The starting lineup for Sony's newly rebuilt PlayStation Plus service has been revealed, and it includes a title that's been missing from home consoles for some time: the original Demon's Souls. The precursor to the Dark Souls franchise is beloved by fans, but since the PlayStation 4 and 5 are both missing backward compatibility with the PlayStation 3, the only way to play it for some time has been via spotty emulation or the 2020 remake. Now, fans will finally be able to play the original Demon's Souls again -- but, unfortunately, the experience probably won't be very good.
Like every other PlayStation 3 game included in the PlayStation Plus Premium plan, Demon's Souls will be accessed via cloud streaming to the PS5 rather than emulation. This means the game won't actually be played from the PS5, but from some other distant computer, broadcast to the PS5 over the internet. The technology is impressive, but it isn't perfect, and imperfection is a huge problem for a game like Demon's Souls.
Demon's Souls, like its sister series Dark Souls, is notorious for its tight and demanding gameplay. Dodges and parries must be executed perfectly, and rhythms must be carefully memorized. Things like input lag and frame stuttering can take the game from "hard" to "unplayable," and, unfortunately, input lag and frame stuttering are well-documented flaws with Sony's other game-streaming service, PlayStation Now. Anyone who wants to take down any of the game's array of incredibly challenging bosses will be doing so with a severe disadvantage compared to playing on original hardware.
Game streaming is a poor way to bring a legendary title like Demon's Souls to modern hardware, but it's Sony's best option when it comes to tackling PS3 games. The PS3's infrastructure is infamously finicky, with a long history of causing problems for third-party developers, and, with the new PS Plus service, that finickiness has finally started causing Sony problems of its own. Emulation of the console has proven too demanding for the PS5, meaning that streaming is the only way to bring PS3 games to current hardware.
All hope is not lost for FromSoftware fans, though, as the new PlayStation Plus tiers will also include Bluepoint's highly-regarded 2020 remake of Demon's Souls and FromSoftware's Bloodborne. These are both great options for those who simply want to lose themselves in another Soulslike after pouring countless hours into Elden Ring. Bloodborne and other games from the previous generation can be downloaded to the PS5 and played with no issue thanks to the console's native backward compatibility and the PS4's considerably more conventional hardware infrastructure.
Fans who have been waiting to return to the original world of Demon's Souls have been left with a raw deal, as have any players with an interest in the other PS3 games included with the service. Game streaming is, for the time being, the only way to fit PlayStation 3 titles into the new version of PS Plus, but it comes with a variety of drawbacks that are highlighted by games like Demon's Souls. The PlayStation 3 library is a major selling point of the service, but in its current state, it's also a frustrating stumbling block.