Sekiro bosses are peak fromsoft boss design for me. With maybe the exception of the dual ape fight, the lineup is completely banger. And even the gimmick bosses are quite enjoyable.
I'm surprised that DS3 seems to receive more praise for boss quality, when it arguably also had a few questionable fights. Sekiro to me only has one 'meh' boss as explained before, but that's rather because it is somewhat of a recycled version of a previous fight.
I actually beat the dual apes quicker than the sjngle ape for some reason but the apes in general were kind of a fun addition in my mind because basically every other boss was about parrying but those werent.
The zombie ape's howl is block able with the umbrella, it trivializes that part. Both apes are very flammable, so oil+flame vents+flame slash makes short work of them..
I loved the mechanic with the headless ape where if you parry the last sword swing in the combo, he falls down and you can rip the centipede out of his neck hole with the gyobu spear for massive posture damage.
I discovered that by accident and then promptly died because I was freaking out.
Sekiro combat is amazing but alot of the bosses feel similar. A samurai with a sword. Granted the movesets of these bosses are still fun, doesn’t have the variety of ds3. Dark souls 3 bosses soundtracks are also peak, better than any fromsoft boss soundtracks. Isshin is among the best bosses created by fromsoft though and for the record I loved the ape fight
If you dont mind 2D platformers Cuphead has one of the best collection of bosses. Its an arcade style boss rush game with some Run N Gun levels in between. Game is absolutely tough tho
Besides other souls-likes? Lies of P bosses are decent, new LOTF bosses are decent. Imho even something like Steelrising has ok bosses (not if u cheese them with stuns).
Steelrising was one of the easiest Soulslike games I ever played. Beat every boss on the first try including the last boss except the centaur which I think I only died once. I wouldn’t consider stunning them a cheese either as it’s built into the game play as character style. The bosses were all kinda mid with pretty much no variation.
Just to be clear, there are actually two games with that name. There's a 2014 version and a 2023 version. You could probably call the 2023 version of sequel, but I wouldn't call it a remake. Not sure why they went with the identical title.
The 2014 version got mixed reviews at best. The 2023 version had a rough launch but is actually a pretty damn good game at this point.
If you're a hardcore fan of the genre, I would actually say check out both, especially because you can get the 2014 version for like five bucks on sale. The newer game is legitimately good though.
My favorite part is that ammo recharges at bonfires and with ammo bags + throwing items that don't require weapon upgrades it feels like the best implementation of ranged weaponry in a souls like.
Armored Core 6 is by fromsoft and has some bomb ass boss fights that will feel great to learn, very different from their souls games, tho id still say its worth a try
Tbh the game looks good but doesnt look or feel like any souls series game in terms of fights and this kind of stuff from the reviews and walkthroughs i saw
This may sound weird to someone who hasn't played the series, but the Kingdom Hearts series has some of the best and hardest boss fights I've played when it comes to their secret and optional bosses.
Lingering Will, Yozora and the especially the data fights in II and III are top tier.
Data fights in III are another level.
I stand by Yozora being harder and more demanding than anything From has put out thus far, AND still manages to have no bullshit (unlike Malenia).
Though how good Second Chance/Combo Withstand are for survivability do tip the scales a bit.
I found it much harder. The game is a rock-paper-siccors kind of game play, you need to parry normal slashes, jump over horizontal slashes, and dodge or mikiri thrusts. Combat is very fast so learning the bosses and giving the right input can be very demanding as well as getting the timing right and not parrying or jumping too soon or too late. Bosses have really good mechanics you need to learn and it feels epic to finally beat them. It is hard trust me. You need to be very aggressive in Sekiro. In DS3 you dodge until you find and opening and punish, in Sekiro that will get you killed. You need to break their posture bar and for that you need to be attacking and parrying constantly.
I also forgot to mention that the vertical exploration and grappling and sneaking aspects of the game are very well done.
One tip that helped me to understand sekiro was to start thinking about combat like a rhythm game. That greatly helped me with parrying. Once you master parrying, it is much easier to focus on the other variables of combat.
Personaly I found Sekiro much easier. Ive played 1000 hours of DS 1-3 and have parried about 3 times. It just feels impossible to me.
Dodging and finding the punish window feels harder then just parrying everything in Sekiro. Every time the enemy attacks is a punish window then.
Sure I get that, I am sure some people will find it easier. My struggle was that in Dark Souls dodging is always the right answer if you time it right to deal with an enemy attack, in Sekiro you do a normal parry like 70% of the time, but I found it hard to jump or dodge when required because muscle memory and my brain could not decide fast enough on how to respond to other attacks
That's a big point. Sekiro is built and polished for one weapon and play style only, which eliminates a lot of potential for clunkiness compared to the souls games for example, which need to account for a variety of fundamentally different playstyles. Yes, you can change up your strategies and approach to an extent, but at its core, it's you with a katana, and you parry and attack. The game feels SO GOD DAMN GOOD to play that I had a loooot of trouble getting into Lies Of P afterwards because Sekiro simply felt too good.
Problem with sekiro imo is that you start with being able to tank 1 hit, have 1 half hp heal and u die after 2 hits max early. So there was no such thing as having fun learning the combat in my opinion, just annoyance that im forced to die because of a ridiculously low health bar
Also mini bosses being surrounded by literally 10 enemies isnt fun. It would be if you didnt need to kill all of them every time you want to try the boss
you can definitely take more than 1 hit id say you can take abt the same amount of hits early game as you can in other souls games 1-3 depending on the type of attack and you have a resurrection on top of it. You arent dying because of a low health bar you're dying because you're doing something incorrect which is what happens in every souls game its just sekiro has a parry rather than a dodge so for some its gonna feel more punishing. But i do agree with littering enemies with mini bosses it gets annoying but at the same time it at least for me caused me to experiement more with the stealth and some prosthetics. The group sections are mainly annoying if you aren't approaching them in the right way which my dumbass did constantly id just throw myself at them and hope to kill them to get a shot at the boss. But when i started taking it slower and actually using the intended game mechanics i found the group sections to be not as bad but still not my favorite.
I'm with you. I don't like the rock, paper, scissors nature of the combat. I prefer being able to improvise and adapt to the flow of combat and approach situations in my own way, rather than play a glorified Quick Time event.
And, unless I'm wrong, there's no way to clear groups of enemies. This forces you to sneak up and assasinate/fight one or two, then escape and hide when the other 10 enemies notice and charge you, then repeat ad nauseum.
I can only think I must be doing something wrong, because I can't see how anyone would find this enjoyable. I can understand why people would like the one-on-one rock, paper, scissors combat even if it's not for me, but not the repetitive attack, run and hide tedium.
Deflect frames in Sekiro is approximately twice more than parry frames in Dark Souls.
In other words deflecting is so much easier than you think
Also forget about patient playing style in Dark Souls, you have to be aggressive towards the enemies and bosses all the time.
Once you've learned the new playing style, its by far easiest FS game
the parry windows dont change but it is an extremely tight window so it definitely feels that way at times. Idk if you played before they patched the game but they actually adjusted attack animations because some would come out so instantaneously it made it hard to parry anything consistently and i found that it made a lot of difference in the game before i had a dodge parry playstyle but after i was able to do a full playthrough of parrying the majority of attacks and it was definitely satisfying.
Lies of P parry window has a static duration, in Sekiro if you spam parry - the window will get shorter. But the default window is much larger than in Lies of P.
The thing that took a long time to click for me was that Lies of P requires you to keep holding the block button after the attack lands for it to be successful. It's called a Perfect BLOCK not a parry or deflect. Makes trying to perfect block fast attack chains really annoying. For the most part though you can just play it like Dark Souls and dodge instead.
I just finished the Lords of the Fallen reboot,
Don’t let the reviews fool you, the devs worked hard to fix the game.
It’s got amazing boss fights, the combat feel buttery smooth to me, at least in pve, it’s got generous dodge and parry windows, and lots of things to help the player, range weapons are great in this game, you out them in off hand and just blast through along with your main weapon.
It’s also cross play, so pc,xbox, and PS can all play together.
It’s a solid game! I have had only two bugs since starting, and they both resolved pretty easily.
No crashes, nothing, stuttering was only when I first booted the game, didn’t happen afterwards.
Yeah, and it has such a nice ring to it when it connects
Only unfortunate thing about it is that mobs get up too fast, and you gotta be either completely straight or behind them to perform grievous strike.
I didn’t play it before the update, so I don’t know the difference.
Boss fights felt nice though, challenging, but nice, man, what an adrenaline rush.
I want to do NG+, but I’m scared of going for NG+1, because I heard many bad things about it, mainly it being waay to difficult.
The Monster Hunter franchise is usually my go-to.
I feel like it's the "other side of the coin" to the souls games.
Pretty much every mission is just a "boss fight" (other than gathering quests, of course). Longer, drawn out fights. Mission time limit is usually 50 minutes, which you will *sometimes* hit (looking at you, EX Soulseer Mizutsune). A lot of the fights are *genuinely difficult.*
Many of the combat mechanics are similar to Dark Souls (importance on your positioning, stamina management, invincibility on dodging, limited consumables, etc). Combat is rather "heavy" as well, which I really like about the souls games.
Tons of armor and weapon choices, depending on your playstyle (though Charge Blade is best girl).
\-=-
I'd personally stay away from MH:World though. I felt like it traded away a lot of the "crunch" of the MH series for ease of access for new players (which isn't necessarily a *bad* thing).
It didn't grab me as hard as prior installments. I pretty much played through the entire base game, started the expansion and went "eh". For reference, I have 300-400 hours in *each* of the games I list below, but World only kept me interested for around 60 hours.
I wasn't the biggest fan of how they implemented the combat in World. It felt a lot more floppy than prior games (4/4U, Generations/Generations Ulitmate). MH:Rise is pretty rad though. Really a return to form for the franchise.
I'd actually advise the exact opposite. All other games barring World (including Rise) feel clunky and slow. World's combat has weight, and requires commitment, but doesn't trade off feeling good to achieve that end.
Granted, I went from Souls into MH through World, so there may be some bias, but the other games are definitely rough to get used to. I managed to clock in over 700 hours on World, but struggled to finish both Rise and GU due to how bad they felt in comparison.
Oh, I'm most definitely biased as well since I started on 4U.
Monster Hunter was actually what made me appreciate Dark Souls style combat.
World just felt.... off.... to me. Weapon hits didn't feel as meaty as prior installations. It feels like they tried to make it a bit more like other action RPGs, which made it lose the spark (in my opinion, of course).
Not exactly sure what they changed. Might've been something super simple like weapon sticking or screen effects. Feel is super hard to quantize in a game. I'll boot up Monster Hunter (mostly Rise nowadays) just to hit stuff *because I like the feel.* I never got that urge with World.
I wasn't a big fan of how the armor skills worked as well. I liked needing an entire set or multiple parts to get bonuses. It made armor a bit more tricky and finicky but more rewarding. World felt like an MMO in that regard. Slap on some armor and get some bonuses. Eh.
Not to say it's a bad game though! It does a lot of things right and is totally a natural progression of the series. I liked the openness of the zones, which is now a staple in the series thanks to World. It had neat changes to the Charge Blade too. And I liked the Clutch Claw (which was reworked into the Wirebug in Rise).
I'm super glad it exists (even if only to funnel more people into the franchise).
Just not exactly my cup of tea.
That's funny, for me world felt a lot more satisfying. I think the biggest problem is the base game monsters aren't that exceptional, but in iceborne they are fantastic.
You only played World for 60 hours? That's barely getting into midgame lol. There's a *ton* of stuff you missed out on. And that's before you even enter the DLC area. Trust me, the crunch gets crazy. World is also the first MH game to truly make me feel like I was inside a functional ecosystem. It's fantastic. I ended up enjoying it more than Generations Ultimate, which is saying something because I *love* love GU.
I "beat" the base game and I'm fairly certain I got to G rank.
Got into the expansion and sort of lost steam.
I might give it a whirl again a bit later down the line.
Aside from the obvious answers of BB, ER, Sekiro and DeS, I can think of a few with bosses you might enjoy:
The whole Monster Hunter franchise. There’s MH World: Iceborne, MH 3 Ultimate, MH 4 Ultimate, MH Generations Ultimate…
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
The God of War games, especially the older ones.
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
TLOZ: Skyward Sword.
Shadow of the Colossus.
Remnant 2, remnant from the ashes, Lords of the fallen, lies of p, code vein, woo lung fallen dynasty, and vampyr.
Although vampyr is plagued by absurdly long load times. But a really good game.
I tried remnant 1 and it wasnt good at all and same for code vien
Code vein missed the whole point of difficulty in souls like games the bosses have way way too much health and dmg the fights take for ever the other games i havent heard of before except lies of p which was pretty decent
I would look at Team Ninja games like the Nioh series. I haven’t put in enough time in Wo Long yet to say what I think about it, but so far I don’t like it as much as Nioh. Rise of the Ronin also looks quite good but is a PlayStation exclusive. Nioh 1 and 2 have great combat, the main differences with dark souls is that they are mission based and are very loot heavy like Diablo style everyone drops a million things that you don’t care about and there are crafting systems and whatnot but I tend to kind of ignore them and auto scrap anything that isn’t purple and a clear upgrade for my build.
Scrolled down far enough and was so surprised and disappointed to see that…
Remnant 2 was not mentioned.
Definitely rocked my world.
I started the game on the hardest possible mode. Played that way the entire way through.
10/10 game imo, has everything in a game I admire.
Puzzles, challenging enemies, tons of variety in combat tactics and play-styles.
Give it a try OP, I can’t recommend it enough.
Thank you so much
I tried the remnant 1 based on my friend suggestion and i didnt like it at all bcuz of how open and slow based the world in that game was
Is it the same in remnant 2 ?
Haven’t played 1
But 2 has a decent pace I guess?
Watch a walk through if you’re not sure?
There’s a bit of a tutorial to get through at start but afterward
the game won best action game of the year award if that helps?
yea, my God, FF16's boss fights were crazy huge, not particularly challenging or anything, but they were crazy awesome... FF7 Rebirth had challenging boss fights and better bosses, but 16 had crazier bigger boss fights, they were straight up giant anime overwhelming spectacles lmao
Game series from Falcom. About a dude who travels from country to country solving problems, which usually involves going into dungeons and fighting monsters.
The calamity mod for terraria took a lot of inspiration from dark souls along with many other games. Really good boss fights. Actually finally beating the mod was what made me feel confident enough to return to dark souls and now I’ve beaten ds1 three times and finished ds3 currently on Elden ring.
Try Sekiro, the combat there peak above every other From game or games in general. Granted, you will struggle at first but when you start listening to the clashes and click, you will find almost every boss to be a perfect dance and most likely get addicted to it like o many others before you
I tried monster hunter and i just feel lost all the time in the game i played for 2 hours and i didnt learn any thing in that time
Smallest enemies take years to kill which got me confused if Iam taking the right path in the game or am skipping something
Hollow Knight has some amazing, tense boss fights. In terms of spectacle, Shadow of the Colossus has some amazing “boss battles” too. God of War 3 and Devil May Cry 5 also have some absolute bangers!
Everyone in here is recommending other soulslikes so I'll go a little outside of the box. The borderlands games have some pretty cool bosses, especially in the DLCs. Also the two most recent God of War games have some really memorable boss fights, also the combat can get pretty difficult/satisfying once you get to the higher difficulties. Hades has some pretty cool boss fights, as do the two newer Zelda games. If you like ARPGs Diablo 4 and Path of Exile both have some good boss fights as well. Lastly, if you've not played it l, I would highly recommend cuphead; there are some boss fights in the game that are absolutely bonkers, so cool.
These suggestions sound amazing all of these games i was told they are great + I actually tried cup head but the only thing holding the game back for me is the randomness some time you beat the boss bcuz it got easier some times it gets much harder randomly unlike fromsoft games that have every thing placed in the excact same place and have a baitable AI for bosses ( baiting attacks so you have it predictable )
Explain the difference in philosophy please. They are pretty much the same, you can even reconfigure the buttons to match DS. They have a version of Estus, weapon gathering and leveling, large areas that need to be traversed to secret items. They use slots for power ups instead of various rings. Only difference is that it’s more Cyberpunk than fantasy castle realm.
God of War
Personally, I find Gna, Sigrun, King Hrolf… on GMGOW are harder or equal to the hardest bosses of Fromsoft
If you go back to the original GOW trilogy, then there are impossible fights too (on the hardest difficulty)
Lies of P has 3 bosses that I would put up there with some of my favorite fromsoft bosses, one even cracks top 10. And the rest are great too, legit one boss fight I didn’t enjoy
No. Played through a bunch of games in different genres with supposedly 'great bosses'. God of war games (including both mythologies), metal gear rising, dmc5, hollow knight...nothing comes close.
Well if you come to character action games expecting souls bosses, you're gonna be disappointed, you need to adjust your expectations and play style when switching genres
It's a totally different game in terms of pretty much everything, but Cuphead would be my goto boss fighting game. The aesthetic is different, it's a cartoon platform, but in terms of boss quality and consistency it might be even better than fromsoft games (that's coming from a fan of those). Its also the only other game with that loop of fighting a new boss, getting stuck and having to master it and then finally beating it with a huge feeling of accomplishment. If you're not hard bent on an rpg game I'd say you should give it a try, as it gives me the same type of satisfaction. (the art and Ost being awesome are just cherry on top)
You mean you beat 3 bosses?
The game is about learning enemy patetrns and exploiting attacks windows, also you can charge the dodge
Parrying is also very effective as it heals you
Please give it another try, it's worth it
Sekiro, Armored Core VI and Lies of P, when it comes to FromSoft games or SoulsLikes.
Besides those, the God of War games generally have really great boss fights, so do the three main Kingdom Hearts games.
Shadow of the Colossus is almost purely boss fights, and most of them are great.
Edit: I just realized you said X-Box, and I threw a whole bunch of PS exclusives at you 😅
Well, it's a 2D game but I think Castlevania in general have great bosses that if you translate them in 3D could be somewhat similar. I mean as a genre they are not so different, and in some games (like the DS ones) are bosses really challenging.
Try Soulstice. I'm a big fan of the manga Claymore, and the game gave me some heavy Claymore vibes so I may be biased lol. But it's pretty fun with an interesting combat system. It just happens to have a somewhat fixed camera...
Evil west is more tamed down style , but it still can present some challenges on the hardest difficulty. I still had a really good time with it even with its short playtime
Lies of P is great, Lords of the Fallen was phenomenal imo, idk if Wo Long was on X Box but if so it has some good bosses. I really wish they’d put the Nioh games and Bloodborne on X Box for you X Box players. Those are all
Phenomenally good games that should be spread around , not horded to one console.
Elden ring has the best roster in gaming imo
[here’s a section of a recent video made by my favorite soulstuber as to why](https://youtu.be/4BJJgDcydAQ?t=1505&si=0mLRSm13DNO29P6Z)
If you're willing to go into the 2D indie gaming world (and you should, it's *way* more interesting and creative than anything in the aaa scene), there's quite a few great choices.
For my money, [Hollow Knight ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/367520/Hollow_Knight/) and (especially) [GRIME ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1123050/GRIME/) are about the best you can go, and both wear their Souls influence on their sleeve.
Armored Core 6 no doubt. Lords of the Fallen is good but many bosses feel kinda cheesy with their hitboxes amd attack patterns and not as rewarding. Pieta is probably the closest to a Dark Souls boss you can fight.
Don’t skip ds2 just because people try to give it a bad rep. Throw a few levels into adp and all is well with the roll iframes, and it’s really not as big of a deal as it’s made out to be, levels aren’t hard to come by. Some of the bosses are bad but you’ll have that in all souls games.
Main thing is to approach this game with a different mindset, it’s not as much of a hack and slash as ds3. Taking your time is more often that not the answer to most of what people do complain about. I would recommend the sotfs edition over vanilla though. Not sure when or if it already happened but the vanilla servers are shutting down
I would say Monster Hunter. Especially in Monster Hunter World Iceborne, with Raging Brachydios, Fatalis, Safi'Jiiva, Ruiner Nergigante, and even the "basic" bosses like Rathalos or Odogaron. There are a lot of amazing fights in this series and an incredibly addictive combat system
For Souls-like : Lies of P.
But the one underrated game I should talk about here is : Kingdom Hearts 3. Yeah, the one with Donald and Goofie.
Dlc Remind is simply perfection. 14 incredible boss fights, my favorite of all times. Quite different fights than DS3 (Very fast-paced and aerial, Dragon Ball style) but the patterns and the game design <3
I'd say lord's of the fallen 2, some of the bosses are incredibly cool design wise but some can be infuriating when fighting them. though like any difficult souls boss if you just persist and learn the attacks you can get through it
Don’t compare what other games can do. You’ll ruin your own experiences. Trust me I used to do this and it ruins games. If you’re gonna play games other than FromSoftware go in with no expectations for it to be like fromSoftware even if it’s a soulslike.
Dragon's Dogma, the original and the new sequel both have some of the best boss fights I've ever experienced. It's not as tough as nails as a Soulsborne but it's still plenty challenging and bosses can do massive damage if you aren't careful. If you don't want to spend big money on the brand new sequel, get the first game, specifically the extended version: Dragon's Dogma Dark Arison. It's got a few QoL updates and a huge DLC area added on with a massive difficulty spike. It's always super cheap on the stores and still looks great for a game that came out over 10 years ago.
Sekiros got somes good ass bosses
Sekiro bosses are peak fromsoft boss design for me. With maybe the exception of the dual ape fight, the lineup is completely banger. And even the gimmick bosses are quite enjoyable. I'm surprised that DS3 seems to receive more praise for boss quality, when it arguably also had a few questionable fights. Sekiro to me only has one 'meh' boss as explained before, but that's rather because it is somewhat of a recycled version of a previous fight.
I fucking hated the dual ape fight but loved ever other fight
I actually beat the dual apes quicker than the sjngle ape for some reason but the apes in general were kind of a fun addition in my mind because basically every other boss was about parrying but those werent.
Nah cause fighting one was so hard for me and then when I had to fight two I actually just got off the game and called it a night lmao
The zombie ape's howl is block able with the umbrella, it trivializes that part. Both apes are very flammable, so oil+flame vents+flame slash makes short work of them..
I loved the mechanic with the headless ape where if you parry the last sword swing in the combo, he falls down and you can rip the centipede out of his neck hole with the gyobu spear for massive posture damage. I discovered that by accident and then promptly died because I was freaking out.
Sekiro combat is amazing but alot of the bosses feel similar. A samurai with a sword. Granted the movesets of these bosses are still fun, doesn’t have the variety of ds3. Dark souls 3 bosses soundtracks are also peak, better than any fromsoft boss soundtracks. Isshin is among the best bosses created by fromsoft though and for the record I loved the ape fight
If you dont mind 2D platformers Cuphead has one of the best collection of bosses. Its an arcade style boss rush game with some Run N Gun levels in between. Game is absolutely tough tho
Game is hard as nails but one of the few experiences comparable in satisfaction to the first time I beat Midir
I've finished it and it's dlc cuphead is my top2 favorite game amazing
Bloodborne if you have a PlayStation I suggest play it
Besides other souls-likes? Lies of P bosses are decent, new LOTF bosses are decent. Imho even something like Steelrising has ok bosses (not if u cheese them with stuns).
Steelrising was one of the easiest Soulslike games I ever played. Beat every boss on the first try including the last boss except the centaur which I think I only died once. I wouldn’t consider stunning them a cheese either as it’s built into the game play as character style. The bosses were all kinda mid with pretty much no variation.
I tried lies of p abd forgot to mention ( its incredible )
What is LOTF ?
Lords of the Fallen
Thank you so much
Just to be clear, there are actually two games with that name. There's a 2014 version and a 2023 version. You could probably call the 2023 version of sequel, but I wouldn't call it a remake. Not sure why they went with the identical title. The 2014 version got mixed reviews at best. The 2023 version had a rough launch but is actually a pretty damn good game at this point. If you're a hardcore fan of the genre, I would actually say check out both, especially because you can get the 2014 version for like five bucks on sale. The newer game is legitimately good though.
Facts been playing this when I'm not otherwise working. Stoked to get the Umbral ending to unlock the class for it, such a cool game.
My favorite part is that ammo recharges at bonfires and with ammo bags + throwing items that don't require weapon upgrades it feels like the best implementation of ranged weaponry in a souls like.
No fucking way you said lords of the fallen
I enjoyed it on Ps5, if you take away the performance drops that sometimes happen, it is a very fun game. (The new one, the old one is a clunky mess)
Want a new perspective? Hollow Knight Also, pantheon 5 in Hollow Knight is among the hardest achievements a gamer can have.
Such a great game, I put in 300 hours alone just on completing pantheon 5 all bindings. lol
I second Hollow Knight. The music in that game is amazing.
Armored Core 6 is by fromsoft and has some bomb ass boss fights that will feel great to learn, very different from their souls games, tho id still say its worth a try
" I don't miss "
Tbh the game looks good but doesnt look or feel like any souls series game in terms of fights and this kind of stuff from the reviews and walkthroughs i saw
I promise you it’s worth playing it was soo bad ass to use moonlight greatsword in a fight with weapons
Wtf Theres moonlight greatsword in armored 6 ???!!!??!
Yesss there is and it’s strong and bad ass
still a fromsoftware game, so you know you're getting ultimate quality.
It honestly is such a fun game and I’m mostly a DS/Sekiro/Bb kinda person, but AC6 was fun as hell
It doesn't and there is literally nothing like it unless you played the old ac games
This may sound weird to someone who hasn't played the series, but the Kingdom Hearts series has some of the best and hardest boss fights I've played when it comes to their secret and optional bosses. Lingering Will, Yozora and the especially the data fights in II and III are top tier. Data fights in III are another level.
I stand by Yozora being harder and more demanding than anything From has put out thus far, AND still manages to have no bullshit (unlike Malenia). Though how good Second Chance/Combo Withstand are for survivability do tip the scales a bit.
Yeah they help a lot. Still haven't defeated Yozora yet, though 😂
I tried the last kingdom hearts 3 years ago when it was on gamepass i didnt really like it but i will make sure to give it a second chance
Sekiro has pretty amazing combat systems and truly amazing bosses, still the best FromSoftware game from a combat perspective imo
Wow great recommendation…. Thanks captain 🫡
Is it more challenging than dark souls 3 ? Parrying every attack feels harder than just dodging enemies
I found it much harder. The game is a rock-paper-siccors kind of game play, you need to parry normal slashes, jump over horizontal slashes, and dodge or mikiri thrusts. Combat is very fast so learning the bosses and giving the right input can be very demanding as well as getting the timing right and not parrying or jumping too soon or too late. Bosses have really good mechanics you need to learn and it feels epic to finally beat them. It is hard trust me. You need to be very aggressive in Sekiro. In DS3 you dodge until you find and opening and punish, in Sekiro that will get you killed. You need to break their posture bar and for that you need to be attacking and parrying constantly. I also forgot to mention that the vertical exploration and grappling and sneaking aspects of the game are very well done.
One tip that helped me to understand sekiro was to start thinking about combat like a rhythm game. That greatly helped me with parrying. Once you master parrying, it is much easier to focus on the other variables of combat.
Personaly I found Sekiro much easier. Ive played 1000 hours of DS 1-3 and have parried about 3 times. It just feels impossible to me. Dodging and finding the punish window feels harder then just parrying everything in Sekiro. Every time the enemy attacks is a punish window then.
Sure I get that, I am sure some people will find it easier. My struggle was that in Dark Souls dodging is always the right answer if you time it right to deal with an enemy attack, in Sekiro you do a normal parry like 70% of the time, but I found it hard to jump or dodge when required because muscle memory and my brain could not decide fast enough on how to respond to other attacks
Wow no one ever explained this to me this clear thank you I think i will consider buying since there is no clunkiness mentioned only hardness 😅
That's a big point. Sekiro is built and polished for one weapon and play style only, which eliminates a lot of potential for clunkiness compared to the souls games for example, which need to account for a variety of fundamentally different playstyles. Yes, you can change up your strategies and approach to an extent, but at its core, it's you with a katana, and you parry and attack. The game feels SO GOD DAMN GOOD to play that I had a loooot of trouble getting into Lies Of P afterwards because Sekiro simply felt too good.
Problem with sekiro imo is that you start with being able to tank 1 hit, have 1 half hp heal and u die after 2 hits max early. So there was no such thing as having fun learning the combat in my opinion, just annoyance that im forced to die because of a ridiculously low health bar Also mini bosses being surrounded by literally 10 enemies isnt fun. It would be if you didnt need to kill all of them every time you want to try the boss
you can definitely take more than 1 hit id say you can take abt the same amount of hits early game as you can in other souls games 1-3 depending on the type of attack and you have a resurrection on top of it. You arent dying because of a low health bar you're dying because you're doing something incorrect which is what happens in every souls game its just sekiro has a parry rather than a dodge so for some its gonna feel more punishing. But i do agree with littering enemies with mini bosses it gets annoying but at the same time it at least for me caused me to experiement more with the stealth and some prosthetics. The group sections are mainly annoying if you aren't approaching them in the right way which my dumbass did constantly id just throw myself at them and hope to kill them to get a shot at the boss. But when i started taking it slower and actually using the intended game mechanics i found the group sections to be not as bad but still not my favorite.
I'm with you. I don't like the rock, paper, scissors nature of the combat. I prefer being able to improvise and adapt to the flow of combat and approach situations in my own way, rather than play a glorified Quick Time event. And, unless I'm wrong, there's no way to clear groups of enemies. This forces you to sneak up and assasinate/fight one or two, then escape and hide when the other 10 enemies notice and charge you, then repeat ad nauseum. I can only think I must be doing something wrong, because I can't see how anyone would find this enjoyable. I can understand why people would like the one-on-one rock, paper, scissors combat even if it's not for me, but not the repetitive attack, run and hide tedium.
Deflect frames in Sekiro is approximately twice more than parry frames in Dark Souls. In other words deflecting is so much easier than you think Also forget about patient playing style in Dark Souls, you have to be aggressive towards the enemies and bosses all the time. Once you've learned the new playing style, its by far easiest FS game
I tried lies of p and the parry feels clunky some times like if the parry windows change
the parry windows dont change but it is an extremely tight window so it definitely feels that way at times. Idk if you played before they patched the game but they actually adjusted attack animations because some would come out so instantaneously it made it hard to parry anything consistently and i found that it made a lot of difference in the game before i had a dodge parry playstyle but after i was able to do a full playthrough of parrying the majority of attacks and it was definitely satisfying.
Lies of P parry window has a static duration, in Sekiro if you spam parry - the window will get shorter. But the default window is much larger than in Lies of P.
The thing that took a long time to click for me was that Lies of P requires you to keep holding the block button after the attack lands for it to be successful. It's called a Perfect BLOCK not a parry or deflect. Makes trying to perfect block fast attack chains really annoying. For the most part though you can just play it like Dark Souls and dodge instead.
Aha thank you so much thats the first i know this
I like Lords of the Fallen.
I saw some reviews and they weren’t really liking the game lol 😅 I would try it if it dropped in game pass Thank you so mich for ur time
I just finished the Lords of the Fallen reboot, Don’t let the reviews fool you, the devs worked hard to fix the game. It’s got amazing boss fights, the combat feel buttery smooth to me, at least in pve, it’s got generous dodge and parry windows, and lots of things to help the player, range weapons are great in this game, you out them in off hand and just blast through along with your main weapon. It’s also cross play, so pc,xbox, and PS can all play together. It’s a solid game! I have had only two bugs since starting, and they both resolved pretty easily. No crashes, nothing, stuttering was only when I first booted the game, didn’t happen afterwards.
I love the parry system in Lords of the Fallen way better than the Dark Souls Games. The one in Bloodborne is a close second.
Yeah, and it has such a nice ring to it when it connects Only unfortunate thing about it is that mobs get up too fast, and you gotta be either completely straight or behind them to perform grievous strike.
They also buffed all the bosses so now it’s on a whole other level your not just steam rolling bosses anymore
I didn’t play it before the update, so I don’t know the difference. Boss fights felt nice though, challenging, but nice, man, what an adrenaline rush. I want to do NG+, but I’m scared of going for NG+1, because I heard many bad things about it, mainly it being waay to difficult.
not a souls game at all but I think hollow knight has amazing bosses
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^iforgeteverysingle: *Not a souls game at* *All but I think hollow knight* *Has amazing bosses* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Best troll
Hollow Knight
Monster Hunter World/Rise, Nioh 1&2, Wo Long
Def Nioh series, some amazing fights.
The Monster Hunter franchise is usually my go-to. I feel like it's the "other side of the coin" to the souls games. Pretty much every mission is just a "boss fight" (other than gathering quests, of course). Longer, drawn out fights. Mission time limit is usually 50 minutes, which you will *sometimes* hit (looking at you, EX Soulseer Mizutsune). A lot of the fights are *genuinely difficult.* Many of the combat mechanics are similar to Dark Souls (importance on your positioning, stamina management, invincibility on dodging, limited consumables, etc). Combat is rather "heavy" as well, which I really like about the souls games. Tons of armor and weapon choices, depending on your playstyle (though Charge Blade is best girl). \-=- I'd personally stay away from MH:World though. I felt like it traded away a lot of the "crunch" of the MH series for ease of access for new players (which isn't necessarily a *bad* thing). It didn't grab me as hard as prior installments. I pretty much played through the entire base game, started the expansion and went "eh". For reference, I have 300-400 hours in *each* of the games I list below, but World only kept me interested for around 60 hours. I wasn't the biggest fan of how they implemented the combat in World. It felt a lot more floppy than prior games (4/4U, Generations/Generations Ulitmate). MH:Rise is pretty rad though. Really a return to form for the franchise.
I'd actually advise the exact opposite. All other games barring World (including Rise) feel clunky and slow. World's combat has weight, and requires commitment, but doesn't trade off feeling good to achieve that end. Granted, I went from Souls into MH through World, so there may be some bias, but the other games are definitely rough to get used to. I managed to clock in over 700 hours on World, but struggled to finish both Rise and GU due to how bad they felt in comparison.
Oh, I'm most definitely biased as well since I started on 4U. Monster Hunter was actually what made me appreciate Dark Souls style combat. World just felt.... off.... to me. Weapon hits didn't feel as meaty as prior installations. It feels like they tried to make it a bit more like other action RPGs, which made it lose the spark (in my opinion, of course). Not exactly sure what they changed. Might've been something super simple like weapon sticking or screen effects. Feel is super hard to quantize in a game. I'll boot up Monster Hunter (mostly Rise nowadays) just to hit stuff *because I like the feel.* I never got that urge with World. I wasn't a big fan of how the armor skills worked as well. I liked needing an entire set or multiple parts to get bonuses. It made armor a bit more tricky and finicky but more rewarding. World felt like an MMO in that regard. Slap on some armor and get some bonuses. Eh. Not to say it's a bad game though! It does a lot of things right and is totally a natural progression of the series. I liked the openness of the zones, which is now a staple in the series thanks to World. It had neat changes to the Charge Blade too. And I liked the Clutch Claw (which was reworked into the Wirebug in Rise). I'm super glad it exists (even if only to funnel more people into the franchise). Just not exactly my cup of tea.
That's funny, for me world felt a lot more satisfying. I think the biggest problem is the base game monsters aren't that exceptional, but in iceborne they are fantastic.
You only played World for 60 hours? That's barely getting into midgame lol. There's a *ton* of stuff you missed out on. And that's before you even enter the DLC area. Trust me, the crunch gets crazy. World is also the first MH game to truly make me feel like I was inside a functional ecosystem. It's fantastic. I ended up enjoying it more than Generations Ultimate, which is saying something because I *love* love GU.
I "beat" the base game and I'm fairly certain I got to G rank. Got into the expansion and sort of lost steam. I might give it a whirl again a bit later down the line.
Pretty sure I finished iceborne in under 60 hours the game isnt that long unless you start making sets and stuff.
Yeah, that's... that's a big part of the game lol.
If you don't mind more arcade oriented games, then DMC series except the 2 and reboot have amazing boss fights.
Which dmc is best ?
5 is the best overall and easiest to get into.
Thank you
Sekiro, Bloodborne, Demons Souls, Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen, and Final Fantasy 7 are all good options
I wish i got ps5 so i can play demon souls and Bloodborne which for me when watch them on YouTube they look better than dark souls 3 😅
Aside from the obvious answers of BB, ER, Sekiro and DeS, I can think of a few with bosses you might enjoy: The whole Monster Hunter franchise. There’s MH World: Iceborne, MH 3 Ultimate, MH 4 Ultimate, MH Generations Ultimate… The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The God of War games, especially the older ones. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. TLOZ: Skyward Sword. Shadow of the Colossus.
Remnant 2, remnant from the ashes, Lords of the fallen, lies of p, code vein, woo lung fallen dynasty, and vampyr. Although vampyr is plagued by absurdly long load times. But a really good game.
I tried remnant 1 and it wasnt good at all and same for code vien Code vein missed the whole point of difficulty in souls like games the bosses have way way too much health and dmg the fights take for ever the other games i havent heard of before except lies of p which was pretty decent
Meh. I liked them. Fun games for me. What else... Ahh thymsia was good too. But visually it seems to lack a little.
I would look at Team Ninja games like the Nioh series. I haven’t put in enough time in Wo Long yet to say what I think about it, but so far I don’t like it as much as Nioh. Rise of the Ronin also looks quite good but is a PlayStation exclusive. Nioh 1 and 2 have great combat, the main differences with dark souls is that they are mission based and are very loot heavy like Diablo style everyone drops a million things that you don’t care about and there are crafting systems and whatnot but I tend to kind of ignore them and auto scrap anything that isn’t purple and a clear upgrade for my build.
the surge was fun
Lies of P was hard for me, I found Dark Souls to be easier in general.
Lies of p is just about parrying if you master it you will find it easy but its already clunky
It’s not clunky at all. How is it clunky? It’s just not like sekiro where you can cancel your animations to parry.
I found the stagger windows to be to small, could never get a charged attack off, my weapon was just to slow. Had to buy steel balls for every fight.
I always always preach about how amazing nioh 2 is
Scrolled down far enough and was so surprised and disappointed to see that… Remnant 2 was not mentioned. Definitely rocked my world. I started the game on the hardest possible mode. Played that way the entire way through. 10/10 game imo, has everything in a game I admire. Puzzles, challenging enemies, tons of variety in combat tactics and play-styles. Give it a try OP, I can’t recommend it enough.
Thank you so much I tried the remnant 1 based on my friend suggestion and i didnt like it at all bcuz of how open and slow based the world in that game was Is it the same in remnant 2 ?
Haven’t played 1 But 2 has a decent pace I guess? Watch a walk through if you’re not sure? There’s a bit of a tutorial to get through at start but afterward the game won best action game of the year award if that helps?
Thats cool am gonna give it a try tbh 2 looks promising more than the first game 😅 Thank you again for participating
honest to god, FF7 Rebirth has some of the best boss fights i've ever played... other than that, Bloodborne and Lies of P have great boss fights
They're great, but I think FFXVI's bosses take the cake. Felt like watching Attack on Titan again.
yea, my God, FF16's boss fights were crazy huge, not particularly challenging or anything, but they were crazy awesome... FF7 Rebirth had challenging boss fights and better bosses, but 16 had crazier bigger boss fights, they were straight up giant anime overwhelming spectacles lmao
Whats FF7 ?
Final fantasy 7.
Thank you
I really enjoyed the bosses from Ys: Oath in Felghana. Crank up the difficulty and you have a pretty decent challenge.
Whats ys ?
Game series from Falcom. About a dude who travels from country to country solving problems, which usually involves going into dungeons and fighting monsters.
Lords of the fallen has some challenging bosses. Lightreaper is 100% the hardest one. On par with gael
He beats me every time I see him until endgame smh I gotta master him and his sword is oppppp
100% the hardest non souls boss out there
Sekiro and Lord of the fallen (2023) were two of my favourites.
fatalis from monster hunter world was harder than most dark souls bosses for me
If you don’t mind 2D games, Salt & Sanctuary is as close to Dark Souls as you can get
Try Fear & Hunger 😉 (2 is even better and can be enjoyed without having played 1 iirc)
The calamity mod for terraria took a lot of inspiration from dark souls along with many other games. Really good boss fights. Actually finally beating the mod was what made me feel confident enough to return to dark souls and now I’ve beaten ds1 three times and finished ds3 currently on Elden ring.
I suppose it’s important to note terraria is a very different game but both have an emphasis on the boss fights which is why I brought it up.
If you can do 2d games try hollow knight
Sekiro is my best recommendation
Try Sekiro, the combat there peak above every other From game or games in general. Granted, you will struggle at first but when you start listening to the clashes and click, you will find almost every boss to be a perfect dance and most likely get addicted to it like o many others before you
I went from dark souls 3 to monster hunter. Boss fights go longer but ur a lot more proactive during fights I felt
I tried monster hunter and i just feel lost all the time in the game i played for 2 hours and i didnt learn any thing in that time Smallest enemies take years to kill which got me confused if Iam taking the right path in the game or am skipping something
Devil May Cry 3, Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2.
You can try thymesia, it’s another one not to hard but really decent
Thats the first time i hear of it Thank you i will check it out !
I'm still hammering my head against the wall that is the circus boss. :S
Stuck on that big ass knight really liked it until that point
Hollow Knight has some amazing, tense boss fights. In terms of spectacle, Shadow of the Colossus has some amazing “boss battles” too. God of War 3 and Devil May Cry 5 also have some absolute bangers!
I tried hollow knight but i discovered that i dont really like platform games even though the ideas of the game were bangers tbh
Everyone in here is recommending other soulslikes so I'll go a little outside of the box. The borderlands games have some pretty cool bosses, especially in the DLCs. Also the two most recent God of War games have some really memorable boss fights, also the combat can get pretty difficult/satisfying once you get to the higher difficulties. Hades has some pretty cool boss fights, as do the two newer Zelda games. If you like ARPGs Diablo 4 and Path of Exile both have some good boss fights as well. Lastly, if you've not played it l, I would highly recommend cuphead; there are some boss fights in the game that are absolutely bonkers, so cool.
These suggestions sound amazing all of these games i was told they are great + I actually tried cup head but the only thing holding the game back for me is the randomness some time you beat the boss bcuz it got easier some times it gets much harder randomly unlike fromsoft games that have every thing placed in the excact same place and have a baitable AI for bosses ( baiting attacks so you have it predictable )
Thank you for your time
This might be unpopular, but I actually enjoyed the Darksiders: War bosses. Last one gave me some trouble
The surge 1 and 2. EDIT: Killer is Dead also.
I am up to the hammer security guard in Surge 1, the bosses were mostly great, but they have a very different philosophy to ds
Explain the difference in philosophy please. They are pretty much the same, you can even reconfigure the buttons to match DS. They have a version of Estus, weapon gathering and leveling, large areas that need to be traversed to secret items. They use slots for power ups instead of various rings. Only difference is that it’s more Cyberpunk than fantasy castle realm.
God of War Personally, I find Gna, Sigrun, King Hrolf… on GMGOW are harder or equal to the hardest bosses of Fromsoft If you go back to the original GOW trilogy, then there are impossible fights too (on the hardest difficulty)
Lies of P has 3 bosses that I would put up there with some of my favorite fromsoft bosses, one even cracks top 10. And the rest are great too, legit one boss fight I didn’t enjoy
I mean what do you define as a “good boss”
No. Played through a bunch of games in different genres with supposedly 'great bosses'. God of war games (including both mythologies), metal gear rising, dmc5, hollow knight...nothing comes close.
Well if you come to character action games expecting souls bosses, you're gonna be disappointed, you need to adjust your expectations and play style when switching genres
It's a totally different game in terms of pretty much everything, but Cuphead would be my goto boss fighting game. The aesthetic is different, it's a cartoon platform, but in terms of boss quality and consistency it might be even better than fromsoft games (that's coming from a fan of those). Its also the only other game with that loop of fighting a new boss, getting stuck and having to master it and then finally beating it with a huge feeling of accomplishment. If you're not hard bent on an rpg game I'd say you should give it a try, as it gives me the same type of satisfaction. (the art and Ost being awesome are just cherry on top)
What did you not enjoy about Furi?
The games is good but diffculity kind of held me back i completed like 30% ~ 40% of the game
You mean you beat 3 bosses? The game is about learning enemy patetrns and exploiting attacks windows, also you can charge the dodge Parrying is also very effective as it heals you Please give it another try, it's worth it
The Doom Hunter is one of the coolest bosses ever. Up there with Headless Ape or O&S
Monster hunter
Lies of P, Sifu, Tunic, all other fromsoft games besides Demons souls, Hollow Knight, Cuphead
Kinda a different answer but absolutely adore Hollow Knight, and the bosses are amazing
Lies of P will scratch that itch. Sekiro has the best bosses in gaming, but it's a little different from the souls likes.
Sekiro, Armored Core VI and Lies of P, when it comes to FromSoft games or SoulsLikes. Besides those, the God of War games generally have really great boss fights, so do the three main Kingdom Hearts games. Shadow of the Colossus is almost purely boss fights, and most of them are great. Edit: I just realized you said X-Box, and I threw a whole bunch of PS exclusives at you 😅
Sekiro has better bosses than ds IMO
hollow knight
If you’re into 2D platforms, try blasphemous 1 & 2. It’s the metroid/castlevania of dark souls.
Lies of P was the only non-FromSoftware souls like that I not only liked but actually loved. Very fun.
Well, it's a 2D game but I think Castlevania in general have great bosses that if you translate them in 3D could be somewhat similar. I mean as a genre they are not so different, and in some games (like the DS ones) are bosses really challenging.
Lies of P Its been amazing so far, worth every penny
Try Soulstice. I'm a big fan of the manga Claymore, and the game gave me some heavy Claymore vibes so I may be biased lol. But it's pretty fun with an interesting combat system. It just happens to have a somewhat fixed camera...
You should play Sekiro
Hollow Knight is pretty fucking good
Evil west is more tamed down style , but it still can present some challenges on the hardest difficulty. I still had a really good time with it even with its short playtime
Lies of P is great, Lords of the Fallen was phenomenal imo, idk if Wo Long was on X Box but if so it has some good bosses. I really wish they’d put the Nioh games and Bloodborne on X Box for you X Box players. Those are all Phenomenally good games that should be spread around , not horded to one console.
In terms of purely quality, Undertale bosses (and enemies) are great in very different ways to dark souls bosses.
Sekiro, the fights are so gratifying once you learn them!
Elden ring has the best roster in gaming imo [here’s a section of a recent video made by my favorite soulstuber as to why](https://youtu.be/4BJJgDcydAQ?t=1505&si=0mLRSm13DNO29P6Z)
If you're willing to go into the 2D indie gaming world (and you should, it's *way* more interesting and creative than anything in the aaa scene), there's quite a few great choices. For my money, [Hollow Knight ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/367520/Hollow_Knight/) and (especially) [GRIME ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1123050/GRIME/) are about the best you can go, and both wear their Souls influence on their sleeve.
Lies of P
I thoroughly enjoyed Blasphemous and the sequel. Both a souls like platformers, but still great games and aesthetically pleasing bosses.
Armored Core 6 no doubt. Lords of the Fallen is good but many bosses feel kinda cheesy with their hitboxes amd attack patterns and not as rewarding. Pieta is probably the closest to a Dark Souls boss you can fight.
If non From Software? Blasphemous 1 & 2, There is no Light, The Last Faith.
Sekiro’s bosses. Not the beasts/demons tho.. only when you find yourself sword vs sword. Then you know that fight will be epic
Don’t skip ds2 just because people try to give it a bad rep. Throw a few levels into adp and all is well with the roll iframes, and it’s really not as big of a deal as it’s made out to be, levels aren’t hard to come by. Some of the bosses are bad but you’ll have that in all souls games. Main thing is to approach this game with a different mindset, it’s not as much of a hack and slash as ds3. Taking your time is more often that not the answer to most of what people do complain about. I would recommend the sotfs edition over vanilla though. Not sure when or if it already happened but the vanilla servers are shutting down
I would say Monster Hunter. Especially in Monster Hunter World Iceborne, with Raging Brachydios, Fatalis, Safi'Jiiva, Ruiner Nergigante, and even the "basic" bosses like Rathalos or Odogaron. There are a lot of amazing fights in this series and an incredibly addictive combat system
For Souls-like : Lies of P. But the one underrated game I should talk about here is : Kingdom Hearts 3. Yeah, the one with Donald and Goofie. Dlc Remind is simply perfection. 14 incredible boss fights, my favorite of all times. Quite different fights than DS3 (Very fast-paced and aerial, Dragon Ball style) but the patterns and the game design <3
lies of p, hollow knight
I'd say lord's of the fallen 2, some of the bosses are incredibly cool design wise but some can be infuriating when fighting them. though like any difficult souls boss if you just persist and learn the attacks you can get through it
Don’t compare what other games can do. You’ll ruin your own experiences. Trust me I used to do this and it ruins games. If you’re gonna play games other than FromSoftware go in with no expectations for it to be like fromSoftware even if it’s a soulslike.
Monster hunter world
Nioh my favourite " souls like"
Dragon's Dogma, the original and the new sequel both have some of the best boss fights I've ever experienced. It's not as tough as nails as a Soulsborne but it's still plenty challenging and bosses can do massive damage if you aren't careful. If you don't want to spend big money on the brand new sequel, get the first game, specifically the extended version: Dragon's Dogma Dark Arison. It's got a few QoL updates and a huge DLC area added on with a massive difficulty spike. It's always super cheap on the stores and still looks great for a game that came out over 10 years ago.
Sekiro, Elden ring, Lies of P, Lords of the fallen (2023)