After beating Dark Souls again, I'm now on Dark Souls 3 again, turns out my save was gone so good excuse to start up. Feels easier going to DS3 from DS1.
Wrecked Ludyx Grudnyr on my first go, for those that don't know he's arguably the biggest roadblock in any game, but right at the start of the damn game, they make you solo it too as price of entry to the game proper.
Caused me grief on the Herald class to the point I almost quit the game when it released, but seems you can wreck it easily with the warrior class.
Features extremely precise gameplay and graphics style lacking from a lot of Western games. As an outside view of British and European medieval times they've done a better job than any Western developer in my view. Nothing quite gets that dank and dark castle atmosphere like the Souls games. Everything feels well put together likely because they did extremely thorough research. One of the helms you get in DS1 is a weird masked helm that was gifted to Henry 8th in 1511 by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian; there's some real elements of history in these games along with all the fantasy.
Also reading the Beserk manga, the main influence on the Dark Souls series which is full of extremely precise drawing style, particularly of weapons, armour, monsters and architecture that's reflected in the game series.