The Best Soulslike of 2023

ign.com:

It’s rare that a whole new genre emerges. It’s even rarer when a new genre breaks out of its niche and becomes a significant part of the medium as a whole. But that’s exactly what has happened with Soulslikes. There’s a whole movement of games inspired by Dark Souls, and with the likes of Lords of the Fallen, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Lies of P arriving over the past 12 months, 2023 was the ultimate proof of that. No longer just clones riding the coattails of FromSoftware, these games have built on the Souls ruleset and bloomed into a scene all of their own. Hence, there seemed no better time than now to give Soulslike its own category for this year’s IGN awards.

For this new category we wanted to celebrate the growth and evolution of the genre but also stay true to its roots. That means an action RPG with strong character building options, challenging combat, and intricate, interconnected level design. There have been several games with really good Soulslike elements – hello, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – but the shortlist for the category was narrowed down to the games that build on the FromSoftware formula rather than blending them with other genres. Lords of the Fallen, for example, quite literally brought an imaginative new dimension to the template with its Umbral Lantern, which allows you to teleport to a parallel world. Hopping dimensions weaves not just new combat challenges but interesting environmental puzzles into the classic exploration and extermination loop.

But which Soulslike won our hearts in 2023? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, there was one clear winner, claiming almost every vote that was cast. But not every vote. And so our runner-up is…

We typically think of Soulslikes as being very precise,