I realized yesterday that I did about 5 areas of the game with the champions covenant. It makes the enemies deal damage as if they where in NG+ 3. No wonder the game was getting too fucking hard.

Thanks,

someone else tells me that weapon bonuses have a soft cap at lvl 40 for Str and Dex too. 

So, they come back.From Software sure loves their gargoyles.

Because of the area, I found those two from Demons (Tower of Latria) harder than the ones in Dark, you know the ones you fight on top of the church.

How do the Dark Souls 2 gargoyles compare to them?

You mean the Manticores on Tower of Latria? Those guys were tough as nails, Dark's Gargoyles couldn't match up to them.

The Belfry Gargoyles on Dark Souls 2 are another matter entirely. You fight 6 of them, 3 at the same time for most of the fight.

3 at the same time?

Yup, and the area is slightly smaller than the top of the tower in Dark Souls too

Playing Dark Souls on a PC with a controller is identical to playing it on a console. I use the XBOX 360 controller and it works flawlessly.  And after the communiy patch, you can play with 1080p and antialiasing.  And no framerate issues in Blight Town.  It's the best platform to play it on.

Just finished the first playthrough. Great enemies and level design in the later areas. Time for ng+ for things I missed.

What do you mean by bonefire ascetics? Is it a specfic item or are you talking about a cattegory. I'm too lazy with bosses, i could have easily won one many tries espeically with co-op but i get hectic and do a mistake. Its really hard to balance the soreness from weight lifting, the stress from studying and the pain of dark souls. I need to play an easy game to feel good about myself. 

The maneaters take you by surprise because you weren't expecting to be another one joining the fray. It was the only boss to do it on the whole game, thus was a shock factor mostly. Once you had their patterns down, they were pretty easy, even without using the middle. I'd just run to one side of the area, lure a maneater, take him on and then take on the other. Worked well for all builds and all NGs.

Dark Souls II gargoyles is more of a tactical/guerrilla fight than anything else. You have to take your chances carefully, one mistake and they'll kill you while ganging up on you. I died twice, once because I didn't knew there was gonna be a third one joining the battle at the same time and the second time I was almost killing them and I got hit by that surprise Lightning attack as well.

@areason - Soriku explained it well, Bonfire ascetics makes your game harder but also increases drop chances and allows you to re-tackle bosses for more souls. 

And yeah, 9 effigies is too much. I wouldn't recommend co-op if you're having a bit of trouble on a certain boss though, because co-op also increases bosses HP and attack damage exponentially in accordance to how many phantoms you've summoned. I've had a harder time tackling the Smelter Demon boss in co-op than solo.