Soulslike games: list + scores

[Strange Fellow]

But Souls games also allow you to go elsewhere, level up, and return later. The ratio of gitting gud to leaving and coming back later was about the same for me in Souls and ER.

 

[Ryzer]

The open world structure makes it fundamentally different from Dark Souls and its clones.
Whereas DS is all about getting good and overcoming the challenge ahead of you, while navigating a tightly interconnected world, Elden Ring allows you to explore an open world, go elsewhere, level up, and return later if you meet a roadblock. This changes the entire structure and approach to challenges.

What you just described is the difference between open-worlds and linear/interconnected games.
Elden Ring is factually a souls game, bonfires are replaced by places of graces, enemies respawn after each death, even a single mob can kill the player, each attribute granted counts as a level, the storyline is cut into nitpicks, it's a souls-clone.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The open world structure makes it fundamentally different from Dark Souls and its clones.
Whereas DS is all about getting good and overcoming the challenge ahead of you, while navigating a tightly interconnected world, Elden Ring allows you to explore an open world, go elsewhere, level up, and return later if you meet a roadblock. This changes the entire structure and approach to challenges.

Demon's Souls, the originator of the Souls-like sub-sub-genre, does not have a "tightly interconnected world" but rather five worlds entirely separate from each other, as from the Nexus. Each world has three levels (or four for the first world with the mandatory initial level) that must be completed in order, and every level must be completed. The individual levels can be quite substantial, with various shortcuts, sometimes enough to consider an individual level "tightly interconnected", but each level can be reached via teleportation from the Nexus at the beginning and (upon completion) the end of the level; the only connections between levels occur at the end of one level that forms the beginning of the next.

Moreover, even Dark Souls introduces teleportation between bonfires about halfway through, and teleportation between bonfires is present in Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 from the beginning; the number of bonfires notoriously increases to a ludicrous quantity in Dark Souls 3 as well. From the beginning, the Souls games permitted the player, if encountering an obstacle to forward progress, to leave that level/zone for an alternative, returning later with greater power and experience to overcome the earlier roadblock. Elden Ring differs in that it is both an Open World RPG and an Action RPG (of the Souls-like sub-sub-genre), but one does not preclude the other; it's a combination of both.

 

[AdamReith]

I have a general Soulsy question and perhaps this is a decent place to ask it:

In general gameplay you are given a lot of freedom to pick and choose your fights, you are punished for overextending and being overconfident.

Why then, does the boss mechanic lock you into fighting to the death against something that you have no way of predicting the power level of.

What is the intended way to play blindly here? Thinking about it I've encountered the same thing in Wizardry so it might go back to the games influences.

 

[cvv]

Those ratings indeed represent the mainstream view. I.e. dumb, shallow, only interested in muh combut and muh bossus and shit being fast fast fast.

Doesn't represent mine tho. I loved DS2, loved the Surges (well, S2), loved both Lords and fucking hated DS3.

 

[Strange Fellow]

What is the intended way to play blindly here?

Try, die, repeat.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What is the intended way to play blindly here?

I think, originally (Demons' and DAS1) the intention was for the player to fight very defensively, focusing on rolling, blocking and running away until you understood all the ways the boss was attacking and could exploit openings. Think of stuff like the spider fight in DeS or various DaS bosses you could basically run away from all day without trouble. Later entries however, ruined that by giving the attacks weird timings and hitboxes, making most of the bosses hyper aggressive with conditional followups, weakening shields and generally just overly punishing defensive play. In anything from DaS2 onward you're basically incentivized to just run in and attack wildly, hoping you luck out and stagger the boss before dying, chug some estus and repeat. Actually figuring out how the boss behaves is left to youtube videos or people with broken builds on a third playthrough that can test what the boss does when you dodge left vs right without dying each attempt.

 

[Max Damage]

idk about DS2 or ER, but DS3 I finished mostly with sword&board, you just need to grab a good shield and (greater) magic shield spell for maximum tanking, didn't watch any guides for bosses either, all solo. The bosses are harder than in DaS, but the runbacks are also shorter, it never felt like a chore. The only boss fight I remember who punishes being too defensive is Deacons of the Deep in 2nd part of the fight.

 

[Doktor Best]

I have a general Soulsy question and perhaps this is a decent place to ask it:

In general gameplay you are given a lot of freedom to pick and choose your fights, you are punished for overextending and being overconfident.

Why then, does the boss mechanic lock you into fighting to the death against something that you have no way of predicting the power level of.

What is the intended way to play blindly here? Thinking about it I've encountered the same thing in Wizardry so it might go back to the games influences.

The intended way is the concept of learning by dieing.

The thing is that the souls you accumulated in the run are now in the boss room, growing bigger and bigger because you have to kill some mobs to get to the boss (after some time you learn how to do a bossrush by running past enemy mobs)

So either you pick up your souls pile every bossfight until you succeed, or you use one of the very few consumables which let you teleport to safety with your souls, or you just abandon them and go somewhere else to explore.

 

[Ash]

I don't think Souls' design is significant enough nor unique enough to have spawned its own sub-genre/series of copycats, but I am glad it did. The alternative is braindead cinematic shit so it's a win for the industry. It's a good game, but merely just another iteration of the hardcore console Jap action game which has a very long and rich history. But I suppose it's only fitting. Castlevania SOTN & Metroid spawned endless copycats (the metroidvania). DMC & Ninja Gaiden spawned endless copycats. Resident Evil spawned endless copycats and so on. I guess Souls IS absolutely worthy of the same reverance. I just get triggered by the copycats taking even the shitty parts of souls (boring RPG systems and lock-on basis of the combat). They're too shameless in their cloning and don't innovate enough.

Also, poll is missing Darksiders 3. Yet another lame souls clone.

I see gamers continue their typical everyday retardation. Dark Souls 2 at significantly lower score than the rest, and Bloodborne as one of the highest rated.

 

[Zlaja]

Also, poll is missing Darksiders 3. Yet another lame souls clone

I kinda enjoyed this one. I liked how aquiring new weapons/abilities changes your looks, when switching between them. Very enjoyable gimmick.

 

[Ash]

Meh.

 

[Eisen]

missing Blade of Darkness

 

[cruel]

Added Enotria to the list. Unfortunately, one of the lowest scores, 67%.

Black Myth: Wukong and Stellar Blade don't quality as soulslike, but they both had average score of 88%.

 

[Skinwalker]

Dark Souls 2 is a worse soulsgame than Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor?

Sounds about right, actually.

 

[cvv]

Added Enotria

As someone already said, Darksiders 3 is absolutely a soulslike. At least much more so than Nioh.

And tho my personal definition of a soulslike is very broad I wouldn't count stuff like Remnant as one, it's just a shooter. And while the Jedi games do have the "retrieve lost xp" mechanics they don't feel like soulslikes either, they're in the same undefined space as God of War for me.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

That Dark Souls 2 user score just reminds me of how stupid people are in general.

Also you forgot Salt and Sanctuary. That's a pretty big one.

 

[mord]

Lies of Pi

 

[cruel]

I've added Darksiders 3 to the list - 71% score, in line with most other games.

I'm reluctant to add Salt & Sanctuary, as this would mean I would need to proceed with all other 2D games like:
- Hollow Knight
- Blasphemous 1 & 2
- Bloodstained

And probably many more, no? Or am I missing something?

Unless we have a separate table for 2D titles hmm...

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Salt and Sanctuary is literally 2D Dark Souls you idiot. I don't see why it would force you to add the other 3. Those are very different.

Actually looking back at the list, S&S copies more from Dark Souls than any other soulslike.

 

[cvv]

I never considered those 2D games soulslikes. "Metroidvanias" has always been adequate for me.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The open world structure makes it fundamentally different from Dark Souls and its clones.
Whereas DS is all about getting good and overcoming the challenge ahead of you, while navigating a tightly interconnected world, Elden Ring allows you to explore an open world, go elsewhere, level up, and return later if you meet a roadblock. This changes the entire structure and approach to challenges.

Demon's Souls, the originator of the Souls-like sub-sub-genre, does not have a "tightly interconnected world" but rather five worlds entirely separate from each other, as from the Nexus. Each world has three levels (or four for the first world with the mandatory initial level) that must be completed in order, and every level must be completed. The individual levels can be quite substantial, with various shortcuts, sometimes enough to consider an individual level "tightly interconnected", but each level can be reached via teleportation from the Nexus at the beginning and (upon completion) the end of the level; the only connections between levels occur at the end of one level that forms the beginning of the next.

Moreover, even Dark Souls introduces teleportation between bonfires about halfway through, and teleportation between bonfires is present in Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 from the beginning; the number of bonfires notoriously increases to a ludicrous quantity in Dark Souls 3 as well. From the beginning, the Souls games permitted the player, if encountering an obstacle to forward progress, to leave that level/zone for an alternative, returning later with greater power and experience to overcome the earlier roadblock. Elden Ring differs in that it is both an Open World RPG and an Action RPG (of the Souls-like sub-sub-genre), but one does not preclude the other; it's a combination of both.

While i have yet to play Demon's Souls and Bloodborne, so i can't comment on those, i'll say Dark Souls 1 from start all the way to the end of Anor Londo (Painted World included) contains the best level design FromSoft ever did. The whole stretch (which is what, 60% of the game? More? I maybe inclined to include the Catacombs in this, minus Pinwheel obviously lmao) is the closest thing to a 10/10 in terms of layout, pacing, enemy placement etc and was never topped by anything else FromSoft ever did.

And that this is specifically the stretch where they didn't allow teleportation might be relevant. Not that the lack of teleportation is what made it good in itself, but i think they understood what they had in their hands and the whole design of the world in the game was deliberely trying to be a "step up" to what you are describing from Demon's Souls.

 

[cvv]

Agreed altho the legacy dungeons in ER are a full return to form and can give anything in DS1 a run for its money.

Plus whether a level is "good" isn't necessarily only a mechanical matter, could be aesthetic also. Like my favourite level in DS2 is Dragon Aerie. It's very simplistic but the unrivalled vibe almost makes up for it.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Added Enotria to the list. Unfortunately, one of the lowest scores, 67%.

Black Myth: Wukong and Stellar Blade don't quality as soulslike, but they both had average score of 88%.

This thread is a very useful resource, thanks.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

The open world structure makes it fundamentally different from Dark Souls and its clones.
Whereas DS is all about getting good and overcoming the challenge ahead of you, while navigating a tightly interconnected world, Elden Ring allows you to explore an open world, go elsewhere, level up, and return later if you meet a roadblock. This changes the entire structure and approach to challenges.

Demon's Souls, the originator of the Souls-like sub-sub-genre, does not have a "tightly interconnected world" but rather five worlds entirely separate from each other, as from the Nexus. Each world has three levels (or four for the first world with the mandatory initial level) that must be completed in order, and every level must be completed. The individual levels can be quite substantial, with various shortcuts, sometimes enough to consider an individual level "tightly interconnected", but each level can be reached via teleportation from the Nexus at the beginning and (upon completion) the end of the level; the only connections between levels occur at the end of one level that forms the beginning of the next.

Moreover, even Dark Souls introduces teleportation between bonfires about halfway through, and teleportation between bonfires is present in Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 from the beginning; the number of bonfires notoriously increases to a ludicrous quantity in Dark Souls 3 as well. From the beginning, the Souls games permitted the player, if encountering an obstacle to forward progress, to leave that level/zone for an alternative, returning later with greater power and experience to overcome the earlier roadblock. Elden Ring differs in that it is both an Open World RPG and an Action RPG (of the Souls-like sub-sub-genre), but one does not preclude the other; it's a combination of both.

While i have yet to play Demon's Souls and Bloodborne, so i can't comment on those, i'll say Dark Souls 1 from start all the way to the end of Anor Londo (Painted World included) contains the best level design FromSoft ever did. The whole stretch (which is what, 60% of the game? More? I maybe inclined to include the Catacombs in this, minus Pinwheel obviously lmao) is the closest thing to a 10/10 in terms of layout, pacing, enemy placement etc and was never topped by anything else FromSoft ever did.

And that this is specifically the stretch where they didn't allow teleportation might be relevant. Not that the lack of teleportation is what made it good in itself, but i think they understood what they had in their hands and the whole design of the world in the game was deliberely trying to be a "step up" to what you are describing from Demon's Souls.

The DLC areas in Dark Souls 2 is From Software's best level design and frankly it's not even close.