The Soulslike is an amazing thing. More than just a genre, it’s a strange subcategory of action-RPG that’s defined not only by mechanics, but by more nebulous things like high difficulty, looping level design, puzzle-like storytelling, melancholy atmosphere, and destitute worlds. Another strange thing about Soulslikes that we take for granted these days is the fact that they literally have the name of another game in the title. I think we’d have to go back to the days of every first-person shooter in the mid-90s being called a ‘Doom clone’ to find a similar phenomenon and even then that was never as established a label as the Soulslike (I guess we have Roguelikes these days too, but the ‘source’ game there is old enough that the name is kind of abstracted from it).
That Soulslike identity is a powerful one, based around a series of From Software games–from 2008’s Demons’ Souls to last year’s Elden Ring–that have proven so good at iterating and improving on that formula, that of all the games replicating their style to greater or lesser extents, not a single one has really come close to reaching that same level of quality. On the one hand, it’s cool that FromSoft introduced such a great cluster of ideas that it’s pretty much formed a new sub-genre, on the other I wonder if said genre is stifled by being so reverent to its source material.
The best Soulslikes for me have never been the 3D ones, which often look and feel so much like Souls knockoffs you’d find at the flea market.
From the enjoyable but clunky efforts of Deck13 games like Lords of the Fallen and The Surge, to the commendable copycatting seen in Mortal Shell, to last week’s latest pretender, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, by way of last year’s so-so Steelrising, Soulslikes tend to struggle to emerge from under From Software’s shadow. Sure, they’ll usually add one or two elements to have something of their own identity–the limb-targeting system in The Surge, or the ‘buddy’ system in Wo Long–but the flow of your friction-filled journey through these games is usually so similar to a Dark Souls or a Bloodborne that comparisons inevitably get drawn, and inevitably FromSoft’s efforts will come out on top.
Of course, not all of these games actually call themselves Souls-likes, but they’re not fooling anyone; the only alternative they have is to call themselves ‘action-RPGs,’ which would erroneously put them in the same broad boat as Borderlands or Diablo), but a quick glimpse at the trailers–which usually depict dashy-dodgey combat, a dark-fantasy aesthetic, and a beastly boss encounter or two–and it becomes clear that the game in question is shooting for that FromSoft feeling. It’s never usually long after that that the gaming public and press define it as a Soulslike, and it becomes effectively ‘locked in’ to FromSoft’s masterful games as a reference point, which inevitably means it pales in comparison.
One of the problems is that many Soulslikes are clearly made on a far lower budget than FromSoft has had of late, so most of them are content to shoot for the corridor-based Metroidvania-like exploration of the older Souls games. Last year, however, FromSoft has set that Soulslike bar even higher with the roaring success of Elden Ring, which successfully merged that design philosophy with a spectacular open world. As if Soulslikes didn’t already have enough trouble being seen as much more than derivatives of that classic ‘Soulsborne’ formula, FromSoft has gone and moved the goalposts to a level that it’s hard to imagine any Soulslike reaching any time soon.
Interestingly, the best Soulslike efforts for me have never been the 3D ones, which often look and feel so much like Souls knockoffs you’d find at the flea market; they can actually be decent games, but I always end up craving the real thing. No, the best implementations of Soulslike ideas can be found on the indie scene, where converting those key Soulslike tenets to a new perspective and art style, while loosening some of the Soulslike design stringencies, have yielded some excellent results. The isometric Tunic is a great case in point, owing as much to Dark Souls as it does to old-school Zelda games, while introducing cool mechanics and ideas of its own (for something similar yet a little easier yet similarly imaginative, check out the gorgeous Death’s Door).
Over in the pure 2D space, games like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous have thrived. While clearly influenced by Dark Souls, they don’t feel quite so hopelessly indebted to it, because they’re equally defined by their Metroidvania qualities (item-based gating, 2D platforming) as they are by their Souls-like ones (consequential death, post-apocalyptic worlds). Their strong visual identities really help here too, with gorgeous art styles that don’t feel like someone just popped ‘dark souls but not’ into an AI image generator.
All the above games in some way hybridise, rather than just mimic, Souls games, and in that they really find their identity. While we’re at it, if you’re going to be more of a 1:1 3D Soulslike, then don’t be all earnest and gloomy about it, because you’re never going to do those things as well as From Software; do what The Last Hero of Nostalgaia did, and throw a bit of humour and self-awareness in there! An honourable mention in the 3D Soulslike space also goes to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which blended Souls ideas into a swashbuckling cinematic adventure that felt very much like the ‘Uncharted by way of Dark Souls’ that we never knew we needed; it was probably the first game to put Souslike ideas into a truly accessible package.
Make no mistake, the existence of the Soulslike is testament to the awesome cluster of great ideas put together by From Software. The medium is a richer, more exciting place for what From Software did, and there are games–particularly in the indie scene–that take some of those great ideas and meld them with their own original visions. But too many games are content to sleep in the shadow of FromSoft’s past, and those games would do well to be, well, a little less Soulslike-like if they want to get noticed.
