I finally jumped the gun and installed Nioh. So far it seems like a very arcady souls like, but that might not be bad for me right now. And a lot of the mechanics seem interesting.

I'm currently playing Demons souls remaster for the first time having started with the original back in the PS3 days. It looks how I remember it but has some lovely quality of life upgrades (hold down to select the first thing in your hotbar). It's almost a comfort game for me at this point. It's by far the easiest souls game, shields are OP in this and tanking behind one will see you through most things. Level ups all increase defence and soul farming is easy to do.

All the reasons you listed, with an emphasis on the story. I need to do multiple playthroughs to get a sense of what the hell is going on. And I find confort in repetition, so when I like something it's hard to move on sometimes, gotta extract all the dopamine I can from it. Heh

It's finally race week in F1 after five weeks of break so I might not be playing as much over the weekend as I usually would. Will probably watch the F2 races as well.

All the same I'll probably get at least some gaming in. Currently I've started playing two new games, one Soulslike and one not. To begin with the latter I couldn't help myself and bought Titanium Court. I've played a couple of hours now, and well... It's hard to say much about it without spoiling things that would be much better experienced first hand. It's a very hard game to describe. My best attempt is this: what if David Foster Wallace didn't kill himself and instead made a modern interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a match-3 game? It's pretty cheap (€9 with the launch discount) and you will definitely know if it's for you or not within the refund window. I still have barely scratched the surface but it will be a strong contender for Indie GOTY I believe.

On the Souls front I nabbed AI Limit on sale, and I'm looking forward to getting into that. I know I've been raving about Chrono Ark recently and between that and this my stance of "I don't really enjoy anime" is looking less than believable but listen: I've heard really good things about this game. Fun combat with no stamina and supposedly really good exploration and level design with nice interconnected areas á la DS1. Only played the first hour so far so can't say much more other than the game looks pretty great.

Variety. That's the biggest reason for me to replay a game. I want to be able to approach a new playthrough in a different, varied way. It's not only about different weapons and builds, but also about taking a different progression path through the game. And the way these gameplay systems interact with each other.

^[Warning^ ^long^ ^ramble]^
For these reasons, Elden Ring is by far my most replayed Souslike game. So much fun can be had in each playthrough. If I want to do a sorcery build I might go to Raya Lucaria, but to beat the Academy early I should go to Caelid for Gravity Sorceries and when I'm there I might as well kill Radahn, but the festival hasn't started yet; should I go to Altus? or maybe go to Ranni since there awesome spells in her questline? These are just a few decisions you can make in a playthrough. In a different playthrough I might set myself a restriction like not leveling, which the forces a whole lot of other decisions: Early Godskin Noble or rushing the capital etc.? Maybe I just want to take a totally insane path through the game: did you know that you don't have to visit Altus a single time to beat the game, no glitches required?
In each playthrough you can make a whole lot of different decisions and have as a consequence a whole other game. This sheer variety draws me in again and again.

No Soulslikes for me this weekend. Still addicted to Slay the Spire 2 (I'm now so good at the game that I realize just how bad I am at the game.)