I'm sure Dark Souls will inevitably take over this thread. But what's prompting me right now is that I'm currently playing through Furi for the first time (I'm about a year late) and absolutely loving it. And the only thing I can compare it with is one of my all-time favorite games: Hyper Light Drifter

They're both very colorful and stylized, they both rely on dashing, sword slashing, shooty mechanics, with unique and challenging boss battles and very vague but fascinating stories. And they both rely on quick reflexes and fairly precise timing mechanics

So I did a Google search to see how often they came up together in topics, and ended up getting a ton of search results of people complaining how broken Furi is

For those that don't know it has mild bullet-hell moments (maybe bullet purgatory is more appropriate naming?) and an invincibility dash, which you can charge up for a second to dash across the screen rather than just a few spaces away when you do a normal tap

It seems people are having a lot of trouble tapping the dash button? They say there's a delay because it's designed to charge, which I never experienced. You tap it, you dash, you hold it, you charge and dash when you release

There's also a nice parry mechanic where when you're in a melee situation the bosses will have a white flash on their weapons and you'll hear an audio cue which is just meant to tell you a parry is available. I've heard people say you can use the audio cue to get a perfect parry (which automatically results in a follow-up counter attack animation from your character), but I've had zero trouble using just the light cue. And there are certain delays in animations. Some bosses will light their weapon and hold. And of course you don't parry before they attack

Long story short, people are complaining because they can't handle the mechanics. They're not good players, they're not picking up on the timing, and what all is available to them

And I actually did find a few topics saying similar things about Hyper Light Drifter

I'm more interested in finding more games like this, not belittle the developers to make easier games and cater to the lowest common denominator. I'm not a masochist, and I'm not out for bragging rights. I suck at Dark Souls, but I love these games. They're just challenging and rewarding enough to create a state of flow for me, which is extremely rare for me in gaming these days

And for those that aren't familiar with that term, a state of flow is a psychological situation where if you're doing something that's not challenging enough you get bored, or if it's too challenging you get frustrated, and if it's just right you get flow

People also brought up how "glorious" the parry mechanic was in Onimusha (I wouldn't know, I never played it)

But yeah, any other challenging yet fun games out there people have enjoyed? I could use some suggestions for after I finish Furi

And if anyone has any comments on their opinions or experiences with challenging games those are welcome as well