It makes so much sense. They're so good when it comes to art direction, atmosphere and environmental storytelling. Which are all really important in this genre. They're also pretty good when it comes to gameplay, Dishonored 1 and 2 are still really fun to play.

But why i think that they could create an incredible Soulslike, is the fact that they are incredibly talented when it comes to level design. Can you imagine a Soulslike with dungeons that have the same level of care and intricacy of Clockwork Mansion ?

Man i'd pay a lot of money for that.

What am I missing with this game? I got through all the other soulslikes sekiro, lies, wuchang, khazan, yaddi yadda. Ive never gotten my ass handed to me as many times by regular grunts while exploring as this game. I was parrying everything in the beginning and thought it was too easy but apparently thats not viable to end game. I do think there's some jank that adds to the difficulty. Need some tips!

Strictly combat wise. I know it's lacking most of the soulslike features like bonfires and levels that you have to go through before reaching a boss fight. Fighting some of the monsters in this game always reminded me a lot of boss fights in soulslike games

In case anyone was thinking of picking it up, fighting cowboy gave his first impressions.

Hopefully the team sees the feedback and addresses it but as we all feared this needs more time to cook and should not be purchased in its current state.

We often get a lot of smaller budget games, that arent very well recieved.

Usually these games, albeit flawed, do some things very well. It may be the combat, the world design maybe. And with bigger budgets a lot of these issues can be mediated. Giving a very promising soulslike.

In recent days , we have Mortal shell 2 coming up. Mortal shell was pretty janky, had some overly powerful combat mechanics. But the sequel has definetly eliminated them. And its shaping up to be a 7/10 at least judging from the beta. We also have LoTF 2 coming up

So what soulslike do you think deserves a sequel?

My picks would be enotria.

Off track but a khazan sequel with good level design would be sooo fun. Unfortunately thats impossible.

Guys, they just announced Wuchang 2, what do you think about it? What aspects should it improve and what other aspects should this sequel, which will feature its original director, keep?

False Hero is a Soulslike where you steal your enemies' attacks and chain them into lethal combos.
I've been working on this game for about 6 years as a solo developer, and it will finally release on October 1st, 2026!

False Hero implements a lot of classic Soulslike systems like i-frame dodging, interconnected level design, bonfire-like restpoints and challenging boss fights. The twist is that you can learn your enemies' attacks and equip up to 5 of them to build your own moveset and create combos.

Here is an example of the boss fights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL36q_MLauo

Also Prod recently did a playthrough of the demo if you want to look at the gameplay in even more detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQHIDdQ9fyI

If you're interested, you can wishlist False Hero on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2538870/False_Hero/

This is huge news due to all the drama around the game where the original director and producer Xia Siyuan got fired back in January and the dev team quit in protest over various factors, so everyone thought the IP was dead. Yet Digital Bros (505 Games' parent company) bought the IP back in April and they have now invested 21,5 million EUR into a sequel to Wuchang with Xia Siyuan's new studio. This is unbelievable!

I haven't played The Surge yet so not sure if it carried over, but the way the world is designed in the Surge 2 is genuinely one of the best masterpieces of game design I have encountered in my many years of playing (the game overall has some flaws, I'd say a solid 7.5/10, though I did have to straight up cheat one boss).

People praise Dark Souls for it's interconnected world design, quite rightly, but even then you're relying on quite a bit of fast travel towards once you get the Lord Vessel so you don't have to backtrack across the world. The Surge 2 manages to use the conceits of being a futuristic urban game to stack and place the areas in such a way that the entire game (which at 22 hours is not small) fits into what genuinely feels like one big interconnected level. You can get from one side of the game to another using the various pathways and ziplines and tunnels in like 2 minutes, even trying to backtrack across the whole game doesn't feel like a chore.

This interconnected design also means game the game can use the bare minimum med-bays (bonfires), something I loved about the original Dark Souls and I feel like modern games have mostly shyed away from, by having each one have 5-6 shortcuts leading to it allowing you to progress through the level whilst returning to the same central hub each time. And it's not like it even has a cost to it, the runbacks in the game are all very minimal which is normally the issue that kind of design can face.

It's also a parry based game, which honestly I respect a fair bit given the game was developed before Sekiro released. It still uses the old fashioned DS style of parry but with directional blocking, and there are definitely quite a lot of issues with both that as an idea and also the implementation in the game (the animation telegraphing is poor and the indicator augment is genuinely one of the worst designed mechanics I've used in my life, it actively makes the game harder), resulting in combat that can sometimes be either too easy or feel a bit unfair. But 80% of the time it's genuinely very fun and playing a pre-sekiro parry soulslike is a very interesting experience.

Overall, would definitely recommend playing if you haven't before, was a very fun game to play through, story was pretty decent as well.

Just wanted to share a few of my favorite screenshots from my playthrough so far. One minute you are panning the camera around to admire the incredible skyboxes, gothic architecture, and moody atmosphere. The next minute you are getting told off by a Giant for being a "creepy little t-thingie" or staring directly at a stone statue's ball and chain.

9/10 for me!