Ranking All Soulsborne Games From Worst To Best

Prepare to die... trying to pick a winner.

By Thor Magnusson /

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.

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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.

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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.

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