Before I get to 1 and 2 on my favorite FromSoft games list, I want to explain the criteria I used to rank the games. I don’t know if I ever have, and even if I have, I am going to do it again.
First of all, there’s vibes. Yes, vibes. Vibes include atmosphere, environment, level design, and just the overall feel of things. FromSoft is beyond compare when it comes to atmosphere and level design. You can’t help but gasp in awe and amazement. When they are at their best, the level design is true art.
I remember a time in the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC where I had been exploring for what seemed like ages. The DLC is brutal, and I had to dump 20+ points into Vigor at the beginning of the DLC in order to stand a chance (and not get one-hit). It’s recommended in the base game and beyond to have 60 Vigor points. I played the first 100 hours with 18 Vigor. I only added pointts in Vigor when I got the Mimic Tear beacuse it takes health and not FP. You need 660 HP in order to summon the Mimic. 18 Vigor is 598. 21 is 680, which, obviously, leaves you with very little HP if you use Mini-Me.
The thing is, though, once you use Mini-Me, you’re not going to stop. For the most part. It’s by far the best spirit summon out of the thirty or so that are available. Every playthrough, I think I’m going to try a different spirit ash, and every time, I d othe same thing. Lone wolves and jellyfish are my two main ones. Until I get Mini-Me. Then it’s me and Mini-Me until the end. Except in my intelligent playthrough. Mini-Me not quite as good for whatever reason. I still used Mini-Me quite a bit, but I also used Tiche, which is the second-best spirit ash (and the hardest to get). Oh, and Tay-Tay frem the DLC (that’s a nickname so I won’t spoil it). That spirit ash is a tank and can take out some bosses by itself.
I can get lost in the weeds with all the games. I can talk forever about them, but I’ll try to rein myself in.
Another thing I judge on is innovation. But, I will be honest. It’s not the biggest part of my ranking. I mean, I value it. I’m blown away by the innovations big and small that From has made. The perfect example is the map in Elden Ring. See, FromSoft does not do maps. At all. There’s a joke one in Sekiro*, but no one even knows it’s there. Their belief is that you should traverse the areas enough to memorize them rather than rely on a map.
And, for the most part, FromSoft fans adapted to them (as usual). We accepted that we would have to die a million times to learn the differerent areas. And, boy, did we. We parroted what they said and kept falling down over and over until we knew every nook and cranny of those games. Map? We didn’t need no stinking map!
When Elden Ring was revealed to be an open world game, well, it became obvious that there would have to be a map. I was one of the skeptical people who wondered if they could pull it off and have an effective map. I could not imagine a map like most open world games. In fact, it’s one reason I don’t play most open wold games–I get stressed from opening the map. All the markers littering every inch of the map. Big red arrows pointing at important things (literally or figuratively). I hate it. I hate it so much. I get panicky when I see those kinds of maps. I remember Alanah Pearce, Tamoor Hussain, and Andy Cortez talking about it. Tam said basically what I just said, and I was so relieved it wasn’t just me.
I thought FromSoft would probably have a decent map, but I did not expect them to blow it out of the water. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because they had never shown they had any interest in doing a map. And, as I said, the one map they did was shit.
I should have trusted them. When will I learn not to doubt FromSoft?
The map was fire. More to the point, the way to get the whole map was brilliant. When the game started, you had a fog of war over the map. You had to find map fragments in the world in order to get tha tpart of the map. Every map fragment was on a stele that you could see on the map (barely).
When you got each map fragment, it gave you the piece of the map, but nothing was filled in. After time, you could figure out what some of the symbols meant (like a dark dot meant a mine, for example), but some of the symbols were similar (a circle for rises and for evergaols both come to mine. They might be different sizes, but they are both circles).
Nothing is filled in until you reach the spot on the map, which is refreshing. There are no markers. I mean, you can put markers on the map, but there are none in the map itself. There are no flashing lights or anything to tell you where to go. Is it overwhelming? Strangely, no. I think it’s beacuse each fragment isn’t very big in and of itself.
And, my god is it deceptive. Because the map just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And bigger. And there are trap chests that can send you to far away places. And you get to see that the game is way beyond whatever your mind was expecting. I wish they had done more of that, honestly. There are only three times you’re sent elsewhere, and I felt they could have done more with this.
But that map, though. That map, yo. I could have done with a physical map beacuse it’s incredible. It’s amazing, and I am just blown away by it. There are layers upon layers upon layers (and I mean that literaly). There is an underground map that is vast. It’s about a quarter the size of the overworld (that’s a wild estimation, by the way).
One thing I realized in going back and playing the earlier game is how smoothly FromSoft has added their improvements to each game. Yes, they iterate, but they also improve at the same time. They have big inspriations once every couple games (like the first half of Dark Souls and the deflect in Sekiro), and then they have steady upgrades in each game that they carry forward.
For example, you can walk and drink estus in the third Souls game. You could not do that in the second game, and it was torture. I would say that being able to fast-travel from the start in the second Souls game was an improvement, but not everyone would agree with me.
Then, there was the FP Ashen Estus Flask in the third game instead of a set number of times you can use each spell/miracle. That was a game changer, and I used to run around with a 10/5 split. Until I played Elden Ring in which you got flasks back for defeating whole hordes of enemies. Then, I went with a 7/7 split (only 14 flasks versus 15 flasks in the previous game), and when I went back to Dark Souls III, I went 8/7 rather than 10/5. I always have a heal miracle/incantation on me, so I could heal myself in a pinch. Except when I did not have enough Faith to do anything but the smallest heal.
I have more to say, but this is running losg. I’ll get back to it tomorrow.
*My totally unproven hypothesis is that Activision forced them to put one in so they put in a shitty one. It’s a useless overview map with maybe five areas marked on the map, and it’s hidden in options.