It's not the dark art that makes Dark Souls unique. It's the combination of deep lore that isn't fully explained or explainable in the game, world building that somehow finds a way to look and feel extremely realistic and fitting while being dreamlike and fantastical at many points, a story that couldn't care less if you followed it, NPCs building an inescapable spell on your mind with 3 lines of non-sensical dialogue, and dark art that underlines and brings all those things together.
There certainly aren't many games like that out there. I'd wager very few to nine, to be honest.
On the contrary, there are boatloads Soulslike games out there that imitate the gameplay (including the difficulty and risk of death) that cannot even be mentioned with being in the same league as the original Souls games. If anything, in the year 2022 it's the Souls gameplay that's "generic" while the rest of the game is still unique in every sense of the word.
I'd just watch a YouTube walkthrough if you don't want to play. Playing the game, alone, is not enough to fully appreciate any of the Souls games.
And further, it is clearly not the case in any of the soulsborne games that the difficulty is tuned perfectly for each player. If that were true, there would be no interest in SL1 runes or there wouldn't have been patches rebalancing of Lost Izalith in DS1 or summons wouldn't be an available option.