Games

I guess Mario is a Souls-like game now, just fail to dodge two hits and you're dead

Here's a very in-depth video on the dark souls trilogy made by a reviewer that is bad at games and loves the series. And his follow-up on the 3 post dark souls games.

Souls-like is defined by the need to decide between attacking, blocking, dodging or parrying. With the additional factor of attacks having a fixed commitment to the attack animation that leaves you vulnerable and likely to get hit if you press it at the wrong time.

It's mostly just 2D fighting game combat translated into 3D with a lock on targeting system.

According to the Skyrim modding community, Souls-like combat means:

-You have a camera lock on function

-You have a dodge or roll button

-You have 'attack commitments' that hold the player and enemies in place during attacks to make the attacks feel more weighty

You have slightly more optional aspects like having weapons with somewhat varied movesets or the punishing difficulty but as far as changing Skyrim's combat into a Souls-like, those seem to be the defining traits

everytime i tune into a stream where someone is playing one of these games they are just rolling around on the ground like wtf are you doing just play sanic the gofer or whatever if you want to roll into a ball and move around on the floor

There's a lot about the souls games I like, but eventually I reach a boss I can't beat and the rest of the game gets locked behind that one boss; in dark souls 3 that would be the sword dancer boss, a literal gate behind which the rest of the content exists. Her moveset is extremely confusing because it looks very samey and it gets hard to learn what to dodge through.

Also you say 'dodge and block', but really it's just dodge; one thing that's really awful about these games (maybe just the later ones in the series? I can't remember how the older ones were in this regard) is that there's primarily only one way to play it and that's dodging and maybe parrying; you rarely are able to build your character to be super tanky (so heavy armor + high health); it may be an RPG, but you can't truly play it the way you want.

I recall back in demons' souls and dark souls 1, heavy armor and armoring up was entirely viable. In dark souls 1 they even added a steel (iron? stone?) skin pyromancy to add on top of the heavy armor you already had on. I can't recall if dark souls 2 allowed for that style, and dark souls 3 definitely didn't. The Havel set USED to be great for boss fights.

This would describe expedition 33: Claire obscura pretty well.

Combat is mostly rolling.

soulslike is when animation priority and when you have a whole lot of animation priority, you get QTE

to me there is nothing quite like dark souls 1. even later iterations are "souls like" (while still being their own thing)

to me its a game where the stakes are relatively low; you can die a lot and it doesn't really matter. You just have to learn the movesets of the bosses / enemies, and however long it takes you to execute damage within the windows given. It requires a lot of patience, memorization, and some motor skill effort depending on what you're trying to do. It's difficulty means that any hardship you overcome feels well deserved and rewarding. You can grind and get levels / gear that helps, or go bare bones. While the game is punishing, and does have some "gotcha!" moments (such as saying "no" to a cat) you can always work to overcome it. I don't think the developers intended to be cruel or to punish one too much.

And then there is ds1 pvp which I hear is like starting all over again and overcoming a wall, but is unique in it's delivery.

really, when other games say "soulslike" I think they just mean their game is difficult and requires memorizing the movesets of bosses. Hades 1-2 has some aspects of this but it's not exactly the same. But dying has different consequences, starting over from the very beginning.

"souls like" is when your character is doing a slow "return to idle" animation so you press a button to stop that and do the next thing, but they have no visible reaction, then the situation changes so you press a different button, then five years later they finish their animation and act like you pressed the first button

Souls-like just means m "rhythm games with swords and magic instead of dancing and neon shapes"

Souls like games are barely even games, they remind of me of arcade machines where it's all just about memorising vs the machine

Never actually feels like playing a proper game, it's got more in common with a dance mat than anything else. When X does Y, press B. When Y does X, press A. Dodge the thing. Hit the thing twice. Dodge the thing again. It's like a feature length quicktime event.