I immediately skip any games that are described as "roguelike" or "soulslike"

https://lemmy.world/post/44200362

I immediately skip any games that are described as "roguelike" or "soulslike" - Lemmy.World

They seem so popular, dozens of games coming out, and reviews often positive. But When I see “Roguelike” I imagine a game that’s too small to be a real game, so they made it so you can never win and just have to keep trying and you’ll get a decent number of hours out of it. With just enough progression each time that you start to believe it’s possible you’ll get somewhere meaningful. When I see “Souls-like” I think of a game where the difficulty is only there to give people with too much time on their hands a sense of superiority. I have roughly a thousand games in my various libraries and I have never played a game in either of these genres. I feel fine being so unreasonable about this.

Most games being called roguelikes now days should really be called Roguelites, as they tend to lack the depth, complexity, and replayability of more mature traditional roguelikes. Mileage varies. I’ve noticed that newer titles that have forms of permanent upgrades have more addictive gameplay loops - love Dead Cells and Hades - but they don’t offer the same degree of excitement that true permadeath rls do. When a game has tens of floors of dungeon, and after many attempts that fail at floor 5-8, you’re finally flying through levels 10, 11, 12, 13, and you know it can all end just like that - a very intense feeling emerges. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is one of my favorites for this.

For soulslikes, I’ve yet to play a game in this genre that has been as satisfying as FromSoft’s games themselves. Been meaning to get back into Elden Ring.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup