I decided to finish Dark Souls III finally. Just had a couple more things to do on my first run. Well, it was fun, but not as difficult as it seems to be made out to be. I think stuff just hits very hard. Some bosses were frustrating at times. I played it all solo though, aside from the occasional summons here and there. Won’t say much, but I wish there had been a little more to the conclusion that I got. The boss was a bit underwhelming too, leading up to it. At least the optional “so-called hardest boss in the game” was fairly fun. I think I beat the final form with just arrows :P
Yeah, in my case, avoidance was really important with my build. Hard to get away and heal too sometimes, since it takes a second or two, and getting hit will interrupt. Being staggered or on the ground can pretty much end it too on some of the hard bosses. I liked the abilities on some gear to mix and match for particular fights. Made some that were tough in my regular gear easier than they would’ve been with the extra resistances. It’s neat though when you’re trying to figure stuff out on some of the bosses, but I beat a lot of them on my second try after the first was sort of a “watch and learn” session. I was pretty surprised how many I actually beat exactly on my second try. A select few others - maybe 1 or 2 in the game… they took 20+ to get it right, and got quite frustrating. Another thing is you have to travel from the bonfire save spots through a lot of mobs just to get to bosses sometimes, so keeping your health topped up and not getting hit up to that point can even mean the difference. When I did die, it was almost never because I ran out of the health substance you get, “estus”, but it was just doing something foolish then paying for it, or trying to heal and getting interrupted and downed. That really annoyed me sometimes!
I remember someone describing Dark Souls as “Zelda for adults”. Going by that, it’s a case of learning how to overcome obstacles and timing for enemies, at which point they became relatively easy.