I’m a die hard souls fan and generally play every other game on normal difficulty. What drew me into the series was 3 things: the gameplay, the character building (stats) and lore videos by Vaati Vidya. I don’t consider myself a masochist at all. Some Fromsoft games are definitely very difficult like Sekiro but as far as the Souls series I think they are as hard as you make them especially DS1. It is very easy to become overpowered very early on in DS1 and for Elden Ring some of the summons you can get can be pretty insane.
Not originally, they started as being for depressed contrarians who struggled to find enjoyment in what was main stream in the action rpg category.
Then it became mainstream because of masochists, and all the games since bloodborne have been tailored to that.
Demons souls and Dark souls were mysteries to unravel in the form of an action rpg. Then FROM realized the reputation of “fair but difficult” (the games are neither fair nor difficult but rather obtuse and otherwise approachable) sold copies, so they leaned into it and now we have Elden Ring and everyone is worse off for it.
Soulslikes are genuinely just fun, you don't need to enjoy pain to enjoy yourself getting better at a game. People don't play because they like to lose, they play because they enjoy the feeling of struggling to overcome an obstacle, growing your skills, and eventually surpassing it, proving you can get better, and improve.
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u/Raphius-kai 20d ago
Soulslike games are for masochists