@Scottie - let me know how Wolfenstein Young Blood plays these days. I mostly enjoyed it at launch for the setting and some of the battles (and some story nods to what I assume is The Man in the High Castle), but they released post-launch patches to better balance mission difficulty and tone down the ammunition-vs-armour system.
As for FEAR 3, I replayed it back-compat on the Xbox Series as they've been discounting it again and wish I hadn't. FEAR 2 already drifted closer to a COD-like left-trigger-right-trigger-repeat experience with the importance of reflex time diminished, and FEAR 3 went even further while also mangling the plot so badly the levels barely feel connected and coherent. Still think the best approach for new players is to get FEAR 1, the expansions, and leave it at that.
Blades of Fire (PS5) -
Played through the demo that includes the opening sequence and first major area of the game. The combat is snappy and feels more like Darksiders/Lords of Shadow, rather than a classic, sluggish 'Souls-like. There is also a well-integrated but complex combo system that forces you to consider enemy armour and posture vs. weapon type, slashing/stabbing attacks, and left/right/high/low strike assigned to the face buttons.
The complexity I could get behind in a Souls-like form - especially as there are three difficulties to moderate the challenge - but the forging, weapon drop, and weapon durability system feel like they exist to take that classic Souls-like grind to another level. Even after getting a grip on the combat system and shifting it down to "Bronze" difficulty, weapon durability ensure you can never explore freely (and maybe this is just early on) as you've only got two weapon slots and will have to return to anvils to repair or reforge new ones. This means you're gonna be grinding through basic foes repeatedly, even if you master the combat, as you'll inevitably degrade your weapons to the point they're ineffectual against even a basic foe.
The demo might not be representative of how the system evolves but it's not the sort of bonus frustration I enjoy in an already challenging genre.