If we’re to believe FromSoftware’s assertion then the fire from Dark Souls has faded for good. Yet the embers continue to burn on in its fans as they crave more dark, mysterious, and brutal challenges. And they’re not the only ones, as there’s an increasing number of developers who have taken inspiration from the Souls series to forge their own games.
Cue the Souls-like: arguably a crude, reductive description that has permeated the gaming landscape in the wake of FromSoftware’s leviathans. But there’s no denying that the Souls DNA – whether the mood, mechanics, or just a shorthand for daunting combat – is etched into the codes of many games that have been released in the past few years.
Dark Souls is a ridiculously high bar to measure against, though, and one that many titles don’t even come close to matching.
That is why trying to find the best Souls-likes on PC is like trying to find the best replicas of the Mona Lisa – it ain’t easy, trust us. Here are our picks, however.
Sekiro: Shadows Die twice
What better place to start than with the latest game from FromSoftware’s stable? Sekiro is stunning, but a real change of pace from the usual Souls fare. Combat can feel a little bare until you unlock new moves, but that’s for the best: being forced to master the fundamentals reveals their depth, and is crucial training for the rest of the game. Unlike Dark Souls, there’s not really a crutch to lean on – Sekiro is a traditional single-player game, so you can’t summon a friend for a little jolly cooperation.
Read more: Our Sekiro review is right here
FromSoft has also jettisoned the RPG-style level-up system. Your character – a ninja known as Wolf – does get stronger, but in a much more controlled way. You improve health and posture by collecting prayer beads, and improve attack power by contemplating the bosses you’ve killed. These resources are both finite, so you can’t farm souls to overwhelm enemies with raw strength. An overwhelmingly good game.
Nioh
Let’s start with the best. Long before Dark Souls, Team Ninja cut themselves a reputation for hardcore melee action from the Ninja Gaiden series (sadly never released on PC – just forget Yaiba ever happened). So their game about slicing up mythical beasts and spirits from Japanese folklore while rubbing shoulders with historical figures from Japan’s Sengoku period shouldn’t immediately bring Souls to mind.
In fact, Nioh shines precisely because, despite a few familiar mechanics – shrines acting as checkpoints, levelling up with Amrita that you can also lose if you die – it’s a very different beast. Chiefly, the Ki pulse makes stamina management a whole new challenge for both you and your enemy, while the ability to change stances adds extra tactical depth to the flow of combat.
Salt and Sanctuary
This is essentially Dark Souls on a 2D plane. There’s the gloomy aesthetic and salt substitutes souls as a currency from defeating enemies (which you also lose upon death). There’s an opaque story delivered through a handful of cryptic dialogue and even messages you can leave for other players using preset words and phrases (“Praise the salt!” being a popular one, naturally). And, of course, unforgivable bosses are included, with names like ‘The Sodden Knight’ and ‘The Bloodless Prince’, whose weaknesses and attack patterns you’ll need to learn, coupled with wearing the right gear and executing well-timed dodge rolls, in order to defeat them.
That might read like a checklist of all things Dark Souls, but despite being overly derivative, Salt and Sanctuary is also lovingly made so that it feels more like a fan tribute than a cynical clone.
Hollow Knight
This is arguably more Metroidvania than Souls-like (but hey, isn’t Dark Souls in many ways a Metroidvania in 3D?). Nonetheless, it’s definitely Souls-ish with its gloomy atmosphere, benches offering respite, and the need to revisit the spot you died to retrieve any lost items. But rather than a world of doomed knights and terrible dragons, this subterranean world is one literally crawling with bugs.
Too hard? You could always cheat…
It might not sound very inviting but it is, thanks to the wonderful, cartoony hand-drawn visuals and slick animation. Hollow Knight also gives you plenty of secrets and optional challenges so you can keep exploring its world, going deeper and deeper if you wish.
Titan Souls
To be honest, the only Souls-like aspect of Titan Souls is in the title. This is more of a top-down boss rush, with the unique hook being that both you and the boss only have one hit point – though that’s relative when those bosses have multiple barriers to their weak spot. If it sounds gimmicky, but that’s because this started life in a game jam, a great place for coming up with ideas.
Titan Souls trades on this one trick throughout, and the steep challenge – and inevitable repetition – will likely only appeal to the most ardent adventurers. Speedrunners will relish the sizeable challenge.
The Surge
Deck13’s second stab at Souls-inspired gameplay is novel in that it’s a sci-fi setting rather than dark fantasy. There’s plenty of fun to be had with the combat here, especially with your exoskeleton armour that can be modularly customised, which requires dismembering specific body parts of enemies so you can harvest their materials for the upgrades. It’s a shame then that the samey-looking environments don’t feel as inspiring as you could be hoped for, but there’s much to like about this hefty sci-fi brawler.
Lords of the Fallen
Deck13 probably got more flack than deserved for this familiar take on FromSoftware’s ideas, especially considering this is the first major game to successfully emulate the Souls formula. Lords of the Fallen sets itself apart with a heavier-feeling combat system in which both the weight of your attacks and armour matter – contributing to the speed and power of your attacks.
Just about every mechanic you can think of in Dark Souls is present and correct with a few tweaks, but the addition of a risk/reward multiplier that increases if you keep fighting without stopping at a checkpoint is brilliant.
Immortal Planet
This is the only instance of an isometric take on Dark Souls, at least so far, though its world is a mesh of fantasy and sci-fi. That said, framing the same careful real-time combat in such a fixed perspective is far from ideal. One interesting note is that the stamina management is a little like Nioh’s, in that you can also see the enemy’s stamina bar and use it to your advantage. The low price point and short length make Immortal Planet feel very much like a bargain bin Souls, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Ashen
Wandering dark treacherous environments, check. Challenging encounters and boss fights, check. Stamina-based combat, check. Characters without faces – well, that’s a bit different. But, seriously, more important to Ashen is building relationships with other players through seamless ‘passive multiplayer’. In comparison to the constant emphasis on difficulty seen in other Souls-likes, it’s a good reminder that community is just as essential to the Souls experience.
Below
It’s surprising that Below plays nothing like Dark Souls considering the number of comparisons that have been made between the two games. With a very zoomed-out top-down perspective, you explore the depths of a remote island in virtually pitch-black environments with only a lantern lighting your way as you delve deeper and deeper, facing hostile creatures, traps, as well as thirst and starvation.
Related: Check out the best RPGs on PC
It’s more of a survival game with roguelike elements – upon death, a new character arrives who can recover the gear from your past explorer’s remains. Nonetheless, creative director Kris Piotrowski finds evoking Souls is a good way to establish the right mindset, in that there is no hand-holding and it’s very much on the player to figure out the game’s mechanics, whether that’s avoiding traps, learning how to cook soup, or bandaging up your wounds.
