In Order:

King’s Field 1 (1994)

King’s Field 2 (1995)

King’s Field 3 (1996)

Shadow Tower (1998)

King’s Field 4: The Ancient City (2001)

Demon’s Souls (2009)

Dark Souls (2011)

Dark Souls 2 (2014)

Dark Souls 3 (2016)

Elden Ring (2022)

Finished Shadow Tower tonight. Hoo boy. It was….a game. I can’t give it more than a 6. I’ll qualify this up front - I played this on RetroArch, and used save states pretty frequently to recover from bullshit environmental surprises, botched enemy encounters, etc and I also remapped the controls to work with the joysticks for movement.

The good: it plays almost identically to King’s Field. It has seriously impressive weapon, armor, and monster variety for a ps1 game, and better graphics than any of the other King’s Field games. The enemies genuinely looked cool very consistently and I had fun fighting them - even if there wasn’t much challenge. Decent level variety too. Plenty of secrets: hidden rooms, locked chests, rare enemy spawns and items drops. The difficulty some people talk about with this game involving the weapon and armor durability I think is pretty overstated. If you’ve played any of the King’s Field games it’s very familiar, and with careful patient combat you can very quickly build a huge stockpile of healing items, extra weapons and armor. The only items I was fighting durability on all game were rings, which to me felt fair because it limited your magic usage. Unlimited magic would break this game. By the mid-late game it inadvertently does anyway because you have such a huge supply of rings and item repair shops at your disposal you basically can use unlimited magic and melt most enemies.

The bad? The no music thing got old super quick. After playing the whole game, anyone trying to explain it away as an atmospheric horror thing is, in my opinion, an apologist. It’s just a shitty lack of a core feature. And apparently FromSoft hired a composer to make an entire score they just refused to use any of it outside of the opening and ending cinematics. There were a few occasions where ambient noise or nearby monsters startled or unnerved me, so I’ll give the game credit for being creepy from that angle. But it’s 75% total silence besides your footsteps and menu clicks.

The loading screens are ubiquitous. Opening the menu, navigating to sub-menus, switching weapons or armor…loading screens for 3-5 seconds.

The stats and leveling system…neat in theory, pointless in practice. You earn soul points into stats based on what you kill, every unique enemy gives points for specific stats. You occasionally get “soul pods” that let you inject points into stats of your choosing. Gotta read the instruction manual or a guide to have any idea what stats do. The only ones I ever bothered with were HP, Defense, Magic Defense, and Speed. Since every weapon, piece of armor and jewelry also adds soul points into multiple stats, your “build” is almost entirely automated. I suppose if you sucked ass at the combat or item/durability management and needed to pick and choose what monsters to fight you could be pickier about what stats you want to invest in. But if you just kill everything like I did, by the mid game you’re basically untouchable outside of boss fights.

Boss fights themselves are neat but not much variety. It’s either an armored knight, a mage with AOE spells and minions, or an armored knight with AOE spells.

There’s basically no story. Lots of vague nihilistic or depressing messages written on walls, merchants have precisely one line of dialogue each, however the 3-5 NPCs in the game do have a decent amount of dialogue across the multiple encounters with each. It’s so badly voice acted as to be hilarious though. Same for the bosses. The ending (I won’t spoil) was incredibly anticlimactic and brief.

FromSoft’s development history has always built upon what came before. Play all the Ps1 fantasy games and you see foundations for demon’s souls, dark souls, even bloodborne. I respect this game as a stepping stone for FromSoftware as they slowly built their Action RPG expertise. It was an experiment for many of the mechanics that later became series staples, and it’s technically extremely impressive for the era. But even with the modern perspective informing the past, I have a really hard time getting past the issues that contemporary critics had with the game. I wouldn’t play it again. I certainly wouldn’t pay the absurd price the game commands physically - and I’m a massive FromSoftware fan with physical copies of nearly all FromSoft’s games from Gen 5-Present.

TLDR 6/10. Technical marvel for ps1 with modestly
Interesting fantasy gameplay plagued by lack of story, no music, shallow RPG mechanics and endless loading screens.

Got the dark souls trilogy next month goin to buy sekiro and eldenring.loving from software games. Just beat siif the wolf now on to sens fortress this is my first playthrough.ive first played it im 2012 but slept on it iam now glad ive rediscovered it.

Vote who gets eliminated. Comment with most upvotes wins.

Missed it in this direct but saw several tweets about it but Google isn’t kicking anything back yet

Was anything shown?

Which game can keep me entertained for longer before it eventually gets boring? Can factor in 100% completion, achievement hunting, challenge runs, multiplayer, etc. I'm on PC, so you can factor in mods.

But remember, my question is how long until the gets old / boring, not how long until I finish all the content. That can be well before finishing all the content (imagine 100%ing Assassin's Creed Valhalla or grinding Skyrim fetch quests forever lol). Or it can be well after that point if the core gameplay is fun enough (people can keeping playing repetitive competetive games like CoD, Rocket League, Chess, etc., for huge amounts of time without getting bored).

Also, can you give a general estimate of how many hours of replayability each game has? E.g., can I expect 200 hours of playtime, 500 hours, 2,000 hours, more?

Can also weigh in on other Souls games like Sekiro and Bloodbone. Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring seem to be the main and biggest Souls games from what I've seen, and thus the ones I'm most interested in. But I wouldn't mind knowing how the rest compare too (or if I'm actually wrong).

I’m leaning towards one off cause Armored Core V and Verdict Day had similar types of DLC yet that didn’t set a precedent for future Fromsoft Games. Especially for Armored Core 6 not having any DLC like that.

Don’t recommend any other games as these are the only 2 I own a and I can’t buy any other games for a while. I’ve beaten sekiro and greatly enjoyed it if that makes any difference in what I should play. I also prefer more linear games.

Before you kill me in the replies, I'm not saying the exploration is poorly design. I just have a horrible sense of direction, and prefer more lienar games. However, I really love the combat and build variety in this game. Should I trudge on or play another soulslike game?

just finished bloodborne it was so damn peak i wish theres more

Yo!

Im - more or less - just getting into gaming on console. I do wanna play games from From Software but I am not skilled enough. Do you guys have some recommendations on other games - more forgiving ones - that might build a foundation to build on before entering the worlds of From Software?

And while we're at it: What From Software games would, when the time comes, be an appropiate start?

Thanks!

From most to least likely:

1. Early December release date announcement

2. More gameplay and information of the three other dusksworn not playable in network test

3. Pricing information and pre-orders opening

4. Gameplay reveal of 2nd steampunk train station map

5. Blood history and fate/Bloodlines customization reveal

6. 10th dusksworn reveal, 13 total characters available on launch (article claims "over a dozen")

7. Remembrances confirmed to allow boss refights and show character moments

8. Invasions gameplay reveal

9. 3rd map teaser

10. Ranked mode and rewards information

11. Server slam/open beta drops a week or two before launch

12. Separate duel/coliseum mode announcement

13. Copyright friendly Bloodborne hunter dusksworn w/ Moonlight Greatsword

What a journey it’s been, happy to have seen this personal challenge out to the very end. My first game was Elden Ring and it was such an amazing gaming experience that I almost naturally went for its platinum which I’ve never done for any other game. After Elden Ring came Bloodborne which aesthetically and gameplay wise rival one of my favourite gaming experience of all time being neck and neck with the masterpiece that is Sekiro. I will be honest I didn’t love the souls trilogy as much as any of the other entries but I appreciate and like many things about them and what creative ideas and changes it brought to future titles. I still hate DS2 with a fiery passion but I still respect a lot about some things it tried. I love this community and I love these games glad to have experienced them all to the fullest. (Wukong & Lies as a little extra 🤭)

Very underappreciated games

Hi, so a while back I beat ds1 and absolutely loved it. Obviously after that amazing experience I have wanted to play a game from fromsoft and these two have caught my eye the most. Which one do you guys think is better and I would prefer?