Hard, but fair games that have crisp mechanics?

The fromsoft games are always brought up as hard, but fair games. While I’ve tried them and love the boss design, I always get bored and haven’t finished any of them as they feel very clunky mechanically. Mostly just to say that the player inputs feel very slow which works fine for bosses but feels like sluggish and boring when trying to go through the world. Sekiro is my favorite out of the series as it is a bit simpler and more focused and feels more responsive.

Games I’m thinking about are like Hollow Knight, Cuphead, the old Contra games, and Furi. Stellar Blade is the closest example I can think of for a 3d game with similar kind of mechanics to the souls games (but of course the difficulty isn’t quite there). Also maybe can consider stuff like Doom Eternal and Halo on harder difficulties or some of Destiny 2’s endgame.

Are there any other games that you would think of?