I've played the game for 80 hours and I tried fighting against the witch today for the first time and, yes, I died. This after playing every other level multiple times and never once coming close to dying from anything, not even any of the bosses. Not even once. I could rock up in any level with any unmodded weapons and just not have any problems whatsoever.
And this isn't even about me crying because the witch beat me, the problem is that there's too big of a divide between how difficult the rest of the game is and how difficult the witch is. Nothing, at all, prepares for how big the jump in difficulty is. The entire rest of the game you can figure out how to fight the enemies as you go along and not get punished for "playing blind", which is fantastic because that's how games should be IMO. You shouldn't feel that you get punished for not reading up online beforehand how to play the game, but sadly that's exactly how the witch fight feels, and it's not a fight you're likely to figure out before it's too late.
So yes there's a massive discrepancy in how the rest of the game feels to play and how the witch fight feels to play, and at least for me the sudden surprise jump in difficulty with absolutely no ramp-up or real preparation didn't feel good at all, and at least for now it has somewhat soured my feelings for the game, although at its core it clearly still a great game.
I feel like either the rest of the game needs to become harder so that player deaths become more common so that players can be used to them (with maybe some balancing so that more player deaths doesn't punish players too much) OR the witch fight needs to become a little easier, or more specifically needs to be just a bit more forgiving for not knowing the fight and patterns before hand, so that it actually feels in line with how the rest of the game feels like to play.