Officially done with DarkSouls 2, and it's bullshit.

[UPDATE 1]

I beat the fume knight. It took a lot of fucking luck, and a summoned phantom (who was mostly there as a decoy. By the point I finally beat the fume knight, I knew his entire moveset down pat, and I just wanted a little insurance that I had a guaranteed time to heal if needed, instead of having to rely on pauses in his greatsword combo) but I did it. I don't feel a sense of relief or accomplishment, either. I feel like I bashed my head against a concrete wall until it finally broke. GG me. I did it though, now I'm moving onto the smelter.
---  

Likely won't be getting bloodborne, after this, either.

I spent the majority of my day off trudging through this dlc. It was 90% "snipe these enemies from cover, then move on to the next area where you can snipe them from cover."

***BOSS SPOILERS AHEAD, DO NOT KEEP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED.***

I made it along the "challenge" route, which was fairly challenging. Up to this point, I have nothing but good things to say about the DLC, until I got to the reskinned smelter demon. Except he has a handful new bullshit moves, and ofcourse a ridiculous amount of health (as well as being able to instantly kill my character when he powers up his sword.)

Of course, powering up his sword also gives it insane range, and he can hit your character anywhere in the entire arena you're forced to fight him in. So, he's a massively buffed reskin, with one or two new moves (or moves I've never seen him use, because he's a joke in the base game.) He's also incredibly resistant to magic, so your only real option is to get up close 'n personal.. which would be fine, for a normal boss. Smelter however has this cute little gimmick of you take constant damage when you're near him, because his magic fire or some nonsense. So he's basically a "dodge perfect or die" fight, when he's fully powered up.

You also can't use -any- phantoms in any of the boss fights, because it scales their stats 3-6x (from my testing) so there's not even an extra body to take a few hits while you chug an estus, or get a second to recover your stamina.

So, I skipped that fight, because the challenge route is incredibly long and tedious, unless you use the shortcut (which I used until I got tired of dying on smelter) and ended up at the Fume Knight. This fight is yet another test in tedium.  This boss was actually pretty challenging. There are 4 healing idols that surround him, so you have to use wedges and destroy those (unless you actually explored before you fought him, in which case you'll have one idol that will always heal him, so have fun with that, just like me!) After you've dealt with his healing factor, he's a tough boss. I used a dark kings ultra greatsword +5, and I buffed it with dark weapon. With 50 STR, I was doing about 798 ~ 1,000 damage per swing. The problem comes in, that you can't really use a heavy weapon fighting these bosses, because you have to manage your stamina 100%. You have to be ready to dodge a 3-4 hit combo on the moments notice, and if you don't have max stamina, you're likely going to eat it.

Once the boss reaches 50%, he self buffs (they just love self buffing!) and he gets bullshit range with his sword, like smelter. Fortunately you have a large arena, except the fume knight can slam his sword in the ground, and a pseudo-bullethell starts, where you have to avoid the ring of projectiles flying at you (unless you're foolish enough to be right next to him when he does this -- in that case, it's a instant kill.) If you manage to avoid that, (I'll admit, it's fairly easy to dodge since they're slow, but you can be caught off guard) then you just have to avoid his bullshit swings and his random combo interruptions to thrust at you. Any sword attack during that phase was an instant-kill, if I got hit. I finally stopped wearing armor, because it became as stupid as the optional boss fights -- you're going to get instantly killed anyways, you might as well be as light as possible, for the best possible roll.

Being instantly killed is a pet peeve of mine; I don't like the mechanic in games, where I'm not allowed to make -1- mistake. In action RPGs, allow me to make -1- mistake. Don't force me to have to have perfect dodges every single attack, and force me to predict a AI who seems to like randomly breaking his combo because I avoided him too many times. I've finally given up on the DLC. 

This bosses in this DLC, are, cheap. I have never felt that way about any boss in any of the souls games, (except that stupid bed of chaos, but he wasn't THAT bad, you just had to learn when to dodge) but in this DLC, instant kills while being forced to predict moves that the AI itself doesn't always abide by? It's just cheap. It's artificial difficulty. Having healing idols with the only way to obtain more being fighting another bullshit boss on what was supposed to be the optional route? It's just bullshit.

I'm sure souls fanboys will have a go at me, telling me I just suck at the game and I should probably quit gaming -- or maybe not. A lot of people are saying this DLC is incredibly difficult, and probably the hardest thing in any of the souls games they've played. I'd personally blame the ridiculously inflated stats of the bosses, because really, the bosses are the only point in the DLC where I stopped having fun. It stopped feeling like a struggle to kill the bosses, and more like I met an unscalable
wall, that people are just bashing their heads against until they find a way through.

I don't have unlimited free time, and there are quite a few games I want to play, so I don't HAVE to dedicate my time to this game.. and honestly, if From is going to be focusing on making the bosses so ridiculously bullshit that you can't kill them without a pinch of luck? I don't see the point in playing the games anymore. They got $60 + $20 out of me, so good on them, I suppose. I'm done, though.

I might not even bother with bloodborne, if this trend keeps up. I was originally going to get the game day one.. but now I'm not so sure. If this is how they're going to be designing their games going forward? I don't see why I should keep playing. I enjoy a challenge, but I abhor tedium.

I'm just not having fun anymore.