To the King's Throne at Level 1: A Record of a Boss Pilgrimage Through Dark Souls II

The setting is the lost land of Drangleic. Afflicted by the Undead curse, with its mark appearing on their body, the protagonist drifts to this land as if guided by the curse, and wanders it in search of a way to lift it. The power of souls exists in this land too, the video explains in its introduction, and the protagonist will have to battle the holders of mighty souls.

The first area explored is the Forest of Fallen Giants. According to the commentary, the king of this land once invaded the land of the giants and suffered a large-scale invasion in retaliation. The forest is the site of that war, and surviving giants attack you there. Against the first boss, the Last Giant, the player swung a mace until its health was about half gone, at which point the enemy for some reason began tearing off its own arm, and the player used that opening to finish it off.

Next comes the Pursuer, clad in armor and arriving from the sky clinging to a bird. It is a being that appears all over the land, charged with hunting the Undead, so it is naturally hostile to the Undead protagonist as well. Here the commentary jokes that "FromSoftware has kindly provided us with a ballista," and the boss is brought down by firing the ballista. The heavily armored Dragonrider that appears next seemed to be headed downward, so the player rolled out of its way, and that was how it was defeated.

At an altar-like place piled high with bones, the player fights three lords who command lesser skeletons. Each time a lord is defeated, several lesser skeletons spawn, so the commentary's strategy was to alternate between killing lords and their underlings. The type of skeleton that spawns is fixed for each kind of lord, and after the scythe-wielding lord, five spawn slowly. Since it's a problem if a lord cuts in from the side while you're clearing out the small fry, it's safe to get a lord snagged behind a pillar before dealing with them.

After the last lord falls, a total of 12 skeletons appear. Here the player reapplied Gold Pine Resin to boost damage, making it possible to kill them in one hit. On top of that, the Alluring Skull is effective against skeletons: throwing one diverts all enemies' attention for just a few seconds. By throwing them at short intervals to draw the skeletons away, the player whittled their numbers down one at a time. Three Alluring Skulls were used in this fight, and the commentary rates them as extremely useful for something you can buy for 300 souls apiece.

In the tower, the Covetous Demon blocks the way. You drop Hollows onto the floor as bait and attack while it's busy eating. It doesn't attack at all as long as there's food left, so the commentary says it's a fight that ends with you simply beating on it one-sidedly. However, damage doesn't go through well while it's chewing, so it's best to hit it right when it finishes eating.

At the top of the tower, the player fights Mytha, the Baneful Queen. Having picked up gear along the way that raises Dexterity, the player can now equip a rapier from this point on. From here on, the commentary switches between the mace, a strike weapon, and the rapier, a thrust weapon, depending on the opponent. In a level 1 challenge where you can't raise your stats, the way stat boosts from gear widen your weapon options ties into the impressions shared later.

Beyond the tower, in the Iron Keep, the Smelter Demon awaits. It's a boss you can normally skip by taking a side path, but since it's currently appearing in Elden Ring Nightreign too, the player decided to fight it anyway. Attacks don't go through well during its transformation animation, so during that time the player builds up poison with Poison Throwing Knives. It's an opponent that strike damage works relatively well against, so the player hit it with the mace. In the second half, you start taking gradual damage just by being near it, and if you dawdle you'll get melted, so you need to finish it off quickly.

According to the commentary, to earn the right to meet the King, you must defeat the four holders of great souls in this land, gain enough souls, and then head to the castle.

The first is the Old Iron King. The commentary introduces it as having an imposing design and a formidable air, but since it comes toward you on its own, you pass the time throwing Poison Throwing Knives in the meantime. Once it's within striking range, you aim for the recovery after its melee attacks, and since strike damage works well, you bash it with the mace. The player defeated it by wandering around in place to bait attacks that are easy to punish, then bashing it again with the mace when it offered up its arm.

The second is the Rotten, found in a ravine deep underground, characterized by a body stuffed with human bodies. It looked like an opponent that thrust damage would work well on, so the player stacked up hits with the rapier. The commentary jokes that it's "the weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings," saying there was nothing particularly difficult about it and the fight was over before they knew it.

On the way to the third, poking at a woman buried in sand causes Scorpioness Najka to appear, and the commentary defeats her while saying, "I'll take her down quick so YouTube doesn't get mad at me." In the following fight against the Prowling Magus and Congregation, the player first takes out the clerics, whose ranged attacks are a nuisance, then attacks the wandering Hollows with the rapier, finishes off the magus, and finally squashes the crawling Hollows with jump attacks, in that order. The rapier is said to hit these kinds of enemies well.

In the spider area past Brightstone Cove Tseldora, the player fights Duke's Dear Freja. If you keep a torch lit in your left hand, the small spiders won't come near, so you can use the one-handed rapier and simply poke alternately at the faces on the front and back to win. The commentary adds that Freja has also recently appeared in Nightreign, but it's a little disappointing that the torch doesn't work there.

The player heads to the last one by ship, dispatching the boss on board, the Flexile Sentry, before reaching the destination. In the Lost Sinner fight, the boss puts out the lights so the room gets rather dark, but the commentary defeats it while joking, "I feel like recent FF games and stuff had about this level of brightness too." With that, all four great souls are collected, and the protagonist has earned the right to an audience with the King.

In the castle, the player fights Dragonriders posted as guards. First, the player lightly chips the first one, leaving more than half its HP, then carves through the rest in one go with the next attack. Then a second Dragonrider comes out, and it's defeated with two counter hits.

Outside, in the rain, the Mirror Knight is waiting. Hitting its large shield gets your attack deflected, so you watch carefully and only hit the armored parts. Strike damage works well against armor, and the mace's attacks went through nicely.

Speaking with the Queen reveals that the King is away, and the player follows his trail to the Undead Crypt. On the way, they encounter the Demon of Song, which the commentary describes as "putting on a concert with no audience." Attacks only go through when its insides are exposed, so you wait while it's shut up and resume attacking when it comes out.

Before the King's chamber stands the last knight, Velstadt, the Royal Aegis. Many of his attacks are big, monotonous swings, so if you dodge them casually and thrust with the rapier, his health drops by half, at which point he crouches down and starts resting, and then you just keep poking until he falls.

The player defeats the King's retainer, but what's in the room is a Hollow who has lost his mind and roams around naked. Since he can't even hold a conversation, the commentary decides to "just grab what we can get" and head back for now. No clues to lifting the curse were found, but the ring brought back widens the range of exploration.

Next, the player visits the keep of Aldia, the King's brother, who is said to have pursued the truth alongside the King, and defeats the Guardian Dragon lying there. After that, the protagonist is granted the mysteries of the Ancient Dragon and becomes able to peer into the memories of those who have perished. According to the commentary, as in the previous game the fire of this world is fading too, and the fire must be linked again for the world to continue. So the player defeats the Giant Lord within the memory and obtains the key to the place where the fire is linked. The commentary consistently refers to that place as "the pizza oven."

Heading straight to the castle from here would allow the fire to be linked, but before that, the player decided to make the rounds of the DLC areas.

According to the commentary, the DLC for this game takes you through three fallen kingdoms, and the Queen's sisters were involved in the rise and fall of each of them. Elana, the Squalid Queen is one of those sisters, and as befits a child of the Dark, she makes heavy use of summoning and hexes. Just as in the base game, the Alluring Skull works on the skeletons she summons, and the player defeated her by attacking the main body while they were distracted.

Defeating Elana breaks the seal, and Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon, said to have destroyed this kingdom, appears. The setup is that it was once revered as a guardian dragon, but after being stabbed with a spear by an invading order of knights, it released poison that turned the whole kingdom into a city of the dead, then went back to sleep. The commentary notes that the spear is still stuck in the base of its neck and looks painful. FromSoftware dragons give the impression of constantly flying around, and this one also uses lots of aerial attacks, so you poke away at it patiently. When it starts shuffling around on the ground, that's a precious chance to attack, and when it rears up on its two hind legs, it's recommended to attack and sever its tail. After that, you just wander around its hind legs attacking, keeping an eye on which way its head is facing to prepare for the occasional fire breath.

In the deepest part of the second DLC area, the player fights the Fume Knight, who dual-wields a straight sword and an ultra greatsword. The commentary explains that his attacks themselves are very simple, and you basically just repeat dodging his one-to-four-hit combos and then landing about two hits yourself. He often swings the ultra greatsword as the final hit, and if you can dodge this by dashing, you use less stamina.

When his HP drops to about half, he discards the straight sword, enchants his weapon, backs off, and starts using a fast thrust attack and a special attack that scatters fireballs. However, his second-phase attacks leave lots of openings, so you get plenty of chances to attack too. If you roll through the fireballs early, you can poke at him for a while. In the end, the player defeated him in a way that felt like "if I force in four hits, I can probably take him down."

In the third DLC area, after a warning from someone, a mid-boss-like foe, Aava, the King's Pet, appears. Thrust attacks go through well and you can chip it down surprisingly quickly, but the rapier tends to miss, and if you stay glued to the enemy as it moves forward you'll often whiff, so you need to be careful with positioning. Aava frequently backs away, but getting behind it during its ranged attacks gives you the advantage, so it's good to close the distance yourself. When it enters a certain stance, getting around behind it while it's casting lets you pound on it while it's defenseless for a while. It has no transformation either, so after that you just chip it down diligently and you're done.

The final boss of the DLC, the Burnt Ivory King, makes his entrance with a cutscene, and the commentary also gets ready by applying buffs. It has an atmosphere truly fitting for a final battle, but at the same time, in this fight allied knights join in on their own, making it a semi-forced team-up. This time the allied knights were the ones being targeted the whole time, so all the player had to do was dodge the occasional attack and keep hitting from the side. The commentary says that since this game is designed so you can deal decent damage even at level 1, it doesn't seem like you'll struggle for damage even against the DLC's final boss, and it looked like the player might beat it while the allies were still alive.

Back in the main game, just before the room with the throne for linking the fire, the player fights two guardians. The Throne Watcher was quickly disposed of by making it fall to its death, for the sake of the video's length, while the Throne Defender was fought head-on. Being main-game bosses, they're softer than the DLC bosses, and if you attack while moving to the left as you face them, you can beat them quickly without any troublesome attacks.

Once everything is ready to link the fire, Queen Nashandra appears. The commentary explains that while she seemed to be a kind-hearted queen guiding the protagonist to the throne, she was actually an incarnation of the Dark scheming to defeat the heir at the last moment, steal their great soul, and reign over the world. That said, the fight's difficulty is like that of a scripted event: you position yourself at mid-range to bait her laser attack, then close in and poke her, and that's enough to win. The commentary mutters, "How was she planning to steal anyone's soul being this weak?"

Just when it's finally time to link the fire, the King's brother, Aldia, Scholar of the First Sin, stands in the way as the final boss and questions the protagonist's worthiness and resolve. As the commentary introduces him, Aldia founded the kingdom together with the King but parted ways with him along the way, and afterward continued his research while confined to his keep. To overcome the curse spreading through the world, he devised many secret arts, and rather than relying on the life-prolonging measure of linking the fire, which merely repeats the cycle of causality, he carried out many experiments, including on primordial beings and the creation of humans. He's a figure who appeared several times along the way, offering advice as a guide through the cryptic story. The commentary paraphrases the scene in Kansai dialect as being asked about your resolve: "Are you really gonna link the fire? Or are you gonna become the Lord of Dark?" "Or maybe there's another way, y'know?"

The tip the commentary gives for this fight is that he's left defenseless for a long time when he puts out a large fireball, so you "just keep praying" for him to use it. When the fireball came as hoped, the player went on the offensive and then poked until he fell.

This game has multiple endings, and you can choose to link the fire right there, but the commentary chose a different ending. Having reached the throne at level 1, the protagonist refused to link the fire and left without looking back, bringing the playthrough to an end.

Wrapping up, the commentary reflects that the game has an abundance of stat boosts from gear, making it a title where you can enjoy trial and error even at level 1. There were parts that were bewildering at first given the clear differences from the previous game, but the commentary felt it's a game that definitely has a flavor you can't find anywhere else, with its unique world and challenging systems, and the video ends there.