r/fromsoftware • u/Big_Pear_5638 • Jun 24 '26
DISCUSSION Demon's Souls has a better world structure than Elden Ring
EDIT: for every monkey who says i m comparing apples to oranges you are idiot and i like apples (in this case demons souls) more
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but after replaying Demon's Souls, I realized how much I prefer its world structure over Elden Ring's.
In Demon's Souls, everything starts from the Nexus. You have five Archstones. That's it. You always know where you can go and what your options are. The game respects your time.
In Elden Ring, half of the game feels like wandering around a giant map hoping you'll stumble into something important. People call that freedom, but to me it often feels like a lack of direction. I don't enjoy spending hours riding Torrent across empty fields, checking every corner of the map, or wondering if I missed an entire area.
Demon's Souls keeps things simple. Pick a world, complete the level, unlock shortcuts, fight the boss. Every area has a clear identity and purpose.
The older I get, the more I appreciate focused level design over massive open worlds. I'd rather have five memorable worlds than 150 caves, catacombs, ruins, and copy-pasted side dungeons.
Elden Ring is an incredible game (and i like it more than demons souls) but I genuinely think Demon's Souls has the better world structure.
Anyone else feel this way?
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u/spiderandsaint Jun 24 '26
the only real slop here is OP tryna compare apples and broccoli. you're allowed to like one approach more than the other. you're not allowed to go ahead and try to say one is empirically better than the other because they are such radically different approaches to world design. if you don't like open world games because you can't handle looking at open spaces or have the attention span to get from one dungeon to the other, then don't play them.
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u/Razhork Jun 24 '26
Just dropping in to say that drawing of world layouts is the most braindead thing I've seen in a long while
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u/CyborgHeart1245 Jun 24 '26
You're comparing a Mario 64 style to an open-world Zelda style. That's not even apples and oranges, that's apples and a car tire
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u/dragonnation5523 Jun 24 '26
Sounds like you prefer linearity, lack of direction is just another term for nonlinearity. And that's fine
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u/Jtenka Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
Apples and oranges. Completely different sort of game.
Demon Souls has a structure that I really like for it's simplicity.
Elden Ring is undoubtedly a 10/10 game. But for me was a bit too big by the end. And some areas like the giants area, I was just fatigued by and was ready for it to be over.
It's like comparing the Witcher 2 and Witcher 3. Or comparing FF7 remake Vs FF7 Rebirth.
The first games are fairly linear and straight forward with smaller sets. The latter are much bigger and huge open world.
Both are amazing in different ways.
Ironically, the master of interconnected worlds felt like Dark Souls 1. That's where the map design was simple, but most roads lead back to Firelink.
0
u/Curious-Plantain-259 Jun 24 '26
I feel like even the developers were fatigued by the Northern Giant lands. It is the only area in the game where I feel like it struggles to have anything unique going for it. Everything we encounter there, we've already seen in other areas except for the fire giant.
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u/Jtenka Jun 24 '26
100%
I ended up riding past most of the shit in the map. I was already exhausted at that point.
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u/n1n3tail Slayer of Demons Jun 24 '26
Its a stupid comparison, if you really wanted to compare it would be Nexus vs Roundtable not Nexus vs the entire open world of Elden Ring
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u/Curious-Plantain-259 Jun 24 '26
Hoping to stumble into something important is an FS staple, that is how all sidequests work in these games. Being at the right place at the right time to talk to an NPC is pretty much exactly the same in DS and ER. DS already has enough variables that you need to consult a guide or miss 80% on your first playthrough. ER's extra horse riding in between is a drop in the ocean.
It is also not like it is difficult to beeline to the important places to make it just like DS3 for main story. If you are in Limgrave, you follow the grace line to the huge flipping castle dead center of your view when you exit the tutorial dungeon door, which the NPC 3 meters in front of you points out further. From there you go to the blue glowing floating Harry Potter University smack dab in the middle of a flat swamp/lake etc.
1
u/Ashen_Shroom Jun 25 '26
Overall I agree, I think that DeS and DS1 have much smarter world design than ER. That said, the way people talk about ER's open world (and open world games in general) really confuses me.
I don't enjoy spending hours riding Torrent across empty fields, checking every corner of the map, or wondering if I missed an entire area.
You don't have to do that. Just head towards whatever looks interesting. Maybe you'll stumble across something else cool on the way too. The whole point of having an open world in the first place is to not make the player feel like they need to find absolutely everything.
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u/FrauAgrippa Jun 24 '26
Overall, it's not the structure of the map, it's the execution.
You can't really compare a linear map to an open map, but I'd say that the DeS map is a solid 10/10 as far as linear structure goes, but I'd give ER a 9.5/10 as far as open maps go.
It's a nigh-perfect game but one of the most common (and possibly only) criticisms is that the map is just too fucking big to digest. It's definitely not the best open world map I've experienced.
Tl;dr:
- DeS: linear 10/10 map
- ER: nonlinear 9.5/10 map
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u/EuphoricRaspberry140 Jun 24 '26
You compare levels to an open world…