I recently wrote about how I turned my Steam Deck into a PS2 which has let me try out games I never had the chance to play when I was younger. As a kid, my gaming habits were dictated by my dad who would show me titles he'd worked on like Midnight, Driver San Francisco, and Wheelman, as well as his up-and-coming favourites like Prince of Persia and God of War. That meant I missed the boat on Silent Hill and Resident Evil. If I never played the classics, I was never going to see anything niche.
Now that I have a Dark Souls tattoo and over 1,000 hours across FromSoftware’s modern games, it felt right to look back at its history. But when I got stuck into Kuon on the PS2, a Silent Hill-like survival horror in which you fight demons in the abandoned night-lit gardens of Fujiwara Manor, my interest in From’s journey faded. All I want now is to see FromSoftware return to horror, a genre it hasn’t touched in decades.
In 2009, FromSoft released Demon’s Souls, a PS3 exclusive that led to a decade of Souls-likes, culminating in two Game of the Year awards and millions of copies sold. No wonder FromSoft stuck with its new genre. It’s taken over ten years for it to finally deviate from the formula with Armored Core 6, returning to the action-packed frenzy of mech shooters. But already people are looking past it to the future of Souls-likes—Elden Ring 2, Bloodborne 2, a Bloodborne remake, Dark Souls 4, something new altogether but, ultimately, still Soulsborne.
It’s a waste of FromSoft’s potential, a company that is now renowned for one thing when it has historically excelled at many different genres. Kuon masterfully crafts an unsettling atmosphere rivalling the foggy streets of Silent Hill, demons lurking around corners as you follow trails of blood left by giggling twins. The thumping of the monsters’ presence grows more intense as you edge closer, finding them shrouded by the shadowy tendrils of the night, always reaching toward you like grasping hands, only held off by the safety of a flimsy lantern.
Atmosphere is something FromSoft still crafts meticulously, usually depicting civilisations that have crumbled into ruin. Horror was an avenue for it to explore these themes on a much more personal level. We aren’t an unstoppable valiant knight, but someone swept up in horrors far beyond their capabilities. That vulnerability in the face of similarly empty areas, filled only with unnatural villains, radically shifts the tone from what we’re used to with FromSoft.
We’ve seen elements of this horror trickle into its modern games like Bloodborne, which embraces Lovecraftian eldritch nightmares to tackle more existential themes. But Kuon still stands out as completely unique from anything From has done since. Even though you can cast fireballs and summon wolves, you’re weak and frail, only a few mistakes away from death. You’re slower, more clumsy, and less agile. Crouching under a bridge to reach safety is a cumbersome task, and even just running too much puts you at risk. Dark Souls allows you to perfectly defend yourself with exact mechanics in most situations, while Kuon makes an effort to have you feel unsafe despite a means to defend yourself. Souls games make you a warrior capable of killing Gods, but even a simple ghost is a threat in Kuon.
It’s a must-play for horror fans, but the chances of seeing From doing anything similar today are slim. Double-A games are on the decline as budgets and development times balloon, and we’re seeing fewer developers take risks as a whole. As masterful as Elden Ring is, it’s still part of a safe formula From has been banking on for years. And given its own success, From is unlikely to deviate anytime soon, leaving Armored Core 6 an outlier.
Looking back, FromSoft developed dungeon crawlers like Shadow Tower, puzzle games like The Adventures of Cookie & Cream, hack and slashes like Yoshitsune Eiyūden, mech simulators like Chromehounds, and even an Animal Crossing-like Monster Hunter spin-off. Now it’s the Soulsborne company, a reputation that has even bled into discussions around Armored Core 6 as many expect to see the qualities of Elden Ring and Dark Souls plastered onto ill-fitted mech shooting.
It needs to shed that reputation and branch out again or it runs the risk of diluting a genre that is already filled with copycats like Lies of P, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Lords of the Fallen. What better way to do that than to tap into a genre it has shown that it can craft as well as the icons?