Black Flame is an excellent spell for sure. It was my bread and butter for pretty much the entirety of my Faith playthrough.
A lot of the rewards whose uses aren't readily apparent (gear, magic) are for crafting. Crafting items can actually be really powerful if you give them a shot, too!
Dodging really is a pain too, but mostly your dodge timing is/should be just a little later than you think, especially with all the delayed attack timings. Enemies
really like to punish you for panic-rolling in this one. Not that I've figured out timing particularly well myself, but I also like to use shields and greatshields quite a bit, so ymmv (The guard counter is a pretty rad addition too, if you decide to mess with a shield).
And yeah, the option to just walk away and go somewhere else for a while is a game changer. It really emphasizes the exploration too, which I like. If it sucks, hit da bricks and see what's over there instead. The exploration is so great too, with surprisingly intricate world design, and it's almost always rewarding. I often wish I could play it for the first time again (although maybe with my third or fourth time's skills/difficulty...)
I've been exclusively playing this using the Seamless Co-op mod, which I think is good, because I'm not totally certain I would have hung on playing it alone. But running around with three or four other people and just kinda running around and doing whatever is pretty fun.
I've been wanting to try this out, myself. Co-op has always been my favorite way to play, so I do a lot of summons and helping out, but having a true always-on co-op mode sounds great. Maybe a little
too easy, but great (and as someone who isn't in it for the difficulty, I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, just that I've had experiences where someone else has done too much
for me instead of
with me, if that makes sense).