Everybody knows Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, Hollow Knight, Lies of P, and Nioh, and anybody remotely into Soulslike RPGs has played each one of these games to completion (along with their expansions and sequels). Despite still being fairly young, the genre exploded so much and so quickly that an avalanche of smaller games flooded the market a bit too quickly, ensuring most of them went unnoticed by all but a select few.
Not every RPG needs to have Soulslike combat, but I still get excited whenever one comes around. What can I say? I love the punishment. While FromSoftware and Team Ninja have set an impossibly high bar, plenty of lesser-known Soulslike RPGs exist that excel in one area or another, and they deserve to exist in a brighter spotlight.
The title is hyperbolic, as these games are well known to die-hard Soulslike fans. However, they are far from mainstream.
Let's kick things off with a special case: the first true Soulslike game. Launching in 2001, Severance: Blade of Darkness is the ultimate proto-Soulslike, even more so than FromSoftware's King's Field. In fact, "proto" is totally unnecessary, as this Spanish action-RPG pretty much wrote the blueprint that would eventually lead to the genre.
Seriously, Blade of Darkness shows so much of the Soulslike DNA that it seems unreal. The punishing-as-heck dark fantasy RPG features a stamina bar that drains whenever you act, meaning that mashing attacks will only leave you vulnerable to an onslaught. With a useful lock-on and precise hitboxes, combat forces you to read enemy patterns and attack during their recovery frames, and you can even target specific body parts.
The interconnected level design is also pure Souls, and areas like the Fortress of Tell Halaf wouldn't look out of place in a FromSoftware game. The progression system is closer to old-school dungeon crawlers, but the game also features weapons with unique arts.
Severance: Blade of Darkness plays like a 3D action RPG from the early 2000s, but the current-gen version has been updated to make it more accessible. However, you need to go in with realistic expectations for this one.
On March 27, The First Berserker Khazan hit stores, garnering widespread acclaim for its intense combat and boss fights. On the very same day, AI Limit released to far less fanfare and notoriety, dooming itself to a lifetime of appearances in "is it worth playing?" threads on the Soulslike Reddit page.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/soulslike-rpgs-perfect-games-nobody-played/
