When did I say I was furious? Or that I couldn't come to grips with the mechanics? Or that I couldn't treat the game as it is? I adapted to ER just fine, and made it to the Malenia fight waiting for the game to rise up to bar the community holds it at. I 'got gud', but the game never actually got fun, cuz it never stopped being clunky.

If you find satisfaction in managing the clunk, more power to ya - clunk away. But it's not my cup of tea.

Idk why folks get so defensive for that game... just in this thread, we've post after post getting all heated about how it's not clunky because [describes how or why it's clunky]. It'd be like the Minecraft community getting up in flames if I said I didn't like it because it's pixelated, and jumping to the defense of their infallible title against such heresy, explaining how it's not pixelated, the aesthetic was chosen on purpose and carefully made that way!! ...vs just advising against playing games that look like Minescraft... because it's pixelated.

enjoy missing out on the nier titles, the devil may cry series, every fable game, kingdom hearts, the whole god of war franchise, asura’s wrath, and the new final fantasies

Yeah none of those are really on my radar. Fable maybe, for nostalgia sake - played the hell out of the first one when I was in highschool, but haven't touched the franchise since. I don't recall getting the impression that it was clunky in the way ER is, but definitely so in other ways... though I wouldn't hold a game from 2004 up to today's standards; the entire industry was janky as fuck then.

The rules will not change just because you refuse to learn them.

Bruh that's what mods are for, hence my first post here. Don't like something about a game? Change it. Idk if there's one that can mod the clunk out of ER, but if I get the itch to revisit that world via a more fluid combat experience, then that'll be high on the to-do list.