Finally beat it, honestly a little disappointed with the endgame and I think this game probably has the weakest endgame of all from titles unfortunately, including balance.
Everything up until the mountaintop of giants was a steady difficulty increase. After that, I began noticing that there's literally only nine unique bosses in the game, and every other boss is a reskin or is a duo boss for artificial difficulty, which just makes it less rewarding when you win and all the more frustrating otherwise.
The game doesn't seem balanced around solo play like the previous titles. Late game fights like the Godskin Duo without mimic tear clearly show that they encourage summons over solo play in this game. In previous titles like Souls 1, Smough and Ornstein had an arena which provided cover to separate the duo, or Souls 3 providing movement speed differences with probably my all time favorite boss in the series, Sister Friede.
Victory didn't really feel impactful in the late game, things honestly felt like more of a chore. With bosses like Elden Beast's AOE attacks and the dreaded camera (a classic), I felt I was relying more on RNG than actual skill and that really soured things for me. I also found my overall build becoming more and more obsolete as the game progressed and clearly favored a meta, which is unfortunate as they really did improve the balance of stats in the most recent titles.
Early game and mid game were fantastic otherwise, still eager to see whatever DLC comes along. Don't think I'll ever be running another NG of this though unless certain things are addressed.