Current Events > How did Souls-like/ Dark Souls become a genre anyway?

(+) Yeah! (+)

All the usual descriptions sounds pretty close to metroidvanias, but harder

- dark fantasy setting, isolation
- interconnected world, shortcuts, hidden areas, etc
- gaining power and upgrades usually through bosses
- if you die, you go back to the last checkpoint, but your collected resources are gone
- more difficult than the average game

Or am I missing something

Technically it started as a modernization of their first-person dungeon crawlers (King's Field and Shadow Tower series). The games had "action" combat but it was pretty boring. For Demon's Souls they moved the camera to third person to allow more interesting combat. In the West most people never played or couldn't play the previous games. If they had they would have seen how similar Shadow Tower Abyss was to Demon's Souls outside of combat.

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just like the term/genre metroidvanias...

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The RPG mechanics, the bonfire system and the invasion system all differentiate themselves from Metroidvanias.

It's also missing unlocking abilities that give you access to more areas.

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3D Metroidvania with a stat system. Metroidvanias can be similarly rough if it's the first go through and you don't know what's where. Even Metroid Prime 2 had the Dark Aether air poisoning you and Boost Guardian.

When done well the game seems to want you to find where to go next or overcome the boss you're at where old Metroidvanias are just for you to explore. Since it's got that third dimension to work with you don't need to end up with crazy vertical movement abilities so the combat gameplay can stay grounded at a slow-ish pace.

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