Two Soulslikes in One Month? PS Plus May Is Brutal

Most months, PS Plus gives you one game you're excited about, one you'll try once, and one you forget existed. May 2026 breaks that pattern. Sony announced on the PlayStation Blog that next month's lineup includes EA Sports FC 26 (PS5/PS4), Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (PS5), and Nine Sols (PS5/PS4), all available from May 5 through June 1.

On paper, EA Sports FC 26 is the headliner. It's the biggest name, the broadest appeal, and it lands right before the FIFA World Cup. Subscribers also get a PlayStation Plus Icons Pack for Ultimate Team while the game is on the service. Fine. But the real story here is what's sitting underneath it: two soulslikes that couldn't be more different from each other, both landing on the same day.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a full-fat, third-person action RPG set during China's Ming Dynasty. You play as a pirate warrior afflicted by a mutation called Feathering, fighting through an interconnected world of warring factions and twisted bosses. It's classic soulslike structure with flexible character builds, multiple fighting styles, and hidden weapons. I covered the studio behind it, Leenzee Games, just recently when its parent company sold the entire franchise for a fraction of its development cost. Seeing the game land on PS Plus so soon after that fire sale is bittersweet, but it does mean millions of subscribers now get to play what turned out to be a solid soulslike.

Then There's Nine Sols

Nine Sols is a completely different beast. It's a hand-drawn 2D action-platformer from Red Candle Games, the studio behind Devotion, with deflection-based combat directly inspired by Sekiro. You play as Yi, a cat-like warrior hunting down nine powerful rulers across a world that blends sci-fi with Eastern mythology. It launched in 2024 and currently sits at an Overwhelmingly Positive review average on Steam. This is a game that teaches you to love parrying, and it does it through tight controls and difficulty that feels earned rather than cheap.

Putting these two together in one month is an interesting choice by Sony. Wuchang gives you the sprawling 3D soulslike experience with build variety and exploration. Nine Sols gives you precision-focused 2D combat where every deflect matters. They scratch completely different itches, but both demand the same thing from you: patience, pattern recognition, and a willingness to die repeatedly. I can't remember the last time PS Plus dropped two games from the same subgenre in a single month, let alone one as demanding as this.

If you haven't claimed April's games yet, you have until May 4 to add Lords of the Fallen, Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, and Sword Art Online Fractured Daydream to your library. After that, May's lineup goes live on May 5 across all PS Plus tiers, from Essential up through Premium.