[MILD SPOILERS] Seat of the Matriarch

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adamxkuhn

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I don't think I've ever experienced this much tension just from an environment before. Any of the single elements taken on their own would be enough to make the reasonable person nervous, but the combination of

(1) the ever present danger of falling death BUT ALSO the ever-present possibility of not dying from falling and instead finding a cool piece of armor and being like "oh dang rad" literally one second before your body is destroyed by six million Large Jumping People

(2) enemies that are mostly trivial until a bigger one shot-puts out of the shadows from 50 feet away and mashes your unsuspecting coworker into atoms and then those trivial enemies become a very serious nuisance if they get out of hand,

(3) the necessity of fighting either in complete darkness or in managing your position so that you can fight effectively while staying close to your lantern (or just praying you can small-axe two wraiths and a listener without falling to your death or getting mobbed by skellingtons) , and

(4) a three-dimensional labyrinthine structure with multiple branching paths looping back on themselves or ending up in unexpected places so that you turn the corner expecting to see your 50k scoria where you left it on that ledge (where you died the way you lived: rolling unnecessarily); but instead the scoria's like 800 feet away across a huge chasm and you realize you took a wrong turn -- no, several wrong turns -- but you can't remember where or what direction was the right one anyhow and you're not even sure if you can get back there anyway

It's a profoundly disorienting experience, a terrifying and weirdly alien journey through a space that was never meant for humans, whose purpose and design and points of egress are obscure. If Ashen is a souls-like, then this dungeon is the most powerfully memorable place I've ever been in a game of this type, Miyazaki or no.

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lifejuice

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#2  Edited By lifejuice

I lost 30k souls (whatever this game calls them) in that cursed dungeon. That place is indeed terrifying.

Got really far in and watched my AI partner get slammed off a cliff. I was using him as my light source so it was basically seeing a bunch of monsters around me and then the light turning off.

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adamxkuhn

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MerxWorx01

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The area sort of reminds me of Blight town, with all the similar type of enemies you wouldn't want to run into on tiny platforms. Lost several tens of thousands souls there so far, in many cases completely surrounded or getting pinned down and eaten while the other player is getting slaughtered by four different types of monster. It can get very hectic. The deeper you get in, the more likely you will be surrounded by enemies you didn't know were there.

Thankfully it seems like it's a very active place to get matched up with other players... so you can die together.