15 Games Like 'Dark Souls' For When You Need a Serious Challenge

The Dark Souls games are notorious for being difficult and Ashen is difficult in the same way, albeit unanimously more enjoyable in its difficulty. Ashen also follows Dark Souls’ mechanics and combat so much that it’s a must-play if you’re a Dark Souls fan. The game is around 15-20 hours long and is a delight with a great open world and intelligent A.I.

Metroidvania’s Blasphemous from September of 2019 began as a Kickstarter campaign and ended up as an incredible action-adventure game. The open-world is called Cvstodia. It’s complex and has been affected by superstition and religion and a mighty force called The Miracle which sometimes blessed and sometimes curses the land’s inhabitants.

Bloodborne is good for fans of the Dark Souls series because while it features a lot of the same elements from the series (as noted by reviewers and fans), it also does away with some of the concepts of the game for more updated mechanics. The narrative is something to get excited about and the level design and difficulty will remind you of the Dark Souls series.

Whereas a lot of games on this list are similar to Dark Souls because it was so influential in the RPG genre and because it contains so many key elements of that kind of game, DarkMaus appears here because it contains direct reference points to the Dark Souls series. The very concept of the game was inspired by the series. Enemies are smart here and require skill and strategy to conquer.

Dead Cells doesn’t look like Dark Souls aesthetically. Where that series is gloomy and has an aura of melancholy, Dead Cells is a colorful game. It is a roguelike action platformer that feels like a different perspective on Dark Souls that is refreshing above all. It’s available on the Switch as well as PC and current consoles.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph of this article, the game that truly set the Dark Souls series off was this game, Demon’s Souls. You might think that just because this game doesn’t have the name that its successors do that it’s nowhere near as good, but you’d be forgiven. Even if it didn’t hold up to the latter three games, it’s worth playing for the sake of seeing where it all started. You will need a PlayStation 3 or PS Now, however.

Hollow Knight was released on PC in 2017 and then consoles in 2018 and fans of it will tell you that it was a quiet Game of the Year contender each time. Where this game is most similar to Dark Souls is its boss battles and hard combat. Just like Souls, when you die here, you’ll lose some in-game currency that you have to earn back the hard way. The storytelling is also treated in a similar way.

A 2D action RPG developed by Heart Machine, Hyper Light Drifter is strongly influenced by The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past and Diablo. It pays homage to 8-bit and 16-bit games and does a great job of feeling like a big game despite its pixelated style. The game’s developer Alx Preston called the game an expression of his personal health problems to a larger audience.

Lords Of The Fallen is so similar to the Dark Souls series that it actually caught some flak for it, but it was forgiven in time. Dark Souls has been so impactful in the RPG scene that it's difficult for any games that have come out since not to reflect it to some extent. The combat system is great and the atmosphere is dark. The actual fights are nowhere near as difficult, perhaps to your delight.

In many aspects, Necropolis is your average third-person dungeon crawler. And while some parts of the game mean it could have appeared on this list anyway, where it really stands out from the pack is in its co-op modes. Fans of Dark Souls will be able to appreciate being able to play a game similar to them with friends even if they never knew they needed that.

Nioh is a Dark Souls spiritual successor with some brilliant twists. It has a historical Japanese setting, which automatically gives the game a nice feel and layer. Authentic Japanese weapons come into play here in battles that are already fun. Combat has more fluidity than Dark Souls, which is a relief and a necessity because it’s so difficult to master.

Of course, although it’s a staple of the game, difficult combat isn’t the only thing that fans appreciate Dark Souls for. There’s the aspect of mystery, rewarding progress, and discovering a new world. These are all present in Rain World. Oh, and although being difficult isn’t the only thing fans love Dark Souls for, that is something you’ll encounter here, perhaps to a fault.

Where Ska Studios’ Salt And Sanctuary shines is its deep skill tree and multiple classes that allow customization. The aspect of exploration is where it mainly echoes Dark Souls, and it does this in a different setting triumphantly. It’s a cult classic.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the only game on this list developed by FromSoftware, the same people who made Dark Souls. It came out after the trilogy and takes the formula of the games and puts it in ancient Japan. Despite this, it feels new for the company and is a new, welcomed direction. It’s another example of being required after Dark Souls.

Titan Souls cites Dark Souls as an influence, as well as Shadow Of The Colossus and The Legend Of Zelda. The game does feel like a weird combination of all three but crucially, it adds its own flavor to the mix. It’s a top-down game which is an interesting spin and makes the world feel even more vast when protagonists pale in comparison.