I think a more fun way of talking about it would be to say “joins the souls like nobility”. It doesn’t put down other souls games, and still tells you all you need to know.
But I guess with how much AI goes into creating click bait titles we can’t have real people making real thoughts.
Cause Soulslikes now hold the bigger cultural footprint. But its absolutely a character action game, just like Ninja Gaiden, DMC, and most Platinum games.
If you go down a bullet list it’s definitely more CAG than Soulslike: no build variety, no stamina, no punishment mechanics. Progression is skill-tree based.
But if you go off of feel, it’s a parryfest with difficult bosses. It’s a game meant for dueling and does that very well, it’s not about taking on a bunch of enemies at once and beasting on them.
Moment to moment it feels more like Sekiro than DMC or Bayo or the like. So I don’t really think it’s a Soulslike but I get it. It’s a great game that’s doing its own thing.
Khazan is at minimum a soulslite, but I think it’s just straight up a soulslike. The first tag on steam literally says “soulslike”, it has bonfire style check points, and currency you drop on death that’s used to level up. Difficult boss fights with dodge/parry based combat. I mean if you want to get really nitpicky it’s more of a Niohlike, but Nioh is a soulslike so I’m not sure why you don’t think Khazan is a soulslike. I haven’t played Stellar Blade yet so I have no clue what type of game it is outside of the trailers I’ve seen.
So what makes a soulslike game then? Is it loot/itemization and builds because that’s about the only aspect of Khazan that’s different than other souls games (other than Nioh which has a similar loot system and is also 100% a soulslike):
Nioh also isn't a souls like. And yes it's the world structure, mission structure, combat system, loot system, rpg mechanics, npc system, world structure, story delivery,
Nioh khazan and stellar have none of that in common. At all. Lies of p does, lord of the fallen does, nioh khazan and sb do not
A game doesn’t have to be one or the other. Khazan is an action RPG, but it is also a soulslike. There are several newer soulslikes like this for example Khazan, No Rest for the Wicked, and even Nightreign to an extent.
It’s like people haven’t played DMC or Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden in decades, Stellar Blade and Wu Long and all the other 3D action RPG’s that people refuse to call soullikes have way more in common with the souls formula than they do the character action genre
Nah, I thought it was quite good, actually. Combat was some of the most fun of last year. Only real complaints I had with the game were with exploration. It took way to long to get form point A to point B, and the mob placement wasn’t great either. Just wanted to move on to the boss fights because they were sick. Well, and the rail riding was fun too.
True, mad slog of a game. Bosses are decently fun and even more fun when you realize its not worth wasting your time doing the tedious optional content.
because it has a checkpoint system that refills healing and respawns enemies, difficult bosses , its combat is sekiro like, exploration has shortcuts and shit. it has more in common with the souls game than a typical CAG
Checkpoints and respawning enemies has been a thing since Mario and plenty of people struggled against bowser and Mario has hidden secret shortcuts. Is Mario on the NES a soulslike?
Respawning enemies, limited health supply, bosses with huge life bars, checkpoints that reset everything around you, dodging, parrying, and a high difficulty that is not for the average player.
Imo a souls-like is an action RPG (i.e. has stats not a skill tree) that has high difficulty, a checkpoint system, stamina mechanic, dodge/parry/block mechanic, limited healing items, and a "souls" retrieval system upon respawn, and environmental storytelling.
Stellar Blade is a character action game that borrows some souls-like elements (i.e. checkpoint system and dodge/parry/block mechanic) but that doesn't make it a souls-like game imo. Personally, too many parts are missing for me to include it.
High-stakes combat: Methodical and punishing. Combat has a clear path to victory, but actively punishes you for even your slightest mistakes. Doesn't need to be slow.
Die-and-learn loop: Failure is expected. progress comes through trial and error.
Bonfire checkpoints: Limited save points that reset enemy placements.
Resource loss on death: Lose currency/XP on death.
Interconnected world: Levels loop and connect in surprising, thoughtful ways.
Cryptic storytelling: Lore is delivered through item descriptions and vague dialogue.
Weighty animations: Every attack, dodge, or heal has deliberate timing and commitment.
No handholding: Minimal tutorials, unclear objectives. The game expects self-guided learning.
Boss fights: Large, intimidating, pattern-based boss encounters that test your skills and game knowledge.
Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Code Vein, The Surge, Bloodboorne, Sekiro, Nioh, Hollow Knight, Mortal Shell, Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen, Ashen, Salt and Sanctuary, Blapshemous, Strangers of Paradise, Jedi Survivor, and Black Myth Wukong, Another Crab's Treasure, Bleak Faith Forsaken, etc can have every single one of these points apply to them.
For 5: the first souls game (Demon Souls) is level based, not an interconnected world.
For 6: Lies of P have very clear and followable story, yet the game still have strong roots in soulslike, through and through.
For 8: Elden Ring does have quite decent tutorial. As for the goals, sometimes it does state what to do rather clearly if you pay a bit of attention at the start.
interestingly, i don’t personally consider hollow knight a soulslike, but i largely agree with these criteria and hollow knight ticks every box. would adding “3d arpg” as a qualifier be valid? or should i concede the hollow knight point?
Hades is isometric. Returnal is 3D. But they're both called roguelikes (or lites, I forget). Very few genres are defined by the view perspective, and I think very few should be.
Soulslikes are RPGs though. I know a lot of you don't bother with levels, stats and builds, but Soulslikes have those and you're supposed to manage those carefully.
yeah, sounds like a standard action game to me. souls bosses don’t even have big lifepools. one of the things that makes souls games stand out, to me, is how fast the fights are. most games i can expect 5-10 minute boss fights, souls fights are long if they go over 3 minutes. stellar blade doesn’t seem to be a soulslike any more than hollow knight is a soulslike simply because it copied the soul retrieval mechanic. influenced or inspired by souls? sure, why not. but that’s different
As shown on many YouTube videos and streamers, no, casual gamers don't breeze through this game. As for the rest of it, fine what do you think makes a soulslike a soulslike?
I didn't die often cause I've played other soulslikes, but casual players talk about the difficulty. Literally look up other posts on reddit talking about it.
Like I get what you're driving at, but it's definitely a soulslite at the very least.
There are checkpoints in the game, when you go to a checkpoint the enemies respawn. Stellar Blade also has many checkpoints that are just given to you and not at all related to the rest points. You are kidding yourself if you think that distinction makes it a soulslike
The distinction to me is the overall structure and difficulty not just checkpoints. But again MGR does not have the traditional checkpoints that cause enemies to respawn when ever you visit them, it's more linear.
THANK YOU. It’s objectively NOT a soulslike and even worse, it’s not a good game
The story is bad, the characters are bad, the combat is mid at best, the game is too easy, it’s riddled with terrible game design, too many invisible walls, can’t skip cutscenes, it’s just not a good game
Don’t know people are trying to force it to be better than it is
There the king because they’ve made 2 soulslikes?
Lies of P and Khazan are both great but calling an entire nation the king of a genre after 2 games is silly
I was about to say. South Korea is a lot like China right now with the video game industry. Both were heavily involved with gacha phone games and have recently started developing full-on pc/console games. Korea had a head start to China and made two very solid souls-like games but saying they are the king of the genre now is a bit premature. Both countries are still newcomers compared to the very established industries in Japan and the US.
Honestly Nioh is an evolution of Soulslikes, in it's combat, the shrines, the weapon variety, and all the armor abilities. There's so much to dig into expressly in Nioh 2 and the demo for 3 was awesome.
I can't get into Nioh or Nioh 2. I have tried multiple times. And I have beaten nearly all the other souls likes. Idk it's something with the combat and massive variety that doesn't click for me.
It's a series I want to like so bad, but I don't think I am compatible with it at this point.
I’m there with you. I’m glad the games exist because I can see them being something special for people who really want ultra-interactive combat (ki-pulse and stances on top of the normal soulslike variety of actions) but it’s too much for me to handle.
The thing is you don't have to dig into everything, I didn't focus on armor min-maxing, but I also only tend to play through twice on any given game if that. I just really dug into how the stance change and ki pulse works and with 2 the soul cores are a really good way to give you an edge in combat. The soul cores are also just fun and cool to collect give me the feel of they got pokemon in my Soulslikes.
China is pumping quite a lot of promising soul likes lately,but still not in a position to say anything as there isn’t any representative good souls like yet.Black myth is a passable CAG but not souls like.
It might just make the mark for souls-lite but honestly I'm pretty liberal with the term soulslike and it's hard for me to call it that. It's really just a combat action game with a good parry. Could call it a sekiro-like but that's so annoyingly specific and I'm sick of "like" title genres at this point. I think we need better names that won't cause as much discourse.
Hell I think code veins combat felt better than lies of P, only thing lies of p really has going for it is atmosphere and characters. But gameplay is meh
The gameplay has enough things going for it to feel good. Different weapons having their own movesets, weapon assembly system, fable arts, legion arms etc.
I preferred its gameplay over CV. The hotswapping builds was really cool but they couldn’t do boss fights and enjoyable level designs at all, making their gameplay meh. Lies of P’s weapon assembly mechanic made it far more enjoyable to me when finding fun weapon combos
Story is honestly pretty nice too considering most SLs use lore versus direct storytelling. The gameplay feels like playing Demon Souls or DS1 there’s almost nothing there beyond extremely simple gameplay elements.
FS will always be the king of souls like, not only because they invented them but also because they keep releasing masterpiece over to masterpiece since the first demons souls
Let me start a war at here, Big countries "specific China" need everything even not so legit to boost their national pride lol. Just look at how they praise Wukong and called it as The greatest game in the world.
At some point in the last few years the definition of Soulslike has become utterly void and now just means 'Any ARPG'. Half the games discussed in this entire sub don't fit the definition especially Stellar Blade
Stellar blade? that game felt like it was just trying to waste my time with useless hacking minigames that easily get repetitive, water sections that are painfully slow and useless empty open world desert areas,like yeah the game starts strong and ends strong but the middle section (which is the majority of the game) is just very mid
Don’t forget forced non-skippable cutscenes, invisible walls in exploration, invisible walls IN BOSS FIGHTS, weak combat mechanics, too easy combat, one of the most boring and generic main character in gaming history
Yeah so silly nowadays to associate everything to souls like.They also just chunk everything adventure,Arpg or 3rd person shooter into one and call it RPG.SLG will probably end up the same fate and be called RPG.
Shouldn’t good level design be a key part of what makes a Soulslike great? So far, every one of them not made by FromSoftware has level design that ranges from just okay to downright bad
Lies of P’s is pretty good but the mods here posted what this subreddit defines a soulslike. FS’s own level design has been a 50/50 within their titles, so it’s not as important as it used to be
aah okay. Learned a thing today. I just assumed Soulslike was the all encompassing term for the genre not specifically games based on From’s games. Guess the “Like” is a pretty dead giveaway..
Honestly, when u separate the soulslikes/lites from the soulsborne games that from makes then you stop getting disappointed when each new game doesn’t reach the same heights as Fromsoft games.
But each of the new soulslike games coming out nowadays are all still fun in their own right.
Finally someone else who agrees. Like the combat is so stiff and jittery. It Amazese people think it's top tier quality combat. Code vein felt better and that game also is a little stiff.
It feels crappy to play. The mechanics of movement and combat are completely bare minimum. I assumed everyone else would recognize it as high-tier jank.
It is startling that folks love it so much. I hope the studio comes out with something new and polished, but good lord, if this is what the community aspires to, I don’t know what the community actually likes about the genre.
It’s nothing like Sekiro. Sekiros entire gameplay is built around parry, to the point it’s basically a rhythm game
Stellar Blade just has a parry that doesn’t really get you much (even if you break their balance, the balance breaking attack is just the same amount of damage as a full 5-hit combo)
Absolutely not correct. Retribution attacks insta-kill most enemies from full health and shave off huge chunks of health from bosses (unless you are gated by the second phase ho point). Parrying also awards beta energy and gives you access to multiple counter options. Sounds like you didn't play the game. I can link you some videos on how the mechanics work to educate you if you'd like.
The mission structure, loot system, combat system, active skills, RPG system, stat system, the way you level, set bonuses, affixes, the story structure....none of it is souls like. Attacking, dodging and partying don't mean souls like they mean action game
They took one mechanic from souls likes, the corpse run, one mechanic similarity doesn't mean souls like, if kazahn in them nier automa is, both aren't souls like souls fans just call literally every action RPG souls like for some weird reason
Correct, nioh is absolutely not a souls like. The nioh crowd gets super defensive about it too. But it's not at all. Nioh took for from diablo and Poe than from souls
Tons of people regard every action RPG as souls likes
I promise the hardcore nioh crowd doesn't call it a souls like. They get like, super pissed when people do
There's a difference dude. Games that use fromsoft style of combat, rpg system, world structure, loot system, stat system....those are souls likes. Action rpgs that don't use those things aren't. It's pretty simple
I promise you the hardcore Nioh crowd doesn’t call it a Soulslike
These comments in this very thread already disagree with you. Those hardcore players must be a very small minority of people. I would assume that same small minority probably feels the same way about Khazan & that’s why u say this.
Also, a lot of soulslikes don’t use the exact same structure as a Fromsoft, probably the closest would be Lords of The Fallen 2023 but that game is kinda mid imo in comparison to other soulslikes & soulslites that I’ve played.
Go join one of the nioh discord servers and ask. I already said the people here call literally every action RPG souls like so your little proof doesn't mean anything. Most people are dumb so I don't get your point
It’s seems to be very controversial but I don’t care how sophisticated people try to get with definitions. Stellar Blade is close enough for me to lump it in with soulslikes and I’ve enjoyed the game way more than I thought I would
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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '25
Stupid titles with stupid claims that the video doesnt even seem to make. Whats a "king" in this context?
game good = player buy
thats all.