The Day the World GOT GUD

2011 was 12 years ago, you're welcome, as I get older and wrinkled. I witness a whole new generation of players who don't remember the old days the same way. I'm sure you knew a little about Dark Souls, but many of you probably weren't around when it was at its peak because the software had already been around for a while and had its fans through series like Armored Core and Kingsfield, but Dark Souls was the game that put them on the

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stage originally as a spiritual successor. until Demon Souls, much more experimental, much less polished but no less imaginative and ambitious.

Dark Souls was an expansion of that prototype of a formula that became an instant classic creating ripples throughout the gaming industry that are still felt to this day. So influential was the software magnum. opus that gave rise to a whole subgenre of games inspired by it and nowadays it is difficult to browse Steam without stumbling upon titles that carry that always vague label of souls like and yes, you probably already knew that when you got here, it is quite difficult. The difficulty of Souls has become something of a meme over the years for the entire series as it is Dutch in my opinion, not necessarily from a gameplay perspective but from a marketing perspective to the gaming audience and gaming media at the time when Dark Souls was a litmus test for only the most hardcore of hardcore gamers, an oasis of brutality in a desert of games that have become too hands-on, tutorial-driven, and overly simplified, and sure There's some truth to the fact that this wasn't a game that tripped over itself to please you or keep your attention.

You were expected to learn it, improve it and handle all the exploration of everything it had to offer on your own, but we'll get to that later, it was a challenge, especially at the time, but my goodness, people overrated themselves. That aspect, if you had heard of it, you would have assumed it was just a rage game along the same lines of I want to be the guy with a bigger budget. The marketing for the game certainly didn't help. For goodness sake, the title of its eventual PC port was the Prepare to Die edition, come on, and oh boy, does this come with a fair amount of elitism?

You can't dislike Dark Souls without being called rude, being casual, unfit to enjoy its magnificence, and thus, one of the meme's most notorious phrases made its way into pop culture and got something good for anyone who expressed discontent. or frustration with the game, invalidating any and all criticism by placing the blame solely on the person's skill or lack thereof. Personal taste is a legitimate defect. With the game, no, you're just a bad boy, cry about it. I must clarify that I love this game to death, but this mentality and focus on this aspect bothered me at the time and still bothers me.

There was so much more to Dark Souls that made it great. just being difficult, the level design, the art, the direction, the music, the

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, the story, so much love and effort was put into it that I felt like it was underrated at the time, all of which is certainly not underrated now, In hindsight, it's 2020 and all, but there's still a lot. I don't hear it mentioned enough, so I decided to revisit it and see how well it fits into that nostalgic memory. I've played it many times in the past, but never got close to it.

I have a critical eye and have been more willing to admit what it does well and what it doesn't before embarking on this journey. I should mention that I will be playing the remastered version because, despite all my problems, it is the most stable. The way to play Dark Souls on PC, the original port was notoriously bad and trying to record this game on my original version of PlayStation 3 was always a bit of a nightmare as the console hardware never seemed to work well with things like Elgato, although It's unfortunate because the remastered version, while still basically the exact same game and keeping the vast majority of it intact, makes some changes to the visuals that I don't agree with, but I'll get into that in a moment because this intro is moving forward five minutes. at this point and we've got a long road ahead of us so pack your bags and gather around the bonfire kids we'll be here a while thanks before we head out though some ground rules to set one I'll follow. the intended path through the game as best I can, from start to finish, this means there is no master key, sorry old friend, we will use black fire bombs instead of two.

I'll be playing a Strength Faith Build as I was looking to try something new. For this game, we're going to start with cleric three as best I can. I'm going to try to complete each NPC's questline until it's complete, so at least layers, this means I summoned NPCs for the boss fights. In this video, I'm still 100% sure if you really need to finish some of the requests, but I just wanted to be sure, plus I needed sunlight medals, so at least I was summoning Solaire. I will also say that I needed them right now. I won't get very far with Griggs.

I kinda forgot about them after putting them away. Oops and finally four. I'm not going to delve too deeply into the game's story. Dark Souls is famous for being the Iceberg of video game stories once you start digging into it. and to explain it in detail would require me to take at least a two week intensive course on body videos and this video has taken quite a while; There are plenty of other people on YouTube who have covered it much better than I could, so just go. Look it up yourself if you're interested. That said, I'll at least give my own summary of what I know as we get into the relevant points.

This is not guaranteed to be accurate, but I will do my best. All that out of the way, we're in prison, we're off to a good start, more specifically, we're in the Undead Asylum, a facility built for the Corral's humans who became affected by the undead curse. The undead will eventually become what is called Hollow, which reduces them. to a shambling corpse that attacks almost anything still alive and an Undead here turns out to be yourself wasting away in seclusion before one very useful night throws a corpse with a key through the ceiling why couldn't I just drop it the key and not all ass body, I don't know, but we take what we can get in these situations, so he starts the game's tutorial and handles it in a fairly discreet way, leaving the actual tutorial in messages written on the ground which are completely optional but give you the basics.

To start, they also demo one of the multiplayer aspects of Dark Souls. Immediate messages. If playing online, people can leave messages for other people on the field using pre-arranged sentence fragments. You'll find messages that are legitimately useful and others that are just people being Gremlins, we'll come back to this later, for now we head to the first bonfire of the game. Bonfires became the icon of the entire Dark Souls series, even Securo and Bloodborne had their own versions of these things. From here you can Rest, level up and then store, repair and upgrade equipment, they are the checkpoints of the game and let me tell you in the day after carefully moving through an area that was slowly running out of resources , holding my souls and Humanity against my chest. one of these things was always a huge sense of relief anyway, where were we?

Oh yes, luckily, I'm prepared. Well, yeah, that's what usually happens when you get careless in Dark Souls. The game tends to offend children. That's what we call it. arrogance, fortunately, through the sacred power of explosives, we prevail and move forward. Now you normally run away from that thing, grab your shield gun and other gear, then go back and fight again to finish the tutorial, but it's nice that the game gives you the option. just beating him right away is even better, you will be rewarded with the Demon's Hammer if you do, this is one of the many good things about Dark Souls, it is quite open ended, you can approach almost any situation however you want with the tools the game offers.

All it asks of you is to get from point A to point B. How you get there is up to you, sure you can follow the tutorial on the intended path or you can bomb the Asylum Demon so hard that there is now a smoking crater where this. It's supposed to be your choice. This will be expanded upon later as you have the ability to summon allies for boss fights. Get more weapons, spells and consumables. I never felt obligated to play a specific way or the right way, just like the game expected me to. to be good at the basics which luckily are pretty simple to understand, here's our friend from Prison Break and they're already dying because of course they are, but at least it gives us some crucial direction in their final moments, there was an old saying. in my family you, who are Undead, are chosen and your Exodus from the Undead Asylum makes a pilgrimage to the land of the ancient Lords when you ring the Awakening bell of the destiny of the undead.

You will need to sing familiarly in a strange and specific way along with the key to the great Ass Door and the Estus Flask, the most important item in the entire game, this is your main healing item and recharges every time you rest. A bonfire starts with five uses. Resting at a bonfire gives you five, but you can sacrifice humanity to light that bonfire. and from then on it will give you more. The Soul series always seemed to change the healing system from game to game. This is still my preferred way, although they've slightly gone with a similar system with find key item, use key item on whatever you want.

The flask-adjacent item is that time and getting more uses that way, it works and there's nothing wrong with that, but I still prefer the first game way, although admittedly it can suck if you get to a new bonfire without humanity to turn it on and We're stuck with only five uses that hurt a little ah ooh ankles anyway after getting the rest of our equipment, we went through the big doors. Waltz this way and bird up now. I've been mostly fun and joking up to this point. so let me back up and get a little serious for a moment.

I love Firelink Shrine. There are many reasons and I'm not entirely sure where to start. This is where you are always 100% safe as long as you don't go. This way, you can spend as much time as you want just hanging out here and nothing bad will happen. There will be no timed missions that run out if you stay idle for too long. There will be no enemies wandering around until they find you here. Nothing, it's very similar to the Nexus and Demon. Souls, but narratively I think it's stronger because not only does it serve the game's purpose of being a hub, it's part of the entire world that the land of Lordran is vast, but almost everything branches off from this place and part of it.

Going back, it's where most of the NPCs you meet end up in one way or another, and as you progress you start to see more and more familiar faces. You just end up here, the further you go, the more it feels like a home reinforced by that somber but peaceful music that plays every time you visit and slowly fades away every time you leave it. By the way, this is the only place in the game that has a consistent musical accompaniment, with only one other exception that we won't see for a while in the rest of Dark Souls.

It only has music in boss fights or important scenes, it creates this unique feeling when you turn a corner and slowly start to hear that familiar tune humming. Firelink is important to the entire experience because it makes the world feel connected even if it doesn't. It doesn't lead to all areas, the areas it leads to are often the paths you need to take to get to those farther places, such as needing to go through the catacombs to get to the Tomb of the Giants, a minor note, but the use of depth of field. it makes the world feel massive even if it's main technical use is to hide texture limitations and such, although speaking of visuals before we continue I mentioned that I had some issues with the remastered version, they're small things but I feel like they interfere with the presentation Visual of Dark Souls in general, the glow that marks the items used to look muddier and slowly fade when you pick them up, now it's more like a flickering ball that immediately disappears and I was going to say that the remastered version looks a little darker than the original, but I don't know, looking at them one after the other, I might be remembering wrong, although the remastered version is definitely doing something different.

I think I could be using less Bloom and the color palette could be a little darker. more faded, I couldn't tell you exactly what the remastered version does differently, but my brain prefers the old one for some reason and most irritatingly for me, at least the bonfires in the remastered version, I would consider a direct degradation of the originals. I mean, they sure look like a bonfire, there's nothing wrong with that, butThe original bonfire seemed more ethereal and magical with tendrils of fire like energy wrapping and spreading above the coiled sword. It's more visually interesting. This is a problem I have with the bonfires of the In the rest of the series they left this original magical aspect behind and I feel like it was a mistake.

I'm probably the only person in the world who cares about this, but damn, there are probably other visual changes from the original version I made. I didn't realize it, but those were the ones that caught my attention the most and the ones that actively bothered me. I'm mentioning all of this now because once we start I won't have a good chance to do it later. I guarantee you. So back on topic, Firelink is immensely important to all of Dark Souls and I needed to give it the proper recognition it deserves, so now that I've had my nerd moment and want to see myself surrounded by skeletons, now is a good time to Talk About Dying , I made fun of the Prepare to Die edition, but death is a big part of Dark Souls.

When you die, you leave the last bonfire you rested at and lose all your souls in humanity. You can get them all back if you return to the place where you died and pick up this Mark on the ground; However, if you die again before reaching that point, everything will be gone forever. Carrying a bunch of souls with you at once is often an unnecessary risk unless you're saving up for something big, spend it while you have it, it's a hard lesson that most Souls players have to learn the hard way now. , although there are three paths we can go from Fire Link, the path we should really follow is abroad, the Undead Burg. is the intended starting area of ​​the game and it certainly seems like the enemies are slow, don't hit as hard, and sometimes become completely catatonic.

Okay, in terms of overall enemy difficulty the Berg is an extension of the tutorial, however the game has taken you off the rails and you are free to explore the surroundings, it's also worth doing since although the Berg is relatively Simple, there are some hidden paths and additional items hidden out of immediate sight and although enemies easily become arrogant when there are more than one. attacking can still get you into trouble. We meet our first merchant here, but we're really only interested in one item of theirs, the Residence Key, we'll need it for an NPC quest later, besides that, it sells some basic weapons, the Yellow Armor.

Soapstone used to leave messages and dry fingers. A new element added in the remastered version. What does it do to support your horses? We'll get to that, in addition to Merchants, the Berg also introduces you to the idea of ​​enemy ambushes, but in It's very easy to see how the Hollows here get up very slowly and take a while to start attacking. When they do, they are vulnerable to attacks all the time, so it's not difficult to kill them before they have a chance to swing. You can even Drop Them if you're Vigilant enough and this is where the idea of ​​the item ambush is supposed to be shown where you pick up an item and then the enemies that were hiding suddenly jump out at you, but I'm very familiar with them.

This entire game at this point and where most of the ambushes are, I eventually had to intentionally fall into an item ambush just to get some decent footage, yeah I guess I'm too good at gaming these days, how tragic to tag. this bonfire, we cross the bridge, we throw a lot of unspoken bad words if the annoying guys throw bombs at us and look at this fight, here you walk into the room and two guys attack you immediately after a few seconds of fighting with a third. The enemy will join the fight, but the game makes it very obvious, if you don't see the Hollow Knight entering the room, kick the door hard to alert yourself.

This is another lesson. Sometimes additional enemies will simply come out of hiding and you. You'll need to adapt as you go, but again, the way it's displayed here is very forgiving and easy on the eyes. I should note that being so familiar with all the Trap locations makes my point of view very biased, so trust me with a moderately proportionate helping of salt, nothing, staff boy, so badass, at least we can get revenge those firebomb idiots and on that note it's time we talk about one of my other favorite things about Dark Souls, the ragdolls, well I wish I'd seen where that landed. cards on the table Dark Souls 1 has the best ragdolls in the entire series, they reach Jank levels surpassed only by Skyrim.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of law of physics these ragdolls are working on, but for some reason. They react so violently to your character's movements that it has been a source of endless entertainment for me every time I replay this game. Yes, with our newly acquired residence key, we commit a casual theft and continue our cheerful old ways. My gas spews like a weakling. However, taking a short detour up the stairs we get this ominous looking interruption the Black Knight's location here is great this thing is completely optional it's way out of your way and isn't even in front of you when you approach to fight it's 100 your choice and among all these slow and easy to digest lessons the game has taught you so far, this one is hard and fast, it's a big curveball since the entire game hasn't been like that up until that point and if you hadn't died yet, It's probably the death number. one for many people.

I wish there was a player death tracker like in Dark Souls 2, but specifically for this Black Knight, it must now be in the hundreds of thousands. A man playing spy. The second round goes much better. Fortunately, I was in it. The wall makes sense because of the way I'm so used to starting with the skeleton key that I'll usually try to open this door even though I don't have it. Going up the spiral stairs, a specific barrel hides a crystal lizard for which we kill. some good upgrade materials and we go out to the bridge, there is nothing on the bridge yet, but we go a little further and a sudden fight with a boss on a narrow bridge, while the fight itself is quite simple, you have limited space to work.

However, upon entering the bridge, two archers will most likely shoot at you from above and behind you before you get far enough to spawn the demon, prompting you to go up and deal with them and then when the Taurus demon jumps, you'll be able to You still go back up to the platform at the beginning while you're there, he'll look at you and hey, this looks familiar. I'm wondering if it is or you can just wait there and he will jump up to join you and give you a Circular Arena to fight him with a little more room to dodge his exploration, go slow and most importantly pay attention.

These are the lessons that Dark Souls is trying to teach you in this first area and I'd say it teaches those three pretty well. The concepts form the basis of how you should approach any Souls game with caution and attention, also as a side note for recording purposes. I had to turn off this music to add it to the post later and without music this fight sounds very pathetic. nothing in these barrels there will never be anything in these barrels there was ever something in these barrels and yet I will always break them every time we move from the bridge to another bridge we will meet our next big NPC Solaire of Astora, okay, let's go Talking about Solaire, I don't think I need to tell you that when Dark Souls first came out, Solaire became a fan favorite almost immediately, people latched onto him, and of course that signature phrase and Jolly's appealing cooperation They've been a meme ever since, but there's more to Soul Layer than just being a fun character with a slightly goofy way of speaking, that's not the only reason people got so invested in it.

In Dark Souls, every NPC you meet, even the kind ones, have their own agenda or are simply performing a service for you, hell, some even outright betray you or just gradually reveal themselves to be complete Pricks Petrus, but Solaire is a different world. lacking vivacity and hope. Solaire stands out as the only true optimist you know, he is jovial, confident, strong, hell. He is more of a hero than you. He's a little slow, but he has the heart to make up for it. He's the OG Dark Souls himbo, but even that's not everything. When you first meet Solaire, he gives you the white soapstone which you use to set a summon signature to be summoned to other players' worlds and help them.

Most people usually do this to team up with bosses, and in several cases you can also summon Solaire to help you in fights. There are a few other NPCs you can do that with as well. But of all, Solaire doesn't help you just because he promotes his own goal, he just genuinely wants to help and enjoys the camaraderie. They are both Undead chosen on the same journey, so why not, with everything being so bleak, someone like? Solaire is refreshing, it's very appropriate that when you first see him he's gazing at the sun, his rays breaking through the smog like clouds and shining down on him, but that can also be a symbol of ignorance and naivety for someone who hasn't realized it yet. account of the devastated state of the world he finds himself in and so focused only on the good that gradually the bad will begin to catch up with him, while we won't get to that until much later, his story reaches an emotional point later anyway.

I loved this guy back then and I still love him even after three full games, he's still my favorite in the entire series anyway, coming back to our journey after meeting Sunbro, we start crossing the bridge, now up to this period, Dark Souls has kept itself restrained while trying to teach you without words or exposition the unspoken rules of engagement and the best ways to approach it, so since we're past that extended unofficial tutorial, now the game starts trying to kill you. This part probably caught almost everyone for the first time. There's a visual clue to this with charred stone and corpses on the path in front of you, but on my first playthrough I didn't notice it and saw a face full of dragon breath.

Okay, luckily it doesn't do enough damage to kill you. and you can run across and crouch in this safe space without it attacking again, from here we head further down and kick this ladder to open one of the many shortcuts built into the Dark Souls world that I then don't use otherwise. We're playing this the same way I did all those years ago. I take this door to the left to go under the dragon and the bridge, but with the power of knowledge, I now know how to get around it, yeah, I don't know why it works.

Either by masterfully making our way through the dragon, we push all the souls we have gained up to that point to enough faith to reach 25, which is the exact amount of faith we need to commit to the Pact of the Sun and win the best All Dark Souls Spell Fight Me Bold, Iconic, and Devastatingly Powerful Lightning Spear Lightning Spear is the spell of choice for righteous warriors of sunlight Strike down your adversaries alone with the power of your unwavering conviction toward all things good and just Lightning Lance Champions spell, so yeah I like Lightning Lance, it's simple, hits like a truck, and turns the rest of the undead area into a joke.

Not many enemies in the game are resistant to lightning damage and some are extremely weak, so this spell remains. good throughout the entire game, even if it starts to fall slightly towards the end, but that's okay because we will eventually get an even better version for the time being, although this door here is blocking our happy fun time, so we go down to find a way alternatively hooking this key here before we leave, we introduce ourselves to the locals, do a quick balancing act and continue, oh, hello. Square Fog Gate Chart, How Are You? pretty sure the camera isn't supposed to catch that, wait a minute.

I should draw attention to that, I'm not sure what body it is, but it looks like his legs are moving away from his torso. This Gentleman's position always made me laugh. It's like they're trying to imitate that black knight from before. I think it works for them, although it's okay, this path is kind of a jerk move, there are two enemies hiding on either side of these corners, so the best way to deal with them is to go out and then immediately hide again to try to lure them out. to you. I have a minor panic attack when I accidentally use Lightning Spear with this Knight charging at me, that works, but it's okay because Dark Souls ragdolls are still a built-in stress reliever.

We go through this term to get revenge on the idiot who closed the door. was obviously there, which allowed me to stop you from here, didn't you know that we took a very important key to our problem and then continued to look at meexpertly? Dodge this crossbow arrow completely on purpose, we move forward. We arrived. the next bonfire in this old church and hey, Andre, your man refrigerator, how's it going? Okay, real quick kids, time for another tip. Dark Souls is one of those games that gives you enough information about the story and mechanics to get started, but if you want to learn all the details you have to do some research on your own one of the best ways to do this is to simply talk to everyone and exhaust All of their dialogue - most of them have something important to tell you that gives you information about the world or a clue as to where to go next - many NPCs will even offer new dialogue after certain points in the game, so it's worth coming back to.

Consult everyone when you are perplexed, other times some information is deliberately hidden from you and there is no way. knowing it without methodical exploration or just by sheer luck, this is what we used to call Secrets, bits and pieces of a game, plus whole parts hidden for you to find yourself or with the help of others, remember what I said in the introduction . it's about discovering everything on your own, well it's not just you who goes on this journey, if you play online you can see ghosts of other players passing through the same area as you, you can summon other players to help you and yes , you can also invade other worlds. to fight each other, watching Dark Souls was built around the idea that shared knowledge is a kind of communal journey reminiscent of the days when you sat with your friends at lunchtime at school and shared your stories of Secret playable characters, hidden levels, and all that Yoshi on the Roof stuff.

In Mario 64 that actually turned out to be true, things like that aren't meant to be played once and put back on the shelf, while that experience is still great on its own, there's content that not everyone was going to find. their first time and there was a damn gold rush to find it all out, remember the pendant fiasco where entire sections of the community were convinced that this seemingly useless item had some hidden use and collectively spent months, if not years, trying to find it alone to be told. by Miyazaki himself which was in fact useless and was put in the game as a joke for this, exactly us, what guy was this still before theA time when data mining became the norm and we could just delve into the game files and finding everything in a boring way.

The idea that shared knowledge was basically a necessity to experience everything a game has to offer has its pros and cons, but I have a certain respect for games like that, there aren't enough of them these days, that's for sure, secrets that They're actually, you know. Secrets almost seems like a dirty concept these days or at least outdated. I don't know, maybe I'm weird, but I like it. my games with a bit of mystique to them anyway, I've rambled on enough, let's get back to the adventure, why do you have a giant titanite demon statue living next door?

Andre, are they paying you rent or maybe they are just terrified? the man who in a world of gods and demons, swords and sorceries, Alexa hits people with her bare knuckles and kicks them out, hey look, when you've got that much meat on you, you can solve a lot of problems with a body shot now Before us head to the Bell Tower and achieve our first important objective. We have a few stops to make, so off we go to Dark Root Garden. I like Dark Root, it's certainly dark, but it has some color and life that stands out a little from the rest.

More Grim coloring of the undead Berg above without making it look like the two don't belong in the same world, it's still not exactly smiles and ice cream, as everything is still trying to kill you, including the literal walking bushes and giant Stone Knights which are impressively weak to get. maced in the knee wow I'm trying to take down this item ambush before it happens and it doesn't go exactly as planned a few close calls later and we get a very important item set if you ever wanted to kill sentient trees surprisingly Dark Souls has you . covered also lizards frogs frogs lizard something lo and behold, ragdolls from Dark Souls 1 go ballistic they actually just went over here to grab this ring that I don't need because I'm weird like that, we briefly return to Andre to finish leveling up my mace for the most I can currently get and while we're in the area we stop at the entrance to Sense Fortress to say hello to a very special guy.

Meet Siegmeyer along with Solaire, he also became a fan favorite character, very innocent, a little goofy and really sounds like he's trying to be the big chivalrous guy of the night but he's just struggling so here I'm sitting on the fence weighing my options, so to speak, but we love him anyway and if you don't, you're actually going to hell. Sorry, those are just the rules. I don't really have a big segment to explain the importance of Siegmeyer and why he's liked because I feel like he's a lot more obvious than Solaire. He is a walking onion who gets into a lot of trouble on multiple occasions. times, but he keeps doing his best and you know how good it is for him, we'll see that later, don't worry though, like I said, we're trying in every NPC questline.

I test my newly powered up weapon on this giant. Sentinel Night and it is very effective, then we get a very important firekeeper soul and we testify that the Dark Souls community is as classy as ever. Now, what's supposed to happen when we go up to the bell tower here is that the channeler up there is supposed to get better. They create a group of Hollows with ridiculous damage who then try to rush me through a very small door, making themselves very vulnerable to some portable war crimes, but I don't feel like dealing with that, so we'll solve this problem with a masterful lightning bolt.

Foreign Aim As we enter this elevator, we take it all the way down and, hey, this looks familiar. Finding a path back to Firelink after everything I had done up to that point was surprising for a younger me, it blew my mind. Keep in mind that through all of that I ended up this close to where I started and that was the moment when the entire Dark Souls World started to feel as connected as I see it today. While we're back in town, we stop by and check everyone out. Petra is finally here she has more to tell us and after some donations, she tells us more about why he and his other colleagues are here.

They are escorting an important figure through Lordran and what he calls an undead mission to search for something. It's called kindling, which is the art of feeding Humanity with bonfires to gain power, which is something we've done ourselves before. We don't have much else to go on yet, but we will very soon. Don't worry, now I could have used that. fire guardian soul to upgrade my estus flask while i was here which i forgot to do that so come on we are on our way back to dark roots specifically to grab a more important item off the beaten path unfortunately its protected by this .

A much beefier halberd wielding Black Knight, but luckily his AI was completely broken and he didn't seem to mind getting shot in the back of the head with lightning twice and behind them is the best shield in the entire game, the Grass Crest Shield. It doesn't have the highest defenses, but it gives a pretty substantial boost to your resistance region when you have it equipped, this even holds true if you have it on your back while holding a two-handed weapon and even then its overall defenses are still pretty good. hello good. I always get this damn thing every time I play this game, unfortunately it's too heavy for us to continue rolling lightly, so it's time to start taking off some of our clothes, allowing the world to admire the beef jerky muscle we're sporting and also the view of the Cuenca.

Here it is simply beautiful. The return to the parish. Finally, we begin to climb the bell tower. Tonight, he learns the hard way that he cannot stop lightning hitting his face. I'm pretty sure at this point it would be easier to count which part of the Geneva conventions we are not violating. Going through this door, we encounter another important NPC locked in a cell. I really appreciate this and guarantee a reward only later. At this point, I looked at my Estus flask and realized I'm an idiot and headed back to Firelink, but not before exiting the elevator early to grab these hidden items.

I can also check the law trick while I'm down here, you can see that it is trustworthy because of its Laughing sinisterly we talk to this lady who is imprisoned under Firelink to power up our Estus flask with the fire guardian soul now that I say all that out loud, that's pretty important, what the hell am I doing? We reverse our emptying and finally make On our way back once more, I decide to run past the gaps this time and very thoughtfully they form a death sign for me, how thoughtfully we finally ascend to the roof and summon a dear friend.

The Gargoyle Bell is pretty easy. The Gargoyle Bell is a pretty easy fight when you have Lightning Spear and Solaire on your side, even if he tends to get a little confused, I'm still there buddy that way, but with the amount of damage we can deal between the two. For us, it doesn't matter, it's a good boss for beginners, although it's nothing fantastic, but it complicates the process by generating a second one with half health towards the end one, two, three, four, with the Gargoyles completely dismantled, we go up to the top. the Belfry and ringing the first Awakening Bell, marking the first major step in our journey, which apparently magically summons this Oswald guy.

If you commit a sin at any point in the game, you can return to this guy and pay him a sum of souls. to clear it we make one more stop at Firelink to check on everyone, check on my equipment and Andre and then continue on our way as I leave the church, the game surely informs me that the disasters disappeared after the defeat of the grave lord servant, yes . That's probably something else I should mention. Dark Souls multiplayer has more than a few layers, most of which are Covenants you can join, such as the Sunlight Warriors, to alter the way you experience the game's multiplayer and even introduce modes entirely. new as usual.

The job is to join, do something specific to the Covenant, get a specific reward for that Covenant, accumulate those rewards, and then turn in a certain amount of them to earn items or spells like you would with the Manson rank. This is the frustrating part about trying to get to 100. The game these days, as the multiplayer, while still active, is not as active as it used to be and most of the covenants are focused on PvP, which I never liked. , most of the time it seems like I only get slow fights or people who have dedicated hundreds. thousands of hours into his craft and I'm nowhere near that level.

I understand why people like PvP, it's just never been my thing, but covenants are still an important aspect of the game and add more to the idea that Dark Souls was developed. With the concept of it being this shared community journey in mind, whether it was helping each other along the way or beating The Living Daylights, it was really all down to how they enjoyed playing the game more and to this day some people still argue . about what the true way to play Dark Souls is, hints that there isn't any anyway, with our previously acquired basement key, we open this door here to the lower levels of the Berg of the Undead, which by sliding down a ladder rusty like this will be good for your hands.

I do not do it. I do not think it is like that. I guess I'm wearing gloves. If we turn immediately right up these stairs, we find another door to open and, damn, it's a pretty important shortcut and I forgot to include this in the recording at the time, but what? What makes this kind of thing especially cathartic is that we are now much more powerful and these enemies that used to require a bit of work would fold like paper Despite how brutal Dark Souls can seem, it does something very important that breaks that difficulty with moments of mercy and genuinely rewards you for your efforts here specifically, it's like a roundabout way of showing you that yes, you are progressing, you are becoming more powerful by giving you a reference point of where you were not so long ago, it's a boost trusted and even in designed games.

To test the player, this sort of thing is vital and then moments later we are presented with not one but two new types of enemies, both of which fight very differently to anything we have encountered up to that point, the second of which which was introduced in A Straight Ambush, so immediately after a moment of relief and reward, you'll remember that the game stillcan throw new tricks at you and that you shouldn't get cocky like I did while we're here, we freed Griggs from his prison and then I quickly forgot to do anything else with them, I mean besides checking them on Firelink, then I'll contemplate the beautiful sounds from sethorvan before facing the next boss.

I choose to open the following shortcut first in advance, it is very polite to enemies. just stand there and let me rip their heads off from afar and if you look, the shortcut goes back to Firelink again, all the roads in Rome or something foreign, then I got bored of waiting. I want to guarantee more than a few. People remember that this guy, the cap or the demon itself, is not that difficult or particularly interesting. What made this fight hell for new players back in the day is the two dogs that rush you in the completely small arena you fight them in, as you can see. in the time it took me to describe the fight I'm already dead Panic is the word I choose to describe this boss because the moment you walk through that fog gate, this ugly thing with big twin swords jumps at you like a bat. from hell and the two dogs are biting your ankles and by the time you manage to get away from them you've already cornered yourself, you don't have much room for error in this fight, and that's probably why I don't do it.

I don't like it much, it's great for scaring new players and it was certainly a wall in the past for a lot of people, but other than that it's not that interesting. The second round starts off much better as I get lucky and get both dogs in. one hit and once you take them out this fight becomes much easier, the camper demon's hits are very slow and while he can certainly take a chunk out of you, he is extremely weak to have lightning shoved into his face almost with the full health, three shots dead, damn, also just kind of gave up towards the end on me I guess he was mourning his dogs, the poor guy I just barged into where he was squatting and trashed the place without word or explanation hmm ooh shiny key with our newly acquired unlocking instrument We begin our descent towards Some of the hollows here have torches and break the damn rules, they have this strange waving charge that has no initial animation, it just comes out at once, like here we rescue another NPC, Laurentius, the pyromancer, who was about to be devoured. for oh hello up there, I love this damn spell, oh yeah, and watch your head while you're down here.

I died because of these dogs in the water. I remember why they are my least favorite enemy in the game. The Butcher thing here briefly. forgets that there is a table in their way, a lightning bolt to the face and a back full of mace moves them out of the way and we are rewarded with, oh yes, the large ember that allows us to upgrade our weapons from plus five to plus 10 .so we'll have to make a pit stop with Andre later, we'll also get a sack. I look beautiful. Okay, we might as well get back to Andre while we have time.

Sackboy is back at Firelink Shrine. We do the usual control. everyone and see that the launch accident is missing, that's worrying and hey, Petrus has friends now, I'm so proud of him, would you mind repeating that no, it's thanks. He meets Lady Raya of Thornland and her two companions, Vince and Nico, they are Petrus. I talked about being on that Undead mission to get firewood, they're not very talkative right now so we won't stay long, but Vince mentions that they'll be going down to the catacombs soon. I can't wait to hear about his resounding success. note NPC Quest Lines Advance as you progress through the game and superbosses, but you must physically talk to several of them before going too far, otherwise you will miss the opportunity.

You can fast forward a few steps of the mission by simply exiting the game and re-entering. I have no idea why this works, but oh well. A few restarts later, we find Petrus back in his Solitaire, distraught at being separated from his group. Oh hey, Lotrek is back and he has some interesting information for us. Why yes, please, the Feraland maiden and her followers recently arrived in this land, but she was stranded in the deepest. catacombs, his followers fled or were reduced to Hollows, oh God, damn it, and I had so much confidence in them that we confronted Petrus about this and he suddenly changed his tone completely, he almost seemed pleased that Laotrex had told us the story. true, maybe because it doesn't.

You have to hide her intentions more from her right now, you can do whatever you want with her, the poor pure bread is completely defenseless. I refrained from attacking him on the spot. Well, now we have a maiden trapped in the undead catacombs to rescue, but we're gone. exactly prepared for that, so we'll come back to this later and Laurentius returned here safely. He teaches pyromancy which, unlike miracles and sorceries, does not rely on stats when used, but is instead powered by the pyromancer's flame used to cast them. The more you level up, the more powerful your pyromancy becomes and being able to cast magic with almost no stat assignment required other than spell slots is pretty cool anyway, for Andre, the looming beautiful sight, oh I agree , we give Andre the Large Ember and Talk to him a little and he tells us about a Divine blacksmith in the Garden of Dark Roots who made weapons specifically for places like the catacombs.

Well, it's not so convenient, why don't we pay them a visit before continuing? Disasters disappear after defeat. from the tomb lord servant and we go to Dark Root again, this time we turn left in the area where we got the Elite Knight armor towards a set of ruins. No, hello sir, how are you? Thanks if you don't mind. I need to get through you, thanks, go back up the tower, we come to another fog gate, well, we won't be any less Hollow, here we go, we go abroad, Moonlight Butterfly is such a cool boss, it's one of the designs most complicated we have seen. in the game up to this point it's beautiful and ethereal almost like it doesn't belong here like it came from a dream it's the most fantastical and alien looking creature yet its theme music is very simple but hauntingly pretty and fits the elegant float of the butterfly moves, his magic attacks can do a lot of damage if you're not careful as they don't fully telegraph until the attack is launched and he's already dead, huh yeah this fight takes a lot longer if you're running melee alone because he spends most of the fight flying out of range until he stops on the bridge, but with the lightning spirit he just melts a little bit, he's still a cool boss just aesthetically, even if he can be improved totally and completely with the right building fun.

In fact, you can see him resting in the tower before entering the fog gate. It also stands out as the only really pretty thing we've seen in the game so far. Everything else is dark and dilapidated, looking devoid of hope and life, or just plain. Monstrous and terrifying, the butterfly is completely different and makes you wonder how it got here. This gets even more complicated as you climb the tower and find the divine blacksmith that Andre spoke of, dead and turned to stone holding his divine ember in his arms, it's all been pretty simple. until now, but that was when Dark Souls started to make me wonder things why was this strange creature here, why was it in the Blacksmith's Tower, was it the one who turned it into Stone or was it in mourning, did it attack us because it was hostile or was trying to defend the remains of the blacksmith.

This is another layer of Dark Souls. The world tells you a story, obviously, through character dialogue and descriptions of items you find, but it also has these moments of a kind of unspoken narration. details in the environment that give you clues or mysteries, things that can be overlooked if you are not paying attention, but open up many questions when you think carefully, although not all of those questions end up answered, this is obviously not the case. an approach to storytelling that everyone likes, but I personally love, it gives enough context to get you started, but the deeper you go, the more you think, the more you discover and let your mind wander, the deeper and more complicated this dark world starts to get. depressing. get and the whole overarching narrative becomes less and less cut and dried now I'm seriously rambling and really need to get back on track but we'll come back to this point later for now I'll just say that for myself at least.

That's when Dark Souls began to show that it wasn't just about the fun and challenge. This was the first hint of a hidden Beauty. We join Andre, give him the divine ember and now he can create divine weapons for us. and plus 10 weapons, but I'm not going to do any of those yet because I don't have my main weapons right now, so for now we'll use one mace plus five and rely on Lightning Spear to get through the next one. bosses for a while, but before we do that, we have a very special friend to go find.

Not only did we get the divine ember from the Divine Smith, oh no, we also got this key now, where is he going? Well, we only know one more. gate closed until now, but we are taking a different route towards it, back in Dark Root Basin, we make our way through this small stretch of land ignoring everything that is there for the moment, don't worry, we will come back later for Now, our friend waits. and he apparently he's very eager to meet us. Havel, he's a beefy guy who has something we want and surprisingly it's not his divine armor and weapon, we can't even get them, but he's slow, but don't let him touch you, that big crazy guy. of his will he most likely shot you at this point most people just chain stab him in the back since he is very easy to overcome but I like to live on the edge that was risky after taming To Boulder alive, we get the ring that literally everyone gets from Havel.

The ring is incredibly useful as it significantly increases the maximum load of equipment you can use, allowing you to wear large armor and use heavier weapons and stuff without worrying about slow movement and with Havel's power in hand, Sackboy evolves into John Duck Souls, also known as the protagonist man. The elite knight armor is the most iconic set in the entire game and pretty much the entire Dark Souls series, so I felt like I had to wear it for this video. That said, it leaves me in the middle of the video even with Havel's ring, but we can. deal with it thanks Welcome to Dark Souls sewer level kids I don't know if this is really a sewer, but I certainly count it as such, it has all the tight hallways of Hallmark, a dark and disgusting color palette, slime enemies that for some reason they are highly resistant to physical damage and of course I don't really have much to say about depths in general.

I guess as far as sewage levels go this isn't one of the worst, the only bonfire in the area is hidden behind a closed door. It's true that it's a bit of a silly move, but at least the key isn't far away. What's most notable about the Depths are things like the introduction of Basilisks, these strange little ones that will cast cursed mist at you, the abundance of Rouses, and the first NPC. Invader Knight Kirk oh Kirk sucks, at one point it seemed like I was invaded by a real player and then I didn't realize it and of course the abundance of narrow hallways makes Ragdoll freaks even more common and no less fun I guess. a friend, now they come with me, fool, I have the power of friendship on my side, oh but yeah, overall not a bad level, although I really only saw it as a transition between Berg and Blighttown and it hasn't been arrested.

Feeling this way, well, actually, there's another notable thing about this place: being a fly on the wall during the creation of this thing. I have to hand it to the artists, being able to design this way is definitely its own skill set technically, this is our first as well. fight the dragon boss and what a first, 50 of his body weight is teeth, he also has an order of magnitude more health than any of the bosses we've fought so far, that's also because I was able to summon Solaire and Knight Law. Walk through this, go get them guys, I'll be right behind you, the ladder of the one who had his summoning sign hidden behind a pillar.

The blatant jab and when you've summoned help, bosses get more health to compensate, but even without summoned help, this thing is thick, especially considering I'm running at a disadvantage with this under-leveled mace. Basically, I'm just letting Solaire and La track take it while I fire off a lightning bolt, oh that was a spicy hair, that was a spicy air shot if I ever say so. Myself, oh, although I say that, but looking at the footage again, I'm not entirely sure if Lotrek did anything. He may have gotten it right once. Excellent work, gentlemen. Rounding up next week either way with the key to Blighttown firmly in hand, Zoopreturn to the bonfire. nice chat with dom hall here and finally getting to the most infamous area of ​​the early game of dark souls as i write this.

I've been sitting here for a good 10 minutes trying to think of what the hell to say about Blighttown, everyone knows that. which everyone has experienced it so what's left to say, well I guess I can say that as much as this area may piss me off, I hate the venom of Waters, who fromsoft really seems to love putting in their games and of course, these toxic Darts. I love Blighttown aesthetically and narratively. I think it's one of the strongest areas of the entire game. It's basically an unofficial sequel to Demon Souls' The Valley Of Defilement, which also had a very similar theme: ramshackle slums made of rotting wood that barely hold together and look prone. to fall apart at any moment everything is decrepit, disgusting, sick and rotten, the inhabitants here are deformed and mutated, perhaps they were once human, but now there is something else, as if the dirt and rot of this place has corrupted them, the waters are poisonous.

Wildlife is nothing more than giant insects and parasites. What else could live in a place like this? This is a place for the lost, the unwanted and the marginalized. Below, even the sewers of Lordran are locked away and forgotten. This here is the strength of Dark Souls. hinted at with the Moonlight Butterfly and shown much more clearly here and again later, but we're not there, telling environmental stories of the world itself and the order you experience that tell you a story, a hint of the state of the world before it. became what it is. now what life was like before the fires started going out now like I said I'm not an expert on the actual history so I won't go into it too much here but when I first played this game and when I came back to it several times over the years this is always what Blighttown and its location in the world told me above where the population lived in relative comfort and safety guarded by giant towers and stone walls the lowest of the low the least sought after among them they lived lower than even Vermin in sewage are treated as a discarded disease and are never thought of again.

He wonders without words if the state of the world was as good before the fires went out. It asks you, as the chosen Undead, if this is really worth fighting for. Do you see what it is? It was like before you experienced it yourself, elf in the Asylum, you were one of those unwanted and cornered, why are you here, what reason do you have to care what happens in this place, it never loved you to begin with, we've just been following this vague prophecy to do what we're told because we had to it was our destiny but this is really the world we're trying to save against something or all that probably contradicts a specific part of the actual lore but I'm just saying that what goes through my mind when I play this game, art is always interpreted subjectively and this to me is what Dark Souls says between the lines with Blighttown, maybe this world isn't worth saving.

Environmental storytelling is difficult to do well, but it's incredibly powerful. when you do and we don't even have a full picture yet, I'll come back to this thought later so get ready for that, um oh that's a good sign, my mace is really starting to feel like a pool noodle, at least Lightning Spear is. I'm still keeping up, but we'll get a better weapon soon anyway, going down the slums here never stops being a nail-biter because of how close you are to falling. There are a few spots where an ill-timed piece of paper can make you fall, but fortunately there is a bonfire relatively close to the start in the open air it still doesn't melt moments like these oh dear oh call that bridge and hello my name is anxiety and it would be appropriate for there to be a lot of travel verticals in the first part of Blighttown and it can also be a little easy to get a little lost with these.

I really need to reemphasize these Toxic Darts. They never stop being annoying, but luckily they're also one of the few non-boss enemies that stay dead when you kill them, even if you rest at a bonfire. Always grateful that these big guys can be buried after a while, we finally start approaching the lower level of Blighttown, this place is big and it takes a while to get down from this first part. I almost restarted that journey by misjudging a role and getting stuck. Oh, this is a bit complicated, couldn't it? Well I guess I only have one option, how's it going guys?

But finally we arrived at the second bonfire. Oh God, we invested our hole to turn it on and then this. What's happening to my life happens on the way out, we have our second NPC invasion further up the streets. You know, as run down and disgusting as this place is, get to the bottom and look out at the world beyond the valley it's amazing laughs um I'm sure everything will be okay okay this poison sound effect really makes me It's getting on your nerves, so let's get this place over with. I farm a little to get upgrade materials for our weapon later and take a quick look. standing on the big tree I love how behind this wall illustri there is a closed chest and another illusory wall what went through the first person's mind when he discovered that if he had to guess they attacked the chest to check it for a mimic and accidentally We hit the wall behind us, oh and don't worry, we'll return to this place later and after continuing to the other side of Blighttown, we finally reached Quilag's domain, this giant mess of web eggs, at least I could.

We finally stop that poison noise. From here we bring back dear Mildred, whose face is probably still concave and is finally fine, from a visual perspective. I would say that Quilag is one of the most attractive bosses in the entire game and no, I don't mean that. that the way you think I do, I mean, from an animation and overall design perspective, we're behind, it's amazing, the way his upper body moves with more grace and purpose, in stark contrast with the fiercest and fastest movements of the half of the spider, it makes it look like it has two. different creatures instead of one, she's also one of those bosses whose theme I never remembered until I heard it later because when I fought her for the first time I panicked a little, I mean she's a giant spider lady running over you throwing lava on your swaying face. a giant sword of fire around and occasionally blowing yourself up, it's a lot to deal with.

I'd probably say she's the toughest boss up to this point, but with Mildred on your side it gets a lot easier even if Mildred is a little stupid. uh help, don't run into the lava Mildred, don't run into the lava you idiot, absolute moron, avoid the lava but honestly it's a great boss, the build up to it with all that mess of cobwebs, the general fight itself , the music, that's all. a home run and once again she has that, what the hell is going on here? Vibe with her entire Lair and just herself in general with Mildred taking the final blow, we take her down and finally after several hours we reach the second Awakening Bell of the first half of our journey is almost complete, but before we leave, We go down these stairs and go behind this illusory wall to meet the beautiful lady, that is the only thing the game refers to, since by the way, her name is never pronounced.

It's useless to her, but she gives us the option to join the Chaos Servant Covenant, which we will do, but not yet. Now she is completely silent, but if you talk to her with the Old Witch's Ring equipped, she can actually be understood given her hoarse voice. and her weak tone seems to be incredibly poorly supported by the humanities offering which is what you use to increase your rank in her Covenant. She is also the sister of Queen Lag who you just killed and she thinks you are her, so Queelag attacked you. It was not out of hostility that she was protecting her sick sister.

Damn, many of you are probably familiar with the body. Vic's series prepares to cry. Yes, he goes over a lot of things like this. Dark Souls is fun, challenging, beautifully dark, and heartbreakingly depressing all at once. However, we still have a quest to continue, so leaving all this behind, we ascend as a backup to Blighttown, take a short detour to grab some items and reaffirm to myself that these dark, toxic guys can burn in the deepest layer. of hell imaginable, grab this key and get out. with the new key we open a previously locked door to take the elevator and once again welcome home and immediately notice that Law Trek is missing again and the fire link Maiden is gone with only her clothes and a black eye orb on her back. her place and the game happily informs us that she is dead and now the fire link bonfire is no longer working well, things are getting real, it was cool that this happened right at this point in my game, right after completing a important stage in the journey, we received a big oh. moment and have a new objective track The noisy track snows and its breath is lethal this is no laughing matter I tell you and I was really starting to like it here maybe it's time I do something about it but first we have a new character to find us, were you the one who rang the Awakening bell?

Yeah, I don't know what I'm looking at, you don't know either, as grim and brutal as Dark Souls can be, sometimes it just throws you a curveball, seriously, what the hell is it? this thing I'm the primordial serpent King Seeker froud oh okay, it's the primordial serpent um question what is a primordial serpent? Does everyone have meat mustaches anyway? My man, please evolve your lips and hide those teeth because they are scaring me. Actually, he waits, not now. Come to think of it, this thing with big, swollen lips would probably look even worse, so yeah, never mind, can you at least stop doing that jaw thing and only years later, after many repeated plays, I still don't know how or why does this thing exist?

I mean, at the same time, I love that it exists because it's so unexpected and adds to that special brand of Oddity. Dark Souls has to break the tension, which is one of the most unique things about it, for all its darkness and brutality. has a very fantastical element to it and isn't afraid to get a little weird, it's like playing through a dark fairy tale, for example giant Mushroom Men that hit you in the soul anyway, so here it's woken up after that both bells rang. and has more information for our mission. It tells us where to get Lord Gwyn to start a new age of fire.

He casts away the darkness and breaks the curse of undeath. To do this, he sends us on a search mission to obtain something called the Lord's vessel. interlando but we can't get there without passing through Sen Fortress, so that's our next stop. He then becomes a seller of sorts, as you can feed him all your unwanted items in exchange for souls. We stop at Laurentius to upgrade our Pyromancer Flame because even though we're not using it, we need it to be level 10 to advance his quest and with all that taken care of, we head to well, not really yet, first I need to get my main weapon that falls from these snake boys. and it's a pretty rare drop, so excuse me while I farm you up a bit, oh thank goodness, we completed our new sword with more 10s, turned our mace into a divine mace and now we finally head to the catacombs, we still have a lady who look after. rescue after all and we can't leave that threat hanging forever, which is good, skele guys.

I'm swinging a divine mace now delivering the good word of Jesus through the power of blunt force, so that's why we wanted a divine weapon in the first place. This is because these skeletons in the catacombs are not only weak to divine weapons, but they also won't stay dead unless one kills them or you kill these nearby necromancers who keep reviving them and, unfortunately, Lightning Spear doesn't count as divine damage. . Pat's little head that they do when they revive looks so ridiculous, gross, so the catacombs themselves are pretty clean, honestly, they're creepy enough and seem to be filled to the brim with skeletons and more than a few secrets to discover which is big , it's dark, they are catacombs, but apart.

From that, I don't have anything specific to mention, so instead this segment was supposed to have the Creepy and Scary Skeletons Remix from Living Tombstone, but apparently that's completely ruined by YouTube copyright, so imagine it here, how many of you didn't know there was an illusory wall here that led to a bonfire. I know there are probably some of you at least I also thought there were supposed to be patches here, but hmm, oh well, after our super happy skeleton fun times, it's time for one. two three four yeah, I have nothing to add here, I move on and now it's time for everyone's favorite level, the one where you can't see.

I really don't know why thisspecific trope still appears in the games, but here it is in all of them. It's frustrating and not very fun Glory, the moment you cross the threshold into this area, the game's brightness plummets and you have to rely on slow, careful movement to progress or, if you're lucky enough to find a lantern shaped of skull on one of the necromancers, before you can use that to light your way there are two other methods: the light spell that you get from the DLC and the sunlight worm, but most of the time your two options are Lantern or Good luck idiot, I hope you like groping in the dark, luckily we don't have any.

To cover this entire area, but only a good part of it, I'll save most of my opinions on this place for when we get back here, but yeah, anyway, after stumbling around in the dark, we finally found Mr. Patches and I'm not even I'm going to pretend I don't know what's coming next, he of course tries to convince us that there's treasure on the ledge and then, oh no, who would have seen that fun fact if you hadn't gotten a flashlight yet? Don't worry about the game. gives you one now, so long story short, if you hadn't found one before, after fumbling around almost completely blind fighting giant skeletons in the dark and trusting every jump and slide blindly, we'd finally get what we need to navigate the this place reliably. no, no, no, not yet, anyway, we find Rhea down here in the well and, as expected, her two bodyguards have become hollow, leaving her trapped.

Vince and Nico are pretty tanky, but our new weapon quickly takes them out after making sure he escapes. We return to the bonfire and finally return to Firelink. Petrus is less than please. We have rescued Raya because the little lady is not worth it without her last name. uh. Lovely, we found Reya in the undead church we were in all those hours ago. and now she becomes a miracle seller for us, we want her spells as she offers some of the best miracles in the game and to advance her story we need to buy them all from her, so goodbye souls and finally with all that.

Out of the way, we returned to Andre and entered the beautiful Sentido Fortress, testing ground for the undead and most likely the only source of entertainment for some sick people with too much time on their hands and legs. You know it, despite it being a trap house. the real traps here are pretty obvious, this would be the perfect excuse to throw in a genuine rage game like the floor falling down without warning, but in all seriousness, Sen's Wild Ride is pretty tame now, that doesn't make it easy Of course, we have fights on precarious walkways with little room to maneuver.

Giant rocks that I love to use as a makeshift stop, attack hanging swords that will send you flying into a tar pit and if the fall doesn't kill you, hello sir, arrow bums. an imitation of this lift that I guarantee you got on your first playthrough, don't lie to this snake guy here, just cool down more rocks that have the reverse boost power and of course smitties and that's not counting the outside where we have a giant. on the rooftops, hugging us with huge incendiary bombs. I will not show the entire journey to my son's fortress.

It's a pretty big place with a fair amount of secrets. I looked for almost everything there was to find here and there was no shortage. of nonsense like this, maybe I'll make a full follow-up video with some extra clips I couldn't include. There are a lot of things in this whole game that I haven't shown since Fortress is like the depths in the sense that it's more of a connection. area, but overall more memorable, it certainly sells the entire house of traps. I love this view from one of the balconies, seeing the first bell tower in the distance is a good reminder of how far we have come.

Oh, and of course We have our second encounter with our dear Onion Knight, maybe I could try rolling, no jobs, my head was big while we're here, we have an NPC to rescue, which first requires us to do a little trolling . The aptly named Big Hat Logan is trapped here. and requires assistance, it is not a problem. I got a key earlier just for this occasion, they will quickly return to the fire link, so for now onwards we press on, eliminate the giant incendiary bomb thrower for no other reason than pure spite for his existence and prepare to finally face the boss of the area , you know I was going to do something where you summon a fucking iron corpse, that's its full name and leave it alone, but I needed an extra Sunlight medal so I summoned a fellow Sun bro and I regretted my actions almost immediately oh well, I have to live with it.

I'll be honest, the Iron Golem looks intimidating, but he's literally a complete pushover and yes, you can make him fall off the edge of the arena with that and kill him instantly. I didnot do that. Since I wanted to get at least some fight footage of this thing, I'll say that the biggest threat it poses is knocking you off the ledge, as its moves can definitely send you flying if you're not careful, other than that though there really isn't much of What to talk about here, the real boss of the Fortress of Senses is simply everything.

The Iron Golem is more like a reward for reaching the end, why are you bullying me? And with the triple pelvis, the thrust of the Gods, we cast down the iron menace, reflect briefly on the mystic orb of forward progress, and are finally lifted above the horizon high in the mountains eternally bathed in the golden glow of the sun that stretches as far as the eye can see andorlando the city of sunlight and the Home of the Gods, there is very little in the games compared to that first vision that rises over the mountain tops and see the city in all Its glory shining in the warm glow of the setting sun or rising either way, it is an impressive sight and yet this is something I have come to appreciate recently, but the location of Anor Londo after your journey from the crumbling Undead Asylum through mossy, rustic Berg and absolutely miserable Blighttown is pretty brilliant.

More to say about the previous world and here it is after subtly questioning whether or not this world you've been chosen to fight for is worth saving. The unspoken narrative of the game plays its last card. Here you have seen the worst, the lowest. the least wanted and the most desperate were confined and locked up, now you see where the highest rung of this old world social order resided, a city of gold and stone, beautiful and eternal, towering above all, unconcerned by the dangers that those below suffer, as if they existed. In a reality of my own, I must reiterate that I am not quoting traditions here nor trying to be 100% accurate, this is purely my interpretation and mine alone simply from looking at the way the world is presented after everything you have experienced in the world at the moment. point Anor Londo really feels like a world apart, a society and way of life completely separate from what has been hinted at;

It's a pretty obvious analogy that the richest and most affluent among us are the furthest from the harshness of reality and live in self-indulgent opulence until now. As beautiful as it may seem, it's clear that something is still wrong. The eerie silence emphasized by its absolutely massive size makes everything feel so empty and lonely that there is almost no one here except the former Guardians and demonic creatures that have since moved on not counting boss encounters. The only people you talk to here are the keeper of the city's first bonfire, a giant blacksmith, Siegmeyer, and Solaire, the latter two being fellow adventurers who aren't even natives of the city.

It is as if Anor Londo's beauty is a thin veil that hides his tragedy and beneath it. everything is no different from the broken world you have seen so far, which is completely accurate and Orlando, as we see it, is a lie, an illusion created by the last remaining God in the city, gwyndolin, the abandoned son of Gwyn , when the illusion is broken. The Golden Sun that illuminates the city fades away leaving only the cold and hollow night, even most of the enemies are gone, making everything feel even more barren, whatever reality this city was hiding from him, to the ending grabbed him in many ways, both literal and figurative.

Anor Londo is the pinnacle of Dark Souls. There's a lot more I could say, but I think I get it. Dark Souls isn't just about difficulty or challenge, it's not PvP or anything purely mechanical for me. the experience from beginning to end and the story that it tells you without saying more, that probably makes me weird, but hey, that's nothing new for me, at least it's fun to write it all down and now I think I've officially done well. about my allotted serious time and was overdue for a change of tone, so as I explored this room and got my hands on Havel's coveted armor and light weapon, I proceeded to fall first for an obvious imitation that I knew was there and still in use.

Somehow I forgot about it. Embarrassing, yes, but I can really only laugh at myself here. brilliant synchronization minger brilliant synchronization As mentioned, here we meet Siegmeyer and Solaire, the first of which we have to rescue from a room full of Silver Knights to advance their quest line in this location. It especially feels good to meet these two and reassure them that they haven't conveniently died off-screen or something. Remember the firelink guardian who died well with the black eye orb we got from his corpse. We can invade the world of Lotrec, who it seems. having been hoping we've put together an ambush squad just in case, unfortunately for them, I have the power of Jesus with the firekeeper Avenged and his soul recovered, we summon Solaire to our side once more and break through the great wall of fog , ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to Anor Londo Arena. We have an exciting match for you today from the north of the Undead Asylum and the land of Astora. It is the enigmatic Chosen Undead and Solaire, the warrior of sunlight, together these two wandering Knights will face the reigning champions. the unlikely destructive duo everyone knows and loves, the powerful and menacing executioner Smo, whose name no one can agree on how to pronounce along with the speedy dragon slayer Ornstein, please put your hands together for the super long numbers, oh, that's not a good dragon slayer Ornstein and The Executioner's Smoke smells however you want to say it.

The original wall, the Ender of many immortal races and the encounter with the most famous boss in all of Dark Souls. This fight is great, its theme music is incredible, and the dynamic of slow but devastating small attacks is a mixed bag. with Ornstein's speed it works better than you'd expect, trying to maintain line of sight while dancing around Ornstein's attacks can be tricky and if you try to escape and gain some distance Ornstein just comes up to your speed and keeps up with you. Nailed, of course, with Solare at your side, you can keep one of them distracted, but oh oh, I'm pretty familiar with these guys solo over the years and let me tell you, the fight is different depending on who you choose also prioritize the second phase.

It is reached when one of them is defeated and the one who still lives takes the power of the other and fights alone against you. I love the detail of how Ornstein is respectful and honorable in how he takes power from Mao, while Biggie Smalls here just crushes Ornstein's forgiveness. ass like the greedy and malicious guy he is, did I mention this guy? Not eight people, well there you have it, there is a reason why this fight is the most remembered, it was a summit in the past and although I can definitely say that even alone it is not.

As hard as it may be to remember, it's no less awesome, the atmosphere is great, the music is great, the whole encounter is a lot of fun, it's a really good boss fight, and it's the pinnacle of the entire Dark Souls experience, but the curious about Pinnacles. is that after reaching it there is only one way to go, but before that, boobies, yes, yes, I know it's an old joke, but it's a tradition at this point Guinevere, daughter of the queen's dotto of the queen's doctor and the queen, oh God, I want to die now. Guinevere, daughter of Gwyn and the Sunshine Princess, let me tell you, someone was very, very happy designing her.

I would show you the general internet reaction to her, but I don't think it's necessary. It really doesn't seem like a funny story to me. In an interview, Miyazaki said that when creating Guinevere, her height was his idea, but her size was not the artist on his team who came up with the final design, however, he seemed so pleased with it that Miyazaki did not have the heart to reject it. and Here we are, Lady Hawkers congratulates us for making it this far and rewards us with the coveted Lord vessel and with it we have officially unlocked fast travel specifically when you rest at a bonfire.

You can now move on to some specific bonfires, which is definitely helpful, especially at this point in the game, also, she's not real, thanks, sorrybreak their hearts. Now is when the illusion that Gwyndolin had been casting on Anor Londo would be broken and the entire city descends into the night causing his boss to fight. available, however, I did it a little differently in the catacombs. I came across this ring which, when used, removed the illusory statue of Gwyn guarding the Gwyndolin boss gate and opens up the possibility of joining their Darkmoon Covenant, but I did not do so and instead proceeded to Accumulate my count of regicides.

I would have dedicated an entire segment to talking about Gwyndolin's boss fight like I did with the others, but to be honest, I don't really like it that much, it's an endless hallway battle while he keeps casting spells. from a distance and teleport away from you when you get too close, the cluster spell attack will be blocked by pillars, the big soul arrow goes through them and needs to be dodged, it will also shoot a quick bow at you and that's it. The most interesting thing to talk to is his story, but I'm not going to go over the story in this video, so go see someone else if you're really interested.

I'll just say that poor people have serious problems with their parents. as if his father was exactly a saint, but that's another story. I'm only here for one particular gift right after his boss fought the last miracle to complete my collection. Oh yeah, and with the power of sunlight, the medals I got from doing a bunch of co-op pop out of the screen, most of which I'll talk about behind the scenes and in the Extras video after this one, which will appear here when it is over, we return to the altar of sunlight, so Lair is at our side and with our deepest commitment to the cause of sunlight and righteousness we obtain the spear of greater lightning, all together and just in time too I hope you've enjoyed the journey so far kids because now is where things start to get difficult oh, and I was going to talk about the Completely Optional Area Ariana's Painted World, but I couldn't think of a good place to put it in this script and This video has already taken enough time, so when I do that extras video I'll talk about it there, so just check back.

That, when it's done anyway, at Firelink Shrine, we find our boy Siegmeyer relaxing by the bonfire, we let him know that we were the ones who opened the door to send Fortress and as a token of gratitude he gives us another miracle that emits Strength, that I. I'm not a big fan of that face, but I can't say no to it. I'll go down shortly. There is nothing worthwhile above. Don't worry, adventuring is my life. I'm prepared for the worst look. You have to admire the optimism below. We use the soul of the Fire Guardian to revive her.

Thank you and she speaks. Cut out my tongue and now I'm depressed again. Well, at least she's alive. Hey, where did that really surly guy go? And hey, Logan came back here to go to Griggs' house. Delight Logan becomes a seller of more high-level sorceries, just as Rhea got us more powerful miracles. I'm afraid you can't learn sorcery or he would if my intelligence was high enough, unfortunately I've been pumping all my souls. My Jesus muscles and my muscle muscles, so my brain is as smooth as silk, don't worry, we will have the opportunity to advance his search later, for now we can attend to Laurentius and of course later to Siegmeyer first to advance Laurentius' quest line.

We need to increase his pyromancer flame to plus 10. Then we return to Blighttown, behind one of the pillars in the middle of the swamp, we meet a new NPC quailana, you need to give up something, are you ready to do this? Well, that's nothing sinister anyway, she becomes a pyromancy seller and we have to choose one of her only ones for herself. Once that was done we made our way to the big hole and found who else but our dear onion boy in trouble once again, how unexpected, this guy is an idiot and I love him.

This part is simple, you just need some purple moss to overcome the poison and with our friend rescued once again, his quest is advanced and we return to the big Ass Tree, why, well, so much to facilitate the later step in the Siegmeyer quest as well as because we need to start collecting upgrade materials to finish our weapon and unfortunately this place has some that we need. I say, unfortunately, because this tree is an idiot, welcome. up to the big gap or as I like to call it help, the entire level is a downward progression through winding roots, many of which are rounded, leading to this happening, if you can't tell, I don't really like this one Dark Souls wasn't meant to be a platformer and this entire level is a great example of why it wasn't and even ignoring that falling or jumping between platforms with rounded edges is always an exercise in frustration no matter what game you're in. playing.

It's hard not to feel a little annoyed when you're just half a pixel off center and end up becoming just another statistic for the floor in the gaming world. Gravity has the most deaths and, if that weren't enough, more of those buggy eyes. The Basilisks are here and with such limited space to work with, it's very lucky that I had great lightning bolts to solve these problems and even then I ended up getting cursed and losing a lot of souls in the process that I didn't. A good time while I was here there were more than a few butt clenching moments with these almost blind leaps of faith oh perfect that's exactly what I wanted for Christmas after a painstakingly slow ride we descend to the bottom and make our way to through the Mushroom Kingdom.

Seemingly and in one of the coolest areas in the entire game, the large gap leads to an ashen white coastline that looks out onto an endless ocean of dark waters, often in the distance other massive trees tower into the skies and pierce The world above them remains stable, all backed by that sinister but beautiful music, oh strange, after the Hollow's own frustration, finding this directly afterwards was somewhat mind-blowing for a younger me to think that all This part of the game is hidden behind a fake. wall hidden behind another false wall. I have to wonder how many people missed this place the first time or, in fact, if there is anyone watching this who still didn't know this place existed.

I mean, most likely not, but it's fun to think. There's a huge hydra blocking our path down here, and although I couldn't get any footage of it, it can jump onto the coast if you try to run away from it, which is more than a little terrifyingly scary the first time you see it happen far away. far away, at the other end of this place, traveling along the winding shores, you eventually reach a Broken Hollow and inside you find an ancient dragon, probably the last one left after the rise of the Gods. Surprisingly he seems completely indifferent to your presence, just existing, even if you completely surround him and cut off his damn tail he's still completely passive or just indifferent, it's a bit creepy to be honest, lore wise he looks wise and As for the music, Ash Lake is.Amazing, hands down, one of my favorite areas in the entire game, even if nothing major happens here, well, not yet, anyway, we came here to check it out, so We'll come back later for now, we go back to Firelink and talk. to laurentius, he is impressed by the pyromancy we got from quailana and asks us if we would share where we got it if we say yes, he split up for Blighttown to go look for himself and once everything is done let's report back to Frant, he seems happy to see us . with the vessel of the Lord, ah, forgive me, I should really calm down.

I guess you're ready now. Stay still, wait, stay still. I'd like to remind everyone that it wasn't too long ago that we fed this guy all our unwanted garbage, including the actual contents, can you imagine how bad it must smell in there? This is the chamber of Lord Gwyn's successor Fire League. The vessel of the Lord on the altar, yes, okay, sure, okay, I'm just going to repress that memory deep in my subconscious, how did I carry that whole thing? The way he gets here is huge, he's bigger than me. Jesus Christ, my boy must have a spine made of titanium and with the Lord's Vessel in place, the final areas of the game are all unlocked.

Next, we are tasked with finding the four Lord Souls left by Gwyn in order. To satisfy the vessel of the Lord and open the door of the chamber the souls in question belong to the lord of the tomb Neato the four kings of newland chaos that izalith and Seth the scaleless are you ready? Then we'll come back Hold still, oh God, please, no, no, a girl, there's no amount of therapy. We'll ever fix that anyway now that I've got enough mental scars it's time to hunt down the Lord's souls and our first stop turns out to be the closest welcome to the second half of the Dark Souls kit oh, sullen friend, it's him, yes.

It turns out that after the appearance of the surly Framp guy at some point he turned Hollow and well, when an undead turns Hollow there's no turning back, so yeah, um, well, anyway, we move on. Welcome to the second half of Dark Souls, kids from here, the progression opens up and while First we go after the Four Kings. We can acquire any of the Lord's souls in any order we want, but we are doing a very specific order for good reason. You see, I mentioned that this is when the trip starts to get going. Fortunately, although New Londo is a pretty good area, it's not my favorite by any means, but the atmosphere here is solid, this is an entire city that was flooded to contain the expansion of the chasm and boy, does it feel like that, not only by the water, obviously, but the overall color and darkness of the area really sells that drowned aesthetic very well.

Another appropriate touch is that there are absolutely no bonfires in this entire level. None, why wouldn't there be fire? Here there is no light, there is no life, nothing, everything is flooded. and void, save for the Vengeful Spirit that still haunts the water-eroded structures, they cannot be harmed in any way, not even with magic, without first being cursed. We're using these things called transient curses. Honestly, it's a weak trick since it's resolved by using an item and all the ghosts have a chance to drop them and if you somehow run out the Moss vendor from earlier sells them, not that the ghosts themselves aren't creepy, but At least in my experience they are not very threatening without that invulnerability that they have.

They're very slow and their attacks aren't hard to avoid, I mean unless they come out of the damn walls then it's a bit of a pain to deal with them, especially when a whole group just runs through everything to ambush you. only one enemy type for most of the area is a bit weak. I mean, there is a second type of ghost, but I think there are only two in total. However, we get a little more variety after flooding the city and opening the second half. To do this, we need to obtain such a key that tells us a little more about what we are dealing with.

The abyss where the Four Kings now reside is not traversable by mortals, however, we could gain the ability to do so. upon finding a certain Knight Artorias, artorius long ago crossed the abyss to fight him, so our best option is to kick the main door of the house of the Four Kings and the Demolition shop, so although we still can't get the Soul of the Lord, we do have some things to obtain from here in the lower half of New Londo we see the bodies of all the previous inhabitants piled up and rotting, it is legitimately disturbing and more than explains why these ghosts are here, they are the spirits of the citizens who were Willless, we willingly sacrifice ourselves to try to stop the abyss trapped in their homes while the waters destroyed them and everything they had, finally we also get a new type of enemy, the dark specters, these lords of the Skeletor blade that They flourish their swords with a kind of control and grace.

I haven't seen it on many enemies so far, it seems like they're trying really hard to look good. It's true that we also have this giant Blobby. I'm still not entirely sure what it is, but it seems like a grotesque amalgam. of bodies, souls and pure abyssal energy can become a single being, so yeah, New Londo is still a pretty solid level in my opinion, although it really gets carried away by its atmosphere and the story behind it, the whole trick of the ghosts is quite weak and is easily resolved. While I can appreciate the lack of bonfires, I can also imagine this frustrated more than a few people.

I didn't mind it personally, but I can understand others hating it, moving beyond some darker spectrums, we find the main thing we're looking for. Down here, big boy Ember. I should also mention that at this point he had already returned to the North End Asylum by climbing the tower and the linkof fire and by doing this I killed the stray demon in the Asylum and grabbed the titanite slab that falls from It's that we need to upgrade our weapon to the maximum level. I would have talked about this earlier since I actually went there when I was still in Sen's Fortress, but it affected the pacing of the video a bit on that note, there aren't enough games to go back to. to where it started and now there are bigger and better enemies and more should do that because it's always great, unfortunately we also left the Oscar now completely empty, may he rest in peace friend and with the thick boy Ember, the titanite slab and all the bits of titanite that we have achieved, we return to Andre and upgrade our weapon to plus 15.

The strongest it can be, we also receive one last piece of information from him. The Dark Root Garden houses the tomb of Sir Artorius and it turns out that he sells an item that he obtains. So 120k Soul Splurge then we unlock a previously sealed door. Yes, I know you can get around that sealed door by going to Dark Root Basin and going around it the long way around, but I forgot to mention it during the script, so shut up, I think the mere sight of this forest triggered fight or flight responses from some people. We take out some of the Guardians here while this guy loses an argument with a tree and now we're talking to a cat with a very long mouth.

This is Alvina. and she seems determined that we not disturb Artorias' tomb. She is also the leader of the Forest Hunter Covenant, which was the de facto main PvP Covenant in the past. You couldn't enter this forest without being invaded by about two. -The Gambler's Ghosts are plotting against your happy ass, but it seems to be a lot less active these days and I'm certainly not complaining. I'm just here to commit a grave robbery together, yes, yes, Thief, everyone knows it. Thief, this is the other encounter with the most famous boss. In all of Dark Souls, another one of those fights that simply has an atmosphere between its Arena, its music and, of course, the story behind this great doll, the old companion of the Knight Artorius who now stands guard over his grave to protect itself from the possible intruders.

Like us, he is incredibly unlucky. I was so overpowered at this point in the game with my plus 15 weapon and soft cap strength because this fight ended much faster than I wanted it to. You can start this boss fight much earlier if it happens. he drops those twenty thousand souls on that ridge of Artorias and I actually did that in my first game. As for the fight itself, I don't have much to say about it, it's a good fight and Thief can rack up damage, especially if you're a lower level than me, but what makes this fight so famous, apart from the music, and of course his backstory, is that when health is low, Thief begins to limp, lift a paw, and stumble after you look beaten and worn down, but you still keep fighting. defending the grave of his master and friend, I mean, there's no other way to put it, it's heartbreaking.

I didn't even know the story when I first fought them, to me he was just a big wolf with a sword and seeing him suddenly becomes much weaker. when in his last stretch he still gave me pause, his damage is reduced, he falls and struggles to get back up during some attacks, it really made me feel sorry for my first playthrough, this was perhaps the first time I felt Hollow after kill a boss I didn't feel like I had overcome any major obstacles despite having had many problems with them before. I just felt sad again in this game.

I was too powerful to show this properly and that's entirely my fault, but the memories of that first meeting. They are still fresh even after all these years and we will see if we are tragically defeated for what we came here for the Pact of Artorias. This ring allows us to traverse the abyss where the Four Kings are hiding and commit some righteous kills on them, so we walk our way back into the depths of New Londo attacking some nervous guys faces once again we equip our new ring and it's Well, that fall always makes me nervous.

I may feel a little conflicted about New Londo itself, but I don't feel conflicted about this boss, this is another one. home run as far as I'm concerned, it's impressive how much a featureless white background can add to a fight, sometimes less really is more, you're dropped into this endless pitch black void, your first experience in the abyss and before you can even get there. Get your bearings if you can, this music starts blaring in your ear as one of the Four Kings rises in the distance and charges at you, it's pure panic and just as you wonder where the other three are, oh hello, the way this boss works is that as you fight the other kings will gradually appear even after you kill one they will keep respawning and respawning until Four Kings can be active at any time and although one or two are manageable , all four are cursed. almost impossible this fight is a damage rush kill the Kings quickly before they overwhelm you now fortunately with the power of my new miracle I have more than enough damage to get through the fight and relative ease but I still love it yes I can know the tricks and yes, I can basically brute force my way through at this point, but that doesn't make me like it any less.

An extremely solid boss for me, not my favorite, but he's definitely up there and with the death of the Four Fallen Kings, getting the Lord's soul fragment that Gwen bequeathed them and getting out of there one minus three to go well, still we have not reviewed Laurentius. I wonder how, oh Laurentius, oh oh yeah, it turns out that Laurentius also turned Hollow on his trip to Blighttown, this guy was actually one of the nicer NPCs and he really enjoyed teaching you pyromancy, so to see this happen, yeah, I mean, we can't do anything about it besides euthanize him now, but damn, that hurts anyway, we're back in Blighttown. for a specific reason and that is to join the Chaos Pact with the beautiful lady.

I apologize, fellow Sun Bros, but I'm doing this for the greater good. You will soon understand that we need to reach rank 2 in the Covenant, which requires us to obtain an entire humanity of 30. to the beautiful lady and that is a big change, in fact, I had to go raise rats in the burg for a while to get what you needed. I don't know why rats abandon Humanity, but they do. I sacrifice literally everything. from this to the Covenant and obtain my required rank now we need to make a small detour, well, a pretty substantial detour, really okay folks.

I would have my opinion on the demon ruins right now, but it's too early, we'll come back here later. period and I'll have a lot more to say so just be patient for now we're going to jump forward a little bit with our rank in the Chaos Covenant, we get the ability to open this door that takes us to a hallway with a bunch of glowworms of the sun and then we murdered them all with righteous fury. I'm pretty sure we just need to kill this specific one right here, but I'm not taking any chances. This hallway is also a shortcut between the demon ruins and one at the end of the game. areas we'll go to later, but we won't use them for now, we're just here to kill these bugs, then we'll head back out.

A further step of the mission is assured and we can continue on our way and now it is time to return to Skeletons. Scary Skeleton Amber came back well, so New Londo was nice. A little weak in terms of enemy variety, but overall, a rich, creepy atmosphere and a really solid boss. I hope you caught that view from above though folks because it's all downhill from here, the trick about the Tomb of the Giants is this, you're looking at it, the reduced viewing radius and reliance on other light sources to navigate would be Pretty annoying, but of course at least they also hide huge skeletons in the shadows.

You can see his eyes, so it's not like you're completely blind, but you know what you're not. Fun inching through the dark and relying on leaps of faith because you can barely see three feet in front of you, why so many games? I do this in the past, I still see it pop up from time to time, literally the only game genre I like this kind of stuff is survival horror and yet it was in action and platform games for a long time, why all it does is force you to stop its most sharp and kind padding and it is obvious why because if you remove the darkness the Tomb of the Giants is barely at a level.

They are just a bunch of caves with skeletons inside, there's a nice view of lost Izalith and Ash Lake down here, but the area itself is so bland that the lack of any distinguishing features of the Abyss worked because you know it's the abyss, it's an absolute void of nothingness and even then you could still see very clearly the enemies you were supposed to fight, they didn't take away ninety percent of your vision and you only saw the Kings when they were right on top of your ass about to make pancakes, friends, hello, damn, that is. a huge arrow I'm fine, I'm completely fine, I'm absolutely fine, I'm sure people will defend this by saying that it adds tension and chills, and it sure can do that in the right environment, but you know, New Londo had a pretty intense atmosphere. creepy. and it wasn't necessary to make him almost completely blind to do that, at least the game gives you a flashlight at the bottom of a well almost halfway down the road and to use the flashlight you have to give up one of your hands to hold it. turned on, which isn't the worst thing, but it's just another layer of annoyance on top of everything else, despite all this, although Tomb of the Giants isn't my least favorite level, it's irritating, but thankfully it's short and he gave us that. a really funny GIF after you pass a certain point, the game just drops the whole Darkness thing with as much fanfare as it deserves and an NPC attacks me for my trouble, why are there a bunch of mini pinwheels down here surrounding Gravelord?

Nito's domain and the baby skeletons coming out of the ground. I'm sure it's all somewhere in history. I especially love how going into this fight you have to take almost half your health and fall damage, that's a fun fact when I first played this. I always had problems with Neato, but everyone I knew said it was easy and at the same time everyone I knew said Seath was very difficult and I beat Seth on my first try without difficulty. I'm not really sure what that says, but there you have it. Well I will definitely say that Nesto's theme song is fantastic, it certainly sounds incredibly creepy and as an undead it makes sense since he presides over the realm of the dead and all, his design is incredible and he definitely has significant intimidation value , but apart from that.

Well, now I understand why everyone said it was easy, apart from some skeletons that require a Divine weapon to fully kill. Nino only has three attacks I think, he swings his sword, explodes in the shadow explosion and does this thing which is actually and it's very hard to avoid, you just have to dodge at the right time, but man, is it still accurate now? I never have a problem with him and as long as you don't move to the back of the arena and just let him come at you in At first, the giant skeletons there don't do anything.

The only thing that baffled me this time was this skeleton that simply refused to die no matter how many times I killed it with my divine mace. Don't know. What specific rule kept this skeleton boy alive, but apparently his devotion to Lord Neato was too great to be deterred by a blunt murder? Nito seemed to work though Rest In Pieces, the world's most determined skeleton, so yeah, Anita looks great, her music is great. but their fight is a bit average, at least it's a decent reward. There are two Lord's souls left in the bag and thankfully we don't have a big checklist to attend to right now, which is Port, head back to Anor Londo and we head straight to the next area, oh. but not before completely crushing the firekeeper, since she's a little mad at me for killing gwyndolin.

It's understandable, apparently the first line of defense for large archives is a giant suit of armor. No problem. I have the power to throw lightning bolts. Of course, I chose to run headlong brandishing the sword, why am I like this? I guess Thief liked the single board attack so much that he decided to use it a second time. To be fair, it worked on me at least once, so he should leave them all. I know that the reason we're doing the final areas in this specific order is because it happens to be the same order I did them in all those years ago and, by pure coincidence, it's also the order of my best opinion of them. for the better.

The worst, so yeah, you know, I'm going to talk about something. I'll say it first and foremost, though I actually love archives. It seems like the whole giant magical library in Fantasia is always cool and I imagine sorting through all of this must have been hell for the accountants. I like how the crystal formations on the walls leading to Steve's room extend further and further as you go up, it'slike an infection that spreads slowly and you get closer to its source, so the visuals are good, especially compared to the Tomb of the Giants. because you know I can see them, it's everything else, I don't like, on the one hand, the variety of enemies, these Crystal Soldier guys are the most common enemy in this entire level and they are everywhere, no, actually, I want say everywhere, they are quite fragile, but they are fast enough to ambush you and deal a lot of damage per hit, but they alone are not the problem.

Remember these guys, the channelers, well, they're back and yes, they also do that ridiculous damage-enhancing Trident dance. of all the enemies around them, like the one in the burg, only now instead of turning a group of relatively mundane and easy-to-deal with enemies into a real threat, the crystal types that are already hitting pretty hard start hitting like Freight trains, oh oh, that. It was the most devastating shot in history to progress in this level, we actually need to take this elevator here to Seth's room. Seth can't actually be killed here since he instantly heals any damage he can do to you.

You're supposed to die, which apparently results in you being captured and thrown into a cell. It's really strange that you're supposed to lose a fight this late in the game. Normally you'd see them towards the beginning to set a narrative tone or give yourself a point to shoot and then have it here it's just I don't know, it's weird. Oh, and by the way, even though you're supposed to die here, you still lose all your souls in humanity when you do, if you didn't know that. beforehand or ripperoni, my friend, fortunately I came prepared, while the prison cells are even more impressive in scale and again, whatever they paid those accountants was not enough How many times do you think someone fell to their death trying to get something out of a section up there probably at least once a week after exploring and opening a couple of these cells that we found hidden in the back of one, all alone Ray, yes, yes, Raya up here and completely hollow , there might be a line of dialogue somewhere explaining why she came here, but I probably missed it anyway, it also seems like it was captured at some point before you locked her up and probably left.

Hollow just sitting in this cell, another friend who left and needed to be sacrificed seeing how she doesn't even cast any Miracles and just runs at you hitting you, it's a little sad, really despite everything, she still ended up like this, just like the Fallen Knight crest and the same as Laurentius. Damn man, well at least we found Logan again also trapped in a cell and once again we need rescue, we don't have the key to that cell yet so we'll have to come back later you know? You know, we've been negative and gloomy for quite a while and I'm getting fatigued here.

You need a little levity, so here are my adventures with the corpse of a snake man, enjoy, okay, I guess now I have a friend who will come with me, ah, arm in arm, we will go see the world together. Actually, they are just. completely caught up in me, okay this is my friend now, hi Logan, this is my friend, this is my new friend, how are you? Don't be afraid, the outside world is much better than this old place, you will love it, I promise. oh no, come on, come on, come on, a random bit of geometry, you won't come between me and friendship, yeah, friendship triumphs in general, okay, wait, I need to put them in front of the ladder, I need to put them on top of me. in front of the stairs why suddenly this is what I have to do I don't know but I knew it no no no no no no no oh oh oh oh oh it's okay it's okay friend it's okay it's okay no oh no oh that's how sad man, I would ask you if you want to be my friend, but I can already tell that it won't work.

This is where Dark Souls really starts again using the enemy hiding behind Corner waiting to attack you. Seriously, you can spin anywhere. Blind corner here and I have about a 70 chance of hitting something in the face. I love that view, although I honestly can't point out anything the files do that makes me dislike it, it's a bunch of smaller things that add up that I placed. it's below the Tomb of the Giants but I'd really rate them about the same where the files are a bunch of smaller annoyances like level design, enemy variety and stuff like that, the tomb had one glaring annoyance where it was a lot easier to concentrate.

My frustration continues and at least the grave was short. The archives seem to have made this huge, brilliant-looking map but didn't have enough ideas to fill it, which is probably accurate considering that the original development of Dark Souls sadly began to rush towards the end. We'll talk about that later, although after continuing to adventure and steal all the things from all the chests, we will finally find the key to Logan's big cell in the prison, so we are going to rescue our gloriously friend once again, but no. before this happens. in the back, one on the shoulder and one directly on the butt, that is simply disrespectful and how dare you go back to the cells?

We free Logan, who I imagine is barely containing himself from running out of this cage and doing the equivalent of reading. devour these books like a hungry wolf and now he will actually teach us all the spells of his regardless of our intellect and unfortunately we need to buy them all to advance his quest and there are many, so forgive me while I burn. my wallet alive 200,000 souls later, okay, it was actually 183,000, but close enough. Logan also discovered the source of the cessation of immortality in the game's introduction. We are told that Seth lacked the immortal scales of his brothers in ancient times and betrayed them after helping Gwen. win the war against the ancient dragons Seth delved into his research on how to artificially create this immortality and apparently he succeeded and at some point in the whole process maybe he went completely crazy, so yeah, apparently Seith created or discovered something called primordial.

Crystal, so if you want any chance of killing him, we have to smash him outside the fog gate. Here we find a giant golden Crystal Golem wandering around, we kill it and they drop another NPC Siegland, you'll see my father if you couldn't. Tell him she's our dear onion boy's daughter, of course, we've seen him many times and we tell him just so he's not sure why he sounds like he's five, but yeah, you know, as I write this I feel the same when talking about This Place, how I feel when I play it, I want to like it, I want to have fun with it, but my God, is it taking forever?

At least the Crystal Caves are big and pretty, like I said, the pictures are great from top to bottom, but like The Archives, this place also has its annoying invisible bridges, but to be fair, they are quite wide and show visibly through falling glass hitting them, so that's not so bad, but look, it's our old friend tilted geometry, ah yes, giant clams. The sorcerer's favorite familiar, yes you know what, we finally, at last, reach the Primordial Crystal and Seeth is understandably a little angry at us for disturbing him. Obviously, to start the fight, you need to destroy the crystal before you can hurt Seath. and fortunately it is as strong as my self-esteem.

I have to say that the music for this fight is really strange, but it fits perfectly. You see a dragon that has gone completely crazy, performing all kinds of horrible experiments on people and delving into knowledge that is better left unknown. goal of achieving immortality and my goodness, that's a big boy. I'm pretty sure Seath is the physically biggest boss we've fought so far, he barely fits in his own arena, most of his attacks are just crazy flails with his tentacles, why? it has tentacles, yes, whatever it is that shoots lasers blindly around it and of course the big crystal explosion that occurred before the cristosis attacks left behind also deals curse damage when walking through them, so there's the ever-present threat of simply being bitten by an instant-death mechanic when you're also fighting him, if you cut off the tip of his rearmost tentacle tail, you'll get the Moonlight Greatsword, an item that doesn't I was going to use it but I wanted it anyway because, again, I'm weird like that and I died twice trying to get it.

Without going for the sword, the fight is pretty easy. I'd say the biggest threat is dying from curse damage, which sucks, but most of his attacks can miss if you just attack him by ducking in and out, that is, while you're the Paragon. brain that I was chosen to simply slap Sunlight Blade and return with Mono charging and swinging my sword like a heavily armed and divinely empowered angry gorilla, which worked to be fair, but I miscalculated how much curse damage I could take and got which I Deserved, fortunately, although I did get the third Lord Soul afterwards, so apparently it still counts.

I will accept it. I'm not really sure if I'd call it a good boss, since it's not that difficult, but it looks a lot like the files I at least have to give. points for the scale or should I say lack thereof anyway with the third Mr. Soul firmly in our grasp I decide to say one last goodbye to Logan uh uh Logan, you feeling good buddy I guess he's busy um we'll do it. I'll be back later, so you know, before we go. I'm curious what's in that room where we first fought Seath now that he's dead, so damn again.

I didn't really talk much about Logan, I admit, but to give a quick summary, he's fine, he didn't deserve this, that's for sure, like Laurentius, he liked teaching you and generally seemed like. as if he had a good head on his shoulders, even if apparently his methods and aversion to taboos earned him an unfavorable reputation in his homeland, it's also possible that Griggs was sent to keep an eye on him or kill him, I'm not sure, but that It's a theory. that's floating around out there, he just wanted to obtain the knowledge locked in the archives, not for power or control, but just out of curiosity and well, whatever was here led him to the exact same fate that Bethel sees or maybe it was the made.

That he achieved his goal, he had unlimited knowledge available to him and now, what else was there? He had everything he wanted, but maybe that wasn't enough or maybe the pursuit of it was all the purpose he had left either way, he was gone too, just another body added to the pile I don't think even when he Hollow his body He's not decomposed or anemic, he just lost his mind somehow, one by one, everyone we know is dying by turning Hollow or betraying us, what the hell is going on? here framp take your damn soul lord one more step and we already know where we are going so first we go back to the demonic ruins we can't even reach the demonic ruins because of the flow of lava that comes from this incessant discharge whose name No I'll make no jokes about who just stands there, hovering over what appears to be the grave of an Izalith witch, staring almost motionless, not becoming hostile until we mess with the body, which we do because I'm on a roll.

Being a horrible person today and trying to fight them head-on is not advisable, so we run back to the fog gate of the Arena, wait for him to get closer and when he reaches us, he will jump forward and grab on. the ledge then all we have to do is knock it down. I don't feel good about it, but it's hard for me to feel good about anything right now. Anyway, with our path open, the demonic ruins are now accessible and oh my goodness, that's it. With plenty of Capper demons, copying and pasting enemies gets especially blatant here with these ancient boss demons standing there almost in orderly rows.

I don't know why, but just seeing the Capper demons lined up like that makes me depressed when I come here, luckily. that depression is interrupted by this, yeah, look at her walking around this part here oh hey, Kirk's back remembers it and now statues of fat, fire-breathing demons and another slightly larger Taurus demon. I think I know why this park depresses me. Cappers and Taurus demons are It's not even new, there's just more of them now, that's all, and giant centipedes, I think that's pretty cool and just because I'm really paranoid, I decide to give those worms another part of my mind. of sunlight through the fog door here and it's just a stray demon but now it's on fire, this isn't even worth talking about, it's a complete filler boss, let's continue with more of those demon statues and a lot more of those demon statues, this is getting worrying, could you look at that? an elevator that goes from the demon ruins to the quilag domain, which is pretty cool.

I should say that right after that there is another fog door and you know it's a boss door because you cansee summoning signs around you. Oh God, Solaris, you understand so. yeah, I need some cheerful cooperation right now, thanks, at least you're still alive and onion boy wherever he ran off to, but anyway, yeah, it's time to cooperate with some poor people on earth, let's go well, this thing looks metallic as hell even though I'm having trouble seeing where it starts and where it ends, most of its sand is lava that can vaporize you in seconds, fact, I remember it very quickly, oh right, death hurts a lot , Lava I sometimes surprise myself with how often I forget the most primitive lesson.

Humanity ever taught itself to shoot unless your name is Solaire, apparently, damn Solaire, you just don't care, in any case, the demon is not that difficult, although if you rip off his arm, his head, his another head, I think it turns into a smaller centipede that charges at you, luckily the beam continues to solve all my problems and we get the charred orange ring which drastically reduces the damage we take from the lava and I mean drastically like it now does to us tickling, allowing us to enter the next part of the ruins without being reduced. to crispy bacon and around the corner sitting by the campfire is so weird, oh thank goodness buddy let me tell you I've been having a shitty time lately and I've never been happier to see what, after everything, I still can't find it, no, no, no, no. no no no no no no no no no no I'm not used to it, man, please, you too, look, I get it, it sucks right now, it's bad, but we'll do it right, we'll make it, we'll make it. the end together it's okay just don't leave okay just don't leave okay that got heavy so what's up Nick oh yeah I'm not even going to bother with the pretensions lost eyes it sucks everyone knows it sucks it's so well known That I spoiled it a thousand years ago in the intro and I guarantee none of you were surprised to see this place now only makes me sad, it's a monument to lost potential, a reminder of what could have been and became criminally underrealized, I mentioned. that Dark Souls started to have a problematic Rush development towards the end, it's not exactly clear where it started and what areas were actually damaged by it, but lost Izalith was absolutely one of them, confirmed by the man himself, this place ended not even close to its maximum capacity.

The vision takes in blooming fields of undead dragon asses placed with as much care and cohesion as a bad Half-Life custom map or that bit with all the headcrabs and hunting down the Freeman, they're barely a threat you can run past. most of them and even the ones that are in your way will simply kill each other trying to get to you. I literally did nothing here, one just died from the other's attacks. You can't make this up and yet somehow I managed to get there. Myself killed by one of them I don't even know what happened there, at least I can take some comfort and knowing that I wasn't the only one, the lava, the most consistent level of Danger between us and our ultimate goal, isn't even a danger.

Because of our new ring, yes, it will cause constant damage to your ship, but that doesn't mean that your billion health and your 20 plus 5 Estes flasks and that constant burning noise make me want to commit major acts of violence. The way these demon statues are amazing, they have an attack and it locks them in place, sometimes in front of One Direction, they are a method of hurting you, it makes it easier to kill them and oh my god, how many of them? are there? You know it from everyone. my problems with the Duke's files at least the endless soldiers of the Crystal Army were placed in real formations oh sweet Christ the new enemy thank you I have no idea what I'm seeing but you know what I'll take oh hello Kirk bye Kirk, it's hard for Even being comically angry about this just depresses me.

I mean, look at this place, it looks amazing, it should have been a fantastic area and yet here we are, the only decent thing I can say about this place is that at least we meet our onion boy again, of course, then It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize where I was. Siegmeyer eventually offers to repay his debt to you by sacrificing himself so you can escape the group of chaos eaters below, fortunately, if he finds his way down and kills all but one. You can make sure he doesn't die and get the final leg of the quest from him.

I don't think he needed any help to be honest. Jesus, are you absolutely sure you ever needed my help? anytime see Meyer Jesus man, that damage was crazy Siegmeyer once again thanks you for helping him and decides to fall asleep standing in a puddle of poison. I'm sure it'll be fine and before we're done here we have One last thing we need to check: we go up the roots past this Demon Titanite statue and kill the sunlight worms for the third time because I'm nothing if not thorough on this one. period and was everything alive? Have I done all this for nothing?

Solaire is alive in the shortcut and believe it or not, we saved him if we hadn't gone down this passage earlier and killed those sunlight worms. Solaire would be here controlled by someone who had lost his mind and was completely unable to recognize us and was forcing us to do so. defend ourselves, this was the end of Solaire's story during many people's departures until a way to save him was discovered, but as you can see, he is still alive, but he questions his entire reason for being here to take this journey, to begin with that naïve and jovial attitude gone, the desolation of the world finally caught up with him, at least he's safe, he won't die here anytime soon, we have a job to finish and I don't even need to tell you what's next.

Did you know this? was coming, we all did, it's almost impossible to make a video talking about Dark Souls 1 without mentioning it and really after 12 years and thousands of other videos there's nothing left to say that hasn't already been said at least a hundred times adding Now just It would be my turn to get over the damned mess that may have once been a dead horse, so there really isn't much point in me doing so. I'll do it anyway now, that may seem unnecessary and overkill. after all this time and you would be right to say that, but in my defense this is deserved, where to start, Bed of Chaos doesn't have just one thing that makes it bad, it's everything, it's a Cavalcade of terrible that everything comes together in a gigantic explosion of stupidity it technically has three phases although I don't think the first one counts oh how threatened I feel you know how I said Sen's Fortress could have done some really cheap deadly things and been justified while it certainly feels like this boss was trying to compensate for tiles falling without warning, they suddenly make these ineffective attacks very effective and were forced to rely on completely broken jumping mechanics that barely work, I mean, I barely had to. on the last pixel of that ledge to make that jump, it's possible to dodge to get through those branch attacks, but that means I bet this thing's hitbox behaves consistently, so I'll take my chance to make the jump faith to Banks.

However, during his last phase is when things get worse, he starts throwing these pillars of fire that can appear from anywhere and doing slam attacks that come off the screen so you can't see them, oh but don't worry , we do. We don't have to fight this, we just have to run through the middle of it all and make one last jump to a curved Branch in its center. Oh, and the Bed of Chaos hasn't stopped shaking madly either and those attacks are wide, very good. luck and even if you manage to get past them you have to land that jump and not accidentally roll if they don't hit you in the air and as you make your way towards the last weak point is I keep summoning these damn pillars of fire that now you can barely dodge you finally hit the bug in its center and voila, you killed it, that's the boss, fight on a glorified death map, the only non-actively hostile thing I can say about this bug is that it's the only boss that has checkpoints because even the developers knew that this was horrible and they wanted the player to get over it as quickly as possible.

I don't blame them, this isn't just the worst boss in all of Dark Souls. but he's a top contender for one of the worst bosses of all time and that's been lost. Izalith. Horrible map design. Horrible variety of enemies. Eye-straining color palette and lighting, all topped off with a boss so atrociously terrible that it couldn't even make me complain. It's funny, this whole area is the number one reason I tend to stop my Dark Souls playthroughs at Anor Londo because I always have that time and I always enjoy revisiting it until then, but I know I'll eventually have to crush those good times. . and turned into dust for this I said it before I'll say it again Miyazaki and probably the entire Dark Souls team to this day regrets the lost look and how it turned out to be the result of poor management of time resources and a date tight limit and oh my god, can you tell I couldn't even have fun with this?

I was actually excited to talk about lost Islip and trash it, but now I'm depressed and angry, the planetary amounts of lost potential this place represents eating away at me at every turn. The time I come back to it and what makes it worse is that, for the first time, this was my penultimate experience with Dark Souls as a whole. I entered the final battle immediately after this place and if I were to follow it. Honestly, it would be ruining the trip for me and all of you, so you know, no, we won't end on such a terrible, depressing note.

I'm taking a detour, this completely ruins the pacing of the script, but no. It doesn't matter, we won't leave it like this kid strap, let's go back in time, wait a minute, this is not where I left my stopwatch, welcome to the DLC, everyone, let's go. Sartorius of the Abyss was the first and only. Major expansion released for Dark Souls 1. As you may have guessed, it follows the events of Knight Artorius' original battle against the Awakened Abyss and the resulting consequences of his defeat. It also has a bit of a strange mission to start with first. to where we find the hydro and darker to kill it, restart the area, find this Golden Golem, kill it, drop a woman called princess dusk, dusk asks you to help her kingdom and then you rebuild it, then you go to the entrance of the large archives, kill the specific Golem that is depressed in the corner for some reason they take the broken Medallion, they drop their heads towards the place where you met Dusk and gather through a portal and dear friends raise their hands to the sky and praise the sun because that quality and passion of Dark Souls is again in force in this expansion.

It's much better than the vast majority of the endgame, probably because the team was less pressed for time and could focus on making this relatively short experience as good as possible. It's also arguably harder than almost all of Dark Souls. See Artorius of the Abyss. one of those expansions that assumes you've played the original game to death and, as such, feels no remorse as you tighten your gloves and swing for the fences. It has a total of four bosses, each much more difficult than all the Dark Souls ending bosses. game and most others in general, while each previous boss had a certain rhythm, each of them shared to a certain point and certain indications when they are about to attack, these have completely different rhythms compared to that and I certainly find it went up several times in my first Time Through Hell, it's still served me raw ass, even some of the basic enemies you encounter have moves and attacks designed specifically to throw you off and nowhere is that more prevalent than the poster of the entire DLC, you know it wasn't.

I'm going to delve into the DLC section since this video has already taken enough time, but I had to do it for Sir Artorius. It's just respectful. You don't really fight Artorias when he was in his prime. You fight him right after he falls fighting against the abyss. little more than a hollowed-out corpse being manipulated by the darkness he sought to contain, but there's clearly more than a little of his old self there when he starts doing this, so you know how we went back in time, well I'm Artorias thought the same thing because this came out of Dark Souls 3.

His moveset is very varied and fast, much more so than any other boss in the entire game, with some variations in moves that are again meant to trip up your momentum with all the bosses in This DLC are more aggressive leagues than anything before and Artorius is the king among them. He won't give you even a second to catch your breath unless you really gain some distance and he'll make you fight for those little moments to heal yourself, yeah. I Artorius was harder than the actual final boss of the Manus Father of the Abyss DLC oh you have no idea how much I want to start talkingI gushed about the story this whole expansion added, but I promised myself I wouldn't.

I'll just say that. Artorias, the legend himself, is the highlight of the entire DLC for me, the boss I remember the most and the one that still gives me the most trouble to this day. The developers knew they had to give this guy all the love they could. and boy, didn't they disappoint you? You're fighting a broken and hollowed Legend and it sure feels that way. There's a lot more I want to say about the DLC. I love how the Oola seal visibly sinks into the abyss with all the architecture leaning towards it. large opening open in its center.

I love how the deeper you go, the more you start to see this abyssal substance all over the ground as you get closer to the center of the corruption. I love the little details in the dialogue we get that further hint at Dark's true story. Souls, how the abyss began to spread and the nature of what the abyss could be. I love this sassy one. I love this big one. I love how you find a young thief and if you rescue him and fight him later, you get a different scene as he is recognized. you and oh god damn it breaks my heart.

I could go on, but I think you get the point and I'll go into a lot more detail about this in my follow-up video whenever that happens if the entire second half of Dark Souls had this kind of energy, I can't imagine how fantastic it could be. have been, poor time resource management and a tight deadline choked the life out of her, but I'm at least very happy that part of her focused on this again if she had to. Imagine that part of the reason they made this DLC was probably because they knew that the second half of Dark Souls was very poor and they collectively wanted to rectify that you don't get a game like Dark Souls from a team that didn't have their With all my heart and for my recorded playback, it was a refreshing renewal of quality and a sudden challenge that I desperately needed to get closer to the final parts, but at least we don't have much longer left, so I think it's time we got back on track, dear. father throughout our journey we have met and become friends with many people in almost all and each of them have become Hollow have gone crazy or have cut the crest in revenge Fallen night laurentius Reya Vince and Nico lautrec Logan and Now Siegmeyer dead on the beach of Ash Lake was sacrificed by his own daughter to stop its emptying.

No story we have come across has ever ended happily. The world we fought so hard to restore is beyond all hope and the people we did everything we could to save fell in the end standing here. At the last obstacle we ask ourselves after losing so much what we have left to fight for why we are here to save a world Beyond saving a world that hated us and never loved us at all for the honor and memory of those who were forgotten even of themselves in In the end there is nothing left, there is no reason to move on, we do not enter this final arena with hope in our hearts and Triumph in our wake, we enter it feeling like the scum of the earth, like a walking corpse , barely grasping what a small illusion. of life is gone much like the world itself we should never have been here we should have died like everyone else we cared about even as great and impressive as the furnace of the first lighting, we barely care in the end we don't.

No matter, we are only here to see this through to the end, there is no other direction but to press forward by the dying hopes and the silver words of others, words that now ring hollow in our ears, but as we get closer, we detect a flickering in the distance. A single pit of golden light shining brightly and defiantly against the world around it. Solaire did it. He came to the end after everything you both have been through. Everyone you have known and forced to see fall here. It was not in vain. Not in vain, what does it mean to become Hollow?

An undead that becomes Hollow does not simply die, but loses the will to continue living, since an undead can never fully die, but an aimless undead cannot avoid the inevitable. The creeping madness that will eventually take hold without any art or purpose to focus your efforts on the symptoms accelerates and soon claims your minds, steals your free will, your thoughts, your memories, sometimes small pieces at a time, but always. It ends the same way. lifeless corpse cursed to wander the world for eternity empty and Hollow Solaire almost suffered the same fate after failing to find his own son his own light Solaire began to go crazy and lost Izalith speaking to himself and barely registering his presence if he did.

We would have left it as it was. It wouldn't even have mattered if he had been possessed by the Sunlight Worm and forced to fight us because he would have become Hollow like the rest with no goal to fight for and the Void of the world trapping him. He almost drowned in it, a powerful and jovial hero would have met a tragic and pathetic end, but he found a reason to keep going. Something or someone to fight for. Do you want to know how I know? Because after all the journey that you and Solaire shared after the many times you fought together after you saved him from a terrible end and he is standing in the oven, what does he do?

Burden in defeat? Lord Gwynn in glorious combat sacrifices himself to restore the first flame and become the son he sought all this time. No. He walks away to the side, leaves his summoning signature and waits to fight alongside you one last time. This is Gwen or was Gwen you've been talking about all this time. The imposing figure depicted in statues who is spoken of as a hero. a God among gods this is all that remains of him a Madden corpse hollow to the core with mere echoes of his once great power the man who once struck down stone dragons with lightning and ushered in the age of Fire can now barely handle a single burst of flame, almost all of his attacks can be parried and if done right this fight can be won with barely any need to dodge, there is no Grace or Majesty in the way he swings that sword of fire, just desperate, thoughtless aggression, and this is not a first phase trick and his true power is revealed after that health bar disappears when he dies, he just dies, that's it, there is no second coming, there is no great revelation, only another body is added to the pile, this is the man who was meant to succeed, the one who sacrificed countless lives even his own to prolong the age of fire, an age that may well have been doomed to fade from the beginning, All of this may have been nothing more than a prolonged death sigh of an already dead world prophecy.

Destiny was never about a prophecy or achieving our destiny this was a desperate attempt by a fearful few who cowered in the darkness to restore a world that has been lost for a long time everywhere in this game is being crumbling and decaying who knows how long this has been going on you were never a chosen Undead there were probably countless before you and perhaps many more will come after Solaire himself said so right at the beginning of our journey the flow of time itself is complicated with centuries old heroes gradually coming in and out, the world is in such chaos that time itself has become corrupted and warped who really knows how many times this exact scenario has been played out.

Every ghost we see is just another undead acting out the same events over and over and over and over and over again and why it's this dead, hollow, warped world that should have died a long time ago. clinging hopelessly to a fading age that will never come back, defeating Gwyn is weightless, there's no triumphant victory or anything like that, sure it can kill you, sure it can make up for the damage, but you'll always come back, you'll keep getting back up and Throwing yourself at him like you've done with every other boss in this game, you die, get up, die again and get up again, it's a cycle similar to the cycle that the world of Lordran has gotten caught up in actions. of a fearful Gwyn, unknowingly dooming thousands to endlessly repeat this same misery over and over again in the vain hope of finding the hero who can finally end this and restore the Flames forever in a way that is a beautiful tragedy for those left with the power to guide the world, instead turn it to this desperate ploy to guide those foolish enough to fight for them down the same path to serve as little more than kindling to keep that first burning. he calls, maybe to break up with you, maybe not, who really knows, maybe.

This is really the last time it will end in all of Dark Souls and the adventure you took raised that unspoken question about whether or not this world is worth saving, if it could be saved at all, so what do you do? cast your hope to those who will come after that perhaps they will find a way to break this curse and undo it all or let it fade and walk silently into the darkness towards whatever it may bring, we don't really know what comes next. our choice, all we can do is hope that we made the right one Dark Souls is a game that I greatly appreciate, that made me appreciate storytelling and gaming on a completely different level when I first played it and that I still have a monumental amount of respect for all these years later, but sadly I have to admit that not everything has aged as well as I thought.

Halfway through this game is one of the most finely crafted, expertly paced, and beautifully dark games I've ever played. and the other half is a slow, agonizing descent into utter mediocrity and disappointment, it ends on a tragic note, something well done, and its expansion adds some much-needed love and passion to the end of the game, but it doesn't come true. of what might have been a minor pain, I stopped my games around Anor Londo, not just because I hate losing izalith or whatever, but because reaching the end of the game reminds me that this game was nowhere near the vision I could have been. if the Polish of the first half had carried over to the second half as a question that eats a little every time I repeat it and yet, despite all that, despite all the problems and aspects that have not aged well , despite the slow descent into mediocrity to despite the lost eyes in Bed of Chaos, I can't help but dislike this game, not even close, it's not perfect, far from it, but when it's good, it's actually very Well, it became a phenomenon not just for one reason but for many. reasons they have only come to appreciate much more.

As I've grown older, there's beauty in its simplicity and even if it's not as well polished as its successors, it still has a twisted dark charm and beauty that hasn't been recaptured by software. best games since then, but for me, Dark Souls has been and always will be one of my favorites. There's something it does that no other game in history has done before and has done since and nothing is going to change that saint. I'm alive, thank you. Thank you all very much for watching what is undoubtedly my most ambitious video today. This was really hard to make so if you enjoyed it I would really appreciate it if you could like a comment to help the channel grow and if you want to stick around make sure to subscribe and do all the Bell stuff for those interested ​​on my Patreon page.

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