i personally love the sandbox genre, and the ability to tell a story with that level of depth is just something developers werent able to do in the past without throwing mountains of text at you. and again, narrative heavy stories can vary in difficulty. and if you just want to talk about AAA les, just read people here complaining about god of war's difficulty when played at higher settings. and that game is getting massive acclaim due to visuals/narrative, too. from what i've read, that latest installment has also left its button-mashing roots and has a more complex combat system. and again, i'm not even saying that's "better" or "worse"... but it's there. TLOU is supposedly much more difficult on grounded. no listen mode, no HUD (health meter, how many bullets you have left), enemies are more sensitive in stealth portions, drastically less supplies, etc. and those are 2 of the highest acclaimed games in recent years.
i just disagree about checkpoints. the only purpose that can serve, making you replay the same easily beatable 10+ minute sequence 15-20 times, which you could basically do with your eyes closed, is just a lazy way to increase the game's lifespan imo. in games where the main story itself is north of 20 hours, i dont need to artificially tack on another 8. it makes sense in nes games where they realistically are 1 hour games if played right.