Man, these games are great but these days I can't help but get annoyed by them. Especially since Souls became the template for modern action games. Everything about the series comes together so well, the world is so interesting, the exploration and level design are top notch, and it lets you be so flexible in your approach that it's easy to want to go back to it. But then you die thanks to an overzealous input buffer, have to do ANOTHER run back to your souls, eventually get fed up fighting the same enemies over and over so you run past everything, fight a boss which will sometimes have a cool gimmick, and then get you invaded because you automatically opt-into online play after a boss. The highs hit really high, but it's probably not a coincidence that I finish one of these games felling exhausted thinking "yeah I think I'm done with this gameplay style for now".