By 
I died less.
Part 1. Quick recap: I quit the game at Ornstein and Smough after spending 5 hours farming Balder Side Sword and progressing steadily through the game. Played Bloodborne to git gud.
I’d been procrastinating going back to O&S after finishing Bloodborne. One day I just woke up and started playing, got close a few times and then went for lunch. Came back and Smough fell followed by super Ornstein. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding. I’m not sure if any game had ever given me that sort of feeling. I’m not sure if any game in the future will. The relief was more than I felt after killing Orphan of Kos. After that I had to take a little break before proceeding. This is going to sound really cheesy but playing Bloodborne sort of changed me in a way that I was able to beat them. It’s like the game was so much more readable all of a sudden. Everything was in slow motion including myself. It’s not like the game suddenly became super easy but something was different.
Having acquired the Lordvessel from Gwynevere, Princess of Sunlight the second half of the game opens up. I had to trek back to Firelink because I hadn’t revived the firekeeper. Once back, Frampt tells me I have to kill four dudes to acquire their pieces of the Lord Soul. Seath the Scaleless, Gravelord Nito, Four Kings, Chaos Witch of Izalith. Of course, I immediately ignored that objective and went to get my sword from Sif.
To do that I had to go through the Titanite Demon next to Andre. Darkroot Basin isn’t a particularly large map, black knight here, some crystal lizards. There’s this large tower that I opened with a basement key I don’t even remember getting. Inside is Havel the Rock, an NPC mentioned a few times and whose set I obtained in Anor Londo. He carries this really big long curved greatsword called the Dragon’s Tooth and I always find it really amusing when I parry such huge weapons. Then he died in one hit because I was supposed to come here a long time ago. At the bottom of the basin there’s this miniboss called the Hydra. Really annoying, before you even get close to him he shoots you from far away and the hitbox his projectiles are huge. Well, maybe because they’re so far away they had to make it huge so that it’s obvious to the player and give them plenty of time to dodge. It still feels like the visuals were a bit too small for the actual hitbox of the attack though. What’s worse is I had to clear the area of enemies, but since his projectiles deal friendly fire damage I just made him shoot everyone. The hydra is stuck to a far wall, so I ran up to him and fell down and endless abyss. There’s water obscuring the ground so you can’t actually notice there’s an endless abyss unless you observe really carefully. Even so there’s this giant hydra shooting and being all menacing, felt like kind of a cheap death. Standing on the edge of the drop-off area the Hydra attacks with a melee attack that has such a absurdly large hitbox. Probably because the Hydra itself is already so big, it’s the only logical attack it can do. The annoying part is you then have to cut off each of the Hydra heads one by one and the heads move into a set position. And the only way to trigger the melee attack is if you’re directly infront of him, and a Hydra head can go way off to the left or right side. So the fight is trigger the attack and then run towards a head to get an attack in. Should have used some magic.
Further on is some semi-destroyed castle. At the top is a boss called the Moonlight Butterfly. The boss flies around shooting these things that I couldn’t quite dodge precisely so I ended up taking a bunch of random damage. It also went through my block so there was no point blocking. Then the boss landed onto the bridge and I killed it in like 2 hits. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to play a melee character, but this game makes it seem like melee isn’t that efficient. Sif is at the end of the Darkroot Garden. There are actually two paths, one after climbing the longest ladder ever up from the Basin and the other just after Andre. He sells the Crest of Artorias that opens up a fancy door. I thought I needed this to get to Sif so I bought it and 20k souls was cheap to me, but it was optional. Darkroot Garden is quite interesting, most of the enemies here are respawning NPCs but without the redness of invaders. After killing them a few times I just ran past most of them. A cat called Alvina stopped me and told me not to tarnish Artorias’ grave or whatever. This would come back to bite me in the butt later. This area was sort of annoying as there’s these little flowers that give off the light that looks like the loot light. I got sick of these little distractions and just ran straight to the boss door. As I was super overleved by this point, I just killed Sif with no big deal. But I didn’t level up my stats properly and couldn’t equip the sword I just made NOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Slightly upset I thought it’d be no big deal to just get the stats as I was progressing through the rest of the game. I decided to go after Seath first, who’s at the Duke’s Archives. It’s the area that was locked the first time I went by in Anor Londo. There are more of these steel boars that was way back in Undead Parish. Only these guys upgraded their armour and don’t have an obvious hole to backstab them. In the end I had to cheese their AI by bringing them to the edge of their leash range. The area they’re put in is just so narrow that I couldn’t find a better way. Inside the actual area I tried going back to my old ways of parrying everything in sight. I died a surprising amount of times inside the first room alone. The hollows are slightly different and there are ranged ones in the back. Reinforcing them are some crystal golems like the one in the Basin. Afterwards I gave up parrying and just fought them normally. The next room was a bit more threatening, melee enemies, ranged enemies and magic shooters from way up. I still don’t know how I managed to clear the room. Lots of screaming as I ran for the magic people then ranged and melee. These sorts of enemy placements are really brutal. At the start of the game there were dudes that shot arrows and there was wooden cover to hide behind. In those instances there was still line of sight towards the shooter so you could see when the projectile was actually flying towards you. Being this far in the game it’s no surprise they up the ante by not giving the player any cover and multiplying the amount of ranged enemies in any given encounter. Magic dudes really make this tricky as you can’t quite block their magic without the correct shield and their projectiles travel at a speed that the player isn’t used to since they’re so rare. Of course if I had some magic skills or knew how to use the ranged weapons I’d find this room no trouble. Which is the beauty of this sort of RPG game where the player has a lot of options when they really think about it. Bows and arrows are a relatively low investment option compared to magic. Duke’s Archives is full of these sorts of rooms.
After scaling up all the way there’s this room with the boss, Seath, just right there. So the stage is just one big room? Turns out the boss encounter is scripted and the player must die. You spawn in some weird place that you’ve never been before. This part was pretty unnerving to me, a bit like when something similar happened in Bloodborne. The place is sort of dark and there are these really creepy enemies. They’re sort of like these lizard people being eaten by octopi slimes and make these really strange noises. The Bonfire the game spawns you at is one you’ve never been to before and is the one you will spawn at. No problem, right? We have the Lordvessel; Not so fast. ‘This Bonfire is sealed off from other bonfires’ which is a disappointing message if the player wanted to go somewhere more familiar. I sort of respect the devs for immediately blocking the player’s new toy. It’s sort of like them reminding you not to put your guard down, this game is still going to kick your butt. On the other hand it’s kind of cheap to give you something and immediately take it away but I suppose I like it more than I dislike it. Going back into the Archives proper is a bit like the first room but with Harry Potter stairs that you have to rotate with a lever. The maze in this section is sort of figuring out which floor can go to which other, i.e. level 3 on the left side goes to level 1 on the right side. At this point after many years of playing games I sort of know that the exit of the level is almost always directly opposite the entrance. That tactic has never failed me. Unless the level has a semicircle shape where the exit is next to the entrance but the player has to walk a big round. Either way, there’s another bonfire here that the player can use to teleport. The bonfire is placed in such an extravagant manner, on a balcony overlooking the open area with god rays shining down, it’s almost like they wanted to make it completely clear that you’ll be able to teleport with this one. Now, you can only use the Lordvessel to travel to certain bonfires, but you can teleport to those from any bonfire. For instance, the Undead Parish bonfire can go to Firelink but not vice versa.
Of course, I still had to kill Seath in this map and was all out of Archives. Out the basement there’s a large garden with those ice golems who seem tougher here for some reason. Other than that there’s this gigantic fissure in the ground. It’s made out of crystals and is fittingly called the Crystal Cave. The room where Seath kills the player earlier is also lined with crystals and at that point we took a good look at him. It stands to reason that he’d be at the bottom of this fissure. Though it would have been cool to fight a dragon in a library. Initially the player walks on really obvious huge crystals and there’s a no mistaking their structural integrity. In the cave there are Moonlight Butterflies to fight. Of course, I could two shot these anytime. Except for some reason they don’t land to be melee’d by the player. It might have been a lesson like ‘If you didn’t know you should have to ranged them earlier, you do now’. In the end this feels like the only point in the game where they force the player to do a certain thing. I ignored them for the rest of the stage. Here’s the real lesson of this level: invisible floors. There are snowflakes that fall and land on something but the player can’t see. This was probably a visual effect that was scripted to fall for a certain height within this area rather than a particle that is physically hits the collision and “explodes”. What I mean is that there’s no truly airtight way that the player knows the game isn’t playing tricks on them. It is paramount for a game to follow its own logic. The introduction to these invisible floors might be the best lesson of the game. There’s one path using this to the side of the proper path. At the end of this path there’s loot. That’s when some people will realise there’s some way to get to that loot. Doesn’t look possible from the top or bottom. Then you notice the snowflakes hitting something. Looking down it’s obvious that the fall wouldn’t kill you. Nothing to lose, right? So you take trust the game and walk on air. If you didn’t learn the airwalk lesson with the loot you do when the game forces you to do it as your only way to progress. If you had doubts, you could always go back and try the loot path. A bit further in there’s this a path that isn’t straight and it’s quite unclear as to where the actual corner is. There are some well-placed prism stones to help with this, the player is supposed to throw these to check fall heights. I can’t help but think those items were made for this specific stage in the game. The zig-zag path is just for some item anyway. There are actually some melee enemies here, more of the ice golems, though I suppose they’re more crystal golems actually. There were a few hilarious times where they would jump at me and then fall off into the abyss. At the very bottom there are these scary clam shells with insect legs and a collection of skulls in their mouth. They have one of the more annoying movesets in the game to deal with. Their wind up takes a strange amount of time, their reach is surprisingly far and they have weirdly large hitboxes. Not to mention their aggro radius is huge so usually you have to fight 2 at a time. It’s like the one closer has a close aggro radius has so you go up to it but then the next one has a huge one so it stands up and fights as well. Fog door is past all of them and this corpse run is particularly tricky because of their animation and hitboxes.
Seath is a bit of a weird fight. In the initial cinematic the player approaches this crystal flower thing at the far end of the room, then Seath jumps down and is like ‘surprise, motherfucker’ and the fight starts. Naturally, I run up to slap him but he heals every hit. Usually when I fight I’m not looking out for the health bar as I have a good grasp of my damage numbers. Took me awhile to notice I wasn’t doing any damage to him. Impatiently, I thought that I had done something wrong so I went to search and discovered the flower has to be destroyed so that Seath will take damage. As he is a dragon, his tail can also be cut. This was one of the more annoying tail cuts. If you run to the very end of his tail his body rotates so quickly that you can’t hit the end of the tail. Hit the tail too close to the root and the damage for the tail won’t register. This boss is so huge that beating him without taking a lick of damage is entirely doable. In the end I gave up on the tailcut. As iconic as the Moonlight Sword is for this series, I wasn’t speccing Int for the scaling since I had my own Greatsword of Artorias. Seath is a pushover. If you stick to his sides he can only really hit you with his “rampage” attack that hits all around him or by breathing crystals on the floor with a huge AOE that it’s ridiculous. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it so I’ll say it again: It is insanely difficult to telegraph boss attacks that are bigger than the screen. When you’re up against him hacking away you really only see his belly, the only way the game can communicate attacks would either be by sound or having some parts of him purposely come into view of the player. Sound is not bad if you’re sure that the player has a stereo setup and is able to tell which direction the sound is coming from. However, most people react better to visual stimuli so having the attack come into view would be ideal. Since a monster is so huge it has to have a purposeful telegraph that the player can perceive. Having such a huge monster do a quick and big attack would be cheap; attacks have to be as big as the monster is big, speed is the only variable. So in the end the player has to deal with a slow attack but having that would be too easy so the monster has to compensate by doing an even larger attack just to make sure the player isn’t sleeping. I get that having big bosses is a good way to make things really grand and Seath is a dragon but he’s just too large to be an interesting fight. Not to say large fights can’t be interesting, it’s just this one isn’t. A bonfire appears after killing the boss. This is the first real ‘dead end’ the player encounters. Frampt says to get the Lordvessel, which is at a dead end but since the player has just acquired teleportation they use it to go back to Firelink where Frampt tells them about the Lord Souls. Seath, bearing one of those souls and having the encounter at a dead end really makes it feel like the game is saying ‘You’re almost there’. The map can’t get any larger, they’ve already shown you all their cards.
I don’t quite remember when I explored Valley of Drakes. It’s a really small map and completely linear, there are just a few dragons to fight and some loot to obtain. The dragons are quite tough as they have a lot of HP and have ranged attacks. There’s a giant door at the end of the valley. New Londo proper is directly adjacent. Apparently there’s a blacksmith here that I never found in my playthrough. It seems that without someone to mock the Crestfallen Warrior has turned hollow down here. Interestingly, the first time I ever played Dark Souls I didn’t like the way this NPC laughed at me so I attempted to fight him. Eventually I parried him and it did like 0 damage. Of course, I always respawned at the Firelink bonfire and he would always aggro and kill me. Now, many years later, I parried and killed him in one hit. It’s kind of nostalgic to think back to all those years ago at this point in the game, so close to the end.
New Londo has ghost enemies that you can’t hit unless you have a certain type of weapon. Early on in the level there’s an item called the ‘Transient Curse’ that lets the player hit ghosts for a bit. There are a few more in the level, and you can buy them somewhere when you run out. So the gimmick of this level is that it’s half flooded and the player character can’t swim. Halfway throughout the level there’s a lever that opens a big door. There’s a cinematic that shows you the door opening into the Valley of Drakes and you’re like ‘Ah hah!’. Strangely, the drakes are all alive on the other side despite being, I don’t know, flooded. It’s quite horrific actually, the ground level is made up of the bones of the inhabitants. New Londo was sacrificed, apparently. Of course, the plot has to be inferred in this game. A lot of the plot I’ve gotten after the fact by watching plot videos and stuff. Anyway, after the water is drained there are a new set of enemies to fight. How they survived under all the water and then all the water rushing out, I’ll never know. Maybe they were sleeping under all the bones. Half of the new enemies are these cool looking dudes wearing skeleton outfits like they’re dressing up as Skullomania. The other half is this monster that is just a big skull that was really scary. It’s dark down there and I remember seeing it from a distance and being utterly terrified when I walked up to beat it. After reaching the lower level the boss door is like right there because it’s pretty small. Annoyingly, some of the ghosts can still fly to the lower floor.
Four Kings is the boss in the abyss. They’re at the bottom of this really long spiral staircase where there’s a bottomless drop. If you just jump in you’ll die. Sif is the key here, she drops a ring called ‘Covenant of Artorias’ and the description is basically ‘This let Artorias traverse the abyss’. It was an NPC in this area that told me this place was flooded due to some abyss corruption. This NPC also gives you the key to unflood the area to reach the boss room. Apparently you can kill the NPC and kill the boss before receiving the Lordvessel; The only Lord Soul boss you can kill before acquiring it, actually. Anyway, I’m not sure which leap in logic will let players believe that the drop into the boss room is actually survivable. The spiral staircase breaks and you can’t climb down, you’re really supposed to equip the ring and jump down without being able to see the bottom. I suppose you could use a prism stone but I’m not sure if it has a special interaction and will disappear once it will hit the abyss. Either way the fall is so far it would kill any player. I suppose this is the only point in the game that there is a fall into legit darkness. In all other cases you can see the terrain at the bottom like it’s sort of out of focus. Of course, I knew that the game wasn’t going to kill you with the ring equipped, because there’s nowhere else for the player to go. I can’t help but think that much more skeptical players wouldn’t know what to do here. The Abyss itself is an interesting area, it’s just all black and you stand on an invisible floor. After awhile the Four Kings will spawn and it’s just one dude that looks really gnarly. He spawns really far away, but due to the area being so empty and huge the game really fucks with your perspective. You can run towards the boss and he will racecar towards you, it is extremely unnerving. I had quite a lot of trouble with these guys. His attacks are so huge and so fast that he just slapped me around and I died. Actually I might have been able to kill one of them but then the next one spawned and hit me from the other side of the map with magic. The gimmick here is that one dude that spawns doesn’t have all of the boss’ hp, so after one is down more will spawn. If you don’t have enough DPS multiple dudes can spawn at once. Since I couldn’t figure out how to beat them I went to the internet for advice and the universal strategy is to tank them with high poise. Which makes sense because their attacks don’t really do that much damage, they’re just fast and large. Another dead end after the boss. If you had’t allied yourself with Frampt by now the other serpent will appear and reveal the truth about the game. I’ll leave that for the end.
Nito was my next target. Of course, since he’s lord of the dead it’s pretty obvious where he’ll be, at the end of the Catacombs. I went there earlier in the game and when my parries did like 0 damage to the skeletons I left. You’re probably supposed to come here in the middle of the game but I didn’t so I was steamrolling everything. Apparently some of the skeletons will respawn if you don’t kill the necromancer reviving them first, but since my sword had a Holy attack modifier they didn’t do that. Which was pretty good. This area is really large and it’s somewhat like a vertical maze. Took me quite awhile to find everything. At the bottom are more of those Bonewheel Skeletons like in Ariamas. These monsters are really annoying. The boss of this area is Pinwheel and because you’re supposed to fight him much earlier I killed him in 2 hits. Further on is the Tomb of the Giants. Much like the Abyss this area is quite dark; Only not completely. There are prism stones pre-placed throughout the level that you can use to navigate around. After walking for a bit there you will undoubtedly run into a giant skull; A giant skull attached to a giant skeleton. They sort of crawl about on all fours and have this really far reaching forward lunge attack. Due to their size and the lack of visibility these monsters are tremendously difficult; You never know when you’ll backroll into an endless drop, which is endlessly cheap. I suppose they’re encouraging you to block so you stay still and don’t risk rolling to your death. There’s another variety that’s just a giant skeleton with a weapon that’s easily beaten by the more traditional roll-between-his-legs tactic. Halfway throughout the level there’s an NPC that when spoken to will kick you into a hole. At the bottom are Rhea and her allies but her allies are hollows so you kill them and save her and she goes back to the Parish. Which is weird cause this place is super dangerous outside of her hollowed allies. Most of the NPCs don’t quite interest me as I’m too busy being the Chosen Undead. I was quite pleased to save Rhea though, she’s done nothing wrong. My favourite NPC is Laurentius of the Great Swamp; He’s just really cool. The area is actually quite small after you explore all the sidepaths and get all the loot. As such it’s not a grueling trek to the boss door. During the Lordvessel cinematic you can see golden doors in the world dissipate, this was one of them. In the distance you can see a vast lake with great trees. In the path towards the boss there is a room full of Pinwheels. I skipped this room entirely because they shoot you all at once, I ran straight for the fog door.
I’ve actually met Nito before. You can join his covenant by sleeping inside a sarcophagus in the Catacombs. It’s quite a surreal experience. The boss is quite annoying as he constantly summons all manner of skeletons. Some big, some small. Nito himself looks quite intimidating, he’s made up of bones (mostly skulls) and he’s got really thin legs, has a coat made out of darkness and holds the Nightmare Edge from Soul Calibur. Nito’s stature in addition to the creepy bossroom made him the scariest boss for me. I beat him by poise tanking him and all his skeleton goons. So in the case of Nito’s covenant you leave the same way you came, sarcophagus tram. Now that Nito is dead, there’s a bonfire.
The final Lord Soul is the one belonging to the Witch of Izalith. Annoyingly, there was a secret bonfire past Quelaag’s Domain but I hadn’t gotten that so I had to go back down Blighttown, again. Back in the Demon Ruins. This game’s complimentary lava stage. There’s a boss that has to be killed before this level can be properly traversed. On the far side of the entrance there’s some loot. Retrieving this loot will trigger a boss battle with the Ceaseless Discharge. He hits the ground with his bone arm and you beat this until he dies. Though there’s a cheese tactic if you run all the way to the start near the fog door he will jump and put a grappling hook into the ground. At this point he can’t fight back so if you just beat the hook a few times he’ll fall and die. The story of this boss is quite sad, he’s the son of the Witch of Izalith but he was one of her failed attempts to recreate her Lord Soul. He makes it up to her by keeping the demon ruins flooded with lava so that Lost Izalith further on is protected. Anyway after the lava has drained there are a bunch of monsters there. How the hell did they get there? It’s like how there are enemies at the bottom of New Londo after draining the water. The monsters here are the Taurus Demon and Capra Demon, those bosses from the beginning of the game. They die in like two hits now. Other than that there are these Giant Centipedes that sprout up from the floor and are a menace. They have just so much hp and their melee attack is so quick and does a ridiculous amount of damage; and they have this ranged breath attack that eats weapon durability. The boss of this area is the Demon Firesage who is the Stray/Asylum Demon from Undead Asylum only now with fire based attacks. Like the Stray Demon, his attacks are really anime. Took me quite a few tries to kill him, actually. Next to his room there’s a room with some Sunlight Maggots where apparently our dear friend Solaire will come to turn hollow looking for his own sun. He didn’t do that in my playthrough. Though I did meet him a bit further on where he’s quite sad as he’s traveled all through Lordran and hasn’t found one yet. At the bottom of the stairs after Firesage there’s another boss fight with a Centipede Demon. This boss is really annoying as most of the level is covered in lava that the player can’t traverse. The boss can walk on lava, no problem. What he did was just stay on the laval and kept hitting me with his flipping tail attacks that has some ridiculous limb extension. Convinced I was doing something wrong I once again took to the internet. Apparently he will jump onto the ground where you can fight him normally. He didn’t do this for me but as soon as I read that online he did it, such coincidence. He went down in like 5 swings, Firesage put up more of a challenge. He drops a ring that lets the player walk on lava. The next level is all lava.
Lost Izalith is just a big expanse where the floor is literally lava and there are a bunch of huge enemies that I just ignored. They’re the back half of the undead dragons. Towards the far side of the level there are these ruins of what looks like a temple. Sort of like Angkor Wat in Thailand with all the vines and architecture. Here exists one of the most terrifying enemies in the game. It’s like an upside down cone covered in eyes and walks on a bunch of tentacles. When they walk there’s this really bizarre sound sort of like what I imagine octopus suckers sound like, it is terrifying. There’s a fire wizard enemy as well here that didn’t give me much trouble. Inside the actual temple complex there’s a trap where the floor collapses. Our old friend Siegmeyer is here as well wondering what to do as there are a bunch of cone enemies but he wants to go down. Here’s where you realise the horrifying truth, the top of the cone shapes enemies are their mouths that are lined with teeth. Me, wanting to help my buddy out tried to plunging attack one and ended up plunging right into his mouth. After chewing me for a bit it spit me out where another one grabbed me and ate me again. I couldn’t have rolled out of that. Strangely they don’t do much damage and I cut them all down. This area, like the base of Blighttown, is all poison water. I managed to explore it fully even though I only knew what was going on after I jumped down.
Bed of Chaos is an interesting boss. This is sort of the only “puzzle” boss in the game. You can’t damage it directly, you have to break two twigs on opposite sides of the boss. After you break the first twig the floor starts collapsing in a way that is impossible to predict. There is no way to avoid falling to your death. Thankfully the twig stays broke. Only when going to the other side the floor starts breaking on the other side as well. Did I mention that as the floor is falling the boss also does this ridiculous sweeping attack that basically covers half the arena each time he does it. After both twigs are destroyed you’re supposed to jump in a hole directly infront of the boss and follow that path to beat up some insect in the middle of him. Couple of things wrong with this fight. Most of all is the floor giving way, that is extremely cheap. His sweeping attacks are way too big. Later in the fight he gets firestorm that can kill you in one hit even when you’re inside his body or underground walking up. A lot of the devs express that this area is their least favourite and they wish they had gotten more time to work on it. Lost Izalith is infamous for its drop in quality.
That wraps up all of the Lord Souls. I could have finished the game at this point but I wanted to explore everywhere. Great Hollow is accessed from a big tree in Blighttown; Only hidden behind two illusionary walls. This game’s parkour is quite rickety and more trial and error than actual jumping skill. I left the items that couldn’t be easily gotten. At the bottom is Ash Lake. Remember it was viewable from the bottom of the Tomb of Giants? Yep, here it is. It is downright massive and visually breathtaking. It reminds me of The Hunter’s Dream in Bloodborne and I’m half convinced they’re linked. There’s a hydra here, more clam dudes, the end of Siegmeyer’s storyline. And a covenant that lets you turn into a dragon. Now that I’ve explored all of the base game I can move on to the DLC.
In Darkroot Basin there’s a certain golem that holds a special NPC. When you kill the golem she’ll be freed and tell you she’s from Oolacile. in Duke’s Archives there’s a passive golem with an item called ‘Broken Pendant’. If you bring this back to a cave near the first Hydra fight there will be a portal. Just interact with it and an otherwordly hand will drag you through. There’s a bonfire there that you can use to teleport. Further along the path there’s a boss called the Sanctuary Guardian. This boss is really difficult. His attacks startup so quick and they do so much damage. It took quite awhile before I got used to his speed. This is a recurring theme in the DLC. It’s a bit like Bloodborne is bleeding into this game. Dark Souls originally came out in 2011, the DLC in 2012. Bloodborne came out in 2015. Development of Bloodborne started as they were wrapping up the Prepare to Die PC port. I’m not quite sure how I beat the Sanctuary Guardian in the end, I think I got lucky with his attacks. Afterwards there’s a little area that looks somewhat like a cemetery with a Giant Talking Mushroom. The mushroom says something like Princess Oolacile (the lady from the golem) has been kidnapped, we must halt the Abyss, something like that. Moving on I realised I was in a flipped map of Darkroot Garden. The place where you meet the mushroom is where the Sif fight is supposed to be. Unlike the garden the enemies here are some moving scarecrows kind of like skinny harvest golems from World of Warcraft. Even the standard enemies here gave me some trouble because they’re so much quicker than the enemies from the base game. Like the garden proper I just ran all the way to the end because I couldn’t be bothered with all the fake loot. Before you can cross the bridge a fucking black dragon lands on it and gives you the evil eye. He just looks at you and then flies off, it’s quite menacing. On the other side of the bridge you can unlock the elevator shortcut. There’s a dude here that’s dressed like one of the Hunters from Bloodborne. He has a short top-hat and a longcoat. If you fight him he also uses the Hunter’s short dash rather than a roll. Killing him gives you his armour set which is really cool. Otherwise he’s a merchant that sells overpriced stuff you can get elsewhere. Past him is this like Colosseum looking building. Entering through the front door you see a short cutscene starring Knight Artorias.
You’ll remember Artorias as this is his DLC. The title is Artorias of the Abyss. He’s mentioned more than once in the main game. His ring, for instance. If you’ve paid attention you’ll also know he’s one of Gwyn’s Four Knights. We’ve already met Dragonslayer Ornstein during the fight. They start thinking about the DLC towards the end of the base game’s production when they already felt like making Bloodborne. That’s why the enemies and bosses in the DLC feel more like Bloodborne bosses than Dark Souls bosses. At least, this is all my speculation.
Back to the fight. I felt kind of poetic fighting him as I’m using his sword, though I’m not sure if he knows I used the soul of his wolf to make it. Either way he can’t be too upset as his mind has already been broken by the Abyss. The Abyss is a map which is just empty blackness. Abyss here is actually some sort of matter/energy and it looks like blueish/black. Despite being laden with such heavy armour Artorias is quite nimble. A lot of his moves are him jumping around or zipping across the stage. He also has some abyss related moves where he throws gloop at you or he charges up for a buff. This charging can be interrupted, almost like free damage. Like the first boss of the DLC a lot of his moves are really quick and painful. He has this flip that tracks the player as he slams down, he can do this up to 3 times in a row; Which has quite a lengthy recovery no matter how many times used, but instead of doing a third one he might do something else. In the end I had to play super safe and only hit him when he did the third flip. I tried parrying him but to no avail; That annoyed me a bit and I’ll explain why later on. Eventually I beat him by playing safe. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before but when I play these types of games within the first 10 times I get the boss down really low and then die. After that I’m never able to get the boss down that low again, I always die really early.
Due to a parkouring mishap I had to walk back to the Artorias arena after I beat him. There’s a lady there now that is praying at his grave and if spoken to asks for his soul from beating him; I obliged. Apparently she’s another Gwyn Knight, Lord’s Blade Ciaran. She gives her weapons as a trade. Her armour is quite cool and you can obtain it if you kill her. I really like that about these games that if something is a similar size to the player there’s a high chance their armour is obtainable. Actually, I can’t think of any armour sets that aren’t. Continuing on into the structure there’s some PVP dedicated systems, which is apt considering this is a colosseum. Further on is the town proper.
Oolacile Township is a completely new map despite the previous one being a darkroot rip off. There are weird creatures that just sort of flail at the player, and another variety that casts magic. The magic dudes are actually quite deadly as they have a slow and a fast projectile that do a lot of damage and it’s unclear which they’re casting. They track too. One of the harder fights is when they put 2 of them in the same room because then they both use a different spell. When enemies use attacks that cover up such a large amount of the screen it sort of feels like a bullet hell game. In a later area there are two spell dudes plus a room full of melee dudes. If I hadn’t “dedicated” myself to going full melee I might enjoy some of the more tactical fights at different ranges, but I’m an idiot. For future games, maybe. At the bottom of the town there’s this miniboss that does ludicrous amounts of damage. He hit me once and I played super safe after that.
The last level is really interesting, it’s dark like the Abyss but not completely. There are prism stones and the light around the player illuminates the area. The enemies here are sentient giant humanity sprites. Humanity is a consumable in the game that does various things when consumed. These giant sprites do damage by touching the player, which is pretty unique as they’re the only ones in the game that do that. Aside from the prism stones telling you where to go there’s a sort of Chesire Cat character to follow. She leads you to save a young Sif from a bunch of humanity which rewards a shield for a job well done. There are also some hollows here who’re a bit more fierce. Deep down below is the boss Manus, Father of the Abyss. Many suspect that he’s the Furtive Pygmy from the start cinematic, with the Dark Soul. This guy absolutely kicked my butt. He’s so much quicker than the Sanctuary Guardian or Artorias. Since I’m stubborn and don’t want to block I had to find some way to get quicker.
Back in the main game the Cheshire Cat is actually Alvina she’s in charge of the Forest Hunter covenant. The purpose of this covenant is to protect the grave of Artorias. Since I was rude to the cat earlier to go kill Sif I had to be forgiven for my sins. I had to farm a bit and get absolution from an NPC in the Parish. Fairly fitting. Now I was able to join her covenant. After joining the garden becomes a bit more lively as everyone becomes friendly and some sell you things. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be peaceful for long as I had to kill an NPC for his ring. The easiest way was to kick him off a cliff and reload the game before everyone in the area aggro’d me. This ring I went through all that effort to get changes the fast roll (<25% burden) to a somersault which greatly increases the iframes. Now the problem was that I had to wear a set to lower my encumberment. In the end I wore a set that was a mix of the painting guardian’s white robes and black bottoms and shoes. It was ugly but not that ugly. Of course, Fashion Souls is the true end-game of Dark Souls and if I was doing anything I had to do it in style. I even went back to my trusty Balder Side Sword to lower the weight, it also had faster swings. Another thing I had to get was a Silver Pendant that reflects Manus’s full screen magic attacks. It’s hidden behind a illusory wall that can only be broken by light casted by the player. There are some developer hints on the floor that hint to it but it’s a pretty big leap in logic for the player to figure out. I bought Cast Light from the talking mushroom. This is one of the few times I had something other than my Estus Flask in my item slot. Maybe the only time.
As I was fighting the boss I started to approach this zen-like state in my mind. His attacks became really clearly and I flip dodged through them because I was so accustomed to his timing. My friend from work told me that you just wipe against bosses so much that your corpse run and subsequent fights are just on autopilot. Against Manus is the first time I truly felt like I was in that state. What makes him more difficult than the earlier bosses is that he has this stretchy arm that can sweep through the entire arena. That’s why I needed those iframes because I’m too stubborn to use shields. He’s the most Bloodborne boss in this game. After cutting him down to size it’s revealed that our princess is in another castle… I’m just kidding she’s safe and you can teleport outside where the mushroom says thanks. There’s one last thing to take care of then the DLC is done.
Gough will mention the black dragon flying around. Down in the valley on the far side there’s this terribly tall ladder much like the one near the main game’s hydra. The dragon makes a return much more aggressively and burns the area; This kills the player. Going back to Gough he will shoot down the dragon. This kills the dragon. Not really. Sadly this is an RPG game so it isn’t dead. I don’t understand sometimes, occasionally the cutscenes are the canon death, otherwise the in game death is the canon death. Anyway, the dragon’s at the same place as earlier, just unable to do his fly-bys. Once again I went back to my default outfit, Artorias. Once again I was destroyed. Black Dragon Kalameet is slower than Manus but he traverses area like no other. He flies across the arena, fire breaths a large area in front of him. Really Monster Hunter-esque boss fight. Fortunately for me I’m a veteran at that game. Due to my weapon choice, the sword wasn’t long enough to cut his tail. I had to go back to my speedy Manus outfit. Just because he flies around the screen so much that I had to chase him down. Now that I try to recall, I don’t remember which of his attacks gave me so much trouble that I needed the flip dodge. Much like the Manus fight I wiped on him so much that I played on autopilot. I remember my victory being fairly clutch. DLC over.
The last area in the game is the Kiln of the First Flame. After speaking to your serpent of choice (Frampt/Kaathe), he will bring you to where the actual Lordvessel is. The player character then puts the Lord Souls and a giant door opens. This area is quite the spectacle, it’s all white with a flight of stairs going down to a giant door and ghostly knights will walk through the area. Through the door at the bottom of the stairs it’s this really desolate area with a giant Colosseum-esque building far off in the distance. Black Knights are the enemies here. Just all the iterations of them with all their various weapons. Back to normality I just parried all of them just like I used to. I suppose the player could go through the entire game without killing any of them as they are optional challenges. Though they’re optional in this area if you want them to be as well, just run to the end of the stage. Either way it serves as a good reminder of how far the player has come, it’s a bit nostalgic. This entire area just screams that it’s the end of the journey and that you’re in the home stretch.
Going through the boss door there’s no fanfare, no cinematic, Gwyn, Lord of Cinder just flies at you and smacks you with his sword. His sword is really cool, looks like the Dragonslayer Sword from the manga Berserk. Which was a huge inspiration on the series, by the way. He hit me on my butt and when I stood up he just grabbed me by the head and beat me. Ouch. Tired of fighting all the knights and wanting to end the game I just ran through. It felt really weird fighting him in the Artorias outfit since he was one of Gwyn’s knights, but whatever. Second time he flies at me I parry him midflight, which felt really awesome. He stood up and tried to grab me so I just avoided his hitbox. The fights are really nice when the enemies are the same size as the player, just feels more fair and that there’s less nonsense that can happen. He swings his sword at me again and I parry him. This happened a few more times until he just dies. In a way I feel like this final boss was way too easy. Though on the other hand having a big world-ending Final Fantasy boss would be really against the game’s theme.
There are two endings for the game. I didn’t figure this out because I didn’t get a chance to speak to Darkstalker Kaathe. Kindling the bonfire that spawns when Gwyn dies will extend the age of fire, like nothing has changed. Leaving introduces the age of man. I haven’t spoken much about the plot because story doesn’t bother me much, but I felt it was much more fitting to have the age of man, just so people can die properly and there aren’t any hollows around. Having the age of fire continue just felt like clinging onto the past. Yeah, it’s great that Gwyn killed all the dragons so that the world can have a proper civilization, but his time was up.
That’s it for Dark Souls. Since this took so long I probably won’t write in this style again unless I feel a game truly deserves it. Dark Souls is a game where teaching is given to the player through mechanics and experiences rather than outright instruction. Therefore it’s important to understand where the developers are coming from and the lessons they’re trying to each. Each lesson has to be thoroughly combed by From so that it is as clear as possible for the player to understand. An unclear lesson will only result in frustration on the player’s part as they aren’t sure what’s going on. Of course, a lot of the onus is on the player to actually perceive and interpret the information the game’s teaching them, so a lot of faith has been placed by From onto the player’s own intelligence. A lot of the challenges in the games are given to the player because the developers have faith that the players can overcome them; If you’re having trouble with somewhere you need to think whether you’re in the right place. Even though there are different paths the player can take there’s really only one obvious path. A lot of games actually do teach the player in subtle ways, unfortunately obvious instruction is the best way of teaching, but the player isn’t satisfied being told something, figuring something out is much more satisfying. In the end I think the game had a stellar first half and maybe after Ornstein and Smough I was a bit too burnt out to enjoy it. Then again a lot of people seem to agree post-Lordvessel the game is less than stellar. When I finished Bloodborne it was sort of like a ‘What now’ moment because the game was so good and I didn’t know what to do with my life. Dark Souls was more relief as like ‘I’m finally done’. I’m replaying Bloodborne because I missed some stuff for the platinum trophy but I don’t mind because the game is great, I wouldn’t do the same for Dark Souls. Good game with a lot of learning points for design but as a Player I didn’t like it as much.
