You can honestly start wherever without missing out on too much, but DS1 is still a great starting point since it lays the foundation for some lore stuff that's explored more later in the series. That's only if you're okay with it being a lot more clunky and slower paced due to it's age though.
If you're willing to risk the money or have a safe way to get it for free, Elden Ring might actually be the best one to start with. It has a few good QOL updates and if you get hard-stuck on a boss you can almost always go explore somewhere else much more easily than in DS. Also the story and lore are brand new so it doesn't matter if you've played the other fromsoft games.
Elden Ring is probably the most accessible of them, with a lot more room to just go and do things without crawling through punishing dungeons first. It also has a downright ridiculous number of bosses that range in difficulty from barely more than a trash mob to ludicrously difficult - the very first two bosses you see are pretty high on that scale, though neither needs to be beaten.
There's also considerable QoL changes like the ability to just teleport straight to any of your discovered sites of grace (checkpoints where you can level up, basically) and more resources that revolve around capacity instead of finite resources (a big strength of the series is the whole "estus flask" mechanic where you get X many healing pots per rest so that if you're bashing your head against a boss or tough area you're not burning a resource that you'll eventually run out of or will have to go and farm just to heal, and elden ring sort of expands that mechanic to throwables and a general buff pot).
It still has a lot of the fundamental problems with the other games, like a camera that's one of your deadliest enemies and a bunch of really fucking awful control decisions like aggressive camera tethering and making your dodge happen on button release instead of press, but everything they do well it does as well or better (except for some things in Sekiro, which mechanically made a ton of mechanical improvements that should have been kept on but which were ditched instead).
The good news is that it doesn't really matter which game you play first because there isn't a particularly continuous story between each one. There's a development of themes, to be sure, and references to the previous games in the series dotted around, but you won't miss too much. They're in chronological order but there is, to be purposefully vague, a focus on the idea of endlessly repeating cycles, so that doesn't overly matter.
DS1 is a kinda rough game to be your first game because, despite the sense of superiority its fans give it over the other titles, it does have some flaws that are rectified by the later games. Performance issues in some areas, wildly broken metas in multiplayer (though later titles never fundamentally address this issue, only bandage some parts), and in my experience, it's quite easy to get lost or wonder what you're meant to do next, especially if you don't have great memory or don't note down the location of every locked door you find. But that is counterbalanced by the "non-linearity" of the environment, at least in the sense that you theoretically have a lot of choice in where you can go. In practice, the enemies just being too strong in certain areas that you can access from almost the beginning limits you a great deal, but even so. Start here if you want to have a more complete understanding of the lore and are fine with a fair amount of challenge in exploration and navigating the world, and like having lots of ways to go.
DS2 is a black sheep as it was developed by a different group of people, and so while it receives a lot of criticism online, I think that's mellowed out over time. I only actually finished it a year or so ago and I really enjoyed it. It's actually probably the least linear game in the series on a technicality, but that won't matter to you. It certainly has its flaws, including a... controversial rolling i-frame system, but it's also the most... goofy? game in the series, at least for me. Still has the dark and gritty atmosphere and all that but it's also got comically large swords and weird armor sets. It also allows you to warp between bonfires right from the beginning, that is, checkpoints, which massively simplifies world exploration. Start here if you want a slightly more modern experience than DS1 and want to use swords that look impossible to even hold, and don't mind a bit of floatiness and jankiness every now and then.
DS3 is, as you might imagine, a more modernized Dark Souls game and developed by the same people that made DS1. It's really got a combination of things from both of its predecessors - there's a lot more references to DS1 than in DS2, but also has e.g. the ability to warp between bonfires from the beginning, which is super convenient. It's seen as quite non-linear, and that is to some extent true - it has some arbitrary roadblocks set up in some areas and it's very likely that you'll go down the same paths at the same times as other players, with only a few real crossroads. But I still think it's got a good balance of having a choice between where to go, and a progression path that is fairly clear to follow. It's my favourite of the three games and while every Souls games has awesome DLC, I think the DS3 DLC, in combination, are at or near the very top in my opinion. Start here if you want a more modernized experience with better graphics and QoL, and don't mind not being able to go down every path for as long as you can survive it without roadblocks.
The most important thing to know about Dark Souls 2 going in is that the Adaptability trait controls how many i-frames you get when rolling and you need to at least hit the first break-point at 12 points of adaptability to get 11 i-frames on your roll.
Really good imo. If you're a fan of Dark Souls you'll probably love it. If Dark Souls isn't your thing Elden Ring probably won't be either.
i've never played a souls game, if im interested should i start from DS1 and try to plow thru or is there a better title for beginners?
You can honestly start wherever without missing out on too much, but DS1 is still a great starting point since it lays the foundation for some lore stuff that's explored more later in the series. That's only if you're okay with it being a lot more clunky and slower paced due to it's age though.
If you're willing to risk the money or have a safe way to get it for free, Elden Ring might actually be the best one to start with. It has a few good QOL updates and if you get hard-stuck on a boss you can almost always go explore somewhere else much more easily than in DS. Also the story and lore are brand new so it doesn't matter if you've played the other fromsoft games.
Elden Ring is probably the most accessible of them, with a lot more room to just go and do things without crawling through punishing dungeons first. It also has a downright ridiculous number of bosses that range in difficulty from barely more than a trash mob to ludicrously difficult - the very first two bosses you see are pretty high on that scale, though neither needs to be beaten.
There's also considerable QoL changes like the ability to just teleport straight to any of your discovered sites of grace (checkpoints where you can level up, basically) and more resources that revolve around capacity instead of finite resources (a big strength of the series is the whole "estus flask" mechanic where you get X many healing pots per rest so that if you're bashing your head against a boss or tough area you're not burning a resource that you'll eventually run out of or will have to go and farm just to heal, and elden ring sort of expands that mechanic to throwables and a general buff pot).
It still has a lot of the fundamental problems with the other games, like a camera that's one of your deadliest enemies and a bunch of really fucking awful control decisions like aggressive camera tethering and making your dodge happen on button release instead of press, but everything they do well it does as well or better (except for some things in Sekiro, which mechanically made a ton of mechanical improvements that should have been kept on but which were ditched instead).
The good news is that it doesn't really matter which game you play first because there isn't a particularly continuous story between each one. There's a development of themes, to be sure, and references to the previous games in the series dotted around, but you won't miss too much. They're in chronological order but there is, to be purposefully vague, a focus on the idea of endlessly repeating cycles, so that doesn't overly matter.
DS1 is a kinda rough game to be your first game because, despite the sense of superiority its fans give it over the other titles, it does have some flaws that are rectified by the later games. Performance issues in some areas, wildly broken metas in multiplayer (though later titles never fundamentally address this issue, only bandage some parts), and in my experience, it's quite easy to get lost or wonder what you're meant to do next, especially if you don't have great memory or don't note down the location of every locked door you find. But that is counterbalanced by the "non-linearity" of the environment, at least in the sense that you theoretically have a lot of choice in where you can go. In practice, the enemies just being too strong in certain areas that you can access from almost the beginning limits you a great deal, but even so. Start here if you want to have a more complete understanding of the lore and are fine with a fair amount of challenge in exploration and navigating the world, and like having lots of ways to go.
DS2 is a black sheep as it was developed by a different group of people, and so while it receives a lot of criticism online, I think that's mellowed out over time. I only actually finished it a year or so ago and I really enjoyed it. It's actually probably the least linear game in the series on a technicality, but that won't matter to you. It certainly has its flaws, including a... controversial rolling i-frame system, but it's also the most... goofy? game in the series, at least for me. Still has the dark and gritty atmosphere and all that but it's also got comically large swords and weird armor sets. It also allows you to warp between bonfires right from the beginning, that is, checkpoints, which massively simplifies world exploration. Start here if you want a slightly more modern experience than DS1 and want to use swords that look impossible to even hold, and don't mind a bit of floatiness and jankiness every now and then.
DS3 is, as you might imagine, a more modernized Dark Souls game and developed by the same people that made DS1. It's really got a combination of things from both of its predecessors - there's a lot more references to DS1 than in DS2, but also has e.g. the ability to warp between bonfires from the beginning, which is super convenient. It's seen as quite non-linear, and that is to some extent true - it has some arbitrary roadblocks set up in some areas and it's very likely that you'll go down the same paths at the same times as other players, with only a few real crossroads. But I still think it's got a good balance of having a choice between where to go, and a progression path that is fairly clear to follow. It's my favourite of the three games and while every Souls games has awesome DLC, I think the DS3 DLC, in combination, are at or near the very top in my opinion. Start here if you want a more modernized experience with better graphics and QoL, and don't mind not being able to go down every path for as long as you can survive it without roadblocks.
The most important thing to know about Dark Souls 2 going in is that the Adaptability trait controls how many i-frames you get when rolling and you need to at least hit the first break-point at 12 points of adaptability to get 11 i-frames on your roll.