Top Ten Video Game Necromancers

up [Music] [Music] [Music] hello and welcome all you grateful dead i'm the green scorpion and hoo boy weapons month 5 really took it out of me for a few months while i was regaining my energy not to mention on vacation getting engaged the countdown portion of my channel was silent as the grave i knew i wanted to warm up before jumping into my next big marathon of videos so i asked the members of my patreon discord for a topic to inject some life back into my writing team and we voted on many worthy suggestions but it's only fitting that we revive with a list about necromancers coming from the ancient greek words necros meaning dead body and manchia which means divination necromancy started as an aspect of shamanism based on communing with the souls of the dead and practiced all throughout the world i'll leave it to your imagination how successful they were like any spiritual practices outside of roman catholicism necromancy became mythologized as a dark art not to be tampered with and had its place cemented in fiction in 1937 when tolkien referred to big bad sauron as a necromancer in the hobbit in popular culture necromancy wasn't just used for the purpose of seeking wisdom or closure it was wielding the powers of life and death like two edges of the same sword in some media necromancers are synonymous with spell casters in general though i prefer the dungeons and dragons take where it's presented as one of the eight schools of arcane magic alongside enchantment transmutation and alike how this power manifests can vary sometimes depicted as noxious green fog silver light creeping frost or gorgeous cherry blossoms depending on the artistic direction practitioners of necromancy can transfer and alter souls hasten the effects of aging or most famously raise the dead be it as perfect resurrections or a mindless zombie army on that note while i did narrow down my list pretty quickly it was putting them in order that was the real nightmare do i treat this like an archetypes list like with berserkers or is this a surprise epilogue to weapons month the weapon being death magic i guess both in order to rank the reviled revivers i fortunately found four metrics of mortal mastery first is defenses necromancy is a good build if you want to hide in your domain behind your undead legion so if that's your mo how hard is it for invaders to get to you second how are you in an actual fight are your spells still useful when your foe has fought through your first feted phalanx third versatility when you can move life and death in any direction i want to see that used creatively and four scale while some necromancers can take over a town others can threaten a country or even a kingdom maybe even the entire world with that out of the way which warlocks laugh loudest in the face of death we're gonna find out or die trying i'm the green scorpion and these are the top 10 video game necromancers [Music] well if necromancers can move the flow of life in all directions i suppose the best place to start would be straight many rpgs feature spells that rather than doing damage or applying an effect endow a target with immediate termination these instant death spells often come with either a delay or low accuracy and now i'm wondering if thwack is a form of necromancy but anyway they're especially fitting for reaper themed characters bringing tidings of non-negotiable annihilation and i want to go easy on the stroke today as it's kind of a separate category this doesn't scream necromancer the same way as say shat from castlevania does but i can make an exception for my boy thanatos the catholic god of death now you might be thinking but i thought hades was the god of death no no hades is the god of the dead he controls the realm all souls go to like a grumpy landlord thanatos rules the concept of death itself the process of demise the actual event of being unalived he's death incarnate and he also happens to be the childhood friend and possible ex-boyfriend of the game's hero prince zagreus the first time he showed up in one of my runs i'll admit i was preparing myself for what might be a hardest balls boss fight but turns out he's not actually here to kill you as easy as that would be for him instead thanatos tests your resolve in a killing contest whoever offs the most enemies wins which can be difficult depending on your build at the time both of his attacks work on a delay either marking a target to take critical damage a few seconds later or creating an area of effect set effect being death thanatos is one of the few characters on this list that doesn't reanimate corpses as part of his skill set but he's very adept at the most simple application of death magic and he's never had a need to do anything else though in theory he can also keep a soul alive just by neglecting to reap it unfortunately as powerful as he's implied to be i kept old fan low on this list since we don't actually get to see much of his power outside of these inflexible demonstrations it's also worth mentioning that you only meet him on his home turf like zagreus he gets sick if he's up on the surface for too long and it's possible these bloodless revenancy slays are easier for him to dispatch seeing as they're already dead he's unaffected by zac's attacks but that might be more of a no friendly fire mechanic as we're told that he was once overpowered by sisyphus of all people resulting in death being turned off for the entire world for a period of time still writing enemies a one-way ticket to tartarus is a scary prospect and i'm glad i'm not on the receiving end of it but then again death has never looked so good that is one sexy psychopop [Music] there's been some debate in the past if using technology and science allows a character to count as a mancer like the pyro being a pyromancer rather than just a guy with a flamethrower fortunately we don't have many non-magic necrokinetics to consider but i did find one well more than one you'll see what i mean azure striker gunbolt goes the comic book route of describing ridiculous superpowers as some form of biological evolution our electro-kinetic protagonist does battle with a series of superhuman adepts who are working for the villainous sumadagi group missions follow a standard mega man type formula but the strata combs are a little different run by the eternal envy elise though she's thrown in with the rest of the level boss gallery in terms of lore elise is one of the most important adepts under suminagi's control with the power of rebirth elise manipulates the souls of anyone around her though her meek personality wasn't to sumadagi's liking so they locked her in a secret facility to increase her aggression and it worked the stratacombs are now filled with her zombified victims the very scientists that had experimented on her so yeah good work elise first zombie army on the list pushing through them you arrive at elise's chamber to find that her trauma resulted in disassociative identity disorder leading to a truly ridiculous feat of necromancy not just her personality but her very soul is split and she is able to create an exact copy of her own body to serve as a vessel for the separate part of herself that's some voldemort horcrux shenanigans right there and though i don't think she did it on purpose that's one for the record books and their snake theme for some reason probably an homage to caduceus the staff with two and twenty snakes carried by hermes in greek mythology and often used to represent healing or rebirth at first i thought most of her moves were just following the serpentine motif rather than using necromancy but according to the wiki she's actually reanimating the corpses of small cobras to use these attacks and when you deflect these kunai they turn back into little snake corpses then there's her gorgon stare which can be described as her halting your life functions for a moment thus petrifying you sounds fake but okay here's the real kicker though if you defeat one of the twin snakes the other will use resurrection to bring them back at a corner max health this means you need to defeat both sisters simultaneously with a very small window in between that's kind of hard to manage when you're being pelted with reptilian missiles could this get any worse well about 50 percent worse actually in the game's finale elise resurrects her fellow adepts for this game's obligatory boss rush and it turns out elise had a third body locked away in cryo storage this one's completely immortal and will resurrect her sisters as many times as it takes to wear you down this would have gone on forever without an assist from copen whose text specifically negates all septuma powers glad to be rid of her but i wouldn't be surprised if there's a fourth doppelganger waiting in the grass somewhere if metal gear has taught me anything it's that there's always another snake [Music] i remember playing castle crashers in 2008 and feeling nostalgic for the heyday of new grounds that was 13 years ago and now i can feel nostalgic about castle crashers itself which holds as a madcap take on the beat em up genre you spend the game roaming the countryside chasing after the evil wizard and his right hand man the necromancer maybe resurrect a better pr guy seriously what a name as on the nose as he is he's certainly deserving of the recognition thanks to his meta knight wings and the power of cutscenes necro is out of swords reach for most of your adventure stopping only to occasionally sprout some skeletons in your path to slow you down he also swings by the domicile of the cyclops after you bested him reviving him from a molten depth so that he and by extension his conheaded best friend can serve as one of the game's end bosses and if you can beat them you'll finally have your chance against the necromancer himself and i hope you've been level grinding because he's considered by many to be the toughest boss in the game by attrition alone good god necromancer when's the last time you cleaned your room their bodies everywhere i can't even see the floor and he plans to add you to the collection by repurposing his carry-on carpet into a trash mob these zombies include every humanoid enemy type in the game and move at hyperactive speeds if you're not good at air combo locking they will overwhelm you and health potions don't do much if he doesn't give you a moment to drink them but necromancer seems to have limited spell slots because after two waves he touches down to fight you himself for the remainder of the encounter that's the only thing keeping him so low honestly because as cartoony as this game is this is one of the quickest death by zombie waves i've ever seen this chibi sauron doesn't mess around and if you have a dlc or play the remaster necromancer is also available as a playable character and while all playable characters control the same they have little variation in their spells that make each one slightly unique necromancers splash attack is a mosh pit of reanimated arms that very unique to him pops enemies into the air to start air combos he can also spawn kamikaze skeletons on the spot and if fired downward from the air these bone bombers will hit the ground running making them more useful than most aerial spells personally i'll stick to green knight but it is cool that he's here even if you don't get the wings or the full extent of his necromantic powers castle crashers isn't a subtle game each character just takes whatever they're supposed to do and hits you over the head with it but few necrotic boss fights have made my blood pump quite like this one opposites out of the spectrum from the frantic action of castle crashers wargrove is a slow-paced highly tactical war game inspired by advanced wars and fire emblem featuring four fearsome factions you start the game controlling princess mercia of cherry stone as your kingdom is invaded by the ruthless ranks of the felheim legion led by valder lord of the dead let's talk world building for a moment felheim as a country is populated almost entirely by the undead all raced from their graves through the power of the fel gauntlet only one who holds the gauntlet can be deemed worthy to rule over the macabre masses valder grew up during a period of history when the gauntlet was lost allowing the undead to spread unchecked and making things pretty dangerous for mortal kind but valder did what it took to survive and in his teenage years the gauntlet presented itself to him recognizing his resolve and relinquishing rulership now 34 valder runs an entire nation of the dead most of which he created himself and all of them battle ready this includes skeleton swordsmen pikeman archers hulking colossi and ragna a frankensteinian monster built from the bodies of history's greatest warriors valder also has an alliance with vampires much older than him and the deep ones from whom he raced skeletal sea turtle mounts so that they could serve as his navy far from mindless zombies valder's soldiers are able to communicate and reason when valder is away but will follow any direct command from him in an instant true his troops act the same way as any of the living troops of any other faction but think about that raised from the dead they're all as capable as any normal person how often do you see a necromancer skeleton army that can fly hot air balloons or operate a trebuchet they can even talk though most people aren't fluent in chatter chatter in terms of gameplay one thing you have to understand about wargroove is that all of the commanders are statistically identical so on one hand valdez are strong as a dog but he's also as strong as koji's mech he can reliably take out multiple units of foot soldiers and go toe-to-toe with enemy giants if he's at full health the distinguishing factor between each of the commanders is their groove a special technique that they can use after charging and valderz lets him summon a swordsman unit okay a little underwhelming it's implied that he can resurrect anything but in game you can only make the simplest unit there is but don't sell it short swordsmen deal critical damage when standing next to their commander so there's synergy there plus the dreadswords spawn ready to immediately move which can be insanely useful for attacking far off enemies and this groove charges so damn fast feed valder one kill and he's probably got his meter full so the point of comparison with the castle crasher's boss is a little tough valder's zombie waves are moving slower but he's also controlling far more at once up to an entire country's worth and it's not that slow if you do the math each dreadsword unit being four skeletons forming as quickly as every other turn or in his boss fight in story mode every turn because he freaking cheats it's not as versatile as some of his contemporaries but the skeletons themselves are varied and make for a continental threat and valder leads them all with an iron fist i mean literally he actually uses a metal hand to do it he's actually a pretty nice guy once you get to know him behold the fell gauntlet i distinguish between a reaper and a necromancer largely on a character's purpose thanatos despite fitting the minimum qualifications of a necromancer embodies a reaper for his role in dueling out death and preserving the natural flow of the universe whereas most necromancers in fiction are either fanatical worshipers of some death god or eccentric experimenters purposefully defying these rules of nature that's part of what makes the necromancer classroom diablo so interesting they still use the title of necromancer but they exist to maintain the planet's balance between life and death so when the fallen star awakens the dead in condorus that balance is disturbed and the necromancer sets out to put the dead to rest even if he has to wake a few more up to do so the necromancer class was first introduced in diablo 2 but was reworked as a dlc class in diablo 3 the canon version of the character being named jewel this is also the character used to represent the class and heroes of the storm his trusty site perfect for finishing the job on any undead and his baggy grey skin demonstrating how close to death he is himself his powers in diablo 3 manifest in four main ways first there's blight here representing less a physical toxin like the witch doctor might use and more the creeping effects of time second is frost as death in these games is a very cold and isolating sensation this could be a reference to the game's developer blizzard who in itself is an entity of darkness that sucks the life out of those who work for it third we have blood magic jewel can siphon blood out of his enemies to heal himself or sacrifice his own blood and by extension his hp for more powerful skills last is a variety of bone manipulation using them as spears or armor even converting corpses in the environment into mortuary missiles in another game world these kinds of spells could fall under poison cryomancy hemomancy etc but the theming with jules whole kid does tie everything together as a necromancer and of course joule can raise the dead traveling with a posse of up to seven skeletal minions he can raise the departed as skeletal mages or melt a bunch of flesh together into hulking golems he can even devour the dead to restore the essence needed to cast his spells that's why i like jules so much as a necromancer while previous entries on this list use their necromancy one way or the other either mostly killing or mostly reviving juul utilizes a full spell book of necromancy weaving life force in all directions depending on what he needs at the time he turns corpses into projectiles enemies into armor health into damage and minions into his own mp pool incorporating sick death cold death bloody death and pointy death not just a circle of life but a mandala of demise and rebirth jewel stands as one of the most iconic necromancers perhaps the most obvious example of this trope but strangely also one of the most creative now that's not creative enough for you our number five goes into bizarre pun infested territory give it up for the necro dancer titular villain of crypt of a necrodancer which combines roguelike dungeon crawling with a rhythm game the result being one of the most addictive stressful and awesome indie games i've ever played seriously check out the highlights of my twitch streams for this game you can actually see my hair grain to the beat once upon a time a fame seeking minstrel named octavian stumbled upon the golden loot which not only helped him invent trap music but also could weave his melodic influence through all creatures living in dead it also made him immortal but only as long as he kept playing and all the while it drained his humanity until he became a blue bearded ghoul with an obsession with raising minions and giving them terribly punny names while not all of them look undead every monster face in the crypt is either revived by the necrodancer or has had its soul altered into servitude through a combination of necromancy and bardic performance so while valder's skeletal forces were fairly diverse and able to operate complex ships and siege weapons he can't beat the sheer variety of the necrodancer's morbid menagerie you've got the usual skeletons with shields or on horses and the necrodancer installed these coffins that will spawn them on infinitum then there's the fully fleshed facilities of harpies trolls dragons fire and ice elementals monkeys that can body jack you nightmares that flow with darkness mummies making mummies he'll even zombify the shopkeeper from time to time not to mention the area bosses like king konga and his conga line of zombies or his personal grim reaper death metal but the real kicker with the necrodancer isn't his minions it's his effect on living hearts all of his pets are altered so that their hearts beat at a specific rhythm and when you enter his multi-story dungeon you too are cursed with his heartbeat this forces you to make all of your movements attacks and item usages on tempo with the dungeon's background music turning your spelunking adventure into dance dance revolution i know that sounds silly next to the multifaceted talents of joule but i don't think we should undersell what a powerful if frankly bizarre display of necromancy this is i've seen necromancer set a timer on how long a target has to live but never a timer that decides how a target lives and he uses it to subject you to his endless concert or if you're good enough eventually turn you into one of his undead champions that's what he did to dorian the last hero to attempt to steal his loot and necrodancer blasted him into a state of mindless never death as his bodyguard the dead ringer the necker dancer spent considerable rehearsal time on his impregnable defenses but even with his back against the wall he's no softy in your first encounter you have to use both cadence and dorian arranging them just right to trigger the explosives and destroy octavian's stage but all the while he's constantly reanimating more minions to attack you like do you mind dude this is already hard enough and with his feet on the ground he'll still teleport around and reanimate on every beat so there's a good chance his minions will finish you off before you can pin him down even when killed he takes the secrets of the loot to his grave constantly forcing our heroes to revive him so they can learn how to destroy the damn thing if you've played the game you know how hard it is to retire this spoony bard you can stop an avalanche but you can't stop a beat [Music] necromancy has a strong presence in league of legends with the shadow isles factoring into the origins of many champions karthus hecarim kalista thresh not to mention viego and his black mist storming through runeterra in the latest plot arc i still haven't decided how i feel about viego so my judgment came down to a pair of contenders mordekaiser the iron revenant and yorick the shepherd of souls it's funny if you ask me for the best necromancer in league back when i started playing 11 years ago this would be no contest for yorick both champions underwent major revisions in their skill sets and lore and mordekaiser's original title was the champion of noxus known as the master of metal basically his whole thing was being an album cover aside from his soul stealing ultimate his abilities were more in metal manipulation or pharamancy as i like to call it now he's actually a formless wraith inhabiting a suit of armor with a mace made out of souls and the power to defy death itself through sheer willpower yorick started out as a retired gravedigger retired on the count of death who had to guide ghosts of the departed to their final destination before he could go on to his a couple years back he was reinvented as a sixth sense i see dead people kid who was trained by monks before getting caught in viego's black mist only instead of dying like most people he got sick new powers and a new posse following him possibly because of the blessed water that he has on his neck he retains the ability to summon spirits but also has more of a shaolin monk fighting style with his trusty shovel so while mordekaiser's leaned more into necromancy over the past decade yorick leaned ever so slightly away he remains one of my favorite champions but alas poor yorick i'm going with mordekaiser a warlord in life mordekaiser believed that by being a badass barbarian conqueror he would be guaranteed valhalla when he died when his time came however he arrived in a sort of purgatory an empty and grey wasteland to wander ceaselessly until he faded into oblivion instead of merely accepting his new forever home the kaiser persevered his sheer anger and will keeping him from fading until he found some sorcerers gullible enough to revive him after promptly slaying his beneficiaries mordecaiser found he'd absorbed energy from his time in limbo that made him stronger than ever and led a war from atop his immortal bastion he was eventually slain again but you fools that was all part of the plan for all the while mordekaiser had been manipulating the souls of his victims just before killing them when he arrived back in the after world which he now had claimed for his own he found those warped souls waiting for him his new army from which he built an even stronger empire until the day he can invade mortality for the last time you really can't keep a good necromancer down to the untrained eye mordekaiser's combat might look more like weapon mastery but not only is mordekaiser's mace made of dead people all of his abilities involve the manipulation of souls in some way as mordekaiser deals damage to others he can convert some of their life force into more damage in follow-up attacks he can also do this in a quick burst with his obliterate skill any damage mordekaiser takes or deals is stored in a backup meter which he can then transform into a protective shield kind of the necromantic version of his old shrapnel force shields he can fire ghostly claws with death's grasp and the pistol resistance his ultimate realm of death similar to jewel's land of the dead actually but way more metal here mordekaiser can transport himself and a single opponent into his territory the death world where they're forced to fight mano amano not gonna be easy as the whole time mordekaiser is stealing their energy to raise his own stats and if mordekaiser kills his opponent he gets to keep the stat buffs he just ate their soul well until they respawn but i imagine if respawning were an unnecessary mechanic for mobas this would be a bigger deal any attempt to harm the kaiser only makes him stronger war is his sustenance and death is always on the menu he doesn't raise the dead because he doesn't need to he's using the dead as a battery like a necrotic energizer bunny and i'd be remiss not to mention that he also started a metal band called pentakill that's taken runeterra by storm it kind of exists as its own alternate universe now but there was a time when this ban was completely canon and that's hilarious he's not my favorite dead guy in league but for the sake of today's list mordekaiser earns his spot as numero cuatro you see because of the meme because he was popular in brazil the joke that he was numero uni man i've been playing this game too long [Music] it's standard practice for necromancers to extend their stay on the planet living through phylacteries and self-resurrection for up to thousands of years but few necromancers have been added for as many real world years as quan chi first appearing in mortal kombat 4 in 1997 and still making appearances today well technically his first appearance was in defenders of the realm a god-awful animated series and then mortal kombat mythology sub-zero but that's the thing with necromancers they do anything to survive even if it means appearing in something dead on arrival so mortal kombat 4 after the defeat of shang tsung and shao khan in the original trilogy mortal kombat needed a new big bad and quan chi filled that role vicariously he actually serves an elder god named shinnok and works to reconstitute him and in the meantime he uses shinnok's amulet to empower his spellcraft making him the most feared spellcaster outrealm has ever seen quan chi's most basic form of necromancy are these phantasmagorical floating skulls these can theoretically kill a target instantly though this being mortal kombat most of his opponents are either gods demons cyborgs or mortals of incredible spiritual resilience all able to tank at least a few of these projectiles this is where quan chi's martial arts mastery comes in handy allowing him to defend himself long enough to unload several more skull blasts he also has portal magic but not just the doctor strange sling ring kind quan chi can open doorways to other dimensions to effortlessly pull himself or others through including the mortal kombat equivalent of heaven hell limbo and so on to quan chi crossing the veil between life and death is as easy as opening a refrigerator and he can empower his magic with the souls of the dead in a similar fashion to mordekaiser or offer up those souls to empower others as he does with his fellow soul-eating wizard shang tsung when they form their deadly alliance if he doesn't have a clear shot to insta-kill or the time to raise a zombie minion he can grasp an opponent's soul and rewrite it on the fly effectively live zombifying them and causing them to march stupidly toward him for a combo setup he'll even summon demon bats from the nether realm the mortal kombat equivalent of hell i can imagine some fans were expecting scorpion for this list who also summons demons and drags enemies to the nether realm where he's much more powerful but ask yourself where did scorpion get these powers quan chi who killed scorpion's people and manipulated him through the mortal kombat tournament quan chi who restored sub-zero from his cybernetic form everyone hated kwan chi who hijacked onaga's undead army made sheng tsung look like a first year at hogwarts and killed liu kang and brought him back as a zombie okay that last one is actually raiden but it only illustrates that necromancy is a difficult art beyond the skill of a lightning god if quanchi had done it he'd have done it better once when facing off against raiden quanchi instantly rest kung lao jade kitana jax cyber sub zero striker nightwolf sindel smoke and cabal all at once all completely under his control as a flex but my favorite quanchi trick of all one word soul nado a magical vacuum that pulls all of the souls from heaven to be used for the darkest of magics imagine chilling out in heaven after a lifetime of good deeds only to get yanked into a duracell for the bald bastard any of the elder gods want to weigh in on this no just shinnok and he's backing quan chi you'd be hard pressed to find a catastrophe in the series that quanchi didn't either help cause or help resolve he's got his grubby little hands in everything i mean again chronicle sub-zero if he can come back from that he can come back from anything how unfortunate juan chi wins oh god back to blizzard activision blizzard has revealed itself to be the true villain of the new decade with several sacrifices made to the god of crunch culture draconian litigation against fan projects and workplace misconduct that wouldn't fly in a george orwell novel i wish i could ignore the company the same way it ignored complaints against its executives and basic human decency for the past several years but i have never let the corruption of the business side stop me from talking about the creativity at play in the developer's office and warcraft's had some pretty great villains so let's go back to a better time a six-year period where warcraft was in its heyday and any atrocities behind the scenes were at least behind the scenes some longtime fans i consulted with recommended kel thusad of the scourge who to be fair is a great character but i think part of why he's so popular is due to his association with an even more popular villain who taught him everything he knew and made him into the lich he is today it's pretty hard to beat the guy who raised you i'm talking of course about arthas the lich king or rather the lich king entity itself there's a lot of lore here but i'll throw them through it as fast as i can try to keep up this will be on the test later so back in draenor there's an orc shaman named nerjoul great start because as i mentioned earlier necromancy has its earliest roots in shamanism ner'zhul doesn't like the fact that the orcs are working with demons but when he speaks up dreadlord kil'jaeden had him cancelled and the only way he can be redeemed to the horde is to be transformed into the lich king lich king is sent to azeroth as a suit of armor trapped in a block of ice the frozen throne he's trapped here but able to create a contagious plague that wipes through the countryside and instantly zombifies anyone it kills from northrend lich king is able to control not only the plague itself but every resulting undead and he's soon a general of hundreds of thousands of troops meanwhile the alliance is struggling to keep up and one paladin named arthas gets so frustrated that he goes kinda evil lich king lures arthas to a new source of power the mighty sword frostmourne through which arthas is turned to the dark side and directly controlled by the lich king so from this point forward everything arthas does is largely the work of the lich king himself eventually arthas treks up to the frozen throne donning the possessed armor and fusing his soul with near jewels to become a more complete lich king no longer bound to the frozen throne and free of the dreadlord's control what follows are bad times it might feel like cheating combining near jewel and arthas's feats here but the way i see it they're both extensions of the same ultimate necromancer so let's list their triumphs creating an instant zombie plague defeating the nerubians that were immune to the plague and zombifying them anyway turning anub'arak the spider king into an undead superbug turning sylvanas windrunner into a banshee corrupting the elves well of life into a well of undeath teaching kel'thuzad necromancy before which he could barely raise rats turning a slain kel'thuzad into a lich using the well of undeath beating illidan in a duel raising sindragosa as an undead frostworm and allowing the best player characters in wow to storm his citadel only to take their souls effortlessly after a few minutes of pretending it was a fair fight he would have won if tyrion fordring didn't deus ex mocking of the situation and save the raiding party though it still took like a dozen champions to take him down the lich king mantle even persisted after this with bolvar four dragon assuming the role to keep arthas's undead legions from swarming across azeroth unchecked i feel like bolvar could have just commanded them all to jump in a volcano and be done with it but i guess that's not allowed so instead the new lich king hung around to attract nostalgic fans back whenever things became stale until recently when sylvanas killed him because she's the creator's current favorite the lich king's reign over azeroth was a moment in time a whole fictional world in peril the alliance and the horde setting aside their differences literally millions of players fighting against the lich king's forces all trying to get to this guy it was a thing of beauty but looking at wow today well it has more in common with the frozen set of armor than the mighty dark paladin the plot spinning its wheels making increasingly divisive story decisions and rather than feeling like a world to explore wow has become a passionless list of dailies more about making your numbers go up than being part of a community makes me yearn for the days when we fought the lich king meanwhile other mmos like final fantasy 14 are doing better than ever with the best story arcs blizzard can come up with seemingly in the past and the avalanche of pr disasters burying them there's never been a better time to quit the world of warcraft [Music] if i wasn't so mad at blizzard i probably would have put the lich king at number one without much consideration but that moment of hesitation allowed me to reevaluate the other entries and one last resurrection is squeaked past old arthas don't get me wrong it was close but taking a page from the power scaling community i started to think about each necromancer in terms of their sphere of influence how big of a force they can amass or oppose elise and the castle crasher's necromancer can protect small hideouts or raise small but elite squads the necro dancer is protecting a much larger dungeon whereas joule is able to penetrate such a dungeon valder ranked a little lower for not being incredibly versatile but he's up there with mordekaiser and quan qi in terms of scope pulling together legions that could easily overtake a continent the lich king gets frighteningly close to conquering a planet and there's only one necromancer that i can think of that tops even that well also thanatos who physicalizes the very concept of death itself but he was almost disqualified because i just don't think he's very interested in the topic but at the same time it turns out thanatos isn't the only incarnation of death on this list so rise from your seats and from your graves for our number one necromancer grave lord nito [Music] dark souls lore is a cryptic thing few who play the game ever learn the backstory they just know that they die a lot but can you believe it that if it weren't for nito there would be no death in dark souls at all back in the ancient past there was no death no life no light or darkness or good or evil there was simply the overworld ruled by immortal dragons and the underground an endless expanse of grey nothingness until the first flame came into existence and with it four great figures the furtive pygmy who invented humanity the witch of easolith who invented life for them lord gwyn who created light and by association darkness and nito who made death something for humans to do when they're done being alive high concepts stuff but very effective in defeating the dragons above gwyn used the flames to split their scales and nito used his newly invented death to stop them once and for all so yeah we got the instant death spells down powerful enough to topple mother effing dragons this beckoned in an age of flame where humans prospered and built great kingdoms but it wasn't made to last in time the first flame source of light and life began to dim and gwyn's group struggled to find the solution the witch of izalith tried to make a new flame and that went horribly wrong so nito and gwyn worked out a way to link humanity back to the flame fueling it whenever someone dies that's why bonfires are so important in dark souls by the way but it turns out humanity isn't a renewable resource there just weren't enough people to keep the flame lit so next level problem solving nito begrudgingly makes it so that everyone who dies comes back as an undead and that's why you always respawn in dark souls and why you have to fight to get your full health bar back your repeated deaths are being used to fuel the first flame again and again and again humanity itself rung out like a wet rag to feed every last drop possible into the shrinking embers trying in vain to prolong the age of man the point i'm getting at here is that nato's very existence shapes reality itself and he can change the rules of life and death seemingly on a whim re-engineering how souls are collected in order to maximize their use throughout the world though he seems a little conflicted on the matter nito hosts a covenant of gravelord's servants which you the player can join and doing so allows players to invade other game worlds the save files of other players leading them to more deaths and more kerosene for the flame so i guess you can say nito's dominion over death spreads to multiple realities but nito is an artist and finds gwyn's new soul economy has cheapened the impact of death so he waits at the bottom of the tomb of the giants behind countless masses of mera which serves as a test waiting for an adventurer to prove themselves strong enough to end gwyn's age of light so in one way it will mean the end of death but in another it will also be the end of life and that is the greatest death of all a giant himself the gravelord stands nine feet tall wearing an umber cloak and adorned with the bodies of several other skeletons an entire cemetery rushing at you from the shadows but despite this initial shock nito is considered to be in the easier half of the dark souls bosses that is to say the traps he laid before his tomb are more treacherous than nito himself but he still has some tricks up his radius and ulna smaller skeletons will swarm you if you stay still while nito himself slashes through them carelessly hoping that when he's done you'll be among the resulting heap of body parts he'll also unleash a miasma attack a simplified version of the same one used to slay the dragons if you can outrun his minions and get behind him you can hack away safe from his sword dance and only needing to backstep from the spreading miasma goes down pretty easily for a number one spot huh i don't know something about this encounter always felt off to me well i look at it this way i really think he's happy that you were able to best him and that he hopes that you'll be the one to defeat gwyn and return the world to oblivion life just isn't fun for him anymore a necromancer's job is to raise the dead and well just about every person in the world he's already raised countless times his zombies raise zombies is this really supposed to be a boss fight it feels more like a retirement party a farewell with little emotion knowing that you too will soon join him so for co-opting life inventing death and literally wearing it like his finest vestments i named grave lord nito as the number one necromancer in video games every time you die in this game and every time you wake up to try again you have nito to thank i'm the green scorpion and thank you for joining me on this reinvigorating topic but don't get comfortable just yet halloween is just around the corner after all so next time round two horror games [Music] you

Channel: The Green Scorpion

Views: 66,217

Keywords: The Green Scorpion, greenscorpion64, video games, countdown, let's play

Id: --Lgj8koDYw

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021