A deep dive into The Relic: First Guardian’s new gameplay trailer, its Soulslike and God of War influences, and why its 2026 launch could make it a defining late-generation PS5 action RPG.
Sony’s late-generation PS5 lineup is starting to take shape, and The Relic: First Guardian is quietly positioning itself as one of the most intriguing dark fantasy bets on the horizon. A new gameplay trailer accompanied the announcement of a May 26, 2026 release window, giving the clearest look yet at Project Cloud Games’ vision for a moody, combat-heavy action RPG.
On the surface, it slots neatly into the current wave of Soulslike-influenced titles. The camera sits tightly over the shoulder, enemies hit hard, and every encounter looks like it can go wrong fast. But the more you rewatch the trailer, the more it becomes clear that The Relic: First Guardian is not just another Souls clone for PS5. It borrows from FromSoftware’s design language, folds in some God of War style spectacle and storytelling framing, then twists the core combat rules in a way that could make it one of the most distinctive action RPGs of 2026.
A somber dark fantasy that puts you on the margins, not the throne
The trailer wastes no time setting the tone. The world is steeped in ash, fog, and ruins, but it is not just another anonymous apocalyptic wasteland. You are not a prophesied hero or fated monarch. Instead, The Relic: First Guardian casts you as a restorer of memories and keeper of stories, someone who walks a forgotten land to recover the final traces of those who once lived there.
This premise immediately distinguishes it from many Soulslikes, which often treat environmental storytelling as subtext rather than your explicit role in the world. Here, the act of play is directly tied to recovering and preserving histories, manifested as Relics that hold the memories, emotions, and last wishes of the dead. It is closer in framing to God of War’s more character-focused approach, where every ruin and side path has a story thread waiting to be pulled, but filtered through a far bleaker lens.
Visually, the trailer suggests a world that leans hard into melancholic beauty rather than pure grimdark. Crumbling castles loom over mist-shrouded lowlands. Fields of pale grass sway under a sky that seems permanently stuck at the edge of twilight. Boss arenas feel like shrines to forgotten tragedies, with massive, twisted creatures that look as much like cursed monuments as enemies. It is the kind of setting that begs for quiet moments between battles, even as the action itself stays front and center.
Combat that bends Soulslike rules without losing the tension
Most viewers will immediately spot the FromSoftware DNA in the combat footage. There are sweeping greatsword arcs, tight dodge windows, and punishing enemy strings that demand close attention. Yet hidden inside those familiar rhythms is one of The Relic: First Guardian’s boldest mechanical choices: stamina is reserved purely for survival.
Instead of tying both offense and defense to a single stamina bar, the game lets you attack freely while gating only your defensive actions behind stamina. Dodging, blocking, and other lifesaving moves consume that resource. This is a sharp break from traditional Soulslike design, and it could change the feel of every encounter. The tension no longer comes from choosing between swinging and saving enough stamina to roll. Instead, you are encouraged to stay aggressive, while still having to manage the precious ability to avoid death.
The other key twist shown in the trailer is how skills work. Many action RPGs, including Soulslikes and even God of War, rely on mana, rage, or other expendable resources to govern powerful abilities. In The Relic: First Guardian, skills do not cost mana or stamina at all. They are purely cooldown based. That means the focus shifts from hoarding resources for the perfect moment to reading fights well enough to cycle your abilities smartly whenever they are available.
If Project Cloud can tune these systems correctly, it could result in an action RPG that is as demanding as a Soulslike but less punishing when it comes to experimentation. New players get more room to learn without constantly watching a depleting bar every time they swing, while veterans will still find challenge in managing limited defensive options and timing high impact skills.
Five weapons, sixty skill trees, and buildcraft without grindy leveling
The trailer and accompanying breakdown outline a progression system that takes cues from modern character action games and deckbuilding RPGs. Right out of the gate, you are presented with five distinct weapon types. Each one has its own identity, animations, and combo routes, and each comes with an impressive twelve exclusive skill trees.
That means a total of sixty separate skill trees to explore, all tied to how you choose to fight. Instead of rolling multiple characters just to try different classes, The Relic: First Guardian wants you to dig deeply into your preferred weapon and sculpt a unique moveset around it. A heavy blade build might lean into wide, crowd controlling sweeps and super-armor trades, while a lighter weapon route could emphasize rapid repositioning, aerial juggles, or counters.
The game also discards traditional character leveling. There are no familiar stat sheets where you pump points into strength, dexterity, or vitality after each boss. Progression flows instead through Relics, which are the crystallized memories you recover as you explore. More than 70 different Relics provide unique passive effects, from subtle tweaks to transformative build-defining bonuses.
This structure hits a design sweet spot for a late-generation action RPG. It preserves the satisfaction of buildcraft and incremental power growth, but it decouples that from raw level grinding. Your character’s identity comes from your weapon choice and Relic combinations, not your soul level. That opens the door for more experimentation, more replayability, and potentially a stronger narrative connection between who you are mechanically and who you are in the story.
Seventy bosses and a world built for replayability
The Relic: First Guardian is not shy about its scale. Project Cloud is promising more than 70 bosses, a number that would be ambitious even for long-established studios. It suggests a campaign packed with varied encounters, but also a structure built with repeated runs and build testing in mind.
FromSoftware’s games have proven that players will happily revisit grueling content if the builds feel fresh and the fights remain fair. Here, every new Relic combination or weapon tree label you unlock potentially reframes how you approach a previously seen boss. One run might see you dismantling a towering giant through careful blocks and guarded counters, while another has you darting around it, exploiting cooldown-powered burst windows.
The trailer hints at a mix of humanoid duels and larger-than-life monstrosities, the kind of boss diversity that invites mechanical mastery rather than brute-force stat checks. If those 70 bosses are meaningfully distinct and embedded in memorable locations, The Relic: First Guardian could rival or even surpass some flagship titles in terms of encounter variety.
Soulslikes, God of War, and where The Relic: First Guardian fits on PS5
With its camera work and methodical combat, The Relic: First Guardian clearly speaks the same visual language as Dark Souls and Elden Ring. Fights are framed with a sense of weight and consequence, where even standard enemies can punish sloppy play. The atmosphere is drenched in the kind of quiet misery Souls fans expect, with item pickups and Relics acting as narrative breadcrumbs.
Yet the game’s emphasis on explicit memorialization and storykeeping, along with the more cinematic presentation of some boss clashes in the trailer, points to an influence from God of War as well. Enemy intros, tightly choreographed finishing moves, and a focus on single, emotionally loaded locations suggest that Project Cloud is chasing the intensity and emotional clarity of Sony’s biggest first party action titles, while wrapping it in more flexible and punishing combat systems.
This hybrid positioning could end up being a strength. Soulslike purists get the demanding combat and opaque worldbuilding they crave, but players who have come to the genre through God of War or other narrative heavy blockbusters will have a clearer emotional anchor in the protagonist’s role as memory keeper.
A 2026 launch as part of the PS5’s “second wave”
The 2026 release window might be one of The Relic: First Guardian’s biggest hidden advantages. By then, the PS5 hardware will be deeply mature, but the industry will not yet have fully shifted focus to next generation consoles. It is the sweet spot where smaller teams can punch above their weight by leveraging well-understood tools, late-generation optimization tricks, and an installed base hungry for fresh tentpole experiences.
If the footage shown so far is representative, The Relic: First Guardian is already taking advantage of that reality. The environments in the trailer show off dense detail, long draw distances, and strong lighting contrast that benefits heavily from the PS5’s power. Combat animations look fluid and responsive, particularly when chaining skills that trigger distinct visual flourishes. The promise of more than 70 bosses housed in an interconnected world hints at efficient streaming and asset reuse that should keep load times unobtrusive.
Releasing in May 2026 also positions the game away from typical holiday traffic, potentially turning it into a standout dark fantasy event for that spring. As bigger publishers juggle cross generational strategies and early next gen experiments, there is room for a focused, visually striking PS5 centric action RPG to seize attention and word of mouth.
For Sony’s console specifically, The Relic: First Guardian has the hallmarks of a next wave showcase title. It is not a first party game, but it is clearly being framed as a platform highlight for PS5, taking advantage of the hardware to deliver a densely atmospheric, mechanically demanding experience in the mold of recent fan favorites.
Why The Relic: First Guardian is worth watching
The market for dark fantasy action RPGs is crowded, and it is easy for new projects to blur together. The Relic: First Guardian cuts through that noise in a few important ways. Its stamina-for-survival-only system flips one of the genre’s most sacred rules, encouraging aggression without sacrificing difficulty. Its Relic driven, level free progression promises meaningful buildcraft without the baggage of grind. And its explicit focus on memory, loss, and preservation gives its world a thematic spine that could differentiate it from dozens of other ruinous kingdoms.
If Project Cloud Games can deliver on the promise of its trailer and hit its May 26, 2026 release target, The Relic: First Guardian may end up as one of the defining late generation experiences on PS5. It has the atmosphere to captivate Soulslike veterans, the spectacle to catch the eye of God of War fans, and the mechanical twists to carve out its own identity in a crowded field.
For now, The Relic: First Guardian is available to wishlist on the PlayStation Store. If you are looking ahead to what will keep your PS5 busy in 2026, this somber, Relic laden odyssey should be near the top of your watchlist.