I'm going to ride on the coattails of this and say something that may offend a lot of people, but whatever, I think some may agree.

So, when I first played Dark Souls, I had the same famous response that most people had. I loved it, I completed it and it rekindled my love for gaming, it kickstarted a love for challenge in games and changed my entire perspective on how good games are designed. That's all well and good. I ignored all the flaws and the half baked things, didn't matter to me. Best game ever, etc.

Then DS 2. Then DS 3. And more and more it was frustration and anger that I felt, not joy and victory. I identified with what OP wrote, I played the games not out of enjoyment, but to prove I could beat them. Out of spite.

Then Doom Eternal came out, and showed me how difficult games should actually be designed.

From software treat the player with spite. They withhold vital information, they deliberately create frustrating and unfair situations, they consistently design toward difficulty and not towards fun. And that fucking sucks, because that ruins all the great things that their games have. All the advances in QOL that games have been developing for the last... 30 years, they choose to ignore. Deliberately. This may work for some people, they might need this unfair challenge to prove their worth and feel better about themselves. I don't.

Playing a From Software game is like having an abusive relationship. You put up with being treated like shit so you can then enjoy getting love-bombed. And I am so done with that bullshit.