Is Dark Souls really THAT difficult...

[Groundking]

The biggest part of the difficulty is learning 'how to play the game'. In essence learning which style of play suits you that you find fun.

Personally my biggest problem when first playing Demon's souls was going in as deprived (? the class with nothing and even stats), as I had heard that you can change the style of play whenever you want, and wanted something with no inherent bias towards one style of play. Safe to say, having a shit shield, no armour (even if it doesn't do much) and a club, whilst also learning the mechanics, not being able to level up and running out of grass from dying so much was not particularly fun, and that character took just shy of 100 hours to beat the game, with a good 10-20 hours just in 1-1.....However it was so so worth it, as the triumphs were greatness. I would also not be ashamed to admit that back when Demon's came out I weren't exactly great at games, only really playing GT, COD, Fifa and a few other games on default difficulty, and for the most part I was in the culture of just going in headfirst.

In summary they're only difficult until you get into the right mindset, which is to be cautious as fuck. I'd even go as far to say that i can play these games half asleep now.

Edit: The only time the game is truly difficult is when they have you fight against the mechanics and camera, for examples when they have you drop down into the room of 5 or 6 soldiers in the run up to the looking night boss in DS2. Or O&S before you get good at managing the space and using the pillars provided (I'd argue that that boss fight would be nigh on impossible without the pillars, though with the pillars it's kind of easy).