Demon’s Souls is famously a hard game. And with the remaster looking like the best launch next-gen title right now, a lot of people will be discovering Demon’s Souls for the first time. So if you’re just finding your feet in Demon’s Souls, or this is your first Souls game at all, here’s some friendly advice to make the initial learning curve a little less brutal.
Temple Knight
A high strength, high stamina character that also comes equipped with some good armour. If you’re a new player, you’re going to take a few more hits than you’d like — so it helps to start with some strong armour.
The Temple Knight’s starting weapon also has good reach. That’s a huge help when you’re still discovering what every enemy can do, and how much space and time you need to deal with them all.
As an extra bonus: The Temple Knight also has a healing spell. What more could you need?
Royalty
If you like the idea of magic but the idea of seeing single digit numbers for your HP and strength put you off, Royalty is the next best option.
You’ll start with the spell Soul Arrow — not healing, but it helps — and you’ll also have an MP regen ring to make life a bit easier. Their endurance and HP are low, and their intelligence isn’t as high as a straight-out Magician. It might be a bit harder not having a straightforward sword-and-board style fighter at the beginning, but once you get into it, the spells in Demon’s Souls can really put enemies on their arse.
Knight
Like the Temple Knight, the Knight has a good outfit from the beginning. You don’t have a self-heal, but you’ve got the next best option: a nice hefty shield.
The Knight’s stats are also well rounded, making it easy when you’re just finding your way. There’s bugger all faith and magic, but the balanced stats mean you have enough stamina, damage dealing and headroom to cope with anything that comes your way.
The alternative to this is the Soldier, which comes with better HP and slightly better stats for endurance and spell-casting. But you won’t hit as hard, and neither of the Knight or Soldier are good spellcasters anyway.
Priest
It’s helpful as a beginner to have that heal “crutch”, and the Priest has the best of them all. Their spellcasting sucks, they have some of the lowest dexterity in the game and priests aren’t lucky either.
But they have a great balance between hitting hard, taking hits and moving around. Priests will also have the Heal Miracle (miracles are a particular type of spell in Demon’s Souls).
As the name implies, Heal heals HP. It’s based on your Faith stat, and it’s the same as what the Temple Knight starts with. Both the Priest and Temple Knight have 13 Faith in the beginning, so the difference between the two is really whether you want more damage-dealing capability early on (Temple Knight), or a more rounded mix of stats with better HP and intelligence (Priest).
Hunter
Want to cleave things up with an axe while also having a bow for ranged threats? Then the hunter is your class. Starting with a soul level of 6 and a shield, the Hunter is pretty well balanced from the off. You’ve got reasonable HP (vitality 12), a decent amount of endurance for dodging and swinging and acceptable strength and intelligence stats.
The balance of dexterity and strength also means you shouldn’t have any problems using any of the weapons you find in the early stages of the game. The axe is also fairly easy for newcomers, which is a big help in a game as difficult as Demon’s Souls. Ultimately, you can think of the Hunter as better variation on the Soldier. You lose a bit of melee damage, but the utility of having a long bow is often much, much better.
If you haven’t grabbed a copy of Demon’s Souls yet, we’ve got a list here of all the prices in Australia. The game’s visual filters are also definitely worth playing around with too.
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