Souls-like is defined by the need to decide between attacking, blocking, dodging or parrying. With the additional factor of attacks having a fixed commitment to the attack animation that leaves you vulnerable and likely to get hit if you press it at the wrong time.
It's mostly just 2D fighting game combat translated into 3D with a lock on targeting system.
This is spot on. I like fighting games and I after playing a bunch of fighting games I will be better at the spacing and timing in a souls game.
It's mostly just 2D fighting game combat translated into 3D with a lock on targeting system.
fighting games are fast tho. if a fighting game had souls combat it would be boring af
fighting games are fast tho
Not Soul Calibur (the WORST soulslike)
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold
According to the Skyrim modding community, Souls-like combat means:
-You have a camera lock on function
-You have a dodge or roll button
-You have 'attack commitments' that hold the player and enemies in place during attacks to make the attacks feel more weighty
You have slightly more optional aspects like having weapons with somewhat varied movesets or the punishing difficulty but as far as changing Skyrim's combat into a Souls-like, those seem to be the defining traits
According to this definition, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is souls like
I suppose the jump attack is pretty committal but the attacks in OoT are pretty quick
Well more like Souls games are Zelda likes but yeah
I actually think Zelda and Dark Souls are almost the same game so unironically yes. Dark Souls 2 is basically just one giant Zelda dungeon
You have 'attack commitments' that hold the player and enemies in place during attacks to make the attacks feel more weighty
Imo the point of this isn't how the game feels, feel is just a byproduct. The point is to have what some might describe as more consequential positioning and decision making with attacks, because you can't just swivel mid-animation to hit someone who got around the initial path of your attack.
Ah yeah you're right, the better explanation is that adding attack commitment allows the Souls-like dodge rolling to function at all. In base game Skyrim enemies will swivel 180 degrees to track you during an attack, and your intended way of dodging them is fully backing away and then rushing back in again while you're playing the game in first person.
you can't do that in a fighting game either but fighting games manage to feel fast. slow in souls combat is slow like if everything was the 35 frame charge unblockables in soul calibur
Combat is mostly rolling.
I appropriated your gag. Sorry, comrade.
but also that if you're bad at it you're dead immediately, right
And die and die and die and die and-
If you put a moderate amount of stats into HP most attacks do not kill you in one shot. Smaller enemies hardly ever have ridiculous damage attacks if you're not taken by surprise.
There are bosses and enemies that ARE very punishing but no, I'm not that great at them and I'm not always dead.
everytime i tune into a stream where someone is playing one of these games they are just rolling around on the ground like wtf are you doing just play sanic the gofer or whatever if you want to roll into a ball and move around on the floor
These days souls like combat means basically anything. Action RPG? Souls like. Dodging and parrying mechanics? Soulslike. Drop your items on death? Soulslike. I recall a review of Expedition 33 that called the combat soulslike which is absolutely ridiculous.
The word has become like the word rogue like in that it is so overloaded it's essentially meaningless
Souls like games are barely even games, they remind of me of arcade machines where it's all just about memorising vs the machine
Never actually feels like playing a proper game, it's got more in common with a dance mat than anything else. When X does Y, press B. When Y does X, press A. Dodge the thing. Hit the thing twice. Dodge the thing again. It's like a feature length quicktime event.
No, and even superficial scrutiny demonstrates that that's not the case.
I'm so unfathomably sick of listening to people moan and moan about soulslikes.
Yes, the fanbase is rancid. Yes, the subgenre is wildly overrepresented and trend-chasing games are often designed in a very formulaic way and are liable to suck, as always. These complaints are fair game.
But very often people go several steps further because they have so much resentment over these facts that they extend this to attacking a serviceable genre on absurd grounds and always interjecting how much they hate it and how superior they are to it in every discussion about it. I don't really care for shoot-em-ups. Do you know what I do? Move on with my fucking life instead of writing dissertations about how they are fake and evil games and dropping into every shmup conversation to tell them how much it sucks.
When minecraft first came out there was a big discussion online and offline about whether it was technically a game. There was no ender dragon or netherworld or 'bosses' to speak of. There were no objectives, quests, storylines... All you do is mine and craft. There's no way to win or lose or any ingame reason to play beyond mine and craft.
I mention this to say that trying to define a videogame is a fool's errand
Diogenes, holding up a floppy disk containing the 1993 "Interference" scene demo (by Sanity) for the Amiga:
"Behold, a video game!"
Ninja edit: holy shit, someone captured it for YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWYRIV8YVdk
This is the same machine whose platform died off because its absurd network-of-coprocessors-driven-by-an-MC68000 (or 68EC020) meant that it couldn't run Wolfenstein 3D for shit, let alone Doom
I only played Elden Ring but in that game, if you use spears you can see enough of the enemies that you can read their intent = you don't need to memorize stuff.
Also if you watch the very proficient (not me) in those games, they don't roll much. They sprint and revolve around the enemies until they are in recovery poses and then go in.
Don't bring arcade games into this. You're playing a dangerous game and you're not guaranteed to win if you besmirch the elegance of the arcade.
That said, it fucking sucks as people saw the elegant design of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls with the cool ways they tied the in-game story and the game mechanics together, the extremely good world design and level design, the open-ended 'solve the problem however you can' RPG design, the innovative way to incorporate and rejuvenate once-boring multiplayer and story-telling techniques, and instead of being inspired to do anything cool with those or being inspired to change their thoughts on games they just went "I fucking love i-frame dodge rolls and big bosses and +12% stagger damage amulet equips".
I mean, a lot of the times the fans do refer to the gameplay being like a dance.
Also, it's not just about memorising. I wasn't memorising when i first tried the first few bosses of the games. Especially the first few games are kinda easy imo with the difficulty myth stemming from the games merely not holding your hand, which was new at the time. The attacks are telegraphed with the meme even being that they are too telegraphed and by the time the boss swings his weapon you have already panic rolled through your stamina.
Idk git gud and all that ๐ค๐ค/s
you can choose to describe any genre of game in such a reductive way as to make it sound objectively unfun
to me there is nothing quite like dark souls 1. even later iterations are "souls like" (while still being their own thing)
to me its a game where the stakes are relatively low; you can die a lot and it doesn't really matter. You just have to learn the movesets of the bosses / enemies, and however long it takes you to execute damage within the windows given. It requires a lot of patience, memorization, and some motor skill effort depending on what you're trying to do. It's difficulty means that any hardship you overcome feels well deserved and rewarding. You can grind and get levels / gear that helps, or go bare bones. While the game is punishing, and does have some "gotcha!" moments (such as saying "no" to a cat) you can always work to overcome it. I don't think the developers intended to be cruel or to punish one too much.
And then there is ds1 pvp which I hear is like starting all over again and overcoming a wall, but is unique in it's delivery.
really, when other games say "soulslike" I think they just mean their game is difficult and requires memorizing the movesets of bosses. Hades 1-2 has some aspects of this but it's not exactly the same. But dying has different consequences, starting over from the very beginning.
Having a high damage to health ratio is common but not remotely essential, while people would consider having stamina much more important for the character of the genre because it introduces resource management. Another common example of resource management is having a heal with a limited number of uses that is restored at checkpoints. There's also usually a mechanic where when certain conditions are met, you can go to the enemy and do a much stronger attack with a canned joint animation between attacker and recipient (backstabbing and whatever the other one is called in DS are like this).
There are also other structural aspects of the game outside of the immediate combat, like the existence of those checkpoints that restore health and certain resources, certain elements of the world design (centered on shortcuts and unlocking doors, usually), the bloodstained mechanic, the soapstone mechanics for letting players leave each other messages, and a few other things.
Souls-like just means m "rhythm games with swords and magic instead of dancing and neon shapes"
Fighting is infact a form of dancing
maybe that's why people have used dance pads to play the game ๐
Now that I have read everyone's responses I have a few things to add that others haven't mentioned yet:
I actually very rarely roll in this game, it's reserved for certain quick manuvering which is not always required, because most of the time I am actually positioning myself to be in the "blind spot" of the enemy.
Parrying and backstabbing is really important. Granted I have skipped parrying and mostly backstab when needed, but if I was patient enough I could easily just one shot many enemies and parry bosses.
The community is actually not very toxic, although it may have that reputation, honestly there are people like that in every popular fandom ๐ griefers, g*mers... but people who cherish this game for it's anti-fascist sentiments get it. They're cool people.
The plot of the first game is very vauge and not really explained that much. To me this makes it much more endearing. There is a lot which is implied but not outright said, perhaps leaving it to interpretation. What one might consider the "good" path is a trick, supported by liars (in my view) There are characters who turn out to be shitty. And there are characters who feel like they care about your well being.
Everything in this game that is a boon to you feels precious. There is something about the spirit of resilience in here, and the shared resilience of those who take the journey with you.
Above all: Don't give up, Skeleton!
Agree 
%
From what I have seen of the souls community it's mostly fine too. I only have 2 issues with it.
The Dark Souls 2 fandom is easily the most annoying one. I get that DS2 has been smeared pretty hard and that they feel the need to correct that, but they keep saying it is the greatest thing ever made and every single other souls game is inferior by comparison. Then you go to the other game's communities and they are almost never talking shit about the other games, but rather talking and enjoying the ones they are a part of. I don't like to use the term "eternal victim complex" because chuds love using that against actual victims, but it feels appropriate here.
The other issue I have is with the Elden Ring fandom, since they just collectively decided to believe that Miquella is the second coming of Hitler or something of the sort, and I genuinely do not get that. Like I didn't really dive into the lore, but that is definitely not what I got from that character at all. Also there's this video essay that I haven't watched yet, that someone posted here before and I'm sure will make me dislike them even more.
Everything in this game that is a boon to you feels precious. There is something about the spirit of resilience in here, and the shared resilience of those who take the journey with you.
YES!!! There's an incredible sense of fellowship and comradery these games can provide from those that you only interact once or twice, be it from direct jolly cooperation or from messages left by other players. It's pretty cool.
soulslike is when animation priority and when you have a whole lot of animation priority, you get QTE
There's a lot about the souls games I like, but eventually I reach a boss I can't beat and the rest of the game gets locked behind that one boss; in dark souls 3 that would be the sword dancer boss, a literal gate behind which the rest of the content exists. Her moveset is extremely confusing because it looks very samey and it gets hard to learn what to dodge through.
Also you say 'dodge and block', but really it's just dodge; one thing that's really awful about these games (maybe just the later ones in the series? I can't remember how the older ones were in this regard) is that there's primarily only one way to play it and that's dodging and maybe parrying; you rarely are able to build your character to be super tanky (so heavy armor + high health); it may be an RPG, but you can't truly play it the way you want.
I recall back in demons' souls and dark souls 1, heavy armor and armoring up was entirely viable. In dark souls 1 they even added a steel (iron? stone?) skin pyromancy to add on top of the heavy armor you already had on. I can't recall if dark souls 2 allowed for that style, and dark souls 3 definitely didn't. The Havel set USED to be great for boss fights.
Turning into metal is in all the subsequent games too, I'm pretty sure.
There are fundamental aspects of a game where if you don't like it, you won't like the game, and you can't really avoid needing to roll, block, or parry attacks some of the time (though you virtually never need to do any one of them and can often just walk out of harm's way). If you don't want to do any single one of those then yeah, playing the game is silly and you'll have a bad time. That said, there are still lots of other elements to builds, like different types of casting and such, that give it more diversity.
I've beaten DS1 without rolling or parrying a single time, just blocking and repositioning, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for everyone, but I thought it was fun.
This would describe expedition 33: Claire obscura pretty well.
fr lol
High stakes and punishing and satisfying to beat
Souls-like as a genre implies a certain kind of difficulty design, but games that are not souls-likes can have souls like combat. for example, the newer Assassin's Creed games have souls like combat, and they aren't really unforgiving like that. It has more to do with attacks that have slower animations so you can't just button mash.
"souls like" is when your character is doing a slow "return to idle" animation so you press a button to stop that and do the next thing, but they have no visible reaction, then the situation changes so you press a different button, then five years later they finish their animation and act like you pressed the first button
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
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