Anguished Guardian
Without going into specific details to avoid spoilers here, I decided to put a pause on finishing the main game to start the DLC because I wanted the Pale Knight weapon.
I've been playing a motivity build and up until this fight, I've generally done fairly well for being my first playthrough. I'm far from new to the genre as a whole. In fact, I'd say I'm a veteran. But I'm all the same new to Lies of P. Of course I had to play on Legendary Stalker mode as a result. And while the game has been challenging, it's never felt too difficult for me. But this fight made me question that a bit.
I've died to a few bosses a handful of times previously. But I usually discovered some sort of "trick" to beating them. Which really translates to remembering to utilize all of my tools, like my Legion arms, throwables, etc. I died to the last major boss before this one (Veronique) 5-6 times until I remembered to really utilize my Puppet String. Once I did that I annihilated her.
But not this boss. This boss beat me 22 times. And that's AFTER I resorted to calling in the spectre. I tried a few times before that without it. It was the first fight to make me legitimately HAVE to utilize its weakness and the spectre. And even then, I still barely got him.
I started using my normal weapon, which has been the Live Puppet Axe head on the Krat Police Baton handle. It just felt too slow for this fight though. I learned that what I really needed to do was break the crystals on his hand and forehead, ok. Except...it takes forever to do so.
So when I finally beat the boss and got my Pale Knight I was left conflicted. On one hand, I haven't been taxed this hard in a Souls game since my initial run through the Old Hunters DLC for Bloodborne. Which I ended up doing on NG+5. And it's rewarding, of course.
But on the other, this boss had me feeling hopeless after about the hour and a half mark of one failure after another.
I don't mind the overall difficulty and how hard it hits. What I think I have an issue with is how goddamned tanky and spongy it is. It felt a bit much. That kind of seems to be a running theme in this DLC. They artificially inflate the difficulty through just juicing the hell out of the enemies health. Not a huge fan of that design. I think in comparison the base game has felt a LOT better balanced as a whole.
Either way, glad it's done. Don't look forward to fighting the bastard again in subsequent playthroughs.