We're a bit late to the party on Dark Souls, but we decided to document our quest for bell #2. I am really quite loving this game, and I think Matt is enjoying it too, despite his audible wondering as to why I'm even playing this crazy thing. Sometimes I wonder too though.

Is this game genuinely good or is it just Stockholm syndrome?

Part 2. I love those froggy guys. They kinda don't look like they belong in the game, but of course, it's Dark Souls, so appearances are deceiving.

Part 3. We fight the Gaping Dragon along with a summoned player and NPC. Man, what a crazy ass monster! I feel kinda bad that we ended up just kinda shooting arrows at it while our buddies kept it busy, but whaddya gonna do I guess. Besides, the dude that helped us prolly got a bunch of humanity right?

Part 4. Man. Blight town suuuuuuucks...

Part 5. We were pretty demoralized at the thought of trudging back into Blighttown. I don't think I've ever been this stressed out by a video game.

Part 6. This one is mostly us being lost on all the windy wooden paths. Also, arguing.

Part 7. Finally some progress! We make it to the swamp bonfire and get a new sword in the process.

Part 8. Progress continues. We start to think, hey, maybe Blighttown isn't so bad? Then we meet the guys with the boulders. Nope, it's still bad.

Part 9. I feel like an idiot after realizing the Blighttown elevator isn't as complicated as I thought. Also, those guys with the blowguns are assholes.

Part 10. Man, we've done 10 of these already? Apparently, we inadvertently cause the death of the Firekeeper in this one. Or something. Man, I dunno, Dark Souls.

Part 11. The penultimate episode, which really should have just been the ultimate episode if we weren't boneheads. Highlights: Quelaag, killing an invader and then summoning the same player, Quelaag again (with feeling), and being boneheads. I swear, we didn't do that on purpose. We honestly had no idea.

We turn around and pull the lever that was right behind us. Yep. We're dumb. That was the bell! Which means Dark Souls Adventures has come to a close. Here's the YouTube playlist if you're interested.

Final Thoughts

Making these videos was a lot of fun. Some of the best I've had in our so far short run of game video makings. I am definitely going to continue playing, though I think Matt is pretty sick of Dark Souls at this point. He has vowed sever times over the course of these videos to never, ever play it himself, and honestly? I can't really blame him.

There's something brilliant going on in the * Souls games. These are games where the acquisition of a regular, non-magical sword that's maybe a couple points better than your current one is a huge cause for celebration. This is pretty amazing in the modern RPG genre, and in modern games in general, where most devs go out of their way to reward the players fast and often. Rewards are great, but they start to lose meaning if they are too ubiquitous. I am far more attached to my Iaito in Dark Souls than any weapon I ever found in World of Warcraft, Torchlight, Borderlands, et al, because I feel like I earned it.

That said, this game is also full of some pretty solid jank that can't be denied. Obscured camera, overly complicated controls, unexplained systems, awful framerates, and a confusing localization all add more frustration on top of a game that is already very demanding of it's players. It doesn't seem fair that a game that asks 110% from you doesn't also perform at the top of it's own game.

If From Software fixed these issues, however, I can't help but feel like the experience might be diminished somehow. The jank is, inextricably, part of the game; a game that I still genuinely love despite it's flaws. Perhaps the devs, instead of being overly ambitious and not reaching their goals, are in fact evil geniuses? Perhaps From realizes that flaws make things interesting, as long as you have something likable at the core. If they don't realize that, I hope somebody out there learns from it's lesson.

Playing this game on video and sharing it with you duders and other viewers on YouTube has also been a great experience. I almost wish everyone could play the game this way. There's a huge sense of camaraderie when sharing this game and discussing it with others, as if we're all sharing war stories and displaying old wounds.

I can't wait to play more.