Board 8 > How would you rank Fromsoft's Souls style games in terms of difficulty?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Demon's Souls
Dark Souls
Dark Souls II
Dark Souls III
Bloodborne
Sekiro
Elden Ring
The Adventures of Cookie & Cream

Feel free to separate the games out by DLC or different versions or whatever. I've been told that basegame Dark Souls 2 and the current release are pretty different in terms of difficulty.

I've only played the original Dark Souls, and I enjoyed it a lot but I didn't walk away thinking 'wow I wish there were harder bosses'. I've seen people talk about some of the later games, including the current Elden Ring DLC, by excitedly saying how the bosses are the hardest ever, and honestly it makes me a little less inclined to eventually play them >_> I really liked exploring the world of Dark Souls but my least fav parts were the more bullshit bosses (and how far away some of the bonfires were from the worst ones. Looking at you, Bed of Chaos). Anyway I'm curious how the difficulty has progressed over time, if each game is generally harder than the last or it bounces around or what.

hard to quantify exactly but i found Elden ring to be the easiest and sekiro the most difficult.

but that is likely because Im not a parry-er

sekiro is the only one I never beat

as for the others I dont think any of them stood out as being more or less difficult.

I found bloodborne to not be as hard as many others did tho I think I just gelled with the combat speed

Kind of hard for me to say - they all feel kind of similar once you the systems start clicking for you, at least for me, so it's more a matter of play order since you start picking up things that tend to carryover to the others. I guess that puts the Dark Souls Trilogy and Bloodborne, Sekiro, and to a lesser extent Elden Ring in different categories though since the latter tend to be more aggressive in playstyle.

Like I probably died the most in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 1 because those were my first two Soulsborne (in that order) so I was basically learning from scratch. Once you "get" DS1 you have a decent foundation for DS2 and DS3. Sekiro is its own thing sorta. Elden Ring gives you easy ways to cheese to the point where I think the actual separation might be "Mimic Tear allowed" and "Mimic Tear banned" lol. I imagine I would have had a much tougher time with some bosses without Mimic Tear.

So all this to say my answer is basically "the first one you play" with maybe Sekiro as an outlier because it's the most different from the others in combat IMO. But once I "got good" in it it didn't feel hard except for the final boss (and Demon of Hatred which is basically a Souls boss who got lost and wandered into the wrong game)

Thorn posted...

they all feel kind of similar once you the systems start clicking for you

This is how I feel. Once you know what you are doing, how quickly you can adapt, the games really aren't that hard. Challenging for sure, still has BS moments sprinkled in, but you'll find those BS moments are sprinkled in every Soulsbourne games (Archers/Poise destroying archers, mobs, enemies hidden behind corners/in bushes ect) so you expect that in every other game.

The one caveat is that Elden Ring is by far the hardest if you are a player who doesn't use summons, but the game gives you those options to use, so use them, and if you use all the tools given to you, Elden Ring is just as hard as any previous title, maybe easier outside a few bosses.

Demon's Souls is by far the easiest though. The rest are all kind of the same if you get the formula that From uses. Sekiro and Bloodborne can be hit or miss depending on your playstyle in the Dark Souls series, they could end up being super easy if you are a dodge roller and like to parry in the Souls games. They could give you a lot more trouble if you depend on a shield on Souls games.

andylt posted...

how far away some of the bonfires were from the worst ones

I think they generally got better about putting closer checkpoints in effect as the series went on. Especially elden ring, they put temporary respawns right outside a lot of the boss rooms

counting the core games, not Sekiro, bloodborne takes by far the longest to actually master. however, blood vials are so overpowered that it ensures anyone can beat the game even if they are garbage at playing it. leads to a pretty interesting difficulty curve where you can feel like the game is challenging you no matter your skill level. if you're bad at the game, the challenge is just staying alive and spamming blood vials long enough to eventually win any encounter. once you're good at the game it becomes more about avoiding damage entirely, conserving blood vials, learning combos and other optimizations, tackling difficult content that goes beyond the scope of the main game experience, etc. etc.

aside from that I agree that the 'Souls' titles are similar in difficulty, although there are some nuances.

Demon's Souls is the easiest but also the most jank. it's very easy to accidentally throw yourself off a cliff in this game as opposed to the other games. but the bosses tend to have extremely limited movepools consisting of 1-3 attacks and once you learn the extremely simple strategy for each boss it's basically impossible to lose. magic is overpowered beyond belief, and even just carrying a bow around will let you cheese almost every encounter.

DS1 is like 'hard but fair' except it's not actually always fair. the jank hasn't all been completely ironed out and the game design is just silly at times with how certain effects or enemies can lead to a game over scenario with no real defense aside from prior game knowledge; except the jank means that even with prior game knowledge you can still get screwed over some of those times. also a lot of weird things like needing to be cursed to fight ghosts, having way too much space between bonfires, not being able to teleport even though it was possible in demon's souls, etc. etc. I'd rank this one as 'most inconvenient to play'

DS2 is like 'fair, but not hard.' this one probably rates as the easiest but it's also the game that very rarely ever punishes you for things that are out of your control. you can feel the lack of miyazaki's influence on this game and that has both good and bad elements. most of the challenges you face in this game will be telegraphed in very apparent ways and while this does make it somewhat easier than other entries it also can be a breath of fresh air at times. people complain about fighting groups of lots of enemies in this game which is a complaint that I really don't share at all. this is the game that taught me the valuable skill of fighting against multiple enemies, and also forced me to massively improve my camera control skills. I feel like the people who weren't able to develop those skills just complain about the encounters against multiple foes being unfair, but really it actually is fair. you just need to learn how to fight them.

DS3 has a similar design space to DS1 with almost everything polished. there's almost no jank in this game. the unfair situations and deaths are usually telegraphed at least somewhat. I can only think of one example where a trap is completely invisible to the player and then just magically warps into existence behind you (also a trash moment in this game, but it stands out even more because of how much more 'fair' everything else is). kept a lot of the modern conveniences that were introduced in dark souls 2. this game does have one fatal flaw when it comes to difficulty and that is the way difficulty ramps up in the later half of the game. enemies essentially just become larger than you, faster than you, with more reach, more damage, more HP, and they seemingly never run out of stamina. this leads to a boring slog where you're constantly forced to hit and run against opponents that have pretty poor encounter design. this is at it's worst during some of the castle sections that are swarming with knights, most of which are an unfair match up against the player in a 1 v 1, much less in group encounters. combat arts sorta help but honestly most of them suck.

elden ring takes the concept of overpowered, overtuned enemies to the next level, introducing many foes who are even more ridiculous and unfun in their design than the ones featured in DS3. however, there are two major differences; first, these enemies start appearing very early on in the game and are later joined by more and more ridiculous enemies. secondly, you are given tools that make the player character also absurdly overpowered which, in theory, levels the playing field a bit. this is like the touhou of dark souls where honestly the best strategy is probably to dodge the 8 billion projectiles and attacks being thrown at you while you spam your most powerful long range attack in response. kinda sad for the people who prefer to just play with sword and board, but sadly dark souls 3 killed that playstyle halfway through the game, elden ring buried it further, and I doubt it's ever coming back. we are fully in the combat art meta now.

tl;dr

bloodborne - peak game design
demon's souls - not too difficult, sometimes unintentionally unfair
dark souls 1 - difficult, but usually in the most unfair way (relative to other souls games)
dark souls 2 - easy, but usually because it's trying to be fair
dark souls 3 - inconsistent difficulty, encounters become more unfair and players lack the tools needed
elden ring - relatively easy if you're willing to use the tools given to you. nightmare difficulty if you want to play an honest build who never gets a chance to attack between the boss firing 800 lasers at you.

Sekiro > Bloodborne > Elden Ring > Demon's Souls > Dark Souls III > Dark Souls II > Dark Souls

I'm not the person to ask here but Dark Souls felt doable the whole way through while I bounced off of Bloodborne and Demon's Souls due to the difficulty (and, especially for Demon's Souls, the length of the run-backs).

Sekiro felt like one the easier ones for me once I got into the groove of its style which is different than the others. DS2 is probably the overall easiest outside of certain caveats like Ancient Dragon (which is a shit optional fight) and stuff that I think was patched out (magic tracking missiles from across the map and those giant dragon guys that swing massive mauls in a frenzy in a comically fast manner).

Elden Ring it depends on if you use all the tools (spirit ashes in particular) or not. Solo it can vary a lot between easy and "go fuck yourself" bosses (Malenia). With spirit ashes (Mimic Tear or knife assassin) and/or summons its generally a cake walk (though I haven't gone into NG+s so could be wrong about that). However, the recent DLC messes with it hard though because a good amount of those bosses can hit "go fuck yourself" levels. Even with spirit ashes they can mess you up. Sometimes its even harder to use the summons as it spikes their HP up with them already destroying you with a touch (even with the tree fragment scaling). There's a good amount of regular/elite enemies there that are also bullshit.

Bloodborne feels like the best balance of being difficult while also being consistent / not total bullshit about it (aside from maybe that one chalice dungeon Amygdala and Watchdog along with the DLC Fish Hulks in the well which you can cheese).

Its been awhile since I went through em all so I guess a loose difficulty ranking for me would be something like:

Elden Ring > Bloodborne > DS1 > DS3 > Demons > Sekiro > DS2

Sekiro is the hardest, but Sekiro is not a Souls game. Some of the things that make it not a Souls game are what make it the hardest.

I don't know what my answer would be, because all the Souls games can be cheesed in some way. I would say.....Dark Souls 2 is probably the most frustrating Souls game? I don't know if that makes it the hardest, though. In fact, most of it is quite easy, it can just be annoying mechanically. DS2 being the hardest for me is because I don't care about getting good at it.

Ok the exact opposite end of the spectrum, I was not sure how someone can say Bloodborne, but at the same time I've beaten that game 4 times in a row back to back before so perhaps that's just me being far more invested in it's playstyle than I am with all the rest.

I'm confused at people not putting Demon's Souls as easist. Have any of you played that recently? It's bonkers easy compared to any thing in the Dark Souls trilogy.

I'm struggling to think anything in that game that would give me more than 3 attempts to go through, as Maria stated the jank is the hardest thing to get through more so than any actual hard fights. Like Old King Allant gave me a shitton of trouble in 09' but the rest of the games have evolved so much more in enemy attack patterns, that alone makes it absurdly easy. Not even to mention moongrass healing > Flask healing.

Maybe it's your guys builds.

But personally
Pirateking2000 posted...

Sekiro felt like one the easier ones for me once I got into the groove of its style which is different than the others.

Sekiro is easiest for me, I find parrying and dodging second nature in Souls games because that's usually my build. Fast rolls, parry(if I need to) and quick attacks. Same reason I found Bloodborne relatively easy outside of a couple bosses. The faster pace and dodging suits my playstyle.

So my personal list would like like Elden Ring > DS3 > DS2 > DS1 > Bloodborne > Sekiro > Demon's Souls, but for the general public Bloodborne and Sekiro are probably going to be at the top of the difficulty along with Elden Ring in some order, than the Souls trilogy, really in any order, with Demon's Souls being the easiest.

Wow, thanks for all the in depth insightful comments everyone! I appreciate them a lot.

I see there's no objective order of difficulty, if there is any order at all. Interesting.

Sorozone posted...

I'm confused at people not putting Demon's Souls as easist. Have any of you played that recently? It's bonkers easy compared to any thing in the Dark Souls trilogy.

I'm struggling to think anything in that game that would give me more than 3 attempts to go through, as Maria stated the jank is the hardest thing to get through more so than any actual hard fights. Like Old King Allant gave me a shitton of trouble in 09' but the rest of the games have evolved so much more in enemy attack patterns, that alone makes it absurdly easy. Not even to mention moongrass healing > Flask healing.

Maybe it's your guys builds.

I don't feel like I got far enough to even really have a build, but my experience with that game was that every boss I fought (after Phalanx) killed me in like one hit, so my strategy was always "stand as far away as possible and shoot them with 600 arrows" rather than risk a run-back. I don't know if that makes it harder or easier, really, but definitely less fun.

If I ever go back to it I might have to make a playthrough topic so I can solicit strategies from all the people who find the game really easy.

The first From Software game you play will be the hardest.

Aside from that, Demon's Souls is absolutely the easiest (as long as you pick up the Cling Ring).

Only two games in, but Dark Souls is definitely harder than Demon's Souls for me. Mostly though due to the extra layer of navigation. Demon's is much more straightforward.

Pirateking2000 posted...

Bloodborne feels like the best balance of being difficult while also being consistent

trick weapons are the main thing that make Bloodborne basically perfect. let's just take a look at the Hunter's Axe for example.

in the base form, I frequently see myself using every single one of these input strings;

R1L1R1L1

R1L1L1

Dash R1

Dash R1, L1

L2R2

L2R1L1R1

if the weapon is transformed in my hands

R1R1

R2R1R1

L2R1R1

Dash R1

Every single thing that I listed here is good for different types of encounters which varies based on the terrain, the number of enemies you are facing, their speed, their poise, their HP, how far away they are, whether you need your gun out, how hard the enemy can hit you and how long their recovery time is, what they do out of hitstun, etc. etc. etc.

Now, let's look at a weapon in Elden Ring. Here's the best input string to use in basically every situation:
L2

(I'm being a bit hyperbolic here with regards to Elden Ring but really Bloodborne is balanced like a fighting game where you have a full moveset at your disposal with combo strings that are match up dependent while Elden Ring most movesets don't even have half the depth of one half of a Trick Weapon)

I've only played

Elden Ring
Demon's Souls
Bloodborne
Dark Souls

In that order. Elden Ring was my first and I fell in love.

Elden Ring easiest, Demon's Souls hardest. Bloodborne and Dark Souls are basically tied for the middle. But they're all fairly comparable of this batch. Elden Ring can be the hardest I suppose if you want to beat your head against a wall. Me, I wanted to explore. I beat my head against Godrick (which was really just like an hour at most) and I think that's the most a single boss took. Malenia took me 3 tries. I was like level 150 by that point. Actually wait, Elden Beast took me way longer and I found it to be the hardest boss of the game.

E: People saying Demon's Souls easiest is crazy to me, but it also might simply be the least balanced. Like its final boss was super easy, but until you level a bunch, that game is a fucking nightmare. Definitely the hardest first 5 to 10 hours imo (as long as you wander away from the harder parts at the beginning of Elden Ring). And it easily has the most bullshit unfair deaths. Good point though that the bosses are the most predictable. Elden Ring definitely mixes things up a lot more, in a very good way. And yeah, the generous checkpoints and even being able to collect your souls outside of boss gates helped it to feel drastically easier.

Bump because I'm curious of other opinions on this

MariaTaylor posted...

Now, let's look at a weapon in Elden Ring. Here's the best input string to use in basically every situation:
L2

Hey now, sometimes R1R1R1 or XR2XR2 are viable, too!

But no I agree completely, Bloodborne's combat is perfect. Only exception is for people who like to play spell casters, the mechanism of doing spells kind of sucks in Bloodborne. They're able to make tighter design for everything else because that's not really a thing that the game supports, which is a fine tradeoff in my book.

they definitely put more focus on the melee weapon movesets but I think that was to the benefit of the game. also, I will say this. with every dark souls entry, miracles and spells have become more and more homogenous. elden ring tried to diversify them again a bit, but they still end up feeling pretty same-y because almost every useful spell or incantation is just 'a way to deal damage at range' with minor variations.

one thing about Bloodborne is that unlike Intelligence and Faith, the Arcane and Bloodtinge stats feel TRULY distinct. they do completely different things from each other, and both of them enable a style of gameplay that is very different from the standard strength/skill build, which is cool.

also, having done a fair share of gun only challenge runs, and a few hunter tool only challenge runs, I can say that they are fun to use. you just have to get used to them. still, the melee combat feels a lot better simply because of how the weapons have such deep and intricate move sets with combo chains, while your most optimal gun and hunter tool strategies rarely combo with anything. you just shoot it once and then reposition before shooting again. there are some decent R1 to L2/Square mix ups, though.

Strength/Bloodtinge especially likes combo styles that look like this:
R1 -> L2 -> R2

basically you hit the enemy, they attack out of hit stun, you parry them out of hit stun. then, when they're on the ground, you hit them with an R2 or R1/L1 combo for amplified damage. since your visceral attacks won't be too strong, this is a good way to make use of the gun as part of a combo chain, and it helps a LOT with medium to large enemies who can't easily be staggered but ARE designed to be parried (like a lot of the chalice dungeon midbosses)

DeS's difficulty comes down to how good you are at running through levels after dying. And if you've played anything else besides ER and maybe DS3 that's probably a skill you have.

Also, whether or not you found the Cling Ring.