Disclaimer
First thing first: I give no guaruntees. Some friends, no matter how much you love 'em, will just be prideful, uninformed derps. It's okay to hope for the best, so long as that doesn't jeopardise your interaction with your friend - whether in the context of Dark Souls or not.

Furthermore, Dark Souls is not for everyone. Yes, I believe anyone who finds the determination to complete it will evaluate the overall experience as worth-while, but keep in mind that gaming is a hobby. Some people just want to waste their spare time in mindless and effortless ways, and if that is how they have decided to make a hobby of gaming, then the pursuit of getting them to play Dark Souls will be far longer and deeper than the intended scope of this guide. Please note that keeping your friend playing Dark Souls is also currently beyond the scope of this guide (if they quit Dark Souls, then don't expect an answer here).

Structure and Premise
This guide will address the major factors of the pursuit of getting your friend to play (and enjoy!) Dark Souls. Let's call it "the pursuit" of "the end goal".

Your best chance of achieveing the end goal includes disposing of any distractions to it. If you have some unresolved dispute with your friend, then obviously that's going to get in the way.

This guide works on the assumption that your friend routinely plays and enjoys computer games.

Firstly, chances are that the first positive exposure your friend will have to Dark Souls is through your very recommendation of the game to them. This is likely to be the most dangerous part of the pursuit. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure on you to deliver your recommendation of the game in as helpful a manner as possible to the end goal. That is what the section entitled 'The Delivery of Your Recommendation' is all about.

Next is the thought process behind my personally refined ordered list of enticements, 'Principles of the Enticement'. Indeed, I first try to persuade you that this particular collection of (reviews of and) videos on Dark Souls is the best for the end goal. The purpose of this is to draw on the power of collaboration. I fully intend for the actual enticements section to be improved by readers of this guide. However, that will be addressed later.

The 'The Enticements' section follows thereafter. Doing the actual recommending in the best way possible would involve being so obviously fair and unbiased and yet persuasive and enthusiastic that only the best word-casters could ever achieve it. Fortunately, they have all recorded their own presentations of it and made them publicly available so that we can direct our friends to them. This part of the pursuit might just be a simple copy and paste. I do not recommend that you direct your friend to this guide.

Finally is the section on use of the comments. I foresee this guide potentially becoming far more popular than my other guides, and I do not have the spare time to keep up with hordes of inefficient comments. Therefore, I require your help in managing the comments. It's no big deal. Basically, just be more efficient in your commenting. This is what will be discussed in that section.

Onto the actual guidance.

So, you want to get a particular one of your friends into Dark Souls, or, if the case may be, any one specific person. Either way, let us call this person the victim "your friend".

How you go about making the recommendation to your friend can be more important than the appearance of the game itself. If this person is your friend, than you might expect that they trust you and would respect any recommendation you give. But pre-existing misconceptions of the game may barrier your attempt at recommending Dark Souls, causing your friend to give less weight to your recommendation or completely dismiss it, and then never play Dark Souls.

(If you have an unresolved dispute with your friend, then consider making the recommendation in the context of specifically trying to avoid the influence of the unresolved dispute. If necessary, explicitly state "I'd like to tell you about something and it would mean a lot to me if we could just talk about it like friends.")

Pre-existing Misconceptions
The first thing to note is to avoid collisions with the abstract barrier of pre-existing misconceptions, since a collision would create conflict and ultimately cause the recommendation to be ill-received. To explain this better, I have written the following example attempt at a recommendation.

Therefore, it is necessary to break down this "misconception barrier" in the pursuit of bringing your friend to discover the entertainment value of Dark Souls. With this in mind, it is imperative that you begin the process of recommending the game to your friend by avoiding the conflict that would arise by insisting that your friend needs to play it. Instead, try to get on your friend's side, emit positivity, be on their team. Again, I present an extreme example.
(Or, as close to that as you can get without sounding sarcastic.)

General Bias
The difficulty misconception is not the only one. A complex spectrum of misunderstandings about Dark Souls can mine field your attempt at getting your friend to play the game.

Misinformation and ignorance plague our modern world. But complaining about or discussing it is of no use here. All you need to know is that Dark Souls suffers from a great deal of misrepresentation and therefore your friend is likely to have a biased or unfair perception of the game. They might think Dark Souls is difficult and nothing more. Maybe they unfoundedly assume that the dark fantasy setting is not their thing. Whatever the case, helping your friend learn to be objective and unbiased in their formation of opinion on any given game will benefit them greatly. Fortunately, I don't think you really need to worry about this factor of the recommendation, since I have tried to integrate it into the next section.

Remember, we do not want your friend to superficially sample the first areas of the game, only to dump it after an hour of playing. This might be likely to happen if they accept your recommendation but do not approach the game objectively. We want your friend to give Dark Souls a genuine go, and hopefully to enjoy the experience enough to become invested in the game and ultimately recognise the greatness of the game and revel in the overall experience.

Google defines enticement as "something used to attract or to tempt someone; a lure". That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to lure your friend into playing Dark Souls. This wording often carries negative connotations, as though the attraction is a guise that would lead the victim to a trap. However, this is just the word that I have selected for representing this part of the pursuit with some measure of brevity.

Theoretical Basis
My take on the theory behind enticing someone to play Dark Souls is thus.
"We identify two major attractors of opinion: (i) the expert effect, induced by the presence of a highly confident individual in the group, and (ii) the majority effect, caused by the presence of a critical mass of laypeople sharing similar opinions" Abstract of Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation[journals.plos.org]

I have decided to assume that your friend is already under a (let us suppose) false opinion of Dark Souls based on an (not necessarily conscious) impression that a critical mass of "laypeople" consider Dark Souls not worth playing. This choice is based on my personal impression of the current overall condition of the largest and most inter-connected gaming community present on the Internet (that is, the Steam community in union with the gaming side of YouTube). I would back up this impression with statistics (say, '60% of all gamers think Dark Souls is too hard, but 90% of those gamers have never played Dark Souls'), but I can find no such statistics.

(Obviously, if your friend has never heard of Dark Souls and has zero impression on it, then you can just go "Hey, try this game. It's really good.", and they'll probably put it on their to-play list. Mission accomplished.)

The Principles
These principles are the backbone to the Enticements. They determine what enticements are good with respect to the end goal, how they are good, and where each enticement should go in the list.

The first principle behind the ordered list of enticements in the Enticements section is to return to neutral ground. The idea is that your friend will likely have a false impression of Dark Souls based on unfair sources. Digging out or breaking down these false preconceptions about the game will hopefully return your friend to a neutral and open base from which they can -with your help- form an opinion of Dark Souls that is more in line with the end goal. However, this principle can be difficult to satisfy (with items of enticement) without appearing as an attack on the opinion of your friend. Therefore, the items of enticement which address this principle will simultaneously address the next principle.

The next principle is fairness. We want your friend to believe that we are presenting Dark Souls to them in a fair and unbiased light. We do this by (giving the impression of) citing valid statistics, citing multiple and varied sources, and citing experts on the game, the genre, and gaming in general. Hopefully, this will encourage your friend to form an objective perception of the game, which, if true, will cause them to come to the understanding that Dark Souls is actually a good game (because it is a technically good game). But they still might not be interested in exactly what Dark Souls is offering.

Finally we have the conviction principle. Through persuasive, emotionally appealing videos and speeches, your friend will become convinced that Dark Souls is more than a technically good game, but is also an amazing (emotional/spiritual) experience, and one that they want and need to participate in. This conviction will bring them to play Dark Souls.

In summary, in regard to your friend's perception of Dark Souls: return it to neutral, build it in a technically positive light, build it in an emotionally appealing light.

This section covers the information that is supposed to go directly to your friend. For ease of use, the literal content of this section will be presented in . Recommendations are a very interpersonal thing. Therefore, I recommend that you read and watch all this content and refine it according to the style and character shared between you and your friend. Consider copying and pasting these links into a Notepad document or Pastebin[pastebin.com] paste where you can more easily modify them. (You really should do that. But if you can't be bothered, then here's a premade literal collection https://pastebin.com/TR0BDibZ to which you can link your friend.)

A quote (of my own making) to begin the destruction of false preconception based on difficulty

Statistics to surprise the misconceptions out of your friend, as well as add some technical backbone to the recommendation

A couple of Steam-based user reviews for Dark Souls continue to deconstruct the difficulty misconception and reinforce the general entertainment value of the game
(Short reviews are prioritised to help keep your friend's attention and sustain the time-dependent build up of positive expectation)
75 words; 93% thumbs up; Tatsuhero
360 words; 94% thumbs up; Morse

Some structure for your friend regarding the next slog of enticements

An appealing and (hopefully) unbiased collection of casual reviews of the first part of the game
01 minute, 15 seconds; 89% thumbs up; REACT

A video boldly addressing the preconception of difficulty
01 minutes, 25 seconds; 88% thumbs up; Haedox

Another video addressing difficulty, just with more emphasis on the positive features of Dark Souls (it encourages the player to think "laterally")
05 minutes, 38 seconds; 93% thumbs up; Uniquenameosaurus

The debut trailer for Dark Souls, featuring my favourite soundtrack of all time
03 minutes, 04 seconds; 99% thumbs up; GameTrailersLimited

A professional analysis of Dark Souls presenting the technical success of the game
14 minutes, 18 seconds; 99% thumbs up; snomaN Gaming

The unique experience of the Dark Souls art piece
12 minutes, 29 seconds; 99% thumbs up; VaatiVidya

Before you post your comment, please make sure it is relevant, defined below through examples.

Relevant

• feedback on the quality of the writing of this guide,
  
• feedback on the quality of the meaning behind the writing of this guide
  
• well-considered suggestions for additions and/or replacements to the enticements
  
• guidance on improving this guide.

Irrelevant

• assistance with convincing a particular friend to play Dark Souls (go to the Discussions tab instead)
  
• mindless restatements of previous comments
  
• general unhelpfulness (please use your sense of logic).

Please spell check and grammar check your comment before you post.

Furthermore, please do not be offended if you comment something of temporary meaningfulness and then I delete it.

I am very appreciative of all the support I get in this everlasting endeavour to help people discover and enjoy Dark Souls. Thank you.

In summary, your comment must be relevant, logically valid, and linguistically correct. Please also treat everyone with respect and kindness.