when i was watching dark souls videos on nico, capra demon as always referred to as ‘犬のデーモン’, or ‘dog demon’. whenever the dogs died the comments always were like “whew! beat that boss good”
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<3 poop and poison knives are in my standard PVP equipment.
- also, my fave weapon for awhile in Dark Souls 1, is the reinforced club. It’s R2 attack is the jump attack you normally get with --> + R2. So, you can dodge/ roll however you need to avoid an attack, then pivot back toward the enemy, straight into a jumping attack. Which would normally be impossible. It’s really good for PVE. Especially since the roll is generous in that game. It’s kinda like the forceful throttle breaking possible in earlyier gran Turismos. Where you break late into a turn. Then jam the steering lock and punch it out of a turn.
Next game should be: Chimp Souls, where the only weapon is the poop
why though? it’s pretty much set up for killing him.
Dog dodging though
hmm, can’t remember well, i beat him on my second try.
I heard it was tough in advance of my first go so just summoned a sunperson lol
IIRC, once you figure out what the hell is going on and what he does it works out ok, but if you’re like me, you die within seconds of entering the fog door 5 to 10 times before you even start to figure out where the hell you are, what the hell you’re fighting, and how the hell you might use both of those to your advantage.
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Just wanna point out the delicious irony that the ‘Fatigued Souls’ thread is now approaching 800 posts and shows no signs of, um, fatigue.
Also Ornstein and Smough made me want to throw 
at my TV. I was shaking like I just had a seizure when I finally beat them (with some but not much help from Solaire). They are the hardest, IMO.
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One of my favorite things in my first Dark Souls playthrough was camping out in front of Snorlax & Pikachu and helping people beat them for two whole weeks. I’d throw down my sign and pick up a book while waiting to be summoned.
true… but! compare the amount of (SB) press DeS/DaS/DaS2/SotFS/BB get compared to DaS3 which i think is what that title was in reference to
i don’t play souls that much because 3 is just kind of there for me and 1 and 2 i’ve played a bunch. it’ll be awhile before it feels compelling enough to give it a full go again. i crapped out in the bone cave or whatever
i never had any issues with capra demon, personally, so i never disliked that boss fight. i love the dogs, though. i LIKE unfairness in the souls games, i wish they were ever so slightly more unfair at times, tbh. From has never made fairness their M.O., which is why i (gently?) push back against people who point to “unfairness” as a flaw. the games are intended to be cruel at times, in my opinion. tough, but fair is just… wrong. they are emotionally manipulative games, which is all i ask for in art
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I agree that some of the most punishing moments are real highlights. For example, the part in DS2 where I could hear one of those laughing pots through a small window in a rock wall, though I didn’t know at the time what was making the sound. I felt clever figuring out how to jump through that hole and get inside, only to land in a puddle of equipment-damaging acid. I remember wishing that it permanently destroyed armor that took critical damage in that way.
Or that one gap in the floor in the Tower of Latria.
Or the dragons on the bridges.
I didn’t get cursed in DS1 at the point when it would have been a huge hassle, having been warned to be careful, but knowing the consequences made those encounters thrilling.
I’m a little ambivalent about some of the frustrating boss battles. I enjoy the desperation but I get impatient when they halt my progress. I wouldn’t change anything, though. I like that I have been too afraid to ever go up against Flamelurker again after getting through that part once.
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I agree that the traps involving unique mechanics are interesting while being unfair (those laughing jars are great as is that area’s Assyrian theme), but the Capra demon exposes limitations in the loading, boss presentation, and NPC pathing system while not being clever or funny, so I don’t think it counts as an interesting bit of hate.
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i don’t really conceive of these games as being unfair or cruel though
i think they want you to PAY ATTENTION and when you don’t, they have some fun at your expense. Oh, you didn’t expect to get flame spewed on you by a surprise drake? Didn’t you see the scorch marks?
It’s GREAT when you fall down a hole in the Depths and get surrounded by weird bouncing frog monsters and turned into a statue. It’s SO RAD when you wake up at a bonfire with a huge skull covering your humanity sign and your HP permanently halved. i love it, i eat it up
the difference is when i have some kind of warning. and it’s not immediately fatal if i miss it. i don’t like suddenly dying, not knowing why, and not having any kind of warning that i could have prevented it or any object lesson i could learn afterward to make the situation easier next time.
Dying in these games means a loading screen and at least a half-mile of enemies to run back through (or just a lot of empty running), it’s not a series made for rapid prototyping as you struggle against an encounter. This is why From has to walk a knife’s edge with the difficulty (and ftr, they usually succeed so i hope i’m not overstating the problem). When you made a mistake and you know you did, it’s not so bad; that becomes a moment to reflect and rethink. When some kind of bullshit comes out of nowhere and one-shots you, it’s crazy-making. It’s also why BoC sucks even worse, i can die in that fight just because the fucking floor opened up under me and then it’s a good 5+ minute jog back each time. Fuck that, life’s too short.
Similarly: feel kind of ambivalent about the first mimic encounter in Sen’s; feel a red mist start to pour from my eyes when i think of the second wall-smash ogre in Aldia’s
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absolutely adore this stuff, wish there was more
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yeah when a game is so otherwise successful with tone-setting I really adore it telling me to go fuck myself personally
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in shadow tower you can pretty easily more or less permanently ruin your game if you don’t keep a backup save. i prefer cruelty to fairness tbh, because i already trust From due to their pedigree in a way i wouldn’t tolerate with other games/devs
*i prefer cruelty to fairness because fairness is already everyone’s goal. it homogenizes games and makes them less surprising and less capable of jarring you out of your comfort zone, especially from a mental perspective. the cruelty is part of why i love From and why other devs bore the shit out of me
i troll in my own output as well, lots of my music is listener-antagonistic, so i feel some sort of kindred there
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Of Lordran’s hot and poppin spots, first and a half floor at Sen’s was the oishii pvp for me.
Lots to work and fuck around with, especially the soul-rich ready to bleed ya
But they end up miracle blasted to a far wall ledge you can’t normally fall down to.
All those stains lost like snakes in the sludge.
Sen’s and Catacombs are definitely the premium invasion spots for players of the stealthy persuasion
“You were indicted”
first mimic encounter in Sen’s
No you know what? i didn’t actually dislike this encounter, i just mentioned it because it felt like there was a case for it being too harsh, but then i thought about it for a sec and nah it’s actually fucking awesome and totally perfect
i mean, it’s the first mimic you ever encounter and you have no reason to expect it, but it’s also possibly the first treasure chest you’ve ever seen, sitting in a darkened room, at the bottom of a long shaft of rolling boulders, in what’s basically Dark Souls’s homage to the Tomb of Horrors. And if you look closely, you can goddamn see it breathing which is still the best and spookiest detail and god dark souls mimics are the best
i also just remembered that i laughed really hard at the first mimic in Dark Souls 3, so basically i’m a big dummy hypocrite
i still dont like the ogre but i hate fighting those guys and i think Aldia’s is a boring level so i’m biased. it’s admittedly pretty funny
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