Prior to the release of the remastered version in 2018, it had also been negatively received due to regularly causing frame rate drops, which combined with its general difficulty had been a massive source of frustration for players.

[6] Miyazaki revealed in an interview with the Russian website Igromania that he did not know why he tended to make poison swamp locations a recurring element of his soulslike games.

She expressed her opinion that it was less the swamps themselves that made the location grueling but more the preceding mazelike areas that are dark, contain dead ends, and are full of hostile enemies like snipers that shoot poison at players.

[9] The GamesRadar writer Austin Wood referred to the Dark Souls location as a "pitch-perfect combination of insects, poison, and dirty water, all steeped in an inimitable air of decay," that has been the frequent subject of memes by players.

[10] Jeffrey Parkin, writing for Polygon, stated that Blighttown is "all kinds of awful" due to its "equal parts dangerous, aggressive, and annoying" enemies and its highly hostile environment.

He also noted that its difficulty can, as a result, mislead people to thinking that it is a complex and important location when it primarily serves as a means to progress through the game up to the second Bell of Awakening.

Black explained that both the subversion of usual game design by rewarding players for descending through as opposed to ascending through it and the lack of large payoffs at the level's end connecting to the location's wider themes help to make it memorable.

[12] Eurogamer writer Thomas Morgan argued that the low frame rates of the level, especially at the elevator system areas, made the location highly frustrating to the point of being subject to widespread criticisms.