Soulslike Difficulty Ranking 2026: All 13 Games Graded, From Sekiro and Elden Ring to Nioh 2

“Is there anything out there harder than Dark Souls?” — every Soulslike fan has asked that question at least once. The answer is yes. Several games, in fact. The SpotGeeks editorial team played every single one of them, then graded them against our own criteria to build this 2026 edition of the Soulslike difficulty ranking. From “beginners need not apply” to “even Souls veterans end up crying,” we called it straight, based on real time spent in the trenches.

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Hell Tier — Difficulty S: Where Human Limits Break

No. 1 | Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice — “This Isn’t a Game Anymore”

If there’s one FromSoftware title that fans almost unanimously call the hardest, it’s Sekiro. The reason is simple: there is no strategy other than getting better.

In Dark Souls or Elden Ring, you can grind levels, hunt down stronger gear, and brute-force your way past a wall. Sekiro has no leveling and no build variety. All it has is the question of whether you have internalized deflection — the parry — or not.

“Genichiro ate 50 hours of my life. I’d beaten every Dark Souls game, and one guy took half my playtime.”
“I threw my controller at the wall over the Guardian Ape (Headless). Turns out Switch controllers are tougher than they look.”
“Hearing the music from Isshin Ashina’s third phase still makes my hands shake.”
— from Steam and 5channel reviews

Sekiro’s difficulty isn’t about unfairness — it’s about the sheer level of precision it demands. Deflect timing is measured in frames, and every duel plays out like a round of a fighting game. That’s exactly why the release you feel the first time a boss finally goes down has no equal anywhere else in the genre.

No. 2 | Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree — “The DLC That Wiped Out Everyone Who Beat the Base Game”

Players who toppled the Elden Ring base game and figured they had seen everything got flattened without mercy. Shadow of the Erdtree landed as a DLC explicitly tuned for people who had already finished the main story, and both critics and players were stunned by how far that tuning went.

“At first I refused to believe Promised Consort Radahn was harder than Malenia. Then I fought him.”
“Messmer killed me 60 times, and when he finally went down I almost cried. That fire and that music are burned into my brain.”
“Bayle’s wing hitboxes have to be bugged. No, wait — I think that’s just how they are.”
— from Steam reviews and Reddit

The DLC-exclusive Scadutree Fragment system means enemy damage feels absurd until you go find them, which turns “skipping exploration and upgrades” into an explicit penalty. Gather the fragments, sharpen your build, and then walk into a boss arena, though, and the experience is widely praised as a more complete Soulslike than the base game ever managed.

No. 3 | Nioh 2 — “The Japanese Demon-Tier Challenge That Out-Fromed FromSoftware”

Nioh 2 is hard along a completely different axis than FromSoftware’s games. Unless you fully understand its own systems — Yokai Shift, Ki management, and stance switching — you will start choking around the midpoint. The opening hours are comparatively gentle, but from the Way of the Shura content onward it feels like being forced to fight ten “hardest boss in Dark Souls” candidates back to back.

“Way of the Shura isn’t for everyone. I am firmly on the ‘not for me’ side.”
“After the tengu in the Underworld killed me 120 times, I rebuilt my whole loadout from scratch and beat him in three tries. Nioh 2 is fundamentally a build-research game.”
“Dark Souls is ‘hard.’ Nioh 2 is ‘harsh.’ Whether you can feel that difference splits opinions right down the middle.”
— from Steam reviews and PSN comments

No. 4 | Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin — “The Most Obnoxious Kind of Hard”

Dark Souls II is the one entry where the fanbase splits cleanly between “the black sheep of the series” and “the best one they ever made.” Its brand of difficulty is fundamentally unlike Sekiro or Elden Ring: instead of “learn it, get better, problem solved,” it constantly feels like “the design itself is being a jerk.”

Rooms where multiple bosses spawn at once. Arrows fired from somewhere you can’t see. Baffling hitboxes. And that early-game death sentence of a stat, Adaptability. Scholar of the First Sin also dramatically increased invader placement, making the runs between bonfires even more lethal.

“Less ‘hard’ and more ‘infuriating.’ Still felt great to finish, though.”
“I didn’t level Adaptability and died constantly from the very beginning. Why on earth are dodge i-frames tied to a stat?”
“There’s no way the Rat King’s throne was designed by a human being. I think it’s a punishment for something.”
— from Steam reviews and 5channel

[BRUTAL] Difficulty A: Punishing Even for Souls Veterans

No. 5｜Bloodborne——”Drop the shield. Keep attacking. That’s the whole game.”

Bloodborne is built on a revolutionary idea: offense is your defense. There is no shield, and the Rally system — which lets you claw back a slice of lost HP if you counterattack fast enough — constantly shoves you forward into the fight. Internalizing that loop is the game’s first real boss.

“Father Gascoigne nearly broke me. You put THAT right after the tutorial?”
“Lady Maria in the clock tower (The Old Hunters) is beautiful and vicious, and paired with that music my brain just melted.”
“I beat Moon Presence’s second phase half in tears. I still think Bloodborne is FromSoftware’s masterpiece.”
——From PSN trophy comments and 5channel threads

No. 6｜Dark Souls (Remastered)——”Where it all started, and it still bites”

This is the game that defined the soulslike as a genre. Fifteen years on from its 2011 release, the design people still describe as “a tension only Dark Souls can produce” hasn’t aged out. Both the run-up to a boss and the boss fights themselves remain genuinely demanding by modern standards.

Ornstein & Smough in particular is still spoken of as the best boss fight in the entire Souls series. That first wave of despair, followed by the high of finally breaking through, has never really been matched.

“The first time I saw Ornstein & Smough, it took me a while to even accept that I was fighting both of them at once.”
“That elevator ride down to the Four Kings while you prep — my heart jumps every single time. Doesn’t matter how many playthroughs.”
“How is a 14-year-old game still this hard? What is FromSoftware, exactly?”
——From Steam reviews

No. 7｜Elden Ring (base game)——”An all-timer that spreads its difficulty across an open world”

Because it’s open world, the base Elden Ring campaign always gives you an out: go somewhere else, get stronger, come back. By series standards that makes it one of the more forgiving difficulty designs FromSoftware has ever shipped. And then there’s Malenia, who exists on a completely different plane — even with a Spirit Ash out, plenty of players die 100-plus times to her. She feels like the studio sat down and decided to build the hardest boss in the game on purpose.

“I died 50-plus times to Malenia and was about to quit, when my Bloodhound spirit suddenly decided to show some spine… next thing I knew, I’d won.”
“The instant Maliketh hits phase two, the sheer spectacle freezes my hands. Then I die.”
“Elden Ring is the high point of the ”hard but actually playable” soulslike.”
——From Steam reviews

No. 8｜Dark Souls III——”The fastest, most relentless boss rush in the series”

Dark Souls III has the fastest bosses in the series and the widest range of attack patterns. This isn’t the heavy, deliberate weight of DS1 or the sheer nastiness of DS2 — it’s difficulty that simply out-moves you. When the game launched, the bosses of the DLC chapters closing out the Age of Ash were widely called the toughest FromSoftware had ever made.

[HARD] Difficulty B: Rough as a First Soulslike

No. 9｜Lies of P——”Korea’s soulslike, fully realized, and a top-tier parry game”

Before release, a Pinocchio-themed soulslike from Korea got written off in some corners as a FromSoftware knockoff. Everyone who actually played it came away with a very different verdict. The precision the parry system demands, the depth of the boss movesets, the cohesion of the world — all of it clears the bar for a real soulslike, not an imitation of one.

“Romualdus wrecked me so badly I couldn’t touch the game for three days. The day I finally beat him was incredible.”
“If you drilled deflects in Sekiro, the back half gets dramatically easier. As a parry game it’s genuinely superb.”
——From Steam reviews

No. 10｜Demon’s Souls (Remake)——”The original still isn’t kind to anyone”

This is the seed the whole series grew from. Viewed with modern eyes, some of its difficulty reads as blunt rather than clever — but the timing of black phantom spawns (player-shaped enemies that hit far harder than anything else in the area) and the way World Tendency turns into pure knowledge-gating remain merciless to a blind playthrough. The remake looks completely rebuilt and plays far more smoothly, yet the difficulty was carried over from the original untouched.

No. 11｜Lords of the Fallen (2023)——”A dual-world system that creates a difficulty all its own”

Its signature hook is moving between Axiom, the world of the living, and Umbral, the world of the dead. Linger too long in Umbral and increasingly nasty enemies start hunting you, which produces a kind of tension nothing else in the genre has. Boss difficulty sits comfortably at B rank, but if you never bother to understand how the two worlds interact, the number of cheap deaths between bosses climbs fast. Pieta, the early boss, is famous for pulverizing first-time players without an ounce of mercy.

[STANDARD TO APPROACHABLE] Difficulty C & D: The Best Soulslikes to Start With

No. 12｜Remnant II——”A shooter fused with a soulslike, and you pick the difficulty”

Because you can dial the difficulty anywhere from Survivor up to Apocalypse, it works equally well as a soulslike on-ramp and as a genuine test for veterans. The third-person shooter controls make it far more approachable for anyone who bounces off the genre’s close-quarters melee, and co-op means you can chip away at it with friends. On the default difficulty, it’s designed to be beatable without heroics.

No. 13｜Star Wars Jedi: Survivor——”Soulslike grammar meets Star Wars, and it’s the friendliest of the bunch”

It borrows the soulslike vocabulary while putting accessibility first. You can tune the difficulty in fine increments, from story-focused all the way up to genuinely challenging, which makes it the ideal doorway for anyone who has never gotten along with FromSoftware’s games. The lightsaber combat feels fantastic to swing, and it lands hard if you’re a Star Wars fan.

How to Beat Them: Tactics by Difficulty Tier

Tactics that work across the entire genre

• Treat every boss loss as a pattern-learning rep——soulslikes are designed around the assumption that you will die
• Learn to dodge instead of leaning on a shield——by the midgame your stamina simply won’t cover shield blocks
• Don’t hoard souls / runes / amrita——spending them on levels immediately is far easier on your nerves
• Feel zero guilt about watching a boss guide on YouTube——using information is not losing
• When you’re stuck, sleep on it——there’s real science behind the brain sorting out patterns while you’re not playing

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

Soulslike difficulty can’t be plotted on a single line. Sekiro’s kind of hard, DS2’s kind of nasty, Nioh 2’s kind of complicated, Bloodborne’s kind of fast — each one comes at you from a different angle. That’s exactly why, whichever one you pick up, “I got through this” ends up being an experience nothing else can replicate.

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