While Souls games naturally predate Elden Ring by more than a decade, FromSoftware’s masterpiece sent shockwaves through the industry, creating bigger waves than any release before it. The Soulslike RPG subgenre transformed forever on February 25, 2022, and the winds of change carried a few games away straight into the mouth of oblivion.
Over the last few years, every other RPG has seemingly started incorporating Soulslike combat, producing a handful of great games and a lot of redundancy. If we eliminate FromSoftware’s stuff, there really aren’t all that many fantastic Soulslike games, so we should celebrate those few that excel in one area or another. None of these forgotten RPGs are Elden Ring, and that’s not a complaint.
“Perfect” is an exaggeration, but each of these games shines in its own way.
Also, none of these games flopped, but Elden Ring’s presence neutered their impact, longevity, and recognition.
Ashen Was The First Open-World Soulslike RPG
But It Wasn’t Most People’s First Open-World Soulslike RPG
- Release Date: December 7, 2018
- What’s perfect? Ashen‘s open-world implementation, at least for a Soulslike RPG.
I don’t know if it has aged perfectly, but I adored Ashen when I played it about a year before Elden Ring. FromSoftware’s epic was the first open-world Souls RPG to blow up, but it wasn’t the subgenre’s first attempt to embrace a sandbox structure. A44, a New Zealand studio, cracked that code more than 3 years before FromSoftware, crafting a smaller-scale experience that felt massive for its era.
Unlike Elden Ring, which takes a maximalist approach to open-world design, Ashen opts for minimalism in both presentation and content. You are dropped into a cel-shaded world with faceless, wordless NPCs, one defined by simple beauty and depressive darkness. Rather than traveling across a never-ending country, you gradually build up a small hub town by recruiting characters, before heading on expeditions to explore dungeons.
While mostly replicating Dark Souls‘ combat, Ashen tried its hand at a few new ideas, including dropping the conventional Soulslike leveling system in favor of a gear-based one. Most RPGs shouldn’t replicate it, but the system works well in a 20-hour campaign with a strong sense of adventure.
Elden Ring blows Ashen completely out of the water in sheer spectacle and, crucially, exposure. Consequently, it gets credit for transitioning Soulslike RPGs to an open-world structure, despite an indie game doing the same years earlier.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Died At The Hands Of Elden Ring
- Release Date: March 22, 2022
- What’s perfect? Stranger of Paradise‘s awesome combat and job system. The game is 95% combat, so these elements matter the most.
Team Ninja’s Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin faced an uphill battle after its 2021 “Chaos” trailer crossed the threshold into meme territory. Still, Team Ninja’s name counted for something, as we are talking about the developer behind an all-time great Soulslike RPG in Nioh 2. With a smart launch window and positive word of mouth, Stranger of Paradise could have righted the wrongs of the past and proved itself.
Square Enix decided to publish Stranger of Paradise a few weeks after Elden Ring. Well, that’s confidence, I guess.
Surprisingly, the Soulslike game few people wanted was swallowed whole by the Souls game everybody needed. Almost a month after its debut, Elden Ring still averaged about 500K players on Steam; simply put, there was not enough oxygen left in the room for another Soulsborne release of any form. The Final Fantasy branding wasn’t enough.
Now, I know that “near-perfect” is a weird way to describe a game known for terrible visuals and dialogue, as well as mediocre level design, and those things are definitely far from stellar. However, in terms of pure combat, Stranger of Paradise sits right up there with the action RPG genre’s best-ever efforts. Team Ninja didn’t just do Nioh with a Final Fantasy coat of paint; no, the developer introduced a versatile Job system, an absorption function that lets you steal spells from enemies, the satisfying Soul Burst finishers, and the Soul Shield system that rewards aggressive play.
Click on the game with the higher OpenCritic rating.
Thymesia Came Out At Peak Soulslike Fatigue
You Don’t Want To Follow The King
- Release Date: August 18, 2022
- What’s perfect? A rare “All Killer, No Filler” Soulslike. The parry system is pretty great, as is the combat in general.
Time for a detour. If a tiny movie studio wants to distribute a sword-and-sandal flick, their ideal market would be right after a genre revival sparked by an unexpected sleeper hit like 300, as audiences would be in the mood for more Roman arena combat. The absolute worst time would be right after Gladiator.
After playing Elden Ring for months, players had satiated their thirst for Soulslike content, leaving little room for a budget game like Thymesia. By all accounts, OverBorder Studio’s project did OK financially, but its ceiling was likely capped by its release date and the fact that the expectations for a Soulslike ballooned after Elden Ring. For an indie game published by Team17, Thymesia was pretty darn impressive, and it would be remembered as a bigger achievement if it came out in 2019 or even 2021.
Honorable Mention – Bleak Faith: Forsaken
Bleak Faith: Forsaken had kind of the same issue as Thymesia, since it also released in a post-Elden Ring world. I cannot really justify describing a game this janky as “near-perfect,” but its atmosphere and world are among the most unusual in the Soulslike genre. Three people created it, which is always impressive, but tolerance for messy Soulslikes seemed to decline after Elden Ring’s debut.
Elden Ring
10/10
- Released
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February 25, 2022
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
