half a star off only cause i struggle too much with many of the bosses (i beat the game but still have to do mimir, gael and nameless king) using mutliple phases with up to 3 health bars (more a psychological trick since one can look at it as one big bar but i personally hated it), more often then not mutliple/gank boss mechanics and stuff like teleporting for the princes boss fight. so far i wouldn't call any of the fromsoft games i played (ds1-ds3, bb, er) being ableist since u can learn stuff or mitigate it even without an easy mode but the mechanics employed in this one really didn't play well with my audhd. i played also offline and sometimes npc summons help a lot but i also wanted after so many soulsborne games do it by myself anyway. i still would call it a skill issue maybe and ds2 can be weird with stuff too but its so flawed in many ways that i don't notice it there so much as here.

however the boss fights are mostly top tier isolated by themselves and choosing quality over quantity (which had to be done in er i guess since it's open world) was wise which is the reason why i give it only half a star off and not with an easy mind. i do see how this was a game for ds veterans more then anything else.

i love how depressing the game was (something many disliked) since for me, after playing dark souls 1, it felt like a bitterweet goodbye to the world of dark souls. i gladly chose to let the flame extinguish since this place felt like on life support but wanting to die, even if i would have become lord of cinder. elden ring teached me that history does indeed just requires a little push at times. dark souls 3 teached that sometimes u need to let go of things which are the most precious.