You Died: Ranking The Dark Souls Games And Their Imitators

It's incredible, really, that in seven short years the devilish Dark Souls series has spun five games from its web. Each entry is brilliant in its own distinct way but when you're treated to so much effortless quality, it's easy to take them for granted. The temptation is to nitpick, to square them off against one another, to single out subjective preferences. One of the great joys of Dark Souls is the debate it inspires. Taken as a whole, the series has transformed the landscape of our hobby forever with standout boss fights, locations, lore and downloadable content that extend the life of these games. Moment after moment, etched in history. Demon's Souls started it all. Dark Souls followed, and two more sequels refined the experience, while the gothic horror Blodborne illustrated just how much ground there was to mine. On a granular level, Soulsborne (as fans like to call them) has managed to change the way we play. Take a trope like dying. In lesser titles, dying yanks you back to a previous checkpoint where you faithfully repeat the exercise until you get a combination of button presses right. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Not so here. While the message 'You Died' is splashed self-knowingly across the screen - and is so omnipresent it has written itself in to folklore - the purpose of death takes on far greater import. Death is a cycle of life, an act of regeneration, and the repercussion for risk-taking in the ultimate cat-and-mouse experience. Each time you die, you lose souls, the currency that underpins every transaction in the game. Progress is impossible without pushing forward, but with it, you run the risk of losing your hard-accrued cash. What ensues is a delicate balancing act where no step is taken lightly. This week marks the release of the Ashes of Ariandel DLC for Dark Souls III, the first of two packs dedicated to extending the 'life' of the final chapter in the franchise. You can read what I thought of the game in my review here, but playing through it inspired me to go back through the series and rank them all from worst to best. In a sense, I'm playing devil's advocate, but to be different, I've decided to include third-party titles that copy the Souls playbook, too. One of these games successfully copies the risk-reward dichotomy that sits at the heart of Dark Souls while the others largely miss the mark. Can you guess which is successful? Read on to find out. 8) Necropolis Release date: 2016 Eighth place goes to a recent inductee in the Souls Hall of Fame and a valiant attempt at that. Necropolis takes a stab at recreating the magic on a fraction of the budget, a flight of fancy that sees it fall short of the mark. Sporting a monochrome palette and a slew of procedural generated worlds, Necropolis understands what it means to be a Souls imitator: death can not simply be a formality, but a matter of consequence. Here, the developers take it a step further by introducing permanent death, an extreme measure not for the faint of heart. That's right, every time you come acropper you have to start afresh. A bit of a bummer, that. Our very own Dylan Chaundy reviewed the console version recently and rather eloquently described it as "a cold shadow of a much warmer bonfire." In short, Necropolis lacks diversity and the sheer addictiveness required to make this a must-have. 7) Lords Of The Fallen Release date: 2014 They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In that case, Lords of the Fallen is a love letter to FromSoftware - written in blood. Released in 2014, Lords copies the Souls formula every step of the way, but crucially, bungles the delivery. It's simply not as satisfying to play, marred by poor framerate and cumbersome action. Where Dark Souls lives and dies by fast twitch response times, battles in Lords of the Fallen feel heavy and slow. At its best, Dark Souls is poetry in motion. In sports terms, it's Roger Federer on the lawn of Wimbledon; Messi under the glow of the Nou Camp; Steph Curry in perpetual liquid motion. Try as it might, Lords of the Fallen just looks downright clunky, and though it's a like-for-like copy in spirit, in real life, it's rather more butt-scratching, finger-sniffing Rafael Nadal than the majesty of Federer. That's a shame, because there's a serviceable game here that acts as a stop gap before the final Dark Souls III DLC. If you want my advice though, you're better off waiting for Nioh, or Deck 13's follow up, The Surge, set for release in 2017. 6) Dark Souls III Release date: 2016 Come on, admit it. The latest chapter in the franchise isn't as good as you hoped. Released earlier this year, entry number three tries to straddle the demands of hardcore fans and newcomers alike, but to achieve a balance, FromSoftware dumbs down the number of options available to you. If the series' first tentative steps in the world were under the guise of an RPG, those pretensions have been ripped away. This is now a slick action game that prioritizes the swish of a blade over inventory management, trading and customization. While the combat has admittedly never been better, I can't escape the feeling that Dark Souls III is truncated and strangely muted. There are simplified build options and fewer tactical decisions to make. Somewhere along the line, the mystique so central to the experience (and the idea that your experience is differing vastly from someone else's) begins to fade. But perhaps my biggest gripe is Lothric, the world of Dark Souls III. It begins promisingly with open vistas and a sense of scale, but soon tunnels underground, pulling you through a series of warren-like levels. Bonfires are meted out around every corner, robbing the experience of the fear so central to your enjoyment. A bonfire acts as an opportunity to 'bank' your souls, and since there's one at almost every turn, you simply never feel in danger of squandering your hard work. Dark Souls laid down the template for level design and with III we were promised a return to that hallowed land. But in reality, it's an A to B romp between levels and only a matter of time until you reach the end-game. We're talking about a Dark Souls title, so the margins are incredibly narrow, but in my eyes, this one is the weakest of the lot. 5) Dark Souls II Release date: 2014 So, we come to the ugly duckling of the tribe. Dark Souls II cops a lot of flack principally because the B team worked on it while series creator Miyakai was channeling his inner Chucky in Bloodborne. But you know what? B team or not, I enjoyed it. Yes, Dark Souls II is nowhere near as groundbreaking as its forebear, nor as pretty as its sequels. But for sheer weight of stuff to do - action, inventory management, weapons, armor, NPCs, bosses, locations, lore, talking points - it can't be bested. If Dark Souls introduced you to a world richly woven from silk cloth and unfurled gently before your eyes, Dark Souls II is coarse linen, nylon and polyester tossed together and made to stick. It shouldn't work, but somehow it fits perfectly. There's a few reasons for this: for one, as we've established, it's generous, even more so if you pick it up with its devilish DLC, which is really rather excellent. Two, it's great fun online, and nails the PVP component of competition. Three, there's just tons of variety here, and over 100 hours of content to pick at and chew over. I've beaten it twice now, once the 'normal' way and once by aligning myself with a covenant called the Company of Champions, which doubles the difficulty and makes the entire nightmarish experience even harder. Don't fall for it like I did. Taken as a whole, Dark Souls II's component parts aren't as good as the others. But somehow, these parts amount to more than the whole. 4) Bloodborne Release date: 2015 With atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife, Bloodborne is Dark Souls in gothic horror frock. And boy, is it good. While it feels very much like a Souls game, there are no shields in this world. So, equip yourself with your weapon and get moving. Like any Miyazaki title, this is done with a purpose. It's a deliberate attempt to make you re-learn your hardwired approach to the series, a clever, knowing nod to the legions of players (myself included) who walk around every corner with a shield firmly raised. Now, the more aggressive you are, the more rewards you reap. Enemies hit hard and hit fast, but you can reclaim your lost health if you counterattack within a small window of opportunity. Wait too long and you lose the health for good, which gives you a subtle nudge towards attack. The new IP also means Miyazaki can let his imagination run wild, visualizing a world that literally begins to reveal its madness the longer you play. The more "insight" you accrue, the more you begin to peel back the window dressing, revealing the horrors within. All told, it's drop-dead gorgeous, but the new focus on action replaces the simple pleasure of tinkering with options in your inventory. Bloodborne is lean and mean, and some of the Souls charm is lost because of it. 3) Salt And Sanctuary Release date: 2016 If you're anything like me, you've spent a lifetime turning your nose up at indie platform fare that eschews big-budget frills for simple gameplay. And then Salt and Sanctuary comes along and you realize you have been a fool the entire time. Man, what a surprise: this is Dark Souls in 2D, and it should be played by anyone who holds the series dear. So, how does the Dark Souls formula hold up in two dimensions? Amazingly well, actually. True, it hews so close to the Soulsformula FromSoftware could conceivably sue for copyright infringement; Salt are souls, sanctuaries are bonfires and the focus is on punishing difficulty. Yet, at the same time, the new 2D perspective makes it utterly different. You've got jumping puzzles, two-dimensional boss fights and a rich variety of locales. What Salt and Sanctuary truly perfects is the world. All those beautiful shortcuts that you start opening reveal a map that's truly interconnected. Few games in the FromSoftware stable do it this well. In the end, it's as tough as nails and rewarding as hell, and that's just about the biggest compliment you can pay a Souls imitator. It's one of the best games I've played all year, and the best attempt by a third-party at recreating that elusive Souls magic. 2) Demon's Souls Release date: 2009 Demon's Souls was never intended to be sold to Western audiences, but after this devilishly difficult Japanese RPG started turning heads in the Americas and Europe, a ported version was made and a dynasty was born. Looking back now, Demon's Souls remains absurdly difficult. There are no Estus Flasks that you can drink to replenish your health, and much of the world is shrouded in dark shadows, making enemies difficult to discern. But what Demon's Souls really gets right is the sense of danger. Archstones (bonfires) are spaced so far apart that finding a shortcut back to safety is as joyous as overcoming a difficult boss fight. I can't help but think this core, butt-clenching tenant of the experience has been lost in translation since. One of the major criticisms levelled at Demon's Souls is that it's overly linear. But I think that argument is reductive. Yes, it takes place from a central hub, The Nexus, from which you have five worlds to explore. But the beauty of the model is you can tackle any realm in any order, and chop and change your course until you find the best route forward. What Demon's Souls lacks in expansiveness it compensates for in player choice. Looking back now, it's stuffed full of surprises and oddities, some so bizarre it'll be unpalatable to audiences reared on the later games. But that only makes Demon's Souls more brilliant. If you don't own a PS3, it's worth buying a second-hand console and dredging up an old copy of. Heck, in a time when remasters are dime a dozen, surely it's high tide for an HD remake, right? 1) Dark Souls Release date: 2011 Ah, the daddy. The main man. The true Dark Soul. In my opinion, it doesn't get better than this. Dark Souls is the game that launched the series into the mainstream; the game that captured the hearts and minds of players all over the world. What makes it so brillaint though? Look no further than the land of Lordran, the domain of Lord Gwyn; Nito, the First of the Dead; Seath the Scaleless and the Witch of Izaith. Here we have towering, knightly Anor Londo, the impenetrable deathrap that is Sen's Fortress, and the twinkling interiors of the Crystal Caves. There are so many varied environs, and yet they all come together to form a cohesive whole. This is a world in which you cannot warp between bonfires until you've beaten a half of the game, and that means wandering the clutches of Blighttown, navigating the Garden and peering into the Depths. Ah, I could go on and on. Look, it's a marvel of level design likely never to be bettered, and a pitch-perfect action game, too. Flaws? It's hard to think of any. The framerate is a bit silly sometimes, but to this day, there's never been a game I've beaten and returned to so easily. It all just makes sense. Chances are, if you're reading this article, you know what I mean. But, by the slim chance you don't, sell your loved ones, mortgage your house and do what it takes to buy an Xbox 360 and a copy of Dark Souls.