When I say this I mean endurance bars that limit the amount of swings or strikes you can perform in combat. This is a big part of the reason why I am yet to get on board with any of the "Souls-like" games that exist. I have tried them and on one of them I really tried to "git gud" but this only happened once with Nioh 1.
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I get it ok? This is a more realistic representation of how combat would work because obviously a person couldn't just wildly swing and dodge and roll endlessly without running out of energy but then again, I don't play video games for realism and while I am sure a lot of people appreciate this relatively new addition to gaming, I absolutely hate it.
There have been a few games in the past that I played that had endurance or stamina bars but this only applied to non combat situations such as sprinting or swimming really fast: You could only do it a certain amount of time before you had to have a slight breather. This was to prevent you from just sprinting away from all combat situations to your advantage - at least that was what it felt like to me and I was ok with that.
In Red Dead Redemption 2 it applied to your horse as well as you off of the horse and I was ok with that as well because it is ridiculous to suggest that your horse can just run at full speed endlessly.
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Now I lost interest in Red Dead Redemption for completely different reasons unrelated to the stamina meter but this didn't seem to interfere with gameplay all that much and you also could replenish it pretty easily on the fly.
When I see a game like Elden Ring, which is already extremely difficult; when they introduce a stamina bar that is going to seriously limit how it is that you can even engage in combat, I know already that I am not going to enjoy it. This is why I have never gotten involved in that game despite the wonderful praise that I consistently hear about from users. I'll watch other people play the game but this is just going to be way too frustrating for me.
In fact, even when I see my favorite style of game, Metroidvanias, I will avoid them if they introduce a stamina or endurance bar.
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Take "Vigil: The Longest Night" for example. This game is gorgeous and is exactly what I look for in a game. It is dark, it is challenging, it has explorable maps with secrets built in, and the enemies are varied and inventive. There's just one problem: It's got a GD stamina bar that reduces every time you swing your weapon. I would much rather have a game like Hollow Knight or Ender Lilies where you just swing like a madman but there are intricate patterns of enemies that you have to learn in order to obtain victory.
I suppose it could be because I am an older gamer and these are relatively new developments added to games and I'm just being grumpy and unwilling to change my gaming style. At least there is one good thing going on here: There are enough game manufacturers out there that I don't have to play these things and this is good because I really don't see myself ever changing my opinion about this: Stamina bars suck!
I'm sure there are plenty of gamers out there that totally disagree with me, and that's fine!