Yep I agree hopefully Starfield lives up to the hype as well. Anyway if a developer ever combined the best of Elden Ring and any Bethesda game, my tune would be different.

My prediction is Starfield will not get 10/10 scores and be found lacking to Elden Ring.:biggrin:

(Elex 2 will be lucky to get 6.5/10 from those same sites.)

God no!

I would rather see the best of CDPR (art/writing) and Beth (freedom/exploration/immersion) combined - and it would be great to add someone who understood proper progression and meaningful challenge, which neither CDPR, Beth OR FromSoftware seem to fully grasp.

Maybe PB in a pinch - though they tend to oversimplify a lot of stuff.

Starfield will NOT get 10/10, no. No matter how good it is - the mainstream media has long since decided that.

In that same way, you're probably never going to see a PB game reach even 8/10 - though I consider most of their games far, far superior to most 8/10 CRPGs.

Again I agree. There is obsidian's open world RPG hopefully in 2023 also. Though some recent rumors and leaks don't sound to good. I'm still waiting on some game footage.

RPGWatch is the only site I know where authentic masterpieces of all time like DOS or Elden Ring will get mercilessly bashed. But don't you dare say anything bad about the eurojankie shit they play and worship like it's a sect and they are the chosen ones to carry the word of the master, ie Elex, Pathfinder, etc. The blood tide will fall upon you, cowardly bouncing off each other where they didn't dare to speak up on their own.

It's why these days I just pop my head around here every fwe months, if even. Really no point in fighting it, just accept that you can't teach new tricks to old dogs, and enjoy what's enjoyable to you.

As for me - Preloaded, ready and armed. Bring it on!

I can recommend ResetEra if you're looking for an echo chamber.

Just make sure you're woke all the way!

It's the left wing alternate RPGCodex. :biggrin:

I don't think Elden Ring has been really attacked to a high degree on this thread, to be honest. Moorkh made a two sentence criticism. Was it somewhat spicy? Yes. But its not like he/she went on a one page long rant against the game or something.

And I and a couple others were very mild, by just saying "this game is not for me" - it doesn't get much milder than that.

And Dart made some good points and was not bashing the game either.

All that said, its nice to see Nereida make a post again, I haven't seen them around here in a while. I liked Nereida's posts often before, because they can be spicy at times. (spicy = slang for controversial) Sometimes a forum does need posters who can be rather blunt and state their opinions strongly, just to keep things interesting.

Anyway, I do think there is some truth in this game having an air of pretension about it, just in terms of its marketing, and sometimes there does seem to be an element of that in the Dark Souls fan "community".

That said, I will now praise Elden Ring just to be even-handed. I have heard this game is colossal in scope and size, with a rich atmosphere, and that is a good thing for rpg games genre in general. I think this is how rpg games should be in the ultimate form, where a huge open world is presented and with every square foot having been hand built, and intricately designed with little pieces of lore all over the world. So good for the developer in this design aspect.

They also came up with a kick-ass name, "Elden Ring". I said this comment before, and its true, its a great name for a game or fantasy series. And yes, its important, all the little things, including the title of the game (or movie, or painting, or book, etc), are important.

Hmm I wonder if any of those early reviewers finished the game, or just posted for clicks? Just something to ponder at 4am in the morning, and still haven't gone to bed.:thinking:

Yep, I wonder that too and now we are in the essence of some interesting discussion. The scores are certainly influenced by the fame of the studio as many say above. How much are they influenced? I mean there certainly is a correlation with averaged critic score and game quality but that correlation is not 1 (i.e. perfect). I feel that games I tend to like often end up to the 80s. I see the quality in highly regarded >90 games but often those are not the ones I consider the best ones.

One also need to consider ones background when interpreting the scores: the reviewers play as their job, my job and life takes all my time from gaming. I have max a few hours a week. Then I should go an excel a game that is famed for its difficulty using a *controller* because I don't play enough to prioritise buying a new gaming PC. Forget that :P

I also agree that there has been very little bashing of any game here although it is possible to misinterpret some posts. Welcome back from your break Nereida :)

Gee, Dart. You can't think of a 10/10 game? CDPR, Bethsoft and FromSoft fail to understand challenge or progression?

What game/developer does good progression, then?

I'm also interested in Starfield (and Star Citizen!) but they'll have to do better than having a Steam page with screenshots taken from their CGI trailer if they want to get my attention. Also, you can only get one ship? Sounds like no progression at all, for a space game.

You say Elden Ring could be a 10/10 but you just don't see it? Mention Starfield being more interesting to you? But what the heck do you see there?! You're just imagining stuff. It's like Star Citizen all over again, for you!

There's just no indication at all that Starfield will be good. There's plenty of indication Elden Ring is good. :)

It's a rare quality :)

It's more about the individual games than the developer - and the kind of scope you're aiming for.

In terms of meaningful challenge - lots of people do that well, but it's very hard to accomplish in an open world freeform CRPG like the ones we're talking about.

I'd say PB used to be very good at it, but have somewhat fallen from grace and gone a bit lazy about it.

But that's not really because they're "good" at it - it's because they opt for very simple formulas in terms of how weapons/armor and so on work. It's easy to balance weapons when they're really just DPS sticks.

It's the combination of sophisticated mechanics and meaningful challenge that I prefer - but I can't really say it's something I see from any of the established titles.

Usually, you have to turn to the modding scene for that to work on huge open world games. You can find very strong progression/challenge mods for Witcher 3 and Skyrim - for instance. CP2077 as well, in fact.

I will say that Elden Ring seems significantly better than their past games in terms of progression, though. It seems they've finally added proper stealth and even ranged stealth for instance.

Progression is also about offering a wide arsenal - and the past Souls games have been heavily focused on melee combat with some magic spells thrown in. Ranged/stealth combat has been very limited.

It's much easier to do one thing really well than it is to offer a dozen things equally well.

Also, even the melee combat seems mostly focused on relatively "heavy" and slow combat - even with smaller weapons. I don't think it's even possible to properly dual wield in most of the past Souls games?

Things like that is a gigantic misstep when it comes to offering a compelling power fantasy to people like me, who have a specific playstyle that we prefer.

As for meaningful challenge, that's obviously subjective. It seems Souls fans actually enjoy being killed by not knowing what they can't know until they've seen it.

I mean, as a designer - it's not exactly hard to kill the player by doing something to him that he couldn't see coming.

Obviously, that does promote a level of investment and caution - and, as such, you're generating tension for the player.

I think that's part of why it's popular for many who feel some kind of satisfaction from learning patterns that are designed to be learnable.

Then there's the checkpoint paradigm - which is another very, very easy and convenient way of creating tension - from a developer/designer perspective.

Essentially, all you have to do is NOT design a proper save-system and you can create tension for the player by not actually doing something :)

I think that's pretty cool.

But, as a player, I'm really not that impressed by that design.

Definitely, Elden Ring does seem really good. That's not in dispute.

I'm just saying I don't see anything to justify a 10/10 score.

As for Starfield - that might very well end up being crap, who knows. But I would be surprised if it's not very good for someone like myself - as I tend to agree with most of Beth's design priorities - even if I wish they didn't make so many concessions for the mainstream audience.

Souls games are actually very unique in that way - as they've made a niche design into a mainstream design somehow.

The original Demon's Souls was a monumental failure in Japan, for instance. It was only because of a slow burn build of popularity in the west that it eventually got the recognition it ended up getting.

In fact, I would never have played that game if it wasn't for the massive praise from a certain segment of the western audience.

Also, I did enjoy it for quite a while and completed most of it. Sadly, I finally "figured out" the design tenets and decided I didn't agree with them - and that the reason I was having fun was really more about my own investment and not because of what the game was doing for me.

That kind of fun I can have without a game :)

I also have a hard time thinking of a 10/10 game for me. The closest the last years is Hades. I loved that game. I still get an urge now and then to play it, which is rare to me.

Maybe Pathfinder:WotR will be one, but I'm still not far into it.

And I'll definitely consider Elden Ring after I've finished Pathfinder later this year. Maybe I'll enjoy it and maybe it will be amazing. I hope so. :)

I don't get the argument of 5/5 or even 10/10 being wrong.

It's a rounded value, and actually more a message than an actual value, so I don't see anything wrong with that. One reviewer may find a game overwhelming positive and deserving of a 10. Even at the university we could get a 20/20 every once in a while; it was rare but not impossible.

The one score on 100 was 98.

What I find more strange is that such a high proportion of max scores. I don't believe this game pleases everyone, but on second thought maybe reviewers who don't like the genre saved their time to write a review on another game they're more comfortable with. I'm not entirely convinced but there are other releases to review right now.

Quite the sidetrack, but if I had to think of a game I would personally consider 10/10 - or close to it - it would probably something like:

System Shock
System Shock 2
X-Com (1994 version)
Civilization (the original)
Master of Orion 2
Gothic

But even if they WERE 10/10 - it's with the understanding that they're all flawed, but extremely good and ahead of their time (which is a thing I respect a lot). It also has to do with my insight into their development process - and the industry around the time of release.

I'm generally not too generous with my scores when it comes to games that repeat themselves to a significant degree - which would also include something like Elden Ring, which - visually and in terms of core gameplay - is hard for me to distinguish from Dark Souls 3.

I'm very wary of too many stellar reviews.

You forgot the best of the lot, Master of Magic.

Not really interested in a Souls game, but I did find this amusing from the inXile twitter page: https://twitter.com/inXile/status/14…065920/photo/1

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMS20GXV…jpg&name=large

When I was younger I could maybe be hyped by great game and I would give 10/10 to
Warcraft2
Panzer general
Master of orion 2
Warhammer Dark Omen -- at that time I thought this game deserves 9999999/10
Homm3
Baldur's Gate 1/2
Starcraft
and Fallout 2 would get 9.5

But as I am older I really can't get so much hype any more. Maybe I am too old, or just the games are repeating themselves, or I am to slow for fast paced games or I have to old machine to enjoy game as it should be.

I will probably try this game but I really do not expect 10/10 game.
7/10 would be just enough.

Wow, that's incredibly condescending and, what is even more impressive, I'm not sure you even realized that while writing. Being condescending by accident is even worse than doing so on purpose :p

Not to mention someone can have any number of reasons they might not be good at twitch style games such as health issues. People can also be poor in one style game but excel at another type of game. Frustration also depends on personality and one persons frustration can be another persons type of enjoyment. Some might love the challenge of survival games but dislike reflex based games, or like tactical games over FPS style games.

Based on this persons post history, however, it clearly wasn't an accident.

We’ll I’m glad people are coming to post even if it’s negative. There was a time here when it wasn’t worth posting in a souls thread because no one else posted. I suppose people thinking the game is worth there time to post that they don’t like these games is a sign fromSoft has finally made it. :biggrin:

I understand the negativity. I bounced off souls games for a long time. Playing a few hours and declaring it masochistic and unfair and quitting. Wasn’t until I made a deal with my brother to play DS1 for 20 hours. He said if I didn’t like it after that he’d stop bugging me to play them. I played 20 hours and I was hooked and have been a fan ever since. Over the 20 hours I got much better and stopped dying every 10 seconds and got to appreciate the combat, progression, exploration, mysteries and atmosphere that I only get from a souls game.

It takes some time to get used to these games and honestly you’ll need to have some twitch skills to survive or it will be a frustrating road. I disagree with people saying you just learn the patterns as there aren’t any true patterns. For example you can’t just go in thinking you will learn the boss’s first 10 moves and get a good start when you die and come back. The ten moves will never be the same. To me guitar hero is a pattern game. Souls games are about identifying “tells” for an enemy’s move, baiting them in to the moves you can handle and then punishing them for it. For example maybe the boss has a big wind up before a certain move or will stomp his foot before a move and then you know what’s coming next and dodge or parry and counter. The difference between a novice souls player is they will die repeatedly and take much longer identifying these “tells” and have to fight the boss over and over. An experienced souls player will identify these “tells” much quicker and has developed the twitch skills to stay alive long enough to identify and defeat the boss in much fewer tries.

For example in DS1 I spent 8 hours one sunday trying to beat Orstein and Smough. Couldn’t even tell you how many tries it was but it was a lot. ( mostly because of my stubbornness and wanting to do it with light armor and a bandit dagger. :biggrin: )

Come DS3 and I didn’t need more than 5 tries for any boss.

I know I've written this before on this site, but I'll say it again and expound on it a bit.

I am not that good at games, and I AM a person who gets frustrated when playing them. And yet FROM games are among my absolute favorites. Maybe you'll think this is pretentious too, but you probably can't know how it feels to play a FROM game unless you actually play one (and not for 5 minutes with the expectation that it will play like anything but itself).

The difficulty informs everything about how you play it. The feeling of exploring when you feel as if you could die if you let your guard down is fundamentally different than exploring like a loot vacuum cleaner, like in so many other games. It also completely changes how it feels to find that loot. Every item you find becomes more important. Finding a set of armor or an ember (in DSIII), etc. feels like progress, not just another thing to stuff in a pack.

The difficulty means that when you beat a boss, it matters. It feels like you've actually done something. And not just because of the physical aspect, but because to beat bosses in these games requires that you have learned from your failures. You learn how they move, what their tells are. You learn what weapons/spells/strategies are useful against them.

When you first face a boss, or even a common enemy, the initial reaction is often to feel overwhelmed, at least in my case. Their size, their speed, the viciousness and relentlessness of their movement and attacks. But as you become experienced in fighting them, you can almost feel them becoming mortal in your eyes. Like a basketball player, the game slows down for you. Areas that you once picked your way through with fear and caution become trivial. This happens because the game, though hard, is also fair, and it's more about planning, patience and preparation than the "twitch" gameplay Wolfgrimdark mentioned.

I don't follow all arguments here, but I did touch on this when writing about sites taking average scores (Meta- and Opencritic). The rounding bloats up the scores toward extremes and this effect is stronger the fewer levels the review has because the average scores are rescaled to 0-100 scale. Do you understand that or should I try to explain using an example?

I don't think that's what Red is talking about.

I think what they mean is that a 10/10 (or 100/100 or 5/5) doesn't mean that the game is perfect, anymore than a 93/100 is a precise indication that the game is 93% of perfect. A "perfect" score is an indication that that particular game, within the realm of gaming as a whole, is an exemplary game, a game at the very top of what has been created. Numbers are a useful shorthand, but in the realm of reviews (of anything) they should not be mistaken for a scientific measurement of any kind.

Thank you for the input, but their alleged difficulty is not really the reason I'm reluctant to try FromSoft games, including this one. I don't consider myself all that good at games either, but I've enjoyed supposedly hard games in the past.

The problem is rather that I derive little pleasure from overcoming challenges in games. It's just not why I play. Nor am I usually drawn in by the gameplay in third person action titles. And setting that aside, I fail to see what is so appealing about FromSoft games. I'm usually more of a narrative-driven player, and defenses of their stories are typically along the lines of "the lore is great!" But lore is not story. I don't care about lore.

Besides, I find their dour aesthetic and its awkward mix of grimdark and shounen anime to be on the ugly side. Admittedly, Elden Ring seems to improve on this, though the character design is still less than great.

@sakichop

About patterns, I wasn't really referring to boss fights. I kinda get why boss fights have to be like that, even if I don't personally agree that's the most interesting way to challenge players.

In fact, I think the boss fight paradigm is a relic of the past that's long overdue a complete removal from most CRPGs - but that's me :)

But there are definitely these patterns in standard enemies - and they're almost 100% predictable once you learn them - and they're a very big part of "learning the ropes" in Souls games.

I think some of the divide is that some players consider Souls games "more fair" - because they tend to not overwhelm you with 100 enemies or ridiculous amounts of hit points. Something many modern CRPGs tend to do as a "challenge" - but that's equally uninteresting to me.

Instead, in Souls, they ask you to be careful and "learn the tells" as you say - and I can see that point.

It's a fair point, but to get *my* point - it's key to realize that I'm not saying it's "unfair" or that it's not challenging. I'm saying it's not what I, personally, consider a meaningful challenge.

I do NOT enjoy trial-and-error gameplay in general. I feel the very same way about many dungeon crawlers when it comes to puzzle design. Most puzzles are based on timing and learning certain patterns of movement.

I consider that incredibly boring and overly time-consuming.

My kind of puzzle is much more about things you can solve through using your "thinking brain" - rather than your "observing/timing" brain - if that makes sense.

As in, I greatly enjoy classic riddles or tactical challenges that ask me to prioritize cleverly.

But killing me as a "lesson" is not something I particularly enjoy - and I don't think the challenge of observing and timing my movements is all that enjoyable.

In that very same way, I also absolutely DESPISE jumping puzzles - and when games go overboard with climbing and stuff like that.

I say this as a person who's actually really good at them. I almost never feel challenged in games like Tomb Raider/Uncharted or what not when it comes to jumping or climbing - because I've played so, so many much, much harder platform games back in the 80s. Modern games are trivially easy compared to them.

I mean, seriously - have you played Manic Miner? :)

We're talking 1 pixel off and it's game over. No save game - no nothing. Game over.

I found Demon's Souls pretty easy for the most part - but I absolutely had to keep observing and I could never "relax" - which I think is what appeals to so many people.

I simply don't enjoy that kind of challenge - and I don't actually feel challenged by it, sadly. I feel bored and I lose motivation - because I've never felt timing movement or avoiding special attacks was a particularly fun kind of difficulty. It reminds me of WoW raids - which I mostly found painfully easy as a DPS player - because the challenge is about coordinating 40 people, not any individual role. You typically have to jump here and there - and click some thingy or kill some add or whatever - but that's about it. You'll absolutely 100% wipe the raid if you don't pay attention - but if you DO pay attention, it's trivially easy - because you can't design a challenge that's hard when 40 people have to be good at it - or you'll have no audience for your content :)

I guess that sort of pattern what you call a tell - but the skilled player you're talking about didn't start out like a skilled player. He started out as a n00b like anyone else - and died repeatedly due to having zero chance of seeing the "tell" the first few times. The enemies are very obviously deliberately designed around having surprising and unexpected attacks - which are meant to kill you the first few times.

But obviously the more you play - the more things will repeat to a certain degree - and I'm sure veterans of Dark Souls will be much better at Elden Ring - but I'm also 100% sure they'll be killed dozens if not hundreds of times no matter how good they are - because they haven't learned the NEW patterns.

But, again, those patterns aren't that hard to learn for the most part - they just need to be learned, if you take my meaning.

Beyond that, you have the patterns of various traps and things you have to avoid in the environment - that you absolutely CAN NOT know until you experience it. They love their large rolling rocks that flatten you if you're not fast enough - and I get that it's sort of amusing, except I hate wasting time walking back and repeating the very same fights over and over because I missed a trap like that.

Sure, you can walk 1 centimeter every 10 seconds and "be skilled" by playing in that way - but that's not at all what I consider a meaningful challenge.

I'm also an impatient gamer :)

Also, perhaps even more key, I don't enjoy the story, the NPCs or even the exploration much in Souls games.

So, I don't even have a reason to overcome my dislike for the kind of challenge it offers.

I don't know what it is about exploration - but I just don't feel the environments are interesting. The levels are beautiful and so are the vistas - but the actual locations and rooms are extremely sparsely populated with very limited detail and a complete lack of feeling like someone having actually lived there. At least that was true in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.

I'm more into exploring areas that feel lived in and which tell a story - and I prefer the story to be tangible rather than opaque. Beth games or - even better - immersive sims are vastly superior in that way to me.

All you're likely to find in a Souls game is a white glowing orb in the occasional chest - and they don't even bother to display the items in any physical sense.

Again, terrible exploration game considering it's supposed to have such great exploration.

Sir James is well known in the political threads. He often writes intentionally provocative, ie flamebait.

You are 100% correct. You would not like their games, based on these three things.

Btw, I'm usually big on story too, but FROM games prove what I've otherwise suspected: I care about plot least of all story elements, and I care about setting/atmosphere as much as I do story. I've heard Elden Ring has more of a central narrative than their other games, but I think it's still probably much less of a traditional narrative than in other RPGs.

What I like about the way FROM tells stories could maybe be called the iceberg method. In most adventure games, our character is at the center of everything that happens, and as a result, everyone tells him or her everything. Usually several times. Random folks on the street seem to hang around just so you can show up and give them the chance to tell you their life stories and/or offer to let you help them. And I love conversations, if the writing is good! I exhaust dialogue trees and never skip through it.

But I also love how FROM does it. In their games, you are not at the center of anything. NPCs care about you exactly as much as people in the real world do: so far as you are important to their own goals and desires. They certainly don't tell you, over and over, about the great calamities in the land and how they need you to solve them. I wouldn't enjoy this nearly as much if there was no actual story or history in place, but there is. It's just that you're not told all of it as if you've wandered into a university lecture. You get bits and pieces, and the more you explore and the more people you talk to and find items, the more of that story coalesces.

I agree (or at least understand, but feel differently) with most of what you wrote, but not this part. I can't offhand remember a trap in FROM games that it was impossible to predict if you were observant and careful enough. It's actually funny sometimes because you can see traps waiting to be sprung if you look at the environment from certain angles (like the dudes hanging off of ledges, waiting to clamber up and stab you).

There's a boulder trap in Sen's Fortress where they deliberately drew the stairs as worn and chipped away to give the player at least the possibility of surmising that a large heavy object came down them. Is it likely that anyone would notice that and put two and two together? Probably not, but it isn't true that you "absolutely" can't know about it. Things never just materialize in FROM games. They are always physically present in the world at all times, and as such, there is the chance that you can detect them before it's too late.

(Btw, you added the last part after I started writing this and oof, do I not agree with you about the exploration aspect, but I'll just leave it there)

I probably phrased that wrong.

It's true that you can avoid the traps if you're careful - but I certainly feel like I've died countless times because I just didn't have a clue what was coming and lost my focus for a second. Potentially struggling with the camera angle or the terrible lock-on system :)

Not just traps, though - but also enemies being deliberately placed in blind spots - or Dragons flying over an area and wreaking havoc etc.

I could also be mixing some of my experiences with other Souls-likes.

For instance, I've played a lot of Nioh 2 - which also had a large rolling boulder that killed my brother and myself numerous times :)

Not necessarily because it was unfairly placed - but due to the chaos of combat going on.

Now Nioh, THAT game wasn't for me. I died all the time, but the rewards and the world weren't as compelling so my motivation to soldier through ran out fairly quickly. The endless Diablo style loot drops, c'mon… who needs to have 87 versions of the same sword?

Nioh 2 :)

The key was proper co-op - which can make most games a lot better.

That said, I found the arsenal vastly superior to anything I've seen in any other Souls game. The amount of weapon types and unique abilities for each and every one of them is pretty staggering.

The only reason we didn't complete it was that we eventually got bored of the nonsense story and mostly boring levels. But we did get 50-60 hours out of it - so it was well worth it.

Also, I think combat was significantly harder than Demon's Souls - but because of the shared experience - and the progression and loot - I felt it was worth the investment.

But there's no doubt Nioh 2 is full of sadistic encounters and bosses.

Not the part of it that I enjoyed at all.

I understand, and that's a good point, although it depends on what you call "bloat up to the extremes". To me, the uncertainty introduced by less precise scores (more quantized values) drowns the precision of the other scores. Said otherwise, it concentrates the values around the low-precision values (0 … 5). The problem is coming from not expressing the precision of the measure and its confidence, but it doesn't matter to most people anyway, they would find it strange.

But I was not talking about averages, only as @JFarrell71 thought: "10" means "10 with a precision of 1", it could be 9.5. Actually, most of the time "10" doesn't even mean that, it just means "it's awesome". It's not as if those scores could be measured in the first place. ;)

"souls-like" to me is immediate don't buy but I'm glad it's out and looking good - there's been a lot of people out there clamoring for a 50 shades of gaming smack down that can take their punishment now.

Wow, just WOW, can't wait to play this! Just let a few patches come in first.

One of the good things about TES IV: Oblivion, is that it made me impervious to hype. This game looks good, and I might check it out later. I haven't played any of the Souls games, but they seem to emphasize the "action" part of "action RPG" a bit much for my taste.

The upcoming game I'm the most excited about right now is Elex 2. Piranha Bytes lost a little bit of my trust with Risen 2 (which I still completed), but they pretty much won it back with Elex. I'll be getting the sequel on launch day. :-)

There's no way my keyboard (or gamepad) would have survived that. :)

What's NPR ?

National Public Radio, one of the very few reasons to still own an actual radio. The news they put out tends to be spot-on, as well.

As for the game, yeah, all these good reviews are almost making me twitchy. I'll be on the hype express once the dust settles down with some updates/patches, might even wait a tad to make sure future content hits as well.

Yes I remember you frustration with WOTR.

While I have only ever played one DS game, and only for abou 10 hours, and I get the idea of overcoming challenge being exhilarating, and the suspense and tension death can bring, I don't care for this particular kind of challenge anymore due to age and eye/hand issues. I also am not into bosses with bloated HP although dealt with them in Technomancer and Greedfall and other games.

Playing a survival game on hard or ironman mode can give me the same sense of suspense and thrill if I want it. As can playing a game of chess or even scrabble.

In general I prefer real life challenges and the rewards, and lessons, they bring, over artificial ones in a game. Games for me are more about escaping into another world and a way to wind down from stress and pressure in real life. I don't particularly need that in my gaming activities unless it fits in well with a world I enjoy.

So great you, and others, get a sense of achievement and pleasure from taking down a boss and enjoying the suspense of death around every corner … but one can still enjoy that in games that aren't twitch based just as one can enjoy games for a more relaxed experience or a more mental challenge (puzzles, tactical) versus how good their reflexes are and how good their endurance is to whittle down a 10K HP creature.