Why I Don't Play Soulslikes

 

Soulslike games seem to be everywhere. The release and commercial success of FromSoftware's Demon's Souls in 2009, combined with the even bigger success of their follow-up Dark Souls in 2011, sparked a long line of games mimicking FromSoftware's games in terms of style and gameplay. Some notable examples include Lords of the Fallen, Mortal Shell, Nioh 1 and 2, Steelrising,  Enotria: The Last Song, Lies of P, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, and Another Crab's Treasure. And that's not even getting into how FromSoftware itself has perpetuated the trend by continuing to produce similar games, such as Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring.

It's a bit like how Die Hard (1989) ended up being such a huge hit it launched a sub-genre of action movies mimicking aspects of its story and plot structure. Much like how the sub-genre is commonly known as "Die Hard on an X" or just a "Die Hard Imitator," this trend of games has become known as "Soulslike," after the titles that popularized it. 

This genre remains hugely popular. But to be honest, I don't really get the appeal. Sure they may look good and have interesting worldbuilding, but it's hard to appreciate all that when the genre itself causes more frustration than enjoyment. 

I'd like to go over all the issues I have with this genre. I'll try to identify as best I can the major things that define it, go through my personal thoughts on each point, and even try to address a few counterarguments. I'll also add in some suggestions for how soulslike games could be made more accessible to a wider range of players. And I'll even include some recommendations for what people like me can do to appreciate the detail of soulslike games without the pain.

What is a Soulslike?

Of course, one lesson you quickly learn in film studies is just how difficult it is to actually nail down a single, universally applicable definition of what makes a particular genre. There is always going to be disagreement, and there are usually some contested entries as well. 

I don't know of anyone who would argue that Stagecoach (1939), The Searchers (1956), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), The Wild Bunch (1969), Pale Rider (1985), and The Quick and the Dead (1995) are not all westerns. But what actually makes something a western? The short answer is, it depends on who you ask. 

Will Wright attempted to define the western with his book Six Guns and Society: A Structural Study of the Western, which argued that all westerns fit into one of four basic plots. Except, as later writers noted, he completely failed to account for the existence of spaghetti westerns. And we could go further. No Country For Old Men is set in 1980's Texas, could it still be considered a western? There are also western-inspired movies like Quigley Down Under (1990) set in the Australian outback. Are these westerns? What about "urban westerns" like Dirty Harry (1971) or "space westerns" like Firefly (2002)?

Much like the western, it can be hard to nail down exactly what makes a "soulslike." Every game is going to do something a bit different. And no matter what criteria we set, there are always going to be outliers. But we can identify a few patterns that, at the very least, most people will agree are common conventions of the soulslike game.

Gameplay

Soulslike games are typically structured as RPGs with an emphasis on combat and exploration. They usually involve situating the player in a fantastical world, where they are left to wander and run into any number of enemies. Fighting them gains experience which allows the player to get stronger and better at handling themselves in the world. 

The thing that distinguishes it from other RPGs, however, is its brutal difficulty. These games are designed to be as difficult as possible. Enemies pop up everywhere, and they're relentless. Many of them can easily overpower the player in one way or another. Or they just attack in large enough numbers to easily overwhelm them. Or it's super-overpowered enemies in large numbers. This makes it really easy to stumble even against the weakest opponents. 

Most soulslike titles put a heavy emphasis on melee combat, though many of them will experiment with additional supporting mechanics. Lies of P gives its one-armed protagonist an assortment of prosthetics with different abilities. Mortal Shell allows the player to possess different "shells" (aka the armored bodies of fallen warriors), which lets them switch between different playstyles. Bloodborne and Flintlock: Siege of Dawn both experiment with adding firearms to the mix.

The protagonist in Lies of P is an amputee. Players can choose from several different prosthetics with different strengths and weaknesses.

A common pattern with soulslike games is they make it really hard to save your progress. Most soulslike games rely on designated save points. The name and appearance of these will vary, but essentially they act as a spot where the player can stop. Often there is an option to "rest" which will restore their health, but doing so also respawns all defeated enemies. To make things extra frustrating, the save points are scattered as far from each other as possible. This means that the player will have to run through a maze of deadly enemies, sometimes including a boss fight, before they can save again, and dying will set back any progress made since the last save, which makes things especially challenging when it's ridiculously easy to die.

Setting

A lot of soulslike games fall into the genre of fantasy, being set in a fictional world populated by supernatural forces (albeit often one that takes aesthetic inspiration from history or literature). However, this is not a requirement. Some soulslikes, such as Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, are set against the backdrop of historical events (albeit with fantasy elements woven in). While less common, there are also examples of sci-fi soulslikes, like Steelrising and Remnant: From the Ashes.

Regardless of what genre is actually picked, most soulslikes take place in a bleak, unforgiving world that is in some way "broken" beyond repair. It's rare to see a soulslike that takes place in a vibrant, optimistic world. Often, this world has been beset by some sort of calamity, and whatever civilization might have existed collapsed a long time ago. Whatever major players in the world's history remain are shadows of their former selves, broken and twisted by their tragic history, and will commonly serve as bosses.

Elden Ring takes place in a fantasy world fractured after a series of past calamities. Much of the game is structured around exploring the ruins of a once-thriving civilization.

The in-game map is commonly designed to be nonlinear and confusing. Soulslike games often throw the player into the thick of things without much explanation, with no indication of where to go or what needs to be done. Exploration is sometimes rewarded by allowing the player to unlock shortcuts. For example, they may be able to drop a ladder or open a gate to make a newly-discovered region accessible where it previously wasn't. 

Story

Soulslike games are often praised for their stories, but the part that isn't explained upfront is that they don't tell stories in the most conventional sense. Typically, they open with the protagonist being placed in a designated starting area, where their journey begins. With a few exceptions, there usually isn't much established about the overarching goal. Cutscenes outside the beginning and end are rare, if present at all. 

Instead, the common pattern is environmental storytelling. Basically, a lot of the story and worldbuilding isn't immediately clear to the player, and the game itself doesn't directly reveal it. Instead, the player has to pay attention to the environment around them and piece together clues about what's going on. This can take a lot of forms. A common one is hiding clues in descriptions of items the player can recover. Sometimes hidden aesthetic choices and NPC interaction can also reveal bits and pieces or at least fuel speculation among players.

Objectives

Soulslike games often like to confuse their players by being vague about what their actual goals are. The protagonist may be given a vague objective with no real context or information about how to do it, or they may just be thrown into the deep end with nothing at all. Sometimes they offer sidequests, but these can also be equally confusing. Although there are exceptions, most soulslike games refrain from using objective markers and many don't even offer a journal for tracking quests. 

Conclusion

Obviously, this is not a perfect guide. Much like the western, any attempt to narrow down a set criteria will always be met with outliers and contested entries. For example, there's a fair bit of contention on whether Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and its sequel Survivor are actually soulslikes. They adopt a lot of similar gameplay like difficult melee combat, learning attack patterns, nonlinear disorienting maps, and sporadic save points that respawn enemies when used. On the other hand, it relies less on environmental storytelling and more on cutscenes, which some would argue makes it not a true soulslike.

There are also examples of souls-inspired games that don't fit the genre perfectly but incorporate aspects of it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 uses cutscenes and a more clearly defined story, as well as turn-based combat. However, it still adopts a similar level of difficulty, confusing map designs, and a system where save points are scattered and respawn defeated enemies when used. Is Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a soulslike? Hard to say.

And what of FromSoftware themselves, the ones who created the genre and continue to fuel its popularity? Is it appropriate to apply the label of "soulslike" to Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, or Elden Ring, or is it a defining feature that soulslike games are made by other companies mimicking FromSoftware's style? For our purposes, we will say they are, getting a consensus on this point is no easy task.

While it may be hard to perfectly identify a soulslike, we can at least label a few common patterns that most players can agree on:

• Extreme Difficulty
• Sporadic Saving
• Nonlinear map and level design
• Environmental Storytelling
• Bleak, unforgiving worlds
• Lack of clear direction

Now that we have some idea of what the key components are, we can discuss the issues in more depth.

Responses

Overly Difficult Combat

Soulslikes are often characterized by extreme difficulty. While it's normal for games to challenge players, soulslikes go a tad overboard, like the developers are trying to make the game as infuriating to play as possible. Players are thrown into a strange world with at most a vague idea of what the need to do, and suddenly have to survive a death maze full of enemies who can take them out in one hit. Even the most basic enemies in the game are brutally difficult, and can knock back progress for the slightest mistakes. 

And this is often mixed with boss fights. Sometimes, you have to go through a death corridor full of monsters and defeat a boss before the game will let you save. And even this isn't going to accomplish much because saving just respawns them so now if you go back, you have to deal with the same enemies all over again. 

Environmental Storytelling

This, on its own, isn't necessarily a bad thing. The phrase "show, don't tell" exists for a reason. Video games also have an advantage over film in this regard, as players can take more time to examine the world around them. While a movie can certainly make use of an environment to tell its story, and many do, it is ultimately limited by how it is scripted, filmed, and edited. We see things from fixed and pre-planned camera angles of set durations. In a video game, the player often has a bit more freedom to move around and study the world from different angles. Some games are specifically designed for this.

However, environmental storytelling is not the exclusive domain of soulslikes. In fact, if anything, the soulslike format kind of gets in the way of environmental storytelling being used effectively. It's hard to appreciate all the little details and creative worldbuilding when you're so preoccupied trying to navigate their death maze and getting one-hit-killed at every turn. We can, in fact look at other games where it is used far more effectively.

A great example of a non-soulslike game that uses environmental storytelling to great effect is the indie game Return of the Obra Din. This game centers around investigating the titular ship and determining the fates of its crew. The player has a pocket watch that can be activated at specific environmental cues to witness pieces of the voyage, all taken out of context. These fragments consist of an audio snippet followed by a 3D snapshot. The player can use these frozen moments to examine details and make deductions. They can move around, study people, details, and make notes. In fact, Return of the Obra Din arguably goes further than a lot of soulslikes with its environmental storytelling, since the player has to actively deduce the identities of 60 people and what happened to them based entirely on visual and sometimes audio clues. 

In Return of the Obra Din, the player uncovers the titular ship's story by using environmental clues to make deductions

And you know what makes Return of the Obra Din different from something like Dark Souls or Bloodborne? It has no combat mechanics. Sure, the player gets to witness action scenes, or at least freeze frames from them, but they don't participate themselves. There's no death gauntlet full of monsters ready to take you out in one hit if you don't know the exact attack pattern to fight them. 

And this works to its advantage, because it actually lets you take the time to study the environment and look for those details. When the game puts you in a frozen moment, you can examine it at your own pace. You can move around, look at it from different angles, and the game even provides a book for making notes on your observations and deductions.

Meanwhile, in a soulslike game, you're too preoccupied trying not to die to actually examine and study those clues. When you're more concerned about everyone trying to kill you, it's kind of hard to stop and notice those little details that give valuable insight. 

Environmental storytelling is great, but as Return of the Obra Din shows, we can have it used really well without the crushing difficulty of the soulslike genre. In fact, it's a lot more effective when the game actually lets you pause to appreciate it once in a while.

Respawning Enemies

It gets a bit tedious to be fighting the same enemies over and over again, especially when they're so brutally difficult they can easily take you down. And you know one way or another you're going to be back on the path you just got through, whether intentionally or accidentally. It doesn't feel like you really defeated them if they just keep coming back. And to me, it feels a lot like undermining my progress. 

So I finally get through the death gauntlet that I had to pass just to get from one save point to another, and now everything I just did gets undone the minute I'm able to stop and catch my breath? Every single enemy I just dealt with is just suddenly back to full health and ready to kill me again? And if I have to use that path again (which I probably will, because that's how these games work), I have to fight them all over again? This isn't feeling like any sort of progress or accomplishment; it just feels like I'm bashing my head against the wall. 

This doesn't mean those paths have to be empty after I get through them. There can still be encounters, but do they always have to be the exact same enemies I already killed? 

Sporadic Save Points

Another annoying detail of the soulslike is how ridiculously spread out the save points are. Having designated locations to save isn't necessarily a bad mechanic, but soulslikes take it to the utmost extreme. They're put as far away from each other as possible, and getting from one point to another requires the player to go through a winding path full of super-difficult enemies, sometimes even a boss fight, before they can finally save. 

In Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, the player can only save by resting at sporadically placed shrines. But doing so respawns all defeated enemies.

This makes it really infuriating when there are so many ways to die and not a lot of options for healing. Any time I make the slightest bit of progress, I end up getting reset because some enemy got the jump on me and I couldn't react quickly enough. After doing that for say... weeks, getting stuck trying to clear one section, it starts to feel like I'm beating a dead horse. It feels like the ultimate embodiment of the true definition of insanity. 

Would it really kill the developers to at least have options to save more often. You can still put challenges in between, just maybe put them a bit closer together.

A Less Painful Way to Appreciate Soulslikes

If you're like me and a soulslike game is proving too much, the best thing to do is to stop playing it. If it's just making you more frustrated than enjoying it, it's not worth it anyway. Just stop playing. If it's a hard copy, give it to a friend or sell it and use the money to buy something more your speed. That way, it can at least go to someone more comfortable with that style of gameplay.

But if you still want to enjoy the worldbuilding and lore of these games, the internet is your friend. There are plenty of channels dedicated to breaking down and explaining the intriguing lore around video games, including soulslikes. This is especially true for FromSoftware, with whole channels dedicated just to exploring different parts of Elden Ring. 

One of the best channels for this is Zullie the Witch, a dataminer who specializes in studying the files of FromSoftware games. Her videos offer detailed breakdowns of their models, highlighting all those interesting little details that play into the lore, as well as some insight behind the scenes on how FromSoftware's models work.

Trust me, it's a much less painful way to appreciate everything that goes into these sorts of games. Especially since you can actually pay attention to all those little things when they're not repeatedly killing you.

Rebuttals

It's Worth it For the Challenge

Sure, it can feel good when you accomplish a difficult task, even a seemingly impossible one. But it it really worth beating your head against the wall for that brief feeling, one which will be very quickly crushed by the next challenge? Seeing "You Died" pop up a million times gets a bit disenfranchising after a while. It would be one thing if these were specific moments but soulslike games like to do this with every single encounter. 

So you beat one boss only to then end up in another death gauntlet with enemies who kill you right away. And of course if there wasn't a save point or you missed it because of how the level was designed, now you get set back and have to do the boss fight all over again. And that's assuming that using the save point doesn't just resurrect the boss so they can kill you all over again.

Now sure, having a difficult boss makes sense, but do they really have to make every enemy so frustrating. And is it really worth the challenge of actually overcoming those enemies if saving just respawns them anyway? This isn't a worthy challenge. It's just mentally exhausting. You ever heard the true definition of insanity? That's literally what these games are- they force you to keep doing the same thing over and over again in the hopes of a different outcome. 

You can Make it Easier by Farming XP From Respawning Enemies

When people talk about farming in video games, unless it is actually a game about farming, they are usually referring to a situation where a player repeatedly performs a task to accumulate a resource. This could be any number of things depending on the game, but in soulslike it specifically refers to experience points, commonly abbreviated as XP. As is common in RPGs, soulslikes usually have a levelling mechanic where the player gains XP from defeating enemies. Being able to level up provides them with improved stats, upgrades, and new abilities that help them against tougher enemies.

One argument in favor of the respawning enemies mechanic is the potential for farming XP from them. This is a common tactic for soulslike fans. Respawning enemies means they can be fought again, so players will repeatedly fight them in order to gain more XP which makes them tougher and better at dealing with bigger threats. One argument here is that, when you know what to do, you can actually make the games easier for yourself. But that doesn't really work for me.

XP Farming, as popularized by Dark Souls, is a practice where players fight the same enemies repeatedly in order to accumulate XP and level up.

You see, the issue here is the fact that I'm stuck fighting the same enemies over and over again in the hopes that I will have a slightly better chance down the line. That just sounds like it's making things needlessly tedious. And keep in mind, this is something you'll usually have to do throughout the game. Every time you make the slightest bit of progress you get stifled because you have to start grinding all over again just to have a fighting chance in the next section when I just want to move forward.

While grinding isn't unusual in other RPGs, many of them will at least offer variety in how to get that XP. You don't have to put the story on pause just so you can attack the same enemies a thousand times and get strong enough to move an inch forward. Some even offer other options, like being able to gain XP through dialogue with NPCs or doing side quests, which helps a lot with making the grind more enjoyable.

How Can Developers Address These Issues?

So now that I've gone on a tirade about why soulslikes are so frustrating to play, let's look at some of the ways they could theoretically improve. This is not to diminish those who do, for whatever reason, love the super hardcore soulslike mechanics. However, accessibility is a great thing to have in a video game and it's in the best interests of the developers to be accessible since doing so helps bring in more players. So let's go over som eof the above issues and look at how they could be addressed.

One of the simplest solutions is to have difficulty settings, and to their credit, there are some that do. Another Crab's Treasure is nice enough to have a lower setting for people who just want the game's story without all the frustration. But many of them don't do this. A lot of them just throw the player in on maximum difficulty with no options. 

Save Points

The first, and perhaps simplest solution, is to add a manual or auto-save, so at least some progress is preserved if the player dies, and they don't have to go back completely to the start. Or perhaps a checkpoint system could be used where the game automatically saves when the player reaches a specific point. Any of these could also be included as options, rather than something imposed on players. When you start up the game, just select whether you want manual/auto save enabled based on your preferences and you're all set.

However, if we must have save points, why don't we move them closer together. Your enemies are already tough enough as it is. I get that it makes things more challenging and adds tension, but you can still have that while being able to save more frequently.  Even if they are relatively close, you still have to deal with the confusing map and some enemies to get from one to another, so it's not like it doesn't feel like a relief when you finally make it. It just doesn't feel like you're spending weeks trying to clear one path and getting set back repeatedly. This could also be included as an option, so die-hard soulslike players can still get the full experience.

Alternatively, while the sporadic save points are a staple of the genre, that doesn't mean we can't experiment with variations. How about having an alternative save option with a trade-off? For instance, what about having two different types of save locations? There could be the type we already have, which is more spread out, but perhaps a smaller, more frequent one, that saves but lacks some of the functions of the main one, like perhaps not being able to heal or level you up, or just not healing as much. 

Any of these choices could take the edge off the frustration of playing a soulslike. A big part of what makes them so infuriating is getting repeatedly set back, so being able to at least save more often so you're not completely restarting all the time would make it a lot more accessible.

Respawning Enemies

Farming XP from respawning enemies is a common staple of the genre, but fighting the same enemies over and over gets a bit tedious when you just want to move forward. Some players have the patience for it but a lot of us just aren't interested in getting bogged down in grinding that one enemy when we could be exploring the world and progressing the story. There's no real reason it has to be there so why not experiment with removing it? Or at least making it optional.

For the casual players, this makes the world a lot more varied. If we're not fighting the same enemies over and over again it's a lot easier to take the time to appreciate all the worldbuilding and the story. And you still get the XP for defeating enemies, it's just not the same ones.

Now a hardcore soulslike player will probably be up in arms at the mere suggestion of this. But I thought the challenge was supposed to be part of the appeal. Well, here's a new challenge for you- let's see how you fare when one of the most popular soulslike strategies no longer works. Surely there are other ways you can get XP, and a good development team could probably find a good alternative XP farming mechanic if there really needs to be one.

Provide Objectives

Soulslike games have a habit of being extremely vague about objectives. There's no clear direction of where the player needs to go or what they need to do. Even side quests can be incredibly vague. An NPC will give you a short description of what to do and... that's it. No guides, no markers, not even a place where you can review basic information about the quest. You're pretty much expected to stumble around or just hope to memorize everything the NPC said. Unsurprisingly, this makes things a bit frustrating. 

Now, for a hardcore soulslike player, this might be part of the appeal. However, for the more casual one, it's a bit more daunting when they have nothing to go on. A lot of soulslikes don't even provide an in-game map. This is a huge leap from other RPGs, which are often pretty good about labelling goals. There are actually a few things a soulslike can take from other RPGs when it comes to objectives. And implementing some of these would be great for newcomers.

First off, a great feature would be a journal. This is a standard in many other RPGs, and even some other genres. Having an in-game journal to record objectives is a valuable tool for game progression. When given a mission, even something small, the journal can record important information to be reviewed by the player.

Objective markers are also a good feature to have. They don't have to be everywhere, but something that just points in the right direction would go a long way to helping casual players. Even if it didn't point to the objective's exact location, just led you to the general area, it would make the game so much more accessible. 

Now, a hardcore player might argue that this defeats the purpose. Well, they're under no obligation to use the journal. And even if there are objective markers, they don't have to be mandated. Like many of the suggestions I've proposed, it doesn't seem that crazy to simply give players the option. A player who likes the full soulslike experience would only need to disable them in the opening screen. Doesn't seem that unreasonable to me. And the same could be done with the journal.

However, if you really don't want objective markers, here's another alternative- a map. So many soulslike games don't even give the player an in-game map to review. But here's what you could do- combine the map and the journal. The journal can record important information like... for instance... a location important to one of the main objectives. This would still require some effort, too, since a map could narrow down the search area but wouldn't neccessarily give you the exact co-ordinates. It might tell you which region to look in but you'd still have to figure out where in that region it is.

Clearer Tutorials

A lot of soulslike games have a habit of throwing the player into the deep end without really explaining anything, including game mechanics. At most, they might get a prompt explaining basic movement and attacks, and that's about it. Now a hardcore soulslike player might argue this is part of the appeal. They might say that figuring out how things work is part of the enjoyment. However, for a new or casual player this can be pretty daunting, especially when the game relies on more detailed mechanics that it never really explains.

An option for tutorials, at least regarding the basics and essential mechanics, would go a long way to helping newer players find their footing. Something that went over the basic combat mechanics and gave the player an opportunity to practice before getting plunged into the death maze would be a great start. But it might also help to have tutorials properly introducing and going over any mechanics the game wants to experiment with.

For instance, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has a central mechanic involving madness. When it accumulates enough, the protagonist's inner psychological issues are personified in the form of an "Inner Demon" which will attack her. However, the game never actually explains or properly sets up this mechanic so it seems to come out of nowhere. A player going in with zero context could easily be forgiven for thinking it was just a random enemy that accidentally spawned because of a bug. The same game also relies heavily on using a substance called Red Mercury, but never actually tells you what to do with it. 

In both examples, a tutorial - even an optional one - explaining these mechanics would be a huge benefit. Even just a text box that explains what the Inner Demon is and what you can do when it appears would be hugely beneficial. Or maybe an optional side quest that gives an overview of how to use Red Mercury. Even if it's just the basics, and some of the details are left for the player to work out, it would still help a lot with grounding newer and casual players. 

Additionally, having an option for tutorials related to enemies could help. I get that learning attack patterns is a big part of the experience, but you need to start somewhere. They don't need to explain every single opponent in the game, but maybe some tutorials that properly introduce some of the most common basic enemies, different ways they can attack you, and how you can react would help get new and casual players get on their feet so they can start figuring out more difficult opponents.

A Database

Soulslike games love to throw the player headfirst into a confusing world, often with little to no context or background information. This isn't always the case. Exceptions like Jedi Fallen Order and Another Crab's Treasure exist. But a lot of them try to disorient the player right from the start. And this is where environmental storytelling becomes an important part. The player is expected to find and piece together bits of information they find while exploring the environment. 

But there's often no real way to keep track of it. No database or anything. The player is pretty much expected to just remember everything. And this is where having some sort of reference would be extremely helpful. Like a database that can keep track of information currently known to the player character. It doesn't need to be anything fancy, just a basic guide the player can consult which can be filled out as they go.

For example, maybe updating the player with any information they get on major characters in the world. A lot of these games have elaborate backstories so some record of who did what, even the most basic surface-level information, will help avoid confusion. Making a record of enemies encountered in the game will also help with providing context for the player. Even if it's something as simple as recording different types of enemies as they're encountered and notable weaknesses.

Basically, some sort of reference the player can consult to better keep track of information they currently have, instead of having to go purely on memory and digging out a specific item just to read its description.

Spread out the Challenge

I get that soulslikes are meant to be challenging, and that's part of the appeal, but does absolutely everything need to be so painfully difficult? Why not spread things out a bit and give the player some breathing room? Maybe even offer some alternatives to combat, like more dialogue-driven interactions with NPCs- this is supposed to be an RPG, isn't it, so how about some roleplay? Maybe there could be a mechanic where interacting with the right NPCs in the right way could give you advantages or penalties in a later boss encounter. Or they could add in the occasional puzzle to change things up. Just something that offers a break from repeatedly dying.

An even better idea would be to spread out the death gauntlets and mix it up with some paths that are a little less intense. Now this might sound absurt to soulslike players, but it could actually make a decent gameplay dillemna. What if the player has two possible paths to reach their goal- they can take one path that's safer but much longer, or a more direct path that's full of enemies. The shorter path would be great for XP farming and get the player where they need to be faster. The longer path would be slower and not give as much XP but be much better for a player who's too badly hurt to keep going. The player could then evaluate the choices based on their current circumstances and decide which is more strategic. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, my experience with soulslike games is they tend to feel more like a needlessly frustrating exercise in futility than anything actually enjoyable or worth the challenge. To me, it just seems like I get stuck in a loop doing the same thing over and over only to get killed horribly. And I can't even save the minute amounts of progress I do make, so I just get sent back and suddenly have to do it all over again. It gets to the point where you can spend weeks just trying to clear the first stage. 

I get that it's supposed to be challenging, but does it really have to be this challenging? Would it really hurt the developers to at least have difficulty levels and options to make it less infuriating for players? Now some players might just say "Well if you don't like it, don't play it." Okay, but this genre is popping up everywhere. So many games that might otherwise be quite interesting feel the need to adopt this bizarrely popular model. It can be quite annoying to find a game that sounds really interesting, only to discover it's part of a genre like this. And it's popular enough that one could stumble into it by accident.

Ultimately, winding things back would be in the best interest of both the players and the developers. For developers, it means reading a wider audience and getting more players interested in their game. For players, it's an opening to enjoy something that otherwise becomes overbearingly frustrating. And making the options available allows each player to customize their own experience. A hardcore player could still get the full soulslike experience, they just do so by choice, while a more casual player can enjoy what the game has to offer without wanting to throw their controller at the screen.

Unfortunately, a lot of developers don't do that. They make games that cause unnecessary stress, stifle progress, and often feel like they're designed to be as frustrating as possible to play. 

And that is why I don't play soulslikes.