The essence of any wildly popular single-player game = hard to win quickly + very hard to lose.
Fun game but some very terrible UX decisions that seem spiteful at times.
Even their games, though, although they are famously and genuinely difficult, do try and guide the player to success. They just do it in somewhat subtle ways by trying to kill you a lot. I’ve been watching a let’s play series on YouTube of Dark Souls I & III for a while (“Souls Academy”), and one of things I enjoy about it is how they often talk about what skills particular bosses or game areas are trying to teach you, so that you can be successful with later, harder challenges.
But you’re completely right that these games aren’t “hard not to finish”. They’re extremely hard to finish!
Kind of like the Matrix.
But then for some reason every single other major boss is very gimmicky and does not draw upon this. Radahn is a (fun) clusterfuck with yer boys. Rennala just has projectiles and no defenses. Rykard is... just poorly designed and can't hit you if you're in melee range. Fire Giant is a gimmicky horse battle. Astel is sort of similar to Rennala. Hoarah does his own thing with grabs and jumpable stomps. Malekith and Malenia are so awkwardly fast that you need to be proactively positioning rather than reacting to their telegraphed moves for the most part.
Then you've got at the endgame Morgot and Radagon who, for some reason, seem to be not only simpler, but significantly slower opponents than Margit.
Not a complaint really. I thought boss design was great and entertaining. But definitely a bit unusual. Sekiro's boss progression was amazing and the best I've ever seen. It's a really great inflection point when Genichiro swings by to make sure you understand the game's not gonna fuck around anymore.
On the converse is his upwards slash. That thing has basically no indicators and comes out faster than you're likely able to dodge... almost. If you fight him for a while it becomes apparent that when he wants to do this move he will walk towards you and otherwise will never do so. I couldn't tell if this was an intentional mechanic. Malenia later does something similar and it makes her fight much easier when you can understand her intentions before she begins doing any of her moves.
It’s so player friendly and lacks most of the hard lessons previous titles teach.
As far as I can tell it’s just time consuming not hard.
Soulsborne games succeed because of exactly this. And you might notice that they’re drifting towards mainstream and that’s actually causing them to shed all the little details of what makes a Soulsborne game.
Elden Ring was ridiculously forgiving and I found it boringly easy. But it made me go back to Demon’s Souls.
Sort of. You could argue that Super Mario Bros. is 99.9% losing for most people. But within those losses are little personal victories, like getting past the first Goomba.
I hate games that try to remove all loss, assuming people can't handle it.
examples include arcade machines/roguelike, gotcha/lootboxes/gambling, crosswords
psychologists have found that the most effective reinforcement strategy is a combination of continuous and random rewards. For example, in World of Warcraft, enemies have a small amount of gold, but only a chance of carrying a good item.