It's wasn't really the hull sequence that broke the game but rather my abysmal hardware at the time. I haven't played DS in years but I'm sure if I tried it on my current machine I could do it since the FPS should sail comfortably at 60 FPS.
When I first played DS1 I was on a 5 year old system and it was no piece of cake getting past the hull sequence. It was a whole lot easier using the tranier option.