FromSoftware has created a brand new genre by itself, with the success of Dark Souls. Since then, many companies have tried to emulate the formula, to various degrees of success. However, nothing can beat the Souls sequels and spinoff created by FromSoft themselves.
In this article, Gurugamer is going to showcase a list of all Souls Games on PC and Console, Ranked.
1. Elden Ring
Elden Ring is basically Dark Souls 4, or Dark Souls but now you can sneak, jump, and ride a steed around the open world areas. You start by creating a character and choosing a class to determine your starting gear and stats (e.g. Astrologer to be a spellcasting sorcerer, or Samurai to be a katana-weilding DEX melee build). You progress through the game by traveling around the map and finding items/gear to upgrade your equipment setup and defeating enemies to gain 'runes" that you can spend to level up or buy items from shops.
'Sites of grace' are the bonfire equivalents in Elden Ring, and most of the time they visually display a path of light that indicate the direction you need to go to progress the main story through the locations of major bosses. There are plenty of these grace sites littered everywhere in the open world and within dungeons so it is easy to fast travel to where you want to go immediately.
Elden Ring is an open-world game and there are various mini-dungeons/secrets hidden away in every corner of the map. It is to your advantage to seek out these locations to find rare materials and unique weaponry that may or may not change your play style altogether. The open world feels like there is always something waiting for you to discover, such as powerful enemies that drop unique weapon arts (ashes of war) or an NPC standing around waiting to offer you a quest. With the introduction of a day/night cycle, there are even some bosses that only spawn at nighttime in specific locations waiting to ambush you but offer unique drops as well.
Elden Ring, while imperfect, is the best implementation of an open-world action RPG that I've ever played. It feels like the culmination of every iteration of FromSoft's 'Souls' games into one truly amazing experience filled with intrigue, struggle, and eventual triumph.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
In Sekiro, you play a shinobi, a ninja, whose young master was kidnapped. The young master has a special heritage, that's why he matters so much to your enemy. To rescue him, you have to sneak and fight your way through historical Japan. Across your journey, you visit very different parts of the country. On the whole, the game is a mix of stealth and combat. That doesn't sound all that interesting at first, and yet Sekiro has, hands down, the best game design I have ever seen in a video game.
In many locations, it is up to the player whether to simply sneak past an enemy, sneak past an enemy, and then attack the enemy from behind, or seek direct combat. If you choose to play dirty and attack your enemies from behind, it not only gives you an advantage in combat, but it also fits nicely with the shinobi theme. If you choose direct combat, which is sometimes inevitable, the game thrives on the fact that you have to break through your opponents' cover in order to hit them with a death blow. This in turn leads to some really nice "finish" animations.
Defeating opponents is often a painful learning process because you have to learn how they move and when it is best to parry. Yet you are more engaged than frustrated in the process. If you die, there is the option to be revived. However, you lose half of your money and half of your experience points.
The level design is awesome because you can move horizontally and vertically, i.e. you can swing from rock to rock or climb trees with the help of your grabbling hook.
3. Dark Souls III
Personally, Dark Souls 3 has the best story and second best level design in the series after the original one. The game really doubles down on weapon and armor variety that leaves you satisfied. Anyone can find a playstyle that suits them better. The compact level design pushes players into various events in each area that needs you to carefully dissect otherwise seemingly impossible challenges.
The gameplay revolves around more dodging and favors an offensive playstyle as enemies are much more aggressive and fast compared to previous titles. The base game is well-crafted and executed but I can't say the same for the DLCs. DLCs feel like they don't want you to engage in combat and just run through everything. The game encourages you to react strategically and use your brain but DLC pushes you so much that after dying in some areas, you don't want to kill those 40 enemies that take 15 mins to go through again. They clearly went overboard here. It was fun for me to kill them all in the first run and then I sprinted past them. So be wary about this.
But the good part about the DLC is that the bosses are particularly well done and does the game favor greatly. Extremely hard bosses that require strict management and knowledge of the game's mechanics that make you fully use everything to get past. Almost every major encounter in the DLCs is memorable, so in the end, the downsides are forgivable.
Possibly the best PVP mechanics of the series here. Multiple factions attacking and defending each other, it's total chaos that always ends up as an exhilarating experience through and through. Absolutely brilliant soundtrack as icing on the cake. Definitely recommended and a must-play of the souls genre.
4. Bloodborne
The aesthetic is what mainly defines Bloodborne as its own separate thing within the Souls series. You don't get to see such beautiful, detailed and immersive victorian-fantasy worlds like Yharnam every day. Add From Software's expertly crafted passive storytelling and a bit of Lovecraftian inspiration, and you have yourself a game universe that is just a delight to get soaked in. It is impressive how Bloodborne, being a single game, has a lore that is just as compelling as the entire Dark Souls series as a whole.
In the gameplay department, Bloodborne is a faster-paced version of Dark Souls, with less emphasis on defending and more on being aggressive. Parrying was made easier than ever thanks to the inclusion of guns, and this is one of the things I love the most about Bloodborne. It's going to be hard to go back to the other Souls games and not be able to parry anything. However, this doesn't make the game any easier. Bloodborne is just as difficult as any other Souls game. Another great thing about combat is being able to regain health if you hit an enemy immediately after taking damage, which creates this very clever risk-reward dynamic at all times.
The amount of art and creativity that went into every aspect of Bloodborne's design is both admirable and delightful. Bloodborne won't win any awards on the technical aspect, but the levels still look fantastic, they have a lot of detail everywhere. I was initially worried that all of the game's areas would look too similar given the victorian setting, but fortunately, this isn't a problem. The soundtrack is also good, probably my favorite in the Souls series, along with Dark Souls 3.
5. Dark Souls
Dark Souls is easily one of the best ARPGs ever created in the last 20 years. A beautiful, varied and interconnected world, a good sense of risk and reward, well-designed levels, and boss fights. It feels very long and you will probably want to take a break for a while, but at the same time you'll want more and you'll just want to go ahead and try to kill the bad guy that made you rage over and over again. Some argue that the second half of the game suffers from a lack of time and a kind of rushed feeling to areas like Lost Izalith and The Tomb of the Giants.
For a true Dark Souls experience, you are gonna want to pick a build early. The starting classes help, giving you more points in a certain category, like Strength, Dexterity, or Vitality depending on your starting class. You will want to use levels from souls to help form your build.
The real part of Dark Souls is the Bosses. They are what the game is known for, and the game would be wildly different without them. Without spoiling too much, some of the bosses in this game have become my all-time favorites. 3 of the 4 DLC bosses and the boss at the end of Anor Londo are the true contenders.
6. Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin
Compared to Dark Souls 1, this game is much more consistent in its quality, with lower highs but higher lows. There's nothing in DS2 that's awful on the level of Lost Izalith, but there's also nothing nearly as good as the Painted World outside of the DLC. However, with the DLC included for free in the SotFS edition, the game is elevated to much greater heights. Sinh, Fume Knight, and Ivory King are among the best bosses in all of Dark Souls, better than almost every fight from DS1 and a good chunk of the DS3 boss pool as well. They also contextualize the story of the game in a way that makes the game far more personal -- it's much easier to be invested in the world of DS2 compared to DS1 and 3 where the stories feel like a backdrop rather than motivation.
Combat is Dark Souls combat, I don't feel I need to explain much more than that. It lends itself more to larger groups of enemies, and magic is greatly improved, but it's still Dark Souls, and it's just as good as any other Dark Souls game -- faster than DS1 as your attack options are better, but slower than DS3 because multiple enemy encounters require patience and picking a good time to attack -- the Dual Pursuers in NG+ play more like Ornstein and Smough than as a generic combat encounter. PvP is also great, but my experience is too limited to comment on it in depth here.
The game is, unfortunately, ugly -- much less creative enemy designs than DS1 and 3, with most of the new enemies being fairly standard humanoid enemies or bland looking 'fantasy monster' -- Ogres, those weird mushroom things, and the long-armed green enemies in No Man's Wharf are all forgettable enemy designs, a far cry from the unique appearance of the basilisks, the unnatural bodies of the mimics, and the horrifying bug/human hybrids in the depths of Blighttown. Boss design suffers from a similar lack of quality -- there are no fights as visually striking as Sif, Gaping Dragon, or Gravelord Nito. The most creative boss design is the Executioner's Chariot, an optional boss that culminates in a fight against a pretty generic horse enemy with dodgy hitboxes.
7. Demon's Souls
Demon's Souls is the prototype for Dark Souls, with the familiar Souls combat (light/heavy attack, block, dodge...etc). Similar to Dark Souls, every action has a heavy, realistic feel to it, so your sword swings and shield blocks will have lifelike responses. These groundbreaking controls are complemented by beautiful visuals, stunning level design and extremely creative boss battles. For instance, one of the early levels will have you running through a castle timing your runs with the intervals of a dragon swooping down and breathing fire over your path. Scenes like this are so grandiose and epic in scale and really immerse you in the fantasy genre.
The most crippling flaw of Demon's Soul is a lack of a compelling story. This game is truly gameplay oriented, meaning you will be going from level to level without really feeling like you've accomplished much for any characters or made a significant progression throughout a long winding engaging story, unlike games like Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls. But Demon's Soul is a game you definitely need to experience to fall in love with. It is a game of absolutely monumental scale and you really deserve to see it for yourself.
The boss battles are also not that hard - they are very "primitive" and much easier than Dark Souls and if you have played DS1, you should have no problem speedrunning this one.
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