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Dark Soul 2 Review - Part 4
8 months ago
General
Hey there!
This is part 4 of my Dark Souls 2 review.
Part 1 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016255/
Part 2 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016257/
Part 3 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11103564/
Without any further delay, let's get started with the first DLC:
Little disclaimer: I fought every boss solo, unless stated otherwise.
Crown of the Sunken King (DLC)
Okay. For the DLCs I will deviate a bit from how I structured this review. So far, I have made a new section/chapter for every main path, map or boss. But the DLCs are a bit different. Each DLC has like 3-4 maps, where one map usualy makes up like 90% of the entire playable DLC map, while the others are rather small and miniscule. You know what I mean as we go on.
The Sunken King DLC consists of 4 maps: Shulva, Sanctum City; Dragon's Sanctum; Dragon's Rest; and the Cave of the Dead. Shulva and the Dragon's Sanctum make up like 40% each of the full map. Dragon's Rest like 15% if you count everything after the raised bridge. And the Cave of the Dead makes up like 5%. The biggest irony is, that this first DLCs has the most evenly sized maps of all 3 DLCs, so the disclaimer I made above seems a bit silly now. It will make more sense in the two other DLCs.
The overall plot is, that Shulva is a city that was built around Sinh, a slumbering dragon that just slept in peace while Shulva and the Dragon's Sanctum was build around it. But one day some Drakeblood Knights, led by Yorgh, invaded Shulva to kill Sinh, to use his dragon blood for their own benefit. Long story short, they managed to kill the King and most of the city's defenses, but as Yorgh thrust his spear through Sinh, the slumbering dragon woke up and nuked the entire city with the poison that build up over centuries inside him, killing basically 90+% of Shulva's population, Yorgh and most of the Drakeblood Knights. One of the most badass 'You don't know what you're messing with' moments out there. While we play, there's not much in terms of story or progression that we do. We basically kill our way through all maps, enemies and bosses until we get the Crown of the Sunken King. The most progression we get, is when we use a key here or there to progress the map. This sentence will make much more sense once we get to the two other DLCs.
Before I get to the first map of the DLC, I want to point out that in all 3 DLCs I tried to do all 'normal' stuff inside the maps before any bosses and that I tried to fight the 'final' bosses, which give us the titular Crowns, last. Each DLC is slightly different in where and when you fight their bosses, but that's the general rule that I used during all 3 DLCs. You can be sure, whenever I fought a boss in the DLCs, it was pretty much the only thing I could do to progress further in their respective DLCs. I used this method for almost all maps in the base game as well, for the most part.
Shulva, Sanctum City
The first thing we notice about this DLC, is the map. It's a very well designed map where many places you see, you can go to. And often when you're outside, you can look around and spot a place where you've been before. And of course, the typical trade mark Dark Souls shortcut elevators, where after you take a random elevator you go 'What? I'm here now? That's a cool shortcut!'.
It's something that Dark Souls 2 had been missing for the most part, and I'm glad it's back. Don't get me wrong, most maps in Dark Souls 2 are very well made and have some clever design and layout themselves, with shortcuts and everything. But usually on a smaller, local scale. For example, in No Man's Wharf you can see the end point, the large ship, as soon as you enter the map. And when you make it through the entire wharf, you knock down a piece of wood to create a shortcut that makes you skip like 90% of the map for the boss runback. It's all there, but on a smaller scale. Similar shortcuts exist in other maps, like Earthen Peak or the Undead Crypt. Some maps also have rather interesting layouts. Like the Lost Bastille, that is seperated into 3 parts that you all need to access via 3 differnt entry points if you want to fully explore it. Or the Gutter and it's pitch blackness that makes you rely on sconces, smaller landmarks and memory to remember what leads where, and where you've been to and where not. Or the Forest of Fallen Giants and it's past version in the memories. What lacks, however, is the larger connectivity. Like being able to see Iron Keep from Harvest Valley. To see the Lost Bastille from No Man's Wharf. To see Dragon Aerie and Shrine from Drangleic Castle. And vice versa for all of these examples.
In terms of gameplay, Shulva is rather normal. You have a few glowing pillars that you can shoot/hit to move large tower thingeys up and down to create paths, open ways and so on. Other than that, you only have a few basic melee weapon wielding enemies, that are hard enough to be a challenge to a lategame character, like mine, but still easy enough to be manageable. There are a few turtles that have a big stack of poison spitting statues on them. They seem immortal, but can be killed with spells or arrows. My fully upgraded Fire Composite Bow comes in clutch yet again.
What is a real highlight, however, is Sinh. You find him sleeping at the beginning and he flies off when you approach him. Later on, when you're about to enter the Dragon's Sanctum via a bridge, Sinh swoops in and blasts the two Sanctum Soliders on it in a one-time event. Which leads us to:
Dragon's Sanctum
The Dragon's Sanctum continues what Shulva began, by being a well designed and atmospheric map. You can even hear faint singing that's meant to soothe Sinh back to sleep. You'd think that they just recycle the Milfanito singing from the Shrine of Amana, but nope, it's a different kind of singing, even when it sounds similiar. And there are various buttons that open up doors and shortcuts. There are also large stone circles with large holes in them, that you can turn around via buttons to create new passageways. You get a few new enemies here, but we get to them in a bit. Because now it's time for my rant about Forlorn:
Okay, so here's what happened. I was just exploring the Dragon's Sanctum until I reached a place in the beginning, where you need to drop down into a sandy place, which has on one side a large stone circle that you need to turn to create a passageway. I was on the section before, where I killed all the Sanctum Soldiers up with me with melee, and the two enemies in the sand pit below with a bow. I used my bow to press a button to open a door to a chest with 5 Twinkling Titanite and 3 Petrified Dragonbones. I had around 15k-20k Souls, give or take, and I had like one Estus Flask remaining. But I wanted to keep exploring for a little bit more and then bone out to upgrade my stuff with the materials I just looted, since I was very low on both from upgrading a ton of stuff with both over the course of the game. So I jump into the sand pit below and get INSTANTLY invaded by Forlorn. I quickly run out of Estus and have to rely on Lifegems, which might be enough for people with thousands of hours in Dark Souls 2 on their 120th playthrough, but not for me. So I died. Also because I couldn't bone out because of the invasion. So I had to kill my way back and retrieve my Souls and thank fuck I didn't get invaded by Forlorn again. You have no idea how fast I boned out just to avoid that.
This is some serious bullshit. I literally counted on the Wiki, and they have 25 spots listed where Forlorn can invade you. And I know that there are at least 26 spots since the one in the Dragon Aerie where Forlorn invaded me wasn't listed. And I got invaded at 10 out of the 26 spots. I got basically 40% of all possible Forlorn Invasion, although they are meant to be random and low chance. Just goes to tell you how bs my RNG can get when it wants to. Even if it were like 9/27 and 33%, it would be to much. To me, Forlorn not only overstayed his welcome, he completely annoyed me in the end. So much so, that I might always play offline in all my future Dark Souls playthroughs, just to avoid PvP player invasions which are as much, if not more, bullshit than the Forlorn invasions. And Forlorn is pretty much the toughest NPC invader out there. Dennis the Menace wishes he'd be as tough as Forlorn. 90% of the bosses in Dark souls 2 wish, they'd be as strong as Forlorn. The only reason why Malenia in Elden Ring can claim that she has 'never knwon defeat', is because Forlorn isn't in Elden Ring. And we all must consider ourselves lucky that the final boss in Shadow of the Erdtree isn't 'Promised Consort Forlorn'. Fucking hell, I'd rather be invaded by a Half Life 1 Controller or EP2 Hunter than by fucking Forlorn.
Long story short: As far as I'm concerned, Forlorn can jut go fuck himself in any and every way someone can be fucked, with all and any tools, plants and objects that can be used to fuck someone.
Wow, that felt good.
Now on with something more pleasant: Tall ghost soldiers that only take physical damage when you destroy their cursed armor somewhere hidden on the map. To be fair, these aren't as bad as they seem at first. If your weapon does any elemental damage (Magic, Fire, Lightning, Dark), you will be able to hurt them, even if only for minor damage. And you can easily run around until you find the big room where all cursed armors are resting. It's like 8 cursed armors for 8 ghost soldiers that you can find all over the map, or something like that, but it's rather easy to destroy those to turn the ghost soliders tangible and thus receptible for normal damage. This big room even has two big gaps in them, where the ghost soldiers chasing you can fall into. These cursed armors remain broken once you destroy them, which means that you make the map permanently easier when you do so. Putting in this effort is more than worth it.
Now, from where I was, I had two options: Proceed past Jester Thomas to the Lair of the Imperfect, or make my way through the Cave of the Dead to face Gank Squad. I chose the Cave of the Dead.
The Cave of the Dead
The Cave of the Dead is one of the three infamous coop areas that you can find in each of the three DLCs (alongside the Iron Passage and the Fridig Outskirts). And I think I have to dish out one of my hottest hot takes yet when I say that I had pretty much no issues whatsover with this map. Even as a runback to Gank Squad.
Here's the layout of the map:
The top layer, which you enter from the beginning, just has a few normal enemies there.
The second layer below, is a larger area filled with statues that spit petrification juice on you, as well as a few petri-statue-turtles that can be killed via bow. There are also a few Sanctum Soliders that are rather easily killed. This second layer can be difficult if you want to kill all enemies and loot all items, but becomes easy on the runback.
The 3rd and final layer is just a long'ish corridor with like 3 Sanctum Solidiers, 3 petri-turtles and a big worm. Easy to both clear and run through.
Now, the runback is very easy, especially when you light all sconces on your first way through. On the top layer, you just drop through the first hole front right. You should see the light of a sconce through it. If you run and fall normaly through that hole, you should just run forward until you hit a wall. Then, on the right, there should be a path that leads below to the 3rd and final layer, which should be marked by another lit up sconce. I needed like 20+ attempts on Gank Squad, and only once did an enemy follow me from the 2nd layer into the 3rd. I think it's rather easy to run past all enemies on the 3rd layer to enter the fog gate, but I killed all enemies there so I could apply 'Crystal Magic Weapon' before the fog gate. The runback was so easy that I didn't even need a single Estus Flasks for most of them.
I have to say that the Cave of the Dead is a rather easy map if you know how to navigate it. You maybe get a singular enemy following you into the 3rd layer once every 10 or 20 runbacks and from what I can tell, can you make it to and through the fog gate without having to kill a singular enemy. And clearing the 3rd layer is easy enough, especially with NPC summons. And remember: I'm one of the biggest casual noobs on my first ever playthrough of Dark Souls 2, who only watched two Lets Plays (and a ton of reviews, retrospectives, ect) beforehand. If I can do it, you can too. If something's easy for me, everyone else, including you, should be able to do it with their eyes closed. I'm far from a skilled or talented gamer. I never was good at any game I palyed. I still ain't. And I never will be. It is what it is and I don't care. ^^
And while I found the Cave of the Dead rather easy, and I see it more positive than most of the community, the same doesn't apply to the boss...
Gank Squad
Oh boy. I really have to try not to type a rant and a half for the next three hours.
I can say, with full confidence, that this is, by far, by leaps and bounds, and not even close, the worst boss in the entire Dark Souls franchise. I haven't even played Dark Souls 3 for more than an hour, and not even fought a single boss there, and I can say this with full confidence. I haven't even booted up Elden Ring once and I know that no boss in that game, no matter if a major one with Rememberance and Great Rune, or a minor one at the end of cave 43, will be worse than Gank Squad. I know that no boss in Bloodborne, although I can only name like 5 bosses of that game, is worse than Gank Squad. Neither Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne 2, Sekiro 2, Elden Ring 2 or Charlie Chicken and the Dagger of Dispair are released yet, and I know that these games won't have a boss that's worse than Gank Squad.
Words are unable to describe how much I hate this boss. It is so bad, that even if FromSoft and Valve were to team up with EA, Sony, Activision and Ubisoft to create the worst boss that a game ever had, it'd still end up more enjoyable than Gank Squad.
Okay, enough ranting, I want to get to a few facts and explain why I dislike this boss so much. On paper it's just a normal 3v1 gank boss fight, no different than the Ruin Seninels, the Belfry Gargoyles or the Skeleton Lords. And it's just 3 basic bitch NPCs with relative normal armor and weapons. But they are basically fine tuned to be as annoying and unfun as possible.
First, you have the Afflicted Graverobber, aka 'Alva'. He's just using double curved swords that can inflict bleed. He's rather normal in terms of damage, but quite tanky. He's okay, for the most part.
Second, you have Ancient Solder Varg, aka 'Havel'. He's in full Havel's Armor and uses a Dragon Tooth. He's extremely tanky and does a lot of damage. In fact, he does so much damage that he managed to one-shot me with a backstap while I was at full HP, which was like 18XX at the time. Havel is extremely anoying during pretty much the entire fight, because he's so tanky and strong. If you get hit by him, you're fucked most of the time, and you can't really burst him down quick unless you have a fully min-maxed build.
Third, you have Cerah the Explorer, aka Fuckhead. Fuckhead has relatively low HP compared to Alva and Havel, but still a lot. He uses a Greatbow whose Greatarrows will knock you over if they hit you. He's one of the main reasons this boss fight can get very, very annoying. As if trying to manage Havel and Alva 2v1-ing you 90% of the time isn't hard enough, you have to dodge these arrows as well.
This fight is ruined by the fact, that all 3 NPCs have way to much HP/Defense. They are so extremely tanky, that without a min-maxed build, it's a chore to fight them. Because it takes forever until one of them is dead. At least for me, no matter if I used my Fire Red Iron Twinblade, my Fire Longsword, my Magic Drangleic Sword or my Magic Guts Greatsword, it always took 500 years until I would get anyone anywhere near 0 HP, let alone kill them. I fought them solo, I fought them with NPC summons, but it was always a tedious chore.
This fight reminds me of a saying of mine I like to use to describe a few bosses: I prefer 'boring and easy' over 'tedious and annoying'. Bosses like Prowling Magnus + Congregation or Covetous Demon or Royal Rat Vanguard or Pinwheel or Moonlight Butterfly or Gwyndolin don't bother me despite them being rather easy. I prefer them the way they are, instead of doubling their HP and turning them into a tedious slog. If that were the case, you'd have to chase Gwyndolin for thousands of years until you slay him, wait for the Moonlight Butterfly to float down like 5 times until you get the kill, or have to wail for 2 minutes on each member of Magnus's Congretation for a single kill on a single enemy. That may be more difficult, but frankly, also more tedious and unfun.
If I had to fix Gank Squad, I would just half their HP and turn this bossfight into an easy push over. I'd rather be over with it quickly than to have to endure the endless slog that it is now.
I would also add unique loot with unique descriptions in addition to the upgrade materials you get from them. Like:
+10 Graverobber's Bleed Curved Sword. 'The Afflicted Graverobber was moments away from turning hollow for good, when he met his two friends Varg and Cerah, who gave his life new purpose.'
+5 Varg's Fire Greatshield. 'Varg used to serve in the army of an acient kingdom. After getting banished because of the Undead Curse that scarred his flesh, he swore to use not only his shield, but also his body, to protect his new friends, who accepted him wthout hesitation.'
+10 Cherah's Raw Greatbow. 'Cerah explores the world with his two friends, sharing any treasure they find between the three of them. Being weak and feeble, Cerah uses his Greatbow to support his friends from afar.'
I think some unique loot with unique descriptions could've given this terrible boss at least some bit of personality.
I listened to this bosses theme and it's not bad. It's quite good, even if it's not up there with the really good tracks of Dark Souls 2 (or the other games). But it's definitely not enough to give this boss even a single point. Literally, I'd give this boss a score of 0/10. Completely unfun. During my victory attempt I literally yelled 'Asshole dead!' when I killed Havel. I was compeltely angry and furious during my last attempt. When I won, I was still angry, and very relieved that the fight was finaly over. No other boss in the game, or in Dark Souls 1, made me feel like that. Not even the Royal Rat Authority made me rage this bad. I was 'this' far away from just fucking off and not bothering with this boss anymore. In fact, Gank Squad might be the only boss I might skip for sure when I replay Dark Souls 2, whenever that may be. I don't see any way how this boss can be fun without a fully min-maxed build that 1-3 shots each one of the three NPCs. At least not with a major nerf to their HP. Everything else is fine. I don't mind that it's 3 NPCs, I don't mind that it's a 3v1 and I don't mind their weapons and loadout. But it's a tedious slog, as unfun as a boss fight can be.
Btw: I used the Fire Longsword for it's low Stamina usage so I could roll and evade better. I used 'Crystal Magic Weapon' for the first time against a boss here. I used both NPC summons here.
Lair of the Imperfect
Before the Lair of the Imperfect, there is Jester Thomas, a NPC invader that uses many, many pyromancies to fight you. He's a rather fun fight, not to hard, not to easy. It is, as it should be.
The Lair of the Imperfect itself is a rather small map, that has 5 or 6 'Imperfect' in them, which are big black dinosaur monsters. They are rather tanky and hard to fight with melee, but it's easy to cheese them once you learn that they can't enter the land at the far end of their lair, where you put in the Dragon Stone. Once I realized that, I just used poison arrows to cheese these big monsters and looted everything else afterwards. Most of the time, problems are as big as we make them. I could try to melee them and then bitch and whine how difficult and bullshit they are to fight, or just cheese them easily.
On that piece of land, where I shot the Imperfect from with my bow, I used the Dragon Stone to raise a bridge to the rest of the Dragon's Sanctum.
After the lair, I found the Drakeblood Sword, which I infused with Magic and used every now and then, replacing the 'Magic Drangleic Sword' in it's role as a medium weapon in terms of Damage and Moveset Speed.
There is also an elevator from the Lair of the Imperfect right up the the bonfire at the start of the DLC. Interesting that the best bonfire the explore the last bits of the DLC is the very first one in Shulva, Sanctum City.
Dragon's Rest
Super technicaly, everything from the broken bridge we raised with the Dragon Stone until Elana's boss arena is still part of the Dragon's Sanctum, but I like to refer to this final stretch of the DLC as Dragon's Rest. Because:
A) It's easier to understand than to call this section 'Dragon's Sanctum Part 2',
B) This final stretch is completely isolated from the rest of the Dragon's Sanctum that we explored earlier,
And C) Dragon's Rest is basicaly just Sinh's boss arena and the little room with the bonfire before it.
Dragon's Rest is a rather vertical section of the map. Since I used the furry tiger legs to save on Equip Load at the time, I didn't have to worry to much about fall damage, since they would reduce any fall damage by 67%. I also got the Drakeblood Knight Armor set here, which I upgraded to Chunck level, which is +6. I farmed a few souls to upgrade it, so I could compare it to other armor pieces I had. I farmed a little bit in Dark Souls 2, something that I didn't do in Dark Souls 1, but only to upgrade Armor. Never to overlevel myself in any meaningfull way.
We also fight various Drakeblood Kngihts, which are rather tough, but I didn't mind it as much.
When we reach the bottom, we have only one way left to go: Through a fog gate into the next boss fight.
Elana, the Squalid Queen
I had a real blast fighting Elana, I have to be honest. I only needed two attempts, and both were completely hillarious.
On my first attempt, I summoned all NPCs. Mainly because Benhardt was a summon and I wanted his help with this fight. I summoned the other NPC because I might as well when I already summon Benhardt. So I buff my weapon with Crystal Magic Weapon, we three enter Elana's boss arena and one of the first things she does is to summon Budget Velstadt. I try to get a few more attacks on Elana, since I did a lot of damage despite her buffed health pool, but then she and Budget Velstadt hit me with their melee weapons at the same time, one-shotting me as they reduce my health from like 80% down to 0 in a single shared hit. I literally laughed out loud when that happened. It was just perfect. I run in with my summons, but Elana just can't be asked and summons Velstadt, who then helps her send me back to the Bonfire not even a minute after I passed the fog door. It just can't get better than that. Then I made my 2nd attempt.
Attempt 2, which I made solo. I buff my weapon, enter the fog gate, run at Elana and attack her with my fully upgraded Fire Red Iron Twinblade while she summons her staff. Once her HP show up, she's alrady down to like 70% of her HP, while having 9280 HP in total. While she summons the three little piggies, which is super rare, I attack her further, with especially the multi-hit follow up, where my character spins and twirls the twinblade for 3-4 quick hits in a row, doing some serious damage. After only two attack cycles during the entire fight, Elana is down to like 20-30% of her HP and teleports away. I chase her, get a few more attacks in and she's dead. I just laughed during all of this.
The Red Iron Twinblade is OP, and I will die on that hill. My stats weren't even that good. My Fire Red Iron Twinblade scales 'only' with Strength, Int and Faith; while I had only 35 Strength, 30 Int and 10 Faith at that time. But this busted weapon in combination with Crytal Magic Weapon and Elana's big hitbox made me shred her like a basic bitch.
Safe to say: I found this fight very fun! It can get a bit bullshit, not gonna lie. And it might could've become a rather difficult, and maybe even annoying, fight if I hadn't been this overleveled while using a strong weapon with a strong weapon buff sorcery, but I still like this fight.
And right behind her waits the next boss fight for us:
Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon
I'm just gonna say it: Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon is my favourite boss in Dark Souls 2. And I will even go so far to say that he's the perfect Dark Souls 2 boss. A sentence that I will explain soon, and which will make even more sense once I'm done with this review.
One reason why I like Sinh so much, is because he's 'slow and stupid, but hits hard'. My favourite type of boss, and almost all bosses in Dark Souls 1 and 2 fit in that category. Sinh doesn't have the flashiest moveset, where he does 5 attack combos within 3 seconds, and many of his attacks are well telegraphed and easy to dodge. But when he hits you, he fucking hits you: You're getting knocked over, lose a lot of HP, and maybe even get Toxic build up (or get Toxic triggered). And because Sinh is this 'slow and stupid', it fits very well with DS2's slower pace. His more deliberate movements and legthier recovery times mean, that the slow speed of your attack and healing animations, as well as the slow heal over time of your Estus Flasks and Lifegems, don't hinder you as much.
One thing I liked about Dark Souls 1 and 2 when I watched the Lets Plays, was that these games weren't really difficult, but unforgiving. Make one mistake, and you're taking a lot of damage and get put on the back foot. Run in willy nilly without a plan, and you're going to die. But when you read the attacks, learn how to predict and dodge them, and prepare yourself accordingly by levelig up your character, upgrading and infusing your weapons, making a battle plan for the boss where you exploit his weaknesses while playing your strengths; when you do all of that, most bosses become easy. And I love that. This is the sole reason why I bothered trying out Dark Souls 1 (and later 2) after watching a full Lets Play of DS 1 and 2 (and watching a Lets Play of DS3 as I played DS1 and started DS2). Not because I wanted to play a difficult game for true hardcore pro gamers, but because Dark Souls 1 and 2 are highly strategic games, where planning ahead, choosing your options and taking your time are heavily rewarded. While I did play some Overwatch, Team Fortress 2 and even Call of Duty in my past, as well as a few SP FPS games like Half Life 2, at my core, in the depths of my heart, I'm a strategy gamer. I love RTS like CnC Generals or Empire Earth. And 4X games like Civilization or Endless Space 2 even more so. I will always have a more strategic focus on any game I play, so a boss like Sinh is absolutely perfect for me, since he's a very strategic boss fight.
For starters, Sinh's fire breath attacks leave behind toxic clouds, which not only serve as short-term area denial, but also cause Toxic build up. And Sinh has corrosive skin that shreds weapon durability faster. Both of these things force you to plan ahead. You might need to swap out one ring for Poison resistance, which also increases Toxic resistance. You might need to put Repair Powder on your item bar, or put on the repair spell, or slot in a back up weapon in your primary hand (which might forces you to increase your Equip Load via a Ring), or use a weapon with high durability, or use the Ring that slows weapon degeneration.
So before even the fight started, and I had to rejigger my Rings: While I could keep the Chloranthy Ring (Buffed Stamina regen) and the 3rd Dragon Ring (Higher Health, Stamina and Equip Load), I ditched my Stone Ring (more Poise Damage, useless against most bosses) and my Silver Serpent Ring (More Souls from enemies/bosses) for a Poison Resist Ring and one that reduces Equipmeant Degradation. I used my Fire Red Iron Twinblade for it's very high durability.
The fight itself is also rather cool. As I said, most of Sinh's attacks are slow and rather well telegraphed. His melee attacks are his fastest and hardest to read and dodge, but if you manage to get to his side or back, you can get a few easy hits off while Sinh misses his swipes or does his grounded fire breath attacks. But he can get you with a tail whip if you're not carefull. When Sinh flies up into the air, to do one of his air-borne attacks, things become even easier. I had very little trouble figuring out which of his 3 areal attacks he'd do, and could dodge them rather easily after a while. His Toxic Fire Bomb attack was a bit troublesome for me at first, because I wasn't able to roll through them, but after a while I just tried running away from them and it worked perfectly. In fact, it worked so well that I decided to ditch my Posion Resistance Ring in favor of the Ring of Binding, because I was getting hit so little by his Toxic flames. And the Durability of my Red Iron Twinblade was so high that I could ditch the Durability Ring as well in favor of my Silver Serpent Ring. But on the attempt I realized that, I killed Sinh and missed out on the extra Souls. I needed like 5-7 attempts, maybe 8. Something like that.
When you defeat Sinh, you get the 'Crown of the Sunken King', which boosts a few stats while lowering Health and Equip Load.
For me, a boss is always more than his moveset and Sinh is clearly elevated by all the things surrounding him. For example, Sinh has a giant spear driven through his body, that's still visible on both the entry and exit point. So of course Sinh can't just fly around willy nilly for hours. And Sinh himself is teased and built up throughout the entire DLC, be it through his appearances or via item descriptions. I really love this kind of things that give a boss more depth and his fight more weight. I think the only real 'downside' are his visuals, since his scales are grey and he looks like he's made out of rocks. But he still looks very good, even when he's no match for the Ancient Dragon or Kalameet in terms of visuals.
Sinh is easily S tier for me, only one of two DS2 bosses to make it into that tier. And in case people are wondering: I'd rate Sinh still lower than Artorias and Kalameet, which are my 2nd and most favourite boss in Dark Souls 1, which means that on a list of all bosses of DS 1 and 2 combined, Sinh comes in at rank 3.
And to round off this amazing boss fight, I'll just show you Sinh's boss theme, which might not be the most catchy or epic, but is still rahter good in it's own way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0s_Z8aIm-s
To round off this DLC, I come to my final thoughts about it. The Crown of the Sunken King DLC might be my favourite DLC of the three. It's map is absolutely amazing in terms of design, visuals and gameplay. It's gimmiks are cool without overstaying their welcome. It's enemies are tough, but fair. Even tougher enemies, like the Imperfect, are just limited to one area and can be easily dealt with one time to loot all items, and then you don't have to bother with them, or their lair, again. The ghost soliders might be a bit bs, but once you destroy their cursed armor, they become very easy to kill. The only real negative I can think of is the Gank Squad boss fight, which can be made trivial by being OP af. But Gank Squad is purely optional and only gives a few Dragon Bones, Twinkling Titanite and a Slab. Except for the Dragonbones, nothing really of value, so you literally lose nothing by skipping this boss.
All in all is this DLC one of the clear highlights of Dark Souls 2 in my eyes.
Crown of the Old Iron King (DLC)
The Old Iron King DLC consists of three maps: Brume Tower, which makes up like 96% of the entire playable area of this DLC, not just including the Brume Tower itself, but also two minor towers beside it. The other two maps are the Iron Passage and the Memory of the Old Iron King, which each make like 2% of the entire DLC map.
And shortly after we light the first bonfire of the DLC, we start fighting it's final boss. In a way.
Nadalia, Bride of Ash
The Brume Tower got overtaken by Nadalia, and the final goal of the DLC is to get her boss soul, for which you need to collect all 12 fragments of it. To get all 12 fragments, you need to activate the Brume Tower, kill two bosses and destroy all 11 of her Ashen Idols. In a way is Nadalia the inofficial 4th and final boss of this DLC; whose boss fight begins when you encounter the first Ashen Idol just behind the first bonfire; whose boss arena spans all of Brume Tower, including it's sidetowers and the Memory of the Old Iron King; and whose boss fight has multiple phases. How many depends on how you count. A total of 16 when you count all 11 Ashen Idols, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne and the exploration of Brume Tower before and after activating it, and the retrieval of the Scorching Iron Scepter, as singular phases. But only one if you just count the entire DLC as a singular, gigantic phase of possibly the longest boss fight in not just Dark Souls, but FromSoft history.
While I get that this is really a stretch and a half, and the first member of my 'Holy Dark Souls 2 Hot Take Trifecta', you actually DO get a boss soul from collecting all 12 soul fragments, which you then can trade for either the Chime of Screams Miracle caster, or the Outcry Pyromancy. And you have to complete almost the entire DLC to get all 12 soul fragments. But I don't disagree with anyone who sees Nadalia as an enviromental puzzle or hazard, even when I see this puzzle/hazard as part of her boss fight, not just the DLC/map.
About the 'fight' itself:
There are 10 Ashen Idols spread across the main tower: 4 are at the tower's floor and around Fume Knight's arena, 3 are reachable from the beginning, 3 only after you activated the tower. The 11th Ashen Idol is in a seperate tower, which you can enter whenever you want.
You also get a total of 11 Smelter Wedges to destroy all 11 Ashen Idols: 6 at the beginning, 4 in a room only reachable after you activated the tower, and the final Smelter Wedge can be obtained after defeating Sir Alonne.
You can loot a singuar soul fragment from Nadalia's body, which you find after defeating Fume Knight.
But first things first.
Brume Tower
Brume Tower is the main map with a lot of verticality. You can easily see many other places above and below you that you can reach sooner or later, or where you were before. You can also 'activate' the Brume Tower later on, making various elevators move, to fully explore it. It's a very simple, but effective map. There are several explosive barrels that you can blow up with fire. I chose my Fire Composite Bow for that. There are also several walls that you can destroy by blowing up explosive barrals or 'Casket Runners' (Weak enemies that carry explosive barrels around).
There are also several flamethrowers, some of which you can even smack to make them move, burning all enemies they come across.
As for enemies, that's where things get a little iffy. The normal enemies are rahter manageble, like in the Sunken King DLC, but they are often buried in Ash and jump out when you get near. Sometimes they even jump out of ash walls or heaps. It can get a bit bullshit from time to time, when suddenly an ememy jumps out behind you, or three enemies jump out at the same time once you walk over the trigger.
There are also these birdy Fume Sorcerers that have a teleport move, which can get very annyoing to fight. Especialy when they teleport away as you're attacking them and you have to turn around. The idea is neat, but the execution is a bit iffy in my eyes.
There are also these possessed armors, that are hard'ish to kill, but fine as long as they're not getting revived permanently by nearby Ashen Idols.
But the worst enemies in the DLC are by leaps and bounds the Iron Warriors. They are very strong, with high health and damage output, and respawn. That wouldn't be that bad if they were used sparingly, but they are sprinkled throughout the map, at times come in groups of 2 or 3, at times get buffed and healed by nearby Ashen Idols, and overstay their welcome very fast. At least for me. They're an enemy type I personaly would prefer if they would not respawn after a single kill, or at least there wouldn't be as many of them. But there are like 20 of them across the entire DLC and not a single encouter was any fun for me. Even cheesing them with arrows takes like 200 years, while fighting them with melee is rather effective, but also risky.
As for Ashen Idols:
The first one's a freebie and right after the first bonfire. Perfect to introduce you how the Smelter Wedges and Ashen Idols work.
The second one is at the bottom of a ladder and easy to take out if you're careful enough to kill the surrounding enemies one by one, which is easier said than done.
The third one is in what I like to call 'the gank room'. There are many enemies there, but using arrows to kill them one by one from a safe distance worked well for me.
For the fourth, and for now last, Ashen Idol, we need to make a little detour.
Curse Tower
This little off-shoot tower to the side has an Ashen Idol somewhere inside, and we need to descend down it to get access to it. But before we can do that, we get invaded by Maldron the Assassin. On first glance he's one of the more annoying invaders, who spawns at the top of the tower and runs down below once he gets damaged a little bit. But when he does that, you can use a Seed of a Giant to make the enemies inside the tower attack him. While they didn't kill him outright, he fled to the top with a chunk of his HP missing where I could easily finish him off. But it's also possible that Maldron gets killed by the enemies below without you having to do anything.
The inside of the tower is shrouded in darkness and causes Curse build up, hence why I name it the 'Curse Tower'. But there's a unique veil that you get from the Invader Gutter Denizen, who only appears if you light all the sconces in the Gutter. This veil has literally 1000 Curse resist, making you de facto immune to Curse when you wear it. This helps a lot in this tower and in the Curse room we enter much, much later. Once the Ashen Idol is destroyed, the enemies are easily dealt with. Only the two respawning Possessed Armors are a tad annoying until the Ashen Idol is destroyed.
After this Ashen Idol is destroyed, we should have 2 Smelter Wedges remaining.
With the Curse Tower completed, we now have one more place to go, where we find the Scorching Iron Scepter to activate the Brume Tower.
Scepter Tower
This little side tower is short, but sweet. The main enemies are some belly crawlers that I actually really like. Usually they crawl slowly towards you and lunge/swipe at you once they're in range. But when they're on fire, they crawl fast as hell and can easily catch you of guard. They also have a self-destruct move, where they can friendly fire other belly crawlers, setting them on fire in the process. You can also light them up by letting them move near the very big sconces, that seem to spill a burning liquid off their edges once they're lit.
At the end, you get the Scorching Iron Scepter, a key item that lets you activate the Brume Tower.
Activated Brume Tower
This is what makes this DLC so great. With the use of a single key item, the Brume Tower activates and multiple lifts move up and down all across the map. With those you gain access to all kinds of rooms, items, bonfires, enemies and so on. I had a lot of fun exploring the Brume Tower to it's fullest.
In one chest we find 4 more Smelter Wedges, increasing our total to 6.
Now comes an important note about the remaining Smelter Wedges and Ashon Idols. There are 7 Ashen Idols remaining. 4 of them are around the Fume Knight's boss arena and 3 more inside Brume Tower. But we only have 6 Smelter Wedges. It's utmost important that we spare one of the 3 Ashen Idols inside the Brume Tower so we can destory all 4 around the Fume Knight's arena. In fact, in theory you can spare any of the 7 Ashen Idols found all around Brume Tower, even the very first tutorial one.
This is because the 4 Ashen Idols at the bottom of the tower heal the Fume Knight when he gets close to them and trust me: The Fume Knight is not a boss you want to allow to heal by accidentaly stepping close to an Ashen Idol.
Our 5th Ashen Idol is near the Prowlers invasion before Sir Alonne's armor. I killed the first Prowler easily so I could destroy the Ashon Idol. Then I dispatched the rest until I reached the Bonfire near Sir Alonne's armor. 5 Smelter Wedges remaining.
The 6th one is in a prison area, where there is yet another Iron Warrior who I killed with poison arrows. 4 Smelter Wedges remaining.
The 7th Ashen Idol is in the 'Curse Room', which is pitch black and cursed like the 'Curse Tower'. I skipped that one till the end. So we should have exactly 4 Smelter Wedges remaining.
After looting everything, I made my way down to the bottom of the Brume Tower. To reach the bottom area you need to fight your way through multiple enemies, floor by floor, until you reach yet another Iron Warrior, because of course you do. There are a few reanimating possessed armors thereafter(Which stop reanimating once you destroy the 4 Ashen Idols around Fume Knight's boss arena. I actually tested that.), which you can easily skip. At the bottom is a Bonfire, which allows you to easily access the 4 Ashen Idols and the Fume Knight Boss Fight. And of course are here 4 Iron Warriors who jump out of the ashen floor if you get to close. Dark Souls 2 really doesn't want it's players to have fun, does it? At least you can skip them if you're hugging the inner wall tight enough.
And when you thought things couldn't get any worse, you decide to make a small detour before fighting the Fume Knight to be proven otherwise.
Iron Passage
The Iron Passage is the worst map in Dark Souls 2, something I can say with full confidence since it's not even close. It's one of these things where I could now rant and rant forever, like I did with Forlorn or Gank Squad, but I think I just say that this map is so bad, that I had to clear it of all enemies to make the boss runback to the Blue Smelter Demon feasible. That's a really long story short, since that took me literally a few hours, and two or three sessions to do. It's just annoying to get through, and a hassle to kill all the enemies. You got it all: Astrologists than can make you fat roll via spells; Fume Sorcerers that shoot lightning at you and teleport around when you try to melee them; Possessed Armors that are a chore to kill with bow and arrow, since they're all out of reach, unless you take one of the paths to melee them; and at the very end you get an Iron Warrior, because of course you do. Have I metnioned that these Iron Fuckheads overstayed there welcome for me after I had to fight like the 2nd one? It wasn't fun fighting them the first time, and it wasn't fun fighting them for the 38th time. And I had to kill this one 12 times to despawn it for good. Fucking hell, this map is complete shite. And what do you get at the end of it?
Blue Smelter Demon
Now, now. Let's not trash this boss just because it's runback is so abysmally terrible I had to spend 5+ hours clearing it. While it is a reskin boss, it's one of the better ones. While it shares a lot of things with the 'red' Smelter Demon in Iron Keep, the Blue Smelter Demon deals Magic damage instead of Fire, has high Magic resiatance instead of Fire, and has a few delays in it's attacks and mix ups in it's moveset. Combined with a much larger health pool, this is actually a well done reskin and reuse of a previous boss. But there is one problem: I personally don't really give much of a fuck about the Smelter Demon. It's not a boss I particular like, no matter if it's red or blue, fire or magic, in the Iron Keep or Iron Passage.
I fought this boss in two phases. The first phase was after I looted all the Items in the Iron Passage and cleared already a few enemies while doing so. No reason to clear this entire map if I beat the Blue Smelter Demon within my first few attempts. 5 attempts later, I was torn between giving up and moving on, and to clear the rest of the map. I decided to clear the rest of the map and after like two hours the path was clear, allowing me to fight the Blue Smelter Demon the next day.
During this second phase I tried out a few weapons until I settled on my Magic Drakeblood Greatsword. While it did less damage than my Magic Guts Greasword and my Fire Red Iron Twinblade, it also consumed less Stamina. While it sounds strange to use a Magic infused weapon to fight a Magic resistant boss, the Drakeblood Greatsword natively deals physical, Magic and Lightning damage, where the physical damage makes like 70% of the total damage. If you infuse this weapon with any elemantal damage, it's physical damage remains extremely high because of this unique split of native damage.
While I sometimes fought the Blue Smelter Demon with NPC summons, most of my attempts were solo, including my victory attempt.
With the Blue Smelter Demon dealt with, we move on to the next boss:
Fume Knight
Fume Knight is the second Dark Souls 2 boss I would put into S tier, just below Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon.
This boss is carried hard by it's moveset. It's simply hard but fair. The Fume Knight has two phases. In a twist of irony, I found his first phase more difficult, but I died more often in phase two. That's mainly because in phase one, Fume Knight fights with two swords, a small and a large one, that are more difficult to dodge, but deal relatively low damage. But in his second phase, Fume Knight ditches his smaller sword, while buffing his larger one with fire. In phase 2, Fume Knight's attacks are easier to dodge, but deal a lot of damage. This resulted in the circumstance that I tended to get hit more often during phase 1, but was able to heal through it rahter fine; while I managed to dodge most attacks in phase 2, but would be forced to heal anytime I got hit, which I had to delay until I dodged another attack. Which I would fail sooner or later, causing many of my 20 deaths(give or take).
What I liked about this fight the most, is that pretty much all attacks were learnable. Despite being more on the faster side, with quicker attacks and shorter recovery times compared to other bosses in Dark Souls 2, it was still quite reasonable and fair, like Artorias in Dark Souls 1. Pretty much all my deaths were my fault one way or another, and I always felt that a death taught me something for future attempts. Like that during his block stance, Fume Knight will instantly charge you if you heal, hence why I started to refer to that stance as 'Heal Bait'. The same applies to his idle stance. Some might refer to that as 'Input Reading', but I think that Fume Knight simply 'sees' me healing and decided to punish me for that.
Or that his phase 2 fireball attack has 3 damage points: When he puts his sowrd in the ground, when the sword explodes, and then from the fireball emerging. I learned that from charging him as he did that move, thinking I'd be safe until the fireballs appear.
I ended up using my Magic Guts Greatsword, which became my default weapon for more difficult and nimble boss fights. While my Fire Read Iron Twinblade is a beast, it does struggle against faster and smaller enemies and bosses. And I love things like that, where I change up my weapons depending on which bosses and enemies I fight.
Fume Knight's boss theme is also really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2eBZjhZ3n8
Besides that, his visuals are absolutely awesome and his armor set my favourite in the game. Look for yourself (Minus the head piece, as I decided to wear Vendrick's crown): https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/47951476686256350/6F47495B7ED65868AEF7E587E58934DED77E06D1/
As a final thing, I want to explain why I rate Sinh higher than the Fume Knight. Both are very close and it reminds me strongly of my internal Kalameet vs Artorias debate for the best boss in Dark Souls 1. Fume Knight, like Artorias, might be the better boss fight when it comes to pure gameplay and moveset. But Sinh, like Kalameet, gets carried by his build up. Especially when we consider the lore of Shulva and the entire Sunken King DLC. It's these surrounding factors that make me prefer Sinh over Fume Knight, like I prefer Kalameet over Artorias. And let's not forget that I really like both Sinh and Kalameet in terms of gameplay as well, as I find both have really fair, predictable movesets, that are easy to learn and dodge, but hit hard. And it's no secret that I love dragons, so that's always a plus for me. Very few things are more epic than fighting a cool dragon, especially when they look as awesome as Kalameet, or have an interesting backstory like Sinh.
After we defeat the Fume Knight, we get another fragment of Nadalia's soul and the Crown of the Old Iron King, which renews 20% of spell uses every 2 minutes.
Memory of the Old Iron King
With the Fume Knight defeated, and the DLC almost completed and nowhere else to go, we enter the Memory of the Old Iron King via Sir Alonne's armor. I didn't really have that much trouble here, the enemies are rather easy to kill, so I just did that. Maybe it was very easy and enjoyable for me because the main enemies here are Alonne Knights, which are my favourite enemies in Dark Souls 2. I basically ended up clearing all enemies in the Memory, because I didn't want to have any souls to lose when fighting Sir Alonne, and I'd get like 15k souls per clean up. At one point during the Sir Alonne fight I picked up like 80k souls, so I boned out, leveled up, and decided to clear the map. It wasn't even close to be as annoying or time consuming as clearing out the Iron Passage, at least to me.
And now, we move on to the next and final boss of this DLC. And oh boy, is it a doozy:
Sir Alonne
Let me start out by saying that his boss theme is very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN9kRFay02s
His visuals are also stunning, no matter if Sir Alonne himself or his boss arena. His lore and backstory as the Old Iron King's former right hand man are also top notch. Let's not forget that the infamous 'Alonne Knights' of Iron Keep are named after him.
Before I get to the gameplay aspects of his boss fight, I want to make perfectly clear that I think that Sir Alonne is a great boss. While I'm stilling mulling over if I should put him into a high A or low S tier, he's my 3rd favourite boss in Dark Souls 2. I need to clarify this as I get to the 2nd member of my 'Holy Dark Souls 2 Hot Take Trifecta':
I think that in terms of gameplay and moveset, Sir Alonne is so fast, with so short recovery times, that he kinda breaks the game. Let me put it like this: If Sir Alonne were in Dark Souls 1, he'd be a perfect boss with no flaws whatsoever. If I'd put him above Arotiras or Kalameet is a different story, but Sir Alonne would be right up there without question. But since he's in Dark Souls 2 and it's slower combat system, he suffers from that. Bascially all my 'issues' with Sir Alonne could be summed up with 'Because Dark Souls 2'.
Long story short: Sir Alonne isn't the problem here, Dark Souls 2 is.
And this needs a bit of an explanation. Sir Alonne is a rather fast boss with short recovery times. While usually that would be a good thing, it brings Dark Souls 2 to it's limit with it's slower animations, slower healing and all the extra attacks and inputs.
For example: I quickly learned that I can only get off one attack with my Magic Guts Greatsword if I want to be able to dodge Sir Alonne's attacks consistently. So I made sure to only click, and thus attack, once. But still my character would sometimes do two attacks back-to-back, causing me to get hit.
Another example: Once I wanted to roll and then attack, most normal thing to do in a boss fight. What does my character: Does a roll, then another roll, which puts me way out of position, and then an attack. I was basically stuck in a chain of animations for like a second or two. As you can imagine, I got hit after that.
Usually, this would be annoying, but manageble in most situations. But Sir Alonne is so fast that every single of such mistakes gets punished hard, since he does a lot of damage. And that's with me wearing high defense armor.
Let's compare that to Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon, who I named the 'perfect Dark Souls 2 boss'. Sinh is slow and stupid, but hits very hard. His attacks are rather slow and well telegraphed, and he has rather lengthy recovery times after his attacks, especialy his air-borne ones. And he's also very stationary and vulnerable during his fire breath attacks. This slower pace means, that the slower healing, for example, isn't much of an issue, since you got plenty of time during and after most of Sinh's attacks. Same for the slower attack speed and all the extra attacks/inputs. Because Dark Souls 2 is a slower game, the enemies and bosses have to be slower as well. It's just how it is. Every game is different, just in general, and therefore you need to fine tune it's maps, enemies and bosses according to their respective games.
Litte tanget on this topic: Half Life 1 and 2 seem to be very similiar to each other, but are different in key things, so they play very differently.
Without going into the detfails:
In Half Life 2 each encoutner is really tough, especially toward the end, but it restocks you with ammo and health/suit power every time. Ammo management is only a minor thing, unless you're very wastefull.
Meanwhile, Half Life 1 seems to be easier with it's encounters, but ammo management is way harder. You can get into really sticky situations if you don't pay attention to your ammo.
Thus, getting low on health is way more punishing in Half Life 1 than in Half Life 2, and way harder to recover from. In Half Life 2, being 100-100 in health and suit power is almost the default. In Half Life 1 it's a rare sight indeed.
To circle back to Dark Souls 2: Sinh works where Sir Alonne doesn't because he's more tuned to the pace of the game. Dark Souls 2 is slower paced and more strategic, less reliant on mechnaics and split second dodges. And this is fine. Most bosses are balanced around that, so it works out in the end. Fume Knight is a very good example of this. He's just at the threshold of being to fast, and this is why I like him so much. He's still reasonable. Sir Alonne isn't.
I know that many people perform well against Sir Alonne. Mapocolops managed to beat him on his second try on his blind Lets Play. I'm not saying that he's so broken that he's not or barely beatable. It's just that I found this fight rather bullshit after my 30+ attempts. At times I got hit, even killed, although I didn't do really anything wrong, or I had no chance of avoiding it.
To fully explain what I mean, I need to retell one of my deaths toward the end of my lengthy battle with Sir Alonne: I rolled through the first swing of a two-swing attack of his. I was injured and drank from my Estus Flask while Sir Alonne was in the middle of his second swing. After that swing, Sir Alonne literally walked like 5 steps toward me, hit me with his sword, and killed me before, or just the moment, my heal animation was over. I pretty much had no chance to roll away, while literally starting drinking while Sir Alonne was mid-swing and several steps away. And healing is the main problem. As soon I get hit and I must heal, the slow heal animation and heal over time of the Estus Flask really shows it's ugly head. 90% of the time, I would be able to heal after Sir Alonne does an attack. But in the other 10% the game just goes "Surprise! He's gonna hit you mid heal, although he didn't the last 5 times you healed during this exact moment!" This is exactly what happened to me time and again, so much so, that I knew as a fact, that if I were to win against Sir Alonne with my skill level, it wouldn't be because of skill or mastery, but because I got lucky.
I ended up defeating Sir Alonne with the help of the two NPC summons. I used them once after like 15 attempts or so, and got one hit away. And on my final attempt, another 15-20 attempts later, I summoned the two NPCs again. And don't get the wrong idea. It's still a difficult fight even with the summons. Sir Alonne still hits very hard and one of the two NPCs usually dies like halfway through. I still had to pick and choose when to heal and only do one attack at a time. And toward the end, when Sir Alonne has like less that 5% Health remaining, he hard focuses the player. He did it both times I summoned. In fact, it was the reason I died the first time I used the NPC summons.
One more little fun fact: Sir Alonne did so much damage to me, that I ended up stacking the Life Ring with the Ring of Binding, so my health wouldn't be as low when it's permanently at 75%. I always used the Ring of Binding in difficult boss fights instead of using Effigies every 5-10 deaths. But this is the first and only time I thought I needed to buff my health to make it more bearable.
I want to repeat that I really like this fight. I had a lot of fun fighting Sir Alonne. After I nearly beat Sir Alonne when first time using the summons, I knew I basically had a 'I win' move. Just summon and be ready for Sir Alonne to hard focus me once he gets below 5% of Health. But I kept fighting him for 15-20 more attempts, simply because Sir Alonne was, and is, that much fun to fight. But I just got to a point where I didn't have any fun anymore, where I thought that the only way I beat Sir Alonne solo, is by being completely lucky after 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 50 more attempts. Or by going full tryhard mode and have no single amount of fun onwards. So I used the summons because I was simply mentally over the fight. Like with the Bell Gargoyles in Dark Souls 1, where I summoned Solaire after 25-30 attempts.
Sir Alonne is a good boss fight and I had a lot of fun during the most of my 30+ attempts. No matter how mean or negative I sounded up above.
After defeating Sir Alonne, we get the final Smelter Wedge. Which means we can finaly destroy the last Ashen Idol and finish the DLC.
Nadalia, Bride of Ash, and closing thoughts
To defeat Nadalia, we need to destroy the last Ashen Idol in the Curse Room. It's rather simple. Slow and steady wins the race.
Nadalia is a very interesting 'boss', who plays like a very elaborate enviromental puzzle. Finding and destroying the Ashen Idols is a very intersting thing to do during the whole DLC. It's like a red thread from start to finish. It's the first thing you do in the DLC, and probably the last. Nadalia's lore is also very cool. She arrived way to late at Brume Tower, the king which she sought long gone. So she renounced her flesh, becomming smoke and ash, and used her power to reanimate dead soliders and to bring the armor laying around to life. She also managed to win over Raime, who became the Fume Knight.
The Crown of the Old Iron King is a very good DLC, but I think my least favourite of the three. The Iron Passage is abyssmal, the Iron Warriors overstay their welcome and the Fume Sorcerers are a tad annoying as well. But the map is held up by Nadalia and the quest to destroy her Ashen Idols, the Brume Tower and that we get to activate it, and of course by the 2nd and 3rd best boss in Dark Souls 2 in form of Fume Knight and Sir Alonne.
Wow. This turned out way longer than I thought. See you in part 5, I guess: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11103568/
This is part 4 of my Dark Souls 2 review.
Part 1 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016255/
Part 2 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11016257/
Part 3 can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11103564/
Without any further delay, let's get started with the first DLC:
Little disclaimer: I fought every boss solo, unless stated otherwise.
Crown of the Sunken King (DLC)
Okay. For the DLCs I will deviate a bit from how I structured this review. So far, I have made a new section/chapter for every main path, map or boss. But the DLCs are a bit different. Each DLC has like 3-4 maps, where one map usualy makes up like 90% of the entire playable DLC map, while the others are rather small and miniscule. You know what I mean as we go on.
The Sunken King DLC consists of 4 maps: Shulva, Sanctum City; Dragon's Sanctum; Dragon's Rest; and the Cave of the Dead. Shulva and the Dragon's Sanctum make up like 40% each of the full map. Dragon's Rest like 15% if you count everything after the raised bridge. And the Cave of the Dead makes up like 5%. The biggest irony is, that this first DLCs has the most evenly sized maps of all 3 DLCs, so the disclaimer I made above seems a bit silly now. It will make more sense in the two other DLCs.
The overall plot is, that Shulva is a city that was built around Sinh, a slumbering dragon that just slept in peace while Shulva and the Dragon's Sanctum was build around it. But one day some Drakeblood Knights, led by Yorgh, invaded Shulva to kill Sinh, to use his dragon blood for their own benefit. Long story short, they managed to kill the King and most of the city's defenses, but as Yorgh thrust his spear through Sinh, the slumbering dragon woke up and nuked the entire city with the poison that build up over centuries inside him, killing basically 90+% of Shulva's population, Yorgh and most of the Drakeblood Knights. One of the most badass 'You don't know what you're messing with' moments out there. While we play, there's not much in terms of story or progression that we do. We basically kill our way through all maps, enemies and bosses until we get the Crown of the Sunken King. The most progression we get, is when we use a key here or there to progress the map. This sentence will make much more sense once we get to the two other DLCs.
Before I get to the first map of the DLC, I want to point out that in all 3 DLCs I tried to do all 'normal' stuff inside the maps before any bosses and that I tried to fight the 'final' bosses, which give us the titular Crowns, last. Each DLC is slightly different in where and when you fight their bosses, but that's the general rule that I used during all 3 DLCs. You can be sure, whenever I fought a boss in the DLCs, it was pretty much the only thing I could do to progress further in their respective DLCs. I used this method for almost all maps in the base game as well, for the most part.
Shulva, Sanctum City
The first thing we notice about this DLC, is the map. It's a very well designed map where many places you see, you can go to. And often when you're outside, you can look around and spot a place where you've been before. And of course, the typical trade mark Dark Souls shortcut elevators, where after you take a random elevator you go 'What? I'm here now? That's a cool shortcut!'.
It's something that Dark Souls 2 had been missing for the most part, and I'm glad it's back. Don't get me wrong, most maps in Dark Souls 2 are very well made and have some clever design and layout themselves, with shortcuts and everything. But usually on a smaller, local scale. For example, in No Man's Wharf you can see the end point, the large ship, as soon as you enter the map. And when you make it through the entire wharf, you knock down a piece of wood to create a shortcut that makes you skip like 90% of the map for the boss runback. It's all there, but on a smaller scale. Similar shortcuts exist in other maps, like Earthen Peak or the Undead Crypt. Some maps also have rather interesting layouts. Like the Lost Bastille, that is seperated into 3 parts that you all need to access via 3 differnt entry points if you want to fully explore it. Or the Gutter and it's pitch blackness that makes you rely on sconces, smaller landmarks and memory to remember what leads where, and where you've been to and where not. Or the Forest of Fallen Giants and it's past version in the memories. What lacks, however, is the larger connectivity. Like being able to see Iron Keep from Harvest Valley. To see the Lost Bastille from No Man's Wharf. To see Dragon Aerie and Shrine from Drangleic Castle. And vice versa for all of these examples.
In terms of gameplay, Shulva is rather normal. You have a few glowing pillars that you can shoot/hit to move large tower thingeys up and down to create paths, open ways and so on. Other than that, you only have a few basic melee weapon wielding enemies, that are hard enough to be a challenge to a lategame character, like mine, but still easy enough to be manageable. There are a few turtles that have a big stack of poison spitting statues on them. They seem immortal, but can be killed with spells or arrows. My fully upgraded Fire Composite Bow comes in clutch yet again.
What is a real highlight, however, is Sinh. You find him sleeping at the beginning and he flies off when you approach him. Later on, when you're about to enter the Dragon's Sanctum via a bridge, Sinh swoops in and blasts the two Sanctum Soliders on it in a one-time event. Which leads us to:
Dragon's Sanctum
The Dragon's Sanctum continues what Shulva began, by being a well designed and atmospheric map. You can even hear faint singing that's meant to soothe Sinh back to sleep. You'd think that they just recycle the Milfanito singing from the Shrine of Amana, but nope, it's a different kind of singing, even when it sounds similiar. And there are various buttons that open up doors and shortcuts. There are also large stone circles with large holes in them, that you can turn around via buttons to create new passageways. You get a few new enemies here, but we get to them in a bit. Because now it's time for my rant about Forlorn:
Okay, so here's what happened. I was just exploring the Dragon's Sanctum until I reached a place in the beginning, where you need to drop down into a sandy place, which has on one side a large stone circle that you need to turn to create a passageway. I was on the section before, where I killed all the Sanctum Soldiers up with me with melee, and the two enemies in the sand pit below with a bow. I used my bow to press a button to open a door to a chest with 5 Twinkling Titanite and 3 Petrified Dragonbones. I had around 15k-20k Souls, give or take, and I had like one Estus Flask remaining. But I wanted to keep exploring for a little bit more and then bone out to upgrade my stuff with the materials I just looted, since I was very low on both from upgrading a ton of stuff with both over the course of the game. So I jump into the sand pit below and get INSTANTLY invaded by Forlorn. I quickly run out of Estus and have to rely on Lifegems, which might be enough for people with thousands of hours in Dark Souls 2 on their 120th playthrough, but not for me. So I died. Also because I couldn't bone out because of the invasion. So I had to kill my way back and retrieve my Souls and thank fuck I didn't get invaded by Forlorn again. You have no idea how fast I boned out just to avoid that.
This is some serious bullshit. I literally counted on the Wiki, and they have 25 spots listed where Forlorn can invade you. And I know that there are at least 26 spots since the one in the Dragon Aerie where Forlorn invaded me wasn't listed. And I got invaded at 10 out of the 26 spots. I got basically 40% of all possible Forlorn Invasion, although they are meant to be random and low chance. Just goes to tell you how bs my RNG can get when it wants to. Even if it were like 9/27 and 33%, it would be to much. To me, Forlorn not only overstayed his welcome, he completely annoyed me in the end. So much so, that I might always play offline in all my future Dark Souls playthroughs, just to avoid PvP player invasions which are as much, if not more, bullshit than the Forlorn invasions. And Forlorn is pretty much the toughest NPC invader out there. Dennis the Menace wishes he'd be as tough as Forlorn. 90% of the bosses in Dark souls 2 wish, they'd be as strong as Forlorn. The only reason why Malenia in Elden Ring can claim that she has 'never knwon defeat', is because Forlorn isn't in Elden Ring. And we all must consider ourselves lucky that the final boss in Shadow of the Erdtree isn't 'Promised Consort Forlorn'. Fucking hell, I'd rather be invaded by a Half Life 1 Controller or EP2 Hunter than by fucking Forlorn.
Long story short: As far as I'm concerned, Forlorn can jut go fuck himself in any and every way someone can be fucked, with all and any tools, plants and objects that can be used to fuck someone.
Wow, that felt good.
Now on with something more pleasant: Tall ghost soldiers that only take physical damage when you destroy their cursed armor somewhere hidden on the map. To be fair, these aren't as bad as they seem at first. If your weapon does any elemental damage (Magic, Fire, Lightning, Dark), you will be able to hurt them, even if only for minor damage. And you can easily run around until you find the big room where all cursed armors are resting. It's like 8 cursed armors for 8 ghost soldiers that you can find all over the map, or something like that, but it's rather easy to destroy those to turn the ghost soliders tangible and thus receptible for normal damage. This big room even has two big gaps in them, where the ghost soldiers chasing you can fall into. These cursed armors remain broken once you destroy them, which means that you make the map permanently easier when you do so. Putting in this effort is more than worth it.
Now, from where I was, I had two options: Proceed past Jester Thomas to the Lair of the Imperfect, or make my way through the Cave of the Dead to face Gank Squad. I chose the Cave of the Dead.
The Cave of the Dead
The Cave of the Dead is one of the three infamous coop areas that you can find in each of the three DLCs (alongside the Iron Passage and the Fridig Outskirts). And I think I have to dish out one of my hottest hot takes yet when I say that I had pretty much no issues whatsover with this map. Even as a runback to Gank Squad.
Here's the layout of the map:
The top layer, which you enter from the beginning, just has a few normal enemies there.
The second layer below, is a larger area filled with statues that spit petrification juice on you, as well as a few petri-statue-turtles that can be killed via bow. There are also a few Sanctum Soliders that are rather easily killed. This second layer can be difficult if you want to kill all enemies and loot all items, but becomes easy on the runback.
The 3rd and final layer is just a long'ish corridor with like 3 Sanctum Solidiers, 3 petri-turtles and a big worm. Easy to both clear and run through.
Now, the runback is very easy, especially when you light all sconces on your first way through. On the top layer, you just drop through the first hole front right. You should see the light of a sconce through it. If you run and fall normaly through that hole, you should just run forward until you hit a wall. Then, on the right, there should be a path that leads below to the 3rd and final layer, which should be marked by another lit up sconce. I needed like 20+ attempts on Gank Squad, and only once did an enemy follow me from the 2nd layer into the 3rd. I think it's rather easy to run past all enemies on the 3rd layer to enter the fog gate, but I killed all enemies there so I could apply 'Crystal Magic Weapon' before the fog gate. The runback was so easy that I didn't even need a single Estus Flasks for most of them.
I have to say that the Cave of the Dead is a rather easy map if you know how to navigate it. You maybe get a singular enemy following you into the 3rd layer once every 10 or 20 runbacks and from what I can tell, can you make it to and through the fog gate without having to kill a singular enemy. And clearing the 3rd layer is easy enough, especially with NPC summons. And remember: I'm one of the biggest casual noobs on my first ever playthrough of Dark Souls 2, who only watched two Lets Plays (and a ton of reviews, retrospectives, ect) beforehand. If I can do it, you can too. If something's easy for me, everyone else, including you, should be able to do it with their eyes closed. I'm far from a skilled or talented gamer. I never was good at any game I palyed. I still ain't. And I never will be. It is what it is and I don't care. ^^
And while I found the Cave of the Dead rather easy, and I see it more positive than most of the community, the same doesn't apply to the boss...
Gank Squad
Oh boy. I really have to try not to type a rant and a half for the next three hours.
I can say, with full confidence, that this is, by far, by leaps and bounds, and not even close, the worst boss in the entire Dark Souls franchise. I haven't even played Dark Souls 3 for more than an hour, and not even fought a single boss there, and I can say this with full confidence. I haven't even booted up Elden Ring once and I know that no boss in that game, no matter if a major one with Rememberance and Great Rune, or a minor one at the end of cave 43, will be worse than Gank Squad. I know that no boss in Bloodborne, although I can only name like 5 bosses of that game, is worse than Gank Squad. Neither Dark Souls 4, Bloodborne 2, Sekiro 2, Elden Ring 2 or Charlie Chicken and the Dagger of Dispair are released yet, and I know that these games won't have a boss that's worse than Gank Squad.
Words are unable to describe how much I hate this boss. It is so bad, that even if FromSoft and Valve were to team up with EA, Sony, Activision and Ubisoft to create the worst boss that a game ever had, it'd still end up more enjoyable than Gank Squad.
Okay, enough ranting, I want to get to a few facts and explain why I dislike this boss so much. On paper it's just a normal 3v1 gank boss fight, no different than the Ruin Seninels, the Belfry Gargoyles or the Skeleton Lords. And it's just 3 basic bitch NPCs with relative normal armor and weapons. But they are basically fine tuned to be as annoying and unfun as possible.
First, you have the Afflicted Graverobber, aka 'Alva'. He's just using double curved swords that can inflict bleed. He's rather normal in terms of damage, but quite tanky. He's okay, for the most part.
Second, you have Ancient Solder Varg, aka 'Havel'. He's in full Havel's Armor and uses a Dragon Tooth. He's extremely tanky and does a lot of damage. In fact, he does so much damage that he managed to one-shot me with a backstap while I was at full HP, which was like 18XX at the time. Havel is extremely anoying during pretty much the entire fight, because he's so tanky and strong. If you get hit by him, you're fucked most of the time, and you can't really burst him down quick unless you have a fully min-maxed build.
Third, you have Cerah the Explorer, aka Fuckhead. Fuckhead has relatively low HP compared to Alva and Havel, but still a lot. He uses a Greatbow whose Greatarrows will knock you over if they hit you. He's one of the main reasons this boss fight can get very, very annoying. As if trying to manage Havel and Alva 2v1-ing you 90% of the time isn't hard enough, you have to dodge these arrows as well.
This fight is ruined by the fact, that all 3 NPCs have way to much HP/Defense. They are so extremely tanky, that without a min-maxed build, it's a chore to fight them. Because it takes forever until one of them is dead. At least for me, no matter if I used my Fire Red Iron Twinblade, my Fire Longsword, my Magic Drangleic Sword or my Magic Guts Greatsword, it always took 500 years until I would get anyone anywhere near 0 HP, let alone kill them. I fought them solo, I fought them with NPC summons, but it was always a tedious chore.
This fight reminds me of a saying of mine I like to use to describe a few bosses: I prefer 'boring and easy' over 'tedious and annoying'. Bosses like Prowling Magnus + Congregation or Covetous Demon or Royal Rat Vanguard or Pinwheel or Moonlight Butterfly or Gwyndolin don't bother me despite them being rather easy. I prefer them the way they are, instead of doubling their HP and turning them into a tedious slog. If that were the case, you'd have to chase Gwyndolin for thousands of years until you slay him, wait for the Moonlight Butterfly to float down like 5 times until you get the kill, or have to wail for 2 minutes on each member of Magnus's Congretation for a single kill on a single enemy. That may be more difficult, but frankly, also more tedious and unfun.
If I had to fix Gank Squad, I would just half their HP and turn this bossfight into an easy push over. I'd rather be over with it quickly than to have to endure the endless slog that it is now.
I would also add unique loot with unique descriptions in addition to the upgrade materials you get from them. Like:
+10 Graverobber's Bleed Curved Sword. 'The Afflicted Graverobber was moments away from turning hollow for good, when he met his two friends Varg and Cerah, who gave his life new purpose.'
+5 Varg's Fire Greatshield. 'Varg used to serve in the army of an acient kingdom. After getting banished because of the Undead Curse that scarred his flesh, he swore to use not only his shield, but also his body, to protect his new friends, who accepted him wthout hesitation.'
+10 Cherah's Raw Greatbow. 'Cerah explores the world with his two friends, sharing any treasure they find between the three of them. Being weak and feeble, Cerah uses his Greatbow to support his friends from afar.'
I think some unique loot with unique descriptions could've given this terrible boss at least some bit of personality.
I listened to this bosses theme and it's not bad. It's quite good, even if it's not up there with the really good tracks of Dark Souls 2 (or the other games). But it's definitely not enough to give this boss even a single point. Literally, I'd give this boss a score of 0/10. Completely unfun. During my victory attempt I literally yelled 'Asshole dead!' when I killed Havel. I was compeltely angry and furious during my last attempt. When I won, I was still angry, and very relieved that the fight was finaly over. No other boss in the game, or in Dark Souls 1, made me feel like that. Not even the Royal Rat Authority made me rage this bad. I was 'this' far away from just fucking off and not bothering with this boss anymore. In fact, Gank Squad might be the only boss I might skip for sure when I replay Dark Souls 2, whenever that may be. I don't see any way how this boss can be fun without a fully min-maxed build that 1-3 shots each one of the three NPCs. At least not with a major nerf to their HP. Everything else is fine. I don't mind that it's 3 NPCs, I don't mind that it's a 3v1 and I don't mind their weapons and loadout. But it's a tedious slog, as unfun as a boss fight can be.
Btw: I used the Fire Longsword for it's low Stamina usage so I could roll and evade better. I used 'Crystal Magic Weapon' for the first time against a boss here. I used both NPC summons here.
Lair of the Imperfect
Before the Lair of the Imperfect, there is Jester Thomas, a NPC invader that uses many, many pyromancies to fight you. He's a rather fun fight, not to hard, not to easy. It is, as it should be.
The Lair of the Imperfect itself is a rather small map, that has 5 or 6 'Imperfect' in them, which are big black dinosaur monsters. They are rather tanky and hard to fight with melee, but it's easy to cheese them once you learn that they can't enter the land at the far end of their lair, where you put in the Dragon Stone. Once I realized that, I just used poison arrows to cheese these big monsters and looted everything else afterwards. Most of the time, problems are as big as we make them. I could try to melee them and then bitch and whine how difficult and bullshit they are to fight, or just cheese them easily.
On that piece of land, where I shot the Imperfect from with my bow, I used the Dragon Stone to raise a bridge to the rest of the Dragon's Sanctum.
After the lair, I found the Drakeblood Sword, which I infused with Magic and used every now and then, replacing the 'Magic Drangleic Sword' in it's role as a medium weapon in terms of Damage and Moveset Speed.
There is also an elevator from the Lair of the Imperfect right up the the bonfire at the start of the DLC. Interesting that the best bonfire the explore the last bits of the DLC is the very first one in Shulva, Sanctum City.
Dragon's Rest
Super technicaly, everything from the broken bridge we raised with the Dragon Stone until Elana's boss arena is still part of the Dragon's Sanctum, but I like to refer to this final stretch of the DLC as Dragon's Rest. Because:
A) It's easier to understand than to call this section 'Dragon's Sanctum Part 2',
B) This final stretch is completely isolated from the rest of the Dragon's Sanctum that we explored earlier,
And C) Dragon's Rest is basicaly just Sinh's boss arena and the little room with the bonfire before it.
Dragon's Rest is a rather vertical section of the map. Since I used the furry tiger legs to save on Equip Load at the time, I didn't have to worry to much about fall damage, since they would reduce any fall damage by 67%. I also got the Drakeblood Knight Armor set here, which I upgraded to Chunck level, which is +6. I farmed a few souls to upgrade it, so I could compare it to other armor pieces I had. I farmed a little bit in Dark Souls 2, something that I didn't do in Dark Souls 1, but only to upgrade Armor. Never to overlevel myself in any meaningfull way.
We also fight various Drakeblood Kngihts, which are rather tough, but I didn't mind it as much.
When we reach the bottom, we have only one way left to go: Through a fog gate into the next boss fight.
Elana, the Squalid Queen
I had a real blast fighting Elana, I have to be honest. I only needed two attempts, and both were completely hillarious.
On my first attempt, I summoned all NPCs. Mainly because Benhardt was a summon and I wanted his help with this fight. I summoned the other NPC because I might as well when I already summon Benhardt. So I buff my weapon with Crystal Magic Weapon, we three enter Elana's boss arena and one of the first things she does is to summon Budget Velstadt. I try to get a few more attacks on Elana, since I did a lot of damage despite her buffed health pool, but then she and Budget Velstadt hit me with their melee weapons at the same time, one-shotting me as they reduce my health from like 80% down to 0 in a single shared hit. I literally laughed out loud when that happened. It was just perfect. I run in with my summons, but Elana just can't be asked and summons Velstadt, who then helps her send me back to the Bonfire not even a minute after I passed the fog door. It just can't get better than that. Then I made my 2nd attempt.
Attempt 2, which I made solo. I buff my weapon, enter the fog gate, run at Elana and attack her with my fully upgraded Fire Red Iron Twinblade while she summons her staff. Once her HP show up, she's alrady down to like 70% of her HP, while having 9280 HP in total. While she summons the three little piggies, which is super rare, I attack her further, with especially the multi-hit follow up, where my character spins and twirls the twinblade for 3-4 quick hits in a row, doing some serious damage. After only two attack cycles during the entire fight, Elana is down to like 20-30% of her HP and teleports away. I chase her, get a few more attacks in and she's dead. I just laughed during all of this.
The Red Iron Twinblade is OP, and I will die on that hill. My stats weren't even that good. My Fire Red Iron Twinblade scales 'only' with Strength, Int and Faith; while I had only 35 Strength, 30 Int and 10 Faith at that time. But this busted weapon in combination with Crytal Magic Weapon and Elana's big hitbox made me shred her like a basic bitch.
Safe to say: I found this fight very fun! It can get a bit bullshit, not gonna lie. And it might could've become a rather difficult, and maybe even annoying, fight if I hadn't been this overleveled while using a strong weapon with a strong weapon buff sorcery, but I still like this fight.
And right behind her waits the next boss fight for us:
Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon
I'm just gonna say it: Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon is my favourite boss in Dark Souls 2. And I will even go so far to say that he's the perfect Dark Souls 2 boss. A sentence that I will explain soon, and which will make even more sense once I'm done with this review.
One reason why I like Sinh so much, is because he's 'slow and stupid, but hits hard'. My favourite type of boss, and almost all bosses in Dark Souls 1 and 2 fit in that category. Sinh doesn't have the flashiest moveset, where he does 5 attack combos within 3 seconds, and many of his attacks are well telegraphed and easy to dodge. But when he hits you, he fucking hits you: You're getting knocked over, lose a lot of HP, and maybe even get Toxic build up (or get Toxic triggered). And because Sinh is this 'slow and stupid', it fits very well with DS2's slower pace. His more deliberate movements and legthier recovery times mean, that the slow speed of your attack and healing animations, as well as the slow heal over time of your Estus Flasks and Lifegems, don't hinder you as much.
One thing I liked about Dark Souls 1 and 2 when I watched the Lets Plays, was that these games weren't really difficult, but unforgiving. Make one mistake, and you're taking a lot of damage and get put on the back foot. Run in willy nilly without a plan, and you're going to die. But when you read the attacks, learn how to predict and dodge them, and prepare yourself accordingly by levelig up your character, upgrading and infusing your weapons, making a battle plan for the boss where you exploit his weaknesses while playing your strengths; when you do all of that, most bosses become easy. And I love that. This is the sole reason why I bothered trying out Dark Souls 1 (and later 2) after watching a full Lets Play of DS 1 and 2 (and watching a Lets Play of DS3 as I played DS1 and started DS2). Not because I wanted to play a difficult game for true hardcore pro gamers, but because Dark Souls 1 and 2 are highly strategic games, where planning ahead, choosing your options and taking your time are heavily rewarded. While I did play some Overwatch, Team Fortress 2 and even Call of Duty in my past, as well as a few SP FPS games like Half Life 2, at my core, in the depths of my heart, I'm a strategy gamer. I love RTS like CnC Generals or Empire Earth. And 4X games like Civilization or Endless Space 2 even more so. I will always have a more strategic focus on any game I play, so a boss like Sinh is absolutely perfect for me, since he's a very strategic boss fight.
For starters, Sinh's fire breath attacks leave behind toxic clouds, which not only serve as short-term area denial, but also cause Toxic build up. And Sinh has corrosive skin that shreds weapon durability faster. Both of these things force you to plan ahead. You might need to swap out one ring for Poison resistance, which also increases Toxic resistance. You might need to put Repair Powder on your item bar, or put on the repair spell, or slot in a back up weapon in your primary hand (which might forces you to increase your Equip Load via a Ring), or use a weapon with high durability, or use the Ring that slows weapon degeneration.
So before even the fight started, and I had to rejigger my Rings: While I could keep the Chloranthy Ring (Buffed Stamina regen) and the 3rd Dragon Ring (Higher Health, Stamina and Equip Load), I ditched my Stone Ring (more Poise Damage, useless against most bosses) and my Silver Serpent Ring (More Souls from enemies/bosses) for a Poison Resist Ring and one that reduces Equipmeant Degradation. I used my Fire Red Iron Twinblade for it's very high durability.
The fight itself is also rather cool. As I said, most of Sinh's attacks are slow and rather well telegraphed. His melee attacks are his fastest and hardest to read and dodge, but if you manage to get to his side or back, you can get a few easy hits off while Sinh misses his swipes or does his grounded fire breath attacks. But he can get you with a tail whip if you're not carefull. When Sinh flies up into the air, to do one of his air-borne attacks, things become even easier. I had very little trouble figuring out which of his 3 areal attacks he'd do, and could dodge them rather easily after a while. His Toxic Fire Bomb attack was a bit troublesome for me at first, because I wasn't able to roll through them, but after a while I just tried running away from them and it worked perfectly. In fact, it worked so well that I decided to ditch my Posion Resistance Ring in favor of the Ring of Binding, because I was getting hit so little by his Toxic flames. And the Durability of my Red Iron Twinblade was so high that I could ditch the Durability Ring as well in favor of my Silver Serpent Ring. But on the attempt I realized that, I killed Sinh and missed out on the extra Souls. I needed like 5-7 attempts, maybe 8. Something like that.
When you defeat Sinh, you get the 'Crown of the Sunken King', which boosts a few stats while lowering Health and Equip Load.
For me, a boss is always more than his moveset and Sinh is clearly elevated by all the things surrounding him. For example, Sinh has a giant spear driven through his body, that's still visible on both the entry and exit point. So of course Sinh can't just fly around willy nilly for hours. And Sinh himself is teased and built up throughout the entire DLC, be it through his appearances or via item descriptions. I really love this kind of things that give a boss more depth and his fight more weight. I think the only real 'downside' are his visuals, since his scales are grey and he looks like he's made out of rocks. But he still looks very good, even when he's no match for the Ancient Dragon or Kalameet in terms of visuals.
Sinh is easily S tier for me, only one of two DS2 bosses to make it into that tier. And in case people are wondering: I'd rate Sinh still lower than Artorias and Kalameet, which are my 2nd and most favourite boss in Dark Souls 1, which means that on a list of all bosses of DS 1 and 2 combined, Sinh comes in at rank 3.
And to round off this amazing boss fight, I'll just show you Sinh's boss theme, which might not be the most catchy or epic, but is still rahter good in it's own way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0s_Z8aIm-s
To round off this DLC, I come to my final thoughts about it. The Crown of the Sunken King DLC might be my favourite DLC of the three. It's map is absolutely amazing in terms of design, visuals and gameplay. It's gimmiks are cool without overstaying their welcome. It's enemies are tough, but fair. Even tougher enemies, like the Imperfect, are just limited to one area and can be easily dealt with one time to loot all items, and then you don't have to bother with them, or their lair, again. The ghost soliders might be a bit bs, but once you destroy their cursed armor, they become very easy to kill. The only real negative I can think of is the Gank Squad boss fight, which can be made trivial by being OP af. But Gank Squad is purely optional and only gives a few Dragon Bones, Twinkling Titanite and a Slab. Except for the Dragonbones, nothing really of value, so you literally lose nothing by skipping this boss.
All in all is this DLC one of the clear highlights of Dark Souls 2 in my eyes.
Crown of the Old Iron King (DLC)
The Old Iron King DLC consists of three maps: Brume Tower, which makes up like 96% of the entire playable area of this DLC, not just including the Brume Tower itself, but also two minor towers beside it. The other two maps are the Iron Passage and the Memory of the Old Iron King, which each make like 2% of the entire DLC map.
And shortly after we light the first bonfire of the DLC, we start fighting it's final boss. In a way.
Nadalia, Bride of Ash
The Brume Tower got overtaken by Nadalia, and the final goal of the DLC is to get her boss soul, for which you need to collect all 12 fragments of it. To get all 12 fragments, you need to activate the Brume Tower, kill two bosses and destroy all 11 of her Ashen Idols. In a way is Nadalia the inofficial 4th and final boss of this DLC; whose boss fight begins when you encounter the first Ashen Idol just behind the first bonfire; whose boss arena spans all of Brume Tower, including it's sidetowers and the Memory of the Old Iron King; and whose boss fight has multiple phases. How many depends on how you count. A total of 16 when you count all 11 Ashen Idols, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne and the exploration of Brume Tower before and after activating it, and the retrieval of the Scorching Iron Scepter, as singular phases. But only one if you just count the entire DLC as a singular, gigantic phase of possibly the longest boss fight in not just Dark Souls, but FromSoft history.
While I get that this is really a stretch and a half, and the first member of my 'Holy Dark Souls 2 Hot Take Trifecta', you actually DO get a boss soul from collecting all 12 soul fragments, which you then can trade for either the Chime of Screams Miracle caster, or the Outcry Pyromancy. And you have to complete almost the entire DLC to get all 12 soul fragments. But I don't disagree with anyone who sees Nadalia as an enviromental puzzle or hazard, even when I see this puzzle/hazard as part of her boss fight, not just the DLC/map.
About the 'fight' itself:
There are 10 Ashen Idols spread across the main tower: 4 are at the tower's floor and around Fume Knight's arena, 3 are reachable from the beginning, 3 only after you activated the tower. The 11th Ashen Idol is in a seperate tower, which you can enter whenever you want.
You also get a total of 11 Smelter Wedges to destroy all 11 Ashen Idols: 6 at the beginning, 4 in a room only reachable after you activated the tower, and the final Smelter Wedge can be obtained after defeating Sir Alonne.
You can loot a singuar soul fragment from Nadalia's body, which you find after defeating Fume Knight.
But first things first.
Brume Tower
Brume Tower is the main map with a lot of verticality. You can easily see many other places above and below you that you can reach sooner or later, or where you were before. You can also 'activate' the Brume Tower later on, making various elevators move, to fully explore it. It's a very simple, but effective map. There are several explosive barrels that you can blow up with fire. I chose my Fire Composite Bow for that. There are also several walls that you can destroy by blowing up explosive barrals or 'Casket Runners' (Weak enemies that carry explosive barrels around).
There are also several flamethrowers, some of which you can even smack to make them move, burning all enemies they come across.
As for enemies, that's where things get a little iffy. The normal enemies are rahter manageble, like in the Sunken King DLC, but they are often buried in Ash and jump out when you get near. Sometimes they even jump out of ash walls or heaps. It can get a bit bullshit from time to time, when suddenly an ememy jumps out behind you, or three enemies jump out at the same time once you walk over the trigger.
There are also these birdy Fume Sorcerers that have a teleport move, which can get very annyoing to fight. Especialy when they teleport away as you're attacking them and you have to turn around. The idea is neat, but the execution is a bit iffy in my eyes.
There are also these possessed armors, that are hard'ish to kill, but fine as long as they're not getting revived permanently by nearby Ashen Idols.
But the worst enemies in the DLC are by leaps and bounds the Iron Warriors. They are very strong, with high health and damage output, and respawn. That wouldn't be that bad if they were used sparingly, but they are sprinkled throughout the map, at times come in groups of 2 or 3, at times get buffed and healed by nearby Ashen Idols, and overstay their welcome very fast. At least for me. They're an enemy type I personaly would prefer if they would not respawn after a single kill, or at least there wouldn't be as many of them. But there are like 20 of them across the entire DLC and not a single encouter was any fun for me. Even cheesing them with arrows takes like 200 years, while fighting them with melee is rather effective, but also risky.
As for Ashen Idols:
The first one's a freebie and right after the first bonfire. Perfect to introduce you how the Smelter Wedges and Ashen Idols work.
The second one is at the bottom of a ladder and easy to take out if you're careful enough to kill the surrounding enemies one by one, which is easier said than done.
The third one is in what I like to call 'the gank room'. There are many enemies there, but using arrows to kill them one by one from a safe distance worked well for me.
For the fourth, and for now last, Ashen Idol, we need to make a little detour.
Curse Tower
This little off-shoot tower to the side has an Ashen Idol somewhere inside, and we need to descend down it to get access to it. But before we can do that, we get invaded by Maldron the Assassin. On first glance he's one of the more annoying invaders, who spawns at the top of the tower and runs down below once he gets damaged a little bit. But when he does that, you can use a Seed of a Giant to make the enemies inside the tower attack him. While they didn't kill him outright, he fled to the top with a chunk of his HP missing where I could easily finish him off. But it's also possible that Maldron gets killed by the enemies below without you having to do anything.
The inside of the tower is shrouded in darkness and causes Curse build up, hence why I name it the 'Curse Tower'. But there's a unique veil that you get from the Invader Gutter Denizen, who only appears if you light all the sconces in the Gutter. This veil has literally 1000 Curse resist, making you de facto immune to Curse when you wear it. This helps a lot in this tower and in the Curse room we enter much, much later. Once the Ashen Idol is destroyed, the enemies are easily dealt with. Only the two respawning Possessed Armors are a tad annoying until the Ashen Idol is destroyed.
After this Ashen Idol is destroyed, we should have 2 Smelter Wedges remaining.
With the Curse Tower completed, we now have one more place to go, where we find the Scorching Iron Scepter to activate the Brume Tower.
Scepter Tower
This little side tower is short, but sweet. The main enemies are some belly crawlers that I actually really like. Usually they crawl slowly towards you and lunge/swipe at you once they're in range. But when they're on fire, they crawl fast as hell and can easily catch you of guard. They also have a self-destruct move, where they can friendly fire other belly crawlers, setting them on fire in the process. You can also light them up by letting them move near the very big sconces, that seem to spill a burning liquid off their edges once they're lit.
At the end, you get the Scorching Iron Scepter, a key item that lets you activate the Brume Tower.
Activated Brume Tower
This is what makes this DLC so great. With the use of a single key item, the Brume Tower activates and multiple lifts move up and down all across the map. With those you gain access to all kinds of rooms, items, bonfires, enemies and so on. I had a lot of fun exploring the Brume Tower to it's fullest.
In one chest we find 4 more Smelter Wedges, increasing our total to 6.
Now comes an important note about the remaining Smelter Wedges and Ashon Idols. There are 7 Ashen Idols remaining. 4 of them are around the Fume Knight's boss arena and 3 more inside Brume Tower. But we only have 6 Smelter Wedges. It's utmost important that we spare one of the 3 Ashen Idols inside the Brume Tower so we can destory all 4 around the Fume Knight's arena. In fact, in theory you can spare any of the 7 Ashen Idols found all around Brume Tower, even the very first tutorial one.
This is because the 4 Ashen Idols at the bottom of the tower heal the Fume Knight when he gets close to them and trust me: The Fume Knight is not a boss you want to allow to heal by accidentaly stepping close to an Ashen Idol.
Our 5th Ashen Idol is near the Prowlers invasion before Sir Alonne's armor. I killed the first Prowler easily so I could destroy the Ashon Idol. Then I dispatched the rest until I reached the Bonfire near Sir Alonne's armor. 5 Smelter Wedges remaining.
The 6th one is in a prison area, where there is yet another Iron Warrior who I killed with poison arrows. 4 Smelter Wedges remaining.
The 7th Ashen Idol is in the 'Curse Room', which is pitch black and cursed like the 'Curse Tower'. I skipped that one till the end. So we should have exactly 4 Smelter Wedges remaining.
After looting everything, I made my way down to the bottom of the Brume Tower. To reach the bottom area you need to fight your way through multiple enemies, floor by floor, until you reach yet another Iron Warrior, because of course you do. There are a few reanimating possessed armors thereafter(Which stop reanimating once you destroy the 4 Ashen Idols around Fume Knight's boss arena. I actually tested that.), which you can easily skip. At the bottom is a Bonfire, which allows you to easily access the 4 Ashen Idols and the Fume Knight Boss Fight. And of course are here 4 Iron Warriors who jump out of the ashen floor if you get to close. Dark Souls 2 really doesn't want it's players to have fun, does it? At least you can skip them if you're hugging the inner wall tight enough.
And when you thought things couldn't get any worse, you decide to make a small detour before fighting the Fume Knight to be proven otherwise.
Iron Passage
The Iron Passage is the worst map in Dark Souls 2, something I can say with full confidence since it's not even close. It's one of these things where I could now rant and rant forever, like I did with Forlorn or Gank Squad, but I think I just say that this map is so bad, that I had to clear it of all enemies to make the boss runback to the Blue Smelter Demon feasible. That's a really long story short, since that took me literally a few hours, and two or three sessions to do. It's just annoying to get through, and a hassle to kill all the enemies. You got it all: Astrologists than can make you fat roll via spells; Fume Sorcerers that shoot lightning at you and teleport around when you try to melee them; Possessed Armors that are a chore to kill with bow and arrow, since they're all out of reach, unless you take one of the paths to melee them; and at the very end you get an Iron Warrior, because of course you do. Have I metnioned that these Iron Fuckheads overstayed there welcome for me after I had to fight like the 2nd one? It wasn't fun fighting them the first time, and it wasn't fun fighting them for the 38th time. And I had to kill this one 12 times to despawn it for good. Fucking hell, this map is complete shite. And what do you get at the end of it?
Blue Smelter Demon
Now, now. Let's not trash this boss just because it's runback is so abysmally terrible I had to spend 5+ hours clearing it. While it is a reskin boss, it's one of the better ones. While it shares a lot of things with the 'red' Smelter Demon in Iron Keep, the Blue Smelter Demon deals Magic damage instead of Fire, has high Magic resiatance instead of Fire, and has a few delays in it's attacks and mix ups in it's moveset. Combined with a much larger health pool, this is actually a well done reskin and reuse of a previous boss. But there is one problem: I personally don't really give much of a fuck about the Smelter Demon. It's not a boss I particular like, no matter if it's red or blue, fire or magic, in the Iron Keep or Iron Passage.
I fought this boss in two phases. The first phase was after I looted all the Items in the Iron Passage and cleared already a few enemies while doing so. No reason to clear this entire map if I beat the Blue Smelter Demon within my first few attempts. 5 attempts later, I was torn between giving up and moving on, and to clear the rest of the map. I decided to clear the rest of the map and after like two hours the path was clear, allowing me to fight the Blue Smelter Demon the next day.
During this second phase I tried out a few weapons until I settled on my Magic Drakeblood Greatsword. While it did less damage than my Magic Guts Greasword and my Fire Red Iron Twinblade, it also consumed less Stamina. While it sounds strange to use a Magic infused weapon to fight a Magic resistant boss, the Drakeblood Greatsword natively deals physical, Magic and Lightning damage, where the physical damage makes like 70% of the total damage. If you infuse this weapon with any elemantal damage, it's physical damage remains extremely high because of this unique split of native damage.
While I sometimes fought the Blue Smelter Demon with NPC summons, most of my attempts were solo, including my victory attempt.
With the Blue Smelter Demon dealt with, we move on to the next boss:
Fume Knight
Fume Knight is the second Dark Souls 2 boss I would put into S tier, just below Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon.
This boss is carried hard by it's moveset. It's simply hard but fair. The Fume Knight has two phases. In a twist of irony, I found his first phase more difficult, but I died more often in phase two. That's mainly because in phase one, Fume Knight fights with two swords, a small and a large one, that are more difficult to dodge, but deal relatively low damage. But in his second phase, Fume Knight ditches his smaller sword, while buffing his larger one with fire. In phase 2, Fume Knight's attacks are easier to dodge, but deal a lot of damage. This resulted in the circumstance that I tended to get hit more often during phase 1, but was able to heal through it rahter fine; while I managed to dodge most attacks in phase 2, but would be forced to heal anytime I got hit, which I had to delay until I dodged another attack. Which I would fail sooner or later, causing many of my 20 deaths(give or take).
What I liked about this fight the most, is that pretty much all attacks were learnable. Despite being more on the faster side, with quicker attacks and shorter recovery times compared to other bosses in Dark Souls 2, it was still quite reasonable and fair, like Artorias in Dark Souls 1. Pretty much all my deaths were my fault one way or another, and I always felt that a death taught me something for future attempts. Like that during his block stance, Fume Knight will instantly charge you if you heal, hence why I started to refer to that stance as 'Heal Bait'. The same applies to his idle stance. Some might refer to that as 'Input Reading', but I think that Fume Knight simply 'sees' me healing and decided to punish me for that.
Or that his phase 2 fireball attack has 3 damage points: When he puts his sowrd in the ground, when the sword explodes, and then from the fireball emerging. I learned that from charging him as he did that move, thinking I'd be safe until the fireballs appear.
I ended up using my Magic Guts Greatsword, which became my default weapon for more difficult and nimble boss fights. While my Fire Read Iron Twinblade is a beast, it does struggle against faster and smaller enemies and bosses. And I love things like that, where I change up my weapons depending on which bosses and enemies I fight.
Fume Knight's boss theme is also really good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2eBZjhZ3n8
Besides that, his visuals are absolutely awesome and his armor set my favourite in the game. Look for yourself (Minus the head piece, as I decided to wear Vendrick's crown): https://images.steamusercontent.com/ugc/47951476686256350/6F47495B7ED65868AEF7E587E58934DED77E06D1/
As a final thing, I want to explain why I rate Sinh higher than the Fume Knight. Both are very close and it reminds me strongly of my internal Kalameet vs Artorias debate for the best boss in Dark Souls 1. Fume Knight, like Artorias, might be the better boss fight when it comes to pure gameplay and moveset. But Sinh, like Kalameet, gets carried by his build up. Especially when we consider the lore of Shulva and the entire Sunken King DLC. It's these surrounding factors that make me prefer Sinh over Fume Knight, like I prefer Kalameet over Artorias. And let's not forget that I really like both Sinh and Kalameet in terms of gameplay as well, as I find both have really fair, predictable movesets, that are easy to learn and dodge, but hit hard. And it's no secret that I love dragons, so that's always a plus for me. Very few things are more epic than fighting a cool dragon, especially when they look as awesome as Kalameet, or have an interesting backstory like Sinh.
After we defeat the Fume Knight, we get another fragment of Nadalia's soul and the Crown of the Old Iron King, which renews 20% of spell uses every 2 minutes.
Memory of the Old Iron King
With the Fume Knight defeated, and the DLC almost completed and nowhere else to go, we enter the Memory of the Old Iron King via Sir Alonne's armor. I didn't really have that much trouble here, the enemies are rather easy to kill, so I just did that. Maybe it was very easy and enjoyable for me because the main enemies here are Alonne Knights, which are my favourite enemies in Dark Souls 2. I basically ended up clearing all enemies in the Memory, because I didn't want to have any souls to lose when fighting Sir Alonne, and I'd get like 15k souls per clean up. At one point during the Sir Alonne fight I picked up like 80k souls, so I boned out, leveled up, and decided to clear the map. It wasn't even close to be as annoying or time consuming as clearing out the Iron Passage, at least to me.
And now, we move on to the next and final boss of this DLC. And oh boy, is it a doozy:
Sir Alonne
Let me start out by saying that his boss theme is very good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN9kRFay02s
His visuals are also stunning, no matter if Sir Alonne himself or his boss arena. His lore and backstory as the Old Iron King's former right hand man are also top notch. Let's not forget that the infamous 'Alonne Knights' of Iron Keep are named after him.
Before I get to the gameplay aspects of his boss fight, I want to make perfectly clear that I think that Sir Alonne is a great boss. While I'm stilling mulling over if I should put him into a high A or low S tier, he's my 3rd favourite boss in Dark Souls 2. I need to clarify this as I get to the 2nd member of my 'Holy Dark Souls 2 Hot Take Trifecta':
I think that in terms of gameplay and moveset, Sir Alonne is so fast, with so short recovery times, that he kinda breaks the game. Let me put it like this: If Sir Alonne were in Dark Souls 1, he'd be a perfect boss with no flaws whatsoever. If I'd put him above Arotiras or Kalameet is a different story, but Sir Alonne would be right up there without question. But since he's in Dark Souls 2 and it's slower combat system, he suffers from that. Bascially all my 'issues' with Sir Alonne could be summed up with 'Because Dark Souls 2'.
Long story short: Sir Alonne isn't the problem here, Dark Souls 2 is.
And this needs a bit of an explanation. Sir Alonne is a rather fast boss with short recovery times. While usually that would be a good thing, it brings Dark Souls 2 to it's limit with it's slower animations, slower healing and all the extra attacks and inputs.
For example: I quickly learned that I can only get off one attack with my Magic Guts Greatsword if I want to be able to dodge Sir Alonne's attacks consistently. So I made sure to only click, and thus attack, once. But still my character would sometimes do two attacks back-to-back, causing me to get hit.
Another example: Once I wanted to roll and then attack, most normal thing to do in a boss fight. What does my character: Does a roll, then another roll, which puts me way out of position, and then an attack. I was basically stuck in a chain of animations for like a second or two. As you can imagine, I got hit after that.
Usually, this would be annoying, but manageble in most situations. But Sir Alonne is so fast that every single of such mistakes gets punished hard, since he does a lot of damage. And that's with me wearing high defense armor.
Let's compare that to Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon, who I named the 'perfect Dark Souls 2 boss'. Sinh is slow and stupid, but hits very hard. His attacks are rather slow and well telegraphed, and he has rather lengthy recovery times after his attacks, especialy his air-borne ones. And he's also very stationary and vulnerable during his fire breath attacks. This slower pace means, that the slower healing, for example, isn't much of an issue, since you got plenty of time during and after most of Sinh's attacks. Same for the slower attack speed and all the extra attacks/inputs. Because Dark Souls 2 is a slower game, the enemies and bosses have to be slower as well. It's just how it is. Every game is different, just in general, and therefore you need to fine tune it's maps, enemies and bosses according to their respective games.
Litte tanget on this topic: Half Life 1 and 2 seem to be very similiar to each other, but are different in key things, so they play very differently.
Without going into the detfails:
In Half Life 2 each encoutner is really tough, especially toward the end, but it restocks you with ammo and health/suit power every time. Ammo management is only a minor thing, unless you're very wastefull.
Meanwhile, Half Life 1 seems to be easier with it's encounters, but ammo management is way harder. You can get into really sticky situations if you don't pay attention to your ammo.
Thus, getting low on health is way more punishing in Half Life 1 than in Half Life 2, and way harder to recover from. In Half Life 2, being 100-100 in health and suit power is almost the default. In Half Life 1 it's a rare sight indeed.
To circle back to Dark Souls 2: Sinh works where Sir Alonne doesn't because he's more tuned to the pace of the game. Dark Souls 2 is slower paced and more strategic, less reliant on mechnaics and split second dodges. And this is fine. Most bosses are balanced around that, so it works out in the end. Fume Knight is a very good example of this. He's just at the threshold of being to fast, and this is why I like him so much. He's still reasonable. Sir Alonne isn't.
I know that many people perform well against Sir Alonne. Mapocolops managed to beat him on his second try on his blind Lets Play. I'm not saying that he's so broken that he's not or barely beatable. It's just that I found this fight rather bullshit after my 30+ attempts. At times I got hit, even killed, although I didn't do really anything wrong, or I had no chance of avoiding it.
To fully explain what I mean, I need to retell one of my deaths toward the end of my lengthy battle with Sir Alonne: I rolled through the first swing of a two-swing attack of his. I was injured and drank from my Estus Flask while Sir Alonne was in the middle of his second swing. After that swing, Sir Alonne literally walked like 5 steps toward me, hit me with his sword, and killed me before, or just the moment, my heal animation was over. I pretty much had no chance to roll away, while literally starting drinking while Sir Alonne was mid-swing and several steps away. And healing is the main problem. As soon I get hit and I must heal, the slow heal animation and heal over time of the Estus Flask really shows it's ugly head. 90% of the time, I would be able to heal after Sir Alonne does an attack. But in the other 10% the game just goes "Surprise! He's gonna hit you mid heal, although he didn't the last 5 times you healed during this exact moment!" This is exactly what happened to me time and again, so much so, that I knew as a fact, that if I were to win against Sir Alonne with my skill level, it wouldn't be because of skill or mastery, but because I got lucky.
I ended up defeating Sir Alonne with the help of the two NPC summons. I used them once after like 15 attempts or so, and got one hit away. And on my final attempt, another 15-20 attempts later, I summoned the two NPCs again. And don't get the wrong idea. It's still a difficult fight even with the summons. Sir Alonne still hits very hard and one of the two NPCs usually dies like halfway through. I still had to pick and choose when to heal and only do one attack at a time. And toward the end, when Sir Alonne has like less that 5% Health remaining, he hard focuses the player. He did it both times I summoned. In fact, it was the reason I died the first time I used the NPC summons.
One more little fun fact: Sir Alonne did so much damage to me, that I ended up stacking the Life Ring with the Ring of Binding, so my health wouldn't be as low when it's permanently at 75%. I always used the Ring of Binding in difficult boss fights instead of using Effigies every 5-10 deaths. But this is the first and only time I thought I needed to buff my health to make it more bearable.
I want to repeat that I really like this fight. I had a lot of fun fighting Sir Alonne. After I nearly beat Sir Alonne when first time using the summons, I knew I basically had a 'I win' move. Just summon and be ready for Sir Alonne to hard focus me once he gets below 5% of Health. But I kept fighting him for 15-20 more attempts, simply because Sir Alonne was, and is, that much fun to fight. But I just got to a point where I didn't have any fun anymore, where I thought that the only way I beat Sir Alonne solo, is by being completely lucky after 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 50 more attempts. Or by going full tryhard mode and have no single amount of fun onwards. So I used the summons because I was simply mentally over the fight. Like with the Bell Gargoyles in Dark Souls 1, where I summoned Solaire after 25-30 attempts.
Sir Alonne is a good boss fight and I had a lot of fun during the most of my 30+ attempts. No matter how mean or negative I sounded up above.
After defeating Sir Alonne, we get the final Smelter Wedge. Which means we can finaly destroy the last Ashen Idol and finish the DLC.
Nadalia, Bride of Ash, and closing thoughts
To defeat Nadalia, we need to destroy the last Ashen Idol in the Curse Room. It's rather simple. Slow and steady wins the race.
Nadalia is a very interesting 'boss', who plays like a very elaborate enviromental puzzle. Finding and destroying the Ashen Idols is a very intersting thing to do during the whole DLC. It's like a red thread from start to finish. It's the first thing you do in the DLC, and probably the last. Nadalia's lore is also very cool. She arrived way to late at Brume Tower, the king which she sought long gone. So she renounced her flesh, becomming smoke and ash, and used her power to reanimate dead soliders and to bring the armor laying around to life. She also managed to win over Raime, who became the Fume Knight.
The Crown of the Old Iron King is a very good DLC, but I think my least favourite of the three. The Iron Passage is abyssmal, the Iron Warriors overstay their welcome and the Fume Sorcerers are a tad annoying as well. But the map is held up by Nadalia and the quest to destroy her Ashen Idols, the Brume Tower and that we get to activate it, and of course by the 2nd and 3rd best boss in Dark Souls 2 in form of Fume Knight and Sir Alonne.
Wow. This turned out way longer than I thought. See you in part 5, I guess: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/11103568/
