Boss grab attacks. I’ve never once missed a roll and been locked into a long instant kill animation and said “wow that was so fun”

Artificial difficulty, controls that are designed to be frustrating unless you get the input perfect after multiple attempts.

It’s not skill but muscle memory and luck that leads to success. I equate it to a monkey being zapped enough times until it learns to push the correct sequence of buttons to get the piece of food.

Let’s add to this: Bosses that are so huge they go beyond your screen limit. Helps with scale but then the arm you can’t see one-hit kills you from somewhere you didn’t expect like some reverse deus ex machina.

Losing your progress for being unfairly killed in those ways should be added to this list.

There used to be a time where being unable to save your game unless it was at a specific place or time was considered bad game design. I’d happily go back to appreciating that instead of this horrid disrespect of my time.

Don’t make me refight bs enemies on the path to a boss if I die. The challenge is the boss, not avoiding combat leading back to it.

Repetition. I understand that some people like challenges, but I play for fun, not to pass a test. Even more annoying than losing to a boss (which is to be expected) is unlocking a shortcut and still having to go through a relatively long journey of attacking, dodging, and hiding from enemies to fight the boss again. Are you familiar with the dungeons in Skyrim? When you completed your mission, there was usually an exit immediately at the end. You didn’t have to go back to the entrance just to get out. I don’t know if any Soulslike implemented something like that, but it would make the experience more bearable.

I like the way Elden Ring provided a lot of options allowing the player to basically pick their difficulty, either by choosing a different build or going somewhere else or grinding levels.

Some people like extremely difficult challenges, others don’t. There’s enough games in the world you couldn’t possibly play them all, might as well play just the ones that match your play style.

I think the bigger problem is jank in a lot of games ruining the experience, so you die from unfairness rather than from being unskilled. No one likes to die because the dice rolled poorly.

I agree the focus on difficulty is a problem, and I don’t love how Fromsoft deals with “Legacy Skill”.

Let’s say that Dark Souls 1 players get really good at Dark Souls 1. Now you’re making Dark Souls 2, and it has to be hard for old and new players, so you can’t have the mechanics be exactly the same, otherwise the game won’t be hard for returning players. So, change the parry timings, and tie i-frames, casting speed, and item usage speed to a garbage stat! Then, when Dark Souls 3 comes along, you keep player speed roughly the same but turbo-charge enemy speed, and give them all infinite stamina and poise! Or else returning players won’t find the game hard and it’s got to be hard, or else it isn’t Dark Souls, right?

I hate the way the games have come to prioritize “faster”, “twitchier” gameplay over time. Same with Monster Hunter. I hate how inevitable it is that as games with slow, careful, deliberate gameplay grow in popularity, they always get faster, twitchier, and more “arcadey” to appeal to the mainstream, least common denominator of gamers, leaving me with nothing to play.

The absolute worst culprits in this are DS3 and Elden Ring, which have taken the round peg of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls 1 gameplay and forced it into the square hole of modern “fast” gameplay, resulting in an absolute mess of a combat system. I also hate rolling 50 times during 30-hit boss combos with a fiery passion. It’s just so boring. At least Elden Ring made greatshields viable again.

The only good “fast” FromSoft games are the ones that are designed for it from the ground up, namely Sekiro (which solves the rolling problem by making parries actually contribute to the fight) and (to a lesser degree) Bloodborne.

Basically, I hate how all of my favorite game series jebait-and-switch me with weighty, consequential, satisfying gameplay initially only to eventually devolve into Devil May Cry.

Bosses that are too big, and you need to hit the bottom part / foot but attacks come from above, so you need to do the dance of not locking on and moving the camera up and down while attacking and avoiding damage.

It might not only be a souls thing, but using darkness as difficulty is the worst game design choice ever.

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I’ve seen a few faux pas in design. Thymesia had damage values cranked way too high for the narrowness of its parry/dodge windows. Elden Ring undertuned its items to account for an inevitable and insane amount of optimizing it would expect from its players. it’s assumptions were correct but it meant new players would inevitably be funneled into copying those builds from youtube videos instead of ever experimenting and just playing the game. these are just math errors though, no really big deal.

The only really bad mistake I ever saw was Lords of the fallen which couldn’t nail a consistent tone or level of engagement with the narrative. It oscillated between trying to be inscrutable ala From Soft and dialogue rich with a populated hub world. Still enjoyed it though

any console game that’s made to work on PC. camera controls always feel like jank nonsense. never played any dark souls games because I know I’ll hate it for the camera specifically.