I have no experience in neither dark souls or the NES shooters, but used to do a lot of raiding in world of warcraft and I feel it’s kind of mix of both, memorizing patterns, thinking on your feet and on top of that coordination of the 25man raid group. Loved that shit
Then you gotta push through, beat it. Or decide it’s not worth it.
I’ve done that couple times with Silmarillion, decided that the story is not worth it.