@alex Pretty much, yes. Elden Ring maybe a bit less so due to some corners having to be cut to make a game this big, but there's also the deliberateness of it all. Modern games in general, but especially western games, try very hard to make everything dynamic and emergent; enemies are not hardcoded in numbers and placements, they are algorythmically adjusted to a difficulty level. And while that is nice to create theoretically infinite variety and replayability, in practice it rarely feels nearly as fun to engage with as deliberate design. Once you understand the basic of the game structure, these modern games basically never surprise you. From Software games, however, feel different (though as I mentioned, Elden Ring had to make a little sacrifice in that regard because you can't make a game that big and full of content without some sort of repeating template to work with). Anyway, game and level design as From Software does it, like deliberately challenging and taunting the players by placing enemies at "Fuck You" dead angles past doorways, makes Player vs Environment feel like there's actual person you're struggling against, rather than just a machine. It's you versus the level designer: are you going to give him the satisfaction of making you give up?