Ranking All Soulsborne Games From Worst To Best
Prepare to die... trying to pick a winner.
Soulsborne is the fan-created moniker for From Software's loosely linked game series. There's lightly knitted lore connecting these games into the same universe, yet what's more defining is the third-person gameplay and controller smashing difficulty.
With the release of Dark Souls: Remastered - a current-gen remaster of the best-known entry of the series - it's cause for celebrating this innovative and lovingly anti-social franchise.
Its no-nonsense challenge will brutalise an unprepared player, but the persistent ones came back for more. For every dire low the player hits, it’s all worth the adrenaline-fuelled high of victory, creating one of the most pulse-pounding and rewarding experiences in gaming…perhaps ever.
Ranking this series is a difficult task though; firstly there are no clear-cut 'bad' games with them all having their strengths. Secondly, its RPG elements create such a vastly varied player experience from one to the other.
It all means that a ranking article really comes down to a writer's stripped down personal preference. Regardless, one must press on and try their best - just like when playing a Soulsborne entry.
Let's hope it results in a little less dying, though...
6. Dark Souls 2
Even the ever-diverging opinions of the Soulsborne community can (mostly) agree that this game belongs on the bottom. Unless the player is a diehard PVP fan - where it is arguably the best of the series - the accolades since this game's applauded initial release, has in time, been reversed.
Series guru Hidetaka Miyazaki was missing as game director, with his absence felt in almost every aspect. It's truly the only instalment that feels like a committee created a game via a checklist rather than a ground-shaking passion for its subject.
To be frank, the design is just plain lazy; the levels are cobbled together with no world logic, the lore is pretty generic, several bosses are just re-skins from part 1, and the combat (asides from the improved jumping) hold the same clunky flaws.
Despite that laundry list of negatives, it still manages to be a decent playthrough. Yet the things that worked had already been established in former entries and the things it attempted to add (e.g. HP loss, no farming, etc) were misguided - resulting in the clear runt of the litter.