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.
Normies and their love of souls games is highly annoying. All you have to do is tell someone they are skilled and they believe it
I can tell you've never beaten Malenia. I hear there's a Teletubbies battle royale MMO in the works for true gamers like you. ;)
Isshin from Sekiro would probably be a better example of a tough, consistent FromSoft boss. Malena is very build specific. Friends who had heavier builds and where used to blocking suffered. I've run dex through the extended franchise, and she melted.
I still find the FromSoft type of difficulty, Sekiro included, more manageable than something like Ninja Gaiden. They're mostly about pattern recognition - learning a moveset and responding accordingly. Not easy by any means, but generally a matter of patience. Ninja Gaiden, especially on Master Ninja, is about split second, highly contextual decision making against a mob of more aggressive enemies.
Isn't Malenia easiest with a heavy build? You just go upgrade some huge weapons with double colossal and can out trade her, because she's balanced around small windows of opportunity.
You do have to dodge her sword dance, but she's a low poise and relatively low range boss, and both of those are best exploited by heavy builds. You just can't block.
The windows are tight, but if you're good at parrying most of her moveset is punishable and bleed procs wreck her. Waterfowl dance isn't that hard to avoid; Trivial if you have distance enough to run.
I had an easy time. Friends who rolled heavy had a hard time. Haven't played a heavy/shield build since it ruined my first DS1 playthrough, so can't comment beyond that frame of reference.