My Personal Ranking of the Soulsborne Games

Dark Souls has been one of the most culturally significant video game series over the last decade, spawning a new sub-genre of games like it and basically setting a new standard of comparison for melee combat, level design, and difficulty. The series has been so popular that it really needs no introduction -- if you haven't heard of Dark Souls by now then you've been living under a rock, and even if you've never played any of them you surely know what kind of games they are. I began playing the series with the original Demon's Souls and have kept up with every release since, though it took me a while to get around to Bloodborne and I still haven't played Sekiro, although from what I understand Sekiro is more an evolution of Tenchu than Dark Souls, so it maybe doesn't fully belong in the "Soulsborne" category of games. With each release of a new Soulsborne game I usually find myself having mixed opinions -- while usually enjoying each one, there's usually some aspect that leaves me a little unsatisfied or subtly disappointed. So I thought it would be fun to review all five games against one another, comparing their relative strengths and weaknesses while attempting to rank them in terms of my personal favorites.

When brainstorming this list and trying to figure out how I'd actually order them, I went back and replayed large chunks of each game, just to refresh my memory, and so I decided to base these rankings on a combination of how much I remember enjoying each game the first time I played it, how much I enjoyed replaying it, and finally how well it compares to the other games in the series mechanically. So in other words, this is not a purely objective ranking of how good the games are technically, since I'm putting a lot of weight in my own subjective feelings in addition to their more technical design elements. If it were purely objective, then believe me they would be in a very different order. All of which is to say that this is my personal opinion, so don't get offended if I don't have the exact same feelings as you do.

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#5 Dark Souls 2  

This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been following my blog these last several years, considering how much I hated it when it originally came out. Its last-place position in these rankings isn't very controversial, either, since it's commonly regarded as the black sheep of the series, and for good reason. As it turned out, Dark Souls 2 was actually developed by an almost completely different team within From Software -- essentially the "B Team" -- while series director Hidetaka Miyazaki and the rest of the "A Team" were off working on Bloodborne, which is probably the main factor in why Dark Souls 2 feels so weird and different compared to the other games. Normally I'm all for experimentation and handing the reigns over to someone with a fresh and different perspective, because video game series can often begin to feel stagnant without that spark of creativity, but the experimentation in this case feels less like a matter of "what can we do to improve the game" and more of "let's just change things for the hell of it."

The main issue with Dark Souls 2 is that it controls differently, and thus feels "wrong" to me because the natural instincts I've developed from all of the other Soulsborne games just don't apply in this game. Attack animations feel really sluggish and lock you into long recovery frames that prevent you from doing anything for almost an entire second after the attack finishes, and getting hit seems to lock you into longer recoil animations where you can't move or do anything. Roll dodging, likewise, seems to have slightly different timing where it feels like I'm always getting hit in the middle of a successful dodge, and you're also restricted to eight-directional movement so just walking around feels janky and stuttery. It also feels like there's no weight or momentum to things like attacking or rolling since there's no acceleration at the apex of swinging your weapon or jumping into a roll. So basically, everything feels like you're either floating on ice or have your feet rooted into the ground, and the timing for pulling off successful attacks and dodges is different enough to throw me off from every natural instinct that I have from the other games.

What's weird is every other Soulsborne game controls a little differently but I can usually jump straight into them or else adapt really quickly, but I just can't get the hang of Dark Souls 2 and I don't have the patience to try to Git Gud at what feels like a broken system. Part of the issue, it seems, is that they tied animation speeds and invincibility frames to the "adaptability" and "agility" stats -- the higher your adaptability, the faster you perform certain actions and the more invincibility frames you have during roll dodges. While I'm usually cool with having more weight and emphasis on stats in RPGs, in terms of their effect on your mechanical performance, Dark Souls 2 is an action game first and foremost, in a series renowned for its tight, responsive controls and fluid combat system, and so changing that core feeling is like taking Doom and adding a one-second delay to every action and forcing you to only aim your gun in eight directions.

Besides that, the level design feels incredibly linear, with many levels being singular paths from the starting point to the boss chamber, and the world design makes no logical sense in terms of how the world is actually built, considering that different areas are literally built on top of each other, in addition to other weird, nonsensical things like how you ride an elevator up from the top of a mountain and find yourself at a castle in a lake of lava, or how you ride an elevator hundreds of feet down from a ruined castle already at sea level and arrive at a wharf that's somehow also still at sea level. For that matter, the connections between areas don't feel as fluid as in other games, since many of them are just long tunnels or elevator shafts. Then on top of all that, the difficulty feels really cheap this time around, with annoyingly-placed archers everywhere, enemies having perfect tracking and literally spinning in place doing instant 180-turns, and areas where they just spam a bunch of enemies at you in a lame effort to ramp up the difficulty. There's plenty more I could talk about, but I think the fact that From Software felt the need to completely overhaul and remaster the game a mere year later with the Scholar of the First Sin edition just goes to show that even they realized it wasn't that good.

(1) How much did I enjoy my initial playthrough? Not very much, but I was at least able to get through the whole game, and did find it decently enjoyable at the time -- just incredibly sub-par compared to the previous two games. I said in my original review that "a bad Souls game is still a better gaming experience than the average video game" and that it was "as mechanically satisfying as either of its predecessors" even though it ultimately let me down in a lot of ways.

(2) How much did I enjoy my recent replay? Absolutely not at all. It's hard to believe that I actually kind of enjoyed it originally, and that I didn't notice as many issues with the controls and the general feel of combat. Every other game took a little bit of time to adjust to, but I just couldn't do it with Dark Souls 2 and basically rage quit before getting to the second boss.

(3) How good is it comparatively? Dark Souls 2 does some unique and interesting things and improved over the previous two games in some key ways, like the improved functionality of covenants, dual-wielding, and remixed New Game Plus mode, but then it has some pretty dumb systems like soul memory. Overall, it has probably the worst level design, the worst world design, and the worst-feeling combat of the entire series, which is not a good combination when those are some of the biggest and most important factors in these games' enjoyability.

#4 Bloodborne

It's a shame that Bloodborne has to come in so low on this list because it does so many things so well, and I really want to like it, but I just didn't have as much fun playing it as I feel like I should have. Part of that is simply Dark Souls fatigue, getting exhausted from playing basically the same game for the fifth time in the last seven years -- six times if you count The Surge which is basically just a straight-up Dark Souls clone. With Bloodborne being a brand new IP I was hoping that it would do more to set itself apart from the Souls series, by putting a brand new spin on the familiar formula, but it turned out to be basically the exact same game but with a bunch of mostly cosmetic tweaks, like a Victorian Gothic setting instead of dark fantasy, and a story dealing with ancient eldritch space gods instead of the usual ordeal with rekindling the Age of Fire.

I actually really, really like the story and setting in this game, probably the most of every other game in the series, since Bloodborne takes a stronger turn towards the realm of horror and feels somewhat Lovecraftian in its lore and backstory, which are two things I really appreciate. The Victorian Gothic setting likewise feels more unique and interesting to me, but unfortunately the game's visual design can feel a little monotonous because there's not as much thematic or aesthetic variety between different locations. In a similar vein, there isn't much variety in terms of weapons or armor -- while I love the added functionality and versatility of trick weapons, the fact that there are only 15 in the base game severely diminishes strategic decision-making in terms of weapon selection and build diversity. Armor sets, meanwhile, all look kind of similar and have only minor variations in stats so finding new armor sets rarely feels all that rewarding.

Making matters worse is that, because there are so few weapons and armors in the game, there's not a lot of rewarding discovery when it comes to exploration; Bloodborne has some of the best level design in the entire series, in terms of its overall complexity and the amount of branching paths available to you, but you don't find much in the way of rewarding equipment or loot because it's mostly all just consumable items, which are pretty mundane. The bosses are fun, but like the game's visual design they get to feel a little repetitive because so many of them are over-sized rampaging beasts with similar movesets, so most of the time they all look and feel somewhat similar.

The combat system, however, is undoubtedly the best in the entire series -- I love how quick and snappy everything is, not to mention the incredible fun of the trick weapons. Plus, new systems like the rally system which lets you heal by attacking an enemy after you get hit further helps to promote a faster pace of play by encouraging you to get right back into a fight when you take damage, and adds an incredibly engaging element of "risk versus reward." Despite a lot of general improvements, they took some odd steps backwards, however, like with the blood vial healing system and the online PVP scene. Although I found the game pretty engaging all the way through, actually finishing it felt almost like an obligation because it wasn't gripping me as much as some other games in the series. I suspect I maybe didn't like it as much as so many other people did when it first launched because I'd already played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 3, whereas most other people hadn't played Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 3 didn't even exist at the time. Those two games have some strong similarities with Bloodborne and so it's possible that Bloodborne just didn't feel as original to me as it did to others who were playing it at release in 2015.

(1) How much did I enjoy my initial playthrough? I was sort of lukewarm on the whole experience -- I enjoyed it a lot in the early goings because of all the refreshing changes it bought to the table, but the more I played the more stale and monotonous it got to feel, as I realized there weren't many interesting surprises in store down the line and as it became clear that it was really just another version of a Dark Souls game as opposed to something radically different.

(2) How much did I enjoy my recent replay? Not applicable, since I played Bloodborne for the first time just now. However, I suppose it's possible that I might appreciate it more if I were to come back and replay it later, after having sufficient time off from the series, but I wonder if it would feel even more monotonous on a replay because of the general lack of weapons, armors, and spells. I'm not sure.

(3) How good is it comparatively? Objectively speaking, Bloodborne could be argued as the best game in the entire series, since it has the best and most responsive combat system, some of the best level design, and the most interesting world and backstory, but for every positive claim in those departments there's at least one notable caveat. If it had a little more overall variety and a more compelling story hook up front then it would probably rank higher on this list for me.

#3 Dark Souls

For a lot of people, Dark Souls was their introduction to the Souls series; since Demon's Souls was a PS3 exclusive and had barely any sort of marketing behind it, most people didn't have any exposure to it or opportunity to play it, whereas Dark Souls was released cross-platform on both of Sony and Microsoft's consoles and later ported to the PC, and had a larger marketing push behind it to drum up interest. I'd wager that most people consider the first Dark Souls to be their personal favorite by virtue of it being their first Souls game, but with me having already played Demon's Souls it didn't have as much of an impact on me. It's a solid game, though, and it's a fantastic sequel considering how much From Software improved on the formula going from Demon's Souls.

Dark Souls's world design is unquestionably its best feature, since it introduced the concept of a persistent, interconnected world where all of the game's different areas were linked to one another through actual level design in a highly immersive, thematic, and atmospheric way. With bonfires scattered throughout the world acting as respawn points and not having a way to warp around the world at the start of the game, it made the world feel a lot more demanding to explore because you had to get everywhere on foot, and meant that you might get stuck in an area if you went down a one-way path and rested at a bonfire because you had no way to backtrack -- you had to advance forward. I absolutely love how many different areas you have accessible to you right from the start of the game, with the Undead Burg, Catacombs, New Londo Ruins, and, if you have the Master Key, the Valley of Drakes and Blighttown all being just a short walk from Firelink Shrine.

The estus flask system, tied to the bonfires, is one of its best improvements over Demon's Souls since it helped to streamline the gameplay by getting rid of the need to farm healing items by always giving you a minimum amount every time you rested at a bonfire, and being restricted to only a limited number of heals forced you to "Git Gud" at the game and improve the quality of your play if you wanted to get through an area because you couldn't just stock up on a near-infinite supply of healing items. Other improvements include being able to jump and perform jumping attacks, and also being able to perform plunging attacks while dropping down from a higher ledge. Poise is a little broken when it comes to PVP, but at least gives incentive to use heavy armor, and the inclusion of a mid-weight roll dodge is certainly a welcome addition. Although the combat is a little slower and more sluggish, compared to other games, it's still a fairly robust and responsive system.

The biggest issue with Dark Souls is that its second half feels a little rushed and lacking in overall quality compared to the first half, with some areas feeling pretty lame, frustrating, or just straight up unfinished. Lost Izalith and the Bed of Chaos are the worst offenders, of course, but even other areas pale in comparison to the early stages of the game. And speaking as someone who had already played Demon's Souls, a lot of Dark Souls's content felt like an uninspired rehash of things I'd already seen and done in Demon's Souls, which made them lose a lot of their charm and interest when I saw them again in Dark Souls -- Lautrec, Bell Gargoyle, Patches, Blighttown, Catacombs, Pinwheel, Phalanx, and more are all just blatantly recycled from Demon's Souls.

(1) How much did I enjoy my initial playthrough? I was pretty deeply engrossed by my first playthrough. It felt like a pretty strong sequel that understood the appeal of Demon's Souls and also knew how to fix some of its predecessor's issues, and with it only being the second game in the series I was pumped just to have more Souls to experience. I didn't like it as much as Demon's Souls, at the time, but it was still a lot of fun.

(2) How much did I enjoy my recent replay? It started out great, with me having a blast exploring a bunch of areas that I knew I wasn't supposed to be in yet, like the Catacombs and Valley and Drakes, going around grabbing a bunch of great loot and equipment before tackling the true start of the game in the Undead Burg. However, once I got to the Depths and Blighttown I kind of decided I was done because I just didn't want to deal with the hassle of exploring those levels, and knew there weren't too many other fun areas to look forward to.

(3) How good is it comparatively? Dark Souls's world design I think easily stands at the top of the list considering how tightly it weaves in upon itself, and how sensibly everything connects to everything else. Plus, it has some of the best variety in the entire series. Unfortunately, the second half of the game is pretty underwhelming and it loses major points for so blatantly rehashing familiar encounters that had already been done in Demon's Souls.

#2 Demon's Souls

Demon's Souls was the first of these games that I played, and so it's long held the top spot in my personal rankings based purely on how much of a unique experience it was, and as evidenced by its position in this list I still believe it to be a better, more interesting game than either Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2 in a lot of important ways. It's slipped from the top spot, however, because after replaying it I've realized that it hasn't aged as well as some of the other games. As the first game in what would eventually become a five-game series, you can tell that From Software was still finding their footing, and so it's pretty crude and unrefined in some important ways. The lack of jump attacks, plunging attacks, and R2 combos combined with the four-directional roll-dodging is enough to make the combat feel pretty rudimentary, and the level design also has an annoying tendency of forcing you into incredibly tight, claustrophobic corridors where your weapon constantly clangs off the walls and the camera gets pushed into tight corners, and where you have no room to move to avoid enemy attacks or to even run past the enemies at all if you're just trying to get back to a boss chamber.

Then you've got other tedious things in the mechanical design, like how healing works, with you having to periodically stop playing the game to farm healing items when your supply runs out, or how upgrading weapons requires increasingly absurd amounts of resources, with you needing 74 shards, 36 large shards, 18 chunks, and 1 pure stone to fully upgrade a weapon to +10, and with pure stones like bladestone being an extremely rare drop from one enemy behind an illusory wall. The game also has an utterly obtuse system in place called "World Tendency" where each of the five worlds can shift their alignment from "Pure Black" to "Pure White" depending on various factors like dying or killing bosses. These tendency shifts can have strong effects on gameplay like making enemies easier or more difficult, and most importantly enabling unique events that only occur in Pure Black or Pure White tendency. It's a fun concept in theory, but the game offers zero explanation for how it works or what it even is, and maintaining certain world tendencies is nearly impossible and a real pain in the butt to keep track of.

Where Demon's Souls outshines all the other games in the series is that pretty much every level has some kind of unique mechanical twist that makes it feel unique and distinct from all the others, whether that be dodging dragon fire while running across the bridge in the Boletarian Palace, or dropping down mine shafts in the Stonefang Tunnel, or searching for keys to unlock cells in the Tower of Latria, or dealing with infinitely-respawning enemies until you find the necromancer in the Shrine of Storms, or navigating the great poison swamp of the Valley of Defilement, and so on. This extends to the bosses as well; later games in the series latched onto the idea of tough, challenging 1-on-1 "duels" where you just have to learn the boss's movesets and figure out the right timing to attack or avoid attacks, turning every fight into basically the same strategy, whereas Demon's Souls gives every boss some type of unique and interesting gimmick, like whittling down the shields on Phalanx, or getting down the tunnel to reach the Armored Spider, or finding the correct Fool's Idol, or moving silently so the blind Old Hero can't hear you, or besting Garl Vinland so that you can claim Maiden Astraea's soul, and so on.

Image from OperationRainfall.

Demon's Souls also has some of the best atmosphere in the entire series, with all of its worlds feeling incredibly bleak and depressing. The Dark Souls games all depict a dying civilization as the Age of Fire wanes, but Demon's Souls really captures that dying spirit through not only its world design, but also its characters. Everyone in Demon's Souls feels horribly beaten-down and on the verge giving up, whereas literally every character in Dark Souls 1 has some kind of silly laugh at the end of their dialogue. Stockpile Thomas's line "You have a heart of gold, don't let them take it from you," still gives me chills. The Valley of Defilement blows Blighttown (and every subsequent poison swamp in other games) out of the water in terms of its horrifyingly oppressive atmosphere, and the Tower of Latria -- especially its second stage -- might be the best area in the entire series. While the actual gameplay mechanics have aged more poorly, compared to the sequels, Demon's Souls still has the most charm and soul in my eyes, and gets a major boost for nostalgia and originality.

(1) How much did I enjoy my initial playthrough? Demon's Souls ranks at the top in this department, considering it was my first Souls game, so everything felt completely new and refreshingly eye-opening. It was a genuine revelation for me. 

(2) How much did I enjoy my recent replay? Things started off pretty rocky as I struggled a bit with some of its more crude and out-dated design elements, but it was the only game that I ended up replaying in its entirety. Part of that was simply because it had been so long since the last time I played, but I also found myself strangely compelled to re-conquer these worlds and slay all the archdemons.

(3) How good is it comparatively? You could probably argue that Demon's Souls is technically the worst game in the series, and that would still be respectable considering it was the first and had nothing to build off of, but surprisingly I think it still sits near the top of the list in terms of level design and boss design, while also having some of the best and most memorable moments. Plus, it set the stage for everything to come and established many long-running staples within the series, so it deserves a lot of credit for that.

#1 Dark Souls 3

I wasn't really sure what to make of Dark Souls 3 when I played it originally -- it was a lot more enjoyable and seemed like a generally better game than Dark Souls 2, and I easily sank twice as much time into Dark Souls 3 than I did any previous Souls game, but it also felt a little uninspired at times since almost everything in it feels reminiscent of things from other games. It's also a little too linear in terms of how you progress through the game, since the first half of it has to be played in a relatively rigid order before you get any sort of serious options when it comes to branching paths to alternate or otherwise optional areas, and when you do, it's usually only a short detour that quickly terminates in a dead end, or just leads to another linear progression of areas. Plus, it feels like the second half of the game is a little lacking in content, because once you make it halfway through the game's main objectives (to defeat the four Lords of Cinder) there isn't a whole lot of stuff left to do other than quickly knock out the final two Lords and explore a couple of optional side areas.

Despite those flaws, Dark Souls 3 feels like the least rushed and most polished of all the Souls games, save for maybe Bloodborne, which makes sense seeing as they had four previous games to use as a foundation -- with a successful formula already on their hands, all they had to do was make iterative updates and polish a few blemishes. The combat system is a lot faster this time around (again, second only to Bloodborne) and feels really fluid and responsive, with satisfyingly challenging enemy designs, too, which makes conquering its levels and defeating its bosses really engaging and rewarding. The level design is decently complex, too, with a lot of different areas to explore within levels, and the levels themselves have some pleasant visual designs that make them decently interesting to look at. I particularly enjoy the Undead Settlement, the Cathedral of the Deep, and Irithyll Valley, all of which are some of my favorite levels in the entire series. It also introduces some fun and interesting concepts to the series, like Weapon Arts that grant weapons extra special abilities that consume Focus Points -- a true return of the magic meter from Demon's Souls, along with an Ashen Estus flask where you have to choose how many of your limited flasks to allot between health or mana -- and Purple Phantoms who can invade or be summoned as a "wild card."

Ultimately, Dark Souls 3 earns the top spot in my book not for excelling at any one thing, but for being a generally good mixture of above-average elements. It's got pretty good level design with interesting visuals and decent atmosphere, a snappy and responsive combat system, a good amount of satisfying challenge, online multiplayer and covenants that work pretty well (except the Blue Sentinels), and a good amount of mechanical variety. Generally speaking, all of these things it does well, some other game in the series does better, but while its peaks aren't as high as others, its valleys aren't as low. In a way, it feels like a compilation of the best features and assets from the entire series, but without the uniqueness or originality that those features had in their respective games. It doesn't have as much of a creative spark as other games in the series, in other words, but it feels like a consistently good and enjoyable game that doesn't irritate, disappoint, or underwhelm me in key ways like the others sometimes do. And really, I just feel the most "at home" with Dark Souls 3, as evidenced by my much higher playtime with it, versus any other Soulsborne game.

(1) How much did I enjoy my initial playthrough? I thought it was decently satisfying, but it didn't blow me away or grip me quite as much as Demon's Souls or Dark Souls did. Still, it was engaging enough for me to put over 200 hours into it across multiple playthroughs and sticking around for the end-game PVP scene.

(2) How much did I enjoy my recent replay? Of all the Souls games, this is the one that I was able to jump back into the most easily, although that may be simply because it's the one I'd played most recently, and it's also the one that had been inspired a little by Bloodborne, which of course I also just played.

(3) How good is it comparatively? Dark Souls 3 feels like the best overall embodiment of what the Soulsborne series represents, since it takes a lot of different elements from all of the other games and blends them into a fairly polished and successful package. I wish it were a little less linear, and had carried over certain elements from Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne, like power stancing and rally healing, but it's basically the quintessential Soulsborne game, and probably the one I'll go back to years down the line when I need to scratch that Soulsborne itch.

In Conclusion

I want to point out once again that this ranking is heavily influenced by my own personal bias, in terms of what I enjoy in these games and the general feelings I had while playing these games, both originally and recently. This is not meant to be a definitive ranking of what games are objectively "best" in the series -- if it were, Demon's Souls would be a lot lower, and Bloodborne would be a lot higher -- it's more a measure of the satisfaction and enjoyment I got out of playing these games. Different people will have different tastes and opinions, of course, seeing as some people rank Dark Souls 2 as one of the best -- if not the best -- in the series, whereas it falls in last place for me by a huge margin. I should also point out that just because some games are ranked lower in this list doesn't mean I don't like them -- even though Bloodborne comes in at #4 for me, I still enjoyed playing it, just not as much as other games ranked higher in the list.

And, that's all I got folks. I'm sure many of you would rank these games in a different order than I did, so if you have strong disagreements with anywhere I placed a particular game feel free to comment and explain why.