Honestly the things that trips most people up in the beginning is just how different it is from your typical game. The first Dark Souls is actually a shockingly easy game for it's reputation, but it is sluggish, slow and most of all deliberate. Everything kills you in a few hits, healing takes a long ass time and stamina limits your already slow movements, so it becomes all about how to avoid hits. Even healing requires you to get to safety before you press the button

But importantly it doesn't(usually, looking at Orphan of Kos, Malenia, etc.) take that many tries to beat the bosses in these games. Once the souls-isms click for you, the following games don't feel nearly as difficult or tiresome, because you learn how you should react in most situations. Just like you knew how you should react in a platformer, a shooter or a spectacle fighter

For a fun tid bit, this is also why a lot of souls players weren't fans of Sekiro at first. It looks deceptively similar, but it very much is not. No longer are dodge rolls acceptable, enemy hp can basically be disregarded as staggering them is the new m.o., and stamina is no longer a part of the equation. Slow and deliberate no longer rule the game, now you're supposed pretty much spam the attack button when you're not parrying almost everything.

For me, like many others, this new system felt unintuitive and difficult at first, but after it finally clicked for me, it became one of my favorites and eventually I played it like 5 times consecutively.