What more can be said about Dark Souls at this point? It paved the way for a whole breed of styles that would seek to capture its charm, and a whole bunch of games that realized that it is infact fine to be difficult.

I've always thought that the level design was pretty overrated myself. It is kind of a cool look at what metroidvania design would have been like if it survived the transition to 3D, but I find the levels themselves to be pretty.. cobbled together and empty of things to find. Like, it's cool that you can go throuhg the valley of drakes to get to different spots, but the valley of drakes sucks. And this isn't even mentioning how obviously half finished the 2nd half of the game is.

It is still the parent of not just a game style, but also a meme. And for good reason, too. Praise the sun and all that.