5 Best FromSoftware Games That Aren’t Soulsbornes

FromSoftware has become known for its excellent Soulsborne games. From Dark Souls to Bloodborne to Sekiro, the developer has continued to innovate on that style, culminating in Elden Ring, which used a massive open world to push the genre further than ever. FromSoft has been rewarded for all that work with massive sales numbers that will likely only increase as the developer iterates on the Elden Ring‘s success. However, FromSoft’s catalog isn’t just Soulsborne games, especially when you dig deep into the early days of FromSoft’s existence.

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Here are five great FromSoft games that don’t share much DNA with Dark Souls and its many sequels and spinoffs.

The Adventures of Cookie & Cream is such a strange game to have in your catalog alongside Dark Souls and Bloodborne. This kid-friendly action-adventure game looks totally different from anything else FromSoftware has ever made, but don’t let that fool you. The iconic developer didn’t waste a chance to innovate.

Cookie & Cream is a relatively straightforward PS2 action-adventure game when you’re playing by yourself. Technically, it stays that way in multiplayer, but there’s an in-game option to turn on two-player, one-controller mode. This forces you both onto a single controller, with half of it controlling your character. It was a wild innovation at the time that has since become a fan-favorite niche in the speedrunning community.

4) Echo Night

Echo Night was FromSoft’s entry into the horror-adventure game market in 1998. It’s not quite as spooky as most of the survival horror games of the era (think Resident Evil or Silent Hill). Still, it makes up for it with a weird story that takes you onto a ship that mysteriously disappeared and might just have a possessed serial killer stalking its deck.

You play as a man named Richard who is exploring his father’s house to try to figure out what happened to him. Through that, he is eventually transported to that fateful ship and meets the many ghosts who still call it home. Some of these souls you can save, but quite a few of them will attack on sight. It’s safe to say these malevolent spirits would not get along with Casper. Echo Night isn’t for everyone, but if it suits you, there are two other games of various quality you can check out.

3) Lost Kingdoms

FromSoftware has never been afraid to get weird with it. Lost Kingdoms might be the best example of that because this GameCube-only game mixes real-time RPG combat with card battling. See, protagonist Katia can’t actually do any fighting herself. Instead, she needs to earn cards that she can then send into battle against her enemies.

It’s kind of like a mix of Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh. You can capture some of your opponents as cards and then use them in future battles. There’s also an element wheel to master and a multiplayer mode where you can test your deck of monsters against a buddy. Lost Kingdoms performed well enough to earn a sequel, but both games are unfortunately still stuck on the GameCube as of 2026.

2) King’s Field 4

There are four mainline King’s Field games and the two Shadow Tower quasi-spin-offs, so players have plenty to choose from. That said, King’s Field 4 is generally seen as the best of the bunch. It’s the first game on the PlayStation 2, which means it looks much better than the first three.

Plus, the first-person dungeon-crawling is at its best. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still the slow and methodical gameplay King’s Field is known for, but it feels a little less clunky. It’s also neat to go back to because you can see the bones of Demon’s Souls inside King’s Field. Obviously, FromSoft made a ton of improvements and updated the formula, but wading through the primordial ooze of the developer’s future is a neat experience.

1) Armored Core 6

Armored Core 6 might be cheating slightly, but I’m willing to take the hit. The Armored Core series has had six mainline games and several spin-offs since the first game launched in 1997. The mech-based games have massive boss battles like Dark Souls, but that’s pretty much where the series similarities end.

See, AC6 (and its predecessors) toss aside the massive, interconnected worlds of Dark Souls and its like. Instead, players move from one relatively quick mission to the next. You’re also not using parry-heavy combat in most battles. Instead, Armored Core 6 is all about pushing your mech’s weaponry to its maximum.

The more damage you can deal, the better chance you’ll have at survival. You can’t just hide behind a shield and poke at the boss. You have to meet its firepower with your own if you want to come out of a mission alive.

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