The term "Souls-like" is one that's only sprung about in the past few years as From Software's Dark Souls series became wildly popular. Over time, we've seen more and more Souls-likes appear in the form of games like The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, and Nioh. However, the term has been, and can logically be, applied to titles like Cuphead for their enraging difficulty.
Preceded by Demon's Souls in 2009 and later cemented by the first entry in the Dark Souls franchise, a Souls-like can be roughly defined as a game designed to test a player's limits in offering an extremely challenging yet rewarding experience. Many games have tried to replicate this, including the surprisingly difficult Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
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However, many have failed in trying to replicate the experience established by Dark Souls. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order doesn't quite capture the amazing atmosphere seen in the Souls world. Furthermore, Cuphead doesn't quite reach the prime Souls-like level design seen in the Dark Souls games.
The fairly new Souls genre is now simply oversaturated with content, as well. With so many developers attempting to create both mind-bogglingly difficult games and game difficulties, you'd be hard-pressed to find one game that doesn't provide some kind of challenge. The Souls-like subgenre tends to transcend more general genre types like platformer, action-adventure, third-person shooters, etc.
Unfortunately, these games fail to make the difficulty a part of the actual experience. Think of Sekiro and how the constant death and rebirth was part of the game's story and had consequence. On a broader scale, there's also the fact that Souls-like games have bad game design. To have as one's shtick that the game is just very hard until you defeat the next boss is lazy game design and should be discouraged going forward.
The Souls-like genre makes sense. For one reason or another, including to capitalize on From Software's success, the release of Souls-like games satisfy gamers' sudden desire to be rewarded for their feats.
Still, the Souls-like genre needs to start dying down. Now that the Souls series has ended, it's about time that these games go by the wayside and make way for more forgiving titles. Hopefully, it happens soon to avoid further saturation, but only time will tell if the Souls-like will continue its reign over multiple genres.