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Description

(part 2)

Bosses:

Micro: As usual for Soulsborne games, it wouldn’t be what it is without its bosses and not surprisingly, Dark Souls pack with ton of bosses that, let’s be honest, if you’re Soulsborne fan, you already know to heart of what people said about every single one of these guys in one form or another. From the best, to the worst, to the forgettable, to most memorable, and whatever you want to classified Pinwheel. While I did said in the last review Demon’s Souls has a lot of memorable bosses, I would be idiot in not to say Dark Souls manages to pass Demon’s Souls bosses by a lot, for or worse depending who we are talking about.

Shekra: We have many unique bosses, plenty bosses that are clearly another version of Demon’s Souls such as the two Bell Gargoyles being a vastly superior Maneater boss fight in that they actually are fun to fight against, have a better arena, and their AI isn’t hot garbage. There are so many bosses in this game to pick from of personal favorites that isn’t the most obvious ones, lord knows you guys can guess which two of our favorite bosses in this game can be and its not that hard to guess, though will say I do enjoy Pinwheel, mostly of how much of a joke he can be no matter when you fight him, at least he has a decent design. In fact, I think a vast number of bosses in this game have great design whenever you fight them. I made fun of the Gaping Dragon earlier, but I would love to be in the same room as the artist that thought of this living nightmare of a boss, it has to easily be one of the most unique dragons in the whole series by a landslide.

Micro: Meanwhile, you have plenty of bosses that while might not look that unique, unfortunately you have reskin bosses that is honestly boring when said reskin are just a different and harder version of the Asylum Demon, the bosses that might not look unique are still enjoyable to fight, either from the sudden intimidation factor some bosses have due to their size and the arena you fight them in such as the Taurus Demon, to bosses that still feel otherworldly from their design the placement in the game as well as the music with a example being the Moonlight Butterfly. As boring as this fight can be, I can’t help but be mesmerized by its design as try to avoid its ma- and its dead already.

Shekra: Yeah, one thing to mentioned about bosses in this game is that depending on your build, you will either have a tough challenge ahead of you or will turn some bosses into an absolute joke, there is almost like no in between unless you did what Micro did for this review and did a very balance mix build.

Micro: That’s mostly to try out certain weapons and spells if I could even try them in the first place, as in this game you can actually use boss souls to make weapons, and unfortunately, even on a third playthrough, because I had no choice but to give the best pupper in the series the ATF treatment three times to get the platinum- I’M SO SORRY SIF! – I couldn’t use all the weapons at all, as remember, you need the right states to use certain weapons and spells, and well, that didn’t go to plan. For the sake of context, I was going to for a high dex and mid strength build as I remember that dexterity is pretty much strong in this game if you are only doing a melee build. And because I want to try something different for once, I decided that my main weapon would be a two-handed halberd as it scale with dex very well especially when you upgraded it max, only for me later to regret the idea with how annoying this thing is to use as my character seem to only think about poking enemies in the dick. Shekra here on the other hand decided to try the idea of using pyromancing but having the power Jesus on her side.

Shekra: I had a lot of fun smiting everything in my way.

Micro: Knew I should’ve gone with the ultra-great sword strength build. Anyways, depending on your build, as Shekra said, you’ll either have a challenging fight or a easy time, that said, that’s not to say that bosses won’t stick out to you in one way or another as there’s plenty of reason to like a lot of these bosses, whether from the gut punch of seeing Sif limping if you get her health next to almost dead, thanks devs, I wanted to have my heart hurt more this year with a dog than it already did, to bosses that are interesting mechanic wise once you understand how some of them works, such as the Iron Golem where this towering boss is a intimidating hard hitting machine, however, when you realize that you could end the fight very quickly by making him fall off the ledge, than you can’t help but wonder how many bosses you can try that idea with. There are plenty of ways to beat the bosses in this game and it’s up to you on how you want to beat the bosses, even if it feels unintended when reality its most likely it was put there on purpose. One of my favorite things I can’t by love about this game is with this one boss call the Ceaseless Discharge that I can’t help but feel sorry for the poor bastard, but it turns out that you can lead this guy to cling to a cliff and just smack his hand a few to time to kill him, and this was pointed out by Miyazaki himself in a showing as he demonstrated that this mechanic was put into the game on purpose. It’s rather amazing just what you can do in this game to get through the challenges. That said, not all bosses are great, there are indeed some awful bosses, and when the bosses suck, they suck hard. Looking at you Kappa demon.

Shekra: Its Capra d- …. On second thought, yeah, I won’t argue with the nickname, this boss fight is awful. Dark Souls does some BS moments, and Capra Demon is one of those moments with how annoyingly unfair this fight can be. The Capra Demon itself isn’t bad, in fact, he’s pretty simple with his attacks that can hurt, what makes this fight awful however is the arena. The arena is a small alley way with barely any room to move around on staircase to help separate you from him, and worst of all is that he has two dogs with him, dogs being consider one of the worst enemies in the whole series to deal with given how annoying they are to kill and the amount of damage to inflict. This guy was one of the two biggest wall in this game, and it doesn’t feel like for the right reasons. And yet, sadly, he’s not the worst boss in this game, we’ll get to HER in moment in the end section. That said, while I would like us to wait for the end section to talk about these two, there is no way we can move on with bosses without at least talking about one of the most iconic boss fight in this series, so iconic that Fromsoft has tried to replicate these two in future games with almost not the same results, and that boss fight is with the legendary dragonlance user and one of Gwyn’s top followers, Ornstein, and on the other side the terrifying well built cannibal whose name no one can make up their mind on how to pronounce his name, Smough. These two make up one of the most iconic as you fight both of them at the same time, with Ornstein being a speedy person who will close the distance and use range attack while Smough is slow and tries to do close range swing with his massive hammer, yet he is very punishing if he manages to hit you or does that butt slam of his, and fight can be brutal as it becomes the true wall of the game, not only because of the dynamic attacks these two do that compliments each other very well, but also because of the fact this is the only fight that has a second phase in the whole game where the second phases changes depending who you kill first, with whoever you kill first will get absorb by the other and their health is restore to full and they get a massive power up. I like how different these two are where if Smough dies first, Ornstein shows some respect to him first before absorbing the big guy, whereas if the opposite happens, Smough is such a sadistic jerk he slams his hammer on top of Ornstein without a single care. I love this fight, a lot, it’s a very tense slugfest as you have to figure a way to break the two away using pillar as well as decide on who you should kill first to make the second phase easier to just focus on one despite the power boost. And if you’re going platinum, you need to kill both, once per playthrough as you only get one soul of the two depending on who you kill last.

Micro: While you consider the two your favorite fight in the who game, there’s one fight that is my personal favorite in the game, and that’s with one legendary knight, so legendary that Fromsoft has tried to replicate in future games and there is only one knight I can think of that surpasses this guy, and the boss fight that is my favorite is Knight Artorias the Abysswalker. Let me paint you a picture, before the DLC showed up, Artorias has been talked about only in description of items and told by certain characters of a man that walked into the abyss, a powerful force that threaten the land, and he manage to stop it. This man, who was once one of Gwyn’s mightiest warriors, manages to stop a whole calamity before he died, that is until you go into the DLC and figure out that you manage to go back in time to the same era that Artoiras would be at. Don’t bother asking how in the world time travel works in this game, this is the same series that tells people that thinks time traveling is that complicated to go f$%k themselves and just deal with the time traveling shenanigans. After you beat the first boss of the DLC and traverse the very painful area that turns out to be a younger version of Darkroot area, you find Artorias, and he has been corrupted by the Abyss as he watches what is left of him dies and he becomes like a ferocious dog that we need to put down. Before I continue, I have to make note of cut content of some dialogue of the only line Artorias would’ve said before they were cut out, shout out to a guy name Ghostcharm on youtube that talks about Artorias in greater detail but more importantly for me right now shows the cut dialogue. Why the hell was this line cut out is beyond me as it would’ve worked so well for the fight before Artorias begins to beat me ass because Christ this fight is hard. Seems Artorias went back in time as well cause Christ I feel like I’m fighting a Dark Souls 3 boss with Dark Souls 1 combat. Artorias is extremely aggressive, his attacks hurt like a freight train, he can be very fast and jumps like a grasshopper shot with adrenaline, you are literally fighting a knight that is a berserk like rage, and don’t tell me that you can’t see the obvious reference to Guts from Berserk with Artorias, the cover art of the DLC is an obvious shoutout to the series, and I dig it a lot after reading most of the series so far. While Artotrias is monster to fight, and I died to him far more than I did with the final DLC that being Manus, Artorias’s attack is still in a way easy to understand and memorize, its just a matter of avoiding his attacks, knowing when to not get greedy, and try to not panic, as any slip up will be heavily punishing as Artorias can snap his attack at the drop of a hat, such as having an attack where he slams his sword while jumping up in the air and it can be easy to mistake this attack of him either doing it one time or three times and prey you don’t mistake the three times one else you might as well die right there. As a little frustrate I got at times with this fight as I kept panicking, I still love this fight a lot. And before I forget, one more note of Artorias that you might not realize until you got deep enough to read about this guy, you see that left arm dangling when he is fighting him, that’s his sword arm he can’t use. So to pretty much spell it out of what you’re going to get into with this fight, you are fighting a cripple knight that has just been corrupted by the abyss, and he is still a son of bitch to beat. I can only imagine him in full strength, he would be beating me ass for weeks, nonstop.

Shekra: And with this game letting you play the way you want to, your experience is going to be different for every boss that who knows which boss you’ll enjoy, hate, will get a brick to the face, or steam roll over. And I do mean any way you want to play this game with whatever tools you can get, I’m not joking when I say that something I love about this series is the challenge runs fans of the series have done.

Micro: If you want to see some of the most bat s$%t insane mother$%ckers in games, you’re going to have a difficult time finding anyone more insane than some people in the Soulsborne community as I’m not joking when I say that some of these people come of with the most crazy challenge runs you could find. You think nuzlocks in pokémon is insane, try looking up some challenge runs by people on youtube like theBacklog or Press Continue. There is an insane challenge idea of people doing a run where you tried to play this whole game without leveling up once or using bonfires at all, and believe me when I say those two challenge are rather the more tame challenges I seen people try to do on youtube, and that’s saying. And no, we will never do a f$%king challenge run, Shekra, I know you.

Shekra: ….. I wasn’t thinking of one……

Micro: If you look at specific challenge runs, you’ll be amaze of some exploits people have manage to find in this game, some glitches that help cut time by taking you to areas you weren’t meant to visit yet, so many that you’d be forgiven in wondering if the game is buggy when not really actually. Though, that said, there was this one time where I accidentally activated a glitch with this giant worm one area where I tried to do a heavy attack while it tried to grab me, only for it to push me under and me falling straight to the boss floor we below than I die because both fall and lava. With that said, I think we said our point of what we think of the bosses. That said, its about time to wrap up this game given how long its taken us to get here. As such, time for the ending…. Oohh boy..

Ending:

Shekra: After all the pain and suffering you had to go through so far, you’re journey will eventually Anor Londo, a rather beautiful kingdom yet eerie as there doesn’t seem to be nobody besides the guards, the sun is out, and this place is home of the cheapest jerks that won’t hesitate to snipe your butt off a balcony, silver knight jerks. Which is a shame that this whole place is completely fake. Yeah, no kidding, the sun being out to show the kingdom light, its an illusion no thanks to one particular boss name Gwyndolin that you’ll have to find. If you kill Gweyndolin or strike at a particular NPC you need to talk to after you fight the real boss of the area, you’ll see that this place can be rather depressing empty that at this point, given what you have seen, from all the areas you explore that have been destroyed, ravage, or corrupted, the people you meet that are either dying, psychopaths, manipulators, or suicidal, you have to wonder if doing this journey is even worth it anymore. Clearly this age has done nothing but cause problems for people because the first flame has been kept alive far longer than it needed to be, yet at the same time, people depend on the fire, afraid of what will happen should the age of dark commence. This is something that you will have to think about especially at the end of the game as the more you think about what’s going on with the world, the more you have to wonder what is the best option, something that honestly, and thankfully for this game, the game will never tell you as there really isn’t a best option, cause you long before you fight the final boss, you more or less already know that you pretty much make up you mind of what to do, though to do that, you still need to take care of business and unfortunately for you, that means fighting the real boss. And no, that’s not Gwyndolin, he’s a optional boss and I don’t want to go into major detail. And yes, I said he, despite his appearance, Gwyndolin is a guy, and let’s just say that poor kid has some serious daddy issues along with the rest of his siblings. And before you dare to think of and say something extremely stupid comments, kid didn’t put that dress on by choice, his dad made him dress like a girl, I think we did made it clear Gwyn is a absolute piece of work that taken advantage of everyone, that includes his own kids.

Micro: Too bad sus boi isn’t the real boss cause this twink that needs a kick to the balls is an absolute pushover to beat in comparison to the pain train WWE duo that is Ornstein and Smough. Shekra already mentioned the ass beating you’re going to be in for with these two pricks, and while there are far harder bosses in this series, these two were the brick wall everyone had to go through and remember their first time playing. Even with Solaire, this was a nervous fight my first time playing, and yes, I do use summon with this fight cause I’m not idiot that’s going to a two on one fight when there is a summoning sign to make things even.

Shekra: Not that it stop me in making you fight these two on New game plus plus by yourself. Hehe.

Micro: Hate you too. That said, once you beat the tag team dick beaters, you get your reward, the Lordvessel, the item needed to unlock the final half of the game, let’s you teleport way late in the game but thank God you at least have the f$%king thing, and you get this from Lady Hooters…… No I will not hold back with the tit jokes of Lady quadruple D as much as Shekra is glaring at me with murderous intention.

Shekra: …. Hate you so much…..

Micro: Love you too. Anyways, Gwynevere, daughter of Gwyn, sister of Gwyndolin, third person that has the name Gwyn so far cause I guess George R.R. Martin was involved back then as well with his awful naming skill, and princess of making Rouge the bat’s look flat in comparison. Fun fact, when lady bazooka was being created, Miyazaki thought of her height in the design, but her size was created by somebody that had a lot of fun coming up with the design that Miyazaki didn’t had the heart to say no to.

Shekra: And I really wish he did. Well, good thing for me that you can kill her to show the illusion we mentioned earlier.

Micro: Don’t worry, I snag the painting of Princess Milkshak-

Shekra: I will burn you with that painting.

Micro: Fiineee, I’ll throw it away for you. *Whisper* Hey, Susie, I know you’re listening, if you need a Halloween costume to annoy Shekra, there’s the idea.

Shekra: With the Lordvessel in hand, its time for the final half of the game where you must kill four lords that holds a piece of Gwyn’s soul in order to go to the first flame and defeat Gwyn himself. These four lords being Seath as he’s in the Duke’s Archive, Nito sleeping in the Tomb of the Giants, the Four Kings locked in the Abyss that is in the middle of New Londo, and the Witch of Izalith who has become the Bed of Chaos in what remains of Izalith …. Alright, we’ve prolonged it enough, time to talk about this section of the game and, what might be a lot of people’s universal opinion of it. So, something to say that we didn’t mention entirely is the development of this game, while I haven’t exactly can find that much information no thanks to google, there was one thing that has been said by even Miyazaki himself in an interview that I did manage to find from a Giant Bomb review I think it was, this game has a rush development at the end. While its not clear exactly where and when the rushed development occur in, there are obvious signs of which part of the game became the biggest victims to suffer from it. To start from the ones that were develop well and honestly are two of our favorite areas, in terms of the four areas you need to go to, New Londo and Duke’s Archive has been design rather well, with New Londo being actually the first area you can actually go through and even fight the Four Kings rather early on as long you also beat Sif first since you need a item to fight the Four Kings. New Londo is a creepy, flodded ghost town with tough ghost that you need to consumable items to be curse in order to kill the ghost or be cursed yourself, with half of the level trying to not also fall off in to the water since no can swim in this game at all, and once you drain the area, you fight some tough undead monsters that being Wraiths that are hard to fight early on and can hurt a lot as well. Then you fight the Four Kings, a fight that’s actually interesting as you are in a bitch black abyss with the only thing to see is you and the boss, who are four enemies that will spawn one by one a minute each until all four are out, to which you have to focus on killing each king before another one spawns in. It’s a DPS race but one that I can’t help but like. Then there’s the Duke’s Archive, a massive library that must be a nightmare for a Librarian to manage, but still a cool place nonetheless, with a dungeon that unless you know how to do a skip, will be force to go through once you actually die in a fight with Seath, and you see just how big this area whole area is, more so once you continue the area and find the golem garden and a giant crystal chasm. The thing that really hurts this level is how empty it can be because of how massive, and the crystal chasm, while pretty yes, is just awful as it has invisible pathways that you have to carefully walk on, though at least once you understand that most of it is straight, it won’t take you long to fight Seath.

Micro: Not that makes the Duke’s Archive a breeze to run through, place may not have that much enemies in comparison to other place, but it has these channeler pricks that buff the weak enemies in this area, and Christ do they hurt, especially archers where I got hit by arrows four times, one in the back, one in the face, one in the ass and one directly in the balls, at least buy me dinner first, game. And also about the crystal chasm area, be make sure to kill the clams that are in the way of the boss arena else these annoying f$%kers will join you in the fight to munch on you. Another thing I don’t like about this place is that its home of the blue titanite slab that is a b$%ch to get no matter how careful you are in trying to get the stupid rock.

Shekra: Right, well, as for Seath himself, he is a rather simple boss and that’s more or less no thanks to his massive size as because of how big he can be, the fight can mostly range to how much of a beating you can unleash on him. Though, he’s still not a joke given that he can sweep large amount of the arena and he can breeze a laser attack that not only hurts but does cursed affect as well which can serious mess you up, as well as give you a rather gruesome death as well. But once you understand how to fight him, Seath shouldn’t give you trouble, unless you are trying to cut his rear tail to get the iconic Moonlight Greatsword, then he’ll be a massive jerk to beat.

Micro: Which leaves the rest of the game and Christ does both of these areas are awful to go through. If it wasn’t for the bonus areas in Dark Souls 2’s DLCs, I would’ve say Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith are my least favorite areas in the entire series. Tomb of the Giant is dark, that its, it’s a big, yet short area to travel around where the only thing besides the giant skeletons ready to give you a Freddy Fazbear jump scare that you will know about this game is that its so goddamn dark to see, and fill with areas to slip and fall to your death. The second you leave Pinwheel’s arena, the light setting drops to negative ten where the only thing you’ll be seeing is yourself, and whatever is six feet in front of you. The only things that can help you see in this game is either the light spell you get from Princess Dusk from the DLC, the maggot helmet you can get from this shortcut from the demon ruins to Lost Izalith, or lanterns from the necromancers in the catacombs, which is complete luck if you even get one, and even if you do, you have to be holding it with one of your hands to use it. You will get a guaranteed lantern in the Tomb of the Giants, when you are already two third of the way done it with and have to drop into a massive pit. And just to throw a cherry on top to the run up to Nito, just before you fight Ainz Ooal Gown himself, you get to deal with running around copy and paste of multiple Pinwheels. And don’t worry, you think the copy and paste is terrible with Pinwheel, it gets worse, but for now, Nito. Bone daddy here is honestly not that hard, he’s very simple in terms of attack with the only dick move he has is this one attack where he stabs the ground and you get hit which has extremely strict timing to avoid, besides that, the major threat is the skeletons that joins him, but Nito seems to not care much about them as he like to unleash a deadly shadow bomb that really doesn’t do much but at least hurts the skeletons for a little while, just make sure to not go to the other side of the arena else you’ll have to deal with the giant skeletons. Which leaves the worst area of the game and is hands down the biggest obvious sign of rush development that is the biggest victim to it, Lost Izalith. While I prefer running around this area cause I can at least see where I’m going, this place f$%king blows. Where to begin exactly? For starters, you have to deal with Ceaseless Discharge first so you can drain lava to get to the demon ruins, to which you are greeted by the control V army of Kappa Demons and Taurus Demons, like what the hell is this bulls$%t, there’s like nine Taurus bunch together and about fifteen Kappas in the way to go. Then you got reskin version three of the Asylum Demon that can go to the salad bar for all I care before you quickly are greeted by the next real boss that being the centipede demon, and I have no idea what hell I’m looking at despite the name. I would like to say I don’t mind the fight except 90% of his arena is lava that you can’t walk through unless you have a particular spell or a certain ring, the very ring you only get from this guy if you cut his right arm off and kill said arm, great design, devs. But then you get to the biggest offender of this whole game, and is what cements my reason why I can’t say this game is my top favorite of the Soulsborne series, Lost Izalith, a area that had so much potential of being a demon invested hellscape ruin meant to be the birth place of all demons, only to become a massive disappointment that suffer the worst of the rushed development. You have a lake of lave that you need the lava ring I mentioned just to walk around this place safely that goes on for a couple of minutes, all while you are fighting even more copy and paste enemies that are like thirty copy of ass end dragon legs that are either a b$%ch to deal with or a total joke given that they will kill themselves more than they will to you, one bonfire in the middle of the eyesore of a brightness setting, and once you get to the very area itself that you can safely walk around in, there are only two major enemies you’ll have to deal with every time you walk through here, one of them being the only thing that’s new since the other one you can fight in demon ruins, that being these weird snowman shape dragon statues that are pathetic to deal with, and a monster that I have no idea what in the hell I’m looking at nor can I even describe at all. I feel I’m looking at Picaso’s version of a living blender. And then you get to the boss you need to fight, the boss that is not only the worst boss of the whole game, but it universally agreed as the worst boss in the whole series to this day that if you look up worst boss of Soulsborne, you will always see this thing as number one in countless ranks, the Bed of Chaos. To bash on this thing would be beating the ghostly residue ooze remains of a ghost horse, but to be fair, THIS THING F%$KING DESERVES IT! I could describe how you have run around the wacky flammable tube man where it does nothing but sweep its weed arms like re$%rded child, I could describe where you have to strike two points on both sides of the arena where doing so makes this fight worse, I could talk about how this abomination is sporadic in using fire spells while trying to smite you, I could try to describe the annoyance of the whole arena breaking apart when you destroy weak point that no thanks to the boss can be easy for you to fall into when its trying to dust the ground, and I could try to talk about the horrible idea where you have to jump in a curve platform in the middle of the arena in a game that isn’t meant for platforming just so you can dig inside this boss just to hit one small big one time to kill this stupid thing, however, I won’t but instead will let Shekra say handle all that as she has something personal to say about this particular boss. Shekra.

Shekra: F$%k this boss.

Micro: Well said.

Shekra: If you think we are being too harsh on this boss, let me stop you right there to mentioned that in interviews, Miyazaki and the Dark Souls development team acknowledge the sad state of this boss fight and Lost Izalith to the point there is some words that Miyazaki himself said the Bed of Chaos is his greatest regret. And just to rub it in with acidic salt, this is the only boss fight in the whole game that has checkpoints, cause even the devs knew how terrible this fight is and wanted the players to get this fight over with as soon as possible. Thank God and Christ the DLC didn’t suffer the same fate so it could be as good as it is.

Micro: Amen, as well as thank god for the checkpoints. And as a reminded because Shekra wanted to platinum this game, we had to do the whole game, minus the DLC thankfully, two and half times, so I think we have a lot of right to be piss with the Bed of Chaos and me not wanting to touch this game again with the final half. Still, at least there is one last area to visit, and it at least help the final half of the game. Once you have beaten all four lords and return to the area you dropped the Lordvessel, you enter the final area of the game, Kiln of the First Flame. It’s a gigantic ashen world that looks like the end of the world, with only one massive tower in the end to go to, and several black knights that will get in your way but are thankfully aren’t that hard to deal with since you gotten here and should be well verse in dealing with these guys. Nearing the entrance of the final boss fight, it should be note that if you save Solaire, there will be a summoning sign to have him here at the end of the game, and something I think I read correctly is that Miyazaki himself point out that because of how the world is structure, Solaire’s summoning sign being here means that he himself, even after the guy has his belief and goal shaken up to the point you may worry of him going hallowed, this beam light in this bleak world manage to make it to this very area himself and is ready to face Gwyn himself in his world. With that said, its time to fight the final boss himself, Gwyn, Lord of Cinder.

Shekra: This fight can go into two directions, it can be either the toughest fight in the whole game for you, or it can be one of the biggest joke in the game, and it all depends on one thing, are you good at parrying. Yeah, not kidding, if you know how to master parrying at this point, you will beat Gwyn in no time. That said, Gwyn is still a punishing boss, and a very punishing one in that. Gwyn’s attacks hurt and he’s aggressive probably the most aggressive boss in the game before the DLC came out, he can be fast, and while he fights like a regular swordsman, he can grab you and punish you so painfully hard with a lot of damage that you’ll be scrambling to dodge roll away to chug your estus flask to recover health, at least you get a to hear a very solemn music piece as you see the sorry state Gwyn truly is in. Its clear from the way Gwyn looks that he is no longer there, this fight is nothing more than fighting a husk of a god that sacrifice everything just because he’s afraid of the dark, afraid to lose his kingdom because of the cycle of the flame, and all that is left is a hallow husk of a dog that needs to be put down.

Micro: Well, with the equipment I have on that I wish I using Smough’s hammer to pound this old fossil to dust for having one of the worst boss holding a piece of his soul, it didn’t take me long to beat this guy, and hopefully it shouldn’t take you long either. That said, once Gwyn is put out of your misery, that just leaves one last thing to do, the first flame. Do you light the flame so it can rekindle once again and this era can potentially live once again, or do you walk away and let the fire finally die and let the world finally enter an age of dark, where you are now the Lord of Dark thanks to the serpa- goddamn it there’s more of these freaky bastards.

Shekra: Yeah, I think I’ll just dose myself in gasoline and light the flame instead, thank you very much.

Micro: Make room, joining you as well.

Conclusion:

Micro: Christ, I think we went on talking longer about this game than we originally thought.

Shekra: I think that goes to show just how much we like this series.

Micro: Or how insane and broken we had gotten from it. Still, glad to finally get this review down with this game, and its been fun to replay this game again for Derpy Review, until we went with the idea of Platinuming the game, seriously, we’re doing it with every game in this marathon, Shekra.

Shekra: No promises and you know it.

Micro: Ugh, the things I do to make you happy sometimes. With that said, about the rank.

Shekra: Not surprisingly, we give it a gold rank, as if we would be giving the game a silver rank, even though it has its rough moments in the game and the final half is going to leave an acquire taste to say the least, it has a lot of polishing compare to Demon’s Souls, the world is vastly unique, interesting and connected, while it will beat you a lot as it won’t hold your hands, its still a fun game to play and while difficulty isn’t the main importance of this series, you may enjoy the challenge this game will provide from exploring the world and fighting bosses.

Micro: Only a third of this marathon down and we haven’t gotten to the rest of the games that I feel like we will have more to say. God we’re so left behind.

Shekra: Well, it kind of helps if we don’t get distracted along the way, as well as you learning to type these reviews faster. That said, I think out of all the games we’re most curious about to do a review, the next game I defiantly one you and I are extremely curious to finally talk about.

Micro: Given the poll I made and seeing the results, truer words can’t be spoken. In the next review, we’ll be talking about Dark Souls 2, the game that many people I’ve seen only prior years would call the black sheep of the series, though in recent years, I have been seeing people coming out of the wood works to talk more about this game, and I can’t help but wonder why, while at the same time have my opinions of the game, but that will have to wait when we’re ready to talk about the game. Thanks again for putting up our rambling of this game, hope ya’ll enjoy whatever we wrote so far, and hope that maybe we convince some of ya’ll that hasn’t tried the game to either look at the game or at least look up videos of people playing the game, you might see something that will convince you to give the series a shot.

Shekra: Till then, we hope you all have a good day.

Micro & Shekra: Bye.

Description

(part 2)

Bosses:

Micro: As usual for Soulsborne games, it wouldn’t be what it is without its bosses and not surprisingly, Dark Souls pack with ton of bosses that, let’s be honest, if you’re Soulsborne fan, you already know to heart of what people said about every single one of these guys in one form or another. From the best, to the worst, to the forgettable, to most memorable, and whatever you want to classified Pinwheel. While I did said in the last review Demon’s Souls has a lot of memorable bosses, I would be idiot in not to say Dark Souls manages to pass Demon’s Souls bosses by a lot, for or worse depending who we are talking about.

Shekra: We have many unique bosses, plenty bosses that are clearly another version of Demon’s Souls such as the two Bell Gargoyles being a vastly superior Maneater boss fight in that they actually are fun to fight against, have a better arena, and their AI isn’t hot garbage. There are so many bosses in this game to pick from of personal favorites that isn’t the most obvious ones, lord knows you guys can guess which two of our favorite bosses in this game can be and its not that hard to guess, though will say I do enjoy Pinwheel, mostly of how much of a joke he can be no matter when you fight him, at least he has a decent design. In fact, I think a vast number of bosses in this game have great design whenever you fight them. I made fun of the Gaping Dragon earlier, but I would love to be in the same room as the artist that thought of this living nightmare of a boss, it has to easily be one of the most unique dragons in the whole series by a landslide.

Micro: Meanwhile, you have plenty of bosses that while might not look that unique, unfortunately you have reskin bosses that is honestly boring when said reskin are just a different and harder version of the Asylum Demon, the bosses that might not look unique are still enjoyable to fight, either from the sudden intimidation factor some bosses have due to their size and the arena you fight them in such as the Taurus Demon, to bosses that still feel otherworldly from their design the placement in the game as well as the music with a example being the Moonlight Butterfly. As boring as this fight can be, I can’t help but be mesmerized by its design as try to avoid its ma- and its dead already.

Shekra: Yeah, one thing to mentioned about bosses in this game is that depending on your build, you will either have a tough challenge ahead of you or will turn some bosses into an absolute joke, there is almost like no in between unless you did what Micro did for this review and did a very balance mix build.

Micro: That’s mostly to try out certain weapons and spells if I could even try them in the first place, as in this game you can actually use boss souls to make weapons, and unfortunately, even on a third playthrough, because I had no choice but to give the best pupper in the series the ATF treatment three times to get the platinum- I’M SO SORRY SIF! – I couldn’t use all the weapons at all, as remember, you need the right states to use certain weapons and spells, and well, that didn’t go to plan. For the sake of context, I was going to for a high dex and mid strength build as I remember that dexterity is pretty much strong in this game if you are only doing a melee build. And because I want to try something different for once, I decided that my main weapon would be a two-handed halberd as it scale with dex very well especially when you upgraded it max, only for me later to regret the idea with how annoying this thing is to use as my character seem to only think about poking enemies in the dick. Shekra here on the other hand decided to try the idea of using pyromancing but having the power Jesus on her side.

Shekra: I had a lot of fun smiting everything in my way.

Micro: Knew I should’ve gone with the ultra-great sword strength build. Anyways, depending on your build, as Shekra said, you’ll either have a challenging fight or a easy time, that said, that’s not to say that bosses won’t stick out to you in one way or another as there’s plenty of reason to like a lot of these bosses, whether from the gut punch of seeing Sif limping if you get her health next to almost dead, thanks devs, I wanted to have my heart hurt more this year with a dog than it already did, to bosses that are interesting mechanic wise once you understand how some of them works, such as the Iron Golem where this towering boss is a intimidating hard hitting machine, however, when you realize that you could end the fight very quickly by making him fall off the ledge, than you can’t help but wonder how many bosses you can try that idea with. There are plenty of ways to beat the bosses in this game and it’s up to you on how you want to beat the bosses, even if it feels unintended when reality its most likely it was put there on purpose. One of my favorite things I can’t by love about this game is with this one boss call the Ceaseless Discharge that I can’t help but feel sorry for the poor bastard, but it turns out that you can lead this guy to cling to a cliff and just smack his hand a few to time to kill him, and this was pointed out by Miyazaki himself in a showing as he demonstrated that this mechanic was put into the game on purpose. It’s rather amazing just what you can do in this game to get through the challenges. That said, not all bosses are great, there are indeed some awful bosses, and when the bosses suck, they suck hard. Looking at you Kappa demon.

Shekra: Its Capra d- …. On second thought, yeah, I won’t argue with the nickname, this boss fight is awful. Dark Souls does some BS moments, and Capra Demon is one of those moments with how annoyingly unfair this fight can be. The Capra Demon itself isn’t bad, in fact, he’s pretty simple with his attacks that can hurt, what makes this fight awful however is the arena. The arena is a small alley way with barely any room to move around on staircase to help separate you from him, and worst of all is that he has two dogs with him, dogs being consider one of the worst enemies in the whole series to deal with given how annoying they are to kill and the amount of damage to inflict. This guy was one of the two biggest wall in this game, and it doesn’t feel like for the right reasons. And yet, sadly, he’s not the worst boss in this game, we’ll get to HER in moment in the end section. That said, while I would like us to wait for the end section to talk about these two, there is no way we can move on with bosses without at least talking about one of the most iconic boss fight in this series, so iconic that Fromsoft has tried to replicate these two in future games with almost not the same results, and that boss fight is with the legendary dragonlance user and one of Gwyn’s top followers, Ornstein, and on the other side the terrifying well built cannibal whose name no one can make up their mind on how to pronounce his name, Smough. These two make up one of the most iconic as you fight both of them at the same time, with Ornstein being a speedy person who will close the distance and use range attack while Smough is slow and tries to do close range swing with his massive hammer, yet he is very punishing if he manages to hit you or does that butt slam of his, and fight can be brutal as it becomes the true wall of the game, not only because of the dynamic attacks these two do that compliments each other very well, but also because of the fact this is the only fight that has a second phase in the whole game where the second phases changes depending who you kill first, with whoever you kill first will get absorb by the other and their health is restore to full and they get a massive power up. I like how different these two are where if Smough dies first, Ornstein shows some respect to him first before absorbing the big guy, whereas if the opposite happens, Smough is such a sadistic jerk he slams his hammer on top of Ornstein without a single care. I love this fight, a lot, it’s a very tense slugfest as you have to figure a way to break the two away using pillar as well as decide on who you should kill first to make the second phase easier to just focus on one despite the power boost. And if you’re going platinum, you need to kill both, once per playthrough as you only get one soul of the two depending on who you kill last.

Micro: While you consider the two your favorite fight in the who game, there’s one fight that is my personal favorite in the game, and that’s with one legendary knight, so legendary that Fromsoft has tried to replicate in future games and there is only one knight I can think of that surpasses this guy, and the boss fight that is my favorite is Knight Artorias the Abysswalker. Let me paint you a picture, before the DLC showed up, Artorias has been talked about only in description of items and told by certain characters of a man that walked into the abyss, a powerful force that threaten the land, and he manage to stop it. This man, who was once one of Gwyn’s mightiest warriors, manages to stop a whole calamity before he died, that is until you go into the DLC and figure out that you manage to go back in time to the same era that Artoiras would be at. Don’t bother asking how in the world time travel works in this game, this is the same series that tells people that thinks time traveling is that complicated to go f$%k themselves and just deal with the time traveling shenanigans. After you beat the first boss of the DLC and traverse the very painful area that turns out to be a younger version of Darkroot area, you find Artorias, and he has been corrupted by the Abyss as he watches what is left of him dies and he becomes like a ferocious dog that we need to put down. Before I continue, I have to make note of cut content of some dialogue of the only line Artorias would’ve said before they were cut out, shout out to a guy name Ghostcharm on youtube that talks about Artorias in greater detail but more importantly for me right now shows the cut dialogue. Why the hell was this line cut out is beyond me as it would’ve worked so well for the fight before Artorias begins to beat me ass because Christ this fight is hard. Seems Artorias went back in time as well cause Christ I feel like I’m fighting a Dark Souls 3 boss with Dark Souls 1 combat. Artorias is extremely aggressive, his attacks hurt like a freight train, he can be very fast and jumps like a grasshopper shot with adrenaline, you are literally fighting a knight that is a berserk like rage, and don’t tell me that you can’t see the obvious reference to Guts from Berserk with Artorias, the cover art of the DLC is an obvious shoutout to the series, and I dig it a lot after reading most of the series so far. While Artotrias is monster to fight, and I died to him far more than I did with the final DLC that being Manus, Artorias’s attack is still in a way easy to understand and memorize, its just a matter of avoiding his attacks, knowing when to not get greedy, and try to not panic, as any slip up will be heavily punishing as Artorias can snap his attack at the drop of a hat, such as having an attack where he slams his sword while jumping up in the air and it can be easy to mistake this attack of him either doing it one time or three times and prey you don’t mistake the three times one else you might as well die right there. As a little frustrate I got at times with this fight as I kept panicking, I still love this fight a lot. And before I forget, one more note of Artorias that you might not realize until you got deep enough to read about this guy, you see that left arm dangling when he is fighting him, that’s his sword arm he can’t use. So to pretty much spell it out of what you’re going to get into with this fight, you are fighting a cripple knight that has just been corrupted by the abyss, and he is still a son of bitch to beat. I can only imagine him in full strength, he would be beating me ass for weeks, nonstop.

Shekra: And with this game letting you play the way you want to, your experience is going to be different for every boss that who knows which boss you’ll enjoy, hate, will get a brick to the face, or steam roll over. And I do mean any way you want to play this game with whatever tools you can get, I’m not joking when I say that something I love about this series is the challenge runs fans of the series have done.

Micro: If you want to see some of the most bat s$%t insane mother$%ckers in games, you’re going to have a difficult time finding anyone more insane than some people in the Soulsborne community as I’m not joking when I say that some of these people come of with the most crazy challenge runs you could find. You think nuzlocks in pokémon is insane, try looking up some challenge runs by people on youtube like theBacklog or Press Continue. There is an insane challenge idea of people doing a run where you tried to play this whole game without leveling up once or using bonfires at all, and believe me when I say those two challenge are rather the more tame challenges I seen people try to do on youtube, and that’s saying. And no, we will never do a f$%king challenge run, Shekra, I know you.

Shekra: ….. I wasn’t thinking of one……

Micro: If you look at specific challenge runs, you’ll be amaze of some exploits people have manage to find in this game, some glitches that help cut time by taking you to areas you weren’t meant to visit yet, so many that you’d be forgiven in wondering if the game is buggy when not really actually. Though, that said, there was this one time where I accidentally activated a glitch with this giant worm one area where I tried to do a heavy attack while it tried to grab me, only for it to push me under and me falling straight to the boss floor we below than I die because both fall and lava. With that said, I think we said our point of what we think of the bosses. That said, its about time to wrap up this game given how long its taken us to get here. As such, time for the ending…. Oohh boy..

Ending:

Shekra: After all the pain and suffering you had to go through so far, you’re journey will eventually Anor Londo, a rather beautiful kingdom yet eerie as there doesn’t seem to be nobody besides the guards, the sun is out, and this place is home of the cheapest jerks that won’t hesitate to snipe your butt off a balcony, silver knight jerks. Which is a shame that this whole place is completely fake. Yeah, no kidding, the sun being out to show the kingdom light, its an illusion no thanks to one particular boss name Gwyndolin that you’ll have to find. If you kill Gweyndolin or strike at a particular NPC you need to talk to after you fight the real boss of the area, you’ll see that this place can be rather depressing empty that at this point, given what you have seen, from all the areas you explore that have been destroyed, ravage, or corrupted, the people you meet that are either dying, psychopaths, manipulators, or suicidal, you have to wonder if doing this journey is even worth it anymore. Clearly this age has done nothing but cause problems for people because the first flame has been kept alive far longer than it needed to be, yet at the same time, people depend on the fire, afraid of what will happen should the age of dark commence. This is something that you will have to think about especially at the end of the game as the more you think about what’s going on with the world, the more you have to wonder what is the best option, something that honestly, and thankfully for this game, the game will never tell you as there really isn’t a best option, cause you long before you fight the final boss, you more or less already know that you pretty much make up you mind of what to do, though to do that, you still need to take care of business and unfortunately for you, that means fighting the real boss. And no, that’s not Gwyndolin, he’s a optional boss and I don’t want to go into major detail. And yes, I said he, despite his appearance, Gwyndolin is a guy, and let’s just say that poor kid has some serious daddy issues along with the rest of his siblings. And before you dare to think of and say something extremely stupid comments, kid didn’t put that dress on by choice, his dad made him dress like a girl, I think we did made it clear Gwyn is a absolute piece of work that taken advantage of everyone, that includes his own kids.

Micro: Too bad sus boi isn’t the real boss cause this twink that needs a kick to the balls is an absolute pushover to beat in comparison to the pain train WWE duo that is Ornstein and Smough. Shekra already mentioned the ass beating you’re going to be in for with these two pricks, and while there are far harder bosses in this series, these two were the brick wall everyone had to go through and remember their first time playing. Even with Solaire, this was a nervous fight my first time playing, and yes, I do use summon with this fight cause I’m not idiot that’s going to a two on one fight when there is a summoning sign to make things even.

Shekra: Not that it stop me in making you fight these two on New game plus plus by yourself. Hehe.

Micro: Hate you too. That said, once you beat the tag team dick beaters, you get your reward, the Lordvessel, the item needed to unlock the final half of the game, let’s you teleport way late in the game but thank God you at least have the f$%king thing, and you get this from Lady Hooters…… No I will not hold back with the tit jokes of Lady quadruple D as much as Shekra is glaring at me with murderous intention.

Shekra: …. Hate you so much…..

Micro: Love you too. Anyways, Gwynevere, daughter of Gwyn, sister of Gwyndolin, third person that has the name Gwyn so far cause I guess George R.R. Martin was involved back then as well with his awful naming skill, and princess of making Rouge the bat’s look flat in comparison. Fun fact, when lady bazooka was being created, Miyazaki thought of her height in the design, but her size was created by somebody that had a lot of fun coming up with the design that Miyazaki didn’t had the heart to say no to.

Shekra: And I really wish he did. Well, good thing for me that you can kill her to show the illusion we mentioned earlier.

Micro: Don’t worry, I snag the painting of Princess Milkshak-

Shekra: I will burn you with that painting.

Micro: Fiineee, I’ll throw it away for you. *Whisper* Hey, Susie, I know you’re listening, if you need a Halloween costume to annoy Shekra, there’s the idea.

Shekra: With the Lordvessel in hand, its time for the final half of the game where you must kill four lords that holds a piece of Gwyn’s soul in order to go to the first flame and defeat Gwyn himself. These four lords being Seath as he’s in the Duke’s Archive, Nito sleeping in the Tomb of the Giants, the Four Kings locked in the Abyss that is in the middle of New Londo, and the Witch of Izalith who has become the Bed of Chaos in what remains of Izalith …. Alright, we’ve prolonged it enough, time to talk about this section of the game and, what might be a lot of people’s universal opinion of it. So, something to say that we didn’t mention entirely is the development of this game, while I haven’t exactly can find that much information no thanks to google, there was one thing that has been said by even Miyazaki himself in an interview that I did manage to find from a Giant Bomb review I think it was, this game has a rush development at the end. While its not clear exactly where and when the rushed development occur in, there are obvious signs of which part of the game became the biggest victims to suffer from it. To start from the ones that were develop well and honestly are two of our favorite areas, in terms of the four areas you need to go to, New Londo and Duke’s Archive has been design rather well, with New Londo being actually the first area you can actually go through and even fight the Four Kings rather early on as long you also beat Sif first since you need a item to fight the Four Kings. New Londo is a creepy, flodded ghost town with tough ghost that you need to consumable items to be curse in order to kill the ghost or be cursed yourself, with half of the level trying to not also fall off in to the water since no can swim in this game at all, and once you drain the area, you fight some tough undead monsters that being Wraiths that are hard to fight early on and can hurt a lot as well. Then you fight the Four Kings, a fight that’s actually interesting as you are in a bitch black abyss with the only thing to see is you and the boss, who are four enemies that will spawn one by one a minute each until all four are out, to which you have to focus on killing each king before another one spawns in. It’s a DPS race but one that I can’t help but like. Then there’s the Duke’s Archive, a massive library that must be a nightmare for a Librarian to manage, but still a cool place nonetheless, with a dungeon that unless you know how to do a skip, will be force to go through once you actually die in a fight with Seath, and you see just how big this area whole area is, more so once you continue the area and find the golem garden and a giant crystal chasm. The thing that really hurts this level is how empty it can be because of how massive, and the crystal chasm, while pretty yes, is just awful as it has invisible pathways that you have to carefully walk on, though at least once you understand that most of it is straight, it won’t take you long to fight Seath.

Micro: Not that makes the Duke’s Archive a breeze to run through, place may not have that much enemies in comparison to other place, but it has these channeler pricks that buff the weak enemies in this area, and Christ do they hurt, especially archers where I got hit by arrows four times, one in the back, one in the face, one in the ass and one directly in the balls, at least buy me dinner first, game. And also about the crystal chasm area, be make sure to kill the clams that are in the way of the boss arena else these annoying f$%kers will join you in the fight to munch on you. Another thing I don’t like about this place is that its home of the blue titanite slab that is a b$%ch to get no matter how careful you are in trying to get the stupid rock.

Shekra: Right, well, as for Seath himself, he is a rather simple boss and that’s more or less no thanks to his massive size as because of how big he can be, the fight can mostly range to how much of a beating you can unleash on him. Though, he’s still not a joke given that he can sweep large amount of the arena and he can breeze a laser attack that not only hurts but does cursed affect as well which can serious mess you up, as well as give you a rather gruesome death as well. But once you understand how to fight him, Seath shouldn’t give you trouble, unless you are trying to cut his rear tail to get the iconic Moonlight Greatsword, then he’ll be a massive jerk to beat.

Micro: Which leaves the rest of the game and Christ does both of these areas are awful to go through. If it wasn’t for the bonus areas in Dark Souls 2’s DLCs, I would’ve say Tomb of the Giants and Lost Izalith are my least favorite areas in the entire series. Tomb of the Giant is dark, that its, it’s a big, yet short area to travel around where the only thing besides the giant skeletons ready to give you a Freddy Fazbear jump scare that you will know about this game is that its so goddamn dark to see, and fill with areas to slip and fall to your death. The second you leave Pinwheel’s arena, the light setting drops to negative ten where the only thing you’ll be seeing is yourself, and whatever is six feet in front of you. The only things that can help you see in this game is either the light spell you get from Princess Dusk from the DLC, the maggot helmet you can get from this shortcut from the demon ruins to Lost Izalith, or lanterns from the necromancers in the catacombs, which is complete luck if you even get one, and even if you do, you have to be holding it with one of your hands to use it. You will get a guaranteed lantern in the Tomb of the Giants, when you are already two third of the way done it with and have to drop into a massive pit. And just to throw a cherry on top to the run up to Nito, just before you fight Ainz Ooal Gown himself, you get to deal with running around copy and paste of multiple Pinwheels. And don’t worry, you think the copy and paste is terrible with Pinwheel, it gets worse, but for now, Nito. Bone daddy here is honestly not that hard, he’s very simple in terms of attack with the only dick move he has is this one attack where he stabs the ground and you get hit which has extremely strict timing to avoid, besides that, the major threat is the skeletons that joins him, but Nito seems to not care much about them as he like to unleash a deadly shadow bomb that really doesn’t do much but at least hurts the skeletons for a little while, just make sure to not go to the other side of the arena else you’ll have to deal with the giant skeletons. Which leaves the worst area of the game and is hands down the biggest obvious sign of rush development that is the biggest victim to it, Lost Izalith. While I prefer running around this area cause I can at least see where I’m going, this place f$%king blows. Where to begin exactly? For starters, you have to deal with Ceaseless Discharge first so you can drain lava to get to the demon ruins, to which you are greeted by the control V army of Kappa Demons and Taurus Demons, like what the hell is this bulls$%t, there’s like nine Taurus bunch together and about fifteen Kappas in the way to go. Then you got reskin version three of the Asylum Demon that can go to the salad bar for all I care before you quickly are greeted by the next real boss that being the centipede demon, and I have no idea what hell I’m looking at despite the name. I would like to say I don’t mind the fight except 90% of his arena is lava that you can’t walk through unless you have a particular spell or a certain ring, the very ring you only get from this guy if you cut his right arm off and kill said arm, great design, devs. But then you get to the biggest offender of this whole game, and is what cements my reason why I can’t say this game is my top favorite of the Soulsborne series, Lost Izalith, a area that had so much potential of being a demon invested hellscape ruin meant to be the birth place of all demons, only to become a massive disappointment that suffer the worst of the rushed development. You have a lake of lave that you need the lava ring I mentioned just to walk around this place safely that goes on for a couple of minutes, all while you are fighting even more copy and paste enemies that are like thirty copy of ass end dragon legs that are either a b$%ch to deal with or a total joke given that they will kill themselves more than they will to you, one bonfire in the middle of the eyesore of a brightness setting, and once you get to the very area itself that you can safely walk around in, there are only two major enemies you’ll have to deal with every time you walk through here, one of them being the only thing that’s new since the other one you can fight in demon ruins, that being these weird snowman shape dragon statues that are pathetic to deal with, and a monster that I have no idea what in the hell I’m looking at nor can I even describe at all. I feel I’m looking at Picaso’s version of a living blender. And then you get to the boss you need to fight, the boss that is not only the worst boss of the whole game, but it universally agreed as the worst boss in the whole series to this day that if you look up worst boss of Soulsborne, you will always see this thing as number one in countless ranks, the Bed of Chaos. To bash on this thing would be beating the ghostly residue ooze remains of a ghost horse, but to be fair, THIS THING F%$KING DESERVES IT! I could describe how you have run around the wacky flammable tube man where it does nothing but sweep its weed arms like re$%rded child, I could describe where you have to strike two points on both sides of the arena where doing so makes this fight worse, I could talk about how this abomination is sporadic in using fire spells while trying to smite you, I could try to describe the annoyance of the whole arena breaking apart when you destroy weak point that no thanks to the boss can be easy for you to fall into when its trying to dust the ground, and I could try to talk about the horrible idea where you have to jump in a curve platform in the middle of the arena in a game that isn’t meant for platforming just so you can dig inside this boss just to hit one small big one time to kill this stupid thing, however, I won’t but instead will let Shekra say handle all that as she has something personal to say about this particular boss. Shekra.

Shekra: F$%k this boss.

Micro: Well said.

Shekra: If you think we are being too harsh on this boss, let me stop you right there to mentioned that in interviews, Miyazaki and the Dark Souls development team acknowledge the sad state of this boss fight and Lost Izalith to the point there is some words that Miyazaki himself said the Bed of Chaos is his greatest regret. And just to rub it in with acidic salt, this is the only boss fight in the whole game that has checkpoints, cause even the devs knew how terrible this fight is and wanted the players to get this fight over with as soon as possible. Thank God and Christ the DLC didn’t suffer the same fate so it could be as good as it is.

Micro: Amen, as well as thank god for the checkpoints. And as a reminded because Shekra wanted to platinum this game, we had to do the whole game, minus the DLC thankfully, two and half times, so I think we have a lot of right to be piss with the Bed of Chaos and me not wanting to touch this game again with the final half. Still, at least there is one last area to visit, and it at least help the final half of the game. Once you have beaten all four lords and return to the area you dropped the Lordvessel, you enter the final area of the game, Kiln of the First Flame. It’s a gigantic ashen world that looks like the end of the world, with only one massive tower in the end to go to, and several black knights that will get in your way but are thankfully aren’t that hard to deal with since you gotten here and should be well verse in dealing with these guys. Nearing the entrance of the final boss fight, it should be note that if you save Solaire, there will be a summoning sign to have him here at the end of the game, and something I think I read correctly is that Miyazaki himself point out that because of how the world is structure, Solaire’s summoning sign being here means that he himself, even after the guy has his belief and goal shaken up to the point you may worry of him going hallowed, this beam light in this bleak world manage to make it to this very area himself and is ready to face Gwyn himself in his world. With that said, its time to fight the final boss himself, Gwyn, Lord of Cinder.

Shekra: This fight can go into two directions, it can be either the toughest fight in the whole game for you, or it can be one of the biggest joke in the game, and it all depends on one thing, are you good at parrying. Yeah, not kidding, if you know how to master parrying at this point, you will beat Gwyn in no time. That said, Gwyn is still a punishing boss, and a very punishing one in that. Gwyn’s attacks hurt and he’s aggressive probably the most aggressive boss in the game before the DLC came out, he can be fast, and while he fights like a regular swordsman, he can grab you and punish you so painfully hard with a lot of damage that you’ll be scrambling to dodge roll away to chug your estus flask to recover health, at least you get a to hear a very solemn music piece as you see the sorry state Gwyn truly is in. Its clear from the way Gwyn looks that he is no longer there, this fight is nothing more than fighting a husk of a god that sacrifice everything just because he’s afraid of the dark, afraid to lose his kingdom because of the cycle of the flame, and all that is left is a hallow husk of a dog that needs to be put down.

Micro: Well, with the equipment I have on that I wish I using Smough’s hammer to pound this old fossil to dust for having one of the worst boss holding a piece of his soul, it didn’t take me long to beat this guy, and hopefully it shouldn’t take you long either. That said, once Gwyn is put out of your misery, that just leaves one last thing to do, the first flame. Do you light the flame so it can rekindle once again and this era can potentially live once again, or do you walk away and let the fire finally die and let the world finally enter an age of dark, where you are now the Lord of Dark thanks to the serpa- goddamn it there’s more of these freaky bastards.

Shekra: Yeah, I think I’ll just dose myself in gasoline and light the flame instead, thank you very much.

Micro: Make room, joining you as well.

Conclusion:

Micro: Christ, I think we went on talking longer about this game than we originally thought.

Shekra: I think that goes to show just how much we like this series.

Micro: Or how insane and broken we had gotten from it. Still, glad to finally get this review down with this game, and its been fun to replay this game again for Derpy Review, until we went with the idea of Platinuming the game, seriously, we’re doing it with every game in this marathon, Shekra.

Shekra: No promises and you know it.

Micro: Ugh, the things I do to make you happy sometimes. With that said, about the rank.

Shekra: Not surprisingly, we give it a gold rank, as if we would be giving the game a silver rank, even though it has its rough moments in the game and the final half is going to leave an acquire taste to say the least, it has a lot of polishing compare to Demon’s Souls, the world is vastly unique, interesting and connected, while it will beat you a lot as it won’t hold your hands, its still a fun game to play and while difficulty isn’t the main importance of this series, you may enjoy the challenge this game will provide from exploring the world and fighting bosses.

Micro: Only a third of this marathon down and we haven’t gotten to the rest of the games that I feel like we will have more to say. God we’re so left behind.

Shekra: Well, it kind of helps if we don’t get distracted along the way, as well as you learning to type these reviews faster. That said, I think out of all the games we’re most curious about to do a review, the next game I defiantly one you and I are extremely curious to finally talk about.

Micro: Given the poll I made and seeing the results, truer words can’t be spoken. In the next review, we’ll be talking about Dark Souls 2, the game that many people I’ve seen only prior years would call the black sheep of the series, though in recent years, I have been seeing people coming out of the wood works to talk more about this game, and I can’t help but wonder why, while at the same time have my opinions of the game, but that will have to wait when we’re ready to talk about the game. Thanks again for putting up our rambling of this game, hope ya’ll enjoy whatever we wrote so far, and hope that maybe we convince some of ya’ll that hasn’t tried the game to either look at the game or at least look up videos of people playing the game, you might see something that will convince you to give the series a shot.

Shekra: Till then, we hope you all have a good day.

Micro & Shekra: Bye.