This guy turned out to be the least of my problems.
So, I finished Dark Souls.
Now, let's begin with a bit of a preface. Somewhat recently, I finished watching an anime series called Clannad and its follow-up season, the far more notorious Clannad: After Story. I laughed, I cried, I had a grand old time with the thing from start to finish, and after having finished things up certain perceptions concerning the conversations surrounding the show began to change, as things might when you watch a series back-to-back-to-back looking for all the details you missed. For example, a certain large and vocal segment of the Clannad fandom started to make my head throb, because whenever someone asked about the series, the response from this part of the fandom was "Oh it's the saddest of sad shows that ever made a sad." Now, it was these kinds of responses that made me take so long to actually try out the series, and the fact of the matter is that if the show was all tragic drama all the time, it would be a far inferior series- however, the fandom takes this one aspect of a varied and interesting series and just sits on that one aspect as the single thing it has to offer to the viewer.
What does this have to do with Dark Souls? Same problem, different way.
Because one of the big things that people will push about Dark Souls- even the marketing for the PC version is not exempt from this- is that the game is hard. Super hard beyond belief, with a great big chorus of "Not for casuals L2p git gud scrub". And it's the only thing that people will push, which is a big shame, because Dark Souls would be a far inferior game if difficulty is all it had, because difficulty alone can never make a game good. There has to be something worthwhile to deal with the difficulty for, and the best hard games usually provide that something, which is basically how I ended up powering my way through Godhand, La-Mulana, and Einhander. What Dark Souls offered me was basically everything I wanted from Western RPGs, but that Western RPGs had never really seemed to offer- understatement.
I am a big fan of JRPGs and how JRPGs go about things, not despite their sometimes pants-on-head insanity, but more often than not because of it. I wanted characters to emote like these were still the days of silent film and wear their feelings like an overcoat and call down celestial objects as artillery when the need or desire arises. What Dark Souls provides is pretty much the exact opposite of that. This isn't to say that there aren't grandiose things to be seen, of course, but the writing basically moves completely out of the way to let the player decide what to think of, say, the fact that the builders of Sen's Fortress didn't see the need for a mechanical boulder trap when you could just enslave a giant to drop boulders into the keep whenever some schlub decided to try to make a climb to the top. A lot of what's expected from writing in games just doesn't exist in the notably sparse dialogue in Dark Souls- the number of NPCs that offer any sort of useful exposition could be counted on one hand that has been in a farming accident, the remainder who are somewhat helpful are generally of various levels of dubious, and those who are actually shady are very overtly so. It's one thing for a game to have your character say that "I must be crazy for going on this adventure", but it's another for the character to run into a bunch of folks on the same adventure who are crazy or at least heading there, and leave the player to figure things out.
And I love it.
Keep trying to stare down that gate, buddy.
So, I did try Dark Souls way back, but GFWL plus I was playing it on someone else's Steam account, so wrangling a game was troublesome. However, thanks to Steam's new refund function, and the existence of a game I thought was going to be grand but actually wasn't, I ended up snagging my own copy of the PC version. The fact that I have a controller now is also a big help, along with the fact that I had a helpful advisor I could call on, and I decided not to mess around with DSfix- As someone who still regularly plays PC-88 games, framerate doesn't really matter to me so long as the controls are up to snuff. So, warrior it was, and I decided to make him a redhead named Adol for reasons that ought to be obvious at this point. Of course, this meant that I would be sending him on the very worst adventure of his entire career. I convinced myself that this was okay, because he's just had it too good for too long and could stand to go to a place where not everyone was fawning over him.
The early game pretty much went the same as the early game does for most folks. The Undead Asylum wasn't too bad, especially since I was starting with a melee character who could actually mid-roll without too much equipment wrangling, and the game played perfectly with the controller, and hammering my way through the Upper Undead Burg was no problem, though I did panic and just firebombed the Taurus Demon to death instead of fighting him properly- but I guess in Dark Souls, if you win, then it was the proper way. I also met Havel, got smashed by him, and decided to come back some other time. I didn't come in with the delusion that because the game decided to fork over the Black Knight Sword this time meant that it was being merciful- besides, I didn't have the stats for it right away, but that would be fixable. I was a bit surprised that it counted as a Greatsword, but when the weapon in question was built for people who are eight feet tall, everything's relative. Solaire remains a pretty cool bro.
The Black Knight Sword did, however, make the boss of Undead Parish pretty hilarious, considering it only took six hits for both- in fact, the bigger problem there was that Channeler and his stupid dance moves- I switched back to my longsword because it was faster and could actually deal with his horde. I also learned to appreciate the way the game hands out shortcuts, and I learned to really like the Balder Knights, even though they're pretty low-level mooks in the grand scheme of things. Also there was Andre, which did make me wonder about all of the merchants that had set up shop hereabouts. Were they other adventurers who gave up? Just folks that were left behind when Lordran was first vacated? And even though Oswald provides a service I found unfortunately useful, how does someone creepy as him keep customers? I have to admit, though, there are a couple of merchants I can see the monsters having a really hard time evicting. This was also the first encounter with Seigmeyer, and I decided to actually pursue his story- he just seems so jolly.
I don't see this guy getting evicted any time soon.
My first real whoa moment was after I went downstairs from the Parish, dusted the Prowling Demon, and decided to see just what was underneath, and while there were many things I would imagine would be underground from there, a forest was not one of them. The Darkroot Garden really did switch things up, and I'm glad it exists, ambivalent as I am to the stone nights and other related shenanigans wandering around- it's not often in a game where "I grabbed the item, but I died" could be considered coming out ahead, but it's an important philosophy. I had also thought to clear out the Lower Undead Burg, but found that the Capra Demon was not a jolly time thanks to his pets, so Darkroot Garden it was, at least for the time being. This is also where I found out that user messages could actually wind up being helpful, as one of them pointed to the wall that was hiding a bonfire behind it.
To be fair, it didn't feel like a choice I had to settle for because I wasn't a bad enough dude to tackle the Capra Demon. There's a whole ton of neat stuff to see around there, and the game is very good at setting atmosphere. One of the ways in which the difficulty in Dark Souls is rewarded is by providing these extra areas, often with extremely good world design- pretty much as soon as you see something new, it becomes a goal. And speaking of new things, this is when I decided that bows were for losers and decided to take on the Moonlight Butterfly, conveniently forgetting that it was an EspGaluda boss. So that ended up taking a couple of tries before I was able to get my head in the game and finish things off.
Now, I was feeling a bit cocky at this point, and decided that while I was in the area, I'd pick up the Crest of Artorias and take on one of the big mandatory bosses: Great Grey Wolf Sif. And anyone familiar with the game knows how that sort of attitude is "rewarded" in Dark Souls.
So, as it turned out, Sif ended up being my first real wall in the game, and the walk from the bonfire to Sif's room is no real picnic either. However, while Sif is undeniably cool stuff, he is 1.) Compeltely undeserving of what you're there to do to him, as he's only guarding his master's grave (and it gets even worse if you've played the extra content), and 2.) Completely mandatory- and the game doesn't bother to point out this intersection, or moralize about how terrible/tragic it is. It's played out like any other boss fight in the game is, there isn't a "sad" cutscene at the end if you win, it's just up to the player to draw that kind of connection. However, this wasn't the time for me to win, which leads to Dark Souls' other big strength. There are only two progression bottlenecks in the whole game, and in general, there are are a bunch of other things you can do if you're banging your head against a Wolf-shaped wall.
There's also the embarrassment of losing a contest of swordsmanship to something without opposable thumbs, but Sif did learn from watching the best.
What this meant in practice was a trip back to the Undead Asylum, and I found it amusing that the giant crow was eager to be your ferry. It's also where I learned that torch hollows were jerks. Still, I liked that there were some rewards for those who take the time to figure out how to make it back there, and the Stray Demon did turn out to be less of a problem than Sif, since one of the best tools for dealing with him is right in the Asylum itself. That doesn't mean it was easy mind you, but I'm glad the option to go back to the tutorial area was there, and the fact that it was refilled with all kinds of stuff was equally grand. Exploration is as dangerous is it is rewarding, even if the temptation to throw a controller sometimes can be strong.
So I went back stronger than before and beat Sif, which does bring me back to something that I probably should have talked about earlier. I was building a melee character for this game, and one of the problems I have with games where you're allowed to build your character freely is that things that look like they make sense can often be trap choices that cripple your character. In this case, what I fed into the game ended up giving me the results that I actually wanted and even expected to get, so it didn't end up feeling like I was throwing good points after bad in a vain attempt to try to suss out what the system wanted. It kinda helped that as this is a pure action game, there is no stat that's tied to accuracy.
With all that sorted out, I followed advice to go to New Londo and pick up the Cursebite ring, as well as some pointers on how to deal with what's down there. While ghosts are spooky, here's something that best illustrates what I really like about Dark Souls.
New Londo Waterpark, open 24/7.
Everything you can see in the distance is a place you can go. How much you feel up to wanting to go there will always be the question, of course, especially considering the unique mechanics of ghosts, but hey, you can look around any of what you see once you can get there alive. Anyway, the ring wasn't the only thing I picked up there, but it's mainly what I came for.
Which brings us to the Depths, after making sure to skewer the Capra Demon with plunge cheese. I have to give Dark Souls credit for introducing the fact that you can destroy barrels by rolling, and then make it actually essential to rescuing Laurentius. None of saves the game from the fact that The Depths is basically a sewer level with all the unfortunate environmental shortcomings that implies. Domnhall is great, especially since they gave him armor that doesn't look like it should be historical, but actually is. However, it doesn't really change the fact The Depths is by far the most bland area in the game. There's only one sewer level I approve of in RPGs, and that's only because it has Subterranean Canal is its area music. While the level didn't feel all that inspiring the boss is something else. The Gaping Dragon, though not difficult is precisely the kind of wonderfully freakish thing I want to see roaming around, especially since it has turned things that shouldn't be teeth into teeth. It's the only thing about that area that's inspired.
(Continued)