With the recent release of Dark Souls Remastered on both consoles and PC, there may be some still on the fence about whether upgrading to the "Remastered" edition is worth the $20 or not. I'm here to save you some money, because in my opinion, it's not worth the cost of admission.
Dark Souls has its fair share of problems on PC, but still unkown to some, there are a myriad of different fixes that can take the game from a buggy mess into a product that rivals and surpasses the Remastered edition.
What you'll need:
DSFix
Dark Souls Connectivity Fix
PVP Watchdog
First of all you'll want to download and install DSFix as this is the most important bug fix for the game. You'll want to just drop the files into the DATA folder insider your Dark Souls folder and voila it's done. You are free to open the dsfix.ini and edit some simple "1 and 0" values inside of Notepad to adjust things like resolution, anti-aliasing and some quality of life fixes, but these are completely optional and those afraid of messing something up would prefer to skip.
Next would be the optional Dark Souls Connectivity Fix which allows you to connect to other players much more easily. This is optional because not everybody wants to cooperate or invade in the game and may want to simply play the game offline without bugs. To get this to work, you simply need to download the file above and run the .exe before or after opening Dark Souls and you'll get connected to players near your level. Dark Souls surprisingly still has a very stable community of players.
Finally, the most optional program of all, would be PVP Watchdog which allows you to see who is invading you and quickly eliminate players who are hacking or way above your level. This one is easy to get setup, just follow the guide provided with the install and you're good to go.
Bandai Namco honestly should have released the Remastered edition completely for free to owners of Prepare to Die, similarly to how Bethesda upgraded owners of Skyrim and the DLC to the Remastered edition of Skyrim for free on PC. Aside from some lighting changes and ease of coop/invasions, there are no upsides to paying $20 for the exact same game, and one that includes the same bugs/issues the original release has almost 7 years later.