In the last post, I talked about whether or not I was actually good at FromSoft games. In doing so, I neglected to say that I was terrible at the first Dark Souls when I started playing it. You have to understand that I was fairly new to video games. The first ‘hardcore’ game I played (as opposed to casual games) was Torchlight (Runic Games), which I absolutely loved. Then I played Diablo III (Blizzard), and Borderlands and the sequel (Gearbox), which did not prepare me in the least for Dark Souls.
Ian’s brother mentioned this new game called Dark Souls to him, saying it was incredible, but hard as nails. By the time I got around to playing it, the Prepare to Die edition was out, which included the DLC, Artorias of the Abyss. It was the first time I played a game with a controller, which made it doubly difficult. I went in without reading anything about it because I wanted to go in pure–and because I heard that’s the best way to play the game. That means I did not know anything about builds or the best way to do things or, well, anything.
I started as a Pyro because I love fire. The Pyro has a Hand Axe as a starting weapon, so I’m partial to axes. I love a good axe in a game. I just started a new game as I’m writing this post. I’m past the Taurus Demon in a flash, but I always play the same way. It’s funny, actually. I didn’t realize this until now, but you can only have 10 characters at the same time. I had to override one character to create a new one. I always choose Pyro as a starting character with the Master Key as my starting gift.
I get the Drake Sword and the Zwei from the start. I use the Drake Sword until I have the stats to use the Zwei, and then that’s my weapon for the rest of the game. I get the staff and the early sorcery to get me through the beginning while I build up my pyro repertoire. Then, I grind a bit so I can use the Zwei soon after defeating the Gargs with the Drake Sword. Plus, I want to get all my pyros and upgrade the flame hand as quickly as possible. Not fully, though, as that takes so many souls. 340,500 souls to be precise. Which I did on my first playthrough.
I must say, I started reading the forums at some point because I was having such a hard time with the game. I screamed at it; I cried as I played it; I cursed as I stomped my way through Lordran. I quit for a whole year at one point, but I kept going back to it. Because there was something about the game that was really special. And because I was fucking stubborn. I hated the game by the time I was done with it, but by god, I finished it. And vowed never to have anything to do with it again.
I laugh ruefully when I think about that moment. When I first finished it, I mean. And said I would never touch it again. The reason why I was playing it in the first place was because the second game was coming out, and I wanted to finish the first game before then. Wait. I think maybe it was that I wanted to play it a second time before the second game was released? That makes more sense. And, much to my surprise, the game went much better.
The remaster was released 2 years after Dark Souls III and a year before Sekiro. I wass online at the beginning, and when I reached Andre, he was dead. I had no idea how that happened, and when I looked it up, I discovered that it was a known problem on the PC. There was someone who had found a way to go into players worlds and kill Andre. That’s what happened, and I was furious. Not so much for me because I could get back there in about an hour, but for any newbie playing it for the first time.
As I said that to Ian, I realized how much I had grown as a Souls player. That had easily taken me twenty hours the first time around–maybe more–and much blood, sweat, and tears. This was before meeting the Gargs, by the way. They almost made me quit the first time around. I was down to my last humanity, and I made peace with the fact that if I didn’t do it that time with Solaire, I would quit the game forever.
Needless to say, I did it with Solaire. Sometimes, I wonder what it would have been like if I hadn’t done it. Everything would be very different–better? Maybe. Worse? Maybe. But it would certainly be different.
The first time I played the remaster, after the fiasco with Andre, I went back to start it over–and I went offline. I did not want to run into the same problem again, so I just did the whole game offline. That meant I could only summon NPCs for bosses instead of humans. I was fine with t hat, and I did almost all the bosses in one try. I had to marvel over that beacuse I had so much trouble in my first playthrough, even with NPC summons. I don’t think I had many human summons because I played it so late, but also, I didn’t want to be invaded.
It took me 150 hours to play the first time, including the DLC. There was a games journalist who said confidently in a Let’s Play that no one would take more than a hundred hours to play the game. That made me feel terrible, I’ll tell you that much. It took me 75 hours to play Dark Souls III without the DLC. Probably thirty to forty hours in the DLCs. So in total, less than the first game with twice the DLC and more in the main game, but still more time than most people probably took.
Done for now. More tomorrow. Probably.