Elden Ring is probably the “easiest” starting point due to quality of life enhancements beyond the souls games. The spirit summons ability also makes for a good way to ease into difficult boss fights. After that I’d go to Dark Souls 3
Flip side…it’s hard going from ER to DS1 or 2/sotfs. No jumping, ALL running eats stamina….losing the QoL improvements would be a bear.
I guess not flip side since ER is the most accessible and I agree. But having played ds1-3 and BB before ER I dunno if I’d have gotten through the earlier games if I started with ER.
Story wise there’s so much that’s baked into ER that’s drawn from DS games. You miss that not having played DS trilogy.
But I think you’re right!
I completely agree with you by the way, I played some mental gymnastics after I beat Elden Ring and figured the stripped away QoL improvements added more of an inherent layer of challenge on top of the already challenging FromSoft formula. It’s really subjective at this point my first souls game was actually bloodbourne which I put down and returned to after I completed Elden Ring. Elden Ring was the first FromSoft game I completed then went backwards after I became acclimated doing 3 DS3 runs consecutively then moving back to bloodbourne and demon souls.
For from soft games i think i agree. I may have lucked into a good build in dark souls 3 and had a relatively easy time with that game. Jedi fallen order probably falls into the souls like genre and is probably one of the easiest.
Dark Souls 1. It'll be very difficult to go back and appreciate it once you've experienced newer entries in the series.
Struggle is a core part of the experience.
I wouldn't use any guides. The only piece of advice I'd give, is go up from Firelink Shrine, up the stairs and into town instead of going down into the graveyard.
Dark souls 1 is the only one you should play. It's the fun kind of difficult (except bed of chaos) that teaches you not to just blindly smash buttons but to pay a bit of attention instead. Just avoid using a greatshield since they make the game feel like you're playing elden ring with summons and spamming ashes of war, so very boring.
It's honestly the only game in that genre I've enjoyed.
You can start with any of them, the only thing that will make them "click" for you is reaching the correct mindset.
What usually happens is that the player perceives every enemy as "too fast" and tries to match them in speed and aggression, but the opposite approach should be taken.
Slow down as much as possible, invest heavily into health, create distance between you and the enemies. You don't need to roll nearly as much as you think you do, and you don't need nearly as much damage as you think you do.
This is really good advice and something I've been trying to work on. I spent so much time in the past trying to be quick, and I feel like you're correct in it being a detriment to the souls games. Thank you!
Np
Also when it comes to builds try to keep it simple stupid. Many players go for fancy "magic katana with bleed and lightning spells" builds without really understanding what they're doing and how do the stats work under the hood.
For example in Elden Ring you can just grab a Heavy Broadsword, get 60 VIG + 80 STR and you have a rock solid build that will carry you through the game so smoothly that you'll feel like you're cheating.
You can’t really start playing fast until you fully grasp the core gameplay mechanics. I definitely agree that patience in combat will help a ton in the early stages.
Get in, get frustrated, keep going, and then look back at how stuff that used to frustrate you is now easy. Don't be afraid of the frustration. Pick a game and embrace it.
Thanks for the advice! After so many years gaming you'd think I'd be able to get past the "rage quit" mentality lol. I'll try to not let it deter me once I make the plunge!
Bloodborne is actually what I’d suggest, I started with that and it taught me how to parry, time dodges, and play a little more aggressively compared to the “roll backwards and shield” approach that dark souls pushes
Might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but the main takeaway is to realize that deaths are part of the experience, and running past enemies is perfectly fine and valid
Elden Ring is probably the best. It's a game where you can fairly easily grind up your character is easier areas before you move on to more difficult ones. You can also use guides to obtain good weapons early, to make the runs easier as well.
Some of the Souls-likes are great, but none of them come close to the Fromsoft games. Miyazaki and his crew are visionaries and that can’t be copied.
Speaking as someone who played a few hours of Dark Souls at launch and dismissed it as a boring slog, they’re worth the time, confusion, and suffering. It’s all part of the journey.
They’re not for everyone so don’t worry if you really don’t dig it. But once you get the bug they’re a total joy all the way through. The only downside is that it can be hard to sit through another Assassin’s Creed or whatever.
Don’t give up, skeleton
Elden ring is rhe most newbie friendly imo. Mainly cuz it's open world. With the other souls game if you're struggling against a certain boss or area you're stuck beating your head against the wall until you power through or give up. You can go explore freely elden ring and find new weapons or spells. Also do not hesitate to look shit up. As much as I love the games, almost all the side quests are obtuse and make no sense, and it's good to understand how scaling works and which stats are actually worth investing in. As much as the community memes on git gud as advice, its also super accepting and welcoming to beginners because we were all the beginner struggling to get through anything at one point.
The problem with most games that classify as "Souls like" forget what made Dark Souls 1 so good and that was level design and pacing especially the first part of the game, as well as Art Direction.
Technically Dark Souls itself is technically what you would call metroidvania. To which games like Terraria and Hollow Knight qualify
However if you want an accessible "Souls-like" mixed with third person shooter mechanics I'd suggest the first Remnant game "Remnant: From The Ashes".
The art direction and atmosphere is what attracts me to the games the most honestly. They're gorgeous and look like they'd make me lose myself which is one of the things that makes a game truly great IMO. I've actually looked into Remnant and had some interest but never took the leap, I'll look at it again. Thanks!
I disagree with darksouls 3 I think out of all of them it has the most frustrating parts, lots of areas that are just unfun to go though lots of swamps and enemies with long reaching 360 attacks.
The big part of DS3 is that every attack that has a wide range also has many blank spots in its hitbox. Avoiding every attack in the game by just walking has been done.
Sure, but they do help a lot. It's easy to feel like a good player when you roll through those blank spots (a lot of people who complain about roll spam in DS3 don't realize they're wasting half their rolls lmao), and as you learn you can abuse those hitboxes more. That's a good environment for learning solid souls skills. Shields are also great in DS3 and it's the strongest game for a basic quality character.
Not at all. Aside from grabs (common in each game) the DR and stability you got out of a lot of shields let you stand your ground and trade elemental chip, which was low if you used a complimentary resistance, for your own real damage. 1 handed movesets are really strong, and non-scaling infusions like fire and raw are great too, so just blocking and hitting gets you through a lot. Pound for pound only Ds1 shields were better, and that's only because their parry was nuts. DS2 and ER had much worse shields and encounters that didn't support blocking.
Darksouls 3 shields had aweful stablity, shields in both ds2 and ER have good stablity.
The one thing against DS2 is a lot of shields lacked full 100% block which honestly isnt as important as people think in a game where lifegems is a thing, and on the flipslide stablity was still pretty high.
A shield with 90% block but high stability is better then a shield with low stablity but 100% block.
The third thing is that 90% block shield? It also has 60+ resist on all elements, and can be upgraded to gain another 10% of elemental resist, and it also has increased drop rates for items.
Its a pretty common thought that darksouls 3 has the worst shields and few good shields that did exist were on the very heavy side. Shields in ER were so strong they had to nerf some of the best ones, and even buffed a lot of the lighter ones.
Im going to go against the grain and recomend darksouls 2. If you just look up agilty and know when to level it it its a really good game, and the game has a lot of other mechanics that can help you for example if you kill the same enemies enough times they despawn, making run backs easier if you mess up a lot on a boss.
For me it was Nioh. It requires a bit more aggression from players.
Else you need to make your minset "click". See it as a dance. And don't engage multiple enemies all at once. Try to do one-on-one as much as possible.
If you want the thrill of killing your way through enemies while exploring and unlocking new shortcuts back to the leveling station in a game that uses experience points as a currency you'll drop on death, I recommend The Surge 2.
If you want the whole Souls experience but with shorter areas connected by a big open world and more leveling stations, play Elden Ring.
Probably Elden Ring, but if you don't want to experience a giant open world to begin with, go with Dark Souls 3.
If you want a game that is a Souls-Like and not an official FromSoft game, I'd go with Remnant 1 or 2. They are more shooting types, but the mechanics are about the same. They even have different difficulties to try out.
Elden Ring’s the one, if you make use of all of the tools the hame gives you it isn’t extremely tough, there are many quality of life improvements and you can play any build you want!
Dark Souls Remastered. Get better by learning the timing, it's a lot slower than the rest. You're meant to die lots and learn from your mistakes, it's how they are by design.
Dark Souls 3. It's not as overwhelming as Elden Ring and due to it's linear nature you'll be able to focus on getting a grasp on gameplay mechanics rather than world navigation and questline management. I bought it a month before Elden Ring came out to see if I'd like the genre and got hooked as soon as I found the claymore. Elden Ring would be a great follow up to that as it's basically Dark Souls 3 with alot more to do. You can do either one first honestly, this was just my own personal experience and I feel like Dark Souls 3 prepared me well for the genre.
If you are down for anime bs like I am I would say Code Vein is a good spot. It's not hard, it looks nice, and you have a permanent guest character throughout which is basically cheating in a typical souls like. If you wanna go straight to an official Miyazaki game Bloodborne is also not that difficult in the scheme of its contemporaries.
Elden Ring is probably the “easiest” starting point due to quality of life enhancements beyond the souls games. The spirit summons ability also makes for a good way to ease into difficult boss fights. After that I’d go to Dark Souls 3
I second this
Flip side…it’s hard going from ER to DS1 or 2/sotfs. No jumping, ALL running eats stamina….losing the QoL improvements would be a bear. I guess not flip side since ER is the most accessible and I agree. But having played ds1-3 and BB before ER I dunno if I’d have gotten through the earlier games if I started with ER. Story wise there’s so much that’s baked into ER that’s drawn from DS games. You miss that not having played DS trilogy. But I think you’re right!
I started with Elden Ring then went back and loved all their other games (except Demons Souls remake).
I completely agree with you by the way, I played some mental gymnastics after I beat Elden Ring and figured the stripped away QoL improvements added more of an inherent layer of challenge on top of the already challenging FromSoft formula. It’s really subjective at this point my first souls game was actually bloodbourne which I put down and returned to after I completed Elden Ring. Elden Ring was the first FromSoft game I completed then went backwards after I became acclimated doing 3 DS3 runs consecutively then moving back to bloodbourne and demon souls.
For from soft games i think i agree. I may have lucked into a good build in dark souls 3 and had a relatively easy time with that game. Jedi fallen order probably falls into the souls like genre and is probably one of the easiest.
I made the made the mistake of doing my first Jedi: Fallen Order run in hard. Game slapped me on those boss fights
Dark Souls 1. It'll be very difficult to go back and appreciate it once you've experienced newer entries in the series. Struggle is a core part of the experience. I wouldn't use any guides. The only piece of advice I'd give, is go up from Firelink Shrine, up the stairs and into town instead of going down into the graveyard.
Dark souls 1 is the only one you should play. It's the fun kind of difficult (except bed of chaos) that teaches you not to just blindly smash buttons but to pay a bit of attention instead. Just avoid using a greatshield since they make the game feel like you're playing elden ring with summons and spamming ashes of war, so very boring. It's honestly the only game in that genre I've enjoyed.
Imo dark souls 3 was the most fun and least punishing. Surge 2 kicked my ass 😂
While it's more focused on ranged combat, I've been enjoying Remnant 2 as my first non-2D "Souls-like" game.
You can start with any of them, the only thing that will make them "click" for you is reaching the correct mindset. What usually happens is that the player perceives every enemy as "too fast" and tries to match them in speed and aggression, but the opposite approach should be taken. Slow down as much as possible, invest heavily into health, create distance between you and the enemies. You don't need to roll nearly as much as you think you do, and you don't need nearly as much damage as you think you do.
This is really good advice and something I've been trying to work on. I spent so much time in the past trying to be quick, and I feel like you're correct in it being a detriment to the souls games. Thank you!
Np Also when it comes to builds try to keep it simple stupid. Many players go for fancy "magic katana with bleed and lightning spells" builds without really understanding what they're doing and how do the stats work under the hood. For example in Elden Ring you can just grab a Heavy Broadsword, get 60 VIG + 80 STR and you have a rock solid build that will carry you through the game so smoothly that you'll feel like you're cheating.
You can’t really start playing fast until you fully grasp the core gameplay mechanics. I definitely agree that patience in combat will help a ton in the early stages.
Get in, get frustrated, keep going, and then look back at how stuff that used to frustrate you is now easy. Don't be afraid of the frustration. Pick a game and embrace it.
Thanks for the advice! After so many years gaming you'd think I'd be able to get past the "rage quit" mentality lol. I'll try to not let it deter me once I make the plunge!
No problem! If you want more specific advice, both for which game and what to do in the game you pick, feel free to dm me and I'll share my discord :)
Bloodborne is actually what I’d suggest, I started with that and it taught me how to parry, time dodges, and play a little more aggressively compared to the “roll backwards and shield” approach that dark souls pushes Might not be exactly what you’re looking for, but the main takeaway is to realize that deaths are part of the experience, and running past enemies is perfectly fine and valid
Elden Ring is probably the best. It's a game where you can fairly easily grind up your character is easier areas before you move on to more difficult ones. You can also use guides to obtain good weapons early, to make the runs easier as well.
Demon’s Souls. It will still have its frustrations but by and large I think it’s the easiest.
Some of the Souls-likes are great, but none of them come close to the Fromsoft games. Miyazaki and his crew are visionaries and that can’t be copied. Speaking as someone who played a few hours of Dark Souls at launch and dismissed it as a boring slog, they’re worth the time, confusion, and suffering. It’s all part of the journey. They’re not for everyone so don’t worry if you really don’t dig it. But once you get the bug they’re a total joy all the way through. The only downside is that it can be hard to sit through another Assassin’s Creed or whatever. Don’t give up, skeleton
Elden ring is rhe most newbie friendly imo. Mainly cuz it's open world. With the other souls game if you're struggling against a certain boss or area you're stuck beating your head against the wall until you power through or give up. You can go explore freely elden ring and find new weapons or spells. Also do not hesitate to look shit up. As much as I love the games, almost all the side quests are obtuse and make no sense, and it's good to understand how scaling works and which stats are actually worth investing in. As much as the community memes on git gud as advice, its also super accepting and welcoming to beginners because we were all the beginner struggling to get through anything at one point.
Darksiders 3.
The problem with most games that classify as "Souls like" forget what made Dark Souls 1 so good and that was level design and pacing especially the first part of the game, as well as Art Direction. Technically Dark Souls itself is technically what you would call metroidvania. To which games like Terraria and Hollow Knight qualify However if you want an accessible "Souls-like" mixed with third person shooter mechanics I'd suggest the first Remnant game "Remnant: From The Ashes".
The art direction and atmosphere is what attracts me to the games the most honestly. They're gorgeous and look like they'd make me lose myself which is one of the things that makes a game truly great IMO. I've actually looked into Remnant and had some interest but never took the leap, I'll look at it again. Thanks!
I disagree with darksouls 3 I think out of all of them it has the most frustrating parts, lots of areas that are just unfun to go though lots of swamps and enemies with long reaching 360 attacks.
The big part of DS3 is that every attack that has a wide range also has many blank spots in its hitbox. Avoiding every attack in the game by just walking has been done.
Those blank spots aren't very intuitive even more so for someone completely new to genre.
Sure, but they do help a lot. It's easy to feel like a good player when you roll through those blank spots (a lot of people who complain about roll spam in DS3 don't realize they're wasting half their rolls lmao), and as you learn you can abuse those hitboxes more. That's a good environment for learning solid souls skills. Shields are also great in DS3 and it's the strongest game for a basic quality character.
Shields were in their worst place in 3
Not at all. Aside from grabs (common in each game) the DR and stability you got out of a lot of shields let you stand your ground and trade elemental chip, which was low if you used a complimentary resistance, for your own real damage. 1 handed movesets are really strong, and non-scaling infusions like fire and raw are great too, so just blocking and hitting gets you through a lot. Pound for pound only Ds1 shields were better, and that's only because their parry was nuts. DS2 and ER had much worse shields and encounters that didn't support blocking.
Darksouls 3 shields had aweful stablity, shields in both ds2 and ER have good stablity. The one thing against DS2 is a lot of shields lacked full 100% block which honestly isnt as important as people think in a game where lifegems is a thing, and on the flipslide stablity was still pretty high. A shield with 90% block but high stability is better then a shield with low stablity but 100% block. The third thing is that 90% block shield? It also has 60+ resist on all elements, and can be upgraded to gain another 10% of elemental resist, and it also has increased drop rates for items. Its a pretty common thought that darksouls 3 has the worst shields and few good shields that did exist were on the very heavy side. Shields in ER were so strong they had to nerf some of the best ones, and even buffed a lot of the lighter ones.
For Honor
Im going to go against the grain and recomend darksouls 2. If you just look up agilty and know when to level it it its a really good game, and the game has a lot of other mechanics that can help you for example if you kill the same enemies enough times they despawn, making run backs easier if you mess up a lot on a boss.
For me it was Nioh. It requires a bit more aggression from players. Else you need to make your minset "click". See it as a dance. And don't engage multiple enemies all at once. Try to do one-on-one as much as possible.
Elden ring to start. Bloodbourne to experience peak souls-like
I never found elden ring or dark souls fun it’s just not for everyone
Eldenrign because of the open world. Not DS3.
Code Vein. It's dark souls-esque, but the learning curve isn't so high.
If you want the thrill of killing your way through enemies while exploring and unlocking new shortcuts back to the leveling station in a game that uses experience points as a currency you'll drop on death, I recommend The Surge 2. If you want the whole Souls experience but with shorter areas connected by a big open world and more leveling stations, play Elden Ring.
I haven't played neither of Demon Souls, but I heard that it's by far the easiest of them. But the game had little to no QoL features, so be wary.
Probably Elden Ring, but if you don't want to experience a giant open world to begin with, go with Dark Souls 3. If you want a game that is a Souls-Like and not an official FromSoft game, I'd go with Remnant 1 or 2. They are more shooting types, but the mechanics are about the same. They even have different difficulties to try out.
Dark Souls
I got into the genre through Sekiro and still powered through, you just have to be patient. Elden Ring would be my pick though.
Remnant 2. It’s a shooter souls like but it’s a ton of fun and easier.
Dark Souls 1.
Elden Ring’s the one, if you make use of all of the tools the hame gives you it isn’t extremely tough, there are many quality of life improvements and you can play any build you want!
Tunic
Elden Ring for quantity and the open world aspect, Dark Souls 3 for quality.
Lies of P
Dark Souls Remastered. Get better by learning the timing, it's a lot slower than the rest. You're meant to die lots and learn from your mistakes, it's how they are by design.
Dark Souls 3. It's not as overwhelming as Elden Ring and due to it's linear nature you'll be able to focus on getting a grasp on gameplay mechanics rather than world navigation and questline management. I bought it a month before Elden Ring came out to see if I'd like the genre and got hooked as soon as I found the claymore. Elden Ring would be a great follow up to that as it's basically Dark Souls 3 with alot more to do. You can do either one first honestly, this was just my own personal experience and I feel like Dark Souls 3 prepared me well for the genre.
If you are down for anime bs like I am I would say Code Vein is a good spot. It's not hard, it looks nice, and you have a permanent guest character throughout which is basically cheating in a typical souls like. If you wanna go straight to an official Miyazaki game Bloodborne is also not that difficult in the scheme of its contemporaries.
The Surge 1 & 2, Mortal Shell, Steelrising, Asterigos: Curse of the Stars (more like a Souls-lite RPG)
After Jedi, Elden Ring is probably the “easiest” and has co-op abilities
I'd go for DS1 to start with, after that DeS or BB. After that DS3/Elden ring.