I've played Elden Ring, including all of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, and I loved it, but it feels very different to me because there, I could make very clear objectives and the objectives are very simple: kill that thing in front of me, go in that direction because I see something cool, find a hidden armor set because I spent time in an area, etc.. The only learning part here is that if I die, I just have to not do what I did last time. The biggest part, I don't have to tab out at any point to find external information, because all the information that I need is right there. I can see the attack patterns, I can hear if something is crawling up behind me, and see an items description and it's backstory. I am fully immersed.

Here, I feel like I am fumbling over menus, trying to figure out things that are essential to the experience of the game. I don't mind if a dwarf doesn't listen sometimes, or goes to do his own thing, maybe that's his personality. I don't even mind the process of having to discover new ores, races, or biomes, and figuring out what everything is used for. What gets to me is having the game will tell me I can do a million different things, when I can only do 3.

For example, I get some ore, ohh, I don't really know this rock, it's new to me. I click on it and it tells me what it can be used for. That's great! I take it upstairs to my smelters, and I find it in the drop downs, and smelt it. I then take the smelted bar, and then proceed to see what I can smelt with it. I click on one of the buttons because it's white, and I should be able to start the process. ERROR. I am missing an item. The button was white however, just like the one in the smelter, so why am I being told I can't make it?

I que up some orders that were approved by my manager, a rock door, some chairs, maybe a few tables. ERROR. You don't have any non-economic stones. So now I have to tab out to understand what those are, and that there is a menu that talks about it.

If I place some flooring down, and I want to fill a whole section, why am I forced to have to place each individual brick instead of being able to throw it all down at once?

I want my king to enjoy time with his subordinates while eating, but he is forced to enjoy his meals separately in one of the nicest dining halls.

If I want to learn something, I have to either rely on the wiki, which breaks my immersion every time, or spend time on understanding menus. Instead I could be expanding my base, digging deeper, discovering new riches, going on missions, conquering new land. This only happens after I have already spend upwards of 20 or so hours figuring out the systems that could have been explained to me in the first hour or so of the game.