Remnant is pretty much THE non-melee soulslike. You might find some small indie games in that genre, but there aren't any I can think of.
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
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FWIW you can play completely ranged in the the Dark Souls games. DS2 has binoculars which let you treat it like a FPS with spells if you so choose. It's a lot of fun imo. Bows are also viable.
Unfortunately I don't know of anything else like that besides Remnant.
Bows are also viable.
Do not fall for this, OP
They absolutely can be. Ofc for ranged sorcery/pyromancy/miracles/incantation are way better but you can absolutely deal good damage with bows
Don't fall for this one either
Have you ever genuinely tried it yourself?
Yeah! Some of my favorite builds involve bows. However, I think suggesting Dark Souls to someone who hates melee and enjoyed Remnant is a trap. Bow gameplay in Souls games is highly janky and bow-only is primarily done as a challenge run. I'd never suggest that to a first-timer to the series, but that's just me :)
That's a more fair explanation than just saying "don't fall for this bait" which makes it sound like bows are useless.
I did say in a separate comment that doing some bosses as bow only is a bit janky.
Edit: But I did a bow only run on Elden Ring as a challenge run and was surprised how easy it was most of the time. Was only a few bosses that felt janky.
DSIII/ER magic feels like
That completely depends on what spells you use though, there's a good amount of quicker ones
shoutout to demon's souls for its cracked out magic system, it goes hard lmao
check out monster hunter (world/rise/wilds) and hop on bow, light bowgun, or heavy bowgun. expect a steep learning curve, but it shouldn't be bad if you're used to soulslikes, monhun is just precious with iframes, so it's a lot tighter to iframes through moves than it is in a typical souls/like
if you pick it up and end up needing a hand, hit me up! always happy to teach people how to hunt
MH isn't really a soulslike. Lethal combat where you need to learn the boss and stamina dodge roll sure but that's the extent of it.
It's all boss fights all the time, and the difficulty is more about repeating hunts to get better rather than to be able to do it at all.
Great series though and will probably be appreciated by a souls fan.
The first time I completed Elden Ring was a mage build. There are also archer builds if you're more into that.
There really is just Remnant unless you wanna use ranged weapons in the Fromsoft offerings.
Returnal is an awesome experience
I know another Crabs treasure has a gun mode in it on the options menue. Granted, it's not how the game is meant to be played
I didn't enjoy melee combat either when I started Elden Ring (my first souls game I got properly into, have played a lot of the others as well after). You can absolutely play ER and the other dark souls + demon souls ranged with the different magic types.
You can also deal good damage with bows (at least in ER) but it might feel a bit more janky to do bow only boss fights.
Flintlock
Bloodborne
Returnal
I enjoyed Code Vein and that has a rifle as a weapon option.
Not a Souls-Like but perhaps something more like Division 2 (looter shooter) or Chernobylite (Rogue like) might be interesting?