Ashley, what you said at the beginning of this episode is what I despise most about the Souls/Borne community, and this is as a huge fan of the Souls/Borne games (I have platinumed every one of them, and I am a good way towards doing the same for the remasters). I hate there are people out there who are scaring off potential Souls/Borne players. I love this series, and I don’t want people to fear its “difficulty”. Frankly, I get the feeling that most of those people are just trying to up their gamer cred by claiming they are among the “elites”.
The Souls/Borne games are not extremely difficult. I am not some incredible gamer, but I can play the Souls/Borne games without significant frustration. Souls/Borne games punish you for impatience. If you are patient, and pay attention to your surroundings, you can play a Souls/Borne without much issue.
There is a great example of this near the beginning of the game. You run out of a “save area” (Bonfire), and immediately to your right are two enemies. One is a crossbowman, and the other is a spearman who is backing away from you. It is very easy to just run away from them. After that, you come to a long, and narrow bridge with an enemy in the room beyond. What would you do?
An experienced Souls/Borne player would go ahead, and kill the two enemies to the right. If you don’t, then they could cut off your ability to escape later on, or catch up to fight you themselves. Then, you look around the bridge for the enemies that will make either crossing, or retreating across the bridge difficult. And there are bomb throwers up, and to the left. You can kill them, or just run past them if you do not have a bow. However, if you run past them, retreat is off the table. As for the enemy in the room, there are almost certainly more enemies in that room. The best thing to do is to drag the enemy in sight towards you, kill them, and then enter the room. Again, if you do not have a bow (or similar), roll through the doorway (to dodge a probable attack), and try to divide the enemies in that room, and kill each in turn.
Nothing about this encounter is hard (or unpredictable). The enemies are not fast, and combat tends to be extremely slow, with slow, and measured attacks. However, when enemy attacks land, they hurt. Given that, you should see how skipping any one step, or going in without a plan, could end in disaster. That is the difficulty of Dark Souls. And that is a kind of difficulty that anyone should be able to deal with.
In fact, if someone here wants to play Dark Souls 1, and wants to know how to do it on “easy mode”, here you go. Magic, and poise are shockingly overpowered in that game. Basically, start out as a sorcerer, but work on Pyromancy as soon as you can (Pyromancy is both overpowered, and incredibly easy to level up). Also put some effort into faith, and buy utility miracles (healing, cure, etc.), as well as the Cast Light, and Fall Control sorceries. There you go. Now you can wipe the floor with most enemies in the game, and many of the challenges (darkness, toxic, etc.) become inconsequential.
If you want to make the game even easier, wear the heaviest armor you possibly can. This will give you high poise, which will ensure your attacks can’t be interrupted. Also, buy the Crest of Artorias from Andre. This will lead you to the best early farming spot in the game. You can get over 40,000 souls in a few minutes in this area (look it up on youtube).
Note: this advice only applies to Dark Souls 1.