Festive Feature #4 - 2023’s Finest Soulslikes

One of the more curious pleasures of this year, if you’re into that sort of thing, was the swarm of soulslikes that descended on us. For those that toil in the vineyards of this unyielding genre, 2023 was a fine vintage. We had Dark Souls with guns. We had Bloodborne with puppets. We had Dark Souls with ghostly parallel dimensions. We had Sekiro with lightsabers. And we had Dark Souls in Ancient China. Think of the following roster, then, as you would a wine list: mull over your options and pair them appropriately with the weather, the food, or your festive temperament.

Lies of P - Lies of P managed that rarest of feats for a soulslike: it was surprising. This is doubly impressive if you count the fact that it’s based on the well-established story of Pinocchio. Part of the shock was that the traditional figure of the hero – a truncated lump of tree, stripped of its leaves and stropped into the shape of a boy – had changed. He was now mechanical: a thing of pistons, gears and sparks, with fake skin and a nose of fixed length, regardless of his mendacity. The other part of the shock was that, in a genre as regularly tilled and often tired as this one, it managed to be both an act of homage (the Yarnham of Bloodborne courses through it, clotting into familiar shapes) and something fresh.

The developer, Round 8 Studio, gave us a brutal combat gauntlet, with gizmo-loaded arms to clip onto our leading lad, and a world worth exploring. The setting was Krat, a clockwork city that reminds you of Columbia, from BioShock Infinite – only without that game’s helium-pumping brightness. Lies of P felt like Disney gone richly wrong. Whatever his lies, P fades from the memory; it’s Krat that hangs around, cobbled and lamplit, and stuffed with secrets to sniff out. Time to get nosy!

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - Team Ninja has already shown us what it can do when let loose in a fantastical soulslike world with Nioh and its sequel. In those two games, the Ninja Gaiden studio grounded its fantasy in samurai history, and in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, it takes war-torn second century China and the Three Kingdoms era as its playground. And, like Nioh, its decaying world is rife with undead soldiers, demons, and other abominations.

Juggling your Spirit Gauge (Wo Long's stamina bar) to unleash powerful Spirit Attacks, Team Ninja's game also brings Wizardry Spells and Martial Arts into your extensive arsenal, then adds a novel wrinkle to proceedings. Each area has its own morale level, and you start at zero. Only by vanquishing enemies can you build morale, increasing the damage you deal foes as it rises. Conversely, enemies also have their own morale to contend with, and the higher the morale, the more dangerous they are.

Offering a lot of its own ideas, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty also brought compelling and detailed style to its rendition of ancient China, and while some of its mechanics might seem a mite on the overly complex side, Team Ninja's game proved to be one of the year's most interesting soulslikes.

Remnant II - Remnant 2 is best described as a Dark Souls-style shooter, although, while still incredibly challenging in places, there’s no penalty for death if that’s what puts you off the soulslike sub-genre. It’s a game chock full of RPG mechanics, from which Archetypes and special abilities you choose, to which weapons, mods and mutators you apply. 

What separates Remnant 2 from the opposition is the fact that you never know what you’re going to get. Its procedurally generated campaign not only throws you into the game’s three main worlds in a random order, but it also mixes up its mission structure as well, meaning it boasts immense replayability, as you’ll likely never get the same campaign twice.

This is a solid shooter, with a stunning musical score, some truly iconic game worlds and moments, with boss fights that are actually pretty damn fun. Whether played alone or with friends, this one will live on long in the memory.

Lords of the Fallen - If this counts as a reboot of the 2014 game of the same name, then the old version wasn’t booted very far. The crux of the new Lords of the Fallen is that the world of Mournstead is forever host to a spectral dimension, called Umbral. Shift into this crumbly, moth-fluttering realm, and you are surrounded by reminders of death. It’s as if the old game were husked and hanging around, prodding us with remembrance of things past. In practice, Umbral was a nifty idea, warping the world into new configurations. Most of the puzzles entailed Umbral tinkering – water melts into air, iron gates twist away, and bridges like giant spines pop into place. If you were a chiropractor, you could set up in Mournstead and make a lot of money.

Lords of the Fallen looked the part. Made in Unreal Engine 5, it was encased in a suit of dull-metal tones pulled out of Dark Souls, a feast of silvery-grey: sky, stone, bone, armour, air – broken up, now and then, by the soupy brown of a bog. What’s not to like? If you prefer your soulslikes served up straight, Lords of the Fallen is likely to please. Plus, no other game this year, to my mind, let you lasso an enemy’s spirit out of their body and bruise it with a sword. That’s one way to darken a soul.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - As soulslikes go, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor isn’t much for the Dark side. The developer, Respawn Entertainment, cribbed lightly from its inspiration, scattering the first adventure, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, with bonfire-like spots to meditate and an emphasis on posture-breaking combat. This sequel gives us bigger hub worlds to poke around in, most notably Kobo, which is home to Turgle, a gangly, frog-like creature. This could have been a bad Jar Jar Binks rehash, but in the event Richard Horvitz hopped into the role and delivered one of the year’s best comic performances.

The story was perfectly fine – something about an elf and a secret Jedi haven. But what lingered after the credits were the shards of sheer spectacle. Coruscant, in all its bustling gloom. The Wild West of Kobo, as you ride a spindly creature that looks as if it had strolled in from a Dalí.

As for Cal Kestis, the returning hero, he came not only with new mechanics, such as the ability to wield both lightsaber and blaster at the same time, but with customisable hair and beard options. He’s nothing if not an action figure: Forcing the story forward with a series of blockbuster set pieces, while clipping on fresh clothes and mullets in accordance with your mood. You could package him in carbonite and make a killing this Christmas.