I don’t think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond just… basic understanding of how to control a 3D character.

That’s obviously not true. Try playing an FPS with a mouse and keyboard vs controller and you’ll see understanding how to do something theoretically is less than half the battle. Say someone is missing arms so plays with their feet, it is far far more difficult to get a higher level of precision, and some people just won’t be able to no matter the amount of practice. People have a peak of reaction time no matter the amount of practice, and its different for different people. People have a peak of ability to move with precision no matter the amount of practice(see dyspraxia). People have shakes that cannot be controlled no matter the amount of practice.

I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasn’t seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons you’re learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.

Ignoring that that experience just isn’t fun for a lot of people, you’re using your own experience of your own ability.

Ultimately, I’m really just tired of being villainized (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself,

… It doesn’t detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.