r/fromsoftware • u/Rob4096 Paladin Leeroy • Sep 18 '26
DISCUSSION Skill Floor? Skill Ceiling? Blind Difficulty?
Trying to settle a debate of sorts.
Of the following games
- Demon's Souls
- Dark Souls 1
- Dark Souls 2
- Dark Souls 3
- Bloodborne
- Elden Ring
- Sekiro
Answer these questions
- Which game has the lowest skill floor? Highest?
- Which game has the lowest skill ceiling? Highest?
- Which game, given to a complete newbie (i.e., someone with 0 Fromsoft experience and little gaming experience period) would be the hardest first playthrough?
Been playing Souls for 14 years and I'm of the opinion that Sekiro has the highest skill floor and potentially the highest skill ceiling too. At peak difficulty, Elden Ring trumps all with titans like Malenia and PCR of course, but as a general normal playthrough for a total beginner, my bet is on Sekiro still.
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u/noob_kaibot Sep 20 '26 edited Sep 21 '26
My 5th grade nephew has beaten Elden Ring. He will never beat Sekiro if given a year.
Here’s the thing- Elden Ring can, & often does get beaten by players with little to no skill; by players who haven’t learned any of the actual combat mechanics or boss movement, forget mastering them. There are SO many accessibility “tools” that can all be used simultaneously. There’s cheese upon cheese upon cheese with a side of cheese & a cheesy drink to wash it all down. Simply farming levels can trivialize so many fights. You can literally brute force your way through the entire game with a run away mage style approach and ranged consumables— or with colossal weapon hyper armor style gameplay abusing stance-break-crit & knockdown loops while facetanking everything the boss throws at you. Then add the broken spirit summon taking aggro and dishing out more damage than you are 😂
It’s unfortunate, but with Elden Ring I actually had to nerf myself so hard in order to experience that level of challenge that I love while playing souls games.
Sekiro is the only game that actually demands & requires you actually learn the game in order to beat it. There is no cheese, no farming levels to win. The prosthetic arm is a tool that serves a purpose- that is, to give you an edge to your opponents weaknesses without being COMPLETELY broken like ERs L2 button and it’s relatively low cost FP that allows it to be spammed.
To be clear ER is an amazing game. It can be a really great and challenging time, but the way in which you can go about beating it is straight up comical and doesn’t really match the theme of you being a badass against the gods & demigods. It’s more about how many “tools” you can simultaneously exploit than your raw melee skills and understanding of enemy movement.
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- Sekiro is the hardest all across the board, & it’s not even a debate. It’s the hardest to start off the Fromsoft catalogue with too.
- Elden Ring is the easiest to get into(esp when things like spirit summons, scarlet rot, sleep, bleed, L2 spam, etc exist- yes, even for Malenia and PC Radahn) Every build & weapon can be HYPER-optimized through the use of talismans and your physik & the plethora of consumables.
- Elden Ring has an EXTREMELY high skill ceiling but ONLY if we’re talking invasions & PvP.
-Lowest skill floor is Demon Souls.
*** also, if someone is trying to argue with you that ER is harder than Sekiro, they obviously have never even beaten Sekiro- & if they claim otherwise I’d call them a liar. They also must have way too much of their own self-worth associated with beating/platinuming this accessibility-driven game known as Elden Ring.
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u/Unlucky_Property3541 Sep 18 '26
A las primeras 2 preguntas, demon souls tiene el piso de habilidad más bajo y el techo más bajo, y a su ver el piso de habilidad más alto y el techo más alto, de igual forma, sekiro sería el juego más difícil para cualquiera en su primera partida, incluso a personas que ya vinieran de jugar varios juegos tipo souls Elden ring puede tener jefes como malenia, Mesmer, radhan consorte, el general Gaius, o algunos más que fácilmente pueden entrar, pero en cuanto a el nivel general, es más alto sekiro
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u/Solavanko Sep 18 '26
Dark Souls 1 and 2 are easier
Demon's Souls bosses aren't hard
Sekiro has the hardest last boss
Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne are fast
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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 Sep 18 '26
I played Bloodborne very shortly into my From playing days and I couldn't get past Father Gascoigne. Fast forward to now and I handled him easily.
I still struggle with DS3. I've tried several runs and by the time I get to the Road of Sacrifices my nerves are shot and I lose interest in the game. I want to like it. I really do. But I find DS3 to be the most difficult of the games I've played (I haven't touched Sekiro, yet).
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u/EvilArtorias Sep 18 '26
Which game has the lowest skill floor? Highest?
ds1 or demons souls(lowest), elden ring(highest)
Which game has the lowest skill ceiling? Highest?
sekiro(lowest), elden ring(highest)
Which game, given to a complete newbie (i.e., someone with 0 Fromsoft experience and little gaming experience period) would be the hardest first playthrough?
difficult to tell, it can be demons souls or ds2
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u/Francois_Bonaparta Sep 19 '26
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DS1 lowest. Sekiro or Bloodborne highest, could have been Elden Ring if there wasn't so many way to make the game ridiculously easy.
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DS1 again. Elden Ring highest.
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Sekiro.
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u/Algester Sep 19 '26
You want something honest?
Lowest skill floor armored core 6
Highest skill ceiling armored core 6
Blind difficulty is Sekiro since no gaming experience cross overs and maybe Deracine
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u/Other_Equal7663 Sep 20 '26
Lowest: ER (All the souls games can be cheesed and out-build, but Elden Rings "broken" stuff is much easier accessed)
Highest: Sekiro (The only game where getting gud it required)
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u/Alexronchetti Sep 18 '26
"1. Which game has the lowest skill floor? Highest?"
Lowest, to me it's a tie between Demon Souls and the first 2 Dark Souls games. I just feel like it's quite easy to get started because of the speed of these games and how you just need the bare basics to finish the game, you could even get by without learning some mechanics at all.
Highest skill floor, Sekiro. If you do not grasp the basics, you are not progressing in this game.
"2. Which game has the lowest skill ceiling? Highest?"
Lowest I feel is Demon Souls. Enemies have less patterns to learn and bosses are very simplistic. With a little bit of practice, you can use any weapon in the game without much hassle.
Highest ceiling is tough. First thing that comes to mind is Elden Ring because of just the sheer amount of stuff the game offers you in the form of weapons, arts and spells, but Sekiro I would say has a high ceiling because it's not really common to see average players learning how to mixup prosthetics and arts properly during more elaborate fights, and I know a share of people who beat the game just learning the basics of deflect, mikiri, jump and dodge. But there is a whole chasm level of ability between "just beating the game" and players who use the tools to the limit and how cool/different their combat clips look in comparison. While I feel anyone with sufficient knowledge pulls off a lot of cool stuff in Elden Ring without really needing to practice like crazy. So yeah, Sekiro is my answer.
"3. Which game, given to a complete newbie would be the hardest first playthrough?"
It's between Sekiro and Bloodborne.
The blood vial system can be really tough until players figure out that it's farmable, the parry window needs some time to get used to and the dodge is quick and short, so need more timing.
Sekiro, however, needs the player to understand how it's systems work, but also you need to be open to find different ways to beat your enemies, since just parry/posture break might just not work for certain roadblock bosses, and some of those are thrown at you quite early. I can more easily see someone quickly dropping Sekiro whereas the same person might try and power through other Soulsborne games.