So after a few missteps with the dual Dragonrider gank, and learning that one of them was laughably weak to my weapon, I conquered them and explored the rest of the castle. Thankfully, the rest of the castle is a lot less annoying than the early sections, especially the room with the living statues and the freaking Sentry Knight Bosses. I'm going to forever associate those bosses with how many gank fights there are in this game since they seem to pop up in the areas that have the worst examples of them.

Speaking of them, I forgot to explore the room properly and backtrack to them, where I discovered this old man babbling on about the Dark like Kaathe from DS1 and I also discovered the Farrom Set (sp?) which for those who don't know, is the armor set used in all of the promotional materials. Being the basic bitch that I am, it's my new armor at the moment, and frankly, with a few upgrades, it is actually better than what I was using with the exception of my helmet. Still the armor looks cooler than my weird animal headress knight with flashy Michael Jackson pants, so I'm probably going to stick to this set for awhile. I did find a decent medium shield with 100% physical reduction I may also switch to once I upgrade it a bit.

I fought the Looking Glass Knight and defeated him, but not without losing Jugo in the process and thus ending both his quest line and the ability to get his gear. So, I'm kind of annoyed by that, but it wasn't like I didn't screw up with the Siegmeyer quest in DS1 and accidentally let Boris of the Twin Fangs die in Demon's Souls either... I am pretty bad about keeping jolly "Big Guys" alive in these games it seems. It actually surprised me too, cause the Glass Knight spent most of the fight wailing on me up until he summoned an ally who went for Jugo before I back-stabbed him to death. After that, Jugo became the primary target and if Jugo and I didn't have half our attacks land on his stupidly huge ass shield, I probably would have finished him off before Jugo died. At east I still have Lucretia.

I've reached the Shrine of Amana and called it knight. I probably would have gotten more done, but I wanted to do some more Co-Op cuse I've done very little in this game and I'm still miffed I was denied in Bloodborne and will likely be denied in Dark Souls 3 as well for the same dumb reason. Yet, I am having a seriously hard time getting this going for me. I'm not sure if I'm too overleveled in Soul Memory, or if there isn't as many new players for this entry and all the action is going down in NG+, or if it's just something I didn't even think of, but I wanted to level up the Heirs of the Sun covenant and no one wants my help. I get invaded enough times to know it's not my online service, though I did have one poor soul try to summon me for the Rotten and my connection kept getting lost and disconnecting us. I'm not even a huge fan of multiplayer shenanigans but I like Dark Souls treatment of the medium and some of my favorite memories of Dark Souls was camping out in front of the Capra Demon Boos room and helping players even the odds against that cheap smurf. So I'm a little annoyed that I've wasted two evenings for some "jolly cooperation" that never happened.

I'm not exactly looking forward to the Shrine of Amana, it's reputation proceeds it, and it sounds like it's DS2's version of New Londo where ambushes and falling to your death are the norm cause everything is underwater. Have I mentioned how much I disliked New Londo? At least before I finally got a ghost to drop the weapons they are weak to so I didn't have to worry about using that consumable to hurt them.

Speaking of consumables, I feel the one thing I'm going to give this game props for is having merchants in your hub area that actually sell upgrade materials for your gear. You got some in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but they often involved traveling to specific locations and even then they only sold the most basic of upgrade material. Having easy access to Basic and Large Titanite, and in close proximity to the blacksmith has been a nice surprise. In fact, the only truly disappointing merchants have been the magic based ones, as many of their skills feel a bit too basic and I've honestly found most of their wares just traveling. Not a bad thing for me, since I still lack enough levels in Attunement to even equip magic, but it does seem to me like the selection is a bit too basic and you'll get your money's worth buying from all the others merchants.