DAY 3
This will be my last update to this diary. Not because I intend to stop playing Dark Souls, but because as I progress in the game and get more comfortable with the controls, the opportunity for entertaining idiocy decreases. No one wants to read "I fought a demon and killed the demon. He had some titanite." Well, some people might, but I don't want to associate with those people, and neither should you.
So, back to my fire, and my friend the blacksmith, and the church...recently cleared of Chubby Armor Guy and Dr. Manyzombies. The zombies, I discovered, were still there, but fairly easily dispatch, with the exception of one (always with the exception of one) who gets in a lucky hit. It's the lucky hits that convinced me to go Cleric, really, so I can heal up between fights without needing to use my little pots. Of course, now I never use my pots, instead carefully hoarding them for a rainy day that never comes. "I better not use that pot here," I think. "I might need it later!" I then promptly die.
Beyond the zombies I find a ladder. What foul creatures await? I climb up. It's an empty landing, with another ladder. Very well then. I climb up again, another landing. Someone has scrawled something here. "Need Humanity" it says. Don't we all. There's some white fog. I step through.
I'm on the roof. It's a nice view up here, and refreshingly monster free. This does not reassure me. Rather, I am convinced something terrible is about to happen. I grip my spear and inch forward.
Something terrible happens.
One of the gargoyles leaps down to attack me. Warily, I circle him. He hits me with his big sword. I block it. He hits me with his big tail. I block it. I poke gently at his ribs. He blocks it. It's the most boring fight ever. I try to speed things up by rolling behind him, and he chops me up like sushi. Excitement level rising.
I come back, fighting through the zombies, who get in their lucky hit. Need humanity, the sign says. I hear you, sign. Gargoyle comes down. This time I don't fuss with rolling, instead trying to loop around him and jab him during recoveries. It's going well! This guy is a cinch. Lol @ Dark Souls.
A second gargoyle flies down and breathes fire all over me. The end. Well, shit.
Zombies. Lucky hit. Attempt #3. I whittle down Gargoyle A, and when Gargoyle B lands I go into full Matrix mode. I leap and roll through the air like the hero in a Hong Kong action serial. The Gargoyles are stunned, and watch breathlessly as I roll right off the roof to my death.
Zombies. Hit. Gargoyles. Death. This goes on for some time. I'm inevitably blitzed the moment the second Gargoyle arrives. Shamed, I check a guide. Divide and conquer, it says. Thanks, guide. These Gargoyles show no interest in being divided. These Gargoyles are platonic life partners. I check the guide again. Summon help, it says. One of the many giggling fools I encountered in my travels will apparently come to my aid, but first I have to be human. I read a guide on how to become human. Seems easy enough.
I become human. Some of you are likely expecting a story here about how an invader instantly appeared and shivved me, but you'll need to imagine that story, because it didn't happen. Rather boringly, I ran up to the tower, taking a single lucky hit from the zombies, and summoned my friend. He appeared, wordless and grim. No laughing matter, this Gargoyle business. Into the mist!
The Gargoyles attack. My companion dispatches them with hilarious efficacy. Seriously, the fight takes about 10 seconds. Why isn't this guy the hero? He isn't even hurt.
There's a tower. I climb it in sweaty handed tension (I hate heights) and ring the bell at the top. A winner is me! When I get down, a man in a dress is waiting for me. He wants to sell me some stuff, but I don't have enough souls for the crazy stuff he sells. I tell him thanks but no thanks and head back to the Blacksmith.
At this point, I'm feeling pretty chuffed, so I decide to go back and tangle with Havel. It's a long journey. I get poisoned by rats. I almost fall off the bridge. But I make it to the fire in the Undead Burg. I light it up, and retrace my steps to Havel. I've leveled up many times since last I tried my hand against this guy. He's in for a surprise.
Avast, Havel! Thy doom has arrived!
Havel kills me with one shot. Well then. Well then.
I need to get my souls back. I had a lot of souls, and now they're down in a pit with Havel. I have a plan, though. A cunning plan. When Havel comes up the stairs, I jump down into the pit, and grab my souls. He comes down. I run around flailing and screaming, and then belt up the stairs. He chases me. Once I get to the top of the tower, I figure I might as well try and fight...this is as safe a place as any to die. Havel is retreating. No doubt terrified of my newfound resolve. I move towards him, and he comes at me. I run away screaming. He retreats. We carry on like this for about a minute, like contestants in a country line-dancing contest, before I finally realize I've found the limits of his leash. I formulate a second cunning plan.
For the next half an hour, Havel and I dance. He comes forward and thumps the ground, and I poke him for woeful damage, and he retreats. Sometimes he thumps the wrong spot, and I yell at him to get his shit together, and he complies. Once or twice he almost gets me, but I manage to roll out of the way. When you only have to go backwards, minimal skill is required, only ample cowardice. Once or twice he comes out onto the stairs and I figure he's had enough...the jig is up...but inevitably he retreats inside his tower. Thank god for limited AI. It takes forever, but finally he crumples to the ground, exhausted. No one can dance forever. He leaves me a ring. I guess we're going steady now. The ring increases my load. I have no idea what that means, but I assume it's good. I put it on. Nothing happens. Always a rewarding experience, Dark Souls.
With this triumph over an old foe safely logged, I decide the next thing to do is tangle with those skeletons in the graveyard, that molested me so unfairly many days ago, when I was young and foolhardy. Those skeletons know not what doom awaits them. To the graveyard!
The first two skeletons collapse under my spear! Retribution is mine!
The second two skeletons skewer me like a hog! Retribution is theirs!
I spawn back in the middle of the Undead Burg, because I forgot to reset my bind point like a prat. I sigh heavily, and descend the mountain to recover my souls.
I wrestle with the skeletons for a while longer, killing some, but never easily. They're too fast, and my spear just doesn't hit them hard enough. Eventually, a giant skeleton spawns. I scamper back, terrified. He's thumping the ground and kicking me and really doing a number on me, and I'm quaffing flasks and harrying his flanks. It's a grim, fatal duel, and there can be only one survivor. The giant skeleton thumps the ground in challenge, and neatly leaps backwards off the cliff. I stare down after him in astonishment. A little puff of souls rises up to meet me.
There's a path. It leads down to some kind of Catacombs. There's a skeleton there, watching the door. I decide to leave that for later. I have a key for the "basement" in the undead burg. I decide to check that out. What could be in the basement? Probably treasure.
(spoiler alert: it's not treasure)
It takes me a while to even find the door this key is meant to open, but eventually I come across it, right by the dragon bridge. The dragon eyes me, but doesn't react. I wave.
So this is the basement. A tiny room, with a huge ladder. I peer down the ladder hole. It's deep! I promptly fall in and die.
Back to the basement. I recover my souls and head in. I kill some disgusting dogs. I kill some zombies with torches. This is easy! Some fancy assassin zombies attack me as well, but they're no match for my spear. Alright, they're a semi-match for my spear, but I have heals.
Some white fog. The treasure must be in here.
The treasure is a goat man. He kills me. Baaaaaaaaaaa!
I return. He kills me again. Baaaaaaaa! This time I live long enough to notice he has dogs. And when I say "long enough" I mean something on the order of 3 seconds.
I return. He kills me again, my frantic rolling notwithstanding. This guy is seriously on top of me a half-second after I enter the room.
I return, and this time my roll only costs me half my life. I run up some stairs. He follows and promptly falls off. I kill his dogs (sorry, PETA). Enraged, he comes up the stairs again. I scamper backwards onto some kind of stone/cog thing on the wall. He falls off again. I heal.
We carry on like this for some time. He runs up, prods at me, I block it, he falls off. I try to throw some firebombs at him, but I only have a few, and I miss with several. It's a stalemate. I try a plunging attack and miss (I always, always miss) and hit the ground instead. He swings at me. I block it. I poke him in the ankle and run. He nails me as I climb the stairs. I get on my cog and heal. He runs up and falls off. I imagine the three stooges music playing merrily in the background.
Thanks to 5 heals and 10 flasks, of which I use 8, my friend the goat man eventually succumbs to our war of attrition. Never bring dogs to a heal fight. I feel like this is another victory over glitchy AI, but I don't really care. That's what he gets for ganking me the second I walked in the room, like a coward. Havel at least had the courtesy to chase me around a bit first. I need some foreplay from my demons. The treasure I get for this agonizing experience is a key, to some place called the depths. That sounds less than promising. I return to the surface, through a shortcut I find. It takes me into a watery tunnel that turns out to be the same watery tunnel right near the original camp! Huzzah! There's a spooky looking skeleton in there, on the other side of some bars. I stab it. It reams me out. Seems it was a friendly skeleton. Whoops.
I head back to my blacksmith friend and pimp up my weapon some more. There's a path leading out of his room. There's a huge demon in it. The demon shoots lightning at me. Alright, clearly not friendly. There's a fire right here...I'm not going to find a shorter run than this. I fight the demon. He kills me. I fight him again. He kills me. I've got a fire right here demon, I can do this all day.
Eventually I wear him out, hiding behind rocks to use my flasks every time I take a stray hit, which is often. He drops some titanite. I think his name was titanite demon. What else would he drop?
There's a forest behind him. It's pretty!
A tree attacks me. Less pretty. I stab it, and it falls over impotently. Ha!
A second tree attacks and meets the same fate as the first.
A third tree appears. These guys are sissies. I stab it, and a tree appears behind me and eats my head.
I spent the next hour and a half or so exploring the forest. I find a secret campfire, and kill (and die to) some more trees. There are some...frog...manta...things...that are almost singularly ineffective, hopping up sadly to die on the point of my spear. There are some snake things that cling to trees and surprise me and poison me with bites on the ass and make me scream in shock. There are big stone bastards who are slow and easy to dance around but hit like a ton of bricks and take forever to kill. And there's some good loot...I do a suicide run to grab one pile and it gives me a set of fancy plate armor, which isn't really that heavy. I have around 10K souls, so I spend them to buy some titanite and jazz the set up a bit. I look a proper hero now, and you can't even tell I'm a mummy. Can't tell I'm a girl, either, except perhaps from the way I throw firepots*. (*hilarious sexism!)
And that's it. That's where I quit for the evening. I killed Havel, and I killed a big lightning demon, and I killed a goat with dogs, and I watched another guy kill two gargoyles. A successful evening of Dark Souls, all around, I think.
SUMMARY AFTER THREE DAYS:
I both love and hate this game. I am totally sympathetic to anyone who quits because it's too boring, too repetitive, because of the save points, because of the bullshit difficulty. The game most assuredly does have a certain degree of forced failure unless you're fucking Kreskin, there's no way you can anticipate some of the stuff it throws at you, and there's absolutely no margin for error at all. You learn from dying. That's fine, I get that. Forcing you to re-experience trash is a bit painful, especially since some sections of trash are loooooong. It's pretty good about giving you shortcuts, but it could really use some more of them. That's when I hate Dark Souls...when I've died a few times attempting a boss or a really tough creature, and I have to kill the same...fucking...10...skeletons...over...and over. And I understand that it's motivation not to die, I do. It does add tension to the game, so I'm hesitant to say "take it out", but my GOD it makes the game an unholy chore to play sometimes.
When it works, though, it works. Dark Souls is impossibly atmospheric. It feels dark, and lonely, and sad, and haunted. It feels like a dream. And the terrible, punitive difficulty adds to that feeling...you?re lost and alone in the night, and there is no help. No witty companions, no easy combat. You?re not a hero. You?re just a lost soul, struggling to regain your humanity. It?s almost *moving*. This is atmosphere other games would *kill* for. It?s almost a work of art, really. It?s an impressive accomplishment. When you prevail over a difficult opponent...it feels SO good. Fist pumping, shouting good. And then that feeling goes away, because there?s just more nightmare waiting for you. You take your little souls, and maybe the little scrap of humanity you won, and you trudge onwards towards the next horror. So I understand why it's a cult classic. It's a special game. It's like an alternate universe RPG, completely different from its contemporaries.
So that's my 3 day review of Dark Souls. Dark Souls is a glitchy, tedious piece of shit with wonky controls. Dark Souls is a haunting, engrossing, old school RPG that is actually (IMO) a good example of art in gaming. Half of me despises it and thinks it's an example of how NOT to make a game. Half of me thinks it needs to be exactly how it is to work.
Thanks for your comments on the little diary, especially to people who actually read my posts and realized I was playing with a controller and did not advise me to buy the console version instead. My Cleric, West, salutes you. A hearty thanks to everyone who recommended this awesome game, and hearty fuck you to everyone who recommended this tedious annoyance. It truly is the best and worst of gaming all wrapped up in one utterly conflicting package.
