> So whatever makes Edlin Ring so special, it's appearently really hard to describe in a way that separates it from lesser games.

Actually, there is:

Knowing the difference between a game being difficult versus punishing. Here's a 12 year old, 7-minute video that talks about it: https://youtu.be/ea6UuRTjkKs

(EDIT: If it helps, consider changing "punishing" to "unfair")

The TL;DW is that punishing games are not fun because they often rely on cheap things like unavoidable damage, actions not being telegraphed, inconsistency of rules, long iteration times (ie, unskippable cutscenes, excessively long boss fights where you're redoing the same first 10 minutes over again). Punishing games are poorly designed by people that want to defeat the player, rather than allowing the player to overcome the challenge.

In Elden Ring, all damage is avoidable. Every attack is telegraphed. Boss fights aren't really that long, and if you die, the walk back to try again is always short and doesn't rely on fighting through waves of enemies. Some fights have cutscenes either at the start of the fight or during a transition to a second phase, but they're skippable.

It's still a challenging game. Some boss hits will eliminate over 60% of your HP in a single hit, but those attacks are telegraphed and you're supposed to dodge them.

But to a certain extent, ER is a "choose-your-own-difficulty" game. You can grind out higher levels to get your stats up if you want to give yourself more of an edge. The people complaining about Margit (A very early boss) being super hard were probably under-leveled. I got him to 1% HP on my second try (Seriously, his health bar was a single pixel wide), and got him down on my 5th.