Best Soulslike Metroidvania Games: Blasphemous & More

If you want the punishment of a soulslike wrapped around a Metroidvania map — bosses you learn by dying, a death that costs you something, and a world that folds back on itself — the best soulslike Metroidvania games are Blasphemous, Hollow Knight, Nine Sols, and Salt and Sanctuary. Below are the ten worth your time, including one upcoming game that runs the formula through time travel.

What makes the fusion work

A soulslike and a Metroidvania want different things from you, and the good hybrids get both at once. From the souls side comes the difficulty and its texture — bosses that are patterns to read rather than walls to grind, a penalty when you fall, and lore told through the world instead of handed to you. From the Metroidvania side comes the space: one connected place with locked routes that open as you earn new traversal, so exploration is its own reward.

The seam between them is where these games live. A pure soulslike is a corridor of arenas; a pure Metroidvania can let you stroll. Fuse them and every advance into new ground carries risk, every shortcut you unlock is relief you earned, and every boss is both a gate and a lesson. The list below is sorted roughly by how hard each one leans on the souls half, so pick by how much punishment you actually want. For the wider field, our best Metroidvania games roundup places these in context, and if the terms trip you up there's a plain-English what is a Metroidvania explainer.

Blasphemous

The one that defines the subgenre for most people. Blasphemous is a grotesque religious-horror Metroidvania rendered in dense pixel art, with execution animations you remember and a world — Cvstodia — soaked in guilt and penance. The first game gives you no dodge roll, which forces you to read spacing and commit to attacks instead of mashing roll-and-hit, and its bosses are the real test, each a pattern to study.

The map is a single connected place with routes gated behind relics and traversal, and the platforming gets genuinely cruel in the optional corners. If you've only heard the name, the Blasphemous story explained piece untangles its lore, and there's a full games like Blasphemous list once you've finished it. It's the anchor of this whole category.

Blasphemous 2

The refinement. Blasphemous 2 keeps the grotesque religious art and the tough bosses while loosening the combat — you get a dodge roll this time, plus three distinct weapon paths you switch between, each opening different traversal and combat options. That makes builds matter more and the moment-to-moment fights more flexible than the original's rigid spacing game.

It's the natural next step if the first game hooked you, and a slightly friendlier entry point if the original's stiffness put you off. The world is a touch less oppressive and the movement more forgiving, but the boss design and the dark tone carry straight over. Play the first for the rawer experience, this one for the sharper one.

Hollow Knight

The benchmark for the whole genre, and the one most people mean when they say "soulslike Metroidvania." Hollow Knight is a hand-drawn 2D Metroidvania set beneath a ruined kingdom of insects, and it's enormous — a connected world of branching paths, hidden areas, and bosses that range from fair to genuinely cruel. It carries the souls DNA quietly: you drop your currency on death and must return to recover it, and the story lives in the world rather than in cutscenes.

The combat is simpler than Blasphemous' on paper — a nail and a handful of spells — but the charm system reshapes how you fight, and the late-game challenges demand real mastery. It trades gore for melancholy, quieter and sadder than the rest of this list. If you want the exploration half turned all the way up, start here; is Hollow Knight worth it makes the fuller case.

Nine Sols

The one built around the parry. Nine Sols is a hand-drawn action-platformer with a deflection-based combat system lifted from Sekiro — you time a parry to break an enemy's poise, then punish, rather than rolling away and poking. It keeps the Metroidvania map and a dark, story-heavy world, this one a "Taopunk" blend of Eastern mythology and decayed sci-fi.

The combat focus is the difference. Where Blasphemous rewards spacing and patience, Nine Sols rewards reaction and rhythm, and its bosses are duels you learn beat by beat. It's one of the sharpest soulslike Metroidvanias of the last few years, and among the hardest here once the parry windows tighten. There's a separate games like Nine Sols list if that reactive, duel-heavy thread is the one you want to pull.

Salt and Sanctuary

2D Dark Souls, almost literally. Salt and Sanctuary takes the full souls structure — stats, classes, a skill tree, a bonfire equivalent you rest at and lose your "salt" when you die — and flattens it onto a 2D plane. The map is interconnected and brutal, the bosses are huge, and the build variety runs deeper than most games here, from heavy strength weapons to spellcasting.

It's older and rougher around the edges than Blasphemous, with a muddier art style, but the souls weight is the real draw — the careful advance through hostile space, the dread of losing a long run. If the punishment and the RPG systems are what you liked in the FromSoftware games, this is the purest translation of them into a Metroidvania on the list.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights

The gentler way in. Ender Lilies keeps the somber atmosphere and the Metroidvania map but eases off the punishment. You play a white priestess who can't swing a weapon herself — instead you purify fallen knights and summon their spirits to fight for you, building a roster of attacks as you go. The art is soft and mournful, the soundtrack one of the best in the genre, and the world unfolds at a kinder pace.

It's the most forgiving game on this list, which is the point. If the souls difficulty above wore you down but you still want the melancholy, the exploration, and the boss-driven structure, this scratches the same itch without the same bruises. It's also a strong first soulslike Metroidvania if the harder picks look intimidating.

Grime

The one with the strangest body. Grime is a soulslike Metroidvania set in a world of living stone and flesh, and your head is a collapsing black hole you use to absorb enemies — a parry mechanic that doubles as your leveling economy. Nail the timing to swallow an attack and you're both defending and gaining resources, which makes its combat a constant push toward aggression rather than caution.

The world is grotesque in a way that's closer to surrealist sculpture than Blasphemous' religious gore, and the traversal abilities you earn are genuinely inventive. The bosses are large, weird, and demanding, and the absorb mechanic rewards players who lean in rather than turtle. If you've cleared the obvious picks and want a soulslike Metroidvania that feels like nothing else, this is the one.

Death's Gambit: Afterlife

The overlooked one. Death's Gambit: Afterlife is a 2D soulslike Metroidvania where you play a servant of Death sent to end a plague of immortals, which means the bosses are creatures that refuse to stay dead. The Afterlife re-release expanded the world, added classes, and smoothed the combat, and it wears its Dark Souls influence proudly — stamina management, a healing item on a limited charge, and heavy, deliberate fights.

It leans harder on RPG builds than most here, with distinct classes that reshape how you approach both combat and traversal, and a hard mode for players who found the base game too kind. The map is a connected Metroidvania space with the usual ability-gated routes. It doesn't have the polish of Hollow Knight, but for souls fans who want more of that specific weight in 2D, it delivers.

The Last Faith

The one that chases Blasphemous most directly on look. The Last Faith is a gothic action-platformer Metroidvania that wears its influences openly — Bloodborne in the atmosphere, Castlevania in the map, Blasphemous in the gore and religious rot. You fight with brutal melee and a set of ranged firearms, and the world is dense with secrets, optional bosses, and bleak architecture.

It's a little less precise than Blasphemous in places — the combat can feel busier, the difficulty more uneven — but no other game here matches that specific aesthetic so closely. If the art and tone of Blasphemous are what kept you playing rather than the mechanics alone, this is the closest visual and tonal follow-up on the list.

Coming soon: KUTO: The Lock of Time

If what you want is the dark, punishing Metroidvania combat with a hook of its own, KUTO: The Lock of Time is worth following — and to be upfront, it's our own upcoming game, so weigh the recommendation with that in mind. It fits this list as a soulslike-flavored Metroidvania: side-on movement, a fast melee weapon, an interconnected world of branching layouts, and tough boss fights built to be learned. The one thing it does that the games above don't is run on a die-and-retry loop — death ends the run, not your progress, and you push back in knowing more. That makes it a run-based Metroidvania, not a roguelike.

The hook is time. You play Jokoan Kuto, an outcast from the Order of Time Guardians — the keepers tasked with holding the ages in order — who is betrayed by the gods, escapes death, and survives by merging with the titan Kronos. That bond arms him with the Scythe of Kronos, a fast physical weapon that stays in hand the whole run, and command over time itself: bullet-time, rewind, dash, and more. You carry two time powers at a time and choose which pair to bring before each run, then live with that decision until you die.

And the world moves through history rather than down one castle — ancient Egypt, the Viking age, a falling Rome, ancient Greece where Athena is a boss, the Old West, a neon cyber city, and the far future, each era its own battlefield with its own rules. Because it leans on the run loop as well as the map, it also turns up on our best roguelike Metroidvania games roundup, and if you're weighing the two genres against each other there's a roguelike vs Metroidvania breakdown.

KUTO: The Lock of Time is coming soon to Early Access on Steam for Windows. Add it to your wishlist on Steam to follow it.

Which one should you start with?

Start with Hollow Knight for the complete package, or Blasphemous if you want the punishment and the grotesque art up front. Want parry-driven duels? Nine Sols. Want the fullest RPG systems in 2D? Salt and Sanctuary. Want an easier way in? Ender Lilies. And if you're mapping the wider hybrid space, our games like Hollow Knight and Silksong list covers the next tier of exploration-first picks.