I think the characterization as survival more than action games seems about right.

I am not good at fast paced action games. I like the flashyness and the style of Bayonetta for instance, but the combat frustrates me and feels a lot harder than in souls games. That is because the pace of the fight overwhelms me. In Souls on the other hand I can plan out my moves and react to the enemy, as the combat is slowed down (probably what feels clunky about it). This is why Bayonetta, while overall an enjoyable game, fails to make my TOP 50, while Demon's Souls enters it.

Heh, this thread reminds me of most of the comments I read when Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were new games.  Most people didn't like it.  Maybe that is still true, but people don't realize it.

To me Dark Souls feels like old school D&D.  You are trying to make your way through a death dungeon.  It is a lot like a roguelike.  It's a real-time roguelike.  I don't think of it as an action game. 

Having said that, Dark Souls is one of my favorite games of all time.  I think younger people want to play it as an action game, because they don't really make challenging action games anymore.  If I want to play a challenging action game, then I'll just play some game from the 80s.  But for younger people, they may not even consider these games, so they try to make Dark Souls into an action game instead.

Heh, this thread reminds me of most of the comments I read when Demon's Souls and Dark Souls were new games.  Most people didn't like it.  Maybe that is still true, but people don't realize it.

To me Dark Souls feels like old school D&D.  You are trying to make your way through a death dungeon.  It is a lot like a roguelike.  It's a real-time roguelike.  I don't think of it as an action game. 

Having said that, Dark Souls is one of my favorite games of all time.  I think younger people want to play it as an action game, because they don't really make challenging action games anymore.  If I want to play a challenging action game, then I'll just play some game from the 80s.  But for younger people, they may not even consider these games, so they try to make Dark Souls into an action game instead.

I wouldn't compare it to a rogue like. Those are about procedural generation, different every time, see how far you get. Dark Souls is the opposite, every enemy is always in the same spot, behaves the same, nothing left up to chance. It's more like Ultima Underworld.

Approaching it like old school D&D is what got me stuck in my first play through. The stats are not all that important, equipment is. I had to throw my notions how to approach an RPG out the window and simply treat stats as 'unlocks' for weapons, armor and spells.

It's still an action game, just a slower paced one. You can't rush it, but you better have good timing and reflexes to dodge and parry. Very different from games like Everquest and WoW where you simply turn attack on and let the dice do the work. Everquest was much harder than Dark Souls even though the actual combat had very little to do with timing. Well, apart from tons of timers before you could use / stack an attack again.

I tried it twice and could not understand at all what was supposedly so great about it. Granted, in both attempts I stopped pretty early into the game, but that's because I was hating every second of it.

For one, the story sucks. I don't mind games that want to tell their story in cryptic ways, but if you're gonna do it like that, don't treat me to a confusing lore dump at the opening cutscene, I'd rather just play the game and learn things at my own pace. For another, the graphics also suck. I don't need games to have highly advanced technology but Dark Souls is just so ugly, I was actually impressed it managed to look so lifeless because I didn't know it was possible. Everything was so gray and low-contrast, nothing stood out, nothing was interesting. Even the UI was hideous and opening the menu just made matters worse, what with its overwhelming collection of arbitrary RPG numbers scattered everywhere.

Then the gameplay... oof. It's one thing to make your game hard, it's another thing entirely to have a lot of trial-and-error bullshit where you get instakilled for not knowing better, and then that death makes you lose like 30 minutes of progress. Then you wanna get back to where you were quicker, end up dying again, and there go all your levels and now you're basically fucked and have to grind for an eternity. I like that the game actually punishes you for dying, but the way it goes about it is entirely wrong. People say "oh you only got instakilled because you didn't pay attention to this random detail!", well, yeah, I'm bound to not pay as much attention to details when your game is ugly as fuck and also has a confusing story that doesn't make me interested in the slightest. But more importantly, the issue is that I wasn't given a checkpoint close to this. If I had that checkpoint, got instakilled, and could quickly try again, that's a good way of teaching me that this game will throw random instakills at me if I'm not careful, and then I'd be inclined to be more careful from that point on. But by making me lose 30 minutes of progress, I'd rather just go play something else instead.

It was a wholly negative experience, really. That was several years ago, to be fair, maybe if I gave it another chance it'd finally click, but I think I'd rather play games I actually have fun with, there's several of those.

Git gud.
But seriously, those games are awesome.

So like Ori and the Blind Forest? That game was way worse about this sort of thing, so I find your love of it a bit confusing after reading this. In fact Ori literally has almost half of the game dependent on enemy A.I. co-operating with the player in order to even do the platforming sections right, which creates scenarios where the enemy A.I. won't respond correctly and you'll lose progress for no reason other than the fault of the A.I. not being good. Just saying, I don't see how that is any better than Dark Souls. 

For me 'git gud' was basically unlearn other video games.  

Other games:

create distance from bosses, heal immediate after taking a hit, find good armor, upgrade all skills, learn to block

Souls:

Bosses close distance too quickly, stay tight on the hip to roll past a swing.  Don't heal until after dodging an attack (given it takes time to use Estus), armor is all but worthless, balanced character is a crap character, blocking isn't as effective as rolling

Really once a person breaks previously learned habits, souls isn't that hard.  

Edit

I would also add in other games people spend a lot of time worrying about what weapon to use, in Souls who gives a ****.  Pick up a weapon and level it up, stick with it.