15 Games Like Dark Souls to Play While You Wait for News on Dark Souls 4

Stop Refreshing Reddit and Play Something

I have been there. You finish Elden Ring for the third time. You scroll through r/darksouls4 looking for literally any crumb of news. You find nothing except the same fake leak from six months ago recirculated by someone who did not check the date. Dark Souls 4 has not been announced. It probably will not be for years, if it ever happens at all. And tbh that is the truth whether we like it or not.

So here is what actually helps. Play something that captures what makes Dark Souls special. Not just "hard games," that is way too reductive and misses the point entirely. I mean games with deliberate combat where every button press matters. Environmental storytelling where the world itself tells the story. Interconnected level design that rewards exploration. And that specific feeling of walking into a new area and having absolutely no idea what is about to kill you.

I have played most of the games on this list. Some of them multiple times, embarrassingly. And here is what is worth your time.

FromSoftware's Own Catalog

Elden Ring (2022)

The obvious starting point. If you have only played Dark Souls 1 through 3 and somehow skipped Elden Ring, honestly fix that first. It is the Dark Souls formula expanded to an open world the size of a small country. The combat feels familiar. Iframes on dodge, an estus equivalent, bonfire equivalents called Sites of Grace. But the freedom to go literally anywhere from the start changes everything about how you approach obstacles. Stuck on Margit? Leave. Come back at level 60 with a plus 15 weapon and absolutely destroy him. The game does not care what order you do things in.

Shadow of the Erdtree from 2024 is essential too. It adds a map roughly the size of Limgrave and Liurnia combined, with boss fights that somehow make Malenia look reasonable. I am not kidding about that.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019)

Sekiro is the hardest FromSoftware game and it is legitimately not close. There is no summoning help when you get stuck. No grinding levels to overpower a boss. No switching to a different build. You either learn the parry rhythm or you quit. I almost quit at Genichiro. Took me 47 attempts. I counted. But once the combat clicks, and it will click eventually, no other game feels as satisfying. The clang clang clang of a perfect deflect chain is pure dopamine.

It is set in Sengoku era Japan with supernatural elements woven in. No RPG stats at all. No character customization. Just you, a katana, a prosthetic arm with various tools, and increasingly ridiculous bosses that test everything you have learned.

Bloodborne (2015)

Still a PS4 exclusive in 2026. Still runs at 30 frames per second with imperfect frame pacing. Still one of the best games ever made despite those technical shortcomings. Bloodborne replaces shields with guns and rewards pure aggression. The rally mechanic lets you recover health by attacking immediately after taking damage. The aesthetic shifts from gothic Victorian horror to full on Lovecraftian cosmic horror about halfway through, and the transition is seamless in a way that still impresses me.

The Old Hunters DLC has three of the best bosses FromSoftware has ever designed. Ludwig, Maria, and Orphan of Kos. Each one is a masterpiece of both mechanics and storytelling.

A PC port rumor surfaces every six months or so. But I have stopped believing them. Sony seems determined to keep this one locked away. Forever, probably.

Dark Souls 3 + The Ringed City (2016-2017)

If you are holding out for Dark Souls 4, just replay DS3 with the DLC. It is the fastest, smoothest, most mechanically refined Dark Souls game. The Ringed City DLC is the actual and definitive ending of the series. Gael is the greatest final boss I have experienced in any game, both mechanically and thematically. A nobody hollow who survived until the end of time, fighting you over the last fading drops of the Dark Soul. No grand speeches. No dramatic cutscenes. Just two nobodies at the end of everything, and one of them has to lose.

The Best Non-FromSoftware Soulslikes

Lies of P (2023)

I was genuinely skeptical about this one. Pinocchio meets Bloodborne sounds like a parody. It is not a parody. Lies of P is the best non-From soulslike by a significant margin. The weapon assembly system where you separate blades from handles and mix and match them should be a genre standard by now. The dodge is slightly tighter than Bloodborne's, which bugged me at first honestly, but the perfect guard system more than compensates.

The factory area drags a bit in the middle and some minibosses are damage sponges that overstay their welcome. But the last three bosses? Incredible. Absolutely worth pushing through the slow parts.

Nioh 2 (2020)

Nioh 2 has the deepest combat system in any soulslike I have played. Stance switching, ki pulsing, yokai abilities, burst counters. There is a lot to learn and the game does not wait for you to learn it. It is closer to a character action game than a pure soulslike, and the loot system with Diablo style random drops will either be addictive or exhausting depending on your personality. I loved it for about 60 hours and then suddenly burnt out hard. The levels are mission based rather than interconnected, which loses some of the exploration magic that makes Dark Souls special.

Hollow Knight (2017)

A 2D game on a list of 3D soulslikes sounds wrong. But Hollow Knight captures the Dark Souls ethos better than most 3D imitators ever manage. Lost currency on death that you have to recover. Bench checkpoints. Environmental storytelling where the world itself is the narrative. A ruined kingdom where everything wants you dead and nothing explains itself.

The map is enormous and genuinely interconnected. And discovering how areas connect to each other is the same thrill as finding the shortcut from Undead Parish back to Firelink Shrine for the first time. Silksong is supposedly coming eventually. Supposedly. I have stopped holding my breath.

Remnant II (2023)

What if Dark Souls had guns? Remnant II answers that question better than the first Remnant did. The procedural generation means no two playthroughs are identical. Different worlds, different bosses, different loot tables. The gunplay feels weighty and the boss designs are legitimately creative and surprising. It plays best in co-op though. Solo against some of the later bosses feels like actual self harm and not in a fun way.

Salt and Sanctuary (2016)

Literally 2D Dark Souls. A shipwrecked knight stranded on a cursed island. Same stat system, same death mechanics, same oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere. It wears its inspiration so openly that it almost feels like an intentional demake rather than a clone. I played through the entire thing in one weekend and did not regret a minute of it.

What These Games All Share

The thing that connects every game on this list is not difficulty. It is commitment. These games ask you to meet them on their own terms and they refuse to compromise. They do not have difficulty sliders. They do not pause when you open a menu. They do not hold your hand through tutorials. They trust you to figure things out on your own. And when you do figure it out, that sense of accomplishment feels real in a way most modern games have completely forgotten how to deliver.

Dark Souls 4 might never happen. That does suck, I am not going to pretend otherwise. But the genre it created is healthier and more interesting than it has ever been. There has never been a better time to be a fan of deliberate, demanding, uncompromising action games.