I played YET ANOTHER 9 Souls-Like games you've never heard of

[Music] hey here's a crazy thought dark souls is good turns out lots of game developers have had that same thought and have channeled it into creating games that are to some extent inspired by the soul series since it's kind of like dark souls we'd call one of these games a souls-like now a lot of these can be disasters but some are genuinely special and i've taken it upon myself to dig deep and find ones i don't see anyone talking about so if that sounds interesting here's episode 7 of steam dumpster diving real quick before i get to the first game i have something really cool to share for the first time in the seven years that i've had this channel i now have actual merch i've been sponsored by and have partnered with display to make a souls inspired metal poster that i'm extremely proud of i'll talk about it more at the end of the video but basically it's a reimagining of if demon souls came out during the n64 era it's supposed to be all the zones mashed together with little references and gags hidden throughout i'm very very happy with how it came out so if you want to get one for yourself check out the link in the description anyway that's it let's check out some games all right we got chrono sword i found this game totally by chance on kickstarter and it kind of looks rad as hell it says it's a souls-like action-adventure game with time travel and incredible pixel art the campaign's still going for it but unfortunately by the time i post this video it'll probably be over but either way let's check it out this is a chrono sword you got kind of like an isometric view so the a button you got like your little dodge all right let's just go this gate won't open from this side it's like such a meme at this point the whole this door won't open from the side thing that's how you know that's how you know they were inspired by uh this whole series wow that's a lot of health that's a big health bar oh [ __ ] me oh [ __ ] me dude oh [ __ ] i'm stuck i'm stuck whoa you got the classic uh dark souls enemies just in barrels inexplicably this feels like a boss superior knight what's he gonna do oh [ __ ] okay one help one health roll that was a full hell i got it this is the end of the demo thank you for playing hell yeah i think this game has a lot of potential this is extremely evocative of the soul series and i really really really like the art style this might be one to keep an eye on it's still kind of like in a rough state but i don't know maybe check on this like a year or two from now or however long it is and there might be something really special here next up we got the fallen but not to be confused with lords of the fallen this game is actually entirely free it's not even a demo it's just the whole game's free and the description says play as a knight who awakens in the land of the i don't know i don't know where he awakens we gotta find out the right stick of my controller is working but not my left stick all right keyboard and mouse it is loving this run animation by the way so we can jump i am ready i'm ready oh my god that was my controller i want them to die from the trap oh wait i think they are getting hurt by it yeah just let's just use the trap oh there goes one yeah that's right oh oh get me out [ __ ] i get it this is like this is like that one fall guys mini game wait a second i bet it's the light on the ceiling i bet that's the hint follow the light swing i think his ai just broke this host is failing me yep c to dash toward target wait what yo whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what the [ __ ] was that it's still happening whoa [ __ ] this is so scuffed you have to hit both his hands and then the mist by his torso goes away for like five seconds art pull platform towards you you know why doesn't uh why doesn't dark souls have a grapple hook i kind of wish it did i think every game is actually made better by having both a jump button and a grappling hook i can't really think of any exceptions to be honest oh you know what if you played starcraft with a grapple hook yeah [ __ ] yeah starcraft of the grapple hook would be awesome why is there a timer why is there a timer wait what what what is happening okay i hit the wrong button i hit the roll button oh my god act it all over again don't i god damn it what the [ __ ] wait he's stuck he's stuck in the air he's stuck this is my chance yes we take those please give me an ending that was worth it all show me ending that was worth it no i think this was actually like a school project and as a school project this is actually pretty impressive you know pretty cool as a game you know it's you know you know what this is but uh if this really was like a group of students that worked on this good job guys you did a great job hey let's do two quick ones they're both on mobile and i'll tell you up front i'm gonna recommend both bleak sword and grim valor starting off with bleak sword i randomly stumbled across this game when i tried the apple arcade the other day if you don't know what that is it's basically the xbox game pass but for ios so this is my favorite kind of mobile game a mobile game that recognizes that it's a mobile game what do i mean by that i mean that the control scheme is actually suited for a touch screen and you can play the whole game with just one hand too often i'll see games have some needlessly complex control scheme that makes the experience on mobile miserable but this one gets it right as for the game itself basically this is a game where you control a little dude with a sword and shield who wants to fight monsters you can swing parry and dodge and taking some notes from dark souls 3 you can dodge as much as you want and if you die and i wonder where they got this idea from you lose all of your experience for the next level up with a chance to recover it if you beat the level on your next attempt also i believe there are 90 levels and each one will probably take you less than a minute so yeah there's not a lot to this one but i really like the controls the sound design the minimalist art design and the simplicity of the game itself is it worth subscribing to apple arcade the only way to play this just for this game probably not but if you're already paying for it you should give this one a look next we got grim valor for seven bucks no apple arcade required i'm not sure the best way to describe this game but imagine the combat of a melee focused metroidvania with a dodge mechanic but with level design that's generally a lot more linear than an actual metroidvania it's got leveling bosses that kind of reminded me of dark souls and even analogs for bonfires estes flasks and souls it's even got a hub area called the nexus which also seems to literally use the font from demon souls i don't know if that's actually even allowed but oh well this game took me around 6 hours to beat and for a rating i'd give it a ok out of 10 but it's elevated by the fact that it's a mobile game with good controls while providing a more or less full game experience in that regard it rises above a lot of what you'll see on the app store and within the context of mobile games it's very solid if this game was on console or pc would i recommend it no but on mobile absolutely does that make sense i hope that makes sense so i opened up the page for this game and the first thing i see is a cat girl with pink hair and a machine gun um so that's that's probably a good sign this is early access and one of the reviews says the fusion of tactical soulsian combat and binding of isaac-esque roguelike dungeon crawling i like that term soulsian i've never seen that term i don't know if it's gonna catch on quite like seoul's like but good effort let's check it out so we can dodge around attack that's like a parry let's play i'm ready whoa cartman so far the layout of these rooms seems very similar to like bonnie of isaac where you have like a square grid layout and just go from room to room collecting [ __ ] hey everyone come here follow me follow me follow me and die okay so different weapons actually have like different move sets that's pretty cool can i can i try this like a new character i can try do you want to hear about my life experiences me on a first date just keep poking them keep poking them slowly it'll work i got them let's go when you obtain this item there's a chance you'll gain 100 coins or lose all of your coins [ __ ] it all right i have zero coins now oh no it's a frog monster no yeah okay i just killed i just got killed by some slime on the ground so overall pretty good uh some of the bosses and like enemies like their attack patterns and animations and everything like the qualities on the lower side but it does seem like there's actually a fair amount of depth here there's like a lot of options in terms of weapons and characters i'm pretty impressed by just how much there seems to be in this game if you're into binding of isaac or a closer comparison might be hades i think you're actually going to like this game obviously the the overhaul polish is going to be lower than those games but it'll scratch that same kind of itch and it also kind of blends the the slow pace of souls and the stamina management and the equipment i think there's something here if you're into these types of games there's a good chance this one maybe went under your radar and i think it actually deserves a bit more attention you know sometimes it's really hard to find these games but other times it's actually really easy and one of the ways it's easy is when they just put souls in the title that's usually a giveaway there's only a demo right now but the screenshots really caught my attention and i'm really curious what kind of game this is okay so you can like charge your attack and like aim it holy [ __ ] what is this inventory whoa there's like there's a lot here oh [ __ ] here we go oh [ __ ] yo this is this is pretty rad oh no no no no no holy [ __ ] first try yo vadi if you run out of run out stuff talk about demon souls this game has lore okay okay okay it's the [ __ ] tower knight from demon souls oh come on oh that's my whole health bar dude that's my whole health bar i just realized this game has kind of like the bloodborne mechanic where you can like heal by attacking what what what whoa my god [ __ ] this game i'm pretty impressed to be quite honest though i don't know if this is gonna be my type of game this game seems to be just bosses with the caveat of you actually do get to customize your character a little bit i'm personally not a huge fan of like these only boss games that's never been like the main draw for me when it comes to these types of games so if the boss fights of dark souls are like your favorite part and you really like an actual pretty hard challenge this might be one keep an eye on so as you can probably guess from its title i found this game very easily on steam apparently this is an early access game where you recruit other prisoners and explore the corridors of the prison let's check it out uh so we're in this prison cell uh this is what happens when i move the camera by the way i just started gyrating i'm follow you okay okay so we can we can block we can swing it doesn't seem like there's a parry wait maybe this is the parry all right let's open up oh what was that enemy i thought that was gonna be a nice guy like i rescued him oh [ __ ] mom said it's my turn on the xbox oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] wait what the [ __ ] okay we need to get the [ __ ] out of here go just go go go go dude this is a goddamn maze okay pl what are you doing hit him my guy just started levitating he's like yeah [Music] okay all right this is um i don't know about this one fellas jail key get it all right is that creepy guy in here again wait thanks we fight together wait i got another guy i will help you too yes we got three now thanks for helping me we have four we have five i'm starting to get into this game now this is the squad game wait why is there just a house down here go go go go go just spam them just spam them almost i'm almost done finish them yes wait everyone died war is hell you know there might be there might be a couple games out there that are a little more worth your time i apologize in advance for butchering the pronunciation but this is juan juan sword seven this is a chinese game and the visuals and setting reminded me a lot of gujian iii if you remember i played that one way back in the first video of the series it looks kind of high budget though and i'm very curious to see how good it is so we can dodge oh yeah wait this this is kind of soulsy is this what i think it is bonfire lit oh my god wait we got we got some uncharted gameplay too [Music] all right so i've been playing for about an hour at this point i think the game's just finally getting started now there are quite a bit of like cut scenes and story stuff i probably cut that in editing but long story short your sister gets killed by a monster and you're trying to revive her but you can't so you turn her into a ghost and you need to like go do some stuff so you can actually revive for for real so you know you're traveling with your sister collecting stuff oh [ __ ] you can just capture stuff wait are you kidding no i'm i'm not pressing it i'm not pressing it oh come on i don't want to see it fail all right okay i am like two hours into this game now and i've literally only fought these dire wolves as an enemy oh here we go new enemy type it's a different colored wolf it's another wolf it's a fire wolf this time [Music] all right all right yo this isn't half bad i'm sorry dad i deserve an ass whooping what wait a minute there's a skip the puzzle button you know i love this as a feature i'm not gonna do it this is a great feature though i should have hit the button that i should have skipped it [ __ ] this sucks oh that took a while i gotta do it again no no man this is agonizing i i can't stress enough how slow this process is like i haven't figured out my head this sucks what the [ __ ] is this hello what is this thing it's a little frog what is this thing it's got so much help oh [ __ ] he's running [Music] [Applause] let's go holy [ __ ] holy [ __ ] look at this thing yeah yeah yeah all right all right we got some cool fights now this is actually good so first off my favorite thing about this game is the setting as someone who's not super familiar with ancient chinese history and mythology it's genuinely really cool to see them explored within a game that has a seemingly decent budget that being said the rest of the experience fell mostly flat to me and for context i put a solid six hours in which for me meant i got roughly two thirds of the way through the story this game is extremely cutscene heavy like to the point where i was getting a cutscene literally every minute or two to a certain extent i don't have a problem with games that do this but you have to make it worth it with an interesting or engaging story and this game just did not have that for me in terms of gameplay i can tell there's a solid foundation here but it's greatly brought down by the lack of enemy variety forgettable encounters combat that's overly button mashy and level design that feels dated by around 10 or 15 years i was only truly engaged by the boss fights which actually aren't bad so it's a shame that the rest of the game doesn't measure up overall this is an extremely mediocre game that feels like it could have come out 10 years ago despite being new that being said i'm excited to see more games explore a similar setting and if there was ever a sequel that iterated on the combat i might give it a shot so interesting thing about this game it was actually very briefly i believe a discord store exclusive for a few months remember that remember the discord store that's gone it's been gone for a year um but yeah this is sinner sacrifice for redemption it's a it says it's a boss battler action rpg but yeah let's just check it out this is extremely evocative of souls you've got the phantoms whoa it's an enemy dude this role animation though and like the speed of it that is dark souls 3. all right i'm skipping right to the review with this one so basically this is another one of those boss rush games and like i mentioned earlier i'm just generally not a fan of these types of games however they can definitely work but the trick is to have good bosses and of the nine in this game i'd say only three are decent and the rest fall somewhere between extremely frustrating and tedious there's also the gimmick this game has where every boss you fight gives you some permanent debuff for the rest of this game on paper this is sort of interesting but i felt it didn't really impact the gameplay much at all and it was mostly just mildly annoying more than anything and sort of wild just how closely they tried to mimic the gameplay of controlling your character of an actual souls game without putting in any sort of mechanical twist to change it if you absolutely love boss rushes there might be something here for you but for everyone else i'm gonna say pass especially since it's 20 bucks and i beat it in under two hours so as of this video i've officially covered over 50 souls likes within this video series and the reason the subgenre of games as well as my youtube channel to a certain extent even exists at all is because of demon souls the one that started it all in 2009. it's one of my favorite games of all time so i commissioned kevin's computer to help create a piece of art inspired by it this is demon's d-make and like i mentioned at the start we were going for an n64 vibe or maybe something like a toy set the idea was to somehow fit all five zones plus the nexus into a single interconnected structure which was a real challenge it's also supposed to revolve around this knight character finding himself in different scenarios as he starts at the bottom and works his way up there's hidden references throughout the artwork and i don't have time to explain all of them but as an example there's a shop run by patches and we tried to make it kind of like an old school 3d zelda like ocarina of time where the shop items sort of float above the counter little things like that were really fun to come up with but why display three main reasons one i have faith in the physical products i think the metal itself is very sleek and the colors came out perfectly two the problem posters sometimes have with damaging walls is solved by display due to these little magnets you just stick them on the wall with the protective leaves and because the poster is metal it just attaches with no issues and lastly i like how diss plate plants a tree for every poster sold i think that's nice so yeah i'm really really happy with how this all came out and i hope people like it just as much as i do if you do want to get one for yourself just use the link in the description and if it's within a week of this video coming out you'll get 34 off your order thank you so so much for watching i know i've played a lot but i'm positive i've not yet played all the souls likes that are out there so feel free to comment and recommend ones i still haven't checked out alright that's it thanks again

Channel: Iron Pineapple

Views: 3,251,816

Keywords: soulslike, souls like, iron pineapple, dark souls, gameplay, funny, co-op, review, guide, commentary, demon's souls

Id: L_A_WSljKbM

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020