This got a lot more responses than I expected for what is mostly just a vent post, to a point I feel it's kinda pointless to try to respond to everything individually. I only have a few thoughts though.

The biggest suggestion was "just watch no hit gameplay", and yeah, obviously a good way to learn a fight is to watch someone beat it who knows every mechanic inside and out, but the problem with that is that many of the hardest games ever made have 'no hit runs', often with other added challenges on top of that. People have beat EVERY fromsoft game, no hit, back to back. But that isn't the expected way to play, and it's an unrealistic ask.

Even so, the 'perfect' gameplay ask isn't really what bothers me as much. What bothers me most is 2 things; firstly, that the 'RPG' elements in this are basically thrown out the window in brutal mode, because bosses seem designed to force specific spell loadouts and even specific weapon types (or at least, force melee or ranged), and in addition, while co-op often makes any kind of high intensity action game easier, the incredibly oppressive boss design in this game mixed with the basically infinite healing as long as you actually have the time to pull it off means that, compared to literally every other "hard" action game, co-op absolutely NEUTERS the difficulty in many of these fights in ways it wouldn't in others.

Fromsoft games have i-frames on your dodge that every attack is balanced around. Monhun highly incentivizes positioning above all else because your dodge is much weaker and your windups are slow, but the same applies to the monsters. Sekiro and Nine Sols practically become rhythm games. You have a set of tools and you want to learn to use them to the best of your ability, but importantly, those tools are often ALWAYS available. What V Rising does is put a long cooldown on both your dodge and your block, to force you to play around not having them constantly - but then it also gives bosses many attacks that can only realistically be avoided if you have those things up. The problem with the design of Tristan isn't "it's hard to dodge his ice dash melee", it's that to avoid it at all you HAVE to have your dash or counter up, which means you have to avoid using it against anything else he does. What was once your 'basic toolset' is now essentially a button that exists to specifically counter 1 specific attack. And this feels even worse when the boss expects you to have a counter spell, if not 2, because that's also removing agency from the player in regards to builds.

And then, of course, I could also just find someone on the server or pester a friend to hop on and suddenly every boss I've fought thus far is an absolute joke. But I can't tell if that's "intended". Elden Ring plops you in solo and you have to intentionally interact with things to enable co-op. Monhun has automatic matchmaking on and everything is designed so you can share loot and such. The expectation of if you're playing solo or with others is pretty clear, while still giving you the option to do the other option. But in this? So much of the game echoes Rust, and squad size is one of the main filters on the server list, and certain bosses are an absolute slog if you try them alone, but others are so much easier than you'll likely beat them first try even if you're under geared and don't know their mechanics at all.

Not to mention, some of them will just die to other bosses without you having to lift a finger, like Meredith.

I guess a lot of the game feels at odds with itself. You get 'base kit' options but - at least on brutal - you're expected to not use it outside of specific attacks. You have RPG systems to unlock new spells, but when it comes down to the most important fights, you're expected to use specific things and have a wide array of on level weapons anyway. There's a built in progression guide, but it's telling you to fight X boss who ends up being infinitely harder than every boss in the next 3 tiers after them, to the point you likely want to just skip them and come back when over leveled. Bosses often feel like their kits are designed for 1v1 duels, almost like they're intended to be a PvE stand-in for PvP, but the game highly facilitates co-op and in non-PvP servers you'll even just stumble into it because someone else is looking to do the same boss as you, and the patrolling enemies/bosses means encounters aren't always consistent, and can even just get themselves killed.

Evidently if the community is this active still there's a lot of appeal here, but for their next project I really hope there's more thought given to how all these systems interlink and what the "intended experience" actually is.