I've beaten all souls games but never considered myself remotely a badass, I just barely finished them through constant hardship. Until I was abducted to mt Gilmer and had to fight the two robot nanny bossfight while underleveled as fuck. I fought them 50+ times getting one shot until I finally got good and saw the game like Neo did in Matrix 1's final fight. The point being no matter how impossible it may seem you can always get better personally by those harder to crack bosses, which has a much more lasting effect than learning a new strategy, cheese or sth. Now after a decade or so I'm finally trying to beat a FS game while intentionally underleveled, and I have that nightmare of a bossfight to thank for it!