Elden Ring’s critic scores compared to its Soulsborne predecessors
In February 2022, FromSoftware’s latest highly anticipated video game released: Elden Ring. The game was met with immediate critical success. On Metacritic, 100% of the site's reviewers scored it at least an 80. On OpenCritic, 98% of reviewers that scored Elden Ring, gave it at least an 80. But how does Elden Ring rank with previous FromSoftware “Soulsborne” titles?
For the Metacritic scores covered below, an average of scores across all platforms was calculated. Comparing these to the OpenCritic scores, they do not differ significantly from critic consensus.
Five titles scored between 80 and 89 on Metacritic, and three titles scored within the same range on OpenCritic. Another five titles scored between 90 and 100 on Metacritic, and five games scored in that range on OpenCritic (neither the original Demon’s Souls nor Dark Souls was scored on OpenCritic).
Demon’s Souls, which released exclusively to the PlayStation 3 platform in 2009, scored an 89 from Metacritic and does not have a published score on OpenCritic.
The original release of Dark Souls received an 89 from Metacritic and does not have a published score on OpenCritic. Again, the average of platform scores does not misrepresent the game’s critical consensus. Both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions received an 89.
The original release of Dark Souls II lands on differing sides of a 90. It received a 91 on Metacritic and an 88 on OpenCritic. As with the original Dark Souls Metacritic score, averaging the platform scores did not pull it up nor down. All three scored platforms assigned it a 91.
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin appears next on both sites, scoring an 85 on Metacritic and an 87 on OpenCritic. Unlike Dark Souls Remastered (included later in this list), Scholar of the First Sin is a port of Dark Souls II created in-house by FromSoftware. According to Philip Kollar of Polygon, “Scholar of the First Sin is a package that will include a revised version of Dark Souls 2 with all three of its downloadable content add-ons plus other new additions.” This version of the game released on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 generation of consoles, but it also carried the title forward to the then-next generation consoles as well as PC.
As with the original Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne released exclusively on a PlayStation platform, launching on PlayStation 4. The game received a 92 on Metacritic and a 91 on OpenCritic.
Dark Souls III presents a divergence of scores between the two websites. The title received an 88 from Metacritic and 90 from OpenCritic. Metacritic’s Dark Souls III scores included the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions of the game. None of those scores eclipsed a 90; instead, the versions scored 89, 89, and 87 respectively.
Dark Souls Remastered scored the lowest across both aggregate websites, receiving an 84 on Metacritic and an 85 on OpenCritic. As a note, FromSoftware did not strictly develop this remaster but oversaw the work of other developers instead. “It has been developed by QLOC (PS4, Xbox One and PC), and Virtuous (the Nintendo Switch), with original developer FromSoftware taking on a supervising role,” wrote IGN’s Lucy O’Brien in a 2018 publication. The game is still included in this list because of FromSoftware’s quality control involvement.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the most recent Soulsborne game developed by FromSoftware prior to Elden Ring, received a 90 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic. To this point, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice presents the most range of Metacritic scoring across the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions. It received an 88, 90, and 91 respectively. The average of these scores totals 89.66 to two decimal places, rounding up to a 90 for the purposes of this article.
Although FromSoftware cannot receive credit for the Demon's Souls 2020 remake on PlayStation 5, the fact that the original title provided Bluepoint Games a strong foundation deserves recognition. The remake received a 92 on Metacritic and received a 90 from OpenCritic. The Metacritic score is three points higher than the original release from 2009.
Finally, Elden Ring released in 2022 to wide acclaim. Launching across multiple platforms, it scored higher than any previous FromSoftware Soulsborne title before it. Metacritic reviews averaged to a 95. OpenCritic reviews landed even slightly higher at a 96.
Despite incorporating an open world for the first time in the "series" history, Elden Ring capitalized on the series' longrunning identity. Andrew Webster of The Verge describes this melding of feature-sets: "Think of it like Dark Souls meets Breath of the Wild, and you’re close. It’s an ambitious premise, but it’s also one Elden Ring more than lives up to." Instead of feeling like an afterthought, many players view the inclusion of the open world as working alongside the previous games' mechanics to create a cohesive experience. "It has everything you’d expect from the developer — deep and challenging combat, complex systems, lore that’s equal parts beautiful and sad — and fuses it with an absolutely gigantic world that you can explore however you like," Webster goes on to write.
Elden Ring is available for purchase on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series platforms.