Dark Souls 2: SOTFS (minus the DLC) completed!
There is a sense of momentum near the end of these games that I felt even more acutely with DS2, and the DLC was starting to feel like a bit of a slog, instead of an amazing set of new areas, so, knowing that the game doesn’t immediately throw you into NG+, I decided it was time to finish off the core story.
Boss fight. Boss fight. Boss fight.
The end of this game isn’t messing around!
The Throne Duo was more of a speed bump, which I’m thankful for. I brought in Vengarl after I saw what the fight was all about, and he did his job as a meatshield to the best of his abilities. He fell as I finished off the Watcher, and I tipped my helmet to him (I’ve been wearing the helmet he gives you for most of the game).
Nashandra (I love the design of her in her true form, one of the coolest looking bosses in Dark Souls) took a bit more work (and a costume change), but once I had enough curse resistance to buy myself a few more seconds of wailing away at her, she went down as well.
The third boss was a surprise. I figured Aldia wasn’t finished with me, but I wasn’t expecting to have to fight him. One more costume change, and a lot of fire resist later, I eventually got my fireball dodging down, remained patient, and won.
I’m pretty happy with how the final encounters played out. Super tough to have to do multiple boss fights back to back to back, but each one had only a few mechanics to master, and allowed me to change up my gear (I love when a game does this) to make the most of all my loot hunting.
The end of the game would have been that much sweeter if I wasn’t invaded right in front of the king’s door on my way back to fight Aldia. I got predictably owned and lost 150k souls.
The final act of DS2 was easily the best part of the game. I had a rocky go with this one, and even after 50 hours I still feel the combat to be a bit off, but the story was very strong, as was the world of Drangleic. You could feel FROM stretching their legs with this game, trying new things, experimenting with old mechanics. It was clearly an essential part of their development as a game company, and you can see a lot of DS2 innovations show up in subsequent games.
If I had to do it over again, I think I’d skip the SOTFS edition, and just play the original version. I think a lot of what they did to “remix” the game failed, and added to the feeling of being punishing for punishment’s sake.
Gonna give it a breather and focus on DS3, but I’ll be back to complete the DLC.
Three Souls games down, three to go. What a year.