Souls-like Enemy Combat in Unreal Engine 5: Where to Start
Documentation Unreal Engine AI Tutorial
What a Dark Souls style melee enemy needs in Unreal Engine 5 (senses, spacing, readable attacks, parries and dodges, group turns, bosses) and the Soulslike Enemy Combat page that sets up each one in Blueprint.
A souls-like fight lives or dies on its enemies: they read the player, hold their distance, telegraph their swings, punish mistakes and take turns. This page lists what a Dark Souls style enemy needs in Unreal Engine 5 and the Soulslike Enemy Combat page that builds each part.
Soulslike Enemy Combat covers the enemy side of the fight for Unreal Engine 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8, in single player and multiplayer. You set it up with Data Assets, Project Settings and Blueprint; no C++. The player's own moveset, camera and lock-on stay yours to build or bring.
Start with one enemy
| You want | Page |
|---|---|
| A working enemy in a few minutes | Getting Started |
| A full enemy built end to end: moveset, combo, weapon | Step-by-Step Enemy |
| Your own Character and AI Controller, with nothing inherited | Minimal Enemy |
| An AI coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor to build it for you | AI Agent Guide |
What a souls-like enemy needs
| Part of the fight | What the enemy does | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Senses | Spots you on sight, hears what it cannot see, searches where you went, gives up when the trail goes cold | Awareness System |
| Its own ground | Patrols its posts and stops chasing at a leash you set | Territory & Patrols |
| Spacing | Strafes, circles and holds the range its moveset wants, instead of walking straight at you | Tactical Enemy Movement |
| A moveset | Picks the right attack for the distance, angle and health, with combos and cooldowns | Action System |
| Readable attacks | Announces a swing on its wind-up, so the player can react | Telegraphs |
| Hits that land | Swept weapon traces on the attack, with damage per window | Melee Trace |
| Defense | Parries, dodges, blocks and counters what you throw at it | Enemies That Parry, Dodge and Counter |
| Health and stamina | Pools that kill at zero or refill on their own | Vitals |
| Group fights | One enemy swings while the rest circle and wait their turn | Enemies That Take Turns Attacking |
| Weapons | Spawns holding a weapon and fights from its moveset | Weapons |
Bosses
A boss is an enemy with more health, the Elite role, and a second moveset it switches to at a health threshold you pick. Souls-like Boss Fights sets one up with its arena, its health bar and attacks that read the player, and Common Patterns has the numbers for a boss, a grunt, a duelist, an archer and more, ready to type in.
Common questions
Is it a full souls-like template? It covers the enemies. Your player character, its attacks and its camera are separate, and the enemies fight any pawn you register as a target.
Does it use Behavior Trees or StateTree? Either. Point the enemy at a StateTree for patrol, investigate, fight and return as visible states, or drive it from a Behavior Tree.
Does it work in multiplayer? Yes. The server decides, and clients receive the health, action, role and weapon state. See Multiplayer Enemy AI.
How many enemies can run at once? See Performance for the measured cost and the settings that cut it.
Related
| Page | Why |
|---|---|
| Core Architecture | Which piece decides, which replicates, and how they connect |
| Configuration Reference | Every setting and the one place you set it |
| Debugging & Troubleshooting | The symptom, its cause and the fix |