Is the ‘Souls-like’ explosion linked to real world adversity?
Difficult RPG games of the ‘Souls-like’ variety used to be somewhat niche, due to their unforgiving nature. In the last 18 months, however, the popularity of these types of games has exploded. Why is that?
Never had a tension headache from playing a game before? May I offer you some Souls-like?
If you haven’t heard that term before, it originates from Dark Souls — a gothic RPG created by FromSoftware back in 2011.
The third-person fantasy title was one of the first to introduce close-quarter melee combat where death is an inevitable part of the experience. Surmounting each area and boss battle is entirely dependent on learning unforgiving attack patterns, precise timing offensively and defensively, and managing a meagre stamina bar to avoid being killed in about just every which way you can imagine.
The game achieved decent commercial success and led to two further sequels, also spawning several other games and franchises that continue to use its formula — hence, ‘Souls-like’.
Due to the innate, uncompromising difficulty of these kinds of games, the communities that shared stories and advice about builds…
