>>712360634 (OP)>best soulsnot quite, that'd be DaS1. But it still is a really good game.
People seem to forget that "souls" games started as basically third-person metroidvanias. They were "hard" because they didn't handheld you and bosses were interesting but gimmicky.
With time, "souls" titles became more cynical in that exploration and discovery weren't the main attractives but the artificial difficulty of "omg this enemy is bullshit". And Elden Ring peaked with that, too many enemies and bosses were tunned to be annoying to fight, not interesting. SotE was even worse in that regard, with spastic anime style common enemies which were more of a chore than a challenge.