oh i dunno, Gwyn is a pretty good end boss…
if you don’t know how to parry
and don’t have the unpatched version of the game where you can just cast iron flesh and spam R1
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Hmm, I was never able to beat him at all without parrying? And I certainly tried because I didn’t bother to practice parrying at all before reaching him
There’s probably some possible cheese involving the terrain, I think I had some partial success with that. But basically it’s a cheese-only boss
He’s Flamelurker 2.0. High damage, unusually aggressive, attacks can’t be perfectly blocked, but he only has like 4 moves and you just have to know which ones are safe to punish (the grab is the best one)
Guess you’d have to define what you mean by cheese, i don’t think of using terrain to avoid attacks or futz with the boss AI that way. Seems like the intended non-parry strategy.
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anytime i type “parry” or “parrying” on this phone it autocorrects to party or partying. the most pro souls strat is party hard
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I’ve only ever played around with parrying gwyn maybe once in my several runs just to see for myself because Well It’s So Easy That’s All You Have To Do has been such an unwaveringly ubiquitous take on that fight since forever. I don’t really remember ever hearing the inverse take that parrying actually necessary to win. it’s definitely not gated as such. not many of my characters had parries in their playstyle so I just didn’t do it.
I think it’s maybe just an early example of the uptempo duel style boss battle that wouldn’t be as codified until later entries in the series. like I guess I find it unlikely someone could come back from just finishing ds3, get dropped at a gwyn save and think “there’s just no space for me to deal with this offense!”
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If they make another souls game I want them to retain the combat but change the theme to something like Persona x Stubb’s the Zombie
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That’s how I always understood the parrying complaint! It matched my own experience: I just couldn’t beat the guy, he’d just slay me usually before I got my bearings. And I had no problems with Flamelurker, so I dunno what it was. It must have to do with the particular way Gywn follows up when you dodge him.
Yeah probably. I haven’t played to the end of DkS1 in some time and maybe I’d now find it sort of leisurely, just like every other boss in DkS1. I usually stop after beating O&S.
Gwyn is def kind of the standard pattern for DkS3 bosses, complete with having a punish attack script he busts out anytime you try to estus near him. In the first Dark Souls, that was still a novel challenge. The only bosses in that game remotely similar to Gwyn are in the DLC
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heads up: if you can run it on pc, rpcs3 can now run demon’s souls at 60fps with a simple hack. all i need now is 60fps bloodborne…
speaking of which, i can’t really rank these games. they are all (minus dks2, tbh) pretty much tied for GOAT imo.
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sekrio is not at all for me, it takes everything but the combat out of the souls games and turns what’s left into a generic action game with some weird half baked stealth garbage. it’s way, way too hard for me. I’ve played it for four hours and I don’t know that I’ll play it any more than that. it’s the opposite of the direction I’d like to see from go.
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Elden Ring could be further in that desired direction and less steep, or even a world removed from rhythm/window timing and I’d only be a tad disappointed - just hoping they at least in some manner, incorporate more fluid, varied maneuverability and combat options.
Nearly half a year after Sekiro every time I think back on it I sense “incompleteness” though not as unfinished or rough. I think it really is a matter of not enough situations to invite and unfold all that’s at a players disposal. These games have always had that I guess, a lot is up to flavor and eccentric choice after you settle somewhere between novelty/strategy.
I’d hate for them to show hand guiding players through experimentation and skill growth but I want more creative playgrounds.
The level craft has always kicked ass I’m just saying it can be wider-wilder.
When I beat DkS recently (for the first time) I had been practicing parrying with the knights leading up to Gwyn, but then I heard about the iron flesh/spam R1 cheese strat.
So I tried it, thinking it wouldn’t work and i’d have time to go around doing all the stuff I wanted to before ng+.
But it worked. Oops
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Do not treat me like an old, withering ninja turtle!
Did you ever pick this up? It’s like three hundred dollars now 
oh shit, i did
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Yes, I got my copy in eventually after several delays. It’s very nice.
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i’ve been revisiting ds3 lately. it’s not…great, in many ways, but i may be slightly more forgiving to it now after playing sekiro, and getting accustomed to some of the design directions in which from was perhaps beginning to lean.
in particular: the feeling of breezing through environments without necessarily expecting to take as much in; the idea that most enemies aren’t meant to be a significant threat on their own so much as to serve as momentary focal points when plotting a course through the level; a better sense of what they were going for with the combat arts; more minimally-styled interiors relative to the graphical fidelity (esp. when compared with bloodborne’s direction).
by the DLCs especially you can tell they wanted to do much larger scale environment traversal, as well as experimenting with some more stealth-like segments.
game is probably best appreciated in the morning/early afternoon with sunlight streaming through the window & after lots of coffee. don’t think about it too hard and just treat bosses like a rhythm game. i dunno
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