It's Critter Time!

Noticed there wasn't a Fromsoft megathread, figure we should have one.

Discuss any fromsoft IP in here - Active ones like Elden Ring and Armored Core, famous ones like the mainline Souls series, and classic titles like King's Field.

In the event of a new release, please use Spoiler Tags for any hidden away or endgame content.

To start this thread off with a post of my own, Hi! I would like to call your attention to our favorite way to play Elden Ring, Elden Ring Reforged.



Mod Link

Elden Ring Reforged is a full game overhaul mod focused on new gameplay systems and rebalancing over massive amounts of new content typically found in other overhauls such as The Convergence (which is also very good and I recommend it highly). While Reforged does feature a decent number of new weapons, spells, skills, and enemies/bosses, the focus is primarily on refining the game's balance and giving the players new ways to play. Build variety is a key focus, with a vast number of weak or sometimes even borderline useless stat distributions and tools from the base game buffed drastically.

I'll list some of the key highlights. (Some of these are copied from the nexus description)

• Every single weapon, skill, spell, attribute, enemy, boss, region, scaling value, damage value and negation value retouched across the board. Leave your expectations of ELDEN RING balance at the door, as every number is re-contextualized.
• Drastically reduced impact of stat "soft caps", encouraging greater investment and reducing trap options.
• Deflecting: Time your block for improved protection and bounce-back, giving skillful players an upper hand.
• Fortune System: A new optional class system that gives new themed abilities to the player, available from various sources in the world.
• Perfect Actions: Time your attacks, spells, dodges, and item usages well for increased speed, reduced resource costs, and improved efficacy.
• Madness and Death Blight now work on enemies, with completely custom effects. Madness destroys enemy Poise, while Death Blight reduces enemy damage and in extreme cases can instantly kill.
• Arcane now scales all status effects, rather than just Bleed and Poison, further augmenting status builds.
• Ducking: Replacing the awkward backstep, press the Dodge button while not moving to immediately drop to the ground, allowing you to duck under attacks that hit high, complimenting the ability for jumping to dodge attacks that hit low. Ducking allows you to counterattack almost instantly and costs very little stamina.
• Left-Hand Blocking and Left-hand Attacking: Block (and deflect) with left-handed weapons, even while powerstancing or wielding mismatched weapons. Press the Attack input while holding the Block input to attack with left-hand weapons freely, allowing unprecedented movement flexibility. This even works for rolling, dashing, ducking, and critical attacks.
• Runeforging: A new permanent character progression system achieved by collecting Rune Pieces, a new collectable that greatly enhances and rewards exploration of the game's world.
• Body Hues: An armor dye system with 72 colors to further customize your character appearance, unlocked through overworld archery challenges.
• Magic Overhaul: Generate FP with Generator Spells and weapon attacks. Cancel spells anytime during wind-up. Spells are generally faster, and Mind further increases casting speed.
• Weapon Catalysts: Attack and cast spells at the same time with special catalyst-weapon combos. Allows for casting while two-handing and powerstancing (with Left-Hand Block enabled).
• Improved UI Graphics: Additional visual clarity by adding icons and graphics to various stats and dialogue options in the game. Hidden weapon stats are now shown on the stat card.
• Spirit Fury System: Spirit Ashes are now ignored by enemies by default, so any build can use them without breaking boss mechanics. Re-use a summoned Spirit Ash to enrage it for increased damage and target priority. Incentivizes raising the Mind attribute, and creates a "Summoner" playstyle.
• Difficulty Options: Tweak your experience at any time at all Sites of Grace. Make the game easier or harder freely to create your ideal play experience.
• Many, many, MANY tweaks to enemy and boss hitboxes, AI, and especially Camera Parameters to make bosses and enemies feel more fair and enjoyable to fight. Restoration of many cut content boss attacks included.
• Many weapons gain new movesets, new passive effects, new skills, and sometimes even total overhauls.

This is only a partial list of changes, as the mod simply affects way too much to sit here and list everything.

If you're interested in more, We help run the Community Wiki for the game! The wiki is an attempt at documenting all of the mod's major changes and new content and systems. We have a Frequently Asked Questions page that is designed to be spoiler-free.

This is reminding me I really gotta sit down and finish playing through Sekiro one of these days

So far I've only tried two FromSoft games, those being Dark Souls and Sekiro. I kinda bounced off of Dark Souls - while it's definitely interesting it's just not my sort of thing. Sekiro, on the other hand, I was really getting into for a while since it was more my speed - felt a lot more spectacle-brawler-y, like if Platinum Games had a hand in it or something.

I've also got Armoured Core VI in my library, I should probably give that a try sometime, too. Keep hearing good things about it and somebody made MEGAS in it so

God I NEEEEED to finish Shadow of the Erdtree. I finished the main game on PS4, tried prepping for the DLC on PC, and then got burnt out and moved on to other games. So much stuff about it looks so cool!

i've tried the first Dark Souls and it wasn't really for me; a little too much "haha you did this very specific thing slightly incorrectly, screw you" for my tastes.

Bloodborne, however; holy CRAP that game is incredible. i would replay Bloodborne on a dime, any day, no questions asked. i love that game. it's definitely one of my favorite PlayStation games by far.

i also really do want to try Sekiro. it looks like Bloodborne with SPEED and i really want to try that. maybe some day...

shokoshiro wrote: Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:40 am Bloodborne, however; holy CRAP that game is incredible. i would replay Bloodborne on a dime, any day, no questions asked. i love that game. it's definitely one of my favorite PlayStation games by far.

BLOODBORNE REAL GOOD! I dropped off my Dark Souls 2 and 3 attempts but Bloodborne hooked me on the speed and dodging focus. I actually was able to give Dark Souls as a whole a proper go BECAUSE of how far I got into Bloodborne!

Bloodborne is definitely my favorite of the From Soulslikes. I also have this weird relatioship with Dark Souls 3, where I like it the least out of the Dark Souls games, but it's also the easiest to get back into (I still like it, just didn't enjoy it as much as Dark Souls 1 or 2).

Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are definitely both masterpieces. Brilliant translations of classic action RPG gameplay to 3D.

One thing I think they get right compared to their sequels is their more restrained action, which I think fits the games better - the Souls games ultimately have pretty simple combat compared to other 3D action games, and like 2D action games, a stricter retry structure with more spaced-out checkpoints suits them best. None of the individual moment-to-moment challenges in the first two Souls games are really that taxing or complicated, and wouldn't be very interesting if presented on their own, but the fact that you have to do a bunch of different things back to back before reaching the next bonfire or shortcut is where a lot of the fun of these games comes from.

As you get into the later Souls games, the distance between checkpoints gets shorter and bosses get more elaborate and challenging - but I don't think the mechanics of these games are really conducive to that particular type of difficulty; the shorter level segments are less engaging and the main way they start leaning on making bosses harder is just on giving them lots of feints and variable multihit strings you have to memorize. These later bosses, and Dark Souls 2 and 3 as a whole, are still very fun - but I think they really move away from some of the aspects that make Demon's Souls and the first Dark Souls so strong.

I feel similarly about Sekiro, which doesn't really have the protracted and tense exploration of the initial Souls games but also has much less interesting combat than action games dedicated specifically to that (stuff like the Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden series). Ultimately Sekiro feels like diet Souls or super-diet Ninja Gaiden to me, and I don't think it has as much lasting appeal.

Really want to play Bloodborne and Armored Core 6 sometime. Bloodborne seems like it might genuinely be the best out of all of the modern From stuff, but I don't have a PS4 to play it on. Actually, I really want to go through and play the PS1 Armored Core and King's Field games sometime too, so I've got to get on that sometime.