Summary
WhileFromSoftwaregained its international prominence with the Dark Souls series, the developer has been making games for decades, starting back in the 1990’s. And over those years, quite a few games have come out. As the years have went on, more and more of those games have become multi-platform.
Not all of them, though. Bloodborne is far from the only console-exclusive game FromSoftware has made, and you might be surprised to learn just how many Xbox games the studio has created. Turns out, Armored Core isn’t the only mech game FromSoftware made, either. They’re just all exclusive to Xbox.
With many Japanese games often made solely on PlayStation due to its prominence in the region, only games that are explicitly exclusive to the platform will be listed here.
There are a duo of Lost Kingdoms games, released in 2002 and 2003 respectively. These games were exclusive to the GameCube, and used a rather uniquecard-based battling system, but in real-time. In the original, you played as the character Katia as she works to save the land from a mysterious fog, capturing monster to turn them into cards along the way.
The sequel takes place generations later, and introduces the ability to boost your cards to make them even stronger in exchange for a higher summoning cost. It’s a fun idea, even if it’s not one that was executed perfectly in all regards. It also had a multiplayer mode if you really wanted to put your deck to the test.
Another 2002 release, Murakumo: Renegade Mech Pursuit marks the first game FromSoftware made on the Xbox, though also the third mech series it created. From loves a good mech game. The game’s name is a pretty good indication of what it’s all about, too. You are a mech chasing down other mechs.
Visually, it’s quite a striking game for 2002, and the high-speed of the chases are something of a visual treat, feeling closer to an early arcade game. That said, it is a fairly simplistic game compared to the more methodical approach and high customisability of the Armored Core series.
Released in 2002 and 2003 respectively just like Lost Kingdoms, Otogi was another set of Xbox exclusives. These games were full-on action games from a third-person perspective. In them, you play as Raikoh Minamoto as he dives into the Underworld to purge the demons trying to escape into reality.
In the game, you can use multiple different types of weapons across four categories, with the same being true of magic. One of the more interesting systems is how health and magic works. HP only restores up to the point of a health orb shattering, and magic is used to sustain your HP. Meaning the more MP you use, the higher the chance your HP will stop regenerating, and eventually dwindling entirely.
The Otogi games can both still be played on modern Xbox consoles, digitally or physically,through backwards compatibility.
Another mech game and another Xbox game, Metal Wolf Chaos was released in 2004 exclusively in Japan. In it, you play the president of the United States as he pilots a mech to stop a military coup by his Vice President while he threatens to destroy America by nuclear destruction. Typical American activities, as it were.
Metal Wolf Chaos is a level-based game, though the money you acquire between levels remains, allowing you to purchase new weapons to equip to your mech as you work to save the United States. It is a genuinely great game that understand the absurdity of the premise.
It was also later released as Metal Wolf Chaos XD 15 years later in the West by Devolver Digital.
You would be shocked to hear that FromSoftware’s first exclusive game on the Xbox 360 was once again another mech game. Chromehounds released in 2006, and takes place in a fictional region around the Black Sea. You play as a mercenary group, using a highly customisable mech as you advance through multiple different campaigns that can be played in any order.
A more unique aspect of the game was its online mode where every player fights to achieve victory for one of the three regions within the game. Wars were fought over a large shared map, with players clawing sections into their own domain for supremacy. It was a great idea, though one that was short-lived, with the servers shut down four years after release.
7Shadow Assault: Tenchu
Xbox 360
If you’ve ever played a Tenchu game before, then know that Shadow Assault: Tenchu is nothing like any of them. The ownership rights for Tenchu have been swapped around quite a bit, though they have primarily been in the hnads of FromSoftware. Shadow Assault is they first game developed by the studio itself, and also the worst in the series.
Shadow Assault is a tactics game played on a grid. Enemies follow set paths, and you must place traps and the like for them to run into to complete each level. It’s an incredibly simple concept, and not really representative of any aspect of Tenchu. It was also exclusive to the Xbox 360 in Japan, a region where the console sold very little. Odd choices all around.
After making Shadow Assault: Tenchu for the Xbox 360, there was only one logical jump from there -make another Xbox 360 exclusive, but this time styled after Ninja Gaiden. Jumping from stealth to action, Ninja Blade was undeniably a more inspired game, but that doesn’t by itself make it an inherently good game.
There is fun to be had here, but it ultimately pales in comparison to its inspirations without much to help it stand out, and was riddled with bugs and quick-time events. Internally, it was known as Otogi 3 for quite a while, with those previous Xbox exclusives being the foundation for many of its systems.
iHere is the moment in which you can retrospectively see FromSoftware’s entire future laid bare. The second game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki after Armored Core 4, Demon’s Souls faced quite a few issues along the way to the finishing line, such as consistent misleading of Sony to get the game published in the vision FromSoftware sought.
Demon’s Souls is more than just the blueprint for future Souls games, but is an incredible game in its own right. It understood that bosses could be more than just movesets, but interesting gimmicks that genuinely required to think. It wasn’t afraid top subvert you, even if those ideas didn’t always land. It was a pure experience, and a foundation for what was to come.
With the fame of Dark Souls still quite recent, FromSoftware still pursued other games across other genres, and created a brand-new entry in a pre-existing series with Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. Shocking no one, it was an Xbox 360 exclusive mech game, though this time as a kinect-exclusive experience as well.
That went about as well as you’d expect. The idea was great - less about the power fantasy of a mech, it was you and a crew methodically pilotting it as a team. This great idea was hampered by the fact that Kinect was very bad at picking up your actual motions and voice commands. So there was a great game there, you just had to shout very loudly to find it.
Will there ever be a console-exclusive game quite as coveted as Bloodborne. FromSoftware struck gold with this one, creating a game that manages to both differentiate itself from Dark Souls in style and gameplay, and creates a narratively deep setting that is still being plundered for meaning. It is a fast-paced game, but one that is willing to incorporate gameplay friction for the cohesion of its setting.
It is one of the few PlayStation titles that also has not either made it’s way to PC yet or gotten a PS5 version. It has attained an oddly mythical quality for no real reason. Bloodborne is a real game that is still attainable. But it is locked to the PS4, seemingly in perpetuity.
