I avoided the games like the plague till about a year and a half ago. I tried DS1 Prepare to Die when it was gifted to me. Computer had so many issues with it just to get it working. Finally got in, died to a few things and uninstalled it. Wasn't the type of game I ass going to force myself to play.

Eventually tho I got more and more into speed runs and watched DS3 speedrun while GDQ was going on. DS3 just looked much more user friendly and i really liked the atmosphere a lot, so I gave it a shot and really liked it. After beating it I played the ds1 remaster and finally got why that game was so big, it is fun but you have to want to have fun with it and accept dying isn't as big of a deal as it may seem. That helped. Haven't played 2, Siekiro or BB but I'm almost done with Elden Ring.

The community pre elden ring was really toxic for the most part, still are in a lot of regards but I enjoy watching certain youtubers who put out quality content for the games and just don't really look at reddit and Twitter fans for it, I just don't care about that shit. Definitely recommend the games tho