It was OK.

I didn’t start the Dark Souls remaster intending to go all cheevo-mad, but the problem was that the very first Channeler – the one in Undead Parish – decided to drop the Channeler’s Trident.  It was kind of a sign that I was destined to collect every last rare weapon.

On a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I have some pretty unkind thoughts about Seath’s tendency to always be turning in the precise direction he needs to turn to have his tail clipping through the walls of his arena.  Completely unrelated.

When I played through Dark Souls on the PC, it had been out for several years and the online was being particularly glitchy, so I did absolutely no jolly co-operation.  I also tended to be really short on humanity, so I almost never took advantage of any of the NPC summons.  I did it The Hard Way, and I feel good about having done that.

Once.

This time through, I did a lot more co-op, and it was a good time.  I particularly enjoyed hanging out at the Centipede Demon and making sure that the host got the lava-walking ring. We didn’t always win, but it was a good feeling to know that the guy was going to have a much easier time on his next attempt.

I even put up with PC invaders for most of my first play-through, and I have to say that I can’t recommend the experience.  The last straw was being backstabbed, from the front mind you, by someone who was – on my screen, at least – well outside the reach of the massive 2-handed sword I was trying to flatten him with.  After that, I set the game into Offline mode, only switching back online when I was actually standing at a fog gate.

The older versions of Dark Souls didn’t have the ability to play offline without actually disconnecting from the internet, so if you needed justification to buy the remaster, I’d say that’s a pretty good one.

Griping about gankers aside, it’s still just about the perfect remaster of one of the best games I’ve played in the last… well, ever.  Now we just need… ah, never mind, I won’t even bother saying it. 🙂