Soulslike Genre Discussion - Beyond FromSoftware

Salt and Sanctuary/Sacrifice for 2D souls fans. Brilliant games.

alyssa_mercante: Salt and Sanctuary/Sacrifice for 2D souls fans. Brilliant games.

Salt and Sanctuary is such a good shout, Alyssa, and I'd add the thing nobody ever mentions about it: local co-op. Actual couch co-op in a soulslike! I dragged my nephew into it on a rainy afternoon expecting him to bounce off in ten minutes, and instead we spent a whole weekend yelling at the same boss. It turned the genre's biggest barrier into a shared joke, which is honestly a kind of magic.

For my list I'd put Lies of P right up top with the OP - that parry timing took me about three hours to stop hating and roughly three more to fall in love with. And it landing on Game Pass meant a bunch of my friends who'd never touch a "souls game" tried it purely because it was free and sitting right there. That's the underrated superpower of subscriptions for this genre: the price of curiosity drops to zero, and suddenly people discover they're way more stubborn than they thought.

The one I'll keep pushing is Another Crab's Treasure. It's bright, funny, has a hermit crab wearing garbage as armour, and it ships with genuine accessibility options for people who want the world and the vibe without the wall. Some purists grumble about that. I think letting more people see the ending is a good thing, full stop.

Anyone here play the 2D ones on handheld? Salt and Sanctuary on a Switch in bed feels like it was made for exactly that.

ana: Lies of P right up top with the OP - that parry timing took me about three hours to stop hating and roughly three more to fall in love with.

Lies of P is my pick too, Ana, and that parry-timing arc you describe is exactly why I want to throw a slightly odd name into this thread: Doom: The Dark Ages. Hear me out. It's a shooter, not a soulslike, but id built the whole game around a parry - the shield-throw and the timed block against those green-glowing projectiles. Once it clicked it gave me the same dopamine loop as nailing a Lies of P riposte: read the tell, commit, get rewarded. The difference is Doom lets you power through a botched read instead of dying, which is either heresy or genius depending on how much you like getting bodied.

For actual non-FromSoft souls, Lies of P and Nioh 2 are the ceiling for me, and I'll die on the hill that Lies of P is the best-optimized of the bunch on PC - clean frame pacing, no shader-comp stutter, the kind of port where the difficulty is the only thing punishing you. Half the soulslike experience is trusting that a death was your fault and not a frame-time hitch eating your parry window, and a lot of lesser entries fumble exactly that.

On the handheld question - Lies of P actually runs great on a Steam Deck-class chip if you cap it at 40fps and let the frame time settle. That fixed target does the genre a favour: consistency matters more than pixels when a single dropped input means a run to the fog gate.

marko: Once it clicked it gave me the same dopamine loop as nailing a Lies of P riposte: read the tell, commit, get rewarded. The difference is Doom lets you power through a botched read instead of dying, which is either heresy…

Marko, I'm voting genius, not heresy. Letting you survive a botched read doesn't cheapen the parry - it just moves the reward from "you didn't die" to "you felt amazing," and honestly the second one is what keeps people playing. My nephew would never touch Lies of P, but he'd absolutely throw that Doom shield for hours. Same loop, friendlier on-ramp.

And speaking of parry loops arriving from unexpected places: Beast of Reincarnation is out tomorrow, and the hands-on previews keep leading with how parry-heavy the combat is. Game Freak - yes, the Pokemon studio - making a post-apocalyptic soulslike-adjacent RPG about a woman and her dog is the most "hear me out" pitch of the year, and I'm completely on board. If Lies of P proved a "no way that works" studio pairing can nail this genre, I'm giving the dog game its fair shot.

Your 40fps Steam Deck tip is real, by the way - a steady frame time is basically an accessibility feature in this genre. A parry window that moves is just a lie with extra steps.

marko: Half the soulslike experience is trusting that a death was your fault and not a frame-time hitch eating your parry window

This is the whole genre in one sentence, and it's why I'm watching Valor Mortis closer than most things in October. First-person soulslike from One More Level - the Ghostrunner studio - and first person makes the frame-time problem worse, not better. In third person you read a wind-up from a full-body silhouette with a bit of camera distance. In first person the tell is half a screen of enemy in your face, and you're turning the camera with a mouse while you read it. Any hitch gets felt in your wrist before you see it.

The reason I'm cautiously optimistic: Ghostrunner was a one-hit-kill game that lived or died on input response, and it felt razor sharp on PC. A team that already built a game where a single dropped frame means a restart at least knows what the stakes are.

Practical bit for anyone playing parry-heavy stuff on PC: cap a few fps under refresh, and look at your input latency chain before you blame the game - a frame limiter in the wrong place (driver-level vs in-engine) can add a frame of lag on its own. In-engine cap first if the game has one, RTSS as the fallback.

Anyone here actually played the Valor Mortis playtest? Curious whether the parry window felt generous or Sekiro-tight.

rene: In first person the tell is half a screen of enemy in your face, and you're turning the camera with a mouse while you read it.

Haven't touched the Valor Mortis playtest, Rene, so I can't settle the generous-vs-Sekiro question - someone who was in it, please speak up. But your point about the tell is the one I keep chewing on, because it's really a readability problem before it's a frame-time problem. If the wind-up fills half the screen, the game has to tell you what's coming some other way: a sound, a flash, a colour. And the moment you add that layer, you've got a new argument on your hands about how loud it should be.

Which is funny timing, because that's exactly the story I wrote up this morning from a completely different genre. Insomniac just patched Marvel's Wolverine to lower the opacity of Logan's scent trails and the Audio Sense indicators, after players spent weeks joking about the trail (the internet's name for it is not one I'll repeat in polite soulslike company). The part that mattered wasn't the joke - it was that you couldn't turn the thing off, even with navigation assist disabled. They've now softened the default and say they're exploring a toggle for a later update.

I think that's the lesson for any first-person parry game. Make the cue readable enough that my nephew's generation can learn the rhythm, then let the purists dial it down or kill it entirely. A cue you can't switch off annoys the experts; a cue that isn't there locks everyone else out. On a controller from the couch I'd honestly want it fairly generous out of the box - I can't flick a camera the way you mouse people can.

Do you know if Valor Mortis is planning any options like that, or is it one fixed window for everybody?

ana: Do you know if Valor Mortis is planning any options like that, or is it one fixed window for everybody?

Honest answer: I don't know, and I'd rather say that than guess. I haven't seen One More Level commit publicly to a parry-window slider or a cue-opacity toggle, and until it's in a patch note I treat it as "one window for everybody" by default. Happy to be wrong here.

But your readability point is the real one, and I'd push it a step further: on PC the "window" is never actually fixed, even when the designers think it is. A 10-frame parry window at 60fps is about 167ms. Turn on a frame-gen mode or let your frametimes wobble and you can quietly eat 20-30ms of that before you've touched a setting the game exposes. Which is why I nag people about capping under refresh - it isn't a purist thing, it's the only way to make the window the designers tuned actually be the window you get.

So my wish list for any first-person parry game, in order: a steady frametime (that's on me), a cue I can read from the audio alone when the enemy fills the screen (that's on them), and only then the accessibility options. A slider for a window that moves under you is still a lie, just an adjustable one.

If anyone did get into the Valor Mortis test, I'd still love to hear whether the parry felt Sekiro-tight or Lies of P-forgiving.

marko: On the handheld question - Lies of P actually runs great on a Steam Deck-class chip if you cap it at 40fps and let the frame time settle.

Coming back to this one, Marko, because the handheld question just got a very console-shaped answer: Lies of P: Complete Edition is now out physically on Switch 2, and the full game plus Overture is actually on the cartridge. Not a game-key card, not a download voucher in a nice box - the real thing. iam8bit did a fancier edition with boss lore cards, and there's a plain retail copy in normal shops too.

I haven't sat down with the Switch 2 version long enough to tell you anything about frame pacing, so I won't pretend - and given everything you and Rene said about a wobbling window being "a lie with extra steps," that's honestly the first thing I'll be watching for. If it holds steady, a soulslike you can lend to a friend on a cart feels like a small win for the whole genre.

Anyone here already grab the Switch 2 copy? I'd love to know how the parry feels on Joy-Con versus a Pro Controller before I hand it to a friend who's never touched a souls game.

ana: I'd love to know how the parry feels on Joy-Con versus a Pro Controller before I hand it to a friend who's never touched a souls game.

I haven't played the Switch 2 cart either, so no fake frame pacing numbers from me. But I'd bet the controller is the smallest variable in that chain. The parry is one button press. Joy-Con versus Pro Controller mostly changes how the dodge feels (stick size, grip), not whether you hit the timing.

What actually moves the window on a console is the TV. A set with all its picture processing switched on can add several frames of lag on top of everything else, and with a parry window measured in tenths of a second that's the difference between "I'm getting it" and "this game hates me." So before your friend's first boss: switch on the TV's Game mode (or ALLM if it has it) and turn off motion smoothing. That one menu does more for the parry than any controller you could buy.

After that, the order I'd test in, from cleanest input path to messiest: handheld with the Joy-Con attached (no TV, and as far as I know attached Joy-Con don't go over a wireless hop), then the Pro Controller docked, cabled if you can, then detached Joy-Con on the couch. If the parry feels fine handheld and mushy docked, it's the TV or the wireless, not your friend.

And for a souls first-timer I'd honestly start them in handheld anyway. Screen close, nothing between them and the frame. Get the rhythm there first, then move to the big screen.

rene: So before your friend's first boss: switch on the TV's Game mode (or ALLM if it has it) and turn off motion smoothing. That one menu does more for the parry than any controller you could buy.

Rene, this is the most useful tip in the whole thread, and it's useful precisely because nobody thinks of it. I've lost count of the living rooms I've walked into where a brand-new console is plugged into a TV still running the "Vivid" preset it shipped with, motion smoothing and all. Nobody ever changed it because nobody knew there was anything to change. Then the kid decides they're "bad at the game," when really the TV was quietly eating half the parry window.

I did exactly your test at my sister's place once, minus the scientific bit. My nephew was getting flattened by a boss docked, and he kept insisting he was pressing the button in time. Handheld, same boss, he got it within a few tries. I'd love to say I diagnosed it on the spot, but honestly I only worked it out when I went digging through the TV settings later and found every "enhancement" switched on.

The one spot where I'd add a small console-side asterisk to "the controller is the smallest variable": for a first-timer, comfort is part of the timing. Tiny detached Joy-Con in big hands, or a cramped grip after forty minutes of dying, and people start tensing up and mashing. That's not latency, but it ruins the rhythm just the same. So my order would be yours, with one extra step at the front: let them hold whatever feels nicest for a long session, then start handheld.

Small practical question, since you obviously know the TV side better than I do: when a TV doesn't do ALLM, is there a quick way for a non-techy person to tell Game mode actually stuck? Most of the families I know won't open a lag tester, but they'd happily check one setting before the first boss.

ana: when a TV doesn't do ALLM, is there a quick way for a non-techy person to tell Game mode actually stuck?

Yes, and you don't need a lag tester for it. Three checks, about a minute total:

1. Check it on the right input. On most TVs picture mode is saved per HDMI port, so someone sets Game mode while watching Netflix on the built-in apps and the console input never gets it. Switch to the console first, then open the picture settings and look at what it says there.

2. Look for greyed-out options. When Game mode is really on, most sets lock or hide the heavy processing: motion smoothing (every brand has its own name for it - TruMotion, Motionflow, Auto Motion Plus and so on), noise reduction, sometimes sharpness. If you can still freely switch motion smoothing on that input, odds are you're not in Game mode.

3. Rename the input. A lot of TVs let you label an HDMI port as "Game Console" or "PC", and some of them apply low-latency processing to that label automatically. It's the closest thing to ALLM on an older set, and it survives the next person who hits "Vivid" by accident.

If you want a feel test as well: move around the console's home menu in both modes. With the processing on, the cursor drags a little behind the stick. With Game mode on, it snaps. Once you've felt that difference you can't miss it, and it's the exact delay that was eating your nephew's parry.

Your comfort point is fair, by the way. A tense grip after forty minutes of dying probably costs more timing than a frame of input lag. I just can't measure that one.

rene: Turn on a frame-gen mode or let your frametimes wobble and you can quietly eat 20-30ms of that before you've touched a setting the game exposes.

Rene, your three-step TV check is already saved on my phone for the next family visit, but it's this older line of yours that I keep thinking about this week - because console players are about to get a frame-gen switch of their very own.

Stellar Blade lands on Switch 2 on Thursday, and it's the most parry-hungry thing Nintendo's machine has had so far. In the free demo, frame generation is always on, and some players said it felt a little off: parts of the picture moving like 30, others smoothed towards 60, plus a bit of extra lag. Shift Up listened, and the full game ships with a toggle. So for once it isn't hidden in a PC config file. It's a menu option a nephew could stumble into.

That's where I think your "a slider for a window that moves under you is still a lie" point gets really practical for console folks. My plan for anyone new to this kind of combat: do your TV Game-mode check first, then fight the first tough enemy with frame gen off. If the parry feels honest, leave it off. Only switch it back on if the choppier look bothers you more than the timing does. For a game that's all about reading tells, I'd put feel ahead of looks every time.

Small question back, since you count milliseconds and I mostly count deaths: when frame gen is stacked on a console that's already upscaling heavily in handheld, would you expect the extra lag to be worse handheld or docked? My gut says handheld, but my gut was also convinced the Vivid preset was "just colours".

ana: when frame gen is stacked on a console that's already upscaling heavily in handheld, would you expect the extra lag to be worse handheld or docked? My gut says handheld

Your gut is right this time, and for a cleaner reason than "handheld is weaker." The lag frame gen adds isn't a fixed number of milliseconds, it's roughly one *base* frame held back so the interpolation has two real frames to work with. So the cost scales with how slow the real frames are underneath. If handheld is running a lower internal framerate than docked - which is the normal situation on a power-limited chip - every base frame is longer, and the one frame you're holding back is longer too. Same feature, bigger penalty, purely because the base is slower. The heavy upscaling is a symptom of the same thing (less GPU budget), not the cause of the lag.

The twist is that this is only the frame-gen slice of the chain. Docked you add the TV back in, and a set that isn't in Game mode can cost more than frame gen ever does. So the honest answer is: frame gen's share is worse handheld, the total can still be worse docked on a bad TV. Which is why your order is right - TV check first, then the toggle test.

One thing I'd add for the Stellar Blade demo-vs-full comparison: don't judge the toggle on the first fight after you flip it. Your hands have spent an hour re-timing to the laggier version, so "off" feels oddly twitchy for a few minutes before it feels honest. Give it one boss, not one parry.

I haven't touched the Switch 2 build, so no numbers from me, only the pipeline logic. If anyone has measured it, I'd love to be corrected with a figure.