The Dark souls The series is widely regarded as one of the best game trilogies ever made, and it's easy to see why. The games have everything from exceptional gameplay to incredible world-building, but despite how well-designed many of these elements are, quite a few different mechanics, ideas, and even pieces of lore were actually changed or completely removed over the course of the franchise.
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These highly accessible soulslikes still offer a challenge, although they do so without punishing players as harshly as some of their peers.
Many of the core elements remained intact, with small QoL changes added to make the whole experience flow a little better, but in some cases these changes fundamentally broke the rules that had been outlined and laid out from the start. Whether it's stories or major tweaks to how players engage with the world, it's very clear that FromSoftware was more than happy to change its vision in almost every way imaginable.
Just to be clear, breaking established rules isn't always a bad thing.
Rearrange the cases in the correct US release order.
Start
Rearrange the cases in the correct US release order.
Light (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)
Linear level design
No more back tracks
Details:
- DS3 has much fewer branching areas
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Early fast travel for maximum convenience
For anyone who has played Dark souls will know how overwhelming and impressive the level design is. Players can run around the Undead Burg for a minute, then find a path that leads them to the depths, only to return to the beginning several hours later, and this design philosophy is what made the original game so enjoyable for many.
However, as the series progressed, the more open and windy levels became much more linear, with fewer side routes and barely any interconnected areas for players to stumble upon. When DS3 rolled around, the design had gone from a sprawling maze to an almost straight line, removing much of the mystery while making it more accessible to a wider audience, a change that is still questioned to this day.
No Tutorial Boss
Throws you right into the action
Details:
- Dark Souls 2 has no real first boss
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Big enemy instead thought of as a barrier
Tutorials in video games are incredibly important, as players can find it very difficult to jump into a brand new world and know exactly what to do and how to play. The Dark souls Games take a much more active approach to tutorials, thrusting players right into the action, while having the actual controls and gameplay ideas in the form of notes or messages on the ground.
Because of how central bosses are to the franchise, it was particularly odd to see no tutorial boss in it Dark Souls 2except for a large ogre that players are more than welcome to run past. Virtually every other FromSoftware game has some sort of boss enemy as the first major obstacle, but the second part in DS the trilogy omits this entirely, instead letting players choose where to go before giving them a bigger opponent to fully test them.
Undead Logic
Who is dead and who is alive?
Details:
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Some characters live, die or hollow
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The consistency is intermittent
One of the weirdest rules breaks Dark souls is how inconsistent the “Undead” condition actually is. The first game establishes that the Undead will eventually lose their minds and become Hollow after repeated deaths. However, several characters seem to completely ignore this rule, as the condition is dependent on the individual's will to exist and their purpose, which itself is rather vague.
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The inconsistency becomes even more curious when looking at characters like Knight Lautrec or Big Hat Logan, as their descent into madness is not strictly tied to death but to personal obsession or despair, subverting expectations from the Undead state. This suggests that Hollowing is less of a biological rule and more of a narrative metaphor, contradicting the supposedly strict mechanics of the Undead Curse, allowing it to be bent into whatever shape or form suits the current story arc or plot point.
Finite Spawns
No more annoying runbacks
Details:
- DS2 introduced finite spawns
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The only game in the series that defies the constant rebuilding
The enemies in Dark souls universes are known for their high difficulty and constant respawning, ensuring that there is always a threat in the world, whether players are dying or resting by a campfire. It doesn't matter how many times players take down these shells; they always come back for more, though DS2 added an interesting mechanic that completely removes infinity from the equation.
If players kill a single enemy enough times, usually around 12, the mob will just stop playing completely, unless a Bonfire Ascetic is used. It's an odd addition that didn't make it into the next game, and a mechanic that fundamentally changes how certain areas can be approached and tackled, for better or worse.
Relationships over time
All realities at once
Details:
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Time is complicated and sometimes not
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The threads remain constant regardless
The famous line about time being “complicated”. Dark souls implies that the past, present and future worlds overlap, and throughout the series it is very clear that this is the case. According to Solaire, heroes from different eras can briefly cross paths due to this distortion, a convenient explanation for multiplayer mechanics and the presence of summoning signs scattered across Lordran.
But the games often ignore their own rules, as several characters like Anastacia of Astora interact in ways that feel completely linear, as if time works normally, while others manage to jump between eras at will, like the infamous Patches. The result is a world where time is supposedly shattered, but certain events unfold in straightforward sequence, creating a subtle contradiction in the story's internal logic that remains ambiguous all the way to the end of the series.
