My internal clock has been utterly derailed by having finished school last week, so I didn’t even notice that it’s Friday again lol. I don’t have any soulslikes on my plate right now - sounding like a broken record at this point - but I’ve been thinking about trying to get a PS4 emulator running on my PC to give Bloodborne another go. It’s been way too long since I’ve last played it.
I’m not sure if it’s the saddest boss in a soulslike, but Romeo from Lies of P is definitely up there. The second playthrough recontextualises many boss fights and this one was just gut wrenching.
What’s your pick?
Hmm, I don’t know that anything really is sadder than Sif (and I haven’t played Lies of P) but I’ll say Artorias just to say something different. It’s not really a sad fight in the same way as Sif is, where he is limping and whining - especially if you get the post-DLC cutscene before the fight. But Artorias is still sad in another way, to see the great hero corrupted and fallen and lost. Though even more than his buddy Sif it’s a fight that is made all the more tragic by knowledge of the lore. The corrupted hero cliché might not hit for everyone perhaps but I guess there just aren’t all that many sad fights in Souls. I feel like there is someone else that I’m missing but it’s slipping my mind.
Actually as I was typing below it hit me (and I can’t believe it slipped my mind): I know it’s not technically a boss fight, but killing Solaire is absolutely fucking gutwrenchingly depressing. He’s with you the whole journey, he is the sole source of positivity and optimism - even friendliness (“jolly cooperation!”). Then you slowly watch his spirit and vibrancy fade as he slips into going hollow, losing sight of his sun deep underground until he’s mislead by a fucking oversized firefly and turned into a twisted and wrenched satirical caricature you have no choice but to put out of his misery.
Yeah, fuck you Miyazaki.
Well, no Souls right now for me. Actually, I really haven’t been gaming much at all the past two months. I played another two chapters of The Drifter (it’s incredibly good) and another mission of Wanted: Dead (it’s wack).
I’ll probably play Hell Is Us soonish though, so maybe I’ll get into an actual Soulslike again soon and not continue to bring disrepute and disgrace over this community by constantly writing about off-genre games.
Solaire was so gut-wrenching the first time… This fall into despair.
You can, of course, save him from it if you know how to, which, of course, no one knows the first time. [You either pay 30 humanity to the Daughter of Chaos, and she opens the shortcut and you kill the bug, or you can kill the bug through the door with something like the Dragon Greatsword heavy attack.]
But did you know that, if you save Solaire and summon him to the fight with Gwyn, he can actually kill him alone without your assistance? It’s heavily, heavily RNG-dependent, but it’s possible.
Solaire, of course </3