Ok, I made it past the black knight by climbing a ledge and just throwing bombs on him. When I ran out of bombs I was able to manage a drop attack that took him out. I got some titanite, which is fine, and he doesn't respawn, so that is great. I made it forward to the boss, who soundly thrashed me a few times. I realized that I wanted to get up on the top of some tower (which was conveniently circular and arena-set) and kill some archers first. After fighting the Taurus Demon a few times and struggling to figure out how to roll to avoid his attacks, I took a different (and I would say cheap) tactic. I climbed the ladder to the tower, jumped down to attack him (which did massive damage compared to my other attacks), then ran away. I would usually take one hit as I would turn around, run past him and climb up the ladder again to repeat the process. Eventually it worked, but it felt cheap. My other attempts (actually fighting him and throwing firebombs at him) failed pretty handedly. After going forward a good bit and talking to some knight who apparently is trying to find his own sun (I crept up to him expecting him to turn and fight me/beat the shit out of me) I started to cross a bridge. When a fucking dragon came, breathed fire all over the bridge killing all of my enemies and almost me. Now the dragon is just sitting there and I am not going to fight him. Instead I am going to crawl down to a spot on the bridge and shoot hit tail with some arrows.
All in all I have yet to feel like I have beaten a difficult part of this game in a legitimate way. With the possible exception of the Asylum Demon, my other two conquests have only been victories by coming up with a strange way to not fight but to exploit the game in some way. Now I am preparing to do this again. I know this is kind of what I was expecting from this game, but I also wonder if I will ever get better at fighting, or if it will just be an exercise in going from one exploit to another.
I had an easier time with the Taurus Demon, but the Asylum Demon had given me the expectation that dropping on his back from above was going to be the quickest way to kill him, and it bore out. But that drop attack can be frustratingly unreliable in some circumstances.
ReplyDeleteWhile progressing through this game, I've had some moments of feeling genuine accomplishment, as well as the same doubts that you express. It seems that the difficulty bar is set really high. For example, taking on something like the knight mini-bosses requires flawless play, not to mention levels and gear you and I don't have yet. So the question is do I become and absolute expert at Dark Souls (and I have to say, I don't feel like a lot of videogames haven required of me--or even allowed for--that level of mastery), do I bypass these unessential challenges until my character has become more powerful, or do I take the short path to gratification immediately?
Discovering the stairway to slip past the dragon was one of my most memorable achievements. There's not a lot of games about which I would say something like that.
There aren't many games that ask you to master anything left. Platformers are one thing that come to mind, but many of those have an easy mechanic in case things get difficult (Mario's P-Wing and Golden Tanooki Suit).
ReplyDeleteI haven't found a stair to slip past the dragon as far as I can tell. It takes me under the bridge, and there is a simple hollow one at the end of it with a shield. I assumed if I walked too far below the bridge it would trigger the dragon and I would get toasted. I think in my mind the dragon is just going to fly across the bridge and would still be able to get at me from the side. So my plan was to start shooting arrows at him and hope that I could hide so he didn't detect me.
Online games have a certain mastery component to them, but it's nice to get it from a single-player experience.
ReplyDeleteYou're in the right place; I'll let you figure out the rest. I'm interested to know how many arrows it takes to kill a dragon.