I really think this is a key to it. There isn't much to the games beyond combat. There's almost no dialogue, the quests such as they are are extremely austere, the levels are generally very small and very linear if you were to simply walk through them without fighting for every inch. They're nothing like Skyrim or Mass Effect or Dragon Age or BG3 or Divine Divinity. They don't have Zelda style puzzles, they don't have branching questlines, there's little or no character development. It's mostly just the fighting. The environments are pretty but not pretty enough to justify going through them more than once or twice if you're not fighting for every inch. These are not deep, rich story games with hours of voiced dialogue and well developed characters. Most of the most talkative, beloved souls characters have at most, like, maybe 30-40 lines of dialogue? Ranni has more, but like Siegfried or Solaire? They don't say much, I doubt all of their voiced dialogue amounts to five minutes.
I think a lot of people think that a big deep complex character and story rpg is being gatekept from them by the difficult combat, but the difficult combat is all there is and if you don't enjoy the souls gameloop of fighting through the same area many times until you win then you probably just aren't going to find the genre enjoyable.
These are not deep, rich story games with hours of voiced dialogue and well developed characters.
You know, I used to think this way, too. I still don't play the games, but I somehow got into an Elden Ring lore video loop, and there really is A LOT going on in the story. It's just not being presented in a traditional way.
Totally agree, i love the story and background. But the way it's presented - item descriptions, weird shit you find lying around - doesn't really track with what people expect from a traditional crpg.
I remember encountering this first time in Darksiders, it was advertised as an RPG game, and it has accessible difficulty so i finished it and was like "wait is that it"?
From that point of view "soulslike" emerging as tag and genre is positive development.
I really think this is a key to it. There isn't much to the games beyond combat. There's almost no dialogue, the quests such as they are are extremely austere, the levels are generally very small and very linear if you were to simply walk through them without fighting for every inch. They're nothing like Skyrim or Mass Effect or Dragon Age or BG3 or Divine Divinity. They don't have Zelda style puzzles, they don't have branching questlines, there's little or no character development. It's mostly just the fighting. The environments are pretty but not pretty enough to justify going through them more than once or twice if you're not fighting for every inch. These are not deep, rich story games with hours of voiced dialogue and well developed characters. Most of the most talkative, beloved souls characters have at most, like, maybe 30-40 lines of dialogue? Ranni has more, but like Siegfried or Solaire? They don't say much, I doubt all of their voiced dialogue amounts to five minutes.
I think a lot of people think that a big deep complex character and story rpg is being gatekept from them by the difficult combat, but the difficult combat is all there is and if you don't enjoy the souls gameloop of fighting through the same area many times until you win then you probably just aren't going to find the genre enjoyable.
You know, I used to think this way, too. I still don't play the games, but I somehow got into an Elden Ring lore video loop, and there really is A LOT going on in the story. It's just not being presented in a traditional way.
Totally agree, i love the story and background. But the way it's presented - item descriptions, weird shit you find lying around - doesn't really track with what people expect from a traditional crpg.
I remember encountering this first time in Darksiders, it was advertised as an RPG game, and it has accessible difficulty so i finished it and was like "wait is that it"?
From that point of view "soulslike" emerging as tag and genre is positive development.