What do Soulslike genre fans think of challenging retro games?

[captain_obvious]

I find difficult games like Castlevania and Mega Man 2 on the NES to be great fun. But they're very simple compared to Dark Souls, Sekiro and so on.

 

[Xzi]

Very few games from that era were both challenging and well-designed (challenging in a fair way). Their difficulty mostly came from cheap gimmicks carried over from the arcades. FromSoft games always give you the tools you need to succeed, but Battletoads on NES exists only to make people suffer.