From Demon’s Souls to Elden Ring: Inside FromSoftware’s approach to brutal video game difficulty

When it comes to difficult video games, Elden Ring developer FromSoftware is nearly synonymous with the term. From Elden Ring in 2022 to the Dark Souls trilogy, the series’ first iteration Demon’s Souls in 2009, and 2015’s Bloodborne, the studio has long been known for creating games filled with tough enemies and punishing boss fights that demand careful strategy, pattern recognition, and memorization.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of many of these titles (including Elden Ring) has explained that difficulty alone is not the studio’s goal. Instead, FromSoftware aims to design challenges that feel fair to the player. The ideal outcome, Miyazaki has said, is for players to reflect on a defeat and think, “Yes, that death makes sense,” rather than feeling confused or unfairly frustrated.

Elden Ring/FromSoftware

“I know we get a lot of credit saying that our games are difficult, but it’s not a matter of simply cranking up the difficulty; it’s doing so fairly,” Miyazaki said in an interview with Game Informer (paywalled). “When players are killed and they can understand why they were killed in an instance, and it feels justified, that makes sense. That’s the game we’re trying to achieve.”

Miyazaki elaborated that while some players may disagree with this philosophy, he and the development team strive to make it clear that every encounter is designed to be approachable through repeated attempts, allowing players to learn from their mistakes and apply that knowledge in subsequent tries in a way that feels fair rather than arbitrary.

“I know a lot of players out there are probably going to disagree: ‘What are you talking about? This game doesn’t make sense! What the heck?'” Miyazaki continued. “But we try to make sure that there is a learning curve and a feedback loop that the players are able to extract that they can bring into the next attempt. We believe in difficult games, but not games that are unjustly or unfairly so.”

Another Crab’s Treasure creative director Caelan Pollock also praised FromSoftware’s approach to challenging game design in the same interview. Pollock noted that while FromSoftware’s difficulty has become influential, he doesn’t believe developers should try to mimic Dark Souls or Elden Ring too closely. In his view, those systems have already been perfected within FromSoftware’s own games, and titles that imitate them too directly often struggle to stand apart or establish a distinct identity.

FromSoftware

“I think calling games ‘Soulslikes’ has kept a lot of devs stuck in a loop of recreating Dark Souls,” Pollock explained. “And in my opinion, the best Dark Souls game has been made already, and it’s called Dark Souls.”

Pollock added, “It’s a deeply imperfect game, and that’s why people like it and why it’s resonated so deeply with players and throughout the industry,” Pollok continued. “I think when you try to mimic every aspect of that experience, you’re really not ending up with something worth paying attention to.”

What do you think of FromSoftware’s approach to brutal video game difficulty? Is the difficulty challenging but not in a frustrating sense because it is applied in a way that makes it feel like the player’s fault and not simply arbitrary? Let us know in the comments.