I didn’t find myself running out of them very often, and trust me, it’s not because I’m super good at video games. I think what it provides is a prompt to stop and think. If you find yourself without any (and I’d really only say it matters at bosses) then you probably either need to rethink your strategy, maybe go level a bit first (there’s almost always another branching path you can take, or even a chalice), or just buckle down and get serious. The game also gave you a core mechanic to restore health without using blood vials. I dunno that it’s a perfect system but I didn’t have any issue with it. Estus flasks that encourage you to back off to safety while you recover were much more suited to the style of play in the Souls games. If you could heal that fast with a reusable thing, I don’t think you would engage as much with the health recovery system, which was really what the game wanted you to do.

I’ll also mention that I did not find that it took long at all to farm them when I needed to. There were several early areas where you could restock quite quickly.