LogFAQs > #979553069

UF8 posted...

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

Yeah this is a good point, in Hollow Knight the boss combat specifically is vaguely souls-y and is the other big reason besides aesthetic people call it a soulslike. People find it difficult, and other games have difficult bosses but the specific loop of the death -> boss run -> retrieve resources (usually) during the fight is what Souls is known for. And the combat itself is slow and deliberate - not quite in a Castlevania way - but focused on movement and boss patterns so that it is almost more of a slowed down MMX/Z. Pattern recognition, patience, and abusing the shit out of iframes - that's souls combat to me.