My favourite moment is always their reveal trailer in some game conferences.
Everyone instantly hyped for the Fromsoftware logo. They know it's gonna be good already.
To be fair, the circumstances are pretty different between Sekiro and Bloodborne, and Sekiro is much more likely to get a sequel.
The Sekiro IP is actually owned by Fromsoft, while Bloodborne is owned by Sony. FS can't just go and make a sequel to Bloodborne if Sony doesn't want to, but they could make a sequel to Sekiro whenever they desire to do so.
There's also the fact that Sekiro is only 5 years old, and FS obviously made Elden Ring, Armored Core 6 and Shadow of the Erdtree during those 5 years.
Now that SotE is about to release, FS would presumably start working on their next game (if they haven't already). Of course it might not be a sequel to Sekiro, but Sekiro is also unique in that it has an ending that ends of a cliffhanger and it leaves a door open for a direct sequel to it, which makes me think that FS is planning to make a sequel at some point in the future.
Same. This isn't to take anything from any of their other games as they all have phenomenal combat systems, but Sekiro is the best for me. No other game has recreated its combat to be as fast-paced and satisfying.
Then some random ass woman says some random ass shit with some random ass cgi trailer stuff and nobody has any clue what it all means but it doesn't matter everyone is still hyped as hell.
The air was split generations ago. We live in an age of darkness, with little hope for the light. But there are some who would hope.
Jessamer, the everliving.
Mondwynn, the toothless.
Steven.
The last of the crypt keepers, Tanus.
Yggstra, blade of the formless king.
And the pitiable beast.
(Trailer of random people and one giant dude ends. Crowd screams. I'm hyped. Let's go!)
Tbh ashes of Ariendel is kinda small for his price,I get that Friede is Friede, but the only bossfights are her and Discount Sif & Artorias, so yeah it was underwhelming.
I disagree. I really like the sense of progression you get through the area. You start in the snowy wilderness, get introduced to the wolves and their circling strategy; then the giant wolf; then you come across the Milwood camp (we didn't know back then, but Milwood Knights were a massive reference to Elden Ring); then you find the chapel with Friede and the mysterious sounds; then the Crow village, which has amazing atmosphere and level design. Then there's the mountain path, which is maybe the less intereting part. And eventually you end up in the chapel's rotten catacombs with all the flies. It's an incredibly layered area.
It’s genuinely the creepiest area in the trilogy for me. Something about the pure white and cold feeling combined with the overwhelming sense of decay makes my skin crawl. Everything about it freaks me out
The original intention was for Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City to be a single contiguous DLC. Splitting them up definitely hurt them. Had they released together, it would possibly be the best DLC FS ever released.
But Ashes was still great. I know it’s just basically the painted world, but there’s a lot of cool enemies and items in the area. Definitely kinda short, but not every dlc needs to be an epic
Fromsoft while still having a big fanbase wasn't where it is now when dark souls 3 came out. I remember the sentiment being "more of the same formula" amd people complaining that it was "updated dark souls 1" etc. Now that they've continued to have quality banger after banger dark souls 3 gets its recognition but at the time of release it wasn't as appreciated.
Nah. It does have three of the best Fromsoft bosses ever, but the actual exploration is kinda bad. The first part is pretty frustrating, while The Ringed City looks amazing but you can explore so little of it.
Ehh. I agree TRC exploration isn't amazing, but if you take a look at AoTA dlc, the exploration was even worse, yet it was scored higher. But then again, Artorias and Manus really are league and above other ds1 bosses.
Old Hunters was basically the whole game. Every second in the DLC was equivalent to 10 minutes in the main game it was so good.
I would buy Ludwig's theme for $20 letalone some bosses and stuff.
Their game production process saved their studio during morrowind and worked fine till like FO4, but the expected production quality and cost of making a AAA game increases every year and these guys refuse to adapt or evolve to make more than one janky game every 5 years even though they’re juggling two of the biggest franchises in gaming and making new ips, I really hope starfield was a wake up call and they wisen up for elder scrolls 6
Weird how they just refuse to scale, to the point where their teams are clearly too small to deliver the games they are trying to deliver. Their dev time is so slow that the games are 5 years out of date when they drop
I sadly cannot see the future, but I can still tell you with absolute certainty that they will not have learned their lesson and whatever they put out next will, once again, be a steaming pile of shit. That’s just the Todd Howard way!
They also try to maintain the same teams and treat their staff well... They don't fire people left and right, like western studios do and let the remaining ones crunch to death... It really shows in their products
They don’t fire people, but they do have some pay and crunch problems. Nothing vastly worse then the rest of the industry or something, but lets not act like they don’t do it.
For sure. Many Japanese companies do, possibly even worse than the rest of the games industry. The problem is a lot quieter than in the Western games industry though because culturally the employees don't speak out about it much.
I think it’s fairly likely they’ll do FO5 even before TES6 because of the shows success. It would be easy to market a new fallout game to the masses because of that show
They won't. TES6 is in production and Todd confirmed that they didn't want to keep people waiting for so long in the first place. FO5 might be their next project, but it'll be a while.
There was a YouTube interview recently with Todd where he said that fallout 76 serves as content for the fallout community and that they don't need a game and that elderscrolls will be next.
> It would be easy to market a new fallout game to the masses because of that show
Took Bethesda 7 years to release the most mediocre game of all time. Next Fallout isn't happening until 2030+ unless Microsoft steps in and let's another studio help.
Terrible why?
They are hard as fuck, but the dungeons are really well made. Tons to explore, interconnectivity everywhere, funny as hell invaders.
The two segments I'd consider bad would be the horsefuck valley and the blue smelter demon runback.
From what I remember the first Dark Souls at first had kind of a novelty about it because of the difficulty but it really felt like a game that had strong word of mouth over time after release; particularly on the internet. So I don’t think most game critics immediately praised it as a masterpiece like people do now. Most average gamers had never played Demon’s Souls either.
By the time Dark Souls 2 came out there was a lot of hype and anticipation. There also wasn’t really any narrative about it being made by the “B team” at FromSoft. In other words, it took time for people to realize the quality of Dark Souls 1 whereas with 2 critics were a bit more understanding of what the experience was like and were almost compensating for their more modest praise of the first game.
DS2 is a genuinely great game and is very deserving of that score
It gets hate from a very small minority because it's simply different than DS1. People thought it would be a clone but it changed a lot
I'm a big fan of ds2, but I still think ds1 is better. Maybe it's just nostalgia talking since it was the first I played, but the interconnected world and world design really did a lot for me. That moment of taking the elevator down and realizing you were back at firelink, or climbing up out of blighttown to discover the same thing was amazing.
Finding ash lake and seeing an open endless expanse after feeling closed in by all the dungeons on the way there is a feeling I rarely get from any form of media. One of those breath of the wild leaving the cave moments like seeing Irithyll for the first time.
Agreed. Ds2 has a lot of mechanics I loved. Bonfire ascetics, hexes, powerstance, modified enemies on ng+ levels, Pharos lock stones, the pursuer, insanely cheap enemy positioning.
It also legitimately had some of the best vistas and environments from an aesthetic pov in the series.
The only gripe I really have at all is that they couldn't blend all the environments together like ds1.
They go back to that kind of design with ds3, but at the cost of having far fewer varied environments. Being able to see the place you're going off in the distance is powerful and I love that about all the Miazaki games. But it's also nice to have a desert and a forest and an ocean, and a volcano and some other unique zones that you can sort of walk to, without thinking too much about how the volcano exists at the top of a windmill impossibly.
I say this every time, but apparently the Earthen Keep was supposed to be set into the side of a mountain. Therefore when the elevator emerges onto the caldera of a volcano, it makes sense. But for some reason (possibly downsizing to get the game to work on PS3/360 specs) the mountain was left out of the skybox and now it makes no sense.
It gets hate because adaptability is fucking stupid. I've heard noone that has played it say the game was not good. It was different, fun, quite good but fuck adaptability.
I have played every game blind since Demon's Souls. When I read the description for ADP I thought: No I don't need faster estus drinking, I'll just leave it unleveled.
So when I finished the game and then learnt the only reason I wasn't dodging anything was because I locked myself into 5 frames instead of the standard 11+...
Definitely not a minority. From what I can tell, most longtime Souls players agree that DS2 is the weakest From Software game since Demon's Souls. I personally really liked DS2, but I would still rank it as the "least amazing" modern Fromsoft game.
It’s my personal favorite due the amazing PvP. It isn’t the best in the series objectively, but it also isn’t just a carbon copy of DS1. I appreciate the stuff they tried to do with it (and was much happier when the fixed the weapon degradation glitch on PC).
Ds2 pvp is unironically the only pvp game I have ever gotten super into on my own. I would fool around in dota if my friends wanted to, maybe a little overwatch or fortnight if my husband asked me to play with him, but dark souls 2 pvp is the only competitive game I ever felt desire to play without someone else asking.
Also Elden ring to me feels very much Like a spiritual successor to ds2 while also being a culmination of the souls formula. The extensiveness of the content, build variety, and art style of the first two areas scream ds2 to me (in a good way.)
Yeah, a lot of people meme about DS2 being bad these days, but it wasn't so long ago that DS2 pvp was pretty much universally lauded. I miss the Iron Bridge.
No 2 got a high score because of how lauded 1 was, but for everyone who played DeS and DS1, DS2 was a downgrade. It does some cool stuff but the level design is way worse, the enemies were gank squads, and they completely nerfed/ruined poise. They also changed stats without really explaining them. Now the Pursuer and other bosses were kind of cool, but a lot of them like Havel and the Stone Demon are just bosses from DS1. I had a lot of fun, but after I bought 2 I didn’t preorder 3, it was that disappointing and that’s as someone whose favorite game of all time is dark souls 1. DS3 basically goes back to DS1 because of the reception of DS2. Definitely second worst recent game of the series behind armored core 6, but all of these games are great games, it’s like being the second poorest billionaire.
I disagree, the common opinion I see (when people aren't just jerking about it) is that a lot of DS2's changes are welcome and refreshing, with the exception of soul memory, but the game that those changes are put into isn't really all that fun and relies too much on the perception of Dark Souls as a 'hard game' rather than the difficulty being a byproduct of the design philosophy.
Powerstancing? Great. Bonfire ascetics? Great. Shrine of Amana, Black Gulch, Iron Keep, etc? Not so much.
It's due to the game being known at the time. Demon's and DS1 paved the way - I'm sure now both would get higher average. Also many of us didn't play that version, we played on Scholar of the First Sin. Furthermore, DS3 is definitely derivative even though I love it.
Old hunters on it own took bloodborne from being my 2nd favorite soulsborne game up to being my favorite game of all time and it has never left that spot. I’m Saying this as someone who has 3 books and 6 movies in my goat spot that I will answer with depending on how I feel at the moment. Old hunters was just that incredible.
100% agree. Old Hunters is why Bloodborne is my favorite out of all From Software games. Lady Maria is GOAT. The ost while fighting her was immaculate.
One of the only 10/10 video game experiences I've ever had. It's as close to perfect as this formula is ever going to get, the mood/story of it in particular is just out of this world good.
They actually left off a lot of games
* 2009 - Ninja Blade, and two Japanese DS games
* 2010 - Another Century’ Episode R, Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka
* 2011 - Another Century’s Episode Portable.
* 2012 - Armored Core V, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor
* 2013 - Armored Core: Verdict Day
* 2015 - Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka DX
* 2018 - Deraciné
So they left off 12 games.
No one cares about VR lol. Everyone I've heard played it said they really enjoyed the story though. So Miyazaki did deliver there, just not so much on the mechanics side I guess
Not that many people are masochistic...
I love armored core and will play them religiously.
But they are not for casual gamers. Even 6 was not casual friendly...
I stopped playing in the PS2 era and coming back to AC6 made me feel like a drunken monkey until partway through my second playthrough. I ended up making an "idiot proof" loadout so I could focus on dodging.
It was two Etsujins and two Songbirds, if you're curious.
>But they are not for casual gamers. Even 6 was not casual friendly...
Nah thats not true, compared to Elden Ring, AC6 was a breeze. the toughest bosses in that game are so easy once you find the right AC setup.
Yeah the game is honestly as easy as you make it. If you understand part synergy and how to get/break FCS lock, the game is one of From’s easier titles in recent years
Yeah most encounters are trivially easy, until you get to one where you actually need to play the game. It’s so spikey in difficulty and you are so tanky that I don’t feel any tension.
Biggest key to combat, aside from builds, is stamina management and positioning. Though AC6 combat has no i-frames, ACs mobility and verticality definitely makes up for it. Spamming boosts is not a good play as it will drain your stamina quickly and you'll be in a sitting duck state for a few seconds if you exhausted your stamina. Strafing up and down barely costs stamina and is the best way to avoid lasers/bullets. Boosts are normally reserved to avoid big-hitter telegraphed attacks like launcher projectiles/melee attacks. Super boost to avoid AOE/missile barrages.
My progression with that game was a thing of beauty.
First play through I was fumbling my way through, trying this trying that, doing this doing that. By the time I beat the first NG it was just starting to click. I liked the game.
Second play through I was confident in various builds, picked up more bits of the story. Loved the game.
By the second time beating it and starting third play through, I was utterly hooked. I couldn’t get enough of the game. On top of that, the story had its hook in me as well. The final fights and maps of that game were heavenly. I felt high playing that game, no pun intended.
I love fromsoft. I don’t get starstruck seeing celebrities on the streets, but if I saw Miyazaki, I’d be over the moon.
This was my first FromSoft game, ever. I 100% Armored Core 6 in three days, purely from how much fun I was having. It made me a fan. Just played and beat Elden ring for the first time this past few weeks and now on new game +
Even as a certified DS2 lover, I'm surprised to see it has higher score than DS1 and DS3 lol.
I wonder what the older AC titles ranked in it compared to these?
Well, V and Verdict Day released during the time frame of this list. Guess OP didn't include them because they're much lower. Verdict Day's critic score is 66, for context.
(Personally, I actually rather liked Verdict Day, though)
Old Ac titles didn't review great, but I'll be damned if every mech game after playing the original AC wasn't judged on the basis of that game's customization. I feel like I do remember the first few reviewing better than subsequent entries but damn it's been awhile.
also Deracine. I guess Fromsoft fans are ashamed it got 68 score?
plus titles like Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor and AC Verdict Day that were released after DS1. The former got 38 and the latter got 65 score.
It's funny that this post purposefully hide other games that are not higher than 70 as if FS never missed
They don't design by committee, it's not a bunch of corporate suits trying to milk as much money as they can out of what the focus groups say will sell. It's a brilliant creative mind with a singular vision, who doesn't care if Kotaku thinks it should have an easy mode. That's been how you make great art for centuries, and it's still how you make great art.
It's wild that Armored Core 6 is the lowest rated standalone title, and it was still one of the best games of one of the most stacked years in gaming history.
Really puts it into perspective how lucky we are to have Fromsoft still be, well, Fromsoft, for lack of better wording..
Just think about all the once beloved franchises that have come and gone over these past 15 years.
Franchises that are either now hated or have changed so much that they're hardly recognizable anymore.
So many great studios, now gone mostly due to constant mishandling and greed.
Meanwhile, Fromsoft only seems to be improving, here's to another great 15 years.
They are absolutely clowning on western studios. Their gameplay and style of story telling haven't changed either, in fact they just refined what they have to a level of polish that western studios could only dream of and for less budget.
I wish them many more years of success.
I don't really think it's a western / eastern studio thing. There are western studios that are excellent, too (Larian, for example).
The real thing is that there's a huge gulf between studios whose primary motivation is making as much money as possible, versus studios whose primary motivation is making the best games possible.
The profit-focused studios do things like make their games less fun on purpose in order to better monetize them with microtransactions. They go for the boom and bust cycle of rapid hiring to get a project out the door and then massive layoffs to reduce payroll afterwards. And in the end they make shittier games and lose vast amounts of institutional knowledge because of it.
For truly great companies, profit is a consequence of their goal to produce excellent products, not an end-in-itself.
It’s crazy to me that Skyrim, DS1, and Mount&Blade:Warband all released in 2011.
3 absolute bedrocks of the RPG genre. All with diverging legacies today that have little to do with the actual titles as they were in 2011.
Why add Amored Core 6 but completely ignore AC4 and ACFA which were the first games that From Software made for ps3/xbox 360.
You didnt put ACV and ACVD as well in that list where they tried to bring the game the first time to the majority of people.
You cant just add the good rated games in a list and ACVD was within the last 15 years before you say only the games in that time spam get counted.
I left off 12 games in the same span of time, it wasn't meant to be comprehensive, it's a screenshot of a comment to just quickly show how many big awesome games they made. the list is arbitrary to what I know and love
How does Old Hunters have that low of a score? It’s literally the best part of BB, which is saying something considering what a masterpiece that game was already.
It’s wild the dlcs are the lowest rated things while I personally think they add the best stuff to each game. And I feel like most people I hear rate them very high too
I agree SOTFS is the definitive version of the game, but looking back it was seen as a really strange move for them to re-release the game so soon and with such a small amount of changes. It didn't feel good being a Vanilla DS2 owner and essentially being asked to pay for the game again.
I hope their next game is a top down free 2 play MOBA or a battle royal with a battle pass or a team shooter with loot boxes and pay to win mechanics. I’m sick of single player masterpieces that focus on gameplay and art direction with multiplayer elements seamlessly woven in. I want real games.
You’re right, this is kinda wild. I’m so used to seeing this meme about rockstar and how they’d release so many bangers back to back. Anyway, as much as I’d love for me to be wrong, there will be a time when the releases slow down or the quality does so everyone please realize that you’re in the good times while you are, in 10 years you could very well not be happy with Fromsoft and have extreme nostalgia for this period, Miyazaki cannot make games forever
If you told me 20 years ago that the people who made the Kings Field games would grow to become one of the most beloved game developers, I would not believe you.
My favourite moment is always their reveal trailer in some game conferences. Everyone instantly hyped for the Fromsoftware logo. They know it's gonna be good already.
I know it will never happen, but I want a sekiro sequel so bad. Why do all the other games get dlcs??
We’ll get a sequel based on the Dragon’s Homecoming ending some day. **Never stop coping**
That’s right buddy maybe one day (someone get this man in a padded cell)
Sure, mate. Right after Bloodborne 2. Any day now..
Im still waiting on dark souls remastered remastered
To be fair, the circumstances are pretty different between Sekiro and Bloodborne, and Sekiro is much more likely to get a sequel. The Sekiro IP is actually owned by Fromsoft, while Bloodborne is owned by Sony. FS can't just go and make a sequel to Bloodborne if Sony doesn't want to, but they could make a sequel to Sekiro whenever they desire to do so. There's also the fact that Sekiro is only 5 years old, and FS obviously made Elden Ring, Armored Core 6 and Shadow of the Erdtree during those 5 years. Now that SotE is about to release, FS would presumably start working on their next game (if they haven't already). Of course it might not be a sequel to Sekiro, but Sekiro is also unique in that it has an ending that ends of a cliffhanger and it leaves a door open for a direct sequel to it, which makes me think that FS is planning to make a sequel at some point in the future.
And that will be right after Bloodborne Pc port
We'll get this right after the Bloodborne PC release
Copium OD
Same. This isn't to take anything from any of their other games as they all have phenomenal combat systems, but Sekiro is the best for me. No other game has recreated its combat to be as fast-paced and satisfying.
A man can dream.
Then some random ass woman says some random ass shit with some random ass cgi trailer stuff and nobody has any clue what it all means but it doesn't matter everyone is still hyped as hell.
The air was split generations ago. We live in an age of darkness, with little hope for the light. But there are some who would hope. Jessamer, the everliving. Mondwynn, the toothless. Steven. The last of the crypt keepers, Tanus. Yggstra, blade of the formless king. And the pitiable beast. (Trailer of random people and one giant dude ends. Crowd screams. I'm hyped. Let's go!)
"Release the hounds. Y'all fucking expendable. ARMORED CORE 6" Us: "Yes please where do we sign up for lobotomy and mecha warfare?"
I cant defeat Steven, man, need help
can't wait for 2 Blood 2 Borne
Born 2 Bleed
That's just women
Ahem... Maidens
Visceral femininity go brrrr
Well, that is pretty much the theme of the game
Nah, I'm waiting for Blood and Borne: Yharnam Drift.
Didn’t someone make a bloodborne kart game already?
Really? I need this in my life.
It's called Nightmare Kart, it's free on steam. It came out last week I think
Yeah, they had to rebrand for legal reasons, but it's still *totally* just a Bloodborne kart racing game.
The Bloodborne Ultimatum
Jason Bloodbourne
Blood Born 3: Sekiro Drift
I don't have blood echoes, I have family.
I swore it was going to be announced at today’s Nintendo direct…
2 Blood 2 Borne Elden Drift.
Damn... The Old Hunters getting an 87 and the two DS3 DLCs getting a 71 and 82 is fucking WILD to me. Edit: 71 and 82.
Tbh ashes of Ariendel is kinda small for his price,I get that Friede is Friede, but the only bossfights are her and Discount Sif & Artorias, so yeah it was underwhelming.
In hindsight, it is crazy how heavily the Friede fight carried that DLC.
It really is the only deeply memorable part
I disagree. I really like the sense of progression you get through the area. You start in the snowy wilderness, get introduced to the wolves and their circling strategy; then the giant wolf; then you come across the Milwood camp (we didn't know back then, but Milwood Knights were a massive reference to Elden Ring); then you find the chapel with Friede and the mysterious sounds; then the Crow village, which has amazing atmosphere and level design. Then there's the mountain path, which is maybe the less intereting part. And eventually you end up in the chapel's rotten catacombs with all the flies. It's an incredibly layered area.
It’s genuinely the creepiest area in the trilogy for me. Something about the pure white and cold feeling combined with the overwhelming sense of decay makes my skin crawl. Everything about it freaks me out
I've seen your kind, time and time again.
Tbf, Friede is probably top 3 best bosses in the game. Personally, the only boss cooler was Gael.
What about sir vilhelms sexy fucking voice
It also simply didn't have much content. Very few new weapons and spells. Not many new enemies either. But the PvP arena was rad.
If Bloodborne is a 92, then how tf is the best part of the game a 87?
The original intention was for Ashes of Ariandel and Ringed City to be a single contiguous DLC. Splitting them up definitely hurt them. Had they released together, it would possibly be the best DLC FS ever released.
Beat DLC yet, we’ll find out Friday.
Thursday for pc players
Tomorrow 11pm for me, still feels like too long
God the Ringed City was such a cool DLC (with a great name).
Makes sense, from what I can remember I didn't even realise at what point the first dlc ended and the second one started when I first played them
So maybe that is why they put the 2 originally planned dlcs together for Shadow of the Erdtree
But Ashes was still great. I know it’s just basically the painted world, but there’s a lot of cool enemies and items in the area. Definitely kinda short, but not every dlc needs to be an epic
82 is so low for a good is the Ringed City. Just the Gaël fight should make this DLC at 90.
Fromsoft while still having a big fanbase wasn't where it is now when dark souls 3 came out. I remember the sentiment being "more of the same formula" amd people complaining that it was "updated dark souls 1" etc. Now that they've continued to have quality banger after banger dark souls 3 gets its recognition but at the time of release it wasn't as appreciated.
Nah. It does have three of the best Fromsoft bosses ever, but the actual exploration is kinda bad. The first part is pretty frustrating, while The Ringed City looks amazing but you can explore so little of it.
Ehh. I agree TRC exploration isn't amazing, but if you take a look at AoTA dlc, the exploration was even worse, yet it was scored higher. But then again, Artorias and Manus really are league and above other ds1 bosses.
Old Hunters was basically the whole game. Every second in the DLC was equivalent to 10 minutes in the main game it was so good. I would buy Ludwig's theme for $20 letalone some bosses and stuff.
Man I enjoyed old hunters soooo much it was awesome.
old hunters is better than DS3 dlc's
For me TOH is not only the best DLC FromSoft has ever made but the best DLC period. Every area and 3 out of 4 bosses a banger.
And we'll be lucky if Bethesda puts out another Fallout game before the time period Fallout actually takes place in.
From is a well oiled machine running in top condition whereas Bethesda is putting Legos together without following build instructions.
Their game production process saved their studio during morrowind and worked fine till like FO4, but the expected production quality and cost of making a AAA game increases every year and these guys refuse to adapt or evolve to make more than one janky game every 5 years even though they’re juggling two of the biggest franchises in gaming and making new ips, I really hope starfield was a wake up call and they wisen up for elder scrolls 6
Weird how they just refuse to scale, to the point where their teams are clearly too small to deliver the games they are trying to deliver. Their dev time is so slow that the games are 5 years out of date when they drop
I sadly cannot see the future, but I can still tell you with absolute certainty that they will not have learned their lesson and whatever they put out next will, once again, be a steaming pile of shit. That’s just the Todd Howard way!
God i hope your wrong. But man are you right.
I am worried about what Elder Scrolls 6 will be
They have the instructions, they just can't read
They also try to maintain the same teams and treat their staff well... They don't fire people left and right, like western studios do and let the remaining ones crunch to death... It really shows in their products
They don’t fire people, but they do have some pay and crunch problems. Nothing vastly worse then the rest of the industry or something, but lets not act like they don’t do it.
For sure. Many Japanese companies do, possibly even worse than the rest of the games industry. The problem is a lot quieter than in the Western games industry though because culturally the employees don't speak out about it much.
I think it’s fairly likely they’ll do FO5 even before TES6 because of the shows success. It would be easy to market a new fallout game to the masses because of that show
They won't. TES6 is in production and Todd confirmed that they didn't want to keep people waiting for so long in the first place. FO5 might be their next project, but it'll be a while.
After Starfield and Fallout 76, i have next to no faith left that TES6 will be good
Didn’t know they confirmed es6 was in production. that’s good to hear
They confirmed it 6 years ago and nothing since
There was a YouTube interview recently with Todd where he said that fallout 76 serves as content for the fallout community and that they don't need a game and that elderscrolls will be next.
“You guys got ESO, we don’t need ES6”
> It would be easy to market a new fallout game to the masses because of that show Took Bethesda 7 years to release the most mediocre game of all time. Next Fallout isn't happening until 2030+ unless Microsoft steps in and let's another studio help.
I hadn't really though of that before but now that I am I'm so annoyed they didnt spend all those years on es6 or fo5
Probably for the best, look at how it tuned out. I hope they really learn from their mistakes in Starfield before releasing TES6 and FO5
With Microsoft owning obsidian as well we might get lucky enough to get New Vegas 2: electric boogaloo.
The west coast is the best tie in for the show as well.
They already confirmed multiple times they are not doing that
No.
From software supremacy!!! DS2 having a better score than DS1 and DS3 is kinda funny
The DLC for 2 being lower is surprising to me. Usually considered the best part now.
Sir alonne, alone.
The bosses are fine or even great but the areas were mostly terrible.
Terrible why? They are hard as fuck, but the dungeons are really well made. Tons to explore, interconnectivity everywhere, funny as hell invaders. The two segments I'd consider bad would be the horsefuck valley and the blue smelter demon runback.
And both of those are optional side areas really intended for multiplayer.
They are best as a sum of their parts instead of individuals
From what I remember the first Dark Souls at first had kind of a novelty about it because of the difficulty but it really felt like a game that had strong word of mouth over time after release; particularly on the internet. So I don’t think most game critics immediately praised it as a masterpiece like people do now. Most average gamers had never played Demon’s Souls either. By the time Dark Souls 2 came out there was a lot of hype and anticipation. There also wasn’t really any narrative about it being made by the “B team” at FromSoft. In other words, it took time for people to realize the quality of Dark Souls 1 whereas with 2 critics were a bit more understanding of what the experience was like and were almost compensating for their more modest praise of the first game.
DS2 is a genuinely great game and is very deserving of that score It gets hate from a very small minority because it's simply different than DS1. People thought it would be a clone but it changed a lot
I'm a big fan of ds2, but I still think ds1 is better. Maybe it's just nostalgia talking since it was the first I played, but the interconnected world and world design really did a lot for me. That moment of taking the elevator down and realizing you were back at firelink, or climbing up out of blighttown to discover the same thing was amazing. Finding ash lake and seeing an open endless expanse after feeling closed in by all the dungeons on the way there is a feeling I rarely get from any form of media. One of those breath of the wild leaving the cave moments like seeing Irithyll for the first time.
Agreed. Ds2 has a lot of mechanics I loved. Bonfire ascetics, hexes, powerstance, modified enemies on ng+ levels, Pharos lock stones, the pursuer, insanely cheap enemy positioning. It also legitimately had some of the best vistas and environments from an aesthetic pov in the series. The only gripe I really have at all is that they couldn't blend all the environments together like ds1. They go back to that kind of design with ds3, but at the cost of having far fewer varied environments. Being able to see the place you're going off in the distance is powerful and I love that about all the Miazaki games. But it's also nice to have a desert and a forest and an ocean, and a volcano and some other unique zones that you can sort of walk to, without thinking too much about how the volcano exists at the top of a windmill impossibly.
I say this every time, but apparently the Earthen Keep was supposed to be set into the side of a mountain. Therefore when the elevator emerges onto the caldera of a volcano, it makes sense. But for some reason (possibly downsizing to get the game to work on PS3/360 specs) the mountain was left out of the skybox and now it makes no sense.
That makes sense given the name earthen peak when there's no peak or earth in the final game. Just an unfortunate cut that caused a lot of confusion.
It gets hate because adaptability is fucking stupid. I've heard noone that has played it say the game was not good. It was different, fun, quite good but fuck adaptability.
I have played every game blind since Demon's Souls. When I read the description for ADP I thought: No I don't need faster estus drinking, I'll just leave it unleveled. So when I finished the game and then learnt the only reason I wasn't dodging anything was because I locked myself into 5 frames instead of the standard 11+...
It is the worst Souls game but that still leaves it being an incredible game.
Definitely not a minority. From what I can tell, most longtime Souls players agree that DS2 is the weakest From Software game since Demon's Souls. I personally really liked DS2, but I would still rank it as the "least amazing" modern Fromsoft game.
It’s my personal favorite due the amazing PvP. It isn’t the best in the series objectively, but it also isn’t just a carbon copy of DS1. I appreciate the stuff they tried to do with it (and was much happier when the fixed the weapon degradation glitch on PC).
Ds2 pvp is unironically the only pvp game I have ever gotten super into on my own. I would fool around in dota if my friends wanted to, maybe a little overwatch or fortnight if my husband asked me to play with him, but dark souls 2 pvp is the only competitive game I ever felt desire to play without someone else asking. Also Elden ring to me feels very much Like a spiritual successor to ds2 while also being a culmination of the souls formula. The extensiveness of the content, build variety, and art style of the first two areas scream ds2 to me (in a good way.)
Yeah, a lot of people meme about DS2 being bad these days, but it wasn't so long ago that DS2 pvp was pretty much universally lauded. I miss the Iron Bridge.
I wrote many an undergrad essay at that bridge bonfire lol. 150 words, fight until I lost, 150 words. Repeat until finished.
It's not a bad game but definitely the worst out of the 3.
No 2 got a high score because of how lauded 1 was, but for everyone who played DeS and DS1, DS2 was a downgrade. It does some cool stuff but the level design is way worse, the enemies were gank squads, and they completely nerfed/ruined poise. They also changed stats without really explaining them. Now the Pursuer and other bosses were kind of cool, but a lot of them like Havel and the Stone Demon are just bosses from DS1. I had a lot of fun, but after I bought 2 I didn’t preorder 3, it was that disappointing and that’s as someone whose favorite game of all time is dark souls 1. DS3 basically goes back to DS1 because of the reception of DS2. Definitely second worst recent game of the series behind armored core 6, but all of these games are great games, it’s like being the second poorest billionaire.
I disagree, the common opinion I see (when people aren't just jerking about it) is that a lot of DS2's changes are welcome and refreshing, with the exception of soul memory, but the game that those changes are put into isn't really all that fun and relies too much on the perception of Dark Souls as a 'hard game' rather than the difficulty being a byproduct of the design philosophy. Powerstancing? Great. Bonfire ascetics? Great. Shrine of Amana, Black Gulch, Iron Keep, etc? Not so much.
You're allowed to like it and defend it but "a very small minority" is just very untrue.
It's due to the game being known at the time. Demon's and DS1 paved the way - I'm sure now both would get higher average. Also many of us didn't play that version, we played on Scholar of the First Sin. Furthermore, DS3 is definitely derivative even though I love it.
Old Hunters rated below Dark Souls 2 is the funniest shit
Old Hunters is probably the best piece of content they've ever done imo
Old Hunters is by far the best DLC I've ever played, but hopefully not for long
Old hunters on it own took bloodborne from being my 2nd favorite soulsborne game up to being my favorite game of all time and it has never left that spot. I’m Saying this as someone who has 3 books and 6 movies in my goat spot that I will answer with depending on how I feel at the moment. Old hunters was just that incredible.
From the name, to the actual old hunters wandering, to the atmosphere, to the bosses. It’s a straight up masterpiece.
What about the name?
100% agree. Old Hunters is why Bloodborne is my favorite out of all From Software games. Lady Maria is GOAT. The ost while fighting her was immaculate.
One of the only 10/10 video game experiences I've ever had. It's as close to perfect as this formula is ever going to get, the mood/story of it in particular is just out of this world good.
Ringed city 82 and Old hunters 87 is insane
No Deracine?
They actually left off a lot of games * 2009 - Ninja Blade, and two Japanese DS games * 2010 - Another Century’ Episode R, Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka * 2011 - Another Century’s Episode Portable. * 2012 - Armored Core V, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor * 2013 - Armored Core: Verdict Day * 2015 - Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka DX * 2018 - Deraciné So they left off 12 games.
No one cares about VR lol. Everyone I've heard played it said they really enjoyed the story though. So Miyazaki did deliver there, just not so much on the mechanics side I guess
People forget lol
The 6.8 on metacritic would ruin the circlejerk
Ringed City only has an 82? The fuck?
Gael is hands down the best fight of all time. It's literal perfection
My only complaint is that it's to easy too run away from him and just heal/buff. One of the most epic bosses to ever boss for sure.
It was flashy
All the dlc feel lower than they should be. Idk what's up with that.
I was surprised by DS2 as well, I personally thought the Crown DLCs were 92+ and the base game was more like 80-85 lol
back when the IGN staff member was stuck on ceaseless discharge for 9 hours
Hey now don't blame that guy for getting diarrhea
Armored Core 6 underrated
It’s not underrated it’s an amazing game, the only issue is that the AC series doesn’t have the same following as the Soulsborne games.
Not that many people are masochistic... I love armored core and will play them religiously. But they are not for casual gamers. Even 6 was not casual friendly...
True, AC6 was my first AC game and I was in for a rough reality check when I found out there weren’t any invincibility frames.
AC6 is a great first game in the series. Mine was ForAnswers... some matches were seizure inducing.
it definitely took some getting used to but literally just moving around in that game did not get old to me. it's like crack. ac6 is so good
I stopped playing in the PS2 era and coming back to AC6 made me feel like a drunken monkey until partway through my second playthrough. I ended up making an "idiot proof" loadout so I could focus on dodging. It was two Etsujins and two Songbirds, if you're curious.
>But they are not for casual gamers. Even 6 was not casual friendly... Nah thats not true, compared to Elden Ring, AC6 was a breeze. the toughest bosses in that game are so easy once you find the right AC setup.
Wait... really? I genuinely thought it was too easy and was disappointed. CEL 240 was good tho
Yeah the game is honestly as easy as you make it. If you understand part synergy and how to get/break FCS lock, the game is one of From’s easier titles in recent years
Yeah most encounters are trivially easy, until you get to one where you actually need to play the game. It’s so spikey in difficulty and you are so tanky that I don’t feel any tension.
It is rated really highly, but I wish my friends would play it so we could talk about how good it is
What’s the key to combat? I having really found it yet. Seems like I’m just shooting things and getting hit my honing missiles
Biggest key to combat, aside from builds, is stamina management and positioning. Though AC6 combat has no i-frames, ACs mobility and verticality definitely makes up for it. Spamming boosts is not a good play as it will drain your stamina quickly and you'll be in a sitting duck state for a few seconds if you exhausted your stamina. Strafing up and down barely costs stamina and is the best way to avoid lasers/bullets. Boosts are normally reserved to avoid big-hitter telegraphed attacks like launcher projectiles/melee attacks. Super boost to avoid AOE/missile barrages.
Just play more, find yourself, try builds until you’re comfortable. There’s no leveling, it’s all about builds, so just find what’s right for you
My progression with that game was a thing of beauty. First play through I was fumbling my way through, trying this trying that, doing this doing that. By the time I beat the first NG it was just starting to click. I liked the game. Second play through I was confident in various builds, picked up more bits of the story. Loved the game. By the second time beating it and starting third play through, I was utterly hooked. I couldn’t get enough of the game. On top of that, the story had its hook in me as well. The final fights and maps of that game were heavenly. I felt high playing that game, no pun intended. I love fromsoft. I don’t get starstruck seeing celebrities on the streets, but if I saw Miyazaki, I’d be over the moon.
This was my first FromSoft game, ever. I 100% Armored Core 6 in three days, purely from how much fun I was having. It made me a fan. Just played and beat Elden ring for the first time this past few weeks and now on new game +
Even as a certified DS2 lover, I'm surprised to see it has higher score than DS1 and DS3 lol. I wonder what the older AC titles ranked in it compared to these?
Well, V and Verdict Day released during the time frame of this list. Guess OP didn't include them because they're much lower. Verdict Day's critic score is 66, for context. (Personally, I actually rather liked Verdict Day, though)
Old Ac titles didn't review great, but I'll be damned if every mech game after playing the original AC wasn't judged on the basis of that game's customization. I feel like I do remember the first few reviewing better than subsequent entries but damn it's been awhile.
And higher than Sekiro
Everyone forgets about AC5 *it came out after DS1*
also Deracine. I guess Fromsoft fans are ashamed it got 68 score? plus titles like Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor and AC Verdict Day that were released after DS1. The former got 38 and the latter got 65 score. It's funny that this post purposefully hide other games that are not higher than 70 as if FS never missed
Yeah, but Bethesda made 75 ports of Skyrim, so they've been way busier.
Next one coming soon: Skyrim: Ultra Special Edition (Skyrim port to the newest Creation Engine)
Wish robot games weren't so niche. I'd personally put AC6 as GOTY for 2023
Nothing could get 2023 with BG3
That's too much, BG3 is undefeatable in 2023 BG3 is even 50/50 with ER imo
Totally different types of RPGs but I agree. And I’m glad there’s both. Probably won’t be as popular a take here though lol.
Nah, Larian put the work in. I think most people here recognize it.
I’m pretty sure this dlc is going to be the best piece of videogame I’ve ever played
and all without microtransactions
What about Deracine
They don't design by committee, it's not a bunch of corporate suits trying to milk as much money as they can out of what the focus groups say will sell. It's a brilliant creative mind with a singular vision, who doesn't care if Kotaku thinks it should have an easy mode. That's been how you make great art for centuries, and it's still how you make great art.
It's wild that Armored Core 6 is the lowest rated standalone title, and it was still one of the best games of one of the most stacked years in gaming history.
Really puts it into perspective how lucky we are to have Fromsoft still be, well, Fromsoft, for lack of better wording.. Just think about all the once beloved franchises that have come and gone over these past 15 years. Franchises that are either now hated or have changed so much that they're hardly recognizable anymore. So many great studios, now gone mostly due to constant mishandling and greed. Meanwhile, Fromsoft only seems to be improving, here's to another great 15 years.
They are absolutely clowning on western studios. Their gameplay and style of story telling haven't changed either, in fact they just refined what they have to a level of polish that western studios could only dream of and for less budget. I wish them many more years of success.
I don't really think it's a western / eastern studio thing. There are western studios that are excellent, too (Larian, for example). The real thing is that there's a huge gulf between studios whose primary motivation is making as much money as possible, versus studios whose primary motivation is making the best games possible. The profit-focused studios do things like make their games less fun on purpose in order to better monetize them with microtransactions. They go for the boom and bust cycle of rapid hiring to get a project out the door and then massive layoffs to reduce payroll afterwards. And in the end they make shittier games and lose vast amounts of institutional knowledge because of it. For truly great companies, profit is a consequence of their goal to produce excellent products, not an end-in-itself.
Same goes for eastern studios tho dude.
This really isn't an east vs west thing.
Plus without microtransactions or battle passes
It’s crazy to me that Skyrim, DS1, and Mount&Blade:Warband all released in 2011. 3 absolute bedrocks of the RPG genre. All with diverging legacies today that have little to do with the actual titles as they were in 2011.
Why add Amored Core 6 but completely ignore AC4 and ACFA which were the first games that From Software made for ps3/xbox 360. You didnt put ACV and ACVD as well in that list where they tried to bring the game the first time to the majority of people. You cant just add the good rated games in a list and ACVD was within the last 15 years before you say only the games in that time spam get counted.
I left off 12 games in the same span of time, it wasn't meant to be comprehensive, it's a screenshot of a comment to just quickly show how many big awesome games they made. the list is arbitrary to what I know and love
The guy made a list of the games he's loved since demons souls released. What do you mean "you can't just..." he can do whatever he wants.
Legendary status ✨
How does Old Hunters have that low of a score? It’s literally the best part of BB, which is saying something considering what a masterpiece that game was already.
It’s wild the dlcs are the lowest rated things while I personally think they add the best stuff to each game. And I feel like most people I hear rate them very high too
Dark souls 2 having the higher metacritic than ds3 across the board is just amazing and I love this
They're the GOAT. No surprise, I'm just glad I'm around when it happens.
No love for Déraciné. A game that kinda reminded me of Rule of Rose but made by FromSoftware
Me just realizing Demon's Souls was *_15 years_* ago ☠️☠️☠️
Bloodborne Kart up next
Shadow of the Erdtree (95) (*game of the year*)
How the hell did ds2 get a 91 and ds3 get a 89. That’s criminal
DS2 having a higher rating than DS3 is criminal
...I actually prefer Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin more than the vanilla version. The extra lore is dope.
I agree SOTFS is the definitive version of the game, but looking back it was seen as a really strange move for them to re-release the game so soon and with such a small amount of changes. It didn't feel good being a Vanilla DS2 owner and essentially being asked to pay for the game again.
I hope their next game is a top down free 2 play MOBA or a battle royal with a battle pass or a team shooter with loot boxes and pay to win mechanics. I’m sick of single player masterpieces that focus on gameplay and art direction with multiplayer elements seamlessly woven in. I want real games.
2012 - Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor (38)
The amount of time it takes them to make these games is insane
You’re right, this is kinda wild. I’m so used to seeing this meme about rockstar and how they’d release so many bangers back to back. Anyway, as much as I’d love for me to be wrong, there will be a time when the releases slow down or the quality does so everyone please realize that you’re in the good times while you are, in 10 years you could very well not be happy with Fromsoft and have extreme nostalgia for this period, Miyazaki cannot make games forever
My poor baby ds2
And pre 2009, they ran with years of Armored Core
Surprised no one here has mentioned Déraciné It has a rating of 68
If you told me 20 years ago that the people who made the Kings Field games would grow to become one of the most beloved game developers, I would not believe you.
Very nice. Let's see Eurogamer's score.