You're looking for a completely different experience than soulsborne games seek to provide my guy. The effort makes the experience meaningful. It's just like WoW was meaningfully better before the abundance of fast travel options later added to the game, or the nerfs to leveling and item acquisition. It's not everyone's cup of tea but it's a strong, flavorful and relatively unadulterated cup of tea and we stan that.
I don't even like soulsborne games that much but I recognize the beauty and purity of the experience they provide. I'd rather be playing quake 3, but it's the same thing in a certain conceptual way.
The defining feature of souls likes is undoubtedly their fluid combat. Not the shitty numbers behind them. You could. Have just as good of an experience getting x level ups after beating a boss and that’s it.
I don't even like soulsborne games that much but I recognize the beauty and purity of the experience they provide. I'd rather be playing quake 3, but it's the same thing in a certain conceptual way.