Chapo Trap House - The Players Club Season 2: Demon's Souls (2009) - Boleteria-ing For Soup

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

AS ALWAYS: The first episode of this season of Players Club is free and available on all podcast platforms. All subsequent episodes will be available exclusively for subscribers at patreon.com/chapotraphouse. The year is 2009. Baquack Odoula is giving birth to Obunglercare and telling Americans that if they like their doctors, they can keep their ashes in urns above their fireplaces after they are rounded up and incinerated (Google “doctor’s plot”). Jay Cutler is filling Chicago Bears fans with hopes of a better tomorrow. Taylor Lautner is at the height of his powers. It may not be morning in America, but we all woke up at 2 PM, so same difference. Across the world, a coder employed by From Software eager to prove his mettle is told by his employers that they just so happen to have a game that is so poorly made, behind schedule, and over budget that if he really wants to, the former Oracle employee can take over its development and try to make something playable. Now free from the clutches of the Ellisons and their blood sacrifices, the man and his team work day and night to turn a quagmire that was previously called something like The Terrific Reclaim of Dark! [1+3=0 Edirion] YOU ARE INFINITE into something playable. That 30 something boy that nobody liked grew up to be Hideteka Miyazaki. And the game? Our inaugural entry for Season 2 of Player’s Club, Demon’s Souls. Frequent collaborator and long-suffering podcast dungeon master Patches was kind enough to join me on this first step through From’s contemporary catalog. This game may be the least of From’s efforts from the catalog of games it kicked off, but it’s not for a lack of ability or vision. Even just making something functional out of such a mess would have been an achievement by Miyazaki and co, but they did more than that. Demon’s Souls may lack some of the more brilliant level design and deceptively deep combat of later entries, but it cannot be overstated how little they had to work with and just how deeply this entry deviated from the standard fare put out by Japanese publishers the size of Bandai Namco in 2009. While everyone else was making once-challenging and open-ended titles more linear and centering every level around scripted set pieces, Demon’s Souls broke the mold by harkening back to a time before endless handholding, and delivered a game that respected its players enough to allow them to tackle individual levels and bosses how and when they saw fit. For this entry, I did my playthrough on a PS3 emulator, meaning I went without the quality of life adjustments in the 2020 Blue Point remake. That said, I found myself enjoying my experience more than my first go around on the PS5 version years prior. To say this is the least challenging or exciting of the remaining 6 (or 7, if you count Shadow of the Erdtree as a separate entry) games on our docket is not a knock on this game, but a compliment to the massive leaps in quality From achieved in each consecutive release. The fact that such a catalog grew out of a game that was almost abandoned before Miyazaki became the stepfather that stepped up.  Praise aside, I don’t care for Stockpile Thomas. He always has to be such a downer. I didn’t ask for your life story!  The wonderful Patches can be found on Twitter (@Senator_Gun) and as the dungeon master of my personal all time favorite DnD episodes we’ve ever done. He does not necessarily share my opinion that Stockpile Thomas is responsible for his family’s awful deaths.

Sometimes the worst thing that you can be is early. And before you say worse than a Nazi who's a pedophile, I offer to you who is worse off than the Nazi pedophile who got into that stuff years before those twin pursuits had their brief moment in the sun. But instead of Anthony Kumia, let us instead contemplate Chenmo. A wildly ambitious endeavor in the 1990s, this deliberately paced action-adventure mystery was among the doomed dream cast. best-selling titles.

But that just wasn't enough to even recoup production costs. It was paced a little bit too deliberately for a console exclusive in 1999, and no one had quite yet figured out how to make a quasi-or-fully open-world game for three-dimensional action in such a way that it enamored players to the point that they felt like they were interacting with a living, breathing municipality. The Dreamcast ended up being Sega's last shot at the hardware business. But did every single employee and shareholder just say, guess everyone fucking hates me and kill themselves on the spot?

Even though that might happen in today's world, they did not. And like the pathetic dinosaur, whose useless back fin and ridiculous size prevented it from outrunning a meteor, becoming a gorgeous deposit of petroleum and fueling a car driven by a handsome man on his way to pork the brains out of an equally handsome dame, Shenmoo's carcass became perhaps Sega's best-known franchise

after Sonic. Sony features that give the Yakuza, or like a Dragon series, its unique identity, were first experimented with in Shenmo. Even the basic structure of a modern Yakuza game is shockingly similar, right down to needing to wait for the in-game world to reach a certain time frame

in order to progress the story at times, something that many at the time balked at in Shenmo. That's the great thing about games. They say that you only have one chance to make a first impression, but how true is that? Sometimes your first impression is so sequestered that you get to fuck up in front of a group of people you'll never see again.

This very fate very nearly befell today's true entry. But 2009's Demon Souls elected to become the witch that you didn't burn instead of the mothers of the daughters of the witches that you burned or didn't burn or a dinosaur, whichever. Let us go back to the prime of Anthony Cumm. his life, to the mid to late aughts. Hitateka Miyazaki had only joined Frum Software in 2004, and his experience at the company consisted of doing coding work for the Armored Core franchise, which was then an incredibly cruel

mech game with an in-game economy based off of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. So imagine how much of a basket case, Demon Souls, a planned successor to Frum's Kingsfield series must have been to let someone so green direct it. And while they had cleared the detritus from whatever they were trying to accomplish before, or removing the game's glasses and correcting its posture did not result in executives at Frum seeing its true beauty. Sony higher-ups thought it was pointlessly cruel, a strange sentiment considering they were licensing it from From Software

who made every fucking armored core game from that general time period a usury simulator. Upon its Japanese release, it had been well-reviewed, but it took a long while for it to be considered a successful financial release. While it was somewhat miraculous at such a troubled project, had received high marks and even turned to profit eventually, it was no juggernaut, at least not until the Western world clamored for a broader release. Only the greatest scholars of Japanese culture in the American gamer truly fell in love at first sight.

After one year on the North American market, it sold half a million copies, versus only 134,000 from a similar time frame in Japan. For whatever reason, the gauge-eared new era-clad box mod puffers that owned PS3s, at this time loved this game. And that's the thing that's most surprising to me in retrospect, having played this on at least an emulation of its original platform.

Not that everyone liked it, it's a very, very good game whose very existence is miraculous when you consider how fucked up the development cycle must have been leading up to Miyazaki's fateful promotion. But more so that they fell head over heels. While the difficulty of these games

has been noted endlessly, Demon Souls could be the easiest thing they've ever made. And this was in 2009 before every game gave you wallhack vision mode and put giant pulsating arrows on every point of progress within the player's line of sight. I'd say those old armored core games are exponentially more challenging than this. So it could not have been the supposedly punishing gameplay breaking the mold at the time, which it certainly did not. And while the shortcuts, types of bossing, pacing, pacing, and unique multitudes,

multiplayer system that came to define an entire subgenre are all there, the experience is much clunkier and the combat less enjoyable and the levels less exciting than in any of its successors. I could completely understand when someone ends up falling in love with Dark Souls. But with this game, maybe I just had to be there and at the time I was not. Still, people decided this thing was so good, they spared it from Shenmo's fate of becoming an also-eran that beget the actual success. It's not uncommon to hear people rank Demon Souls as their favorite entry in FromSau's entire catalog. And to join me to discuss this inarguably a classic, even though I would put it like as 8 out of 10,

is an expert on role-playing games himself, the legendary Game Master and Dungeon Master Patches. Patches, how did you, first, what, Did you play the remake or did you emulate this? And how did you find it? So both. My first encounter with Demon's Souls was years after the original had come out.

I had friends who were very early to FromSoft, very much those like the true American nerd that you described, the real sages of our time. And they were yelling at me about Demon's Souls when we were in, God, I guess high school. And I was like, oh, that looks, that looks cool. Like, you know, I didn't quite get it. They were yelling at me about it.

And so I got the first Dark Souls after that came out. And I also didn't get that, really. And this was, I was somebody who loved, like, Metroidvania's. I loved interconnected level design. But I think, I think literally placing it in three dimensions and then obscuring it the way that From did. Like, I think I was, I was like, well, games can't be. games can't be confusing.

That's not how you're supposed to experience them. And so I was like, I guess I'll come back to this another time. Yeah, I mean, that's something I admitted in my intro. I mean, this was more the case in like 2010, 2011, 2012. But this was right before a period where Japanese studios got incredibly influenced by Cod and then every studio. And it resulted in these horrible games like Hitman Absolution where, you know, I mean, I mean, now is pretty bad, but this was, 2010 through 2012 was probably the worst period for giving people wall hack vision and making every point of progress incredibly obvious.

And this was, yes. This was obviously very different. Yeah, and it's funny. So I'm going to send you something on Discord. And you're going to, this is Kevin at Kevin Spoiler. So that handle was, I think, owned by somebody else at one point. and he wrote an article that is the only source I could find. I had to use a wayback machine that suggested that FromSoft as a company not only originally

produced business software, but specifically produced business software that automated the feeding of pigs. And like that that was the one of their main flagship things that they did. And so the guy who found in FromSoft, and the reason why I was bringing this up, I was mentioning this to you, I think, right before we're recording, is that this is demon souls, but like Frumsoft is, it's so funny to think of Miyazaki,

someone who loved Kingsfield and joined it, didn't like know he was going to go into game development until, like, basically he had a job at Oracle to support his sister and then was like, actually I do want to make games. And Frumsoft had this similar turn where it was financially motivated, where Naotoshi Jin was like,

I actually think we're going to make more money in gaming than we are in producing business software. So this sort of inverse relationship. And this idea of like making something as like immediately alienating as Kingsfield. And for that to be a flagship title on the PlayStation I thought was so interesting. And then this Demon Souls remake is the second, it's the like latest time that Frum has had a game be a flagship title for a console. but it's uniquely reviled by the fan base. And I think there's this weird sort of, I think it's just a lot of movement and transition

and things that you can trace that lead to from getting the kind of audience that it had, getting the kind of Western audience that it had too. It's really strange. I knew that about Miyazaki. You know, his creation legend is a huge thing. Famously, the unique multiplayer system and the phantoms are based off of how,

Miyazaki's car broke down during a blizzard one time and a bunch of people helped push it up a hill and he never learned their names or anything they just went back in their car and he said he based the multiplayer system around that the way that lore is communicated to the player in most of these games

save for Sakaro is based on Miyazaki going to this rundown library when he was a kid and he reportedly grew up pretty poor where he would read these fantasy novels that had pages missing and a lot of them were in English

and he didn't really know that many English words but he just, he would learn enough to where it left him wanting more though I don't I, that's one of those things that you see in videos but I have trouble tracking down a source for

there have been a lot of books and even movies and TV shows where that is their main mode of communicating world building is by leaving things out. It's a pretty time-tested method. It's cool to do it in a game because that's definitely not the Norman games,

and it's very admirable now because everything now is based on lore dumping so you could just juice the most out of a fucking IP. But there is a lot made of his legend. I did not know that about FromSoft. How far back did they go? Like, were they making like those weird, like weird shit for those like analog computers

like INS machines and shit like that yeah I don't know the particulars of like the software they were designing but I know that they were founded like so uh Natoshi Jin he like founded it I think um oh yeah the the way it's described is he had like a motorcycle accident that left him bedridden

and while he was injured he like took the money he received from insurance and decided to start a software company. This was in the mid-80s. So that's how that starts. He has a through-the-wire moment and is like, I'm going to make, like, I'm going to make Operation Software.

I'm going to make, like, a bad version of an ERP system. And then Japan has this slowdown in their economy, and this is like after a few years of having the company. The bubble economy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so then he's like, he had apparently there were employees in there who were like, hey, like, we've been enjoying 3D modeling. And maybe we can make games.

And then, you know, Sony for their part was like, let's try to do something with Nintendo. And then we're like, fuck you. We want to do it ourselves, actually. And Kingsfield, the lore of Kingsfield. So I spent a lot of time also trying to read about that because I was like, I know this is so foundational. Obviously, like, Seath comes from there. Moonlight's Great Sword comes from there. Yeah.

Like all that stuff. But the thing that's similar through all the From games, and obviously we'll get to Demon Souls and all that, but is this like belief in humanity, these very grim dark games, and yes, very similar to Berserk,

which is amazing and is obviously very influential for these things, it does believe that no matter how bad it gets, people have a capacity to do things, to work with one another, to achieve, great things and be good to one another.

And that story, the Miyazaki like story that you told, that is true, right? That is like his story. Yeah. I reread it while prepping for this. And one of the things he said was that there was like a line of cars that were stuck in the snow. So people would help, were helping out the next person in front of them over and over and over again.

And so there's like a bunch of people who like were helping the person in front of. And that kind of like connectivity, I think, is also, like, so instrumental in all these games. Like, I think it's a really good point to bring it up. I'm trying to be conscious of, like, laying a foundation for you and want to know your thoughts as you continue this series. Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it. The fundamental belief in humanity in these games, the first time, I had a weird journey with these games. I started with Sekros. The first thing I played, I played it during COVID

because I just never touched any of these before. And I got furious at it because I tried playing it on like a 60-inch TV. And I got up to the first ogre you fight and it made me so fucking mad. And then I somehow online found a bunch of people telling you it's stupid to play on a TV. And then I moved to a monitor and I ended up loving it.

I went in such a weird order. I did Sacro, Bloodborn, Dark Souls 3, Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 2. Yeah, it was all over the place. And Demon Souls, I think, was the last thing I played before Eldon Ring. Yeah. And I bought a scalped PS5 to play it. Oh, man. Because I didn't know how to emulate back then, which is embarrassing because it's very easy.

But the through line in all these games, and it's less so the case in Secro, because Secro is about something else. The story is told in a much more direct fashion. Yeah, that's true. I think I should, yeah, I should be more cognizant of like Securo and Bloodborn as departures in some ways from the central lore, I think, or central themes in some ways. Obviously not all the way through, but yeah. Well, yeah, I think Sekra is the only one you can say it's a full departure from this theme, though, which is that the world can end. And you can take that incredibly biblically, or you can take that in a just very immediate localized sense of the world.

as you know it ending. The fundamentals of your day-to-day life and reality can collapse, but you are still you, you are still a human being who has social relations, and though you have a series of choices, there are fewer societal and systematic consequences for acting socially malevolent. It's still, that's sort of missing out on the point of life.

Wow, yeah. And I think it's so interesting that so many of these games are really like you end up becoming very powerful in all these games. But the only game where you really feel like you are something close to a god is an Eldon Ring, all these other games you are kind of a pawn and you're pretty aware of that fact. And the power you accumulate by the end of the game is kind of the point. It's necessary towards the thing that you are accomplishing at the behest of forces larger than yourself. And it's interesting because it is kind of making the point that just achieving power,

however you do it in these games, if that's all you want to do, I guess you can do it. But your time will be more meaningful and textured and memorable if you stop along the way and help out these people even if there doesn't seem to be an immediate benefit. And it really, I know Sacro is the first one I played and it didn't, that those are, that's more of a game directly about like Japanese Buddhism than it is those themes. But when I got to the Souls games at Bloodborn, it really appealed to me because around that time, something that was very in vogue was the sort of like liberal millinarianism. It was this idea that like, oh my God, climate change is going to kill us all in North America in 10 years.

And it always annoyed me so much because it's like, Well, no, it's not how it's not how it's not how it's going to, it is with a whimper actually, not to be pedantic. Right. But it's like it's going to kill a lot of other people first. And it's going to create a lot of refugees and create a lot of systemic failures. Yeah, you'll be, you'll be fine. You'll just be shittier.

It's going to kill the people that make your shirt. Yeah, right, yeah. But you don't get to be wiped out in a great cataclysm that you can redeem for all our same. for whatever it means to live as an American or in the Imperial Corps or as a Western or whatever the fuck, you don't get that. You have to decide what the rest of your life means. Your children and your grandchildren,

they may have to see tens of millions of climate refugees from the periphery gunned down, and they are going to have to figure out how they are going to respond to that, if at all. Just like how we now have to figure out what it means that we are perpetrating a genocide. You don't, for better or for worse, you have the rest of your life to contend with.

And other people don't get that luxury. And these games are just, I always felt they were like a very extreme version of that. That like, even if there is just the barest skeleton or imprint of a fossil of what your life was, you still have to get up every day. And there are other people in the world, and you don't just get to go, okay, I guess the fact that, like, things are shittier now

means that everything is redeemed. I think Demon Souls. So it's funny. So when I was replaying it this time and I was replaying it as in the original, I mean, obviously we should definitely talk about like the art direction changes too between that and the remake. Yeah. But as I was replaying it, I was taking a lot of notes and reading a lot about it. And then I stumbled on, I mean, it almost feels like,

silliously stumbled on, I think it's a pretty popular video. And it's fantastic. It's called, you know, a philosophical analysis of demon's soul, which is, of course, it's called that. But it's by this guy, Jemsbach. I thought he did, like, an incredible job. And, like, when I was starting to write a lot about world tendency, which I think is speaking to this particular theme you're pointing at,

which is that, like, you are not an island, And I think that helped me unlock a lot of different thoughts I had about world tendency and also the like network mechanics and design of these games and particularly of demon souls, which is the originator of this sort of, you know, asymmetrical online play. And world tendency in particular, for those I guess who have not, if you're listening to this and you have not played demon souls, world tendency is a super weird, obscure mechanic Introducing Demon Souls, where the actions that you take will affect the world directly where if you do, if you progress through the game in a normal fashion and you don't just kind of

kill random NPCs and when presented with the like sort of rare choices that like feel like the game is presenting you with like a moral decision, you choose the default slash good choice. Your world tendency will go closer towards white. If you choose to be immoral, kill a NPCs, things like that. And this is all, right now I'm describing the offline experience, your world tendency will go towards black. If you get to pure white or pure black, you have literally different experiences.

And Miyazaki talks about that. He says, like, this is different from other RPGs, like an early interview with him, because everyone's going to have their own unique experience with it because of the reactivity of the world. I think it's really cool from a, like, if you think of reactivity in the like the M-Sim tradition, right, of like, oh, like, you know,

the world is going to react to you based on physics, I'm Warren Specter. If I shoot lightning at a pool of water, it should zap, and then that should hurt an enemy or start a machine, where Miyazaki's reactivity is like, your moral decisions and actions in this world should affect the way the world responds to you.

So there's that piece of it. And then the network piece of it is what's the part of it that's fucking nuts to me, that he was on this level. And it kind of justifies this mechanic that exists throughout the rest of the Souls games, which is that if you invade, folks, right, and kill folks, like, you will lead to having a darker world tendency. If you do

co-op, you can only do it in this soul form, not the body form. That's a whole other thing I've thought a lot about. But like things like that can increase your tendency to white. Also, when you connect to the network, the entire network's world tendency. So that means everybody who's connected to the demon souls server drifts the tendency towards that direction slightly. Things you do in your world are affecting everybody else's and he like literalized that which is i think just like a fucking wild like notion to have and to put alongside a very ambitious game and i think speaks to and we'll get to other things with it but like definitely speaks to the philosophical underpinning of like you're not an island the things you do matter and in fact get reflected back directly towards you one other thing

I'll mention, because I'm going on for a bit here, but when you make the world tendency white, it makes the game easier. It makes it so that you, like, enemies are, like, easier to kill. They're weaker. When they hurt you. So, but when the world tendency is black, when the world tendency is black, enemies are harder. They hit you harder. You have less health when you are in your soul form. And, like, the game, like, just becomes harder. Like, you're making it harder for yourself. And the last piece of this is, the world tendency goes more white as you defeat bosses, right? But as you die in your body form,

the world tendency goes towards the black. So there's also this element here of like, if the game is hard for you, we're going to make it harder for you. I can't even believe that he like had this kind of instinct as a designer. There's even more with that, but I want to pause there just because it's a lot.

I think ambitious is the best word to describe all of this because you mentioned Kigsfield. I've never played these games, but I've watched play-thrus, and I've watched a lot of videos about them. So for people who don't know, these were PSX, first-person RPGs, and they are like...

With fucking tank controls, they suck to play. They suck out. They're very fun. I've played Kingsfield 2, which is the first one that came out in America, and it is like, it is entirely bolstered by the fact that you're, like, playing something that you know

is the foundational text for later from soft games. If you're like me playing it now is like just an academic exercise but it's really cool. What worker and parasite is to itchy and scratchy, you could say Kingsfield is to the Elder Scroll series.

It's like the worker and parasite version of those games. Because it's, you're like oh yeah, it has the same form and then it is the most like punishing obtuse. And it just drops you in too and and there's so much

there's like three layers of like historical events prior to you playing as at least in Kingsfield 2 Alfred that like you just are that are like completely obscured to you until the end of the game and then when you learn them it's just basically that like

the dragon gods the one that you thought you were doing something good for and the one that you were going up against are both pieces of shit who do not care about you so it's the same kind of like lovecrafty alienation. And I think demon souls does this really well too

where there is a supposed God in the world and there's an old one. And I started to liken it to like a Prometheus myth where God just like made a mistake and he like gave people the ability to like to use soul arts which allegedly and there's different interpretations of this as to the demons.

And like he's like I'm going to help you like fight the demons with more magic. And like, it's just like nothing this God is supplying people helps them avoid their death and doom. So even like if this God is doing this, which the video does a great job of like remarking that like the passive voice is used in particular when attributing who created humans and who created souls.

But like if something is doing this, it's just doing a fucking bad job at it. And like Kingsfield being that brutal is like, is I think, again, a part of that tree. even before Miyazaki showed up, which is that like this unknowable, brutal, mystical, high, low fantasy thing. It's really cool. Yeah, the old one in Demon Souls, not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but the old one in Demon Souls and the cosmology of Bloodborn, they both love this idea of the Lovecraftian idiot God. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But Demon Souls more so, and this is a theme that you see in the Dark Souls series more and an Eldon Ring especially. it's less if you take away the old one and add like the Monumentals and the other extremely powerful forces in the world it's less like a Lovecraftian idiot god and more like a Lovecraftian like shitty administrators like a Brandon God Yeah Like they can't like it's just like okay you need to work for the good god

Why? Why? Because if you do soul arts the demons will come How are you going to keep the demons from Yeah exactly How are we going to get rid of the demons? We're going to like put it to sleep and then try not to do magic. They're trying to do magic again.

It's like, didn't this happen? This is the second time this has happened, right? Like, yeah, yeah. There's fewer monumentals now. There's only one now. It's like, what is the, what, it could make someone come to the conclusion of why even bother. But to your point, I think all the mechanics are trying and the world tendency and these other things are trying to tell people, no, like, keep, keep working with other people.

Like, keep trying to do things with, you know, keep trying to do the right thing. And it's like, but it is like a very funny. like you just are hitting a wall of like these guys are so goddamn brand end out it's like so bad here yeah I wonder if like in the world of Demon Souls if you go forward

like a few hundred years of them doing this like they get it's sort of like our world like they get a term of monumental rule and then a term of fog and they're like oh oh the monumentals were so bad and someone starts a website called like what are the monumentals on and they're like there are actually five

fewer magicians in the world now So it'll be even longer before the fog comes back. It's, uh, yeah. But like I, that is something I, I thought about with Eldon Ring because with Eldon Ring, I, you know, there's no real, like, time frame. It's like a vestige of, like, Western fantasy stuff that's based on, like, popular conceptions of the Middle Ages. But Eldon Ring seems to be the world outside of Bloodborn and Sekaro, which take place in, like, a Victorian, England Analogue and Sengoku era Japan that are like farther along

Eldon Ring seems like the most like immediately pre-mercantile world they have. Right. And I always wanted, I wish they had done more stuff with the merchants because I would have liked you to be able to get an ending where they invent mercantilism and it's historically progressive

and it leads to parliament in the lands between I think that would have been but that might make their themes to explicit but yeah, I I think it's a good way to put it that Like, all the great forces you were working for are, like, their ideas suck, but there's, like, nothing else. Yes. I think it's, like, a huge, a huge part of the from thing.

And, well, what do you, like, do you have a better idea? And, like, the closest that, like, I think, like, Demon Souls has, like, two endings and both are pretty, pretty bleak. The first one is the default one, which is basically, like, yeah, like, you're a great hero. you got this guy to, you know, go to bed and it's probably going to happen again, but like, it basically says, like, it'll probably go again, like, happen again, but, like, nice work.

And the, the bad ending is, like, you, like, looked at King of Lant's, like, fucking slug form and said, I want that, and now the whole world is fogged. Like, you fogged the whole thing. And, like, and so it's like, it's much more hopeless than, like, I think, the Dark Souls games, which do offer the, like, age of darkness and try to, like, offer.

And even then, obviously, the Abyss has its own complications as this, like, overrun of humanity. But there is this, like, they try to offer you a world in which, like, humans have a little bit more agency. And that world. And, like, Eldon Ring obviously has that with, you know, Ronnie's ending. But I'm also, like, looking at the tradition now of, like, demon souls through the third Dark Souls, through to Eldon Ring, which I think Eldon Ring is a more clear. I don't want to discount or like pretend that Bloodbourne and Sekiro are disconnected, but I think there's a clear lineage of, not just like aesthetically,

but like, I think thematically too. I was also thinking about one other thing, like, while we're like kind of in the, is still in the like establishing the conversation of these games and of this game, is you would mention this in your intro, which is also the early internet popularity piece of this, right? Like, Demon Souls is 2009, So that's before like BuzzFeed and the Arab Spring, right?

Like, you know what I mean? Like Web 2.0 forums were still like hanging out. They didn't have the like kind of like monocultural popularity of Facebook. But like they were completely and totally relevant. There was still spaces for community driven internet like undoubtedly. And so that idea and like Miyazaki looking at that, I should say Miyazaki and co like you know

I think it's I think it'd be crazy to not say he's an entor but I'm trying to be mindful of the fact that like obviously this is a very just like incredible just company and the ethos in it but Miyazaki and Co looking at that

looking at also the possibilities of the network they're trying to design and then looking at how they can ensure that there's this sort of like community of folks who can literally help each other out with like with forums and guides.

And so there's the actual network inside the game. And then there's the one that sprung up, like going to the playground and being like, I heard you can get Charzard by walking around a tree three times. Like, they like brought that back and saw the opportunity for that. I think Demon Souls does not work. If it came out in like 2015, instead, I think there would be too much cynicism

and too much consolidation of, places for people to commune on the internet for that to take off the way it did then. Oh yeah, no. I mean, like, I am generally kind of optimistic about a lot of stuff for the future of games, but there are a lot of games who's, you know, they came out in the last like six, seven years and were only possible due to like advances in technology making it possible for like three guys to make a kind of ambitious thing. Sure.

Games that were made with either small teams or in the case of project winged, man just one guy that I don't know how possible it could have been like 10 or 20 years before. And in any other time, people making things that were this ambitious and this good and like brought, in the case of Project Wingman and Ready or Not, brought back these types of games of which, you know, there was only one or two franchises. And in the case of Ready or Not, the franchise had died like 15 years ago. Right. that would have been like everyone would talk about it

there would be giant communities dedicated to it there would be a sequel out like just a few years later and in the case of I mean ready or not is thankfully still updating but Project Wingman came out in 2020 there was a DLC that was initially PS5 exclusive but I have not heard anything since then and it should be this amazing like this one guy

made this incredibly cool thing that is like a tribute to his combat and is still like very much its own thing and has all these great ideas and in fact like did things did certain things like boss fights better than the most recent days of combat and you you know

if this was like 2009 it would be like oh my god there there's a competitor to the one like sort of arcadey plane combat game this is so exciting I can't wait to see the game he does next with a bigger budget and now it's like who no like I don't really I don't really

I don't want to make it sound like I don't like this game where I think it's like unremarkable because it is, it's like even for the things I don't like and just touching on what you said about like the story a little bit, that is one of the things that I kind of thought there could be improvement. I just, I didn't feel like, I don't need like a ton of articulation, but it just felt like the world that we are supposed to, I think save is too simple of a term

But like the world that we were fighting for Or the world that we were fighting against If we choose the other ending Is so it reminds me of when In the second and third Matrix movie When you go to Zion And you see how shitty it is And you think

You're doing it for this? I have the same feeling There's just like no culture or anything Like I'm doing this for like stupid as stockpile Thomas I like stockpile Thomas Dickhead bloat He is a complete dumb ass assing coward, but like, I was, I was thinking about him.

And one of my favorite NPCs ever is Baldwin in this game, though, I will say. Yeah. He's very much in the Gideon-Offnir, and I would say, like, I don't know if you played the Pillars of Eternity Games, but just on, like, being, like, unbelievably unlikable, like, Durants from those games, where you're just like, how the fault, like, and, like, I think the voice acting on Baldwin is, is very special. like a Brit who has like actually has no time for you

despite him like needing you it's like makes you disgusted to talk to him and he's like there to like he like is so helpful throughout the game I think that stuff like that you're like is this is this worth it like this is the world you go to Bolotaria and like I think this is some of this is due to the fog

which I think it's ridiculous to suggest that like the technical limitations are why they like chose to have like a fogged world around Bolotaria I don't think that's fair But I do think that it does allow them to, like, create blank spaces. But it also, like, it does end up, like, limiting your, like, understanding of, like, the cultural, like, parts of the city. Zoli, the witch talked about how Bolotaria, like, does sit on, like, when you zoom in to get in there in the beginning of the game, like, you are zooming past all these rocks. There's, like, a river underneath the bridge.

Like, it is clear that this is, like, you know, a fortress. It's situated properly in the world. You know, it has that kind of Romanesque architecture, at least in the original. But you're like, who's King Alon? He like doesn't matter. He doesn't have any history. You don't really get a sense of like, this world is just like a fortress. Like, and then when you look around, it's just like water and fog.

I understand what you're saying is what I mean. I guess this was maybe probably a bit deliberate, but it just felt like there was no culture. It felt like one of those. the story that the character Clarkon that I've used in all those E1DDs it's it is based off this what I thought it was like the best example of like bad fantasy sci-fi writing online

that I found once and there is literally you can look it up there is a story called Clarkon the Terrible about a guy named Clarkon who like goes into a space monastery and starts bragging about all the people he killed and then slams a monks headed to the table in a way that makes his Clarkon's arm explode. And then you hear Clarkon's internal monologue go,

I can buy another arm from all the credits I wish. It's at some forum that's for this type of stuff. And it just, it's one of those things that stuck with me for like 16 years because it's such a great example of like that type of writing. And it's so revealing about the person that wrote it. And all the criticisms you see in the thread are obvious. It's like, why is he doing this? Just basic character motivation.

Who hired him? Who hired him? Like, what's the hierarchy to this world? And all these things answered, right? But like, to have so many brash actions taken within this guy who I'm supposed to care about, I'd like at least something to hold on to, yeah. With Demon Souls, I would not say it is as extreme as the original piece of Clark on the Terrible. I'd fucking wishes.

Yeah, well, you can actually, you go down to the thread and the author of Clarkon revises it and makes it like 5% better and the people are like, this is awesome, good job. That's basically what blue point tried to do. They like, they're like, what if the fucking vanguard demon like didn't look like just like like goofy fucking like monster

and what if he looked awesome and badass? And there are a lot of people who were like, this is awesome, this is tight. But like most people, I think, were, like, what happened. I like that he had, like, somehow both an over and underbite. Like, that guy was cool. Right. So, just to touch on the remake from that, the remake has some quality of life changes.

Oh, my God, yes. That make this game far, like, far, far more enjoyable to play in a lot of ways. One thing that is very distinct about this game compared to other games in the series is that there's a very strict limit on your carry load. And that is not your equipment. which dictates your roll speed, which is a thing in every game except Zecro and Bloodbored. But literally just the items you pick up, you can only carry so many before you become overburdened. And that is why Stockpile Thomas, who is this just like hapless guy whose wife and kid were killed by the demons. And now he lives.

It's so, it's so sad, dude. He's such a bummer. Like, oh, man, sorry, keep going. I'll talk about Stockpile Thomas later. Like, I like him. But when he's there, every time I like go somewhere to like mine, uh, you know. Moonstones or whatever. He goes,

where did you go? I thought you died. It's like, I'm the only guy who's doing anything, you fucking pussy. Like, shut up. Like, I hate that.

I hate that. Have you ever had, like, a male friend who's always, like, saying, I love you? Yes. Remind me of that. It's like, you keep saying

it has no meaning. But they make it so that your items automatically go to the stockpile. And so you're not caught out in the middle of exploring a level and you have to, like, either sacrifice all this stuff.

I also think what does that's good is it adds weight to the healing items, to the grasses, which I think still creates the friction that I think Demon Souls was trying to do. Like, I think people were saying that there was originally like, oh, like, you know, this was Sony investing in it from a like, make oblivion. And so like weight became a thing. And that was something that was kept. But still, I think that friction was really interesting. It was fun to have that.

I think you need that because otherwise you could just. like endlessly farm grass and you theoretically have almost infinite healing. And they add some, you know, there's a couple interesting weapons and some good-looking armor sets. But the reason I walked away, I played this on RPCS3, which is a very good, very well-maintained emulator for PS3 that you can get on PC that I highly recommend. And I just want to give a quick condom, or not condemnation.

Yeah, do it. commendation to the community there who they are patching all these like ISOs. Yeah, they added save states fucking finally and like, but that's like, that's, that sounds dismissive of them, but I'm saying like their PS3 is such a fucking piece of shit.

Oh my God, yeah. So like that they're continuing to do this is like very cool. It's also the only way to play this online and fully engage with the tendency system. Because, of course, you can, they've made their own imitation of the PlayStation servers, which is very cool. But the reason that I would say I ended up being more engaged with the world this time around playing on the PS3 version rather than the PS5 version is there is obviously some very good character beats and character texture in the NPCs you talk to, though I would argue not as much as in subsequent. games. So, of course, you again have to grade this game on an extreme curve

because it was this fucked up boondoggle that was taken over. Yes, true. But the I don't know how to describe the art direction of the Blue Point remake except for like if DreamWorks had done oblivion. I mean,

and just like the original art direction goes such a long way in, and again, I don't feel like there was enough of of a sense of what is going, what this world was supposed to be beforehand, what is going on here,

why I care about these people, I wish there was more of that, but it's still, the art direction went a long way in feeling like there was something used to be here. Whereas when you play the BluPoint game, which admittedly, the graphical fidelity is great. They really, they got the most out of the PS5 there. you very much feel like you are in a game

and it in fact looks it looks like a generic game it looks like a tech demo I mean yeah I mean that's the problem is that it like that it was basically a tech demo and like that Blue Point is was I should say so unfortunately Blue Point

you know was I think shuttered this year which is unfortunate because there's obviously a huge amount of like really talented people at that studio Oh, yeah. But, like, this was, I think, essentially, they were a Sony company. So it's just a tech demo for the PS5.

And, like, there's a bunch of resources of people talking about this. But one of the things that everybody knows about is the way that they fuck with the Flame Lurker in the original and the remake. And it is really striking. I recommend everybody, like, look up Flame Lurker remake versus Original,

if you haven't looked into that, to just see the original, to your point, Felix, like the original did so much more work to try to tell a story where the flame worker, the way their animation is, it's jittery, it's moving, it's sad, its flesh is dripping off of its body, it is clearly being like consumed by this fire,

and in the new one, it looks like Doom 2016. And that's it's it's just, it's like, it is in a like strong hell reds everywhere it doesn't look like it's emerging from like a weird muddy temple it just it nukes the story of it it's you know it's trying to it's almost trying to like evoke a like memory of a triple a game like like like it's trying to evoke like oh i remember playing demon souls it was epic instead of like which is just that's just not how people played it. Like, that wasn't quite how people played it, so you don't have to do that with it as a remake.

And it's very, a very strange, it's a lot of strange. And then the fat official design, everybody also. That's, I think that's the worst character redesign they did. It's pretty, pretty disappointing. And, like, kind of, like, shocking choice. I mean, the fat official is so cool and is such an interesting design choice because, like, Just having fucking top hats alone is one of the strangest thing. Like, there aren't top hats until, like, what, the 19th century probably?

Like, at least Lincoln. Oh, yeah. Like, what the fuck? Like, that choice of then still having the, um, having also like a later medieval, like, collar as well. And like, it's all this like amalgamation of fashion from like a later era down to like the chrome kind of like mask of death on its face. And then you're just like, oh, this is like an arbiter of,

and then you read the lore, and it's like an arbiter of doom, right? It's like before the fog came these guys. And they just like turned it into like a really ugly fat guy. That's it. He's like a fat guy with boils. And like, this guy sucks. He's not interesting anymore. Yeah.

They, the most alarming thing about them in the original is that like they look like more human than anything you're facing. Yeah. And they, like, it makes their laugh. Yeah. Just their, their general attitude so much more disturbing. Because it is, it is, everything, almost everything you face is just like a starling animal. Like, like a, or just like a barely sentient.

Yeah. It's the bodies without souls, like, is what they do. Which this is like, which we should talk about that because this, before like, hollowing, there was like, this game. like invented like the hollowing thing, you know, in a lot of ways. But yes, I agree. Like they were this, they've seen more in control. They were scarier because of that. They had whips, you know, they tormented.

There was a motivation that wasn't just hunger for souls. They look more like victims in the new one. And I don't like that. I liked that they were mysteriously, you know, in control. The point about the top hat is very good. And this is something they do in, uh, Dark Souls with Marvelous Chester, one of my favorite names for NBC.

I mean, I joked about the merchants being a historically progressive force, but they are literally suggesting that at some point they surpassed mercantilism and get to early capitalism. Exactly what you were saying with the merchants before. Yeah, there's a similar sort of like doom hanging over it of progress in these, you know, because all these games punish ambition. right they all like look very down on it and not to not to be like let's jump right to a Miyazaki quote but but yeah he's the one who said like I didn't really have a lot of ambition

I didn't really know what I wanted to do and and he built a gaming empire funnily enough on where one of the central tenants is like some people want to live and hold on to power for so long that that it ceases to be anything resembling good, like it doesn't do any good for anyone or anything. And like using Victorian era fashion choices and like articulations too as that I think is really particular.

You can't go much further than that or the pastiche gets kind of ruined, I guess, in some ways. Yeah. So it's a smart move. Yeah. The last preliminary. everything I want to get into before I start running through the play-through is

just the gameplay itself, like the combat. So I would say it's like it's most of the way there towards the eventual from solve formula. You know, Dodge, roll. It's definitely more deliberate. Yeah, it's not on the

directional either, which is like really tough honestly in the original. The combat in the games get like faster as the series goes on and to some, infamously, blood-bored, was a huge influence on this because it was the fastest-paced game they ever made. There were no shields in it, and that totally changed the rhythm of combat for some.

And one of the big complaints a lot of people had about Dark Souls 3 was they claimed that the bosses were blood-borne speed, but your character was Dark Souls 1 speed, which anyone who thinks that I played Dark Souls 1 than play Dark Souls 3, it's not true. Yeah, I mean, Dark Souls 1 is a funny game to play now. It is like, it is a cake wall. in a lot of ways compared to like it is like you are like not to be like but it's like you are so

slow and everything's so deliberate it is like it is like bullet time playing it like compared to Dark Souls 3 forget it yeah it's very interesting when you compare it to Eldon Ring which is obviously there are more ways to mitigate difficulty in Eldon Ring

but it is an entirely different beast than this game than Dark Souls 1 and even Dark Souls 2 But so there are a few things in this game that I found really interesting that I would like to see I think it would be cool that they did not bring these back entirely, but maybe some small version of this. Like the way that they do magic is really interesting.

I didn't really go deep into magic, but I thought it was cool that, you know, you only, you have to obviously level up your intelligence to get to get some. slots for spells and you you level magic to scale your damage with magic and faith to scale your your damage with miracles obviously but you can like you can get spells that are based off boss souls and miracles when your faith or intelligence is only like 13 or 14 or even just you know some starting classes it'll be 12 and you can do it that way but you just you know you're monobar, which they took that away in Dark Souls 1 and 2, and brought it back later on. But you only get so many spells, and it's not going to be as strong as if you were a mage.

But I did, I thought it was cool because it gave you a ranged option beyond bows, which are weirdly powerful in this game to the point that, like, I had to stop using them because they, they trivialized levels too much. I don't know. I don't know what was going on with scaling. A lot of the ranged option. Like both magic and bows, I think, are pretty, pretty beast in demon souls. I think it's a little bit, a little much. I do agree. Yeah.

It's a little broken. And I said this is among one of the easiest things they've made, which is not to say that it's, like, boring or challenging. Because they're definitely like, you know, the first time you play this, there will be things that you probably end up retrying. But it just, it only feels like with this game, with most of the bosses, it felt like there was only so many ways to skin a cat, you know? A lot of the main bosses are just straight puzzles. The hero, the, obviously the Storm God, which is just a classic. The Storm Ruler, which showed up in other games, too. The version of the Storm Ruler, the Storm Ruler named the actual Storm Ruler is in Dark Souls 3.

Yeah, against Yorm and then, of course, an Eldon Ring, yes, yeah. The Serpent Hunter, which works the same way. So the first time I played this, I ended up, I was not able to find the Storm Ruler. Oh, no way. I just used a bow, and it was like fine. Yeah, it is kind of fine, yeah, that's fair. Yeah. It's not like with Yorm where nothing touches him or I've seen people try to fight a Rikard without it.

And it is just, you can do it, but it's horrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. A lot of the challenge is it's less so in the bosses. And there are a few bosses that I found really fun. And I think you could definitely, like, put up there with some of the best Dark Souls one, even though they were still figuring out there, obviously. A lot is great. Fucking awesome.

Great boss. And probably, like, I would say more integral than Arturius for their eventual, the sword and shield boss that they would go to a lot of the future. A flame lurker who we brought up a great, awesome boss. Actually really like false idol. The man eaters would be good

if they didn't have the worst fucking AI I've ever seen. Yeah, they suck. Like the boss arena is cool. The man eater is a maddening fight, I feel like. It is like, I even like, I mean, like, I like the penetrator too.

Like, I think they have some like great, great bosses in that game. You did not like The Penetrator? I remember, no, I remember loving Penetrator on PS3, but this time I don't know if it was just more knowing what I was doing, or maybe I over-leveled, but I felt like I was also, I took special care to do almost every NPC quest, except for the Laotrix granddad, who I just pushed off to his death.

No, yeah, he doesn't, it's a bad quest. He just kills everyone. Yeah, I mean, like, you just like, yeah, I don't want to do that one. Yeah. So I had that A bullitarian Vietnam veteran basically helps you out And it makes it even easier I save scumbed

And I tried it just alone And it was also like Pretty fucking easy I mean they do I may have over leveled In some ways But I I get what you mean

Yeah But it can be He can be figured out for sure Yeah I just I never felt like I was in any real danger with him And I The first time I did it I buffed with the pine resume

And I I it just annihilated the health bar Yeah I think this My second playthrough is definitely way everybody was was that I will say With Demon Souls more than any of the other ones I've like played Like either like played more than once or at least like They like had an inkling to like start it up and like played for like five hours Like every demon souls I definitely feel like you solve

bosses can be solved a lot more easily than the other games after and there just aren't a lot of like alternative ways to do a lot of them and I just yeah I that leaves a lot of the challenge

to be left in navigating the levels themselves which can be kind of a mixed bag I mean from soft in these first two games in their modern catalog they did

With Demon Souls It is literally Literally just a case of It's Mario Yeah It's fucking Mario Running out Well running out of money

And time During the last like 20, 30% of the game In this game I don't know It's a different thing Because this was A boondoggle

When they When they started But For like 11 And 21 are pretty straightforward But have some interesting stuff

I feel like the strongest levels are three, four. Three undoubtedly, I feel like, is like, yeah, but four is good too. I actually liked the swamp in this one. It's not that bad. The swap had the best, like, I got the most sense for, like, the world and the people in it from there. Oh, yeah.

I mean, it does a huge amount of work, a valley defilement. It does a huge amount of work of, like, hey, like, there's, like, there are, like, demons are a more complex thing than just, yeah. But like just navigating the level I found so just time consuming in this weird way.

I'm embarrassed to say I did not, because in the Blue Point remake you can get a ring that makes it easier to navigate water and this time I died in the swamp

a couple times and it was because it looked like my character was dry heaving and I was, I wondered if it was due to poison effect. So I loaded it up on like the

Widows blossom or whatever the fuck it's spelled. And just I had like 30 on hand. I was just farming. And I was like, okay, I guess if I let poison take too long, my character vomits, until I realized it was when you try to roll in a certain depth of water,

your character makes a dry heaving motion. Oh, wow. You end up getting flattened by those big, those big featherless brick. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my God, that's very funny. So that, yeah. Damn.

I lost hours because of that. Like, just if you combine the farming I was doing. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, like, but that's what's great about Frumsoft is it you can eventually, like, pick up on what's happening. It doesn't telegraph everything. But yeah, you will, you will, like, straight up lose time to things. They are largely very intuitive games, but I'm glad that animation never showed up again because it does not. communicate a guy who's going, oh, I can't roll here. It looks like fucking dry heaved.

Like, that's not, if I was like, oh, I can't do a somersault to avoid damage, I wouldn't go, and I'm going to throw up. You know, when I think about this, when I think about... It's a bad, it's not intuitive at all. When I think about Frommsoft games in general, like, or at least like, yeah, like the modern Fromsoft games, I think of it as like going to a party and it's like you can kind of have like a conversation at a party that are like... like, you know, it's nice, pleasant, like, conversations,

Cabalum, you're just, you ask somebody about their brother. They ask you, like, you know, what you're doing next weekend. And, like, you feel good. You leave it with, like, feeling good. And that's, like, when I'm like, okay, I want to play, like, a rogue like, or I want to, like, play, like, you know, the God of War remake sequel. And then from Soft Game is, like, talking to somebody at a party where, like, they, like, look you right in the eyes while you're talking,

like, the whole time. and like when you say something like that you usually just sound smart and people move on, they go, oh, what do you mean by that? And like, it's not out of like malice. It's out of like, oh, you input something. And so I'm reacting to it. And I think about the FromSoft games as way

because it's like there's this like, if you look at a poison swamp and that looks really intimidating and vast, it's not like that it isn't. It just is. It is those things. It's, it's,

and you can't pause the game. And it's all very rewarding because of that. You're locked into this conversation with this guy. It's actually really, they're actually really interesting. Yeah. You're going to leave it richer. But like,

you are like also just fucking like, forced to contend with the like, oh, I have to like actually lock in and like pay attention to what is being said, what is being communicated. The game is like actually having a conversation with you. Like it's actually communicating to you.

Hey, like, you do you hear, dogs barking. I'm thinking about like in Bolotaria 1-2. It's like, did you hear dogs barking? Yeah, yeah. You keep hearing them barking. There's seven dogs back there. That's why you're hearing so many dogs barking. Like the game is not, it's not trying to trick you.

It is, of course, but it's like, also like, do you see like a shifty guy around a corner? You think that's going to be the only one? Like, it just, it keeps like, it's like, and it's like, this is like, it's like, oh, okay, I'm in for a different kind of night. If I'm okay with this kind of night where I have to actually have a real connection with a person, have a real connection with a game, it'll be okay. But if I'm not, and I just want to have a nothing conversation and then go home, these games, like, don't let you do that, you know?

I was trying to, like, think about this. I was like, why do I like these so much? It's like they force me to engage. I think that's a very good framework. And just going by this analogy, the time at, I spent my at the time girlfriend's birthday party arguing with her coworker about Syria for three hours. That was like what Lords of the Fall is. It was just shitty.

She was kind of mad at me that I just, I didn't talk to any of her. I was just, yeah, I was just yelling at this guy. Difficult for no reason. Like, you're just begging your head against the wall. Why won't you do the thing I need you to do? Why won't you just either shut up or agree with me? Those are your options. For her, it was like playing Lords of the Fallen.

just watching her, watching this co-worker, she probably didn't like very much in me. Like, we're screaming at each other about a Rania Kolokar. It was the true Lords of the Fall Out experience. I only did that once. I had that with a friend. We went to a bar once and, like, he was, I wasn't, like, introducing him to this other friend,

but she was just also there. And I was like, oh, like, you know, it's my friend. And, you know, she's Turkish. And he just immediately started, like, knew that what the thing to do to make me feel upset would be to like just yelling at this woman about how shitty turkey is and how it like sucks, like how it has a shit shit.

I hate it when people do that. And I mean like it was very funny because I was like I knew you knew to do that but like I was like could you not do that to this person? It was very funny but... I just have this thing about like Americans doing it. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, he was just being a shithead.

But you're right that like the game play of these games and like demon souls like where it struggles to be maybe as smooth or as intuitive and as maybe consistent as the later in the modern catalog the foundations that are there are so crucial which is like animation commitment dodge rolling parrying like all these things are there where like in everything else it's like you actually have to think about the like the actions of the enemies like it's like it's like it's like hey we're an action game but like There's almost like a meta thing of the developer is like, hey, I spent a lot of time on this enemy,

so I don't really want you to just tear through it. Like, I actually want you to like think about like how to approach it. And you kind of suck, by the way. You're like a not that good at fighting. That is something that I really enjoyed that again, you see this did not become as big of a theme in later games. And maybe you can attribute it to the archstone layout versus the more interconnected approach.

They went for most of those games. Though obviously none, None really following the exact Dark Souls 1 formula. But I liked how when you go to different, you go, you do one and one two, and it's just straightforward, like quasi-hollow sword and shield enemies. And obviously the phalanx is different. It's a puzzle boss.

But you have Tower Knight, I think one of the better puzzle bosses, but it's straightforward. Most people play like a knight or like just a strength or quality or. Yeah. I've never really met anyone who played a Dex DPS build in this game because there just aren't that many exciting options and you can use a katana to great effect as just a quality or even strength build. But immediately when you go to Stone Digger Tunnel,

you need to have like piercing or blood damage. Yes, yes, they really cared about weapon type. I thought that was really cool. And how, going back to how the leveling requirements weren't as strict with some things, how with a very low magic level, you would have enough magic to, like, you know, damage these guys in Stone Digger Tunnel who were also weak to magic. You go to the shrine of storms and, like, nothing, you have work,

so you have to go around and search for something. I thought that was so cool how, like, there are different damage types that have different effects in each world. And it just, there are individual enemies and mini-bosses and later games that do this, but it's never quite as dramatic as this. And the only game that I feel like, the only souls like, like really, that I feel like went as far as Demon Souls did with this, and I think actually improved on the formula would be what I think is the best ever souls like in Lies of P.

Camus said the same thing about Lies of P. So I have not played it. I've watched, I think Iron Pineapple did like a video on it. And I like watched the whole thing. I was like, this looks awesome. And I just have not played it. But I have heard that too because of like the different weapon types and like the different like elemental things that are going on in it. That does sound really cool. It's obviously like, I think the best way to describe the combat is like a middle point

between Sekaro and Bloodborn but it's the closest thing to, the feeling that you get from Sekiro is so unique, the feeling of satisfaction, from pulling off paris from the death blow, the sound design is so good, it's so satisfying.

This is the only thing that has given me that same, like, oh my God, I figured out the rhythm of this guy feeling. I don't like a lot of even the acclaimsoles. Like I thought that, Berserker the first Khazar or whatever the fuck that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what that was.

One of the worst games I've paid real money for. I hate everyone who wrecked. I really think it was like an anti-woke thing. That's why people pretended to like it. I think that is what was happening with that one. I think it was part of the like Wukong anti-Wo-W. Like there was like a, like a, I feel like a seven-month period of time. Maybe it wasn't in that time.

But like, they were trying to do like difficulty discourse again. And it was just stupid. Who cares? Which, but by the way, this, like, incredibly boring, overdone joke about games journalist. IGN, they had guides up for Liza P, the Liza P fucking DLC, which was very overtuned, not in a terrible way,

but, like, very difficult, especially on, like, a new game cycle, and Shadow of the Earth Tree, which you could say the same thing about. They had it up, like, the same day. Like, you, I'm sure you can find, like, a video, whoever being, like, bad at games, but, like... Yeah. I don't know what to tell you. There are people who are bad at games, but, like,

they clearly have enough people who know what they're doing to, like, make a fucking guide for these very difficult DLCs. It's just, I don't... I don't even know why it, like, why a game reviewer is important. I mean, yeah, it's so... Like, I've never, like, I've never, like, I've never not bought something or bought something because of a game reviewer. Getting through a whole game is not easy, and game reviewers do have to do it.

and like they have to get through the whole game. Yeah. It's not whatever. It's just, it's dumb as shit. And it's so dumb how it became a woke thing. But going back to that period, that very funny period, like it was like late Brandon to the start of Trump. Right. Do you remember when the Lords of Poland developer, just this stupid Polack?

He posted one of the worst, there's a lot of pandering on Twitter, but this was one of the worst instances of it I've ever seen. He posted a poll and he pinned it. And he said, do you think that Lords of Fallen too should use DEI in development? And obviously, like, all these shitheads. I do remember this, yes, yes. No, no, don't put DEI in Lords of Poland. Don't do it, no! No!

He was like, okay. The Polish mind, which is the only thing that could come up with something like Lords of the Fallon. Like, that's the thing, is they're, like, worried about the integrity of that. What would that even look like if they put DEI? It like would Lizzo help you? Like what what how are you even like engaging with DEI in Poland? What is DEI in Poland? Like oh Hungarian.

Hungarians need more than onions to survive. It made me so mad not because like I think the D like you need DEI to make games. But just like it is the most, it's literally like one of my other least favorite type of internet comment. that I'm ashamed to say I did when I was 11, where you post on a video of a movie you like or something, and you go, I'm only nine and all my friends make fun of me for liking this movie, but I like it. Do you think it's good?

Right. What do you think, asshole? Yeah. I mean, it is in that same vein. And it's funny because it's like, oh, I mean, that's always, and I'm sure you'll encounter this as you continue doing these, which is the, like, the culture around Souls games. Like, you can touch on it, since we're here for a second.

it is like, it's either you're kind of like, you know, a giant, I mean, you're like a dork or like, you know, the smartest trans woman in your hemisphere. Or you're like something that I even find hard to, like, I don't know, my friends who played these games, like, and we're like more, we're more advanced American gamers. Like, they're all, like, you know, we're all, they're still my friends from high school because, like, you know, we, we all have similar feelings and opinions on things, but it's also like they're not, they're not activated and on the computer. What I'm trying to say is like, there is a demographic of just like ape

that plays these games and thinks that that has any bearing on their spirit. And it's really fucking weird to me because it's like these are, it's not weird to me that like I think art and like, I think these games are art, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, absolutely, like, can be indicative or correlative to, like, you know, your own personal character or whatever. But I guess it's like just a gamer demographic and it's just people, I feel like it's people, it's a group of people who just latch on to something to get excited about and angry about. And they'll choose the Souls games and the Fromsoft games because that is a vehicle for that rage in that moment. but they would just as easily choose, you know, a different sub-genre of games,

or they'll turn their anger or ire or, you know, a schattenfreudean joy at a different genre, if it were to present itself, if that makes sense. I think I know exactly what you mean. And the thing that is so funny about it to me is, like, the self-congratulatory aspect towards playing a game that's, like, harder than, like, Assassin's Creed Vol-Hala. And it's so funny because,

like, it briefly got turned into like a woke anti-wise thing. Thankfully, like that's, people are like, thankfully, like, thankfully, like, too embarrassed to do that now. At least I hope. But their attitude about playing these games, it was the same as people who, like, watched the net, where it's like, well, it wasn't easy to do. But, like, you know, I'm glad I did it because it's,

I know so much more now. And it's like, it may be even sillier because it's like, well Lisa Nanette is like At least the net is loudly like pedagogical right Like you know Yeah Like you know

At least it's like Okay She does want you to hang your hat On the fact that you watch this Like And Miyazaki talks openly about like He wanted people to have a sense of accomplishment But I don't think he

It definitely wasn't a like Moral imperative that you That you feel accomplished That wasn't the you know Undergirding it Where Nanette it was like You're gonna leave this and you're better You're a better guy

Yeah I think you would be horrified if you thought people were like using it as a standard for like any actual like accomplishment, which is what people were doing. Yes, a hundred percent. No, yeah. It's people disagree with me about Sekaro on this point. But I think, look, you can play Eldon Ring as like a test of reflexes. Doing it without any of the numerous things that make the game much easier is the way to do that. And it is like very fun when you like, you know, take down Consort Redon without any of that when you beat Millennia.

But at the same time, for the most part, for the vast majority of titles, and I would include Sekaro in this, it is just about like figuring out the most optimal way to do this. Yes. In the same way that like, you know, Counterstrike is not, it's not a test of reflexes unless you're at the highest level of it. Yeah, 100%. It's about like knowing the map and angles and prefires and. timing and figuring out how people think. Using it as like a test of your hand-eye coordination, which is, I think this is,

Dick Magic said this, where he said, video games are great because they help with your hand-eye coordination, which helps you be better at playing video games. I mean, it just kind of ends there. It's like, you're not going to, I mean, I would like to see the, like, sort of slumdog millionaire movie where, like, because of, like, my relationship to, because I did a no-hit run of all of like

Wu-Kong like I'm now able to I don't know fall in love and or make money but it's like this is not what happens and so it is weird to do that I mean like this is like ink has been spilled but I think it is just worth mentioning that like because we're on that topic that like while difficulty and adversity seems crucial

to like these games like I think similarly to how we began this talking about how it's like there's a lot of love about people in these games. It makes me feel like the rest of the attitude that these people inhabit is like antithetical to that. So this game starts off pretty similar to other FromSoft games. You get a FMV pre-rendered cutscene

explaining like the basics of the world. You know, just for people who don't know, the world was great, shitty, middle period monarchy. and then a bunch of demons and fog came because of magicians, as we've explained. We see a pretty jaunty animation of like your classic generic D&D party, basically, fighting against, you know, these sort of like a thrall demon-looking guys. One of them dies, that's you.

And it brings you into the tutorial. basic from soft fare of like, you know, attack, blah, blah, blah. It ends with a boss who, what, which what? I've heard, it's... It's a vanguard. Yeah, it's a vanguard. Yeah, it's a vanguard. Yeah.

Vanguard demon. And he moves exactly like the same tutorial boss from Dark Souls 1 and the Urtree avatars from Elding. Correct. Yeah, it's the same, I think, skeleton like, for that, for those ones, yeah. If you beat this boss, you do get the Vanguard Demon Soul, which can make a pretty good strength weapon, sort of a similar deal as it is in Dark Souls 1. But you also, you immediately face a mid-late-game boss

who instantly kills you, which I always found really funny. That's awesome. It's so cool. I've never beaten the Vanguard Demon in any time I've done the opening. I've gotten close, but, like, I was like, what happens if you beat him in learning that you just, like, can get like additional like it's like okay all right like you did that let's let's see what else you can do

and it's like you're just gonna die is fucking sweet yeah it's it's it's very I really like that um interestingly though your first new game that is the only time you can ever try to do that because any new game plus you just you skip a tutorial obviously they let you they let you give it a first shot in every other game in this series but uh anyhow and secro i think is it might be the only one where you don't get anything for it.

You get an extra cutscene if you beat Genichiro. Yeah, it's not worth it, I don't think, but, you know, it's up to you. Anyhow, you get sent to the Nexus in soul form, and soul form is another interesting idea, which they only ever really repeated in Dark Souls 2 with Dark Souls 2's Halloween mechanic, where you instantly, you are ethereal, your skin is better, but there are tradeoffs and everything in life, you have half your health. It's amazing. I think it's like my favorite thing ever, to be honest.

I fucking love soul form. I really like it. Yeah. When I first played it, I was like, oh, I get why people hate this, but like, I mean, you just go, okay, half my health is my health. That's what you do. And, and, and, and just move on. And now you're in, now it's like a, it's such a cool drawing attention to the gameness of it. and then you, and then it's harder and you move on.

I think it's really neat. I like it a lot better than what they did at Dark Souls 2. But just like in Dark Souls 2, there is a cling ring. You'll only have two ring spots. And to spend half of them on something that, you know, admittedly is pretty strong. It gives you, you have like 75% of the hell. Yeah, it's pretty important to get the cling ring.

It's like pretty important to have that equipped basically all the time. Yeah, I would say. Yeah. And, you know, in these games where healing, and health do represent the amount of tries you have to learn something. It is pretty crucial. But the other thing I like about being in human form, and there are only two ways to get the human form.

One is to beat a boss, a demon, which restores you to human, and the other is to get the eyes of ephemeral stone, which there are kind of a lot of, but they're a finite resource. And just to make things to add this many more variables, dying in human form in any world brings down that world tendency. Yes, it's so cool. World tendency is something.

I really like the idea, though. I wish there were more avenues to adjust it that weren't so reliant on online play. You can, of course, with Demon Solz and RPCS3, they've actually figured out a way to automate some of the changes. So even if there's no one online, you can change some things. But character tendency is one of those things that's very tough. when there aren't people online.

But I do like the idea a lot. And to patches, I think you explained that, like, black makes it more difficult. You die easier, but enemies will, you'll get more souls and they'll drop rarer stuff. There are NPCs that only show up. So cool. In either highest form of the tendencies, tendencies changed by, like, set amounts per action. Like, killing a boss moves it up towards white by, about 30 and 180 is when it becomes either fully white or fully black.

I ended up liking it a lot because I do like backtracking and evolution of levels. Though, again, I do wish that there were more avenues to do it beyond just online play. I had the most problems with character tendency because, of course, your reward for completing this game is a weapon that it's damage. is dependent on your character's tendency. Yes. And you can kind of be stuck for a little while unless you either go online or really grind through some stuff

to get it in either direction. Killing NPCs, not black phantoms, but actual NPCs, people in human form in your world, always brings down character tendency towards black and world tendency. And this is one thing that pisses me off because there are two NPCs that are, assuredly awful people.

One is a terrible murderer and the other is just this asshole who wants a sword wants a katana that damages you for some reason. If you talk to him when you have it in your inventory, he just attacks you. You can't get a knock for killing.

Yeah, you get a knock for killing you. The way to get around the Lautrek guy who we'll get through later on is just to push him off a ledge. That validates. That's so funny. But if you actually If aggrove people, you're already, if you aggro someone and they die, you're pot committed.

But anyhow, you meet the leveling lady that is in every FromSoft game. A very pretty brunette who is barefoot, as is the in-house style. Yes, sir. She has two gross wax things over her eyes. That's fine. We can work around that, yeah. That's, yeah, that's just a fashion choice. Yep.

But, yeah, no, this is the first ever FromSoft blind barefoot leveling lady. the maiden in black You meet the rapacious blacksmith Who I always thought the blacksmith is funny He's so greedy But it's like what can you buy in here? He sucks He's such an asshole

Baldwin is like so nasty to you Hmm You knew here Do you have him of services That ends Baldwin Just an ordinary blacksmith He is And like he doesn't

He, oh my God. And he's like, he's like, I rely on you for your souls. Like, you better come back alive. And you're like, anything else? Like, is there anybody else here who can help you? Like, you have, he has nothing else going on. He rocks. He's so cool.

Later on, you mean it even meaner back, Blacksmith? It's kind of like, this is a problem with bike repair shots. Every bike repairman I've ever met has been a huge asshole. And you leave one thinking you'll find a nicer one. No, he's an even bigger dick. Hmm. I haven't seen you around these parts. What does it matter?

You need a blacksmith. Show me some coin. If not, head straight for the door. And it's funny because the blacksmiths after this are, all the, like, default ones have much more of a, like, sort of, like, fatherly, paternal, congenial character. And then except for an Eldon Ring where he's just slave, he's just a big fucking slave.

but like it's pretty cool. A slave with a heart of gold. Yes, that's true. Yeah, even though, you know, it's bad to do that, morally bad to have that as a job. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I disagree. participating in an exploitive system. Yeah, he's like kind of, he's pretty bad, yeah.

It's a bad guy. But there's Stockpile Thomas, who we mentioned, the sort of emotional manipulator of the Nexus. And another, another from Soft, there's only like a few games where they don't have a guy literally named the Crest Fawin Warrior or Crest Fall and Whatever. The Crest Follin Warrior who is just like a guy who sucks and eventually hates himself so much that he goes insane and attacks him.

Yeah, he's just a guy who like, if you turn off the game, if you stop playing, you become him, you know? That's what happens. Oh, yeah, yeah. The first area you go to is the Gates of Bullittaria, which is the outer walls and the sort of high wall of the castle of Voluntaria.

This is, as we discussed, it is similar to undead settlement in Dark Souls 1, the High Wall of Lothrick and Dark Souls 3. I think it's close to Stormvale in a lot of ways too. Like, it's like this sort of... Oh, yeah, yeah. It's kind of a mini version of Stormvale

where you have to go around... You basically discover the worst shortcut of all time, but like you have to in order to like go through... through the main gate. And then, like, Stormvale does the main gate. And it's like, oh, you wanted the main gate like we had in Demon Souls? Well, it's like this and you're getting bombarded.

I always thought that was like a neat, like design echo. But like, yeah, I think it's similar. Like it looks really similar to Stormvale, like plays really similar. It's as if you only have to go around, though. So similar to those levels, there is some interesting stuff with verticality that we'll get to as we go. but the enemies in this level are, like 60% of the guys you fight are just like, they're like hollows basically.

They're really fucked up. But then there are just like regular soldiers who are like working with these guys, which is in the Vermacht, that's probably how the Germans felt when they started drafting the Aus division. That's how they looked at like Hungarians. Probably almost identical, actually, I would say.

Just because of the, also the, Like the capacity of these like regular guys is is similarly limited. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's very funny. And there's, in this first part, there you'll be one night with glowing blue eyes and one with glowing red eyes. The guy with red eyes can be kind of a bitch in your first ever new game to fight. He really, there is a way to also kill him by pushing him off a ledge, though it doesn't affect tendency in any event. But this first part leading up to where you get to the phalanx, which is the very first boss, unique boss in the game that isn't just like a Vanguard demon,

which becomes a repeated mini-boss later on. It actually surprised me a lot going back to it because there's a lot of interactivity that I just didn't really, didn't really register with me the first time I played this on PS5. Like, for instance, when you unlock the worst shortcut ever, which, It is the worst shortcut ever. Your grand reward for trudging through this level is you get to crawl up a tower having all these Hungarians run at you amidst explosive barrels. Yeah, it's their first time using explosives, these Hungarians.

And they're blowing themselves up and you. And it's like it is obviously like a faster shortcut, but it is like marginally so, like in relative to the work you put into unlocking it and it becomes the runback becomes like at least like for until you unlock the um obviously the main boss it becomes like fuck i have to go up this tower again uh this is a nightmare yeah i was really surprised by yeah like how when you go in that tower you you there's a balcony and you can go out and you can actually uh swing your sword at these two chains and it drops a corpse that's being strung up and you can go and you pick up i think it's a ring and uh pretty jaunty

set of armor. Yeah, I think it's like a wanderer's armor, if I remember, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Later on, you obviously get introduced to bolters that get rolled down sets of stairs very early, much earlier than you do in some other games.

So not as early as in Dark Souls 1. But very soon after that, you encounter a sort of hilly area with a bunch of Austavision guys. And there are a bunch of boulders in, like, I don't know what I would call it, like a boulder cabinet that's being held up by like a plink of wood. If you hit it with a bow and arrow,

the boulders just let loose and they run over all these guys and kill them. It's very fun. But yeah, that was a pleasant surprise. And I thought the verticality of this was very interesting. Yeah, lots of like going upstairs and seeing enemies before you can approach them, realizing you can't hit certain ones because of where they're located. Yeah, they do a really good job, I think, of that kind of placement. and just getting you a sense of that there are certain things you're going to be able to do.

There are natural barriers that come with your particular skill set as this sort of a very meek, regular action character. I think they do a really good job of that. Very early on before you ever fight this first boss, you meet your first NPC outside of the Nexus, which is Estrava of Bolotaria. who is, he's a knight, great-looking suit of armor, but he is just, he's always in a bad situation. He is a real dumb-d-d-d-d-d-d. He's like prototypical, just like,

kind of like a Mr. Magoo-style character where he just, but what if Mr. Magoo, like, woke up and then realized he had fucked up a bunch and then doesn't get to reap any of the benefits of it? Yeah. And then like when you ever You free him from his circumstances He does never he always wanders in the direction you don't want to

Like he's not going to help you And he continues to wander him missing around Yeah until the end I guess I should say It's very easy to accidentally hit him Oh my God When you're fighting enemies with him too Another interesting thing about the way that you traverse the world in this game The way that you get to Estrava

Who when you first meet him is over he's on a sort of balcony Overlooking a bunch of like screaming thralls. And you drop down, you know, you smack a piece of wood and go through the barrier. Right. But you, there's a ledge,

and you, if you push your left analog stick forward, your character crawls up on it, which I thought was very interesting. They don't repeat this. No, it's a very, very limited mechanic. It's really weird to, like, introduce it that way. And then, like, they don't really, it doesn't come up too much in the game,

but they like introduce it like, yeah, you're going to climb ledges. This is going to happen to you in this game. We're in the first level right now. So you know what we're trying to say is we're going to repeat these design elements. And then they don't totally. It's so weird. It's so weird. And it makes you realize like why they did traversal the way they did in other games.

Because it's so there's no rhyme or reason to it. There's a lot of ledges you can are in fact and are in fact supposed to climb up to progress the game. especially in the final archstone you get to before in Swampistaro and there is a very harrowing bit of this in Tower of Bolotaria but it's just there's nothing demarcating when you can do this and when you can't

and it doesn't make a lot of sense there's a lot of very ledges that seem a lot smaller than the ones you can step over that you cannot and ones that seem too big to do it and you're supposed to. But that is something I'm glad they did it away with. Yeah, same. As much as we make fun of sign posting in games,

that is kind of better than just whatever this is. Yeah. But it's not a big enough part of a game to really be used knock against it. But anyway, you unlock another shortcut that is fewer of these, like, screaming thralls experimenting with explosives for the first time ever regarding it. But there are these, a very strong, striking thing, if this is your first time playing this. These guys who are just blobs with shields and spears

that come out of them. So, so inspiring, honestly. I always thought about, like, what does it feel like to hit your sword into these guys? First of all, swing, let me tell you, sores are heavier than you think. So it's already, you know, it's already like, the problem, and I don't know, because I haven't, I've been, I've been good. and it's probably already hard to like cut through flesh but like the going through that sludge

always just you just are like this seems I think the game does do a good job of being like yeah there's a shield in front of like sludge so this is going to be this is not going to be fun to cut through at all and it like again this is the game I feel like communicating stuff and just and owning that communication where other games will be like

look how badass this guy is you're about to like turn him into dust and like why did you even care about that this guy was badass? The game communicates very strongly that if you have a blob of sludge and you put a shield over it, swinging your sword through, it's going to suck, and it does. This ends up being the first boss. It's just like a few dozen of these guys glommed together

and talk about great communication through visuals. My first reaction towards seeing this was that I wanted to light it on fire. And luckily, you picked it. up a bunch of fire bombs through the level. The way to actually, you know, you can bang your head against the wall and you can do this without either weapon, weapon, grease,

or fire bombs, but you'll have a much easier go of things, yeah, throwing fire bombs at it, breaking away the outer level and then just hitting it. This is, Phelix demon. Pretty easy, boss, yeah. Yeah, what did you make of,

yeah, you know, you go into human form, you're able to level up now, you go back to the nexus and you have to talk to a wise baby before you can do everything else. The monumentals are really interesting it's like a whole, I think

it's like still, it was like this time I was playing it like I think I didn't think about it as much but it is like so fucking weird that there's just a, I mean I guess they're I guess they're just a bunch of dead like kids like hanging

out and then there's or like sleeping or whatever, and then there's just one who's like kind of awake, and he's very certain about everything. He lor dumps on you. We have long awaited you, slayer of demons. I am one of the monumentals. We preserve the fabric of reality.

You get to the pre-rent, like the, the FMV just like starts, and you're suddenly told kind of what you already knew that you had to do. And this time I also said, know to him when he asked, hey, will you do this? Oh, I did that too. Yeah, yeah. I loved how grim and, like, snide he was immediately.

Yes, I see. That is unfortunate. You should know that you will be imprisoned in the Nexus forever. Just like the poor candle maiden. He was just like, oh, well, we're all going to die anyway if you don't do the thing I need you to do. So you're like, oh, okay, you're not that, like, you're supposed to be. this wise baby that like

can control this thing and you the first the first time somebody tells you know you're immediately like yeah well I didn't really want you anyway bitch like that was and I was like oh okay like that's like I guess that like that to me like cast more doubt

on the monumentals interpretation of like what causes the old one than it did in my previous play through I like this setup of not being able to level up until you do this and of course And then like having to climb the whole fucking thing to find it. Yeah, it's very strange.

Well, I really like that because it does actually give you a sense of accomplishment and like real progression. And it does, for me at least, who like I had played this game before and I had a similar opinion from that PS5 remake of like, you know, this is a very good game. But I'm not going to go back to this like I have with all the other games. but it did immediately wrap me back in, which is impressive. So I guess this is, this is the first time you talk to the Monumental, this is a good,

I want to explain what I mean by what I say when I say that the story and the world did not really enrapture me in the same way that the other games did. This is why I think, because, yeah, definitely there's some great characterization

with the Monumentals, and the voice acting in general in this game is great. FromSoft is very well known for using a lot of classically trained. I think it's West End is the British equivalent of Broadway. West End stage actors who deliver incredible performances. You get these guys with incredible melodic accents, and you get these characters who have 30 seconds of speaking time the entire series, but you never forget them.

like Sister Freya's bodyguard and Dark Soul 3, one of my favorite. I can't wait to talk about him. It says from now. But the problem is, so in all these other games, I like that we're not told everything, but through playing the game,

you learn enough to figure out, okay, this is what is motivating the forces that want me to make this one binary choice, and this is what is motivating the forces that want me to make this other binary choices. choice. And obviously both are like kind of bad and exploitative. Yeah, sure. But you can, like in Dark Souls, you can figure out why the gods want to extend the age of light and why the, you know, dark is less articulated and more uncertain and there's conflicting information about it. But you can

figure out why the forces of Dark want that and how it's aligned with humanity. In Eldon Ring, it's very, everything is spelled out for you much more than Dark Souls. But it is, essentially about creating the laws which govern reality. In Demon Souls, I don't think they needed to articulate the binary choice of the Monumentals want you to make that much. It makes sense. But like what is,

they're obviously aiming for some ambiguity with Maiden Estria, who, an instance of someone who, I think people overrate the story and characterization, of this game because that performance and that characterization with her and Carl Vindelan is so good but they never explain like

okay well what are demons then the game basically tries to say that demons it seems like to me are like projections of like they both come from the fog right but they also can be like literal projections of something that people worship right like the shadow men worship the storm god so when it shows up

and you find out that the like Like a Japanese only, yeah. Yes, exactly. And you find out that the like fucking storm weapon like is like older and like was used before. And so because there was like a first cataclysm, right? There was like a first cat. This is like the second. So you get the sense of like, okay, there's this history here of people's like souls or their minds or something being able to create demons.

And then the demons also like take souls to for their own like their hunger for it. But then also the fog itself can also create demons. And so it's a little bit like ambiguous as far as like how demons are like what to your point like what they actually are. They seem to be able to manifest though just thought at least seems to be a part of it. Like and like the fog seems to be, you know, it's at least like instigated by a lot supposedly right. Like wanting power. Right. So there's like, okay, there's something with like and then you look at the world tend to.

and that being influenced by actions. And it's like, okay, there's something like seeming being kind of thing going on here where like your actions and your thoughts can like govern the way the world is shaped. But it is all very like ambiguous and you aren't left with as clear a reason why you would want anything besides to put the old one back to sleep, right? Like I just, yeah, no. I don't need like the entire history of the demons and like I don't need like a scene where they, they're like, we're not so different.

Like, just can they have, like, any advocate besides just, like, the fat officials? Like, why, why couldn't Maiden Estria make some case for it, like, cost us? She's so interesting, yeah. You're so, it's so true. She has, like, a relationship with the old one that feels real and, like, intimate and strange. Yeah. Dear God. Have mercy.

Is not your abandonment of us punishment enough? How long must we weather? this cruel fate. Estria just seems like she cares about the people who are, like, she's like, these people deserve to be treated right too. And I don't, it's like, I don't really

get why, except like, that, like, I guess if demons are born from like people, then maybe there's that element of it, right? Like, I don't know. What do you think? That's the problem. I don't really know. I don't know.

I don't know. what she's saying because like the most direct interpretation is like okay demons are still like living beings and they're often created by like the neglect of the church that that is like the most popular interpretation I see on you on uh YouTube and shit but again there's just like not a lot to go off of yeah the church is also weird because it's like the the mages think that like the god is actually the the old one yeah right like like Like, Freak always talks about that. And so you're like, okay, if that's what the church is doing, then the church is ignoring people.

And that's what becomes demons. But demons are, yeah, yeah, I get why it's why you're, like, I'm confused. I get why I'm confused, basically, is what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like a terrible story, but it's just like, yeah, I would have. it would not have killed them to, like, give us a little more. I'll admit that, like, I definitely, like, in contrast to you,

I definitely felt like I didn't, I think I went right for the metaphysical with this one, which is definitely like, I went a little, like, philosophy 101 and kind of out the gate. And I think that made all of it, like, go down a lot smoother for me, where I felt like there was kind of immediately, like, a, like, metaphysical battle for, for meaning in the world. And, like, I was very, obviously, I was, like, thinking a lot about world tendency. And that made the story and, like,

its architecture feel to me, like, just set dressing for ideas, which to the strength of, like, the later from soft games, especially, like, the characterization of folks in those games and, like, how strong they are, like, far stronger than, to your point,

stockpile Thomas. Like, yeah, you do lose that, right? You do lose that. But I think I was so down for, like, yeah, like, this is kind of just about, like, what you are able to do in your capacity and like we're going to like mechanically

reinforce your decisions in a way that is so unique. I guess I was not even thinking like yeah me in Australia she's just yeah she's like the good church lady you know it's like what my I was like moving on and you're right that like it's like

it does leave something to be desired. I should engage with it more I've engaged with like the lore or any of it like the least out of any of these games because it's just it's interested in me the least but I still come back to this fundamental problem of like there's no identifiable motivations for the demons

other than like we want to be bad and make the world foggy and eat people yeah and arguably there aren't really any motivations for anyone else either and it's hard for me to like get any to want to read anything deeper into to it if there aren't even like surface level motivations. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, there's so much less on the surface at least. And even when you dig deeper, at least for me, than with like Dark Souls. Like Dark Souls has so many, it's not the most complex thing in the world, this soul assembly line system that the gods want. Sure. But just by giving them basic motivations that you can articulate and there are some moving parts of them, you could do this incredibly interesting stuff like how.

you know, the prophecy of the undead, the first time you hear it, it's they, they communicated to you in medieval times language. And then when you actually go back to the time that, you know, this prophecy was supposedly delivered onto the gods. And you talk to people back then, they just speak normally. Right. You realize, like, oh, someone's fucking yank in my chain here. The sense of history is, it's very rudimentary in demon souls. It's very single-threaded. I mean, like, the reason why, like, the prison of hope or, like, Lahtria, right, is, like, the most interesting is because there's enough to hold on to from a, like, you know, human-driven action and, like, you know, the kind of logic and bureaucracy and, like, you know, systems that arrive from that.

And then you can kind of, like, there's so much that you can, like, understand and can hold on to from that where everything else, feels like you get the sense that like oh like you know it's like oh maybe the flame lurker was you know uh you know uh big am or whatever and like oh maybe like the um the you know in the storm uh the old hero was someone who like

probably tried to like defeat the um old one and like but like there isn't the same like dark souls is just like littered with like sons and daughters and motivations across those groups and motivations across the like, not just within those groups, but within groups that are like,

you only get to know until later. And Demon Souls is much more like single-threaded and motivations that allow you to get invested in doing something on behalf of someone. Sense of history, I think it's the best way to put it. I always had this feeling, and I know this isn't the case, but I always felt like Latria was started like 20 years ago.

That's always how it felt to me. Because it's, okay, so the guy before Alant, he lives like in his same apartment complex, basically. Yeah, right. He's just next door. Alat is like, Alad is like, I should get rid of that guy who has that sword that can kill me. But I'll get around. I mean, to your point about the development history earlier, right? Like, it's so strung.

It's these six worlds with these distinct tones. and like the monumentals kind of handwave like, yeah, we made the archstones so that they could communicate with each other. And it's like, why? Yeah. Well, what do they have to do with each other? And it's like, not much, it seems like.

And that, you know, it's sort of this like, you know, it's much more like of like a fairy tale slash video, you know, I was thinking like, like Miyazaki, like he starts with this sort of like, obviously it's like, you know, great level design, Metroidvania-esque. in Demon Souls. It's not really there yet, right?

It's not like a large enough interconnected. It's pretty like, you go, it's not even really metrovenia ask. It's kind of like original Castlevania,

honestly. Before a Symphony of the Night where it's just one one, one two, two one. There's some different paths you can take, but it's pretty straightforward. Then he kind of like does Dark Souls

and like in like, masters three-dimensional Metroidvania. And then I would say like, Shadow of the Earth. Urtree. I mean, like, obviously it's like Sekiro, he kind of like expands on verticality in that. And then by Shadow of the Urtree, he invented like verticality open world. And it's insane. And there's nothing ever like done like it. And I think to some extent like there's a real like mapping of like the complexity of the motivations and characters along with that as you got used to probably the

practical aspects of developing a game and using the same system. It's like, all right, well, we're better at making the game so we can have more of it reflect more interesting level design choices and have it reflect more interesting this and that you know but then i i still think the network thing is is the innovation of demon souls but like you're right that like it is so so like it is like pretty like straightforward and then and and and somewhat lacking in like the motivations that you can have fun with i yeah i don't know again like you have to you cannot like greed this game like it had a full development cycle. No.

The thing that we got was the thing that was being planned all along because that isn't the case. Again, it's miraculous something this good was made out of something that fucked up. Like the thing they were making was like probably going to be like

a more punishing Lords of the Fallen. They made something with like this much of the modern from identity is incredible. It's amazing, yeah. My biggest criticisms are just like these things that aren't really gameplay related or level design.

So next thing I did, I immediately went Lord's Path and Tower Knight. Yep. On your way to the Lord's Path, you see two dragons who are... It's kind of cute the way that they're sleeping... They're not sleeping together in that way. Right now. But they're just like curled up like two cats.

I always found it very cute. Yeah, it's cute. But you... When you go, out, you cross his giant bridge, the red dragon, he eventually comes out and, like, kills all these

guys who you can kill him two hits anyway. And you're like, thanks, pal. But you, if you weren't so inclined, you can have the worst boss fight ever with him. By waiting for him to fly down on the bridge and shooting him with a bone arrow for approximately

17 hours, which I do every single time. So I guess it's really my fault. But you get, You get a, I mean, you get a lot of levels for doing this. This is probably why I was so over-leveled. But, um... Yeah, that'll help.

This is, you brought up the barking dogs earlier. This is the part of the game with, with said dogs. Yes. The infamous dogs of FromSoft. Uh, I think the most punishing dogs in all of gaming. The only dogs I hate more are the Gitmo dogs in Splinter Cell, uh, blacklist. But, uh, who, the game ends if you even, shoot them with a drank dart.

That's, if I recall. I didn't not play that. That sounds really stupid. You should be able to kill dogs. No offense. Splinter Cell, uh, it's the worst for, in all the ways that, uh, ground zero is like the most amazing depiction of Gitmo in any game that could ever exist. Fluttercell Blacklist is the worst one.

It's bad in ways that I didn't know anything could be bad. But, uh, anyhow, this is, there, there's less, um, verticality in, uh, one, to, but there is, I think the introduction of like these level hazards, like the dragon is cool, the dogs, Estrava comes back and walks away like an idiot again. But you, the second boss of the game for most people in Tower Night, I really, really enjoy this boss. And it is a style of, I don't think it's fair to call it entirely a puzzle boss, but. Now, if you have magic, if you have magic, he can be.

kind of more straight up. You still have to get around the shield, but like it could be way more straight up. Anyone who has played the one Reborn in Bloodborn? Yes. Very similar setup of there being a very high, very high railing up a few stories

where a bunch of ranged enemies are. And you, it's easy to climb up the stairs and take these guys out, though you get a trophy if you just take him out normally, take up the tower nine normally. Which if you have the thief ring is not that hard. No, it's not. Because you just have to go to the back of the arena and they won't shoot you. But anyway, the only way to really get this guy is to hit him in the ankles so he

falls on his ass and you get his weak point in his head. And let this be a lesson that he manlets out there. This is the way to beat a really tall guy. Yes. This is the only boss I needed to retry. I died. I got back into a corner. Yeah, he's someone who's a little bit, you you can kind of find yourself getting frustrated by him i think that i think there's a little bit of a rope a dope thing i felt like that on my second play through where i was like i'm just going to cruise through you know bala taria's one one and two and then just like go start upgrading stuff and then i got to the tower night and i was like oh yeah huh like i was i forgot that like i could get impatient and then just like find myself fucked by i would say maybe some unforgiving

hitboxes, but even that I think is I think that's I think it's a little bit of cope. Like I could have just like been more patient, kept my distance, and thought about how to approach him. I totally agree.

I think he's like, is like surprisingly tough and like tough but fair, you know, really though. Yeah. I really like this boss a lot. And I, they do a lot of spectacle bosses later on in their franchises.

and I would like to see this style of thing where you hit someone in the ankle and make them fall down. I don't know why. It was just very enjoyable for me to do. Anyhow, for most people at least, most people will, one of these days I'm going to try taking on Penetrator

immediately after, but I just feel like one three would be so punishing when you're like level 28. Yeah, I don't even bother. I'm too much of a pussy. I'm like, I got to just, I'm going to go, I'm going to go upgrade my weapons. That's what I do. Yeah, yeah, that's, for most people, most people will go to Stone Tunnel, which we alluded to it earlier.

The enemies are, they are Mancunian mine workers, and you are Margaret Thatcher, you are killing them. We talked about it earlier, but, yeah, these guys, if you swing, like, even a Claymore, which is, I use the Claymore, throughout this entire game. I had some fun with some other stuff. The katanas are quite fun, but the Claymore really just wrecked everything. But it will not wreck these guys who, due to their northern heritage

and working in the dusty old mines, they're rock guys. So you have to hit them with like a pickax, a blunt instrument, or magic, which is what Margaret Thatcher had. She had white girl magic. Yeah. I really like, I mean,

I like all of World 2. I think it's great. Yeah, I think it's really, really strong. Atmospheric is really strong. I love that it like forces you to use like piercing or blunt weapons. I also like love the bosses in World 2. I love the spider. I don't know how you feel about the spider,

but I really love the spider. I found the spider really fun. Yeah, I think it's a fun fight. I also like the way that light, the what light? in these games and in World 2 is really cool. Like it's just the glow and the haze while you're in the mind. There's something really eerie

and like fun about it for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Really it shows how important art direction is in the game. Oh my God. Because I remember thinking this was kind of dull in the PS5 bringing in it. It is and it is. And it's too specific. It's too

articulated. And then in like the original. Yeah. It's like there's this glow. There are these glows and this like, you know, the slight light around you become so much more interesting. It's like when you're like kind of like dropping, we're doing like kind of the patented FromSoft drop down those rickety bridges. And you kind of like, like I think it was just like a very good example of like,

like they brought back the verticality and then they added like this light element to it. I think it was really, really cool. And, you know, just for people who don't know, this is a pretty well-known fact about the Demon Soul's remake, but they did not, they really did not change any of the gameplay, any of the levels. The only things they changed besides quality of life were just like adding a couple weapons and sets of armor that don't really change the game at all.

So this was not, it's not like they fucked up the design of the level itself. No, I think the remake's fun to play. I think it's just, it just looks like shit. If I'm just playing to like, you know, I want to see what this weapon does against this boss, I want to fight this boss again, I probably would play the remake just because Yes. It is annoying when you find us, especially some of those heavier sets of armor and you have to like maybe drop a weapon that you leveled up to bring it back. Yeah, right, exactly.

Just till fucking yes, 100%, dude. Yes. Another thing I like about this level is I think the idea, especially in a game like this, or like Dark Souls 1, where upgrading your weapons is so needlessly complicated compared to future entries. and there's like eight different types of upgrade materials all with like three three or four gradients depending on how many levels you put into them. It was at least nice that there was like a centrally located world where the majority of the resources were.

Yes. That you could go back and farm. And another cool thing about world tendency that I forgot to mention, changing world tendency by killing a demon, it spawns the famous crystal lizards. Oh, yes. Yes.

That keep repeating in these games that give you a nice bounty of higher level upgrade mats. But yeah, that is something that I'm glad they did away with after Dark Souls won a little bit, was having all these different types of fucking Titanite. I think the Dark Souls won upgrade system is a pain in the fucking ass. Some of me likes it because, like, I think almost any, the magic of these games is because of how they're, they're not like the most difficult games like i think that's i think that's a mischaracterization but because of the way that they force you to be thoughtful because of the way they lock you in they all they they almost make everything they can almost make anything interesting and like fun to invest in so like

like dark souls one i can say that like i've i will have enjoyed some of the more complexities of the upgrade system because it was like a part of that journey but zooming out and like playing it again, especially on like a replay, being like, I really don't want to have to like fucking collect these different things. Like, like, that was like my first thought, like on a replay. Yeah. This is also the, the, for 99% of players, the first time you will meet a fat official who,

again, we talked about this before, but yeah, very disturbing when you meet them. They're, they're the arguably, like, the first enemy you meet that seems to have any degree of sentience. Yeah, and like, yeah, knowledge and motivation and like, yeah, and like dominion over. thing. Like, it's a, it's a bummer because you're, like,

the first time you encounter it in a, like, cutscene is the, um, Tower Night, right? And you see it, like, sort of, like, spur the thing into action. And then when you see it as an enemy and it's, it's, the laughing is, yeah, it becomes iconic, I guess, is the word where you're upset by it. You wish it would stop. Yeah, it feels like it has control in a way that you don't, specifically as a player.

It's awesome. I love the idea of, like, introducing something as, like, a cutscene enemy and you almost immediately next level you confront it. But again, the strength of art direction, it's not like the AI in this game especially is like infamously not very good, but just due to the fat officials design and laugh and everything, just them being in the same room as like regular mobs, you get the sense that they are in charge and there was something very intimidating about that early on. It's also enemy placement, and I'm thinking now that we're still, we're on World 2.

I think about where when you get into the like kind of worm part of it and you see their carcass, and like the way that they pop out, there's like these stone worms that like shoot fire out. And they have a very predictable pattern, like attack, but they pop out kind of randomly. And then you only have so much space to navigate that. And then you end up in these tunnels and there are these big beetles that like take up the whole tunnel. And they only have like one or two pokes that they can. can do, but because of the enemy placement, because of the way it's designed, because of like, the fact that you can't really see the Beatles in the tunnel unless you get up on them, because

the game will just make them go completely dark except for the personal light and glow that's around your character model. Like, it makes the fact that the AI is kind of weak, not as important as a fact that, like, that confluence of, like, enemy placement and, um, and art direction allows these things to be kind spooky and scary and difficult. And yeah, where you place the fat official in like always it's placed in relation to, the way it's placed in relation to the enemies is the enemies will flank it or will be right in front of it.

I mean, it's in the back cackling, right? Like, that's how you like do that. It's super cool. It's a really good point that, like, that, the way they get away with that. So after, after this, I don't know. For me, I did not feel confident to take on Flame Lurker just yet. I immediately went to Tower of Latria, which I agree with you.

This is the first world they have that gave me any sense of like, okay, there's like, I mean, there's at least a system of crime and punishment in this. Yeah. And definitely the most disturbing thing so far in the game.

The music is amazing. And that's one of the huge misses in the remake, I think, is taking it out. Oh, yeah. Like, I get that they wanted to, like, they basically have this bitch singing.

And it's has its own, it's doing its own thing, and I get it, because it's like in the diegesis to borrow a film term, right? Like you find the woman who is singing, and that's kind of the only music. And that's kind of interesting. But the soundtrack in the original Tower of Latria is fucking awesome. And because the atmosphere is murky, because the darks are dark in the original too, it's just very grim and, yeah, wonderful. The sound design, there are a little, this is something you owe to like the technical limitations of the PS3. There are a lot of instances where like there will be a, the sound that you think is of enemies is actually like the backing track for the arena you're in and you'll clear out the entire level and still hear like dogs barking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there, with this level, I feel like there's, I didn't have nearly as much of that type of jankiness. and I really like just like how there's always like some sound of human suffering or like torment going on in this level. Oh, God, yeah, it's really miserable. It's such an accomplishment to like, because I go back to this level a lot in every play-through because there's a very important merchant in here and also a tendency event that takes a while to unlock. but no matter how strong I was.

And there's a very annoying enemy in here that was sort of the basis probably for the jailers in DS3 that just picks you up and sucks you. Yep. Not in a good way. And also, yeah. I mean, it's a classic.

I mean, it's a classic. Like, jailers in DS3, they're the suckers in DS1 too. Like they, and also in Bloodborn, like they, Miyazaki is, he's always talking about like Western, art and all these things, but, like,

he has, like, a few, like, totems, like, important, like, for him, like, Lovecraft is just, is so, is very obviously a big part of it, and just, you know, cuddlfish, I guess, in general, seem to excite him. Mind fliers, I should say, really, in D&D, at least.

Well, it's sort of a combination, because there is a character in Japanese folklore who, they get more explicit with this in Sechre, obviously. but it picks you up and it sucks you but it sucks you from behind it sucks you like from your ass to suck your soul out the ass sucking demon yes

and that's I mean that that is what the what do they call them in Sekro again people hate them headless headless headless yes headless yeah it's sort of a combination of mind players and like whatever this thing is called in Japanese folklore it's very cool you know just going back to how good the design

and atmosphere of this level is Even when I can one shot those sucker guys and like I can take quite a few sucks from them without dying, it's still like, I feel very uneasy in there. Yes. And like there's tons of, it's very similar to the tunnels in World 2 where everything is dark around you until you're kind of right up on it, with the exception of items. And then unlike what is super unique about it is the prison structure of it. And again, they come back to this and like see this fucking library thing in Dark Souls 1. but this sort of like tower dungeon that you're crawling up and each door you can open and interact with,

you don't know if someone's going to come in behind you after you open the door, you don't know if somebody's going to come around the corner and you'll open the door and then the enemies will come out of there. And so there's this like just constant layering of like, of ambiguity and dread that, yeah, like kind of no matter how high you're leveled, when you see the suck guy, you're like, fuck, fuck, fuck is the feeling.

And they do a great job with that. The first boss for this area, I really, it's really a shame, like, how bad the AI is for one of the bosses in this area. Because otherwise, it would be like one of the, one of the high marks for bosses in an entire world, I really like Fool's Idol. I love Fool's Idol. I would say less of a puzzle boss, though there are obvious puzzle elements. She do make fake versions of herself that still have their own head. health and can hurt you. But a great arena, great design, really fucking fun fight.

And another boss that I wish I had not leveled so much for because I wanted to last much longer than it did. Yeah, she's sort of an OG Renala too in a lot of ways. Like just... Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. That was like, like, and also even down to the fact that she is a, you know, like a projection,

right? Ranalla, like her first phase is a projection. Well, really, like, the first phase is her, and then the second phase is the projection by Ronnie. Like, there's a similar vibe of, like, the puppetry used of these, the puppeting of these, like, women, these, like, statuesque women in a weird way. And I think it's, like, it's a great boss fight. And then also, even more of it being, like, a great boss fight, just, like, also, like having to go chase her right around the room. Very similar to Rinala, too, that way. But it is the most consistent, it feels like, or, like, or, like, trace.

I should say lore-wise for a level to start with her, right, then eventually ending up at the old monk, right? Like you start to get a sense of it. Like the puppet mastery, the like levels of control and bureaucracy in this like ecclesiastic world that they're painting for you, you know? I felt this is, this middle period is sort of the high point of the game. They reach heights that aren't really reached again until you go back to world one. But whether this time I just went straight through the world Because it's not really They can be hard levels to traverse

But for me at least this is when my build was really starting to take shape There's some actually really fun, creepy enemies And you go right down to the very bottom of this world again To a swamp which I thought was really fucking cool To take you up this high where it's an instant death If you fall off right down to the very bottom I love that I loved the level of

obstacle, you have to traverse this sort of like skyline. Yeah, it's cool. I know that boss fight fucking blows, but like that is such a cool visual though, yes. To leading, to get to the boss fight, you have to go to these two altars that are across the high line from each other and kill these groups of like thralls worshiping a flame to remove the chains from the system of sludge that's helping to keep this world together. It's so cool. So similar to what you do at the Academy of Mensis.

Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In Bloodborn, yeah. Almost exactly the same. You also meet, depending on whether you go to Shrine of Storms Next or go through this world, as I did, you meet your first, like, real dickhead of an NPC. Like, you've met assholes, but none like this.

You can rescue a guy who has a pretty fucking cool suit of armor that I ended up using. from a probably the worst prison I've ever seen just a person-sized bird cage that he's been standing in for eternity

Yes And any like look No matter how much of an asshole This guy is I just for human rights reasons I let him out Right of course And then I remembered

He's the guy Who just pointlessly murders everyone So I pushed him off a ledge And got all of his stuff He I mean the fact that he Does that and like The motivate like When you find out

that it's like, it's sort of this, like, magic genocide. These guys are, like, goal is to kill everyone who uses magic except themselves, basically. Which is, like, so, like, fuck you. Like, like, fuck you. Like, and so they just start killing everyone. It sucks. So much less interesting than Lautrich, who's a great character. Oh, he, I mean, he's, yeah, awesome.

In addition to his wonderful armor that Laughtrick gives you. Electric also gives you the best ring in the game. But anyhow, this all leads up to the man-eater fight, which would be a great boss fight if not for the abysmal AI, which some of the things it can do, it can just float in mid-air because these are two flying enemies. They're sort of like goblin-y flying demon guys. I've seen videos where one just falls out of the year,

like it forgets it can fly, falls out of the air and dies. from fall damage, which I didn't even know it was possible. That's never happened to me. But I have had them just, like, float and slowly float to the ground and take, like, three minutes to come back up. Oh, yeah. I've had them just, like, glitch out on the ledge. And, like, I guess it's less frustrating than if they had been really good and kept, like,

pushing you off the ledge because that is a very frustrating type of boss. But it's really just kind of dull. It's like fighting a mob who has a little too much health. Yes. This leads up to... I don't know if this is a world tendency thing or what, but for me at least, you get the red demon suckers who really, it's really hard to get strong enough to one-shot them on any build.

And they can really, like, they can one-shot you if you have not been leveling your health bar. But this all leads up to a very interesting boss that could potentially be one of the most boring bosses, the old monk, which is similar to half-light, the sphere of the church and dark, Soles 3 is a boss based on online play. There is a old guy sitting in a chair, and he's, this is where Jeremiah from Dark Souls won. This is where his outfit comes from. Yes.

He conjures an NPC, and if you're not online, you will just fight an NPC, and it's not that interesting of a fight. Pretty, if you're looking to quickly change world tendency, this will do it. I don't know. I don't have a lot to say about this because this can be, this is such a subjective. experience. I did this on PS5 once and I got a guy who just like all he does is play PVP and he just destroyed me. Just destroyed. Yeah, I mean, that's, so like the cool thing about it about Old Monk, first of all, is a design. I think he's like looks, he's not just sitting

on a chair, he's sitting on hundreds, right? In a way. I think like, like, like, like, I mean, that is like a, you know, a little joke there, but like, this is this really cool thing of like, this guy at the top of this ivory tower is like sitting amongst like a thousand like chairs underneath him he has this really cool design and the second that the yellow like sash around him leaves him he dies so it's like it's just like a really weird

cool elegant design like he looks almost like uh what's his fucking name in the DLC and Shadow of the Earthry. Dry Leaf game? Yeah, he looks similar to dry leaf but he also like, what's the frenzied guy? Just because of like being like a really skinny skeleton, dude.

Oh, oh, I know, yeah. One of the best boss fights in the DLC. Yeah, I'm like forgetting his name, but like in that he's like a skinny skeleton seems pathetic and then the real fight is with some alternative form of it. But the, I always, I've never gotten anybody who like, I mean, I played the second time I play the,

was offline. So it's got like a generic thing. And this first time I played online, it was like kind of interesting. So he like brings a guy out that you have to fight. And like it is really cool that like that there's this sort of like, you know, this sense of like, you know, puppetry throughout control prisons and then down to like this main monk is under control by this sash. And also like they, he will also control quote unquote one of your sensible comrades, which is, like another person playing the game to fight you as well, right? So, thematically, I think that's really, really cool. Yeah.

Like, that scratches that itch for me. But yeah, I get, like, being like, well, whatever about the boss fight. Any PVP boss fight in these games is pretty much always, like, kind of like, ho-hum. Always the best boss fights are the ones where it's like, you are fighting somebody who's, like, human, you know, anthropomorphic, you know, a human proportioned. But they're, like, designed by Frumsoft to be a, like, specific boss fight for you. you know, Artaurius, Radagon, I love, yeah, like stuff like that.

Radagons, one of the... One of the best fights, I think, in any of them. Obviously, is Sullivan. But yeah, yeah. That's all I got to say about that, too, though. Feel the same. One of my favorite bosses in Sechro,

and probably would be my favorite boss in that game, if not for Eishon's sword saying, is owl, because he specifically does... Great fight. He has, like, prosthetic tricks that he... Yeah, only a player can, do, which is such a, they never really did that, unless you count like NPC and online fights, like Half-Life and this.

But like specifically where they can do very player-specific things. Yes. They never did it like that again. And it's so cool. It's really cool. Both owl fights. Yeah, both owl fights are great for that reason, yes. But yeah, I would rate World Treaty Terror Volatria very highly.

You can go back and you can rescue a guy, a blue guy who's screaming the entire time, And also, Sage Frick, if you are a miracle user. Frank is awesome. I think he's a great MPC. I think he's a very good MPC. I mean, I don't know. I like the sort of wise and bitter guys. Like, that's, I'm always going to be like, oh, that's dad.

Like, you know, I was going to like that guy, you know. I liked him, too, and he was very forgiving. I was really worried that I, I ruined him because I kept, like, jumping off the ledge to get to the other spell guy. Yeah. I accidentally said Sage Frank is a miracle guy. He's not. He's a spell guy. But I would fall on him and I would do like two damage and he would act like I was aggrowing him.

And I kept looking up like, you know, is there a shrine of Velka type thing? And there's only in the PS5 version. But no, I did this like 40 times. And if you only do two damage, he's just like, he just goes like, hey, what's the big idea, asshole? But then he'll let you trade demon souls for stuff. Yeah. If you only ever do that, don't hit him with a sword. Yeah.

Oh, there's something too with these, oh, God, whatever. My brain goes to, like, the currency being tied to the essence of people, and that essence, in demons, maybe more than any of them, like, the fact that the main currency is souls and that, like, souls are, you can be in a soul form. Like, there's a lot of just, like, overlap with that that I think is just so, so interesting. And there's a lot, I was writing about that, but I'll save that. let's, I don't want to like keep derailing this.

I could be here all day. No, I, I'm very excited to get into that because I have a lot of thoughts on it too. And also the way that you as a player character are unique because you have a, you at least have like an agent who can transmute souls or runes or whatever the currency is in the game into actual power, which only really your enemies can do. Yes. I always, just to bring up Liza P again, Liza P. did one of the most interesting. things with the thematic use of the in-game currency and level-up mechanic that Dark Souls

did it too, but just the idea that like the thing that you're doing throughout the story is someone wants you to be collecting all these souls or in the case of Liza B. Ergo, which I found so cool about that game. And another reason why I think it is the most, they are the most inventive with adding stuff to the formula, but also the most first. faithful to the things that make these games great. Anyhow, the next world, another one I like a lot, just Shrine of Storms. Yeah.

This world is inhabited by one of my favorite regular mobs, the skeleton guys, who you can have a really, really fun time parrying and just dueling them. From Soft is the best skeletons in gaming, probably. Just like from like being really fun to fight, really fun designs. almost always, there's something slightly silly about them. Yeah, like, just awesome. Yeah, there's always, like, especially the guys who hang out around the Mariners in Eldon Ring. Those guys at Elton Ring, piss me off unless I'm using one of my faith characters, and I can just insta-kill them.

The least fun skeletons to fight were Dark Souls won for me, but these guys are, like, these guys are gamers. I love going up against them. I love taking out the buckler. And I love this level. This level has some of the coolest stuff you'll find. You will find that the Miracami, is it called? The katana that hurts you to hold. It is also very good.

I love that weapon. The design of the world is very cool. It looks very bombed out. Like these, all throughout the level, the deeper you go, there are these floating stingray creatures that shoot like ice spears at you. And you get the sense that they have just been carpet bombing this area forever. It's the best representation of the fog, like, too, like, except for Bolotaria, as far as, like, giving you a sense of, like, the skybox and the, like, and the horizon line in general just being, like, negative. Like, you're fucked.

Like, you can't see anything. Like, you are isolated. You are alone. Like, I think it really does a great job at communicating that and just grayness of it. Yeah. No, absolutely. So I also I really like every single

boss in this world Another world I wouldn't rate Bolotari quite as high Just because You can only do Thay Lake's demon so many times Yeah

But every I like every single one in this world I'm not as crazy about the adjudicator I'll say But like I still like him though Unless you maybe Did you like him best? I think from a design perspective

It's very very cool to like have you have that. I think he first looks the best. He looks amazing. And they do kind of like ruin him a little bit in the remake. Yeah. They make him look very silly in the remake. And the original one, he's silly,

but he's just like this green slime guy with a big tongue. Like he looks kind of like a gooey. His head kind of looks like gooey in Dragon Quest. But then his body is like just like this really fun, goofy gelatinous thing. But, like, I think I just, like, got sick of, like, figuring out my way in with him, which is maybe my own, like, you know, I'm a coping a bit there. I really liked it because this time I did something weird. I talked about how I ended up upgrading the bows a lot.

Oh, okay. And finding them to be so strong. I had to stop using him. But I stayed on the upper level and just danced around him and tried to, like, avoid his gross tongue and just hit it, hit him in the head with a bow. I had a ton of fun doing that. You engage with the geometry a lot more than I did then. Yeah, that's probably the way you're supposed to do it in a weird way. Like, where I would just be like, let me go, like, get on the ground and unabungabunga this guy.

And I was just like, all right, why do I have to get down to the ground? But, like, yeah, I think that's a really cool, like, engaging with the verticality to fight this guy. All right, yeah, you're selling me on, I should approach it differently next time. That's another trophy that you get for doing it that way. I don't know if it's because you don't ever go down to the ground level. I don't know why I got it, but I did. Another great thing about RPCS3, they replicate the trophies. Yes, they do.

Anyhow, you go deeper into the level. There are a lot of perilous ledges this time with gold skeletons and red-eyed skeletons who are like, at this point, I started realizing I was leveled past what the progression should have been. but I was still having a lot of fun fighting these guys. You next fight the old hero in World Four. Yeah.

And I, this is a really, this is two gimmick fights for the first two bosses in this world. Actually, yeah, three gimmick. Kind of just all gimmick fights, pretty much, yeah. But they're really good ones that I actually enjoy replaying.

I mean, I think I just like it from a design and just like, just the way he's, behaves, like the screaming, the banging around. Like, I think there's something like, he really like gets me every time I fought him. Like, I'm emotionally very invested in this guy. It's just like the most emotion. Like, I mean, he's just like recognizable emotions from this thing.

It's basically this giant blind dude who's fucking swinging his sword around and is just pissed off and you feel it. And this is after you've been like carefully going around the edges in this weird gray world, right? Where you kind of like go through this blasted out place, you get through this kind of gauntlet of bullshit. And then you're along the edges and there are these like fucking mantarays

shooting ice bikes at you. You're carefully navigating around these like shadow men who are summoning things and shooting beams at you. And then you're fighting this guy and you're just terrified. He's running around and screaming and it's a completely unique thing. I think he's really a really, cool fight.

You could not agree more. Yeah. It's, for people who don't know, old hero is blind, and he will just start rampaging through the level. He can do a lot of damage to you. Yeah. But if you sprint up to him, he'll immediately swing on you. And even when his back is turned, he has kind of a really good radius of damage for his big

looping swings. But you can obviously kind of chase this fight by using the thief ring. though it's so much more fun to try to time your slow walking over to him and try to get damage in and then run away and try to get behind a pillar where he can't hit you. Just a fucking awesome fight.

And it makes you feel a lot of empathy for him not to be totally lame, but you really do where it's like... Oh, yeah. Once you figure out how to cheese him and like bait him, then you're like kind of just like baiting a blind guy.

Oh, yeah. who is really upset. And so then you start to, once you figure out the pattern, it becomes this kind of like, oh, I am like kind of like strafing around this guy quietly and he doesn't see me. And I think that's really a very cool experience. SIF is like a similar to me in that experience.

Obviously SIF is just much more, it's just the like one animation when you get her down to low. But same idea, you know, except it's like kind of the whole fight and the whole mechanic of the fight has this melancholy to it, especially when it's like old hero. Like this isn't like this is a dude that's revered and like, you know, like it just

communicates that right away. Nothing about him seems demonic. He just seems strong. You know, it's cool. Yeah, it reminds me of what is the last demon or whatever? The guy that you fight in Dark Souls 3, the demon who's sort of, it's an optional boss that's squared away somewhere. And if this, it's a, if you get him down to like the last.

10, 15% of his health and don't immediately kill him. There's a great animation of him struggling to pick up his club. It's the same thing of like, oh, this is like, this is someone who maybe should have died a long time ago and whatever sustains them

is no longer there. It's really like, yeah, it's incredibly evocative. And likening it back to like M-Sims or at least like the like history of M-Sims, like talking about like half-life, right? The investment of M-Sims being the genius of it,

at least of Half-Life, right, is to just keep everything in first person. Like, when you go to Black Mesa the first time, you're just, you're on the fucking thing going there. And similar to this, like, why I think it's the relationship to it, right? Is like, there's no cutscene that shows how much of a bummer it is

that he's struggling to pick up his club. No, you're just like watching it happen and you have to act on that. And like, make a choice as somebody, you know, it's very much engaging with the medium, basically, right? It's not, I trust a player to, like, be playing this game and in the moment of this game so that their reaction to this moment will be based on, and they'll be able to perceive this is happening,

that there's a struggle for this character, but that it's killer be killed. And I think that's a, like, I think the SIF fight is exactly why that is, like, powerful. It's, because it doesn't do a cut scene where the dog is limping. It's, it's like, the dog's limping, and you're fighting the dog. What are you going to do? If you like all the other games they've made and you've never played this game, I really recommend playing it even though, you know,

I definitely would say it's the one that I'll go back to the leash out of any of them. It is edifying if you like these games at all just to see the seeds of ideas that they would later articulate in much grander fashion later on. There are all these amazing fights they do in later games. some immediately after this, where I love this thing they do where the final boss of the game is sometimes pretty easy

and deliberately so, or where they try to communicate the frailty of a certain end game or middle game boss like this. Like with Emma and Sekiro, that entire Shura ending, it is supposed to make you feel like the world's biggest piece of shit

because you are. And I always think about how, what a good fight Emma is because she's... Great fight. It's a very well-made boss but she's very frail and easy to stagger and doesn't have a lot of help.

And you really do... You feel like a monster killing her if you've paid attention to the story at all. But even if you haven't, just like seeing the way she moves around when you hit her, you do feel... You are a sura.

And with this, like, it does not feel that gallant to kill this. At least, at the very least, you're putting him out of his misery, but there's nothing, like, really heroic about what you're doing here. Yes, it's like you're hiding behind the pillars to trick a blind guy to hitting the wrong thing. Yeah. Like, that's, that's like a, I mean, that is just like a behavior of a degenerate.

Like, that's what that is. Yeah, yeah. Also, it's because you want his soul, by the way. So. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't even, like, you're not even that. into this quest you're doing.

You're like, like, like some barefoot lady was like, hey, get all these souls. And you were like, oh, rude.

Well, some barefoot lady was like, go talk to this baby. Okay, no, she didn't even do you. She said,

go talk to this baby who you also said no to you. Yeah, it's great. It's good shit. What a great franchise. Mm-hmm. After this comes the model,

or at least the weapon is the model for an off-repeated theme in these games, you get the Stormroller. Out of all the games that have a weapon like this, I would say the most fun to use in the boss fight is definitely the serpent hunter. Yeah.

I mean, they really, the weapon arts that they did in Eldon Ring are like, a lot of people did not like that in Dark Souls 3. I thought it was cool, but they really the weapon arts that they, they spent a lot more time on an Eldon Ring and made it so cool.

And using it on that thing is so fucking fun. This, though, the Storm ruler in this game, unlike the Storm ruler in Dark Souls 3, this one, you can actually get a little use out of it outside of the boss fight.

Yeah, it's also like just the fight itself. It feels really cool to attack like a flying beast with a weapon like that. I think it just like does a lot of good. Just looks cool. That's like a straight, like lizard brain thing for me for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. And there is a giant floating entity who has a bunch of mobs around him who are these stingray things who you've been encountering throughout the level. I always just like kill these guys, kill the smaller stingrays with like a bow or something.

Though you can also kill them with the storm ruler. And it is unbelievably satisfying to chunk the main boss's health away with that thing. I, they always make the storm rule is pretty satisfying. Just going by from what I've heard from people, it seems like Yorm is people's least favorite of these. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, I mean, there's stuff I like about, if you do the entire Sigmyre quest, which is, admittedly, there's some extra steps to it that can be tedious. But I think doing it with him, at least the first time, is worthwhile. I like how weirdly claustrophobic Yormer. boss room is. Oh, Andrew Hudson, actually, he never picked up the Storm Ruler. And the first time he did it, he just fought him normally and eventually killed him.

That's sick. Good for him. It's, yeah. But I would put this, this fight, as far as this type of gimmick fight with a gimmick fight-specific weapon, definitely. I don't like it nearly as much as I like Rikard, but I would put it right above Yorne. Yeah, I definitely would say so as well. Yeah, it's, I think Rikard, Rycard so much of it is that there's like

Rycard and like he like just that He's so funny Yeah that's just doing a lot of work He's such a dickhead He's an evil dumb piece of shit dude

I think the the aesthetic of the Storm ruler Storm King fight I even think in the remake too I think there's something really melancholy about the original that I like that I miss in the remake where it's just like kind of gray

and like the stuff sunbeams are kind of coming down. But I still think I did get like, okay, this is epic with the remake. I did kind of like feel that and I was happy to oblige, yeah. There are some bosses where they really didn't

redesign it. Like I mean, how much can you redesign the phalanx? But yeah, sure. This was a redesign. I actually thought they did a good job. It's not an unmitigated disaster like with a lot. Yeah, no. Yeah. So for my personal playthrough, at this point,

was just, I was so powerful that I actually thought about, like, starting over, but I figured, like, I was, by this point in the game, when I would, uh, fight red knights, I could, it wouldn't even take a parry. If I backstab them, it would one-shot them. Damn. I, I don't know what it, I did something weird. I don't know. I think in the course of, like, farming grass, I gained a few levels, too. Yeah, that's, that'll do it. That's like done to me before in like this game and in Bloodbourne of like farming shit and then like finding out that like I also was getting levels.

I think in BloodBorne it was mitigated by the fact that I had to buy Blood Vials at least usually is what I was using the Blood Echoes for. Where in this year you're just like, oh, I'm just getting that shit straight to the face and then I'm getting grass. And in Bloodbourne like, oh man, I I scrapped the first character I ever played with because I learned that Chalice Dungeon thing to buy Bloods. vials and I swore I would only do it to buy mudviles but then I you know of course like you're like oh I want to use the moonlight sword and I don't want to like go through two more playthrues to get any use out of it and then I just I made some stupid character that can just do everything and it's like okay this isn't fun anymore yeah but going back to this game I for me the next thing I did was to finish out world two flame lurker we talked about it before another horrible redesign by BluPoint. I think it's like the most egregious. Like, yeah, it's the fat official, but like I, the Flamorker really just,

like, really fucking, he looks like fucking knack, dude. Like, he looks like shit. It's such a bummer. What's that gift people use like wrecked Ralph of like a guy getting angry and turning right? It's just brutal. But it's a good fight.

It looks like, he looks like the emoji movie. And it's a shame because it's, Bloodbourne is such a fast game And you would think it would kind of suck being on 30 frames per second But you really get used to it though Of course I would love it if they rematch Even just remastered it and Allowed it to be on 60 because

I would just I think the gun parries are so fucking fun But Demon Souls is very rarely do you feel like It would be that much better to have 60 frames it's not even, it's one of the easiest Perry Windows, many of those kids have played. But

Flame Lurker is like a tough enough opponent to where, when you play the Blue Point remake, you're like, okay, this is good, I like this is smoother but it's, that goodwill is done away with by how bad the design is. Correct. And it's a shame because it's a great boss

and I feel like more so than Penetrator, it feels like it could be a more contemporary from boss. Definitely. I think Penetrator, like, I like Penetrator, but I think it also more wants to be that than it achieves it. Blamaker has enough, like, interesting movement and, like, more dynamic animation choices that make it feel more like a modern from SoftBoss. Yeah. I just barely got him in one try, and this was being tremendously over-leveled.

And you can really misread him in a way that is kind of hard to do with a lot of the other bosses. of the other bosses do have quite obvious tells, even Alant. I wished that I had save scuffed because I wanted to play it again. But I also, just a note about World 2 as we go deeper into it, I really like going to the bottom of World 2. Getting to Flame Lurker, you encounter patches, you encounter these giant sort of like hardened magma worms and act as obstacles. Yeah, they're awesome.

If you really want to, you could just hack away at them in a event. eventually get rid of them. There's a lot of platforming in this level of just dropping down from plank to plank. And with that, in addition to those very fun fireworm creatures, there are these great, like, fire mosquito guys that, um, oh, yeah, I can point. Nowhere near as annoying as the actual mosquitoes in World Five, but they, you can really just run past them, but it's pretty fun to, like, hack at them with, like, that enchanted Felchion or, or even this got me to experiment with magic for the first time.

I only ever leveled up intelligence and faith before so I could use heel and to use Northern Regalia. But I actually had a lot of fun with my very limited magic stat poking away at these guys. Yeah. You would counter Patches here. Your namesake. Yeah, so. Patches is, yeah, I mean, he's like the best character in these games.

He's so, I mean, he's awesome. You see that pit? It's filled with treasure But I can't get to it myself I love him He's the man I am excited for when I get to cover DS3 Just because it is the only instance

Of them having this character In any game really Of having a character who Like their thing is just being a complete bastard Utterly repatious Don't check it out with an onion It's like the best It fucking rocks

Like he's he's he's oh man God what a cool Fun thing to do to like Personify in these games To be the The like smile on the face As the game like brutalizes you For being a little too trusting

Or a little bit or playing it a little bit too much like a Any other video game And like personifying that in a just A bastard who eventually you Are better than him and stronger than him And stronger than him and it's like Like, there's kind of like a reward there of like, oh, I'm not worried about patches. Like, you know, in DS3, I think about that.

Like, once you get the better of him, it's, it's awesome. He's a great character. It's a very special character. Hey, look, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean what I said. I mean, a man's got to make a living, right? Here, look, I can make up for him. I love his presence in all of these games because it is like, I think we were talking about, like,

how awful the people who self-aggrandized for playing these games are. And there is this web comic that even by the standards of web comics just makes me recoil. And it's, oh, God, I hope you've seen this one. It's of Link from Zelda going, time to go on an adventure and fucking Lord Ron. And he goes to the graveyard and a skeleton parries and stabs him in the stomach and goes, welcome to Dark Souls bitch I've not seen that I hope whoever made that

died in the Benghazi embassy attack I think he might have I mean oh man I got to look at a link Dark Souls comic I mean I'm gonna just enjoy looking at that but at the risk of sounding like that the thing that makes Patches so fun

is that it is a great efficient thematic explanation of the tone of these games which is not deadly cells serious. Yes. But also, like, do you really think someone is who you've never met doesn't know you, doesn't

care about what your quest is, is just going to tell you where some treasure is out of the goodness of his fucking heart? Also, if you talk to the other NPCs in this game, they're either like weird and sullen or they only say useful information one time and then not again. Yeah. Like, this is like, you have to treat the world seriously. But also, like, we're going to laugh if you don't. it's a good point that Tony strikes.

I think like the lack of self-seriousness is so strong because it makes those moments, there aren't as many of these NPCs in this game, but there are truly altruistic and wonderful kind NBCs that you meet all throughout the series. Like the Piramancer in DS1 is like one of the nicest people you'll ever meet any of these games. Even like weirdos like Big Hat Logan are kind of nice.

and it makes like the true altruism you encounter so much more noticeable. Yes. Because it's not just like, oh, there's this treasure, but I'm not getting it because I don't want it. I'm nervous and neurodivergent, so you have to go get it. But like, no, it's like I either got it already and I'm not telling you or I can't get it because I'm because I don't know where it is. And then, like, also, like, the fact that patches is in each of the games, I think is important from a, like, to continue to communicate

that the theme of these games is, is, it's a bit of a laugh in it, like, which I love. It's another crucial point, thematically, is also just like, okay, idiot, do you think that there is altruism without any social relation?

Right, yes. Because you've never fucking talked to this guy before. Yes, yes. You don't know what he's like? When people actually do go out of their way for you and do nice things for you, there's like a character reason or something.

There's something, there's some reason that they're doing it. They're not just, they don't just see you and like how you look. Long time followers of me will remember the name Scotty Burberry, who if you don't know, was this insane middle-aged gay guy who in 2013,

we found him because he was arguing in the replies of Ezra Klein's posts about, he was like, he hated, Edward Snowden, this guy He was like super anti-Edward Snowden It was arguing with someone in their replies

And after only two replies He goes, beta boys don't know When they've been out class And post a picture of him In his underwear And like his weird ripped old man body Just like spread easy And I have just

I've always, he's the funniest guy ever He would go online and say I just had lunch of the CEO of Gucci America and I told him about the trolls that are making fun of my picture and he said, my body's better than there.

One time we made fun of his jacket that he was wearing and he said, I'll never fucking forget this. He posted a picture of a note, a handwritten note that he like, obviously he wrote. And he goes,

oh my God, you guys. I was just taking a walk along the riverside with my uncle. And this man stopped me and said that my coat was so wonderful that he was going to give me this bottle of champagne. Oh my God. And that's...

That's how most games work. Yeah, like most AAA games, you're walking through it. And they're like, holy shit, did you just plug in your controller and start moving around? Yeah, yeah. We got to talk.

Here is your supplies for the game, which is fine. Like, that's a lot of, a valid enough reason to play video games, like, is validation and fun. But just as it's valid to be like, oh, I love, like, stepping into a world where I can't trust anyone and I have to take people at their word. And there's something endearing about that, too. But, yeah, yeah. And I don't, you know, I don't necessarily need for everything to be, like, playing Operation Flashpoint. No, I, just as ridiculous as it would be for someone to actually give you a bottle of champagne

because of the coat you were wearing on your walk with your uncle. The tone of these games is, yeah, it would be ridiculous for a guy to, like, tell you about treasure because he's like, great, I love how you're wearing leather pants with a plate male torso piece and wizard gloves. Yeah, I mean, it is a lot like that. Also, like, going back to World 2, I think we should get into the Dragon God as, like, what do you think of the Dragon God? Like, do you love that fight?

Do you think it's too much of a gimmick? What do you think about it? I love him, first, I'll say that, at least. I love how he looks. You know what's weird? It's like, in the lead-up to doing it the last time, All I read was people telling me like how shitty and unfun it is. So of course, going into it, I like watch guides and read like the most optimal way to do it.

And it took me like several tries trying to follow these guides. And I really hated it and thought it was like a terrible idea. I was glad they never really, you know, even for however bad the bed of chaos is. Yeah. It's nowhere near as like stupid as having stealth in a game like this, even though one of the best fights in this game is a stealth one. But then this time, I just, man, I just kind of freestyled it a little. I actually kind of enjoyed it.

I wouldn't say it was, like, great to play by any means. But there was a little bit of a thrill in trying to do it as quick as possible, almost fucking yourself by getting the crystal lizards. I hated it a lot less than I thought I would. And while it's not great, I really had just wished that first time I had just gone in blind, but knowing what it is, because it's pretty intuitive.

Yeah, it's not that hard of a fight, I feel like it did just kind of wash over me. Like, I knew I had to engage with it and get it done because of like once you realize what the limits of your inputs on the fight and what you can do, you just go, okay. And then like I think also part of it is the way it's staged where,

yes, like he's like a full guy, but it's just not the same as when, I think to your point, like, when the dragons and Bolotaria are flying over and you know you can shoot them with arrows and that relationship to the actual character models that seem really imposing and that there's like, like, again, I keep going back to like communication and it's like dragons seem really scary and powerful and like they'd be really hard to kill and they just are. And where in this, it's like, okay, there's like a way to kill this guy and like he kind of likes, he kind of looks like he's like max headroom and like yelling at me

and like there's like this like alienation to that fight that that makes it feel like I am like sort of like playing a puzzle game on my phone when I fight him and so that it was more that than the like this is annoying and gimmicky you know it was more

that I felt so abstracted from it yeah I think that that's the reason why people hate the ancient Wyvern in DS3 which it's not that like the actual mechanics of doing it sucks so bad because with the Wyverd fight you're really just traversing a level

with a pretty easy to read hazard until you can like do a plunging attack Yes. Which at least on console I saw would only trigger half the time upon release which is annoying but yeah with this one you can't

do like we talked about how with the Storm King or even with Yorm or even with the ancient Wyvern you can if you want to do it that way and you figure the timing enough. Yeah, you can do it that way. But this is like there's only one way to engage with it.

And it's not even that it would be fun to do it in another way. But it just is kind of lame that, yeah, you just have to go to these two incredibly bright things that this guy has been living in this hot tub for like. And he was never like, oh, I should get rid of these two ballistas that kill me. Yeah, he's just sort of like, yeah, he's like kind of like a bachelor who like never moved them. microwave away from the bathtub. He's just living his life. And he's like, I probably, I don't know if the outlet should be this close to my

infinity pool, but hmm, here we go. Like, you know, it's, it's, yeah, I don't know. Like, yeah, he's fine. I mean, like, I think, I just think the fact that it's like, you can at least, like, with the fucking storm god,

you can just, like, fucking, like, you can Andrew Hudson it, right? But, like, and also, like, even with the storm god, there's all this movement. There's all these other enemies you're facing. There's, like, hover you need to get, like, there's a lot more dynamism, I feel like where this is like,

it feels kind of like a, like, we wanted to put in a boss that was like a rail shooter, and we found a way to do it, which is maybe interesting, but it wasn't for me, I feel like. Yeah, yeah. This is another problem with it that, not strictly gameplay, but just going back to my problems of characters and motivation, with all these other bosses, I have a pretty good idea of, like, if not what they're doing, why they're there. Like a false idol is in a place of worship. Old hero is in this awful sort of prison cave, et cetera, et cetera.

What is this guy doing? It's kind of that he looks like that and so he's got to do that. It's very much like... Yeah, I guess. It's like sentimentalist literature of like the ugly guy is evil. Like this is like what this guy feels like to me. Like, like, because no, but you're right. Like that's, that's...

He's just kind of epic to the bone. And, like, so you got to put him in a big, big tub, and you got to fight him. And you got to with the ballistas. And it's like, yeah, it was like an attempt to do a thing, to your point. And, like, maybe it's good that they didn't keep doing the thing. But I'm glad they tried. When you fight dragons in other games, even when the dragons, like, suck to fight, like the ancient dragon and Dark Souls did one of the worst fights in the series.

In Eldon Ring, they're, like, you know, roaming around the war. world and just killing things at random. The field dragons feel right. Or when it's something like Placidusax or Dark Eater Madeir, it makes you get what they're doing and why they're there. And in some of these cases, it's explicitly explained like with Medeer, but even when it's not, even with the Placidusax, who maybe you don't have all the information about him going in, you go there and you're like, oh, this is like.

a place where an ancient dragon king would hang out. Yeah. But with the dragon, like, why is the, the dragon god is... And he basically is literally just like a dude who like everyone, like the stone people worshipped.

And then he was just bad. That is, I think is more of a more. And this is something where people can definitely, and should correct us on that. But like, from what I like was trying to pick up from item descriptions and I, and then also just trying to read online,

I didn't get anything besides like, well, this guy's just a right bastard, you know, that's kind of the extent of what I felt like I got. And it weakens, like, any potential strength of Estria's storyline where it's like, okay, like, what's her argument for this guy being good?

Or at least, like, for why it's, like, bad for you to kill him? Because it just seems like neutral to me. Anyhow, yeah, that wraps up World 2. after the tendency switch is provided you did not murder every merchant you saw in this world. Which would be understandable and we respect that kind of choice. But let's say you didn't do that.

Yeah, there are some real dickhead merchants of this game. The happy-go-lucky undead guy in the early, in Boletario 1-1 gives you a false image. Yeah, he's dope. He's cool. I like him. I love him. Good date you. Care to look over me wears. Mostly stolen, but who's telling he? He's just a scoundrel. He's just like, ah, like, war's been fun for me. Ha ha. And you're like, yeah. Seems like it. All right. Yeah.

Like, pretty straightforward. He's not really trying to do anything. Like, it's funny when you see him in one, two, and he's just like, the dogs are behind him. And there's like, basically he has like a bodyguard. And you kill him, the guy and the dogs. And he's like, hey man like do you want to buy some more stuff he's just like he's just hanging out like there's kind of he's just like I love this this is like my my jam before this like he always is the line he says like it's like demons

like at least the demons like don't make us like fight in the pits basically he's like this is fine yeah yeah he's cool yeah I love him he's not like the fucking annoying lady with a kid oh man there's some real chad up you need shut up yeah

but if you go back you can pick up the Dragon Smash sword, which is one of the... I think there are only two colossal weapons in the original, right? Two or three. I don't remember how many there are in this. I think three.

I think it's almost three of every, like, bigger weapon type. I always ended up with, um... Fuck, what's it called? The, the cleaver, the, like, fucking, like, man-eater thing. Oh, oh, I know what you mean. Yeah, it's... I think it might just be called, like,

the meat cleaver. Yeah, I always just, like, end up with that shit just because I love the HP gain. and I just like how like brutal it is. Are you talking about what weapon you got like at this point or what did you have? Yeah. After you turn the world to like pure white tendency, you pick up the Dragon Bone Smasher in the Dragon Gods Arena,

which if you are a strength build, very fun weapon to use. I found the great sword in this game, which disappointingly it's not the gut sword. Every other game they have the gut sword type thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess the Dragon Bone Smashers kind of that. It's almost like a, you know, like a gag of like a camera following a woman up and then you get to her face, you know, like it's like it's like it's, then it's just like a, it's just like a, it just has like kind of like a tip of a penis instead of like a blade end. It's kind of silly. It's like the first raft of the Fume Knight's sword.

Yes, that's a good point. That's a good way of putting it. Oh, that's kind of funny. Yes. It's almost like a stone age version of that Of the Fume Night Sword Yeah Oh man I played the hell out of the Fume Night Sword In my first DS3 play through it But yeah

No for any strength build Highly recommended Also just on the note of weapons I would say the franchise's worst Zwhi-Hander Hmm The Zwhi-Hander in every other game Is like at least very good

And in the case of Dark Souls one Yeah I mean it's always like top tier. I feel like I don't play Zwhi-Hander enough that I can't comment on this. But if you're like a Zwhi-Hander guy, like you're one of those, then I trust you on that. What makes it worse do you feel like? You'd be fair,

you probably should just make it a regular great sword, which it is in this game. But as a regular great sword, it's just, it can not even touch the Claymore in terms of scaling. Like the Claymore just, the Claymore also feels faster. I don't think

it is really, but it feels that way. And yeah, I just, maybe I should have played around with Scallant, with upgrades differently, but it's just, the base damage seems so negligible compared to what I got with the Claymore. But, um... It might be also just like, I don't know what the weapon animations are. Is it how... Kind of similar to the Claymore. Yeah, because sometimes that affects things more than I realize when I, when I'm like, why do I like this weapon better? And it's not faster. It's just that, like, where it's cutting is, like,

better for like how I place myself against enemies where enemies are placed like even if it's all slashes it can just be like the order of the slashes like it'll change the way your relationship is to the weapon in general I in these games my favorite thing to use is any type of great sword or very large sword or katana when I'm doing a deck's build that the r2 or at least the rolling r1 is a stabbing animation. Yes. That is... I mean, you need a stab.

You need a stab, yes. Like, 100% in any of these games, to be honest. Just distance. Just going off of... While we're on the subject of weapons in this game, I ended up feeling very disappointed with a lot of the special weapons. They look incredible.

But either, like, you cannot really use their full benefits unless you have really... you've gone all the way dark or light tendency, a character tendency in the case of the Northern Regalia, which is one of the most amazing-looking boss weapons you can get. Yeah. But I just, I really, I was really annoyed by that aspect.

You're like the needle of eternal agony looks super sick, and then it's like... The Morion Blade looks awesome, and it like kind of sucks. Yeah, it's not that good. I mean, like, I liked the meat cleaver only because I like, I always go quality if I can. And the, the, it's scaling is fucking bonkers. It's bonkers. But yeah, I think the large sort of searching, I think, has really low scaling, if I remember. And, like, yeah.

Yeah. Like, so it's like, it's like, there's all these cool looking weapons. And then they're like, the scaling is kind of like, for some reason not like A or S sometimes. Like, it just seems like a little weird that they, Maybe it was just like, it didn't feel as important. The Northern Regalia Sword is like so cool looking. Like it looks like a bone and a lightning bolt I always feel like at the same time. And then like, I don't know what it's scaling has, but it doesn't feel like it gets that strong.

Like, I don't know. Yeah, it really doesn't. There's also the fact that for a lot of special weapons, they just cannot be upgraded because their extra damage is not. Yes. In a lot of cases, not all, but a lot of cases, is not come from scaling, but rather from things like tendency or like your HP or whatever.

And that's like, it just becomes so conditional that it's like, okay, what the fuck am I doing here? Well, here's the thing. It's cool in that it's like,

in that like, to use the ultimate weapon, right? You have to be, or these ultimate weapons, you have to have a like relationship with this mechanic that is about your relationship

with the world and your relationship with other players online and the network. And in that sense, it's like, okay, I think it's a very strong thing to do,

but then there should probably be more, I guess it's up to you, which is maybe the point of it, but you can nudge people in different directions so they're engaging with that system more, so they're thinking about it more often in more explicit ways so that then when I'm confronted with getting an ultimate weapon,

I can decide the direction I want to go, and it's based on me playing. Like, I understand, like, they can signpost more. It's just, it was never their style, and this was so ambitious. I, it's not even a signposting. It's just that it's like, um, the use cases are so, like, I don't feel like I can go out into a level and, like, enjoy it. Yeah, I get that. I think the magic system in this game is cool.

I mean, I liked the, like, the DS1, like, having, like, uses like that. But I liked a magic bar makes things simple. I think the magic in this game is really good. too. It's like really fun. A little overpowered, but that's kind of interesting. Kind of fits with the lore too. I would just go like, soul ray at a certain point.

I would just like hit that shit a bunch. Soul arrow. Like those were just like pretty easy to like know to do. Even things like like firestorm or like ignite were like really really like the fire ones were really really cool too. I think it was like still really fun to like mess around with that.

So we are getting into endgame here and now we get to the final world before we go back to Bolotario which is the Swamp of Sorrows and Swamp of Sorrows you do not there is a very vertical

level in general but you do not spend a very long time before you instantly fight the leachmonger which um very appropriately named boss what else would you call him I would say unambiguously, my least favorite world, my least favorite boss is the guy you fight after Leachmonger,

after, it takes such a long time to get to this guy. It's not necessarily difficult, but it's just so tedious. It's pretty tough, man. Well, maybe I would, I don't know. I was over-leveled. No, I mean by tough, I mean, like, it's like, yeah, it's like kind of like. Tiring, yeah.

Right. Until you get the shortcut, which you have to find. Even then... Yeah, I know. It's not even enough. Did you have this problem where, like, you got the shortcut, but everything looked so samey

that you just get lost and ended up clearing the level again? Just so you can, like, walk around? I didn't have that as much, but I definitely, like, felt like after even I got it, I got it, I definitely got it, like, after I'd already, like, was trying to just grind at a certain point

just fucking around. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't like... Yeah. I got it and was like, oh cool like this will be useful on like my linear experience with this level it was like I got it and I was like yeah I guess I like need that now to get to keep going because it's it is like a very brutal world which like again like I can get sucked in and just enjoy that it does have maybe some of the best

names of enemies though and bosses like I do like the leech guy yeah there's the giant depraved one which is a very funny name for a guy and obviously it has like the most like probably emotionally resonant boss in the game. Oh yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Even as we talked about, you can't trace too much literal meaning out of it. This is another problem is, so I really like the selling Vinland quest as straightforward and simple as it is.

I never, I never like did that one, but I know, yes, I know, I've read about it. Yeah, I know what that one is. It's pretty straightforward, but it's well acted. We live humble lives. Leave us be. It gives some texture. Actually, Garl Vinland ends up skis.

ends up getting more characterization than fucking Lady Estriah. But basically you find her in the swamp and she goes, I heard that my brother is shacked up with some lady. Yeah, right. Heard he's been fucking on the sly. Yeah. Heard that sly dog's been boning a nun. Yeah, he's been fucking this nun who's become sort of a swamp wench.

Is that true? Think how bad both of them smell. It's got to be bad. Garland's armor is awesome, but he's wearing just, he is wearing like two inch thick steel-plated armor in this 98% humidity swamp that's covered in shit. I mean, it's gotta be the worst.

He probably smells worse than her. Yeah, I mean, at least she can air out her shit. I don't really want to know, like, what is seeped in and caked to the inside of his... His armor is the coolest. It's just... But it's got to be a nightmare. Last week, I left these gym clothes.

I have this, like, little bag that I put my gym... clothes in when I'm done with them. Like when I change before I shower at the gym, you know, it makes you able to use your bag for luggage without ruining the odor of the plane

or your belongings later on. Sounds great. I left my gym clothes in a bag the other week. I left them there like just marinating in there for like five days and forgot about it. I opened it. I had to run these

through, I had to give them three washes to get the smell out. And it's Garl Vinland right there. Yeah, that's what he smells like. That's the Garl Vinland experience, yeah. I know, what is athlete's foot called when it goes, it happens in the rest of your body?

I don't, I mean. Oh, I have athletes' foot on my dick. Yeah, it's, yeah, the foot, yeah, it's foot to dick syndrome. I don't know what it's called, but, but, uh, it's a fungus from like sweat, but he has to have that all over. Yeah, oh, it's not unquestionably.

that fight is also like very cool it's like thematically really strong even though it's like not like a you're not nothing to write home about but like it is i do you do like having that fight i guess i feel like this is how bullshit world five is you start off with leachmonger the next guy you fight is dirty colossus who's like pretty much the exact same fucking thing yeah dirty colossus yes pretty much like how different is he yeah like i feel like i feel like like is a little bit of less variation, but like, I don't know,

it's, it's, you're kind of just facing two fat, dirty guys for the most part. Yeah. Leachmonger is like, I like that he gets the leeches on you.

Yeah, that's like, like, that's what I mean, like, he's at least a little bit more going on in that sense. But Dirty, Dirty Colossus gets like some

rhyme on you too. It's not as evocative as the leeches. No, I guess you're right. Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking, like, just,

just the leeches are cool. I thought it was cooler than Dirty, Colossus thing. And it's satisfying when you like that like that superpowered flame grease for your weapon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's

very satisfying. The light him on fire. Also the PS5 version especially but yeah, this is just kind of like a nothing boss and I just I would say definitely not the hardest swamp, poison swamp they've ever done but absolutely for me the most tedious

easily. Yeah. But you finally get to the main and strio fight. I like that you can get a trophy for doing this fight in the easy way, which is Manny Nostria is sitting on the floor, criss-cross applesauce, just marinating in like Mursa. Just giving herself a mega yeast infection. Oh my God. Yeah.

There's a whole bakery in there. Yeah. It's like Miropoa for Mursa. Oh my God. But yeah, she's down there. She's sitting down. So, yeah, you get the trophy. for like just being a bastard, I guess.

Yeah. So the way it's set up is, yeah, she's sitting there in the bottom and she's going, you suck. I love these bird people who attack you on site. Yeah. Yeah, you just don't understand them like I do, you know. Yeah, so what if I stole that NPC's baby or something? Yeah, whatever.

It doesn't matter. You don't care about them and you're like, I don't. It's a good point. You're like, you got me there, lady. Mm-hmm. Girl Vinland, he's on the level above, and this is, I would. say probably the toughest NBC fight in the game. Oh, unquestionably.

Yeah, his health is definitely scaled for it. He's more of the boss, but he's Maideness Reyes' bodyguard. Maideness Reyes, her backstory is she was a member of the church. She, like, did her missionary work in this dire swamp and was like, oh, my, oh, my God, I love them. And I'm just going to live here and chill with them. And I'm a demon now. Everyone go home, fuck off. And Garland was like.

you've never been sexier to me. Yeah, you're the only bitch I know who doesn't care how I smell under here. He was already infamous in that world. Yeah, it was already smelled bad. Well, they don't tell you in that quest with Selwynne Vinlan Vin.

She's like, you know, my brother, you'll probably smell him a mile away if you see him, but she has that dialogue that cut. We spent all of our, our great house, we are now like penniless aristocracy We spent all of our gold and all of our souls inventing defense soap. Yeah.

That's actually the item she gives you if you complete the quest. It's not that ring or over. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd say Garland and Ministrade, they're sort of another similar relationship, though, the one with the latter that I'll get to is not romantic at all. but Sir Wilhelm and Sister Frieda which I think is a much

a much better iteration of both characters though I think again I think both characters are tremendously well performed there's just not a lot there well it's always cool about it is it's always like it's just like analog to you and you are maiden right like that's always to me part of the strength of it right it's there like this foil for you

and like the way you like rely on her as a way these guys rely on their ladies and like there's this like it immediately like validates their perspective just because you recognize that and you have all this time and emotional investment in that relationship yourself too

as a player. I think it's really really cool. And it's a great parallel because in both cases these guys like both Sister Frida and Made in Estria they both said okay like I'm doing something else now

you can you can go home and be a night somewhere else and both Sir Vilhelm and Garlvin Lindwin went, no, I'm loyal to you. Whatever mission you choose, that's mine too. I will defend you with my life. And they made way more of a choice that you were just sort of plopped into this shit. You're not exactly mercenary, but you're not really fighting for anything affirmatively yourself.

And you're, you know, you definitely like your level up lady, but it's not like you would lay your life down on the line for her. No, yeah. It does, you're right. It does like, it does draw direct attention to that. That's a good point. I do like that. And I do like that that's like a, like, at least consistent enough that you see it in more than one game in this. I decided that as part of the series, I'm definitely going to do Armored Core 6, even though people don't, you can't really argue that it's of the souls like genre.

But I figure if I'm going to do Sekro, I should do that one. Yeah. If only because I think the themes of like, they. They go off on the themes of choice, the idea of your player character is just being plopped into this shit. They go deeper on that than they do in any other game. Like, in Eldon Ring, you become more important than you ever have been in these Souls games. But in Armored Core, at least one of the endings is so exciting

because it actually feels like you made a choice that you sat and thought about. and it is the first time in your life you have done that and not just been the agent of someone else and I thought that was that was incredibly cool and I don't necessarily think they need to do that in more traditional

soul settings but it was it definitely added a lot of weight to a game that I already loved and a story I already loved different kettle of fish but similar enough I actually I would say that Armored Core 6

just pure gameplay-wise, it feels closer to a soul's game than like, what was that Xbox Mech game? It, like, came with the Xbox? Mech-Assault, right? Mech-a-sault, right? I remember playing that game when I was in sixth grade and my brother walking by

and looking at, well, I was watching a cutscene, and he was like, why are her a tit's so big? I mean, that's exactly the thing that's six in your memory forever. It was like, shut up. I wasn't even looking at them. So shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. Yeah. Don't fucking look at me.

It made me, like, embarrassed. It made me feel like, well, I don't like this game. Well, it makes you realize you're just playing a video game to play a video game. It's when somebody walks by and goes, like, and goes like, why are they talking like that? And you're like, well, I don't know. I had such a, like, I was so happy. when like I was able to just have a TV in my room and no one could see what I was playing or watching. 100%.

I would watch really weird shit when I was like six. I would watch like sitcoms on BET. I don't know what was wrong with. I was such like a weird little kid. There was something like wrong with me. Explain your worldliness though, I have to say. I was interested in a lot of stuff. Yeah.

But, yeah, there was some, like, I've sort of had like a, it's my own lost media quest. There was a sitcom about like a pastor who's kind of an asshole that I used to watch on B. in the late 90s. And I don't know what it's called. But if you're out there, let me know. But anyway, so I would say that Armored Court 6 plays more like a Souls game than it does. like any other mec game. And I love mech games.

I wish it was still a going concern as a genre. Zona the Enders, one of my favorite franchises. It only has two games. But I don't know if you saw this. There was a job posting that seems to be related to an armored core 7 that I'm very excited about. Oh. No, I did not.

Mech specialist. What's the... Anyway, it was similar to like, you know how they figured out Ace Combat 8 by someone posting it on their resume? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that's awesome. But anyhow, yeah, Carl Vinland has a gigantic fucking hammer that is, it just categorized under very large hammer or just under large hammers, but it is like a colossal weapon. It's really fun to use. And also, it looks almost exactly like.

the thing that maybe my favorite character in all of Dark Souls 2 Vellstat uses. Hmm, it does. It does. Okay. I even think about that. Yeah, it's so cool that like, damn, that is cool. I mean, the echoes in all these games are so cool,

but yeah, it does. I mean, even his armor is not that dissimilar. Oh, yeah, no, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, he has the same, like, yeah, the same like... Yeah, he's like the kind of same look, like, pretty much. That's kind of cool, but they, I even think... Yeah, wow. Yeah, I mean, he just doesn't have the, like, the cool, I mean, maybe, I don't know,

but what I really like about Garl is the fucking just, like, his face, just this blank stone thing is, like, so tight. But, like, yeah, the helmet shape and all that, like, very similar. Like, you know, very mightily, I guess. Yeah, the fact that there's no, like, facial articulation on his headpiece is so cool. Yeah. A, because it fits with the theme of religious figures deliberately blinding themselves. Yes, yes, of course. But B, just him having no expression, it works so well with, like, how even for a silent protagonist,

you are really just going along to get along. You're just doing whatever people tell you, good or bad. But, like, yeah, you're not like this guy. He's next level devoted. Yeah, this guy's some passion. for what he's doing. I would say definitely the best NPC fight in the game. There's a huge risk reward with pairing Carl Vinland,

not just because he could obliterate your health with that hammer, but because you're fighting on a really narrow ledge, you can knock you off into the Mercer Swamp where you get plague, which is like... It's way worse than poison. It really fucking sucks. Yes. Great fight, though.

I hit her with the bow one time and I felt cheated even though after that you do get to fight Carl Vinland as a phantom it's just not the same thing I fought him I like that when you kill him and then made him to stride goes all right fucking kill me then asshole yeah what are you waiting for I'm just some dumb ladies sitting in crap just yeah I'm just some poop poop woman like just and me then that was the only other guy who was like me you You killed him, didn't you? Very well. I can no longer resist you.

Do as you like. Take your precious demon soul. It is cool, though, because yeah, it's not heroic. You're just, you're hitting some helpless woman with a sword once. Well, that's the thing where it's like the complicating of the demons is interesting, but also without like as many answers on it. you just know it's objectively bad that demons are ruining people's lives. Right.

So you're like, I get that this woman is complicated, but it's like, how are the demons much more complicated than, how are they complicated? Except that she exists. Okay, she exists, but people are getting fucked up, so I don't care. They say that she used her miracles to, like, help them. And it's like how. Yeah, they seem great. Good job. Good job.

They just pushed me into muck. Cool. You help them? That's awesome. We were joking about what have, you know, what have the monumentals done? There should really be like, oh, what has Estria done? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's been so helpful.

Like, you should have seen this place before. It's like, oh, okay, well, well, I can't. How much worse could it be? Yeah, like, like, yeah, I can't imagine. Like, I literally can't imagine how this place could have been, was, like, worse later, earlier. Like, like, shut up. I didn't even think, like. I'm like, I'm like, where's the help?

I mean, are you just getting started? Like, is this like, you know, you're just starting? Is it like, it's like, it's just a marketing effort? You're going to do the work, but you just need to advertise it first so that, you know, you, you know, like, what's happening? That's what, that's what was cool about Isoleth, was that like, you're told that these are insane, they're loco demons. But they have a society. Yeah, they do function. They do, they are doing stuff.

and there isn't like just poop everywhere. Like it makes sense. This is not a society. This is like a bunch of wooden planks and featherless bipedal birds like stealing babies. And then like just one dumb woman who took her kid to live there. Yes. I hate her the most. She's the worst because it's like everyone else is like, oh, I have to like,

I have to live in this like cave because the demons overran my home. And she's like, I decided to go where the worst smelliest demons are. Don't you feel bad for me? I don't like her, but like, you know, I still like the merchant in Bolotaria who's like choosing to be amongst the like ruins of this war. But at least like with him, there's like a delight he's taking in it where she just seems like miserable. It's like, all right, well, leave. Like not to not to go full. You know, you know, if you don't like this country, you can go somewhere else.

All right. Like, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to be in the swan. Like, like there's this, there's this woman who shows, she shows. showing you her feet, and she will take your soul and bring you to a place called the Nexus. You can go there, and it doesn't seem to smell bad. There's Thomas you can talk to, but she's like, no, I like it here. I like the muck. Yeah.

You know. And she, if you don't, like, buy her most expensive stuff, she'll be like, that's all you're going to give me. Yeah, it's like, somehow worse than Baldwin. Yeah. I mean, I kind of, it's, yeah, it is cool that they do that in these games, that it's like, Yeah. Like we were talking about where there is no just like, oh, wow, you have a, you have like a cutlass. Okay, let's talk.

You're a friend, like, you're my best friend now. Like, oh, wow, like a leather helmet. In this game, it's like, you didn't buy a lot, man. We're like, aren't you like an adventurer? I need the money. It's like, I bought something. Lady, are you telling me you pay rent down here? Why did you come here?

Like, everyone else is like, oh. Damn bitch you live like this. Yeah, exactly. Everyone else lives where they do because... They're all refugees of the fog, right? Like, yeah. Right, they're there because it's like safe from whatever demons. But she is like, she went out of her way to live in the...

Probably, like, she's the only remnant of humanity. The only other person there besides Estrian, Girl Vinland, is Selin Vineland. But at least she's like a warrior and she's going down there alone. She's just like looking for someone. Yeah. There's something interesting about her too, but yeah, whatever. We can move on. Anyway, you get Girl Vinland's headpiece.

You show it to Selin Vinland, who, they reuse that name for a lady who turns to a ball in Eldon Ring. They do. They do. You show it to Selin and instead of going, hey, what's that? Did you kill him? She goes, well, I knew he does someday. Here's a ring, pal. Thank you, kind warrior.

As Garl's sister, I express my deepest thanks for your honoring of his name. Please accept this. It was intended for my brother, but now it should belong to you. May the angels gaze favorably upon you. You could agro her, but I never... I wouldn't want to do that. I haven't done it, but she seems like a cool character from everything I've seen. Yeah, I really like her.

I really like her, and there's like a sense of solidarity there of like, We both had to come to this place, and it really sucks. But anyway, you can now progress to the very end game. And you can do this at any point when you kill an arch demon, which that is constituted by any character at the end of any given world. But I always just clear everything out just because it's, you get new looks on things, and it's fun to over-level the shit out of yourself. But anyway, back to Bolotaria.

Oh, by the way, somewhere around like flame lurker, the crestfallen warrior went crazy and invades you in somewhere when you kill him. There's basically this concept of like the soul can like degrade and like if it's without a body for too long. And if you're like not, what's cool about him is it's similar to like hollowing where it's like if you're not trying. Yeah, yeah. You do, you just go crazy or you die or you become mindless. So there's always this element of like you got to give a shit. you know, back to that idea.

We were talking about it in the very beginning, right? And I think that's like part of what the crestfallen thing is supposed to be is it's like, you're a soul and you're not even looking for your body and you're resigned to just hang out in the nexus and like let the world go away. Like, that's not a valid answer at the end of the day. Like, that's not good enough. You know, pick aside. But yeah, it is like a weird thing that happens.

That's what I liked about Diallo's in Eldon Ring is that he kind of, he was the closest thing to that character though he's way different way different way more interesting character beats and he did like he actually did find a thing to do and obviously like ends horribly

but he has like the one of the most like interest like one of the most like traditionally interesting arcs of a FromSoft character absolutely like a genuine like redemption like cowardice redemption like he's like a interesting

I like the Alice a lot. I love him repeating that motto like he's going to do anything. Oh, so cool. House Hoslow. Blah, blah, blah. Stained in blood. Yeah, stained in blood.

It's toad in blood. Yeah. Do anything. You're not anything. Yeah. But, um... It's a, you know, fuck off you'll do nothing,

you know. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so going, uh, going, uh, going, from penetrators arena.

So I don't know if you talk to the old warrior who makes a penetrator fight even easier. But in this final thing, one three to one four, I found this great trick where I can send the old warrior once I clear at the level and get to the part with the blue dragon. I send him to just smack the blue dragon's ankles

until the dragon kills him, at which point I can pick up his armor without affecting my character tendency and then go back to poking the dragon with arrows for another 19 hours. Yeah, just hang out underneath his, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it actually came in, that extra level came in handy this way because we now...

Yeah, now we can talk about a lot, yeah. A lot. I think... I mean, is there anything... I mean, he's maybe one of the coolest fights in anything ever. Just a complete beast. Oh, my God, yeah. Tons of great ideas in here.

ideas that I wish they had used again. Most infamously, so a lot is he's a sword and magic enemy. He's faster than pretty much any real boss. He comes up on you. Like he tracks you down and he comes up on you and like nothing is moved like this. And honestly, nothing pretty much will move like this until maybe DS1. But even then like, you know, I think of like Maness and like how aggressive he is and how aggressive Arturius is. and, like, you know, that DLC, like, teaching you about aggression and, like, but even they don't, like, they don't hum up to you.

And, like, that's part of what is so, yeah, I mean, like, Gwyn, I guess is maybe the closest I can think of. It's just, and even then. Yeah, but Gwyn, yeah, Gwynn is such a glass canon. Exactly, exactly, and he's pariable. And, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a level of aggression. I honestly, like, Artorius, he lets you catch your breath a little bit. He does, yes. Manus, I would say he's the closest to Manus.

But honestly, Manus is, you can kind of use Manus's geometry and size against him and stay behind him. Yeah, like any kind of AEOE moves, you can reposition, like, this is like, I mean, you know what, maybe it's like, DS3, the Abyss.

The Abyss Walkers. The Abyss Watchers, right? Like, where there is this like, whole, like, this guy's just coming up on me. Like, and he's like my size. and he's fast. It's a real, like, mirror stage. Like, I'm looking at myself,

and it's a lot faster, and it's a lot stronger. When I, like, ah, God, like, I'm actually not... Oh, yeah, I'm controlling it, and I'm a person. This is a computer that is a lot better than me at the... Like, it's very cool. A lot is very, I think, scary. A very scary fight, especially because of what you're going to get to, I think, with him. But, yeah, keep going.

I would actually compare him the most to Sir Alone from DS2. I think they actually reuse some of the animations. Sterloan's similar type of thing where it's like he's like a guy who's like 1.5 times the size of your character, but super in your face never lets up. You just have to like, you have to fight smart, but you also have to be aggressive in this way that maybe you haven't. Yeah, he is a lot like Sir Alone. I'm just watching a video now like to remind him.

Like, yeah, the like just the movement, the sliding up in particular is just so unique. Yeah. Before I say the most incredible thing that he does that I wish they use another game. I know, I know. I forgot to mention his son kills himself on steps outside. Boring. No one cares.

Literally no one cares. Doesn't matter. Dad was in the boss room doing stretches. Yeah. One of his moves is to stretch you out. He picks you up and sucks the soul level out of you. He brings you down one level. It's incredible.

It's like a mind-blower. like move. It's so, so wonderful. It's so cool. It's so fucking cool. Like, maybe if I had played this in 2009 and like, you know, there's a lot of bullshit you can do if you're playing this on emulation. You can like, you know, duplicate items or whatever the fuck. And this will not set you back that bad even if you're not cheating. You have the benefit of like a PC's load time. Maybe this, I would find this annoying in 2009.

But I just thought it was so awesome here. I loved it on the PS5. I think it's so fucking cool. Great fight. A lot, he, most of what you're avoiding is ranged. He has a sword, but the sword shoots magic at you. And for people who have been leaning on magic the entire game, he has the highest resistance. Yeah, he's a real buster.

Because he's like a total soul, right? So he's like the complete soul. He's justice. And so he's like the soul form. manifest so he really is just like like magic as soul it's like it's great it's terrific it's back to that like really thinking about damage types which is something that is very important in in all from soft games too uh but demon souls really leans into it it's awesome especially because magic is such a crutch in a lot of the game and it really like draws your attention to like i have to figure out

something else um it's very very cool i experienced that like um in my first play through so i i i I remember that and being like, oh, fuck. Like, I really, like, have to figure this guy out. It was great. Yeah, I will just briefly say maybe the second worst redesign in the remake, but even that couldn't ruin it for me. I don't know. Do you always...

One of the... Estrava things, by the way, is he tells you where... We talked about it before, but the old king, the guy who's so old that he's, like... He's like George... H.W to Alon's Brandon. This guy who just, he's almost naked and he's

waiting for someone to beat him up so he can give them a sword, which is how you get Demon Brandt. And the soul that you get from King Alon, if you combine it with Demon Brandt, you make Northern Regalia, which we've discussed a lot. They love having naked guys who are

waiting to get beat up. That's a big DS2 thing as well. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I would say old King Alon, Maybe actually more so than flame lurker seems like a contemporary thing. And I would say actually probably people always reference Artorius as the basis for all modern humanoid enemies. But I would say a lot, there is more a lot DNA and a lot of Elton Ring bosses than there is Artorius. Though both are great.

But this is just, I don't know if he benefits from. being preceded by so many relatively easy bosses or slow-moving bosses, but it really is, he really does just blow you away. Yeah, he's pretty unique. I think, like, he probably has more DNA of him than Arturius

just because of the straight, kind of because of the straight line drives, but, like, where Arturius has a little bit more, like, lateral movements and things like that that make him feel, and a little, like, that makes him feel a little bit, like, a perfected DSW. one maybe than like something that's as prescient or forward looking.

But like I always think of like all modern from soft bosses are like orphan of coast plus in a lot of ways I think too. And I think a lot is a direct line of orphan of coast too. So I feel like there's there. I think I could see that line now that you say that of like 1.5 times style boss. Right. Like that is and that is like a crucial thing in humanoid 1.5. to X-size, like, style boss in the FromSoft games. Like, you guys should be hearing about that throughout this,

I would imagine, because it is, like, a boss fight type that, like, I think everybody universally usually just loves. Yeah. And it's really special to these games. Also, the start of something that would became slightly controversial in Eldon Ring, but the use of, like, fakeouts of mixing up his tempo. Certainly, certainly in a way that no other boss really does this. same effect.

But I actually, yeah, he sucked the soul out of me this time. I died that one. And luckily, you know, I had over-leveled. But the backstep move he does too. He does like that. Oh, that one's so evil. It's so cool that he does that. That like he has like a bait move.

It really did like put a lot of the AI emphasis on like what he, like, it feels like him. Like that backstep move I think about. that is like, because it's just, it's, I think it's maybe, it might be just the timing of it, but it always feels very deliberate in a way that like, is, I'm sure, masked by, by, it's not doing pure input reading, it's just masked by the

the way that it's mixing things up, but it's like, yeah, it's a really good point of like, just of like, how dynamic he moves and the, like, fake outs and stuff. It's a really good point. Just a, a great, obviously not the final, final boss of the game, but the soul sucking is tough.

It's very tough. And would be tougher on PS3 with its increased loading times. But what does he say when you beat him? It's something like, he doesn't literally say this, but it's something like, how could such a dumb ass be so powerful? How did you defeat my gracious team? No human has an appetite for souls such as you.

Lest is up to the old one. If it is to be, then you shall be back in a good. It makes me mad. Like, I forget exactly what he said. says, he basically says like, oh my God, this guy, like this guy. It was this guy. And like, and you're like, you're kind of like, hey, man, I like beat like eight of you just now. Like, fuck you.

Like, it's, it is cool, though, to like, again, continuing the from self tradition of, like, you are just kind of a guy who's, like, kind of doing a thing. You're just called an adventurer in this game. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not even like, you're not even like a fake chosen one. They don't, they're not even, like, bothering to, like, subvert anything. They're just like, yeah, you also don't want the fog. You're just also interested

in that. Your name is Slayer of Demons, of which there are like, that describes a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Old King Alant, the reason he's Brandon is, I mean, the Monty Medal's explained it to him, but basically he was a good king, and then he was like, I could be even greater. Why don't, you know those guys who eat people's souls? Why don't I make a deal with them and it fucking ruined everything so bad that his

I mean his son is beau his son gets cancer from the burn pits of bolotaria wow god damn yeah he gets he gets bulleteria and burn pit cancer like well time to die and he like Brandon could not care less you you know son no one

Wishes to go on. He's still, he's asking a question, but it's a little bit more like you're fucked up. But the you fool, don't you understand? No one wishes to go on. Oh my God. God damn, dude. Just like, oh man.

And also like if a lot wins, if he will inform the player, I have had enough of this rotten world. It's just like, God, man. Like, it's, I mean, that's like something Brandon has said. like walking off. Like, he's like walking. He's like, none of them was rat in room.

That's what he said after the donors made him step down. Yes, yeah. He's like, fuck this shit. I'm going home. Tell you what, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go to bed. Yeah, I don't need any of this stuff anymore. You know, yeah, I was just sucking souls.

I was sucking souls out of your mother. Yeah, you know, you remember. I'm going to go becoming a sludge guy. I was this old guy. He was like a butthole. Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn't.

I'm gonna go live in the beach. Where's both? You know? You go to Rahobah's beach and he's just like, there's just like a sludge that still talks about in. Is sludge lurching towards you trying to stab you? Like, oh, it's Joe. Every time a woman comes to the beach, you just hear this like booming echoing voice. Come on, let me kiss you.

Let me kiss you. I cannot kiss you. I mean, he is like, it is like, oh my God. Saying, oh, man, you fool, don't you understand? No one wishes to go on. You fucking old bitch. Shut the fuck up. You, you like old fucking loser.

Oh, my God. I mean, a great villain, though. Like, this is why he's a great villain. Oh yeah, fantastic. Like, again, motivations are a little more ambiguous. It's kind of just, you know, bland like power seeking, which whatever, that's fine. Like, you know, it's not, that's not un, that doesn't not get the juices flowing. You know, it's a real thing to understand and hold on to.

But the, the assertion that no one wishes to go on after like, yeah, man, you made, you made the worst country ever. Of course no one wants to... Yeah, man. Like, fuck. This is the worst place ever to live. There's no history here and everyone's boring and trying to kill you. No one wishes to go on. One fifth of your country is called the Swamp of Sorrow.

Yeah. Like, there's like one guy who's like still willing to fight for things and he doesn't know where he is half the time. Yeah, yeah. And he's confused and locked... Oh, I left the key outside the door. Can you go in there and like get can you climb through the window like that's the only other guy besides me who's fighting anything Of course no one wants to go on

Their living situation is like Like okay a lot is Trump and then Biden just like lives in the like the like the roof over From the bedroom They like see each other all the time Oh hey Yeah it's it's how do you like this job? Yeah Pretty good.

It's awesome. I mean, he's a great fight. And, like, you also, so you also get, like, a soul-suck spell. It just kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it does give you extra souls if you kill people that way. And I think, I don't know if this is true, but I think it doesn't affect world, like, doesn't make world tendency black. Yes, you were right. You're right.

If you kill NPCs that way. I wasn't sure if that was true, if that was, like, a rumor or something. I've never, like, used it on an NPC because I'm, I feel too bad. But yeah, that's awesome It is a pretty rotten thing to do It's so cool that you can make it not affect world tendency though It's like such a unique thing That's a weird mechanic

Yeah It's a hell of a wind-up But yeah, it is so cool So you triumphantly return to the Nexus And your nice level up lady She goes, good news You know that weird Fucking glass thing that we walk over

To go to the statue that only does something on the PS5? Well, it's gone now. And take my hand. We're going to fall down a pit onto the beach, but we won't die. It's in a cut scene. You go inside this gigantic fucking husk,

and she basically tells you what's what. There's this big, stupid idiot god named the old one who hungers for souls. And you got to go in there. You got to kill a lot who is... He's just a sludge guy. So, yeah, his soul is who you fought, basically. So in the, and I think it's important to point out, in this game, like, souls and bodies are like, like, that is like, that is, they are different things.

And your body, like, different, your body can live on after you're dead, your soul can be consumed by a demon. You can still have a body. The body can either live on or just be like kind of a layabout corpse. Like, and so a lot sever, severing of these things ties to, like, souls being a part of magic, magic possibly inspiring the demons. So there's this kind of sense of like A lot has given up his body Like Dorian Gray Kind of thing and has made it into this

Like one of the worst looking like slugs Like it's a Like wonderfully grotesque design And he is just like this sliding Slythering nothing It's horrible. It's great. Fantastic design

Great sound design here Oh so yeah The way that he His dialogue echoes while you're fighting this like horrible disembod embodied thing is so I yeah just very well done obviously

you know the easiest boss in the game I do want to say Tom Tom on here on Twitter he did a stream of Demon Souls it was a new like new game brand new character didn't die once anywhere got through the entire

game in human form after phalanx kills all the bosses clears out everything and then And, like, I don't know what happened. I think he, like, he got backed into a wall or something or, like, glitched out. But he got killed by false king a lot. That's amazing.

In this level, yeah. Isn't that insane? That's, I mean, that's like a miserable. What a miserable experience. That's probably unique. God, wow. He, so his also, his end dialogue, too, in that scene is really good. it's really weird

like he basically says that like like like the world is shit so you have to make it worse and God and God made it better by giving us the old one who will help us make it worse and it's this like

it's like this nihilism he's an accelerationist yeah accelerationist like call to arms for this and like, and he, it starts as this guy, it's funny because he, I think this is like why,

also why I felt very strongly about like, Miyazaki believes in something better for this world. Like, like there's a lot of optimism and humanity in this, in these series, in these games. Because the guy who is telling you this is the worst looking guy ever.

And he's like giving you his thesis statement. And his thesis statement is like accelerationist nihilism. And you have every reason to refute this. Just by him, like, lurching towards you in this horrible form and you're like,

you know in your heart something is wrong with this. You know, like, it is, it's like, I think it is like a very, like, like, it's,

it's, you, again, I would argue it would be more on the nose if, again, like, they, they make sure to not do these things

and cut scenes. And that helps it, it helps, like, mask and, like, mask, like,

uh, uh, uh, uh, things. and lets things be a little more subtle and less less things be a little bit more breathing in the realm of the game

and so you're not, it feels just less didactic, I guess, that way. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. And yeah, you, after you beat him, you get a binary choice of, do you exit the fog door and let her lull the demon back to sleep. By the way, if you do not want to wait, in New Game Plus until you reach World 2

and find Blacksmith Ed. Use the char of the Nexus once you get taken down to the beach. It'll send you right back to the Nexus. You can go to World 2, make Northern Regalia, and then you can just touch the archstone in the Nexus and it sends you down to the beach. Nothing bad happens if you do this.

But after you do that, you can either kill the maiden in black, and your life as a demon sounds awful. It just sounds like you're addicted to souls. And I hate to tell you, there's a finite amount of those. You're going to run out of people. Yeah. Or you can lose. The game's very explicit about that, too. Like, it does end.

Like, yeah. It just, it seems like a really bad existence. and you get also bad existence of being a wise baby. So I became a wise baby. Yeah, you choose to be the monument, like the other monumental. Now, oh, God. I do. That is the only thing.

Again, like I said, like the thing about it is you, and the worst part about being a monumental, monumentals are bitches because they fucking just like, they just try to keep hiding magic from people. and this is the second time people have figured it out. And so, like, you are just committing to the cycle again, you know, which is very... Yeah. Like, like, here's the thing, whatever.

I like that, like, I think it's their prerogative. I think there's something interesting about, like, it's good to always fight through this and always be a part of this journey of making the world better. You know, it's not going to ever be perfect, da-da-da. But it is... These babies suck. And so it does feel like, is there a way that I could just not... be this this like could i choose a different thing and you just you just can't well yeah that's the thing

why is why is like a baby who tells you that magic is bad but can't stop you from doing it why is that better than being like this ultra powerful warrior who can now kick anyone's ass yes like that's a better guy to have like can't that guy just like kill anyone who does magic instead of just like sitting in the top floor of this Baha'i temple and going, oh, magic's bad. Yeah, it's like if somebody does something wrong, I'll just kill them. But otherwise, I'll let people like do magic stuff. I don't really care.

But like, I'll just kill the ones who are like, I'll do the thing. I won't, you don't have to kill all of them. I don't think they, I don't know. I think there's the grimness of those endings. You know, I don't want to be too much of an ending is the conceit guy. but I am a little bit. I think it's worth weighing things that way. And I feel like they could have given you a little bit more.

I don't know. Because I can't tell if I'm looking at this. I don't know if there's something I'm not listening to in this game. And like maybe the idea of you participating in this cycle, it's like it's better to do that than to be a like bastard demon. And like there's something beautiful about like, well, I'm going to do the thing that's better to do even though maybe that slug, that slug Brandon is kind of right.

I think there's maybe enough in the game that can back that kind of thing up where it doesn't feel as much like a oh, you just like couldn't figure out what the good ending should look like. I'm like, you know, I'm like, I played so much and I want the nice thing, you know? I mean, I think that's like a fine reading into it.

I just, again, I wish there were, there was more there because it was like, I did not have very strong feelings about either choice except for the fact that, like, I didn't want to kill the nice lady. Yes, yeah, I love her. Yeah, fuck that. Yeah.

But, like, in Dark Souls 3, there is something intriguing about making that choice. It feels dramatic, and it feels like there are real stakes for the world and that you're making a choice. When you do it in this game,

it's just like, oh, I want to kill her because I want to be hungry. That's a good way of putting it on this. I don't know if it's like, there is something lost in translation or what, but it's just, again, there's not enough there or there. It's like if you reach the same conclusion as a lot,

by looking at this world, seeing how smelly and or, like, you know, controlling people are, right? And then your conclusion is also like, all there is his power, right? Which is kind of what he positions to you is he's like, did you see this? Did you, like, just play through this game? You see how much of a bitch it was? Like, what else is there besides being strong?

just like rock that out. I can see that. And so maybe it's like worth trying to buy into that. The counterpoint of it is that like because the motivations are a little bit more obscure throughout the game and because also like you are on a journey to end this thing and there's a little bit of sunk cost of why would I undo this? I just went on this journey.

That was the thing I liked about this game was the journey getting here. and I don't really have anything to hold on to for a reason to kill the maiden in black. Like she anchored me when maybe some of the games more ambiguous motivations couldn't. So I get what you're saying about that, yeah. That is Demon Solis,

and you better have killed the Vanguard Demon that first thing because you'll never get another chance. Nope. Which maybe it makes you so mad that you become hungry in your next life. True. But yeah, talking about it now, I think I discounted the strong points during my initial evaluation earlier in the episode.

It's just hard for me to escape the fact that like the worlds they create in these other games are so enrapturing. And I have, even though very little of it is articulated, I feel like I have a pretty good sense for these different regions and higher. hierarchies and people's motivations especially. Whereas in this game, yeah, I just, when I spoke to Vendrick in Dark Souls 2, or when I would talk to the confessor in Dark Souls 1 or any number of people you talk to in Eldon Ring or Black Born or Secro is different because it is strongly based on like real history. But still, I got a sense that the, these places that I am traversing through the game,

I could not suspend my belief, but I could see them in my mind's eye as places that existed independently that other people traversed before I got here. With Demon Souls, I just never got that same feeling. And to be fair, I have looked deeper into the world and lore here, but not nearly as much as I have in the other games.

But it also just never captured me in the same way. All that said, if you have never played this, I highly recommend you do because the high points are really going to surprise you. They rock. How close they get to that modern formula, which knowing that this was whatever the fuck this was going to be. And it was so bad that they put in a guy who he wasn't even designing any. No, he was just a programmer before this. And he literally went, okay, I did computer stuff, can I be an ideas guy? And they were like, we're already going to lose money on this, whatever.

It's really amazing what that entire team pulled off. It's such an accomplishment. And you really, you know, for as mad as I am about the Duskbloods being a Nintendo title, you really see why this is really one of the only franchises that has gone on this long. and not falling in victim to, you know, even what has happened to RGG studios in recent times. I don't know what the secret sauce is exactly. I do get the sense that they're just because of what a gamble

this game was for a console in 2009 and the fact that it paid off, it's allowed them more freedom maybe. I don't really know, but I'm very glad this game exists. Yeah. I would recommend people also. So, and you should probably buy it, I guess.

I don't really care if you buy it or not. There is, you can look up the Design Works book, the Dark Souls Design Works book, and there are interviews, the interviews with Miyazaki and his team. And I've read those interviews, or at least some of them, but there is this amazing reverence for him. That sounds like I'm praising, you know, like the single autore being worship, but it comes from this like they are all excited by the ideas they shared with him and he's excited by the ideas that they bring to the table. And I want to read that again because I remember reading it and being like this seems like a culture that is like obsessive and particular and that culture at Frumsoft

seems to really be about the thing and doing the damn thing. I loved reading that interview and seeing the way they spoke about Miyazaki and the way he spoke about his team and the ways in which they were like, oh, I don't even remember that we did that. Oh, did you do that? oh, that was a good idea. And you realize that, like, there's something unique going on there. Yeah, and Demon Souls, I think, if I had to, like, leave with, like, one other thing,

I guess to mention about it, is that, like, it is, like, maybe, like, from a network design and world tendency thing, is maybe the most complete version of, or at least, like, the most, like, realized in the idea sense, maybe not totally its application, of how these asymmetrical multiplayer experiences are supposed to be

and are supposed to be about how you can play with each other even when you're not and how you're not alone. And I did find that, I think, you know, I definitely had a, like, COVID relationship with these games as well. And I think that was very, like, resonant and emotionally resonant. And I think these are special games for that reason. And also, one other thing is that it is annoying to say

but the title is demons souls which I think is so so cool because it's just it's about the demons are getting their souls that belong to them and they're going to go get them

which I always I always thought it was a really weird choice to put the apostrophe S and the possessive there yeah it's a funny thing I just wanted to say that that's all highly recommend the design works for anyone who wants to go deeper

into the creation of these games and what goes into making these... Yeah, anyway, like I said earlier, if you enjoy these games at all, and you've never played this one, you lose nothing by playing this. Even if you don't completely fall head over heels,

which, you know, I certainly did not, even though I very much have enjoyed the multiple times I played this game, you will get something out of it if you appreciate these games at all. That does it for today. The next episode I am going to do is going to be Dark Souls 1.

Very excited for that. But Patchett's, thank you so much. Do you have anything you want to promote at the end here? Oh, yeah. I mean, hey, if you made it this far, go listen to a podcast about list. You know what it is. Go listen to the D&D episodes.

Highly recommended. Yeah, go listen to Gun City. We love it. Well, thank you so much. Hell yeah. Thank you.