dark souls 1 (the first half) offers the fairest, most balanced harmony of challenge.
the bosses are tough, so they remove the process of "waiting" for the next try by automatically giving you healing items. the runbacks aren't short, so they give you shortcuts. the enemies have the ablility to stagger and punish, so there aren't 20 of them crammed in a small room.
the weapons require you to get 15+ to max them out, so they allow you to buy the first 10 (finding the coals that allow you to progress is fine because it can't ALL be easy). it's a fine blend that makes a great coffee...
and then you get to the second half where miyazaki splattered his fucking ceaseless discharge all over the coffee cup and then never went back to fucking wipe it up for like... 14 years.