Thanks Keith; I tried those also... used High, Med, Quick mode to change boxes form none to a few to all, but same results. Also checked/unchecked some that I thought might impact it.
I'm not totally sure but it seems that PBR is the issue. I unchecked "Convert All Shaders to PBR" in the Project PBR setup and that worked on the most obvious section. A few shadows were more subdued in short (200 frames) final render test, but it may work okay. I'm rending full project now, but that will take an hour or so. I'm still not sure this was the best fix, but it does get rid of really dark shadow.