Fcuking finally! Beaten the game a while back and I feel on top of the world right now. With so many unwarranted deaths, epic boss battles with brutally mind numbing music, traversing some of the most relentlessly hostile levels, touching that bonfire to get a sense of relief (only to die a few yards later!), it has been an absolutely terrific ride. Just like Demon's Souls was few months back when Allwyn insisted me to grab the title from Flipkart. But somehow this title feels a lot more rewarding than Demon's Souls or may be it's just my perception.
I think I have reiterated this a dozen times already but I will say it again, both the Souls titles out there aren't exactly hard but challenging. Unlike the newer crop of titles which let you save at any point during the game with added quick saves and regenerating health, this game has stuck to its old roots. Not to mention portraying combat in the most realistic way I have ever seen in any game till date. Equip your character with a heavy armor, the defense improves but stamina and movement takes a hit. Equip them lightly and they can roll like a tumbleweed but would take a huge hit with every attack. There is no ambient music during the gameplay except during boss battles. And music that can be soothing at times or terrifying. So much so that I used to feel my heart beating at a much faster pace!
The boss battles in the game deserve a special mention. Every other game nowadays have plenty of those. Be it an arcade racing title, you have to beat the car to own it. Be it a 2D side-scroller, you have a bunch of them with health bars. I must admit however, there were at least 26 boss battles that I had to contend with but each of them were very different from one another. In the sense that, the scale was different - at one point of time, you have to face a towering giant wielding an axe on top of a narrow walkway who would knock you off the ledge or a couple of sentinel'ish enemies inside a huge chapel-like arena with one of them absorbing the soul of the other when it dies and further empowers itself to become a mightier variant or four different spirits twice the size of your character within a dark abyss with no visible footing and the spirits keep spawning based on a timer or kill a hybrid of a human female and a big arse spider that spews lava at you or a huge wolf wielding a sword in its mouth protecting the tomb of its dead master! None of them felt repetitive sans the variants of the Asylum Demon but it wasn't a big deal TBH.
Initially, the game feels a lot hard and by hard I mean, excruciatingly hard. You have a bunch of panzy equipment to start of with, no souls to level up your stats or do any upgrade to the armor or equipment, no NPCs around to interact with and so forth. And a whole lot of lore and other things within the game are left best to the exploration of the user. As a result, it pays to do a bit of homework initially - browse through a few starting guides and videos on YouTube to get acquainted with the gameplay mechanics of the title. Unlike other RPGs out there, this one has a completely different play style and it might be a good idea to get the hang of it before you die a gazillion deaths. A simple Google search will throw you ample guides for reference. Having a lot of patience in the game really helps - you will die, that's a given. And at times lose several thousand souls and a bunch of humanities that were accumulated. But fret not! Pay attention to what went wrong when you died and you can avoid it the next time. Once you die, the bloodstain remains intact on the location a few seconds before you died so be extremely careful if you intend to touch the stain and do not impatiently hurry towards the spot. The stain will be there waiting for you. Die again and you will lose it. Which will be at times very very demoralising. Been there and done that!
The only gripe that I had at times were that some of the crucial things were not explained properly to the player. For instance, I was hooked to the NPC Solaire of Astora and Seigmeyer of Catarina right from the start I met them. But their paths had absolutely no mention anywhere within the game and I had to refer a guide to figure out where these guys were headed to after a particular interaction. Fortunately, I met both and saved both their lives. Long live Sunbro!
Towards the end of the game, as my good friend Allwyn has already put it, it got a lot more easier with the upgraded equipment - Black Knight Halberd +5 to be specific. This halberd was chopping through enemies like a hot knife through butter! Things became simpler and bosses mere pussies! Of course there were some who still gave me a good run however. Black Dragon Kalameet for instance. It must have taken me at least 6 to 7 tries to beat this hellish creature who had some unpredictable and intimidating moves! The final boss however (surprisingly considering False King Allant in Demon's Souls owned me!) was extremely simple and it took me just 5 critical hits and 2 estus flasks before I laid him to rest permanently. The screenshots below should be self explanatory I suppose:
Each critical hit did a whopping 1183 damage with the Hornet's Ring equipped!
And that's it!
These were my primary equipment and stats on the right side:
Also managed to kill the Asylum Demon in 5 shots this time.
And finally, it took me 58 hours and 28 minutes over a period of 24 days to beat the title.
Props to the devs. at From Software for a brilliant game and to Namco Bandai for listening to the fans publishing the port to the PC. And to Durante at NeoGAF for bringing out an instant fix to an otherwise flawed port. Had it not been for him, I wouldn't have even bothered to play it on the PC. And finally, Allwyn who insisted me to grab the title after the Dishonored playthrough, instilled courage in me from time to time, for all the help that you have lent me - I owe you one Allwyn!
Here is hoping that the devs. bring about more Souls titles in the future.
hyeah:
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