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I wouldn't say they're bad games per se, but they're certainly overrated on their own merits barring Sekiro.
Nonsense, they occupy a large cultural space because they're needlessly exclusionary, which appeals to a lot of elitists. Difficulty isn't hard to find, just try any challenge runs or speedruns for games you already enjoy. But there's a reason why speedrunning is incredibly niche while the Souls games aren't. People like to watch speedrunners but not to actually do it themselves, while the Souls games sell millions of copies, and it's mainly because of the elitist snobbery the Souls games have wrapped themselves in.
I think this take and your favorite Soulslike being Sekiro are entirely at odds, which is what I don't get.
Souls, and to the greatest extent Elden Ring, allow you to use the game's systems, content and options to make the game as difficult or as easy as you want. Even in Demon's Souls, you could essentially powermax your character through repetitive soul farming until you trivialized a lot of the content, serving as a sort of soft difficulty modification depending on how the player wanted to play. There are options in the game that can make the majority of bosses a joke, and the oneshot magic spell is a meme in the Elden Ring community.
Sekiro is not like that. You either have reflexes or you don't. If you don't parry, you're dead. People who don't have the reflexes to accurately do so are never going to be able to complete Sekiro by design.
One of the sillier parts of debating the possible inclusion of an easy mode is this exact line of reasoning. "The devs must not include an easy mode as that would ruin the game... except oh wait they already did! It's [any playstyle I think is too easy]!" My response would be to question why easy playstyles are fine, but an easy mode is perceived as such a sacrilege?
The effect of levelling is overstated. It has its biggest impact at the lowest levels, but even there it doesn't make much of a difference beyond giving maybe 1 or 2 more hits of leeway before you're flattened into a pancake. Weapon upgrades follow a similar path of the lower levels everyone will get being pretty impactful, but there's quite diminishing returns after that. The oneshot magic spell (I'm assuming you're talking about the big beam thing?) is good for Twitter clips and YT clickbait but is way too inconsistent to rely on in any capacity for a first playthrough.
You're not wrong about the general point though. There are definitely things you can do to trivialize the game. Using magic in DS1 feels like you're the only character in the game with a gun, and Ash Spirits trivialize every boss in ER (although in a really boring way, the Joseph Anderson critique I linked above goes into that more).
You don't have to play Sekiro using parries. I did hit-and-run tactics for most of my first playthrough, which is low risk and low reward. It's definitely not the best way to play the game and had I not grinded the bosses after beating the game I probably never would have noticed how well-designed most of them are, but it's certainly possible to do. Heck, new players probably gravitate towards it if they've played other Souls games before.
Also, I don't really understand how that is connected to the overall point. Sekiro is the tighter game overall, but it would still be fine if it had an easy mode.
I disagree so strongly with you and your point is so alien to me that I don't think it's possible we can have any realistic dialogue.
To quote a discussion further up the thread: what is the purpose of the game? Why is it a game? What comprises a game? What is the purpose of gameplay? To me, a game must have win state and lose state. Otherwise, it's not a video game. Otherwise you would have to expand the definition of 'gameplay' to include the act of turning a page in a book or hitting play on a media player for a movie. Winning has meaning because losing matters.
Have you ever interacted with a child and handed them something for free? Expecting them to value it at all is a joke. Make them earn something, something nontrivial, and they will treat it like a treasured heirloom.
The dialogue between the game designer and the player is the point of the game. You seem to be under the impression that the reason games are designed to be hard is to weed out players. I don't think any game designer thinks like this, especially as they are subject to financial incentives that explicitly want the game to find the widest possible audience.
The purpose of a game is to be fun. Difficulty is a big part of that. Something too hard is frustrating, while something too easy is boring. Skill differences between players are wide, which is why the vast majority of games include difficulty options.
For most games this is true, but FromSoft has found a niche where alienating less skilled players is worthwhile for them to prop up the series' reputation for difficulty, which appeals to smug elitists. "Developer vision" arguments are vacuous nonsense that essentially boil down to "you can't criticize any design choices, ever".
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Even if you never valued at all any gifts you have got at birthday or some other occasion, it does not mean that it is universal.
ironically, heirlooms are quite universally in this category
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Clearly, that exclusionary element is not needless - it serves a purpose or satisfies some desire. I think that desire is the desire for competition, just channelled into a single player game. I also think it's wrong to write off that very natural drive as snobbery.
There's a big difference between the drive for completing a tough challenge, and being pretentious for having done so. I get that the smug superiority people get is part of the reward for doing the challenge, but it's best not to make that the central premise. For FromSoft titles it very much is.
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