> I can enjoy difficulty when I don't have to redo things I've already done; I'm fully on-board with something like a Super Meat Boy or a Hotline Miami, which are also games where death is expected and a core part of the loop, but when dying to a boss involves trekking back through 5-10 mins of low-level enemies I very quickly lose interest.

Sekiro and Elden Ring are both much better here in terms of checkpointing close to bosses, though it's still not always just right outside it often is. Indeed I remember a few very tedious routes in Bloodborne and Dark Souls. It just didn't bother me quite so much because I enjoyed optimizing them also!

With Elden Ring also at least there is always other stuff to do/explore (at least so far for me at ~50 hours in) so you can come back later.

The trekking back to bosses in games that aren’t Sekiro or Elden Ring is totally valid. But in terms of the overall difficulty, I think it’s more a case of something closer to user error than the game actually being ridiculously difficult. This is a common thing and it bums me out because the difficulty aspect of these games is severely overhyped, partially because people try them out without fully understanding the mechanics, and then are turned off from them. Same thing happened to me and I’m so thankful that someone set me straight.

The number one thing is this: you cannot interrupt yourself once you begin an action. Neither can your enemy. An attack is a commitment of the entire animation associated with it. This one single thing affects everything else.

Also: rolling! You are very briefly untouchable while rolling.

Time your rolls and your attacks with intention, and the difficulty drops drastically. The game’s are still tough and unforgiving, but in a good way.

Hope you end up revisiting and enjoying the games. I’m historically not a fan of “hard” games and these have quickly become my favorite, gameplay being just as big a reason as atmosphere and lore.

I realize you're not asking for help in Dark Souls, but should you ever find yourself playing it again, I feel like I should tell you that you can run past nearly every standard enemy in pretty much every FromSoftware game. I often play the game sections in reverse. Sprint through looking for the next safe spot, then after activating it, work backwards to the previous safe spot.

Don't the enemies you're running past, though, drop loot/weapons/spells/stuff that you need to reach the next safe spot?

Not at all, in fact the enemies basically wind up being red herrings.

They drop trivial amounts of souls which are used to buy levels, but souls are also gained by beating bosses and from using items that also grant souls.

I've experimented a lot with this. If you just fight bosses and use boss soul items and other easy to reach soul items, you will end each game roughly 5 levels below someone who is more meticulous and clears each zone of enemies without grinding them repeatedly.

At the end of the game, those 5 levels will be a trivial difference.

Not that I can remember, maybe once or twice.

As it happens, Elden Ring takes care of the specific problem you mention by having save points, or some temporary respawn point, ahead of pretty much every tough boss available. This is done even for many optional bosses: You will respawn 10 seconds away from the fight. It will still not help when, instead of a boss, the wall is a slightly stronger low level enemy, and there might be an example or two of this problem in a few side dungeons, but it's nowhere near as common a problem as in their earlier games.

Now, this often means said bosses are often quite a bit tougher than in earlier games, but you don't have to go through a 10 minute dungeon to get to them every time you die.

Sounds like you might enjoy the Ori games (Ori and the {Blind Forest, Willow of the Wisps}).

Not exactly the same genre as the ones you mentioned, but some challenging combat (at times, not throughout) that doesn’t involve slogging back if you die.

While Ori is similar genre, I think it doesn't have the sheer depth of lore and world-building that pulls many people into Souls games.

Hollow Knight on the other hand does.

Try following a walkthrough on YouTube, eg the one from FightinCowboy. It’s almost an easy mode, since you enter the mid- and endgame much stronger.