FromSoftware

Studio FromSoftware, Inc. is responsible for giving us some of modern gaming's most influential titles. Their forays into atmospheric, Gothic horror worlds with a stellar difficulty level - the Dark Souls games, their prequel Demon's Souls, and the spiritually similar Bloodborne - have inspired many other studios and developers, who've credited FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki’s influence on them in terms of world design, or attention to the myriad details that make a good video game fight tick. The battles in Dark Souls and its related games are notoriously difficult - and immensely rewarding - to the point of making ""a Dark Souls-like difficulty"" a well-known turn of phrase amongst reviewers and fans.

Dark Souls and Demon's Souls elevated FromSoftware’s global profile as a studio, but these aren’t the only titles worth your time: the studio’s preference for hardcore gaming in dark settings also defined earlier releases like Armored Core, Otogi and the Tenchu games.