> You arguably shouldn't be grinding a boss for several hours.

I agree, unfortunately I'm not even grinding the boss, I am grinding the path to the boss.

> Learning to identify this as a sign to step away is a very good life skill.

Which is why I stopped playing the game instead of letting it waste my time, like many others :)

> Take a 15 min break, either go somewhere else in game or better still, in real life. It really makes a world of difference.

It it is not like I, or every other person struggling with playing the game, have been continuously doing the same boss, for extensively long game sessions. I only have 8 hours evenly spread across the last 5 days.

I've also explored up to Graymoor at this point and picked up a few of the upgrades there, I don't think that is actually the issue here.

Unfortunately basically every encounter up to this point has the same runback tedium to it. So unless one one-tries a boss, which at least did happen twice to me, there seems to be no real way to avoid this tedium because of progression locks.

For comparison, I've played Elden Ring and the DLC, I've never had this much frustration there, because for the most part the struggle was with the bosses, not the perceived busy work of getting to them.

But it doesn't really matter, a good chunk of the players seem to enjoy it, the game doesn't need to appeal to everyone.

Something I think people don't realize is why there's a runback. Primarily, it's there to teach you how to counter enemy attacks, especially common ones, and it helps you stockpile money so you don't need to farm for it. Usually, on the runback, there's enemies that drop rosaries. If you kill them every time, you'll get really good at fighting them and you'll get money each time, so the more you die to the boss, the more money you build up, which means when you do finally beat the boss, you'll have lots of money saved up, and can buy some stuff.

And don't feel bad if you are at 1 health and you have tons of money and you save scum and quit to go back to the bench and try again so you don't lose the money - it's okay, having to grind that money again is silly.