Highlights

  • FromSoftware's Souls games and Soulslikes are unique despite similarities, promoting innovation in the subgenre.
  • Stealth in Soulslikes is challenging due to boss encounters and game pacing, pushing players towards traditional combat strategies.

FromSoftware’s Souls games and Soulslikes are all considerably iterative of one another and perhaps that’s what makes each a unique installment despite all of their glaring similarities. Obviously the Soulslike subgenre formula that has persisted has also become tremendously popular, but while other developers mimic and iterate upon what FromSoftware has achieved, FromSoftware itself has never pigeonholed itself or been afraid to break its own molds.

This is true of Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls trilogy, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and now Elden Ring. Some of these games leaned heavily on their predecessors and some have been wholly authentic, such as Dark Souls 2 and Sekiro respectively. Indeed, Sekiro eschewed about as far as it could from FromSoftware’s previous titles as it’s an action-adventure game with an emphasis on stealth, traversal, and skill trees. Stealth in particular was a fun system to see FromSoftware’s take on, but while Elden Ring would adapt comparable mechanics to give it more fluid movement it isn’t a feature that works wholeheartedly in Soulslikes.

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Stealth in Soulslikes Doesn’t Account for Most Bosses

Unless all bosses could be encountered first in a stealthy manner, it doesn’t seem like stealth could ever be a viable approach because it wouldn’t be wholly adaptable. Sekiro shows how this can be done with several mini-bosses and bosses whom players can assassinate to eliminate one of their health nodes, but all the necessary strats in these instances are widely regarded as cheese strats and therefore wouldn’t be deemed ‘intended.’

Killing a boss without severely breaking a game is still obviously a viable way to achieve victory, but stealth in these cases is rarely intuitive with the mechanics available to players. The speedrun strat for Sekiro’s illusory Corrupted Monk in Ashina Depths involves a ton of ash and snap seeds followed by a precisely maneuvered deathblow, for example, while the Lone Shadow in Ashina Reservoir can be plummeted on from above to rid them of one of their health nodes.

Soulslike Stealth Becomes too Slow if Not for a Hefty Reward

The other issue with stealth is that it slows the game’s pacing to a crawl in titles that are otherwise predicated on how quick and action-packed they are. Sekiro is dizzyingly hasty with a protagonist who can sprint speedily at no stamina cost and aggression is rewarded with posture damage against an enemy regardless of whether their health is being depleted at the same time.

That said, stealth works well in most of Sekiro’s mob encounters if players are willing to dramatically halt the game’s pace and cut enemies down gradually. This often isn’t as rewarding or efficient as simply racing through an area, though, and if Dark Souls had taught players anything about mobs it is that they should run through and collect as many illuminated items as possible while trying to reach the next bonfire—or sculptor’s idol, in Sekiro’s case.

Elden Ring in particular seems less suited for stealth because most locales are already so expansive with a ton of real estate players can ride around if they want to stealthily circumvent an enemy mob without sacrificing any speed they have astride Torrent.

It’s tough because available stealth options are always neat, but they are hardly ever advantageous. Even so, being able to crouch and jump are mechanics that FromSoftware hopefully won’t get rid of in its next Soulslike. If stealth itself is integrated again it would be fantastic to see bosses be more viably approached from that angle so that witty thieves and rogues can get as much out of a fight as knights or sorcerers.