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Soulsborne + Sekiro Tier List Discussion

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
I know there has been Soulsborne and Sekiro threads and discussions made before, but been playing them again recently and wanted to talk about them a bit. Especially with the hype of Elden Ring on the horizon. Also, I have been playing Dark Souls 3 the most recently, and wondered if anyone still plays at all? Would be cool to get some competitive PvP going! I have the game for XB1, GT: Juggleypuff

Anyway, I also wanted to make a tier list of the Soulsborne + Sekiro games. Two separate tier lists, one regarding PvE, one regarding PvP. Every game except Demon Souls, because that’s the only game of these I haven’t played and probably never will unless a remaster/remake happens.

Let me quickly define PvP and PvE for anyone who for some reason doesn’t know what they mean.

PvP stands for “player vs player”. Which means a player controlled character fighting another player controlled character

PvE stands for “player vs environment”. This means every single player aspect of the game.

So here’s my tier lists:

PvP:
  1. Dark Souls 2
  2. Dark Souls 3
  3. Dark Souls
  4. Bloodborne

Sekiro doesn’t have PvP

PvE:
  1. Sekiro
  2. Dark Souls
  3. Bloodborne
  4. Dark Souls 3
  5. Dark Souls 2
————————————

Dark Souls 2’s PvP is godlike. So much variety and depth, especially in comparison to the other games. There’s a lot of tech available. This includes but is not limited to; Attack canceling, kara cancels, dead angles, roll cancels, power stance, stance cancels, and a bunch more cancels and just a lot more tech in general.

Dark Souls 2 also had the most variety as far as PvP is concerned. You could pretty much make any build you want and could make it competitively viable. It’s also one of the few souls games where Magic was top tier. When I say “magic” I’m talking about it all, btw. So sorceries, pyro, dark magic, faith, etc. Magic is decent in the other games too, like for instance dark magic in Dark Souls 1 was very powerful. But the casting of the dark magic was very easy to avoid unless you were getting ganked. In Dark Souls 2, a lot of the magic has different speeds, ranges, start up, size of AoE, etc. There was just a lot of variety within the magic tier that you had to worry about and know about.

Dark Souls 2 also had power stance. Which was one of the best Dark Souls mechanics that has been introduced when it comes to PvP. This allowed even MORE variety of weapons and builds ontop of the variety that already existed. I can’t remember exactly how it worked enough to give a great explanation, so you can just look it up. But basically, whatever requirement for a certain weapon, if you had that plus 50% more (for instance if a weapon required 10 strength and you had 15) you could go into a power stance. I think this was only possible if you were using two weapons of the same category (for instance two Katanas) but again, you’ll have to look it up because I can’t remember exactly. Anyway, my favorite build used a Washing Pole (the longest Katana in the game) with some kinda unique Rapier. I can’t remember exactly which Rapier it was, but all I know is I could dual wield that Rapier with the Washing Pole and go into power stance. And it was a VERY strong build. The washing pole had insane range and the best running r1 in the game. My main BnB would be to do a running r1 with the Washing Pole into jab attacks with the Rapier. This would stun lock them to where I got a nice combo off and did insane damage. Doing a high damaging combo off of a run attack is good enough, but doing it off a running r1 from a washing pole? It was so damn good!

Anyway, Dark Souls 2 had by far the worst PvE though in comparison imo, which is kinda funny. HOWEVER, it being the worst compared to the rest of the soulsborne+sekiro games does NOT mean it is bad. Dark Souls 2 PvE still shits on A LOT of other games.

I have Dark Souls 3 PvP above Dark Souls. I love the original Dark Souls PvP. It’s very fun and it’s the game that started it all for me, and for a lot of people. Both for PvE and for PvP. However, there’s so many issues with Dark Souls 1 PvP. There’s obviously a lot of good too. Dead angling is one of my favorite PvP mechanics and it was in the original Dark Souls and I’m pretty sure it was in Dark Souls 2 as well. But they removed it from the Remaster of the game. And there was never any clarification if that was done on purpose, or it was just an accident as a result of remastering the game.

But anyway, one of the main problems I have with DkS1 PvP is the poise system. The way poise works in DkS1 is very easy to understand. The more poise your character has, the more they can walk through and tank attacks without getting staggered or stunned. A big issue with this is that you can literally just backstab fish the entire time. Since the hitbox area where you could perform a backstab was so large, you could just wait for an attack, walk through it, and get an easy backstab. Of course, there were a few weapons you couldn’t poise walk through, but there weren’t very many. And the ones that you couldn’t were very large, heavy weapons that were really slow anyway. Meaning you didn’t even have to walk through those, just react to the startup, then reverse roll into backstab.

Another issue I have with DkS1 PvP is the lack of variety. There were some obviously top tier weapons/builds that were so much better than the rest. In any serious PvP match, like a clan fight club tournament, a fight club in general, any tournament in general, or really just any general actual competitive 1v1 match, you wouldn’t be seeing very many different weapons and/or builds. At least not in my experience. However, that also made for some fun times if you didn’t use the god tier set ups. I remember me personally using a MLGS build (which depending on who you ask is either top tier or high mid tier), and just recking people with it. DkS1 MLGS is one of the best versions of the weapon. But let’s be honest, that weapon is good in all of the games that it’s in, which is why it’s probably my most favorite weapon in the trilogy.

I feel Dark Souls 3 PvP is better than DkS1. More variety and more builds capable of being competitively viable. There is of course the standard top tier weapons and builds, which is unavoidable. But the variety definitely was more vast than DkS1. Also, they altered the poise system for DkS3. Poise in DkS3 works only when you’re attacking. So that if you have high poise and you’re attacking and a trade happens, you generally wouldn’t get staggered if you had high poise. This was also dependent on the weapons both players were using. In general, the heavier the weapon was, the more poise damage it did.

Anyway, I could talk about the games more and more, and didn’t even touch on the PvE. But was curious how everyone else ranks the games for PvP and PvE. I know people have way different opinions on their favorite games out of these, and have way different tier lists. That’s the main reason I wanted to make this thread, to see everyone else’s tier list!

Long live Miyazaki, long live FromSoft!!
 

Professor Oak

Are you a boy or girl?
S tier:
Dark Souls 3
Dark Souls Remastered
A tier:
Dark Souls 2
B tier:
Bloodborne
Sekiro
C tier:
Demon Souls

I agree with the expansive PvP options in Dark Souls 2, but the world, art style, and PvE was garbage. I thought my favorite new series was ruined when it first released. Ive since replayed it and found love for it, but its over all presentation almost lost me. To me, Dark Souls 3 found the best balance, Dark Souls 1 was best PvE with limited but great PvP, DS2 is mostly bad with great PvP, Sekiro is only PvE so I have to rate it lower, personally, Bloodborne wasnt my bag, but I see its appeal as a slightly faster and less diverse souls title, then Demon Souls being mentioned because how couldnt I? Its basically just DS beta, though so its last.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
S tier:
Dark Souls 3
Dark Souls Remastered
A tier:
Dark Souls 2
B tier:
Bloodborne
Sekiro
C tier:
Demon Souls

I agree with the expansive PvP options in Dark Souls 2, but the world, art style, and PvE was garbage. I thought my favorite new series was ruined when it first released. Ive since replayed it and found love for it, but its over all presentation almost lost me. To me, Dark Souls 3 found the best balance, Dark Souls 1 was best PvE with limited but great PvP, DS2 is mostly bad with great PvP, Sekiro is only PvE so I have to rate it lower, personally, Bloodborne wasnt my bag, but I see its appeal as a slightly faster and less diverse souls title, then Demon Souls being mentioned because how couldnt I? Its basically just DS beta, though so its last.
Oh okay, you chose to go with one tier list overall, that includes both PvP and PvE. For me personally, I didn’t think that would be fair to Sekiro since it was designed specifically to not have PvP.

But, if I had to make an overall tier list like you have done, this is what mine would look like:

Overall Soulsborne+Sekiro Tier List:
S Tier: Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3
A+ Tier: Bloodborne, Sekiro, Dark Souls 2

Very difficult to do an overall tier list. So just made a compromise and only made two tier categories (S and A+). I feel overall, with both PvE and PvP in mind, Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3 are very clearly the best, imo of course.
 

PapaRegadetho

All hail emperor Liucifer Kang!
You forgot Demon's Souls!!! To me that game is S tier.
My order for PvE would be : S - Demon's Souls
S - Dark Souls
A+ - Bloodborne
A - Dark Souls 3
B+ - Dark Souls 2.

I havent yet played Sekiro tho but I heard amazing things about it.
And honestly didnt like the netcode in Soulsborne series to take it seriously, but It was enjoyable when I wasnt randomly back stabbed cuz the opponent teleported.
 

DragonofDadashov24

Let’s see whose fire burns hotter
I’ve beaten Sekiro like 30 times in a row cause of how addictive it is. My family couldn’t guess why my eyes were red for weeks. Love this game and consider it the best samurai/ninja game since Tenchu 2. Waiting for Tsushima, but it won’t be as challenging as this masterpiece.
Couldn’t care less about DS to be honest. Yuka Kitamura and my all time favorite Noriyuki Asakura did a great job with this one in terms of music.
The Owl father is hands down the best boss in the game, should have been the final boss.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
You forgot Demon's Souls!!! To me that game is S tier.
My order for PvE would be : S - Demon's Souls
S - Dark Souls
A+ - Bloodborne
A - Dark Souls 3
B+ - Dark Souls 2.

I havent yet played Sekiro tho but I heard amazing things about it.
And honestly didnt like the netcode in Soulsborne series to take it seriously, but It was enjoyable when I wasnt randomly back stabbed cuz the opponent teleported.
No, actually I didn’t forget it. Read literally the 2nd paragraph of the OP. Smh
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
I’ve beaten Sekiro like 30 times in a row cause of how addictive it is. My family couldn’t guess why my eyes were red for weeks. Love this game and consider it the best samurai/ninja game since Tenchu 2. Waiting for Tsushima, but it won’t be as challenging as this masterpiece.
Couldn’t care less about DS to be honest. Yuka Kitamura and my all time favorite Noriyuki Asakura did a great job with this one in terms of music.
The Owl father is hands down the best boss in the game, should have been the final boss.
You should give the Soulsborne series a try someday. Literally the best game franchise ever made. If you like Sekiro, you’ll like the Soulsborne games. Plus PvP adds such an awesome element to the game. Having to worry about PvE, with the threat of being invaded by an actual player at almost any given moment, adds such an amazing aspect to the game. Unfortunately, you probably won’t be getting invaded too much these days, at least not nearly as often as when the games were super popular. I will say though, I believe Dark Souls 3 and maybe Dark Souls Remastered may still have a bunch of people invading.
 

Professor Oak

Are you a boy or girl?
I second the opinion of it being all time greatest game series. Its a fighter, an rpg, a treasure hunt, a (loose)narrative, and its the standard for character progression IMO. Anyone not interested in trying it is missing out on a chance at finding video game love. If you try it and dont like it, fair, I guess, but you should def try it.

If I had to split into a pve/pvp tier list, I think maybe
PVP
S:
Dark Souls 3 Dark Souls 2
A:
Dark Souls Bloodborne
B:
Demon Souls
F+:
Sekiro

PVE
S:
Sekiro
A:
Dark Souls 1 Dark Souls 3
B:
Demon Souls
Bloodborne
Dark Souls 2



Dex/Bleed build with dual claws in DS3 is literally the most fun Ive had in a video game, so DS3 is my overall favorite game. Elden Ring better be the souls successor or I will continue to play DS3/DS remastered for life.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
I second the opinion of it being all time greatest game series. Its a fighter, an rpg, a treasure hunt, a (loose)narrative, and its the standard for character progression IMO. Anyone not interested in trying it is missing out on a chance at finding video game love. If you try it and dont like it, fair, I guess, but you should def try it.

If I had to split into a pve/pvp tier list, I think maybe
PVP
S:
Dark Souls 3 Dark Souls 2
A:
Dark Souls Bloodborne
B:
Demon Souls
F+:
Sekiro

PVE
S:
Sekiro
A:
Dark Souls 1 Dark Souls 3
B:
Demon Souls
Bloodborne
Dark Souls 2



Dex/Bleed build with dual claws in DS3 is literally the most fun Ive had in a video game, so DS3 is my overall favorite game. Elden Ring better be the souls successor or I will continue to play DS3/DS remastered for life.
I have high hopes for Elden Ring. The main appeal to me is that they will be going back to the character builds/creation like in Dark Souls games. And it was said to be heavily influenced by the Souls games. I just wish we had more info on it!

Right now I’m trying a no death run on Dark Souls 3. I just started and I have failed a few times already. Mainly because I haven’t played Dark Souls 3 in quite some time, so gotta refresh my memory on a lot of stuff. Also with this no death run, I have online enabled. Just to add that extra layer of danger and excitement, lol.
 

Marinjuana

Up rock incoming, ETA 5 minutes
I've played Sekiro and Dark Souls Remastered. Just finished Sekiro the other day, actually. I have never played any PVP and I don't think I was invaded, personally I found that prospect of getting ganked by some high level rogue to be too frustrating but I'm sure there's a lot of fun to be had with it.

I think both are good games but Sekiro is far better IMO. I was kind of blown away with Dark Souls at first and I think the normal gameplay of working through areas in the interconnected world with badass enemies is about as fun as any game you'll find. I love how raw their games are, they are like NES hard but in a modern 3D game. But I think the gameplay of boss fights gets really janky sometimes. And I have to really rip it for some objectively bad design with how some later game boss fights had a lot of travel time from campground to boss room. Some of them like the Skeleton Lord or the Ice boss can be thought of as having little dungeons as part of the challenge but there's others like Ornstein and Smaug where it literally takes like 5 minutes to get back to the room and you don't have to fight any enemies along the way. Loved that fight, but I took like 30 attempts and I spent at least an hour of my life walking back to that room. Final boss and the Guts DLC boss are like that too. Then there's bed of chaos. Still a really great game though but had some first game jank that I imagine improved with later entries, which I haven't got to playing yet.

And then we have Sekiro which has most of the good that Souls has but sacrifices RPG character creation stuff and we get much more polished and well thought out battle mechanics and boss fights. I still died a lot against certain bosses, but it just feels way more rewarding to be memorizing attack patterns for parries and reacting to the "red danger" mixups then it was to just invicibility dodge everything in Dark Souls. I also really enjoyed the aesthetic and setting. I probably enjoyed the non boss gameplay of Souls more but as a whole experience, Sekiro gets my top vote for sure. My biggest knock on Sekiro is how your progression and money is hampered by dying. I see the value of making death count for the value of gameplay but it's overboard and it works against the player. Like if you want to fight a boss and you have Zen and experience, then you should go out of your way to spend it and gain enough experience to get a skill point. I would have just made Unseen Aid have a much higher chance of activating.
 

Kiss the Missile

Red Messiah
S - Nioh, Demon's Souls
A - Dark Souls, Bloodborne
C - Dark Souls 2

I got burnt out on Souls games so I didn't play DS3. Never got into Sekiro either
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
S - Nioh, Demon's Souls
A - Dark Souls, Bloodborne
C - Dark Souls 2

I got burnt out on Souls games so I didn't play DS3. Never got into Sekiro either
Nioh isn’t part of the Soulsborne+Sekiro games. Not made by Miyazaki or FromSoft.

However, If I had to put Nioh somewhere on my tier list, it would be at the bottom. Nioh was definitely a rushed game, even though it was in development for probably the longest of any game I’ve heard about, lol. But yeah, the game felt super rushed. Got repetitive really quickly, not enough new and unique enemies, the areas also felt tedious and recycled. Just wasn’t a fan of the game in general. Huge wasted potential imo. I was debating on getting Nioh 2 to see if they fixed all the issues the first one had, but I’ve heard it’s pretty much the same game as the first one. Which is unfortunate, because as I said, the game had so much potential to be amazing.

Adding Nioh to this tier list would be like adding Code Vein. This isn’t a “souls like” tier list. If I were to add Code Vein, it would be pretty high up though. Code Vein was a surprisingly good and fun game. Basically a anime dark souls game... kinda.
 

Kiss the Missile

Red Messiah
Nioh isn’t part of the Soulsborne+Sekiro games. Not made by Miyazaki or FromSoft.

However, If I had to put Nioh somewhere on my tier list, it would be at the bottom. Nioh was definitely a rushed game, even though it was in development for probably the longest of any game I’ve heard about, lol. But yeah, the game felt super rushed. Got repetitive really quickly, not enough new and unique enemies, the areas also felt tedious and recycled. Just wasn’t a fan of the game in general. Huge wasted potential imo. I was debating on getting Nioh 2 to see if they fixed all the issues the first one had, but I’ve heard it’s pretty much the same game as the first one. Which is unfortunate, because as I said, the game had so much potential to be amazing.

Adding Nioh to this tier list would be like adding Code Vein. This isn’t a “souls like” tier list. If I were to add Code Vein, it would be pretty high up though. Code Vein was a surprisingly good and fun game. Basically a anime dark souls game... kinda.
I mean it's close enough to consider it for the list. It might not be SoulsBorne, but it's def SoulsLike. I loved Nioh because it was like an arcadey Dark Souls. Lot more bite sized. You could replay whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. I didn't feel like it was repetitive, but everyone has wildly different tastes when it comes to these type of games. I've never done a NG+ playthrough of a Fromsoft game, but I've done 3 for Nioh.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
I mean it's close enough to consider it for the list. It might not be SoulsBorne, but it's def SoulsLike. I loved Nioh because it was like an arcadey Dark Souls. Lot more bite sized. You could replay whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. I didn't feel like it was repetitive, but everyone has wildly different tastes when it comes to these type of games. I've never done a NG+ playthrough of a Fromsoft game, but I've done 3 for Nioh.
Oh it’s for sure Soulslike, no doubt about that. But I personally wanted the tier list to only include FromSoft and/or Miyazaki “Souls” games.

But, we can discuss all the soulslike games there is if y’all want, doesn’t matter.

For NIOH, it just didn’t do it for me. If I had never played any of the Soulsborne games, my opinion of NIOH would 100% be vastly different. But FromSoft and Miyazaki have absolutely spoiled me. They have in a sense ruined every action RPG that is even remotely Soulslike. Because it is impossible not to compare them. That’s honestly why the meme exists of reviewers saying “it’s the Dark Souls of X, Y, or Z”. Everything get compared to the Soulsborne games because they were made so incredibly well. They are without a doubt masterpieces. Which is why I have ZERO doubts that Elden Ring will be yet another masterpiece.

About Code Vein, it is a very fun Soulslike game. It takes a different approach and the description of “Anime Souls” is fairly accurate. There is a bit of repetitiveness in Code Vein as well, but the combat is so much fun that it really doesn’t matter too much. It has a very interesting leveling/upgrading system. Which you pretty much just have to play to understand it. It’s kinda funny, not many people thought it was going to be good based on the trailers and gameplay they saw. But those same people ended up loving the game after playing it. Unfortunately the DLC, from what I’ve seen and heard, is really awful. It got consistently bad reviews, so I never ended up even getting the DLC. With all that said, if y’all haven’t played it, I definitely would recommend y’all trying it out. Also, there’s a lot of story involved in the game as well, more so than just about any of the Soulsborne games. Just as an fyi.
 
I played only bloodborne and sekiro til now. Bloodborne is one of the best games of the generation, and my life. Sekiro, even though has good graphics ans history, is too much burocratic and bullshit....after I realized that they respawn you away from the boss and all the guys that you killed before around him respawn too, and you have to repeat the same shit that you did over and over just because the "dificultyyy ~~~uhhh~so difficult"....I dropped. Far fetched af.
 

DragonofDadashov24

Let’s see whose fire burns hotter
I played only bloodborne and sekiro til now. Bloodborne is one of the best games of the generation, and my life. Sekiro, even though has good graphics ans history, is too much burocratic and bullshit....after I realized that they respawn you away from the boss and all the guys that you killed before around him respawn too, and you have to repeat the same shit that you did over and over just because the "dificultyyy ~~~uhhh~so difficult"....I dropped. Far fetched af.
None of the games from the studio is difficult actually. I found Ninja Gaiden far more difficult to beat. I played bloodbourne for about two hours and got bored to death with evading everything. You don’t have to fight everyone in Sekiro
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
I played only bloodborne and sekiro til now. Bloodborne is one of the best games of the generation, and my life. Sekiro, even though has good graphics ans history, is too much burocratic and bullshit....after I realized that they respawn you away from the boss and all the guys that you killed before around him respawn too, and you have to repeat the same shit that you did over and over just because the "dificultyyy ~~~uhhh~so difficult"....I dropped. Far fetched af.
The games definitely aren’t for everyone. If you’re a lazy gamer and don’t like learning from your mistakes, you most likely won’t enjoy these games. For someone like me though, who loves the challenge and I love improving myself and getting better at a game, these games are perfect for someone like me!
 

DragonofDadashov24

Let’s see whose fire burns hotter
By the way, Having said that Sekiro is the best, I gotta say. Demon of hatred was pure bullshit that competely denied the idea of sekiro’s mechanics and was plain taken from DS lol. I’ve never tried to beat that shit legit after dying like 3 times cause you can’t neither parry nor block this shit, so I just threw him off the cliff and didn’t feel like a cheat at all. Stupid boss design but goddamn awesome soundtrack
 

NHDR

Noob
If we can include Nioh in this list, then I'll say Nioh > Nioh 2 > Demon's Souls, as those are the titles I have beaten so far. I am currently playing DS1 Remastered, Sekiro, and Bloodborne, so I'll see where they slot after I beat them all.
 

portent

Noob
It may not be the most difficult of the Soulsborne genre, but do not sleep on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

It is absolutely a soulsborne game, albeit an "easy" one. That said, the story line is absolutely S+ tier. If you haven't played Fallen Order yet, it's on sale pretty much everywhere.
 

DragonofDadashov24

Let’s see whose fire burns hotter
It may not be the most difficult of the Soulsborne genre, but do not sleep on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

It is absolutely a soulsborne game, albeit an "easy" one. That said, the story line is absolutely S+ tier. If you haven't played Fallen Order yet, it's on sale pretty much everywhere.
That game is a ripoff of Sekiro actually, pretty dumb too
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
Completely forgot The Surge is a Soulsborne genre game and is also surprisingly good.
These games are not part of the Soulsborne games. Only Miyazaki + FromSoft count as Soulsborne. You’re talking about “souls like” games. Which is very different.