The 13 Best FromSoftware Games, Ranked and Scored (2026 Edition)

Ever stared at FromSoftware’s catalog and thought, “Okay, but where do I actually start?” It’s not just Dark Souls and Elden Ring, either — dig back through the studio’s history and you’ll turn up Armored Core VI, Metal Wolf Chaos, Tenchu, Otogi. There’s a lot more buried in there than the “games that kill you” reputation suggests.

For this piece we ranked 13 major FromSoftware titles, scoring each one out of 100 points across four axes: accessibility, graphics, brutality, and replay value. Soulsborne, mech action, ninja stealth — it’s all here, in our definitive 2026 edition.

You’ll find a difficulty comparison chart, a price breakdown, and the full scoring table below. Use it to find the one game that actually fits you.

We also explain how to read the scoring axes and pick accordingly, so stick with us to the end.

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All 13 FromSoftware Games Compared: Difficulty, Price, and Platforms

Start with the big picture. Difficulty runs on a five-star scale, with five stars being the most punishing. Prices are standard list prices on Steam and the PlayStation Store as of May 2026.

With that out of the way, let’s dig into each title in ranked order.

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The SpotGeeks Scorecard: Accessibility, Graphics, Brutality, and Replay Value, Each Out of 100

We scored every game out of 100 points on four separate criteria. A high “brutality” score means the game is punishing; a high “accessibility” score means it’s welcoming to newcomers. Don’t just read the totals — pick based on the axis that matters most to you.

Elden Ring tops the accessibility column at 82. On graphics, the PS5-exclusive Demon’s Souls remake hits 92 and AC VI lands at 88 — exactly the numbers you’d expect from current-gen hardware. Brutality is a blowout: Sekiro takes it at 97, with AC: FOR ANSWER a distant second at 88. And replay value belongs to Elden Ring at 92 by a mile. Factor in the DLC and you’re clearing 200 hours, guaranteed.

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No. 1: Elden Ring — The Best Possible Introduction to FromSoftware

If you’ve never touched a FromSoftware game, Elden Ring is the one to play first. No debate. Since its 2022 release it has swept Game of the Year awards worldwide and pushed past 25 million copies shipped — a genuine monster of a title.

Its defining feature is that enormous open world. Earlier Souls games funneled you down a linear sequence of stages, but Elden Ring lets you pick whichever region you feel like tackling. Stuck on a boss? Go level up somewhere else and come back. That alone drastically cuts down on the moments where you feel truly walled off.

The Spirit Ashes system is another huge assist for newcomers — you summon a spectral NPC to fight alongside you during boss encounters. Having put in the hours across plenty of FromSoftware games, the SpotGeeks editorial team can say flatly that Spirit Ashes are a well-designed safety net, not a crutch.

Elden Ring at a Glance

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No. 2: Dark Souls III — The Series Peak and Its Most Refined Combat

Ask the fanbase to name the best game in the series and Dark Souls III comes up more than any other. It launched in 2016 and its Steam reviews still sit at Very Positive to this day.

It inherits the best of Dark Souls and Dark Souls II while quietly fixing nearly everything people complained about. Camera behavior, how Estus flasks feel to use, shorter load times — the polish runs all the way down to the small stuff. “Once you’ve played DS3, you can’t go back to the first game’s controls” is a sentiment plenty of players will nod along to.

There’s no Elden Ring-style safety net here — no Spirit Ashes. Beating a boss demands pure execution and hard-won knowledge. If Elden Ring stopped feeling like enough, Dark Souls III is unambiguously your next stop.

Dark Souls III at a Glance

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No. 3: Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon — FromSoftware’s New Direction and 2023’s Best Mech Action Game

“So Armored Core went Soulslike, huh?” Not quite. AC VI is a straight-down-the-middle FromSoftware action game built around mech customization and brutally tough boss fights. It launched August 25, 2023, scored 87 on Metacritic (PS5 version), and marked the series’ first all-new entry in a decade.

The setting is a planet called Rubicon 3. Corporations, governments, and insurgents are all clawing at each other over a mysterious substance known as Coral, and you drop into that war as a hired merc. There are five chapters and 58 missions, with branching routes leading to three distinct endings. When the SpotGeeks editorial team went back for all three, the third playthrough turned out to be genuinely breathtaking.

The headline feature is just how freely you can build your AC. Frames, weapons, boosters — you assemble the whole thing yourself, balancing weight, mobility, and firepower to taste. The stagger system sits at the heart of every boss fight: pour on damage to break the enemy’s posture, then unload for massive damage. That tension holds up against anything in the Souls games.

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[No. 4] Bloodborne | The One-of-a-Kind Gothic Horror Soulslike That Forces You to Attack

Bloodborne is a PS4-exclusive Soulslike set in Yharnam, a fictional city dripping with medieval Gothic horror. Its defining trait is that it forces an aggressive playstyle on you — the polar opposite of Dark Souls — because shield-based defense is essentially off the table.

The Rally system lets you win health back if you land a hit immediately after taking one. In other words, the game demands you swing back the instant you get clipped. Once it clicks, the rush is enormous. And the sheer density of its atmosphere and world-building puts it in a class of its own among FromSoftware’s entire catalog.

The downside is that it’s locked to PS4/PS5 — no Steam, no Xbox. It also never holds a steady 60fps, so judged against modern action games, the way it plays can feel dated.

Bloodborne at a Glance

[No. 5] Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | The Peak of Punishment and FromSoftware’s Purest Action Game

Judged strictly as an action game, Sekiro is the hardest thing FromSoftware has ever shipped. It’s set in Sengoku-era Japan, where you play the one-armed shinobi known as Sekiro on a quest to take down the man who killed his adoptive father.

The decisive break from the rest of the Souls lineage: you can’t grind levels to lower the difficulty. There is no RPG-style brute-force escape hatch. Everything runs through the posture gauge, a system built entirely around deflecting attacks until an enemy’s guard shatters. Skill is the only currency.

The swordplay is overwhelmingly satisfying. Learning a boss’s rhythm and then parrying a full string cleanly produces a high nothing else in FromSoftware’s library matches — I’ll say that flatly. That said, I’d hold off on pushing this one on newcomers.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice at a Glance

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[No. 6] Demon’s Souls (PS5 Remake) | PS5 Exclusive — The Origin Point, Rebuilt With Modern Tech

This is where all of it began. Released on PS3 in 2009, Demon’s Souls became the blueprint for every Souls game that followed. In 2020 it returned as a gorgeous ground-up remake by Bluepoint Games, launching alongside the PS5 itself.

The remake is exceptionally well made. The PS5’s SSD reduces load times to virtually nothing, and the visuals have been dragged fully up to modern standards — the Metacritic score sits at a stellar 92. The balance stays faithful to the original, including its signature quirk of regular enemies being tougher than the bosses. The catch is that it’s PS5-only, so if you don’t own the hardware, it’s off the table entirely.

Demon’s Souls (PS5 Remake) at a Glance

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[No. 7] Dark Souls: Remastered | Where the Whole Legend Started

This is the remaster of the first Dark Souls. When the original hit PS3 in 2011, it stunned the industry — nobody was sure you were allowed to make a game this hard and this compelling at the same time. The 2018 remaster cleaned up the visuals and performance, so there’s a comfortable way to play it today.

What sets Dark Souls apart is the sheer elegance of its interconnected world. From the Undead Asylum in the opening hours all the way to Anor Londo, every area physically links to the next. The moment a shortcut clicks open is one of the great experiences in the medium. It’s also the only Souls game playable on Switch, which counts for a lot.

Dark Souls: Remastered at a Glance

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[No. 8] Dark Souls II | The Series’ Black Sheep — and Still the Real Thing

Dark Souls II is the only entry in the series that Hidetaka Miyazaki didn’t direct. Fans tend to file it under “the odd one out” or “divisive.” But actually sit down and play it, and you’ll find it’s far from a bad game.

Its strengths are weapon and gear variety plus an enormous amount of collectible content. The system for converting boss souls into weapons and spells is unusually deep, and its replay value score of 85 is one of the highest in the series. Still, the rough edges are real: some hitboxes are unforgiving, and enemies notice you from absurd distances. Skip it as an entry point — this one’s for completionists working through the full catalog.

Dark Souls II at a Glance

[No. 9] Armored Core: For Answer | NEXT at Full Speed and One of the Cruelest Difficulty Curves Around

Armored Core: For Answer (AC4A) is a 2008 mech action game for PS3 and Xbox 360. A direct sequel to Armored Core 4, it’s built around hyper-fast combat between fourth-generation machines called NEXTs. Mastering acceleration, inertia, and boost management is the entire game, and the learning curve is among the steepest anywhere in FromSoftware’s catalog.

That brutality score of 88 comes from the late-game missions and the final boss. Legendary encounters like SPIRIT OF MOTHERWILL and ANSWERER were strong enough that gaming magazines of the era openly called them unfair. But the payoff when you finally break through is equally outsized. There are three branching endings, and the way your playstyle and choices reshape the conclusion gives the scenario real weight.

It remains PS3/Xbox 360 only, with no announced port to current hardware (as of May 2026). You’ll need the original console or a compatible machine. I’ll say it plainly: this is the game you end up chasing after Armored Core VI gets you into the series and you start wanting something harder-edged.

Armored Core: For Answer at a Glance

[No. 10] Another Century’s Episode (A.C.E.) | The PS2 Miracle That Put Gundam and Macross in One Box

Another Century’s Episode — A.C.E. to anyone who owned it — is a mecha action game FromSoftware developed exclusively for the PlayStation 2 in 2005. Its hook is the crossover roster: 38 playable machines pulled from Gundam, Macross, Fafner in the Azure, Eureka Seven and more, all sharing the same battlefield.

The structure is mission-based 3D mecha action. Combos chain melee strikes into sub-weapons, and the sheer joy of screaming across a huge open airspace at full boost was unmatched among PS2 mecha games. It hit No. 1 on the PS2 charts right after launch and built a devoted following in Japan.

Three sequels followed: A.C.E. 2 (2006), A.C.E. 3 (2007), and the PS3 entry A.C.E. R (2009). None of them are available digitally today, so a used PS2 disc is the only way in. Licensing headaches make a re-release effectively impossible, which turns this into a genuine lost gem — if you still have the hardware, grab it.

Another Century’s Episode: The Specs

[No. 11] Tenchu | The Ninja Stealth Pioneer FromSoftware Raised

The Tenchu series is the ninja stealth action franchise FromSoftware helped build. Acquire developed the 1998 original and From published it, and the thing was an instant hit — after which From took the reins on development and publishing itself. The two From-driven highlights are 2003’s PS2 release Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and the 2009 Wii/PSP entry Tenchu: Shadow Assassins.

The whole game lives or dies on one idea: slip in behind an enemy and execute a stealth kill before he ever knows you’re there. You track sightlines, footsteps and shadows, creep along rooftops, and the split second before a one-hit takedown is a tension nothing else replicates. Get spotted and the difficulty spikes off a cliff, which is exactly why the Brutality score sits at 62 — I’ve lost count of how many runs ended with “flawless stealth for ten minutes, one guard turns around, total wipe.”

Everything here is locked to legacy hardware — PS2, Xbox, Wii — with no digital versions available. If you’re a From fan who wants to trace the roots of the studio’s ninja obsession, hunting down a used copy is absolutely worth the effort.

Tenchu (FromSoftware-Involved Entries): The Specs

[No. 12] O·TO·GI (Otogi: Myth of Demons) | The Xbox’s Buried Japanese Hack-and-Slash Classic

O·TO·GI is an Xbox-exclusive action game FromSoftware developed and published in 2002. It’s set in the Heian period, in a capital city overrun by demons and yokai, and you play as Raiko Minamoto’s retainer Sadamitsu Usui, cutting down monsters across a stylized vision of old Japan. North America and Europe got it in 2003 as OTOGI: Myth of Demons, where it picked up real critical goodwill.

Mechanically it’s action with a hack-and-slash spine: four weapon classes and four schools of magic, and the pleasure is in mowing down waves of enemies with them. Health doubles as “soul” energy you harvest from the environment itself, so attacking and refueling become the same objective. For an early Xbox title, the physics and destruction work blew past the standards of the day — it was the game that made people go, wait, the Xbox can do that?

A sequel, O·TO·GI 2, followed in 2004, and neither game has ever been ported to a modern platform. Xbox backward compatibility (Xbox 360 and Xbox One) will run it, but there is no way to play on PlayStation, PC or Switch. It remains a cult favorite among the hardcore — From’s hidden Japanese-action masterpiece.

O·TO·GI (Otogi: Myth of Demons): The Specs

[No. 13] METAL WOLF CHAOS XD | The President Pilots a Mech, and From’s Madness Is Fully Concentrated

METAL WOLF CHAOS is the mecha action game FromSoftware developed and released in Japan for the Xbox in 2004. The premise is completely unhinged: U.S. President Michael Wilson climbs into a powered suit called Metal Wolf and tears across America to stop a coup staged by his own Vice President, Richard Hawk. It launched as a Japan-only Xbox exclusive, which kicked off one of gaming’s great injustices — the whole world screaming “why does JAPAN get this one?”

In 2019, a partnership with Devolver Digital finally delivered the remaster, METAL WOLF CHAOS XD, on PS4, Xbox One and PC. It added 4K support, proper 16:9 presentation and modernized controls, and at long last the rest of the planet got to play it. The gloriously overcooked English voice acting — “This is Michael Wilson, President of the United States of America!” — lives on as an internet meme to this day.

As a game, it’s a 14-mission stage-clear mech shooter. The weapon loadout variety and the sheer crunch of the destruction effects are genuinely well executed. It’s on the short side, but score attacks and weapon collecting keep pulling you back. This is the single most concentrated dose of FromSoftware lunacy ever bottled, and at 2,050 yen on Steam I’ll say it flat out: nothing in this ranking gives you more per yen.

METAL WOLF CHAOS XD: The Specs

New to FromSoftware? Here’s Where to Start on Every Platform

The right first game depends entirely on what hardware you own. Here’s the optimal pick for each one.

Whatever you’re playing on, the answer is Elden Ring — that’s the only advice a FromSoftware newcomer needs. AC VI is the follow-up I’d push hardest once you’ve rolled credits on Elden Ring. And if mecha action is already your thing, there’s no rule saying you can’t start with AC VI and get to the Souls games later.

Final Word | Start With Elden Ring. And Play AC VI — It’s a Masterpiece You Can Buy Right Now

That’s all 13 major FromSoftware titles, ranked. Let’s put the whole board back on the table.

If you’ve been avoiding these games because they’re “too hard,” Elden Ring is the one most likely to change your mind. And AC VI delivers a completely different high from the Souls games — the joy of tearing down a boss with a machine you built yourself. If you like mecha, buy it today. Tenchu, O·TO·GI and METAL WOLF CHAOS all take some effort to get running, but playing them drives home just how many wildly different swings FromSoftware has taken over the years.

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