I'd been sitting outside the final boss for a good year so it was time to put this to bed; I was never going to go back to any DLC or secret portrait worlds any time soon.

I finished my first Dark Souls, my first proper Soulslike. That's a crazy feeling. I didn't always do it the hard way; I fought with NPCs, I fought with friends, I got guided to shortcuts and found bonfires I would have refused to have played the game without. But it still feels very special. Maybe for the next run, I'll try and play blind.

I doubt it. There's a shared experience that makes this invaluable to me, and my run feels like a shared achievement, and I'm genuinely like privileged to not have done it alone.

It's janky. The boss runs suck. i-frames are franky a ridiculous mechanic. It's too dense in its secrets; too much undiscovered, too much too complicated. Levelling feels pointless, upgrading equipment isn't obvious. I never saw a legendary weapon, I never wore a single piece of cool armor because slow-rolling was ass. Level design ranged from outstanding to incredibly, incredibly poor.

But it's an unforgettable experience in an unforgettable world. And I did it.