Almost immediately after the credits rolled, I started to reflect on my experience. I honestly didn't think I had it in me, being my first Souls game and all.

As much as it is gratifying to have beaten arguably one of the harder games of this generation; I think my proudest moment was beating the Ruin Sentinels on my first try. I actually wanted to summon the sorcerer for this fight, but I thought I'd just give it a go by myself first. The fight really didn't start off well. I was caught off guard by the first sentinel's surprise attack. Then, a succession of attacks pushed me off the edge. Barely surviving the fall, I managed to quickly heal. But, really, I didn't think I'd survive more than few seconds, since the other two sentinels joined the fight. I must've spent two or three minutes just dodging and blocking. I didn't hit anyone -- I never even landed a hit on the first one on the platform! It was hard enough keeping the three of them in my sight, let alone try to attack. I slowly built my confidence and tried to cautiously attack every now and then, and probably after 10 to 15 minutes (or at least, that what it seemed like), I managed to kill the three of them. My nerves were practically fried and my palms were sweaty.

This was probably one of my proudest moments not just in Dark Souls 2, but probably gaming as a whole. So... what were your proudest moments in the Souls series, particularly Dark Souls 2? I actually wouldn't mind the embellished version of what happened.

That is very impressive. It took me like 12 tries to beat them. I also didn't have a strike weapon, nor was mine upgraded a lot so that increased difficulty somewhat. On my second playthrough I beat them first try in under a minute.

Proudest moment in Dark Souls II? Hm, probably beating 2 gray spirits at a time, while also being attacked by the dwarfs and then defeating the Belfry Gargolyes in one run. There isn't a lot of stuff that would actually make me proud, but seeing some of the reactions maybe I should be. For instance, I only died about 5 times in Shrine of Amana across all my playthroughs, which is 5 (not counting deaths from falling why trying to get Sunlight Blade though) while a lot of people seemed to have a lot of trouble with it. Same story for Lost Sinner and Flexile Sentry on NG+, died once on both.

Beating the Belfry Gargoyles on my first run through the Belfry Luna. I even killed some human invaders, which is the first time that's ever happened in the Souls series for me haha. On a similar note, beating the Lost Sinner NG+ on my first try, despite those surprise pyromancers. What a rush.

Soloing the Belfry Gargoyles with a pure melee low level character. At some point, every Gargoyle was active. That's fighting like 7 Gargoyles at once. I kept my cool and plinked away at them, whenever I saw an opportunity, and eventually, I prevailed. That was satisfying.

That ONE time I got summoned in as a Blue Sentinel, and was actually on time to help.

When i finished my bare-naked bare-fist no leveling, no death run.

There are only 6 max. To get everyone to spawn you must have all the others at half health or below and not kill them as a new one spawns when one gets below half health. Why wouldn't you focus on the ones with low health and start attacking a 'fresh' one?

Because they also start breathing fire and flying at that point. Without any ranged attacks, how would I get to them before the higher health gargoyles get inbetween by rushing at me to engage me in melee combat? I wouldn't, for the most parts.

Also - I didn't have that information. I'm pretty sure they're on a timer as well, ontop of that health treshhold - so dealing little damage with my piddly sword would result in the same outcome.

Beating the pursuer on my first try, thinking he wasn't too tough. Then hearing Vinny, Brad and Rorie talk on multiple occasions about how tough he was for them.

That fight is so stressful the first time. I remember my thought process going through it:

"Okay, so, it's two, like in the last game."

*minutes later*

"Actually, it's three. Okay. I can do three. It's just the game upping the ante."

*minutes later*

"Oh, come on. Four? Four? Three I can do. But four?"

*minutes later*

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. This whole fucking rooftop is made of hate and hunger and oh god I just want to die to think about this for a while."

@historyinrust: I kind of liked how they played with your expectations in that fight. It was a good throwback.

@seppli I don't believe they are on a timer. I just ran around the fire breath. The only good half damaged gargoyle is the one that is about to die.

Helping a guy beat The Rotten then getting a thank you message from him. Made me feel good!

I'm not really rpoud of anything... Or maybe my "no death + no bonefire run". I was happy when I finished it. Happy it was over, but happy I could make it too.
Things I "should" be proud of ? Never, died against the Lost Sinner (NG+ or otherwise)

My deaths against Lost Sinner on my first playthrough were due to still figuring out ADP and healing. I haven't died on her since in NG across 5 characters. In NG+ I died once. I used Repair Powder instead of Estus accidentally. It was kind of funny though.

Man these challenge runs you guys are talking about are beyond my ken..and my Barbie for that matter. I'll just be happy to beat the game, then maybe dive into NG or a new character.

Thinking about it I am not even totally sure. I guess I would have to say that time I owned the skeleton lords so bad I killed all three of them before their adds spawned. Of course this ended up with my dieing cause it turned into me versus like 15 undead that I had no idea were coming with my back turned to the wheel guys.

I tried to do the speed run almost instant parry to death thing on the Persuer. It failed, so I just kept parrying him. Each hit came after a parry, until Persuer was dead.

Beating the Fuck out the Belfry Gargoyles the first try, came out on the roof saw the first one and was all "I know whats going on here...Ill just keep an eye out for the second one."

Oh you think there are just two, silly human.

Hmm, beating the second pursuer felt good. It felt like an actual man on man battle.

Every time I took out that pest navlaan (and still do mind you he keeps popping up post game).

But the proudest moments are when I manage to get a bosses aggro away from a world master whose life bar is shrinking before me with Rotten or the Sentinels on his tails.

The worst was once again Sif. They made it even worse this time. What is up with that. Somebody at From must really really hate dogs.

Beating Smelter Demon for the first time. It felt so good, even if I didn't manage to keep Lucatiel alive it was really something.

Pretty sure it is supposed to be a rat, as he is called Royal Rat Authority.

@scampbell: Well, ya, I know what its called but its clearly a (rabid) dog. Or coyote or other canine. But certainly not a rat. Maybe someone can shed light on the lore and why this animal seems to mingle with rodents...?

I just thought they had made him dog-like to reference Sif, he does have a rat tail though, both as a reward and visible on the model.

@scampbell: I know what it drops, believe it or not, I actually kept hitting the limping thing. But given the fact that judging by the other boss battle they know what a rat looks like, they also know that this isnt one. And my assumption is the tail is bald from scabies, like half of him.

Okay, so I'm not crazy. I could have sworn there were 6 of them when I fought them, but everyone kept talking about fighting 3-4 of them so I thought I must have miscounted and remembered things wrong. I went through EXACTLY the same train of thought.

"Oh, its the gargoyles."

"Hey, it's the same music from the Dark Souls 1 gargoyle fight. That's cool."

"Hah, I have to fight 3 of them at once. You are pretty sneaky From."

"...is that a 4th gargoyle? WTF!"

"Oh shit a 5th! Fuck it! Firestorm! Burn them all!"

"They're still alive? Time to finish them off with my sword."

Best moment so far was beating the Throne Bosses on my Company of Champion run. I lost 30+ times to them, but it was super satisfying to finally finish them off.

@militantfreudian: I'm really impressed, I don't know how many times I tried but at the end I had to invoke the sorcerer because I was starting to insult the game and that's not a good sign.

My proudest moment was when I finally beat the Pursuer, my personal, most difficult boss in all the game.

Sure, like most things in Dark Souls, the Royal Rat Authority is scabby, but there is not a single patch of fur on that tail. I agree he doesn't look much like the rats from Grave of Saints, but he kinda looks like the toxic rats in Doors of Pharros, though as I can't seem to find a picture of one, I can't really confirm that. I just don't see anything besides his wolf/dog-like qualities that indicates that he is anything but a mutant rat, it is not like he drops Sif's soul or something on NG+, and to have him be Undead Sif is just too much of a stretch. If he is a dog/wolf in your mind that's fine with me, I just don't buy it.

After reading all the comments, I almost feel stupid for being proud of beating the game. Seriously, the challenge playthroughs... I haven't even started new game plus! What's weird though is that some are acting as if it's nothing to have beaten the game without dying. I must've died over 100 times, and I was super careful for most the time.

I'm not really proud of anything I did in the game. At no point was I banging my head against a wall of difficulty or challenge. I guess beating the game without using magic or ranged attacks is the thing I'm most proud of.

In PvP I faced off against a guy and we were a perfect stalemate for about 7 or 8 minutes. We each got in some good hits, a lot of dodges, some poison, some healing, some ranged attacks, absolutely no magic besides healing, and no blocking with a shield. We had very similar play styles and didn't panic when our health was low. I eventually won. Another person invaded which forced him into a rushed panic, which allowed me to win before the other guy reached the battle.

Yeah, those back and forth fights are the best. I had something similar happen twice. Also very similar play styles. Both very fast in and out. It was a ton of fun.

I wasn't paying attention to my weapon durability, walked into The Rotten, hit him twice and my weapon broke. I punched him to death.

My proudest moment : when I finally closed the gap in my PvP killcount, after being slaughtered so many time in the Arena because of my lack of experience and poor build choice. I kill guys with 25 to 100 SL above me... I'am still having hard time against SL 300+

I was having a real tough time with Duke's Dear Freja. I swear it probably took me around 20 tries to kill that fucking thing. I tried summoning for it but everyone I summoned either died right away or was just really bad. Finally I decided to just solo it. The fight was going well and victory was in sight; I had an almost full health bar and it was one hit away from death. I was just about to land the killing blow when it's little spider buddies get me in the webs they like to shoot. I lost my cool and started rolling and attacking wildly in a desperate effort to free myself from the webbing. Some how I manage to land the killing blow on Freja just as it kills me. Completely defeated after losing what should of been a victory I decided to take one last stab at Freja before calling it quits for the day. I make it all the way back to the fog door and before I can enter it-it vanishes and on the other side of it is the soul of that blasted spider.

I can't tell you how happy I was that the game counted my victory before I died.

I am not very far at all, but I beat that dude that gets dropped on the tower in the Forest of Fallen Giants my first time through the game with no levels and no upgrades. I yelled YES so hard my roommate came to make sure I was okay.

That is pretty impressive ! Bonus points if you were a deprived.

I was sightseeing-slash-goofing around the Forest of the Fallen Giants after I had cleared every enemy from the area. On a whim, I decided to test a hypothesis: The Greater Your Weight, The Greater Your Fall Damage. I de-equiped all my armor, removed all the weaponry from my slots, and all I kept were the rings, which I figured would be negligible. The plan was to attempt a running jump for one of the few remaining equipment drops in the area, so even if I failed the jump (which was likely), I could make a note about how damaging it would be and then attempt it again with all my armor on.

...and someone decides to invade my game. I'm effectively nude as they spawn in front of me, so I do the only thing I can: run and take the jump. Not only do I make it, but I have just enough time to grab the item (some fallen soul whatever, sidenote: the perilous positioned items are rarely the good ones) and bug out of there. But this invader is not giving up. He's keeping pace with me, giving me no time/room to open the items/equip screen.

But 'lo: a Blue Sentinel pops in.

Ol' Blue isn't much of a match against this invader, but they provide just enough distraction for me to get in close and kill him with my bare hands.

I even had enough time to gesture a thanks to the Blue before they vanished.

It was fantastic.

So many great moments of glorious victory in this game: cheesing Dragonrider, parrying Pursuer and soloing Ruin Sentinels. Now I get to do them again in the buttery smoothess that is the PC version.

I've never done anything genuinely impressive, but today I had a moment with the Bell Keepers that made me feel pretty great (keep in mind that I'm rubbish at this game).

I get summoned to Belfry Luna as usual, and as I head down the stairs to look for the host I instead find myself face-to-face with a white phantom. I immediately think that this invasion will be a wash, but then the white makes a massive mistake: he backs off. I'm assuming he thought that he and the host would corner me at the bottom of the stairs; unfortunately, not only was the host closer to me than the phantom, but the host was also turtling behind a great shield (wearing the turtle armor, no less) and I had finally figured out the timing for the guard crush on a 360 controller (playing on pc). I jogged down the stairs, guard crushed the host, switched to my dagger and two-handed it before one-shotting him with the riposte. I'm not gonna lie, it was awesome seeing the white dash over once he saw me land the guard crush.

Also, the dagger wasn't upgraded. I can't believe it was enough to one-shot him. The benefit of low level pvp I suppose!

I ended up playing through the Gargoyle fight 4 times solo and I'm proud to say I went 4-0 against the gargoyles. Beat it every time the first time even on NG+ and NG++

I'm not very good at pvp, so beating two invading bell bros was a neat feeling.

Well done. It might be harder in NG though. Simply because if you don't know what to expect, that fight can throw you off. I was expecting 3 gargolyes. I thought, yeah they'll probably try to toy with my expectations here and just add another one. But no, it was 5. That surprise is the hardest part I think.

So far it's just been the fact that I've been making progress while sticking to using two Cestus weapons. I do use a bow/lightning spear, but only for special occasions.

Got through the Forest, Tower of Flame and Blue Cathedral so far doing that. I've also done a ton of co-oping, and had a good amount of invaders during those sessions, though I don't think there's been an invader that has actually killed someone yet. Though I did walk off a cliff once (and felt like a right dumbass) when fighting one.