Every time FromSoftware releases a new title, the entire gaming community seems to get wrapped up in the same tired debates about game difficulty. One side complains that games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne are just too hard for their own good and that only masochists enjoy games that punish players for every little mistake. On the other side, die-hard FromSoftware fans will argue vehemently that the games aren't really that difficult if you just play them correctly.
The release and massive success of Elden Ring has predictably revived those debates, leading to familiar and circular arguments. To help end the bickering, we've tried to break down the vast and loaded concept of "difficulty" in video games into an Ars Difficulty Matrix (™) consisting of five noncomprehensive subcategories.
We've laid out the elements of that matrix below, and for each element, we've tried to explain how Elden Ring fits into the history of game design. In doing so, we hope to show that Elden Ring can be both brutally difficult and incredibly easy. It all depends on what, exactly, you mean by "difficulty."
Mechanical difficulty
Mechanical difficulty simply refers to the way games require players to hit a certain set of buttons in a certain timing window to complete the next objective. This form of difficulty is also sometimes referred to as a "reflex test."
Mechanical difficulty has a very long history in gaming. Classic arcade games overwhelmingly relied on increasingly difficult reflex tests to weed out players and force them to put in another quarter. Early console games often did something similar, using demanding mechanical challenges to increase the playtime on cartridges with limited storage space. When people talk about games being "Nintendo Hard," they're usually talking about mechanical difficulty.
While pure mechanical difficulty isn't as popular in games as it once was, it still features prominently in platformers like Super Meat Boy, Celeste, or the so-called "Kaizo Mario" ROM hacks, to name just a few.