I somehow find the areas to be very difficult to get into, while bosses mostly seem easy.
So far I've done:
Cleric beast - first try.
Felt very easy, but since it's the first boss i suppose thats just to get people who haven't played other souls games to get the feel of the game.
Father Gascoigne - first try.
Think i had grinded a bit much already here, but up until werewolf phase he was easy to control with the graves, afterwards it was a beast so natural instinct went "kill it with fire!".
Blood starved beast - feckton of tries.
Felt at times like i wanted to throw the controller at the screen. The amount of times he got me with that grab was so annoying!!!! Can't state how hard i struggled mentally thinking that move was impossible to dodge! Think i ended up overleveling myself (again) and beat him through just having good stats and using the pillars to get time to heal inbetween shots. Lucky win more than anything
The Witches of Hemwick - first try.
Very easy boss. But I suppose it's there for people like me who feel uncertain if they are ready to take on Amelia and want to explore more (thats how I found them first), making it possible to use gems earlier.
Darkbeast Paarl - first try.
Same as Amelia really (did Paarl first I believe), that and I knew he was electric beforehand so went in with Henryck's set for bolt-protection. Just went in an attacked relentlessly. Had farmed all weapons (i had up til that point) to +6 on the bag-men and invested quite a lot of souls in levels, so was around level 60-80 then.
Vicar Amelia - first try.
Classic case of too strong. Just went in, expected to get wooped, but hit so hard she didn't get to show off her healing skills.
Shadow of Yarnham - first try.
Used a shaman blade on the sword guy and then attacked the others alongside him. Felt like a cheese more than anything. Think knowing about the Shamans blade working on them is bad for the first try (in other words, regret looking them up before I had gone a few times)
Martyr Logarius - first try.
He almost got me... Many times. I have no clue how i got that win. I was aggressive, then on the last phase became a scardy-cat running and hiding for my life, waiting for him to get close and attack him after ha had tried to finish me off. That long-ranged attack at the center of the roof was goddamn annoying!
Celestial Emissary - first try.
Shaman blade again... But that fight would've been a bore anyway, if I had the blade or not. Just a ton of midgets attacking you, and one of them growing tall? Most bland boss fight I've had in a souls game. And i've played through Dark Souls 2 (and beaten Pinwheel for that matter).
Rom, the vacuous spider - 2nd or 3rd try.
His spiders got me good, and he is the one I'm currently fighting in the chalice dungeon. I tried to hit the spiders but noticed I did no damage (later on in the chalice dungeon i noticed their head is armored so that might have made things simpler), i ended up strafe-attacking and running out, dodging spiders and then running back in for another attack every now and then. Very tedious fight that even now that I know I can attack the mini-spiders and kill them, I still seem to struggle at the boss in the chalice dungeon. (in other words, beaten on story mode, not won yet against it in chalice dungeons)
One Reborn - first try.
Saw people rate it as one of the easiest bosses, but I found his moves to be quite annoying. Maybe I shouldn't have used my ludwigs greatsword with the scabbard, slowing me down a bit too much. But hindsight is 20/20, got him down in the end. (this is as far as I've gone story-wise)
DLC:
Ludwig, the holy blade - first try.
Watched the amazing Lobos analyze (on his first playthrough), again, i do this because I don't have the mental fortitude to die a thousand times before i understand whats going on, so prefer to do some research on a boss before i attack it. After all It still needs to be beaten, which another boss soon will reveal... As for the boss, I found him to be very difficult. But I think I got lucky with a few dodges. And he did only 1 charge-attack which i was lucky enough to not get hit by (lucky because according to lobos it's best dodged by strafing to the north-west, but I went just to the left).
Living failures - 4th try I think, might've been 5.
Too much things going on for me to grasp it, ended up a roasted chicken when I had 3 in my sight and the 4th snuck up behind me and rammed me into the ground. ALL-THE-TIME. Not much of failures, they did exactly what they were supposed to do, annoy the crap out of me.
Got it down once I wized up and didn't try to take most of them on at the same time, but instead ran around looking for one isolated one, hit it til it died then ran some more.
Lady Maria - 932365626502364264084072 tries. (probably an overestimate, but i lost count, and my sanity, I've never lost so many times to a boss, ever!).
Entered thinking, it'll be like any of the other hunter-fights. She'll do massive (annoyingly so) damage with bloodhinge and I'll be parrying her to death. Even if i had done research and seen lobos beat her on new game 2 on his first try, with zero difficulty... Man I struggled. Every time we fought, I'd get her down to the 3rd phase. Every time that 3rd phase came up, I died. The hit-boxes on that 3rd phase is just ridiculous. Be behind her? She kills you. Be straight up in her face? She kills you. Try to stay away frem her? She kills you. I got in a few lucky parries at the end... Can't even say I beat her, I think I had under 5 vials and bullets left and no clue what the feck i was doing. Stressful fight.
feck her. That is all.
Apart from those, I've tried to take on Ebritas, but I just couldn't do it. Got rekt hard. After 10+ tries i decided I'd come back later on (will probably go again after the DLC is done).
I'm currently on blood level 105. Starting to regret pumping so much into endurance, but I have Vitality on 40, str and skill at 35 and endurance around 30, with arcane/bloodhinge at 7. I really wanna build up bloodhinge and arcane so I can use some of the DLC weapons, or that gunblade from cainhurst (or even Chikage). There is just so many things i wanna try now that I cannot because I've focused on strength and skill up until now. But at 35 each I think I can start developing the other stuff without having to worry about damage until new game +...
Areas though. Ares are damn hard. I die at those all the time. Fishing Hamlet (my current location) doesn't bode well with those giant shark-giant things. Wonder if lightning is super-effective pokemon style against them? Sheesh.
