I’ve been ranking the FromSoft games because it’s been almost a year-and-a-half since Elden Ring came out so I’ve had time to digest the game and my experience with it. Here is part 2 which has Dark Souls and Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin), plus a link to the first post which has Sekiro and Bloodborne.
Now, in the third and final post about the rankings (hah!), we’re going to tackle Dark Souls III and Elden Ring. I will say up front that Dark Souls III has been my favorite game of all time since I finished it. I’ve had it in that position the entire time I played Elden Ring, and I’ve periodically checked in with myself to see how I’ve felt about Dark Souls III first and Elden Ring just right behind it.
Before I continue on, let me remind you that this is a ranking of my favorite From games, not the BEST From games. I never rank best because that’s more objective-sounding than I’m comfortable with. I much prefer ranking how much I like the game rather than how good it is because when it comes to the From games, the devil is in the details and different people are going to be attracted to the game for different reasons.
The people who like Bloodborne and Sekiro tend to have quick reflexes and are aggressive. Those who prefer Souls games are more methodical and plodding. I’m in the latter camp, which is one reason that Sekiro and Bloodborne are at the bottom of my list.
So. let’s talk about my two favorite From games of all time, which makes them my two favorite games of all time. Dark Souls III and Elden Ring. Let’s get into it.
With the other two posts, I ranked the two games each time straight away. 3-6 are mostly set in stone with a little complication for 4 and 3. But in the case of 1 and 2, well, it’s complicated.
Before Elden Ring was released, Dark Souls III was my favorite game of all time. I had played it dozens of times, and I platted it with many tears, blood, and sweat. It was the cumulation of all the previous Souls games (including Demon’s Souls), and it was truly a tasty blend of the prior games, polished to perfection.
I’ve said often that it was the Greatest Hits album of a group that has been around for twenty years. There may be one new song on the album, but it’s mostly oldies. And it could be reimagined versions of them, but they are definitely familiar to longtime fans.
From took lore from the first game and included in in the third. But, they twisted it in a delightful way, in my opinion. Many people weren’t pleased with it, but I was. In addition, they added straight-up fan service such as Firelink Shrine and Anor Londo. The latter was basically the same whereas the former was a glorious reimagining. There also is a different version of Lost Izalith, though it’s called something differently.. There is a Demon Ruins, which was also in the first game.
Siegward instead of Siegmeyer, but the same knid of knight. Black Knights still prowl around as well as the Silver Knights. The lore of the gods is the same, but it has been advanced past the point of where it was in the first game.
From the second game, they took the windmill from Harvest Valley and turned it on the side. Plus the poison mushrooms. Plus, the Estus system is more like the sceond game (starting with a low number and having to find Estus shards), but they did bump it up from a measly one sip. They also had the undead bone shards which was closer to the sublime bone dust from the second game than the Fire Keeper’s Soul from the first.
They re-introduced mana (FP) from Demon’s souls, which made me so fucking happy. Instead of a limited amount of spells, you could cast as many as you wanted–as long as you had the mana to do so. There was an Ashen Estus Flask in addition to the Estus Flask, and the former was for the magicks.
the game is gorgeous, and the legacy dungeons, er, the dungeons were statement pieces. Each was distinct from each other, but many were reminiscent of previous ones. The final boss of the main game was such a fitting end to the trilogy. It jsut couldn’t have been any better.
Then, there’s Elden Ring. Ah, Elden Ring. The hype leading up to this game was unreal. It was in part because the pandemic happened and everything was put on hold. The announcement trailer was released during E3 (summer) of 2019. The pandemic hit early 2020, and then radio silence for over a year. People started getting nervous. Was the game coming out at all? From is not very communicative about what they’re doing, and people feared that the game was quietly being cancelled.
One of the sweetest things during that time was a community on Reddit (yes, Reddit!) that started making up their own places in the game. They would make up enemies and bosses, and then talk as if the places were real. It was oddly wholesome and a way to bond over the delay.
Then, the summer of 2021 and Geoffcon. There were rumors that the release trailer was going to drop, and everybody was on edge for it. We had to sit through the entire thing, and my heart started sinking when there was no mention of Elden Ring. Then, there was the ‘oh, one more thing’ and it was what we had all been waiting for.
Elden Ring.
The hype was ridiculous, and I still can’t quite figure out why. Why so much hype, I mean. The games have always been industry-defining, but they were definitely niche. Suddenly, Elden Ring was part of the cultural zeitgeist, and I couldn’t quite understand why. I mean, I was expecrting it to be big, but not as big as it was. It shook the world for several months, and not just the gaming world. It became a thing, and I was super-pleased for FromSoft to get the recognition they finally deserved.
I will say that it was a bit bloated. It could have done with cutting the caves/catacombs in half. They were my least-favorite part of tmhe game, but I felt compelled to do all of them the first time through the game. By the tenth or so one, I was just so tired of it. Yes, there is some kind of puzzle to each one (to find the lever to open the door to the boss), but it got repetitive because most of the time the puzzle was to step on the giant machetes to go up or hit some walls to make them disappear. This is for the catacombs. For the caves, it was just traverse the cave with a variety of enemies and ailments until you got to the boss. I hated the Chalice Dungeons of Bloodborne, and these were pretty much the same.
For the most part, I loved that you could go everywhere in the game whenever you wanted. I never felt like I had to do anything. I didn’t make myself do the content–except the fucking caves and catacombs. I really hated them, especially when the boss was the nth incantation of, say, the cat statue. This and the copy-paste bosses in the field made me think, ‘filler’, which I did not think of anything else.
Except. I’m just going to say it. Spoilers for late game content. Mountaintops of the Giants is not a good area. It’s the beginning of the second half, sort of, and it’s a big area filled with a lot of nothing. The boss is one of my least-favorite because it has the biggest HP pool for no reason, and I get that it’s supposed to be epic because it’s the point of no return, but the boss itself is very underwhelming.
I hate to say it, but they could have cut this entire area without harming the game. Same with the optional area that houses the hardest boss in the game (supposedly). Someone pointed out that there is not a single new enemy in that area, which makes it feel even worse. Plus, it’s the one area in which I feel like they threw in mobs willy-nilly just to be jerks.
They could have cut the content by a quarter and the game would not have suffered from it. But the game in its totality is incredible. Each area is associated to a color and a very distinct vibe. The first area, Limgrave, is green. Liurnia of the Lakes is blue. Caelid is red (a very angry red), and Altus Plateau is yellow. The underground city is purple, and the capital city is gold.
I recently started a dex character and did my best to stick to dual-wielding, which I have never done before. However, I’m reaching the end of my abilities, and I’ve been swapping out for a shield (the lefthand scythe).
It’s my latest playthrough plus watching someone doing a playthrough and they have found a questline I never knew existed (well, to be fair, I did parts of it, but not the whole thing). That’s exciting! I have put over five-hundred hours into this game, and there is still things to be found.
That’s my favorite part of Elden Ring, to be honest. The exploration. Yes, it’s harder to find new things now that I’ve been through the game more than once. But it’s still a thrill to make mini-discoveries or get more little tidbits that I hadn’t gotten before. It’s the game that keeps on givinng, and I know that I can make so many different builds. That makes it a different game each time. Hell, even going with incantations rather than sorceries makes it different–and there are so many spells and incantations.
I have more to say, but this is running long, so I’ll talk more about it tomorrow.