English subtitles are available.

In this video I respond to the worst video essay ever made, ''The Lost Soul Arts of Demon's Souls'' by Matthewmatosis, in which he argues that Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne are bad sequels to Demon's Souls, which was the only truly unique and innovative game of the souls series. If you want to see my previous response to Matthew, ''All Dark Souls 2 critiques are SLOP.'' (A response to his ''Dark Souls 2 Critique''): https://youtu.be/bWiccoRo-mg

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Timestamps:
0:00 - 1:40 Introduction
1:41 - 11:48 Matthew is a bad and/or dishonest critic
11:49 - 23:57  ''Only Demon's Souls was innovative''
23:58 -  26:26 ''Only Demon's Souls has many unique bosses'' (Prelude)
26:27 - 31:08 ''There is nothing remarkable about Dark Souls' combat''
31:09 - 33:14 ''Bloodborne's RPG mechanics are useless''
33:15 - 40:51 ''Bloodborne/Souls combat is below that of basic action games''
40:52 - 41:41 ''Weapon Arts destroy the grounded aesthetic''
41:42 - 44:47 ''Souls combat is just about rolling and attacking''
44:48 - 54:37 ''Non-puzzle bosses are generic at best and terrible at worst''
54:38 - 57:09 ''Only Demon's Souls was risky and experimental''
57:10 - 1:00:13 ''I could just play a better action game instead''
1:00:14 - 1:02:59 ''Only Demon's Souls has traps and area gimmicks''
1:03:00 - 1:08:14 ''Only Demon's Souls is immersive and has unique areas''
1:08:15 - 1:18:47 ''Only Demon's Souls has unique bosses'' (Again)
1:18:48 - 1:35:54 (Nitpicks and falsehoods)
1:35:55 - 1:40:17 ''Dark Souls and Bloodborne are bad sequels''

23:40 When I first entered the Painted World, I immediately walked backwards and fell off the broken bridge. When I came back to life on the bridge, I realized that I was not only locked in the Painted World but that my Souls were locked outside of it because of how quickly I died (iirc, your souls drop where you were 10 seconds ago). And I had a lot of Souls that I didn't want to lose. This forced me to need to no-death the entire Painted World if I wanted to get my souls back, and doing so was immensely satisfying.

One of the very last things I did after a thousand hours or so in DS2 before moving on was kill Darklurker as a first boss.

on the one hand, I am sad this isn't another lore-through episode.

On the other, damn, it's not even Mauler?

Lore wise, Bloodborne is set during a victorian era where Shields are at this point in time expensive heriloom. In Dark Souls,  Knights use magic materials, spells or use souls to get stronger. In Bloodborne, using magic in a lovecraftian setting damages one's sanity and the materials (bloodstone) make the weapon stronger but makes it 'bloodthirsty' and lastly consuming a lot of blood turns you into a beast. The knights of cainhurst, at least the modern iteration of them, use weapons with high bloodtinge such as Chikage. Hunters,excluding outliers, are civilans so armoring them and outfitting them with a shield is expensive, guns are better as they can be mass produced and one can coagulate their blood into mercury for ammo.

1:37:18 it's me, I'm the cult following

34:20 NANOMACHINES SON.

7:54 In demons souls you have to actively study to remember which stone was used for which type of weapon, it’s such a hassle that most of the times you just look up the wiki on what type of upgrade material and where to get them

I agree with what you say, I just want to make one correction: at 23:46 you say that the only way to access Gwyndolin is by killing Gwynevere, but you don't have to do that. You can just put on the Darkmoon Seance Ring and the statue disappears.

3:35 Dark Souls 2 is so free that you can get +10 weapon without killing a single boss

Positioning and spacing has only become more important due to combo extensions and such. The complexity has always come from the enmies and the fact that you can't just stop them from attacking you indefinitely (or at least not without a lot of understanding). One thing I always like to say is that a combat system is only as good as the enemies you fight with it. You could have the most complicated and intricate combat system in the world but if the enemies don't ask you to use any of it then it will feel very simple and lacking in depth.

I'm so glad i dont let the opinions of others dictate my view of games, fandom is cancer

The point that MM made resurfaced in elden ring boss discourse and it was just as stupid and arrogant lol ("fromsoft has hit a wall with combat"). Many "critics" like VGmatthew made terrible videos that I unfortunately watched and took seriously before I played the game.  Great video!

1:19:48 he is right.
Invasions are more fun than pvp will ever be and it seems like he is criticizing the overall opinions of the souls community at the time since I think his video came out in 2017, which you misunderstood afterwards.

Dark souls is derivative of Demons and that's derivative of Kings Field(s) and so on to other influences. Arguing your favorite is best is often on what you experienced first being right and variations wrong.

So he is using Demons' Souls as a blueprint for how the other games should be but only when it allows him to criticize other games, and if said games are similar to Demons' Souls in some way then he stops using the blueprint and calls it derivative.
It is dishonest at best.

This demand for sequels to be "innovative" and "different" without quantifying of what they actually mean and without giving any examples is something that also bothered me with many other "critics" i've seen. If reworking all systems, changing the entirety of how world progression works and adding new moves isn't enough, then what is it that you want from a sequel? At that point they are just asking for a completely different game, and if a developer would do that then the same people would complain that its too different, its just complaining for the sake of it.

I actually found MM's video refreshing. At the time it seemed like the community was only talking about the boss fights and was also very outspoken about the fact that they believed "gimmick bosses" should be removed from the subsequent souls games, so it was fun to hear someone appreciate a different aspect of the series.

The first Souls game you play is always the most immersive.

16:46 the gravelord covenant, how to forget when someone cursed my world the first time I reached the DLC in NG+ because I had missed it in the normal playthrough and couldn't continue playing after Gwyn, that fucked me up so hard, I had to learn how to get rid of it and had some luck because the invader died by itself after I spent time looking for them and advancing through the DLC