And to frame this discussion, my answer to the title is no, no it is not a senselessly brutal game.
Dark Souls (360)
Quick note about the box art. I found a pretty awesome image in my Internet travels:
Funny observation about how having a lone character man facing directly towards or away from the camera is such a popular pose.
Anyhow, any time Dark Souls is brought up, the first thing people will mention is its perceived difficulty, how oppressively unfair and challenging it is and, in most cases, how it's not their type of game.
I want to rewind time a bit, to when I was a mini-gamer, 6 or 7 or so. I had my SNES with Super Mario World. Modern ROM hacks aside, that's not a game we associate with being an unusually difficult game. But to little me, it was quite the challenge, especially when trying to uncover all of the secrets. Despite the struggles little me had with the game, I persevered, and the satisfaction of success made it all worth it.
Alright, now fast forward almost 20 years to the present day. I, and anyone else who has was a gamer in those days, has nearly an extra 20 years of gaming experience under their belt. So we should all be video game demigods by now, right? Well, the thing is, while yes, we've had a lot of time to play games since then, I would contend that most games nowadays are NOT harder than Super Mario World. I'd go as far as to say completing most modern games is easier than completing Super Mario World. Better stories, more complex mechanics, and more realistic graphics, sure, but harder? No. And it's not like it's that way without reason. Developers don't want to exclude people with minimal gaming experience from playing their game. Those games certainly have their place. But it seems to me that nearly every game I play likes to pretend it's the first video game I've ever played.
I love Dark Souls because it doesn't guide you through 3/4 of the game on training wheels. This game assumes you've been riding the metaphorical bike your whole life and pushes you right down the hill. This is definitely not baby's first RPG. But you know what, I got that feeling in the game that I relish so much, that same type of feeling I had when I was a goofy, uncoordinated kid struggling to beat Super Mario World. The struggle makes the success so much richer. It's time to play games harder than SMW.
Alright, so I've said Dark Souls is a difficulty tier above most games, but I claimed earlier that this game is certainly not "a senselessly brutal game." As a veteran of games like I Wanna Be The Guy, I can definitely say that this is not the type of game that tries to blindside you with deaths against which clairvoyance is the only viable defense. Care can save you from most situations, and action RPG skill can save you in the others. This isn't a "death game" like Kaizo Mario World or Super Meat Boy, but just a game that pushes the envelope of difficulty a bit further than most games are comfortable doing, even right from the get go. So you don't need to be twisted masochist gamer to love this game, you just need to like action RPGs and have a few under your belt.
I do wonder if people confuse the difficulty of the game with its lack of instruction. The game provides very minimal direction as to how one should actually play it. Indeed, the players of this game don't need to learn how to make the character run for the millionth time in their gaming career, but it might be nice to know how to read that obscure as hell weapon stats sheet, for instance. It might be nice to know what ascending weapons mean, and to have some hint that upgrading weapons and armor should be a much higher priority than leveling up (got an in-person tip for that one, saved me a lot of grief in the long run). When you encounter the first checkpoint (bonfire) in the main world, you are told "Use bonfires to level up and kindle." Do you know what kindling is? Nope. Try it: "You can't kindle while hollowed". Okay, "Reverse Hollowing": "You can't reverse hollowing without humanity." What the hell is humanity. Alright, I found some after an hour of playing, and I've reversed my hollowing and spent my humanity. Kindle: "You can't kindle without humanity." Gah, all of this work to kindle and I still don't know what it is (of course, I do now). So I go to find more humanity, and I die and become hollowed again. There's some satisfaction in figuring out how a system works with minimal instruction, but I think Dark Souls drifted a bit to far in the direction of obscured mechanics. And no, the provided manual doesn't help. To frame this, on my first playthrough, I refused to use any online help. I did on my second playthrough.
And now, after 2.5 playthroughs, I have completed all of the achievements, so I can put the game to bed. I really enjoyed Dark Souls, and I think it's a pity that people have the notion that this game is a merciless bloodbath and decide to skip it for that reason.
