With Hollow Knight: Silksong’s huge launch in full swing, community debate about its qualities and flaws has gone back and forth, with some players insisting their criticisms about things like the game's difficulty are valid and shouldn’t be instantly dismissed as "hate."
To be fair while Elden Ring is the most popular From game it’s also by many accounts a downgrade from their previous titles. It’s fun but not nearly Bloodborne, not Dark Souls with it’s ups and downs but establishing the genre, not even Sekiro which is weird for the series but still doesn’t have any game to compare where it shines. Personally if I had to choose between three Elden like games and one Bloodborne, I wouldn’t even think.
I used Elden Ring as an example, but all of Fromsoft’s Souls games have had similar ways of adjusting difficulty. Bloodborne still had summons, still had tons of optional areas and alternate paths, and even had the cum dungeon if you want to cheese it on levels and skip the grind.
And it’s not like From is the only company doing difficulty this way. Most Mario games are pretty straightforward for casual players, but advanced players who master the controls can often find secret levels or alternate collectibles. It’s an added, optional challenge a player self-imposes to make the game harder. Or Celeste and the optional strawberries and post-game levels.
To be fair while Elden Ring is the most popular From game it’s also by many accounts a downgrade from their previous titles. It’s fun but not nearly Bloodborne, not Dark Souls with it’s ups and downs but establishing the genre, not even Sekiro which is weird for the series but still doesn’t have any game to compare where it shines. Personally if I had to choose between three Elden like games and one Bloodborne, I wouldn’t even think.
I used Elden Ring as an example, but all of Fromsoft’s Souls games have had similar ways of adjusting difficulty. Bloodborne still had summons, still had tons of optional areas and alternate paths, and even had the cum dungeon if you want to cheese it on levels and skip the grind.
And it’s not like From is the only company doing difficulty this way. Most Mario games are pretty straightforward for casual players, but advanced players who master the controls can often find secret levels or alternate collectibles. It’s an added, optional challenge a player self-imposes to make the game harder. Or Celeste and the optional strawberries and post-game levels.