The top-ranked complaint in 12,327 Steam reviews of 30 recent souls-likes is that combat feels clunky: 261 reviewers across 26 of the 30 games. Combat is also what the same reviews praise most (3,575 reviewers, all 30 games), so combat is what this niche gets judged on, for better and for worse.
The first five places in the ranking are all about handling: clunky combat, shallow combat, the camera in boss fights, missing key rebinding, hitboxes. Difficulty only turns up at number six, and mostly from players past ten hours. The problem recent reviews hide is the runback: only 2.6% of reviewers raise it, yet it hurt 7 of the 10 older flawed hits we studied.
The sample: 12,327 reviews of 30 souls-like games released from 2026-03-21 to 2026-09-21, plus post-mortems of 10 flawed hits built from the 142 most helpful reviews of each. Counts are reviewers, not players. Every game in the data found an audience, so nothing here explains the souls-likes nobody noticed.
The ten complaints, ranked
The 30 games all carry the Souls-like tag inside their top 10 tags, reached 100 or more reviews, and cost $6.99 to $39.99 (median $19.99). Of 38 candidates, four joke or non-game titles and four $50-70 big-budget titles were left out. 11 of the 30 sit under 80% positive and 9 at 90% or higher.
An LLM read the most helpful negative reviews, positive reviews containing a “but”, and a sample of plain positive reviews for each game, and sorted every complaint, wish and piece of praise into fixed categories. Similar statements were grouped into themes: 64,677 extracted points in all.
The ranking score combines the share of games where a theme shows up, the share of all reviewers who raise it, and its severity, so a theme spread across many games can outrank a louder one from a single game.
| # | Complaint theme | Reviewers | Games (of 30) | Severity (of 5) | In positive reviews | Under 2h / over 10h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Combat feels clunky and unsatisfying | 261 | 26 | 3.3 | 38% | 34%/29% |
| 2 | Combat is basic and lacks depth | 236 | 26 | 3.3 | 37% | 26%/38% |
| 3 | The camera is problematic during boss fights | 269 | 19 | 3.4 | 45% | 17%/34% |
| 4 | Keybinds cannot be remapped on keyboard, mouse, or controller | 241 | 26 | 2.9 | 41% | 41%/21% |
| 5 | Hitboxes are inconsistent and problematic | 233 | 22 | 3.2 | 47% | 14%/53% |
| 6 | Difficulty balance | 186 | 25 | 3.4 | 47% | 6%/63% |
| 7 | Enemy and encounter design | 186 | 25 | 3.2 | 45% | 9%/60% |
| 8 | The game has numerous bugs | 198 | 23 | 3.1 | 52% | 14%/47% |
| 9 | Boss design | 147 | 27 | 3.2 | 49% | 8%/62% |
| 10 | Combat feel | 170 | 24 | 3.2 | 40% | 10%/52% |
The last two columns are the share of those reviewers who still recommended the game, and the share with under 2 and over 10 hours played. Rows with a short name (Difficulty balance, Boss design, Combat feel) collect statements that did not group into one repeated sentence, so they are broader.
A caveat on two rows. The boss-fight camera theme has the most reviewers in the table, but 64% of them come from one game. Rebinding is similar, at 63% from one game. Both still appear in 19 and 26 games, which is why they rank.
Just outside the ten: the camera in general (218 reviewers, 21 games), progression and grind (178, 23 games) and a game that is very short (167, 22 games).
Combat: clunky, shallow, and hitboxes nobody trusts
Combat feel is the most praised category in the data and the most complained about: 3,575 reviewers praise it and 2,182 complain, which is 17.7% of all reviewers. Four of the ten themes above belong to it, and the clunky-combat theme is evenly spread, with no single game above 13% of it.
“Combat is VERY clunky, tracking is almost nonexistent while locking on” (Kristala, not recommended, 21.9 hours played)
Depth comes second, and 37% of those reviewers still recommend the game.
“the combat is mediocre at best” (Dinoblade, recommended, 1.1 hours played)
Hitboxes are the complaint of people who stayed. 53% of the reviewers raising them had played more than 10 hours, against 14% under 2, and 47% recommend the game anyway. One Dinoblade reviewer, recommending after 6.2 hours: “Hitboxes are very often dodgy both in and out of your favour”.
Parrying cuts both ways. “Parrying is satisfying and mechanically rewarding” is one of the biggest praise themes in the data (325 reviewers across 16 games). “Parry timing feels inconsistent and unreliable” comes from 193 reviewers across 15 games. A parry only sells the game when a correctly timed one always registers.
The flawed-hit post-mortems agree. Combat that does not feel fair or reliable showed up in 8 of the 10, the most common failure in that study. Enotria: The Last Song had a generous parry and a different problem. One of its reviewers: “combat and build variety falls apart as the game forces you into parrying everything 10x or more”.
The study’s check: debug-draw your hitboxes over recordings of every enemy and boss attack, including hitboxes that linger after a swing.
The first two hours: camera, controls and rebinding
Steam refunds a game bought within two weeks and played for less than two hours. Complaints from reviewers under 2 hours can cost you the sale itself, and they differ from what players say past 10 hours.
Controls and input make up 14% of complaints from reviewers under 2 hours and 5% past 10 hours. Combat feel is 13% against 8%, performance 7% against 4%. It flips for difficulty balance (5% against 11%), build variety (2% against 6%) and boss design (1% against 4%).
Rebinding is the clearest bounce theme in the top ten: 41% of the reviewers raising it had under 2 hours played. Its severity is the lowest in the table (2.9), and unlike most of the list it is a bounded engineering task.
“No rebinding of keys.” (Crimson Moon, not recommended, 4.3 hours played)
The camera gets the same treatment. Another Crimson Moon reviewer, not recommending after 4.3 hours: “Camera control is a mini-game in and of itself”.
Controls, camera and missing basics were a failure in 3 of the 10 flawed hits: Dark Devotion, Bleak Faith: Forsaken and Crimson Moon. Dark Devotion shipped without rebinding, pause or options. One of its reviewers: “Not rebindable in any way, shape, or form.”
The study’s camera test: fight every large or fast enemy next to a wall and in a corridor, locked on and unlocked. For the rest of the first session it keeps coming back to a blind playtest. The playtest or demo tool helps you pick between a closed playtest and a public demo.
The souls-like label is a promise your store page makes
Complaints that a game does not live up to the souls-like label are rare (2.6% of reviewers) but among the most severe in the data, 3.7 of 5, and they appear in 28 of the 30 games. The theme “labeled as souls-like but plays more like a roguelike” shows up across 11.
The checklist frames it as a choice: deliver the core (deliberate stamina combat, exploration, a death that costs something), or have the store page say what the game is instead.
Playtime claims get checked too. One Enotria reviewer “finished the game in 22 hours after leaving it open for a full night”, against the 40-plus hours several reviewers say was advertised. And 48% of the analysed reviews are not in English, with localisation complaints in 29 of 30 games, so localise properly for the languages you sell in. Run your page through the analyzer to check it describes the game you are building.
Difficulty, bosses and enemy variety belong to the players who stayed
Difficulty is the second biggest complaint category: 17.6% of reviewers, severity 3.5. It is a veteran’s complaint. 63% of the reviewers raising difficulty balance had more than 10 hours played and only 6% had under 2.
Nearly half of them (47%) recommend the game they are criticising, and what they object to is specific: a spike after the first two bosses (65 reviewers, 17 games), uneven boss difficulty (22 games), excessive boss health (14), late-game enemy and projectile spam (12) and overwhelming groups (11).
“some of the attacks feel like they were made just for the sake of being difficult” (Dinoblade, recommended, 7.2 hours played)
Bosses are argued about most in the best games. Boss design is 7.8% of complaints in strongly rated games against 1.7% in weak ones, and it has the highest praise severity among the twelve most praised categories (3.6 of 5, 1,165 reviewers).
“Enemy variety is very limited” is the biggest enemy theme: 191 reviewers across 21 games, no game above 20% of it. In the flawed hits, few enemy types used as ganks hurt 6 of 10, and unfair, broken or spongy bosses 6 of 10. A Mortal Shell reviewer describes “the same handful of enemies that have limited movesets”. A NECROPOLIS reviewer: “The final boss consisted of 25 minutes of hitting and rezing.”
The check: record ten attempts per boss from players who have not seen it. Every death should have a nameable cause.
Runbacks: the complaint recent reviews hide
Runback and checkpoint complaints come from only 2.6% of reviewers in the 6-month sample. That low number is an artifact of timing: these are launch-window reviews, and players who quit early never reach the long runback.
In the older games, “The way back is a punishment” was a failure in 7 of the 10 flawed hits, behind only unreliable combat: long boss runbacks, scarce checkpoints, fast travel that is rationed or locked to a single point, slow ladders and elevators.
“atrocious boss runs, what an awful and frustrating decision” (Ashen)
“I’d wager at least 20% of my playtime was spent climbing up or down ladders.” (Bleak Faith: Forsaken)
The recent sample has traces of it: “Boss runbacks are excessively long and tedious” appears across 8 games, too few checkpoints across 7, and fast travel is a wish across 10. The study’s working guide is a run back to any boss of under a minute, without a gauntlet of respawned enemies. Time it from the nearest checkpoint to every boss door.
Navigation is the neighbouring problem. An uninformative map draws 166 reviewers across 20 games and no map at all 123 across 12. Samey, maze-like levels were a failure in 5 of the 10 flawed hits.
Bugs, crashes and the 1.0 that was not finished
Bugs are raised by 12.7% of reviewers and appear in all 30 games. They make up 8.5% of complaints in weakly rated games against 5.2% in strong ones. Of the 198 reviewers behind “The game has numerous bugs”, 52% still recommend the game. Crashes are forgiven less often: 128 reviewers across 19 games, severity 3.9, only 38% inside positive reviews.
Performance is the clearest separator in the sample for single-player games: 7.1% of weak games’ complaints against 2.8% in strong ones. In a genre built on timing, a dropped frame is a gameplay bug. Save problems are rare (1.1% of reviewers) and carry the joint-highest severity of any complaint category, 3.8 of 5.
Seven of the 10 flawed hits had bugs, soft-locks, crashes or an unfinished release.
“THIS GAME SHOULD BE LABELED AS EARLY ACCESS.” (Bleak Faith: Forsaken)
“It’s pretty easy to get soft-locked in this game one way or another.” (Enotria: The Last Song)
In the recent sample, “feels like unfinished early access” is a theme across 7 games. Steam has a label for a build that is not done: Early Access tells buyers a product should be considered unfinished. Whether it fits your game is a separate call, covered in our Early Access strategy guide.
The six ways a souls-like becomes a flawed hit
A flawed hit has 500 or more reviews and a 40-79% positive score, the Mixed and Mostly Positive range on Steam’s review labels. The hook worked, since people bought the game, and the execution let them down.
The ten studied are small and mid-team games at $19.99-39.99 from 2016 to 2026, all named in the table below. All ten were praised for art direction and atmosphere, even by people who did not recommend them. None of that saved them.
The “n of 10” figures are judgments counted by hand from ten post-mortems, not review counts. The game-by-game write-up is on the flawed hits study page.
The checklist names six combinations, each matching at least one documented game.
| Pattern | What fails together | Looks like |
|---|---|---|
| The beautiful maze | Players cannot find their way, checkpoints and fast travel are scarce, boss runbacks are long | Mortal Shell, Hellpoint, Bleak Faith, Nostalgaia |
| The hybrid that halves both genres | Not designed as one game, structure not funded with content, too few weapon classes | NECROPOLIS, Dark Devotion, Salt and Sacrifice, Crimson Moon |
| The 1.0 that was not done | Soft-locks and crashes, a 1.0 that was really early access, untested bosses | Bleak Faith, Enotria, Crimson Moon |
| Hard, but not fair | Hitboxes off, defence unreliable, unfair encounters or bosses | Mortal Shell, Ashen, Enotria, Nostalgaia |
| Co-op first, broken alone or online | Unstable sessions, a reconnect that loses the run, poor solo play | Ashen, Crimson Moon, NECROPOLIS |
| The sequel that shrank | Less freedom than the first game, too few weapon classes | Salt and Sacrifice |
If a roguelike or extraction loop is in your pitch, read the hybrid row twice. A genre mash-up that fights itself was a failure in 4 of the 10, and such a loop needs several times the rooms, enemies, weapons and bosses of a linear game of the same length. One NECROPOLIS reviewer posted their time: “Final run time: 1:34:49, and that is hours:minutes:seconds.”
You can check your own souls-like against these findings in about five minutes. It is free, and every risk it returns comes with the counts and quotes behind it.
What players ask for
Wishes mostly arrive inside positive reviews, in the “great, but I wish” form. They are differentiators, not base requirements. The top-ranked wish themes are difficulty balance (59 reviewers, 18 games), a map (84, 14 games), build variety (69, 23 games), combat feel (50, 22 games) and interface and menus (66, 22 games).
The map is the single biggest specific wish, 88% of it inside positive reviews, and a minimap is asked for in 12 games.
“Where’s the map????” (Mina the Hollower, recommended, 5.5 hours played)
Counted as whole categories, interface and menus is by far the top wish category (466 reviewers, 29 games) and build variety is second (270 reviewers, 29 games). The recurring specific asks, by number of games:
- Difficulty options in both directions: 13. Fast travel: 10. New Game Plus: 7.
- Cosmetic character customisation: 12.
- A parry where there is none: 12. Deeper combat mechanics: 9.
- More weapon types: 11. Co-op: 9.
Originality is the fourth most praised category (1,769 reviewers, all 30 games) and rarely a complaint (1.7%). This audience rewards a twist and does not punish the borrowed base. Every one of the ten flawed hits sold on one clear idea.
The post-mortems also list hooks that sold and, going by those reviews, are still not delivered well: the co-op souls-like that works solo too, the souls-like roguelike with enough content, the culturally specific setting, and the small interconnected world that respects the player’s time.
What this data cannot tell you
- It is 30 recent games plus 10 older ones. Only part of the 382-game souls-like watchlist has been crawled, and percentages will move as more is.
- The tag is broad. 3D souls-likes, 2D “soulsvanias”, boss rushes, roguelite hybrids and one extraction PvPvE game share the sample, so a finding about platforming or maps may not apply to you.
- Big-budget games were left out on purpose. Their influence shows only in what reviewers compare small games to.
- Launch-window reviews skew early. They over-represent controls, performance and bugs, and under-represent runbacks, late-game balance and endings. The flawed hits cover that gap with judgments, not counts.
- Reviewers are not all players. They skew engaged and opinionated, so trust ranks more than absolute percentages.
- Survivorship. Of 2,459 relevant games under this tag, 382 reached 100 reviews. Avoiding every complaint here does not get a game noticed.
Check your own build against the list
Four things to do this week:
- Hand the build to someone who has never played it and watch the first three fights. Ask whether attacking, dodging and blocking felt reliable.
- Ship full rebinding for keyboard, mouse and controller.
- Time every boss runback and debug-draw every hitbox.
- Run the souls-like readiness check. It is built on the 57-item checklist this post draws on, 19 of them marked Critical. Other genres are on the Genre Readiness Check hub.
A full PDF genre report built from the same research is sold from the souls-like genre page.
Frequently asked questions
What do players hate most in souls-likes? In 12,327 Steam reviews of 30 souls-like games released from 2026-03-21 to 2026-09-21, the top-ranked complaint theme is that combat feels clunky and unsatisfying: 261 reviewers across 26 of the 30 games. Next come combat that lacks depth (236 reviewers, 26 games), the camera during boss fights (269 reviewers, 19 games, with 64% from one game), keybinds that cannot be remapped (241 reviewers, 26 games, with 63% from one game) and inconsistent hitboxes (233 reviewers, 22 games). Counts are reviewers, not players.
Do souls-like players complain that the games are too hard? Difficulty is the second biggest complaint category at 17.6% of reviewers, but it comes from invested players: 63% of the reviewers raising difficulty balance had more than 10 hours played, and 47% of them recommend the game. The specific objections are spikes after the first two bosses, uneven boss difficulty, excessive boss health and late-game enemy spam. The post-mortems of 10 flawed hits reach the same reading: players accept a hard game and reject one that wastes their time or does not read their inputs.
What are the most common souls-like game design mistakes? Across 10 flawed-hit souls-likes, the failures seen most often were combat that does not feel fair or reliable (8 of 10), a punishing way back after death (7 of 10), thin weapon and build variety (7 of 10), and bugs or an unfinished release (7 of 10). Those frequencies are judgments counted by hand from ten post-mortems, not review counts.
Why do recent reviews barely mention boss runbacks? Runback and checkpoint complaints come from only 2.6% of reviewers in the 6-month sample because launch-window reviews are written early, and players who quit early never reach the long runback. In the 10 older flawed hits, the way back after death was a failure in 7.
Is there a souls-like game design checklist? Yes. The free souls-like readiness check on Steam Page Analyzer is built from the same data: a 57-item checklist, 19 items marked Critical, each tied to review counts and quotes. It takes about five minutes.
Where do these numbers come from? A structured extraction of 12,327 Steam reviews (64,677 extracted points) from 30 games tagged Souls-like within their top 10 tags, released 2026-03-21 to 2026-09-21, each with 100 or more reviews, priced $6.99 to $39.99. It is supplemented by post-mortems of 10 flawed hits with 500 or more reviews and a 40-79% positive score, using the 142 most helpful reviews of each. Every game in the data found an audience, so it says nothing about games that never got noticed.