Not to be outdone by last year's landmark entries into the genre, 2023 has seen two incredible Soulslikes arrive within a month of each other. Both the recent Lords of the Fallen reboot/sequel and September's Lies of P are commendable attempts from new studios to create compelling Soulslikes, each with their own clear inspirations drawn from the catalog of titles in the library of the genre's forebear: FromSoftware. However, outside both titles being new Soulslikes inspired by the games that helped to define the growing genre, Lords of the Fallen and Liesof P couldn't be more different in how they approach the intertwined elements of accessibility and difficulty.

The tense, methodical combat and ultra-difficult boss fights that are part of FromSoftware's games are trademarks that have come to define the Soulslike genre, with similar titles often judged based on the nature of their encounter design. After some players found themselves frustrated at their inability to progress past certain skill checks in Soulslikes, a conversation over balancing difficulty and accessibility began to pervade the discourse surrounding the genre. While Lies of P is most certainly one of the more difficult Soulslikes available and offers a significant challenge, Lords of the Fallen lowers its skill floor and provides plenty of tutorials to potentially be a great entry point for those previously turned off by the genre.

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Lords of the Fallen's Approach to Parrying is More Forgiving Than Lies of P's

Contrary to later games like Bloodborne (which favors aggressive "push-forward" combat and features a health recovery mechanic that rewards it) or Sekiro (which almost exclusively requires players to master its complex parry mechanic), the Souls series from which the Soulslike genre gets its name provides players with three defensive abilities in each encounter. Of these, perhaps the most difficult for new and inexperienced players to wrap their heads around is the parry mechanic, with both the window for perfectly timed parries very slim and the penalty for mistiming them very severe.

And while players can reasonably complete the Dark Souls trilogy without extensively utilizing parrying, it makes the game substantially more difficult. Lords of the Fallen also features a parry mechanic, but the window for executing it is extremely forgiving, and the game allows players to recover lost health if they mistime their block. Lies of P, on the other hand, features a parry mechanic much more in line with Sekiro, where mastery of parrying is practically essential to completing the game and the window for executing the movement requires precision timing. For those who are newcomers to the genre, Lords of the Fallen is much more manageable in comparison.

Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen Run the Gamut of Soulslike Experiences

That's not to say that Lies of P is an impossible game that only longtime fans of the Soulslike genre can enjoy, but it certainly shares more in common with two of the more difficult games in FromSoftware's catalog than Lords of the Fallen, which clearly draws inspirations from the fundamentals of the Dark Souls trilogy. Ultimately, both games provide accessibility options to help ease newcomers into the genre, but Lords of the Fallen's combat is much less exacting than that of Lies of P. Lords of the Fallen can't necessarily be classified as an "easy" game, but the way that it gradually ramps up difficulty concurrent to the player's skill developing feels more forgiving.

If veterans of Soulslikes are eager for a game that will push their skills to the limit, Lies of P can certainly provide that challenge. On the other hand, Lords of the Fallen offers an olive branch to players who may have previously been turned off to Soulslikes by the genre's intimidating difficulty. That both games are enjoyable by Soulslike fans both old and new is a testament to the flexibility and freedom that each title's combat systems afford, even if one is clearly more forgiving than the other.

Lords of the Fallen is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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