<- Previous update: Painted Preliminary
Recap:
- Found the portal to the Painted World
Current missions:
- Explore Anor Londo further
All right. It's been a minute since I've played, so I'm trying to jog my memory here. The school semester began for me last week, and we sort of hit the ground running, so I haven't had a lot of time to play. I think I mentioned splitting the Anor Londo update into three parts, so... this would be the second part, I guess.
I think this is about where we left off:
As I approached that formidable-looking castle and slayed the two sentinels guarding its entrance, I was dismayed yet unsurprised to discover that the front gates were sealed shut. Though both sides just outside the castle were blocked off by two sets of metal bars, the one on the right had been mysteriously busted open--its door lay on the ground, busted off its hinges (or at least, that's what I remember seeing).
Along this path, I was jumped by a group of lanky pink demons--the same kind that flew me over to Anor Londo in the first place. These ones, however, were hostile spear-wielders with electrical capabilities. They were easy enough to dispatch--I'm far better at wielding a spear than them, it seems. They're also quite stupid, lemming-style; it's very easy to lure or even just
push them off ledges and shit. Which makes no sense. Like, come the fuck on--
they have wings, for fuck's sake. Why can't they just
fly up and rescue themselves? There's no excuse for that. I feel like these enemies could've been a lot tougher and more annoying if they had the unique ability to save themselves from falling off cliffs and shit, but no.
It's this kind of thing that takes me out of the game a little bit, because it's not even a logical oversight. Oh well. I don't wanna harp on it too much, because I did enjoy this area of the game overall. But that
did bother me--and this is an impressions thread, after all.
Anyway, I think you all know what's coming up next.
Upon slaying the last pink demon, I heard the distinct
thwack of an arrow being fired at me from a distance. Instinctively, I took cover behind a large pillar and hastily panned the camera around to see where the shots were coming from. Another
thwack--with careful observation, I spotted the archer off in the distance. He looked like a black knight--but I had never encountered a black knight archer before. And it looks like there's more than one.
Another arrow--this time, feeling a bit brazen, I decided to just block it with my shield, and--WOAH,
FUCK. That one had some serious force behind it. After being knocked back a good three meters, as well as taking a big healthy chunk of chip damage, I realized that shit had just gotten real. This has officially become a situation.
I looked ahead. In order to reach them, I had to scamper up a series of, uh...
flying buttresses (any architecture nerds can correct me if I'm wrong there), just like before. Only this time, I had to dodge a stream of these
industrial-strength arrows. This was easier than I thought it was, but now I have two black knights to kill: one on the left, and one on the right. The one on the left was guarding an item corpse--so, naturally, that's the first one I went for.
I got close enough to the knight to realize that his armor was not black--it was grey, or maybe silver, so I opted to call them grey knights instead (yes, I later discovered that they're called silver knights). Time to discover whether these knights are stronger or weaker than their black counterparts. He unsheathed his sword, and... I was blasted off the edge by the other knight.
Thankfully, that was actually my only death against these bastards. On my second attempt, even though I had five digits worth of souls on the line, I decided to leave them behind to try out a new strategy that I never usually do: BUMRUSH. I sprinted up to the rightside knight, and just fucking wailed on him. For some reason, the knight on the left must not be a very good shot--because I wasn't hit by any of his shots.
Though my onslaught was fierce, the knight was hoist by his own petard--as I deflected his strikes, he was forced off the ledge by the blowback of his own attacks.
Newton's Third Law, bitch. Now, not only am I in the clear to kill the
other knight without being sandwiched, I can also recover all my souls. This was a triumph.
I later learned that the Anor Londo archers were actually considered
so difficult by some players, that even Miyazaki
himself admitted that they may have been "a little much," which just makes the fact that I got past them in two attempts all the nicer.
With the castle successfully infiltrated, I found myself in a corridor with a spiral staircase and many unopened doors. I'll play this part in fast-forward--I'll just talk about all the neat stuff I found.
- I met up with Solaire at a bonfire. He didn't have much to do or say, but it was good to see him alive, I suppose.
- Found a hidden room. It was mostly empty and very dark, except for these five treasure chests--one of which was a mimic. The other chests contained Havel's everything--armor, greatshield, and a Dragon Tooth, which I thought was pretty surprising. I've seen dragons before in this game, but to my understanding, none of them have been "true" dragons, or "everlasting" dragons. This tooth belonged to an everlasting dragon. Dang.
- Slayed another Titanite Demon. This one was a son of a bitch to kill, and I didn't get a lot out of it, so I'm just mentioning it here because I'm still kind of salty about that.
- Found some more useless real-world money (Gold & Silver coins). Perhaps I'll find a use for these soon. Maybe not.
- Apart from getting the Silver Knight's armor set, I also managed to kill enough Silver Knights to earn a Silver Knight Straight Sword, and a few of their badass Dragonslayer arrows. Come to think of it, I bet I could use these against the hydra! That'll be so dope.
- Met up with Seigmeyer again, to my delight. As always, he was in a bit of a kerfuffle. It seemed a group of silver knights were giving him some grief, so I slayed them all for him. During the skirmish, however, one of the knights used a dastardly tactic--he walked near poor Seigmeyer, making it difficult for me to avoid stabbing him--and, indeed, I did stab him on accident during the fight.
That's gonna be a sin I'll have to pay for, but Seigy didn't seem to mind. He still rewarded me with a Tiny Being's RIng for my efforts. Hey, wait... That was my starting gift... - Eventually, I found myself in the entrance hall of the entire castle. It was at this point that my Black Eye Orb started rattling. Yup, it's time for me to kill that son of a bitch, Lautrec. I needed some time to come up with a suitably sadistic strategy, first--and I needed all my Estus back. Not to mention, a magical variety of those sentinel guards outside of the castle were here, and they weren't fucking around. They're the hardest enemies I've had to deal with in Anor Londo so far, so Lautrec can wait a little longer before I invade his bitch ass.
- I found the giant blacksmith. This was huge, because not only does he know how to imbue weapons with lightning and other cool shit--he also knows how to harvest the souls of bosses and make powerful weapons with them. I haven't made any just yet, because you need to sacrifice one of your strongest weapons to do that, which is a pretty big commitment. I wasn't about to sacrifice any of my +10s, but I did buy some Moonlight Arrows and Lightning Bolts.
- Found a nice Dragonslayer Bow to go with my DS Arrows.
- Opened up the front gates. Now I can enter this castle whenever I want.
With all that said and done, there was only one more thing left to do before I fought the boss: Invade Lautrec.
And invade him I did. He was a lot tougher than I imagined he would be, but only because he had a couple of cronies at his side. Still, I wanted to kill him as stylishly as possible, so I ended up using a lot of very impractical strategies (and yes, I threw a couple Firebombs).
Sadly, however, the footage itself was corrupted in
such a way that doesn't allow commentary to be recorded over it. I don't fucking know, man.
When I try to edit the video file, this is all that shows up on WMM. Why am I using WMM?... I dunno. It does work, occasionally. Just not this time.
Oh well, at least we
have the footage. Just no commentary again. You don't even have to bother watching--I posted it unlisted on my other channel, because I don't wanna have too many commentary-less videos on my main channel, you feel me? Anyway, here it is:
The fight itself begins at 2:00. The first two minutes were there for the sake of build-up, but it just looks awkward without commentary. Sorry about that.
About the invasion itself. Just to make things clear--I know what I've said about invasions in the past, and I stand by everything that I've ever said about them. It's different here, because I'm invading an NPC. Plus, I'm doing it for the sake of retribution. Lautrec killed an innocent Fire Keeper for his own personal gain. So he must die. Simple as that.
The strategy I went with was to focus on the sorcerer to his right. He's the one with the ranged attacks, so it would be wise to take him out first. Then the spear-wielder. Then Lautrec himself. All on one health bar, too, because Spirits of Vengeance are not permitted to heal themselves.
Backstabs, dash attacks, rolling attacks, and jumping attacks were utilized, as well as Fire Bombs and Fire Orbs. I even equipped both my Eagle Shield
and my Grass Crest Shield. I intended to switch between the two so that I could attempt to finish Lautrec off with a parry, but that ended up not working out. Lautrec's weapon seemed rather unique--it pierced through my shield on occasion, which made the fight nominally difficult--but I pulled through after the fifth or sixth try. I could've done it even earlier if I wasn't trying to style on him, but there you go.
After giving him what he deservedI took back the Fire Keeper's soul (how has he not consumed it already?). to show how metal I am, I cut off his fucking ear as proof of my victory. Blades of the Darkmoon, can you hear me?
With the Firekeeper avenged, there was nothing standing between me and the boss of Anor Londo now.
Well, there's a couple of magical sentinel guards, I guess. But you know what I mean.
And yeah, I promise, I
will have commentary for this next boss video. Stay tuned, and such.
Show Posts
