So, I plowed pretty easily through most of the bosses of the Elden Ring DLC with my Strength/Faith build. I definitely think I've been having a tougher time on my pure Int build - the Golden Hippopotamus at the entrance to the Shadow Keep was quite tough, though actually got easy when I didn't summon Freyja and Hornsent (I feel like the buffs to the bosses for summoning NPCs is more intense in the DLC?) It wound up taking me a good four or five attempts, compared to one-shotting it on the first character.
Anyway, I knew that Radahn/Mohg/Miquella had a reputation for being incredibly hard. I've now attempted it.
My impression is that it's definitely hard, but it doesn't seem impossible. My first couple attempts, I got killed in mere moments before even doing anything (actually my dropped zero runes appeared outside the golden fog gate after my second try). I have both Ansbach and Thiollier to summon, though on my last attempt today I decided to skip Thiollier, which actually made it feel a bit easier because Radahn wasn't hitting as hard.
It's still nasty - in the first phase, Radahn's attacks are very quick and hard to dodge, with a couple of delayed attacks that trick you into dodging early. Just getting an opening to pop out the old Mimic Tear generally forced me to wait until the NPCs momentarily drew his attention. My build, which focuses on taking out big chunks of the enemy's health with dual-wielding jump attacks, still only felt like I was chipping away tiny bits of his massive health pool.
Still, I've now been able to get to phase two twice - the exact HP level where this happens seems to vary slightly, as I think the second time I did he was at like 75%.
The second phase has Miquella, now apparently a god, riding his back and imbuing his attacks with holy damage, with a ton of very hard-to-dodge, massive area effects.
I think on my best attempt I got him down to somewhere around 25-30%, so it feels like it's maybe not quite within reach (I fully ran out of healing potions) but could be with a bit of practice.
One thing I will note is that I'm at a 17 Scadutree Blessing, which I think means I have room for three more, which could push me over the edge. As with a lot of bosses, the bad pattern I can fall into is that I get hit, heal up, and because of the potion-drinking animation, I have a hard time dodging the next attack, so I get into this cycle of never having a chance to attack.
I think if I can survive a few hits here and there (or get better at dodging them) I might be in a much better situation.
It is funny, though - the first time I fought the Oprhan of Kos, kind of an equivalent as the final boss of a DLC, it took me something like 20 attempts, but when I went back on a second character, I one-shot him (not, like, a single hit, but a single attempt).
Anyway, no real rush here. The sad thing about this is that I don't think there's any plan for further DLCs for the game, so on a certain level, this is kind of the last hurrah for the characters you take into the expansion. I mean, I know there's NG+, but it's not quite the same.
Elden Ring has been one of my favorite video games of all time - a culmination as well as an evolution of all the things FromSoft has learned making Soulsborne games from Demon's Souls onward.
I really love the world of Elden Ring - I think I connect with it on a level I never really did with Dark Souls - and I'd be really excited if they announce an Elden Ring II someday (though I've got to say that Shadow of the Erdtree feels very much like an Elden Ring 1.5, it's so massive). On the other hand, I doubt that this will be the last of From's Soulslike games. There are so many fantastic quality-of-life improvements in this compared to earlier titles, so I'd love to see them exploring other genres that work with this gameplay. I'd be ecstatic to see a Bloodborne II with some of the improvements of Elden Ring (Bloodborne with a degree of build flexibility comparable to Elden Ring would be utterly amazing). Frankly, I've always thought it would be cool if they tried a futuristic sci-fi game with Soul-like mechanics (no, Armored Core doesn't count).
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