With Elden Ring’s huge success, you might be hearing the terms “Soulsborne” and “Soulslike” now more than ever.
While they were mostly used for FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne series at first, these words now describe an entire video game genre that has become immensely popular in the past decade. While FromSoftware helped define this new subgenre of action games, there’s now the question of if there are any Souls-likes that released before this term even existed.
With a bit of research, some blueprint paper, and a TINY bit of genre bending, this video aims to determine the definition of a Soulslike along with what can be considered the very first game to meet that criteria.
Also, check out these channels that inspired this video!
Iron Pineapple – https://www.youtube.com/c/IronPineapple
AesirAesthetics – https://www.youtube.com/c/IllusiveFiddler7R0M37H3U5_WinkWink
MadLuigi – https://www.youtube.com/c/MadLuigi
Casitive – https://www.youtube.com/c/casitive
Music used:
Eternal Ring OST – Leaving Story
Demon’s Souls OST – The Beginning
Severance: Blade of Darkness OST – Map
Onimusha: Warlords OST – Dress
Dark Souls OST – Great Grey Wolf Sif
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time OST – Hyrule Field
King’s Field OST – Opening
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss OST – Descent
Castlevania OST – Wicked Child
Kevin Macleod – Robobozo
Kevin Macleod – Hall of the Mountain King
Elden Ring OST – Roundtable Hold
Elden Ring OST – Omen Illusion
47 Comments
I’m your biggest fan
Salt and sanctuary gameplay for 3 seconds in the background 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 that game needs more attention
Holy molly dude, you went hard on this video, good shit 👍
If I had a nickel for every Souls character who created a YouTube channel to deliver me obscure Souls-based content, I'd have two nickels
Thanks for another insightful video, Vyke
BoD was tha shit, very good game
"Actions such as blocking, attacking, and rolling can be done at the cost of stamina"
So literally any game is a souls-like? Elder Scrolls Online and For Honor have so much in common with dark souls!
Even by your own definitions, then Sekiro isn't a souls-like because it doesn't even have multiplayer.
In this household, we stan Gregory Yob
Your editing style is amazing!
WOOO ULTIMA UNDERWORLD YEAAAAAHH WOOOOOOOOO
I'm always up for Onimusha getting some recognition.
I always figured Zelda, kingdom hearts, and monster hunter kind of laid out the formula for what a souls like would become. This game looks really interesting, though.
Love the edits, 3:56 killed me.
Wasn’t the Demons Souls story similar to another From game called Otogi?
Souls games are actually defined by your ability to roll through barrels and pots and make them shatter.
I love how my favorite game of all time (pun intended) always manages to be brought up in the vids I watch. Ocarina of time is just amazing 😊
Very appropriate that Miyazaki would say that. I started with DS1, and it brought back that feeling of wonder and trepidation I felt the first time I played through Ocarina of Time as a kid. Each game in the series has managed to do this as I've aged, so I always had this notion in my head that the Souls series was like "adult Zelda" to me, since they do share plenty of similarities and I was able to draw these connections from childhood to adulthood. Of course they are both absolutely their own thing, but there will always be a personal connection between the Zelda games and the Souls games for me.
One day I'll probably give my children the same experience when they get here, of letting their worlds expand from the pure fantasies to the light and darkness that exist beyond their imagination.
08:22 I KNEW subscribing to this channel was a good idea! Good Guy V giving UW a shout out.
The very 1st souls like game was…. crystalis on nes!! Secret of mana on snes, and link to the past on snes. Of course ocarina of time on 64 is prolly the right answer though. Highly recommend these games if u havent played them.
7:30. That sounds like a black metal vocalist. 🤘
Wow, this video was actually impressive ! I lurned sow much thanks you, but I'll just have a question, do Shadow of the Colossus has been a source of inspiration for the Souls genre ?
Hope you are doing well 🙂
(Sorry for the english I'm french)
Incredible writing and video editing, sir, you are going to make it into the big leagues. Hope to learn a lot from you as your channel grows!
Yeah Shadow Tower right? We're just going to ignore king's field purposefully in order to highlight a different game in other words. That's fine, but almost all of the mechanics are derived from field.
Still haven't even let the video play –
Lmao. The reaaaaaach is hilarious
YES. BLADE THE EDGE OF DARKNESS WAS THE FIRST ONE. FRO A SPANISH COMPANY. NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT IT BUT IT'S THE COOLEST EVER CREATED.
SEVERANCE.
First souls like is the rocks we threw at each other's heads in 70000 BC
the real answer is armored core
METROID IS THE PROGENITOR
I know it’s a bit of a joke this video, and mostly an excuse to talk about games that inspired the titular souls series… but I disagree with the definition of souls like that you have set. It’s too specific. There’s only one set of mechanics I believe define the genre souls like. The ground hogs day style death mechanics. If the game doesn’t emphasize that trial and error aspect of the game design it’s not a soulslike. Just like it’s not a metroidvania if it doesn’t contain an interconnected world.
7th saga is the first souls game for me, its a SNES game, I HIGHLY recommend you to take a look.
But pong is the real first souls like. With the innovation of parrying and dodging
That tree meme on the Deku tree gave me a good laugh.
I usually say that Dark Souls felt like 3D Symphony of the Night for me.
This video had more fake-outs than the Lord of the Rings ending! 😀
Good stuff, I haven't heard of a bunch of the games mentioned here and you wrapped it all up in a neat and tidy package
Did not expect to learn something genuinely new and interesting, nice research!
ur avatar is amazeballs~
The first Souls-Like was Spacewar
In my opinion, the first souls like (if we're stretching definitions) was Simon's Quest for the NES. Backtracking, Cryptic Dialogue, Difficult Combat, it was there. Not perfect, but I doubt we'd have Souls-likes if Simon's Quest didn't exist.
way to extend a video is to extend soul-like genre definitions. Nice
Don't forget berserk milenium falcon
nice
an ad for overcooked 2 showed up right before you said a games title and i was like what
I just want more Patches.
This was a really fucking good video. Love the editing and general quality.
Dungeon Master could be included, though first-person, and it's a realtime game with quickslots
It doesn't make the requirements of all the souls-like criteria but I will throw, an SNES title under the name "Actraiser 2" in that mix. The story is basic but at the same time told from the narrative of angels that view upon the lands and issues, that plague it. The difficultly is well known, you're handicapped with being slow but being able to jump and glide, but with consequences of sliding when landing. Plus the protagonist is in a thankless position of saving the lands without being noticed until the end, when he becomes a statue and time rolls by with tales of his fight with Tanzra, the main antagonist and the seven deadly sins he defeated to liberate the world.
No the very first dark souls… is armored core :X
Haven't watched yet but Enclave gets my vote.