Summary
FromSoftware, over the past decade or so, has cemented itself as one of the greatest video game developers of all time,bringing forth groundbreaking experiencesand creating a genre of its own that has since taken over the whole industry. The company has had success after success in recent years and is only now looking to go back to the drawing board and branch away from the traditional Soulslike formula that really put the developer on the map.
Before the era ofSouls, FromSoftware had already tried its hand at plenty of different genres, game types, and settings, resulting in mixed success and levels of critical acclaim. In the early days, making a hit was all about standing out, and it is clear that creativity has always been the driving force for the company, pushing for excellence in the face of uncertainty and attempting to create worlds that no one has seen before.
While FromSoftware is now synonymous with brutal action RPGs,Lost Kingdoms 2represents one of the studio’s earliest and most ambitious experiments in real-time action mixed with strategic mechanics that are still around in other titles in the gaming world. Released for the Nintendo GameCube, the game followed a mysterious warrior navigating a dark fantasy world where magic is wielded through summoning creatures and spells via collectible cards. Its real-time battle system combined quick reflexes with careful planning, offering avery different type of challengecompared to the slow, methodical pace of earlier FromSoftware and a completely different feel to the more fast-paced approach that has been adopted now.
What made the game particularly ambitious was its hybrid design, which melded deck-building strategy with live-action gameplay in a way that was rare at the time. It really looked to push the hardware to its limit, with expansive environments and fluid animations, even though the overall polish wasn’t perfect. Critically, the game received mixed to positive reviews, but among FromSoftware’s catalog, it stands as an important and successful risk that helped pave the way for their bold design philosophy in later years. As card games have exploded in popularity over the past few years, it would be interesting to see a more modern version of the game, with all the same FromSoftware DNA fans would expect from one of their titles.
Long before FromSoftware became famous for punishing action RPGs,Echo Nightshowcased their willingness to take creative risks in entirely different genres. Released for the original PlayStation,Echo Nightis a first-person adventure game focused heavily on narrative and exploration rather than combat, something which the company is now known for best. Players assume the role of Richard Osmond, drawn intoa supernatural mystery aboard a haunted shipand across a web of ghostly timelines, solving puzzles and interacting with spirits to uncover the truth, in stark contrast to the previous games the company had published.
The ambition behindEcho Nightlay in its atmosphere and storytelling, where players were encouraged to look for hidden secrets rather than be spoon-fed every story beat. At a time when horror games typically relied on jump scares and combat, the game emphasized subtle fear through mood, setting, and moral choice in a slower, more cerebral experience that required patience and attention to detail. While it didn’t achieve massive commercial success, it was a critical stepping stone, proving that FromSoftware was capable of creating richly immersive worlds built around player-driven discovery and emotional engagement.
After a decade of Soulslike success, returning to their roots was both unexpected and incredibly risky. TheArmored Coreseries was one of FromSoftware’s biggest hits in the early 2000s, and the series spanned countless sequels and spin-offs before taking a backseat to the success and esteem of theSoulsseries. After a few massive hits that dwarfed anything the company had produced before, deciding to play it safe would have been a fine choice, but instead, they opted to bring back the class series with a bang.
Flying around a devastated world ina high-powered mech suit, seeing the FromSoftware logo attached to anything other than a fantasy world felt like a bold move, but it was one that paid off and demonstrated that the developer was more than capable of creating amazing games outside of the ones it was most known for. It featured a completely different style of gameplay from a Soulslike but a comparable level of action, intensity, and difficulty at times that still demanded a significant amount of input from the player.
With theDark Soulstrilogy complete andBloodbornedemonstrating a different feel to the previous games in the catalog, FromSoftware had a lot of eyes on it regarding where their next game would take fans and whether it would meet the same level of quality they had come to expect. ButSekiroblew everything out of the park, introducing the world to a ridiculous level of precision and a caliber of combat that expected so much of the player and could havevery easily backfired with its difficultyand immense barrier to entry.
Raising the difficulty and removing all the crutches was an interesting approach, combined with the lack of customization and weapon variety, but the end product turned out to be one of the best video games ever released, revolutionizing how developers would go on to make great games for years to come. Something about the satisfaction of every single button input and the lack of sloppiness that was found in previous games madeSekirofeel incredible to play and provided an experience that has yet to be replicated even by the developer themselves.
Demon’s Soulsstands as one of the most pivotal and ambitious projects in FromSoftware’s history, and no one could have predicted the impact it would have on the gaming world over a decade later. Released for the PlayStation 3, the game thrust players into the bleak kingdom of Boletaria, a realm consumed by a deadly fog and plagued by soul-hungry demons and all manner of fantasy creatures and foes. Its tight, punishing combat, intricate level design, and interconnected hub system offered a stark contrast to the more straightforward RPGs of the time and put a much stronger emphasis on difficulty that wasn’t reliant on simple sliders, but on player skill.
The ambition behindDemon’s Soulslay notjust in its difficulty, but in its entire philosophy in creating a world that didn’t want to teach players how to play the game, instead inviting them to figure it out themselves. It dared to trust players to discover the world through their own ambition, offering little hand-holding and creating a tense, oppressive atmosphere rarely seen in mainstream games at the time. Though it was initially a commercial risk, the murmurs became shouts over time and turned a quiet release into a cult hit, ultimately laying the foundation for the entire Soulsborne genre that would dominate gaming for the next decade.
A major departure from the brutal action titles that made the studio famous,Deracinewas FromSoftware’s quietest yet one of its most daring projects in a time that demanded immersive worlds and flawless combat.Developed exclusively for PlayStation VR, it placed players in the role of an unseen faerie within a secluded boarding school, tasked with subtly influencing the world around them. Through environmental interaction and non-linear storytelling, the game focused entirely on atmosphere, mystery, and emotional resonance rather than combat or challenge, taking a lot of the storytelling influences from previous titles and replacing the physical challenge with detailed environments and visual imagery.
The ambition of the title came from its attempt to tell a delicate, melancholic story using the relatively young medium of virtual reality, which was still in its early stages of becoming a household hit. It demanded players slow down, observe carefully, and piece together the narrative through clues and fragmented interactions, things that fans of the company were already accustomed to doing but in a completely different medium than before. Although it didn’t achieve massive commercial success, it remains a deeply unique title in FromSoftware’s library, showcasing the studio’s willingness to innovate outside of their established strengths and explore new forms of player engagement.
Far from the first open-world game but quite possibly thebest in the open-world genre,Elden Ringmoved the narrow yet interconnected level designs of the Soulslike games and bridged the gap to an expansive world that reimagined how a game could be explored and experienced. They could have stuck their guns and continued to make elaborate castles and catacombs full of enemies and bosses to tackle, but spreading these structures over a richly filled open landscape, in a meticulously crafted universe by one of fiction’s greatest writers, was a bold move that could have fallen flat right from the start.
Thankfully, the talents of the studio and the will to do the impossible paid off, and the game demonstrated that the formula could work on a much bigger scale and that, if given a big enough canvas, Miyazaki would quite literally paint a world. A game that defies all logic and transcends what a video game can and should be,Elden Ringis the new reigning king of the video game world as not only an exceptional open-world experience but a living piece of art.
