You’ve identified one part of the issue and it’s a valid one.

Aside from aging, games have also evolved into lazy design. What used to be difficulty was really innovation a decade+ ago. Take a game like the original Soul Reaver. The bosses required specific skills and strategies you had to figure out in order to win. If you didn’t figure it out they would laugh and mock you for failing. It was genius and you felt accomplished when you figured it out.

Contrast that to Elden Ring. The moveset isn’t intuitive and your character moves like it’s not attached to the world.

The bosses are just extremely higher health bars and your health bar is on the opposite end of theirs. That’s it. That’s the game difficulty.

So “strategy” just means dodging until you can get a hit on the overly large boss and repeat for long periods until someone dies. I find it lazy and uninspiring.

So yeah, you’re not crazy.