I wholeheartedly support all forms of gamer hate, but I will say your description of the gameplay style doesn't match my experience with the game after getting past the tutorial. It does to some extent match my (limited) experience with previous Souls games. The difference this time around was that when I came across a boss or area that was giving a hard time, I could simply decide to fuck off and go do something somewhere else, come back later and have a better time with new gear, new spells or just some more attribute points. Which I think is the intended approach for most players since they decided to put this guy between your starting location and the first checkpoint:

The game highly rewards non-linear exploration of it's open world in a way I haven't seen other games manage to do this well before. There's still a Souls game in there, the legacy dungeons are maze-like ant hills and the some of the final bosses felt like what you describe. But then, the game has the summon mechanic for a reason, and like the article says, who gives a shit what the Gamers™ think. I haven't finished a Souls game before, but this one gave me enough flexibility with the gameplay to actually enjoy it while experiencing the beautiful world design and cryptic storytelling.