Dark Souls 3 is BETTER at LEVEL 1!

after I beat Dark Souls 3 for the first time one of my biggest issues with the game was that it felt too easy I thought that fromsoft should add a hard mode but little did I know there's always another way welcome back to another level 1 run last time we watched on as I tried to praise Dark Souls 1 while getting one shot by bad hitboxes but this time it's different this time we will witness true pain as I attempt to beat a ton of two and three phase bosses with giant health bars all the while stuck at level one and the question on everyone's mind will I be able to beat the hardest boss in the base game nameless king or what about the even more difficult DLC bosses of sister Frida slave night Gale and dark eater midir or will my Insanity finally take hold and turn me into a hollow in real life in this video we get to witness me an insane masochist die hundreds of times as he tries to show the world why Dark Souls 3 is better at level 1. in addition to the level 1 commentary this essay is also a critique and it will have a boss tier list think of this tier list as me ranking the quality of every boss when the difficulty has been turned up to 11. this forces me to correctly memorize and understand every boss mechanic in depth to win while at to normal level I can beat the boss while making many mistakes and not really knowing all of its mechanics as you can probably imagine this video is really hard to make because level 1 runs take a lot of time and effort so if you like the video please consider supporting the channel on patreon or subscribing or doing YouTube things and with that out of the way let the level one run commence Dark Souls 3 isn't some slow Souls game for babies like the last three no this game is fast and Miyazaki wants you to know it so the first boss is much more mechanically demanding than the first boss of the previous Souls games in Dark Souls 1 the player can cut the first boss's HP in half in just the first blow only for the boss mechanics to be a single slow combo on repeat combined with an easy to avoid butt Slap Attack and Dark Souls 2 we fight a giant in slow motion while in Dark Souls 3 the first boss is a fast-paced multi-phase Extravaganza although I think gundir is an easy boss I would imagine that for new players this might be a bit over the top not only does he have multiple fairly quick combos he also has a very scary looking Phase 2 transformation with difficult to understand hitboxes this is a problem because Dark Souls 3 has the most consistent quality control out of any of the souls games overall so I like to recommend new players to try this one out first but the skill check occurs before they can grow accustomed to the attack q and controls since players can't adjust difficulty through leveling until after the first boss gundier could force new players out of melee classes entirely and into spellcasters although those new players may have enjoyed melee combat more if they were given enough time to learn it final verdict for Mr gundier is B tier he's all right just a bit over the top for the tutorial boss defeating gundier leads us to fire link Shrine where we talk to the fire keeper so that we can embed our coiled sword into her bonfire only for it to be a massive letdown the only way out of Firelink Shrine is to fast travel to the lothric if you saw my video on Dark Souls 1 then you know that I loved not being able to fast travel in the first game since it caused traversal to have real consequences you had to plan out your journey by using different elaborate shortcuts and when you got stuck at the bottom of the world you really felt desperation because you couldn't just click two buttons and return to Safety in Dark Souls 1 actions had consequences and the world felt real because of that my personal Theory and why from soft refuses to recreate the interconnected World design of Dark Souls 1 is because it was an extremely difficult time sink out of all from soft games Dark Souls 1 probably has the most late game levels that feel rushed and underdeveloped which may be because fromsoft spent all the budget on programming and designing the early games interconnected World design crafting a bunch of levels that are simultaneously fun to explore while overlapping within themselves to create creative shortcuts while also not overlapping with different regions of the map except at specific points like the parish elevator or the Valley of the Drakes sounds like a complete nightmare to program and Design This may have siphoned development time from late game areas like lost izalith to prevent repeating this mistake from soft decided to make Future Dark Souls titles have simpler World design I want every from soft game to prioritize World design just like in Dark Souls 1 because that leads to some of my favorite moments in these games and it's a shame that Dark Souls 3 didn't follow suit even if it would have cost more development time so instead of finding a path outer fire-like Shrine that could lead us to lothric we just teleport in and the boss here to stop us is vort of the Boreal Valley this boss is like a bull that just constantly charges down the player oddly enough I find him easier than gundir since the player can easily roll underneath him to get free hits in and when vort uses his ice breath it's also an opportunity to get free hits vort also appears after the player has been given enough time to get used to the controls which also might make him feel easier than gundier I'm gonna also throw vort into B tier just so that you guys know the further left of bosses the higher they are in the tears so I'm placing gundier above vort just because I prefer dueling bosses who have a nice rhythm in their combos to smacking vort in the butt from behind and after two good bosses next up we have a real stinker the curse rotted great wood basically the player has to hit weak points on the tree's arms and legs that are constantly moving around while other enemies annoy them and to make it all worse the great wood will spam AOE puddle attacks and have this fall from the sky around him which forces a player to run away and wait and to make matters worse in some parts of the Boss Arena the puddle that deals damage to the player will seep below the floor model so I have to guess when it's safe to attack him again he continues spamming this damage puddle move into his second phase and to make the boss even worse in Phase 2 he introduces a One-Shot grab attack with an oversized hitbox like most other grab attacks in the series foreign in order to avoid dealing with the grab hitbox I found a strat where I stand at a specific location at mid-range and the tree will usually just fall over for free damage so I can kind of just skip phase two the only redeemable quality on this boss is that it's fun to chop through hordes of normal enemies but they keep respawning and they aren't tied to the boss's HP so the only fun part of the boss is a waste of time I'm gonna throw this tree stump into D tier phase one is an annoying waiting game for melee builds and Phase 2 has some bad hitboxes with the tree Dead We progress to another forest and to another swamp which makes this a good time to talk about the Dark Souls 3 problem when it comes to boss and level quality Dark Souls 3 is probably the best in the series and if I was to score every fromsoft game Dark Souls 3 with the DLC May rank close to the highest but it's also missing something it's missing creativity instead of trying to create something new it feels like fromsoft tried to combine Dark Souls one with bloodborne there's a kingdom with a bunch of spiers and a red sky that's a little bit like bloodborne the spired city and Cathedrals have a somewhat Gothic aesthetic to them and there's a ton of gravestones and tombs lying around that's also kind of like bloodborne the bosses are all very fast with lots of varied combos kinda like bloodborne rolling costs little stamina and shields are worse than they were in Dark Souls 1 to incentivize rolling as the best defensive option kind of like bloodborne Dark Souls 3 also retreads areas that were seen in Dark Souls 1 to varying degrees of success my least favorite repeated idea to literally no one surprises the poison swamp in farron keep that is the swamp from Blighttown a better repeat area was Anne Orlando since it was a great surprise to realize that Israel one of the most original levels in the game was actually built around the city of the Gods from the previous game the grand archives is kind of like a more well-designed version of The Dukes archives Dark Souls 3 feels like a story in World sequel to Dark Souls 1 while being a spiritual successor to bloodborne's fast-paced gameplay and in some areas aesthetic this leads to a lack of magical moments in Dark Souls 3 where I was blown away from its creativity in comparison to many other modern AAA games Dark Souls 3 3 is still leagues ahead in creativity but in comparison to other from soft games it may be the least creative of them all the Dark Souls 3 problem isn't that there are a lot of references to previous games but that it doesn't introduce enough of its own ideas in addition to being Dark Souls 1 plus bloodborne this means that Dark Souls 3 is missing the creative magic usually found in from soft games however it's probably because fromsoft wasn't focusing on Innovation so much that Dark Souls 3 was able to be as good as it is dark souls 3 has the best quality control for bosses and levels out of almost any game I've ever played for a reason which is because Boston level design was the sole focus of development not creativity the whole point of this part of the video is to say that even though I love Dark Souls 3 when I think back on it I don't have as strong of an emotional attachment to it as I do with other from soft games whether you think Dark Souls 3 is better than Dark Souls 1 is largely dependent on if you care more about a consistently good experience over a game that is sometimes amazing and sometimes awful I'd say Dark Souls 3 is better than the first one if just by a smidgen and if Dark Souls 3 had Dark Souls 1 interconnected World design it would be a clear 10 out of 10 best game of all time winner now that I've finished complaining about the world design again it's time to get back to the level 1 run and the boss tier list next up Crystal Sage This Witch is the first example of a boss that is actually better at level 1 because God knows it isn't curse rotted great wood normally Crystal Sage is a complete pushover but when half the Spells one shot me it starts to feel like a real challenge I used 100 of my brain power to formulate a strategy to beat this boss the first of many level 1 strats that make the game better at level 1. phase one Crystal Sage is forgettable but in phase two she summons many duplicates that all cast spells at the player the sages tend to spawn further away from the player there so I'd run into the corner with the least amount of cover to cause the sages to spawn around the opposite corner with tons of cover after doing this I used the cover to protect me while killing the duplicates even if the sages spawn too bunched up for this Strat to work cleanly it still helps me find a good opening since if every Sage spawns closer to cover it takes less time to run out of cover to get a hidden on them unpopular opinion Crystal Sage is the best magic Dark Souls fight when done at level 1 and that's the best type of unpopular opinion since most Dark Souls players don't do level 1 runs so they can't disagree not being able to disagree as seoul's player's worst nightmare at a normal level I'd say crystal Sage is mid but at level one I'll put her at the top of b-tier keeping up with the theme of better at level 1 the next boss is deacons of the deep at a normal level this boss is so easy it almost isn't a boss but dying in three hits makes it a lot of fun it makes me feel like a child caught inside of a mosh pit who's trying to find the drunk father at Academy concert without getting stepped on dying quicker means that greed is punished and low stamina makes every attack and roll matter resulting in a fun fight just like with Crystal Sage before deacons of the deep is usually mid but at level one it's gonna sit as the second best in beat here I mentioned it before but I'm gonna say it again Baron keeps poison swamp is my least favorite level in Dark Souls 3. despite being the same swamp from Dark Souls 1's Blight Town after many years it misses the whole point of Blighttown swamp the swamp in Dark Souls 1 was there to make players feel trapped lost and out of their depth after going through an extremely difficult level while the swamp in Dark Souls 3 is there to make you walk slower while being slightly inconvenienced by poison and they hit a bunch of upgrade materials and an Estus shard here so I have to walk through the poison to pick up items on repeat playthroughs slow rolling through the poison is boring getting poison picking up items is annoying and since this is a repeat of Blight Town it doesn't even feel original the level isn't hard or easy just exceedingly dull I also think that the game's pacing starts to drag once we reach the crucifixion woods and doesn't really pick up again until Israel getting rid of or shortening farron keep could help solve this pacing issue and make the game even better to replay or maybe I'm asking for too much since the levels in Dark Souls 3 are already some of the most replayable but this would make it better the boss of the swamp is pretty cool though the abyss Watchers this boss gets bonus points for me just because their design is so cool they remind me of the hunter from bloodborne was turned into a Dark Souls boss battle their first phase is a creative take on the 1v2 fight as a third boss comes in to help the player and the second phase is the first difficult sword Duel of the game this boss has an added mechanic that no other boss other than Gail has which is that there's an extra fire hitbox that Trails every sword swing for a new player iframe dodging through fast sword combos is already hardened enough so when combined with having to memorize lingering hitbox positions I do think that the abyss Watchers are the first real wall of challenge that will stop new players from progressing now something weird happened with the abyss Watchers throughout all of my many playthroughs of Dark Souls 3 I thought the abyss Watchers were a little unfair because they can randomly stab the player in the face when they go for a two-hit combo that was until I reviewed the footage for this video and realized that they only stabbed me after rolling light attacks Never After normal light attack combos I want to blame the game for having a mechanic so obscure I wouldn't have discovered it unless I was a YouTuber but I also kind of like it the abyss Watchers take advantage of the speed difference between a rolling light attack and a light attack combo in a way that no other boss does although this mechanic seems a little bit too obscure for most players to figure out I also think that it increases the skill cap of combat in an interesting way so I kind of like it even if I wasn't able to figure it out during the actual gameplay overall I'm gonna give the abyss Watchers a tier they're a fun Twist on the 1v2 boss idea with a cool aesthetic and a challenging sword Duel at the end although the theme of this video is me explaining why I like the boss mechanics better at level 1. the next boss is actually the same at level one high Lord wolnir all you need to do is hit the bracelets a few times to win unlike previous Souls titles Dark Souls 3 is good enough to not have a single terrible boss because when Dark Souls 3 boss design is at its absolute worst it isn't terrible it's just underwhelming so instead of having an F tier I'm going to change it to a u tier for underwhelming bosses like high Lord wolnir before moving out of the Catacombs we're gonna take a trip to the smoldering Lake to face off against The Old Demon King this boss is actually probably the only one in the game that is way worse at level one you can vomit lava whenever that one shots anyone underneath him so I have to position myself towards his back or side but then he keeps turning and getting me stuck underneath his club's collider it's really annoying so I need the circle to avoid the lava throw-up attack and the developers made this guy the most annoying boss in the game to circle around when combined with a bunch of attacks where the only solution is to run away and wait which I find boring I'm just not a fan of this boss at level one when his lava attacks don't one shot me at a normal level he's probably C or B tier but at level one he's going into D tier still better than Chris Rod at Greatwood at least with The Old Demon King dead we can now leave the catacombs to find one of my favorite moments in Dark Souls 3 discovering Israel this city is one of the most creative ideas for a level in the game and it was actually fleshed out all the way a snowy city with the silver white and gray color palette that is protected by a magical barrier helps sell the illusion that Israel's actually a giant snow globe come to life discovering and exploring Israel was a magical feeling that I wish I felt more often in Dark Souls 3 due to its creativity the enemy variety here is also really cool since the combo stringing Knights contrast well against the downtrodden slaves connected to Israel are the Israel dungeons which tells an interesting story about how a seemingly beautiful city with elegant looking Knights has a dark past of treating their slaves like tools to be experimented on I also loved that once I reached the highest point of Israel I found out that the castle in the distance was actually an Orlando in Disguise the whole time which I was not at all expecting there were a lot of silver Knights here that might have indicated that it was connected to Anor Londo but I just assumed ethereal was built over the rubble of Anor Londo not that it would actually contain it I also like Anna Orlando because unlike some of the reference levels in the game this one is at the end of a creative level and doesn't take up too much time it's mostly just a Boss run the boss of ethereal is also an epic highlight of the entire game pontiff Sullivan or should I say Mr eldenring similar to an Elden ring boss I have to run across the entire Arena to heal and one time I ran until the lock-on dropped automatically and he was still able to punish my healing pontiff really doesn't want a player to heal some of the time pontiff also has seemingly unlimited combo extenders that cause many players to think that he's unfair also I'm not gonna Perry pontiff in this run despite doing so in the past because that would negate the challenge of pontiff's combo extenders and would make this part of the video very boring although pontiff may seem like an Elven ring boss because of his unlimited combos he does have a consistent opening but it took me multiple level 1 runs to find out what it is basically the strategy for phase one pontiff is to Circle towards his back or side as you dodge and then Dodge any combo extenders without attacking until you notice him return to Idol and start awkwardly turning towards you this Idol animation turning 100 of the time is an opening for at least one attack this is because once pontiff returns to Idol he is programmed to not be able to attack until he is facing the player so his Idol turning animation is the opening once I realized this pontiff stopped feeling like an Elden ring boss since one combined with other attacks like his overhead delayed strike he actually has a lot of openings my main issue with pontiff is that his most common opening is so hard to figure out that I don't know if I can say it's well designed but I guess that's the weird thing about Dark Souls if a problem makes the game unfun but an obscure solution exists for that problem that someone else on the internet figured out then are you justified in disliking the problem at all Dark Souls fans would usually say no get good but with pontiff I bet that over 95 percent of players probably missed this opening because everyone says pontiff has unlimited combos without openings when in reality no he doesn't and on some level it is good that fromsoft made it so hard to find pontiff's most common opening because it helps sell the illusion that he's a master sword fighter my opinion on this matter is that pontiff being a bit over the top with combo extenders and hard to discover openings is all right because it's only done once since pontiff is the only unfair boss that never stops attacking in the game he stands out as a memorable experience now with fromsoft decided to make an entire game where every boss fought like pontiff on steroids then I'd start to get upset Elder and it does lead to a cool moment of Discovery when an experienced player can experiment with positioning in subtle animator cues to notice an opening that 90 percent of players Miss I just don't think every boss should be like this Phase 2 pontiff is also extremely interesting as he summons a phantom and and trust me at level one this will always get your blood pumping just like the abyss Watchers this is a genius Twist on the 1v2 boss formula since the original pontiff mimics his Phantom's attacks many of pontiff's attacks are the same as before but even the ones that are repeated have different rhythms to balance this out the developers created new attacks in this phase where pontiff has more clear openings and his combo extenders are usually absent at a normal level I have enough DPS to kill the Phantom right as it spawns and then I can kill pontiff quickly too which causes me to almost completely skip phase 2. at level 1 Phase 2 is drastically more fun because I don't have enough damage to skip it and I also die in one or two hits so I have to be in sync with both Pawn tips as they do their combos to make it more interesting the pontiffs go off script by starting their attacks and combos in slightly random positions this ensures the fight has just enough Randomness to feel unpredictable and a bit frantic while still feeling fair I love that pontiff Phase 2 is a fight that will always push me out of my comfort zone no matter how many times I replay Dark Souls 3 at level 1. although Phase 1 pontiff's opening is a bit too difficult to understand I also really like it when the boss is so hard it forces me to theorize and execute strategies to win one thing I don't think a lot of people realize is that a level 1 run is not just about muscle memory and reaction time it's also a thinking man's game that involves strategy the weird thing about criticizing Dark Souls is that if I didn't find out a strategy to create openings on pontiff I'd probably dislike the fight at level 1 and say his combo extenders are unfair but since I use 100 of my brain power my experience battling pontiff was s tier with pontiff defeated we can Journey to the top of Israel to find annor Londo contained within is the corpse of the cross-dressing octopus Snake Man himself gwyndolin who's been consumed by all of the deep I don't like a single thing about this boss although gwyndolin was a simple boss he was still well done chasing down a ranged enemy in a giant hallway while occasionally taking cover was as creative spell casting boss Aldrich is not like that Aldrich shoots arrows and I run away he spams me with damage and I keep running away when I'm done running away for a long period of time I wail on him as he awkwardly attacks with poorly communicated hitboxes and he Clips through the wall placing Anor Londo in Israel was a great idea and I wish it contained an actually fun boss Saint Aldrich of the deep is going straight to the bottom of underwhelming Tears since he is boring while also being more annoying than wolnir keeping up with the theme of underwhelming bosses the next boss is just that yorm the giant the hardest part of this fight is when you try to equip the storm ruler in your inventory while yorm chases you down after doing this beating the boss is a simple matter of charging up a weapon and pressing the attack button to win honest play pinwheels harder at level one than this guy Alden ring showed me how spectacular a gimmick boss could be with Reichard Lord of blasphemy which makes me all the more harsh in my criticism when viewing jorm's lackluster mechanics jorm the giant is going straight to the top of underwhelming tear I haven't talked about the story yet so let's have a quick plot recap there are four strong beings called the Lords of Cinder that once linked the fire in their age and have been resurrected the length of fire again and keep the world in an age of light but only one of them is all right with being sacrificed the little Lord ludlith the other three of them went insane and prince lothric who is fated to be the next one to link the fire is going through his rebellious teenage phase and won't do it so we have to kill them all so basically it's another Dark Souls game where we have to fight four giant Gods so that we can kill a fifth guy by a bonfire since only three bosses are actual Lords of Cinder I do find it disappointing that mechanically two of them are extremely disappointing those bosses as being Aldrich and jorm the giant to make this issue weirder the bosses before and after these two disappointments are amazing pontiff and Dancer of the Boreal Valley are much stronger than either Lord of Cinder and much more fun to fight I'd prefer it if either pontiff was a lord of Cinder or Aldrich and yorm had more interesting battle mechanics defeating yorm and Aldrich causes the old lady in lothric Castle to teleport us to her as she kills herself this causes the sun to eclipse and start bleeding with the old lady dead we can continue into lothric Castle but not before dancer of the Boreal Valley tries to stop us if you're a pro level 1 Runner you can kill the woman right away and fight dancer early to get good upgrade materials and rings but I personally don't like doing that this is because I don't want to become overpowered early since it would make all the early to mid game bosses too easy and thus not fun to avoid this I always fight dancer when I'm supposed to and it's always a lot of fun phase one dancer is nothing too special but in Phase 2 she starts whipping out eight plus attack combos obviously this would be impossible to beat at level 1 because I don't have enough stamina to dodge the attacks so instead I just hide behind a pillar and use hit and run tactics to win the answer at level 1 is still difficult even when doing a hit and run because she can sometimes trap the player with a giant combo as they leave which makes for an interesting blend of dueling and running away or as I like to call it strategy I think the reason why this boss always stands out is in how unique her sword swing movements are every one of her attacks Flows In A graceful manner unlike any other boss which causes all of the Dodge roll timings to be slightly delayed I like this because it fits with the dancer aesthetic of the boss and makes her stand out from the crowd it's really creative now if every boss had a bunch of delayed attacks then I might start to get upset but one done in moderation it can be a lot of fun a tier before heading into lothric I'm gonna pick up the greatest ring in the game for level 1 Runners the prisoners chain this will give me a bit more health and more importantly more stamina in order to do this I need to defeat two optional bosses first up Osiris the consumed King now I do feel conflicted on this boss on one hand I like Osiris because he is one of the few bosses that actually has dialogue and I find it funny how he spends the whole fight cradling an invisible baby just to commit domestic abuse when things don't go his way on the other hand this boss is a mechanical mess his main mechanic is the same as Fort which is to get angry and charge down the player character this works with the vort because the player can easily roll underneath him to avoid the damage the player also has to roll underneath Osiris to avoid this attack but this only seems to work up close at a very specific timing in the animation to make this mechanic more frustrating the arena we fight Osiris in isn't at all flat so at certain points in the arena the player will get stuck between a bump in the floor and the boss's collider which leads to a cheap death although I like the boss's presentation Asian I hate his charge attack and I hate the arena we fight him in so I'm gonna throw him into C tier certifiably mid behind Osiris awaits a dark version of the tutorial and fire link Shrine called untended Graves I feel incredibly conflicted about this level finding a dark version of the tutorial with new enemies and a boss hidden behind an illusionary wall is exactly the type of creative magic That I Want from these games but I wish that there was more I want fromsoft to expand on the idea of a dark dimension World in a creative way maybe with having a fallen dark version of the world with altered level design and enemies kind of like the Dark World from a link to the past and then as the game progresses the player could revisit earlier levels in the dark world and face off against both stronger versions of the previous bosses as well as entirely new ones you might say that this would be lazia from soft to reuse levels but similar to a link to the past if they change the Dark World variants in a meaningful way it could be like a new experience Champion gun deer is a good example of that since he's a lot better than the first boss but they could be taken even further the high wall of lothric could be destroyed in the Dark World so the actual design of the level could be radically different and all the enemies could be changed to make it not feel repetitive I'm going to brainstorm different ways fromsoft could have expanded on their creative ideas throughout this video If you dislike that because I'm just some guy on the internet and not inexperienced game designer at fromsoft that's fine all I'm really trying to do is prove to you guys how much creative potential some parts of Dark Souls 3 have so you can understand why this game leaves me feeling unfulfilled on some level now it's time for a hot take and when I say hot I mean molten lava Champion gundier has the most fun to dodge attack pattern in the Dark Souls series and I don't even care that he's somewhat a reskin since his mechanics are wildly different similar to pontiff gundir has a lot of combo extenders the difference between these two bosses is that pontiff uses his combo extenders to punish players who haven't discovered his obscure turning opening while gundier has openings in between his combo extending attacks this means that champion gun deer locks the player in what feels like a never-ending combo where a player is always under the pressure of getting attacked while still having enough openings in the never-ending combo for the fight to feel Fair the idea of having bosses with giant combos that lock a player into combat was made better in sekiro and this is Dark Souls 3's best version of this type of fight I also love just how good gundier's attacks feel to Dodge I barely get a hit in only to dodge under the guy's foot even getting hit by this boss's shoulder bash feels good since it just looks so cool Champion gundier is an S tier fight one of the best dueling bosses in the game even better than pontiff I know that I've been pretty harsh on Dark Souls 3 for lack originality throughout this video so now that we're getting to the late game I want to talk about something it does well I've heard some people write off Dark Souls 3 saying the only good thing about it is its bosses which makes me think that these people completely turn off their brains when it comes to level design Dark Souls 3 has the most good shortcuts per level of any Souls game even if it's lacking the superior World design shortcuts of Dark Souls 1 levels like the Cathedral of the deep Israel lothric and the grand archives all come to mind as some of the best design levels in the game in fact outside of the poison swamp I'd say that there isn't a single bad level in the entire game which is certainly not something I can say about the previous Souls games another thing Dark Souls 3 does well is its enemy placement within the levels in addition to having a fair amount of enemies in every level Dark Souls 3 has the best amount of ambushes per level in the series Dark Souls tends to set up these ambushes with loot this puts the player into a paranoid mindset that every chest piece of Loot on the ground or entrance to a room could signal an enemy attack the player always has to be looking behind and above them scanning for danger in every level to survive the amount that these ambushes occur in Dark Souls 3 feels like the most fine-tuned in the series not so many that it would make me want to run past everything like in scholar the first sin but just enough for the world to be really threatening the difficulty of these surprise attacks are also very well designed they're just hard enough to be challenging if a player isn't observant and lethal if a player is careless the only real issue I have with the level design isn't in the levels themselves but in the bonfire spam and healing I loved those tense levels in Dark Souls 1 like Blight Town and Sen's Fortress that were endurance challenges to see if a player could fight their way to the next bonfire without running out of Estes flasks in Dark Souls 3 there are a few levels that will ever challenge a player's amount peels which is probably because they drowned the player Nest to shards I was able to have 10 Estus flasks before defeating deacons of the deep or the abyss Watchers and with a limit of 15 heals I can say that it's far too much since it makes the boss battles too easy even at level 1 I rarely ever ran out of s discharges and I tend to use more healing at level 1 because of how the Lloyd Shield ring and sword ring only give me benefits at Max health and I still didn't run out one counter argument could be that I should just pick up fewer shards or a lot my Estes to have less flasks except for one facing the hardest levels in bosses my issue with this is that I prefer it when a game's default difficulty is hard with options to make it easier like in Dark Souls 1 with bonfire kindling then easy with options to make it hard like with choosing not to pick up Estes shards in summary Dark Souls 3 level design is great but the healing system in bonfire am take away tension from the levels so Dark Souls 1 early to mid game levels are overall still the best in the series it's so weird that every time I write an essay about a from soft game I always end up saying that Dark Souls 1 did something better even after all these years Dark Souls 1 is still the best from soft game in terms of difficulty options the amount of checkpoints per level and World design it really sucks that with every new release from soft takes one step forward and another step back we're almost done ranking the base game's bosses and the next boss dragon slayer armor is much better at level 1. the first phase of this boss is another standard duel with a nice Rhythm to his weapon swings and shield bashes in Phase 2 the moths in the sky start shooting laser beams and red balls at the player at a normal level these attacks don't do enough damage to be a real threat to me and I have enough DPS to kill dragon slayer so quickly that I barely had a chance to fight with the moths I always thought of this boss's missed potential until I fought him at level 1. now I have to do a traditional Dark Souls duel while keeping in mind when to run away from the moth attacks as well as what pieces of cover haven't been broken yet that I can use to Shield my puny health bar from The Moth attacks normally dragon slayer armors beat here but at level 1 he's a tier the boss that concludes lothric Castle is a shut-in who canonically never changes his clothes it's lothric and Lorien the twin princes I love this boss although seoul's combat is very simple this boss manages to innovate on the Dark Souls boss formula in two interesting ways the first way it does this is by allowing Lorien to teleport behind the player and follow up with either quick or delayed attacks every time lorian teleports I'm filled with genuine adrenaline since I know I might need to Quick Dodge but I also know that quick dodging could be my death in addition to the teleport Attack Phase 2 twin princes introduces another cool mechanic which is a weak point on the back of a dueling boss if a player doesn't Focus his damage on lothric then he can heal his brother Lorien back from the dead and we can only hit lothric if we get behind lorian so that is the weak point generally circling to the back of a melee boss allows the player to get an extra hidden as the boss turns kind of like what I did with pontiff twin princes adds on to this concept since positioning behind the boss is actually now required to win unless you just want lothric to revive his brother a bunch it should be obvious by now but the twin princes are an s-tier boss and my favorite boss in the base game of Dark Souls 3. I think it's time we take a trip to fight what many people consider to be the hardest boss in Dark Souls 3 nameless King and I need to brag a little here because somehow when I first play Dark Souls 3 I found this place on my own damn it once I beat Osiris and found the crisscross sitting gesture I instantly connected it to the dragon statue and I found name endless King on my own using the gesture teleports us to archdragon Peak my opinion on this level is the same as how I feel about untainted Graves it's a creative idea for a level that starts to bring back the Magic in the Dark Souls one large runestone bridge in the sky we navigate around with the occasional Interruption by a dragon is a cool idea but it ends too quickly the first boss of this area is ancient wyvern this is a gimmick boss where the player has to run past or fight a bunch of enemies before one shotting the boss with the plunging attack overall there isn't much to say about this boss since he's barely a boss so I'm just gonna stick him in underwhelming tier of course the real attraction in archdragon Peak isn't a gimmick boss no for it's time to fight the hardest boss in the Dark Souls 3 base game nameless King he is the firstborn of Gwyn who had his name wiped from the annals of history for siding with the dragons over the gods the nameless King has been hiding from his dad in a mountain that's actually pretty closed captioning not available rhythm of medium delayed spear swings that are designed to punish players who spam Dodge roll however what really makes this boss interesting is how weird his openings are since nameless King's consistent openings are so hidden he probably feels like pontiff to many players since he never stops attacking but just like with pontiff this isn't true the nameless King's main mechanic is that if he returns to Idol after a two or four attack combo he can continue the combo indefinitely but if he returns to Idol after a 1-3 and usually 5 attack combo then he will not continue the combo unless he's doing a delayed stab in which case you still have an opening for at least one attack in other words if he returns to Idol on an odd attack you can hit him but never on an even attack to demonstrate the consistency of this strategy I did get hitless on both phases of nameless King in the footage unlike with pontiff nameless King's hard to discover opening is much more well designed it almost feels like I just covered a positioning and animation exploit with pontiff which is a bit too difficult while nameless King's opening of only attacking after odd numbered combos is something anyone should be able to discover through observation however there is one large thing I dislike about the nameless King's opening which is that it's so unnatural and hard to learn that a player has to die a bunch of times to realize what the opening is and every death sends the player right back to the king of storm which I hate and then I die a bunch of times to a terrible camera that won't zoom out just to get one more attempt at learning nameless King it almost seems like fromsoft design nameless King to kill players a bunch and get them to rage quit if the king of the storm zoomed out the camera like with the sekiro boss then this would be a spectacular fight but as it currently stands I'm gonna stick nameless King in a tier an amazing creative duel that is only held down by a rage-inducing camera in phase one with the most difficult boss in base game Dark Souls 3 defeat did it's time we move on to the first DLC Ash is a very end-all and if you want to do your own level 1 run of Dark Souls 3 I strongly recommend that you look up how to get the dragon's lair's ax by completing sirius's quest line up to Israel since that is the best level 1 weapon but because this is my second level one run I'm going to challenge myself to use the broadsword the whole time and the first DLC boss to die to my broadsword is the Champion's grave tender the first part of this boss is an easy wolf multi-fight that I just see as part of the Boss run the second part is an NPC duel against the Champion's grave tender that I don't enjoy all that much the boss attacks the player as he blocks with his shield which forces me into using hit and run tactics to get safe openings once he gets to half Health he summons the wolf and starts using magic with the shield put away the NPC duel becomes less annoying but the wolf more than makes up for it he just spams the charge attack and jumps away from the player's attacks none of these annoyances make me hate the fight but I don't like it all that much either overall it's mid when looking at the dlc's level design I really like how it starts at ariandle Chapel and then loops around the town a snow field and a cave only for the cave to lead us in a circle to the rottenfested basement of the chapel this basement is what is left of the sewer system from Dark Souls 1's painted world after many years and the chapel was built on top of it the lever in this basement opens the way forward to the next boss which is the same lever we used in Dark Souls 1 to open the path to Priscilla what awaits Us in this secret room is one of the greatest bosses in Dark Souls a three-phase boss extravaganza the first phase is a standard duel against Frida who is of a similar size to the player and can be staggered like the player sometimes she will do a hyper armor attack but it's always Fair because it has a long wind up she will also turn invisible and attack from a random location which seemed unfair at first and until I realized that she leaves a cloud of dust that communicates her location to the player she either Dodges left right or jumps behind the player after turning invisible with this in mind phase one Frida's greatest strength turns into her greatest weakness the second phase is another great Twist on the 1v2 boss formula which is something I've been saying a lot in this video this time the twist is that the bosses have a combined health bar and extremely different movesets that easily allow for a player to create their own openings the first boss is a simplified version of phase one Frida and the second boss's father ariandole himself going a bit crazy the fight is all about cleverly positioning the player character to hit father ariandel from behind while avoiding Frida's ice and melee attacks to make it a bit harder the father will also spill lava around him and cause a giant explosion so the player can't always just stay right beside him these two bosses have one of the best rhythms to their varied attacks out of any 1v2 boss that I've seen partially because there's always a correct position to be dealing damage to the boss instead of waiting but that position is constantly changing and hard to find occasionally Frida will heal the boss and I learned that even while at level 1 I can out DPS her healing if I just wail on Father ariandel's back so it always feels Fair defeating the 1v2 leads us to the third and final phase black flame Freeda if pontiff was Mr Elden ring then Frida is Mrs Alden ring since she reminds me so much of Melania a staggerable boss with never-ending attack combos of course I'm only joking here while some of Frida's combos will seem endless if you just memorize all of her guaranteed openings then you'll find she actually has quite a lot of them quite frequently and if I'm being honest her openings really aren't hard to discover Frida will also turn invisible in this phase the player has to track an invisible Frida as she dashes away three times and throws out ice attacks at the player this is a genius way to to expand on the invisibility concept introduced in phase one since if you learned the trick in Phase 1 it was just too easy so then in Phase 3 they made it harder since you can still get hit by your ice attacks as you're trying to find her my only real issue with this boss is the same one I had with the abyss Watchers for no reason that I can discern black flame Frida will just sort of ignore getting staggered and do a hyper armor attack outside of this one tiny issue black flame Frida is a great fight I feel exhilarated when she pursues me with her giant combos but she has enough openings so that I'm never bored sister Frida will always have a special place in my heart because when I encountered her on my first level one run she was my greatest challenge I probably sank over 20 hours on this boss and after overcoming this challenge I felt like I actually did The Impossible Freedom made me a radically better Dark Souls player as a result of this struggle it should be obvious by now that Frida belongs right at the top of s tier a spectacular fight with Frida defeated we only have one Dark Souls 3 DLC left to be completed that rhymed the ring City and this DLC has what are widely considered to be the hardest bosses in the souls series when I first got to the end of the game and looked out at the collapsing lothric Castle environment I was both amazed and deeply disappointed I was amazed because of how creative an idea it was to have the castle City we previously explored in an alternate Dimension where it's caving in on itself and disappointed that fromsoft once again decided to not flesh out a creative idea in Dark Souls 3 something they do throughout the whole game the DLC fixes this by making the drag Heap an actual level while I enjoy the drag Heap for such a cool idea I wish there was more I just won't stop saying that I guess the whole concept for this level has so much creative potential it's a mishmash dimension of every previous Souls game name brought into one we see the remains of lothric Castle and Earthen Peak but imagine if this level was three times longer and threw in four more levels maybe Iron Keep and Sen's Fortress could be caving into each other or maybe enemies from Israel and drangalia Castle could be locked in a never-ending Undead War at the End of Time drag Heap being a collage version of previous Souls games is an amazingly creative idea something this game desperately needs but like with every other creative idea in Dark Souls 3 it doesn't realize its true potential the boss of the drag Heap is another great Twist on the 1v2 boss formula like every other 1v2 boss in the game demon in pain and Demon from below the demons take turns between having aggressive melee attacks and ranged poison attacks the far-ranged poison attack leaves a trail before exploding which ensures that the player always has adequate time to avoid the poison attack once the second demon dies they resurrect as the demon Prince the difficulty of this boss will be largely dependent on which boss you kill first in the 1v2 if you killed the demon From Below first then you have to hit the demon Prince enough to stagger him so that his giant meteor One-Shot attack doesn't get fully powered up while Fireballs shoot at the player to make it even harder alternatively if you kill demon in pain first then the demon Prince Will Fly Away and shoot a laser beam in a single direction for a long period of time during which you can hit him for free with no threat of taking damage as long as you stagger him before he Powers up the laser this means that the fight is 100 times easier when you kill the demon in pain first the Rhythm to his Dodge roll timings are fun and a nice Evolution on the 1v2 aggressive demon moveset my only real issue with the demon Prince is that at level 1 his flying fire slam Attack One shots the player and it has such an oddly tight Dodge roll window there might be some positioning trick to avoid this that I can't find but dying in one hit to such a tight Dodge roll window is really a no annoying overall this is one of my favorite 1v2 fights in the series followed up by a great 1v1 duo with a giant demon so demon Prince is going to rest comfortably in s tier with the demon Prince defeated we may proceed out of the drag Heap and into the ring City the way I feel about this level is the way I feel about every other truly creative moment in all Dark Souls 3. at first I was blown away by the unique City environment that looked like if Naboo from Star Wars and Dark Souls had a baby only to be thoroughly disappointed that we spend half of the level in a swamp in a cave the breathtaking city backdrop when we enter the ring city is just baiting at a bunch of areas we will never be able to fully explore I almost wish that the dreg Heap and the ring City both had their own separate DLCs rather than deliver both ideas Half Baked in a single DLC the second boss in this DLC is the PVP boss while a cool idea at level 1 we can only fight the NBC rather than an actual player for obvious reasons fighting Half Light at level 1 is the ultimate test of using hit and run tactics in a duel to win not my favorite type of mechanical difficulty but also not terrible overall half light is still mid before we finish out this DLC it's time to fight the optional hardest boss in Dark Souls 3. a boss specifically designed to be the ultimate challenge for a Dark Souls player will My Level 1 run end here was it all for nothing no this boss isn't even hard I did hit list in under an hour with a broadsword you see madir is not even close to the most mechanically difficult boss in the Dark Souls series he doesn't even crack the top 10. the deer's openings are obvious and plentiful and none of his Dodge roll timings are all that tight one reason players find midi are hard is because they attack his legs I think the developers communicate this is an obviously terrible strategy because a midir has so many lengthy openings with his head B medeir's head takes double damage and C medeir's fire is specifically designed to murder players who attack the legs and has an obviously unfair hitbox if you try to avoid it by running towards his tail the only other mechanic to keep in mind is that you have to roll backwards from madeira's attacks so that the camera doesn't lock off but that should also be pretty obvious if you die from the camera locking off because you wound up underneath midir and then blame the game for the death then you just aren't paying close enough attention to the mechanics my own personal theory on why so many people find this boss so hard is because he requires players to have the fundamentals of Dark Souls down midir does too much stamina damage for a player to block reliably so you really have to dodge a lot of the attacks and he does so much damage that a few mistimed Dodge rolls could mean death midir also has a lot of health so a player can't just get lucky with their Dodge rolls they need to be consistent to win hit trading and blocking aren't effective strategies to win so you must Dodge and hit and a lot of people just aren't good enough at the fundamentals to beat medir I guarantee if anyone has completed a level 1 run up to this point they will not struggle on madeir at level 1 sister Frida alone is 10 times harder than madeir maybe more I originally did my first level 1 run in Dark Souls 3 out of spite because my friend kept telling me that I was bad at Dark Souls this friend also spent months fighting madeir and was only ever able to beat him with summons he kept saying there's no way you can beat midir at level 1 that's almost impossible so when I beat the boss in about a half hour at level one he got angry and called me a hacker and in some ways I have to thank that friend for this whole level 1 series because it all stems from him calling me bad at Dark Souls despite the fact that he uses great swords to hit trade with every boss anyways medeir is going into a tier he's almost an S tier boss but he's just a bit too easy only one boss is left to finish out the DLC slave nightgale this egg keeps everything within the ring City Frozen in time and touching it causes the egg to crumble and for time to fast forward into its natural end the ring City being stuck in time connects to the common theme in Dark Souls 3's story of not letting go of the past Gwen built the ring City to imprison the pygmies for as long as possible this is because each pygmy has a piece of the Dark Soul inside of them and if they were ever to come in contact with the abyss they could unleash their true strength and speed up the oncoming age of Darkness this is exactly what happened in Oola seal when a pygmy touched the abyss and turned into Manus I like how the story of Dark Souls 3's final DLC actually resolves a plot thread of what happens to the pygmies rather than only adding more questions which is what Miyazaki usually does gale is an interesting character since he takes advantage of the immortality aspect of the end dead in the plot Gail is an undead from Before Dark Souls 1 who has survived because he has had a single purpose driving him forward which is to create a new painted world with the Dark Soul as the paint I look at Gail as an immortal version of Moses and the dark soul-infused painting as his Promised Land This metaphor really works because Gail never actually reaches his Promised Land he doesn't get to go to the painting he doesn't make it that far since you have to put him out of his misery he spends an eternity longer than any other living creature trying to create his promised land and ironically enough in the end he dies without ever realizing the only goal that kept him alive this is because in order to achieve his goal Gail needed to murder all of the pygmies and consume the blood of the Dark Soul I'm not certain why he couldn't just kill the pygmies and pick up their Dark Soul or just pick up their blood to use his paint which is what we later do with his soul but I guess that would mean that he wouldn't be a boss battle so he eats them instead and goes insane and thank the Lord that Gail did eat the Dark Soul because he makes for an amazing three-phase boss fight the first phase features Gail in an animalistic frenzy wildly throwing his great sword around while crawling around like a gorilla my only issue with the first phase is that if a player doesn't want to run a while to fight Gail around the pygamy Thrones then they will fight him near the entrance to the Boss Arena on the Sand Hill this causes Gail's model to partially clip into the hill at points which will sometimes hide his next attack I thought phase one Gale so many times that if he so much as turns his body weight one degree I know where and when to dodge so this no longer bothers me but Gail hiding his model in the sand did lead to a lot of cheap deaths during the learning process in Phase 2 Gale starts actually trying and stands up one thing I haven't mentioned until now now is that Dark Souls 3 has the best soundtrack of any Souls game and when Gale enters Phase 2 his song transitions from good to amazing there's a reason why you guys hear at least one or two Dark Souls 3 boss songs in all of my videos and I've probably used Gail's song the most because it's just that epic in fact you're listening to it right now Phase 2 Gale plays out like an easier version of manus's boss fight the best strategy I found to win at level 1 is to constantly Circle him so that when he does an overhead attack you are positioned to not have to roll and can use that time for your own attack Gale's sword swings also leave behind a second hitbox in the form of his cape which makes all of the Dodge roll timings really tight to avoid Gale's horizontal attacks I would usually run out of attack range when I got the chance Pro tip always Dodge left from Gale's horizontal attack swings no matter what direction he attacks from that seems to be the only correct Direct action to dodge roll unless you're positioned near his back phase three Gale is kind of like phase two but he has some longer attack Combos and will occasionally summon a lightning storm at level 1 your best bet is to just run away from the lightning attacks which does drag out the fight but I don't mind it as much as when other bosses do the same thing I think that's because other bosses like Aldrich force a player to run away since it's the only solution to avoid death while you won't automatically die if you fight Gail near his lightning it's the Player's Choice whether to play safe and patient or fast and risky and that makes it more engaging for me the reason why I love fighting Gail so much is similar to why I like Manis which is that both bosses Force the player to use clever positioning strats as well as well-timed Dodge rolls to win I do still enjoy fighting Manus Moore because his positioning requirements are more strict and more plentiful but both bosses are loads of fun I do think that all of these mechanical parallels between Gail and Manus are intentional as both bosses involve a person who contains a piece of the Dark Soul becoming enlarged and corrupted after doing hitless on Madeira nameless King I decided to go for hitless on Gale and let me tell you this was a difficult one I only slightly wanted to tear my hair out every time a single crossbow bolt hit me but it was worth it because the extreme Challenge reminded me why I like level 1 runs in the first place while doing a level 1 run May Grant some bragging rights that alone isn't enough to make me put in all the hours of work that go into these runs the level 1 run isn't about bragging rights it's about thinking of accomplishing something extremely difficult and wondering can I even do that is that even possible and then trying anyways it's about facing down the impossible and not giving up it's about defying the odds no matter how high you make them it's about insanity and I love that [Applause] oh with hitless Gale completed we can return to the painter and give her the blood of the Dark Soul to use his paint she asks if she can name the painting after the player character and after accepting it it is Canon that bloodborne's world is officially called feeble King unless the painting will be the setting of Dark Souls 4 then that's feeble King wow guys it's really been a journey we overcame all of Dark Souls 3's greatest challenges at level 1 and there's only one boss left to finish it all out soul of Cinder this boss is a collection of everyone who has linked the fire previously including Gwyn and the protagonist of Dark Souls 1 although this is dependent on which ending you chose in Dark Souls 1. because of this the soul of Cinder Phase 1 switches between multiple different classes of weapon while this is a cool idea I don't think it's executed very well the sword class has so many delayed attack combos that it starts to feel a bit tedious I'll call this class the Lord of Dodge roll catches but the worst class has to be the pyromancer I swear where to God this class doesn't have a single opening with his melee attack combos he just doesn't stop attacking it's almost like an NPC duel who's supposed to stagger but it's put on a boss moveset so I just don't fight this boss until he decides to do some spell that Awards the player free hits and then I run away again although these classes are clearly overtuned when the boss switches to being a spellcaster the game becomes almost too easy every spell is easy to dodge roll and he will shoot a big blast that allows me to take out a giant chunk of his health the only challenge is that he will summon magic balls above his head that will shoot the player at random intervals but you can counter this by staggering the boss as he summons the balls so they will just dissipate I can reliably take out over half of the boss's Health from just this one class the other two classes are so hard that I just play extremely safe until he becomes a Mage and then I win which isn't my favorite design approach the only class that I actually enjoy and think is a good level of difficulty is the spear class I like how a circle strafing right can award the player with extra hits as you run out of his attack range kind of like what I did with Gail the spear class also has a satisfying Dodge roll Rhythm that doesn't have a million roll catches although Phase One Soul of Cinder is a bit of a mechanical mess phase two is pretty great after you defeat the soul of Cinder his final defense is to fall back on using a harder version of Gwen's moveset the music changes to include the piano Melody from gwyn's theme from the first game this is a great callback to the final boss of the first Dark Souls game and it really hit me in the fields the first time I realized what was happening the boss also has an all-out attack where he will do a giant sword combo to shred through the player's Health this is kind of like a fair version of melania's waterfall dance since a the player can actually Dodge roll away from the attack at close range without using developer tools to practice and B the boss does this attack at regular intervals so baiting it out after it comes off of cooldown act actually works I'm going to place the soul of Cinder in a tier while I don't enjoy fighting two of the classes in Phase One the second phase Gwen fight redeems the boss for me with every boss in Dark Souls 3 defeated at level 1 I decided to link the fire I thought it would be funny that the final boss of the next ages psycho will just be a super weak level one character who's really good at dodging because as we all know Dodge roll spam is the true final boss of Dark Souls 3. now that the level 1 run is over I just want to take this time to talk about what Dark Souls 3 means to me on one hand I see many parts of this game as missed potential all of my favorite creative ideas in this game were set aside for the focal point to be on repeating ideas we've already seen however on the other hand this game got me into doing level 1 runs in the first place probably because the boss mechanics are so fun which has caused me to view the entire Series in a different light while I have many great memories of this game going back to it all these years later does leave me feeling a bit unsatisfied the level design is great but the abundance of Estus shards and bonfires make it devoid of tension the bosses are amazing but sekiro bosses are so much better that they somewhat ruin Dark Souls 3 boss designed by comparison when I was playing this game at level 1 honestly guys I was just thinking I'd rather be playing sekiro right now the world design is better than Dark Souls 2 in sekiro but it pales in comparison to Dark Souls 1 and Elden ring what I'm getting at is that Dark Souls 3 is a jack of all trades and master of none it will always hold a special place in my heart for being the one Dark Souls game that doesn't have a single thing about it I despise the only level I dislike in all of the worst bosses they aren't even bad they're just boring but even if this is all true so many great ideas weren't fleshed out there's so much missed potential in this game when looking at the Dark World and ended Graves and the drag Heap and archdragon Peak and the profane capital and the ring City I know that Dark Souls 3 could have been so much more if the focus was on creativity rather than playing it safe

Channel: Feeble King

Views: 371,795

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Id: UBQy65VETGA

Length: 64min 18sec (3858 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2023