Death's Door

Having a few souls-like games without much success (read: dying too often and not understanding why being frustrated at a game is "fun"), games like Death's Door have been able to help me break through that barrier and finally be able to enjoy the souls-like genre. Death's Door starts out just difficult enough for anyone to be able to get into the game, while slowly ramping up the difficutly in a way that you can adjust to without throwing the controller across the room. The art style and music are on point as well, accompanied with a story that is mysterious enough to keep you wanting to continue to play in order to learn more.

Underrated gem. While the core gameplay may be nothing new, the atmosphere and the music elevates it. One of the best gaming experiences I had in recent years.

The lack of map is a bit meh (especially when backtracking) but gameplay, graphics and especially music is very good.

Tons of fun, but without a map, you have to get good at navigation with landmarks, you know... like befor phones were equiped with GPS.

I'm about 25% in, and every element in this game is fantastically polished. The story is fantastic - as you are a Reaper, you find characters having to deal with their immortality, souls that can't find their way through, villains that are not super evil, but make evil choices to avoid death, that kind of thing. The world creation is fantastic (though a completely different game, it reminds me of Grim Fandango). The characters are something you'd see in a Ghibli movie. But above all that, the game is so much fun! The combat is very similar to Tunic (expect instead of shield you can use range weapons), super smooth and responsive -- you can get away without upgrading, because the game does not rely on getting better weapons, but on a sharp combination of close and ranged attacs. It has a very clever mechanic: to recharge your ranged attacks you need to get in some meelee hits, which forces you to change tactics constantly, and risks pay off if you time them well. Often bosses are supported by teleporting minions with differing attack styles, so that what could be a short fight becomes absolutely frantic mayhem! Terrific art direction, and the music is just superb, the kind that makes you delay a couple seconds just listening to it before going to the next place. So good!