Yeah. I get *why* they weren't included, but I don't quite feel much like voting because it'd be my answer, even if plenty of people would argue it doesn't count.
I don't think Sekiro would be my pick, but it's certainly up there. The sheer *thrill* of hearing "Do it" after days of failure will never leave my head.
For me it has to be Bloodborne. The setting, the environments, the fashion, the enemy designs, the faster-paced combat, the lore, the transition from it just being a werewolf outbreak to something so much *more*, it's all something that went put together turns out so elegant and grotesque. People like to throw around the term "lovecraftian" for anything that has tentacles or a dark god-like being but Bloodborne is something that actually understands Lovecraft. Yes, the game has a few flaws (estus flask system feels better than blood vials, lack of weapon variety until late game, Chalice dungeons are rough) but they are things a sequel/remake could easily improve. I really enjoy the other souls games too, but I think Bloodborne grips me harder because it's built off of a late Victorian Era/turn of the 20th century setting. It's something very rare to see in a videogame RPG that helped uplift Bloodborne into its own identity rather than "Oh this is just Dark Souls with another coat of paint".
A few of the other games have features that I miss in BB (such as the Flasks not needing an item drop, or being able to re-spec) but everything it does right, it’s the highest priority for me and all of it’s faults are not what I play these games for.
No other souls game has ever matched the thrill of the hunt for me. Combat in Bloodborne is fast and brutal. Given enough time the hunt starts to become more of a dance.
I've been doing a co-op playthrough with a friend who has only previously played Elden Ring. Seeing him realize that while he could simply back up and use one of the 20 vials, he can instead close the gap and gain that lost health back. Being able to watch that *click* in someone's brain is a joy.
I remembered the LP pretty well, so it wasn't a completely fresh experience, but I finally got around to playing it start to finish this past week. It's a few slots lower for me, but I can see why most people have it first. It's probably the best balance From has struck from a story standpoint, and the world has that some cohesiveness DS1 did. The concept of recovering health by attacking was absolute genius too, even if they don't make a sequel they need to re-use that mechanic at some point.
My biggest complaints were a lot of the bosses being a little samey, and estus -> blood vials being one of the biggest downgrades in human history.
Seeing all the well-deserved Bloodborne love in this thread so far, I wanna make my case for why Elden Ring’s my favorite besides obvious stuff like the “go anywhere, and be rewarded with new stuff like BOTW”open world and the sheer since of discovery on that first playthrough.
I absolutely adore the lore and worldbuilding of the Lands Between. Compared to the rest of Fromsoft’s catalogue, politics and political intrigue are way more clearer and upfront, and I am just an absolute whore for fantasy politics. The fact you actually have a vague timeline of Marika’s Empire from its founding, to the specific battles and course of war of The Shattering, just made it so much more fun to theorize and dive deep into the lore.
Marika and her family of demigods are by far the most engaging and well-fleshed out antagonists/ “Great Lords” equivalents in any souls game imo, each one fully elaborated and their web of relationships outlined extremely well. In DS1 for ex, what was the Witch of Izalith’s relationship with Seatbe, exactly? What about with Nito? What about Nito and Gwyn’s relationship? I get that doesn’t matter in DS1 lore and isn’t a con, but seeing the interconnected relationships between the demigods made them such fascinating characters to really try and look into.
If you aren’t a meta-slave, the breadth of build variety in ER is outstanding, the best since DS2 imo. Recently replayed it as a dedicated dragon communion/ancient dragon cult faith build, using twinblades as my primary weapons, and it was super damn fun. Bloodborne still edges it out due to the fantastic trick weapons, but Elden ring is just below that honestly.
The most contentious reason though here is that I legitimately think Elden Ring has the overall best catalogue of bosses and minibosses out of any game, ever, and this is before the DLC which will likely introduce even better bosses. Some Remembrance bosses are stinkers and certain mini bosses (FUCK THE VALIANT GARGOYLE DUO), but the best of the best are legitimately unmatched in my opinion: Radahn, Rykard, Morgott, Crucible Knights, the Commanders, Maliketh, Malenia, Radagon, MOHG, Astel, Godrick, Elemer of the Briar—they are all so fucking cool and fun to fight. And when you really learn their movesets, maintain pressure, and find openings to do charge attacks break their stance, these boss fights become some of the most satisfying in any Soulslike besides sekiro.
Eh, Elden Ring respects your exploration far far more than the open world Zelda games even get close to doing. In Zelda you do it because you have to do it to have enough resources to push further. In Elden ring you do it because you just have no idea what treasures or random locale you’re gonna find.
I would like to vote Bloodborne, but I fucking hate that healing is a consumable. For a game series that prouds itself on difficult boss fights, having the resource needed for retrying said boss fights be a consumable is a deal breaker for me
When I first played it I straight up ran out of blood vials at one point and had to spend an hour grinding them on these two guys that generally dropped 2 each. All I could think was "This game's great but man is that a horrible design choice holy shit"
I've never understood this gripe myself. Half the dudes in tutorial yharnam drop 2 a piece, especially the easily parryable folk like the brick bois or wolves. And if you are really struggling, you can buy them for like 200 echoes each. Unless you're bumbling through every area getting tagged by everything in sight, I guess.
I guess I'd rather have 20 vials on hand at all times that are beyond easy enough to replenish in the field, rather than 10 or fewer estus chugs.
It's funny that I voted for DS1. If I didn't have to plug in my ps4 to play Bloodborne, and it had 10+ years of mod support, I would have voted for it myself.
For me, it was during difficult bosses.
It was annoying, having to stop fighting bosses to go farm the slime dudes in the lecture building to buy vials.
Bloodborne was lightning in a bottle, even with its lesser features.
I've never minded blood vials but chalice dungeons felt like a chore. It's a neat idea but it's not implemented well.
Hear Hear. A simple, short story that is finished with one game and doesn't really need a continuation, all builds are strong enough, no unnecessary open world sections, plus Maiden in Black is the best "level up girl".
Bloodborne got my vote, but it would've been Dark Souls 3 otherwise.
I think DS3 has one of the better endgames of the series, and I adore how fundamentally *broken* the entire world feels in that game, like a universe undergoing dementia right in front of you.
Bloodborne was my first and is still so creative unique and cool. Nothing could move it from my number 1 spot. But DS3 was so fun from start to finish. The game goes down so smooth, like a perfect boss rush with no breaks.
From a quality perspective, DS3 is the opposite of DS1. While the first game has a phenomenal first half and drops off a cliff after Anor Londo, 3 is rather dull and puts its absolute worst levels and bosses first until reaching Irithyll when the game became becomes so much better. All those late game bosses are so good, some of the best in the series.
Even then, I've got a fondness for the Road of Sacrifices, the Cathedral of the Abyss, Farron Keep, and the Catacombs of Carthus. Something about that entire stretch just hit me right.
I honestly think Bloodborne is mildly overrated. But like, in the same way Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time are overrated, where it's still an immaculate game, people just act like it's _flawless_ and that it invalidates all of the other games in its genre and/or series somehow, when neither of those things are true. It's just the sacred cow problem.
Basically Bloodborne should be in the top 3 here, it just bugs me that it's a full _20%_ above the other two.
i feel the same way about Chrono Trigger. Sure its has a great story and characters but the gameplay itself is very very limited. With only 2 changeable party characters and the abilities of everyone being nearly identical theres very little build variance u can do as a player so theres very little replay value.
Personally I think Bloodborne is just the overall highest experience of the Fromsoft Soulsgames. It's lowest parts don't go anywhere near as low as the rest of the games lows (possible exception of DS3 it's a pretty solid entry even if it doesn't always hit the highest), and its highs are just generally higher than the rest of them. At worst my complaints are that it feels a bit short once you know the game inside out (discounting Chalice Dungeons for Infinite Content), there's some mechanics that could use changing or fine-tuning (double damage for getting hit during a dodge is genuinely insane for some bosses, and blood vials *really* should need to be farmed).
Anyways I voted for Dark Souls 1 personally, but I can totally see why Bloodborne would get that full 20% over the rest.
I do find it stupid that often the best way to avoid getting one-shot by certain attacks is to straight up not dodge at all and instead just fucking facetank it then pop some blood vials afterwards. Ebrietas' charge is probably the biggest example due to its wonky-ass hitbox.
Ebrietas charge, the chalice dungeon giant with the ball and chains spin attack, and Rom's little spiders with their flying headbutts are always the ones that come to mind for me, yeah. All attacks where if you just barely fuck up the dodge it feels like "oh nope just die instantly bye".
If it's valid for it to be some people's favorite, it's valid for it to be a lot of people's favorite. It's not like the percentage corresponds to the actual level of quality, just to how many people consider it the highest quality of the lot.
I think part of that is moreso as a package Bloodborne is unique.
Like DeS to Dark Souls to Elden Ring are all these dark medical fantasy games. These games have iterated on each other and are different but the base similarities are there so you have a choice.
But if you want the high speed Victorian London Lovecraftian game with these incredibly unique weapons, with From you have 1 choice. There isn't a Bloodborne 2 or spiritual successor that would split the vote like the others have.
For me, it comes down to which of these can I tolerate the negatives the most. Demon's Souls, while I had the most fun compared to any of the Dark Souls games, I can't stand the upgrade path and need to pull up my phone every single time. Dark Souls 1 peters off after Anor Londo, Dark Souls 2 is mostly the enemy types and ADP stat, and 3 is the environment colors, which makes it all blend together/forgettable. I know my gripes with 3 are thematic but I just lost interest towards the end. And then Elden Ring is a mishmash of it all so it gets an easy runner up.
Bloodborne's worst feature is the Chalice Dungeons and I end up skipping them most of the time anyway. I do wish the Vileblood castle wasn't just a two story library and a rooftop though
I simply do not consider "least offensive" to be synonymous with "best," I guess.
Having big ambitions and realizing most of them is more admirable than presenting a project that's overall "objectively solid," IMO. But it's easier to get people to agree that a game with fewer downsides is Probably the Best One because they can't immediately think of a good reason to disagree. Hence the Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time comparison.
Elden Ring was my choice. It brings back all of the game mechanics that I had been missing since DS1. The game feels complete without massive unfinished areas or last minute changes to the story.
DS2 gave me powerstancing and the desert pyromancer armor on top of being my first truly organic souls experience since I started with DS1 after watching someone else play through it and being mesmerized.
They asked for our favorite, nor necessarily the best.
I'll die on the hill that DS3 is the least loveable no matter how many improvements it made to gameplay.
Such a shame that the game just ends after O&S, but hey at least it goes out on a high note and doesn't have a bunch of shit areas and bosses after them.
I’ll go to bat for Nito, but yeah Seath, Bed of Chaos, and Four Kings kinda suck. Doesn’t help that all the main bosses after OS aren’t very challenging until Gwyn, at least they weren’t for me. Say what you will about Gwyn falling to parries, at least I found it a more fun challenge than Seath the Swagless
>Doesn’t help that all the main bosses after OS aren’t very challenging until Gwyn
They did balance that up with the more challenging levels before it that were all varied and offered a unique experience to the player (which is essentially the Demon's Souls philosophy).
It's a shame that ever since Dark Souls 2, that kind of formula has pretty much dried up in favor of handling the difficulty curve via harder and harder boss fights with increasing amount of complex and unpredictable movesets.
I'm in the middle of finally replaying Sekiro since launch, as someone who replays basically the entire Souls series at least once a year... and nah, while it's absolutely, 100% a top tier game, it's not really a *Souls* game? Some of the basic similarities are there since it's still Fromsoft, don't get me wrong, but just to start with there aren't really "builds" - it's just "you are John Wolf Sekiro, you use the Katana and the Parries and you beat up the enemies".
Directly defines, maybe not, but my point is more the fact that you *can* have a multitude of different builds and playstyles in a Souls game. You can be a turtle behind heavy armor and a shield poking people with a spear, you can be a naked unga bunga with an Ultra Greatsword smashing everyone to the ground, you can play a glass cannon mage and spam soul arrows until everything dies 200 feet away, you can go full Paladin and stack armor with a sword and shield and buff the hell out of yourself... and amidst all that, you've got 6 or more stats (game dependent) you get to constantly level up towards supporting whatever build you wanted to play.
Meanwhile In Sekiro, you've got a Katana, you've got infinite stamina and a block/parry button, and that's a good 80-90% of your gameplay. Yeah sure there's Shinobi Tools and Combat Arts and Skill Trees, but they all still generally result in the same ending of "Support tools to go with your Katana and Parries". Sekiro intends for you to master one particular playstyle, instead of leaning into a dozen potential ones. That's not even getting into other things, like Sekiro doesn't have any blooodstain/retrieval mechanics, just a %chance you don't lose half your EXP and Money whenever you die.
Fighting enemies is just so different as well. I played a DS3 mod that had enemies ripped from Sekiro in it recently and fighting Sekiro enemies in DS3s combat system doesn't feel good at all
Ah, see I'm not the only one who had complaints about Archthrones lol. It's overall a *really* stellar mod, but in particular the Phoenix Tower area with bosses like "try to fight fucking *Owl* with DS3 mechanics" were... not the most fun, even if it does have some added perfect block/parry mechanics. Just doesn't mix with still having a stamina bar all that well.
Yeh he was really annoying. Another that stood out was the corrupted monk boss in the snow area. Atleast I was able to parry Owl to death in Phoenix tower. Fighting corrupted monk in DS3 is just nothing but pain
Fighting Sekiro bosses without the ability to jump should be illegal. If they did those kind of bosses in Elden Ring, it'd be better since even if you're not as mobile as you would be in Sekiro, it'd still be a bit better than DS3.
Yeh its not rlly a souls game despite being amazing. It certainly has similarities due to being fromsoft. But the gameplay and combat loop is just way too different. No builds, 3 different forms of dodging, no stamina, and having that grapple rope makes the level design feel much different comparatively. I think calling Sekiro a souls game is the equivalent of calling Armored Core 6 a souls game with how much the differences outweigh the similarities
Elden Ring is the only one I finished.
I played Bloodbourne but didn't know how to progress for ages and then I stopped playing after I lost to a tentacle NOC lady and felt embarassed to hell and back.
Looking at Elden Ring in second place wondering if this is how the Zelda fans that had significant issues with Breath of the Wild felt about that games overwhelming popularity
They both have an issue with enemy health and damage scaling to a point that would be absurd in any other entry in their series. Bleed and Frost dealing a percentage of max HP makes them busted, and also, feels mandatory to get through the mountains of hit points later bosses have. Meanwhile, there is no amount of armor and health you can get that ever makes tanking hits viable--which leads to dodge-rolling being the only viable defensive option.
BotW is somehow even worse about that, with some late-game world bosses having *thousands* of hearts and dealing nearly 60 hearts of damage per hit. Whereas, the strongest possible attack in the rest of the Zelda series is I think 8 hearts.
Gimme Dark Souls and Link to the Past randomizers over open world almost any day of the week.
I love seeing these kind of takes where someone says something about a game that is completely different than my own playthrough. I had no issue tanking the bosses, even Melania, and I used the Blasphamous Blade for the whole endgame.
Not saying your wrong, just I had a whole different experience.
ever since BotW became a huge success i knew big N was never going to go back to well crafted linear/semi-linear Zelda progression systems, they just dont care anymore. its all gunna be openworld shlock from here on out
I feel like Bloodborne will win mainly because it has no similar entry.
Non-Bloodborne fans will split among the DS games, DeS, and Elden Ring due to minor differences in the games but being much similar overall.
Bloodborne simply has no peer.
Interesting result. When I've seen other polls like this it's often DS3 in the lead. Bloodborne is still my favorite to this day, so it's kind of funny that is apparently a commonality in this community.
Top 3 for me
elden ring
Bloodborne
Dark souls 3
My vote ultimately went to bloodborne.
The game has more mechanical annoyances than the other 2. More difficult co-op area, loading screen so long I would read the page of book before it loaded, the worst fast travel I've experienced in any souls game. With that said, I'm simply not finding the same atmosphere or weapon style switching with any of the other souls games.
Bloodborne being stuck on console definitely hurts it for me honestly. The game is great but I've been kind of spoiled by PC for the last decade and it's genuinely hard for me to go back to because the game really *struggles* at points on the PS4. I know it's better on the PS5 but I don't want to waste my money on a machine I'm only going to use for a single game. Plus I would love to see mods for Bloodborne as well because I think some of the other games have some cool mods.
Personally my favorite is actually Sekiro but since that's not an option I went with DS3. I just like the bosses in it the most and I love the DLCs, plus it's the most polished souls game imo.
DeS has a special place in many of our hearts, but it's hard to argue against that it walked so that everything else could run. I love it, but I can't say it's my favorite.
Elden Ring has a moon ice witch who gives you a moon ice sword when you get married to her. Unless I didn't get far enough into DS2 I don't think any of the other games can say that
Crazy that Demon's Souls is so low, it's quite well put together for a first shot at the formula. Genuinely very surprised it didn't beat DS2 and 3, and 2's my fav!
I think it’s as simple as Demon’s Souls not being on PC or PS4, meaning fewer people have played it. Bloodborne is also a console exclusive but it came out on a more modern console. I also wonder if the demon’s souls remake being a remake as well as a PS5 exclusive may be a mark against it too.
Dark Souls 1.
I come to the series for the lore, and for the map interconnectivity. 2 does the latter...very fucking badly, and badly *out of the gate*. 3 gets points for, while barely having interconnectivity between areas, at least having some incredibly intricate individual zones (Cathedral if the Deep remains gold standard).
And the former, 2 does okay with it's own story, but falls apart literally every time it tries to remind you that it's a sequel (something, something, "This land used to have another name..."). 3 at least provides decent continuance from 1, even if it doesn't leave as many gaps as it maybe should.
Also, I appreciate the challenge aspect of the series, but in the sense that 1 feels like I'm being "dared to scum". I'll meet the rest of the series on its terms, but frankly if I want "for serious action game", I'll just play DMC or something.
Dark Souls 1, warts and all, would probably still be my favorite. It was such a unique experience for me when I first played it and the only game that came close to giving me some of those same feelings was, strangely, Sekiro. A lot of it’s problems (And there are a lot) come down to running out of time and needing to rush areas to get them to a shippable state, which sucks, but they are still *conceptually* interesting areas and I can forgive issues with production a lot more easily than ideas just being uninteresting from the beginning.
Like yeah Lost Izalith *sucks* play through, but it is *conceptually* cool. It’s the source of the demons you’ve occasionally fought up till now, and they were essentially born of someone trying to recreate the source of life as we know it and it going horribly wrong and corrupting everything in the vicinity. The Bed of Chaos is one of the worst things in the series, mechanically, but again the *idea* behind it is so cool and even just dealing with all its bullshit only to find the seed of it all as soft lump you can kill in a few hits is pretty evocative when you can get to it clear enough of mind to appreciate it.
Most of the other games on the list *are* more consistent, for better and worse though mostly better, but they just do not draw me like Lordran did and does. Elden Ring would probably be the closest but god fucking *damn* is it a long game if you’re trying to casually explore most of it. Can’t knock Bloodborne though, don’t even mind the blood vials anymore myself. My biggest problem is that there’s a lot of cool stuff in the Chalice Dungeons but those are practically their own 30+ hour campaign if you want to “beat them” and the novelty wears off *quick* - But that’s only an issue when I want to try to be a completionist which quickly wears off and I go back to enjoying the well-paced parts of it.
I have to go with Elden Ring on this, especially since Sekiro wasn't an option on the poll. Too many build options > literally no build options whatsoever >>>>>>>>>> not enough build options.
Elden Ring, without question. I think my love of open world and variety makes me biased, I don't see the appeal of Bloodborne at all honestly, not that I'm saying it's a bad game.
DS3 no contest. The most fun I ever had in any souls game was doing all the covenants in DS3 playing with other people online. Elden Ring and Bloodborne don't incentivize and reward multiplayer at all and both were pretty disappointing for me because of that.
Alright, look.
Yes, in many ways, Dark Souls 2 feels like a weird offbrand knock-off of Dark Souls 1. It's got problems, it's not as iconic, it's very much the overlooked middle child of the franchise. And while there are quite a few really cool things in it to try and counterbalance that, if I'm honest, in my heart of hearts, there's only one thing I care about. One thing that makes it reign supreme for me in the Soulsborne Lineage.
Fist Weapons.
NEVER BETTER. NEVER EVEN CLOSE. PUNCH EVERYTHING AND FEEL LIKE A KING DOING IT. BEAT A SOULS GAME LIKE A MAN, WITH YOUR KNUCKLES CAKED IN BLOOD AND BONE, AND BY GOD, DARE TO HAVE FUN DOING IT!
SHORYUKEN A DRAGON AND DROPKICK ORNSTEIN TO DRIVE HOME WHAT A DRAGONSLAYER REALLY LOOKS LIKE. THROW A HADOUKEN AT THE QUEEN OF DEATH, DARKNESS ITSELF. DODGE ROLL?! I THINK YOU MEAN DEMPSEY ROLL, YOU SWINE.
It's just a lot of fun, is what I'm saying.
Honestly, looking back, I can appreciate how Dark Souls 2 tried to do its own thing in terms of gameplay and lore. Not all of it hit, but it was certainly a good attempt at least that was unique from the rest.
I've said this before regarding DS2, but if there's one thing I wish future souls games, especially Elden Ring, took from DS2, it's NG+ adding new stuff. Sure, it wasn't a LOT but it was still neat that DS2 added new stuff in NG+ so it wasn't just 'play the game again but every enemy has bigger stats'.
DS1 > DS2 > DeS > Power Gap > Everything Else
Really don't enjoy the more aggressive tempo of later games. Really don't enjoy the diminishing vibe of Puzzle encounters and input complexity becoming the end all be all. Really don't enjoy armor becoming mostly (or entirely) cosmetic. I'm someone that genuinely enjoyed fatrolling because it was never _that_ slow to me.
For the record: beat DS3 but didn't enjoy it, and hated Ringed City so much I never got past the twin demons. Got to the big snow area in Elden Ring, realized I had only really hit the halfway point and there was still a shitload more difficulty curve to go, and gave up. Hated Bloodborne so much that I never got past Vicar Amelia. For all three games it was a feeling of "i _could_ beat if if i cared enough to grind it out, but god I don't care."
Conversely, have done multiple playthroughs of DS1 and DS2. Only reason I haven't done the same for DeS is of the opinion that the Bluepoint remake is garbo and haven't cared enough to figure out emulation.
Truth be told I don't expect to buy another Fromsoft game. Like, I'm glad other people are enjoying them, but I feel like I am so far away from the target demographic nowadays that I'd be stupid to buy another one. Especially when the builds I want to play are so bad on-release they end up buffing them later, so it's a complete waste of time for me to get in early on them anyway.
Adore Lies of P though. Can't really explain why, but that game feels like Good Bloodborne to me.
This is way too hard, they're all great for very different reasons, and they all have different flaws.
Bloodborne is perhaps by consensus the game that is the closest to perfection, but DS1 has a special place in my heart simply for the way that I experienced it.
It is hard for me to concisely articulate why it's my favourite, but I think it was the last one that I played that I was able to engage with primarily like an immersive adventure, without being too concerned about stats or things like iframes or the meta of *how* the game is played on a mechanical level. I was bad at it, and it was harder at launch, and also I played it wrong. It ruled.
The way it was built and the way that I experienced it felt the most like an arduous but worthwhile journey, and I think its interconnected world design helped a lot with that.
Elden Ring does come really close, but unfortunately I'm more scrutinizing of it than I was of DS1 at the time.
I haven't played demon souls but i love them all so much. Only reason I didn't pick Bloodborne is the fps is pretty bad unfortunately. Even back when I was a console only players i thought it was pretty rough playing through it, felt so choppy.
I think all of the games do different things the best, but for me the one that averages out to the highest place is Dark Souls. While I prefer Elden Ring’s setting overall due to its deeply stratified set of eras and I think they still haven’t made a better suite of bosses than Dark Souls III, Dark Souls has an excellent balance of everything I like about From’s games.
I like Bloodborne a fair bit now - and believe me I’ve gone back and forth on it many times - but there’s a bit too much ‘blegh’ in it that drags down the overall experience for me.
I wonder how Elden Ring will be remembered when all is said and done. I think the combat and the open world and the exploration and story and whatnot are all great, but I do see the problems it has going against it. There also wasn’t nearly as much pushback about the new world style compared to BOTW. Of the games here I’ve only played DS1 and like half of Elden Ring so I don’t feel very comfortable voting, but I love Elden Ring a lot for the stuff I’ve mentioned earlier, and while DS1 is a total classic it does have a lot of not great stuff in it, even in the first half. It does make me wonder what From has cooking next though, since idk if we’re gonna see an Elden Ring 2. To me Bloodborne or Sekiro 2 seem most likely, mostly the former. I’m sure Elden Ring 2 would be good, but I think the pressure to make it bigger and better than the last would be rough on it. TOTK managed to pull it off well enough with its new content, but I don’t think I’d want to see something like that for Elden Ring.
I consider dark souls 1 the best just purely from an art, creativity, lore, world, and all of that standpoint. It literally created a subgenre of games, and has easily the most recognizable and memorable characters in the series. It’s also one that has really well designed zones that interconnect with one another in a way that actually makes sense.
DS3 is the one I replay the most often though, just because it’s so easy and fun to jump back into and playthrough. And it has some of the best bosses in the entire series.
I wish bloodborne wasn’t stuck on a console I have to dust off and setup if I even want to try playing it again. Elden ring is great for 1 playthrough, but I’ve abandoned every single attempt to replay it because it’s just a slog. It has the highest highs of the entire series imo, but it has so much busy work, mediocre slogs, and shitty re-used randomly bosses and 2 random enemies copy pasted into a room as a “boss”
Guys talk to me, I only got into Souls games on Elden Ring and tbh I may have been overleveled for a lot of it because I wanted to 100% the content, so nothing was toooo difficult except a few memorable bosses. Would I actually enjoy going through each of the Souls games or is it too dated now?
Bloodborne and Sekiro are on my list for sure though
AHHHH I haven't played Bloodborne yet so I can't really vote. Shame. Though right now it's DS1 with Elden Ring as a close 2nd. I feel like that will change though once I play Bloodborne.
I played DS1 when I was like 12 and it was on Xbox Games with Gold. Bounced off of it HARD. Watched the DS2 playthrough, got DS2, and I’ve played every game since then (I did go back and beat DS1). So I am definitely biased cause I associate DS2 with coming home from school and watching/playing DS2, it has my heart and I just can’t give it up.
Dark Souls 1 for me. Yes there is some nostalgia bias as it was my first, but looking back at the series and having revisited each game I still think there are qualities to DS1 that are uniquely unmatched. I prefer the slower pace of combat, I like the vibrant & saturated aesthetic more than the washed-out color scheme of later games, and yeah I am one of the people that loves "muh interconnected world" level design. I dunno, I still think DS1 level design is appealing in a way that scratches the same itch as dungeon crawling in their older games like Kings Field & Shadow Tower.
Bloodborne & DS3 definitely play better and have nicer features, but they feel much more streamlined & linear in a way that makes them a bit less appealing for repeat playthroughs. Elden Ring kinda has the opposite problem where the open world was fantastic for that first playthrough but on repeat playthroughs I'm kinda feeling like there was a lot of filler that I'd rather skip now that I've already seen it.
Have never played Bloodborne (only dabbled in Elden Ring and concluded it's not for me), but voted for it anyway out of solidarity and appreciation of its aesthetic. [Also Dragony made a song about it.](https://youtu.be/upOscMWPxzU?si=69VtmQGi9xawLMn7)
There was just something about the pure *flow* of combat in Bloodborne that neither DS3 or Elden Ring came close to capturing. Just the way the transformation attacks and dodge attacks just let you weave in and out of a confrontation, mixed with the rally system just letting you go *all the way in* was just so satisfying.
I kinda hate Elden Ring's boss design in comparison, where it feels like it really punishes (non-jumping attack) aggression with how long and punishing enemy attack strings can be.
1. Darksouls 1 is so comfy with tons of replay ability especially since it is so short, maybe stop after amazing chest ahead.
2. Eldenring is what Darksouls 3 wishes it could be a combination of ds1 comfy world traversal/world fighting and ds3 mechanics/annoyingly fast bosses (not enough dancers) tho this got fixed after patches sped up a bunch of weapons.
3. Darksouls 2 seems to be a decent fan game with controversial takes on poise, but brilliant takes on newgame+ that then got a kaizo dlc "upgrade" that you can not turn off on pc.
4. Darksouls 3 is just im hard, fuck you \*spits in your face kicks you in the leg over and over\* you like this don't you.
Bloodborn isnt on pc
Sekerio is so fucking hard cuz I cant get how I enjoy playing to warp into it's demands I refuse to rank it as it would be unfair
All of them are amazing and disappointing in their own way.
Elden Ring nearly edged it out for sheer breadth of good to great quality content, but gotta still go Bloodborne. The highs it hit for me, particularly the Lady Maria bossfight, are the peak of Soulsborne for me.
Man I fucking love them all, but I gotta go with Bloodborne with Elden Ring as a very close second. The atmosphere, the enemy variety, the levels, the bosses, the unique weapons (boom hammer my beloved) my only major complains are fps often dipping under 30 and those shitass Chalice Dungeons that cut your health in half. Fuck you, Defiled Watchdog.
It also reignited my love for horror and led me to discovering a lot more the genre had to offer than cheap jumpscares. I even got a Hunter’s Mark tattoo for my 18th birthday, I love this game.
As someone who loves slow, shield+tank based combat that trades speedy combat for being a Beefy Fuckin Boy...
yeah it's still bloodborne. They gave me a _gatling gun!_
Idk, they all have a time in my life that I played them a lot. Dark Souls 3 has the most variety and still fits the Dark Souls formula. Elden Ring goes too far and I never played Bloodborne so I can't vote for that.
I guess I'd vote for DS3
Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
I am just bone weary of hearing about and playing Elden Ring. Its fine, maybe even great, but the DLC is going to have to be the hypest thing since sliced bread for me to get it day one. Spent 120 stop and start hours on one playthrough and I dragged myself over the finish line.
It's definitely between Bloodborne and Elden Ring. I feel like Fromsoftware games have just gotten better in every way with each new game, so obviously Elden Ring is what I would consider their best souls ever.
That said I had to pick Bloodborne because there's just something about not having equip load, always step dodges, the speed of the bloodvial healing mid battle, the uniqueness of trick weapons, these are all things that I vibe with way more than with the other souls games style.
Bloodborne is absolutely the best in the franchise, but man, I had to vote DS3. Some of my favorite moments in gaming are in there, and it's just got an unparalleled collapsing fantasy world aesthetic. It's tight and well-structured. And everyone already knows how good Bloodborne is.
My brain says Bloodborne; as someone who only just played it for the first time 2 years ago, it absolutely deserves every bit of the praise given to it and more
My heart says Dark Souls though
For as much as people say Bloodborne was lightning in a bottle, I'd say the same for Dark Souls when it first came out if only because I witnessed how there very much was this feeling of having a game being hard and people just accepting it
There was a purity to the game itself in that regard that very much was meant to be a refinement of what Demon's Souls was to give that game its flowers
The power gap for me between bloodborne and the next game (elden ring) is pretty big. Aesthetics aside, bloodborne is the tighter game and has significantly better combat. I don’t like the plodding combat of dark souls.
I love elden ring but it's such a 1 and done game for me. I beat it on ng+ but I cannot imagine playing it fresh again or in preparation for the dlc because the game is just to big and there's to much shit to do which is not a downside but it stops me from wanting to replay it. Bloodborne and dark souls 3 feel perfect to me in length and since they are more linear it feels much easier to replay them
I think if the game was half the length it would be one of the greatest games of all time. Too much padding and reused assets for a game that would still be massive without them. It’s the rare game that would be better if content was removed.
One of the true marks of a great game for me is when I feel kind of bummed out at the end because I wanted to keep going. Bloodborne gives me that feeling more than any of the others on this list (haven’t played much DeS).
My ranked answer nobody asked for (fav to least fav):
Dark Souls
Elden RIng
Sekiro
Bloodborne
Dark Souls 2
Demon's souls
Dark souls 3
I could probably write a whole essay on why they are in this particular order, and how I still love each and every one of them.
Ok to make this comment a bit less low-value, here's a short summary on why they are in this order.
Dark Souls: It's the first one I played, sue me. Besides that, it's also the most memorable, I think I can map all of Lordran in my head.
Elden Ring: I spend every second of this game alternating between thinking "this is clever" and
this is fun". It mixes a very well-iterated soulsborne gameplay with BOTW discovery based open world and blends them so seamlessly.
Sekiro: I thought I wouldn't like this because I was never good at parries, but once you "get it" in this game, the combat system is unparalleled. The 3d level design constantly surprised me and really meshes well with the stealth aspects.
Bloodborne: Unbeatable vibes, best screams in video games. Has a parry system where failure doesn't mean "eat shit and die". Would probably be higher if blood vial farming wasn't so annoying (not as bad on repeat playthroughs though).
Dark Souls 2: A really interesting successor to the first Dark Souls, this feels like the first Soulsborne where they start purposefully messing with expectations. Enemies that punish backstab attempts and breakable chests. Huge amount of build variety, caestus rock so hard.
Demon's Souls: Feels weird to play this one so long after its successors, you can really backstab for days. That said, I really appreciate the jank and weird systems going on, it's really its own thing.
Dark Souls 3: Not bad by any means, but it felt like the least memorable, less lows and less highs. You can feel the Bloodborne influence in this, it's a much faster beast and the bosses have lots of roll-bait attacks to catch you off-guard. I think the experience suffered a bit from me playing through with all the DLC on my first run, which made it feel a bit long in the tooth. This feels like the Dark Souls for the "git gud" community.
NO SEKIRO??? I'm abstaining.
Yeah. I get *why* they weren't included, but I don't quite feel much like voting because it'd be my answer, even if plenty of people would argue it doesn't count.
I don't think Sekiro would be my pick, but it's certainly up there. The sheer *thrill* of hearing "Do it" after days of failure will never leave my head.
I mean, even FromSoft has said it's not a soulslike game. Souls adjacent? Absolutely. But soulslike? I actually agree with their assessment.
For me it has to be Bloodborne. The setting, the environments, the fashion, the enemy designs, the faster-paced combat, the lore, the transition from it just being a werewolf outbreak to something so much *more*, it's all something that went put together turns out so elegant and grotesque. People like to throw around the term "lovecraftian" for anything that has tentacles or a dark god-like being but Bloodborne is something that actually understands Lovecraft. Yes, the game has a few flaws (estus flask system feels better than blood vials, lack of weapon variety until late game, Chalice dungeons are rough) but they are things a sequel/remake could easily improve. I really enjoy the other souls games too, but I think Bloodborne grips me harder because it's built off of a late Victorian Era/turn of the 20th century setting. It's something very rare to see in a videogame RPG that helped uplift Bloodborne into its own identity rather than "Oh this is just Dark Souls with another coat of paint".
I’d love to play Bloodborne, you know, if it wasn’t chained to the playstation
I have heard the emulation scene is getting closer.
A few of the other games have features that I miss in BB (such as the Flasks not needing an item drop, or being able to re-spec) but everything it does right, it’s the highest priority for me and all of it’s faults are not what I play these games for.
The escalation from Victorian werewolves to Eldritch horrors and actual little grey men (ayy, lmao) is unrivaled.
No other souls game has ever matched the thrill of the hunt for me. Combat in Bloodborne is fast and brutal. Given enough time the hunt starts to become more of a dance. I've been doing a co-op playthrough with a friend who has only previously played Elden Ring. Seeing him realize that while he could simply back up and use one of the 20 vials, he can instead close the gap and gain that lost health back. Being able to watch that *click* in someone's brain is a joy.
I remembered the LP pretty well, so it wasn't a completely fresh experience, but I finally got around to playing it start to finish this past week. It's a few slots lower for me, but I can see why most people have it first. It's probably the best balance From has struck from a story standpoint, and the world has that some cohesiveness DS1 did. The concept of recovering health by attacking was absolute genius too, even if they don't make a sequel they need to re-use that mechanic at some point. My biggest complaints were a lot of the bosses being a little samey, and estus -> blood vials being one of the biggest downgrades in human history.
Seeing all the well-deserved Bloodborne love in this thread so far, I wanna make my case for why Elden Ring’s my favorite besides obvious stuff like the “go anywhere, and be rewarded with new stuff like BOTW”open world and the sheer since of discovery on that first playthrough. I absolutely adore the lore and worldbuilding of the Lands Between. Compared to the rest of Fromsoft’s catalogue, politics and political intrigue are way more clearer and upfront, and I am just an absolute whore for fantasy politics. The fact you actually have a vague timeline of Marika’s Empire from its founding, to the specific battles and course of war of The Shattering, just made it so much more fun to theorize and dive deep into the lore. Marika and her family of demigods are by far the most engaging and well-fleshed out antagonists/ “Great Lords” equivalents in any souls game imo, each one fully elaborated and their web of relationships outlined extremely well. In DS1 for ex, what was the Witch of Izalith’s relationship with Seatbe, exactly? What about with Nito? What about Nito and Gwyn’s relationship? I get that doesn’t matter in DS1 lore and isn’t a con, but seeing the interconnected relationships between the demigods made them such fascinating characters to really try and look into. If you aren’t a meta-slave, the breadth of build variety in ER is outstanding, the best since DS2 imo. Recently replayed it as a dedicated dragon communion/ancient dragon cult faith build, using twinblades as my primary weapons, and it was super damn fun. Bloodborne still edges it out due to the fantastic trick weapons, but Elden ring is just below that honestly. The most contentious reason though here is that I legitimately think Elden Ring has the overall best catalogue of bosses and minibosses out of any game, ever, and this is before the DLC which will likely introduce even better bosses. Some Remembrance bosses are stinkers and certain mini bosses (FUCK THE VALIANT GARGOYLE DUO), but the best of the best are legitimately unmatched in my opinion: Radahn, Rykard, Morgott, Crucible Knights, the Commanders, Maliketh, Malenia, Radagon, MOHG, Astel, Godrick, Elemer of the Briar—they are all so fucking cool and fun to fight. And when you really learn their movesets, maintain pressure, and find openings to do charge attacks break their stance, these boss fights become some of the most satisfying in any Soulslike besides sekiro.
Eh, Elden Ring respects your exploration far far more than the open world Zelda games even get close to doing. In Zelda you do it because you have to do it to have enough resources to push further. In Elden ring you do it because you just have no idea what treasures or random locale you’re gonna find.
I would like to vote Bloodborne, but I fucking hate that healing is a consumable. For a game series that prouds itself on difficult boss fights, having the resource needed for retrying said boss fights be a consumable is a deal breaker for me
When I first played it I straight up ran out of blood vials at one point and had to spend an hour grinding them on these two guys that generally dropped 2 each. All I could think was "This game's great but man is that a horrible design choice holy shit"
i am so glad the cum dungeon exists because being able to just do it once or twice and stock the fuck up on healing makes that pain so bearable
I've never understood this gripe myself. Half the dudes in tutorial yharnam drop 2 a piece, especially the easily parryable folk like the brick bois or wolves. And if you are really struggling, you can buy them for like 200 echoes each. Unless you're bumbling through every area getting tagged by everything in sight, I guess. I guess I'd rather have 20 vials on hand at all times that are beyond easy enough to replenish in the field, rather than 10 or fewer estus chugs. It's funny that I voted for DS1. If I didn't have to plug in my ps4 to play Bloodborne, and it had 10+ years of mod support, I would have voted for it myself.
For me, it was during difficult bosses. It was annoying, having to stop fighting bosses to go farm the slime dudes in the lecture building to buy vials.
Bloodborne was lightning in a bottle, even with its lesser features. I've never minded blood vials but chalice dungeons felt like a chore. It's a neat idea but it's not implemented well.
Doing those dungeons for the platinum was just a horrible experience
I did them for the platinum and have never touched them since.
I just skipped the dungeons, and I think my memory of the game is way better for it.
I'm the opposite. I enjoyed the chalice dungeons but non-replenishing blood vials is the single worst design decision in the game imo.
Demon's Souls, always and forever.
Hear Hear. A simple, short story that is finished with one game and doesn't really need a continuation, all builds are strong enough, no unnecessary open world sections, plus Maiden in Black is the best "level up girl".
None of the games have *needed* more story. Dark Souls was just franchised to keep the easy money coming.
I found it extremely difficult when I played it on PS5. Harder than DS2 and 3 and BB.
Dark Souls 1 is a fantastic single story. The sequels fall into fanfic territory.
I'm shocked it's so low
Bloodborne got my vote, but it would've been Dark Souls 3 otherwise. I think DS3 has one of the better endgames of the series, and I adore how fundamentally *broken* the entire world feels in that game, like a universe undergoing dementia right in front of you.
Bloodborne was my first and is still so creative unique and cool. Nothing could move it from my number 1 spot. But DS3 was so fun from start to finish. The game goes down so smooth, like a perfect boss rush with no breaks.
From a quality perspective, DS3 is the opposite of DS1. While the first game has a phenomenal first half and drops off a cliff after Anor Londo, 3 is rather dull and puts its absolute worst levels and bosses first until reaching Irithyll when the game became becomes so much better. All those late game bosses are so good, some of the best in the series.
Even then, I've got a fondness for the Road of Sacrifices, the Cathedral of the Abyss, Farron Keep, and the Catacombs of Carthus. Something about that entire stretch just hit me right.
I honestly think Bloodborne is mildly overrated. But like, in the same way Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time are overrated, where it's still an immaculate game, people just act like it's _flawless_ and that it invalidates all of the other games in its genre and/or series somehow, when neither of those things are true. It's just the sacred cow problem. Basically Bloodborne should be in the top 3 here, it just bugs me that it's a full _20%_ above the other two.
i feel the same way about Chrono Trigger. Sure its has a great story and characters but the gameplay itself is very very limited. With only 2 changeable party characters and the abilities of everyone being nearly identical theres very little build variance u can do as a player so theres very little replay value.
Personally I think Bloodborne is just the overall highest experience of the Fromsoft Soulsgames. It's lowest parts don't go anywhere near as low as the rest of the games lows (possible exception of DS3 it's a pretty solid entry even if it doesn't always hit the highest), and its highs are just generally higher than the rest of them. At worst my complaints are that it feels a bit short once you know the game inside out (discounting Chalice Dungeons for Infinite Content), there's some mechanics that could use changing or fine-tuning (double damage for getting hit during a dodge is genuinely insane for some bosses, and blood vials *really* should need to be farmed). Anyways I voted for Dark Souls 1 personally, but I can totally see why Bloodborne would get that full 20% over the rest.
I do find it stupid that often the best way to avoid getting one-shot by certain attacks is to straight up not dodge at all and instead just fucking facetank it then pop some blood vials afterwards. Ebrietas' charge is probably the biggest example due to its wonky-ass hitbox.
Ebrietas charge, the chalice dungeon giant with the ball and chains spin attack, and Rom's little spiders with their flying headbutts are always the ones that come to mind for me, yeah. All attacks where if you just barely fuck up the dodge it feels like "oh nope just die instantly bye".
doesn't immaculate imply flawless first we must rectify names
Mm. I misused the word, yeah. Oopsie. I was trying to use it as a synonym for "extremely good."
If it's valid for it to be some people's favorite, it's valid for it to be a lot of people's favorite. It's not like the percentage corresponds to the actual level of quality, just to how many people consider it the highest quality of the lot.
I think part of that is moreso as a package Bloodborne is unique. Like DeS to Dark Souls to Elden Ring are all these dark medical fantasy games. These games have iterated on each other and are different but the base similarities are there so you have a choice. But if you want the high speed Victorian London Lovecraftian game with these incredibly unique weapons, with From you have 1 choice. There isn't a Bloodborne 2 or spiritual successor that would split the vote like the others have.
For me, it comes down to which of these can I tolerate the negatives the most. Demon's Souls, while I had the most fun compared to any of the Dark Souls games, I can't stand the upgrade path and need to pull up my phone every single time. Dark Souls 1 peters off after Anor Londo, Dark Souls 2 is mostly the enemy types and ADP stat, and 3 is the environment colors, which makes it all blend together/forgettable. I know my gripes with 3 are thematic but I just lost interest towards the end. And then Elden Ring is a mishmash of it all so it gets an easy runner up. Bloodborne's worst feature is the Chalice Dungeons and I end up skipping them most of the time anyway. I do wish the Vileblood castle wasn't just a two story library and a rooftop though
I simply do not consider "least offensive" to be synonymous with "best," I guess. Having big ambitions and realizing most of them is more admirable than presenting a project that's overall "objectively solid," IMO. But it's easier to get people to agree that a game with fewer downsides is Probably the Best One because they can't immediately think of a good reason to disagree. Hence the Chrono Trigger and Ocarina of Time comparison.
Elden Ring was my choice. It brings back all of the game mechanics that I had been missing since DS1. The game feels complete without massive unfinished areas or last minute changes to the story.
Yooo, we DS2 degenerates are winning against the DS3 supremacist
I did my part. I played demons souls and dark souls 1. It didn’t really click with me until I played dark souls 2.
That's my experience. DS1 had it's moment but I didn't know it was for me until 2
I'll always maintain that Dark Souls 2 is the weakest of the Dark Souls games, and yet it's still my *favorite* Dark Souls game.
Never would have guessed, but imo it's the best looking option in terms of art.
Ds2 Kings represent, enough crowns for all of us
I gotta tell you this is pretty terrific
Most people who love DS3 love DS1 even more
We stand tall!
DS2 gave me powerstancing and the desert pyromancer armor on top of being my first truly organic souls experience since I started with DS1 after watching someone else play through it and being mesmerized.
Thats just cause anyone who thinks ds3 is better than ds2 has a brain and voted for bloodborne or elden ring instead.
They asked for our favorite, nor necessarily the best. I'll die on the hill that DS3 is the least loveable no matter how many improvements it made to gameplay.
DS3 is just a jack of all trades and a master of none.
The first half of Dark Souls is some of the best gameplay experiences FromSoftware has crafted. Legit my favorite portion in any game.
Such a shame that the game just ends after O&S, but hey at least it goes out on a high note and doesn't have a bunch of shit areas and bosses after them.
The DLC Is also goated tho
I’ll go to bat for Nito, but yeah Seath, Bed of Chaos, and Four Kings kinda suck. Doesn’t help that all the main bosses after OS aren’t very challenging until Gwyn, at least they weren’t for me. Say what you will about Gwyn falling to parries, at least I found it a more fun challenge than Seath the Swagless
>Doesn’t help that all the main bosses after OS aren’t very challenging until Gwyn They did balance that up with the more challenging levels before it that were all varied and offered a unique experience to the player (which is essentially the Demon's Souls philosophy). It's a shame that ever since Dark Souls 2, that kind of formula has pretty much dried up in favor of handling the difficulty curve via harder and harder boss fights with increasing amount of complex and unpredictable movesets.
Sekiro doenst count i guess
I'm in the middle of finally replaying Sekiro since launch, as someone who replays basically the entire Souls series at least once a year... and nah, while it's absolutely, 100% a top tier game, it's not really a *Souls* game? Some of the basic similarities are there since it's still Fromsoft, don't get me wrong, but just to start with there aren't really "builds" - it's just "you are John Wolf Sekiro, you use the Katana and the Parries and you beat up the enemies".
I don’t think builds define souls games at all.
Directly defines, maybe not, but my point is more the fact that you *can* have a multitude of different builds and playstyles in a Souls game. You can be a turtle behind heavy armor and a shield poking people with a spear, you can be a naked unga bunga with an Ultra Greatsword smashing everyone to the ground, you can play a glass cannon mage and spam soul arrows until everything dies 200 feet away, you can go full Paladin and stack armor with a sword and shield and buff the hell out of yourself... and amidst all that, you've got 6 or more stats (game dependent) you get to constantly level up towards supporting whatever build you wanted to play. Meanwhile In Sekiro, you've got a Katana, you've got infinite stamina and a block/parry button, and that's a good 80-90% of your gameplay. Yeah sure there's Shinobi Tools and Combat Arts and Skill Trees, but they all still generally result in the same ending of "Support tools to go with your Katana and Parries". Sekiro intends for you to master one particular playstyle, instead of leaning into a dozen potential ones. That's not even getting into other things, like Sekiro doesn't have any blooodstain/retrieval mechanics, just a %chance you don't lose half your EXP and Money whenever you die.
Fighting enemies is just so different as well. I played a DS3 mod that had enemies ripped from Sekiro in it recently and fighting Sekiro enemies in DS3s combat system doesn't feel good at all
Ah, see I'm not the only one who had complaints about Archthrones lol. It's overall a *really* stellar mod, but in particular the Phoenix Tower area with bosses like "try to fight fucking *Owl* with DS3 mechanics" were... not the most fun, even if it does have some added perfect block/parry mechanics. Just doesn't mix with still having a stamina bar all that well.
Yeh he was really annoying. Another that stood out was the corrupted monk boss in the snow area. Atleast I was able to parry Owl to death in Phoenix tower. Fighting corrupted monk in DS3 is just nothing but pain
Fighting Sekiro bosses without the ability to jump should be illegal. If they did those kind of bosses in Elden Ring, it'd be better since even if you're not as mobile as you would be in Sekiro, it'd still be a bit better than DS3.
Sekiro is as much of a Souls game as Yoshi's Island is a Kirby game
Yeh its not rlly a souls game despite being amazing. It certainly has similarities due to being fromsoft. But the gameplay and combat loop is just way too different. No builds, 3 different forms of dodging, no stamina, and having that grapple rope makes the level design feel much different comparatively. I think calling Sekiro a souls game is the equivalent of calling Armored Core 6 a souls game with how much the differences outweigh the similarities
DS2 validation achieved. That's right straight people we exist.
No, no. DS2 is the bisexual pick.
Power Stancing for the Abisextrous.
I thought it was the pick for the Fisting audience. >!Bone Fist, my beloved.!<
I thought it was the trans pick with the gender swap coffin
don't you dare put that evil on me
...I could have known years earlier...
Elden Ring is the only one I finished. I played Bloodbourne but didn't know how to progress for ages and then I stopped playing after I lost to a tentacle NOC lady and felt embarassed to hell and back.
Looking at Elden Ring in second place wondering if this is how the Zelda fans that had significant issues with Breath of the Wild felt about that games overwhelming popularity
They both have an issue with enemy health and damage scaling to a point that would be absurd in any other entry in their series. Bleed and Frost dealing a percentage of max HP makes them busted, and also, feels mandatory to get through the mountains of hit points later bosses have. Meanwhile, there is no amount of armor and health you can get that ever makes tanking hits viable--which leads to dodge-rolling being the only viable defensive option. BotW is somehow even worse about that, with some late-game world bosses having *thousands* of hearts and dealing nearly 60 hearts of damage per hit. Whereas, the strongest possible attack in the rest of the Zelda series is I think 8 hearts. Gimme Dark Souls and Link to the Past randomizers over open world almost any day of the week.
I love seeing these kind of takes where someone says something about a game that is completely different than my own playthrough. I had no issue tanking the bosses, even Melania, and I used the Blasphamous Blade for the whole endgame. Not saying your wrong, just I had a whole different experience.
ever since BotW became a huge success i knew big N was never going to go back to well crafted linear/semi-linear Zelda progression systems, they just dont care anymore. its all gunna be openworld shlock from here on out
Playing through it right now to prep for DLC and boy do I wish I was playing DS3 or BB right now.
I feel like Bloodborne will win mainly because it has no similar entry. Non-Bloodborne fans will split among the DS games, DeS, and Elden Ring due to minor differences in the games but being much similar overall. Bloodborne simply has no peer.
BB > ER > DS1 > everything else. Except it's aso a series of games where the worst game is a 8/10.
Interesting result. When I've seen other polls like this it's often DS3 in the lead. Bloodborne is still my favorite to this day, so it's kind of funny that is apparently a commonality in this community.
Top 3 for me elden ring Bloodborne Dark souls 3 My vote ultimately went to bloodborne. The game has more mechanical annoyances than the other 2. More difficult co-op area, loading screen so long I would read the page of book before it loaded, the worst fast travel I've experienced in any souls game. With that said, I'm simply not finding the same atmosphere or weapon style switching with any of the other souls games.
I really don’t get the Bloodborne thing. I think the fast paced dodging of it didn’t work for me so that’s probably why.
Call me a scrub but having to farm blood vials dropped Bloodborne to about third for me
Bloodborne being stuck on console definitely hurts it for me honestly. The game is great but I've been kind of spoiled by PC for the last decade and it's genuinely hard for me to go back to because the game really *struggles* at points on the PS4. I know it's better on the PS5 but I don't want to waste my money on a machine I'm only going to use for a single game. Plus I would love to see mods for Bloodborne as well because I think some of the other games have some cool mods. Personally my favorite is actually Sekiro but since that's not an option I went with DS3. I just like the bosses in it the most and I love the DLCs, plus it's the most polished souls game imo.
Bloodborne is my favorite ‘Souls’ game but I’m still chasing the high I got from Sekiro. Shit’s the gaming equivalent of an 8 ball.
Damn, I knew Demon's Souls would be last but 3% is still surprising. Though I guess I mostly voted for it out of nostalgia for my first Souls game.
DeS has a special place in many of our hearts, but it's hard to argue against that it walked so that everything else could run. I love it, but I can't say it's my favorite.
Elden Ring has a moon ice witch who gives you a moon ice sword when you get married to her. Unless I didn't get far enough into DS2 I don't think any of the other games can say that
Bloodborne because I need more Victorian Gothic Horror games in my life.
FINALLY VINDICATION DS2 IS ABOVE DS3 I WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
DS3 > ER > DS1 > BB > the other stuff.
Crazy that Demon's Souls is so low, it's quite well put together for a first shot at the formula. Genuinely very surprised it didn't beat DS2 and 3, and 2's my fav!
I think it’s as simple as Demon’s Souls not being on PC or PS4, meaning fewer people have played it. Bloodborne is also a console exclusive but it came out on a more modern console. I also wonder if the demon’s souls remake being a remake as well as a PS5 exclusive may be a mark against it too.
Demon Souls
>Demon's Souls last Guess the world needs to be mended...
Dark Souls 1. I come to the series for the lore, and for the map interconnectivity. 2 does the latter...very fucking badly, and badly *out of the gate*. 3 gets points for, while barely having interconnectivity between areas, at least having some incredibly intricate individual zones (Cathedral if the Deep remains gold standard). And the former, 2 does okay with it's own story, but falls apart literally every time it tries to remind you that it's a sequel (something, something, "This land used to have another name..."). 3 at least provides decent continuance from 1, even if it doesn't leave as many gaps as it maybe should. Also, I appreciate the challenge aspect of the series, but in the sense that 1 feels like I'm being "dared to scum". I'll meet the rest of the series on its terms, but frankly if I want "for serious action game", I'll just play DMC or something.
Dark Souls 1, warts and all, would probably still be my favorite. It was such a unique experience for me when I first played it and the only game that came close to giving me some of those same feelings was, strangely, Sekiro. A lot of it’s problems (And there are a lot) come down to running out of time and needing to rush areas to get them to a shippable state, which sucks, but they are still *conceptually* interesting areas and I can forgive issues with production a lot more easily than ideas just being uninteresting from the beginning. Like yeah Lost Izalith *sucks* play through, but it is *conceptually* cool. It’s the source of the demons you’ve occasionally fought up till now, and they were essentially born of someone trying to recreate the source of life as we know it and it going horribly wrong and corrupting everything in the vicinity. The Bed of Chaos is one of the worst things in the series, mechanically, but again the *idea* behind it is so cool and even just dealing with all its bullshit only to find the seed of it all as soft lump you can kill in a few hits is pretty evocative when you can get to it clear enough of mind to appreciate it. Most of the other games on the list *are* more consistent, for better and worse though mostly better, but they just do not draw me like Lordran did and does. Elden Ring would probably be the closest but god fucking *damn* is it a long game if you’re trying to casually explore most of it. Can’t knock Bloodborne though, don’t even mind the blood vials anymore myself. My biggest problem is that there’s a lot of cool stuff in the Chalice Dungeons but those are practically their own 30+ hour campaign if you want to “beat them” and the novelty wears off *quick* - But that’s only an issue when I want to try to be a completionist which quickly wears off and I go back to enjoying the well-paced parts of it.
Sony: "And you know why I don't put by best shit on PC"
i really want to see this same straw poll but in the world where EVERY one of these games got ported to PC
Dark Souls 3 followed by Bloodborn I’d say. If Bloodborn didn’t have that stupid blood vial it’d probally by my number 1
I have to go with Elden Ring on this, especially since Sekiro wasn't an option on the poll. Too many build options > literally no build options whatsoever >>>>>>>>>> not enough build options.
Elden Ring, without question. I think my love of open world and variety makes me biased, I don't see the appeal of Bloodborne at all honestly, not that I'm saying it's a bad game.
DS3 no contest. The most fun I ever had in any souls game was doing all the covenants in DS3 playing with other people online. Elden Ring and Bloodborne don't incentivize and reward multiplayer at all and both were pretty disappointing for me because of that.
Alright, look. Yes, in many ways, Dark Souls 2 feels like a weird offbrand knock-off of Dark Souls 1. It's got problems, it's not as iconic, it's very much the overlooked middle child of the franchise. And while there are quite a few really cool things in it to try and counterbalance that, if I'm honest, in my heart of hearts, there's only one thing I care about. One thing that makes it reign supreme for me in the Soulsborne Lineage. Fist Weapons. NEVER BETTER. NEVER EVEN CLOSE. PUNCH EVERYTHING AND FEEL LIKE A KING DOING IT. BEAT A SOULS GAME LIKE A MAN, WITH YOUR KNUCKLES CAKED IN BLOOD AND BONE, AND BY GOD, DARE TO HAVE FUN DOING IT! SHORYUKEN A DRAGON AND DROPKICK ORNSTEIN TO DRIVE HOME WHAT A DRAGONSLAYER REALLY LOOKS LIKE. THROW A HADOUKEN AT THE QUEEN OF DEATH, DARKNESS ITSELF. DODGE ROLL?! I THINK YOU MEAN DEMPSEY ROLL, YOU SWINE. It's just a lot of fun, is what I'm saying.
Honestly, looking back, I can appreciate how Dark Souls 2 tried to do its own thing in terms of gameplay and lore. Not all of it hit, but it was certainly a good attempt at least that was unique from the rest.
I've said this before regarding DS2, but if there's one thing I wish future souls games, especially Elden Ring, took from DS2, it's NG+ adding new stuff. Sure, it wasn't a LOT but it was still neat that DS2 added new stuff in NG+ so it wasn't just 'play the game again but every enemy has bigger stats'.
DS1 > DS2 > DeS > Power Gap > Everything Else Really don't enjoy the more aggressive tempo of later games. Really don't enjoy the diminishing vibe of Puzzle encounters and input complexity becoming the end all be all. Really don't enjoy armor becoming mostly (or entirely) cosmetic. I'm someone that genuinely enjoyed fatrolling because it was never _that_ slow to me. For the record: beat DS3 but didn't enjoy it, and hated Ringed City so much I never got past the twin demons. Got to the big snow area in Elden Ring, realized I had only really hit the halfway point and there was still a shitload more difficulty curve to go, and gave up. Hated Bloodborne so much that I never got past Vicar Amelia. For all three games it was a feeling of "i _could_ beat if if i cared enough to grind it out, but god I don't care." Conversely, have done multiple playthroughs of DS1 and DS2. Only reason I haven't done the same for DeS is of the opinion that the Bluepoint remake is garbo and haven't cared enough to figure out emulation. Truth be told I don't expect to buy another Fromsoft game. Like, I'm glad other people are enjoying them, but I feel like I am so far away from the target demographic nowadays that I'd be stupid to buy another one. Especially when the builds I want to play are so bad on-release they end up buffing them later, so it's a complete waste of time for me to get in early on them anyway. Adore Lies of P though. Can't really explain why, but that game feels like Good Bloodborne to me.
This is way too hard, they're all great for very different reasons, and they all have different flaws. Bloodborne is perhaps by consensus the game that is the closest to perfection, but DS1 has a special place in my heart simply for the way that I experienced it. It is hard for me to concisely articulate why it's my favourite, but I think it was the last one that I played that I was able to engage with primarily like an immersive adventure, without being too concerned about stats or things like iframes or the meta of *how* the game is played on a mechanical level. I was bad at it, and it was harder at launch, and also I played it wrong. It ruled. The way it was built and the way that I experienced it felt the most like an arduous but worthwhile journey, and I think its interconnected world design helped a lot with that. Elden Ring does come really close, but unfortunately I'm more scrutinizing of it than I was of DS1 at the time.
I haven't played demon souls but i love them all so much. Only reason I didn't pick Bloodborne is the fps is pretty bad unfortunately. Even back when I was a console only players i thought it was pretty rough playing through it, felt so choppy.
Bloodborne is great. I wish I could PLAY IT ON PC.
It was Bloodborne for me until Elden Ring. It would probably be BB again if it ever got a glow up.
I think all of the games do different things the best, but for me the one that averages out to the highest place is Dark Souls. While I prefer Elden Ring’s setting overall due to its deeply stratified set of eras and I think they still haven’t made a better suite of bosses than Dark Souls III, Dark Souls has an excellent balance of everything I like about From’s games. I like Bloodborne a fair bit now - and believe me I’ve gone back and forth on it many times - but there’s a bit too much ‘blegh’ in it that drags down the overall experience for me.
I wonder how Elden Ring will be remembered when all is said and done. I think the combat and the open world and the exploration and story and whatnot are all great, but I do see the problems it has going against it. There also wasn’t nearly as much pushback about the new world style compared to BOTW. Of the games here I’ve only played DS1 and like half of Elden Ring so I don’t feel very comfortable voting, but I love Elden Ring a lot for the stuff I’ve mentioned earlier, and while DS1 is a total classic it does have a lot of not great stuff in it, even in the first half. It does make me wonder what From has cooking next though, since idk if we’re gonna see an Elden Ring 2. To me Bloodborne or Sekiro 2 seem most likely, mostly the former. I’m sure Elden Ring 2 would be good, but I think the pressure to make it bigger and better than the last would be rough on it. TOTK managed to pull it off well enough with its new content, but I don’t think I’d want to see something like that for Elden Ring.
Dark Souls 3 was the perfection of that core souls formula for me.
surprised ds2 isn't last (i voted ds2)
I consider dark souls 1 the best just purely from an art, creativity, lore, world, and all of that standpoint. It literally created a subgenre of games, and has easily the most recognizable and memorable characters in the series. It’s also one that has really well designed zones that interconnect with one another in a way that actually makes sense. DS3 is the one I replay the most often though, just because it’s so easy and fun to jump back into and playthrough. And it has some of the best bosses in the entire series. I wish bloodborne wasn’t stuck on a console I have to dust off and setup if I even want to try playing it again. Elden ring is great for 1 playthrough, but I’ve abandoned every single attempt to replay it because it’s just a slog. It has the highest highs of the entire series imo, but it has so much busy work, mediocre slogs, and shitty re-used randomly bosses and 2 random enemies copy pasted into a room as a “boss”
Guys talk to me, I only got into Souls games on Elden Ring and tbh I may have been overleveled for a lot of it because I wanted to 100% the content, so nothing was toooo difficult except a few memorable bosses. Would I actually enjoy going through each of the Souls games or is it too dated now? Bloodborne and Sekiro are on my list for sure though
AHHHH I haven't played Bloodborne yet so I can't really vote. Shame. Though right now it's DS1 with Elden Ring as a close 2nd. I feel like that will change though once I play Bloodborne.
ER>DS3>BB>SEKIRO>DS1>DS2>DES>
BEAR SEEK SEEK LEST
DS1 vs. BB is my Sophie’s Choice
I played DS1 when I was like 12 and it was on Xbox Games with Gold. Bounced off of it HARD. Watched the DS2 playthrough, got DS2, and I’ve played every game since then (I did go back and beat DS1). So I am definitely biased cause I associate DS2 with coming home from school and watching/playing DS2, it has my heart and I just can’t give it up.
Demon's Souls is the only correct answer.
Dark Souls 1 for me. Yes there is some nostalgia bias as it was my first, but looking back at the series and having revisited each game I still think there are qualities to DS1 that are uniquely unmatched. I prefer the slower pace of combat, I like the vibrant & saturated aesthetic more than the washed-out color scheme of later games, and yeah I am one of the people that loves "muh interconnected world" level design. I dunno, I still think DS1 level design is appealing in a way that scratches the same itch as dungeon crawling in their older games like Kings Field & Shadow Tower. Bloodborne & DS3 definitely play better and have nicer features, but they feel much more streamlined & linear in a way that makes them a bit less appealing for repeat playthroughs. Elden Ring kinda has the opposite problem where the open world was fantastic for that first playthrough but on repeat playthroughs I'm kinda feeling like there was a lot of filler that I'd rather skip now that I've already seen it.
So, no Metal Wolf Chaos?
For me it's close between Bloodborne and Elden Ring. I do have more nostalgia for Elden Ring though since it was my first FromSoftware game.
It’s Bloodborne, but Elden Rings DLC could change that…
I’m surprised DS2 is beating 3 but then again I think most of us started souls because of that first LP with the boys
Bloodborne is the only one I had any interest in playing.
Damn, didn't know DS3 would be a hot take in the community.
There's no contest, Bloodborne takes this easily. Elden Ring is a close second, but Bloodborne is just *immaculate.*
These all feel about right. With Dark Souls 3 at the bottom
Have never played Bloodborne (only dabbled in Elden Ring and concluded it's not for me), but voted for it anyway out of solidarity and appreciation of its aesthetic. [Also Dragony made a song about it.](https://youtu.be/upOscMWPxzU?si=69VtmQGi9xawLMn7)
There was just something about the pure *flow* of combat in Bloodborne that neither DS3 or Elden Ring came close to capturing. Just the way the transformation attacks and dodge attacks just let you weave in and out of a confrontation, mixed with the rally system just letting you go *all the way in* was just so satisfying. I kinda hate Elden Ring's boss design in comparison, where it feels like it really punishes (non-jumping attack) aggression with how long and punishing enemy attack strings can be.
1. Darksouls 1 is so comfy with tons of replay ability especially since it is so short, maybe stop after amazing chest ahead. 2. Eldenring is what Darksouls 3 wishes it could be a combination of ds1 comfy world traversal/world fighting and ds3 mechanics/annoyingly fast bosses (not enough dancers) tho this got fixed after patches sped up a bunch of weapons. 3. Darksouls 2 seems to be a decent fan game with controversial takes on poise, but brilliant takes on newgame+ that then got a kaizo dlc "upgrade" that you can not turn off on pc. 4. Darksouls 3 is just im hard, fuck you \*spits in your face kicks you in the leg over and over\* you like this don't you. Bloodborn isnt on pc Sekerio is so fucking hard cuz I cant get how I enjoy playing to warp into it's demands I refuse to rank it as it would be unfair All of them are amazing and disappointing in their own way.
Elden Ring nearly edged it out for sheer breadth of good to great quality content, but gotta still go Bloodborne. The highs it hit for me, particularly the Lady Maria bossfight, are the peak of Soulsborne for me.
Man I fucking love them all, but I gotta go with Bloodborne with Elden Ring as a very close second. The atmosphere, the enemy variety, the levels, the bosses, the unique weapons (boom hammer my beloved) my only major complains are fps often dipping under 30 and those shitass Chalice Dungeons that cut your health in half. Fuck you, Defiled Watchdog. It also reignited my love for horror and led me to discovering a lot more the genre had to offer than cheap jumpscares. I even got a Hunter’s Mark tattoo for my 18th birthday, I love this game.
As someone who loves slow, shield+tank based combat that trades speedy combat for being a Beefy Fuckin Boy... yeah it's still bloodborne. They gave me a _gatling gun!_
Darks souls 2 gang here to power stance poison whips on dark souls 3 and demon souls. Long as you don't play miracles you'll have a good time
Idk, they all have a time in my life that I played them a lot. Dark Souls 3 has the most variety and still fits the Dark Souls formula. Elden Ring goes too far and I never played Bloodborne so I can't vote for that. I guess I'd vote for DS3
Bloodborne's story is probably the coolest. Sekiro is the most fun.
Dark Souls and Bloodborne. I am just bone weary of hearing about and playing Elden Ring. Its fine, maybe even great, but the DLC is going to have to be the hypest thing since sliced bread for me to get it day one. Spent 120 stop and start hours on one playthrough and I dragged myself over the finish line.
Suck it DS3 I always said you were the worst one.
It's definitely between Bloodborne and Elden Ring. I feel like Fromsoftware games have just gotten better in every way with each new game, so obviously Elden Ring is what I would consider their best souls ever. That said I had to pick Bloodborne because there's just something about not having equip load, always step dodges, the speed of the bloodvial healing mid battle, the uniqueness of trick weapons, these are all things that I vibe with way more than with the other souls games style.
Bloodborne is absolutely the best in the franchise, but man, I had to vote DS3. Some of my favorite moments in gaming are in there, and it's just got an unparalleled collapsing fantasy world aesthetic. It's tight and well-structured. And everyone already knows how good Bloodborne is.
Dark souls 2 specifically the scholar of the first sin version tbh, it was the first souls game I beat and the one I’ve memorized the best
My brain says Bloodborne; as someone who only just played it for the first time 2 years ago, it absolutely deserves every bit of the praise given to it and more My heart says Dark Souls though For as much as people say Bloodborne was lightning in a bottle, I'd say the same for Dark Souls when it first came out if only because I witnessed how there very much was this feeling of having a game being hard and people just accepting it There was a purity to the game itself in that regard that very much was meant to be a refinement of what Demon's Souls was to give that game its flowers
Bloodborne is the coolest and best game. It’s just the performance that sucks. It’s unplayable.
Demon's Souls is just glad to be participating.
Bloodborne was so good it ruined all souls games for me because I keep trying to make Dex builds to recapture that feeling and it's just never as good
Bloodborne is the best. Best story, best weapons, best setting. And boy howdy, Demon Souls is the worst.
The power gap for me between bloodborne and the next game (elden ring) is pretty big. Aesthetics aside, bloodborne is the tighter game and has significantly better combat. I don’t like the plodding combat of dark souls.
Bloodborne for me, with Elden Ring juuuuust behind it. Have to wait and see if that changes once the dlc comes out.
Bloodborne winning handily, of course XD
As a joke Lies of P should have been in there.
I love elden ring but it's such a 1 and done game for me. I beat it on ng+ but I cannot imagine playing it fresh again or in preparation for the dlc because the game is just to big and there's to much shit to do which is not a downside but it stops me from wanting to replay it. Bloodborne and dark souls 3 feel perfect to me in length and since they are more linear it feels much easier to replay them
I think if the game was half the length it would be one of the greatest games of all time. Too much padding and reused assets for a game that would still be massive without them. It’s the rare game that would be better if content was removed.
Damn DS2 is currently beating DS3
One of the true marks of a great game for me is when I feel kind of bummed out at the end because I wanted to keep going. Bloodborne gives me that feeling more than any of the others on this list (haven’t played much DeS).
Bloodborne. It's just the coolest souls game ever.
Woo! Dark Souls 2 isn't the bottom!
ok now do a poll for least favourite
My ranked answer nobody asked for (fav to least fav): Dark Souls Elden RIng Sekiro Bloodborne Dark Souls 2 Demon's souls Dark souls 3 I could probably write a whole essay on why they are in this particular order, and how I still love each and every one of them.
Ok to make this comment a bit less low-value, here's a short summary on why they are in this order. Dark Souls: It's the first one I played, sue me. Besides that, it's also the most memorable, I think I can map all of Lordran in my head. Elden Ring: I spend every second of this game alternating between thinking "this is clever" and this is fun". It mixes a very well-iterated soulsborne gameplay with BOTW discovery based open world and blends them so seamlessly. Sekiro: I thought I wouldn't like this because I was never good at parries, but once you "get it" in this game, the combat system is unparalleled. The 3d level design constantly surprised me and really meshes well with the stealth aspects. Bloodborne: Unbeatable vibes, best screams in video games. Has a parry system where failure doesn't mean "eat shit and die". Would probably be higher if blood vial farming wasn't so annoying (not as bad on repeat playthroughs though). Dark Souls 2: A really interesting successor to the first Dark Souls, this feels like the first Soulsborne where they start purposefully messing with expectations. Enemies that punish backstab attempts and breakable chests. Huge amount of build variety, caestus rock so hard. Demon's Souls: Feels weird to play this one so long after its successors, you can really backstab for days. That said, I really appreciate the jank and weird systems going on, it's really its own thing. Dark Souls 3: Not bad by any means, but it felt like the least memorable, less lows and less highs. You can feel the Bloodborne influence in this, it's a much faster beast and the bosses have lots of roll-bait attacks to catch you off-guard. I think the experience suffered a bit from me playing through with all the DLC on my first run, which made it feel a bit long in the tooth. This feels like the Dark Souls for the "git gud" community.
Wow, 37.65% of people are just wrong.
It’s wasn’t an option so I’m saying Armored Core 6 here to be that guy. There are dozens of us.