Konsol Ting: List of Soulslike games

What exactly is a "Soulslike", and which criteria does a game need, to meet the requirements of being one? This is of course up for debate, and part of the reason why I chose to put together this list in the first place. The thing is, that I really like to experience new Soulslike games, but a bit too often I see Soulslike-lists including games that I would not personally define as such. Therefor, I will start this list with my definition of a Soulslike.

As the name Soulslike imply, the term is used for games that are alike "Souls". This leads to the next question, which is: "What is a Souls-game?"

Back in 2009, the game company From Software released the game Demon's Souls on the PlayStation 3. This game started the Souls franchise, which became a great success. From this point on, From Software continued the franchise with Dark Souls (2011), Dark Souls II (2014), and Dark Souls III (2016). Besides these main installments in the Souls series, there was also a remastered (2018) version of the first Dark Souls game, and an updated version of the second Dark Souls game, with the subtitle Scholar of the First Sin (2015). In 2020 Bluepoint Games released a remake of the original Demon's Souls, as a launch title for the PlayStation 5. With that said, my definition of a Souls game, include Demon's Souls, the three Dark Souls games, and the different versions of these. In short 4 games and variants of these, all with the word "Souls" in the title, and all originally developed by From Software.

I assume that people who are looking for Soulslike games, are doing so because they have already played the Souls games. If not, that would, without a doubt, be the place to start. There is a reason why the Souls games manage to define a whole genre, and why other developers want to copy the gameplay formula. It's because From Software have created top tier games, where all of these Souls games are brilliant, even the "worst" of them!

With the huge success of the Souls games, From Software have created their own "Soulslike" games. Games that are not considered to be in the Souls series, but borrow a lot of the same game mechanics and feel as the Souls games. These games are probably already known by people who are on the lookout for more games similar to the Souls games. If not, take a good look at the games that From Software has developed over the last decade. Games like Bloodborne and Elden Ring. The last one in particular has Dark Souls vibes all over the place and could easily be mistaken for a "Dark Souls 4".

What about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you may ask? Even though it shares a lot of the same mechanics, as the Souls series, there are some big differences, primarily regarding the lack of the stamina bar, and the limited level up system. Chances are, that fans of the Souls games, would find the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice -formula too different, to enjoy the game.

With that out of the way, let's focus on which Souls likes that are out there, developed by other companies. The interesting thing with these developers is, that more often than not, they try to bring their own twist to the gameplay formula, even though ~95% of the gameplay and combat mechanic feels like a Souls clone.

When I decide to count a game as a Soulslike or not, it is all always centered around how the combat and movement feels in game. Others may categorize games as a Soulslike focusing on other criteria, which is all good. This is just to clarify.

I have put together a list of 6 criteria, that I would argue has to be in play, if the game should meet requirements to get the Soulslike-label.

3rd person perspective
The game is played in a 3rd person perspective. All the Souls games are played in a 3rd person perspective, and if you are on a lookout for a game similar to these games, this one has to be in place. There are some good examples of other great games in 2D that takes clear inspiration from the Souls franchise, but for me these games are not "Soulslike" games. You could make a subcategory called "2D Soulslikes", which could includes great games like: Blasphemous, 3000th duel, Death's Gambit: Afterlife, and more. Besides that, there is also the King's Field series, which was also developed by From Software. This series shares a lot of the same elements as their Souls games, just from a first-person perspective, and with way slower gameplay. It would be fair to assume, that the Souls series takes a lot of inspiration from the King's Field series.
Lock on
The game has an enemy "lock on" mechanic. This enables some sort of auto aim, but also opens op for all the defensive play, like parring and dodging incoming attacks. The dodge mechanic, in particular, plays a huge role in the Souls games, and the lock on -mechanic goes hand in hand with the whole 3rd person perspective. Combat wise, this does also support the principle of enemy difficulty, where all enemies are lethal and well-placed in the game world. The lock on feature makes every enemy a fight on its own, and makes it clear how it's not a hack ´n slash game.
Stamina
The game has a stamina bar, which all movement refers to. This is essential to everything from sprinting, blocking, dodging, attacking, and so on. If the player fails to pay attention, and the stamina bar depletes, it can be fatal. The Stamina pool is as important as the health pool, and is always in focus in Souls games.
Bonfires
The game makes use of "bonfires", or similar checkpoints, spread around the game world. Bonfires are used as checkpoints, where the player respawns if dead. Besides that, these sites automatically restore the player's HP, Mana, Flasks, but at the same time respawning most of the enemies. Another main feature of these sites are, that they are the gateway to upgrading the player stats, using "Souls". Bonfires are used in the Souls games, and defines the concept.
In Soulslike games, these are replaced by other sites, such as: Site of Lost Grace (Elden Ring), Lamps (Bloodborne), Obelisks (Immortal: Unchained), Beacons (Dolmen), ...
Souls
The game uses "Souls" as currency, which the player gain from defeating enemies. Every time an enemy is killed, the player receives a certain amount of souls, that can be uses to either level up the player or the gear, or to buy stuff from NPC´s. The hook is, that all these souls are dropped upon death, whereto the player only has a single chance to retrieve the pile of lost souls upon death. Only when the souls are spent, they are safe, and cannot be lost.
In Soulslike games, this currency differ in name, even though the principle is the same. Examples could be: Tech Scrap (The Surge), Experience (Lords of the Fallen), Bits (Immortal: Unchained), Nanites (Dolmen), ...
Upgrades
The most iconic upgrade mechanic in many Soulslike games, centers around letting the player level up some primary attributes (strength, dexterity, ...), that also affects secondary stats, such as resistances, HP and carrying capacity for example. This lets the player choose a build, that fits the playstyle, that the player want to experience. Often this is done level by level, where the player spent individual points (bought with "Souls"), but in games like Mortal Shell, the player chooses between predefined builds with the use of "Shells", upgrading some perks instead. The same with weapons, where the player often needs to combine rare materials found in the world, with "Souls", which then results in a +1, +2, ... weapon, that makes more damage and improve scaling.

Besides these 6 main criteria, there are other aspects that very often are present in a Soulslike in some degree. Often the game world makes use of shortcuts (doors that only open from one side, ladders that can be kicked down, ...), that makes bonfires more useful for multiple areas. These shortcuts make it a lot easier and faster to free roam the game world, the more the player unlock. Another thing that a lot of Soulslikes do, is to present the story in a vague, mystical and cryptic way, where the player has to gather a lot of lore from different places in the game, and figure the plot out himself. The difficulty would also be in top, where especially bosses will have the ability to kill the player in a few hits, if the player does not time their dodge rolls correct. Secret places accessed through illusionary walls, narrow edges, ... is also a common and fun thing to explore in these games.

List of Soulslike games

Below I will present a list of games, that in my assessment, meet the criteria to get the "Soulslike" label. The list will most likely evolve over time, since the genre is a big success, and more developers will seek inspiration in the formula.

Where games like Bloodborne, (and some elements of Sekiro) can be considered From Software's own fast-paced soulslikes, some games in this list could lean more towards the faster "parry instead of dodge / block -playstyle" of these titles. They are still included in the list, since they, in my opinion, share the basic criteria to be considered a soulslike.

I will try to keep the list up to date, as new games are released. Do you know a game that I have missed, please leave a comment!

<><><><><> Code Vein <><><><><>

Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC.

Description: Code Vein is a soulslike in an anime setting. It offers a deep verity of builds and weapons and has some good level design with a ton of shortcuts, secret areas, an interesting boss battles. One of the major differences, compared with other soulslikes, centers around the level up system and "bloodcodes". When spending currency to level up your character, it only raises some base stats that are static across builds. When you choose which build you want to play, you simply equip the corresponding "bloodcode", which then modify your base stats for that build. This means that you can swap between different builds as you progress the game, and discover new "bloodcodes", simply by equipping another "bloodcode".
In my opinion, this is a great game. It offers a good amount of the sexual undertones (that you might expect in these type of anime games - girl with big breasts, short dresses showing their panties, ...). I ended up skipping most of the cutscenes since I didn't actually care, but the gameplay and world building is awesome.

<><><><><> Dolmen <><><><><>

Platform: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC.

Description: Dolmen is somewhat fun to play, since it makes ranged combat viable. The game is mediocre (at best) in all aspects, and the gameplay feels like all the characters are controlled by rubber bands.

Unfortunately, there is a big problem with the game for now on Xbox One, that is actually game breaking. When I was about halfway through the game, suddenly my character was back at level 1. All levels and gear was lost without a reason, with no way to recover it. Since the game has been out for some time, you would expect a patch fixing these issues by now, but there are none. It is possible that the developers have abandoned their game by now, since they don't seem to update their Facebook page anymore, and they don't respond to questions regarding this issue.

Update: I have now managed to complete the game. Back in late February / start march, there was a patched released for the game, and I thought that that would have fixed the bug, but no. The game breaking bug still exists, and my only option to play through the whole game was to be very aware of this issue, and handle the problem manually every time it appeared.

The way I did it, was to make sure my save game would not synchronize with the cloud, once the bug appeared and send me back to start. Every time it happened, I pressed the home button (not closing the game!), went into the settings and deleted all the local game saves. After that, the console reboots, and I could launch the game again, and I could load the last synchronized (and still working) save file from the cloud. This is a mess, but it meant that I only had to play a small part over again. If you want to go through the game in this fashion, I would recommend changing the color of your character radically, which makes it stand out immediately, when the bug appears. I changed my character to red, so every time my character was white again (starting color), I knew I had to delete the game files.

The bug happens to me ~10-20 times in a single play through, and it seems that the bug starts to appear around midgame ~Act 2. It also seems, that most of the time the bug happens after a teleport, mostly to / from the ship.

The hardest part about this Soulslike is clearly the game itself. I can not recommend this game, as long as this bug is around!

<><><><><> Hellpoint <><><><><>

Platform: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, PC.

Description: Hellpoint is, in my opinion, a fantastic game. There are multiple reasons for that, including a great level design, with insanely cleaver secrets and hidden mechanics. Some good boss fights, and overall entertaining combat and smart enemy placement. The difficulty is spot on and the whole setting is well crafted. This game is a brilliant combination of Dark Souls in a Dead Space environment.

I have completed Hellpoint on both Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 Pro, and unfortunately I experienced some frame rate issues on both platforms. Because Cradle Games, at the time, was a somewhat small studio (that has since grown larger), I am able to ignore some of these technical issues, and still enjoy the games for all its quality. I hope to see Hellpoint 2 at some point!

<><><><><> Immortal: Unchained <><><><><>

Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC.

Description: Where Souls games mainly focus on melee combat, with ranged options as some sort of backup, Immortal: Unchained changes this around and centers combat around ranged builds using guns. Melee is still an option, but most of the game encourages the player to kill foes at distance.

This game is a mixed bag in every way. Clever and well crafted design is some parts of the game, where other parts are poorly made. This applies to everything from level design, bosses, enemy behavior and placement, story, stats, ... Some parts of the game are, in my opinion, straight up trash. This mostly centers around the difficulty, where it seems like the developers simply adjusted the difficulty by adding more enemies, with more HP, that hit harder. This could for instance be multiply invisible enemies that appear out of thin air at the same time, which have the ability to kill the player with two shots. Think the classic passage in Dark Souls Anor Londo with the archers. This is a difficult section to pass. With the Immortal: Unchained way to make the passage harder, you just add in 5 times the amount of archers, make them invisible and teleporting around. Yes, it is now much harder, but is it challenging in a fun and fair way? No! Instead, it just feels like an cheap, unfair and unbalanced way to create a hard game. In my playthrough, I skipped it with suicide runs to catch the next Obelisk (bonfire). I had no interest in exploring these areas. I respect and enjoy a fair challenge in games, but when games try to adjust the difficulty in this lazy way, the challenge just turns to frustration, which is just stupid.

Overall a decent game though, that I have completed once. Will I play the game again? Probably not.

<><><><><> Lies of P <><><><><>

Platform: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC.

Description: Beautiful soulslike, with solid gameplay and a somewhat simplified take on the whole build approach. The story is centered around the Pinocchio tale, and is very well integrated into a soulslike setting. Compared to other soulslikes, the storytelling is straight forward, without the need to gather a lot of vague story pieces from all over the world, and listening to cryptic NPC's. Lies of P offers a good chunk of QOL improvements, compared to similar games. Stargazers (bonfires) and shortcuts are cleverly places, meaning that there is almost no run back when you die. When you die to a boss, your ergo (souls) are placed at the entrance to the boss (fog gate), which makes it possible to pick them up before entering the fight again. The build options are somewhat limited compared to other soulslikes, and are more similar to the options in Bloodborne. You can upgrade your weapons, and mix and match blades and handles. This gives the player the option to alter move sets and special attacks. Lies of P is a great game from start to finish. If you like gameplay in between Dark Souls and Bloodborne, this game is for you!

<><><><><> Lords of the Fallen (2014)<><><><><>

Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC.

Description: One of the first - if not the first - Soulslike. Where most Soulslike bring some minor, but fresh, idea to the table, Lord of the Fallen brings nothing. The game copies the Souls formula, and does an okay job doing so. The result is a game, that in all aspects tries hard to mimic a Souls game, but ends op been mediocre all the way. Back in 2014, when you have just completed Dark Souls and wanted more of a similar gameplay, Lords of the Fallen was a fine alternative for lack of better alternatives. Nowadays, there are far superior options.

<><><><><> Lords of the Fallen (2023)<><><><><>

Platform: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC.

Description: With the exact same name as the game from 2014, this reboot offers so much more! Besides having solid gameplay, impressive build options, beautiful and well crafted level design, challenging boss fights and a great story, this reboot brings something new to the table - The Umbral real! The whole game is basically 2 world running on top of each other. The living "normal" world, called Axiom, and the undead world "Umbral". As a player, you can switch between these realms on the fly - or at least the one way - which results in cleaver mechanics regarding level design, secrets and combat. If you like the Dark Souls games, with the medieval dark fantasy setting, this game is a must-play! This is a great game!

<><><><><> Mortal Shell <><><><><>

Platform: Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC.

Description: Mortal Shell is a somewhat short Soulslike with only a handful of bosses. The game has some interesting mechanics where you get familiar with consumables, the more you use them. Where other games let you level op your character, and by doing so define what build you want to make, Mortal Shell instead has a handful of shells with different stats. These shells define the builds, and the player can then spend currency upgrading abilities connected to these. The same applies to weapons, where there is also only a small amount of different weapons in the game, that can be upgraded a bit. There are only a few levels / areas in Mortal Shell, connected to the main area, which is the main hub.

Combat feels like a Souls game, with the twist that you (and the enemies) have the ability to "harden", which means that the next hit will not harm you, but instead put you out of the "hardened" state.

In my play through, I ignored the whole hardened aspect, and just counted on my dodging skills.

Overall, a great - but short and somewhat simple - Soulslike!

<><><><><> Nioh <><><><><>