Dark Souls

[Wolf Kanno]

Not much advancement tonight. I did a little co-op, but nothing fruitful because the other players either entered boss zones outside of the summonable area, or in one case, the guy had us clear a room for him before banishing us back to our worlds.

While it took freaking forever to finally start having the co-op element kick in for this game, I will give it props for having more cordial invaders. Outside of one jackass I encountered early in the game, most of the invaders I've encountered are just guys in it for some fun PVP and tend to seek you out, greet you from a distance and then go for the kill, and while I lose nine out of ten times, I'll take this friendly invasion over the BS in DS1 where invaders made certain zones a virtual nightmare for me cause the guys basically hid around the level to snipe me or sneak attack while I was trying to complete it. I think I would have loved Sen's Fortress and the Painted World more if I didn't have to worry about using Humanity cause it meant I would be invaded all the freaking time in those places. I think helping things out is the Red Soapstone which allows invaders to ask you if you want to be invaded.

This sort of brings me back to the one thought I felt about the PVP elements of this series, which is that they have it backwards. Instead of making invaders only show up in locations where the other player hasn't beaten the boss. It would make more sense to me to have the invaders only be able to invade worlds where the bosses have already been beaten. Partly cause it's frustrating to try to finish an area and prep for the boss only to have to change your plans cause some jackass showed up to ruin your day; and partly because it would actually make backtracking to older areas more exciting. I mean traveling through the Forest of Giants with my over-leveled character to grab some item I missed is kind of tedious, but would be exciting if I knew there was a chance the zone would be filled with invaders. It would make backtracking more interesting since you could still have a real challenge. DS2 certainly mixes this up since it introduces the Red Soapstone and bonfire ascetics, but I feel the PVP community would prefer this set-up since it would mean the chance to invade more players, have a much better diversity of zones to play in, and would mean they are going to be challenging an opponent who has already proven they can beat the area as opposed to maybe running into a less skilled player. Griefers may hate this set-up, but I kind of like the idea.

Onto actual news, I spent most of the evening playing around with covenants. I'm having bad luck with the Heirs of Sun covenant cause I'm either only able to be summoned in endgame zones, my host dies, or I keep getting sent away before boss battles for one reason or another; not to mention my own success rate with some bosses isn't perfect. So, I picked up the Sentinels of Blue or whatever and finally learned the missing gesture I needed for the gesture trophy, and then realized I still hadn't opened that stupid hidden door in the Black Gulch. Did that, and met the old man a third time and joined the Pilgrims of the Dark, and gained access to the side quest to unlock one of the other hidden bosses of the game. I also explored the Dragon Shrine some more and debated about fighting the dragon there and found the petrified egg needed to join the dragon covenant.

Also, is there anyway to unfreeze all the frozen treasures in the Ivory Crown DLC? I still haven't fought the first boss, but I tried pyromancy and that did nothing. I need to get back to finishing it up I guess. I did find the item that makes the invisible knights visible, so that was nice.

[Spuuky]

There would be way fewer invasions in your PvP system. I very rarely spend time in zones I'm done with (by which I mean having beaten the boss, which I do last). I would guess people spend way more time in zones pre-boss than post-boss.

You just aren't far enough in the DLC to melt the ice.

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, but if PVP was left for after bosses, then you would actually have a reason to go back to places. Instead most of the invaders stick to end game zones or places like the Painted World where the boss can be skipped, having it be post would actually give the players who like PVP a place to go and do so, and the people who would rather never bother with it can freely ignore it.

I backtrack a lot, but part of that is because I rush to the bosses so I can end invasions quickly and the other is because some zones are just fun. Afterwards I comb over an area to grab all the items and events I missed, but it would be nice to be able to enjoy areas on the first go around instead of feeling the need to find the boss ASAP cause XxXdiptrout637XxX and his cronies like to invade you while you're still trying to figure out the area. As I said, there are still some zones in DS1 and 2 I'm still salty about cause they were tough and compounded by being invasion hotbeds that raised the frustration factor more than I would care for. If you like PVP, then I don't see how the idea I suggested would really change it for them. It would largely just stick it to the Griefers.

[Syssareth]

Artorias and the Fume Knight are two of my favorite bosses in this series, which is kind of hilariously ironic because they both force me to play opposite my usual playstyle (I'm very turtly) and they both took me upwards of 20 tries to beat. As I wrote in my game diary, but then never posted anywhere: Contrary to just about any other boss, where losing more than 3-4 times was irritating, when I repeatedly lost against these two it wasn't frustrating--because I could feel myself becoming just that tiny bit better each time.

Artorias I kind of just wore down with my Great Scythe and a ton of kiting, only attacking when I was sure I had time to get a hit in, and even on that winning run, I nearly died a few times because I just couldn't shake off my turtly ways. With the Fume Knight, a couple of tries in, I discovered summoning help was a very bad idea, then a little later had another epiphany where I realized it was neither stage 1 nor stage 2 per se, but the switch between them that was getting me. Started wearing that special helmet that forced him into stage 2 from the beginning, and (after many attempts) took him down with the Craftsman's Hammer. (Went through most of the game with that hammer, but in this battle I don't recommend it; the range is so short and the battle so fast that I kept whiffing.) My winning attempt I was far more aggressive than any prior, almost not even using a shield, dodging instead of trying to block, and attacking every time I had an opening. I had one or two close calls, but overall, though it took about the same number of attempts, he went down easier than Artorias. (Though the difference likely lies in my increased experience, rather than actual difficulty.)

On another note, I just got Dark Souls 3 from the current Humble Monthly, and my computer is nowhere near the minimum specs, but it still runs. XD I've got an AMD A6-3620 APU with a 6530D graphics chip. For quick reference, it's a 2.2Ghz quad-core CPU and an integrated "GPU" with 512MB memory. Miraculously, DS3 is playable, but I've got it at 800x450 with the lowest settings possible, and I still get booted offline due to FPS sometimes. On my end, it's a bit jittery but not choppy, and there doesn't seem to be any input lag, but I'm only just past the first area so time will tell. My biggest problem so far is trying to read the tiny text. XD

I have not ran into the first area boss, nor have I found the challenge area yet, though I've heard the challenge area is one of the most reviled of all the DLC. We'll see what happens.

I'm apparently pretty tolerant for a Dark Souls player. I didn't mind Blighttown. I didn't mind the Demon Ruins/Lost Izalith. I didn't mind the Shrine of Amana or the Iron Keep or most of the areas people tend to hate. I didn't like the Black Gulch and hated the Tomb of Giants, but neither even begin to compare with my loathing for that challenge area in the Ivory King DLC. It's not even the environment I hate, though it adds insult to injury; it's the enemies. I seriously camped there for literal hours to deliberately despawn each and every one, partly to make my wanderings easier but also because those things shouldn't be allowed to exist. And to add more insult to injury, they actually have a pretty neat design. Would probably really like them if fighting them wasn't such a pain.

(In other words, I sincerely wish you good luck and highly recommend summoning any available NPCs to take aggro while you rush the boss fog. If anybody survives to follow you in, they'll help with the boss too.)

[Wolf Kanno]

Weird night.

Helped a player fight off the twin Pursuer duel and then got killed in the Nashandra fight by being too greedy and her curse damage knocked enough of my health down for her AoE attack to finish me and the guys other summon off.

Remembered that the room with all the living statues had one of the Pilgrim of the Dark areas, but instead opted to start with the one in the Black Gulch cause it's way more annoying to reach. Ended up completing that zone and the one in the Faded Woods, as well as light their torches. Luckily wasn't hit with any Player Invaders but I imagine that will change in the last area since it's a high level zone.

Opted to not to finish that quest-line and instead tackled Aava and took him down rather easily. He's powerful but his attacks miss more than I thought they would. Met the Priestess and finally melted all of the snow. Now, being the idiot that I am, I ventured back into the city to collect the knights she was talking about, as well as grab all those treasures I was denied. Ended up finding an elevator and reached this place with an NPC Invader, some ice hedgehogs, and some nasty Ice Wizards. Cleared out everything and was sitting on close to 85,000 Souls but I was really hoping to find the optional area and a bonfire. Met this odd White Phantom, who never attacked me and even used gestures. Kind was paranoid around him but against my better judgment likely due to my low supplies of healing items, I ignored him and found this lever. About the time I used it, this phantom back stabbed me and killed me in one shot. Kicked myself for being stupid. Went back to collect my souls but missed with one of my arrows and watched as one of the ice hedgehogs murdered me...

Was going to call it a night when one of the guys I friended during some of the help I got in the Old Iron King DLC messaged me and asked if I could help him with Elena. So I went and helped him take down the Squalor Queen and was getting ready to help him with Sihn when my PS3 started to lose contact with my internet (my internet is pretty awful in my area unfortunately) and kept getting shot into offline mode. Figured this was a sign to call it a night and here I am telling my exploits.

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For the most part, there are only a few zones I really dislike in the series so far.

Demon's Souls - The Valley of Defilement, easily the most obnoxious poisonous swamp area in the series for me. Like I don't know why people even complain about Blighttown or the Gutter cause neither have anything on that place.

Dark Souls - Sen's Fortress sucked cause I don't really tank damage and prefer to roll my way through situations and overwhelm opponents, so tight corridors with strong enemies with high poise are the bane of my existence. I also disliked New Londo before you unflood it. Largely cause I find the Ghost enemies to be one of the few really unfair opponents in the game, especially if you were like me and were unfortunate enough to get cursed super early in the game and had to try and venture through there early to get uncursed. I'm still salty about it.

For Dark Souls 2, the only area I really hate in the main game so far has been the Black Gulch cause that whole zone is designed for maximum frustration and even at higher levels that can easily deal with most of the stuff it throws at you, it's still a chore to get through. Of the DLC, I can so far agree with the general consensus of the fanbase and say the "Optional Hardcore Zones" have all been the weakest if not the most frustrating parts of the DLC. I died over a dozen times trying to beat each of those zones but it was never fun and I'm usually sighing with relief when the boss gets taken out, and I'm actually fine with not going back through them to get every item. With that said, I died about the same amount of times trying to take down Fume Knight and Alonne and had a blast in both cases despite that, though I could have down without the lead up to Alonne. My main issue with areas in DS2 so far is that I often feel more "meh" about them than I feel I should.

Sadly, much like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the DLC has been of such excellent quality in terms of dungeon design and bosses that the main entry has tough competition in terms of my favorite places and boss battles, and it's kind of hard to remember any of them cause the DLC is so good at eclipsing all of it.

[Bri]

My eight year old is finally done with the Abyss DLC ( I still got to beat Manus then the dragon)he was hesitant about Kalameet but he went ahead and defeated the dragon on his first run. He also saved Sif because he wanted the other cut scene. All I goy to say is he got gud lol

[Wolf Kanno]

Not a big update tonight:

So my evening began with helping a friend I had made through the game with the Cave of the Dead, which considering how short it was and my own experience, I felt like a freaking super star for once being able to slam in there and take out all the cronies left and right. Even took down two of the three Gank Squad bosses by myself.

After that, I tried my hand with the third Cave of Dark for the Pilgrims of Dark Covenant and kept dying stupid deaths thanks to all of the freaking bottomless pits. I ran out of human effigies and decided to just focus on the Ivory King DLC.

I was able to reach my first Knight to help me with the boss, but not before a lot of trial and error. The enemies in this DLC are tanky as hell and I had to use a few Repair Powders and most of my arrows just to make it back to one of the bonfires in one piece. I've also decided that along with the Ice Hedgehogs, my new least favorite enemy type in this area is the re-imagined Crystal Giants from the Duke's Archive. You know except now they are ice based, have much better speed, which was like their only weakness in the original. Still high poise, still lots of damage. I also lit some torches that led to a cavern with a bunch of those backstab happy priestesses and decided to play it safe and just call it a night at this point. I'm still looking for the optional zone cause I usually try to complete it before the final story boss battle if I can if not first, but this one seems really well hidden for some reason.

[Wolf Kanno]

So I finally tackled Darklurker, using the Drangleic Portal cause it's surprisingly the easiest one once you know what you're doing. Not too bad of a fight, took him down on my second attempt. He was a surprisingly fun fight, and was a well done boss overall despite the fact that I was probably way over-leveled for him. Pilgrims of the Dark are currently the only Covenant I've completed at the moment, and I'm now back to Heirs of the Sun, though this Covenant seems to be cursed for me, as I'm having a hard time getting successful co-ops going here and I seem to more often than not, get summoned to help a player farm souls in a tough section before getting sent away without actually fighting a boss.

Finally got the key to access the optional zone in Ivory King DLC, and was pleasantly surprised that it's not quite as bad as people make it out to be. The Lightning Reindeer are certainly a handful but manageable, and the gimmick of the zone is actually clever and has more thought put into it than the other two optional zones. The same cannot be said for the boss fight, which got me clobbered pretty badly, especially since my primary weapon was at it's breaking point by the time I reached them and I had to switch to a weaker one. The fight is also one of the worst of the DLC IMHO. Largely cause it's a reskin of a fight from this very DLC and to "mix it up" they made it into a another gank fight which is sort of a major symptom of some of the design problems DSII suffers from.

As for the rest of the Ivory King DLC, I'm still trying to hunt down the rest of the Knights, but have only found one so far and I've completed everything up to the "third bonfire" which takes place before the NPC Invader. I've noticed there is a slot for a fifth bonfire, but have no idea where it is.

I plan on focusing on beating the optional zone first before proceeding with the main DLC quest cause I want this to end on a high note and so far, finishing the optional zones early is a good way of doing that. Afterwards, I want to beat the Ancient Dragon, then Vendrick, then finish the game. Not quite sure if I'm going to dive straight into Dark Souls III afterwards.

[Bri]

That's where I left off with the Ancient dragon. Let me know if you need some help. I'll have to check my soul memory also. Good luck!

[Wolf Kanno]

That's where I left off with the Ancient dragon. Let me know if you need some help. I'll have to check my soul memory also. Good luck!

Ooh thanks for the offer. I'll have to check but I'm pretty sure my Soul Memory is over four million by now. I have kind of dealt with him, but I would be happy to help fight him again.

So update time:

I seriously lucked out and finally took down the beastly duo in the Frigid Outskirts. Surprisingly enough, with the exception of the disappointing and lazy boss battle, I actually liked the area. It had a lot more thought put into it than the other hardcore zones and while the Lightning Reindeer are certainly a hassle, as long as you tread carefully and slowly, you only deal with them one at a time which makes it way easier. Especially since it's pretty easy to outrun them surprisingly enough.

After that, I took on the Burnt Ivory King and holy hell if that wasn't one of the most epic boss battles in the game. While he's not as hard as Fume Knight, he makes up for it with spectacle. Certainly a nice end to some great DLC. Though I'm not sure if I want to farm the Loyce Knights to get the final Child of Dark soul.

Overall, the DLC is great if with some questionable design choices. I don't think anyone would disagree with me that all of them would have likely been better if they didn't have the optional zones and they are all generally the weakest link. The Cave of the Dead was my favorite with the Iron Passage easily being my least favorite. Boss battle wise, Ivory King is the weak link with the pets all being boring battles and only made up by the epic Ivory King duel. Old Iron King easily has the best battles with Fume Knight and Sir Alonne both being exemplary, and the Smelter Demon not being too bad. The Sunken King DLC has the best level design with the various switches and hidden passages combined with the cool ghost knight gimmick, though I will say none of the DLC was really a slouch in this department and all four are also simply gorgeous. Difficulty-wise, I feel the Ivory King was the hardest and the Sunken King was the easiest. Lore-wise, the Ivory King was my favorite and the Sunken Kingdom was my least.

After beating the DLC, I decided to tackle the Ancient Dragon. I think I now have my boss who has killed me the most in the game, especially since I've nearly cleared out the Dragon Shrine by this point. With that said, I did beat him finally, and despite dying so much, he's actually really simple to fight. The only real issue with him is his size and the ridiculous damage he can pull off. Despite that, he's also kind of cheap as he got some wonky hit boxes like him "landing" on me despite clearly missing me and the one time he basically flew off the platform and into the perimeter sky around the arena, and thus gave me no room to dodge his fire breath which killed me by launching me off the arena. So he's probably won the most "no fair!" and "this is bulltrout" from me. I think Veldstat was the other boss where I swear his hammer's hit box is twice the size of the model used in game.

With all five Giant Souls, I challenged Vendrick and was promptly crushed for my trouble by me accidentally dodging into him and his surprisingly combo friendly sword wailing. I decided it was getting late and had accomplished enough. Once Vendrick is down, I'll finally try to finish the game. I'm debating about jumping straight into DS3 afterwards but part of me feels I should take a break and come back later.

[Bri]

High five on Ancient dragon! And good luck with Vendrick! Updates please when you do defeat him finally.
I definitely agree about Veldstat also. I am level 172 last time I checked. You have to share with me how you manage to defeat the dragon because he kills me every time!
As for dark souls 1 I am done with getting all foul lord souls as well as my son. I'm so proud of him, he defeated tge four kings on his first try! He basically tanked them. I was a bit jealous though because it took me 4 tries. Well once I'm done I'm going to finish up with ds2 but before I do I must get the DLC! I must!!

[Spuuky]

Ancient Dragon is notorious for being "easy" and "hard" in different ways; he OHKOs most players but he has one simple pattern and you just repeat it until he's dead. One of the worst boss designs in Souls probably, except for how cool he is.

[Wolf Kanno]

High five on Ancient dragon! And good luck with Vendrick! Updates please when you do defeat him finally.
I definitely agree about Veldstat also. I am level 172 last time I checked. You have to share with me how you manage to defeat the dragon because he kills me every time!
As for dark souls 1 I am done with getting all foul lord souls as well as my son. I'm so proud of him, he defeated tge four kings on his first try! He basically tanked them. I was a bit jealous though because it took me 4 tries. Well once I'm done I'm going to finish up with ds2 but before I do I must get the DLC! I must!!

I'm jealous too, they were one of the hardest fights for me and I think I only initially beat them by having a particularly powerful sorcery build player help me out. I stink at the fight as I learned when I tried to help other players.

As for Ancient Dragon, my strategy involves rushing to his back legs and nipping at his heels of his back feet. Don't stand in front of his feet or between them cause that usually baits his self-immolation attack, and don't attack his tail cause it just makes him use hit tail whip. Basically nip at his heels and when he flies up, chase his tail. Don't get greedy with hits, just hit him twice and then run towards the tip of his tail until you're about halfway between the tip and his feet and simply wait to see what he does, If he flies up, follow the tail and run towards it but slightly to the right of left of it so he doesn't land on you. Wear a Quartz Ring +3 if you have it for protection from his flames or Goyer's Ring that prevents backstabs. Chaos Pants +5 also give you great fire defense and mobility. With that said, focus on mobility and stamina recovery for the fight since most of his attacks will OHK. Also, I wouldn't use partners either since his pattern is surprisingly simple and you don't need to prolong the fight more than you need to or let another player accidentally bait him into using one of his more dangerous attacks like his tail whip or self-immolation. After that, it's a matter of hoping he doesn't land on you and I should warn you his hitbox for landing is a bit larger than it looks so try to keep your distance from his body when he lands but always stay behind him. With that said, be careful if he starts clinging to the edge of the arena as this leaves you open. When he does this, rush to his other foot that's more into the arena and pray his next "jump" will move him back into the arena area so you can maneuver.

Update time:

Game, Set, and Match.

I just got incredibly unlucky on my first attempt with Vendrick but totally kicked his ass on my second, and I better have considering I had all five Giant Souls. Got my upgraded crown, decided not to use it...

Fought Nashandra with some help but it just kept going badly for me, so instead I fought her solo and found her incredibly easy as my damage was significantly better and I played extra cautious. Didn't stop her from cursing me once or twice sadly. Surprisingly, I don't think she ever actually hit me otherwise, her scythe has terrible range.

Aldia was the bigger shocker. This guy has wasted me every time I've tried to help someone with the fight and this time I took him down no problem. I basically learned that I was just being way too overly aggressive before which meant I was taking unnecessary hits from his fire shield and by staying so close, I often left myself open for his pyromancy spells he casts above him and out of my line of sight. So just staying super defensive I was able to get through the fight no problem and actually beat him on my first try.

I ended up taking the "third" ending that's unique to Scholar of the First Sin, which ironically was very similar to the ending choice I took in Dark Souls. As it stands, I think Demon's Souls is still the only entry where I've taken the more altruistic ending choice, though I guess the Dark Lord ending is DS1 is sort of altruistic in its own way when you think about it.

Overall, I feel DS2 is a pretty solid game. The weakest in the series for me so far, but that "weak" entry is still far better than some series strong entries, so understand this is simply me stating it's weak compared to the other entries but is still a great game overall. It does have several issues which hurt it, but it comes in with some interesting ideas as well. The two most glaring faults I can give it is one of quantity over quality. The game is huge compared to other installments and has almost twice as many bosses, but the quality isn't there and some of the bosses are poorly implemented. Editing the game down would actually do wonders for it. I also feel the devs focused a bit too much on the "difficult" part of the "difficult but fair" mantra fans have for the franchise. Gank fights galore, entire zones designed around being as painful and unpleasant to go through as possible, marathon boss battles, screwing with the healing mechanics by giving them a stat to deal with it and largely adding back things in from Demon's Souls that I honestly felt Dark Souls did better, making weapons break easier, and Soul Memory was just a bad idea overall.

On the other hand, the game has way more equipment options, more fun to use boss weapons, power stance (though I never used it), a genuinely better and less trolling online community, better refinement with the Covenants, some great locales, streamlined weapon upgrading, a better hub zone, and some good lore and characters. The DLC, barring the optional zones, are overall still excellent quality that befits the rest of the series. The lore added in Scholar of the First Sin actually segues into the plot of Dark Souls 3 rather nicely as well.

Top 3 Favorite Zones:
The DLC locations
The Shrine of Amana
Aldia's Keep

Top 3 NPCs:
Lucratia of Mirrah
The Pryomancy Teacher
the Cat

Favorite Bosses:
The Executioner's Chariot
The Burnt Ivory King
The Fume Knight
The Glass Knight

For now, I've jumped back into Demon's Souls since this is the last month the servers will still be up. I'm finally checking out the NG+ of which I've heard Demon's Souls has the most jarring jump in difficulty within the franchise. It is both weird coming back to this now that I know what I'm doing, and I am seriously chuckling at my character build. This is probably the closest I've come to playing a "tank build" which is really jarring cause I prefer speed usually. Chances are, the itch for Dark Souls 3 will kick in soon and I'll jump into that instead.

[Wolf Kanno]

It's been interesting jumping back into Demon's Souls on NG+.

I've just finished 1-2 of Boletaria Castle and I'm going to dive into 2-1 of the Mines cause I want to unlock Blacksmith Ed. I could dive to 1-3 of Boletaria and try to rescue Biorr and Yuria early, but I remember 1-3 having a considerable difficulty spike from the previous zones. On the brightside, I was able to achive Pure White World Tendency in Boletaria, so I got access to the Execution Grounds and finally fought Executioner Miralda who serves as a basis for a character in the Dark Souls series. She has way more health than I feel she deserves, but thankfully we're in Demon's Souls and Poise isn't a thing yet, so stun-locking her made this fight pretty easy once I stopped getting antsy with her.

My stats are kind of awful as I focused on health and kept the rest of my stats kind of even barring luck, meaning I'm not particularly good at anything. The Equip Burden mechanic is far less generous in this game than in Dark Souls as it doesn't take long to finally ditch the fat roll in decent armor in those games, but Stamina is like my second highest stat and I'm still fat rolling in my Fluted Armor set. Not helping things is the scrappy mechanic of Item Burden, which I'm happy the series dropped like a stone after this entry. I am also just too use to trying to roll my way out of situations. One feature Dark Souls brought in that I never noticed until now is that rolls can cancel actions like healing and take priority. Demon's Souls doesn't do this, so I've had a few embarrassing deaths due to trying and failing to roll out of a healing item animation when an enemy closes the gap between us than I anticipated.

While I did acquire several great spells and boss weapons in the first run, I'm either not built to use any of them effectively or more often, they are not as useful as they sound. This comes a bit jarring coming from DSII where I actually felt the boss weapons/Soul Arts were handled really well for once. With that said, the Lava Bow is still my favorite bow in the series (high damage and arrows do fire damage) thus far, though the Dragonrider Bow in DSII was a nice substitute.

Boss-wise, I'm surprised that Phalanx turned into a bigger ordeal than I felt it should. She has more Phalanx Guards than in NG and it seems like they got a boost to fire and magic defense. On the other hand, outside of getting hit by multiple Phalanx Guards, most of their minions do laughable damage so the battle just took longer than I remember it doing. The Tower Knight was a completely different story, as he can still come close to taking me out with one hit with most of his attacks, but being able to fight him with an upgraded magic imbued weapon saw me nearly finish him off with my first combo after I knocked him down once. I had a harder time fighting the two Blue-Eyed Knights guarding his Fog Gate than with him. I really hope Flamelurker goes down this easily. I also took down the Red Dragon in 1-2, which I instantly regret because he actually makes this zone go faster since he murders everything on the tower bridges for you. He's still my favorite stage hazard dragon in the series.

Regular enemies are a bit weird, everything has much more health so it's still taking two to three hits to finish off things, but that's manageable. The damage they do is the bigger problem cause while I remember Knights always being powerful foes up until the end, it's surprisingly to see Dredglings take out 75% of my health if they actually stunlock me into their flailing attack.

It's been interesting so far and while the place isn't active anymore online-wise, I still love the notes you can find and I actually got repped for a few of them. I do love the fact that Demon's Souls changes the color of your messages so you can spot them easier. Funnily enough, they look like summon signs. How long I keep this playthrough up is unknown. DS3 is calling me it seems.

Who else here has actually played Demon's Souls btw?

[Slothy]

Got demons souls before dark souls was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. I still love that game to death.