Anyone who played any beloved third-party NES game:
Oh, that's cute! 😏
Edit: Just so we're clear, I'm poking fun here, I like Demon/Dark Souls just fine.
but waay too many games get compared to them as though they're the first game with ball-retracting difficulty, lmao.
The only reason Souls games get a reputation for being hard is because they have mass mainstream appeal, so they get played by legions of bad players who then blame the game. 99% of its difficulty comes from trying to rush things and getting into a pickle. Its the same with other memeatically "hard" games like Darkest Dungeon.
Like, I've Level 1 done DS1 and BB because of how simple they really are to play. I'm not really a "gud gamer" but I was still able to manage them, and without having to assemble a "route guide" to all the overpowered items as fast as possible, but just playing normal.
But NES games weren't nearly as fun or worth playing for anything besides the "street cred" of being the biggest masochist (or realistically, because you had nothing else to do). The majority of the games famous for being difficult are just bad games we have nostalgia for, so we keep them from fading into obscurity. If they dropped today they'd be mocked constantly for how shoddy they are.
I think a lot of people confuse tedium with difficulty, and don't realize it.
Its ironically one of the strengths the Souls games have. The interconnected world is fun and neat, but it also cuts out huge amounts of wasted time and tedium of getting back to where you died once you get far enough. Dark Souls 2 even made the controversial idea of just removing enemies if you die enough times and Elden Ring just puts checkpoints before some bosses.
Heck its one of the reasons that despite being a Fire Emblem oldfag who hates a lot of the easiness of the newer games, I enjoy the Turnwheel system. Because 99% of players just restarted a chapter if their character died anyway, so just cut the time loss and let them have a short rewind with the same seed.