When the fire fades, the ash will rise... Let's Play Dark Souls 3

Yeah, it really took me out of the experience. In Souls Lore they don’t have Taco Blizzards in the Painted World of Ariandel, they’re an Undead Settlement specialty. Do these guys even read descriptions?

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No!

It is a settlement of giant humaniod birds. If any species would try stealing a Taco blizzard it’d be them,

Summary

Or humans.

gasp

The settlement is filled with crow/raven humanoids, stealing something as horrific as a taco blizzard could only be vile seagull territory!!

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We respect corvids in this thread, damnit.

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update

Guest Commentators: @Enrel and @IFS

38

What’s this? Did all of that not impressive gameplay finally result in masterful, expert-level play?

Well… eventually. Maybe.

Anyway, let’s finish up this first DLC with quite an intense and climactic fight!

(And if I did everything correctly, this’ll be the first, and only, time you’ve seen a loading screen in this whole dang LP.)

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All right. The Friede fight. To me this is definitely the hardest fight of the game including all the DLCs (I don’t think any other bosses even come close.)

The fight often gets criticized for it’s sheer length, difficulty, three phases you have to fight every time you die and “surprise health bars” (c’mon kids, back in mah day we di’nd even got dem health bars) but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I like that this fight kicked my ass up and down the room the first few times. (funnily, first time I beat her only took me about five tries, when I recorded the fight for the NG+ portion of my LP it took me closer to 15).

The revelation that Friede has a third phase is one of the very few actual “Holy shit!” moments in this game.

When you’ve played Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Bloodborne there really isn’t much of anything in 3 that really forces you to overcome the odds. Sure, there were bosses that gave me trouble, but it was more a matter of adapting than actually improving and taking risks. This is something I haven’t really felt since beating Ornstein and Smough for the first time, and that fight is piss easy by comparison. To accomplish that the Friede fight needs to be that marathon, it needs to deny you an easy way to learn phase 3 and it needs to do the best to break your spirit. Only because of this Friede isn’t just yet another Dark Souls boss I defeated. Sure I’ve beaten her in a single try on later playthroughs but that was only after struggling with her to varying degrees in playthroughs before that.

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I definitely agree that this fight will likely break your spirits the first time around. Most people believe it to only be a two-phase fight, and why not? There’s a mid-boss cutscene, the arena changes, and you get a Titanite Slab the first time you beat the second phase.

Then it happens. Ariandel starts speaking again (and I almost want to say that they had him say something so you wouldn’t notice the health bar refilling under the subtitles).

You’ve used up all of your estus because you thought you could, and Friede gets back up. And the third phase is over before it begins.

And even for this LP, she genuinely crushed me during my first attempt. (You can actually see me noticing very early on in the attempt that my estus is not the equipped item, so I take a few hits while trying to switch to it.)

It’s a really good fight!

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You know, if you root around in the game file’s picture menu, you can find a completed version of the Painter’s painting. I find it weird that that they went with this design, but I guess that Miyazaki really liked this version of it:

Picture

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update

Guest Commentators: @IGgy and @prahanormal

39

This is it, the start of The Ringed City! Andy’s back to remind us that Dark Souls 2 exists and Iggy joins us to… also do that… somewhat.

Anyway, we’re covering a lot of ground today, so get ready for quite the Dark Souls sendoff!!

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730-0-1498708663

:toot: did you know :toot:

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I make my best posts on no sleep.

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update

Guest Commentators: @IGgy and @prahanormal

40

The first of this DLC’s four bosses is quite a doozy, so let’s… jump right on in. Then let’s talk lore as the Dark Souls 2 references just keep on rolling in!


This thread has seen a significant increase in the amount of shitposting going on recently, so let me be clear that I 100% endorse all of it. ALL. OF. IT. So keep up the good work!

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My posts are immaculate, how dare you! :anger::dogee:

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Aw yeah, the best part is rapidly approaching. Fun fact: The giant can also summon a disembodied dragon head to lay down some fire while you are in the middle of arrow hell. Or getting rushed down by the knight with the massive hammer.

The ringed city dlc is pretty interesting so far. Sadly my run was ended against the brick wall that was Friede.

It’s going to become apparent that having only one person with us who has intimate knowledge of playing this DLC is probably for the best. I’m going to get really good at frustrating Iggy with my terrible combat and platforming decisions, so three people constantly owning me would just be too much.

Not to say it won’t be totally undeserved, but still.

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Huh, I don’t remember having to own you. You’re plenty good at that yourself.

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DAMMIT IGGY!!! I’VE BEEN OWNED AGAIN!

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