That was the moment where I knew this game could and would fuck with me. From then on? I hacked at every chest before opening it. I used to do that in previous Souls games because the chest might actually eat me if I didn't look closely; now I do it because I might be transported to hell. At some point it felt like game was saying "Oh, you're exploring a new area? Heads this hurts, tails this helps. Go ahead. Flip that coin." Caelid wins in my "horrific experiences" of Elden Ring, beating out strong contestants like: - 'giant hands that erupt out of the ground when you walk too closely and scuttle towards you like spiders' - 'ambulatory iron maiden with actual grasping hands that will ALSO TELEPORT YOU SOMEPLACE ELSE if it doesn't kill you first'. - Even winning against 'possessed dead snake with a face in the back of it's neck, it will invite you to join it as family before attacking, stopping only to wrench a greatsword MADE OF PEOPLE out of it's throat'. Fuck Caelid.
Of my main 'gaming' pals, only my brother and I are the Dark Souls fans. Our discord group all bought in, and we could pinpoint exactly what boss someone was at by the mix of rage/resignation/despair they were exuding in comms. You're right, it's absolute bullshit, and it's still the most accessible of the games FromSoft have put out! As a big middle finger to the vets, the first big boss was designed to take everything about movement patterns (beaten into players), and throw it out the window. This dude has a windup attack that lasts 2 seconds longer than it needs to; you roll away? He cancels it. His three hit combo? Adds a fourth if you roll in to punish him. Movement tracking? He's got it up until the final second of a move. He can break away faster than you can, and forces you to bring the fight to him. The absolute opposite of what I was trained to handle. I was so pissed, but eventually pleased that they understood their playerbase well enough to fuck with them so effectively. I have Inquisition, never started it but I heard a similar description to what you've just offered so I may have to give it a hoon.
FFXV was meant to be my resurgent love for the Final Fantasy series. I loved VII, VIII and IX so much growing up, before moving away from the franchise to play FPS games and consume energy drinks with my spotty friends. A friend loaned me FFXV and I legitimately gave up at the tutorial phase of figuring out how to make the dude zip to his sword after he's thrown it away/at an enemy/into a bush. I couldn't do it. No idea why. Button bindings? I'm an idiot? Glitch? I hung onto the game for the better part of 2 years, and my friend finally came round to pick it up last week. I didn't have the heart to tell him I made it five minutes in before rage quitting the tutorial, when I can speedrun a Dark Souls game.. Fuck it I'm going to play Inquisition. Something simple sounds good. Something possibly written by an AI sounds hilarious.