DAY TWO:
I started over again. I hated my Knight. She was sluggish and manly, and I felt I'd messed up a fair bit in the early going, dying too often and frittering away souls. I re-roll as a Cleric. In place of my Knight's shiny armor, I have a big blousy skirt, in fashionable brown. I also discover the advanced face customization options, allowing for 1100 different variations of homely. I spend a good 20 minutes hand-crafting a homely face especially to my liking, and then log into the game, where it is instantly mummified.
The controls are feeling more comfortable now, and I easily breeze through the tutorial. The jailer demon only kills me once this time. Amateur. I shout "Lol noob!" at him as I exit the chamber.
I'm back in the new area, with my friend the giant crow and Ser Bad Actor. Hahahahaha! He says, helpfully. I run around smashing pots and collecting loot. Whilst doing so, I discover entire areas tucked away I hadn't stumbled into before, littered with chests. Tense, I expect a trap. There is no trap. I happily burgle the chests and carry on.
A graveyard! With numerous items shining, waiting to be picked up! Tense, I expect a trap. My expectations do not go unfulfilled a second time as skeletons boil up out of the earth. Pfft, I think. Skeletons. I've been killing skeletons for ages now. I'm the Michael Jordan of skeleton killing. I raise my mace threateningly, and they cut me to ribbons.
Humbled, I crawl back for my green remains. It's a short run, literally seconds. This heartens me. I will test my mettle against these skeletons again.
And again!
And again!
Have at thee!
Again!
Finally I relent and satisfy myself with dashing through the graveyard snatching items left and right with a conga line of outraged skeletons behind me. At the last second, I give them a brisk salute, and roll to freedom. Alas, there was a gravestone between me and freedom. No matter, the ill gotten gains remain mine. I poke through my loot back at the firepit while Ser Bad Actor looks on. It's a lot of PvP stuff. I also get some souls, which I promptly devour. Ser Bad Actor seems unperturbed by the sight of the leathery mummy eating souls by the fire after flying in on the back of a terrifying raven. He is clearly not cut from heroic cloth.
I spent the next several hours poking my way through the undead burg. I'm not going to bore you with the details. Suffice it to say I know that first stretch of burg better than I know my own neighborhood. There was a lot of undead on undead violence. I leveled up a fair bit. I put my points all over the place. I have no idea what I'm doing.
There was a Black Knight. I killed him, after several aborted attempts. I climbed a little ladder, and threw fire bombs at him, and then jumped down and slew him with an expert bit of swordsmanship. Actually, I scrambled around in terror quaffing potions and bumping into walls and eventually slew him through sheer attrition. He dropped an enormous sword. I put it in my magic box. That's not innuendo, by the way, I literally have a magic box. It's filled with all kinds of crap. Often I find a broken sword, or a piece of rubbish, or a skeleton loincloth. "I might need that later," I say, and place it in my magic box. It's like a hope chest.
I took the Master Key this time, instead of the little amulet thing that was meant to regenerate my hit points and never appeared to be doing any such thing. Excited, I attempted to open the first door I came across. LOCKED, it said, sternly. So it's more of an Apprentice Key, really. It has opened some interesting doors though. One lead me to a burly chap named Havel. He swung a great mace at me and killed me in a single blow. I came back, and this time I rolled around ferociously. He clipped me with his mace, killing me in a single blow. I came back, stripped off all my armor, and pranced around him, tickling his rubs with my shiny new spear. He killed me in a single blow. I resolved to save Havel for later and carried on.
I fought a great hairy demon on a long, narrow catwalk. I stood between his legs and poked his groin while he clipped around my head, jittering back and forth, doing nothing. It seemed possible he was an Autistic Demon, and I felt somewhat guilty for killing him. There was a message on the ground just behind him, that said "I DID IT". I wonder if the demon wrote it himself. He seemed like an optimistic chap. I bow my head in sorrow.
I meet a new person, whom I shall dub Ser Mumbles. Ser Mumbles rambles out some crap, and finishes up with a laugh. Hahahahaha! He says. Earlier, I met an undead shopkeep. He also finished up with a laugh, something along the lines of heeheeheeheehee! The Undead Burg is a place of great and lasting hilarity. Ser Mumbles says we should help each other. I agree. I expect him to come with me. He does not. He's apparently quite happy to stay where he is, peering over the battlements. I am briefly tempted to push him over.
More time passes. There's a bridge, and a dragon, and a lot of creeping around ledges which I expertly fall off several times. Whoops, a skeleton poked my ankle, off I go! Whoops, a rat startled me, off I go! Whoops, that's not the right button, off I go! When I'm not plunging to my death in futile fashion, I'm getting poisoned by rats. There is much profanity. I have colorful things to say about save checkpoints.
I eventually survive the Sisyphean task of actually getting inside the Parish, and proceed to do great things. I kill a boar...by accident! It runs into the fire. I kill some skeletons! I run shrieking from a special looking skeleton, only to find he is easily defeated! Filled with confidence, I forget to target lock a second special skeleton, who stabs me in the back repeatedly before I figure out what's gone wrong! I get to do it all again! Whee!
Eventually, in sweaty desperation and terror of dying, I find another firepit. There's a Blacksmith here. He doesn't end his conversation with me in maniacal laughter, making him my new favorite NPC.
I overcome a big fat skeleton.
I overcome a mage and an army of wussies.
I find a guy in a cage. I let him out. He promises to reward me. "Later" he says. I'm skeptical.
This seems like a good time to save, as I've accumulated a few souls which I'm sure to lose at any moment. I take them to my new best friend Ser Blacksmith and have him upgrade my chain mail and my spear, making them fancy. After he's done, my gamepad decides to forget its bindings again, making this the perfect time to quit.
Ongoing impressions:
1. Getting used to the control scheme. It certainly doesn't feel smooth...especially when attempting to juke or dodge, and getting a target lock can be unnecessarily fussy (given how essential it is)...but it's quite manageable. Every now and then I do something slick, and I'm like "Hey, I've got this shit figured out". I usually die shortly thereafter.
2. The checkpoint saving is a bit ugly. There's some LONG stretches of trash that can be quite punitive without an intermediary checkpoint. Does it add tension? The first couple of times, yes. By the third or fourth time, it's tedious. By the fifth or sixth time, it's approaching "Fuck this shit" territory.
3. I've heard much about the lore. Where's the lore? There's not really much story being given to me. I love the atmosphere, but the only text I get is from the idiots I talk to, most of whom are REALLY bad actors delivering some questionable dialogue.
4. It's a good game, I'll stick with it for now. If the space between campfires keeps getting longer and longer, though, and the game continues to get harder, I could see frustration eventually overwhelming my enjoyment. For now, though, it's pretty fun, and rewarding, peppered with extreme irritation.
