10 Video Games So Great They Ruined The Series

9. Dark Souls

With Dark Souls 3 having launched mere days before I wrote this, it could potentially have offered an argument that the series is alive and well.

However, brilliant though it is, there's a good reason the series' visionary creator Hidetaka Miyazaki declared Dark Souls 3 to mark the end of the trilogy. For that daunting Dark Souls magic to stay alive, the series needs to end before it becomes over-familiar.

There's literally no way to recreate that sense of trepidation when playing the original Dark Souls. It was a nightmarish, beautifully interconnected world of the sort we hadn't seen before, and the sequels have incrementally improved on the the gruelling formula where you try, die, try again.

That's not to say Dark Souls 3 isn't the most polished, technically sound game in the series, and a huge improvement on the disappointingly linear Dark Souls 2 - which was also great, but with a world design that looked shabby next to its predecessor. All three games are must-plays, but the original is a full-on pioneer of the medium that can't be topped.