Gaming

Interestingly I’d say Elden Ring is the most forgiving when it came to the “death penalty” you mention compared to all the other titles. There were far more rest points and things were so much more interconnected so you can stroll through/around most of the enemies to get back to where you died. Not always but a lot of times.

Also I found that really using your summons (especially mimic!) really helped with the difficulty. Also using magic makes life way easier. A lot of people just tend to go for the pure melee build which is making life really hard for yourself.

If you are looking for "learn fight, get better, epic win" without much of a death penalty, maybe look at Monster Hunter?

It's not the same as a Souls game - not much world exploration, not much plot, zero gothiness - but it is 3D Fantasy Boss Fights: The Game. With 14 genuinely different weapon classes to choose from.

And if you faint three times and fail the quest, all you've lost are the consumables you spent on the attempt. (If you give up early and bail, you haven't even lost that.)

Dark souls 1 or the remaster is still worth playing. The map design is once-in-a-lifetime good. There is a pretty hefty penalty like in other souls games, but it's just getting hollowed and losing some souls. DS3 is also good, maybe a more refined version of 1, but I personally don't think the world is as cohesive with the loading screens.

The trick is to just get used to being hollowed all the time and spending souls asap when you get them. You don't lose gear when you die, and gear is pretty important. The real progress comes from learning how to deal with each enemy though, and that comes from dying. I guess it sort of boils down to "git gud", even though that wasn't what I was trying to say here lol.

Death is another obstacle in all the soulslike I've tried. I've learned to not put so much stock in valuing souls/xp as they come and go, but more important is upgrading gear/learning move sets

Dying and losing your runes in Elden Ring isn't as big a deal as you think. The runes you collect from general enemies throughout the game areas are mostly inconsequential across the whole length of the game. The bulk of your rune income is earned by killing bosses, and there's almost always a grace to spend those runes after you down a boss.

I used to get the same anxiety as you when playing Souls-likes. Once I accepted that losing my runes a few times is inevitable when navigating an area for the first time, that anxiety lifted and I could focus on just exploring and having fun.

Try celeste and super meat boy if you want a skillful platformer with low penalty.

Elden Ring was my first Souls like game, and the biggest thing for me was to stop worrying about "losing" progress. You end up with so many opportunities to get runes that I never felt like I had to grind once and leveled up naturally as I played the game.

Maybe you would like Tunic, it's souls-like but you do not lose all your currency on death and you can adjust the difficulty in several ways

You might also appreciate rogue lites where each time you die you make some progress, like Hades or Dead Cells

If like the "beat your head against the wall until you win", but dont care too much about the rpg elements and losing your progress, Furi is a great game.

The game is JUST boss fights, so there's no trekking back to the boss every time you die. But the actual bosses are brutal, multi-stage journeys that scratch that same itch that Souls games do.

I know it’s different, but you might enjoy the new Zelda games. The combat is kind of similar with the i-frames and learning attack patterns. It’s definitely more casual.

If you have a PS5, Returnal is the game that taught me how to enjoy "difficult" games. Admittedly, that's not been the case for everyone, I've read plenty of comments complaining about the difficulty. But it clicked for me, and I naturally started thinking of it almost like a puzzle game, where each attempt was just part of a trial and error cycle.

Death is...kind of punishing, insofar as it's a roguelike so you start from the beginning, but the underappreciated progress is in weapon traits, which are randomly attributed to each weapon you pick up and are improved through use. It's persistent progress and is critically impactful for the damage you can do.

But the most important thing to say about it is that its mechanics are an equally (if not moreso) fine-tuned machine as you'll find in the From games. Controls are tight and responsive as hell, and the economy, upgrades, weapons, and enemies are carefully balanced.

Actually, one final note: the weapons themselves are a major standout. Some of them are really unique and almost all of them are super fun to use. Anyway, the game's awesome and I highly recommend it 😀.

The only Souls game I've played and enjoyed in the past was Bloodbourne. I'm not an action / fighting gamer usually I enjoyed the atmosphere and challenge.

I've just picked up Sekiro (half price, steam summer sale), and I am absolutely loving it. The difficulty is crushing for me but always (so far) feels fair, like I can tell what I did wrong, what I needed to do, what to get better at. And when it goes well I feel like a goddamn samurai, the rythym of combat is just so satisfying when you're on top of it.

The game design suits me a lot better than something like Elden Ring - in Sekiro it's way more focused, far fewer options (no character build freedom, only a few secondary weapon choices that aren't used as often - it's just you, your sword, and your rythym).

Penalty of death feels less intense than Bloodbourne (and other souls games I think). You lose consumables that you've used, and half of your Sen (currency), but building both of those up again is pretty easy and there are ways to stash it to not be lost. Your XP (used to acquire skills) is lost back down to your last number increase, meaning every time you gain a level it can't be lost. Feels like a good balance to me, and there's no running back to the enemy that killed you every time - you're free to explore another way.

I highly recommend it, but I'm still in the early stages so who knows, maybe it gets terrible? I doubt it though 🤞

I keep trying souls games in the hopes that it will somehow click. But no, it doesn't. It feels more like a punishment than it does a game. Like some sort of hell I have to force myself through. I think I lasted all of 2-3 hours in elden ring before I just said "fuck this shit" and walked away never to return. I'm not wasting my money anymore on them. Sometimes you just have to accept that what game critics like is not what you like.

You can even get an item in Elden Ring called the Twiggy Cracked Tear about a third of the way through that lets your Physick flask grant the same effects as a Sacrificial Twig for 3 minutes. Once you get that, the stress of losing Runes can be greatly diminished.

Simply drink it prior to crossing a fog wall or at a difficult point on the path to Rune retrieval.

If that's not enough, and you're on PC, you can download a simple mod off Nexus which eliminates Rune loss on death entirely.

It's a 2D Metroidvania-type game but Ender Lilies is the closest game I can think of to that delivered the same sort of challenges as the Souls games, like having to sometimes fight a boss battle dozens of times before you finally learn the patterns, without a disheartening death penalty or needing to go back to retrieve anything (you do return to your last checkpoint with respawned enemies though). It's admittedly a little rough around the edges especially with some questionable level designs (In one spot I had the hardest time spotting the waterfalls over the background - but also I played it on a small Steam Deck screen so that might not have helped) - also it's not a terribly original setting/story but I still liked it overall.

I think it is kinda a big aspect of the Souls-like genre, no reward without risk. I will say I was very similar to you about not enjoying it. I bounced off of DS1 very hard. However, if you can manage ER, DS3 is a worth trying. It is a more conventional game with more clear goals and leveling. It also gets pretty steep discounts on Steam. DS3 taught me how to play a Souls-like aggressively, which massively changes the flow of combat.

It's also worth saying that the death penalty is a mentality thing. I've been playing God of War, and I get way more frustrated when I die in that. GoW is a power fantasy ties together with an emotional narrative, so that's what I want. DS games are about facing insane challenges with basically no hope, but through practice and determination you can succeed. Souls/runes are easy come, easy go, but you always gain knowledge. As hard as it can be, I've never been as satisfied in a game as I was when I first beat Midir or Gael.

Sifu maybe?

That's got some definite soulslike features, but it's wrapped up in a completely different aesthetic and vibe. It's still very punishing though.

One of the satisfying things about soulslike games is the satisfaction that you did something because your personal skills developed, not because you got lucky with the random generation, or got a good crit in, but because you personally developed your skills into something impressive.

In that vein, I suggest Etterna, a free rhythm game I've been getting into. Some of the charts are hard and others will seem utterly impossible, but even if you lose you're never more than a minute or two from where you left off (and a single click away on practice mode). There's only your personal skill and mastery to get a AA or S rank on a song. The game is also deceptively simple. There's a lot of different skills to learn and combine together, and a jack chart will feel different from a stream or endurance chart.

As you develop your skills, you'll eventually reach the point were you're able to look back and remember a time when you didn't think a chart was humanly possible, but you just got an A on it. That feeling is super satisfying,

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order isn't too punishing. You'll sometimes die and come back far away, but on the first pass through the level, you'll most likely have opened shortcuts. I rarely lost more than a few minutes of progress when I played it.

I mean, the death penalty is part of the Souls-like experience.

Maybe try Hades or Dead Cells if you like roguelites/roguelikes? Fundamentally different genre but gives me a lot of the same vibes. You inevitably die every run, but you keep all the meta-progression/upgrade resources you found during that run. So really, dying actually just gives you a chance to spend those resources to get stronger rather than taking away your progress.

Roguelites sound like a good fit for you in general if you like challenging, arcadey games that don't punish you too severely for dying. It's usually expected that you die a lot lol

if you can get the ps5 version, strangers of paradise: final fantasy origin is soulslike in nature with the ff job system and a very forgiving death system (you only lose max mana, which you naturally lose and regain as part of the combat flow anyways)

Death's Door has many souls-like elements but losing currency on death isn't one of them. That could be what you are looking for.

I see in your comments that you like rogue-lites - I found Curse of the Dead Gods scratches that Hades itch as combat is similar and I'm playing it right now while waiting a release of Hades 2...