Controversial opinion, but I’d probably pick Dark Souls 1. It’s the one I’m most disinterested to play. DS2 is the outsider and has earned its accolades via that alone, plus it’s the most experimental DS game, which is cool. DS3 has fun world building and good combat, or rather my preferred speed, so it beats DS1 in that regard too. DS1 wasn’t particularly fun to play for me in comparison.
The others are one-ofs and have all brought something truly unique to their catalogue, culminating in ER which is arguably, next to DS1 maybe, the most influential Soulslike in existence.
What’s your take?
I’d probably delete Ninja Blade. It’s proper alternate timeline stuff - it was released within weeks of Demon Souls, but instead of being an inventive and groundbreaking new thing it is the most derivative amalgamation of CAG gameplay, blockbuster cutscenes, QTEs and brown-grey mid 00s graphics you can imagine. It’s very easy to see why one failed and the other succeeded, but it’s fun to imagine the alternative timeline where Ninja Blade was a smash hit, FromSoft are a notorious CAG developer now and Soulslikes don’t exist. Well, maybe calling a timeline without Soulslikes “fun” in this community is flirting with danger but it is certainly interesting to think about.
EDIT: Also, DS1 has a map that’s an absolute work of art. Genre defining and still the yardstick we compare every Soulslike to. If a new game has interconnected levels we say “it has a little bit of DS1-style…” etc. Exploring something like DS1 again is the high so many of us (I am one) keep chasing by playing this genre. Deleting that over other entries is crazy talk.
Probably won’t be playing much of anything this weekend. The World Cup has been eating into my gaming time and I’ve also been otherwise distracted and not in the right headspace, really. I did play an hour of Lost Odyssey yesterday, but that’s been the grand total of my gaming this week.
I only know of Ninja Blade because of an Iron Pineapple video. Proper nightmare stuff if that had been more successful than Demon Souls.
Also, did you know the Moonlight Greatsword is actually in Ninja Blade?
Of course it’s in there, it’s a proper bona fide FromSoft game after all! And even you pick it up through a QTE! What could be better?