I haven't played Demon Souls, but the timing feels more forgiving than it does in Elden Ring. Interestingly, Sekiro feels even more forgiving.

There‘s a potential discussion to be had about how much of the Soulsborne/-like experience is about overcoming difficulty - and let’s be honest, the vast majority of people won‘t finetune difficulty but just go as easymode as possible - but on the other hand I strongly dislike elitism in games and in the end it should be on the player if they wanna potentially ruin their own experience or not, as such I agree with you.

Would Dark Souls have ever become the iconic game it is and FROM/Miyazaki the iconic devs they are with an easymode (in their games)? Hard to say.

I‘m always happy to see these options especially in indie games, which so often go crazy hard on difficulty towards the end (Celeste endgame for example).

Black myth wukong would be so great with some difficulty options. I'm sure the rest of it story is great, but if I get stuck for a week on a boss I'm going to stop caring about that story.

It's true I haven't played the Elden Ring expansion, and I guess that's the most difficult one now so it's required to have played it to be able to parade around your gamer credentials? Whatever that's supposed to mean? To me gaming is about enjoying a medium of culture, not a dick measuring contest. I've played Dark Souls, I've played Elden Ring. I've beaten Sister Friede, I've beaten Malenia.

I still think accessibility options are good.

Agreed, it's a great idea. I don't even think I would have been good at soulslike games when I was 14. I just don't have the patience for those sorts of constant boss battles where it takes so many hits to kill the boss but you die in 1 or 2.

So that doesn't apply to Sekiro...

Yeah, is a double edged sword. But if it makes more people to stick to the game rather than abandoning it, is nice.

My brother has Elden Ring for PS5 sitting on the shelf. The only serious playtime he’s had was a year ago when I visited him and made some character progress. Now, he keeps asking if I’ll play it again during my next visit. I always tell him, ‘No, I’m good-it’s a great game, but I’m coming over for peace and relaxation, not to get frustrated.

I stopped playing, and until they patch in an easier mode… I won’t get to experience the rest of the story. It’s been a great story, so far, too.

I appreciate difficulty options for other people and I think everyone should agree it's a good thing to make games more accessible or more challenging depending on what a player is seeking.

My only caution is maintaining the vision for the expected experience. I imagine we've all played games where the normal difficulty or the default experience feels bad or improperly tuned. Multiple difficulty options can, I imagine, lead to less tuning on the default experience. I have no doubt I disliked games I would have liked if they'd encouraged me to play at a different difficulty or spent more time tuning their preferred difficulty. I have no doubt I liked games that if they'd provided difficulty options I may have changed the default experience to my detriment without realizing it.

In this one you can get away with blocking too. You take some damage but you have a short time to regain health by attacking right after. I think it makes it a little more forgiving when you are learning enemy moves and fine tuning your reaction.

Gotta make the stories good for me. The story in all these games is all drawn out dog water trash.

Works for me. I got stuck on the puppet king second phase and gave up. Not like rage quit, I just never went back to the game after like a dozen attempts, uninstalled it months later to free up space.

I love difficulty adjustments. Tuning a game to be right for every audience is impossible, better to let the end client have some control over fine tuning their experience.

Control is an excellent example of this for me. My GOTY when it came out, still an all time fav. I love the story and setting, but the combat is tedious after a while. In that case, lowering enemy health made the game less boring without being substantially easier, giving me the kind of experience I could enjoy.

This is that Pinocchio game right?

Im of two minds on this.

On one hand difficulty settings seem good because it gives players choices.

But on the other this genre is meant to challenge you. And for me if Dark Souls hadn’t been one difficulty only and hard was the way it is now I probably would have never beaten it on the hard difficulty. But I persevered and did something that felt great because of that design choice.

Amen! There's nothing I hate more than damage-sponge enemies. I love active dodging, blocking, and targeting weak spots, but NOBODY should survive multiple headshots just because they have a lot of HP.

The video games cant hurt you.

Neither can casual disagreement and downvotes, snowflake.

I'm not sure if you've played directly on release but they did nerf the puppet king two weeks after release or so, he has way less HP than he used to when the game came out

Reading comprehension, even more challenging than dark souls nowadays eh? No idea what you’re even going on about now, but glad you got your nice rehearsed rant off your chest.

The main souls games have already gotten progressively more and more “””accessible”””, somewhat to the detriment of what originally made them appealing. Options are a mutually preferable alternative - people that enjoyed the original gameplay would still have their torture, or you can play on games journalist difficulty and have basically the same experience as watching someone else play on twitch.

I don’t think Sekiro is more forgiving necessarily, but it’s a very tight and precise game so it’s easier to catch onto the timing and feels satisfying to do, never like “I should have been able to hit that, my gun didn’t shoot :(“ I would say Elden Ring is a lot easier than Sekiro though.

You hit the nail on the head. Soulslikes aren't about difficulty, they're about patience. And when school was the only thing I had to worry about I had patience. Now that I have to fight for 30 minutes of game time I don't. Great decision by the devs!