this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes
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This is a community for discussion, news, and memes pertaining to the video game sub-genre "soulslike".
Given Lemmy's size, the definition of soulslike may be treated relatively loosely. While games like the numerous FromSoft titles, the recent Star Wars Jedi games, Lies of P, Nioh and similar games should be the focus, games that incorporate soulslike elements - like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous, for example - may also be discussed here.
Basic Lemmy-quette applies. Additionally, since flairs don't exist yet, please do make sure to include a marker to denote what game your post is about in square brackets for clarity's sake. An example could be:
[BB] This enemy is so difficult!
or
[DS1] Anyone struggling with the gargoyles?
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None, but it'd be great to discuss what anyone and everyone here thinks are the essential components of a soulslike. I've got some friends that get angry at games that they believe to be "yet another soulslike", and then you ask about which game they're cussing about they mention something like Onimusha and Silent Hill F (any game that has taget lock, stamina bar, dashes/rolls, defensive stance, and melee atacks that should be timed against enemy patterns in combat).
I've also run into this, and it can drive me up the walls some times too. Where Winds Meet was another one of those examples that I heard some people call a Soulslike. It's possible we are heading towards a branching of the genre into Soulslike and Souls-lite, much like Roguelikes did once.
To me there are two fundamental aspects of the genre - one concerning the general structure and one concerning the combat.
Structure
A true Soulslike has progression currency you can temporarily lose if you die, and can permanently lose if you fail to do something (typically recover your corpse). Combined with this, a true Soulslike has levels whose enemies are respawned and reset every time you die.
Combat
Soulslike combat is defined by stamina management, animation lock, limited healing and iframing (either though dodge rolls, parries or both). The flow of Soulslike combat is a balance between all four of these factors. They are all equally important to the feel of combat. I could also be persuaded to add a fifth element of "pattern recognition", as the games tend to want you to solve the combat equation by memorising specific boss attack patterns to know where you can punish.
I could see a world where a game with a structure that is Soulslike but a combat that isn't (for example, having no stamina) could be called Souls-lite.
Spoken like a true scholar.
My hunch is that, even if it kinda already exists as a "sub genre", souls-lite as a term will probably won't catch on, at least right now. it sort of carries a bit of stigma? it won't attract genre die hards and probably will push away people that are scared of the formula. Idk. I'm not really in tune with gaming jorunalism so I could be completely off.
Apparently people are already using it!
Oh! Well if the studio is using it to self describe their game I'm obviously streets behind XD. That's exactly what legitimizes a term.
Thanks