People who want to punish themselves should play Iron Storm.

That's not accurate at all. Souls games are designed to have the bosses fought as co-op battles.

Co-op play is an essential feature of those games. You want to see a pile of jank, then try the combat in Witcher 2 and/or Witcher 3. Now that's what real jank feels like, with the horrendous play control of those games.

The Souls games are special because they don't suffer from that kind of jank.

"Really bad take" achievement unlocked.

I mean ok, I might give you Witcher 2, at least as it was on release (I'm not sure what changes have been made later), but Withcer 3? I have not even the slightest idea what problem with controls you could have there. At least on PC, with mouse and keyboard.

While a feature, it's not an essential feature.

From what data there is, it looks like most players tend to play the Souls franchise solo (offline) due to the aggravation of invasions.

I would argue the only Dark Souls game designed specifically for co-op is...

... Dark Souls II.

The addition of boss and enemy "trash mobs" makes Dark Souls II MUCH harder to accomplish solo because there are too many high damage enemies cycling through different moves (and tells) simultaneously. Impossible solo? No, but extremely hard compared to Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1 & 3 (all of the others are completely doable IMO as single-player experiences with or without invasions). But again a case could be made that co-op is essential for Dark Souls II.

I played Witcher 2 but no one was praising its combat unlike Dark Souls ("This is what action RPG combat should be like from now on" and then we get an entire genre of piss poor imitations). I believe Tim Cain said it best, it feels too choreographed, but I'll also add that it felt like I was adding suggestions to an action queue instead of playing the game. And yes, I played all of Dark Souls II up to the end but never beat it. I don't like it but I can respect it for what it is.

The main menu "offline" option in 1,3 and ER kinda implies differently.

Co-op, npc summons, spirit ashes in ER, for the most part they're the hidden difficulty settings, you know the accessibility in place that the folks that resent the hell out of these games argue should be there. NPC summons can be regarded as essential at key points if you're invested in moving their "storylines" along, but co-op, even with some features clearly designed strictly with it in mind, is 100% optional.

The "offline" menu option is missing in DS2, I don't know why, i'm guessing it has something to do with the game being a tad weird tech wise, something which also affects controls and combat animations. While i absolutely don't consider the combat to be jank i don't consider it to be completely fluid either by virtue of the controls' unresponsiveness that keeps making itself noticeable every now and again. I absolutely love DS2, adjusting to the slight "weirdness" is trivial, but i don't consider the combat to be on par with that of the other games. Or maybe objectively it is on par with that of the other games and i simply like it slightly less, i don't know.

In any case that missing option in 2 didn't stop anyone from playing the entire trilogy with no co-op, no pvp, no invasions, no nothing other than a 100% straight up solo / singleplayer experience, for DS2 it's just a matter of turning steam itself to offline mode and viola - which would likely render the game useless to you since that means no cheevo's, i finished SotFS at least 2 times and i have 1 out of 32 :)

I tried al few Souls-Like games, and had no real problem with the difficulty. However - It's just not for me. I don't like the atmosphere, and the fact that you have to grind a lot (and die a lot) to get some progress. It's not that I hate difficult games, but at the other hand I do not really enjoy them.

I don't really like the dark depressive environment, and the loneliness that ooze out of every part of the world.

As said - I do not really hate difficult games. I played Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne, and that game is far from easy to get through. I could name other games, but you get the picture.

That all said - I don't say that those Souls games are bad games. Far from that. It's just not my "piece of cake" so to say.

The only thing I do have problems with are the people that like the genre and take a dump on all other games that are not "difficult" enough in their opinion. For instance, take a game of the (let's say) Trails series. It does not matter these games are more about the story telling, as long as they are not "Souls-Like" hard, they are simply garbage. The same for games that are not even meant to be hard (like the Atelier series). All those games are easy, so they are garbage. That are the moments I really feel like I could hate the whole Souls-Like Genre. Not the genre itself, but those bragging people that take a dump on any other game.

Anyway - I really tried to like the games, but at the end I just got bored and gave up. It's just not for me...

I haven't played one Souls game yet simply because they aren't DRM-free and I'm not willing to pay more than 10€ to rent one.

My personal reasons for turning away from these sorts of titles is almost opposite of the OP. For myself, it's almost entirely due to the fact that the developers of said titles basically put zero thought and consideration towards their single player base. It seems that almost all of these "newer" titles don't have any reasonable and full pausing options that are available for their single player modes. With a team of over 500 developers, Larian wasn't capable of building an engine that could support a full and proper pause? Outside of using external hacking programs, it seems that many of these newer engines and titles are only built with multiplayer/online modes in mind....even when playing entirely offline and single player.

Oh boy, hours of grinding... I can't wait to waste my time.

You don't have to if you can tackle the bosses as you go on. But if you can't, the option to just grind stats is there. Someone may not need to grind at all, someone struggling might need the extra stats from farming trash enemies repeatedly to beat bosses. Varies from person to person. Which is why Souls games are a bad measurement for difficulty in general.

I think we had so many high adventure/upbeat games in the past that people have convinced themselves that going against that grain and making something grim and depressing is fresh. But of course with how these things work, everyone jumped on the same bandwagon all at once (everyone is a goth girl who insists they aren't "like all the other girls") and now doing something happy has swung back into being a counterculture.