2017 has already seen excellent games like Resident Evil 7 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but another unexpected title has managed to quickly crawl up my “best of” list. The Surge, the latest game from Lords of the Fallen developer Deck13 is, at first glance, a Dark Souls knock-off that swaps Miyazaki’s dark fantasy setting for industrial science-fiction, but this isn’t a simple attempt to cash in on the popularity of the genre. The Surge’s level of prowess in both its combat and level design shows that its developers understand what makes the Souls games so great, and how the formula can be tweaked. After just a few hours, it’s already satisfying my action role-playing itch in a big way.

From the very beginning, The Surge is relentless in its commitment to kill you, but it does so while simultaneously teaching you the strategies that will become crucial in later fights. The first enemies that protagonist Warren encounters are small, fragile drones and humans that use slow weapons that can easily be avoided if timed properly. Much like the Souls games and Bloodborne in particular, the difficulty quickly ramps up, forcing you to learn every advanced tricks on the fly – simply going into fights with relentless attacks will get you killed, and before you have a chance to be embarrassed on later bosses, The Surge trains you to approach each fight with caution. Just why everyone has decided to attack Warren at his new workplace, the CREO corporation, isn’t made clear, and this uncertainty makes the human enemies’ guttural shrieks even more terrifying.

Deck13 understands that the weighty, tactical combat of the Souls series is a large part of what makes it great, but the studio wasn’t content to simply copy and paste it. The majority of enemies you encounter can have specific body parts targeted during a fight, allowing you to eventually slice them off with a brutal finishing move. These typically net extra weapons or broken gear that can be repaired and then equipped, and rushing to damage an enemy enough to perform a finishing move helps to change the pacing of the combat enough to separate The Surge from its influences. It’s through this limb-severing system that The Surge also refines the Souls’ gear system to something far less annoying. Instead of searching for “Titanite shards” or other hidden collectibles in order to improve the damage on a weapon or armor statistics on gear, the resources required to upgrade are regularly found by fighting standard enemies. Need a certain item to improve your leg armor? Just start targeting enemies’ legs and play the game as you normally would, and you’ll eventually acquire what you need.

There are, however, a number of Dark Souls mechanics and features that have been lifted wholesale, but they still manage to feel right at home in The Surge. “Souls” have been replaced with “tech scrap,” which you drop upon death and must reclaim in a limited amount of time before it’s lost forever – the time limit itself was also present in Lords of the Fallen. Because enemy’s routes largely stay the same each time you respawn or reset their locations by using a medical bay – the game’s equivalent to bonfires – long runs almost turn into dances, with you gradually learning exactly when to attack, when to dodge, and when to just take off running. When you eventually unlock a new location, the new enemies will quickly kill you, and it’s time to learn a new dance.

When it comes time to duke it out with a boss in The Surge, the game falls noticeably short of From Software’s work. I’ve encountered two thus far – both at the tail-end of a particular location – and they look remarkably similar. With large, spider-like limbs and powerful stomping attacks, the bosses are tougher than nearly every other enemy in the game, but their weaknesses are frustratingly obtuse. After inevitably dying and making a “boss run” to fight again, it’s nice to feel like you’re making progress, but if you can’t quickly figure out the trick to winning, you’ll essentially be at square one, with little reward for your effort. Once you do recognize the bosses’ weaknesses, the fights are intense and satisfying, which makes the decision to artificially raise the difficulty on them perplexing.

As you enter new areas of The Surge’s enormous industrial complex, they’re initially restrictive, with the majority of doors and elevators inaccessible until they’ve been unlocked from the other side. This causes the environments to almost fold in on themselves, as a room you won’t be able to reach for several hours could actually just be a few feet away from the most recent medical bay. It’s certainly inspired by the Souls series, but it also serves as a tremendous tool for telling The Surge’s mysterious story. Audio logs and other more “traditional” storytelling devices, like characters who actually explain their motivations when they speak, are often only found after exploring every nook and cranny. As Warren moves into new rooms, he’ll occasionally hear a voice over the PA system give him further context, but it’s always just vague enough to keep us from truly understanding what is happening. Had The Surge simply chosen to use the Souls series’ level design philosophy without building its story around it, as well, it would have felt like a ripped-off feature included only to appease From Software’s fans, but the game’s narrative mysteries all but demand it.

The Surge is a game that is most certainly “like Dark Souls,” but its admiration for the series’ best elements never undermines what Deck13 did to make the game unique. Though enemy variety is limited, at least early on, I could easily see myself spending dozens of more hours in Warren’s exo-suit-equipped shoes just so I could continue to pummel baddies and discover every secret hidden away in the game’s walls. Your enjoyment will largely depend on how willing you are to jump into another Dark Souls, but if you’ve been chomping at the bit like I have, you’re in for a very good time.