bbPress.org

deep integration is easier if you know how to mess around with html & css.

Integration plugin is solely needed for the purpose of generating bbPress admin side cookies when a user logs in from WordPress side. If you don’t use it, everything will be fine, just you won’t be able to access bbPress dashboard unless you login from bbPress side.

but this clearly doesn’t affect regular normal users as they don’t have to access the dashboard, only you have to.