The games are terrible at difficulty curves. They could make a difficulty ramp with more simple bosses that teach one specific core mechanic at a time, but they

The games are terrible at difficulty curves. They could make a difficulty ramp with more simple bosses that teach one specific core mechanic at a time, but they don't want to do that. Elden Ring is no different in this regard. The earlier games were also pretty janky and had unnatural hitboxes. Elden Ring is a stellar improvement in this case. It also takes advantage of your lizard brain's reaction to hit the roll button as soon as you see an animation start, but that's often a bad idea in these games (definitely more so in Elden Ring). There's big themes of precise timing and memorizing the moves over raw reflexes, although enemies can do mix-ups and combo options. They will stop the combo early if you're out of range, but if you try to go within range thinking the combo has ended, another attack comes out. I suspect if you were doing competitive shooters that's where it doesn't match up well. You can't simply act faster to forgo learning the boss moveset. This is also why they say dying is part of the genre. Unless you sit and watch a boss video before-hand, the price of admission to see the boss moveset and know when you can attack safely is dying.