The Day the World GOT GUD

2011 was 12 years ago you're welcome as I grow older and wrinklier I bear a witness to a whole new generation of Gamers who don't remember Ye Old Times quite the way I do sure you knew a crown know about Dark Souls but many of you probably weren't around when it was in its Heyday from software had already been around for a while and had their fans through series like armored Core and kingsfield but Dark Souls was the game that put them on the world's stage originally a spiritual successor to the much more experimental far less polished but no less imaginative and ambitious Demon Souls Dark Souls was an expansion on that prototype of a formula that became an instant classic creating ripples across the entire gaming industry still felt to this day so influential was from software's magnum opus that it birthed an entire sub-genre of Games inspired by it and these days it's hard to browse steam at all without tripping over titles carrying that ever vague tag of souls like and yes you probably knew this coming in here already it's pretty hard Dark Souls difficulty has become something of a meme over the years to the entire series as Dutch in my opinion not from a gameplay perspective necessarily but from a marketing one to the gaming public and gaming media at the time Dark Souls was a trial by fire only for the most hardcore of Hardcore Gamers an oasis of brutality in a desert of games that have become too handholdy over tutorialized and oversimplified and sure there's some truth to that this was not a game that was tripping over itself to please you or keep your attention it presented itself to you expected you to learn it get better at it and handle all the exploring of everything it had to offer on your own well mostly but we'll get to that later it was a challenge especially for the time but good Lord did people oversell that one aspect of it if you'd only ever heard about it you would have assumed it was just a rage game in the same vein as I want to be the guy just with a bigger budget marketing for the game certainly didn't help for God's sake the title of its eventual PC Port was the prepare to Die edition come on now and oh boy did this come with its fair share of elitism you couldn't dislike Dark Souls without being called a scrubby be casual unfit to enjoy its magnificence and thus did one of the most notorious phrases meme its way into pop culture get good something utter to anyone who expressed displeasure or frustration with the game invalidating any and all criticism by placing the blame solely on the person's skill or lack thereof personal taste a legitimate flaw with the game nah you're just bad boy cry about it I should clarify I love this game to death but this mentality and focus on this one aspect bothered me then and still does there was much more to Dark Souls that made it great than it just being hard the level design the art Direction the music the world the story there was so much raw love and effort put into it that I felt went underappreciated at the time all that's certainly not underappreciated now hindsight is 2020 and all that but there's still plenty about it that I don't hear mentioned enough so I decided to revisit it and see just how well it holds up to that nostalgic memory I've already gone back and played it many times before in the past but I never really approached it with a critical eye and been more willing to admit what it does well and what it doesn't before we set off on this journey I should mention that I'll be playing the remastered version because despite all my problems with it it is the most stable way to play Dark Souls on the PC the original Port was notoriously bad and trying to record this game off my original PlayStation 3 version was always a minor nightmare since the console's hardware never seemed to play nice with things like Elgato it is unfortunate though because the remastered version while it is still basically the exact same game and keeps the vast majority of it untouched makes a few changes to the visuals that I don't agree with I'll get into that more in a bit though because this intro is pushing five minutes by this point and we got a long road ahead of us so pack your bags and gather around the bonfire kids we're gonna be here a while thank you before we head out though a few ground rules to lay one I'll be taking the intended path through the game as best I can from beginning to end this means no master key sorry old friend we'll be going with black fire bombs instead two I'll be playing a strength Faith Build since I was looking to try something new for this playthrough so we're starting cleric three to the very best of my abilities I'm going to try and do every single NPC's quest line to completion so layers at the very least this does mean that I summoned NPCs for the boss fights in this video I'm still at 100 sure if you really need to to finish some of the requests but I just wanted to be sure besides I needed sunlight medals so at the very least I was summoning Solaire also I'll say right now I didn't get far with Griggs I kinda forgot about them after saving them whoops and finally four I'm not going to go super in depth into the game's lore Dark Souls is famous for being the [ __ ] Iceberg of video game stories once you start delving into it and to explain it in detail would require me taking at least a two-week crash course on body video and this video has taken long enough there is plenty of other people on YouTube who've covered it far better than I ever could so just go look it up for yourself if you're interested that said I will at least be giving my own summary of what I do know as we go through where it's relevant this isn't guaranteed to be accurate but I'll try my best so with all of that out of the way we're in prison off to a good start more specifically we're in the Undead Asylum a facility built to Corral humans that became Afflicted with the curse of undeath Undead will eventually turn what's called Hollow which reduces them to a shambling corpse that attacks just about anything still alive and one Undead here happens to be yourself wasting away in seclusion before a very helpful night drops a corpse with a key through the ceiling why he couldn't just drop the key and not the whole ass body I don't know but we take what we can get in these situations thus Begins the game's tutorial and it handles it in a pretty unintrusive way leaving the actual tutorializing to messages written on the ground that are entirely optional but give you the basics to get you going they also demo one of the multiplayer aspects of Dark Souls right away messages if playing online people can leave messages for other people on the ground using preset bits and pieces of sentences you'll find messages that are legitimately helpful and others that are just people being Gremlins we'll come back to this later for now we make our way up to the game's first bonfire bonfires became the icon of the entire Dark Souls series even Securo and bloodborne had their own versions of these things from here you can rest level up and later on store repair and improve equipment they're the checkpoints of the game and let me tell you back in the day after carefully inching my way through an area being slowly drained of resources clutching my souls and Humanity to my chest finding one of these things was always a huge wash of relief anyway where were we oh yeah luckily I'm prepared okay so yeah that's usually what happens when you get careless in Dark Souls the game tends to take offense to that kids this is what we call hubris thankfully through the holy power of explosives we Prevail and move on now normally you run away from that thing grab your Shield weapon and other gear then go back and fight it again to cap off the tutorial but it's nice that the game gives you the option to just beat it right away even better you're rewarded with the Demon's Hammer if you do this is one of the many good things about Dark Souls it's pretty open-ended you can approach almost any situation however you want with the tools the game gives you all it asks is that you get from point A to point B how you get there is up to you sure you can go through the tutorial in the intended path or you can bomb the Asylum Demon so hard there is now a smoking Crater where it's supposed to be it's your choice this is expanded on later as you get the ability to summon allies for boss fights get more weapons spells and consumables I never felt like I was forced into playing a specific way or the right way just that the game expected me to get good at the fundamentals which thankfully are pretty simple to wrap your head around here's our Prison Break buddy and they're dying already because of course they are but at least he gives us some crucial Direction in his final moments there was an old saying in my family thou who art Undead are chosen and thine Exodus from the Undead Asylum maketh pilgrimage to the land of ancient Lords when thou wringeth the bell of Awakening of the fate of the undead Thou shalt oddly specific familial sang along with the key to the big ass door and the Estus flask the single most important item in the entire game this is your primary healing item and it refills every time you rested a bonfire starts with five uses resting in a bonfire gives you five but you can sacrifice Humanity to Kindle that bonfire and from then on it'll give you more the soul series always seemed to change the healing system from game to game this is still my preferred way though lightly they've settled on a similar system with find key item use key item on whatever your flask adjacent item is that time and get more uses of it that way it works and there's nothing wrong with that but I still prefer the first game's way though admittedly it can suck if you get to a new bonfire with no Humanity to Kindle it and you're stuck with only five uses that does sting a bit ah ooh ankles anyway after getting the rest of our gear we pushed past the big doors Waltz right up this pathway and bird up [Music] now I've been mostly fun and jokes up to this point so let me dial it back and go slightly serious for just a little bit I love Firelink Shrine there's many reasons and I'm not entirely sure where to start this is where you're always 100 no [ __ ] safe as long as you don't go this way you can spend as much time as you want just hanging out here and nothing bad happens no timed quests that run out if you idle for too long no enemies that roam around until they find you here nothing it's very similar to the Nexus and Demon Souls but narratively I think it's stronger because it doesn't just serve a gameplay purpose of being a hub it's part of the entire world the land of lordran is winding in vast but almost all of it branches out from this one spot and some of it Loops back it's where most of the NPCs you meet end up one way or another and as you progress you start seeing more and more familiar faces just wind up here the further you go it feels more like a home reinforced by that somber but peaceful music that plays every time you visit it and slowly Fades away every time you leave this is the only place in the game that has a consistent musical backing by the way with only one other exception that we won't see for a while the rest of Dark Souls only has music in boss fights or important cut scenes it creates this unique feeling when you wind a corner and slowly you start to hear that familiar Melody just humming away Firelink is important to the entire experience because it makes the world feel connected even if it doesn't lead to every Zone the areas it does lead to are often the paths you need to take to reach those places further away like needing to go through the catacombs to reach the Tomb of the Giants a minor note but the use of depth of field makes the world feel massive even if its main technical use is to hide texture limitations and such although speaking of visuals before we continue I did mention that I had some problems with the remastered version they're small things but I feel like they mess with the visual presentation of Dark Souls overall the sparkle that marks items used to look more more cloudy and slowly fade away when you pick them up now it's more like a flickering ball that immediately blips out of existence and I was going to say that the remastered version looks a bit darker than the original but I don't know looking at them back to back I might just be remembering that wrong though the remastered version is definitely doing something different I think it might be using less Bloom and the color palette might be a bit more faded I couldn't tell you exactly what the remastered version is doing differently but my brain prefers the old one for some reason and most aggravatingly to me at least the bonfires in the remastered version I would consider to be a direct downgrade from The Originals I mean sure they look like a bonfire nothing wrong with them but the original bonfire looked more ethereal and magical with tendrils of fire like energy wrapping around and reaching above the coiled sword it's more visually interesting this is a problem I have with the bonfires from the rest of the series they left this original magical look behind and I feel like that was a mistake I am probably the only person in the world who cares about this but I do God damn it there's likely other visual changes from the original version that I didn't notice but those were the ones that stood out to me the most and the ones that actively bothered me I'm bringing this all up now because once we get started I'm not gonna have a good chance to later I guarantee you that so back on topic Firelink is immensely important to the whole of Dark Souls and I needed to give it the proper appreciation it deserves so now that I've had my moment of nerding out want to see me get swarmed by skeletons now's a good time to talk about dying I made fun of the prepare to Die edition but death is a major part of Dark Souls you die you pop back out of the last bonfire you rested at and you lose all your souls in humanity you can get them all back if you return to where you died and pick up this Mark on the ground however if you die again before reaching that point it's all gone forever carrying a bunch of souls on you at once is often an unnecessary risk unless you're saving up for something big spend it while you got it is a harsh lesson most Souls players have to learn the hard way now while there are three Pathways we can go from fire link the way we really should go is up foreign [Music] the Undead Burg is The Game's intended starting area and it certainly feels like it enemies are slow don't hit all that hard and sometimes go completely catatonic okay in terms of overall enemy difficulty the Berg is an extension of the tutorial however the game has taken you off the rails and you're free to explore around it's worth doing so too since even though the Berg is relatively straightforward there's some hidden paths and extra items tucked away out of immediate View and despite the fact that enemies are easy getting cocky when more than one is attacking can still get you in trouble we meet our first merchant here but we're really only interested in one item from them the residence key we're gonna need that for an NPC Quest later aside from that he sells some basic weapons armor the yellow soapstone which is used to leave messages and the dried finger a new item added in the remastered version what does it do hold your horses we'll get to that in addition to Merchants the Berg introduces the idea of enemy ganks to you as well but in very easy to see coming ways the hollows here get up very slowly and take a while to start attacking when they do the entire time they're vulnerable to attacks so it's not hard to to kill them before they have a chance to swing you can even get the drop on them if you're Vigilant enough and this is where the idea of the item gank is supposed to be shown where you pick up an item and then enemies that were in hiding suddenly spring on you but I'm so familiar with this whole game by this point and where most of the ambushes are that eventually I had to purposefully fall into an item gank just to get some decent footage of it yep I guess I'm just too good at the video game these days how tragic tagging this bonfire we make our way across the bridge throw a lot of unspoken curse words if the annoying guys throwing bombs down at us and look at this fight here you walk into the room and two guys immediately attack you after a few seconds of tussling a third enemy will join the fight but the game makes it very obvious if you don't see the hollow Knight entering the room it loudly kicks in the door to alert you this is yet another lesson sometimes additional enemies will just burst out of hiding and you'll need to adapt on the fly but again the way it's shown to here is very forgiving and easy to see coming I should note that being this familiar with all the Trap locations makes my viewpoint very biased so take my word with a moderately proportioned helping of salt nothing Personnel kid so [ __ ] badass [Music] ow at least we get to take our revenge on those firebomb douchebags and on that note it's time we talk about one of my other favorite things about Dark Souls the ragdolls well I wish I could have seen where he fell hands down cards on the table Dark Souls 1 has the best ragdolls of the entire series they attain levels of Jank surpassed only by the likes of Skyrim I'm not entirely sure what kind of law of physics these ragdolls are working off of but for whatever reason they react so violently to your character's movements it's been the source of endless entertainment for me every time I replay this game yes with our newly acquired residence key we commit some casual larceny and head on our Merry Old way my gas throws like a wimp however taking a small detour down the stairs we get this ominous looking Interruption the placement of the Black Knight here is great this thing is entirely optional is way out of your way and it's not even facing you as you approach fighting it is 100 your choice and amongst all these slow easy to digest lessons the game has taught you up to now this one is hard and fast it's a great little curveball since the whole game has been so not that up to that point and if you hadn't died already that's probably death number one for many people I wish there was a player death tracker like in Dark Souls 2 but specifically for this Black Knight it's got to be in the hundreds of thousands by now [Laughter] a man playing spy be like round two goes much better thankfully I was in the wall makes sense by the way I'm so used to starting with the master key that I habitually go to try and open this door even though I don't have it up the spiral stairs one specific Barrel hides a crystal lizard that we kill for some nice upgrade materials and we make our way out onto the bridge nothing's out on the bridge just yet but go a little further and a sudden boss fight on a narrow bridge while the fight itself is fairly straightforward you've got limited Elbow Room to work with however upon entering the bridge you'll most likely be shot at by two archers from above and behind you before you even get far enough to spawn the demon prompting you to climb up and deal with them then when the Taurus demon jumps you you can still climb back up the platform at the start while you're up there it'll look up at you and hey this looks familiar I wonder if yep or you can just wait up there and it'll jump up to join you giving you a circular Arena to fight it with a bit more room to dodge around it's explore go slow and more importantly pay attention these are the lessons Dark Souls is trying to teach you in this first area and I'd say it teaches them fairly well together those three concepts make up the basis for how you should approach any Souls game cautious and attentive also on a side note for the purpose of recording I had to turn this music off to add it in post later and without music this fight is very pathetic sounding [Music] there is nothing in these barrels there will never be anything in these barrels there ever was anything in these barrels and yet I will always break them every single time making our way from the bridge onto another Bridge we meet our next major NPC Solaire of astora all right let's talk about Solaire I don't think I need to tell you that when Dark Souls first came out Solaire became a fan favorite almost immediately people latched on to him and of course that signature phrase and engaging Jolly cooperation has been a meme ever since but there's more to Soul layer than him just being a fun character with a kind of silly way of speaking that's not the only reason people became so invested in him you see throughout Dark Souls every NPC you meet even the nice ones all have their own agenda or are just performing a service for you hell some even straight up betray you or just gradually reveal themselves to be complete Pricks Petrus but Solaire is different in a world devoid of liveliness and hope Solaire stands out as the only true optimist you meet he's jovial confident strong hell he's more of a hero than you he's a bit slow but he's got the heart to make up for that he's the OG Dark Souls himbo but even that isn't everything when you first first meet Solaire he gives you the white soapstone which you use to lay down a summon signature to be summoned into other players worlds and help them most people typically do this to team up on bosses and in several instances you can also summon Solaire to help in fights there's a few other NPCs you can do that with as well but out of everyone Solaire doesn't help you just because it furthers his own goal he just genuinely wants to help and enjoys the camaraderie you're both chosen Undead on the same Journey as each other so why not with everything being so Bleak someone like Solaire is refreshing it's very fitting that when you first see him he's gazing off at the sun it's Rays piercing the smog like clouds and Shining down on him yet that can also be symbolic of ignorance and naivete someone who hasn't yet caught on to the devastated state of the world he's in and so focused only on the good that gradually the bad will begin to catch up to him while we won't get to it until much much later his story comes to an emotional head further down the line either way I love this guy then and I still do even through three whole games he's remained my favorite in the entire series anyway back to our journey after meeting sunbro we begin making our way across the bridge now up to this point Dark Souls has kept itself restrained while it attempts to teach you without words or Exposition the unspoken rules of engagement and the best ways to approach it so since we're past that extended unofficial tutorial now the game starts trying to kill you now this part probably got almost everyone their first time through there is a visual clue about this with charred Stone and corpses on the path ahead of you but on my first playthrough I did not notice it and caught a face full of dragon breath it's fine fortunately it doesn't do enough damage to outright kill you and you can run across and duck into this safe space without it attacking again from here we head further down and kick this ladder to open up one of the many many shortcuts built into Dark Souls world which I then promptly don't use now if I were playing this the same way I did all those years ago I take this door on the left to go under the dragon and the bridge but with the power of knowledge I now know how to get around it yeah I don't know why that works either [Music] masterfully slipping our way past the dragon we shove all the souls we've gained up to that point into faith enough to get it to 25 which is the exact amount of faith we need to pledge ourselves to the Covenant of the Sun and gain the best spell in all of Dark Souls [ __ ] fight me lightning spear bold iconic and devastatingly powerful lightning spear is the spell of choice for the righteous Warriors of sunlight strike down your adversaries with not but the power of your unwavering conviction to all things good and just Lightning Spear the spell of Champions so yeah I like lightning spear it's simple hits like a truck and turns the entire rest of the undead area into a joke not many enemies in the game are resistant to lightning damage and some are extremely weak to it so this spell stays good throughout the whole game even if it starts to slightly fall off toward the end but that's fine because eventually we'll be getting an even better version of it for the moment though this here gate is blocking our happy fun time so down we go to find an alternate path snagging this here key before we go we introduce ourselves to the locals do a quick Balancing Act and continue on oh hello there Square fog gate graphic how are you doing pretty sure the camera is not supposed to catch that hang on a minute I gotta draw attention to that [ __ ] I'm not sure which body that is but it looks like their legs are stretching away from their torso this Knight's position always made me laugh it's like they're trying to imitate that black knight from earlier don't think it works for them though okay this pathway is kind of a dick move there's two enemies hidden on either side of these Corners so the best way to deal with them is to walk out and then immediately duck back in to try and lure them to you I have a minor panic attack when I accidentally use Lightning Spear with this Knight charging me that works it's fine though because the Dark Souls ragdolls continue to be a built-in stress reliever we round this quarter to take our revenge on the prick who shut the gate on us I was obviously over there which allowed me to Parry you from over here didn't you know we pick up a very important key for our trouble and then continue on watch me expertly Dodge this crossbow bolt totally on purpose moving on WE reached the next bonfire in this old church and hey Andre you [ __ ] fridge of a man how you doing okay real quick kids time for another pointer Dark Souls is one of those games that gives you just enough information on the story and mechanics to get you going but if you want to learn all the details you got to do a bit of digging yourself one of the best ways to do this is just by talking to everyone and exhausting all of their dialogue most of them have something important to tell you that gives you background on the world or a hint on where to go next a lot of NPCs will even give new dialogue after certain points in the game so it's worth checking back with everyone when you find yourself stumped other times some info is deliberately hidden from you and there's no way to know about it without methodical exploration or just blind luck this is what we used to call Secrets bits and pieces of a game more entire chunks of it hidden away for you to find yourself or with the help of others remember what I said in the intro about discovering everything on your own well it's not just you going on this journey if you play online you can see ghosts of other players going through the same area as you are you can summon other players to help you and yes you can also invade other worlds to fight each other see Dark Souls was built around the idea of shared knowledge being a communal journey of sorts hearkening back the days of sitting with your friends at lunchtime in school sharing your stories of secret playable characters hidden levels that whole Yoshi on the roof thing in Mario 64 that actually turned out to be true stuff like that it's not meant to just be played once and put back on the Shelf even though that one experience is still great all on its own there's content in it that not everyone was gonna find on their first time through and there was a friggin Gold Rush to discover it all remember the pendant Fiasco where entire swaths of the community were convinced this seemingly useless item had some hidden use and collectively spent months if not years trying to find it only to be told by the man himself Miyazaki that it was in fact useless and was put into the game as a joke for this exact us what a guy this was still before the time when data mining became the norm and we could just dig into a game's files and find everything the boring way the whole idea of shared knowledge being basically a necessity to experience everything a game has to offer has its pros and cons but I have a certain respect for games like that there's entirely not enough of them these days that's for sure secrets that are actually you know Secrets almost seems like a dirty concept these days or at least an Antiquated one I don't know maybe I'm weird but I like my games with a bit of Mystique to them anyway I've old man rambled enough let's get back to the adventure why do you have a giant Titanite demon statue living next door you Andre are they paying you rent or maybe they're just terrified of the man who in a world of gods and demons swords and sorceries Alexa bare-knuckle box people and drop kick them out of [ __ ] existence hey look when you have that much meat on you you can solve a lot of problems with a body slam now before we head up to the Bell Tower and accomplish our first major goal we have a few stops to make so off we go to Dark Root Garden I like Dark Root it's certainly dark but it's got some color and Life to it that stands out a bit from the more Bleak coloration of the undead Berg above without looking like the two don't belong in the same world still not exactly smiles and ice cream as everything is still trying to kill you including literal walking shrubberries and giant Stone Knights that are impressively weak to getting maced in the knee wow I attempt to dismantle this item gank before it happens and it doesn't go exactly to plan a few close calls later and we NAB a very important item set if you ever wanted to kill sentient trees surprisingly Dark Souls has you covered also lizards frogs lizard frogs something behold the Dark Souls 1 ragdolls going [ __ ] ballistic really only went this way to grab this ring that I don't need because I'm weird like that we head back to Andre briefly to finish leveling up my mace to the max that I can currently get it and while we're in the area we stop by the entrance to sense Fortress to say hello to a very special boy [Music] meet siegmeyer along with Solaire he also became a fan favorite character very innocent a bit doofy and really sounds like he's trying to be the big chivalrous night type but is just kind of struggling so here I sit in quite a pickle weighing my options so to speak but we love him regardless and if you don't you are factually going to hell I'm sorry those are just the rules I don't really have a big segment to explain siegmeyer's importance and reason for being liked because I feel it's a lot more obvious than Solaire he's a walking onion who gets himself in way over his head on multiple occasions but still keeps trying his best and you know what good for him we'll be seeing more of him later though don't you worry like I said we're trying for every NPC questline I test out my newly empowered weapon on this giant Sentinel night and it proves very effective then we NAB ourselves a FireKeeper's Soul very important and bear witness to the Dark Souls Community being as classy as ever now what's supposed to happen as we climb the bell tower here is that Channeler up there is supposed to buff up a bunch of Hollows with ridiculous damage who then try and rush me through a very small door making themselves very vulnerable to some portable war crimes but I don't feel like dealing with that so we're gonna nip this problem with some masterful lightning Marksmanship foreign stepping into this here elevator we ride it all the way down and hey this looks familiar finding a path that looped back to Firelink after all that I had done up to that point was kind of amazing to a younger me it kind of blew my mind that through all of that I ended up this close to where I started and that was kind of the moment where the whole of Dark Souls World began to feel as connected as I see it today while we're back in town we stop by and check up on everyone Petra's here finally has more to say to us and after some donations he tells us more about why he and other Companions of his are here they're escorting an important figure through lordran and what he calls an undead mission to seek something called kindling which is the art of feeding Humanity to bonfires to gain power which is something we've done ourselves before we don't have much more to go off of yet but we will very soon don't worry now I could have used that fire keeper soul to upgrade my Estus flask while I was here what I forgot to do that so off we go we're on our way back to dark roots specifically to grab one more important item off the beaten path unfortunately it's kind of protected by this much beefier halberd wielding Black Knight but thankfully it's AI entirely broke and didn't seem to mind getting blasted in the back of the head with a bolt of lightning twice and behind them is the best shield in the entire game the grass Crest Shield doesn't have the highest defenses but it does give a pretty substantial buff to your stamina region when you have it equipped this even carries over if you have it on your back while two handing a weapon and even then its overall defenses are still pretty good I always get this damn thing whenever I play this game always unfortunately it's just a bit too heavy for us to continue light rolling so time to start taking off some clothes it lets the world admire the beef jerky muscle we're sporting also the view of the Basin here is just [ __ ] gorgeous back up to the parish we finally start making our way up to the bell tower this night learns the hard way that it can't Parry lightning to the face I'm pretty sure at this point it'd be easier to count what part of the Geneva conventions we aren't violating breaking through this door we meet another important NPC Locked Away In A Cell I truly appreciate this and I guarantee a reward only later it's about at this point I looked down at my Estus flask and realized oh I'm an idiot and skedaddled my way back down to Firelink but not before getting off the elevator early to snag these hidden items may as well check in on law trick while I'm down here you can tell he's trustworthy because of his Sinister chuckling we talked to this lady that's imprisoned below Firelink to empower our Estus flask with the fire keeper Soul now that I say all of that out loud that's that's pretty [ __ ] up what in the world am I doing we reverse our hollowing and at long last make our way back up yet again I decide to Sprint past the hollows this time and they very thoughtfully form a death cue for me how considerate finally we Ascend to the roof and summon a dear friend [Applause] the Bell gargoyle is a pretty easy the Bell gargoyle is a pretty easy fight when you've got Lightning Spear and Solaire on your side even if he does tend to get a bit confused I'm still there that way buddy that way man but with the amount of damage we can put up between the two of us it hardly matters it's a good beginner boss though nothing fantastic but it does throw a spanner in the works by spawning a second one with half Health toward the end one two three four with the Gargoyles thoroughly dismantled we climb our way up to the top of the Bell Tower and ring the first Bell of Awakening marking the first major step in our journey which apparently magically summons this guy Oswald if you commit a sin at any point in the game you can come back to this guy and pay him a sum of souls to erase it we make one more pit stop in Firelink to check up on everyone double check my equipment and Andre and then continue on our way as I leave the church the game surely informs me that disasters are gone after the defeat of the gravelord servant yeah that's probably something else I should mention Dark Souls multiplayer has more than a few layers to it most of the covenants you can join like the Warriors of sunlight to alter how you experience the game's multiplayer and even introduce entirely new modes with it the way they typically work is you join you do a thing specific to the Covenant get a specific reward for that Covenant accumulate those rewards and then turn in a certain amount of them to earn items or spells as you would Manson rank this is the frustrating part of trying to 100 the game these days since the multiplayer while it's still certainly active is not as active as it once was and most of the covenants are centered around PVP which [Music] [Applause] I never liked more often than not I seem to just get laggy fights or people who have devoted hundreds to thousands of hours to their craft and I am nowhere near that level I do get why people like the PVP it's just never been my thing but the covenants are still a major aspect of the game and lend more to the idea that Dark Souls was developed with the concept of being this shared communal journey in mind whether it be through helping each other along the way or beating The Living Daylights out of each other really it was just down to how you enjoyed playing the most and to this day some people still argue about what the true way to play Dark Souls is hint there is none anyway with our previously acquired basement key we opened this here door to the lower levels of the undead Berg which sliding down a rusty ladder like this be good for your hands I don't think it would be I guess I am wearing gloves if we make an immediate right turn up these stairs we find another gate to open and the holy crap that's a pretty significant shortcut and I forgot to include this in the recording at the time but what makes this sort of thing especially cathartic is were a good deal more powerful now and these enemies that used to take a bit of work would be folding like paper despite how brutal Dark Souls can feel it does something very important breaks up that difficulty with moments of mercy and genuinely rewards you for your efforts here specifically it's like an indirect way of showing you yes you are progressing you are getting more powerful by giving you a reference point of where you were not that long ago it's a confidence boost and even in games designed to test the player this sort of thing is vital and then moments later we're introduced to not one but two brand new enemy types both of which fight much differently than anything we've encountered up to that point the second of which being introduced into straight up gank so directly following a moment of relief and reward you're then reminded that the game can still throw new tricks at you and you shouldn't get cocky like I did while we're down here we free Griggs from his imprisonment and then I promptly forgot to do anything else with them I mean aside from checking on them in Firelink later behold the beautiful sounds of sethorvan before we take on the next boss I elect to first open up the next shortcut ahead of time it's awfully polite for enemies to just stand there and let me blast their head off their shoulders from afar and would you look at that the shortcut Loops right back to Firelink again all roads in Rome or something foreign [Music] then I got bored of waiting I want to guarantee more than a few people remember this guy the cap or demon themselves isn't that difficult or particularly interesting what made this fight hell for new players in the old days is the two dogs that rush you down in the utterly tiny Arena you fight them in as you can see in the time it's taken for me to describe the fight I'm already dead Panic is the word I choose to describe this boss because the second you cross that fog gate this ugly ass thing with twin great swords is leaping at you like a bat out of hell and the two dogs are chewing at your ankles and by the time you manage to get away from them you've already cornered yourself you don't have a whole lot of room for error in this fight which is probably why I don't like it very much it's great as a scare for new players and was certainly a wall back in the day for many people but apart from that it's just not that interesting round two starts off much better as I luck out and get both the dogs in one swing and once you clear them this fight gets much easier the camper demon swings are very slow and while he can certainly take a chunk out of you he's extremely weak to getting lightning shoved in his face near full health three shots dead damn he also just kinda gave up toward the end for me I guess he was mourning his dogs the poor guy I did just break into where he was squatting and trash the place without word or explanation hmm ooh shiny key with our newly acquired unlocking instrument We Begin our descent into some of the hollow in here have torches and they break the goddamn rules they have this bizarre flailing charge that has no starting animation it just kind of comes out all at once like down here we rescue another NPC laurentius the pyromancer who was about to be eaten by oh hello up there I love this goddamn spell oh yeah and watch your head while you're down here I died of these dogs in the water I'm reminded why they're my least favorite enemy in the game The Butcher thing here briefly forgets there's a table in their way one bolt to the face and a back full of Mace gets them out of the way and we are rewarded with oh yes the Large Ember allows us to upgrade our weapons from plus five all the way up to plus 10 so we'll have to make a pit stop at Andre later we also get a sack I look beautiful okay may as well just go back to Andre while we've got the time Sackboy away back at Firelink Shrine we do the usual checking up on everyone and see that launch wreck is missing that's concerning and hey Petrus has friends now I'm so proud of him you mind repeating that no it is thank you meet lady Raya of thoroughland and her two companions Vince and Nico they're the ones Petrus talked about being on that Undead mission to seek kindling they're not very talkative at the moment so we won't stay long but Vince does mention them going down into the catacombs soon I can't wait to hear about their resounding success one small note NPC quest lines Advance as you progress through the game and beat bosses but you need to physically speak to several of them before you go too far otherwise you'll miss your chance you can fast forward a few Quest steps by just quitting the game and jumping back in I have no idea why this works but oh well a few resets later we find Petrus all in his Lonesome again distraught about being separated from his group oh hey lotrek's back and he has some spicy info for us why yes please maiden feraland and her followers recently arrived in this land but she became stranded deep below the catacombs her followers either fled or were reduced to Hollows oh God damn it and I was so confident in them we confront Petrus about this and he's suddenly changed his tone entirely almost seeming pleased that laotrex spilled the beans to us maybe because he doesn't have to hide his intentions anymore right now you could do as you please with her poor little pure bread is entirely helpless I restrained myself from zapping him on the spot well now we have a maiden trapped in the undead catacombs to rescue but we aren't exactly prepared for that so we'll come back to this later and laurentius made it back here safe and sound sweet he teaches pyromancy which unlike Miracles and sorceries are not dependent on stats when used but are instead empowered by the pyromancer flame used to cast them the more you level this thing up the more powerful your pyromancies get and being able to cast magic with almost no stat allocation needed aside from spell slots is pretty nice anyway off to Andre imminent gorgeous view oh I do agree we give Andre the Large Ember and chat him up a bit he tells us about a Divine blacksmith in the Dark Root Garden who made weapons specifically for places like the catacombs well isn't that convenient why don't we pay them a visit before we continue disasters are gone after the defeat of the gravelord servant and we're off to Dark Root again this time we hang a left in the area we got the elite Knight armor from toward a set of ruins no hello sir how are you doing thank you if you don't mind I need to get by you thank you come again up the tower we come to yet another fog gate well not getting any less Hollow here off we go foreign the Moonlight Butterfly is such a cool looking boss it's one of the most complicated designs we've seen in the game up to this point it's beautiful and ethereal almost like it doesn't belong here like it came from a dream it's the most Fantastical and alien looking creature up to now its music theme is very simple but hauntingly pretty fitting the butterfly's graceful floaty movements its magic attacks can do a lot of damage if you're not careful since they aren't entirely telegraphed until just as the attack is launched and it's already dead huh yeah this fight takes much longer if you're running melee only since it spends most of the fight flying around Out Of Reach until it comes to rest on the bridge but with lightning Spirit just kinda melts well it's still a very cool boss from aesthetic alone even if it can be kinda completely and totally cheesed with the right build fun fact you can actually see it resting on the tower before you step into the fog gate it also stands out as the only really pretty thing we've seen in the game so far everything else is dark decayed looking devoid of Hope and life or is just monstrous and frightening the butterfly is entirely different and makes you wonder just how it got here this is compounded more as you climb the tower and find the Divine blacksmith Andre spoke about dead and Turn to Stone clutching their divine ember in their arms everything's been fairly straightforward up to now but this is when Dark Souls first began to make me question things why was this odd creature here why was it at the blacksmith's Tower was it the one who turned him to Stone or was it in mourning did it attack us because it was hostile or was it trying to defend the blacksmith's remains this is another layer to Dark Souls the world tells a story to you obviously through the dialogue of the characters and descriptions of the items you find but it also has these moments of a sort of unspoken narration details in the environment that give you hints or Mysteries things that may be missed if you're not paying attention but open up a lot of questions when thought about at length the thing is though not all of those questions end up answered this is obviously not an approach to storytelling that Everyone likes but personally I love this it gives enough context to get you going but the more you delve the more you think the more you uncover and let your mind wander the deeper and more complicated this dark and depressing world starts to get and the whole overarching narrative is made less and less cut and dry now I'm seriously digressing and really need to get back on track but we'll come back to this point later for now I'll just say that for me at least this is when Dark Souls started to show that it wasn't just about the fun and the challenge this was the first hint of a hidden Beauty to it joining ourselves back to Andre we give him the divine ember and now he can make us Divine weapons and plus 10 weapons but I'm not doing either of those yet because at the moment I don't have my main weapons so for now we'll be rocking a plus five mace gonna be relying on Lightning Spear to get us through the next bosses for a bit but before we do that we have a very special friend to go meet we didn't just get the divine ember from the Divine Smith oh no we also got this key now where does it go well we only know of one more locked door so far but we're taking a different route to it back in Dark Root Basin we Scurry our way across this little stretch of land ignoring everything there for the moment don't worry we'll be back later for now our friend awaits and he is apparently very eager to meet us Havel he's a chunky boy who has something we want and surprisingly it's not his Godly armor and weapon we can't even get those yet he is slow as [ __ ] but do not let him touch you that massive Bonker of his will most likely one shot you at this point most people just chain backstabs on him since he's so easy to outmaneuver but me I like to live on the edge that was risky after taming the living Boulder we get the ring that literally everyone gets Havel's ring is incredibly useful since it significantly increases the max load of equipment you can wear which lets you wear big armor and use heavier weapons and stuff without worrying about Slow Rolling and with Havel's power in hand Sackboy evolves into John duck Souls also known as protagonist man the elite Knight armor is the most iconic set from the entire game and pretty much the whole Dark Souls Series so I felt like I had to wear it for this video that being said it does make me mid-roll even with Havel's ring but we can deal with that thank you Welcome To Dark Souls sewer level kids I don't know if this is actually a sewer but I certainly count it as one it's got all the Hallmarks cramped corridors a dark gross color palette slime enemies that for some reason are highly resistant to physical damage and of course [Music] I actually don't have that much to say about the depths overall I guess as far as sewer-esque levels go this one isn't one of the worst the area's only bonfire being hidden behind a locked door is a bit of a dick move admittedly but at least the key's not too far away what's more noteworthy about the depths are things like the introduction of the basilisks these freaky little [ __ ] that'll spew curse fog at you the abundance of Rouses and the first NPC Invader Knight Kirk oh Kirk kind of sucks at one point I appeared to get invaded by an actual player and then didn't I guess and of course the abundance of cramped corridors makes Ragdoll freakouts all the more common and no less hilarious I guess I have a friend now they're coming with me foolish slime I have the power of Friendship on my side oh but yeah all in all not a bad level though I really only ever viewed as a transition between the Berg and Blighttown and it hasn't stopped feeling like that well actually there is one other notable thing about this place to be a fly on the wall during this thing's creation I gotta hand it to the artists being able to design [ __ ] like this is definitely its own skill set technically this is also our first dragon boss fight and what a first one it is 50 of its body weight is teeth it's also got an order of magnitude more Health than any of the bosses we've fought so far now that's also because I was able to summon Solaire and Knight law Trek for this go get em boys I'll be right behind you the ladder of whom had his summon sign hidden behind a pillar The Cheeky prick and when you have summoned help the bosses gain more Health to compensate but even without summoned help this thing is chunky especially considering I'm running with a handicap with this under leveled mace I'm basically just letting Solaire and La track tank it while I pelted with lightning oh that was a spicy hair that was a spicy air shot if I ever do say so myself oh although I say that but watching the footage back I'm not entirely sure if lotrek did anything he may have hit it once excellent job gentlemen Roundup next week either way with the Blighttown key firmly in hand we Zoop back to the bonfire have a nice chat with dom Hall here and at long last reach the most infamous area of the Dark Souls early game as I write this I've been sitting here for a good 10 minutes trying to think of what the hell to even say about Blighttown everyone knows that everyone's experienced it so what's left to say well I guess I can say that as much as this area can piss me off as much as I hate the poison Waters that fromsoft just really seems to love putting in their games and of course these [ __ ] toxic Dart [ __ ] I love Blighttown aesthetically and narratively I think it's one of the strongest areas in the entire game it's basically an unofficial sequel to The Valley Of defilement from Demon Souls which also had a very similar theme ramshackle slums made of rotting wood barely held together and looking prone to falling apart at a moment's notice everything is decrepit gross diseased and decayed the denizens here are warped and mutated maybe once upon a time they were human but now there's something else as if the filth and rot of this place has corrupted them the waters are poisonous the wildlife is nothing but giant insects and parasites what else could even live in a place like this this is a place for the lost the undesired and the outcast below even the sewers of lordran locked away and forgotten this right here is the strength of Dark Souls hinted at with the Moonlight Butterfly and shown much more clearly here and again later but we're not there environmental storytelling the world itself and the order you experience that tell you a tale a hint of the state of the world before it became as it is now what life was like before the fires began to fade now as I said I'm not an expert on the actual lore so I won't be going into it much here but when I first played this game and as I returned to it several times throughout the years this is always what Blighttown and its placement in the world told me up above were the populace lived in relative comfort and safety guarded by giant towers and walls of stone the lowest of the low the least wanted among them lived lower than even the Vermin in the sewage treated like a disease cast away and never thought about again it wordlessly questions whether the state of the world was all that great before the fires faded it asks you as the chosen Undead is this really worth fighting for you see what it was like before you you experienced it yourself elf at the Asylum you were one of those undesired and corralled why are you here what reason do you have to even care what happens to this place it never wanted you to begin with we've just been following this vague prophecy doing what we're told because we had to it was our fate but this is this really the world we're trying to save against some or all of that probably contradicts a specific part of the actual lore but I'm just saying what goes through my mind when I play this game art is always interpreted subjectively and this to me is what Dark Souls is saying between the lines with Blighttown maybe this world isn't worth saving environmental storytelling it's hard to get right but it's incredibly powerful when you do and we don't even have a full picture yet I'm coming back to this thought later so be ready for that um oh that's a good sign my mace is really starting to feel like a pool noodle at least Lightning Spear is still keeping Pace but we'll be getting a better weapon soon anyway descending down the slums here is never not nail biting with how close you come to falling right off there's a few spots where one mistimed role can send you a tumbling but thankfully there's a bonfire relatively close to the start out in the open still doesn't melt moments like these oh dear oh call that bridge and hi my name is anxiety and it would be fitting there's a lot of vertical traveling in the first part of Blighttown and it can be kinda easy to get slightly lost also these I really need to re-emphasize these toxic Dart [ __ ] they never stop being annoying but mercifully are also one of the very few non-boss enemies to stay dead when you kill them even if you rested a bonfire forever grateful that these big guys can be buried after a while we finally start approaching the lower level of Blighttown this place is big and it takes a while to get down from this first part I nearly restart that journey by misjudging a role and getting myself stuck oh this is a bit of a pickle isn't it could I well I guess I only have one option how's it going fellas but at long last we finally make it to the second bonfire oh God we reverse our hollowing to Kindle it and then this happens what is happening to my life on our way out we get our second NPC invasion higher on the streets [Music] You know despite how decayed and gross this place is getting to the bottom and looking up at the world just beyond the valley is amazing laughs um I'm sure it'll be fine okay this poison sound effect is really getting on my nerves so let's wrap this place up I do a bit of farming for upgrade materials for our weapon later and take a quick stop in the big tree I love how behind this illustri wall is a locked chest and another illusory wall what was going through the mind of the first person to discover that if I had to guess they attacked the chest to check it for a mimic and accidentally hit the wall behind us oh and don't worry we're coming back to this place later and after tracking all the way across to the other side of Blighttown we finally come to quilag's domain this giant mess of spider webs eggs at least I could finally stop that poison noise from here we bring back dear Mildred whose face is probably still concave and finally all right well from a visual perspective I'd say quilag is one of the best looking bosses in the entire game and no I don't mean that in the way you think I do I mean from an animation and overall design perspective we lag is awesome the way her upper body moves with more grace and purpose starkly contrasted with the skittery more ferocious movements of the spider half makes it seem like she's two different creatures rather than one she's also one of those bosses whose theme I never really remembered until listening to it afterward because when fighting her for the first time I was kinda panicking I mean it's a giant spider lady running you down spewing lava at your face swinging a giant fiery sword around and occasionally blowing you the [ __ ] up it's kind of a lot to deal with I'd probably say she's the hardest boss up to this point but with Mildred on your side she becomes much easier even if Mildred is kind of [ __ ] stupid Mildred uh help don't run into the lava Mildred don't run into the lava you [ __ ] idiot you absolute dunce get around the lava but honestly great boss the build up to her with the whole mess of spidery webs the overall fight itself the music it's all a home run and once again she has that what in the hell is going on here Vibe with her whole Lair and just her self in general with Mildred getting the final blow we bring her down and at last after several hours we reach the second Bell of Awakening the first half of our journey is almost complete but before we leave we head down these stairs and pass behind this illusory wall to meet the fair lady that's the only thing the game refers to her as by the way her name is never actually spoken speaking to her proves unhelpful but she does give us the option of joining the chaos servant Covenant which we will be doing but not yet now she is completely silent but if you speak to her with the Old Witch's Ring equipped she can actually be understood given her raspy and weak tone she seems to be incredibly ill sustained through the offering of humanities which are what you use to increase your rank in her Covenant she's also the sister of Queen lag whom you just killed and thinks you're her so queelag attacking you wasn't out of hostility she was protecting her sick sister God [ __ ] damn it a lot of you are probably familiar with body Vic's series prepare to cry yeah he goes over a lot of stuff like this Dark Souls is fun challenging beautifully dark and heartbreakingly depressing all at once we do still have a quest to continue though so leaving all this behind we Ascend backup Blighttown take a small detour to grab a few items reaffirmed myself that these toxic dark guys can all burn in the deepest layer of Hell imaginable snag this key and head out with the new key we open a previously locked gate to take the elevator up and once again welcome home and immediately we notice law Trek is missing again and the fire link Maiden is gone with only her clothes and a black eye orb in her place and the game cheerily informs us she's dead and now the fire link bonfire no longer works okay things are getting real it was kind of neat to have this happen right at this point in my playthrough right after completing a major leg in the journey we get a big oh [ __ ] moment and have a new objective track down La track noisy it snows and its breath is lethal this is no laughing matter I tell you and I was really beginning to like it here maybe it's time I do something about it but first we have a new character to meet was it you who rang the bell of Awakening yeah I don't know what I'm looking at either you know for as Bleak hollowing and brutal as Dark Souls can be sometimes it just throws you a [ __ ] curveball seriously what in the hell is this thing I am the primordial serpent King Seeker froud oh okay it's the primordial serpent um question what's a primordial serpent do they all have flesh mustaches either way my man please evolve lips and hide those teeth because they are freaking me the [ __ ] out actually wait no now that I think about it this thing with big puffy lips would probably look even worse so yeah never mind well can you at least stop doing that jaw thing and just years later after many repeat playthroughs I still don't know how or why this thing exists I mean at the same time though I love that it exists because it's just so unexpected and adds to that special brand of Oddity Dark Souls has to break up the tension that's one of the more unique things about it for all its darkness and brutality it's still got a very Fantastical element to it and it isn't afraid to get a little weird it's kind of like playing through a dark fairy tale for example giant Mushroom Men Who punch your [ __ ] soul out anyway right so framped here has awoken after both Bells were rung and has some more info for our Quest he tells us where to succeed Lord Gwyn usher in a new age of fire Cast Away the Dark and break the curse of undeath for this he sends us on a fetch quest to get something called the Lord vessel from interlando but we can't get there without going through Sen's Fortress so that's our next stop he then becomes a vendor kind of in that you can feed him all of your unwanted items in return for Souls we stop at laurentius to upgrade our pyromancer flame because even though we aren't using it we do need it to be at about level 10 to advance his quest and with all that settled we head off to well actually not just yet first I need to get my main weapon which drops from these snake boys and it's a fairly rare drop so pardon me as I farm them for a bit oh thank [ __ ] God we top our new sword off at plus 10 convert our mace to a Divine mace and now we finally head off to the catacombs we still have a lady to rescue after all and we can't leave that threat hanging forever what's good skele boys I'm rocking a Divine mace now delivering the good word of Jesus Through The Power of blunt force drama so the reason we wanted a Divine weapon in the first place is because these skeletons down in the catacombs are not only weak to Divine weapons but they also won't stay dead unless killed by one or you kill these nearby necromancers that keep Reviving them and unfortunately Lightning Spear does not count as Divine damage I like the little head Pat they do when they revive it looks so goofy ew gross so the catacombs themselves are pretty neat honestly they're sufficiently creepy looking filled to the brim with skeletons and more than a few secrets to find it's big it's dark it's catacombs but apart from that I don't have anything specific to mention so instead Hey so uh this segment was supposed to have the spooky scary skeletons Remix by living tombstone playing but apparently that gets completely screwed by YouTube copyrights so uh just imagine it here so how many of you didn't know there was an illusory wall here that led to a bonfire I know there's probably a few of you at least also I thought patches was supposed to be here but hmm oh well after our super happy skeletal fun times it's time for one two three four yeah I got nothing to add here moving on and now it's time for everyone's favorite level the one where you can't see [ __ ] I really don't know why this specific Trope just keeps showing up in games but here it is in all its frustrating unfun Glory the second you cross the threshold into this area the game's brightness [ __ ] plummets and you have to rely on either slow careful movement to progress or if you're lucky enough to find a skull Lantern on one of the necromances earlier you can use that to light your way there's two other methods the light spell you get from the DLC and the sunlight maggot but more often than not your two options are either Lantern or good [ __ ] luck dumbass hope you like fumbling around in the dark thankfully we don't have to go all the way through this area yet just a good portion of it I'll save most of my opinions on this place for when we return here but just yeah anyway after stumbling through the dark we find Mr Patches at last and I'm not even gonna pretend to not know what's coming next he of course tries to convince us there's treasure over the ledge and then [Applause] oh no who could have seen that coming fun fact if you hadn't gotten a lantern yet don't worry the game graciously gives you one now so to recap if you hadn't found one earlier then after fumbling about damn near entirely blind battling giant skeletons in the dark and trusting every single blind jump and slide we would finally get the thing we need to navigate this place reliably nope no no no not yet anyway we find Rhea down here in the pit and unsurprisingly her two bodyguards have both gone Hollow leaving her trapped Vince and Nico are both fairly tanky but our new weapon makes short work of them after we ensure her Escape we yank ourselves back to the bonfire and finally back up to Firelink Petrus is less than please we've rescued Raya for the little Madam is not worth her salt without her family name uh Charming we find Reya in the undead church we were in all those hours ago and now she becomes a miracle vendor for us we want her spells as she gives some of the best miracles in the game and in order to advance her story we need to buy all of them off of her so goodbye souls and finally with all of that out of the way we make our way back to Andre and enter welcome to beautiful sense Fortress Proving Grounds of the undead and most likely the sole source of entertainment for some sick [ __ ] with too much time on their hands [Music] legs You know despite being a house of traps the actual traps here are pretty out in the open this would be the perfect excuse to throw in some genuine rage game [ __ ] like having the floor fall away from you without warning but in all seriousness Sen's Wild Ride is actually fairly tame now that doesn't make it easy of course we got fights on precarious walkways with little room to maneuver giant Boulders that I love using as impromptu Parry attacks pendulous blades that'll send you flying into a tar pit and if the fall doesn't kill you hello sir Arrow tramps a mimic this one elevator that I guarantee got you on your first playthrough don't lie this snake dude here just chilling more Boulders that have the power of reverse momentum and of course smitties kind of and that's not counting the outside where we have a giant on the rooftops hugging massive fire bombs down at us I won't show the entirety of my son's Fortress Journey it's a pretty big place with a fair amount of Secrets I did look for just about everything there was to find here and there was no shortage of dumbassery such as this I may just do a whole follow-up vid with some extra clips that I couldn't fit in there's plenty in this whole playthrough I haven't shown since Fortress is like the depths in that it's more of a connecting area but it's overall more memorable it certainly does sell the whole house of traps thing I love this view from one of the balconies seeing the first Bell Tower off in the distance is a nice reminder of How Far We've Come Oh and of course we have our second encounter with our dear onion Knight perhaps I could try some rolling no jobs my head was big while we're here we have an NPC to rescue which first requires us to do a little trolling Big Hat Logan very aptly named is trapped here and requires assistance not a problem I snagged a key earlier for just this occasion they'll be skedaddling back to fire link so for now onwards we press we take out the firebomb lobbing giant for no other reason than pure spite for its existence and prepare to finally take on the area boss you know I was going to do the thing where you summon iron God damn carcass that is his full name and let him solo the thing but I needed an extra Sunlight medal so I summoned a fellow Sun bro and regretted my actions almost immediately oh well gotta live with it I'll be honest the Iron Golem looks intimidating but it's a complete pushover literally and yes you can make it fall off the edge of the arena with that and kill it instantly I didn't do that since I wanted to get at least some fight footage out of this thing I'll say though the biggest threat it does pose is knocking you off the ledge since its swings can definitely send you flying if you're not careful apart from that though there's really not that much to talk about here the real boss of sense Fortress is just the whole thing the Iron Golem is more like a reward for getting to the end why are you bullying me and with the triple pelvis the thrust of the Gods we topple the iron Menace we briefly Ponder the mystical orb of forward progression and finally we're hoisted up over the horizon [Music] high upon the mountains bathed eternally in the Golden Glow of the Sun spanning out as far as the eye can see andorlando the city of sunlight and the home of the Gods very few things in gaming compared to that first sight coming up over the mountaintops and seeing the city in all its Glory just gleaming in the warm glow of the setting sun or Rising either way it's a breathtaking sight and yet and yet this is something I've only come to appreciate recently but the placement of Anor Londo following your journey from the crumbling Undead Asylum through the mossy and rustic Berg and the utterly squalid Blighttown is pretty brilliant I said I'd have more to say about the world earlier and here it is after subtly questioning whether or not this world you've been chosen to fight for is worth saving it all the game's unspoken narrative plays its final card here you've seen the worst the lowest were the least wanted and most desperate were confined to and locked away now you see where the highest rung in this old world social order resided a city of gold and stone beautiful and eternal looming Above It All unbothered by The Perils suffered by those beneath as if existing in a reality all its own I should reiterate I'm not quoting lore here or trying to be 100 accurate this is purely my interpretation and mine alone just from looking at the way the world's presented after everything you've experienced in the world at this point Anor Londo really does feel like a world apart a completely separate society and way of life from what's been hinted at it's a pretty obvious analogy to the richest and most wealthy among us being the most detached from reality's harshness living in self-indulgent opulence yet as beautiful as it looks it's clear that something is still wrong eerie's silence emphasized by its utterly massive size make it all feel so empty and lonely there's barely anyone here except for ancient Guardians and demonic creatures that have since moved in not counting any boss encounters the only people you talk to here are the keeper of the city's first bonfire a giant blacksmith siegmeyer and Solaire the latter two being fellow adventurers not even native to the city it's like the beauty of Anor Londo is a thin veil that hides its tragedy and beneath it all it's no different than the broken World you've seen so far which is entirely accurate and Orlando as we see it is a lie an illusion created by the last remaining God In The City gwyndolin the neglected son of Gwyn when the illusion is broken the Golden Sun that illuminates the city Fades leaving only the cold and hollowed night even most of the enemies are gone making it all feel even more Barren whatever reality this city was hiding from it caught up to it in the end in many ways both literal and figurative Anor Londo is the peak of Dark Souls there's a lot more I could say but I think I've gotten the point across to me Dark Souls isn't just about the difficulty or the challenge it's not the PVP or anything purely mechanical for me it's the experience from beginning to end and the story it tells you without saying more that it needs to that probably makes me weird but hey that's nothing new for me it's at least fun to write it all out and now I think I've officially gone well over my allotted serious time and were overdue for a tonal shift so while exploring this one room and getting my hands on the light Havel's coveted armor and weapon I proceeded to fall ahead first into an obvious mimic that I knew was there and still somehow forgot about embarrassing yes but I can really only laugh at myself here brilliant timing minger brilliant timing as was mentioned we run into both siegmeyer and Solaire here the former of which we have to rescue from a room full of silver Knights to advance his quest line in this place especially it feels nice to run into these two and reassuring that they haven't conveniently died off screen or something hey remember the fire link keeper that died well with the black eye orb we got from their corpse we can invade the world of lotrec who seems to have been expecting us having put together a gank Squad just in case unfortunately for them I have the power of Jesus with the fire keeper Avenged and their soul regained we summon Solaire to our side once more and step through the big fog wall ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Anor Londo Arena we have an exciting match for you today all the way from the northern Undead Asylum and the land of astora it's the enigmatic chosen Undead and Solaire the warrior of sunlight together these two wandering Knights will face off against the reigning Champions the unlikely destructive Duo you all know and love the mighty and menacing executioner Smo whose name no one can agree on how to pronounce alongside the Lightning Fast Dragon Slayer Ornstein please put your hands together for the super long numbers [Applause] oh that's not good dragon slayer Ornstein and executioner smoke smell however the hell you want to say it the original wall the Ender of many deathless runs and the most famous boss encounter in all of Dark Souls this fight is great its music theme is amazing and the dynamic of small slow but devastating attacks mixed with ornstein's speed works better than you'd expect trying to keep smow and line of sight while dancing around ornstein's attacks can be tricky and if you try to break away and get some distance Ornstein just zoops on over at the speed of [ __ ] you and keeps you nailed down of course with solare at your side you can keep one of them distracted but oh oh I'm quite familiar with soloing these guys over the years and let me tell you the fight's different depending on who you choose to prioritize too the second phase is reached when one of them is defeated and the still living one takes the other's power and fights you solo as an aside I love the detail of how Ornstein is respectful and honorable in how he takes Mao's power whereas Biggie Smalls over here just flattens ornstein's sorry ass like the greedy malicious [ __ ] he is did I mention this guy eight people no well there you go all in all there's a reason this fight is the most remembered one it was a summit back in the day and while I can definitely say even solo it's not as hard as I remember it being it's no less awesome the mood is great the music is great the whole encounter is a lot of fun it's just a really good boss fight and is the Pinnacle of the entire Dark Souls experience but the funny thing about Pinnacles is after you reach him there's only one way left to go but before that boobies yeah yeah I know it's an old joke but it's Tradition at this point Guinevere daughter of dotto of Queen of the doctor of Queen and queen oh God I want to die now Guinevere daughter of Gwyn and Princess of sunlight let me tell you someone was very very very happy when designing her I'd show you the internet's overall reaction to her but I don't think I need to I really really don't funny story in an interview Miyazaki said that when creating Guinevere her height was his idea but her uh size was not the artist on his team who came up with the final design however just seemed so pleased with it that Miyazaki didn't have the heart to refuse it and here we are lady Hawkers congratulates us on making it all the way here and rewards us with the sought after Lord vessel and with it we have officially unlocked fast travel specifically when resting in a bonfire you can now warp to a few specific bonfires which is definitely handy especially at this point in the game also she's not real thank you I'm sorry to break your hearts now this is when the illusion that gwyndolin had been casting over Anor Londo would be broken and the entire city descends into night making his boss fight available however I did it a bit differently back in the catacombs I came across this here ring which when worn removed the illusory statue of Gwyn guarding gwyndolin's boss door and opens up the ability to join his Darkmoon Covenant but I didn't and instead proceeded to rack up my regicide count I would have devoted a whole segment to talking about gwyndolin's boss fight like I've done with the others but to be honest I really don't like it that much it's an endless hallway battle as he keeps flinging Spells at you from a distance and teleporting away from you when you get too close the cluster spell attack be blocked by pillars the big soul arrow goes through them and needs to be dodged he'll also fire a rapid shot bow at you and that's about it really the most interesting thing to talk about with him is his lore but I'm not going over the lore in this video so go watch someone else if you're really interested I'll just say that the poor guys got some serious daddy issues not like their dad was exactly a saint but that's a whole other story me I'm just here for one particular goodie directly after his boss fight the last miracle to complete my collection oh yes and with the power of the sunlight medals I gained from doing a bunch of Co-op runs off screen most of which I'll talk about in the behind the scenes and Extras video after this one which will pop up right here when it's done we return to the sunlight altar so Lair at our side and with our deepened pledge to the cause of sunlight and righteousness we gain the greater lightning spear all coming together and just in time too hope you've enjoyed the ride so far kids because now is when things start getting bumpy oh and I was going to talk about the completely optional area the painted world of Ariana's but like I couldn't think of a good place to put it in this script and this video has taken long enough already so when I make that extras video I'll talk about it there so just check that out when it's done anyway back in Firelink Shrine we find our boy siegmeyer chilling by the bonfire we let him know that it was us that opened the gate to sends Fortress and as a show of thanks he gives us another miracle emit Force which I'm not a huge fan of but I can't say no to that face I'll be heading down below shortly there's nothing worthwhile up above no worries venturing is my life I'm prepared for the worst look you gotta admire the optimism down below we use the fire Keeper's soul to revive her thank you and she speaks cut my tongue and now I'm depressed again oh well at least she's alive hey where'd that really Sullen dude go and hey Logan made his way back here much to griggs's Delight Logan becomes a vendor for more high-level sorceries much like how Rhea got us more powerful Miracles I'm afraid that you are unable to learn sorcery or he would if my intelligence was high enough unfortunately I've been pumping all my Souls into my Jesus muscles and my muscle muscles so my brain is as smooth as silk not to worry we'll get a chance to advance his quest later for now we can attend to laurentius and of course later siegmeyer first off in order to advance laurentius's quest line we need to get his pyromancer flame up to plus 10. then make our way back to Blighttown down there behind one of the pillars in the middle of the swamp we meet a brand new NPC quailana you must give something up are you prepared to do this well that's not ominous at all either way she becomes a vendor for pyromancies and we need to pick up one of the ones unique to her with that done we scoot our way over to the great hollow and find who else but our dear onion boy in a spot of trouble once again how unexpected this guy is a dork and I love him this part's simple he just needs some purple Moss to get through the poison and with our friend once again rescued his quest is Advanced and we make our way back into the big ass tree why well both to make getting to a later step in siegmeyer's quest easier and also because we need to start Gathering upgrade materials to finish our weapon and unfortunately this place has a few that we need I say unfortunately because this tree is a [ __ ] dick welcome to the great hollow or as I like to call it help the entire level is a downward progression through winding Roots many of which are rounded which leads to [ __ ] like this happening if you couldn't tell I don't like this place very much Dark Souls was not meant to be a platformer and this whole level is a great example as to why it wasn't and even ignoring that falling onto or jumping between platforms with rounded edges is always an exercise in frustration no matter what game you're playing it's hard to not feel a bit annoyed when you're barely off center by half a pixel and end up becoming another statistic for the floor in the world of gaming gravity has the highest kill count and if that wasn't enough more of those buggy eye basilisks are in here and with such limited real estate to work with it's very fortunate I had big bolts of lightning to solve these problems with even then I still ended up getting cursed and losing a huge chunk of souls in the process I didn't have a good time while I was down here there were more than a few butt clenching moments with these near blind leaps of faith [Music] oh perfect that's exactly what I wanted for Christmas after a painstakingly slow Journey we descend to the bottom fight our way through the Mushroom Kingdom apparently and into one of the coolest areas in the whole game [Music] the great hollow leads out into a shoreline of Ashen white looking out over an endless ocean of dark Waters often the distance other massive trees Loom into the skies and Pierce the surface as if holding the world above them steady all backed by that ominous but beautiful music [Music] oh foreign after the frustration of the hollow itself finding this directly after it was kind of mind-blowing to a younger me and to think this whole part of the game is hidden behind a fake wall hidden behind another fake wall I have to wonder how many people missed this place their first time around or for that matter if there's anyone out there watching this who still wasn't aware this place existed I mean most likely not but it's fun to think about down here there's a massive Hydra blocking our path and while I failed to get footage of it it can leap over the shoreline if you try to run away from it which is more than a bit pinch shittingly terrifying the first time you see it happen far far far at the other end of this place traveling along the winding Shores you finally reach a broken Hollow and within you find an ancient dragon likely the last one remaining following the uprising of the Gods surprisingly it seems entirely unbothered by your presence just existing even if you go all the way around it and cut its freaking tail off it's still completely passive or just uncaring it's kind of creepy to be honest lore wise looks wise and music wise Ash Lake is amazing hands down one of my favorite areas in the whole game even if nothing much of note happens down here well not yet anyway we did come here to checkpoint it so we'll be back later for now we bring ourselves back up to Firelink and talk to laurentius he's impressed by the pyromancy we got from quailana and asks if we'd share where we got it if we say yes pulled apart for Blighttown to go search himself and with all that done let's report back to Frant he seems happy to see us with the Lord vessel ah forgive me I really should calm down I assume that you are ready now be still wait be still for whoa I'd like to remind you all that it wasn't that long ago when we fed this guy all of our unwanted junk including literal actual [ __ ] can you imagine how bad it must smell in there this is the fire League chamber successor of Lord Gwyn Lord vessel on the altar yep okay sure fine just gonna repress that memory deep into my subconscious how was I carrying that thing all the way here it's [ __ ] massive it's bigger than me Jesus Christ my guy must have a spine made of titanium and with the Lord vessel in place the end game areas are all unlocked next we're tasked with finding the four Lord Souls left by Gwyn in order to satiate the Lord vessel and open the chambered door the souls in question belong to gravelord Neato the Four Kings of newlando chaos which izalith and Seth the scaleless are you ready then we shall return Stay still oh God please no not a girl [Music] no amount of therapy we'll ever fix that anyway now that I'm sufficiently mentally scarred it's time to hunt down the Lord's souls and our first stop just happens to be the closest welcome to the latter half of Dark Souls kit oh Sullen dude is that him yeah so turns out following the appearance of framp's sullen guy at some point went Hollow and well when an undead goes Hollow there is no going back so yeah [ __ ] um well uh anyway moving on Welcome to the latter half of Dark Souls kids from here progression opens up and while we're going after the Four Kings first we can acquire any of the Lord's souls in any order we want but we're doing a very specific order for a good reason you'll see I did mention that this is when the ride starts getting bumpy thankfully though New Londo is actually a pretty good area not my favorite by any stretch but the atmosphere here is solid this is an entire city that was flooded to contain the spread of the abyss and boy does it feel like it not just because of the water obviously but the overall color and darkness of the area really sells that whole drowned aesthetic really well another fitting touch is that there are absolutely no bonfires in this entire level none why would there be there's no fire Here No Light No Life nothing it's all flooded and empty save for the vengeful Spirit still haunting the water eroded structures they can't be harmed by any means even by Magic without being cursed first we're using these things called transient curses it's kind of a weak gimmick honestly since it's solved by using one item and the ghosts all have chances to drop them and if you somehow run out the Moss vendor from earlier sells them not that the ghosts themselves aren't spooky but at least in my experience they're not very threatening without that invulnerability they're very slow and their attacks aren't hard to avoid I mean unless they're coming out of the goddamn walls then they're a bit tricky to deal with ow dick especially when an entire Posse just phases through everything to gank you still having only one enemy type for most of the area is kinda weak I mean there's a second kind of ghost but I think there's only like two of them in total we do get a bit more variety after we unflood the city and open up the second half though to do so we need to get a key from this guy who tells us a bit more about what we're going up against the abyss where the Four Kings now reside isn't traversable by mortal folk however we could gain the ability to do so by finding a certain Knight Artorias artorius long ago traversed the abyss to battle against it so that's our best bet to kicking in the front door of the Four Kings home and Wrecking shop so while we can't get the Lord's Soul just yet we do have a few things to get from here in the lower half of New Londo we see the bodies of all the previous inhabitants piled up and rotting away it's legitimately disturbing and more than explains why these ghosts are here they're the spirits of the citizens who were unwill willingly sacrifice to try and stop the abyss trapped in their homes as the waters destroyed them and everything they had we also finally get a new enemy type the dark wraiths these edgelord Skeletor looking [ __ ] who flourished their blades about with a kind of control and Grace we haven't seen in many enemies up to now it does seem like they're trying very hard to look cool admittedly we've also got this giant Blobby thing I'm still not entirely sure what it is but it looks like some grotesque amalgamation of bodies souls and pure Abyssal energy can yield into one being so yeah New Londo is still a pretty solid level in my eyes though really it's carried by its atmosphere and the story behind it the whole gimmick of the ghosts is pretty weak and easily solved and while I can appreciate the lack of bonfires I can also Imagine That frustrated more than a few people I didn't mind it personally but I can understand others hating it pushing forward past some more dark wraiths we come across the main thing we're after down here the big boy Ember I should also mention that by this point point I had already gone back to the northern ended Asylum by climbing the tower and fire link and doing this killed the stray demon at the Asylum and nabbed the titanite slab that drops from it which we need to upgrade our weapon to the max level I would have talked about this earlier since I actually went there when I was still at Sen's Fortress but it kinda messed with the pacing of the video on that note not enough games do the return to where it began and now there's bigger better enemies there thing and more should do that because it's always cool we also sadly put down the now fully hollowed Oscar rest in peace buddy and with the thick boy Ember the titanite slab and all the titanite chunks we've attained we returned to Andre and Ascend our weapon to plus 15. the absolute strongest it can be we also get one last tidbit from him the Dark Root Garden houses the grave of sir artorius and he just so happens to sell an item that gets us to it so 120k Soul Splurge later we unlock a previously sealed door yes I know you can get around that sealed door by going to Dark Root Basin and going around it the long way but I forgot to mention it during scripting so shush I think the sight of this forest alone just triggered a few people's fight or flight responses we take out some of the Guardians here while this guy proceeds to lose an argument with a tree and now we're talking to a cat with a really long mouth this is Alvina and she seems intent on us not disturbing the grave of Artorias she's also the leader of the forest Hunter Covenant which was the de facto main PVP Covenant back in the day used to be you couldn't walk into this Forest without getting invaded by about two-player Phantoms ganging up on your happy ass but seems to be much less active these days and I am certainly not complaining I'm just here to commit some casual grave robbing together yeah yeah Thief everyone knows Thief this is the other most famous boss encounter in all of Dark Souls another one of those fights that just has a mood to it between its Arena its music and of course the story behind this big pupper the old companion of Knight artorius now standing guard over his grave to ward off would-be Intruders like us it's incredibly unfortunate I was so overpowered for this point in the game with my plus 15 weapon and soft cap strength because this fight was over so much faster than I wanted it to be you can initiate this boss fight much earlier if you happen to drop that twenty thousand Souls on that Crest from Artorias and in fact I did that in my first playthrough as for the fight itself I don't have much to say about it it's a good fight and Thief can pile on the damage especially if you're lower level than I was but what makes this fight so famous aside from the music and of course its backstory is that when brought to low Health Thief starts to limp holding one paw up and stumbling after you looking beaten and worn but still still fighting to defend its master and friend's grave it's I mean there's no other way to say it it's heartbreaking I didn't even know the story when I first fought them it was just a big wolf with a sword to me and seeing it suddenly gets so much weaker when on its last leg still gave me pause its damage gets gutted it falls over and struggles to get back up during some attacks it genuinely made me feel sorry for it in my first playthrough this was perhaps the first time I felt Hollow after killing a boss I didn't feel like I overcame some great obstacle despite having a lot of trouble with them prior I just felt sad again in this playthrough I was far far too powerful to properly show this and that's entirely my fault but the memories of that first encounter are still fresh even after all these years and would see if tragically put down we game what we came here for the Covenant of Artorias this ring allows us to Traverse the abyss where the Four Kings hide and commit some righteous murdering upon them so we Trek our way back down to the depths of New Londo bashing some edgy boy faces once again equip our new ring and okay that fall always makes me nervous I may feel slightly conflicted about New Londo itself but I don't feel conflicted about this boss this is another home run as far as I'm concerned it's impressive just how much a blank featureless background can add to a fight sometimes less really is more you're dropped into this completely black endless void your first taste of the abyss and before you can even get your bearings if you can at all this music starts blaring in your ear as one of the Four Kings Rises up in the distance and charges at you it's pure panic and just as you're wondering where the other three are oh hello the way this boss works is as you're fighting the other kings will gradually spawn even after you kill one they'll just keep regenerating and spawning back in up to Four Kings can be active at any one time and while one even two is manageable all four is damn near impossible this fight is a damage race kill the Kings quickly before you get overwhelmed now thankfully with the power of my brand new miracle I have more than enough damage to get through the fight and relative ease but I still love it yes I may know the tricks and yes I can basically just brute force my way through it at this point but that doesn't make me like it any less extremely solid boss for me not my favorite but it's definitely up there and with the death of the Fallen Four Kings we gain the Lord's Soul Shard bequeath to them by Gwen and get the hell out of there one down three to go all right we haven't checked up on laurentius yet I wonder how oh laurentius he oh oh [ __ ] yeah turns out laurentius also went Hollow on his journey into Blighttown this dude was actually one of the nicer NPCs and genuinely enjoyed teaching you pyromancy so seeing this happen yeah [ __ ] I mean we can't do anything about it besides put him down now but damn that one stings anyway we're back in Blighttown for one specific reason and it's to join the chaos Covenant with the fair lady I apologize my fellow Sun Bros but I do this for the greater good you will soon understand we need to reach Rank 2 in the Covenant which requires us getting a Whole 30 Humanity to the fair lady and that's a big chunk of change so much in fact that I had to go farm rats in the burg for a bit to get what I needed I don't know why the rats drop Humanity but they do I sacrifice literally all of it to the Covenant and get my required rank now we need to make a small detour well a fairly substantial detour really okay folks I would get my thoughts on the demon ruins right now but it's too soon we're coming back here at a later point and I'll have plenty more to say then just bear with me for now we're gonna Leap Forward a bit with our rank in the chaos Covenant we gain the ability to open this here door which leads us into a hallway with a bunch of sunlight maggots and then we murder them all in righteous Fury I'm pretty sure we only need to kill this specific one right here but I am not taking any chances this hallway is also a shortcut between the demon ruins and one of the end game areas we'll be going to later but we're not using it for now we're just here to kill these bugs then we yank ourselves back out a later Quest step has been assured and we can continue on our way and now it is time to return to Skeletons Scary Skeleton Amber back okay so New Londo was nice A little weak in terms of enemy variety but overall a rich creepy atmosphere and a genuinely really solid boss hope you got your feel of that view from the top though folks cause it's all downhill from here the Tomb of the Giants gimmick is this you're looking at it the reduced sight radius and Reliance on other sources of light to navigate would be annoying enough but of course they hide massive [ __ ] off skeletons in the shadows as well at least you can see their eyes so it's not like you're completely blind but you know what isn't Fun inching your way forward in the dark and trusting leaps of Faith because you can barely see three feet in front of you why did so many games do this back in the day I still see it pop up every so often literally the only genre of game I like this sort of thing in is survival horror and yet it was all over action and platformer games for the longest time why all it does is force you to slow down its padding of the most blade and kind and it's obvious why because if you remove the darkness the Tomb of the Giants is barely a level it's just a bunch of caves with skeletons in it there's a nice view of lost izalith and Ash Lake down here but the area itself is just so Bland the featurelessness of the Abyss worked because you know it's the abyss it's an absolute void of nothing and even then you could still very clearly see the enemies you were supposed to be fighting you didn't have ninety percent of your vision taken away and only see the Kings when they were right up on your ass about to Pancake you friends [Music] hi God damn that is a huge [ __ ] Arrow I'm fine I'm completely fine I'm absolutely fine I'm sure people will defend this saying it adds tension and creepiness and sure it can in the right setting but you know New Londo had a pretty creepy intense atmosphere and it didn't need to make it near completely blind to do that at least the game gives you a lantern at the bottom of a pit at almost a halfway point and to use the lantern you need to give up one of your hands to keep it lit which isn't the worst thing but it's just one more layer of annoyance on top of everything else despite all of this though the Tomb of the Giants is not my least favorite level it's irritating but it's mercifully short and it did give us that one really funny GIF after you pass a certain point the game just kind of drops the whole Darkness thing with about as much fanfare as it deserves and I get invaded by an NPC for my trouble why are there a ton of mini pinwheels down here surrounding gravelord nito's domain and baby skeletons that come out of the floor I'm sure it's all in the lore somewhere I do especially love how when entering this fight you have to take near half your health and falling damage that's fun fun fact when I first played this I always had trouble with Neato but everyone I knew said he was easy then at the same time everyone I knew said Seath was really hard and I beat Seth on my first try with no difficulty I'm not really sure what that says but there you go well I'll definitely say neato's music theme is fantastic it certainly sounds incredibly spooky and undead-like makes sense as he presides over the realm of the dead and all that his design is [ __ ] awesome and he definitely has significant intimidation value but apart from that well these days I now see why everyone said he was easy aside from a few skeletons that require a Divine weapon to completely kill Nino only has like I think three attacks he swings his sword he explodes in the shadowy burst and he does this thing which is actually [ __ ] and really hard to avoid you just gotta Dodge roll the right time but man is it precise still now I never have trouble with him and as long as you don't move into the back of the arena and just let him come to you at the start the giant skeletons back there don't do anything the only thing that threw me for a loop this time around was this one skeleton that just refused to die no matter how many times I killed it with my Divine mace I don't know what specific rule kept this skele Boy alive but apparently it's Devotion to Lord Neato was far too great to be dissuaded by holy bludgeoning killing Nito seemed to do the trick though Rest In Pieces the world's most determined skeleton so yeah Anita looks cool his music is cool but his fight is kinda meh at least it's a decent payoff two Lord souls in the bag two left and thankfully we don't have a big checklist to attend to this time which is Port back to Anor Londo and head straight to the next area oh but not before utterly flattening the fire keeper here since she's just a tad bit upset with me for killing gwyndolin understandable apparently the first line of defense for the great archives is a giant armored bore not a problem I have the power to throw lightning bolts so of course I elected to run in head first sword swinging why am I like this I guess Thief liked the single board offense so much he decided to use it a second time to be fair it did work on me at least once so I should let you all know the reason we're doing the final areas in this specific order is because it happens to be the same order I did them in all those years ago and by pure coincidence it also happens to be the order of my opinion on them from best to worst so yeah you know I'm gonna be talking some [ __ ] I'll say first and foremost though I actually love the archives looks the whole giant magical Library thing in Fantasy is always great and I imagine sorting all this [ __ ] must have been hell for the bookkeepers I like how the crystal formations on the walls leading up to Steve's room spread more and more the further up you climb it's like a slowly spreading infection and you're approaching its source so the visuals are good especially compared to the Tomb of the Giants mostly because you know I can see them it's just everything else I don't like for one thing the enemy variety these Crystal Soldier dudes are the most common enemy in this whole level and they are everywhere no really I mean everywhere they're fairly fragile but they're pretty fast like to Ambush you and do quite a heavy amount of damage per hit but they alone are not the problem remember these guys the channelers well they're back again and yes they also do that goofy Trident dance that Buffs the damage of all enemies around them just like the one in the burg only now instead of buffing a group of relatively mundane and easily dealt with enemies into an actual threat it makes the crystal dudes who are already hitting pretty hard start hitting like [ __ ] freight trains oh oh that was the most devastating ass shot in history to progress in this level we actually need to take this elevator here all the way up to Seth's room Seth actually can't be killed here as he just instantly heals any damage to do to him you're just supposed to die which apparently results in you getting captured and thrown in a Cell It's really odd to have a supposed to lose fight this late in the game normally you'd see those toward the beginning to set a narrative tone or to give you a goal to shoot for later having it here is just I don't know it's weird oh and by the way even though you're supposed to die here you still lose all your souls in humanity when you do so if you didn't know that beforehand or ripperoni my friend thankfully I came prepared while the prison cells are even more impressive in scale and again whatever those bookkeepers were paid it was nowhere near enough how many times do you think someone fell to their death trying to get something out of the a section all the way up there probably at least once a week after exploring around and opening a couple of these cells we find tucked away in the back of one all on their own Ray yeah yep Raya all the way here and fully hollowed there might be a line of dialogue somewhere that explains why she came here but I likely missed it either way it seems she was also captured sometime before you locked away and likely went Hollow just sitting in this cell another friend gone and in need of being put down seeing how she doesn't even cast any Miracles and just runs at you punching is kind of sad really despite everything she still ended up like this same as the crest Fallen Knight and same as laurentius God damn it man well at least we find Logan again also trapped in a cell and once again in need of rescue we don't have a key for that cell yet so we'll have to come back later all right you know we've been negative and gloomy long enough and I'm getting fatigued here we're in need of some levity so here's my adventures with the corpse of a snake man enjoy okay I guess I have a friend now will come with me ah joined arm and arm we're gonna go see the world together I they are actually just completely stuck in me okay this is my buddy now hi Logan this is my buddy this is my new friend how are you doing don't don't be afraid the outside world is much better than this old place you'll love it I promise oh no come on come on come on come on random bit of geometry you will not stand between me and friendship yes friendship triumphs overall all right hang on I need to get them in front of the ladder I need to get them on top of me in front of the ladder why is this suddenly the thing that I have to do I don't know but it is I knew no no no no no no oh oh oh oh oh it's okay it's okay buddy it's okay it's okay no [Music] oh no oh that's so sad man I'd ask if you want to be my friend but already I can tell it won't work out it's here that Dark Souls really starts over using the enemy hiding behind Corner waiting to attack you thing seriously you could swing around any blind corner here and have about a 70 chance of hitting something in the face gotta love that view though honestly I can't point to any one thing the archives does that makes me not like it it's a bunch of smaller things that add up I placed it below the Tomb of the Giants but really I'd rate them almost the same where the archives is a bunch of smaller annoyances like the level layout the enemy variety and stuff like that the tomb had one blatant annoyance that was much easier to focus on my frustration on and at least the tomb was short the archives feels like they made this massive brilliant looking map but didn't have enough ideas to fill it which is probably accurate considering that sadly Dark Souls original development started getting rushed toward the end I'll get into that later though after further adventuring and stealing all the things from all the chests we eventually find The Key to Logan's big ass cell in the prison so it's off to once again rescue our gloriously had it friend but not before this happens oh one in the back one on the shoulder and one directly in the ass that is just disrespectful and how dare you back in the cells we set Logan free who I can imagine is only barely holding himself back from sprinting out of this cage and doing the reading equivalent of devouring these books like a starving wolf and now he'll actually teach us all of his spells regardless of our intellect and sadly we do need to buy all of them to advance his quest and there's uh there's a lot so pardon me as I burn my wallet alive 200 000 Souls later okay it was actually 183 000 but close enough Logan also discovered the source of cease immortality in the game's intro we're told Seth lacked The Immortal scales of his brethren in the ancient times and betrayed them after helping Gwen win the war against the ancient dragons Seth delved into his research on how to artificially create this immortality and apparently succeeded and at some point in the whole process he kinda sorta maybe went completely insane so yeah apparently seith created or discovered something a thing called the primordial Crystal so if you want to have any chance of killing him we gots to smash it outside the fog door here we find a single giant golden Crystal Golem wandering about we kill it and they drop another NPC siegland you see my father if you couldn't tell she's the daughter of our dear onion boy of course we have seen him plenty of times and we tell her just so I'm not sure why she sounds like she's five but yeah you know as I write this I feel the same way talking about this place as I feel when playing through it I want to like it I want to have fun with it but good Lord is it taking forever at least the Crystal Caves are big and pretty looking like I said the visuals are great from top to bottom but like The Archives this place also has its annoyances invisible bridges for one thing but to be fair they are pretty wide and are visibly shown through falling crystals hitting them so that's not too bad but hey look it's our old friend slanted geometry ah yes giant clams every sorcerer's favorite familiar yeah know what well finally at long last we make it to the primordial Crystal and seeth is understandably a tad bit mad at us for disturbing it well obviously to start the fight off you have to destroy the crystal before you can even hurt Seath and thankfully it's about as sturdy as my self-esteem I gotta say the music for this fight is really bizarre but fits seeth perfectly a dragon that's gone completely insane conducting all sorts of horrific experiments on people and delving into knowledge best left unknown all for the goal of attaining immortality and good Lord that is one big boy I'm pretty sure Seath is the physically largest boss we've fought so far he barely fits in his own Arena most of his attacks are just mad flails with his tentacles why does he have tentacles yeah whatever blasting lasers blindly around him and of course the big crystal explosion thingy from before the chrystosis attacks leave behind also inflict curse damage when walking through them so there's the ever-present threat of just being gibbed by an instant kill mechanic when you're fighting him also if you cut off the tip of his most rear tentacle tail thing you get the Moonlight Greatsword an item I wasn't going to use but nonetheless wanted because again I'm weird like that and died two times trying to get it without going for the sword the fight is fairly easy I'd say the biggest threat is dying from curse damage which does suck but most of his attacks can miss you if you just attack him by ducking in and out I mean while being the Paragon of brain that I am elected to just slap on Sunlight Blade and return to Monkey charging in and Swinging my sword like a heavily armed divinely empowered pissed off gorilla which worked to be fair but I misjudged how much curse damage I could take and got what I deserved thankfully though I got the third Lord Soul afterwards so apparently it's still counted I'll take it I'm not really sure if I'd call this a good boss since it's not that hard but much like the archives I gotta at least give points for the scale or should I say the lack of them anyway with the third Lord Soul firmly in our grasp I decide to give one last farewell to Logan uh uh Logan you uh you feeling okay buddy I guess he's busy um we'll we'll just come back later then you know before we leave I'm curious what's in that room where we first fought Seath now that he's dead so let's God [ __ ] damn it again I didn't really talk about Logan all that much admittedly but to give a brief summary he's well he didn't deserve this that's for sure like laurentius he liked to teach you and generally seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders even if apparently his methods and aversion to taboos earned him an unfavorable reputation in his homeland also Griggs may have been sent to keep an eye on him or kill him I'm not sure but that's one Theory that's floating around he only wanted to gain the knowledge locked away in the archives not for power or control but just for the sake of curiosity and well whatever was in here it led him to the exact same fate that Bethel seeth or maybe it was the fact that he achieved his goal he had Limitless knowledge at his fingertips and now what else was there he had everything he wanted but maybe that wasn't enough or maybe the pursuit of it was all the purpose he had left either way he's gone too just another body added to the pile I don't think he even when Hollow his body isn't decayed or anemic looking he just lost his mind somehow some way one by one everyone we know is either dying going Hollow or betraying us what the hell is happening here framp take your goddamn lord soul [Music] one more to go and we already know where we're going so back down to the demon ruins first we can't even get to the demon ruins because of the lava flow coming from this thing ceaseless discharge whose name I shall not be making any jokes about who just sort of stands there looming over what seems to be the grave of a witch of izalith staring almost motionless they don't become hostile until we mess with the body which we do because I'm just on a roll with being a horrible person today and trying to fight them head on is ill-advised so we run back to the fog door of the Arena wait for it to approach and when it reaches us it'll Leap Forward and grab onto the ledge then all we have to do is knock it off I don't feel good about that one but it's hard for me to feel good about anything right now anyway with our path open the demon ruins can now be accessed and good Lord that is a lot of Capper demons the copy pasting of enemies gets especially blatant here with these former boss demons just standing there almost in neat rows I don't know why but just seeing the Capper demons lined up like this just makes me depressed when coming here fortunately that depression is interrupted by this yeah watch her step around this part here oh hey Kirk's back remember him and now fat fire breathing demon statues and another slightly bigger Taurus demon I think I know why this park kind of depresses me the cappers and Taurus demons aren't even new there's just more of them now that's it well and giant centipedes I think so that's kind of neat and just because I'm extra paranoid I decide to give those sunlight maggots another piece of my mind through the fog door here and it's just a stray demon but now it's on fire this is this isn't even worth talking about it's a complete filler boss let's move on more of those demon statues and a lot more of those demon statues this is becoming concerning and would you look at that an elevator that goes from the demon ruins all the way back up to quilag's domain that is pretty nice gotta say right after that is another fog door and you know it's a boss door because you can see summon signs surrounding it oh God Solaris you get yes yes I need some Jolly cooperation right now thank you at least you're still alive and onion boy wherever he ran off to but anyway yes time to cooperate some poor [ __ ] into the dirt let's go well this thing looks metal as hell even though I'm having trouble seeing where it starts and where it ends most of its arena is lava which can vaporize you in seconds a fact I very quickly remind myself of oh right death hurts lava bad sometimes I amaze myself with how often I forget the most Primal of lessons Humanity ever taught itself fire hot ow unless your name is Solaire apparently God damn Solaire you just do not give a [ __ ] do you in any case the demon isn't that hard though if you blast off its arm head other head I think it turns into a smaller centipede that charges you thankfully lightning continues to solve all my problems and we get the orange charred ring which drastically reduces the damage we take from lava and I mean drastically like it [ __ ] tickles now which lets us enter the next part of the ruins without being reduced to crispy bacon and around the corner sitting by the bonfire is so rare oh thank God buddy let me tell you I have been having the shittiest time lately and I have never been happier to see what after all still cannot find it no no no no no no no no no no no no no no I'm not used to man please not you too look I get it [ __ ] sucks right now it's bad but we're gonna make it okay we're gonna make it we're gonna get through to the end together all right just just just don't go okay just don't go [Music] okay that got heavy so what's up Nick oh [Music] yeah I'm not even gonna bother with the pretenses lost eyes will [ __ ] sucks everyone knows it sucks it's so well known that I spoiled it a thousand years ago in the intro and I guarantee not a single one of you were surprised looking at this place now just makes me sad it's a monument to Lost potential a reminder of what could have been and went criminally underrealized I mentioned that Dark Souls started getting a troubled Rush development toward the end it's not exactly clear where that started and what areas were actually hurt by it but lost izalith was absolutely one of them confirmed by the man himself this place ended up not even close to its full vision behold the flourishing fields of undead dragon asses placed with about as much care and cohesion as a bad custom Half-Life map or that one bit with all the headcrabs and hunt down the Freeman they're barely even a threat you can run right past most of them and even the ones that are in your way will just kill each other trying to get to you I did literally nothing here that one just died to the other's attacks you can't make this [ __ ] up and yet I still somehow managed to get myself killed by one of them I don't even know what happened there at least I can take some Solace and knowing I wasn't the only one the lava the most consistent level Hazard between us and our end goal isn't even a hazard because of our new ring yeah it'll do constant ship damage to you but that doesn't mean [ __ ] to your 1 billion health and 20 plus 5 Estes flasks and that constant burning noise is making me want to commit great acts of violence oh by the way these demon statues are amazing they have one attack and it locks them in place sometimes facing One Direction they're one method of doing harm to you makes it easier to kill them and oh my God how many of them are there you know for all my problems with the Duke's archives at least the endless Army of Crystal soldiers were placed in actual formations oh sweet Christ the new enemy thank you I have no idea what I'm looking at but you know what I'll take it oh hi Kirk bye Kirk it's hard for me to even stay comedically mad at this it just makes me depressed I mean look at this place this looks awesome this should have been a fantastic area and yet here we are the only decent thing I can say about this place is that we at least meet our onion Boy again of course it then took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize where he was siegmeyer finally offers to pay his debt to you by sacrificing himself so you can escape the group of chaos eaters below thankfully though if you find your way down below and kill all but one of them you can make sure he doesn't die and get the final leg of his quest not that I think he needed the help to be honest [Music] Jesus are you absolutely certain you ever needed my help at any point at all seeing Meyer Jesus [ __ ] man that damage was nuts siegmeyer once again thanks you for helping him and decides to fall asleep standing up in a pool of poison I'm sure he'll be fine and before we finish up here we have one last thing to check up on we make our way up the roots past this Demon Titanite statue kill the sunlight maggots a third time because I am nothing if not thorough at this point and was it all alive have I done this all for nothing we find Solaire alive in the shortcut and believe it or not we've saved him if we had not come down this passageway before now and killed those sunlight maggots Solaire would be here controlled by one having lost his mind entirely unable to recognize us and forcing us to defend ourselves this was the end of solaire's story for many many people's playthroughs until the way to save him was discovered yet as you can see he's still broken alive but questioning his entire reason for being here for going on this journey to begin with that naive and jovial attitude is gone the bleakness of the world finally caught up to him still at least he's safe he won't die here for now we have a job to finish and I don't even need to tell you what's next do I you knew this was coming we all did it's nearly impossible to make a video talking about Dark Souls 1 without mentioning it and really after 12 years and thousands of other videos there's nothing left to say that hasn't already been said at least a hundred times over adding on to it now would just be me taking my turn to beat the bloody mess that may have at one point been a dead horse so there is really not much point in me doing it I'm gonna do it anyway now that may seem unnecessary and overdone after all this time and you would have a point in saying that but in my defense this thing [ __ ] deserves it where to even begin with this the Bed of Chaos doesn't have just one thing that makes it bad it's the whole thing it's a Cavalcade of terrible that all comes together into one gigantic explosion of stupid technically it has three phases although I don't think the first one counts oh how threatened I feel you know how I said Sen's Fortress could have done some real cheap death stuff and been Justified while it certainly feels like this boss is trying to make up for that floor tiles falling away with no warning suddenly make these ineffective attacks very effective and were forced to rely on the utterly broken jumping mechanic which only just barely works I mean barely I had to be on the very last pixel of that ledge to make that jump it is possible to roll Dodge your way through those branch attacks but that involves me betting on this thing's hitbox is behaving consistently so I'll take my chance to put the leap of faith Banks during its last phase however is when things get their most [ __ ] it starts spewing up these pillars of fire that can just appear from anywhere and doing slam attacks that go off the [ __ ] screen so you can't see them oh but don't worry we don't have to fight this thing we just have to run through the middle of all this [ __ ] and make one last jump onto a curved Branch at its Center oh and the Bed of Chaos hasn't stopped madly flailing either and those attacks are wide so uh good luck and even if you do manage to get past them you have to land that jump and not accidentally roll off if you don't just get smacked out of the air that is and while you're breaking your way to the last weak point it's still summoning these damn fire pillars that now you can only just barely Dodge finally you smack the bug thingy at its Center and that's it you killed it that's the boss fight a glorified deathrun map the only the only non-actively hostile thing I can say about this mistake is that it's the only boss to have [ __ ] checkpoints because even the devs knew this thing was awful and wanted the player to get past it as quickly as possible I do not blame them this thing is not only the worst boss in all of Dark Souls but it's a top Contender for one of the worst bosses of of all time and that's lost izalith horrible map design horrible enemy variety eye straining color palette and lighting all capped off with a boss so egregiously terrible that I couldn't even make me complaining about it funny this whole area is the number one reason I tend to stop my Dark Souls runs around Anor Londo because I always have such time and always enjoy revisiting it up to that point but know that eventually I'll have to have those good times crushed and ground into dust by this I said it before I'll say it again Miyazaki and likely the entire Dark Souls team to this day regrets lost eyes look and how it turned out it was the result of mismanaged time resources and a tight deadline and boy oh boy does it show I couldn't even have fun with this I was actually excited to talk about lost Islip and tear it to Pieces but now I'm just [ __ ] depressed and angry the planetary amounts of lost potential this place represents [ __ ] eats at me every time I go back to it and what makes it worse is for my first time through this was my second to last experience with dark souls as a whole I went into the final battle hot off the heels of this place and if I were to follow it Faithfully I'd be ruining the ride for myself and all of you so you know what no [ __ ] it we're not ending on such a a terrible depressing note I'm taking a detour this completely screws up the pacing of the script but I don't care we're not leaving it off like this strap in kids we're going back in time uh wait a minute this isn't where I left my timer welcome to the DLC everyone let's go Sartorius of the Abyss was the first and only major expansion released for Dark Souls 1. as you may have guessed it follows the events of Knight artorius's original battle against the awakened abyss and the resulting aftermath of his defeat it's also got a bit of an odd quest to start it [Music] first you're going to where we encounter the hydro and darker to kill it reset the area find this Golden Golem kill it it drops a woman named princess dusk dusk asks you to help her kingdom and then pieces out then you go to the entrance of the grand archives kill the specific Golem who's just off moping in the corner for some reason take the broken Medallion they drop head back to the place where you met Dusk and get joint through a portal and dear friends raise your hands to the sky and praise the sun because that quality and passion of Dark Souls is back in force this expansion is leagues better than the vast majority of the end game likely because the team was less pressed for time and could focus on making this relatively brief experience as good as possible it's also arguably harder than just about all of Dark Souls see artorius of the Abyss is one of those expansions that assumes you've played the original game to death and as such feels No Remorse in tightening its gloves and Swinging for the fences [Applause] it's got a total of four bosses each one much harder than all the bosses in the Dark Souls end game and most of the others in general while each previous boss had a certain Rhythm they each shared to some extent and certain tells when they are about to attack these ones have completely different Paces compared to that and it certainly [ __ ] me up several times in my first time through hell it's still served my own ass to me raw even some of the basic enemies you encounter have motions and attacks specifically designed to throw you off and nowhere is that more prevalent than the poster child for the entire DLC you know I wasn't going to go in depth for the DLC section since this video has already taken long enough but I had to for sir artorius it's just respectful really you don't fight Artorias as he was in his prime you fight him right after he fell battling the abyss little more than a hollowed-out corpse being puppeted around by the darkness he sought to contain but there's clearly more than a bit of the old him in there as he starts doing this [ __ ] ow so you know how we went back in time well I'm thinking so did Artorias because this [ __ ] stumbled in from Dark Souls 3. his moveset is so varied and quick way more so than any other boss in the entire game with a few variations on moves that are again meant to trip up your momentum all the bosses in this DLC are leagues more aggressive than anything else that came before and artorius is the king among them he will not give you a second to catch your breath unless you really gain some distance and will make you fight for those small moments to heal yourself yes for me artorius was harder than the actual final boss of the DLC Manus Father of the Abyss oh you have no idea how badly I want to start gushing about the lore this whole expansion added but I promised myself I wouldn't I'll just say that Artorias the legend himself is the highlight of the entire DLC for me the boss from it that I remember the most and the one that still gives me the most trouble to this day the devs knew they had to give this guy all the love they possibly could and boy did they not disappoint you are fighting a broken hollowed out Legend and does it sure feel like it there's so much more I want to say about the DLC I love how Oola seal is visibly sinking into the abyss with all the architecture slanted toward the big gaping opening at its Center I love how the deeper you go the more you start seeing this Abyssal goop all over the floor as you approach the center of the corruption I love the small details from dialogue we get that further hinted the true story of Dark Souls how the abyss began to spread and the nature of what the abyss could potentially be I love this cheeky [ __ ] I love this big [ __ ] I love how you find a young thief and if you rescue them and fight them later you get a different cutscene as they recognize you and oh God damn it it breaks my heart I could keep going but I think you get the point and I'll be going into much more detail about this in my follow-up video whenever that happens if all the latter half of Dark Souls had this kind of energy I can't imagine how fantastic it could have been mismanaged time resources and a tight deadline choked the life out of it but I'm at least very happy that some of it got focused back into this if I had to imagine part of the reason they made this DLC at all was probably because they knew the latter half of Dark Souls was so lacking and collectively wanted to rectify that you don't get a game like Dark Souls from a team that didn't have its heart in it and for my recorded playthrough this was a refreshing renewal of quality and a sudden challenge that I desperately needed approaching the final Parts but at least we don't have much longer to go so I think it's time we get back on track [Music] dear father throughout our journey we've met and befriended many people in nearly every single one of them are gone turned Hollow gone mad or cut down in vengeance the crest Fallen night laurentius Reya Vince and Nico lautrec Logan and now siegmeyer dead on the beach of Ash Lake put down by his own daughter to stop his hollowing no story we've come across has ended happily the world we're fighting so hard to restore is beyond hope and the people we tried our best to save all fell in the end standing here at the final hurdle we ask ourselves after losing so much what's left to even fight for why are we here to save a world Beyond saving a world that hated us and never wanted us at all for the honor and memories of those who forgot even themselves in the end there's nothing left no reason to keep going we don't walk into this final arena with hope in our hearts and Triumph in our wake we walk into it feeling like the scum of the earth like a Walking Corpse barely grasping at what small illusion of life it has left much like the world itself we never should have been here we should have died like everyone else we cared about even as Grand and impressive as the Kiln of the first flamed looks it hardly matters to us in the end we don't care we're just here to see this to the end no other direction but forward push this way by the dying hopes and silvery words of others words that now ring Hollow in our ears yet as we approach we spot a flicker in the distance a single moat of golden light glowing bright and defiant against the world around it Solaire he made it he got to the end after everything you both have been through everyone you've met and forced to see fall here he is wasn't in vain it wasn't for nothing what does it mean to go Hollow an undead who goes Hollow doesn't simply die but loses the will to keep on living for an undead can never truly die but an undead with no goal can't Stave off the inevitable a creeping Madness that will eventually take hold with no craft or goal to focus their efforts on the symptoms accelerate and soon claim their minds it robs them of their free will their thoughts their memories sometimes little pieces at a time but it always ends the same way an unliving corpse cursed wander the world for eternity empty and Hollow Solaire nearly suffered that same fate after failing to find his own son his own light Solaire began to go mad and lost izalith talking to himself and barely registering your presence had we left him as he was it wouldn't have even mattered if he'd been possessed by the sunlight maggot and forced to fight us because he would have gone Hollow just like the rest with no goal left to fight for and The Emptiness of the world catching up to him he nearly drowned in it powerful jovial hero would have been brought to a tragic pathetic end but he did find a reason to keep going something or someone to fight for you want to know how I know because after the entire Journey you and Solaire shared after the many times you fought together after you saved him from a terrible end and he stands at the kiln what does he do does he charge in defeat Lord Gwynn in glorious combat sacrifice himself to restore the first flame and become the very son he sought all this time no he walks off to the side puts down his summon signature and he waits to fight alongside you one last time [Music] this is Gwen or was Gwen the one you've been told about all this time the Towering figure depicted in statues spoken of like a hero and a God among the gods this is all that remains of him a Madden corpse hollowed to the core with mere Echoes of his once great power the man who once struck down the stone dragons with bolts of lightning and ushered in the age of fire can now barely manage a single blast of flame almost all of his attacks can be parried and if done right this fight can be won with barely any dodging needed there's no Grace or Majesty in how he swings that fiery sword only desperate and thoughtless aggression and this isn't a first phase trick and his true power is revealed after that health bar vanishes when he dies he just dies that's it no second coming no big reveal just another body added to the pile this is the man you were meant to succeed the one who sacrificed countless lives even his own to prolong the age of fire an age that may have very well been doomed to fade from the start all of this may have been nothing but a prolonged dying gasp of an already dead World prophecy fate this was never about a prophecy or achieving our destiny this was a desperate attempt by a fearful few cowering from the dark to restore a world that has been long long lost everywhere in this game is crumbling and decayed who knows how long this has gone on you were never a chosen Undead there were probably countless before you and maybe countless more will come after Solaire himself said it right at the beginning of our journey the flow of time itself is convoluted with Heroes centuries old phasing in and out the world is in such shambles that time itself has been corrupted and warped who truly knows how many times this exact scenario has played out every ghost we see just another undead playing out the same events over and over and over and over and over again and for what this this hollow warped dead world that should have died long ago to hopelessly grasp at a fading age that will never come back defeating Gwyn carries no weight no triumphant Victory or anything like that sure he can kill you sure he can put out the damage but you'll always come back you'll keep getting up and throwing yourself at him just like you've done to every other boss in this game you die you get up you die again and you get right the [ __ ] back up again it's a cycle not unlike the cycle the world of lordran has trapped itself in the actions of a fearful Gwyn unknowingly doomed thousands to endlessly repeat this same misery again and again in the vain hopes of finding the one the one hero who can finally end it and restore the Flames forever in a way it's a beautiful tragedy those left with the power to guide the world instead turn it toward this desperate ploy to lead those foolish enough to fight for them along the same path to serve as little more than kindling to keep that first flame burning maybe to end with you maybe it won't who really knows maybe this really is the final time the one that'll end at all throughout all of Dark Souls and the adventure you took it asked that unspoken question whether or not this world deserves to be saved if it even could be saved so what do you do you cast your hope to those who will come after that maybe they will find a way to break this curse and Undo It All or do you Let It Fade and walk quietly into the darkness toward whatever it may bring we don't really know what comes after our choice all we can do is hope we made the right one Dark Souls is a game that I hold dear to my heart one that made me appreciate storytelling and gaming on a whole other level when I played it first and one that I still hold a Monumental amount of respect for all these years later but sadly I have to admit that not all of it aged as well as I thought it did half of this game is one of the most finely crafted expertly paced and beautifully dark games I've ever played and the other half is a slow agonizing descent into outright mediocrity and disappointment it ends on a tragic note a well done one at that and its expansion adds some much-needed love and passion back into its end game but it doesn't make the thought of what could have been sting any less stop my playthroughs around Anor Londo not just because I hate lost izalith or whatever but because reaching the end game reminds me that this game wasn't nearly the vision it could have been what would this game have been had the Polish of the first half been carried over into its latter half as a question that eats a bit every time I replay it and yet despite all of that despite all the problems and aspects that have not aged well despite the slow descent into mediocrity to despite lost eyes in the Bed of Chaos I can't bring myself to dislike this game not even close it's not perfect hell far from it but where it's good it's really really damn good it became such a phenomenon not just for one reason but for many reasons ones that have only come to appreciate that much more As I Grew Older there's Beauty in its Simplicity and even if it's not as well polished as its successors it still has a Dark Twisted charm and beauty that hasn't been captured again fromsoft has made better games since but for me Dark Souls has and will always remain one of my favorites there's something it does that no other game in history has done before and has ever done since and nothing is ever going to change that holy [ __ ] I'm alive thank you everyone very much for watching what is without a doubt my most ambitious video today this one was uh rough to make so if you enjoyed it I would really appreciate a liking a comment to help the channel grow and if you'd like to stick around be sure to subscribe and do the whole Bell thingy for those interested in my patreon page has recently gotten a major overhaul and has brand new tiers of rewards for those who want to support the channel so check that out I do want to keep doing this style of video and direct support in that way helps a lot so do check that out if you have the time if you want to keep up to date with me and everything I do I have a Discord server that is open to everyone and I stream over on Twitch every Friday Saturday and Sunday at 3 P.M Central U.S time thank you again for sticking around everyone and as always y'all have a lovely evening and I'll see you next time [Music] thank you

Channel: Sethorven

Views: 1,896,062

Keywords: sethorven, retrospective, dark souls, from software, elden ring, dark souls 1, commentary, edited, documentary, git gud

Id: fow5Zw5-8rs

Length: 151min 10sec (9070 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 26 2023