I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
This is exactly how I feel. I just don’t think they are fun most of the time. I don’t think they are harder than the well controlled third person action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, but I never feel like I can blame the cumbersome controls in those games like I can with souls-likes. Weirdly, the only souls-like that I ended up enjoying was the heavily memed/mocked Final Fantasy Origins. It had an interesting story (total inversion of the story of the first FF game) and had somwhat interesting skills and upgrades.