Comparing dark souls and Mario seemed irrational til I read this. Beautifully said. While I agree my sentiment towards the Souls genre is the exact same.

I own Bloodborne, Ashen, Elden Ring, Nioh, Nioh 2, etc etc… I’ve dropped countless hours, looked up articles, guides, play throughs, the whole nine yards. Those games just aren’t it FOR ME

Even Mario has a more user friendly approach to its games. Even if you aren’t particularly skilled you get to enjoy a decent amount of the damn game.

Games are for enjoyment, I rate games accordingly. Games like Mario are easily enjoyable as numbers show. When I look at the sales of Elden Ring vs. the percentages I can find of people who’ve actually beat it…. I can only imagine the Creator being fine with the majority of their consumers not truly getting to see or appreciate their work. To me that’s just fuckin stupid.

Like making a painting you have to get LASIK surgery to see. Like chopping up the audio of a song and making you put it back together before getting to hear it. Souls games are like, here’s a really beautiful and expansive game… but you have to die and retry hundreds of times before you get anywhere. I work full time, and have a social life, these games really don’t seem tailored around that.

To say all of that:

If YOU like those games… cool. I don’t. I’ve tried and tried and tried and just really fucking don’t lol.

I like them so much I contemplated getting a PC to use difficulty mods just so I could actually experience the game.