Hidetaka Miyazaki sees death as a feature, not a bug

I will say: I find these games to be extremely fun to watch (and a lot of others do as well, as they consistently get very high views on Twitch and YouTube), but maybe not so much if I wasn't already into playing them as well. I think the viewing experience is greatly improved by having a personal experience of the game itself, and the skill that goes into what you're watching.

This is perhaps similar to watching a fighting game: it's probably hard to enjoy watching somebody play Street Fighter if you haven't actually put hours into it yourself, and understand the depth and nuance of what you're watching.

> FromSoft has always been a step behind from a graphical fidelity level. But they make up for it in art design, which is some of the best in the industry.

I'm not just talking about lack of rendering bells and whistles - I also thought the design itself was tacky, reminiscent of much lower-budget games like Valheim or those mid-2010s f2p Korean MMOs. Admittedly this is subjective.

> For the controls, the game is all about animation timing

OK, knowing that this is an intentional design aspect makes it a lot more reasonable. Not necessarily my cup of tea, but at least understandable.

Just my own opinions to respond to a couple of your points:

- Visuals: Disappointing. Looked like a cheap free-to-play MMO. Cheap-looking textures, stock-looking characters

What settings did you have the game on? This has never been my experience with a Souls game - and definitely not Elden Ring.

- bad rigging (e.g. characters holding things in unnatural poses), etc.

Yeah, agree. Pretty typical for every game though.

- Controls: Unpleasant. Controls felt very sluggish. If this is supposed to make the game more challenging or something, this isn't a very fun mechanic.

The Souls series is definitely a little slower in that sense than most other games. If you want a faster weapon, use a faster weapon. There are a ton available, but there are tradeoffs! The series puts a focus on calculated, well-timed strikes; the most successful strategy is to learn your opponents' attack patterns and take advantage of the right moment to strike. Once you hit the attack button you're locked in to the attack, so you absolutely have to know the boss isn't winding up for another attack.

- Software quality: Terrible. Performance is not good, tons of bugs, graphics issues, wouldn't recognize my controller when I had multiple input devices plugged in.

Keep in mind these games are designed for and primarily sold on consoles - PC is the minority.

- Dialogue: What little I saw was super corny. Used as a crutch for poor level design. E.g. a ghost telling you something to the effect of "you need to jump into this hole to continue the game".

I won't comment on the "corny" part other than saying you kind of just have to lean into it... Enjoy it for the fantasy it is.

"you need to jump into this hole to continue the game" - that's the first 15 minutes of the game, teaching you that you'll need to pay attention to that kind of stuff later. There is very little handholding past the intro.

- Multiplayer felt like a cheap gimmick. I wanted to turn it off.

I'm curious about this, can you elaborate?

- Am I missing something? This is my first souls game;

In my opinion yes. But the genre is just not for everyone. It's a really different type of game and some people just won't like the gameplay.

- is feeling cheap and clunky part of the aesthetic?

Yes, but as someone who enjoys the genre, I wouldn't use the word "clunky". It intentionally pushes the player away from the modern norm where a game can be blown through by mashing the attack button.

I think it can be fruitful to analyze games through the emotions they evoke. After all, the whole reason we play games is to feel a certain way.

I think the problems with many clones stem from misidentifying the emotion of FromSoft games to be frustration.

The reason we play a souls game isn't to get frustrated, that's the price of admission not an ends in itself. What we want is that feeling of accomplishment.

Along this axis, FromSoft's games are closer related to something like The Witness than say Diablo (which is more about feeling strong and powerful).

> What settings did you have the game on?

1440p "high" on 3060 Ti. My visual objections weren't just the low-quality lighting, textures, framerate cap, etc. (objectively kind of bad) but also the visual design of the game (which I thought was kind of tacky/garish and reminiscent of 2010-era low-budget multiplayer games).

> Pretty typical for every game though.

I saw some stuff that looked really out-of-place in an AAA game.

> If you want a faster weapon, use a faster weapon.

Yeah, I think this was me confusing an intentional design decision with poor UI. Still, I subjectively definitely prefer more responsive games.

> can you elaborate

The multiplayer didn't feel like an integral part of the game. They had to artificially incentivize you to use it in a ham-fisted way ("you get HP if people upvote the ugly textures you leave littered all over the place"), and the random ghosts popping up all over the place (I think part of multiplayer?) seemed useless and distracting.

> It intentionally pushes the player away from the modern norm where a game can be blown through by mashing the attack button.

I think this is an uncharitable comparison for non-souls games. I can think of several games I've played recently which absolutely ace many of the things that bothered me about ER and are by no means button-mashers. For example, Ori 2 (beautiful graphics and design, ultra-smooth rendering, extremely snappy response time, etc. - excellent implementation of a singleplayer timing-heavy game) and HL Alyx (incredibly good level design, solid graphics, very smooth, intense focus on control experience)