YU-GI-OH: Duelist Kingdom | The Most Underrated Anime Arc

"Oh I wonder what to watch today?"

"Well your friends have been hounding you to watch Full Metal Alchemist. There are all those famous HBO shows you still haven't seen like Sopranos, the Wire, Barry, Lovecraft Country. There's the rest of Kurosawa's films, Dragon Prince, Daredevil, Star Trek TOS, Naruto for some reason, and all that British television you started when you were in grad school. There's so much to watch....

....or you can rewatch YU-GI-OH."

"Yeah, I am going to rewatch YU-GI-OH."

YU-GI-OH was a mass media wave that completely absorbed me in the same way Pokémon did around that same time.  I remember somehow getting my hands on a Crass Clown and Gate Guardian action figure that meant so much to me as a kid that Crass Clown and Gate Guardian are still among my favorite monster cards in the series. My friend at the time, who learned about my budding interest in YU-GI-OH, gave me my first card which was Cyclone Laser. It's a useless card, but I wouldn't know nor care at the time. All I knew was that I was hooked. I would always ask for tins for Christmas. Flea Market trips on the weekends had a blocked set of time shopping for booster packs and rare cards. My grandfather was always happy to pay for these splurges. And in retrospect, I imagine it took a great deal of character for my grandfather to spend $10-15 on a single shiny card whose value was only worthwhile to his stupid grandson.  

Of course, the value didn't stem from just the shininess. It also stemmed from recognizing the card from the anime from the handful of VHSs and DVDs I owned. That's advertising for ya. If you think you aren't affected by advertising, chances are you are too stupid to realize that you already have. 

Anyway, that's my history with YU-GI-OH. A mixture of VHSs, expensive cards, and toys has me set up for a review that is going to be heavily bias. 

YU-GI-OH, or what will be called Duelist Kingdom for the remainder of the review since I hate typing out the hyphens, is a show whose first season is a pinnacle example of what I like to call 1st Season Growing Pains. You can probably guess what that is. Shows where the characters weren't fleshed out like Parks & Rec and the Office (U.S). Some are outright bad like the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Essentially, the First Season Growing Pains is the stage where the story is still working out the kinks. 

In the case of Duelist Kingdom, the first season is just wonky, and I guess now is a good time to address the elephant in the room. 

The next paragraph will compare the anime to the card game. If you are a reasonable human being that isn't a mouth breathing card game fanatic, then skip the next paragraph to the stuff that actually matters. 

Yes, the first season doesn't follow the traditional card game format. Monsters that require tribute summoning can simply be played. Some cards will have effects that are not accurate to the actual cards. Life Points will occasionally drop randomly even though there wouldn't be a calculation to based that deduction. Players will outright make up rules, Updated Autopsy style, such as dinosaurs being weak to fire or monsters attacking the field for effect bonuses. Players will outright break rules like hacking a duel to alter a monster's attack and threatening to commit suicide in order to forced their opponent to forfeit. It's no coincidence that both of those offenses were done by Kaiba.  

But even ignoring that, there are still a couple of things that are uncanny compared to later seasons. Yami, the alter ego of our main character Yugi Moto, is sort of an anti hero that will straight up ice antagonists from where they stand. Bakura in general is in this weird limbo where he is useless because he doesn't become important until literally the last season of the show, but his character is also kind of genius because his story is technically built up throughout the show all the way up to the final season. 

Don't even get me started on the 4Kids edits, but that already has been done to death by other pundits on the Internet. 

Really, you kind of have to be of a certain mindset to get any kind of enjoyment of Duelist Kingdom. If you are a card game fanatic, I would highly suggest not looking at Duelist Kingdom as a YU-GI-OH show but rather as some weird Dungeons and Dragons derivative with YU-GI-OH assets. 

Duelist Kingdom has a childlike inventiveness where the hero will outwit the opponent through some fun antics. It's very play pretend but in a good way. And more importantly, this feeling separates Duelist Kingdom from any arc in YU-GI-OH. Sure, it's cool when they do cool card combinations that can be used in actual gameplay, but it's also fun to see strategies that you can only imagine in a fantasy world. I can see cool card game strategies in any season of YU-GI-OH but only in Duelist Kingdom can I see a dragon rider shot straight at a flying castle, destroying its flotation device, and thus crashing it down into a mob of monsters.

There is not a care in the world about the sanctity of the rules, so there is a feeling of freedom in building these fun situations. It also makes the discrepancies to the rules less severe since you should accept that it isn't trying to be an adaptation of the ruleset in the first place. The later seasons, while more faithful to the ruleset, has discrepancies that stick out more like a sore thumb because they are so faithful to the rules. 

Duelist Kingdom isn't afraid to experiment with the game either. In the first season, we see YU-GI-OH done via a board game, a maze dungeon crawler, and an MMORPG. There is a lot of variety in the scenarios. 

As for the story...well...well it's something. On top of the mindset that accepts the weird rules, you should also judge Duelist Kingdom the same way you judge professional wrestling or a kid with Down Syndrome presenting an art project. In that, let's focus on what it does right. 

For a show about a children's card game, there is surprisingly a high amount of dedication in establishing character motivation and making villains threatening. It's refreshing from a modern age perspective since I feel the MO of some shows, especially later YU-GI-OH shows, is to focus less on this concept. Have you ever seen a narrative where a protagonist seems to throw themselves at a situation with the only motivation being to save the world or some other feigned notion? Have you ever seen a villain that is more concerned with being relatable than threatening? 

The thing is that conflict and relatability, two powerful elements of a story, can sometimes hinge on just the most basic elements that we take for granted. Duelist Kingdom reminded me of it in a big way. There was always a part of me as a kid that hated the sections when characters weren't dueling. But now, I kind of appreciate it. It would be harder to be invested in Yugi and Joey's plight if they didn't spend time on Yugi's Grandpa or Joey's sister. 

It also makes us care because Yugi and Joey are going up against some moustache twirling trash. 

The villains are so deliciously evil, and they get me pumped like a Wrestling Heel would. The famous example is Weevil Underwood who tosses out Yugi's Exodia cards. It's a great scene and an underrated piece of writing. It nerfs Yugi's deck since Exodia could easily deus ex machina out of every duel. It establishes Weevil as a hateable piece of shit and a rival to Yugi. It's always a brilliant piece of writing to kill two birds with one stone, and Duelist Kingdom has a lot of little moments like that. The duel between Yugi and Bakura establishes Bakura and builds intrigue of the millennium items. Grandpa trains Joey which makes his competency against top duelists more reasonable since he is barely a beginner at the start. It also gives us another reason to like Grandpa. It also establishes Joey's arc as a lousy card player to defeating the intercontinental champion. Duelist Kingdom tries to do a lot with very little. And compared to later seasons, it's more grounded and less convoluted. 

But back to the villains, the villains are super evil and awful, but it is not like they are completely irredeemable (well the ones that matter aren't anyway). In the case of Bandit Keith and Pegasus, their motivations are just as clear as the heroes. And personally, I'm glad the motivation is not the center characteristic unlike say Gus Fring. I'm not saying villains with complex motivations like Gus Fring are bad. They have their place. However, there is also a place for villains that are simply villains and having a motivation is just the flavoring to keep them from being purely one dimensional. 

Other things that I enjoy are the monsters' sound design which are great. At least, it is leagues better than animals saying their name. Pegasus's deck is one of my favorite examples of deck representing character. His deck starts off as carefree Toon monsters only to slowly turn into macabre eye creatures as the duel goes on symbolizing his good nature getting distorted by evil. It's simple but effective. Pegasus himself is great for unintentionally poking fun at the heavy use of inner monologues by how he directly responds to Yugi's thoughts.

I really love the English voice acting even though the lines that come out of their mouths are....are....

Ah fuck it, let's talk about the bad. 

The dialogue is rough. As you can probably tell, I watched the 4Kids dub. And for those that are aware of 4Kids notoriety, their problem of neutering adult content and having cringy on-the-nose dialogue is very apparent in Duelist Kingdom. It is not a good sign when the first thing I thought of when the first episode opened up was how eerily similar the dialogue was to Little Kuriboh's Abridged series. It made The Abridged series retroactively funnier but it didn't reflect well for the show it was parodying. 

Story is rough overall as well. As much as I praised Duelist Kingdom for getting a couple of basic things right, there is an equal amount of basic things that the show fails spectacularly at, full of missed opportunities and contrived moments.  

Let's go back to Weevil as an example. Although Weevil was set up brilliantly, the whole thing with this character is anticlimactically resolved within the next episode. I guess you can make the argument that the early resolution helps for other story reasons, but I would have preferred Weevil as an overarching rival that is built up throughout the season. It would have given Yugi another incentive that isn't saving his grandfather/the Kaiba brothers. As it stands, Yugi is very one dimensional compared to Kaiba and Joey who at least have a secondary drive to be the best at the game. 

I suppose Yugi has a secondary conflict in the form of his conflict with Yami which leads to another problem. 

Many people get upset about Kaiba trying to kill himself to win a children's card game, but what frustrates me is how Yugi responds to the aftermath of that. For some reason, Yugi gets traumatized in this isolated incident where Yami almost tried to kill Kaiba even though Yugi seems completely fine when Yami 'mind crushes' two other characters. It's so out of place and clearly happening so Yugi can have something to conflict about during his duel with Mai later. And like Weevil, it gets resolved so quickly that it makes that whole ordeal inconsequential. It also makes the unintended dark themes feel gratuitous. 

We are now at the lighting round of weird, stupid, anti-climatic, and forced nonsense Duelist Kingdom provides. The duel between Joey and Yugi has no stakes since we know Yugi could just give Joey the prize money. The whole thing where the semi-finalists have to keep showing credentials before every duel even though they already have before reaching the semi-finals is baffling and again is only there to create conflict. The whole Paradox Brother's riddle is unnecessarily complicated for no reason. The duel between PaniK and Yugi, while a fun duel, is soured slightly by how effortlessly Yugi whoops PaniK's ass. It also accidently reinforces that Mai is utterly incompetent which contradicts her status as a high ranking duelist. The duel between Joey and Bones, a duel that was should have highlighted Joey's independence from Yugi's backseat gaming, is undercut by Yugi's backseat gaming. Kaiba trusting his board executives even though they tried to kill him at one point. Mai not getting disqualified for cheating after using perfume to gain a strategic advantage. AAAAH, listing these out are actually starting to give me a headache! 

Then there is the ending which feels more like one ending, an epilogue, and three appetizer endings. 

Duelist Kingdom concludes with filler content which is about as hit and miss as the average filler content. The hits being the Legendary Heroes arc which is a fun RPG gimmick. The misses being Rebecca Hawkins grating voice and the entirety of Dungeon Dice Monsters. God, I would need all the time in the world to describe how bad Dungeon Dice Monsters is. 

I appreciate its attempt at experimenting and giving the viewer variety. However, there is truth in saying that experiments can fail. Let's break it down in a number format because this blog is going long and I don't want to spend any more time on something as stupid as Dungeon Dice Monsters:

1. Duke Devlin sucks. His personality is just a plain faux cool, and he reminds me of the douchebags I knew in high school. 

2. On top of that, his motivation and scheme is so blatantly nonsensical that I had to make a sublist for it. Here it is now! 

2a. The fact that he really has no reason to blame Yugi for his struggle takes him from a villain you are suppose to love to hate to someone you just hate. 

2b. The fact that Duke thinks beating Yugi in a game he has no experience in would somehow make him superior to him is the stupidest thing YU-GI-OH has ever done, and I've seen GX. 

2c. The fact that same game is essentially luck based makes Duke's logic even more stupid, and I've seen like twenty minutes of Zexal. 

3. The rules of Dungeon Dice Monster are so convoluted that Duke has to keep explaining the rules even up to the last part of this four part arc. I suppose Duke's cries about why Dungeon Dice Monsters was unsuccessful shouldn't be directed to Yugi defeating Pegasus but rather to these stupid rules! 

4. There is little out of box thinking like in other duels, so it is kind of boring to watch. 

5. And it just ends! Instead of a ending this season with the Legendary Heroes arc, which would have been a more appropriate ending, we get this guff which slows the momentum of the main plot. 

It leaves the conclusion to Duelist Kingdom feeling idiosyncratic. It feels like if I decided to end this review abruptly and review something else-

YU-GI-OH: The Sacred Cards | A YU-GI-OH Branded Video Game Snack

During my recent dive of Duelist Kingdom, I also played a YU-GI-OH game on the GBA that was as part of my childhood as the other YU-GI-OH branded entertainment I previously mentioned. 

I am tacking it on to here because I don’t have much to say on this game, and it is not worth dedicating an entire blog post on. That said, it had a few interesting things that I felt worth talking about. 

Sacred Cards is a retelling of the Battle City arc of the show except you play as the self-insert protagonist. Because of this, the story is altered slightly to accommodate this new character. 

If you have seen the Battle City arc, then it can be mildly amusing to watch certain events play out differently. However, that’s about as interesting as the story goes. As it stands, it is just a watered down retelling of Battle City.

Gameplay also demonstrates a few alterations. Although unlike Duelist Kingdom, it isn’t as severe and some seem there just to work around the limitations of the Game Boy Advance. The main differences is that monsters can be destroyed via type advantage similar to Pokémon. It’s fine albeit a little unintuitive. Certain type match ups are a bit confusing. For example, Shadow beats Light but Light beats Fiend. Then Fiend beats Dream but Dream beats Shadow. Shouldn't Light beat Shadow? What differentiates Fiend and Shadow? It's somewhat unintuitive and certain typings feel redundant. 

In fairness, Pokémon has this unintuitive problem too in the form of Poison, Fairy, and Dark type which have weaknesses that aren't immediately apparent. Similarly, there are redundant typings such as Ground/Rock and Dark/Ghost. Although to Pokémon's credit, those types tend to usually operate as secondary types which Sacred Cards lacks, but I digress. 

A bigger issue is how certain duels require this type advantage or else you will have to face monsters that are practically unbeatable. This leads to two scenarios where you rework your entire deck to exploit that weakness or have a fairly diverse deck and rely on the luck of the draw. In either case, you will be relying on trail and error or knowledge from previous playthroughs to manage especially on the last few duels of the game. This is to say that if you ever felt Pokémon was way too basic, play this and take some comfort that Pokémon could be a whole lot worse. 

The lack of effective magic and trap cards is also be an issue. This creates the problem where you rely mostly on high power monsters and or type advantage which either stun locks your opponent into a loss or they do the same to you. Again it feels like luck. 

Other than that, I can live with most of the alterations. I have mix feelings about how most of the monsters you have have triple digit power which is very low for modern YU-GI-OH. However, it works for the type system. And frankly, I developed an affinity for some of them like Dharma Cannon and Skelengel. 

I hate how story progression can be locked with little indication on what to do next. Certain sequences can’t be activated until you talk to certain NPCs leaving even more progression to trail and error or knowledge from previous playthroughs. 

This game gives me the same feeling as Duelist Kingdom. It’s crap but I like it anyway. It has its problems but there isn’t a piece of media that to me captures that old timey card game feel like the original YU-GI-OH. Maybe the later episodes of Chaotix, but that’s all I can think of. 

I haven't used this word yet other than for the title but hopefully you now understand what I mean when I say Duelist Kingdom is underrated. It's certainly flawed, but more tragically its more enjoyable elements are rarely discussed in favor of talking about how they don't play by the rules or the 4Kids dialogue. 

I would recommend this to anyone assuming you go in with the right eyes. And if you don't, then you can just watch it for a laugh. How else can you watch KUNAI WITH CHAIN with the satisfaction of context?  

Spiritfarer: A Crafting Game Made for Me

I try really hard to consume a little of everything in what I like to call the genre buffet. I'm pretty proud of saying that I have a favorite in every single major film genre. "What's your favorite comedy?" BOOM, Monty Python's the Holy Grail! "What's you favorite action movie?" BOOM, Mad Max: Fury Road. "What's your favorite pornographic film?" BOOM, uhhhh okay we won't talk about that one.  

However, I can't say the same for computer games which has genres that I still have biases against. Skateboarding, for example, is a genre I couldn't get into as is real time strategies, MOBAs, and realistic sports games. 

I'm happy to say that I recently found a game that broke ground for me in a certain genre. That game was Spiritfarer. 

Spiritfarer is a management crafting game. And yes, I'm not a fan of that type of gameplay. I've only managed to somewhat enjoy it in a couple of games such as Minecraft, which is not so much a crafting game than an elaborate toy box, and Bed & Breakfast, a decent management flash game that's enjoyable albeit very simple. Other games that had crafting or management elements I've merely tolerated than enjoyed.

I initially had no interest in Spiritfarer. I saw a few trailers and frankly saw no reason to consider it other than the beautiful art style and the ability to hug animals. Who cares if you can pet the dog when you can hug large anthropomorphic animals? 

It took word of mouth and a few video game reviews to finally draw my attention to the reasons Spiritfarer is worth the purchase, well A reason. That reason is the story. 

The story of Spiritfarer involves a woman named Stella as she is assigned to take care of lost spirits until they are ready to be sent to the afterlife. From the premise alone, it is a much more enticing than from what I've seen from the genre. Granted, stories about the afterlife are easy sells for me along with Christian mythology and stories told by the Muppets.

Plot wise, there isn't much going on aside from a few tiny scenes throughout the story, but it makes up for it by filling the runtime with building relationships with these lost spirits and learning about their lives. It's similar to the appeal of Animal Crossing where you interact with residents and fulfill their needs. However, I much prefer Spiritfarer's approach as your interactions are far more involved and meaningful. 

I was initially shocked by how few spirits you are actually tasked with helping in your adventure. I imagine a more ambitious developer wanting to do dozens of characters each with their own backstories. However, I later became more appreciative of their quality over quantity approach. The game benefits from a shorter runtime especially since the gameplay gets rather monotonous which I will get to later. 

Actually, I will get into the gameplay now since my rambling foresight tells me I am going to be spoiling the hell out of this game, and I would prefer to save that talk for the end. For the sake of beginning this as a spoiler-free review, the story is fantastic and worth checking out. The gameplay is also worth checking out, but it comes with a couple of asterisks. 

Spiritfarer has the usual trimmings of what I expected from a story-based crafting management game. The gameplay loop is fetching items through exploration and shopping. You use those items to craft upgrades and progress the story. As someone who doesn't normally play these types of games, I couldn't tell you what its gameplay does to differentiate it from others aside from the framing device of being a grim reaper that looks like the lovechild of a Hayao Miyazaki character and a PBS kids show. All I could tell you is my honest experience which started out quite serene and absorbing. It was nice to have a game that doesn't involve combat which is nice since combat is so prevalent in computer games. The only problem is that it doesn't take long for that to get repetitive. 

I'm glad that Spiritfarer had a shorter runtime as I already saw myself dragging along to get to the end. It felt like I was having Senioritis in your last semester of college. There came a point for me where I was doing the basic minimum to get through which sort of clashed with the spirit of the game. The game encourages you to feed your passengers which I happily did for a while. It didn't take long before I realized the little downsides to feeding your passengers before I all around stop feeding them for the sake of convenience. (The only exception is Stanley. I kept feeding him). Likewise, the game encourages you to fish. However, the only reason to fish later in the game is to give passengers a wider variety of meals since they may not like certain foods or the same meals on consecutive days. But as I already mention, there is little incentive to feed your passengers other than for the sake of roleplaying as a caretaker. Now, I don't need some horrible punishment like Stanley gaining the figure of a Holocaust survivor, but I wish there was something that can tame that urge to play efficiently over playing the role. 

I guess my urge to play efficiently even at the expense of my malnourished friends was tamed somewhat due the game's occasional surprises. The occasional wrench in the day-to-day did so well to pull me into the world and my role as the Spiritfarer. An early example happens almost immediately as the shopkeeper attempts to price gouge you only to stop thanks to some help from the tutorial spirit. It's a great moment as it established how the game will feel more lived in. However, this happens less as the game progresses right around when I needed those surprises the most. It's telling that the moments that came to mind were not the gameplay but the subversions within the gameplay. 

The other moments that came to mind were the frustrating moments. Glitches like game crashes and phasing behind the backgrounds are more common than they should. Platforming challenges where the camera doesn't sometimes convey where to land. The lack of an upgrade that would house the fast travel seal on your boat which would have made traveling more convenient. The forced day and night cycle which doesn't add anything to the game other than forcing your boat to stop. The cooldown for special moves takes too long. There is a lot of small but egregious annoyances that took me out of the serene experience Spiritfarer is trying to take you on.

At this point, I am going to transition to the story. This paragraph is to establish that everything at this point will contain spoilers including the ending. It is also used as a transition device since I didn't know how to transition from gameplay to story. Well...

...

As I previously mention, the plot takes a backseat to focus on characters. It's almost slice of life, and all the lives of the lost spirits are great from a writing perspective. I love how you like or dislike a character says more about yourself than the likability or the quality of the writing. Some people will gravitate towards some characters over others based on who they are as a person. This also means feeling unfavorably towards one character shouldn't reflect badly on someone who might love that character. This is my way of saying "don't be offended if I dislike your favorite characters."   

As you can see by this tier list, I developed quite the fondness for Stanley and Gwen. As a kid, I grew a fondness for people that acted as a sort of generous guide in my life. I went into this crafting management game blind and having no idea what to do, but Gwen was eager to help. As it stands, Gwen is easily my favorite tutorial character. She is at least better than Omochao because her guidance is flavored with a genuine personality. I haven't really seen that since Bottles the Mole. 

Her helping you get on your feet and being your acting mentor figure creates such meaningful relationship. It makes her exit all the more emotionally satisfying. And from a gameplay perspective, it signals to the player that the tutorial/first act is over, a perfect blend of gameplay and storytelling. 

Then there is Stanley, who I admittedly didn't like when we first met. His entrance was hilarious and all but the fact he squatted one of the guest rooms really rubbed me the wrong way. Plus, he made me use a guide for this game for the first and only time when I couldn't figure out what a tchotchke was. When I figured how simple a tchotchke was, you can bet I was rather angry. But it was overtime that I grew to like him. I saw his insecurities and childlike innocence in myself. At the end of the day, he just wants to be accepted. So when he exits to the Everdoor, it was quite the gut punch seeing this child in his final moments feel guilt and anguish. Something you wouldn't want to see any child like Stanley to feel.

On the other side of the tier list there's Elena. I never cared for teachers that were overly critical and were quick to assign busy work. A lot of my least favorite missions were from her. Thank God I didn't have to improve her house. It didn't help that the game made her the last one I completed before it dumped me into the ending. 

The ending is one of the few missteps in the game's narrative where it is revealed that Stella is also a lost spirit, and her helping the lost spirits was her own way to make peace with the world before she moves on. Now, the ending itself is great and serves as a great linchpin to an otherwise blank slate protagonist. However, this climax of the story happens before you've completed all the spirits of the game. And again, it is not like you have dozens of spirits to deal with making the ending requirements potentially unruly. You only have to help eleven, so why did it needed to give that option to the player? Having the ending hit right before you completed your main task makes everything after feel like an unnecessary epilogue. I guess Stanley and Atul, my two remaining passengers, weren't that important to Stella's life if they weren't necessary to complete the game. 

But I digress. 

Spiritfarer is a game that I will refuse to play again. The gameplay, while amusing for a bit, got tedious for me as it went on. However, this game will stick with me far better than most games I have played purely for its style and spirit. I won't play Spiritfarer again, but I will definitely listen to its soundtrack from time to time. I will definitely use Spiritfarer as my IPhone wallpaper. I will reminisce about walking Alice to her room and getting mad at Atul from blocking my view while I threaded fabric. I will overall be thankful for playing Spiritfarer. 

When I first played Spiritfarer, I remember feeling like this was a crafting game made specifically for me. It's a story driven, with non-combative mechanics, thoughtful themes, and it represents a lot of things we definitely need more of in video game storytelling. But after finishing it, I'm compelled to think that Spiritfarer is made for everyone. It's an emotional journey of life and death and explores the complexities of both. 

It's retroactively one of the best games of 2020. "Hey gamers. I know the community is treated like a bunch of homophobic sexist twat-goblins, because it kind of is. But maybe, if we started surrounding ourselves with games like Spiritfarer that push diversity and unique themes instead of games that seem to actively work against that image, we might be taken more seriously!" 

That's my review. Now if you excuse me, I got to cry about Stanley again. 

Rambling about the Box Art of Demon's Souls (PS5)

The PS5 has been out for about five months, and yet I'm wondering if we should change that on the wiki since the word 'out' clearly doesn't apply to everyone. There have been a lot of reasons why I didn't buy consoles at launch in the past. They may have been too expensive at the time like the PS3. They may have had a terrible series of launch titles like the PS4. They may have no right to exist in the first place like every single XBOX console past the XBOX 360. I never had a situation where I didn't get a console because I couldn't. 

Even with that aside, the PS5 was looking to be a launch title problem. However, it had one saving grace in the form of the Demon's Souls remake. A game I always wanted a remake for. 

It's not because Demon's Souls is dated that I wanted a remake. In fact, some would make the argument its more dated mechanics enhance the experience as the Souls games are tailored to putting you into an adventurer's mindset. It's more that I wanted to see Demon's Souls get the spotlight. While I had the pleasure of playing it on the PS3, many haven't. That's sort of the sin of the lack of backwards compatibility in modern consoles, but that is another topic for another time. 

There is also the indulgent want of seeing these environments in a more realistic fashion. Frankly, I don't play the Souls games for the combat or for the adventurer's mindset. I play them because I like exploring the locations and level design. If we are judging my enjoyment of the Souls games based on subversion and how it made me think like an adventurer then everyone's favorite Souls game would likely be their first. It was for me with Dark Souls. The sort of problem with the Soul's series is the same problem some have said about Star Wars. There is a surprising lack of ideas you can really do with something like the Souls series that doesn't involve changing the whole aesthetic like what they did with Bloodborne and Sekiro. Demon's Souls is really the first and only time it can and would be truly subversive as sort of outlined in Matthewmatosis' video essay. 

However, what remains mostly consistent is the quality of locations and level design. Aside from Dark Souls 3, I really like the locations throughout the series. Dark Souls, the best in my opinion, had the amazing Undead Burg, Darkroot Garden, and my personal favorite Duke's Archives. For Dark Souls 2, while an admittedly sloppy entry in the series, still had Sanctum City and Lost Bastille which were fun to run around in. And then, we have Demon's Souls which had the Gates of Boletaria and Tower of Latria. These locations are amazing, and the primitive part of my brain wants to see these locations brought to life in a more polished way.

This is a longwinded way of explaining why I wanted Demon's Souls remade and why I'm pissed that I don't have a PS5. It has come down to reviewing the box art. 

But before I really get into that, I want to establish my general hatred of modern box arts we have been seeing in the past decade and a half. 

I grew up in the N64 era of consoles, or PS1 era if you are a Sony fanboy. And when I think of great box arts, I think of these. 

This is to this day my favorite box art. 

And this isn't a box art, but I also loved the cartridge art of Mario 64. I suppose with you were to look at it from an art perspective, the framing is a bit awkward. I suppose it's because of nostalgia that I love it anyway.  

But as the years went on, there have been less and less box arts that stuck with me over the years. Oh sure, there have been some good ones since the N64/PS1 era. In fact, let's get those out of the way now. I'll even consider my biases and exclude Nintendo box arts since I feel Nintendo is the only company that still makes fun box arts nowadays:

It's almost hilarious just how bad Americans were screwed out of a great box art when it came to Ico. 

But then, we have this.

And yeah, there certainly bad retro box arts (i.e. Megaman 1). However, modern box arts just feel so homogenous and generic. It's reflective of the creative bankruptcy in mainstream computer games. 

This leads us to Demon's Souls, or at least the original Demon's Souls cover. And in my opinion, it is a pile of hot garbage. The remake isn't exactly a giant leap in quality, but I will get to that. 

The Soul's series has been consistently meh when it comes to their box arts, and I feel that stems from not fulfilling a particular function of a good box art. To me, that function is the following: Do they convey the feeling or experience of the game? 

When I look at the DK64 art, I get immediately the sense of adventure and hectic energy. There is almost a story to these box arts that your eyes get sucked into. It's something modern games lack especially the Souls games. 

Demon's Souls (PS5) seems to be a step in the right direction in this front. There is a lot to convey with a Souls game, so it focuses on the overwhelming sense of loneliness as the knight is faced against a small army of monsters and a dragon. It's not much but it's at least better than a knight in a dark aura alla OG Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3. 

That said, there is a foundation that I appreciate in Demon's Souls (PS5). It unfortunately doesn't quite hit with me on an aesthetically pleasing or creative energy level. At this point, I am speaking from pure opinion which is to say I think the Demon's Souls remake box cover is alright with nothing to back up that claim....yeah I suppose that ends my review of this box art. 

I thought I would have something more poignant to say. Maybe I would if I had a bloody PS5!