So, difficulty in games

You guessed it, this is going to be centered on Dark Souls. But not in the way you probably think.

I've struggled with this a lot over the past few years. Passively, slowly. And I realized that going around the topic is a way to get lost in words, rather than getting into the topic itself. So I am going to state it outright:
I don't think that Dark Souls are hard games.
No I have not beaten them. No I have not gotten through the "Git gud" stage. And yes, I have mostly gotten stuck near the beginnings in all of them. 

This is the part where more words and side stepping comes in.
When I think about "hard" games, I think about games that I cannot possibly ever learn or beat. I think of games like Osu and Dance Dance Revolution, on the former of which I spent a few dozen hours and didn't get past the easy difficulties. I think of games like Touhou and other similar bullet hell games. Even of fighting games and I know that no matter how much time I spend on practicing them, there are gonna be local people better than me in those.
In that regard, no, I don't find Dark Souls hard.

In fact I'd even think it's sort of fair and simple. All you need to do is spend a little time learning the controls and mechanics properly. And then the paterns of the bosses and so on. But it isn't unbeatable. In fact, it's sheer popularity stems from the fact that it can be learned and beaten. It is not a "maybe this time I'll be lucky" kind of difficulty. Rather it's "Maybe if I try hard enough, I can beat this section/boss/whatever". 
In that regard it's very similar to many roguelikes(and roguelites) that are commonly considered hard. For example Darkest Dungeon is often regarded to be hard, but in the end, there is no defeat condition. Sure you may struggle at times, you may get angry, your characters may die, but by design, only two things can happen: either you win or you give up. And this goes for Dark Souls as well. There is a punishment for death, but nothing that will keep you from defeating the game.

That still doesn't mean the game is easy.
Oh hell no, there are plenty of games that are easy, plenty of games that don't punish you for failing too harshly or at all.
And there is the timing of Dark Souls.
Dark Souls came out into a time when matchmaking was being made a standard. Before that, all the games that required "skill" (in quotes because fuck it) were mostly random about who you were up against. When you first picked up Counter Strike and followed your friend into a server, the server likely wasnt full of newbies. Quite the opposite. Most stable servers had a set of regulars who spent ungodly hours of their lives on that game and as a result you were likely nothing more than prey. 

Matchmaking changed that.
Instead of fighting people all over the skill level, suddenly we are being matched against people similar in skill to us. Sure there may be some variance in there, but it's nothing quite like meeting the pros in a public server (And getting bloody wiped by them).
The result of this is that even if you are playing a 'difficult' multiplayer game, at worst you will be losing half the time, winning the other half. If you are decent, that ratio will be somewhat in your favour until you get into a stable position with your rank (or never if a game features frequent changes of season, right Overwatch?).
As such, we always feel at least Okay. 
But Dark Souls isn't like that. You are either good enough and get through the game or not at all.
Or you struggle, call the game hard and never pick it up again.

But is the game hard, or are you a quitter who has gotten too used to matchmaking?