The concept of what makes a so-called “Souls-like” has grown far beyond its origins. What began with Dark Souls’ intricate combat and punishing design has inspired developers worldwide to create their own interpretations. The thrill of mastering a brutal boss fight, the satisfaction of uncovering hidden secrets, and the tension of surviving impossible odds have become hallmarks of the genre. Elden Ring raised the bar by combining sprawling exploration, layered lore, and intense combat into one incredible experience.
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Even after spending hundreds of hours exploring every corner of the Lands Between, the desire for that same sense of challenge and reward doesn’t go away. There are other worlds out there that capture the tension and satisfaction of a good Souls-like while offering their own unique twists. Some lean into narrative and characters, others into mechanical complexity or survival mechanics, but all carry the same addictive rhythm of risk and reward. For fans who can’t get enough, these experiences are worth diving into.
6. Code Vein
Code Vein transforms the Souls-like experience with anime aesthetics and a post-apocalyptic setting filled with gothic ruins and vampiric creatures. You awaken as a Revenant, a hunter seeking blood to survive, navigating cities filled with towering enemies and environmental hazards. In true Souls-fashion, its combat is fast-paced yet deliberate, requiring careful timing and stamina management. The “Blood Code” system allows you to swap class abilities on the fly, encouraging experimentation with builds and combat styles. without the stress of having to respecalize every few hours. Like Elden Ring, it rewards patience and mastery, teaching you enemy patterns and the value of defensive timing. Each fight feels like a careful dance of risk and reward, providing satisfaction with every success.
Beyond combat, though, Code Vein excels at telling its story through companionship. You can recruit AI companions to assist you in combat, and the act of doing so is actually lore-friendly to the story. Each one comes with their unique skills and personalities, which adds strategic depth and emotional weight to the experience. Its world is more narrative-driven than Elden Ring, with cutscenes, dialogue, and character arcs that immerse you in personal stakes. You do have the choice to play through it alone if you’re looking for a real challenge, so don’t be put off thinking you need to have allies to play. The visual style emphasizes vibrant, cinematic moments while maintaining the dark and grim atmosphere familiar to Souls veterans. The combination of style, story, and challenge makes it a standout non-FromSoftware Souls-like that’s easy to recommend.
5. Lies of P
Lies of P takes the classic tale of Pinocchio and turns it into a brooding, gothic adventure through the practically ruined city of Krat, a city filled with deranged mechanical enemies and haunting architecture to explore. You can wield a variety of weapons, each customizable to fit your preferred playstyle, and every encounter demands precision, parry timing, and stamina management. Like Elden Ring, it rewards exploration and mastery, but it adds a much stronger narrative focus on moral consequences through its unique “Lie System.” The bosses are challenging and creative, requiring you to study movesets and adapt to defeat them.
The game’s tone sets it apart, balancing despair with the wonder of its twisted fairy tale fantasia. Choices in dialogue and action influence the story’s direction, giving you agency over your character’s fate. Combinations of choices can even determine which bosses you face. While smaller in scale than Elden Ring, the intricate level design and detailed art direction create a dense, atmospheric world that is reminiscent of the FromSoft Souls-like. Combat is punishing yet fair, and success feels earned. Lies of P delivers the mechanical intensity that Souls fans crave while offering a narrative-driven and visually striking experience, in a much more linear package.
4. No Rest for the Wicked
No Rest for the Wicked is a bold experiment in the Souls-like formula, blending top-down perspective, survival mechanics, and the weighty combat familiar to Souls-likes. While the survival aspect of the game is not hardcore, it is an important element, as you’ll need to make all of your own consumables to keep your health up. There are bonfires, but there are no Estus Flasks to speak of. This, naturally, provides a unique management challenge on top of your standard Souls-like ones. Thus, you’ll need to properly engage with the survival elements to sustain yourself if you want to progress through the game. Like Elden Ring, exploration is rewarding, but its smaller, more intimate world encourages methodical planning over sprawling discovery. Environmental hazards and hidden secrets make every step feel dangerous.
What truly sets it apart, though, is that combination of survival elements and top-down perspective. Managing stamina, health, and inventory adds a strategic layer uncommon in most Souls-likes. The game challenges you to adapt to resource scarcity and enemy behavior while blending a unique Diablo-Souls-like RPG progression with survival tension. Despite being in Early Access, it already offers a challenging experience that mixes precise combat with long-term planning. The painterly art style gives it a haunting beauty, and the atmosphere reinforces the feeling that every action matters. It is a refreshing take that rewards patience and careful thought.
3. The Surge 2
The Surge 2 brings Souls-like combat into a dystopian sci-fi setting filled with malfunctioning robots and hostile cyborgs. You wear an exosuit and can target and dismember specific enemy limbs to harvest new equipment. Combat is weighty and strategic, demanding both observation and precise timing. Like Elden Ring, it challenges you to learn enemy patterns and approach encounters carefully, but the focus on mechanical augmentation gives the combat a unique tactical depth. The city is dense with verticality and hidden paths that all reward you for exploring its depths and gear experimentation.
Exploration is tighter and more focused than in Elden Ring, with interconnected areas that loop back on themselves, more similar to Dark Souls 3. The industrial, oppressive atmosphere creates tension, and even small skirmishes feel dangerous. Generally speaking, fighting bosses in The Surge 2 is rather easy. The most difficult part of the game is progressing through each area, and that is a significant focus. This unique focus on standard enemies providing the bulk of the challenge gives every encounter a sense of weight and strategy that sets it apart. The Surge 2 is a must-play for Souls fans looking to jump to a futuristic spin on the Souls genre.
2. Remnant 2
Remnant 2 is a bit of an outlier on this list. It re-imagines the Souls formula in ways few other games do, combining Souls-like mechanics with third-person shooting, procedural world generation, and intense (optional) co-op gameplay. You need to stay on your toes as enemies appear from multiple directions, each with unique attacks that force you to constantly adapt. Combat blends melee, ranged attacks, and dodging into one seamless rhythm, and bosses are incredibly dynamic thanks to the existence of firearms being a central element, often requiring environmental awareness and rapid adaptation.
What makes Remnant 2 truly unique is how it mixes the familiar Souls-like stamina and timing system with unpredictable, ever-changing worlds. Every time you enter a new area, the layout, enemy types, and loot can differ, so you can’t rely on memorization alone. Co-op gameplay changes strategies entirely, as coordinating with teammates can make or break a fight on the game’s most challenging difficulties. Remnant 2 features some of the most unique bosses of any of the Souls-like games on this list, making it a standout even among its peers. The weapons and mods available to you here provide countless ways to experiment with playstyle, from brutal melee builds to high-octane gun combat that involves summoning headcrab-like spiders to do the majority of your damage. It’s a weird spin on the sub-genre that challenges both reflexes and creativity, giving you a different kind of mastery than any linear Souls-like.
1. Nioh 2
Nioh 2 is arguably the most combat-intensive game on this list, even more so than Elden Ring itself, thanks to the game’s insanely complex combat system. Set in Sengoku-era Japan, it combines fast, fluid melee combat with supernatural Yokai abilities that dramatically alter your playstyle. You can choose from a variety of weapons, each with multiple stances, combos, and special moves that require mastery and precision. On top of that, there is a ridiciulous amount of freeform class-building options to truely make your character your own. Combined with the game’s incredibly overbearing loot system (in the best way), this level of depth takes build crafting far beyond any other game on this list, rewarding your constant experimentation.
Additionally, its mission-based structure keeps fights tightly focused and punishing, emphasizing skill massively over exploration. Unlike Elden Ring, which balances openness and challenge, Nioh 2 is a relentless gauntlet of mechanical depth and combat intensity. Nioh 2 exemplifies the pinnacle of combat mastery in the Souls-like genre, and with its combination of skill-expressive and complex gameplay, it makes for the perfect Souls-like for anyone looking for a true test of skill.
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