THE DIARY OF THE MASOCHISTIC MONK [DARK SOULS TOO BAREHANDED CHALLENGE]

I was doing 55 damage per hit.

For those of you that were disappointed in the lack of pain in the last boss, I am happy to inform you that I did something stupid for this boss fight. You know, something other than fighting it with my bare hands.

The gimmick to the Lost Sinner fight is that it's in a dark prison cell. Before entering, there are two spiral staircases on either side of the fog gate leading to a pool of oil. Setting this oil on fire would spread to the arena and providing light to see the boss better with. Failure to do so would mean that the boss would be harder to spot, and you would easily lose your lock on and your ability to track it.

I decided not to light those torches. I did that because I wanted to give myself an extra challenge since the last fight went disappointingly smoothly, but mostly because getting the key to unlock the doors leading to those oil pools meant that I had to fight a different boss. And that boss is annoying to fight even with a weapon. Without it... eugh. So chalk it up to laziness, but I just went ahead and fought the Lost Sinner with the deck stacked against me.

I'm not kidding. I won't do that fight. No amount of sad faces you post in response to this will get me to change my mind.

To Battle!

If someone can tell me of a way to take a screenshot on the PS3, I'd be very appreciative. I kept trying to take pictures of the boss during to intro to try and find a cool looking shot to put on the top of this article. That intro scene only plays once forever, after all, so I was hoping to get a good, authentic shot of the Sinner before actually fighting it. Unfortunately, I didn't start my timer before starting the fight, so after taking a neat picture at the end of the cutscene, I fumbled with trying to dodge the boss's and starting the timer after closing the camera app. After taking a few hits from the boss, I finally managed to get the timer started. Ready to finally take on the boss, I put my phone down and waiting for her to finish her combo before popping an Estus. The Sinner saw me doing this, though, and decided that this was the time she would rush forward instead of leaping back like she usually does. One bum rush forward, and that greatsword of hers implanted itself right in my butt, killing me.

I have never made any claims to be good at this game, but come on, you don't want me to count that, right? You can give me one Mulligan, right?

...Okay, fine. I'll add it to the total.

Annoyed, I went to my computer to log the time and death method, when suddenly I heard damage noises from the TV! Panicking, I rush back to find enemies that stood next to me at my spawn point filling me with crossbow bolts! I try to get away from them, but couldn't make it time, and I died. From mobs.

If I have to add technical difficulties to the death count, then I guess I have to add BS mob deaths as well. Great. Off to a wonderful start.

Nothing to log this time, so I spawned back and immediately ran past those assholes camping at my spawn point (seriously, From?) and made my way to the Lost Sinner again. Luckily, I made it back with no problem, so the next round begins!

Being another variation of "a dude/chick in armor" boss that DS2 is so fond of, her attacks were rather easy to predict. Doesn't mean I got clipped every now and then by mistiming a dodge, but for the most part, I settled into a decent rhythm and kept going for 1:32 minutes. I botched a dodge roll from her three hit combo and was backing up to heal. However, she paused for a while after the combo, and I thought it would be a good time to take a swig of Estus and restore some health. The Sinner was waiting for that moment, though, and like a tiger pouncing on its prey, she immediately raised her greatsword and skewered my face.

I want to state for the record that it's twice as humiliating actually WRITING about my failures as opposed to showing them in a video. Having to relive and document exactly how I screw up makes my brain go, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING YOU MORON?!" every time I log a mistake. Seriously, what was I thinking popping an Estus Flask WHEN THE BOSS WAS NOT IN AN ACTUAL ATTACK ANIMATION?! That was just asking for death.

After that brain lapse, I went to record my failure yet again. And yet again, I completely forgot about the enemies that stand right next to the spawn point! So here I was again, rushing back to the controller to save dear Masomonk from getting skewered again. I was frustrated that I let myself fall into that trap yet again, and I was in the mood to take it out on some mobs. So I rush out from behind the corner I was hiding behind... only to be killed with three crossbow bolts at once.

Sometimes I amaze myself with how stupid I am.

I knew that I would continue to be blindsided time and time and time again, so I decided to take a break from the Lost Sinner to clean up these dips before moving on. Dark Souls 2 had an interesting mechanic where, if you kill mobs in each area about ten or so times when they respawn, they will STAY dead for the remainder of the game. A controversial addition, sure, and one that was removed in all future games. Personally, I was fine with it. By the time I got that point, I would be appreciative of having a break. So I continued to kill them over and over again until they stopped respawning. Lucky me.

With that out of the way, I felt encouraged. I had a break from the boss, and so the next time I fight, I'll win. Right? That's how the process goes.

Ha...

Hahahaha...

HAHAHAHAHAHHA!

*sobs*

Oh sure, it STARTED fine. I fell into a nice rhythm and kept a good pace going for about 6:37 minutes. Somehow, however, she ended up parrying and countering me when I wasn't even doing any attacks! Without any kind of warning, no less! This is one of the few moments since I started with the Souls series where I call bullshit on the game rather than my ineptitude as a player. Usually it's the other way around.

What the hell is with locking me into a preanimated finish when I had enough health to keep going? This ain't Skyrim! I don't want to play Skyrim! I want to play something fun!

Well, on the bright side, at least I saw an animation I had NEVER seen before in all my time playing this game. So... worth it?

It's been about thirty minutes at this point, and I was feeling the salt flowing through my bloodstream. Seeing that salt is bad for the human body in such large doses, I knew I had to wrap this up soon. With that in mind, I enter the boss arena yet again.. and died in 36 seconds thanks to a mistimed dodge and desperate attempt to heal instead of PAYING ATTENTION TO THE BOSS I'M FIGHTING. I read one of the Lost Sinner's attacks as a leaping slash, but instead of landing in front of me like she always does, she landed behind me and immediately stabbed my butt, killing me as I was putting away my flask.

Someone sign me up for Estus Recovery program. I have a problem.

Eventually, though, lots of patience and constant focus brought me victory. I panicked a little when I made a couple of blunders that lost me all my Estus early in the fight, but I decided to keep going and see how far I could whittle her health down before slipping up and dying.

Turns out that time was never. After 10 death both in and out of the boss fight, I was in the zone and could predict pretty much any attack she made. It was over in a final 6:03 minute round of endurance.


Rubbing Salt in the Wound:

This is normally the part where I start throwing shade at you as I pop the last remaining tie you have to this world for some extra Souls. God knows you deserve it; it's around the time players face you that we realize that different varations of "a dude in armor" is going to be about 60% of this game's boss fights. Because you're just another sword fighter boss, the only idea From had to give you for extra challenge on New Game + is to throw a couple of extra Black Phantoms at me when your health starts to drop. Can you say "ARTIFICAL DIFFICULTY?"

Honestly, though, I just feel sorry for you. Not because of anything you did in the game, mind you. You were as significant to the plot and storyline as a fly's role in a man dying of old age. No, I feel sorry for you because you were a victim of the developers. You could have had an interesting gimmick with the darkness in your stage. Unfortunately, right before release, From ripped out the amazig lighting engine they had to really add the DARK to Dark Souls. Your boss fight felt like it was designed specifically to take advantage of that engine. Even without the torches, you were still visible from one side of the arena to the other. You love to always leap backwards after finishing a combo (hence the Dancing Queen title I gave her), presumably to conceal yourself in what would be total darkness. But as it is, you are just another boss that has a strange arena gimmick.

I heard the PS4 version adds the awesome lighting engine back, so perhaps your arena actually looks the way it should and fighting you without the torches would be a terrifying experience. But this is the PS3 version and you're about as concealed as a beer can at a frat party.

The Conclusion:

And there you have it. The first of four Great Souls claimed. Looking back through my notes and mentally retracing my actions, it's really hard to justify how I had this much trouble. I suppose hindsight is 20/20, and it's about as fair as berating yourself for betting red after the roulette pill landed on black.

So yeah. I hope this round of suffering made up for the lack of pain with the Ruin Sentinels. Anyway, I'm going back to the starting village to visit the Emerald Herald to put these newly acquired Souls to good use. See you next-



...Oh, I'm sorry. Am I BORING you? Is my pain and suffering NOT INTERESTING TO WATCH?!

If you weren't the person who levels me up, I'd have killed you just for striking that pose. But sure. Enjoy your time here, safe and comfortable in the village while I get raked over the coals. I hate you, I hate you so much.


Death Count:
- Hardcore Acupuncture: 5
- Peanut Gallery: 4
- Parryless Riposte BS: 1

TOTAL DEATHS (this boss): 10
TOTAL DEATHS (all time): 34

I was doing 56 damage per hit with bare fists. One strike from a slightly upgraded mace did about 296 on a single hit.

I admit I was expecting to fight a different boss before facing off against this guy or else I would have hyped it up a bit more. However, I actually remembered a certain shortcut I could use to skip a boss I THOUGHT I was going to fight and decided to just come straight here. Perhaps when I'm feeling particularly masochistic I might go back and fight him. For now, I wanted to tick the required boss off the list.

Remember how the Lost Sinner was one of those four Great Soul bosses I had to kill for the first half of the game? Well, this is the second one. Don't let his imposing appearance fool you; The Old Iron King is, in my opinion, the worst boss in the entire game. Not because he's so hard, but because he's so EASY! I died a couple of times I seriously question how anyone could have gotten this far into a Souls game and not had any trouble with this guy.

The Old Iron King is generic, uninspiring, and boring in my eyes: A half man, half dragon hulk whose lower body is submerged in lava. When taking the battlefield, he uses his massive strength pound at the land with such ferocity that it even scares himself stiff, as evidence by him not budging an inch afterwards and leaving you with plenty of time to get about five or six hits in before he remembers that pain is something he's supposed to avoid and jumps backwards. To add variety in his arsenal, he also comes with a variety of fire-breathing moves that cover about 90% of the arena. The remaining 10% consists of a clear barricade that you can cower behind in and cry or sip some Estus until it's over.

When your Dark Souls boss is one turtle shell away from becoming Bowser, you might want to rethink a few aspects about the design.

To Battle!

You may have noticed the trend in the last couple of fights that the bosses have some sort of gimmick to their arenas. The Lost Sinner had darkness, and Mytha had poison. While the Old Iron King thankfully doesn't have a gimmick that is almost certain to kill you for the crime of not predicting exactly what the arena was going to look like, the gimmick it does have is obnoxious and stupid. The arena in which you fight the Old Iron King in is really really small, and surrounded on all sides with lava. Fall in the lava, and you immediately die.



This freaking driftwood in stone form counts as the arena for the boss fight. For scale purposes, the Old Iron King is probably about twice this length. With a multitude of fire breathing attacks that cover about 90% of the walkable land, this fight was more annoying than actually challenging or fun.

As if the lack of breathing room wasn't enough of a handicap for the boss, there's something else about this arena that makes me tear my hair out in frustration. Can you see it? It's running right up against the left wall. No? Here then, let me move closer to show you:



Somewhere out in the mystical, far-off lands of Japan, some psychotic designer at FromSoft is raughing their ass off, drinking from the tears of all the unfortunate souls who fell down that hole. And yeah, that someone was me.

Don't laugh at me. Just because I fell for the trap doesn't make it a good trap.

Anyway, the fight ended up being shorter than any other in the series so far. You'd think that, with the massive amount of health he had, this would not be the case. However, the Old Iron King suffers from one of the biggest issues plaguing large scale bosses of this generation: slow, telegraphed attacks with ridiculous amounts of cooldown. For every other boss, I could just manage to squeeze in one or two swiped before needing to back off to avoid the next attack. With the Old Iron King, however, I could throw in five, six, even seven hits if I wanted to! This meant that, despite the low damage, the boss was toppled in about 1:30 minutes.

Rubbing Salt in the Wound:

I'm sorry, Mr. Old Iron King. I'm sorry I was so mean to you. In retrospect, you're actually very very good boss. You, contrary to my initial belief, both add to the Dark Souls experience and provide a great example to use in legit game design discussions! It used to be that I had to go on and on a list a bunch of different aspects about bosses that piss me off and why I think they're terrible design ideas.

Now I don't have to list all of them. I can just point to you and your fight and say, "never do anything you see here."

That is your purpose, Old Iron King. Keep that at the front of your mind while I pop your soul to gain a few extra levels. That's all you are to me now. A few extra levels.

The Conclusion:

I died twice to this fight. For that brilliant display of incompetence alone, I feel like I don't deserve to continue on with this series. But as long as there's more pain to be had, I'll be there!


Death Count:
- Bath time: 1
- Explosive belching: 1

TOTAL DEATHS (this boss): 2
TOTAL DEATHS (all time): 46

He realized how boring and easy he had become and decided to burn himself.

Yay I feel better! Thanks, Kylaila! Time to run around naked some more!

I was doing 76 damage per hit with bare fists.

It's been quite a while, hasn't it? I'm so sorry that it took me so long to get the next part finished. However, today (February 25) was a community event "Return to Drangleic," where members of the Souls community would create a new character and return to the game. So now was as good a time as any to get back into it! You'll be happy to know that I pushed forward and completed the next two bosses in the series, so you've got that to look forward to. For now, here's my triumphant return to Dark Souls 2! Here we goooo- *dies*

Thankfully, Scorpioness Najka is a relatively easy (if not frustrating) boss to ease my way back into the game. Her attacks are rather slow, she likes to give me some breathing room thanks to her array of sorceries, and she had this frustrating phase where she burrows underground and starts tunneling through the earth like an earthworm that gave me time to heal and compose myself before resuming the dance.

That being said, this is still Dark Souls, and she is certainly no pushover. Her attacks do heavy damage and have poisoning attributes, her sorceries almost ALWAYS kill me in one hit (though that's because I have no armor on), and failing to pay attention to her position underground can mean almost instant death when she jumps back up. Despite this, she is a good warm up for the inevitable suffering that will ensure in the next boss.

However, Najka hold a certain significance to me, which I'll explain in the last section.




Entering Najka's lair is unlike any other boss you'll see in the game. Upon entering, you are not greeted with a sweeping choir and orchestra normally accompanying the boss room. In fact, the boss herself isn't even fully visible. Instead, you find a sandy crater surrounded with dead trees and ruined buildings. At the deepest part of the crater, in the dead center, stands the torso of a pale woman. The woman stares unblinking at you as you try to make sense of what it is you're seeing.

However, the second you take your first step, she raises her arms and starts firing off Soul Spears, one of the more powerful sorceries in the game, directly at you. In a panic, you roll out of the way and break into a dead run towards this new enemy. Once you reach her, though, her body slips underground, and your attacks strike nothing but air. Seconds later, the woman bursts completely out from under the sand, revealing her true form. Now, the battle can begin proper.

I found this to be an interesting idea, if not a little unnecessary. Every time you die and reenter the room, you have to go through that little commencement ritual. As I come to find out, however, this tactic of slightly annoying me actually plays well into her repertoire of moves designed to frustrate and tease. It doesn't make it fun or interesting, though. It just makes me haaaaaaate her.

Allow me to expand on that previous point. As I explained in the beginning of this writeup, Najka has both short range poisonous attacks and long range sorceries. Combine that with the behavior of burrowing underground for a set period of time, and her approach to battle becomes clear: poison the prey, then back off and let their life slowly drain away. It's a cowardly and frustrating tactic, but one that certainly kept me on edge. Remember: I'm not wearing any armor. No armor mean no poison resistance. If I get hit by two consecutive attacks, I'm poisoned.

On the bright side: my stash of healing items has grown to a respectable size since I started this endeavor. While it's true that I only have about 6 chugs of Estus, I have ample supply of Lifegems. The intent of these Lifegems were to provide you with slowly regenerating health for when you're out of battle, where Estus flasks were meant for a quick, large chunks of healing in the heat of battle. Lifegems were a godsend for this fight, as popping two of them at once countered the DPS of poison. And thanks to Najka's habit of backing off whenever I get poisoned, there were plenty of windows to pop a couple of Lifegems. I imagine my death count would be in the double digits if she continued her assault in close range after poisoning me.

Remember when I said she had an array of sorcery? One of the worst sorceries to plan against is the Homing Soulmass. For the uninitiated, the Homing Soulmass is a spell where the caster creates up to 4 satellites around their heads. When a hostile comes within a certain range, the satellites quickly rocket towards the hostile and explode, inflicting heavy damage. I'm not wearing any armor. No armor means no magic resistance. If I poorly time my dodges, even 2 of those 4 Homing Soulmasses will kill me. Because of her teasing nature, I refer to these freaking things as the Blue Balls attack since they look exactly like little spheres.

Oh, but it gets better. The other sorcery she has up her nonexistent sleeve is the Homing Soul Spear Shower. Remember me describing the Soul Spear to you at the beginning of this section? Well, imagine about 5 of those bastards being launched at once. Doesn't sound like a fun time, huh? Well, it's not. Just like the Homing Soulmasses, just 2 out of the 5 spears are enough to kill me.

OH BUT IT GETS BETTER! Imagine if she set up the Blue Balls attack and THEN went straight into spamming Soul Spear Shower? Since she's not the type for direct confrontation, I had to be the one to approach her target zone, which meant dealing with Soul Showers and Blue Balls at once! A single misstep would spell instant death!

*sigh*

Thankfully, once you master the dodge window for the sorceries, she doesn't have much else up her sleeve to trick you. As long as you keep up to date with the Lifegems, you'll take her out without too much trouble. I managed to beat her in 8 or so minutes after I regained my muscle memory.

Najka's soul description
Najka was born of the misdeeds of an ancient being, a frail soul from the beginning, that soon succumbed to madness.

In this case, I think the ancient being is the lead designer. Like I said at the beginning of this writeup, Najka holds a certain significance to me: During my very first playthrough, there was something strange niggling the back of my mind. Something felt wrong. Something felt off. However, I couldn't quite place my finger on it.

But when I came across Najka, it finally hit me: 60% of Dark Souls 2's bosses are just boring variations of a dude in armor. The other 40% are shameless ripoffs of Dark Souls 1!

Let me show you a picture of a certain boss in Dark Souls 1: Chaos Witch Quelaag:



See the similarities? Granted, it's not as bad as a different boss that I won't do for this playthrough which is a BLATANT copy/paste job, but I still wonder what From was thinking. Quelaag used a fire sword and spat lava, while Najka uses Sorcery and poison. I'm still deciding which one I hate more.

It was at this point that I stopped looking forward to the next boss encounter. Now that I knew the bosses would fall into either a dude in armor or a rehash of DS1, the magic was simply lost on me. I was so hyped since the original Dark Souls all had original and interesting boss fights. Here, it was either one of the two categories with PERHAPS an outlier here and there.

Was I being a whiny, entitled Soul snob that demands absolute originality back then? Yeah I was. Do I know more about game design now and can appreciate the differences between these "ripoffs?" You bet. Will I continue whining like this to vent my frustrations after suffering through this masochistic challenge of killing bosses in a hard game with no weapons?

Damn right, I will.




Feels good to get back into the suffering. Sorry about the hiatus, but I'm back and ready for more pain! I didn't leave because of the Rotten, despite how I ended my last entry. I just got wrapped up in a bunch of committments that all took higher priority. I'll work on the writeup for the next boss and have it sometime in the future. I won't give an exact date, but I want to really take my time and get my thoughts as clear as I possibly can.

Because this next boss... This next boss got me mad. Not cynical self-depreciating mad. Not frustration over my own inability to play the game mad. I'm talking about volcanic, blood-boiling, vein-bursting fury that puts everything else I've written to date to shame. I want to make damn sure I convey exactly how this next boss made me feel.

Next up: the final Great Soul boss.