Yeah, I think that's a better criterion for "Soulslike" combat mechanics than a strict emphasis on a stamina system. Hollow Knight and Death's Door, two 2D/isometric games often described as "Soulslikes", have no stamina bars, but I think their rhythmic, methodical combat systems both hew close enough to the spirit. From Software's own Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice replaces the stamina system with a posture system, which demands the player to maintain a relentless pace of counterattacks rather than conserve their stamina like in the other Soulsborne games.
Nioh is kind of an odd duck, because while it does have a stamina (ki) system, it also comes with a ki pulse mechanic that lets the player recover their ki right after an attack, allowing them to chain very long, complex combo moves more reminiscent of Fighting Games or Beat 'em Ups. It does stick very closely to the Soulslike formula in most other mechanics, though.
At the same time, there are some games with clear Soulsborne inspiration that I think are just too different to warrant the label. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is often jokingly called "Disney Souls" because of its Surprise Difficulty, punishingly limited healing system and high emphasis on precise dodges and parries. It also has a minimalist story set in a deserted setting with some Metroidvania world design elements, as well as some very Dark Souls III-inspired boss designs. But I think the lack of fixed save points, respawning enemy mobs and consequences for deaths leaves the final gameplay different enough to sidestep the label. Nor is "Soulslike" a useful label for difficult action games in general, despite the memes: I found the higher difficulty settings in God of War (PS4), in my limited experience, to be more punishing than just about anything in a Souls game, but I don't think anyone's ever seriously called it one.
DS1 is indeed uniquely ambitious in its recursive world design, but every other FromSoft Souls title has had plenty of unlockable shortcuts and alternate routes to be found, even the more linear ones.
And yeah, I think there's space to discuss titles with Souls-inspired narrative (but not mechanical) designs. I just don't want the label to keep getting slapped on anything with a vaguely high difficulty and dark atmosphere — partly because it builds up this perception of the actual Souls games as hopelessly grimdark masochism-fests only accessible to hardcore players, which I really don't think is the case.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.Stamina's not essential, but it's part of the paradox of the heap that is the combat formula. Take away too many parts and you just have 'this is an action game with hard timing', which is about as generic as you can get. Although, the role of said stamina could also be considered—it's an in-built mechanics for trying to avoid endless attack spam and punish thoughtless dodging.
I have to disagree in the case of 3. There's some variation within areas (Cathedral of the Deep and Lothric Castle particularly), but the actual world layout there is very linear without much in the way of shortcuts or backtracking. Nor is 2 much different in that regard—having teleporting from the get-go rather removes the need for such a thing.
Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 24th 2022 at 1:56:16 PM
The page for Souls-like RPG has not actually been linked in this thread yet. (It has a lot of the same criteria that have been mentioned, but seems more exacting about some of them - narrative choices like "who is the player character", for example - and is missing others. And of course "difficulty" is at the top of the list.)
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOSoulslikes are relatively not that difficult, if you compare them to arcade and arcade-inspired games. I would advise heavily against making such criteria that basically require the game to be well-made in some form or another. A game is in a genre because it does things that aren't good or bad, and good difficulty is... good.
It's an interesting thought, because they're difficult in a different way to arcade games and their clones. They aren't designed to be hard and unfair to try and part you from money for continues, you can have all the continues you like. So you don't have the cheap tricks and very rarely do you get the comparative 'here's a pretty much undodgeable wall of ordnance'.
They're hard in the same way that bullet hell games are hard; you need to engage with the mechanics and learn the patterns, but once you've got that down it's not really the hardest thing to clear in some capacity, and you can transfer that knowledge from game to game. But if it's not challenging and unforgiving of mistakes, then it's hard to say it would count as an example.
They're many times more obtuse, which is why I shy away from doing harder difficulties, but it's a similar kettle of fish. Pattern recognition.
Bullet Hell just adds in a ton of Hitbox Dissonance that makes it a pain to learn. ~_~
It's not like soulslikes can't occasionally go overboard with tight timing and one-hitpoint wonders. They just don't strictly delineate it with difficulty levels like said bullet hell games. xD
Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 25th 2022 at 11:52:53 AM
Except... for action RPGs, they are hard? That's kind of the point; for the genre that they exist in, they stand out as hard and far more precise than the norm. Note, to compare it to things that are even more demanding, you're moving over to different genres entirely. (Especially the RPG side)
And trying to focus on narrative thematics as the definition of a soulslike would get bizarre, because you'd have Nioh not counting because it has no narrative similarities, despite having fundamentally the same basic combat structure and very similar levelling similar item upgrade logic with the addition of a lot more combo potential.
Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 25th 2022 at 12:11:06 PM
Again, your definition excludes Nioh (it's pretty colourful and fairly bright all things considered, it's also smack bang in feudal japan which dictates a lot of visual elements), which would make it kind of unworkable.
Like, if your definition of a soulslike excludes 'game with a very similar playstyle and what most people are probably thinking of if they're looking for another one to play having beaten all of From's offerings multiple times' but includes a 2D metroidvania, I think it's obviously a bad definition.
Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 25th 2022 at 12:14:59 PM
The first game has an obsession with caves for its first act, but I'm not sure I'd say the environments are dark. It's all very well-lit, things don't sneak up on you too easily. <_>
Designs is an interesting one, because the majority are just like... youkai drawings in 3D.
Edited by RainehDaze on Dec 25th 2022 at 12:19:24 PM
So a while back I got to try out the demo for Asterigos: Curse of the Stars
, a Soulslike by Taiwanese indie developer Acme Gamestudio. It takes place in an Ancient Grome-styled setting, and you play as Hilda, a young warrior tasked to journey into the lost city of Aphes and find her father's lost legion.
My impressions so far:
- The game has a brighter, more cartoony art direction than a lot of action RPGs in the genre, though the full game seems to be filled with enough dark dungeons and catacombs to rival any Souls game.
- The devs were clearly working with limited resources, and while they did a very commendable job with the art direction, the constraints did show with the decidedly non-AAA quality of the combat animations. That, and the (IMO) rather weak audio feedback, results in a combat system that feels rather floaty — not something I'd prefer in a genre that relies heavily on crisp controls and clear telegraphing. It didn't ruin the demo for me, but it is what it is.
- You get a neat collection of weapons right at the start, and can equip two of them at once, each one having a special skill. Instead of switching between your weapons, you map their attacks and techniques to individual buttons,* which allows you to chain attacks from different weapons together.
- Sword and Shield: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Kind of boring. Technique: Block (costs stamina for every attack blocked).
- Hammer: Apply directly to forehead. Technique: A charged slam attack, doesn't feel powerful enough to me to really like.
- Twin Daggers: Weak but fast attacks. The neat thing is that you can cancel out of an attack at any moment, which is useful if you need to dodge in a hurry. Technique: Sliding Dodge, basically the Bloodhound's Step skill from Elden Ring — only you get it at the start of the game, if you didn't feel dirty enough.
- Spear: Big pokey. Technique: Parry, followed by a powerful spinning counterattack. Parrying is objectively the best way to get through many of these games, so I picked it as my main weapon right away.
- Staff: Ranged weapon. Press attack to shoot a magic beam, or hold down the technique button to aim a charged beam. A bit slow, but useful for cheesing some enemies. Only consumes stamina to fire, not AP (FP if you're a Souls player).
- Gauntlets: Didn't get to try them, but apparently cast fancy elemental attacks. Technique: Magic Landmine.
- I've been a bit critical of the combat's presentation so far, but apparently the full game offers you a good range of upgrade options for the above weapons. The game averts Money Is Experience Points; your currency, Stardust, is solely for upgrading weapons and purchasing items. You drop 10% of it upon death, with no way of getting it back.
- The game actually has two kinds of experience points: one for upgrading key attributes (HP, attack power and AP) and one for unlocking perks, which overall makes levelling relatively simple and stress-free. AP is gained in combat by landing hits on enemies and used to pull off unlockable special attacks, which you can equip 4 of at any given time.
- The full game apparently has a very DS1-styled world design. You arrive at a hub area early on and explore branching paths that lead to different areas of the city, unlocking shortcuts between areas along the way. There's also apparently a lot of NPC sidequests that require backtracking, requiring you to learn the city's layout and plan your route carefully (though I found the demo combat relatively easy even on the highest difficulty). And just like DS1, it seems that you can unlock the ability to fast travel between bonfire-equivalents late in the game.
So Elden Ring is on sale on Steam, and I'm trying to figure out if I should grab it. I actually got it before, played an hour, and returned it. I got annoyed at the "we won't explain anything, look it up on the wiki if you want to know what your stats do" Souls-like lack of tutorial. Does it get any better? It's won all sorts of awards, I just feel like it's a game I should love.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.In terms of explaining stats? Not really. The help dialogue in menus has never been great, so you're left looking at what numbers tick up on the right if you make to change a stat.
The only obtuse one that isn't just some form of weapon or magical damage scaling is equip load, though, which is just 'how much can you have equipped and still roll well'.
We do actually have an Elden Ring thread!
FromSoft games tend to uphold a "h*ck around and find out" design sensibility. They expect you to mess with all the buttons and gear and numbers you find and see what happens — and if you get killed and revived in the process, well, that's your character canonically learning from their mistake and coming up with a new way to approach the situation.
Elden Ring's open world design exemplifies this. The game doesn't have quest logs or markers like many other open-world games do, though you can put down the latter manually. Instead, the game's world is designed with dramatic ground contours, long sightlines and plenty of towering, fantastical landmarks, so you can orient yourself and spot points of interest at all times without having to constantly look at your map.
The game doesn't tell you how many places of interests there are for you to clear: it lets you stumble upon them organically and decide whether you want to explore them — be it for curiosity, loot or the possibility of stumbling into an entire underground city. It's by no means a perfect game, and there's plenty to criticise, especially with regards to late-game content. But I think the reason I (and evidently lots of other people) enjoyed it so much is that it manages to turn the experience of getting lost into something exciting. You really never know where that weird hole in the ground is going to lead you.
- Vigor: Levels up your HP (red bar). If you don't already have a build in mind or are unsure of what to level next, always level Vigor. You'll live longer that way.
- Mind: Levels your FP (blue bar), which you use to cast spells and special weapon skills.
- Endurance: Levels your stamina (green bar), as well your equipment weight limit. You won't typically need much more than 20-25 unless you're going for a stamina-hungry playstyle (like dual-wielding heavy weapons), or want the ability to light roll (which requires you to keep your equipment weight under 30% of your limit).
The rest are offensive stats. All weapons and spellcasting catalysts (staves and seals) in Elden Ring) have two damage components. The first is the base damage, which depends on the weapon's upgrade level. The second is the scaling damage, which depends on both the upgrade level and your stats.
Say you're playing with the Hero starting class (16 Strength at the start), and you're wielding a basic-tier axe with C strength scaling. Your axe might deal 120 base damage at the outset, plus an added 20 scaling damage on top of that.
Now say your axe has been upgraded to +15. Your axe now deals 220 base damage; but what's more, its strength scaling has climbed to B, which cranks up the extra damage to 50 if your Strength stays at base level. If you've levelled your Strength to, say, 30, then that extra damage goes up to 90; different weapons have different ways to calculate their stat scaling.
Throughout the game, you can also collect a variety of weapon mods that let you equip a variety of special attacks on your weapons, as well as modify their damage types and scaling affinity. For example, if you're wielding a curved sword that scales off Dexterity and want to respec into a spellcaster based around the Intelligence stat, then you could try modifying your curved sword with the Cold affinity, which scales off that stat and builds up the Frostbite status effect in enemies. Anyway:
- Strength: A physical stat associated with heavy weapons like halberds and greatswords. When you two-hand a weapon, your effective Strength stat for that weapon is increased by 50%. You can modify most weapons with the Heavy affinity, which decreases base damage in exchange for increasing the Strength scaling; or the Fire affinity, which also scales off Strength and adds a fire component to your damage (be wary of fire-resistant enemies).
- Dexterity: Another physical stat, this time associated with light, fast weapons like curved swords and whips. Where Strength weapons are often best two-handed, Dexterity weapons often work best dual-wielded with another weapon of the same class. You can increase a weapon's Dexterity scaling with the Keen affinity, or add an extra damage component with the Lightning affinity (which works like Fire for Strength builds).
- Intelligence: The main stat of Magic and Cold weapons, and more importantly, staves that you use cast sorceries ("blue" magic). Sorceries are somewhat more offensively-oriented than incantations, with lots of ranged spells as well as fast close-ranged ones.
- Faith: The stat for Holy weapons, as well as magic hand seals that you use to cast incantations ("golden" magic). Incantations are a more well-rounded category than sorceries, with lots of useful low-level utility spells that you can use to heal, cure status effects of enchant weapons. It has a lot of very powerful offensive options too, albeit usually slower or less long-ranged than their Intelligence counterparts.
- Arcane: The most unusual stat of the list, buffing Occult and Poison damage... which very few weapons deal innately. But Arcane increases the rate at which you build up status effects on opponents — and there are a lot of ways to enhance weapons to deal status effects. It also increases your chances of collecting items from the enemies you've unalived.
That sounds like one of the better "open worlds" to my mind, by that description. ^_^
~
(Quotes below are linked to their original posts.
... Presuming that I linked them to the correct posts, of course! XD; )
According to that description ...
I don't know much about the game in question: Does it have the other, non-combat mechanical traits? The description that I gave covered only one trait, being the combat.
I'm inclined to agree with this.
This is fair. While Soulslikes have a history of being pretty grim, I daresay that there's no reason that one couldn't make an optimistic, even pleasant, Soulslike.
I would say that as long as the parts draw close to the sort of experience that I described—even if it comes to that experience from a different direction—it would still count to my mind.
That is, to my mind it's the end result that matters, rather than what specific elements are used to achieve that result.
Hmm... I think that I see what you're saying: That a game in a given genre is in that genre regardless of whether it does a good job of it?
That, for example, a "stylish action" game that tries to be stylish, but fails, is still a "stylish action" game—just a bad one?
If so, then that is a good point, I do think.
On the contrary, I would say: Yes, absolutely.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 26th 2022 at 10:52:37 PM
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Edited by Dylan_Dog on Dec 26th 2022 at 12:13:48 PM

I would agree, I believe.
To my mind, the specific form that this takes isn't all that important. Rather, what's important is that the game be demanding and punishing: combat requires a solid grasp of the mechanics, and mistakes bring a heavy cost.
Now, that could take the form of traditional Soulslike melee weapon-play—or it could take the form of precise bullet-dodging, or a sufficiently-punishing fighting-game mechanic—or something else besides!
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