The main problem I find with Dark Souls is that it isn't well designed.
My biggest gripe with it is that there is no pause button, no map, no tutorial not even explanations.
One might argue that "that's part of the difficulty" but fuck no - not even having a pause button doesn't make the game more difficult - it makes the game more stupid and poorly designed. Me having a break from slashing monsters doesn't make me a worse player. There's user-friendly features and then there's just outright *missing* features.
How about a map? Does that make the game easier, no it does not. The biggest difficulty of the game comes with dealing with enemies - not actually finding where you need to go. It's just a time waster. They might have made a map that only displays places you've found. The only facilitation of adding a map to the game is actually not getting LOST - which shouldn't be a difficulty.
No tutorial is a huge gripe I have with the game. The game fails to explain the most basics and important concepts, what is a bonfire? What does it do? What is kindle? What is Humanity? Why is it important? I know I can look it up online but it really turns me the wrong way with the "fuck you! You find this shit out on your own"-mentality this game portraits to the user. It really rubs me the wrong way every time I have to check online for something the game failed to explain. That's not adding difficulty - that is just poor design.
We gave Final Fantasy XIII a lot of criticism for having insane amounts of texts and logs in the game menus - at least they DID have SOMETHING that gives the player a clue of what is going on and how to actually do stuff. Dark Souls offers the player absolutely nothing - and that is not adding difficulty - that is just outright stupid.
However my absolutely biggest problem with Dark Souls is that it doesn't emphasize on playing the game fairly. The only way of making the game playable is by exploiting the poor games AI. Look on any YouTube tutorial/guide/walkthrough and you will see people exploiting the enemy AI to their advantage. Every time I meet a Dark Knight I ask myself - "how do I get behind this fucker so I can exploit it's dumb AI so I can back stab him over and over and over again" rather than letting the games AI giving me a fair challenge that actually leads to me using my characters dodging and melee skills. And I am not alone in this! Look up *ANY* playthrough or guide video and you will constantly see people exploiting the enemies AI. And that sums up Dark Souls to me in a nutshell - the game isn't challenging in the sense that it tests my ability within the games rules - the only way of playing the game that gives me any fair advantage is by breaking the games rules constantly in order gain the slightest advantage against it.
Also, the addition of the parry-button (or the "Fuck-You"-button as I like to call it) is the worse game dynamic. It literally makes the entire game a quick-time event against all enemies whose attack you can parry, and the fact that during the time you are executing the parry-stab attack you are *ENTIRELY INVULNERABLE* just goes to show how broken and out of place it is.
Dark Souls isn't a bad game - I *want* to like it. I *want* to enjoy it - but the nature of the game and it's heavy emphasis on me trying to constantly break the game in order to get anywhere just really doesn't want me to play the game any more.
Am I making any sense?
For the record - I have invested a lot of hours into the game already and I have a level 30 character.