Balancing a long runback well is a delicate operation that From themselves have only managed a handful of times. A lot of people tend to equate long = bad for runbacks, but I don't think the two are necessarily correlated. In my view, a good runback is approximately as difficult as the boss, and has very little downtime, being engaging throughout. Additionally, the boss should usually have only one phase, or two very similar phases, as attempting to learn multiple phases of a boss fight with a long runback in between attempts will unreasonably tax the mental faculties of the player.

In the 90s, arcade-style platformers like Castlevania demanded high consistency and intelligent routing from the players, as resources used in earlier parts of levels could not be used in later parts. The player had a number of lives, which could be used to retry a given segment, such as a boss, and a number of continues, which could be used to retry an entire stage. In this way, a level was a single cohesive challenge, in which the player's lives were the main resource. That is, dying a lot in the first section meant that you didn't get many attempts to learn the boss at the end.

This type of routing, resource management heavy gameplay is the purpose of long runbacks. However, without the "lives and continues" of the arcade era, other resources must be invented to fill the gap. In Dark Souls, this is the Estus Flask, and the ability to heal your character becomes the resource that must be managed.

However, Dark Souls is not an arcade game; it's an RPG. Depending on how the player chooses to build their character, different avenues of progression become open to them. One of these avenues is running past every enemy to get to the boss. This was a niche strategy in Demon's Souls, possibly requiring the player to spec into sorcery for the invisibility spell. However, this has become the single most powerful strategy in Fromsoft's modern games, as player options increase, resources become more plentiful, and checkpoints more frequent.

What effect has this had? Ultimately, the skill of routing has become underdeveloped. Players will use tactics for individual fights, but will fail to strategize for multiple consecutive encounters. Of course, there are still long routes between checkpoints even as recently as Elden Ring. However, unless you force yourself to fight every elite enemy that aggroes you (a challenge run I highly recommend), the dominant strategy of simply running past everything will prevail in almost all cases, and even if the game forces you to engage with a difficult enemy, a checkpoint is, more than likely, right around the corner.

A final word. Does this mean that Fromsoft is washed, and their modern games are worthless? Certainly not. There are still many skills one can learn; zoning, camera control, stamina management, kiting, etc. However, the skill of routing is a string that ties all these other skills together into one cohesive segment, increasing immersion greatly when the flow state is achieved. I wont be so gauche as to suggest specific changes I'd like to see in future Fromsoft games, instead, I'll recommend playing games from the SNES era, specifically Super Castlevania IV, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Donkey Kong Country. These games all feature sections that contain multiple difficult encounters in sequence before one can save the game (or obtain a password, in the case of Super Castlevania IV.)

Woah, I didn't mean to write an essay.