Best Souls-Like games

88 ELO points separate Elden Ring from Dark Souls 3 at the top of the Souls-Like ranking, after 1883 duels.

The gap between ranks 1 and 2 is the sharpest divide in the ranking. Elden Ring commands 1540 ELO points and wins 77% of its duels, a dominance that leaves Dark Souls 3 trailing at 1452 ELO despite its own 66% win rate. Bloodborne sits third at 1433 ELO, just 19 points behind Dark Souls 3, while Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Dark Souls round out the top 5. The bottom tells a different story: Ashen languishes at rank 11 with 847 ELO and a 20% win rate across 89 duels, barely ahead of The Surge at 902 ELO and The Surge 2 at 959 ELO. The community clearly draws a hard line between FromSoftware's canonical entries and the genre's imitators.

The ranking draws from 1883 duels submitted by 63 players across 11 contenders, updated on 11 October 2026. Whether you champion the open-world ambition of Elden Ring or hold out for the gothic horror of Bloodborne, your vote shapes the hierarchy. Head to VAINKEURZ to settle your own duels and shift the standings.

Updated on October 11, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →