The Road to Elden Ring #2.5: Dark Souls – Artorias of the Abyss
This is a small review of just the Artorias DLC for Dark Souls 1, meant to be read in addition to my Dark Souls review as a whole.
I think that the Artorias of the Abyss DLC is really great and showcases a lot of the main game’s biggest strengths. The map of Oolacile is quite literally the same as Darkroot Garden/Basin in the main game, but set a few hundred years in the past. Players who really know the maps inside out will get a kick out of seeing locations they remember but slightly different. For example, Black Dragon Kalameet is fought at the same location as the Hydra’s lake. This is both a cool look at a distant civilization as well as clever reusage of maps that doesn’t feel cheap or lazy.
I love the NPC interactions in this DLC. Players can rescue Sif, a boss from the main game, when she is a pup, and she can even be summoned to face the final boss of the DLC. This also results is a really cool alternate cutscene when initiating her boss fight in the main game if the player hasn’t killed her yet. The standout NPC for me in this DLC is Hawkeye Gough, who helps the player shoot down Kalameet for a tough and optional boss battle. I think the more interactive NPCs helped influence the later Souls games with their more lively and helpful NPCs.
The DLC offers a slew of new and interesting enemies to fight, but the peak of this DLC is definitely the boss fights. Sanctuary Guardian offers a simple fast and intense monster fight, Kalameet is the first proper dragon fight in the series, and Manus is a challenging and wild fight that would have many aspects of it taken for the Cleric Beast in Bloodborne and the Demon of Hatred in Sekiro.
However, the clear winner here is the fight with Artorias himself. I think this fight kind of set a new standard for Souls bosses, and its influence can be seen in Dark Souls II and III with their incredibly tense 1-on-1 knight duels. Artorias takes you on with 1 good arm and gives you the toughest fight of the game, unrelenting in his brutal swings and slashes. Not only is he a great fight in terms of gameplay, Artorias’s story relevance also puts him on another level. We hear about the legend of Artorias throughout the main game, and follow his footsteps into the Abyss, but to see him in his true state – corrupted, suffering, dying – is truly tragic and finishing his quest for him really fits into the solemn, grim world of Dark Souls.
The only issue I have with the DLC is the extremely obtuse way of finding and accessing it. Kudos to anyone who figured this out without wiki-diving.
This is a small review of just the Artorias DLC for Dark Souls 1, meant to be read in addition to my Dark Souls review as a whole.
I think that the Artorias of the Abyss DLC is really great and showcases a lot of the main game’s biggest strengths. The map of Oolacile is quite literally the same as Darkroot Garden/Basin in the main game, but set a few hundred years in the past. Players who really know the maps inside out will get a kick out of seeing locations they remember but slightly different. For example, Black Dragon Kalameet is fought at the same location as the Hydra’s lake. This is both a cool look at a distant civilization as well as clever reusage of maps that doesn’t feel cheap or lazy.
I love the NPC interactions in this DLC. Players can rescue Sif, a boss from the main game, when she is a pup, and she can even be summoned to face the final boss of the DLC. This also results is a really cool alternate cutscene when initiating her boss fight in the main game if the player hasn’t killed her yet. The standout NPC for me in this DLC is Hawkeye Gough, who helps the player shoot down Kalameet for a tough and optional boss battle. I think the more interactive NPCs helped influence the later Souls games with their more lively and helpful NPCs.
The DLC offers a slew of new and interesting enemies to fight, but the peak of this DLC is definitely the boss fights. Sanctuary Guardian offers a simple fast and intense monster fight, Kalameet is the first proper dragon fight in the series, and Manus is a challenging and wild fight that would have many aspects of it taken for the Cleric Beast in Bloodborne and the Demon of Hatred in Sekiro.
However, the clear winner here is the fight with Artorias himself. I think this fight kind of set a new standard for Souls bosses, and its influence can be seen in Dark Souls II and III with their incredibly tense 1-on-1 knight duels. Artorias takes you on with 1 good arm and gives you the toughest fight of the game, unrelenting in his brutal swings and slashes. Not only is he a great fight in terms of gameplay, Artorias’s story relevance also puts him on another level. We hear about the legend of Artorias throughout the main game, and follow his footsteps into the Abyss, but to see him in his true state – corrupted, suffering, dying – is truly tragic and finishing his quest for him really fits into the solemn, grim world of Dark Souls.
The only issue I have with the DLC is the extremely obtuse way of finding and accessing it. Kudos to anyone who figured this out without wiki-diving.