Talking purely about Soulsvania not pure Souls game. I’ve played and loved Hollow Knight, Blashphemous and Salt and Sanctuary. What draws me to these games is the bestiary and the crazy monster designs, that’s what I love most and what makes me progress through the difficulty.
At the moment I’m playing GRIME and I love how unique and dark the universe is, with a lot of body horror elements throughout. What are other cool soulsvanias with great horror elements (ie. not Ori etc)?
While it’s very old school compared to others, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a lot of fun and was made by the same devs of older Castlevania titles. The monster design is very cool and you can get a different spell from each of them.
Also, did you know Bloodstained has a crossover with Blasphemous?
Yeah I’ve actually learned more about Bloodstained from crossovers (with Kingdom as well) than by looking into it :D
What I struggle with more with Bloodstained (and to a certain extent other games like Ender Lillies) is the JRPG/anime aesthetic but it’s still high on my list just cause I love games where you get the abilities of your enemies like in Aria of Sorrow (and GRIME)
It’s really not as anime as it looks. Only the human characters have an anime aesthetic, as soon as you get into the game it’s just full on Castlevania.