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Steam Summer Sale is on! Discuss deals in the comments and recommend some great games!
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this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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I like to try to recommend people who are interested in Souls games to start with Dark Souls 1. If that's your first soulslike the bosses will still feel epic and it will be a magical experience. If you start with Elden Ring or DS3 and go back to Dark Souls you will get completely underwhelmed.
Between Pyromancy, Zweihander and Poise DS1 is also by far the easiest of the games, even for newcomers.
I've heard that recommendation a lot - "play DS1 first because otherwise you won't have the patience to play it later", and TBH all that tells me is to skip 1, play the more recent entries, and then move on to the many, many other games that I keep meaning to play, lol.
It's not really that you won't have the patience later. It's more like this: Dark Souls 1 is extremely basic in its boss design. If that's your first soulslike, it doesn't matter because you have no frame of reference and you'll have a great time. Come back to it later and you'll react with "...that's it?" to a lot of bosses, which is a shame. This is something I've seen a lot from people whose first soulslike was Elden Ring.
The world and level design in Dark Souls 1 is still on an absolute top tier level so skipping it altogether would be sad. Many consider the first half of DS1 to be the best level designs FromSoft has ever done.
That’s true, but I find the sluggish pace (by modern standards) and the second half of the game feeling a little unfinished or rushed makes it a toss up with newbies. I’m a massive fan of Dark Souls 1, but I can see why some people would find it dated. Dark Souls III on the other hand feels like a modern game still, so for someone used to mainly playing modern games I can see why they’d be turned off. Personally I mostly play games from the 360 generation so DS1 doesn’t feel dated to me, but I totally get it.
It is dated, and the last third of it does suck. In truth it would probably be a good candidate for a remake.
Even then, it is a wonderful game that you can only really enjoy fully if you haven't played any later soulslike first. To me, that first time experience is worth trying to push for.
Fair enough. I played DS1 after DS3 and thoroughly enjoyed it, but my experience probably wouldn’t be everyone’s. If someone is planning on playing the whole series anyway, yeah start with the first. But if they’re not really sure, I think DS3 is a safer bet. Though now I’d say Elden Ring.
I've just seen both reactions a lot, and it mirrors my own experience. I played DS1 as my first soulslike and it was completely mind blowing. I've seen other streamers have similar experiences. Then I've seen lots of people who got introduced to FromSoft through Elden Ring try DS1 and react with "...that's it?" to all the bosses. It's an unfortunate reality due to the boss design evolving over time.
True, I could see that, but I’ve seen many people give up on DS1 because they found the intro too difficult. The ER intro is far easier. DS3 I could see being a roadblock too though, I just haven’t seen it myself.