The 4 best Soulslike games (that weren’t made by the Dark Souls folks)
Finished Elden Ring? Craving more Souls? Let us guide you to the next entries on your quest
Games Features Souls
Eleven years after the release of From Software’s Dark Souls (and in the same year that the company’s Elden Ring blew all of that series’ rewardingly hostile design ideas out into a massive and enthralling open world), the DNA of the franchise has been well and truly disseminated into the gaming corpus. Everywhere you look in the hobby, there are hints of Souls, whether it’s in an embrace of the series’ signature slower-paced combat, a straight-up copy of its beloved risk/reward mechanics—or just a willingness to cheerfully kick players straight in the teeth from time to time.
Nowhere, though, is Souls’ dominance clearer than in the ultimate hallmark of a new type of gaming arriving on the scene: An awkward, dopey bit of nomenclature that warps the name of a dominant title in the genre into an adjective form. And while the From-derived “Soulslike” isn’t as awkward a portmanteau as *shudder* Metroidvania, it also doesn’t tell you much about what you’re getting when imitators attempt to play in this space. After all, Dark Souls and its ilk are really, if you want to get pedantic about it, just action RPGs with some particular design principles operating around combat, exploration, and storytelling. Calling a game a “Soulslike” simply suggests that some, all, or even very little of those ideas and aesthetics have been imported into the new material.
Even so: An increasingly crowded pack. Which is why we’re offering up this little primer, exploring those games that best live up to Dark Souls’ legacy (without actually, y’know, being made by the people who made Dark Souls; hopefully nobody needs to tell you to go play Bloodborne). We’re sticking to a fairly tight, if still arbitrary, definition of “Soulslike” here—excluding, for instance, Team Cherry’s masterful Hollow Knight, on the grounds that it doesn’t play much like Dark Souls, for all that it captures a similar sense of a dying world—and instead focusing on four games that attempt to match the masters on their own turf. And because none of these imitators are going to hit every metric, we’ve divided our picks up by which aspects of the Souls formula each game best serves, and added a few “What to play next” entries if you find yourself still looking for a deeper dive.
10 Comments
I recently went back to Nioh this last week. I’d say one way this series tops the SoulsBorneEldenrings is replayability. The game doesn’t even start until NG+ (and especially NG+++). Whereas in the Souls games it’s nice to go back and play again with your beefed up character, there’s really no reason to do so.
I should get back to Nioh. It was pretty fun (especially once I realized that the game REALLY doesn’t want you to use heavy armor) but something about the aesthetic is just a drag to look at.Also how did Fallen Order not make this list? Or is that a metroidvania first and a Soulslike second?
Dark Souls is more of a metroidvania than Fallen Order is. Fallen Order is more of a pure action game, I guess, but it sure copies the bonfire/enemies respawning mechanic and plays like a floatier Sekiro in some ways. I dunno why it didn’t make the list. Guess they wanted to bring special attention to the 2D games or something cause they rarely get talked about.
Speaking as someone who’s played every single Fromsoft-produced soulsborne to death, I think Nioh’s too hard. I find that game infuriating. It’s all about getting lucky with gear drops at least in the first several hours, since otherwise your garden variety enemies will just up and 1-2 shot you, and the numbers of enemies you have to kill between save points is outrageous compared to DS games. Most bosses seem to be able to be cheesed with spells, but the trash is just infuriating.
Nioh revels in being a more dedicated action title than any FS entry save for Sekiro (and even Sekiro is more on-your-side than Nioh). The limited enemy variety in Nioh 2 is intentional, since as a player, you are expected to learn every enemy’s moveset and attack patterns to not just dodge past, but actively exploit with a wealth of tools at your disposal. Nioh 2 definitely excels over Nioh 1 in giving players those tools. Soul Cores, Burst Counters, dodging perfect Ki pulses, Onmyo magic, etc. It’s still a very hard game, but after the first couple stages (really the ‘prove it’ section of the game), it levels out for most of the rest of the game.
Could not get into Mortal Shell, or Nioh for that matter. I did really like Code Vein despite its anime eccentricities.
Blasphemous was an amazing game.
Finished Elden Ring?
Not quite yet, but I’m so damn close. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I stomped the Godskin Duo after a few tries; granted, I may have set the difficulty slider lower on that fight by inviting both Behrnal and the Great Shield Bros (maybe my favorite ash spirit in the game) along.
The worst thing I can say about Nioh is that it’s a Soulslike. This game would be immensely better if it actually let you play it like the action RPG it presents itself to be FROM THE START. The entire first difficulty is a massive slog because of all the restrictions and how everything is dolled out so slowly and because it really really wants to be a Dark Souls clone. As many people rightfully point out, the game doesn’t really get fun until the second difficulty. However that’s an arduous journey of 40 hours of the first game and easily double that of the second. By the time I finish the initial difficulty, any excitement I had for playing the game is gone.
Why are you acting like Dark Souls was the first of it’s kind when there was Demon’s Soul’s?