Things You Should Do After You Beat Demon's Souls

Demon's Souls is a challenging game with insanely hard bosses, but it is far from impossible. It doesn't matter how many times the Penetrator turns you into a human kabob or the Tower Knight introduces you to the soles of his metal boots. Eventually, through sheer perseverance and stubborn human will, you will beat the final boss. However, that is not the end of your journey.

Even after you've slain the final boss, you still have more enemies to kill, more dungeons to delve, and more equipment to loot/upgrade. And, since the original Demon's Souls started the Soulsborne genre, the PS5 remake is no exception to the trend.

Whether it's your first time completing Demon's Souls or your fiftieth, you probably want to know what lies beyond the final killing blow in the remake. Here are a few activities you can try after you've saved the world from the Old One — or doomed it by joining the demon.

The Souls series is well-known for its New Game Plus mode. While the option to transfer character stat and item progression over to a new, harder playthrough has been around for a long time, Demon's Souls dialed the concept up to 11 and transformed it into a selling point to make players stick around.

Unlike most other games, Demon's Souls (and Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and the Demon's Souls remake) offers an unending number of New Game Plus runs. Each time you complete one, you get to replay the game again and tackle increasingly stronger enemies, which lets you pursue equally increasing heights of power. More importantly, the game world resets each time you enter a new level of New Game Plus. Did you kill an NPC in one session for a quest in a playthrough? New Game Plus hits the reset button, just in case you want to let them live the next time around and obtain some items and spells you missed.

Any RPG worth its salt features a morality system. This mechanic is designed to extend a game's replayability, and Demon's Souls is no exception.

Depending on the actions you take while exploring Demon's Souls, the levels start to drift towards White or Black World Tendency. Unless you used a guide, you probably won't reach Pure White or Pure Black World Tendency your first try. So, once you beat the game, grab a walkthrough and aim for one of those level variants. You will find new quests, items, and enemies if a world turns Pure White or Pure Black.

If you want a whole different sort of challenge, you should explore Fractured Mode. Once you offer up 25,000 Souls to a statue in the Nexus, this new experience will flip things around, pun intended. In Fractured Mode, left is right and right is left, including your character's hands. Suddenly, all paths and enemy placements you've memorized are reversed, which plays havoc on your muscle memory.

While the Souls games have plenty of powerful bosses, you don't need to kill every one to beat the game. And since the genre thrives on obfuscation, you might not realize some bosses even exist. If you'd like a challenge that goes beyond what you're used to in an already challenging game, then you will love killing Demon's Souls' optional bosses. Or tear your hair out trying.

Demon's Souls first two optional bosses are the Red and Blue Dragons. You would be forgiven for assuming they are just immortal level-specific hazards designed to smother you in red hot death. The game doesn't indicate the dragons are enemies, let alone killable, but with enough ranged and magic attacks, you can end their fiery reigns once and for all.

Demon's Souls' final optional boss is Old King Doran, and he is the epitome of a superboss. You learn about his tomb by helping (or killing) Ostrava, and you visit it expecting a powerful weapon, but are instead greeted by the old king himself. Granted, he will give you the weapon if you defeat him in a duel, but good luck trying. Most of his moves obliterate you in one hit.

You can only plod around Demon's Souls in heavy armor, cleaving through enemies with a giant sword so many times before it gets boring. So, how do you change things up without switching games? How do you venture through Demon's Souls one more time and make it feel like a fresh experience? Try a new character build.

In Demon's Souls, your stats affect what equipment you use, and your equipment impacts what stats you focus on. These intertwining factors determine your gameplay style of choice (or build), and the game has plenty available. If you're tired of safely poking enemies to death with a sword and spear, you can try out builds that focus on spells or large swords. Some builds are also designed to excel in PvP, which can help players who are conscripted into serving as the Old Monk's stand-in.

If you only stick to a specific weapon type and plan of attack, you haven't truly experienced everything Demon's Souls has to offer.