Finished this over the weekend. The final bosses were underwhelming after the DLC and probably would have been even without the extra levels. They just kind of sit around and languidly attack you once in a while. I don't really care about that and honestly was just ready for the game to be over (with DLC, it's maybe a bit overstuffed), but the non-DLC content in this game definitely is not the one for people who come to this series primarily for challenging bosses. Luckily, I do not.
Overall I liked this a lot, for the reasons I've already stated. Nothing really changed my basically impression of the game all that much. Maybe I just never noticed it, but I'm surprised this game doesn't come up more often in Dark Souls Difficulty Discourse. I feel like Dark Souls 2 Sucks Discourse and Difficulty Discourse are mostly going on in parallel tracks, but in many ways DS2 with its de-spawning enemies, much easier bosses on the critical path, frequent bonfires, unlocked from the start fast travel, infinitely purchasable health recovery consumables, tons of offline NPC summons offered, intuitive equipment upgrades, and wide range of viable builds seems to be an already existing answer to the "What if they made Dark Souls easier?" question that seems to get treated as rhetorical.
Apparently I also missed a whole area with a boss called Darklurker, I think because I never accepted or followed up on the sidequest/covenant of the old man in the chair I ran into a few times. That's fine. It seemed like something that would pay off for mages, and my character was dumb, unfaithful, and never had a single spell slot. I guess I'll try this if I replay it with a spellcaster of some sort, which I hear is very fun to do in this game.
Overall I liked this a lot, for the reasons I've already stated. Nothing really changed my basically impression of the game all that much. Maybe I just never noticed it, but I'm surprised this game doesn't come up more often in Dark Souls Difficulty Discourse. I feel like Dark Souls 2 Sucks Discourse and Difficulty Discourse are mostly going on in parallel tracks, but in many ways DS2 with its de-spawning enemies, much easier bosses on the critical path, frequent bonfires, unlocked from the start fast travel, infinitely purchasable health recovery consumables, tons of offline NPC summons offered, intuitive equipment upgrades, and wide range of viable builds seems to be an already existing answer to the "What if they made Dark Souls easier?" question that seems to get treated as rhetorical.
Apparently I also missed a whole area with a boss called Darklurker, I think because I never accepted or followed up on the sidequest/covenant of the old man in the chair I ran into a few times. That's fine. It seemed like something that would pay off for mages, and my character was dumb, unfaithful, and never had a single spell slot. I guess I'll try this if I replay it with a spellcaster of some sort, which I hear is very fun to do in this game.