I struggle to find something that Dark Souls 1 is the best at.

Not gameplay, the character is locked in rolling 4 directions at a snail's pace. The bosses are for the most part extremely shallow and tedious, bar a few exceptions who would be average in a modern Souls game. The atmosphere, while nothing to scoff at, doesn't always keep the immersion up when you turn a corner and see 20 dinosaurs pasted in a line or 10 skeleton wheels rolling at you.

I feel like people sort of feel bad for Dark Souls and give it the consolation prize of "Best inter-connectivity...!". The falloff after Anor Londo is so noticeably bad that it should be studied.. oh wait it has. Look, I appreciate Dark Souls for being the catalyst for some of my favorite video games of all time, but the guy did not age that well. If another remaster/remake is to every be done, I hope that Fromsoftware actually tries to give their firstborn the quality that it deserves.

it took me 2 years to actually finish it. the game is obviously mechanically pretty amazing and impactful for its generation, you gotta give its flowers. but as a game it's very unforgiving and those kinds of games don't motivate me to play them at all. i just finished it because i felt like i had to. did i not enjoy it? well, yeah. once you beat the bosses you were getting fucked by, it feels satisfactory. that's usually about it though, apart from the big world-building and gameplay greatness. absence of story makes me not want to continue the game too.