LogFAQs > #979527506

Xiahou_Shake posted...

Hollow Knight structurally is very much like both Super Metroid and SotN, I'd say - definitely has only trace elements of Souls on that front by comparison though.

indirectly that's kind of what i was getting into earlier actually, that the defining characteristics of titles being souls-like as opposed to any other kind of action game are fundamentally way more light to begin with. all you need there is a souls-esque vibe and combat style (the difficulty helps too obv). which is why it's a lot less difficult for something to really qualify as that compared to metroidvanias, and why so many metroidvanias can be safely said to employ these concepts without much issue (it has so few qualifying factors that it doesn't even conflict with the many qualifying aspects a metroidvania requires (unlike roguelikes which unfortunately kind of do even in more surface level definitions))

it's kind of funny that metroidvanias have so many particular quirks when it's being limited to just the broad concepts that those games had in common, when soulslikes are evaluated as such on all of the souls series' quirks and it's still ultimately just that many (mostly i suppose because unlike with metroidvanias, it's not like, inherently tied to a single form of action game (counting king's quest it's had forays into first and third person officially). i suppose some obviously do still have hangups over it being applied on other genres but the resistance is less clear than with metroidvanias (i say, aware that i'm more than marginally to blame for this stance being represented in this topic right now lol)