reactions to dragon's dogma 2 feel like proof i've truly poisoned my brain online, like despite some of the things i write i truly don't feel very optimistic about people's ability to actually engage sincerely with challenging art. especially when i see people talk about >30 year old movies or 20 year old games as boring or hopelessly obtuse. or having "the right to see everything because i paid for the game" which feels like such an ill-defined and weird attitude to have towards the medium. i've seen people i like and think are pretty smart play things that i would consider a little challenging to the conventions of their genre and medium and jump to really negative takeaways before reflecting on why they might've been made that way.
the broad notions of what's "good" do change and potentially even expand over time, and concepts that were niche at first can become accepted by wider sections of people who engage with games if they're used repeatedly. but it never feels to me like people as a whole actually become more open-minded...more often it seems like they just adapt to the new concepts of what's good and ask for or accept more of that.
i remember demon's souls being pretty divisive and not that later from games haven't been but it doesn't really feel like the same reason. we're coming up on 15 years now of "soulslikes" being a genre and if you release an action rpg without i-frame dodges or healing similar to estus a lot of people will view it highly suspiciously