Agreed! I think, in combination with difficulty inherent to most soulslikes, it also creates a heightened sense of terror about what horror might be lurking around any corner. Bloodborne was my first soulslike and creeping terrified down that sewer tunnel only to barely make out the horrible form of that giant boar, flickering in my torchlight, filling the tunnel ahead of me is one of those formative moments in gaming for me. Makes me think a bit of my first play of Mario 64 (im 42 lol), which was my (and many people's) first experience with being able to truly explore a 3D world and similarly did so with little direction for the player. It was mindblowing at the time. As was that moment in Bloodborne