Of course, there are scolds who think looking it up is cheating.

Or, counterpoint, it's not what you want to do for fun. I'm not going to say Elden Ring is "too hard" or anything negative about it, actually - just that the style of gameplay it favors (trial and error followed by rigid adherence to precisely-executed attack styles) is the style of gameplay I will go out of my way to avoid. There's a certain segment of people who love to play "guess what number I'm thinking of" where the only way to move ahead is to be wrong over and over and over again until eventually you stumble on the solution. There's a release to successfully stumbling on success for some people and there's nothing wrong with that because it clearly dumps some people's endorphins.

I will put up with a game where it trains me how to win. Where the strategies for success are suggested by prior conflicts, where there's a logical progression between "thing you do to beat this guy" and "thing you do to beat that guy." "Gamers" tend to hate these games and call the players thereof "filthy casuals" etc. That's okay with me, too, because if there's a group of humans I will proudly bear the scorn of, it's these fuckers. Yup, you're right. I cheesed the boss in Crota's End. Know why? Because I play on the couch with two fingers of bourbon and a hot girl next to me, ignoring everything that isn't pretty and then when I get bored with it, I get laid. So the average scrote-neck without (1) couch (2) bourbon (3) sex is not a part of my self-selected peer group and I wish them all the Dark Souls they can handle.

Think my Rivers of Blood bleed build + maxed out Mimic Tear is cheating? Okay. Don’t care. Think using the IGN walkthrough is lazy? That’s cool. Don’t care. And because we’re playing the same game, on the same difficulty, watching the same credits when we finally triumph, I don’t have to care. Because we’re the same, you and me. Except I’m not on Reddit.

This so much.