12 Games Like Nine Sols Ranked by How Hard Their Parry Is

Nine Sols’ perfect parry window sits at 133 milliseconds — about 8 frames at 60fps. Sekiro’s, the game Red Candle directly cited as the combat inspiration, is roughly 200ms. That means Nine Sols is actually the tighter game. Anyone who cleared Yi/Li and Eigong on reflex has developed parry skills that most Sekiro players never needed to reach.

Finding something that genuinely challenges that skill is harder than it sounds. This list ranks 12 games by how demanding their parry systems actually are, from the most accessible window to the most punishing. Timing data is cited where it exists; documented player consensus fills the gaps. Not every entry is a strict metroidvania — a few are soulslikes or action games — but all share Nine Sols’ core loop: read the attack, deflect at the right moment, punish the opening.

For a broader pick, the Best Metroidvania Games 2026 and Best Soulslike Games 2026 guides cover the wider field. If you want to understand Nine Sols’ own parry mechanics in depth, the parry timing guide breaks down Qi charging and talisman detonation. This list is for players who want the deflect-and-punish rhythm and need to know exactly where to take it next.

How This List Is Ranked

Parry difficulty is assessed on three factors: the size of the input window (ms/frames where available), the severity of punishment for a failed parry, and the consistency of enemy attack telegraphs. A narrow window with clear tells can feel easier than a wider window with unpredictable timing changes — both factors count.

Verified against game versions current as of May 2026. Parry windows noted at 60fps. Games with difficulty settings have been assessed at default or recommended difficulty unless stated otherwise.

#1: Hollow Knight — Parry Difficulty 1/10

Hollow Knight doesn’t have a parry mechanic in the Nine Sols sense. There’s no deflect window, no posture system, no timed counter — the Nail Arts (Cyclone Slash, Dash Slash, Great Slash) are proactive attacks, not reactive deflects. The Dream Shield charm blocks projectiles automatically, but timing is not involved. Combat difficulty comes from pattern reading and positioning, not execution timing.

The reason Nine Sols fans should play it anyway: nothing in the genre matches Hollow Knight’s atmosphere and interconnected map design. Team Cherry built a world with more hidden depth per square metre than almost any metroidvania before or since. If the parry was the stressful part of Nine Sols and you want a recovery game, Hollow Knight is it — the same skill for reading enemy timing translates directly, with none of the execution pressure.

#2: Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist — Parry Difficulty 3/10

The January 2025 follow-up to Ender Lilies was designed for players who want metroidvania depth without punishment parrying. Parry windows are generous by genre standards, enemy attack telegraphs are clear and consistent, and difficulty settings can be adjusted mid-run. You’re not required to build around parry — many players complete the game relying on dodges and projectile builds.

What transfers from Nine Sols is the melancholic atmosphere and the world structure. Lilac navigates an interconnected steampunk-dark-fantasy map with ability-gated backtracking that rivals Hollow Knight in complexity. Boss fights have telegraphed multi-phase patterns that reward the same read-and-react discipline Nine Sols builds. Described by multiple reviewers as a metroidvania masterpiece on launch, it’s the most polished new entry in the genre since Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

#3: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown — Parry Difficulty 3/10

The parry window here sits around 300ms — more than twice as wide as Nine Sols’ 133ms — and you can hold the button down before an attack lands rather than timing a precise press. A successful parry stuns the enemy and opens a Vengeful Counter dealing bonus damage. Difficulty settings widen the window further if needed. It’s the most accessible parry on this list that still rewards precision.

Ubisoft Montpellier’s 2024 reboot earned an 86 on Metacritic by combining that accessible parry with traversal puzzles built around Sargon’s Dimensional Claw ability — genuinely inventive mechanics inside a genre-faithful structure. For Nine Sols veterans wanting to move laterally into a game that rewards the same attack-reading skills without demanding the same execution, this is the natural first stop.

#4: Dead Cells — Parry Difficulty 5/10

The parry window in Dead Cells is moderate on its own. What makes it demanding is the roguelite structure: a missed parry that leads to death resets your entire run. The Assault Shield and Symmetrical Lance build Dead Cells into a deflection puzzle similar to Nine Sols — read the attack, time the parry, punish the stun. The difference is that every failure erases progress instead of sending you to a bonfire.

Players who loved Nine Sols’ unforgiving philosophy will find Dead Cells scratches the same nerve. Players who found Nine Sols’ checkpointing too sparse may struggle with losing a strong run to a parry mistake in the fifth biome. The upside: enemies use consistent attack animations within each area, so the same read-and-parry loop that works in a given room will work every time you see it again.

#5: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Parry Difficulty 5–8/10

The 2025 French turn-based RPG looks nothing like Nine Sols but demands the exact same neural response. On the enemy’s turn, watch for the attack’s hitbox to reach your character, then press the parry button at contact — no generous buffer, no pre-empting the swing. PC Gamer grouped it alongside Sekiro and Nine Sols as part of the same parry-satisfaction design family. The comparison holds.

Difficulty is genuinely variable here. Story mode received a patch expanding parry and dodge windows by 40%, making it accessible to players still learning the system. Hard mode removes that buffer and pushes the timing close to Nine Sols territory. The Sandfall Interactive-developed world — a Belle Époque-inspired apocalypse where painters create monsters — is the most ambitious narrative on this list. The parry is the skill bridge; the story is the reason to finish it.

#6: Blasphemous 2 — Parry Difficulty 6/10

Blasphemous 2’s parry difficulty depends on which weapon you use. Ruego Al Alba (broadsword) has a reliable parry counter that feels closest to Nine Sols’ deflect rhythm. Sarmiento & Centella (rapier/dagger) triggers a lightning riposte dash on parry — higher skill ceiling, higher reward. Veredicto (heavy flail) has no parry access at all. Your build choice dictates how parry-dependent the game becomes.

The key difference from Nine Sols: there are no invincibility frames after taking a hit. A failed parry can juggle you into a corner and chain into two or three additional hits before you recover. The punishment for a wrong read is steeper here than in most games on this list. Named the best Metroidvania of 2023 by multiple outlets, Blasphemous 2 rewards the same pattern-read discipline Nine Sols demands — but charges a higher price for lapses.

#7: Sifu — Parry Difficulty 6/10

Sifu is not a metroidvania, but it’s the closest match to Nine Sols’ demand for pure parry mastery as a standalone skill. Every encounter runs on the Structure bar: absorb hits and your stance eventually breaks, leaving you exposed. Land consistent parries and you break enemy structure instead. The mechanic directly mirrors Nine Sols’ Qi-charging loop — parry correctly, punish heavily.

The complication is that Sifu’s timing window varies per enemy type and attack speed with no fixed frame window. Successful parries have minimal visual feedback — a weak flash at the point of impact, no distinct audio cue. You learn through failure rather than through clear tells. There’s also no metroidvania map or checkpoint system: failing a late run means replaying substantial content. For players who cleared Nine Sols’ hardest sections without difficulty assists, Sifu is the natural destination for pure execution depth.

#8: Stellar Blade — Parry Difficulty 7/10

Shift Up’s 2024 action game sits at a specific intersection: the parry window is reasonably forgiving in isolation, but the game’s emphasis on boss combo strings means a wrong read at the wrong moment can end fights instantly. EVE’s Perfect Deflect negates all incoming damage and generates Burst Energy for powerful follow-up attacks — the reward structure is directly analogous to Nine Sols’ talisman explosion after a charged parry chain.

Stellar Blade is not a metroidvania — its world is semi-open rather than labyrinthine. But the combat DNA is identical: learn the boss’s attack language, deflect at the correct moment, punish the stagger window. Players who cleared Nine Sols’ late bosses without relying on Jade loadout optimization will handle Stellar Blade’s hardest fights cleanly. The game also supports a dodge-heavy playstyle for players who want the world without the execution ceiling.

#9: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice — Parry Difficulty 8/10

Nine Sols is, in large part, a love letter to Sekiro. Red Candle Games cited it directly as the combat inspiration — the perfect parry charges your primary damage resource, enemies have a posture equivalent that breaks under sustained deflection pressure, and no amount of stat investment bypasses the execution requirement.

The counterintuitive finding for Nine Sols players: Sekiro’s parry window is roughly 200ms (around 12 active frames at 60fps), wider than Nine Sols’ 133ms. But the difficulty doesn’t come from the window size — it comes from the posture system creating compounding pressure, from bosses like Isshin and Genichiro who vary attack timing mid-chain, and from a late game that assumes absolute parry fluency. Nine Sols veterans will find the individual timing reads more forgiving than expected; the posture-management chess game provides the challenge instead.

#10: Metroid Dread — Parry Difficulty 8/10

Metroid Dread buries one of the tightest parry encounters in any Nintendo game inside an unavoidable threat. When an E.M.M.I. corners Samus, two counter windows appear — one as it grabs, one before the kill — both extremely narrow. The specific timing changes between encounters: the same E.M.M.I. can shift its attack animation window between attempts, making memorized timing unreliable. Success frees Samus; failure is instant death.

The standard melee counter outside E.M.M.I. zones applies similar tight timing to regular enemies — less lethal, but unforgiving enough that Nine Sols players will find it familiar. The metroidvania structure is among the most refined in the genre: Nintendo locked Samus behind more abilities and environmental gating than any prior Metroid, and the map design rewards the same thorough exploration Nine Sols encourages. The parry is familiar; everything around it justifies the playthrough.

#11: Nioh 2 — Parry Difficulty 9/10

Team Ninja’s Ki Pulse system functions as a parry analog: press the attack button at the precise moment of receiving an enemy hit to restore Stamina and enable damaging follow-ups. The catch is that the timing window varies by weapon — fast katanas pulse differently than heavy axes, meaning mastering one build doesn’t fully carry to another. The result is a parry system with layers that take tens of hours to access fully.

The satisfaction ceiling is the highest on this list outside of Lies of P. Landing a Ki Pulse mid-boss combo, transitioning into a Burst Counter on a charged attack, and breaking the boss’s Ki bar produces combat flow that rivals Nine Sols at its peak. Unlike Nine Sols, the structure is mission-based — no interconnected metroidvania map. Players chasing the parry experience specifically will find the combat depth more than compensates for the different world design.

#12: Lies of P — Parry Difficulty 10/10

Lies of P matches Nine Sols’ 133ms parry window (~8 frames at 60fps), making it the hardest pure parry game on this list. The critical distinction from every other entry: you must hold the parry button, not tap it. Tapping gives approximately a quarter of the full window — around 2 frames instead of 8. Players who approached Lies of P as a tap-parry game found it notoriously unresponsive; those who switched to held input found the window matched what the combat design implies. It is the single most impactful mechanical insight the game withholds from new players.

The Pinocchio-inspired world runs on Neowiz’s interpretation of FromSoftware systems: interconnected hub areas, weapon assembly from parts, stat builds. The parry loop — stagger an enemy’s Fury Attack by deflecting it, punish the open window — is the same deflect-and-explode rhythm Nine Sols uses, compressed into the genre’s tightest execution demand. If Nine Sols felt like the hardest parry game you’d played, Lies of P is the response.

Which Game Should You Play First?

• New to parry games: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The window is generous, the feedback is clear, the game is excellent.
• Nine Sols veteran who wants harder: Lies of P — hold the parry button. Then Nioh 2 for layered depth.
• Want the Sekiro original: Nine Sols players will find the window more forgiving than expected. The posture system provides the challenge instead.
• Need a break from execution pressure: Hollow Knight or Ender Magnolia. Both reward the pattern-reading Nine Sols builds without punishing timing lapses.
• Want the best narrative alongside parry: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on story mode to learn, then raise the difficulty for the real test.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Nine Sols harder than Sekiro?

In terms of raw parry timing, yes. Nine Sols’ window is approximately 133ms versus Sekiro’s ~200ms. That makes individual parry inputs tighter in Nine Sols. Sekiro’s overall difficulty, however, comes from the posture system and boss design rather than the window size — many players find Sekiro’s late game harder despite the more generous timing.

Do you need to finish Nine Sols before playing these games?

No, though completing Nine Sols gives you a precise benchmark for where your parry timing sits. Players who cleared the final boss without difficulty modifiers have demonstrated the execution level needed for Sekiro, Metroid Dread, and most of the upper half of this list. Players who used the game’s Jade-adjustment system extensively may want to start at #3 or #4 and work up.

Which game on this list is most like Nine Sols in setting and tone?

Sekiro is the closest combat match. For aesthetic tone — the hand-drawn 2D art, the Tao-punk mythology, the isolated world — nothing maps directly. Blasphemous 2 comes closest in terms of dark atmosphere and world density, though its Catholic imagery is stylistically opposite to Nine Sols’ Taoist cosmology.

Sources

• Nine Sols parry system — Nine Sols Complete Guide — Switchblade Gaming
• Lies of P parry frame data and hold mechanic — GameFAQs community analysis
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown parry guide — TheGamer
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 patch notes — GamingBolt
• Blasphemous 2 review — Digital Trends
• Ender Magnolia review — Final Weapon
• Metroid Dread EMMI counter guide — Game8
• Sifu parry and deflect guide — Game Rant
• Best Metroidvania Games 2026 — Switchblade Gaming

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.