Dark Souls, Harder than Demons' Souls?

Namco-Bandai told us all that Dark Souls would be harder than Demons' Souls. They weren't lying. The question is, how did they make it harder, and is it still fun?

Well, I have the answers to those questions for you.

The increase in difficulty is all in the creators limiting you for the most part. Level wise and item wise.

First of all, there are no High Value Targets experience and item wise like in the first game. No Blue Eyes Knight with his back facing you, no Soul Reaper standing and waiting for you to kill him. Moreover, the regular units experience values DON'T scale as they get stronger. A regular ghoul or Hollow or whatever you want to call it is only worth 20 exp, regardless of whether he's strong enough to kill you in 1 shot or not. The first boss in the game only gave 1000 exp, mini bosses have only been giving 500. Problem is that the level curve is still the exact same. You have to level your weapons with souls still too, AND if you didn't take a starting item called the "Master Key" you have to spend souls on keys to open doors throughout the levels.

The creators also saw fit to limit your healing. You get a maximum of 5 heals per rest at a bonfire, which are checkpoints of sorts in the levels, except for ones that are in "Safe zones" with friendly npc's (so far only the first one, as far as I can tell) that boosts your heals up to 10. No stockpiling moongrasses to victory, you get a max of 10 shots of the good stuff at the most and then you're cut off. This makes every inch you gain precious. This also makes learning the timing on parrying attacks a complete bitch, what with the enemies almost guaranteed to do half your health if they hit you, since your level is so low from the exp starving that your defense stat hasn't had a chance to increase much.

The boss attacks are also much harder to deal with. The tutorial boss is pretty much a recycled Grey Demon from the first game. Only problem is, he's faster, his attacks come quicker, AND the hit boxes on them are MASSIVE compared to the first game. You used to be able to roll under his arm when he swung, try that now and you're a bloodstain on the floor, waiting to be laughed at by anyone the networking deems fit to see your failure.

So yes, the game is harder. It feels unfairly hard especially the experience values. Being able to actually keep up with the level of the content would be nice. But with it being this much harder, and this much more, "unfair" feeling, and FRUSTRATING, is it still fun?

The answer is yes. The game is still fun. The satisfaction from advancing through the levels is just intensified that much. The game also looks even more fantastic than the first game. The environments look completely spectacular. The game is great and I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a tendency to throw things when they're upset.

Edit: Oct. 09/2011
I've found out that bonfires can be "powered up" so to speak by offering a resource known as humanity to them. It would seem that the first bonfire in the main play area is already "Rank 2" and that there is a rank 3 or higher, that allows you to get even more than 10 heals per rest. This makes certain parts of the game substantially easier.