Hidetaka Miyazaki's personal favourite From games are Dark Souls and Bloodborne, which still isn't on PC by the way

From Software game difficulty chat is in full swing following the release of Elden Ring's Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC, but cannier Soulslikers such as myself and GR’s Hirun Cryer are already leaping and bounding ahead to the next Stage of Review Discourse: which From Software game is bestest? Here to settle the matter once and for all until the next time we post about it is company president Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Asked by CNET to say which of the From Software games he’s worked on is his “favourite child”, Miyazaki correctly answered “first Dark Souls and Bloodborne”. Truly, the perfect reply. Interviewer David Lumb has presumably now retired from journalism, for there are no more worlds to conquer. The only way it would be better is if Miyazaki had added "which is coming to PC soon". He's definitely up for a Bloodborne PC port, musing earlier this month that “any game like that, it'd be nice to have an opportunity for more players to be able to experience that and relive this relic of the past.” The onus is on Bloodborne's publisher Sony, it seems, to give the project the greenlight.

Ever the diplomat, Miyazaki qualified his initial response with "of course, I love them all". But grotty old Lordran and Yharnam are the gameworlds he appears to look back on mostly fondly, inasmuch as anybody looks fondly at a Souls game, even if they haven't reached quite as many people as From's later works. "On a very personal level, I would say, first Dark Souls and Bloodborne left a very big impression on me,” Miyazaki told CNET. "As a company, Elden Ring put us in a completely different league, so that was a huge milestone for the company."

As for From Software games Miyazaki hasn't worked on, he singled out 1995 action-RPG King's Field 2 for praise (a little surprisingly, he didn’t mention Armored Core). I like King’s Field games myself. There’s a rich vein of latter-day retro indie dungeon crawlers inspired by the series - Lunacid is a recent doozie.

We haven’t ever published a list of the best From Software games, possibly because doing so would be akin to making a shark-diving cage out of mackerel, but we have done a list of the best Soulslikes. It was last refreshed in 2021, and could probably do with an update.

I have been trying to think of an elegant way to mention that Miyazaki has an actual child and that being a father might influence his future games, but I am now tired and irritable. Please just pretend I have cleverly inserted this bit into one of the paragraphs above.