So having played Bloodborne and (2/3rds of) Dark Souls I wanna talk about the design philosophy of these games with people who heard about it and thought it sounded pretentious and miserable
Because I know that my impression of the FromSoftware Soulslike games before I started playing was that they’re long and grueling and miserable and full of unfair traps and ambushes so that you can have bragging rights if you manage to finish the game
as somone who doesn't play soulsborne for reasons utterly unrelated to the gameplay, it's always seemed to me like the core of it is 'presenting you with a difficult puzzle but also the tools to solve it'
(i have a crippling fear of spiders else i'd at least play bloodborne)