As for areas that have few bonfires, of which No Mans Wharf is the longest I think, they were tougher with my sorcerer than with my strength guy, I think the first time through with my sorcerer I was more or less out of magic when I hit the boat, though I'd opened the shortcut which made getting back a bit easier. At that point I hadnt adopted my now standard boss approach of dropping a white soapstone first as I didnt realise it regenerated your resources, so I had to trod back to the bonfire and then fight back through via the shortcut. That didnt make the area more difficult or more fun, it just made it more tedious. I also said that maybe I'd be out of Estus at times, not that I was always out, but like the bonfires estus flasks also function differently (which feeds back into bonfires working differently), with the additional healing items you arent reliant purely on spells or estus for healing. Which means you arent relying solely on bonfires to charge them, which in turn means finding a bonfire isnt a big event, which in turn means that how many of them there are doesnt particularly matter as it doesnt have as big an impact on difficulty either way. Again I think your perception of what the bonfires are is tied up in what they were in DS. But hey, this is all subjective so Im happy to agree to disagree on it.
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