Dark Souls isn't unfair.
There are people that finished the first one in what, 30 minutes?
It just takes practice.
And there are people who finished plenty DMC3 in an hour etc -- Not every gamer in the world can be as good/insane as the next guy, but Dark Souls is a game sells itself on its supposed difficulty. At best, it isn't difficult in the same sense I thought DMC3 or God Hand was difficult. It's difficult, similar to how early Resident Evil's might be difficult. It has dodgy frustrating gameplay mechanics and like the previous mentioned example, you can somewhat eventually learn to master it, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.
I finished it 3 times. Once on Idontknow, once on the max difficulty and once on Dark Mode ( where you can craft that set that makes your screen black and white ).
Upgraded dodge is simply a lifehack. Not only can you spam it to get out of being surrounded by 20 people, you can also spam it to travel since it is faster than running.
I picked it up first even when running sorcery builds, so go figure.
It certainly wasn't a "Get out of town card" for me, when I played it -- I'll eventually play the game again on Dark Mode and I'll see for myself. Witcher 2 wasn't a particularly difficult game, that much I can admit, except when the QTE's makes it particularly obnoxious, but it wasn't that easy either and provided plenty of challenge. Witcher 1 was dull, unconventional, with jarring point & click combat that came off as obnoxious when 4 people would surround your ass -- That game was no challenge at all. The final boss was downright disappointing I'll say. Anyway, I think we've made our point here.