Only that D* Souls games, and I suppose Bloodborne as well, aren't "punishingly brutal". Not generally speaking at least. Only Demon's Souls on level 1-1 has been, basically because one couldn't level up. Yes, they may be hard, especially for new entries. They have a long learning curve.But while I took 9 hours to beat 1-1 in Demon's Souls, I could go reach the first boss in DS2 without even dying in a fight. Just by some lame mistakes.

Still, they are RPGs. The easy mode somehow is there. Just grind to level up and upgrade your gear. Or if you want to make them really trivial play online and summon like mad.

As for the "self-conceit and elitism".. Please. The games are praised and loved simply because they have the best fighting system for action RPGs out there. Well, not to mention that the setting is lovely. If people would rather slice air or waste hours chatting in that retarded 1st person view in Skyirm and the likes, their loss. 

Id say theres definitely a portion of the fanbase that has an air of smugness and elitism when it comes to the souls games.

I for one thoroughly enjoyed playing demons souls and dark souls, especially the worlds created for them, but the difficulty almost killed those games for me. I just don't have the patience and had to be in the right mood/have a lot of free time to waste before i got around to playing them. For that reason I haven't played dark souls 2 yet.

Hearing that this game is harder has pushed me away from picking it up day one... I secretly was hoping that it might be toned down just a little from the souls games. However it looks good so im sure ill eventually be in the zone and pick it up.

While I'd agree that there is an elitism with most Souls fans, I think that your focus on why they're smug is a little misdirected. The elitism comes more from people saying that Souls games are hard than from Souls games actually being hard. The difficulty of these games has been harshly exaggerated. Not that they're easy, because they aren't, but they are far from these impossible and inpenatrable games. There are lots of games harder, and honestly, the Souls games are some of the most accessable games out there.

The Souls games aren't special because they're hard; they're special because they fool you into thinking that they're hard. They make you better at video games in general by making the player think critically about what they're doing at all times. Everyone's first Souls game is astronomically more difficult than their second. That's not because the second game was easier; it's because they got better at Souls games. Most of the difficulty in Souls games come from not knowing the rules. The controls are backwards, and the game punishes stupidity aka players who don't follow the rules. The punishment isn't even that harsh. At least not if you play the game by its rules and actually spend your souls regularly.

Just look at enemies in Souls games. Most people die from the easiest enemies early on, when literally every enemy in the game blatently, including the bosses, telegraph their attacks. It's like if someone turned Punch Out into a game that wasn't only boss fights. And then made the controls backwards.

Souls difficulty is like Puzzelda puzzles. They're not made to be difficult, they're made to make you feel smart. And that's not a bad thing, until 90% of the fanbase overhypes the difficulty of the series. Souls games are moderately challenging dungeon crawlers with unconventional gameplay. It's very hard when you don't know the rules, but more than managable when you do. It's no harder than something like Mega Man or Donkey Kong Country. The only differece is that those games have simple, easy to understand, rules that are clear from the first level. Run and jump. Souls games have RPG elements and has rules that are backwards from the genre that it's in, making it more "difficult" to start.

It's the equivilant of if a platformer suddenly made you jump by pressing up on the dpad and made it so that you could only jump if you were already in the air aka falling off a platform. That's not harder, it's different. Souls games are different. And damn good for it.

The only thing being elitist about these games does is make people who would have no real problem beating these games not even try them because they think they are insurmountable. It's definitely no Battle Toads. (That's a bad example. I've never played Battle Toad, but you get my point)

spemanig, on a thread about The Order, I think you said you were able to play it before most people..will you also do the same with Bloodborne?...if you do, I think we´d all appreciate a few early impressions of the full game.

Maybe we do remember and are happy that most developers don't feel the need anymore to build arbitrary barriers.