…but worse

Kidding! Haha! No, I’m not kidding, sorry. Even as a hardcore FromSoftware fan, if Dark Souls 2 was a person and I was a snot-nosed 5-year-old, I would be doing some booger-flicking in its direction. Trust me. That said, if you’re willing to look past the game’s lethargic mechanics and enemies that are somehow able to smell you from 10,000 fucking miles away, I don’t think this is a bad FromSoftware game to try if it’s your first after Elden Ring. Dark Souls 2 is the longest in the series and has 42 bosses if you’re counting its DLC, but Elden Ring taught you how to savor the long haul. You will, however, need to learn to love Dark Souls 2’s truly putrid textures (sorry!), but other than that, it’s a massive, difficult game waiting for you to mine its fields of crystalline lore.

These are just a few games I’m thinking of revisiting now that Elden Ring has me feeling all medieval, but there’s always more knighthood to be gained and horse content to be whinnied. What games has Elden Ring inspired you to play recently?

Updated, 5/11/22, 1:45 p.m. ET: The headline of this post was changed to correctly reflect the number of games on the list.