a lot of nice answers, faith restored. praise the sun.

The game isn't hard at all ...

People often just overrate that aspect ...

There are much harder games that I've encountered before ...

It's not that difficult except for the duo boss fight like the guy on the first page said.

Half the time it took me to complete DKS was trying to defeat Ornstein & Smough : (

It's pretty difficult. It's not very accessible to casuals but if your patience is strong enough, you can start to feel the flow of the game. Those fucking gargoyles on DS though. Jesus Christ, they were fucking hard. As many have said, it punish impatience and stupidity/ignorance. Gamers are so ready to have the game hand them everything out that a game like DS seems like an impossible feat.

Every game is about mastering the controls. Gamers are too used to being babied by devs copying the same exact control 'feeling' in every game.

I never see anyone complain about the controls in Shadow of the Colossus, and those feel way weirder at first than any of the Souls games, and take longer to adjust to. Doesn't mean they're bad. Just means you have to learn them... you know, actually try a little bit.

The Souls saga is like learning to play an instrument. When you're inexperienced, it's absolutely impossible, but with enough patience and practice, it becomes second nature.

It isn't "hard," but it does have a difficulty curve which shoots into the stratosphere early on, usually before the player is ready. With the exception of the first few hours, the game is largely about being cautious and intelligent.

Dark Souls is a lot like Wind Waker's dark doppleganger; it's a great game which really should be played with a walkthrough at hand. You can probably beat everything yourself...but eventually your patience will dry out.

And as to anyone who says Dark Souls' controls are clunky...please remove the controller from your rear end. The controls are some of the most immersive and accurate I've played. It's a lot like Parasite Eve 2. The only problem I have is that it was designed for the PS3. The 360's D-Pad is one solid button with four inputs under it. There have been many times I wanted to circle through my inventory only to change weapons as well.

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). 

It's not hard, it just demands respect. Everything is fair and straight forward, you just have to pay attention.

It's only hard if you try to rush.