Nah you just gotta get good sadly. You can improve your damage but the difficulty curve is still tough. Bosses are like Mega Man bosses: they'll take you apart. Still confused by shell throwing enemies in the garden... in the fog canyon maybe? If so, that's an area you might want to avoid for now. Maybe look for the mushrooms.
Yep. Funny how quickly it all comes together. The regular knight before that, was a bastard first time, then the full you have x amount of hits in this time frame gameplay clicked and everything is Zen.
Just upgraded my charms slots for the first time.
Spoiler:
See myself on map, stand still on attack and longer nail combo. Have other stuff, but they all seem more bonus than these, which seem essential to me.
B took about 35 hours to complete it, and he has seen quite a bit, think he did almost all of the optional stuff too. (but used a thing towards the end that makes sure you can't be killed, so you still need to put in the fight, but a without risk. This was mainly for health reasons, as I think his heart would have exploded or something if he didn't use that).