Got quite a bit done tonight.

Met the imprisoned sorcerer who is this game's version of Yurt or Lautric, though I feel it's safer to say he's a cool shout out to Mephistopheles from Demon's Souls since he can contract out his assassinations to you. Made more amusing in that you can actually acquire all the items needed without killing his targets as I already had the first two target's items when I met him, and before the day was done, I acquired the last two.

The dragon at Aldia's Keep was a pretty cool fight when the camera cooperated at least. The Dragon Arie was pretty cool, though I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff going through there. The Dragon Shrine was surprisingly annoying despite being so short. I've heard you can fight the Dragon NPC there, but considering how huge he is and the sheer amount of bloodstains I saw around him, I may leave that for another day.

I was kind of stuck at this point, and had to look up where to go next, so I checked out the Giant's Memories around the Forest of Giants, which was a pretty cool idea. Kind of hated the march up to the Giant's King since I kept getting two shotted with being hit with a bombardment only to get hit with the bosses air slash move. I collected the three Gian't Souls and the Giant's Kinship. I even grabbed the fourth one in Black Gulch as well and the key to finally join the Darklurker Covenant, but again, I'm debating about it.

As of right now, I can go and beat the game and get the original vanilla endings, I can take out Vendrick and open up the opportunity to fight the new final boss and get the new ending, I can finish up the vanilla game by taking on the optional bosses from there, or I can start the DLC. I'm probably going to not bother with just going straight to the end and will either deal with the few lingering quests and bosses left in the main game, or I'll start the DLC, likely the DLC as I'm not really in the mood to fight a dragon that can apparently one shot me with any of his attacks. That and I don't quite want to drop my covenant since I have not been able to really rank it up, and I figure the DLC will help me there. Any suggestions?

Before I do go further, I would like to say that I feel the second half of the game has been much more enjoyable than the first half. Maybe it's because none of the starting areas really grabbed me like some of the final areas, or maybe I felt the opening was a little too directionless for my taste compared to the tighter narrative of the second half, but it's amusing how this is like the opposite of DS1 for me.