this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
37 points (100.0% liked)

Soulslike - Discussion, News, Memes

963 readers
47 users here now

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?

Friends:

!liesofp@lemmy.zip

!bloodborne@lemmy.zip

!sekiro@lemmy.zip

!eldenring@lemmy.world

!shittydarksouls@lemmy.world

Should you have any questions, please do let me know.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
v4ld1z@lemmy.zip
37
[Discussion] Open worlds in Soulslikes: yay or nay? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 2 days ago by v4ld1z@lemmy.zip to c/soulslike@lemmy.zip
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Since Elden Ring's meteoric entrance into the pantheon of soulslikes, many players have grown very fond of the very new and fresh open-world approach to the genre. Miyazaki himself said that ER is as close to his dream soulslike as he could wish it to be. It felt like a new direction for future soulslikes to come and felt similarly revolutionary as Breath of the Wild did for Zelda.

The open world didn't come with only positives, however. Repeat bosses and assets, dungeons weren't as diverse as one hoped them to be, the rewards for exploring some of them felt very situational and niche-y at best and outright useless at their worst. Some say the game is only ever good for a first blind playthrough and that the open world stands in their way of getting to "the fun part™" of the game.

After almost four years of the game existing, a, objectively speaking, very strong DLC, and a spin-off with Nightreign, how do you guys feel about open worlds in soulslikes? I understand this is not the first or only soulslike to feature an open world - I don't have any examples at hand off the dome - but ER is definitely the open world soulslike.

Is it something you'd like to see featured in future soulslikes? Are you over it? Very keen on hearing your thoughts since I can't really make up my mind either :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Sas@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago

Very much team nay. The ER open world was alright for one playthrough. Then i wanted to start a bow only playthrough, opened the gate out of the tutorial area and then closed the game. I love Nioh 2 and it is probably my favourite game ever but i bounced off hard from Rise of the Ronin because of the open world. While in ER you at least still had to explore the world yourself, in RotR you could open the map and see points of Interest and just run there. I just played the Nioh 3 demo a few days ago and it follows the same pattern but at least the world seems more dense and the gameplay is more varied. Also it seems to have "legacy dungeons as well"