>>275425(big pretentious post which no-one will read incoming sorry)
I have kinda complex conflicting thoughts on the SoulsBorneSekiroRing series or whatever the fuck. Like I think Demons Souls (the real game not the goyslop remake) and Dark Souls 1 are clearly two of the greatest video games ever made anyone who disagrees is a gay homo poopyhead who doesn't know what they're talking about. I also think Dark Souls 2 is pretty underrated. I do have a lot of issues with Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring and the direction in which this meta-series of games seems to be heading tho
DeS and DaS 1 were these really experimental games for the time which felt like more of the sum of their parts, they brought so many disparate influences together like the WRPG inspired Japanese dungeon crawlers of the King Field series, the austere environments of Team Ico's games, the NPC dynamics and the way in which your interactions with the NPCs had permanent consequences almost reminiscent of a visual novel or something, the combat which was surprisingly deep for the action RPG where you usually just hit the thing with a stick until it dies (the combat wasn't the whole game though which I'll get to later)
when Bloodborne came out it was much more action focused and more of a pure action game rather than an ARPG. Bloodborne is amazing and it worked for that game as a kind of more action focused spinoff. The combat had more depth and the action focus made more sense thematically. With DaS3 and Elden Ring I feel Fromsoftware took too much influence from Bloodborne, the games are just as action focused as Bloodborne but the combat system is nowhere near as cool as in Bloodborne, and the huge focus on action and badass bosses doesn't work as well for Souls which used to be these bleak, subtle games where every action felt weighty and deliberate.
Like I said, Souls combat is good by the standards of action RPGs, but not so good by the standards of pure action games, like you insinuated. With games like DaS3 and Elden Ring they focus so much on combat and the bosses rather than the "jack of all trades" approach of DeS and DaS1 that I just wish I was playing Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden or something when I play them lol. Not only that, despite the increased focus on combat you could argue that the combat in those newer games is actually more shallow than in the slower earlier games because in those you had more freedom to experiment with different weird builds and get into the RPG side of the game which has been slowly neutered with each consecutive game. Like in DaS3 / Elden Ring you just do the meta thing - where light clothing so you can fastroll, equip some big sword which staggers everything, learn each bosses increasingly tedious delayed attack patterns, then roll hit and repeat. It just gets dull after a while
the earlier more experimental games were way less focused on just rushing bosses yet the bosses were a lot more memorable. Sure you had classic scrappy fights like Flamelurker, Ornstein + Smough etc. But you also had The Fool's Idol who is invulnerable until you find some lil goblin guy and kill him, you had Maiden Astraea who doesn't fight back once you've got past her goons, you had Priscilla who gave you the option to leave her area entirely, even action-focused Bloodborne had Micolash who just runs away from you at first. Those earlier games were way more focused on worldbuilding / level design / tightly designed encounter / NPCs / weird experimental shit rather than just trying to be pure action games. I think this vid makes a lot of great points, although I don't agree with him on everything