Who thought No-Man's Wharf was a good idea?

I genuinely don't understand the thought-process going on in designing No-Man's Wharf. There's multiple mob enemy encounters before you have the equipment or spells to deal with big groups of enemies. There's tons of "gotcha" enemies that hang off ledges or in hidden areas that, while rewarding to spot on the first playthough, make retracing your steps a chore. The fire system only pays off in that you scare off the Darkdwellers for a few seconds before they aggro on you again. The Darkdwellers don't make thematic sense in a pirate cove. There's a shortcut right at the end that completely bypasses everything, but you only get it once you've passed through this absolute gauntlet of enemies. A good shortcut gives you alternate paths. A bad shortcut skips 95% of the level. But at least this shortcut exists! I can't imagine what a hell run it must have been to get to Flexile Sentry before Scholar introduced that shortcut.

There's no interesting lore. The animation for the dogs moving at a distance is like a Geocities gif. The boss for this area literally gets reused in the next zone as a normal enemy before The Lost Sinner. The whole rationale behind going here is that it'll take you to the Lost Bastille, except there's already another way to get to the Lost Bastille.

I think that the developers looked at the idea for limited enemy respawns and thought that meant they could just let players grind away at garbage areas like this without having to put more thought into good level design.

Putting levels like this so early in the game really gives new players a sour taste in their mouth. They see something overwhelmingly difficult and unfun and go "yeah, DS2 just sucks compared to DS1."