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You finished Elden Ring. First of all, congratulations. Second, I’m sorry. Because now you have the very specific problem every Tarnished eventually develops: regular games suddenly feel a little too safe, a little too tidy, and a lot too willing to explain themselves. After roaming the Lands Between, surviving absurd boss fights, and getting emotionally drop-kicked by every swamp in existence, you want another game that can deliver that same sense of danger, discovery, and delicious suffering.
The good news is that there are great games to play after Elden Ring. The bad news is that none of them are just “Elden Ring again, but with a fresh coat of moss.” That is actually a good thing. The best follow-up games either sharpen one piece of the formula you already love or push you sideways into something that hits the same pleasure centers in a different way.
Some players want tighter combat. Some want richer gothic atmosphere. Some want another huge world that lets them wander off, make bad decisions, and then somehow call it “build experimentation.” With that in mind, these are the five best games to play after Elden Ring, depending on what part of FromSoftware’s masterpiece grabbed you by the collar and refused to let go.
What Makes a Great Post-Elden Ring Game?
Before we get to the list, it helps to define what most players are really looking for after Elden Ring. It usually comes down to five things: challenging combat, meaningful exploration, memorable bosses, strong worldbuilding, and the thrill of learning a system that initially makes you feel like a complete fool. In other words, you want a game that respects your intelligence, rewards patience, and occasionally causes you to stare at the screen in silence while rethinking your entire life plan.
The games below do not all copy Elden Ring. That would be boring. Instead, each one captures a different slice of the experience. One doubles down on pure swordplay. One gives you the closest thing to “classic Souls comfort food.” One turns aggression into a survival strategy. One proves a non-FromSoftware studio can make a seriously compelling Soulslike. And one offers another giant fantasy adventure where the journey itself keeps pulling you off the road.
1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Best for players who loved mastering combat
If your favorite part of Elden Ring was not the build variety or the open world, but the feeling of finally understanding a boss after getting flattened a dozen times, then Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice should be your next stop. This is the game for people who enjoy that magical moment when panic slowly transforms into rhythm.
Sekiro is much more focused than Elden Ring. There is less role-playing flexibility, fewer ways to over-level your problems into submission, and far less room to cheese your way through fights with a creative spell loadout and a prayer. What you get instead is a cleaner, sharper, almost musical combat system built around deflects, posture breaks, and relentless pressure.
That means every duel feels intensely personal. You are not just chipping away at a health bar. You are reading patterns, forcing mistakes, breaking balance, and learning to stand your ground instead of rolling away like a guilty raccoon. When it clicks, it is one of the most satisfying combat systems in modern gaming.
It also helps that Sekiro moves faster than many Soulslikes. The vertical traversal, stealth options, and prosthetic tools make it feel more nimble and aggressive. So if Elden Ring taught you to love enemy stance breaks and close-range pressure, Sekiro feels like taking that lesson to graduate school, then discovering the final exam is a sword fight on a rooftop during a thunderstorm.
The biggest caveat is simple: Sekiro does not really let you hide from its demands. You either learn the combat properly or you become a very sad shinobi. But if that sounds exciting rather than terrifying, this is arguably the strongest mechanical follow-up to Elden Ring.
2. Dark Souls III
Best for players who want the purest FromSoftware follow-up
If you want something that feels immediately familiar, Dark Souls III is the easiest recommendation on this list. It is not open-world like Elden Ring, but it absolutely carries the same DNA: melancholic fantasy, interconnected tension, brutal boss fights, cryptic storytelling, and that trademark feeling that every hallway may contain either treasure or your next humiliating death.
In many ways, Dark Souls III is the “straight to the source” answer. It has less sprawl, less downtime, and fewer distractions. That makes it a great pick if you enjoyed Elden Ring but occasionally found yourself spending forty-five minutes riding around, picking flowers, and asking why a giant hand was chasing you across a cliff.
What Dark Souls III does brilliantly is momentum. Areas lead to bosses at a more deliberate pace, and the boss lineup remains one of the strongest in the genre. The fights feel dramatic, skill-based, and visually unforgettable, often delivering that perfect FromSoftware mix of dread and admiration. You walk through a fog gate already suspicious, then something horrifying stands up, unfolds six extra limbs, and confirms your worst instincts.
Compared with Elden Ring, the combat feels tighter and more direct. You are not dealing with the same degree of freedom in approach, but that also means the game is excellent at guiding your attention toward its strongest content. It is a curated gauntlet of deadly castles, ruined cities, grotesque monsters, and unforgettable set pieces.
If Elden Ring made you curious about the broader Souls lineage, Dark Souls III is the best place to continue. It is welcoming enough for modern players, punishing enough for veterans, and full of the atmosphere that made FromSoftware legendary long before the Erdtree entered the chat.
3. Bloodborne
Best for players who want faster, meaner, more aggressive combat
Bloodborne is what happens when FromSoftware looks at defensive fantasy combat and says, “That’s cute, but what if we made panic stylish?” It is still unmistakably part of the same family as Elden Ring, yet it pushes the formula in a very different direction.
Instead of encouraging cautious turtling, Bloodborne rewards aggression. Take a hit, dive back in, and you can recover some lost health by immediately striking back. That one decision changes the whole texture of combat. Suddenly, retreating is not always the smartest move. Sometimes the game practically dares you to answer violence with more violence, preferably while wearing a coat dramatic enough to deserve its own billing.
The result is a game that feels urgent, feral, and strangely elegant. The gothic setting of Yharnam is one of the best environments FromSoftware has ever made, packed with dread, mystery, and a creeping sense that things are much worse than they first appear. And in true FromSoftware fashion, they already appeared pretty bad.
If you loved the darker corners of Elden Ring, especially the parts that felt grotesque, haunting, or spiritually unwell, Bloodborne delivers that tone in concentrated form. The world design is denser, the horror elements hit harder, and the weapon design is packed with personality. Trick weapons are still some of the coolest tools in any action RPG, because why carry one weapon when you can carry one weapon that becomes another weapon in the middle of a fight?
Bloodborne is ideal for players who found themselves playing Elden Ring aggressively anyway. If you liked staying close, punishing openings, and turning every boss encounter into a knife fight in a phone booth, this one will feel like home. A cursed, blood-soaked, deeply unhealthy home, but home.
4. Lies of P
Best for players who want a fresh Soulslike that still feels legit
There are a lot of games inspired by FromSoftware. Some are great. Some are fine. Some feel like they were assembled in a laboratory after researchers identified “dodge roll” as a marketable feature. Lies of P, however, is one of the rare Soulslikes that genuinely earns a spot in this conversation.
At first glance, its pitch sounds like a fever dream produced by a very ambitious story meeting: Pinocchio, but make it grim, violent, and mechanically demanding. Against all odds, it works. In fact, it works extremely well.
What makes Lies of P such a smart game to play after Elden Ring is how familiar and distinct it feels at the same time. The bones are recognizable: tough enemies, punishing bosses, careful stamina management, moody worldbuilding, and a steady sense of danger. But it also introduces enough of its own ideas to avoid feeling like a copy. The weapon assembly system lets you mix blades and handles for different move sets, while Legion Arms add tactical variety without overwhelming the core combat.
That combination makes experimentation fun. You still get the satisfaction of tailoring a playstyle, just in a tighter and more curated framework than Elden Ring. The world is also more linear, which is a plus if you want momentum and structure after spending a hundred hours wandering in every direction except the useful one.
Most importantly, Lies of P understands the emotional rhythm of a great Soulslike. It knows when to punish you, when to surprise you, and when to hand you just enough progress to keep you crawling forward. It also nails that lovely genre tradition of making every victory feel earned instead of handed out like a participation ribbon.
If you want another demanding action RPG but feel ready to step outside FromSoftware’s catalog, Lies of P is the safest bet. It is polished, clever, stylish, and more than confident enough to stand beside the games that inspired it.
5. Dragon’s Dogma 2
Best for players who want another giant fantasy adventure
Maybe what you miss most about Elden Ring is not the exact combat system, but the feeling of heading into the unknown and getting pulled into a world that constantly creates stories on the fly. If that is the itch, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the most interesting follow-up on the board.
This is not a Soulslike in the strict sense. It does not play like Dark Souls, and it is not trying to. But it absolutely scratches the “one more hour” open-world fantasy obsession that Elden Ring does so well. You head toward one objective, get distracted by a cave, get attacked by something enormous, barely survive, discover a new path, and somehow it is now 2 a.m. and you are explaining to yourself why sleep is technically optional.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 excels at party-based exploration. The Pawn system gives you AI companions who feel oddly helpful, frequently chatty, and often responsible for the kinds of battlefield chaos that somehow become your favorite memories later. The world is designed to make travel feel eventful, which is a huge part of why it works as a post-Elden Ring recommendation. The road itself matters.
Combat also has a wonderful physicality to it. Large monsters are not just health bars with elbows; they feel like creatures you scramble across, topple, outmaneuver, and survive by improvisation. That gives fights a dynamic quality that feels different from Elden Ring while still delivering the same sense of high-stakes fantasy adventure.
This is the pick for players who loved discovery more than precision. If you want another world that seems happy to let weird things happen to you, and if you enjoy the journey as much as the destination, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a terrific next game.
Which Game Should You Pick First?
If you want the toughest combat test, pick Sekiro. If you want the cleanest continuation of the Souls formula, pick Dark Souls III. If you want speed, aggression, and gothic horror, pick Bloodborne. If you want a newer Soulslike with its own identity, pick Lies of P. And if you mostly want another enormous fantasy adventure to disappear into, pick Dragon’s Dogma 2.
There is no wrong answer here, only different flavors of obsession. The real trick is knowing what part of Elden Ring stayed with you. Was it the duel? The atmosphere? The discovery? The suffering? The answer probably says a lot about you. Possibly too much.
The Post-Elden Ring Experience, Explained
Finishing Elden Ring creates a very particular kind of gaming brain. You stop trusting peaceful landscapes. You look at every ruin like it probably contains either a secret sword or a giant nightmare. You begin to evaluate ladders, elevators, and glowing item drops with the caution of someone who has been emotionally ambushed before. This is why choosing the next game matters so much: you are not just looking for another thing to play. You are looking for somewhere to put all that freshly trained instinct.
That is also why the best games after Elden Ring are not necessarily the ones that imitate it most closely. The magic of Elden Ring is that it creates stories you feel rather than merely remember. The boss that stonewalled you for two nights. The weird cave you found by accident. The field enemy that somehow became a personal nemesis. The time you walked confidently into a new region and were instantly corrected by reality. Great follow-up games create their own versions of those moments.
Sekiro gives you the experience of sharpening your focus until every clash feels intentional. Dark Souls III gives you that old-school pilgrimage through a dying fantasy world where every victory feels carved out by stubbornness. Bloodborne turns fear into fuel and teaches you that sometimes the correct response to getting hit is to become even more dangerous. Lies of P offers the thrill of realizing a newer studio actually understands why this style of game works. And Dragon’s Dogma 2 reminds you that the joy of fantasy role-playing is not always perfect balance or pristine structure; sometimes it is the messy, glorious adventure of seeing what happens next.
There is also an emotional side to all this. Part of loving Elden Ring is loving the feeling of growth. You start out fragile, confused, and underprepared. Hours later, you are still confused, but now you are dangerous. The best games after Elden Ring preserve that sense of earned confidence. They let you struggle, adapt, and slowly become the kind of player who can handle things that once seemed impossible.
And honestly, that is why this genre hooks people so hard. It is not only about difficulty. It is about transformation. A good action RPG gives you stories. A great one changes your posture in your chair. It teaches patience, observation, timing, and occasionally the humility of being flattened by a monster the size of a courthouse.
So yes, the post-Elden Ring slump is real. But it is not permanent. The answer is not to search for a clone that recreates every beat. The answer is to pick the next game that matches the part of the journey you loved most, whether that is sword-on-sword precision, oppressive atmosphere, wild experimentation, or getting lost in a world that seems much bigger than you. In that sense, finishing Elden Ring is not the end of anything. It is just the moment your taste gets more specific, your standards get higher, and your tolerance for suspiciously easy early bosses drops to zero.
That may sound dramatic. But after Elden Ring, a little drama feels appropriate.
Conclusion
The best games to play after Elden Ring are the ones that understand why it worked in the first place. Not every great follow-up needs the same map structure or the same exact combat, but it should offer challenge, discovery, memorable encounters, and a world worth getting lost in. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Dark Souls III, Bloodborne, Lies of P, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 each deliver that in a different way.
If you choose based on the specific part of Elden Ring you loved most, you are far more likely to find your next obsession. And really, that is the dream: a new game that makes you lean forward, stop checking your phone, and say, “Okay, just one more attempt,” until the sun comes up and your responsibilities begin filing formal complaints.
