Surprised with the hate on Aldrich, he seemed to me at the very minimum to be a novel idea (that is, not a dude swinging his weapons at you), and he really doesn't require a lot of dodging at all, as most of his attacks can be avoided by running. If anything, his problem is that just running at him and mashing R1 is a very good strategy, and the only attack you need to care about is the arrow rain. With some tweaking, though, I think he could be made into an awesome bossfight.
why are you surprised?
to me, this bossfight is nothing more than Gwyndongling 2.0, with next to no cover and virtually the same attacks as 1.0 (with the added scythe) that are much more frequent, combined and powerful and one mistake can cost you the whole fight (at least on my 25 vig char) because they'll essentially one shot you. it's "roll roll roll roll" for a minute while (s)he spams the arsenal, then whack it until it disappears. same shit as the original except in a different room with next to no cover so you have to be constantly rolling instead of waiting behind a pillar. it's boring as fuck
on my char, literally every death was to the arrows, directly or indirectly. first fight, phase one, (s)he fires arrows and the first volley staggers me enough for the next 2 to kill me (was at full health at the time. i usually wear lloyd's ring for bosses so i try to be at 100% as much as i can). felt like bullshit to me. death number two was in phase 2 because i didn't expect the arrow rain to last so damn long and home so much. my mistake, but it was still a one shot. still bullshit. death number three, after mashing roll so much my finger hurts while dodging the simultaneous spam of arrows, homing missiles (which can stagger you if enough of them home on you at the same time, which is quite a bit random. so again it can feel like bullshit) and soul spears, (s)he moves towards me with the scythe, clips me, staggers and the homing arrow rain finishes me off. bullshit? death four was because i while trying to roll through the arrow rain i get clipped, which is enough to stagger me for herhim to fire a soul spear that hits me at exactly the moment i got staggered, the soul spear knocks me down (and does damage for about 70-80% of my health bar) and the next one arrives at exactly the nanosecond my wakeup iframes are gone, mashing roll didn't help so again i was essentially one-shot. again it felt like total bullshit
tl;dr: none of my deaths to it felt like anything but complete and utter cheap bullshit
these were essentially all my deaths to that boss, and none of them felt like i deserved it. technically, none of them were one-shots per se, but in essence were the same. and one-shot bosses (or mobs), in my opinion, are made of 100% bullshit. when i killed it, it was basically when the RNG god decided (s)he won't spam everything at the same time in phase 2 so i could dodge that shit without getting hit by
something. and it was boring as fuck and not at all satisfying (as pissed as i was for sully, at least it felt somewhat satsfying killing him)
i really don't see how "some" tweaking could make this boss salvageable and not just bottom, shit-tier. as i said, it relies on the exact same attacks as the original, but upgraded in terms of damage, spam and homing capabilities, boss health and a room with virtually no cover for anything but the small homing spells (which can be quite often nullified in phase 2 thanks to you needing to be constantly on the move because of the unblockable arrows and spears [didn't try to block the scythe. is it possible?] or because (s)he moves while spamming them)
holy fuck what a tl;dr for a crappy boss
It's one of the annoying things about DS3 for me, there are a lot of very cool boss designs in it (Abyss Watchers, Aldrich, Dancer, Twin Princes which you will see soon and likely oneshot as well), but they are crippled by a combination of healing being too strong, AI being passive and erratic, and R1 spam staggering.
man, Abyss Watchers could've been such a great fight if they weren't backstabbable and so easily staggered. Dancer looked okay, got summoned a couple of times there and she seemed much less passive than when i fought her. dunno about the princes, hopefully i'll get there tomorrow or saturday when i'll have more time
btw, i wandered into the consumed garden of bullshit (+1 on the black mutated hollows hate. truly awfully designed enemies. for me personally 10 times more idiotic than the crocdogs in irithyll, about on par with the spastic frostknight), and the boss seemed okay. nothing special, but nothing particularly good either. is this famed Nameless King the only good boss fight in the game?
one other thing.
every single bossfight having 2 phases gets old rather quickly. Abyss Watchers would've been much better (still subpar) if it had only phase 2
