Dark Souls 2: YOU DIED HARDER

And I swear there are some enemies (like dogs) who can hit you after you've clearly killed them. Like, they jump at you, miss, you hit and kill them mid air, half your health bar disappears. That feels unfair

Maybe the dogs have bad internet connections

my ds1 playthrough (sorry for derail) has been characterised by me going “oh *yeah*, everyone follows you forever” (just before succumbing to a weakling mob, while dodge rolling to futility, as they go absolutely rng on my ass after several blameless runbacks)

lol xpost

In an attempt to save estus, I
have taken to equipping the restoration ring, killing a few enemies, running to safety, waiting for ages for my health bar to refill, then relaying back.

If I do push ups while I'm waiting I guess it's a health plan?

I beat Old Man's Wharf or whatever it's called. The pirate level. Man, it was tough, but I think that has to be one of my favourite levels from any of the Souls games. Then I find out that it was largely optional because I could have got to the same destination via Forest of Fallen Giants(?!) Dark SOUUUULS!!!!!!

Was expecting to have terrible trouble with rhe Belfry Gargoyles but I mashed them all up first go in under a couple of minutes. Wahoooo!

Good soapstone jokes are very far between, but I had a proper LOL moment yesterday.

After beating the gargoyles, I walked cautiously into the next area, a dark windowless room with incredibly noisy floorboards that made a loud clomping sound when I walked on them. In the middle of the room is a soapstone that simply reads: "horse"

Haha. Enjoying these vague memories of DS2 being jarred loose.

Lost Bastille was EXCELLENT too - even better than Old Man's Wharf. I'm enjoying the fact there are a lot of "Stormveil"-style levels in DS2 where you're crawling around a castle with loads of ramparts and towers and you'll come out somewhere and look around and think "Huh, I was over there a minute ago!"

It's definitely one of my favourite things about all these games. Elden Ring really capitalised on that. Like when you're at the Chapel of Anticipation, you can use binoculars to look out at that whole section of Stormveil with the knife eagles and the path leading down where you crash through several platforms.

The bit in Lost Bastille where you need to roll a barrel and then blow it up felt very non-Souls in a fun way. More like a Mario reference or something.

haha yeah. i wouldn't have guessed you need to do that without a hint. there's a bit in Fallen Giants area that's a bit like that. The Pursuers are nails though. I had to literally clear a whole courtyard of enemies until they stopped respawning to make that even close to a fair fight

Skeleton Lords toppled on second try (although I got a bit of help from Creighton and the Large Club). Man that was a fun boss fight! And I enjoyed the Huntsman's Copse even though it was VERY SCARY! More than once, I thought I'd totally cleared an area when one of those hooded thieves would sneak up behind me - and they hit hard!