Just my personal opinion on ranking these games. Not all soulslikes are on this list as I just found it lol. Nor have I played them all. #eldenring #fromsoftware #soulslike #darksouls
I wonder what your parameters are for ranking these games. For me personally, even after playing all soulsborne games, Elden Ring sits comfortably atop the list, followed by bloodborne and sekiro. It has so many things going for it: more complex boss movesets, crazy build variety, beautiful art directions, one of the best open worlds I've ever seen, fantastic worldbuilding and insane playstyle variety. There's like a hundred different ways to play the game, and even more after all the stuff added in the dlc. For me, and for many others, Elden ring is one of the greatest games ever made. You kinda just slapped it onto the list without explaining your criticisms
True, i think i even said id go back to it and never did lol. Well for me (not true for a lot), overall its the easiest game Fromsoft has made, and that 100% takes away for me. Also. I personally don't like the open world aspect of the game. id much prefer something more akin to their other games. The other positives you mentioned tho "are" why its still an A tier for me. incredible build variety, art direction music etc. all are top tier. But so are all their other games. Again, its a great game, its just (for me!) one of my least fav that FromSoft has done. Im glad its your fav tho man!
@@smaldor It's only easy if you want it to be. Self imposed restrictions like going for fashion or a certain theme to a build rather than going all in for meta game breaking builds will give you a much more satisfying experience (going off of your opinions in the vid). Elden Ring can be the hardest or the easiest.
@@themarathonman2874 well it’s next to dark souls 2(and above it) it’s opposite end of the tier of ds1. For me the world and environment in the new lords of the fallen was spectacular. The level design was incredible too. My biggest complaint with the game was the clunkiness/jank of movement/combat.
@@smaldor I respect it but Lords of the Fallen really fell off in the second half for me because of the enemy variety and level design. Sure it looked great but every new area played out the same way. Same exact enemies with a different element and a boss that ended up being throughout the level every time. The lag in certain areas especially the swamp was horrific and the final boss was terrible. If you run an inferno build it will be 9 hours before you find a good weapon meanwhile if you run radiance every weapon you find is fucking radiance. Terribly balanced game. Wish I liked it as much as you I really wanted to
@@soldierswag4884 you don’t have to do any side quests and you don’t have to explore for 50 hours lol. Within 10 minutes you can fight the first boss what are you talking about
fantastic list! For me Elden Ring was such an interesting game because The highs of elden ring is the best of the series but the lows are sometimes competes the bs of ds2 lol, Good List! 🎉
A fair assessment of Ashen. What soured my experience with it is the final boss, which was not only a stark difficulty spike but introduced the worst boss run in soulslike history. This is one of those bosses that punishes a single mistake with absurd damage and has some brutal combos that effectively one-shot. There's a reason why many of the "easy boss guide" videos have you kiting the thing around a lava pool instead of fighting it head on. I know I could have beaten it, I saw what needed to be done, but I just didn't care enough to continue. I always ran out of the estus equivalents and depended on the limited crafted healing potion to keep me alive. I couldn't get over the finish line without this consumable, but it's a limited item that requires farming and crafting to make. On my last run I gave in and was using throwing spears and kiting the boss and had it nearly dead. I went to use a heal and ended up consuming the wrong item: one of those consumables with a trade-off benefit that damages a chunk of your HP, so I accidentally self-deleted with the boss two hits away from death. Considering that last session was about 30 minutes of kiting and I ran out of spears and crafted healing, I gave up. For those wondering, imagine Midir's boss run but you have to go through the entire dungeon again and you cannot run past the enemies which happen to be the most obnoxious in the game.
I started up a fresh new save for NIOH 2 yesterday after not playing for over 2 years now. Holy cow is the the combat something else. When I played it originally, I got all the way to the final difficulty and did a bunch of the underworld floors and only stopped because Ghost of Tsushima came out. I know for a fact that I was good at the game. My time playing Elden Ring has wiped all my skills. Pressing the dodge button and immediately dodging is like riding lightning after adapting to the delayed inputs of Elden Ring.
There's a difference between Soulsborne and Souls-like games. Souls like are the games similar to DS but not made by Fromsoft, or the games made by fromsoft whose name does not have souls or borne in jt
Weirdly I'd go DS1>ER>DS2>DS3 (though there's little between them) because even though DS3 is clearly more artistic and well designed, there's something charming about the jankiness of DS2 and I find it a little more addictive to play, maybe because it's quite easy so you make a lot of progress quite quickly and it has more of a 'gamey' vibe. For some reason I find the atmosphere of DS3 a little bit too 'spiky' and oppressive - there are less moments of levity as there were in 1 and 2 to break up the serious tone. On the other hand the bosses in DS2 are kind of bad and DS3 generally excels there, and I'd argue that The Ringed City is peak Dark Souls nightmare stuff.
I think I mention early in the video I used to have DS1 as my favorite Souls game but i grew less so over time (and for reasons I do mention in the video) and DS3 grew on me more and more. But yes Ringed City is the pinnacle of Dark Souls IMO
If Elden ring had upto 6 player's in a match it wouls be easily S tier as well for me. But it ruined pvp with invades being 99% get ganked by 3 people. With more slots open fight clubs happen and with fight clubs honor codes, Elden ring has none of which just cheese layered on cheese for PvP.
@@TalZadios I’ve heard things like this about the PvP. I personally didn’t play much because the latency is so bad. But didn’t really use it towards my rankings. Let’s hope their next game has better and more fair PvP!
@@ibrahimbaghdadi4995 it’s definitely amazing! Wasn’t on the list I found though and I’d say it’s more metroidvania than souls like but I can see it. And if so it definitely is too tier
good list based takes, would of liked to see your takes on ER though. IMO personally a lot of people cut it too much slack solely because its either their first souls like or are blind to its failures (intentionally or not). The game probably has some of Fromsofts highest highs and lowests lows. Their animation work is top tier, the enemy visual design is great as well, and the addition of jumping/crouching adds a extra layer of mechanics to the gameplay I enjoyed. The music was alright, but personally I felt like it was kinda lackluster compared to some older tracks in the previous games. The open world is too large and underutilized, especially in the later parts of the game in mountaintop and even in the DLC there is a lot of dead empty space. A lot of encounters just dont feel rewarding on your first playthrough whenre a lot of the loot feels completely useless and you dont know where to get the things that you actually need are. The open world also forces From to resuse a lot of their enemies in a manner which I found to be quite cheap, uninteresting, and kind of harms the incentive for players to explore when they are just fighting the same side enemies over and over again. I can only get so excited about seeing the same ulcerated tree boss or asylum demon reskins so many times. The Ashe of War System and the Spirit Ashe system in addition to the open world aspect kind of allows the player to trivialize the game entirely. There is way less incentive to learn boss movesets or mechanically improve when you can just summon a spirit ashe (without increasing the boss's HP scaling btw), allow it to tank, whilst you wail on the enemy mindlessly. Ashes of War in this game also make its extremely easy as you can just put broken any ashe on most weapons and just completely steamroll enemies (lions claw, swift slash, BHS/raptors of the mist for insane i-frame, black flame tornado, pre-nerf seppuku, pre-nerf hoarfrost, and more). The weapons in the game are also the most overpowered we've ever seen with stuff like Blasphemous Blade and Moonveil deleting enemies + incredible sustain + knockldown power. Status Effects have also never been stronger, with bleed, frost, and scarlet rot being able to take over 30-50% of a bosses HP bar throughout an entire fight. Now stuff like deleting bosses have been in previous games before but I feel like it has been been this easy, not that its necessarily bad but it feels like you are not really incentivized to earn your victories like before but rather to just L2 spam your way to a win with a summon at your back. Another thing is a multiplayer which took a huge step back from DS3 going from 6 players to 4 players and only allowing hosts to be invaded when they had a summon. fight clubs are kind of dead and always invading into 2v1, 3v1 gets a little stale. The arena maps are also a step back from the DS3 arenas with every single one of them being a giant ass circle with barely any cover. the covenant system has also been completely removed without a replacement or an attempt at improving it and the Netcode is as per usual completely trash.
@@peevan yeah an earlier comment noted I never explained why I ranked ER where I did so I replied to his comment with my reasons. I will probably do a separate full thoughts on Elden Ring with the dlc as a whole soon
I think mortal shell being in B is fairly rated. It‘s nothing ground braking but solid and fun. It was my first souls-like experience and imo makes it easier to get into this genre than starting with the real souls games. I‘m currently playing DS1 and I appreciate having some experience with this genre already.
@@smaldorI’m really enjoying it :) It certainly has flaws, like hitting the wall rather than the enemy when being in a tight room or grinding souls to upgrade, but the overall gameplay loop and atmosphere in general is really cool and addictive. I actually started with og demon souls on the ps3 but it got a ylod, so I had to put souls games down for a while. But I’m glad I changed my mind about starting DS remastered.
@@smaldor I get what you mean, but most people are better off with the remake anyway. I still remember the og game running pretty bad sometimes and there‘s some overall sluggishness you can fell when playing. So I think the remake is the best way to experience it. At least that‘s what I‘ll do next time.
I think many players like Bloodborne a lot because it was their fist souls-like experience, so they have a kind of bias towards it. But there is no way I would put Bloodborne above Elden Ring, not even above DS3.
@@rvons2 wasn’t my first. But did originally play on launch day in 2015. For me its world and lore are so far beyond the other games. And its combat is the 2nd best of any FromSoft game (sekiro is superior in that regard). Also I’m a huge sucker for hub areas like Bloodborne/DeS
Not on the list: Lords of the Fallen (2014), Darksiders 3, Steelrising, Thymesia, Asterigos, Hellpoint, and Dolmen. There's even more to add recently with Morbid Lords of Ire and it looks like Bleak Faith is still poised for console release. I have a feeling these titles might flesh out your C-F tiers a bit.. Thymesia and Steelrising were quite enjoyable, though. Even OG Lords of the Fallen is a guilty pleasure.
@@johnbaga1191 yeah I need to learn how to just make my own list lol. I’ve played asterigos steelrising and hellpoint and they’d be C and D tier for me. Just saw this one had most the big ones and went with it lol
S+ tier: Nioh 1/2 S tier: Lies of P, Code Vein A+ tier: Remnant 1, absolver, stellar blade A tier: immortal unchained, hellpoint B tier: thymesia, wo long C tier: strangers of paradise, mortal shell, surge 2, steelrising D tier: lords of the fallen, ashen
@@smaldor that makes sense, i recently played thru it and beat it hitless lol, i enjoyed it a lot, but yeah nowhere near A tier id say. good list homie
i wish i played the older souls games before elden ring, sekiro and ds3 because ds1 is TERRIBLE for me. The game seems like it's 30% finished and the layout of the areas is like they want to make the game shit so i would never get how someone puts it above elden ring. I'm finishing bloodborne now and it seems like it's the oldest game you should finish by fromsoft.
DS1 definitely has not aged well. especially if you have played the newer titles. But imo (aside from Izilith stuff) the game is complete and has some of the best interconnected level design to date. But a lot of us older souls players also look with rose-tinted glasses, even if we replayed recently.
I completely disagree, and even moreso when you add the chalice dungeon bosses. That being said, perhaps its my bias to the more "horror" themes of the game and the fact its a stark difference when compared to the Souls games. DS2 definitely does has the weakest bosses in terms of cool/unique fights. I replied to another about why I placed Elden Ring as low as I did.
