I'm still not sure how to feel about save-anywhere and checkpoint abundance.
On the one hand, accessibility and options are nice and you can always "choose" not to save much or take advantage of infinite retries. But on the other hand, it just doesn't feel as satisfying as having the developers force limited checkpoints/savepoints on you. I end up being a hypocrite, often abusing retries and saving a lot (to "save time") then proceed to sulk about it lol. FromSoftware games owe their renowned high difficulty to penalty systems that can't be disabled. If FF7 Rebirth had similar penalties (or limited checkpoints/save points), it would have been notably harder than any Souls game. And you can still choose to make it harder by simply not abusing the checkpoint system, but ultimately the game does not "feel" THAT hard.
The hardest games I played are shumps/STG's. The reason shmups remain too difficult is because they force you to play 25 to 75~ minutes of nonstop action where a single mistake could snowball into utter defeat. The further you make it, the higher your heartrate, it's a thrill! Emulators allow you to save at any second, but where is the "thrill" in saving in the middle of a shump stage? It just defeats the purpose.
The high difficulty of older games in general stemmed from their limited checkpoints/attempts and it's one of the reasons why modern gaming feels numb by comparison. "Oh it's okay if I die here, I got infinite lives".
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