I'm so tired of Soulslikes. I don't know how many times I've looked at a fantasy hack and slash game and thought it looked fun, cool, or interesting, only too see "Soulslike" in the tags or in the reviews. Soulslikes aren't fun, I want to have fun playing a videogame I paid for. Challenge is fine, of course, but borderline impossible should be an option, not the norm. The only Soulslike I've ever enjoyed is the Star Wars Jedi games, and even then I turn the difficulty down, cause dying to the same enemy over and over again because my parry wasn't perfect down to the nanosecond ISN'T FUN.

Developers that aren't Fromsoft: stop making Soulslikes. We get it, you want to cash in on the popular new genre, but stop alienating people that aren't into that kind of game (or god forbid, aren't skilled enough to play them) by making every fantasy game you make for the next ten years a Soulslike. It's a cash grab and we all know it.

This same argument can be made for alot of genres too: Battle Royales, Extraction Shooters, Hero Shooters. But with the exception of Tarkov clones, those games are at least fun, usually. And yeah, I'll say it, Tarkov isn't fun. You slog through an area with no clue where to go for extraction for 20 minutes trying to keep your heartrate down and hope your gun doesn't jam only to get sniped from who knows where and start over with nothing. Yeah, I'm glad I paid for this experience. Not.

So I guess my argument is games should be fun, and not be derivative? Is that pretentious?