Oh yeah! I've finally beaten the game! Bed of Chaos, Four Kings and Gwyn all in one sitting. I kinda wish it was longer even though I already put in 58 hours into it. Man, I almost lost it when I was fighting Gwyn because I thought he was gonna be a pushover like Old King Allant. Took me about an hour to condition my reflexes on his AI patterns. Also the final music was good.

Anyone can talk all the shit they want about the combat being finicky or the game being needlessly hard but the sheer sense of scale and larger than life experience makes this game worth playing. I recommend this game to anyone who is willing to devote their time and patience on a grueling but extremely rewarding endeavor.

@redcream:

That music, man. I still get chills every time I hear Gwyn's theme.

The Bed of Chaos is the only part of Dark Souls where I said "fuck this game" and actually turned it off. There was plenty of other "fuck this game" but Bed of Chaos was the only time I meant it.

Four Kings is probably my second favorite fight in the game (after O&S) because the strategy changes from "wait for an opening then attack" to "wail on these motherfuckers hard enough before more spawn in" and I thought that was a clever little trick for Dark Souls to play.

If you're jonesing for more Dark Souls, I'd definitely recommend doing a NG+ playthrough since the increased monster health and damage really tests what you learned in your first run.

Praise the sun!

Good job. Now go get 1000/1000 like the real men, like me!

@ravenlight Maybe someday I'll get back on that new game+ or start a new character altogether but this game will take a backseat for a while so that I can finish playing other games in my backlog.

Congrats, man. Now that you've got some hair on your chest it's time for NG+.

@ravenlight: I feel as though the Bed of Chaos fight gets a lot of undeserved flack. It was the only boss in the game that tried something different, something new. Every other boss fight is simply drain the health bar, win, rinse, repeat (minus that first Seath fight, which I could easily accuse as the worst boss). The interesting concept about the BoC is that it nullifies a player's build/equipment, essentially putting everyone on equal footing. Was it poorly executed? Sure, but I'm going to be honest. I beat it on my first playthrough in one attempt, and that was before I learned the cheap homeward bone/return to bonfire after destroying an orb trick. I feel as if people get mad because they've died to it, which applies to almost every enemy and terrain in the game. However, I feel the problem with it is that it's a one trick pony, so on subsequent playthroughs, the boss has lost its magic, sort of like The Sorrow in MGS3.

You beat those three bosses in one day? I spent a few days worth of time just farming things for my NG+ playthrough before I finally fought Gwyn. I'm glad I did, once it was over.

Not exactly true that gear is nullified. I eventually decided a great shield with much a higher stability would better protect me when those claws swipe, and hey, I was right!

Although I can see how you'd go in and just roll past everything and do it in one go. When I first entered the chamber I very quickly thought that was how it was going to happen. I slowly made my way around to the right side, killed that side, and realized what I needed to do to finish the fight. That's when I started making my way back around and fell to my death as the floor crumbled. From there it took me nine or ten deaths before my shield strategy finally helped me out. I'd say you got a little lucky.

Anyway, good times.

@jjweatherman: I was leaning more towards build/class types than gear, probably should've made that clearer. When you think about it, a sorcerer, faith, pyro, tank, etc. all have to approach the boss more or less the same way, meaning no one build will automatically be overpowered against the boss. I'm not making a case that the boss fight was good or anything, I'm just saying that Dark Souls had more immediate problems than one flunky boss. (talking about awful performance issues, reused boss design-did we really need an Asylum Demon, Stray Demon and Demon Firesage all in one game? etc.)

@jclane: Okay, fair point. It is cool that they tried something different. However, that fact is completely destroyed that it's not a fun fight to trial-and-error your way through. I wouldn't be so harsh, but the walk back to the boss door from the nearest bonfire is a non-trivial impediment to learning a boss that one-shots you multiple times with no tells. Again, I'd be singing a different tune if the collapsing sections of floor were at all differentiated from the safe zones.

I didn't get rage-quit mad at any other point in the game because literally every other death was my fault for either not reading tells appropriately, getting in over my head, or rolling off an obvious ledge like a moron. Falling into the hidden pit in the Bed is a cheap death.

The Sorrow has at least some replay value depending on how you played the game up until that point (dozens of dead enemies vs only dead bosses). The Bed is the same every time.

As much whinging as I'm doing here, I still love Dark Souls and I'm willing to put up with one iffy boss since the rest of the game is so good.

I was a really light character and dodging was my thing in the game so Bed of Chaos wasn't really an issue. I feel that people who had issues with that boss were heavy shield users.

@jclane: I felt it was cheap simply because you do all that work and you basically one shot the boss. You don't even get to fight it in any way real way. But that whole zone felt rushed to me anyway so i guess I shouldn't feel so bad about the boss being so underwhelming but I think about how cool the fight could have been if after you hit the two orbs you actually get to fight the boss. For that to not happen and to basically one shot the thing after is pretty disappointing.