You kind of have a point, you kind of don't.

Dark Souls is hard, but it's all artificial difficulty*--mostly created as a result of low damage thresholds. All you really have to do is learn enemy placements and the simple AI patterns.

I'd say "learning the controls" too, but is that really an issue for anyone? The REAL reason for Souls' popularity is that the game mechanics/controls are very simple and intuitive, yet offer a great deal of depth. It literally takes 10 to 20 minutes to master the basics.

*I know some people are going to get all huffy at this, because a lot of inarticulate reviewers used the term "artificial difficulty" as a pejorative, to describe games Souls' aren't similar to. It's not my fault the common usage is incorrect. Genuine difficult can ONLY be the result of artificial intelligence (or human intelligence). Everything else is artificial.

"Cheap" difficulty is a subset of artificial difficulty that Souls games avoid, which is--I think--what those inarticulate reviewers were attempting to say.

....

It's also worth noting that the "modding" of difficulty in Dark Souls 2 basically allows it to be two different "games" (at least) since you can change enemy default locations/behavior. That's HUGE.