i didn’t play demons, and what initially sold me on dark souls was the contiguous world w/ very few load screens. exploring was exciting because you literally didn’t know what would be around the next corner – sometimes the transitions between areas were gradual and made a certain sort of sense, and sometimes they were stark and goofy, but that unpredictability was exciting.
ds2 lost me a bit with all the warping, where i could no longer keep a mental picture of how the world was laid out, and by ds3 i had some souls fatigue and the immediate forced warp to the high wall of lothric put a bad taste in my mouth (not to mention the area itself being rather annoying and constrained like a theme park ride).
for elden ring, i basically still feel the same way i did when i first posted about it:
like for me mechanical challenge or mechanical expression is the bare minimum i need to stay engaged and interested in a single player game. so from my perspective, the UNIQUE things i get from souls games vs. other games i play are all accentuated with the open world format elden ring has, and it’s still hitting that requirement i have for challenge. yes, the challenge is a necessary piece, but only to hit some minimum threshold.
