How did I miss this thread? Why wasn't I summoned?!
Lifetime Achievement Award: Dark Souls
1. Elden Ring
2. Sekiro
3. Dark Souls 3
4. Bloodborne
5. Demon's Souls (remake)
6. Dark Souls 2
I couldn't bring myself to rank DS1 alongside the others. I revisited it after DS3 and it was fine then, but I did so again after playing Elden Ring and the DeS remake, and it just felt...rough. But even if I'm not so into going back to replay it anymore, it was mind-blowing at the time and I love it forever, so it gets a special place in my heart. It also has one of the best stories/lores of any of them still.
Elden Ring is my favorite all-told, even above DS1 if I had to include it. It just feels like the culmination of everything that came before. It has some rough edges, absolutely, and there are things I miss about the previous games. But it has by far the widest and deepest range of builds that aren't just viable, but powerful. Since playing with all the different character builds is one of the biggest draws for me, that wins ER major points. It also has amazing world map and level design, some of the best of any of the games (All of which are known for extraordinary map and level design). It has a horse that double-jumps! It has the most scaleable difficulty, I feel - the most ways to make a difficult thing easy, and the most ways to deal with balls-hard difficulty if that's what you're into (IMO). I love the open world, the progress, the story, everything.
Sekiro is hard to compare to the others directly, but easy enough to rank on a simple scale of how much I enjoyed it. For how fucking hard it could be, it has some of the most fun sword/melee combat in any game I've ever played. It was such a joy to just get in there and swordfight everything, the stealth was an amazing new mechanic that added a ton of depth and fun, the visual design was top-notch, just a masterpiece. So fucking hard though. And I do miss the RPG elements - multiple character builds in particular. But I ended up playing it through NG+4 anyway, so I guess it didn't hurt the replayability after all.
DS3 would be under DS1, I think, so I guess that limits where it'd be in my rankings. It's great - it's more Dark Souls. It felt more like a true follow-up to DS1 than DS2 did, for better or worse (but mostly for the better, definitely). It has some amazing boss fights and music and more polish than DS1 did, plus more QoL improvements to make it a bit smoother. It doesn't really have much that truly stands out, either, though, compared to some of the other games' highs.
Bloodborne has my favorite lore out of any of the games with the possible exception of Elden Ring. I also love the Victorian atmosphere, the whole werewolves of London feel, and also the hard right turn into cosmic horror. The trick weapons were great, and I'd love to see them return. The thing that really hurts it for me, though, is that it has by far the worst variety of builds in any of the games. You basically get dex, str, or quality and honestly I don't know if quality was really a thing. Arcane makes you suffer through half the game with only one weapon and one "spell" before it starts unlocking stuff, and even then it's way more limited with its bullet requirements. Bloodtinge is, by all accounts, a fucking joke. Since different builds and weapons are what appeals to me most in these games, it suffers badly. Though it does have an wide array of cool weapons, many of them also just feel kinda shitty (the whip sword was such a massive disappointment).
Demon's Souls I only played as the PS5 remake, but I enjoyed that pretty well. It has a whole lot of jank and charm and experimentation that got lost in the later games' polishing, which felt like a shame. It did have some great level design and some neat gear, but was way more limited in its builds. And it had a lot of cool ideas that were terribly executed, like the world and character tendency systems. I enjoyed it, but don't see myself going back to it.
Dark Souls 2... To be clear, I liked DS2. I put a lot of time in it and enjoyed my play through. I think it's a good game. But also, it's the worst of these for me, no doubt. My second run just kind of petered out, and I've never felt the urge to revisit it, really. My memories of the game portray it as kind of a muddy blob. It was difficult in the least interesting and complex ways it could have been, ignoring the "harsh but fair" DS treatment for "MORE ENEMIES!" and less polished ones with janky hitboxes, invisible enemies, and the least interesting bosses of the series for the most part. It was the least visually appealing to me, overall, despite some good design in a few places. I did like that there was such a wide variety of good builds, and that you could buff enchanted weapons, and a lot of other stuff. I liked the game! I just liked it the least of all of them. The worst entry of a batch of many very good things is still very good.
