I don't give them as much of a pass as you say. I want Armored Core games to have difficulty sliders and accessibility options.

Hmm, sounds a lot like what a lib says when called out about how they didn't criticize after they said something about Russia or China

All I'm doing is calling out your hypocrisy here because I've never seen a single comment of yours saying a single negative thing about Armored Core but you never shut up about Souls or Elden Ring, even if you don't mention it by name it's always obvious what you're talking about

I'm not defending any of the Souls games or Elden Ring's lack of accessibility options but I'd argue that literally every Souls game already has more accessibility options than any Armored Core game just by the virtue of being playable co-op, you can literally just have someone else carry you through the whole series if you really wanted to and have a friend who's into it (I'm genuinely willing to do this for anyone)

I suppose the aesthetic difference is grimdark quasi medieval schlock is tiresome to me and big flying robot go brrrrr.

On the one hand I agree that sci fi, cyberpunk and giant mechs are better than midieval fantasy but if you think all the Souls series has is grimdark then you don't know what you're talking about

Hell the main reason 99% of all soulslikes not made by From suck so much is because they're grimdark for the sake of grimdark instead of interesting lore

I am not mad about it. It's just eye rolling marketing I poked mild fun at, and poking fun at the game's marketing clearly upset you so you reacted to that with directed hostility toward me for most of your reply.

I don't mean to be hostile but maybe I can't help it when I've seen you hating on the Souls games for months now in a way that's honestly kind of weird

I'm not saying everyone has to like the games but you went out of your way to bring up Elden Ring in a discussion about predatory practices in gaming specifically microtransactions, something no Fromsoft game has or does. Why do this? I followed the link you provided then and am I the only one who finds it kinda funny that the same site criticizing Elden Ring as not being accessible enough also praises the TERF wizard game for its accessibility options and defends their position by saying that they're "here to serve people with disabilities first and foremost" or some bullshit as if trans peo people with disabilities don't exist? Am I the only one?

I don't want to be a dick about this, I agree with and like 90% of your posts. You're objectively a better poster than most on Hexbear that 90% the time, which makes all the hate posting about Gambo and Souls all the more cringe

Seriously question, how much of your dislike of Souls or Elden Ring is from the actual games? You don't have to like them but it seems clear to me that you don't know enough about the series to hate it, just enough to hate an idea you've formed about it based on some of the most vocal and toxic parts of the fanbase (which I'm sure you'll assume I'm part of even though I hate those guys) and honestly I think since Elden Ring your hate for Gambo has just bled into this

I get that you hate but defining yourself in opposition to and the things redditers like can just lead to a different kind of cringe

Have you tried Synthetik? It’s full of difficulty sliders.

So I mostly don't want to reply to the vitriol beyond what I already have, but by most reasonable understandings of grimdark, I would contend that the Soulsborne games aren't particularly grimdark. They are a little tonally and very aesthetically dark most of the time, but that's not what grimdark is. Grimdark is Guts dragging himself over broken glass for months trying to protect Casca from the demons that they both attract and not even being able to sleep more often than like once a week because there's always some fucking phantom sneaking up trying to eat their souls or something. Grimdark is oriented around animosity and squalor as much as powerlessness and morbidness.

Yes, I did use Berserk as a contrasting example.

Dark Souls is extremely gothic in its writing in the sense that it's perpetually mournful of basically everything in the world because the world is already mostly dead and the rest of it is dying. You can say that's tedious or tacky or whatever and that's fine, I'm not telling you to like it, but it has a very different tone from what "grimdark" suggests. If most of Dark Souls was like Blight Town, you'd have a good case, but most of the time you're in ruins or natural environments fighting off echoes of the past while reading epitaphs. On a story level, the struggle isn't dedicated opponents or even really your own weakness nearly so much as it is the entropy of the universe.

Yes, the intro cutscene to DS2 is in many respects grimdark. Go look at another one, literally any of the other ones.

Okay Bloodborne is, well, ironically less gothic in the sense I described but it's oriented around cosmic horror, the "grimdark" is mostly a veneer that you get baited on before the werewolves start having 4 mouths and tentacles. It is very blood blood nightmare blood though, but the "nightmare" part is pretty cool