FromSoftware took a big swing in 2009 with Demon's Souls, an action RPG that threw players into a world with little instruction, forcing them to master a grueling combat system far removed from the traditional hack 'n' slash that so many were used to.
It was such a bold move that Sony remained unconvinced that it would work and outright refused to publish the game in the West, leaving Atlus and Bandai Namco to pick up the slack. But it was nothing new for the studio, as its debut game in 1994 was just as lax about genre conventions, and there were concerns even then that throwing out the rulebook might be too alienating. But, as with Demon's Souls, that didn't stop them.
"We were worried, but at the same time, we genuinely didn't know how people would react," longtime FromSoft developer Shinichiro Nishida said of King's Field, a first-person dungeon crawler that would later inspire the Souls series (via GamesRadar+). "We weren't expecting people to just freeze up after being dropped into the game... I mean, you can swing your sword, you'll figure it out."
In fact, King's Field was arguably more opaque than FromSoftware's later games, as...
