its funny because im struggling with silksong way more than any dark souls adjacent game ive played recently (and im happy for it lol). The "clunky controls" of a soulsgame are way more intuitive to my brain than the jumping around and slashing in silksong.

A lot of the joy in Silksong is in being able to figure out how a boss or enemy forecasts their moves. Every enemy is an anime character who has to announce their moves. Silksong is a "Guitar Hero"-like, actually. I beat a lot of bosses and minibosses on the first encounter, I beat the final boss on the second try, etc.

For some of the bosses, they announce their coming moves with some simlish-style announcement. The penultimate boss took me seven tries for this. The flamboyant boss took me nine. But all the other bosses have windup animations that forecast the moves, with very few (no?) fakeouts.

have you tried sekiro? if youre looking for another guitar hero game you could give it a shot. (im just alwys looking for an excuse to recommend sekiro lol)