the fight with the "deposed king" is making me want to rip my hair out

Sometimes, his freeze attack will freeze you anyways even if you dodged it and he isn't even facing the same direction.

His tornado attack is almost undodgeable; basically you have to just spam dodge backwards to the other side of the room and hope you get far enough away from him that you don't get hit (this only works about a third of the time, and no amount of button mashing or trying to get better at it with repeated attempts will do any good).

To top it off, if he hits you twice in succession, you're dead. The battle turns into trying to save all your health potions for when he starts doing those undodgeable tornado attacks, but its likely Death will dodge funny and get hit by him early on anyways and you'll use up most of your health potions before you get that far.

I don't feel that I'm fighting him so much as I'm fighting the xbox controller when it doesn't make Death do what I tell him to do.

I'm guessing my only option is to come back to this boss way later in the game, at which point the gear he drops will probably be worthless