Keep us updated! I'm in the same boat, where the game looks interesting, but I've never been good at quick action games even when I was young.
 

I would urge you to give Dark Souls a go. Valheim has basically the same combat system as DS but faster paced - the first Dark Souls is quite deliberate and slow paced compared with later soulslikes. You’ve defeated several bosses in Valheim, so you’ll be fine with DS combat. Most of it isn’t boss fights anyway - it’s exploring a massive, ruined world and discovering its many secrets.

Dark Souls regularly appears at the top of critics’ lists of the greatest games of all time. This is not because it’s “difficult”. It’s because of the incredible world design, art direction and level design, and the way the whole game is designed to gradually and patiently teach you how to play it.
 

@Unknown - That's a very helpful and intriguing comment. I'm a little older than Tobold and not only am I not fast enough for these kinds of boss fights, I didn't even like them when I was younger. I played and very much enjoyed Valheim, though, and the combat was one of the things I liked most about it, albeit not the boss fights specifically. I had written Dark Souls and similar titles off as something very much not for me but I'll bear your comments in mind.

@Tobold - Looking forward to seeing how you get on with your experiment. I'm not sure my PC would even run Elden Ring (Haven't checked the specs but it seems unlikely) but by the time I upgrade, something I have no immediate plans to do, ER will probably be dirt cheap so it'll be interesting to know if I could play it with any enjoyment.
 

I've settled for Black Book, so I can battle creepy demons with cards and mythology!
 

Sounds like a good compromise. Let us know how it all turns out!
 

Tobold I'd like to make some reccomdations that I think will help you enjoy the game.

Go for a starting class with a ranged option. Any of the spell casting classes or the Samurai.

Look up how to get the summoning bell. It's easy to miss and while I wouldn't advise you look amything else up I think you should definitely just get this as soon as possible.

Embrace summoning both spirits and NPCs when you can. Fromsoftware really tried to make Eldenring accessible by adding the summoning feature. The summons help draw aggro from you and combined with a ranged abilities are essentially an "easy" mode.

In the open world don't forget that you can always just run away. Enemies leash after a certain distance and they do not regain HP unless you rest at a bonfire. So chipping away at their HP and running/resetting them is a completely viable strategy. You can even combine this with stealth to get multiple backstabs on tough high HP enemies.

Exploration is key. Following the main path will quickly lead you to feeling under leveled. I'd say follow the main path until you get the mount and then after that just explore.

I 100% believe you can play this game.
 

Great project, I love it. I am on the same boat: slow reaction and "I am too old for this sh*t" in most games. This is why I am loving Lost Ark, it really caters people like us. Slow peace, very doable encounters, lots of things to see/do, etc.

Can't wait to read your next updates!
 

I am also bad at quick response action games and yet I did get completely sucked in to Dark Souls a few years back. There was something about the sheer unhelpfulness of the world that was utterly compelling. I kept beating my head against the same encounters over and over until more by chance than by skill I would get through. It actually became an obsession for a while. Eventually I decided to move on because it was just too compelling. The game had a curious form of multiplayer that was both co-op and competitive at the same time. You could play offline but if you choose to play online then you could get other players to come and help with challenging encounters in co-op mode. However as long as you were online you were also at risk of being invaded by hostile players who would enter your world to hunt you down and kill you. These invasions were never fun and I was invariably humiliated by a superior PVPer. Unfortunately you couldn't enable co-op without also enabling invasions so it was a risk / reward decision whether to allow them or not.

I'm pretty sure Elden ring has a similar co-op/invasion mechanic and has anti-cheat software to protect it. Be careful using cheats in case you trigger the anti cheat mechanism.