You know people use Monster Hunter as a comparison so much that it really bothers me. Just because Monster Hunter has diversity in combat doesn't mean that's it's automatically better than Souls when Souls has limited combat options.
There is a big different. MH requires the gameplay diversity because it requires the player to do the same fight over and over and over again. The diversity in combat is there to give the player options to make the exact same fight feel different if they get bored with it.
Souls games don't require this, they require a basic learning curve for a boss and then that boss is typically done and the next fight will require something different of the player. You wont return to the same fight unless you are playing the game all over again for the most part. This means that Souls combat being limited is actually a benefit, simply because the combat allows the player to MASTER their approach in order to maximize their success through the game. If there is too much diversity in the combat, then you'd end up with people just finding the easiest way to get through a fight to move on and the experience would be so drastically weakened as a result.
It's apples to oranges in comparison is what I mean.
I mean, the comparison comes up because its the same combat system at a baseline almost to a plagiaristc level (the bars for health and stamina are literally identical colours in identical order in the identical UI location).
Both utilized stamina management as a limiter to set a more deliberate pace to their combat, and placed a high emphasis on evasion of attacks over blocking or even countering (Souls concessions to parrying aside). With the main evade move also being a roll that includes i-frames (in Souls a giant gaping window of them, in MH a drastically more limited amount).
No one is changing their weapon in Monster Hunter to find the easiest way through a fight, I'd guarantee you that, because farther in the game that literally could be 10 hour investments (both in re-farming up a weapon tree and in learning a whole new weapon).
Souls... doesn't require anything different in the vast majority of boss fights. R1, R1, circle repeat ad nauseum with even a basic grasp of timing reads and stamina management. Off the top of my head the only time this doesn't work is Crystalians in Elden Ring which actually required using the R2 (or well, assming you didn't want to witness the heat death of the universe first). And it doesn't change if I use a sword, a claymore, an axe, a halberd, claws. a rusty pitchfork. My NG+ run on DS3 I llterally used a different weapon on every single boss that I'd never used in my first run.
The only adjustments in Souls, tandeming with what it deems as difficulty, is pushing my weapons damage up a curve (and even that petres off about midway through each game). Its primary difficulty reflects the same, the attacks aren't difficult to learn and the invincbility window is gigantic, the main pitfall is that you will get out by a particularly large or oddly animated attack, die in one hit and have to reset the whole fight. Bury that in a second or third boss phase to make it even more fleeting. I'm not mastering any technique or notable skill improvement even on the baseline, I'm definitely not establishing any new skill for each boss. I'm just dealing with whatever new janky way they've found to make the animation look derpy or add some other attack you wouldn't expect to occur.
And that basically is the main component of my critique of the Souls game. Its the same critique I have of Assassins Creed. Every fight and every scenario in the game (with rare exception) is so mind numbingly similar that I frequently forget how many games there actually are in each series and sometimes which fights were in each one. Admittedly, Monster Hunter is not above a bare remastering of its regular line up as well. But I don't feel like I've fought Rathalos 23 times in one game (unless I have, because RNG's a harsh mistress). I barely process a distinct memory between Ornstein, Gwyn, Black Knights, Pursuers, Crucible Knights (they do have their little angel thing which is amusing when they yeet themselves into pits) and the other seeming 18,000 humanoid dudes I've fought in Souls games. I remember fighting the Weeping Dragon mostly because it took 40 minutes with a non-upgraded weapon, and I couldn't tell you a single attack it did but I've never lost to it in 2 runs of DS1 and 1 run of DS1:R.
