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Borne to Run Gaiden: Kindred Souls

by mento

Welcome to the Gaiden series: homages for all the new Giant Bomb shows that have been gracing the website over the past few weeks. Each one takes the general theme of the video series they're linked to and looks for an alternative route to take the idea, since it would be too easy to just imitate them wholesale.

Borne to Run, which has NoClip's Danny O'Dwyer and GameSpot's Tamoor Hussain explore the FromSoftware Souls games one "Endurance Run" LP at a time, is perhaps setting itself up to be more than meets the eye: Danny's well aware that the Souls series has a prominent place in Giant Bomb history and looks to be leveraging that legacy towards some meta commentary on the renowned RPG series (or Giant Bomb itself). My "Gaiden" alternative idea is to look at the many games that were, if not inspired directly by Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, very much in the same mindset in terms of their presentation and mechanics. For each, I'll be making the case for how they hew close to the Souls formula, but also provide one key difference in their approach (same basis as this list of explormers, with which we'll see some overlap).

Each game has a "Soulmate Score" that is based on how many of the following traits it shares with the Souls series:

  1. A desolate, if not entirely empty, setting long past its prime or on the precipice of total destruction.
  2. A generally saturnine atmosphere and tone, germane to the above.
  3. A contextual-heavy approach to narrative, where the player must pay attention to their surroundings, cryptic NPC encounters, and item descriptions to learn as much of the full story as there is to be gleaned.
  4. A "corpse run" mechanic wherein the player has an opportunity to recover what they've lost by reaching the point where they last died.
  5. Healing items tend to be both finite and replenishable, the idea being that you can't brute force bosses with a heap of curatives but nor do you have to waste time farming them after every failed attempt.
  6. A single playable character, with a development system versatile enough for a plethora of highly specific builds.
  7. A real-time combat system that prioritizes stamina gauges, careful maneuvering, parries, and seizing opportunities to attack over relentless aggression.
  8. Lots of traps designed to keep you on your toes (except for pitfalls, obviously).
  9. The NPCs you meet have their own individual motivations and routes that occasionally intersect with your own, and some may even assist with boss fights if you allow them.
  10. A generally high level of difficulty that can nonetheless be conquered by sheer perseverance or further character development (i.e. grinding and/or backtracking for upgrades).

(NB: These inspirations have really picked up in the last few years so there's many I've yet to check out. I'll include a list of those I have my eye on in the comments below.)

Showing 1-10 of 26 items

Blade of Darkness

1. Blade of Darkness

2001-02-19 Soulmate Score = 4 (1, 7, 8, 10.) A rare "pre-Souls" that isn't one of From's proto-Souls games like Shadow Tower, Severance pre-empted the tactical action-RPG combat, the grim tone, and taking every level very slowly in case of sudden ambushes or spikes flying out of nowhere. Every enemy is capable of ruining your day, so it's important to take each encounter seriously and use what few healing consumables there are judiciously. There's also four different characters with very different approaches for some added longevity, though each has an automatic development path. Distinct Feature: Beyond presaging much of the Souls formula by eight years, Severance uses fighting game inputs to perform special attacks. They're powerful tools if you can pull them off with any regularity.

Titan Souls

2. Titan Souls

2015-04-14 Soulmate Score = 5 (1, 2, 3, 7, 10.) Inspired as much by Shadow of the Colossus as Dark Souls (the title is an allusion to both), Titan Souls is a top-down boss rush game in which the player character and bosses alike can only take one hit to defeat; however, there's usually a lot of groundwork to do to make boss's weakpoint appear. The Souls influence is mostly only tonal here, though you could make the case that it emphasizes the pivotal nature of the boss encounters of Souls. Distinct Feature: The player's only weapon is a bow and a single arrow. Fights come down to firing it at the exact right moment, though the player can instantly recall it in case of a miss.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

3. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

2016-03-04 Soulmate Score = 8 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10.) A side-scroller, Momodora's fourth outing uses replenishing health consumable and corpse run features similar to Souls and also imitates its gloomy atmosphere. Bosses even have the same naming structure ("[proper noun], [title]"). Distinct Feature: Perhaps the earliest game to attach the Souls formula to a 2D platformer, at least by a few weeks. Also, using a leaf as a weapon, something games wouldn't do again until Breath of the Wild.

Salt and Sanctuary

4. Salt and Sanctuary

2016-03-15 Soulmate Score = 10 (1-10.) Ska Studios always made their games with a stark, monochromatic edginess to them so adapting that aesthetic to a Soulslike platformer wasn't a huge departure. As well as the usual comparisons, Salt & Sanctuary put a lot of focus on the second of its two titular items: you could change each save point/rest area to suit a specific purpose, such as specific vendors, from a finite selection available. Distinct Feature: Unlike most Soulslikes, Salt & Sanctuary has a massive skill tree to work through. Each node even had its own little piece of lore about the game's wider world to peruse.

Nioh

5. Nioh

2017-02-07 Soulmate Score = 8 (2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.) The first Soulslike to approach the same budgetary level as its inspiration, Koei Tecmo's Nioh franchise plays very similarly to Souls but chooses to demarcate its content into discrete levels with an overworld map interface to move between them. It's closer to Demon's Souls's archstones in practice, but allows for even more granular stages for smaller "sub-mission" zones, some only constituting a wide enough space for a boss duel. There's also a huge emphasis on weapon types, each with its own individual skill tree. Distinct Feature: Among many other innovations, the triple stance system is one that takes a while to master but offers a great deal of combat variety. Weapons can change their behavior completely in different stances, meaning every weapon type has a stance suited for fighting every enemy type.

Hollow Knight

6. Hollow Knight

2017-02-24 Soulmate Score = 9 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.) Another platformer, Hollow Knight hits the Souls tone perfectly with a subterranean kingdom of infected bugs and the few survivors making the best of a tragic situation. Hollow Knight streamlines a lot of the RPG aspects, even reducing the HP count to single figures, but the combat is no less tactical or riveting because of it. Distinct Feature: A selection of equippable charms conferring passive skills that collectively allow for a great deal of customization potential.

The Surge

7. The Surge

2017-05-16 Soulmate Score = 8 (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10.) A sci-fi variant of the formula, The Surge has the player adapting their build based on the mechanical scraps and cybernetic implants they've found and also features a grisly dismemberment system as the fastest way to earn specific materials. Players can also use drones as a way of keeping pressure on an enemy, working in tandem to bring foes down. Distinct Feature: Like Hollow Knight, the game has a loose character customization system based on acquired upgrades in lieu of a traditional skill-based level progression. It allows for a serious amount of min-maxing potential and tactical prioritization - say, switching out exploration-friendly upgrades like secret detectors for the sake of more healing abilities when it's time for a boss. Corpse runs are also timed, which adds an extra degree of suspense (though enemy kills will boost the timer).

Death's Gambit

8. Death's Gambit

2018-08-14 Soulmate Score = 10 (1-10.) A by-the-books 2D Soulslike that has the player perform the role of Death's servant, defeating a cabal of immortal beings that have cheated the Grim Reaper for far too long. The game has all the Souls flourishes but is much more compact, leading to what feels like a very boss-fight-heavy imbalance. Skill trees are based on the player's initial class choice, so it's integral to choose wisely. Distinct Feature: Death's Gambit is a little nicer than most Soulslikes - as well as having a less severe death penalty (you'll temporarily lose one of your replenishing curatives) it'll let you keep a percentage of the boss reward based on how far you got their health down, which can sometimes mean an extra level to tip the scales. It's also the only other Soulslike I've found to borrow Bloodborne's "rally" mechanic of immediately attacking after getting hit to recover some of the lost health.

Blasphemous

9. Blasphemous

2019-09-10 Soulmate Score = 10 (1-10.) A 2D platformer inspired by the more esoteric apocrypha of Catholicism, Blasphemous has a certain weight to its jumping and platforming that requires a more cautious approach to navigate. This stoicism plays a role in the strongly defensive and parry-based combat as well. It's also one of the more grisly games on this list, with several macabre boss and NPC encounters that look as creepy as anything in Bloodborne. Distinct Feature: Like Death's Gambit, Blasphemous has a less severe spin on the corpse run mechanic where, instead of losing your currency, you lose a small chunk of your mana gauge. This less punitive system means you never have to worry about being underlevelled, but it's often worth the effort to recover what you left behind.

The Surge 2

10. The Surge 2

2019-09-24 Soulmate Score = 9 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10.) Retains all the innovations of the original The Surge (albeit less innovative now) and adds plenty of its own, tweaking its versatile implant system to let you switch it out on the field. Drones have been heavily reworked too, offering limited range abilities as well as a few traversal- and multiplayer-based modes like a scavenger hunt for remotely-placed holograms (you get a huge reward if no-one finds it within a time limit). Overall challenge level is a little lower, though, and the new setting of Jericho City feels a little less connected than the sprawling campus of CREO Corp. Distinct Feature: Healing's another element that has been reconfigured since the first game. You build battery by damaging enemies and can spend it on either a heal or other buffs once you have a full bar charged up. You can also "bank" healing charges for later - they work like Estus Flasks in that state.

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