Highlights
- Dive into the intricate level designs of Soulsborne games to unravel secrets and face relentless enemies and bosses.
- Dark Souls 2 offers maze-like areas with hidden spells, requiring hours of gameplay and New Game Plus for challenging content.
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice introduces a posture-based combat system for a unique and difficult gameplay experience.
In the gaming industry, the Soulsborne games have a reputation for being quite challenging and unforgiving in terms of gameplay and combat. Every game in the genre from FromSoftware has an intricate level design with areas that interconnect with each other. Enemies and Bosses in the games are relentless and require the player to understand their moveset before besting them.
Soulsborne: 7 Best Combat Systems, Ranked
FromSoftware has done an great job at creating challenging, yet amazing games, with some of the best combat systems.
Having such challenging gameplay also factors in when a person wants to 100% the game. This discussion includes all the hardest Soulsborne games that take time to fully explore, complete every quest, and more.
Updated June 3, 2024 by Waseem Muhammad: Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin and Dark Souls 3: The Fire Fades Edition bring new changes to the enemies and bundles all DLCs together into their respective games. Both of these editions have a similar 100% difficulty curve to their original version with a few changes.
1 Dark Souls 2
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.1
The graceful melody when a player reaches Majula is still one of the best moments in gaming. It was not well received as compared to other FromSoftware games because there was little to no HidetakaMiyazaki involvement. This was mainly because areas and bosses felt reused at times. Still, the game managed to give a marvelous experience, allowing the player to explore a different side of Dark Souls like never before. Many of the bosses in Dark Souls 2 are easier than bosses in other Dark Souls games, but this does not mean that they are pushovers.
The main area where Dark Souls 2 shines is its highly challenging and complicated level designs. Though some might think of this as poor world-building, others do not agree and want to explore these maze-like areas to uncover secrets and hopefully acquire loot. There are countless amount of Spells and Hexes located in different and vast areas. Acquiring all of them can take tens of hours to collect. There are spells that require the player to play the New Game Plus versions in which the difficulty ramps up quite tremendously.
Dark Souls 2: Scholar Of The First Sin
Though Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin might not sound different from the original version, there are a lot of small changes that overhaul the game, making it far better than the original. As the game counts as a different game entirely, this means that players can earn trophies and achievements all over again.
Enemy and item positions have also been altered, making it much easier to access them. Going for 100% completion in Scholar of the First Sin is much more rewarding as the graphics have also been improved, which makes for a better experience altogether.
2 Dark Souls 3
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.02
Dark Souls 3 is one of the harder games to 100% because of the cryptic questlines that have strict requirements as well as acquiring items that are Rare and hard to find. Many NPCs in the game require players to do quests for them in a specific order and sometimes progressing further into the story and defeating a boss can end the questlines for that playthrough.
Dark Souls 3 takes the grinding element and pushes it to the max. The game includes Covenant items that one must find and offer to the Covenant to acquire all Sorceries, Miracles, and more. Acquiring these Covenant items requires the player to complete successful PvP Invasions or defeat a single enemy several hundred times for them to drop the item. There are multiple Covenants and grinding for 30 items for each Covenant can take up to 20 to 40 hours depending on the player's luck.
Dark Souls 3: The 15 Best Boss Weapons
Beating a Dark Souls 3 boss provides the opportunity to gain a weapon, but some are better than others. Here are the game's best boss weapons.
The game also has countless Rings that the player has to accumulate. Most of the Rings are available in the first playthrough but for the rest, the player will have to start NG+ and NG++ playthrough to acquire them all.
Dark Souls 3: The Fire Fades Edition
The Fire Fades Edition bundles all the DLCs along with the base game into one edition. The Fire Fades Edition has no changes from the base game but does include trophies/achievements for players planning on playing the game again.
Unfortunately, the DLCs do not have any achievements or trophies that the players can earn. The inclusion of new bosses, armor sets, and weapons makes 100% completion of the game a bit harder, especially because the last two boss fights are considered the hardest.
3 Elden Ring
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.1
Elden Ring
- Platform(s)
- PS5 , Xbox One , PS4 , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , PC
- Released
- February 25, 2022
- Developer(s)
- From Software
Elden Ring might be considered one of the easier combat games in this list purely because of how fluid and seamless the gameplay is. The bosses and worlds still pose a threat and can be deemed challenging but having a mount, Torrent, that can allow the player to run easily past many enemies and whole areas is something that factors in. Like every other entry in the list, Elden Ring also requires the player to defeat all the main story as well as the side bosses in the game. Elden Ring has a vast map filled with questlines, items, and resources that the player must find. The open-world element means that exploring every nook and cranny can take 60 to 80 hours.
Multiple endings in Elden Ring require repeat playthroughs. However, if the player is playing on a PlayStation or Xbox they can save their progress on the Cloud or a USB storage device before initiating an ending. This way the player can reload their previous save and acquire all ending trophies/achievements. One of the endings, Lord of Frenzied Flame has a difficult parkouring section that the player must complete to achieve the ending.
4 Bloodborne
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.13
Aside from the relentless boss encounters and harsh environments of the game what makes Bloodborne a hard game to 100% is the Chalice Dungeons that the game introduces. These Chalices Dungeons are randomly generated areas that are filled with unique enemies and multiple bosses at the end of each floor. These Chalices are the main hubs of extremely good rewards such as high-level Blood Gems that the player can put in their primary weapons.
Bloodborne: The 5 Best Boss Fights (& The 5 Worst)
Bloodborne is yet another masterpiece from game company FromSoftware, and here are the best and worst boss fights in the game.
Bloodborne has countless Chalice Dungeons and if the player wants to go for the 100% then completing all the dungeons is a must. Some of the latter Chalices are Cursed which reduces the player's health bar by half and provides much harder areas to navigate. Fighting the new and unique bosses in the Chalices with half or less than half a health bar means taking a single hit will restart the encounter.
5 Dark Souls
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.18
Dark Souls1 was the first installment in the Dark Souls series and probably FromSoftware's best game out of the bunch. Similar to the other Dark Souls games, Dark Souls 1 is also considered a tough endeavor to 100% purely because of the boundless collectibles one has to acquire. Not only this but the player is required to reinforce their weapon to acquire the best quality weapons of different status effects. This requires an ample amount of time to acquire the resources needed for crafting.
Even acquiring Miracles, Sorceries, and Pyromancies can be an easy task when looking at the Rare Weapons trophy requirement in the game. This basically forces the player to play multiple playthroughs and not only that but farm countless hours for these weapons to drop from the respective enemies.
6 Demon's Souls
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.22
Demon's Souls
- Platform(s)
- PS3
- Released
- October 6, 2009
- Developer(s)
- From Software
- Genre(s)
- Soulslike , Action RPG
Demon's Souls is a Soulsborne game that features the World Tendency system. Players can have their Tendency to shift towards White or Black which is based on what actions they perform. To aim for 100% Completion players must make use of this Tendency system in different areas to unlock potential questlines as well as encountering different enemies or creatures. The game has multiple worlds and each world has its own Tendency.
8 Things 2009's Demon's Souls Does Better Than Any Other FromSoftware Game
Demon's Souls is an exceptional game by FromSoftware, and here's why in many ways it's better than any other game by the studio.
Aside from the Tendency system, there are multiple endings in the game as well as NPC questlines that will require multiple playthroughs to complete. Some of the questlines in the game require the player to find and interact with a lot of the other NPCs and failing to do one step can change the outcome of the questlines altering the rewards. Demon's Souls is filled with hidden areas and paths that the player must explore at their own pace to discover rare loot.
7 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
GameFAQs Difficulty Score: 4.5
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice introduces one of the hardest and most different combat from the other SoulsBorne games. The game has a posture-based combat system where the player has to constantly attack the enemy to break their posture leading to the enemy being staggered and losing a life bar. The gameplay revolves around parrying every attack to avoid taking damage as well as damaging the enemy's posture bar.
The base game has a lot of difficult boss encounters as well as two endings that the player must achieve. Aside from this the game also features Gauntlets of Strength. These are challenges that require the player to face off against multiple bosses one after the other. The bosses in these Gauntlets are also slightly different from the base game as some of them have additional attacks. Dying in the Gauntlet means the player will have to restart the challenge. These Gauntlets have rewards such as outfits that the player can acquire once they complete them.
After completing the base game there is also a bit of a grind to acquire all of the skills from the Skill Tree which can take some time. This grind and the Gauntlets alone make Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a must on this list.
FromSoftware: 15 Best Boss Battles (That Are Not From Soulsborne)
The Soulsborne games may be famous for their boss battle difficulty, but they're not the only ones that really pushed players to their limits.
