It isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, but I have fond memories of my Code Vein review because it helped me officially codify the kind of anime action RPG junk food that I find irresistible. See also: Crymachina. Code Vein isn’t a great game, but I liked it a lot, and I’m getting exactly the same vibes from the Steam Next Fest demo for AI Limit, an upcoming Soulslike action RPG set in a sci-fi post-apocalypse. The demo is on PS5, too.
By active players, AI Limit’s Steam demo is currently the most popular Soulslike in the whole event – I’m excluding Windblown, the new roguelike from the Dead Cells devs, because it’s not a Soulslike despite what Steam tags would say – and I can see why.
This is what I like to call Another One of These. From the red-and-gray tutorial enemies to the stat sheet to the soft-spoken female lead who wakes up in a puddle dressed mostly in rags, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been here before. Bonfire checkpoints in dungeons with double-back shortcuts, Estus flasks, experience lost on death, light attacks, heavy attacks, old robed men babbling mythological nonsense – I’ve heard this song before, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t hit every single time.
I’m being a bit mean to AI Limit, which could well blow my pants off hours into the full game, but the demo is overwhelmingly fine. It works! It’s a Soulslike and I like those so I like this. The art is nice, the dungeons are solid so far, the encounter design balances threatening and annoying pretty well, and enemy attacks are mostly well choreographed. The camera is a little jank, the English translation is a touch odd (you are a Blader eating Mud Balls), and the beginner weapons don’t combo as well as I’d like, but it’s all very playable and, dare I say, fun. It’s Another One of These!
There are some interesting twists here, at least. You only lose some of your experience on death, for example. There’s also no stamina bar as far as I can tell, and your movement speed seems fixed regardless of your weight. Bring on the big boy poise for big poise boys.
The most interesting bit takes a page from the Bloodborne chapter of the Great Souls Bible by encouraging aggression. Your special attacks and spells use a resource that’s generated by landing weapon attacks. This is lost when you take damage, so the game rewards careful assaults but invites you to keep hitting so you can hit harder. This resource is also used to power the game’s parry, which, at least in its base form, is extremely proactive – you want to hit dudes when they’re about to swing rather than right as those attacks connect.
I don’t have a great sense of the world or narrative yet, and there are plenty of gaps in my understanding of the combat, but there’s already enough here to keep me on the hook. It’s not that I love this demo – I like it – but I do love games like this. If you can’t get enough of these things either, AI Limit is due on PS5 and PC this year and feels like a solid – dare we dream, good – time so far.
Here are 10 games like Dark Souls for my fellow addicts.
