I’ve been playing a lot of Salt and Sanctuary, a game that takes the Dark Souls formula and translates it almost verbatim into 2D. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong, but the list of things that aren’t straight-up copies of Dark Souls is short. So far the only differences I’ve noticed are the perspective (obviously), the character/weapon progression systems, some added generic NPCs.
Again, it’s not a bad game at all, but it did make me think about the effect Dark Souls has had on games.