This is something I didn't like about the game. They always had multiplayer so difficulty has always been... optional in a way. But the summons in this game are extremely powerful, and they change the dynamics of the fight from slowly mastering an encounter to high variance gambles on being able to capitalize on the boss just not looking at you. Which is fine. You can just not use summons. But then you see something like the godskin duo with a premade npc ally outside to be summoned and you start to get conflicting feelings about what's appropriate "intended" difficulty.