Nine Sols did this perfectly. It's another very hard metroidvania, but it has some options you can enable if you want to that adjust the difficulty in a variety of very tangible ways. I wish that was standard.

And the idea that every game should be for everyone is the reason why Elden Ring is... kind of a bad game.

Great open world, beautiful scenery... bad boss design, which yes — that is the game.

Like, think about this in the real world setting. Think about how this hyopthetical would play out, person becomes disabled and has to sit in a wheelchair. Everyone agrees 'it's not fair that they can't walk, no one should walk because this person can't'. And then everyone sits in a wheelchair despite being perfectly abled.

Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me, I'm sorry if there are people who can't beat these games — but damn, at some point you have to recognize life isn't fair and just enjoy the shit you do enjoy. If being good at a video game isn't important to you, ok that's your prerogative. Do not play the hard video game. But this constant whining about difficulty settings and nerfs is just obnoxious.

... I do? They're like the most basic manifestation of mastery over a particular section meaningfully impacting my experience. Not only does getting good at a run back let me focus on learning the boss more, but it also increases my general mobility throughout the map as a whole and drastically improves how cool it feels to replay the game and just blow through previously challenging sections.

Exactly.

Imagine being ridiculed for not enjoying frustration and games designed around failure. It’s a damned shame.

I've played 7+ total hours and I've only managed to get Greenpath and Forgotten Crossroads. The fact that my ghost can (and has, many times) kill me is infuriating. How am I supposed to progress if after 30 minutes I want to throw my controller at the wall?

Several Soulslikes I’ve played have hidden in accessibility options things like not hitting you for falling into a pit, or not taking resources when you die.

I had a fantastic moment with this in Another Crab’s Treasure; I was doing some platforming when Krill glitched off the geometry and fell, killing me in the process. When I respawned, I knew I had tons of microplastics (souls) out there I wanted to save, but also felt frustrated because it wasn’t my fault I died - just bad game coding, as many games have. Plus, the odd positioning meant I might not be able to reach the death spot.

Instead, I just went to Accessibility and recovered them that one time; the game was nice enough not to even invalidate any achievements from the brief use.