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I mean, to some extent yes. The hostile, uncaring world complemented by challenging gameplay that doesn't hold your hand is an important part of the design. I just think they went too far in Elden Ring to the point where it stops being a challenge I can feel good about overcoming. But that's not really what I meant as far as the flaws with the games.

Setting aside difficulty, their games are filled with flaws, both minor and major. Some they've learned from over the years, some they haven't, and some which they've gone backwards. I could get into a whole discussion about them, but it's a testament to the rest of the design that I can acknowledge all of these and look past them to enjoy what was done right. Just a few off the top of my head:

• The stats are obtuse and frequently either broken or useless. Resistance from DS 1, Poise from DS 3, armor in basically any game, etc. This makes engaging with the RPG elements feel kind of pointless and why in a lot of the games I played basically naked.

• The stat requirements and the need for upgrade materials makes it so that most items you find will be useless to you. They alone don't really contribute to the desire to explore. I do end up exploring around in these games, but it's in spite of the rewards rather than because of them.

• Demon Souls made you go back to a hub through a load screen to level. Dark Souls 1 fixed this. Then every game after that until Sekiro has gone back to forcing you to go through a load screen to level.

• The games are really inconsistent with their use of bonfires and shortcuts. I think to this day Dark Souls 1 has the best level design of the series. The lack of fast travel for the first half really makes you engage with the levels and makes you appreciate the shortcuts you find and eventually the fast travel once you have it. Since then all of the games have gone bananas with the bonfires/sites/etc with fast travel right from the start. There were some absolutely absurd places in DS3 where there was another bonfire within sight of the first. Then you have areas with absolutely no bonfires and shortcuts all the way through, or none at all. In Elden Ring sometimes you get sites of grace or stakes of Marika right outside the boss door and sometimes there just isn't one anywhere close.

• Consumables feel pretty useless since they're non-renewable. If you use them and still can't kill the boss before they run out, you're now just gonna have to beat the boss without them, so you might as well not have bothered. Elden Ring kind of helped this with crafting, but honestly I haven't used it much because I just am trained not to think about consumables in these games at this point.

• Some weapons/spells end up being completely useless. Some feel like they were designed for a different game. I don't know how they imagined people would make use of them. And iirc bows and spells have been a joke until like DS3, and even then from what I've heard people say bows are still pretty crap.

I think what's interesting about these games is that they're unpolished. That's not to say I wouldn't want these problems fixed with better design, but I think I prefer what we have to the usual AAA design where everything rough gets sanded down until the whole game is bland and appeals to nobody equally.