Like many people who were unfamiliar with FromSoft at the time, I tried DS1 randomly, got wrecked by those skeletons, and then set it down for a while out of confusion. Only later did I come back and give the game a fair shake, and I'm so glad I did.
You didn’t spend hours trying to beat asylum demon with a broken straight sword? That’s as far as I got my first play through. I randomly was recommended a ds1 speed running video on YouTube years later and I realized I could have just run past.
Also, in the starting area there's a dragon that shows up unexpectedly right near a cellar (where you might try to run and take cover from said dragon) with a trapped chest that teleports you to a very hard cave in Caelid (the hard area pictured in the screenshot). You can't teleport out of the cave, you have to figure out how to get out of it while being assaulted by weird bug priests that will likely one shot you.
Definitely was a fun introduction to the game for me. The game is actually not THAT hard but it also is happy to put you in really difficult situations sometimes.
I could see some people hating being trapped there, but I think a big part of Dark Souls is definitely the shared experiences like this. It's so fun to see people's experiences and just be able to laugh at it