and, to my knowledge, the overall stories of the games are somewhat equally fucked up

For me it was the opposite. Tried the dlc on my second play-through and thought I was ready. I was confident in my stats, equipment and grasp of the game mechanics. But I’m gonna be completely honest here, I beat Radahn and Miquella by pure luck. I eventually managed to figure out the attack pattern before Miquella shows up, but from that point on I was just frantically dodge rolling and casting comet. They were just too damned fast, all those flashing lights so disorienting, and those damned AOE attacks……… How the hell does anybody avoid them!? A few rare times I would get them to a third of their health, and once or twice I just needed one more good hit but couldn’t manage it. Those moments would freaking destroy me. It got to a point that I realized if I failed to dodge or parry even one attack from Radahn before Miquella even showed up, I was screwed. This went on for days until another one of those instances came up when either one of us could’ve taken the victory with one more hit. My spirit summons had been killed, I was out of crimson tear flasks and a part of me wanted to get a dramatic final strike with the Darkmoon Greatsword but I was too afraid to risk it. So I hit him with a couple more comets instead. I wasn’t proud to win that way, but by that point I was just relieved it was over. I can admit that I’m not great at this game and many would say I was over leveled for this fight, but I can’t help but think “They expected me to win this at a lower level!? Holy crap!” Granted I actually hadn’t found all those stupid scadutree fragments at the time, but there weren’t *that* many left so I’m not sure how much of a difference it would’ve made. I’m on my third play-through now, and I’m getting close to the dlc. I am terrified of going through this boss fight again. Funny thing is, I’ve seen so many videos of players perfectly dodging those damned attacks and doing so much more damage than me because of the armor and talismans they have equipped. They make this fight look so damned easy.

I was confused when I did not expect Maxwell here too!