BLACK SOULS markets itself as an utterly miserable experience. Through the visuals, music, and storytelling, it presents itself as the edgiest video game ever made, and that's, on its own, not a bad thing at all. It's fun to see a story be so brave and open about what it truly is. Not just fun, it could be something truly great.
However, when you actually play the game, this dark, gritty, and supposedly unforgiving world constantly spoonfeeds you with items to raise some meaningless number in your stats, a level-up system that's a huge downgrade from the original Dark Souls - after all, there is absolutely no trade-off to leveling your stats, as all of them get equally raised with every level-up - and, I cannot state enough how baffling this is, it REWARDS you for dying by giving you another item that raises your stats.
The worst part, however, is that there's an actual difficulty slider. A game called "BLACK SOULS," which signals from the very start that it's a game that shows you how kind Dark Souls actually was, is too cowardly to give you a set difficulty, so you can make the experience easier, you can get spoon-fed once more, whenever you want to.
It is complete ludonarrative dissonance. Nothing in the gameplay feels BLACK, it all just feels like an ignorant attempt at making the player crawl through the mud, to replicate Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, without actually knowing how to do it. I cannot feel the story's misery when I'm too concerned with managing all the stat bonuses I keep getting.
Playing this game on the initially set difficulty is a walk in the park. In the second half of the game, you can beat some of the most powerful beings on the planet by spamming a single move three times.
For most games, this would be inexcsuable. It would be such bad game design that nobody should ever play it, a completely worthless experience. However, what makes BLACK SOULS nevertheless recommendable is the incredible storyline. The story is so good, so well-written, that it alone makes the game worth it.
Therefore, despite the mediocre game-design, I can't wait to play BLACK SOULS II and see how the story unravels.

Side-note: After finishing the series, I will go back and play through these games on the highest possible difficulty. In the hope that the higher difficulty will finally give the game the atmosphere it deserves.
If this higher difficulty actually turns out to be amazing gameplay-wise, I will recommend everyone, even if it's their first playthrough, to use the highest possible difficulty setting. This doesn't excuse the horrendous idea of having difficulty settings in the first place, but at least it gives me some sort of peace of mind.
Because, really, this series looks like it could be one of the greatest stories ever told. If I can get rid of the complete mismatch in tone between gameplay and story, I will give this game the title of masterpiece it ought to deserve.