I finally finished this game with the normal ending, last night, after going back to it a week or so ago.
My final review is this is the worst part of the game and they should have, in their quest to strip the fat from the dex-build 2-shotable Souls carcass and really tighten down all the screws, just gone ahead and completely jettisoned death and its annoyance-as-punishment consequences, and then done whatever it takes to make that game interesting. Instant retry, credit feed, no load screens, no forced cool down to make you forget the one weird juke animation, no reverting to previous phases, no memorizing the timing on when you can press start to skip the cutscene.
But also, cool game.