You're not helping my predicament.
Let me put it this way, and I'll try to be as unbiased as possible about the pluses and minus's:
Demon's Souls pluses:
More beautiful environments: I definitely feel that Demon's souls environments are much prettier than Dark Souls.
Tower of Latria: Creepy wardens ringing bells as you hear someone screaming "Help me" or weird opera singing in the distance all in a multi-level prison? Awesome.
Better hub and characters: You get a nice nexus from which you can go to any of the game's levels at any given time, and you can also interact with the people you bring in from the outside. It's cool looking, and functional.
Demon's Souls YMMV:
Tendency: I
still don't quite get how this shit works. There are two types of tendency in the game based on player actions: World tendency and Player Tendency. I never really fully understood how to change it, but the game is easy mode when the tendency is white, harder when it's black. Also certain areas are blocked off when your tendency isn't right.
Human form: Human form allows you to do a variety of things including summoning in both demon's and dark. In demon's, not being human reduces your max health by half. However, your opportunities for becoming human in Demon's Souls are limited to: a very rare limited use item, and beating bosses.
Quicker paced combat: As I said in my previous post, I feel like it's a negative, but other people prefer it.
Item burden: On top of taking into account how much the equipment you have on weighs, the game also takes into account the weight of the items you carry with you. This results in a lot of dumping extra items and equipment back at the bank guy.
Mana: Instead of the limited spell uses in Dark Souls, demon's souls uses the more conventional mana stat for its spells.
Demon's Souls Minuses:
Summoning: Summoning other players in Demon's Souls requires a lot of things to coincide. You have to be human, the other player has to be in soul form, you have to be within a level threshold of the other player and you also have to be looking at the right spot at the right time. It's really more trouble than it's worth.
Dark Souls pluses:
Covenants: Basically guilds that you can get into and increase your rank in for nice stuff. Adds an extra layer to the game and its multiplayer, and allows you to get into the lore a bit. Some of the things they do are quite interesting, like one of them allows you to turn yourself into dragon-human hybrid.
More armor: Self explanatory, there's a lot more armor
More spells: Self explanatory, there's a lot more spells to choose from.
Interconnected world: The way all the areas join together through openable shortcuts will have your jaw on the floor at times. It's absolutely amazing how all the levels in this game weave together in a coherent manner.
Better multiplayer: With the covenants and a summoning system that's actually usable, Dark Souls easily has better multiplayer than Demon's Souls.
Awesome DLC: Artorias of the Abyss is the best expansion pack to be released in years.
Dark Souls YMMV:
Slower combat: Self explanatory. Much weightier than demons.
Poise: Basically a stat attached to armor that give you stagger resistance, so you can take light-medium hits without having your attack interrupted. Personally I feel like it gives medium-heavy armor a point, but a lot of people don't like it.
Limited spell uses: Instead of mana, each spell you have equipped can only be used a certain amount of times between resting.
Dark Souls Minuses:
Lost Izalith: Terrible terrible area of glowing lava with the worst boss in the entire god damned series. Worst area in the game.
Some areas feel rushed: Nothing is as bad as lost Izalith, but some of the areas on the latter part of the game don't feel as well crafted as the first half.
Well I could go on for both, but I think this is enough info. I'll admit I have a bias toward Dark Souls, so even if I tried to keep my bias out of these descriptions it probably still exists.
Which mode were you on? Bear in mind that the "normal" difficulty being a total snooze is a relatively recent problem for the series. It seems like Intelligent Systems decided after Radiant Dawn that it would be better to tone down the default difficulty and then offer more challenge modes beyond "Hard." Hard mode in Awakening is closer to what long-time Fire Emblem players are used to (although I happen to think the balance is still not quite right).
In any case, fear that you won't get a good challenge should not be the reason you miss out on Thracia 776. It's one of the meanest games I know.
I didn't turn on permadeath(because every game I've played with permadeath has been a reload fest) but I did play at the hardest difficulty. It was interesting at first, but once I had my guys leveled up I was bored out of my skull with the combat.
