Game studio
FromSoftware
The studio that turned difficulty into a design language, graded from King's Field to Nightreign.
FromSoftware spent fifteen years making strange, ambitious and often rough games before Demon's Souls taught the industry how dying could be the point. This collection grades the whole run, ranks the bosses that defined it, and names the places players still talk about.
The hardest bosses
The fights that made the studio's reputation, ranked.
- Malenia, Blade of MiquellaElden Ring, 2022
- Isshin, the Sword SaintSekiro, 2019
- Promised Consort RadahnElden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, 2024
- Orphan of KosBloodborne: The Old Hunters, 2015
- Slave Knight GaelDark Souls III: The Ringed City, 2017
- Darkeater MidirDark Souls III: The Ringed City, 2017
- Sister FriedeDark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel, 2016
- The Nameless KingDark Souls III, 2016
- Demon of HatredSekiro, 2019
- Ornstein and SmoughDark Souls, 2011
The places
Areas that players describe to each other years later.
- Dark Souls, 2011Anor LondoThe golden city at the top of the climb, and the archers who guard it.
- Bloodborne, 2015YharnamGothic streets that turn cosmic somewhere around midnight.
- Dark Souls III, 2016Irithyll of the Boreal ValleyMoonlight, snow and something wrong inside the cathedral.
- Sekiro, 2019Ashina CastleA vertical fortress built around a grappling hook.
- Elden Ring, 2022Leyndell, Royal CapitalA capital under a golden tree the size of a mountain.
- Dark Souls, 2011BlighttownThe swamp everyone warns you about, earning its name.
- Dark Souls III, 2017The Ringed CityThe end of the world, found at the bottom of it.
- Elden Ring, 2022Crumbling Farum AzulaA city falling apart inside a storm, mid-fall.