So, about Dark Souls... I haven't played it, but I have played Demon's Souls, and I feel like my experience was very similar. It's a fun game moment to moment, but the overall unforgiving nature of it led me to ultimately stopping. Still, I have always felt a sort of "guilt" much like Jon? felt where all of these other people were enjoying and finishing the game and I felt like maybe I was just approaching it wrong, etc.
However, I do kind of rebel against the idea that has been thrown at me a few times that I'm weak or something because it apparently was just "too hard" for me. I don't think the difficulty level is my issue with Demon's Souls, and in fact I tend to like difficult games. My issue is that you can spend a good 30-60+ minutes doing something, die, and actually be in a worse spot than when you started, and that is just frustrating and a bit of a turn-off. At that point, is it really skill if you keep coming back for more? Or just persistence? Especially frustrating is when you spend all of that time and then die because of some weird trap or this or that, which can be avoided, sure, but can still feel cheap. I don't even have much time to game nowadays, and after a couple of 1-2 hour sessions that ended with me in a worse spot than I started, I just couldn't find the will to go on.
I still get tempted to finish it sometime (I only finished 5 or 6 stages) but I kind of doubt that will happen. The weird thing is, when Dark Souls was announced, I just kind of assumed they would tone down the unforgiving nature because that is what usually happens in the case of a "niche" game finding a bit of popularity and getting a sequel. The developers usually try to shoot for that mass market that they just missed. So I thought hey, maybe I'll just wait for that one and pick it up and it will be more what I am looking for. But from everything I've heard, Dark Souls is just as bad, if not worse.