I’ve been told I am doing things out of order, so I’m glad to hear that ghost-town is not the next stop. I’ll poke around in the depths, try to kill the big gnarly dragon and/or Sif, and mayyyyybe fuck around in the Giant’s Tomb. That is one of those places that made me stop playing the game, but ALSO I have a lantern that I did not have last time so hopefully it’s a bit less…fucked up.
I’ve been thinking on this game and its appeal to me. On the surface, it’s an antithetical to most of the things i like in video games, particularly the gloominess, difficulty, ability to fuck one’s self over by leveling improperly, almost necessary reliance on guides and/or orange soapstone clues, etc.
When I actually think about what connects this game to other games I like, I think it’s novelty and scale. Like, my favorite game (if I have to pick one) is Katamari Damacy, a game whose main two traits are constant novelty and a strong sense of scale.
To me, Dark Souls is very flat in a lot of ways. There’s hardly any build-up of ideas other than building a personal style of combat. It hardly ever repeats itself, and is just consistently novel. It introduces new ideas, then just…never uses them again. I appreciate the lack of structure there, even when it can be frustrating to feel like I haven’t really gained a mastery that will help me in anything but the area in which I gained it. I think shifting the idea of Mastery of the Game to more Mastery of my Character has helped in that regard though.
It’s also a very carefully structured game in other ways!! Each individual area is amazing in the way that it compresses with mastery, and the interlocking shortcuts do the same thing for the larger world. Dark Souls is a game that seems huge, and is actually pretty small, and is somehow impressive at both scales. It’s a game that plays with my ideas of geography and scale in a lot of ways, and I appreciate it for that.
Anyway, so many words have been spilled about Dark Souls that this is like tears in rain, really. Prepare to die.
3 Likes
One of my favorite aspects of Dark Souls is the awkward laughter almost every NPC does at the end of most dialog.
11 Likes
i don’t wanna spoil too much because this games more fun when you only seek spoilers as a last resort, but if you decide to go to tomb of the giants be prepared to walk all the way back out, it’s a dead end down there.
There is at least one really good treasure a ring that increases the souls you get by a nice phat 20% that i sometimes push down there for early but you gotta plan that shit like it’s a bank heist
1 Like
sorry for being such a dark souls reply guy y’all
2 Likes
I got stuck in both Tomb of the Giants bottom bonfire and also Ash Lake without the lordvessel on my first playthrough. I also got cursed and went to New Londo early to get it cleared out like the curse message said to do. The full DkS1 salt mines
6 Likes
I feel like getting reamed taking the “front way” through Blightown at approximately 5 FPS is also included here (this may be assumed with the Ash Lake bit I guess).
2 Likes
actually losing my mind because i can’t tell which dark souls game this is. is this a UI edit?
It’s Dark souls 3, in the Irithyll dungeon
2 Likes
the area that was probably in retrospect one of the better layouts of the whole game but you mostly ran through it because of the obnoxious status-inflicting enemies and since you were almost guaranteed to open a new shortcut each time round regardless
2 Likes
Like many areas in DS3 it is over in about 30 seconds if you try running straight through and if you stop to comb it, you’ll walk away with like 30 lightning crossbow bolts and a handful of embers
2 Likes
I love how it felt like a callback to Demon’s Tower of Latria, even in the very surprising and quick deaths you could experience if you accidentally surprised a jailer.
6 Likes
I beat the big dog, finally, after many tries. I eventually grinded out a bunch of souls, leveled up my dex, and used my great scythe two-handed. The trick was realizing that my shield was causing me to die because I was trying to block things that would get me killed. Removing that option made it much easier, mentally, to process the fight.
I…guess i can…walk in abysses now?? what
anyway, I guess the next stop is probably the depths, since I’ve just basically avoided it. Not sure what to do with these 40K souls but I’ll probably just level up my dex since my endurance seems okay right now. Just gonna make this great scythe do alllll the damage.
3 Likes
Possible DkS1 spoilers:
1 Like
Oswald’s!
often lo-startled me
2 Likes
Oswald is the best! That VA really put his soul into it!
2 Likes
Beat the gaping dragon second try. I only failed the first time because I didn’t realize the charge attack did so much damage when you were right in front of it.
I like the depths, they’re very funny.
Got to the first (only?) bonfire in Blighttown. This was the deepest I got last time I played, so we’ll see what happens from here.
Right now my available paths are:
a. Push on in Blighttown
b. Go to Ghostville
c. Fuck around in the asylum
d. Try to cross that bridge in Valley of Drakes to see if I can even get in that door.
e. Go to the giant’s tomb
I’m going to keep diving into Blighttown and see what’s there. I’m sort of amazed I’ve managed to stay this unspoiled about an almost 9 year old game that people have talked about non-stop essentially since the release date. I really have no idea what I’m going to find at the end of any of these paths other than the broad strokes of “there’s a fortress full of traps somewhere” and “there’s a boss that’s really two bosses and it’s really hard.”
4 Likes
there are two bonfires in blighttown, and one in quelaag’s domain
1 Like
who called it a quelaag and not a chthonic boom
1 Like