Dark Souls, developed by From Software and published by Namco Bandai, is so hard that with most of the classes of character available, many players won’t be able to finish the tutorial, 
which is offered in the guise of the Asylum which you, as a soul, have been deposited into and ends with a big bad Asylum Demon. I eventually gave up on the thief and moved on to a warrior, then to a knight which is the heaviest of the tank classes. Why? Because Dark Souls does not want you to succeed and the odds are heavily stacked against you. Using the strongest character you can, will give you a modicum of success. Later going back having learned what I have learned, I dare say I might be able to finish that level with a thief, maybe.
As for character creation, they only offer you a modicum of control that includes some basic physical characteristics, name, gender, and a special gift, usually an item of some sort.
After playing several hours of Dark Souls I realized what it was. Just like first person shooters come in two flavors: arcade and military simulation, so too do RPGs. This would be far more the latter than the prior. A plethora of cakewalk RPGs have collectively softened us to the hardships of what life might be like in a world that really wants you dead. Running around in those games is a piece of cake. Running around in Dark Souls, will just get you killed. This is more of a creep up to the next ledge, peek around the stairs and in general, formulate a plan of attack long before you even know what it is you will be attacking.
Dark Souls will test all those things in you that many gamers are not known for, things like patience, moving slowly, thinking out your approach and believing that every single enemy has the potential to kill you, because they do, and they can, and probably will (that’s my main strategy tip). You know the game is difficult when other players leave messages like "I Can’t take it!" and are proud to say "I DID IT!" to show that they made a difficult leap from one platform to another (not much of this is required thankfully).
In fact, they summed it up quite nicely themselves:
This is a game of pain, one of hardship.
Dark Souls Technicalities
There are all sorts of weird physics problems with Dark Souls, which was built on the Havok physics engine, where the corpses will dance about all twitchy on the ground, like they are break dancing. On top of that, they get stuck to you when you run by and you end up dragging them around every once in a while, which is not only distracting, it’s also annoying because there’s already enough to deal with and having them get in the way certainly doesn’t help things.
A lot of the environments are dark and dreary. Of course, it’s the land of the dead, so colorful flowers and all that aren’t really expected. But since we’re talking about lighting, a weird light emanates pretty much from your face for no apparent reason. Well, there is a reason, it’s because there are tons of spaces too dark to see in and instead of putting, oh say, torch here and there, they just decided your head would glow, again, mildly distracting.
