5 Things Soulslikes NEED To Do Going Forward 

The rolling animations for a lot of souls like looks like the Dark souls one roll.

Going back further than Bloodborne and even Dark Souls, the Castlevania games were defined by their dark gothic worlds and scary monsters too. It feels almost like a tradition at this point but I'm into it ahaha.

Lies of p was my game of the year last year! I loved the combat. And it gets better the more u play ! For me my second play through was my favorite. It's such amazing combat. So fun. , so smooth .

I wanna see other souls games incorporate Lies of P's mechanic where if you die in a boss room your souls appear outside the arena. its not fun trying to get your souls back from a boss fight, especially if you ended up there by mistake or are forced to take damage trying to get them back. I had like 40k souls in the Hushed Saint Boss arena in LotF and it was so nerve wracking running back and getting them each time I almost had a heart attack.

That first point about refining one aspect to perfection is so true. Bloodborne and Sekiro both have my favorite combat in the series because Bloodborne perfected the feeling of absolute chaotic aggression with minimal down time and sekiro perfected the precise "parry" as its main focus and gave us the most polished game ever. The reason why Nioh 2 is still one of my favorite souls likes is because it put its focus into your weapon combos, skills, and magic, making them the main focus of the game!

To me parry mechanics are a must. Doesn't need to be the main mechanic, but it is a way to alternate aggression time with defensive time. Sekiro was build around it, but Bloodborne had that as a reliable tool, instead of sometimes useful if you know you can.

That bridge scene in the Codex Lost reminded me of Morrowind. Game looks really great

My hopes for future soulslikes: 1. More interesting ways to interact with spellcasting: a lot of these games just stick with the "shoot different colored balls of whatever" for each element. Get creative with magic! 2. Interesting uses of the stamina mechanic: Nioh 1/2 really opened my eyes on how you could take the simple mechanic of stamina usage and regeneration, and turn it on its head with more active and skillful play. 3. Better multiplayer; Lords of the Fallen, Salt and Sanctuary, and Nioh 2 allowed for some of the best coop experiences I have had in any soulslikes. Its a shame that the main fromsoft games haven't evolved much from their base implementation in DkS1. 4. You don't need to always be aping the dark themes: I feel like a lot of soulslikes have a tendency to think they HAVE to be themed like a Dark Souls game. I'm of the opinion that you can be more creative with your worlds and themes, especially if you buck the trend of being a dark depressing world, in the vein of most soulslikes. 5. More interesting ways of using stats: I remember being SO hyped when I heard Team Ninja was working on a job class system FF take on a soulslike, only to be let down by Strangers of Paradise in the end. However; I still think there is value to take in a FF styled job class system being implemented into a soulslike/ Code Vein and Strangers of Paradise played around with the concept; but I would love to see a developer really push it to its limits.

I really want an entire soulslike in that primeval, occult, tribal atmosphere you get from the Regal Ancestor Spirit bossfight.

Need to give some more love to axes, hammers, and greataxes. Especially the greataxe category, so they actually have a horizontal light attacks and vertical heavies

The main one is: Develop a vision for the world and feel first, design mechanics in accordance to these later. This is how Miyazaki made his games feel coherent. Don't start with mechanics. As a simple tangible example, level design and enemy variety are more important than combat mechanics. Combat mechanics in Souls games are actually not that complex from the player input standpoint at all, it's the world that carries them.

The best thing games that are inspired by From Software can do, is not trying to be like FromSoftware. Miyazaki himself takes a lot of inspiration in other games, except he manages to create original experiences, that differentiate themselves from their original inspirations.

Thanks to this video I learned about Enotria! Italian folklore is incredibly obscured and rarely gets the spotlight. I'm keeping my eye on it!

Love your vids man, been watching since before ER's release. Always great takes and great suggestions for future releases with top tier Metroid Prime BGM. Keep up the great work 😁

thanks for this info currently working on a project to be 9 tiers/areas from top to bottom 9th area mapping world with different twists indie using blender to do everything from scratch and unreal 5 to render out the works.

On the topic of unique settings. Man, what i wouldn't give to have FromSoftware make a Sci-Fi Souls game.

I would really like to see Vampire Hunter D or Spawn as a soulslike. Both have the potential to be transformed into something fun and engrossing to play and experience.

Nice topic to talk about, not just hollowing dlc speculations. Keep it going, Zio!

One point you missed that all souls-likes need: A camera that does not have a hitbox that constantly bounces off of the environment, doesn't spin around rapidly causing your controls to suddenly reverse in the middle of combat, and isn't relentlessly obsessed with getting close up shots of your colon. Oh, and bring back upgradable armor so we're not going from full health to dead in 3 hits or less, if not 3 seconds or less.

Tbh, bring perfect parry to every souls game. Having an option besides roll to not take damage is so nice. Feels like a natural evolution to the combat

I'm making a game like King's Feild and I'm glad you mentioned the world. Not to dunk on any particular game but for some reason this part doesn't get the same treatment as the combat. Maybe because developers are not exactly artists and just hope the "souls tag" will be enough to market it. Which is a shame because it's everything I look for in a FromSoftware-like game. It should lead the design of enemies, the setting, and how NPCs act.

Was excellent, pretty much nailed it!

Dude, I've been watching you since the Elden Ring release....the time you must take to create these videos is evident and your delivery is great. If you haven't heard this lately, I.....WE appreciate you. Stoked for SOTET

The main reason ah like soulslikes is because of DARK FANTASY SET IN EUROPEAN STYLE SETTING

Dear FromSoft: Allow people to pause your games. Doors and phones do need to be answered sometimes, we aren't all tweens.

im not trying to make a soulslike and infact if gone further and further fromm a soulslike the more i go into development of my game, but i do love the souls series and i want to share this appreciation in my game, taking inspiration from the level design, bosses and *partly* sekiros combat (im not rlly focusing it on parrying so that i build a unique identity based on sliding underneath attacks to dodge them instead of being a parry based sekiro clone)

On your first point about some games doing too much I can understand this perspective but I’ll offer a counter. I think the Souls genre is good because it’s base was very simple. It made it easier to iterate on a solid foundation allowing for amazing experiences that felt like evolutions. However something that happens is that when we get this iterative experience it really shows just how much the past games could have benefited from those changes. I remember before ER had dropped people hopped that the game would have Sekiro parry’s and were disappointed when it didn’t. I think this is a genre all about taking what someone else did and building on it with class. It can’t always work but in the case of Lies of P/Wo Long I think it did.

Totally agree that Soulslikes need to change up their settings. We all want Bloodborne 2, but devotion to repeating the same idea is antithetical to effective Souls design.

I think what I'd most like to see is a Souls game set during a period of growth and prosperity instead of a dark dying world. Would be nice to see some character and enemy designs that don't look zombified (although u could still have some of that even in that setting here and there)

The last few I've played were good games but felt too parry centric (thymesia, mortal shell, LoP) and to me, that's wasn't like Dark Souls where equipping the buckler and learning how to parry often made life so much easier, but it never felt forced.

So one game I remember making a large visual impact on me do to not looking samey was weirdly enough dragon's dogma, despite pulling in the most generic mythological elements from Greek mythology they could, they both eschewed other mythological influences other than the dragons themselves and went with a more pastel color pallet and combined all of that with a distinct Mediterranean architectural influence. All of that gave the game a very distinct feel despite being, in abstract, very generic.

Putting all my thoughts into words perfectly! Lies of P and LOTF were huge steps up for Souls likes, so it's nice to discuss what is great from those while also stating what can still be improved. Also I'm close to finishing LOTF, and i feel exactly the same as you. I'm enjoying my time with the game, but I'm only ever now surprised by the major bosses, you're still fighting many of the same enemies you fought at the start of the game. The level design is cool, but i still want to run through because I'm not engaged with fighting the same guys again

For my wife and I casually playing and handing a blast co-oping, then invaded within 1 minute, we get killed, resummon, invaded, get killed, rinse repeat. The option to turn invasions on and off is our only wish. It will never happen, but we can wish.... it really kills the fun for us.

Future Souls-like games need to have water-based combat. I mean, under the water, on top of the water's fickle surface and even in the air immediately above the water. I want to explore under-water cave systems to find treasure and monsters. Sunken cities, skelletal remains of leviathans, inscrutable derelicts of fantastical origins --- so long as theres some water splashed on it.

Personally I both agree and disagree with every point made. When it comes to the point of "don't do everything", I think that it's pretty obvious that stretching a combat system too thinly will always detract from the overall quality. However the point about picking one aspect of the combat and focussing on it is not something I agree with at all. While Bloodborne and Sekiro are fantastic games, the focus on essentially 1 aspect of their combat systems (the aggression in Bloodborne and the posture system in Sekiro) made the games feel very one dimensional to me, because at the end of the day I personally play Soulslikes for the same reason as I play any ARPG: different builds and playstyles. So being pigeonholed into playing a certain way is a surefire way to make me lose interest. I know that this part of the video (and indeed the video as a whole, it seems) was meant to criticise Lords of the Fallen, but after playing through that game, I found it refreshing that I could play it in any way I wanted; indulging in either the slow and steady style of early Souls combat or in the faster style of newer game's combat. The point about unique settings is obviously a universal rule of thumb, as the more unique you make your world, the more it stands out. However, again, I think that it's a matter of taste and implementation. While I (and many others I think) would love to play a Soulslike set in an actually living, breathing world with more traditional RPG elements, such as having towns and cities bustling with many NPCs, deep dialogue interactions and quests that are tracked via a journal with character insights and directions, there is a reason why the "Fantasy Post-Apocalypse" type of setting works so well: it complements the atmosphere set by the difficulty and the reduced NPCs and traditional RPG mechanics means that the developers can focus on the systems that make the genre so well-regarded, such as combat and exploration. I think I disagree the most with the point of "Meaningful Difficulty" though, tbh. Difficulty is one of, if not the most subjective aspect to any videogame and I don't think anyone, not even a whole community, has the right to really say "X is too easy" or "X is too difficult". I think that difficulty should be held to the standard of each individual game, rather than as a franchise. The idea that a game is somehow inferior to another because it's too easy or difficult in comparison is a growing kind of discourse I've seen since Dark Souls 3 and it's always dumb to me. The question that should always be asked instead (imo) is "Is this game fun and satisfying?", as the enjoyment of the player matters more than the "cred" you get for beating the game. Also, for this point I'd like to say I found Lords of the Fallen pretty challenging and died at least once to every boss on average, learning the moveset and overcoming, which was satisfying enough, no need to turn each bossfight into a BDSM session. I will agree the most on "Trusting the Player", since I share the same sentiment around tutorials and guidance. That being said, I don't think an extended tutorial is necessarily a bad thing, so long as it isn't intrusive and so long as one can disable it in options. Finally, about the subject of change. I'm autistic, so I'm obviously a little biased when it comes to changes haha, but I do agree that variety in these kinds of games is important. I don't think every Soulslike needs some kind of "rug pull" element to the story, lore and atmosphere, as that would just end up becoming another (ironically) predictable trend. I think that so long as the story and atmosphere are engaging to the player, they don't need to change throughout the game. I will agree heavily on variety though, as it can make or break player engagement and is my biggest criticism of Lords of the Fallen. That being said, I think that variety also comes in the form of different playstyles, weapons, armours, accessories and spells as well, which is often an overlooked element to Soulslikes and that greatly impacts my personal enjoyment and engagement with all RPGs. And, to come to LotF's defence here, I think that having more ways to kill and defend against enemies, than enemy types themselves, is still a good way to do variety. Obviously combining both is the best way to go though. Of course, these are all my personal opinions and I have been known to be a contrarian in pretty much every gaming community I've ever interacted with, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about as well as others haha. Still, I think that when it comes to any game, regardless of genre, is that it always most important to develop it around player enjoyment first and foremost, which is extremely subjective. So if one develops a game, they will always have a split between people that like it and people that don't and it's ok for people to dislike your game, so long as you cater to and satisfy the needs of those that do.

Nioh 2 was great in that it offered something new that FromSoftware-inspired Soulslike games couldn't. Looking forward to Black Myth: Wukong and hope it also adds another interesting layer to the saturated Soulslike genre.

Hard but fair Monster hunter comes to mind with that thought lmao

I'm not super into steam punk, but I'm surprised we haven't seen a stemepunk/bio shock style souls-like. I'd personally die for a sci-fi souls-like (aside from Star Wars, if you consider those souls-likes). Especially one set in the Armored Core universe. You could incorporate AC style gameplay with personal boosters, fight MC's as bosses, use AC's as set pieces, explore doser dens, etc. You could even have a Lake of Coral area to make players mad (that one is for you, Miyazaki).

Souls games need to focus on replayability imo. After beating the game, you should unlock custom mode where you can create your own custom starting build with whatever weapons you want and starting stats. Also you should be able to alter certain values, like enemy DMG, souls gained, enemy agro, ect... They also need to focus on adding new enemy layouts for NG+ so repeating playthroughs dont just become a boss-rush. I love replaying ds3 but i get so mad when i wanna have a playthrough with a certain weapon but knowing that weapon is only obtainable in the endgame. Sure you could just download a mod that allows you to spawn any weapon, but why not just have it in the base game so people dont have to do that?

I think Choi Ji-Won and Hidetaka Miyazaki need to get together and make the best souls like the world has ever seen.

I'm hoping Fromsoftware will lean towards a Sci-fi setting in the future. I keep thinking of an egyptian or mediterranean aesthetic Soulslike that ends up changing to H.R. Giger biomechanical visuals. It could show completely new mechanics and settings and something that's not really used nowadays.

The main thing is the level design, it's all about the level design, not the bosses or even the dodge roll combat (at least directly). Demon's Souls has mostly puzzle and gimmick bosses and the most simplistic combat of any Soulslike, but it's level design is still better than pretty much every non-From Soulslike. Its why no-one really cares about the Chalice Dungeons even though its infinite Bloodborne combat: the level design in the chalice dungeons is terrible.

Lies of P is nothing short of a masterpiece

not too sure about that _gothic_ point. *_Another Crab's Story_* has that 'animated under the sea' vibe, while *_Bleak Faith : Forsaken_* happens more in a a cyberpunk _à la_ Tsutomu Nihei kind of world. There's also *_Remnant : From the Ashes_* which has more of a post-apocalyptic setting, while *_Shattered : Tale of the forgotten king_* happens in a virtual world, albeit a crumbling one. Feels to me like the souls-like the days have a pretty diverse world-building and style.

For me, I like it when my Soulslike games have difficulty that is presented in player choice. I actually liked the partner system in Code Vein, for example. It made the game a lot easier and since I played it mostly with a friend, there was always three people. But what I liked about it was the fact that it was available for those who are interested in the genre but don't like the difficulty.

I would like to say when you talk to finger reader crone after you reach the mountain top of the giants and your two fingers has cut you off from the greater will even someone as loyal as finger reader crone will tell you how to burn the erd tree as her faith has weened. They do such a good job at making you feel like you have done something in elden ring and made changes to the world and finger reader crone agreeing to defy her gods she follows blindly is a huge example of how good they are at there environmental story telling. Crone understands shit is going down and she realizes the greater will has finally abandoned everyone it’s blissful moment when you hear that dialogue

Also i agree with the list in this video there very good n true points

I didn't have much trouble with Lies of P bosses (I felt they were satisfying-hard) until the final (final) boss. I can't get past the constant speed and two hit kills. I've just moved on to other games and am tempted to take the easy out and choose the bad ending. :/

Great video! I'm just hoping dragon dogma 2 and black myth turn out amazing. They both look like two of the best games coming out this year in my opinion.

I believe the lesson taken should be: If your "vision" is trend chasing, then your game is most likely going to suck. Fromsoft's Souls games were not the first ones in the 3rd person action RPG genre, they merely became mainstream enough, that the term "Soulslike" was born.

Technically speaking, Dark Souls does have an invasion tutorial later in the game.

I’m shocked to find out lotf was considered too easy while lies of p was considered too hard. I beat lies of p three times straight without ever feeling too stuck, while I got maybe half way through lords before giving up in a mix of frustration and boredom

personally my dream souls like would be set in a mountain forrest type region and the enimies to be cryptids like wendigo skinwalkers chupacabra etc etc

I totally agree with your list and I hope that all soulslike devs take notes!!!!

I also want more build variety, RPG progression systems. Too many soulslikes are doing an in between of Sekiro and Souls, which really takes away the amount of build variety and rpg progression; for me this just gets boring.

They only need one thing going forward: don't just put something in your Souls-like because FromSoft put it in one of theirs, understand why they put it in first. For instance: NeoWiz be looking at Margit's delayed attack to punish roll spamming and then put it on every goddamn enemy in Lies of P because that's what the cool kids do now, they guessed.

What made Elden Ring so successful and profitable was it allowed new players to explore and level-up versus grinding over and over again. Which makes some games a daunting chore and feel like a mundane job rather than a fun video game, at least for me and I know most others. I think all souls and souls-likes need to follow that game mechanic and allow the player to level up through meaningful side quests and exploration and ditch the grind mechanics.

I always think Mortal Shell is extremely underatted and deserves more attention and love

1:13 Wrong, Deflecting is essential.

Biggest suggestion: Dont ship with 60fps lock and let PC players have nicer controls. Most Soulslikes are Terrible PC-Ports of console games

One more suggestion for these devs is that if they are going to add multiple weapons, they need to make sure their ranges feel consistent. Some soulslike weapons feel like they're the same length as long as they're the same class. Variety needs to be a thing

Suggestion 6: Don't be afraid to do something different mechanically. Soulsborne games (along with Soulslikes) tended to stay with the swords n sorcery type medieval style of gameplay (with Bloodborne and Sekiro being Victorian and Feudal offshoots). Why not center a game around long-range gameplay with gun-tricks (such as a more customizable and more robust system to Devil May Cry's Gunslinger style)? Why not try a dedicated summoner system, where your skills are dictated by the summons you have in use? Why not go with something where it's full grappler combat (brawling and wrestling moves/skills) where immobilizing, throwing, and slamming enemies and obstacles are the primary actions? Play with the idea of how you interact with the world and your foes, thus giving your soulslike a much more distinct flavor. Couple this with a distinct artstyle that works well with the style of gameplay you're going with, and you've got yourself a memorable combo.

I think hellloint did cosmic horror pretty well, it also handled weapon upgrades fairly well aswell.

the surge series also had a much different setting

I would like to see a souls like MMO, would be cool if somebody could figure out how to do one that has the holy Trinity

this morning: I am fighting Lanseaax, she does her dive bomb and goes down by the sleeping Leyndell Knight, I stagger him just as she is getting ready to spew fire to avoid taking damage during this. then I hop on torent and loop around real quick to try and do some plunge attacks, but instead she takes to the sky and does her Glaive to one shot me and torrent in supreme epic fashion. Ok spulslike dev now recreate THAT. these games arent perfect but nobody can make games like them.

I personally agree with most of the video even though I can get past these flaws if the gameplay it's actually good. The truth is that in a lot of soulslike the combat system is not so good.

I wonder how you feel about Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King and Hellpoint

Admittedly, most of my progress in Lies of P was after the 1.03 patch, but part of me thinks some of why folks had a hard time came from being too used the games it emulated and were caught flat footed by its particular idiosyncrasies.

You should try out Steel Rising its a basic but fun souls like and bare in mind when playing its an entire year older then Lies of P

I still think Malenia is a bad example of an end game boss. The only thing hard about her is the Waterfowl Dance. Without it, everything else is a cool back n forth

5 things they need to do… 1: what you’ve been doing. 2: don’t listen to the other game studios gripes. 3: Shit on game journalists. 4: Sequels. 5: More remakes. Not remasters. Start with DS3, go back and do DS1 again, and finally give is remake Bloodborne and release it on all platforms.

Just let the elevators spawn ON THE SIDE OF THE MAP WE DO

Soulslikes need to release 2 versions of every title: 1 for the whiners, who constantly complain about ganks, and runbacks; talk about fashion souls, waifus and feet; use terms like chad, goat, team green etc 1 for gamers.

I think Respawn’s Jedi series needs to be talked about more with good Souls-likes. It’s very clearly heavily inspired by Sekiro, but it uses a lot of ideas from other places and drops stuff from Sekiro that wouldn’t make sense in the game.

Not being locked to consoles would be a definite plus.

Lies of P developers should do Alice in Wonderland next

What we need is a bloodborne 2, how we get a dark souls 4 and not a bloodborne sequel.

What was the name of the game based on Italian culture? I couldn't quite catch it and the subtitles couldn't either

the cheek of this lad

Im not saying they should make the games easier but maybe lowering the barrier to entry and making the skill curve a tad bit longer over the length of the game would make a lot less people quit early on and create a larger player base.

The problem developers have making "Souls likes" is they focus too much on the basics of what the souls franchise is and try to copy it. All they are, are action RPGs with their own combat flavor. Developers should just make their own action RPGs with their own flavor and call it a day.

Just wait for the DLC.

There shouldn't be any cheap cop out ways to win.. Pretty sure every souls game has these and some of them are even intentional (ceaseless discharge the most obvious example)

They need to commit to no obnoxious DRM. No Denuvo, nothing worse.

I think if someone wants to make a soulslike they should make it how they want to and not base it on the dark souls formula, many of these soulslike games all try to make their games hard asf without no gimmicks to make it immersive, idk this is just my opinion but lies of p tried to be bloodborne and Sekiro and lords of the fallen just flat out wanted to be dark souls 4 without the right formula or balancing, I think if game developers want to make souls like games they need to focus on the immersion and gameplay before focusing on the story, if I made a soulslike game I would add a combo system similar to a quick time event in the middle of combat and give the player the ability to arrange them in a proper order they want, or I would try to create a mechanic that would allow every player to have their very own unique skill that cannot be recycled through a skill fusion system

idk abt the gothic setting. it’s underutilized for it’s potential.

I just wanna see co-op

I was looking forward to lord of the fallen but so many people were ripping on it and spooked my interest.

Hi @Ziostorm, you asked me whats going on, so I thought I let you know. I currently am working but wasting time on RU-vid instead, got stomach ache, hate my job and my manager, what can we do about it?

Any news on shadow of the Erdtree yet?

If it involves pvp...fix latency issues to be down to the minimum...i swear that bloodborne had the worst way to connect to firends, but had the least amount of pvp latency at least that i could remember....perhaps the amount of latency is also related to how many weapons are in the game? Less stuff to load between players means less connection problems? Just spitballing

Things they need to do: 1. Have crossplay 2. Add level scaled bosses so you can't become OP then fight the bosses (especially with open worlds and a non linear paths it is too easy to accidentally become OP and make bosses way to easy)

Make multiplayer more fun and up to date

When is Fromsoft gonna release Bloodborne on PC?

Was just talkin about it recently with friends. I don't think "soulslike" is a genre, just a flavor. We used to call them action rpg's. Fromsoft just figured out designs that made the genre better. Much like dual analog stick layouts with halo, recharging health or sprint in fps games yadda yadda. Fromsoft made concepts and design choices that became more or less a standard in the genre. Not all action rpg's share those with souls however, just like we have arcade, arena, and milsim shooters. Devs lookin to make games like Fromsoft should look at the deeper design philosophies behind souls as you touched on in the video. Then figure out a way to make it their own.

It lacks jump button

I really want to see a souls game set in the Roman republic/empire

Hey, Zio! If you've been playing a bunch of Soulslikes maybe you could give us a tier or suggestion lists from you. Love to hear your opinions on some of the bigger ones and hidden gems I'm the genre. P.s. if you haven't fuckrd with Ashen yet, then you should.

they should stop trying to replicate the success of elden ring without understanding what made it successful.