What speaks to me is how they feel like the "truest" RPG experience.

You are in this completely unfamiliar world, you are holding a sharp stick and trembling with a crappy flap of leather as a shield...

You have to creep through this terrifying dungeon world, having no idea what is around every corner. Every map layout tells a miniature story of what's going on in that area, and it can be so subtle, sometimes it's just the enemies they choose to place, or other small world details.

It is such a true sense of bewilderment, despair, and scrambling to grasp where you are and what is happening and how to control it

What are these weapons, how do they work? The game leaves it to you to discover for the most part. I'm going to use this pickaxe on this giant rock guy! Wow what a difference and now the feeling of a shred of control. You can deduce so many vulnerabilities in enemies just by paying attention.

And it just keeps going from there.

The best part of playing a Souls game is never looking at a Wiki. And fucking hating that you are stuck or can't get past a spot and need to up your game. Not necessarily in the git gud sense but actually willingly learn and play the mechanics of the game sense. Or just try to discover more and find new solutions.

I love that you simply cannot have a singular build and realistically expect to be able to have success throughout the entire game world. I love that at the very least you need to use a range of tools, not necessarily upgrade them, but you're going to have a sad time if you think you can just hack and slash with some ultra mega dragon sword. Or get the pointiest magician hat and everything is going to be cool. Or think that because you are build x, you're not ever going to be served by a bow.

I have the most fun when I play the games in the dark, no hype, no wiki, no hints, no Googling answers. Making my own little maps and notes and trying to figure it out.

So I guess to me that's what it is, it's a game world that is scary and brutally dangerous, but it gives enough tools to the player that they can squeak by.

It's a whole vibe.

What Fromsoft has done has yet to really be replicated in its entirety. The combination of old and new school design philosophies is a big part. Another is changing the story to fit the game, and not changing the game to fit the story.

Lots of games replicate the 3rd person perspective, the stats, the dodge and parry mechanics, the respawning mechanics and bonfires/checkpoints, but still fail to get the vibe right when it comes to the actual story and storytelling. The worst offenders are things like Remnant that have BOOKS of exposition that tries to explain every little thing instead of allowing the player to figure it out and having things open to interpretation. Or Lords of the Fallen that just fail to have anything interesting going on in their worlds and have flat, one-dimensional characters.

The closest thing that has managed to get most of everything right, including the vibe, is Lies of P. That's a dev that really understands what it is they are imitating and the things it doesn't live up to are super minor.

The defining factors for me are the dropping of souls on death/ the ability to pick them up again, and the dodge roll with i-frames. Everything else is not unique to soulslikes.

Interconnect world? Metroidvanias.

Combat and boss fights? Zelda.

Difficulty? Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

If you were to give me examples of the soul-dropping mechanic and i-frame dodging in other games, then I would probably have to adjust my definition to include some or all of the above factors along with those two. But for now that's it.

Non consentual adversarial multiplayer.

Yea I said it. Watchdogs was a souls like.

I think "diffciulty" is poorly defined.

The souls games have a kind of difficulty, but I think what throws people is more the change in kind than degree.

The games are largely deterministic. There's little to no random factor.

You level up and improve your numbers, but the difference between starting health and the soft cap is typically a factor of five or less. Compare with like final fantasy where the factor is like 50 (a starting HP of 200 to 9999). Baldur's Gate is typically a factor of ~10. The underlying math in souls games doesn't provide that big of a buttress.

You don't get a lot of super moves as you progress. There are some spells or weapon arts that can be strong with the right build (blasphemous blade!), but nothing really like getting Fireball in DND or Knights of the Round in ff7.

This stuff comes together into an interesting cocktail. The game is mostly about you, the one holding the controller. Your stats and equipment matter, but are secondary. This is very different than like old final fantasies where I can hand you my save and you could win any fight (just do quad magic ultima and mimic).

I think a lot of games try to set up paper tigers for the players. They want the player to feel threatened , without any real danger of losing. Most of the Bethesda games, you might have a scene where there's a death claw or whatever, but you can always pause the game to heal. Most of the final fantasy fights are not a real threat. They wear down your resources, but you're sitting on a stack of healing items.

I think it's also worth noting that the fights also aren't a super long challenge. Most of time, the winning match is over in a few minutes. It's not like an MMO raid that's a 30 minute ordeal.

This isn't my most organized post but I'm on my phone, so editing is hard.

"Door does not open from this side" = Soulslike

To me it's not precisely the difficulty, it's the thought and consideration you have to have for each enemy. Even with end game gear, facing 2-3 of the lowliest enemies, you can't just charge in and button mash.

For me it's about finding a situation that seems impossible at first, then eventually beating it by learning the enemy (both the actual enemies and the environment) and getting better myself.

That doesn't just include bosses, level design is a big part of it too, and it's what I enjoy (and sometimes detest) the most about souls games.

Edit: forgot the question I was answering, lol. Difficulty is an essential part of my experience, but more as a method and not the goal. It creates tension, keeps me focused, makes me notice things that I would have missed otherwise, and gives that great feeling of winning against the impossible.

Not difficult bosses, difficulty in general. Unforgiving, deadly fights with even the basic enemies (unless hopelessly overleveled), and sense of crushing despair in the world around you, to the point where acomplishments feel more earned since they're harder to achieve. That, and usually some punishment mechanic for dieing repeatedly. Thats what makes a souls-like to me. And big fuck off bosses where you're fighting their toes.

The interconnected world and bosses are from it's origins as a metroidvania subgenre. The pacing of each fight, how death is handled, and the skills are important to being a souls game.

Each time you fight something you could die, at any point in the game. And that's not from leveled lists or the enemies becoming bullet sponges. It's from the combat system and how it's designed. You're not just killing enemies as you run through an area, though you can do that, you're facing off against them.

Dying is important. It's even a plot point in every From game. Earning points(souls) to use for currency to level and buy items, and the pressure to not lose them, is a big part of the games structure. That's not unique to souls games, but it's definitely a core mechanic. (Devil may cry being a big example)

The skills are often over looked, but they determine what we can even do in the first place. Some games can get away without skills by leaning more on the metroidvania aspects such as Tunic and Hollow Knight. But for a soulsborne game they're kinda essential. A more "true" game could remove the skills, but it would need to have some other way to constrain the players ability to use different classes of items in their place.

I used to hate these game, btw. I love them now though, and i think that gave me a good look into how they operate in a way.

Eh, Khazan takes more from Nioh 2 than souls games. Yes, Nioh 2 is that much of a departure from souls likes — literally the souls game it is most like is Dark Souls 2 (holy fuck I want to kill bosses not the same 10 enemies 1 million times).

So, bosses. Bosses are the defining point, to me. Poor bosses are the reason why I think Elden Ring is bad, and why I won't be purchasing Nightreign.