[bananaoomarang]

> I can enjoy difficulty when I don't have to redo things I've already done; I'm fully on-board with something like a Super Meat Boy or a Hotline Miami, which are also games where death is expected and a core part of the loop, but when dying to a boss involves trekking back through 5-10 mins of low-level enemies I very quickly lose interest.

Sekiro and Elden Ring are both much better here in terms of checkpointing close to bosses, though it's still not always just right outside it often is. Indeed I remember a few very tedious routes in Bloodborne and Dark Souls. It just didn't bother me quite so much because I enjoyed optimizing them also!

With Elden Ring also at least there is always other stuff to do/explore (at least so far for me at ~50 hours in) so you can come back later.