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Dark Souls III: when FromSoft gets silly

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If people know Dark Souls, they think of it being a grimdark fantasy game that is relentlessly punishing. It’s hard AF, and all the bosses will destroy you. That’s the Cliff Notes version of how most people who don’t know From games well think about Dark Souls.

I’m not dissing people for that, by the way. They’re not wrong. The games are grim, dark, and utterly depressing at times. There’s a sense of nihilism* to them that can be disconcerting–even to me. I can see the hopeful spark in them–if I squint. But the darkness is pretty unrelenting. Here is my post from yesterday in which I waxed poetic about my love for the game.

That’s why the absolutely silly parts of the games are a blessing. Today, I was running through

*SPOILER*

the Grand Archives, which is a late game area because it’s a great farming area. I did it so many times in the past. You can clear around seventy K in one run through, which is a nice chunk of change. The thing is, there are these arms and hands that spring out of the books, and they can curse you if they touch you. They are everywhere!

The only way you can protect yourself from the hands/arms (and they’re a weird shade of purply-pink) is to dip your head in wax. Yeah, you read that right. There are pools of wax in strategic places in the archives, and there’s a prompt that says something like, “Dip your head in.” Did it say why? Of course not. Did it say what it would do? Nope! You were just supposed to trust that it was something you had to do because the game told you to.

Now, I will say that FromSoft rarely outright tells the player to do something detrimental (I want to say never, but there might be  a case or two) , but I wanted to know why I was dipping my head in wax and making myself look like a candle. And to make matters worse, I lost my big hat in the process.  Not literally as I still had the attributes, but it didn’t appear to be on my head any longer.

The enemies had the same waxy appearance (at least, the humanoid-looking ones), which made it even sillier. As you may guess, they are extremely weak to fire. My Chaos Bed Vestiges literally melted them. This will never not amuse me, by the way. Being a human candle, i mean. Especially as someone with a fondness for pyros. It just makes me laugh inwardly because it’s so goofy! But it’s presented so seriously, which makes it even more hilarious.


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Dark Souls III love is flourishing, part two

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I’m going to talk more about Dark Souls III (FromSoft) and how I’m absolutely in love with it again. But first, I want to share a video I found. I have posted it down below. I found the Elden Ring one first, and it just warmed my heart. These videos are so adorable, and they really just make me smile. It’s the little (tiny) things in life sometimes. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about one of my hardest bosses in the game. Today, I will be talking about another really hard boss.

*SPOILER*

I did an optional area today, including a bullshit boss that has the worst hitbox in the world. It’s called the Ancient Wyvern, and when you first encounter it, you do potato damage on it. There’s a message on the ground that says somethnig about a plunging attack. It’s a dev message, and it’s supposed to be a clue as to what you need to do. I don’t remember if I figured this out myself or not, but here’s what you have to do.

You have to race up the level as the Ancienty Wyvern chases you, breathing fire on you. There are enemies along the way, and you have to get to the top of the castle so you can–wait. We’ll get there in a minute. You can access this area roughly halfway through the game. In typical From faashion, it’s really hard to find this esoteric and obsucre area.

Shall I tell you how? Sure, why not. So. There’s an area with a bunch of dragons sitting, looking at a castle in the distance/on the horizon. First time, I saw it and thought , “Hm. I’ll get there eventually.” Because if you can see it, you can go there. At least in the Souls games.

Did I figure out how to get there on my own? Nope! I had to look it up and read the forums with one eye (trying not to see other spoilers). You have to go to another completely optional area, beat an optional boss, kill an enemy, and pick it up down the road. With this gesture, you then go to the area with the sitting dragons again. You do the gesture and get whisked away to the far-off castle.

Which is hard as hell.

Seriously. You don’t want to go there too early. It’s really hard. And the hardest boss in the base game is there. Optional, integral to the story, and so damn hard. It’s another one that I had to summon for in my first playthrough, and they are still so hard now .It’s the Nameless King* and the bird he rode in on. Who is called the King of the Storm. That’s the name bar you see when you first go into the boss arena.


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When you pick a fight with the Devil….

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You better be stronger than Hell.

I love that phrase so much. I want to make it my life mantra, but it doesn’t really make sense in and of itself. There is a lot of explaining I’d have to do if I went around saying it all the time. I’m going to include the trailer below once again because I like it that much.

I want to get a shirt with it emblazoned across in the Dark Souls III font (not sure that’s allowed). I would wear the hell out of that, pun not intended, but still funny. I was talking yesterday about the bosses that arre considered more difficult and how I found one of them (Dancer of the Boreal Valley) easy.

Today, I faced one of the four bosses who completely owned me the first time around. Back them, I was still of the mindset that I had to solo all the bosses or I was not a true Souls player*. I tried so hard, but this boss just had my number. It wasn’t just one boss–it was two. Hey, look at that. Double bosses are harder than single bosses. Um, spoiler warning for a ten-year old game.

*SPOILER WARNING*

This was not an optional boss, and it was the boss I had to beat in order to get my beloved late-game sword. It’s called Lorian’s Greatsword. Take a guess who you have to kill to get it. If you said Loriaan, you are half right! It’s Prince Lorian in the first half, and then his sickly and frail brother, Prince Lothric, climbs on his back and hits you with holy magic that takes away nearly my whole health bar. Granted, I only have 20…Vitality? They always change the name of the stats from game to game. No. It’s also Vigor. They didn’t change that one, which makes it worse. They change some , but not the others. Dark Souls III stats: Vigor, Attunement, Endurance, Vitality, Strength, Dex, Intelligence, Faith, and Luck. Elden Ring stats: Vigor, Mind, Endurance, Strength, Dex, Intelligence, Faith, and Arcane.

I looked up the cheese for this boss. There was one I had not heard of and hadn’t tried. I’ve done the Pestilent Mist cheese, and this cheese was similar. Take care of Lorian as quickly as you can. For the last hit, though, you have to be at the foot of the carpeted stairs that lead up to Lothric. You can’t be on the steps–you have to be as close as you can be without touching them. Then, you have to watch the cut scene. If you do it correctly, Lorian and Lothric will be in front of you, motionless (with Lothric on Lorian’s back).

The Pestilent Mist cheese is to spam the sorcery, Pestilent Mist. It’s a cloud that eats away at any human’s humanity (including the caster). So, yes, you have to make sure you cast it away from you. Then, just watch Lothric’s health melts away.

Oh, here’s the thing. In the second stage, you have to kill Lothric, not Lorian. You can kill Lorian if you wish, but when you do, Lothric will bring him back to life. So, you have to hit this tiny target on Lorian’s back, and it has a very janky hitbox.


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Demos? Demons? Definitely! Part seven

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I have one more post about demos and video games in general in me, and then I’m going to move on. Probably. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about this, that, and the other thing. One thing I was talking about is how my love for Dark Souls III (FromSoft) has flared up once again. I just played and took a glance at my playtime. It’s roughly eighteen hours, and I’m about two-thirds through the base game. The first time I played the game, it took me roughly seventy hours to beat the base game. That’s with all the hidden/optional areas. It’s still longer than most people, but…I’m actually guessing it probably took me longer. Closer to a hundred hours, maybe.

At that time, I still held to the toxic notion that you had to solo the bosses. I managed to do most of the bosses solo, but four of them I just could not (I did them later solo). Now that I’ve done all that, I have no compunction about summoning, and there are NPCs for several of the bosses. At least the ones you have to fight. The hardest boss (who is optional) does not have an NPC summon, unfortunately. And while I can sometimes get a human summon, it’s not a guarantee (and it’s more often not than that I can).

It’s funny which bosses I have trouble with and which  I don’t. The Dancer of the Boreal Valley is considered one of the harder bosses in the game, and I’ve never had trouble with her. She’s very susceptible to fire in the face as it turns out, and because my Attunement is higher this time than ever, in this run, I demolished her faster than I ever had before. I did see if there were any humans to summon, but since I did her on the first try, I’m not sure they would have shown up, anyway. There’s a special thing you have to do to prock her, and then you’re locked in the boss room with her.

I can usually get her on the first or second try, and I did it this time with such ease. It took less thatn a minute because my Chaos Bed Vestiges (best pyro in the game according to me) just melted her–literally. I read afterwards that Gnaw (swarms of flies that chew on the victim until they prock bleed) will do the same. I have Dorhy’s Gnawing , which is the souped up version. It takes 25 Faith to use it, which I just got.

One thing I don’t like about this game is that it becomes prohibitively expensive to level up. the secodn game of the series is probably the one in which it’s easiest to level. It’s not bad in Elden Ring as well. I’m back to smiling my way through Dark Souls III. It has been fairly smooth this time, even when I solo a boss (like I did with Dancer).


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Demos on my mind, part four

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Let’s talk more about demos. I have tried several more, and I do think the fun of plowing through a half-dozen demos has considerably dimmed. I’m still looking for that hidden gem, but there is just SO much slop. I think I have found one decent game for every twenty crappy games I see. I was talking yesterday about things that seem to be missing from so many games, and I want to continue that in this post.

One thing that I’ve noticed is how many copycat games there are. This is to be expected and it’s not just limited to games, of course. Anything that becomes popular gets hundreds of others trying to copy what made them popular. The problem is that most of the copies if not all of them fail to get to the heart of what made the original special.

I will use FromSoft as an example because they fit the brief perfectly. When they first came out with Demon’s Souls, there were more naysayers than supporters. In that time, games very very much hand-holdy and making sure that the player felt overpowered and unable to die. In fact, dying was made pretty toothless with the ability to respond without any negative effect becoming the standard.

FromSoft (especially Miyazaki) came along and said, “Nah, fuck that shit, yo.” Not those words in particular, but the sentiment. Demon’s Souls was hard and gave no quarter. I have not played it, but I have seen others play it. It’s hard and grueling as you would expect from a From game. More to the point, it does not coddle the player.

You could say the same for Dark Souls, which I have played.  Several times. Both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls grew to be cult favorites, and Miyazaki was pressured to porting the latter to PC. It was awful. A really terrible port. It’s only because of a mod called dsfix that anyone could play it on the PC at something resembling ok. Because of that, I did not have to experience the Blighttown slowdown (it ran at literally 2 fps for some people).

Fast-forward to 2021 when FromSoft released the biggest game of the year, Elden Ring. It became a huge commercial hit, and it’s what made them cross the rubricon (heh) from niche to mainstream. In the time between Demon’s Souls and Elden Ring, their success has spawned countless soulslikes. A few have been good, while the vast majority have been serivecable, bad, or horrid.

This is the way it goes when something hit sthe cultural conscienceness. There are a bunch of lemmings in any industry (and shareholders desperate to jump on the latest trend–see the debacle of the live service nonsense of the last year), and they will milk the shit out of a trend until there is nothing left but a limp, lifeless husk. In the first few years after Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, there were no copies, obviously. Then the first Lords of the Fallen (Deck13 and CI Games) came out in 2014, and it was the first Souls clone (at least of any notability).


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FromSoft again? You bet! Part eight

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I have one more post in me about FromSoft. Let’s be real. I could write about them endlessly, but for now, I’ll stick to one post at a time. In the last post, I talked about why Patches is a better representation of the From games than is Solaire. Oooooh yes. I know that’s so controversial of me to say, but it’s how I feel deep in my heart.

Ian and I have discussed plenty of times whether Miyazaki loves his fans or hates them. I’ve said this before, but here are the arguments for both sides.

Miyazaki hates his fans: His worlds are so bleak and actively out to get the player. It’s pure misery everywhere you go, and everyone is hurting in one way or the other. Hell, one of the main points of the first game is that if you go Hollow, you’ll lose your reason to live. That’s when you lose your mind and it’s just a mercy to kill you. There are more than one NPC in the first game that you can mercy kill after they lose their minds (Griggs of Vinheim, Big Hat Logan, Oscar of Astoria, Crestfallen Warrior, Reah of Thorolund, Laurentius of the Great Swamp, to name more than a few. And, of course, the big man himself, Solaire).

That’s just off the top of my head–there might be more. I don’t do them all every time, but I have done them all at least once. Hm. That might actually be my next playthrough–doing all the NPC mercy killings.

By the way, many people like to kill all the NPCs at the end of the playthrough and before NG+ to get the items that they drop. I’ve done that, but I felt really bad about it. I don’t do it any longer.

It’s amazing to me how I can remember every corner of the game–at least in the first half. I did those runs so often, I can do them in my sleep. I will admit that I’m not quite as good at the second half of the game, but I know the general layout and most of the enemies. You kind have to when you die a million times on the way to the boss.

It’s also wild to me that I’ve played this game at least two dozen times, and I still find new things/hear new things about it. I’m sure that there are no secrets left to be found, but that doesn’t mean I’ve heard/seen it all.

One of the best things about playing a From game real time is the sense of community that happens when everyone is looking for secrets and commiserating about how hard certain bosses/areas are. This has happened since Demon’s Souls, and it’s one thing that makes the games incomparable. People are divided as to whether Miyazaki meant it to be that way or not, but my god, it has paid off in spades.


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Yet more musing on FromSoft games, part seven

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I’m back to have more fun with baseless speculation about the FromSoft pirate game. Why? Because why not? On a tangent to that, but somewhat related, I’m including a video below of Luke Westaway interwiving the man who translates From games into English. Well, he’s one of two who does it, and  he was the first one before his team hired another guy. The idea that it was just two men who did all the English for all the From games is wild–especially Elden Ring. His name is Ryan Morris, and he speaks fondly of Solaire, the NPC from the first Dark Souls game whom everyone loves. (Ok, I had asterisked this and everything starting with ‘Except me’ below was going to be a footnote. But then it turned into the post, so let’s just go with that.)

Except me. It’s not that I dislike him; it’s just that I think he’s overrated. Everyone has him as their favorite NPC in that game, igf not in all From games. I wouldn’t put him in my top five, and I might not even put him in my top ten. He is not even my favorite NPC from that game.

Who is? Darkmoon Knightess. She’s the Firekeeper of Anor Lando, and she has a tragic life. Well, that’s pretty much everyone in any From game, really. None of the NPCs have particularly good lives, mind. It’s one of the things that From is known for. Everything is tragic and horrible, which is one reason why I love Patches so much (as I talked about in yesterday’s post. He is one of my favorites beacuse he’s in almost every game. I know the saying is that familiarity breeds contempt, but in this case, the opposite is true because everything is so bleak. As I mentioned in the last post, when Patches shows up, I smile in glee. I know what is going to happen. He’s going to tell me that there’s some wondrous treasure down a pit, and when I go for it, he’s going to kick/push me in the pit.

We have a deal, Patches and I, and I’m always happy to do my part of it, knowing he will do his. He is in my top five favorite NPCs in Dark Souls and, indeed, in Elden Ring. And DS III. Some other favorites from the games are Lucatiel (DS II), Eileen (Bloodborne), Yuria (DS III), Karla (DS III), Blaidd (Elden Ring), D (Elden Ring), and Sellen (Elden Ring). These are several off the top of my head, and I like them all better than I like Solaire.

Look. Here’s the thing with Solaire. I get why people like him. He’s a lonely ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak world. He’s on a noble quest that sounds so heroic. Which brings me to another point about Solaire. After the first game, people thought he was the first born of Gwn. There are a ton of reasons for thinking this–and a soupcon of wishful thinking.

When the third game came out, Miyazaki made it crystal clear that Solaire was not the first born son of Gwyn. People were mad, to say the least. Well, some of them. There were a few camps. The first were upset/miffed that it wasn’t Solaire. The second weren’t miffed, but they wanted it to be left open. The third were happy with who it turned out to be.


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More about FromSoft (and stuff), part six

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So, apparently there are rumors that FromSoft is working on a pirate game, code name Cerusean Onslaught. Before I go further with this into the realm of pure speculation, here is the post I wrote yesterday. Now, let’s go on with baseless spinning of what probably isn’t happening. Cerulean was a key word in Elden Ring for two reasons. One, it was in the name of the flask for casting magicks (Flask of Cerulean Tears) and two, it was the name of an area in the DLC.

*Spoilers from here until I’m done theorizing*

The area is called the Cerulean Coast, and as has been pointed out, the–ok. It’s like this. In each of the four cardinal points it the DLC, there is a a mauseoleum. In each of them, there is a powerful enemy you can fight for some pretty tasty rewards. In fact, the first one you can come across within the first five minutes of the DLC. He wrecked my shit for an hour and was the sole reason I respecced my health so he could not kill me in one hit. I went from 38 Vigor to 60 (the recommended amount of Vigor for the game in general), and that made such a big difference. No way I would have had fun doing the DLC with less than 40 Vigor.

Fun fact; I played the first hundred hours of the base game (which was roughly half the game)  with 18 Vigor. I do NOT recommend that at all! I didn’t plan on doing that, but I always found something else to put the points in. It was only when I wanted to use the best spirit ash in the game–and that took 21 Vigor (instead of Mind, which is what the Flask of Cerulean Tears is for). If it weren’t for that, who knows how long I would have went with only 18 Vigor?

Back to the mausoleums. The one in the Cerulean Coast has a boss who is a woman who is a dancer. But also looks like a pirate–sort of. If you squint. There is also a marooned (what looks like a) pirate ship near the ocean in this area.

FromSoft has a habit of putting an NPC in the DLC of a game who signifies what the next game is going to be like. They put Marvelous Chester in the first Dark Souls DLC as a nod to Bloodborne. Then, in Bloodborne’s DLC, they had Old Hunter Yamamura, a hunter from a foreign eastern land who was a nod to Sekiro.

I see that some people consider the Armored Warrior (a boss) in Sekiro, a heavily armored person who came from a distant land to find a cure for his sick child to be a harbinger of Elden Ring, but I’m not so sure I buy that one. I mean, yes, the Armored Warrior doesn’t fit the aesthetics of Sekiro, but that wasn’t the only thing that people noticed about the out-of-place NPCs who seemed to indicate what the next game was about. In the other game, it was in the DLC, and it wasn’t a boss.


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Still more on FromSoft (and other shit), part five

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I am always amused/bewildered/confused by the console gamers who are so vitriolic against PC gamers. I mean, I don’t get console wars at all because who the fuck cares? Play what you want to play on what you want to play it on. That’s pretty much my belief. It’s also wild to me that after years of people saying that exclusivity is bad, there are a bunch of hardcore Xboxers who are now demanding exclusivity once again.

I mean, I get it because PlayStation is still sticking to their exclusivity as is Nintendo. PS has said that they will not be porting their games to PC any longer. If certain platforms stick with their exclusives, then Xbox has to do the same if they’re serious about being a meaningful console. But, and bear with me, if it seems as if consoles are dying out as far as brand loyalty, then so be it.

Also, if Xbox is going to truly be exclusive, meaning not being on PC, then I think that’s the wrong way of thinking. I’m not in the industry, obviously, but at this point, going with exclusives that are truly only on the Xbox seems so regressive. Gamers have been advocating to get rid of exclusivities for quite some time, and now, a small minority of them are suddenly pushing hard for them once again?

Look.

I’m not someone who is brand loyal to anything that is a product. I’m also not a team player or anything like that. I don’t get having undying loyalty for something/someone who cannot by nature give you the same kind of loyalty in return.

This is true of teams, celebrities, and especially for products–which video games are. It’s a slippery area beacuse they can also be art, which is more difficult to put a price on. But, lik a piece of art that I might buy–it’s worth what I’m willing to pay for it. To me, I mean–not in general.

FromSoft is probably a ‘brand’ that I’m more loyal to than almost any other brand. I have said in the past that–oh, this is my post on them from yesterday. In which I rambled about this, that, and the other thing. I will buy any From game I can immediately. In fact,  they are the only games I’ll preorder. I am always willing to give my money to FromSoft.

Until now. I did not like either Elden Ring Nightreign or  Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon. Or rather, I could not play either of these games. Because of several issues I have, I simply could not do the things necessary to play these two games. Not “didn’t” or “wouldn’t”, but couldn’t. I can’t do anything that requires being able to gauge spatial distances accurately nor twitch responses. Nor any kind of deflection/parry.

Devout fans of FromSoft say, “Trust Miyazaki. He’s earned it.” (And to be fair, he did not direct either of the two games in the previous paragraph.) He is directing The Duskbloods. I’m uneasy with giving unconditional loyalty to anyone I don’t know personally, no matter how genius they are.


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More FromSoft musings (part four)

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I got a decent amount of sleep last night, and it just feels so good. I have no idea why I’m such like a toddler when it comes to going to bed, but I wish it weren’t so difificult for me to go to bed. I know it’s in part a neurospicy thing, but that doesn’t make me feel any less silly/guilty/ashamed that I can’t make myself go to bed earlier.

In fact, it’s been inching back again. I put a hard stop to that, and I managed to make it to bed by 3:30 a.m. last night. I think part of the problem is that I’m giving myself a generous window in a case where a hard stop would be better. In some cases, I’m fine with giving myself a generous deadline. In other cases like this, I’m going to push it because I can. I know myself. This will just be what I do.

I can be sitting at my computer and literally watching the clock tick, tick, tick. My brain will be saying, “I should be going to bed” while I continue to sit there, motionless, for the next hour or three. Usually, playing a casual comfy game that I can just do without thinking.

And, oh what the hell. It’s 59F right now, which is right on track with what it should be around this time of year. It’s really green outside, though, which means thunderstorms. We had one last night, which made me happy. I like a good thunderstorm.

Back to FromSoft games. I have a character in Dark Souls in which I just finished Big Hat Logan’s quest–which meant I got his big hat. And it’s a very big hat. I rarely do his quest because it’s very intricate and laborious. Plus, you have to buy all his spells which costs a pretty penny. I did it on a recent run just for funsies. It’s supposedly an intelligence run, but it’s not. Oh, and here’s my post from yesterday in which I talked about the worst boss in all of FromSoft’s games.

My issue is that I am wedded to a certain build–and a certain weapon. I adore the Zwei, which takes 24 Strength and 10 Dex. Because I’m a caster, I don’t need that many points in Strength. I do like to put 12 into Dex so I can use a bow. The Battle Axe, which is a decent enough weapon for a Pyromancer, takes 12 Strength and 8 Dex.

I am firmly a strengthcaster. That means even when I focus on casting, I want to be able to wield the Zwei. You can wield it two-handed at somethnig like 16 strength (it takes 60% of the Strength stat to wield a weapon two-handed, I think), but I don’t like to two-hand weapons (yes, I know that’s ironic giving the weapon I’m talking about).


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