Rank the Soulsbornero series and explain your reasoning

Dark souls 1 is fucking excellent in terms of atmosphere that most games can't even come close to its quality. It's like you stepped into some fantasy painting or book.

It certainly is and still a joy to play. It's just the second half that bums me out. Archives and Crystal caves are fine but there's nothing I can add to Tomb of Giants and Lost Izalith that hasn't been said already.

I never got to play Bloodborne, but have played all the others (and Sekiro) extensively. I don't think it's a useful practice to try to measure them on a "total value" scale. They all have strengths and weaknesses.

Dark Souls 1's greatest strength was its sense of discovery. More than any other game in the series, its maps twisted around back and interconnected, and there were multiple points where you emerged from a cave or went through a door and thought, "oh gosh, here I am. I know this place!" The Painted World and Ash Lake felt unique at the time because they felt like old-school videogame secrets, levels you never had to find or even know existed, but you found regardless. Yes, nine years ago we had the internet and it was very easy to have them spoiled for you, but because the series itself wasn't a cultural phenomenon yet, all this lore and speculation discussion we have nowadays wasn't a thing early on in its life cycle.

Dark Souls 2 excelled at creating the feeling of being a Hollow going on a journey over vast stretches of time, going in and out of lucidity and never quite being sure how you ended up where you are. It felt more like the player was someone not predestined by fate or the machinations of gods to achieve a purpose, but who through sheer force of will managed to keep pulling himself back from the edge of complete depersonalization. In focusing the story on the works of Aldia and Vendrick, mere men who became great powers, it brought the narrative closer to earth and the works of Man, and emphasized that the children of the Dark Soul were not mere puppets in the games of the gods, but had the potential within them to equal or even surpass those gods with time. Also, had the widest variety of pretty cool weapons of all the Dark Souls games.

Demon's Souls had the cutest witch NPC. Fight me.

>Demon's Souls had the cutest witch NPC. Fight me.
Can't fight when I completely agree.

For anyone who's played Sekiro:
I'm going for the purification ending first, but I'm wondering if I should continue into NG+ for the shura ending or restart entirely and get the bell demon (which I missed). Also, how much harder does the bell demon make the game in NG+?

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Every time I see someone say DS3 is their favourite I can't help but think that it also was their first game in the entire Soulsborne series
I seriously don't get the appeal, it just feels like it's all spectacle and no substance to me. I don't like resorting to meme terms but it unironically feels like they took the soul out of Dark Souls with that game

Ds3 was my 2nd souls game after playing 2 first and I absolutely loved 3 because I could actually enjoy that game.

DS3 = BB > DS1 > DeS > DS2
I like the multiplayer, and the best version is in DS3.

I played all the games in order and at least I can say DS3 doesn't have the things I disliked from 1 and 2 (lackluster second half and shitty bosses in DS1 (Bed of Chaos) and shit mechanics, unfair gangfights and uninteresting world in 2).

Then again, "uninteresting" and "fun" are subjective things.

Has anyone played Daughters of Ash? Any good?

I played it a while back and I don't even remember it to be honest. It was fine but it hasn't stayed with me. I have more fun doing randomizer runs.

>DS3 = BB
ah so you want a devil may cry game instead of a souls game

the thing ds3 had i liked so much was overall enjoyable bosses, 2 had a lot of just unique bosses but most were not really that fun until the DLC's came along. also i had a really shitty time trying to play with my friends because of soul memory, ds2 was comfy but a lot of areas clearly looked rushed and have some copy pasted shit.

What was unbelievable was this was an easy things that they could've fixed for SoTFS and they didn't remove it. WHY?

My ranking is the same as yours. I think the entire series is more flawed than people like to admit, however. I think the combat encounters outside of boss fights are really boring and bland, especially on replays. Most enemies are trivial by themselves, which goes against the series 1v1 design philosophy. We know and they know that their combat system is at its best in 1v1 boss encounters. So why is it that it took them until Sekiro to make non-boss enemies that can't be cheesed using some sort of obvious method? (backstabs, R1 spam stunlocks, etc.) Another huge issue with the series nobody talks about is that you can simply run by almost everything without much issue. On a first playthrough, this isn't much of an issue. You don't know the correct way to go, and naturally on a first playthrough you are much more keen to explore every nook and cranny. On further playthroughs, the flaws in From's game design is made much more apparent. When you know where everything important is, and exactly where you need to go, there is very little incentive to explore. Now this is still a problem with Sekiro, but in Sekiro its far less egregious, because simply moving around is far more engaging in Sekiro. You have many more movement options available to you at any one time, you aren't just holding the sprint button and running forward for 20 minutes anymore. Exploring and running around is still fun on my 8th or so playthrough of Sekiro, whereas I can barely stand exploring for the sake of exploring in Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls anymore, and I haven't even played those games as much as Sekiro. Sekiro's non-boss combat encounters are also far more engaging. There are fast and nimble ninja-like enemies that can jump across rooftops, giant fat niggas who drink poison for fun that can nearly one-shot you, and also giant fucking snakes that you can't even kill. There is a lot more variety and the mini-boss system was a sorely needed innovation we've needed since DeS.

Bloodborne>All

Why do so many hate dark souls 2?

Sekiro > BB = DS 1 > DeS > DS 3 > DS 2

I might have rose colored googles about DS1 since it was my first game of that type but ill stick to that ranking.

Bloodborne > DS2 >> DS1 > DS3
Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne combined just seem to render the other two games obsolete IMO. With Bloodborne I felt a stronger sense of immersion and the atmosphere and world were better than the rest. The core gameplay was also really satisfying and made the bosses amazing to fight

for me it was a truly terrible experience trying to slog through it.

DeS > BB >= DaS1 > DS3 >= DS2. I don't think 2 is bad or anything, it's been too long since I played it for me to really judge it properly, but it's the only one I've never bothered to do a complete playthrough of.

I hadn't really played anything like Demon's Souls before and I was really enthralled with it when it came out, I played through it about 7 times. Fell in love with the setting, world tendency was really unique and felt like the natural conclusion of the sense of shared experience things like white phantoms are obviously intended to contribute to. The bosses are still the most varied in the series and the most memorable to me, getting good ratings from other players for helping them made co-op extra satisfying and gave me extra incentive to do it. I fucking HATE covenants so I consider the lack of them a plus. Being the first in the series also gave it the advantage of not knowing what to expect; when you see Patches in later entries you know he's going to betray you, you know there's going to be a poison swamp at some stage, etc. It also has the most unique OST (imo) and is the most immersive. Latria and Boletaria are my favourite levels in the series.

It and Bloodborne are the only games in the series I bothered to play through more than once. I love BB's selection of weapons, its setting and it's arguably even better than DeS when it comes to atmosphere (first time in the Upper Cathedral Ward and hearing a screaming madman in the Chalice Dungeons are particularly memorable in that regard for me). But its bosses are relatively samey - not bad, just samey - and it leans to much on its action side as opposed to its RPG side for my taste. That wouldn't be a bad thing if From weren't so much better at the latter than the former.

If I were to rank Sekiro, it'd be at the very bottom.

Nioh > DS1 > Sekiro > Shit > DS3 > DS2

i did shura first playthrough and beating isshin made glock saint much easier than i thought on later playthroughs.

Unrelated but is there a level of attack power that has a "hard cap" equivalent? I've got the dragon mask but don't know how werf it is.

Doesn't really add anything to the series
Very forgettable

I dont understand why you would want to restart , just finish that run with whichever ending you weant and move on , you will need at least 4 runs for the endings plus quite a bit of grind for the skills (if you aiming for all achievements) if you just want to check all the endings you can just check 3 of them in th same run savescumming.
The demon's bell item/buff is about a 20% effect all around (their vit/posture positively your vit/posture negatively) that adds to the NG+() difficulty , but its not a big deal imo i personally found harder to play w/o Kuros' charm than i did the with the bell.

I didnt hate my time with it but if we are being fair its simply the weakest from game, which puts it leaps and bounds ahead of most shit in the market tho.

DS1 = BB = Sekiro >> DS3 >>>>> DS2

Haven’t played DeS

sekiro> des > bb >>>>> dark souls trilogy
The Dark Souls games are too rushed, less polished, and more derivative and redundant

They didn't experience it and the *souls community on release

1. Bloodborne
It's by far the best. When you compare their individual elements the other games just can't measure up. The level design, the bosses, the combat system are perfected in Bloodborne.
The art direction is just incredible, so many of the areas are absolutely stunning, the game just oozes style. The weapons contribute to that as well and the neat thing is they also fix the weapon bloat that is a problem in Souls. There are plenty of streamlining like this in BB which i appreciate greatly.
The music is fantastic. I think it's easily the best composed video game music and it's worth noting it's the only Souls game with a live orchestra. This is also the only time i was interested in the lore of a Souls game. It's very good at being cinematic in a positive way. Overall i think this game obviously has a lot of care put into it, even Miyazaki says Bloodborne was his favorite game to work on.
It isn't perfect though. The chalice dungeons is the biggest failing of Bloodborne. They are incredibly dull and repetitive although conceptually they are pretty cool. This might be an unpopular opinion but i think it's too derivative as well. You do a lot of the same things you have done in previous games and that is just lame.

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The fact that it always devolves into 2 vs. 3 is telling though, isn't it? I like both of them quite a bit desu, even 2 with all its jank, but they're easily at the bottom of the pecking order - I don't think it's a coincidence they're also the two entries made as direct sequels rather than spiritual successors.

The other ones (Demon's, Dark, BB and - arguably - Sekiro, if you want to throw that one in) are all of such high quality that there's no way I could put one over any of the others.

Armored Core > BB > DkS1 = DeS > DkS2 (PvP) > King's Field > Sekiro > DkS3 (PvE) > DkS2 (PvE) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> DkS3 (PvP)

Game locks you into digital 8-way run when you move (this can be changed on PC by resetting your controller's deadzone to restore the same type of movement as the other games, but if you play on console you're out of luck); lots of spammy groups of enemies that are annoying to deal with; general lack of the very specific and anachronistic style and atmosphere of the other titles in favor of something more like a generic post-Tolkienian vibe; NPCs are blander; the world doesn't have that consistent sense of scale; the bosses follow a quantity over quality appracoh; the AI is REALLY bad and enemies do the dumbest things; etc., etc., etc.

DS2 is a blast to play but it's very unpolished. It underwent a director change halfway through development and was fucked when Bamco decided they wanted it out in 2014 instead of 2016, and it shows.

You're right, the standalone games are by far their better games but that still doesn't really excuse how shitty the threads get with 2 and 3 fans just throwing shit back and forth. I actually dislike playing 2 and 3 now but I can easily see myself playing BB and Sekiro if given the chance.