The 10 Best Soulslike Games on Steam and PC: 2026 Ranking

What Is a Soulslike? The 10 Best Soulslikes on Steam and PC (2026 Edition)

Die, learn, come back for more. That’s the soulslike loop in a nutshell.

If you’ve written the whole genre off as “way too hard for me,” you’re missing out. A soulslike isn’t just a difficult game — it’s a genre built around a very specific pleasure that only arrives on the other side of suffering. This guide covers everything from what actually defines a soulslike to the best ones you can play on Steam right now in 2026.

Read straight through for a bird’s-eye view of the 2026 soulslike scene, or jump directly to whichever game has caught your eye. However you want to use it, it’s yours.

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What Is a Soulslike?

In a single sentence: it’s an action RPG designed so that dying is how you learn.

The term “soulslike” stuck as shorthand for games built in the mold of the Dark Souls series, developed by FromSoftware. Ever since Dark Souls launched in 2011, studios of every size — scrappy indies and major publishers alike — have been building games in that style, and by now it has hardened into a genre of its own.

The Four Pillars of a Soulslike

1. Brutal difficulty and a real death penalty
Enemies hit hard, and one lapse in concentration will kill you. When you die you drop your currency — souls, XP, whatever the game calls it — and you have to fight your way back to your corpse to reclaim it. Putting real stakes on failure is exactly what makes success feel so good.

2. Boss fights that are all tension and payoff
You lose, again and again, learning the pattern a piece at a time, until the moment it finally goes down. Nothing else in gaming quite matches that rush. Bosses here aren’t walls dropped in your path — they’re trials, carefully built to be overcome.

3. Interlocking maps and shortcut design
The levels fold back in on themselves, and every bit of progress unlocks another shortcut. That “wait, this door connects to here?” moment is the whole joy of exploring one of these worlds.

4. A world told in fragments
The story never over-explains itself. You piece together what really happened from item descriptions, offhand NPC dialogue, and the way the architecture is laid out — and that detective work runs surprisingly deep.

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A Short History: How Dark Souls Rewired Game Design

2009: It started with Demon’s Souls

FromSoftware released it on PS3, and its radical “learn by dying” philosophy landed like a bomb. Plenty of people called it needlessly punishing, but core players chasing the high of a hard-won victory embraced it with something close to religious fervor.

2011: The genre gets its name with Dark Souls

Its immaculate level design, its bottomless lore, and its weighty combat system left fingerprints on game design worldwide. Developers everywhere came away thinking “I want to make something like that” — and the soulslike genre was born out of exactly that impulse.

2019: A new shape with Sekiro

FromSoftware stripped out the RPG scaffolding entirely and rebuilt the formula around pure swordplay and the posture system. It swept Game of the Year awards and proved the studio had no interest in repeating itself.

2022: The genre’s summit, Elden Ring

The open world and the soulslike, fused into one. Three years after launch it still holds elite ratings on Steam, and it’s already spoken of as one of the all-time greats.

2024 onward: The indie free-for-all

Black Myth: Wukong, Nine Sols and others have arrived from studios outside FromSoftware, and critics have started saying some of them go beyond the soulslike template. The genre keeps diversifying and maturing.

Trace the “learn it by dying” design philosophy back far enough and you land in the classics of the Famicom (NES) era — the punishing action games of the day, like Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania.

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The Best Soulslikes on Steam: The 2026 Ranking

Selections weigh Steam ratings, review volume, and sheer quality as a game.

🥇 No. 1: Elden Ring

The summit of the genre. Calling it one of the greatest games ever made isn’t hyperbole.

FromSoftware’s razor-precise dungeon design was dropped into a vast open field, and the freedom to explore at your own pace blew the doors open for players who’d bounced off previous Souls games. A 92% positive rating across more than 750,000 reviews tells you everything about how well it lands. The Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is available now, too.

🥈 No. 2: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

No soulslike has ever nailed the pure pleasure of swordplay this cleanly. Leveling and gear lotteries are gone; what’s left is the posture system and a blade-to-blade reading war, and that austerity makes it one of a kind. The early game is a brick wall, but the moment it clicks, the entire game transforms in front of you. It took home a pile of Game of the Year awards.

🥉 No. 3: Black Myth: Wukong

Built on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, this was one of the biggest gaming stories of 2024. Its calling cards are the staggering Unreal Engine 5 visuals and a combat system where you chain attacks to pry openings out of your enemies. As international outlets put it, it’s a great fit even for players who’ve grown tired of the genre’s cruelty — you can play far more aggressively here than in a typical soulslike. And the 107 bosses (optional ones included) are frankly absurd.

No. 4: Lies of P

A Korean-made soulslike that reimagines Pinocchio as Belle Epoque dark fantasy. Plenty of players will tell you it’s the best soulslike not made by FromSoftware. Weapon customization that lets you mix and match blades and handles, a push-and-pull between perfect guards and dodges, and a story that branches on whether you lie — and it all interlocks beautifully. The Overture DLC picked up strong reviews internationally as well.

No. 5: Nine Sols

“Taopunk” is the coinage the developers use, and it fits perfectly: Taoism crossed with sci-fi and cyberpunk, wrapped in a 2D side-scrolling action game. It welds Sekiro-style parry-first combat to metroidvania exploration, and the result is unlike anything else out there. The hand-drawn art and the weight of its story both earned serious praise. It’s the kind of indie masterpiece that leaves fans asking how it stayed so under-the-radar in Japan.

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No. 6: Nioh 2

A homegrown Japanese soulslike built on Japanese-flavored dark fantasy and seriously deep build crafting. It’s set in the Sengoku era, you’re carving through yokai, and the combat system layers stance switching and yokai abilities into something genuinely rich. Plenty of players will tell you the mechanical depth here rivals anything FromSoftware has shipped. And the Complete Edition bundles every piece of DLC for 3,520 yen, which is absurd value.

No. 7: Dark Souls III

This is the one people call the culmination of the entire Dark Souls saga. It cashes in threads planted across the whole series, wraps them in a gorgeous end-of-the-world atmosphere, and hands you some of the best boss fights FromSoftware has ever designed, all at a noticeably faster tempo than its predecessors. “If you’re trying a soulslike for the first time, start here” is advice you’ll hear constantly, and it holds up: the world is smaller than Elden Ring’s, which makes it a cleaner way to feel what the genre is actually about.

No. 8: ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN

Take the world of Elden Ring, bolt on three-player co-op and roguelike structure, and this is what you get. The map reshuffles every run, and starting from level 1 to scavenge and upgrade your gear generates a kind of tension the mainline games never had. Reception was split at launch, but patch 1.02 added two-player deployment and tuned the characters, and the Steam score has climbed back to 87% positive. That’s off a sample of roughly 72,000 reviews, which is a big enough pool to trust. If you’ve been wanting to play a soulslike with friends, this is the one.

No. 9: WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers

A dark fantasy soulslike set in the dying years of Ming dynasty China, and one of 2025’s record-breaking sellers worldwide. Its Steam page got hammered at launch over PC optimization problems, but the team apologized immediately and pushed out fixes. That kind of straight-shooting response earned back a lot of goodwill, and the score has climbed back above 80% positive. The tangled, interlocking level design evokes the original Dark Souls, the transformation system gives you real variety, and the whole thing stands as proof that Chinese-made soulslikes are here to stay after Black Myth: Wukong kicked the door in.

No. 10: Nioh 3 – The Newest Entry in the Series

“Easily the best game in the series.” That was the near-unanimous verdict from international reviewers on the biggest Japanese soulslike of 2026. It blew past a million copies faster than any previous Nioh, and its Metacritic critic page carries zero negative reviews, which almost never happens. GameSpew handed it a 100/100, Wccftech a 98/100, and “GOTY contender” started getting thrown around immediately. The series’ first open-field structure and the new dual samurai/ninja combat stances give it a genuine sense of reinvention, and that 93% Steam rating tops Nioh 2’s 88% to become the highest the series has ever posted.

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Which New Soulslikes Are Coming in Late 2026?

Phantom Blade Zero – Launching September 9, 2026

A swordplay action RPG that bills itself as “kung fu punk,” currently in development at China’s S-GAME. It’s locked in for September 9, 2026 on PS5 and PC (Steam/Epic). The hook is fast, aggressive combat that pairs Sekiro-style parries with just-frame dodges, and the reaction to the trailers released so far has been overwhelmingly positive. No price has been announced yet, but this is the soulslike to watch in the back half of 2026.

Lords of the Fallen II – Due Sometime in 2026

The direct sequel to 2023’s Lords of the Fallen. The dual-layer world that lets you cross between Axiom and Umbral (the realm of the dead) is returning, and the studio is pushing things harder and nastier than the first game. It’s being positioned as the next big difficulty spike for players who finished Elden Ring and want somewhere to go next, so get it on your Steam wishlist.

The Duskbloods – FromSoftware Meets Nintendo Switch 2

A brand-new multiplayer action game FromSoftware is building for Nintendo Switch 2. Blood is the thematic spine: you play as one of the Twilight Bloodline, chasing the First Blood in matches of up to eight players in PvPvE (player versus player versus environment). It uses a “role system” borrowed from tabletop RPGs, which means you can expect the dense lore and learn-by-dying design FromSoftware is known for.

Watching what the studio behind Elden Ring and Sekiro can do with Nintendo’s new hardware is one of the most compelling storylines of 2026 for soulslike fans. It’s slated for release sometime in 2026 as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive with a simultaneous worldwide launch, though pricing and a firm date were still unannounced as of May 2026.

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Soulslike Rites of Passage and How to Get Past Them

The Traps Beginners Fall Into

1. Swinging too early and too often
A soulslike isn’t a game about attacking, it’s a game about reading. Watch the enemy’s patterns, learn where the openings are. Panic gets you killed.

2. Ignoring your stamina bar
Nearly every soulslike runs on stamina. Get hit while your bar is empty and you cannot dodge out of it. Managing that meter is the line between living and dying.

3. Charging headfirst into a crowd
Peel enemies off one at a time. That’s the rule. Leaping into a mob and dying instantly is the most classic rookie mistake there is.

How to Break Through a Wall

Enjoy the fact that you can retry forever: A soulslike isn’t a game about dying, it’s a game about learning. Every death hands you information.

Rethink your gear and build: When you’re stuck, swap your equipment or your spell loadout. These games give you far more build room than you think.

Leave the hard boss for later: Elden Ring especially is open world, so if a fight is walling you, go clear a different region and come back a few levels stronger.

Final Word: 2026 Is the Richest Year the Genre Has Ever Had

If you’ve been avoiding soulslikes because they look too hard, you’re exactly the person who should try one. The rush of finally putting a boss down, the pleasure of picking apart a world’s buried lore, the moment your homebrew build finally clicks into place: no other genre delivers those feelings.

If you’re picking one game to play in 2026, I’d push you toward Nioh 3 without hesitation. An 86 on Metacritic and 93% on Steam make it the best-reviewed entry the series has ever had, and the “best in the series” chatter is backed by what’s actually on screen. If value matters most, grabbing Nine Sols (3,400 yen) and Nioh 2 (3,520 yen) together is an outrageous amount of game for the money.

If you want the big blockbuster, Black Myth: Wukong is still one of the defining spectacles of 2024. And if the FromSoftware name is what you trust, Elden Ring and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice are required reading. Then there’s the back half of 2026, with The Duskbloods and Phantom Blade Zero both waiting in the wings.

You’ll Love These If…

• You need to beat things on your own terms, no matter how long it takes
• You care more about combat depth than story in your RPGs
• You enjoy cryptic worldbuilding and digging into fan theories
• You’re a core gamer hunting for something you can sink dozens of hours into

You Might Want to Skip These If…

• Dying repeatedly stresses you out (there’s an adjustment period you have to push through)
• You want a clear narrative and a happy ending
• You prefer breezy games that keep moving
• You mainly play multiplayer or competitive games

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