I've had a mild interest in Elden Ring (never played any Souls games) but when I saw everyone on SSO talking about it, I got the idea it was one of those games where you've basically got to die repeatedly until you figure out the exact movements/timing bosses move at. Is that the case? The graphics look great, but the second I run into stuff like that it's game over for me.
The whole premise is that you are always a couple of hits away from dying. Then you lose all the souls you have accumulated, but can retrieve them if you go back to the place where you died and pick them up before dying again. Souls are a currency for leveling up, so they are high value and each level gained increases the cost of the next one.
But for overall damage, the level of your weapon often matters more and the upgrade materials for these are something you can't lose. So even if you keep dying, you still make some progress if you found some items, or learned how to avoid and punish a boss during some particular attack pattern.
You still have things like health refills, various items to boost your abilities, or NPC summons that you can use to gain an advantage - if you have the breathing room to use them during combat.
Every time you die, non-unique enemies also respawn but they will be in the exact same spots so you learn where they are and be prepared the next time. A lot of the levels are built to troll you with ambushes, traps and more so advancing carefully is often the best approach.
What got me hooked to this series is that it becomes a real heart rate raising epic battle when you are down to your last health bottle, enemy has little health left and when you finally beat them, the victory is really sweet because you had to work for it. The stakes being a bit higher than "eh, let's just try this section again" make it better.
The number one reason why you die in these games is that you get greedy. You try to go for one more hit on a boss, you try to go grab an item before looking for traps, you travel further before spending your souls etc. Aside from some grab attacks with crappy hit boxes, most of the game is fair.
They are absolutely not for everyone, but worth trying. I believe Demon's Souls is available on PS Plus so if you have a PS5, then give that a try as it plays very much like the others, and is also gorgeous.
