Games

When one of my friends started playing Dark Souls, one of the first areas he went to was somewhere that was extremely difficult at his level and skill (he went to the catacombs straight after firelink). He found it exceptionally difficult in a not-fun way, but he continued pushing forward, because he had heard about how gruelling and difficult Dark Souls was.

He told me about this when I was first playing the game, as a way of explaining how the game isn't necessarily difficult in the way people make it out to be. He needlessly struggled because he was inadvertently listening more to how people talk about the game than what the game was actually communicating to him, via it's in-game mechanics: namely the skeletons weren't reviving because the game is unfair and mean, but because there are some mages reviving them; said mages are often difficult to reach, but ranged weapons exist; divine weapons make the skeletons stay dead and can be obtained by explaining other parts of the game; clubs are better against skeletons than swords.

The thing that he, and later I, loved about the souls games is how the challenge works. I like how they foster an environmental awareness in me, both for lore purposes, and figuring out if there are any sneaky mages hidden around. I like being very autistic and getting attached to certain weapons, leading to some enemies being much more difficult than if I were more flexible (and occasionally, I like changing my play-style when the game's systems are screaming at me "WHAT YOU'RE DOING ISN'T WORKING. TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT — LITERALLY ANYTHING DIFFERENT, YOU HAVE SO MANY WEAPONS")