Fancy yourself as a hairy-chested gamer, hardest of the hardcore, with extensive knowledge of the arcane conventions of RPGs? If not, look away now, as trying to play Dark Souls may well turn out to be the most frustrating experience of your life.

Its predecessor, Demon's Souls, prided itself on being one of the hardest games ever. And if anything, Dark Souls is even trickier to negotiate. It's the games equivalent of playing rugby: strictly for the masochists.

At least, that's what I thought of it when I first started playing it. You begin (having chosen one of a wide variety of classes, such as knight, thief or wanderer) in a dank cell in the Undead Asylum. Although undead yourself (you can regain humanity as you progress), you learn that you're some sort of chosen one, who must rid the land of its impressively extensive undead infestation.

Before you even leave the Undead Asylum, which is effectively a tutorial (tips are written in orange on the ground), you must kill a giant demon; indeed, the first time you encounter it, you haven't even acquired a sword and shield or the means of casting spells. But that demon teaches you what Dark Souls is all about – working out how to chisel out, through strategy and persistence, a means of killing seemingly unassailable enemies.

Dark Souls

A number of things help you in that regard. Bonfires provide home-bases where you can restore your health and fill up your Estus flask with health-restoring draughts. But to increase the capacity of your Estus flask, you must acquire some humanity, reverse your so-called hollowing (becoming temporarily human), then kindle your bonfire.

Dark Souls revels in its abstruseness: it goes out of its way to make those who wouldn't say they were RPG veterans feel like they missed a crucial class at school. To prosper in it, you almost need to operate like a detective, seeking out hidden areas and objects, and mining its endless menus (in gloriously old-school fashion, they can only be traversed using the D-pad) for tiny little edges that eventually add up.

If ever there was a game for which buying the accompanying strategy guide was a no-brainer, Dark Souls is it. Although it helps if you hook your console up to the web: players can leave tips for each other online.

At first, the combat feels clunky, but it clicks when you realise it's all about timing your strikes to when enemies are just about to attack, or parrying their attacks and replying while they are still off balance. Each type of undead you face has a distinct way in which it acts, and things start getting really fun when you're beset by several different types at once.

Dark Souls

The bosses are, of course, ridiculous, and very satisfying to overcome. Several aspects of the game are harsh: you can only have one save per character and, as in Demon's Souls, whenever you die (and that's a very common occurrence), all the dead souls you've collected, bringing precious levelling-up Experience Points, is left as a green wisp to be collected from the point at which you died. So if you fall short next time out, you lose it. Also, if you return to a bonfire to level up or restore your health, all the undead around it respawn.

Dark Souls doesn't lack elements ranging from niggly to sloppy. It looks OK, though by no stretch of the imagination spectacular. The undead you kill end up sprawled like rag-dolls and can become caught underfoot. You have to work the camera a lot, and sometimes – usually when up against a particularly gigantic boss – it's still impossible to see what is going on.

But such concerns pale into insignificance for Dark Souls' intended audience: people who want to play what might just be the hardest game ever. So is it?

Probably not – because that would surely be incompatible with being so addictive and entertaining. Sure, it makes you work for your rewards like a forced-labour camp internee. But would discovering a masochistic streak be such a bad thing?

• Game reviewed on Xbox 360