I finally got my hands on the Moonlight Greatsword and as expected, it´s fucking awesome. This greenlit beast of a greatsword is the main reason for my build and it feels good to finally see my character come to life. I´m thinking of enchanting the Flamberge, it´s just too much awesomesauce packed into that thing to just ditch it, so a combo between that and MLGS would be pretty devastating. The Duke´s Archive is a fascinating place, the lore around this place is great, with channelers snatching victims for Seath the Scaleless to conduct his horrible experiments on and old Big Hat going bat shit crazy. But if talking strict gameplay here, the enemy placement is really annoying. It wouldn´t be too bad if you only got ganged up by the crystalline warriors that lurks around, they are pretty easy, but there is also ranged crystalline bow men shooting loads of arrows at you and those fucking channelers blasting Soul Arrows constantly. The first section before being trapped by Seath is terrible, I thought I was gonna go nuts in there. And Seath himself is such a boring boss, in fact he is complete shit, with one attack that he spams constantly. I must say, the bosses in Dark Souls are far less memorable than I remember. So far, the only ones worth a damn have been O & S, Sif and Artorias. The rest ranges from forgettable to pure shite. Dark Souls 2 and 3 had much better bosses.
Speaking of Artorias, now that is one boss that kicks so much ass that he puts the rest of the series bosses to shame. Holy shit, what an incredible fight he is. He comes straight up from the malevolent Abyss, with a cursed Greatsword and a broken arm, not giving two fucks about you. He twirls and slams and jumps all over the place, all while he screams in heartbreaking agony. An epic encounter. The only one I can think of that comes close to the genius that is Artorias is Slave Knight Gael, but he comes off as too much of a copycat to claim the throne. Nonetheless, Gael is a terrific boss encounter and a magnificent ending to a great series.
IMO, Artorias of the Abyss raised the bar when it comes to expansions. It is really well made with lots of interesting stuff happening in it. I actually never noticed that you can hear the thundering growl of the Abyss from the Royal Wood. I sat with headphones yesterday and when I explored the forest I heard the rumbling noises coming from the Abyss. I love these little details in Souls-games. I have played these games for thousands of hours and I still notice new things with every playthrough. Illusory walls, new items, new gameplay mechanics, new lore, environments, dialogs etc. It´s just mindblowing how much attention to detail From has put into these games.
I´ve also acquired the Tracers but I´m not getting the feel for them. They were a big reason for my build as well so it´s a little disappointing. But maybe I get the hang of them. The Gold Tracer is nice, with interesting moveset, but Dark Silver was kinda meh. I´m sticking with MLGS and Crystal Ring Shield, those two suckers are the best goddamn weapons in the game so far for my sorcerer. I picked up the Dark Orb but I haven´t had the chance to try it out, I mostly just use utility spells such as Cast Light, Repair, Fall Control, Hush combined with melee. Works so much better for me. But maybe I´m switching to a more ranged approach with the Dark Magic of Oolacile once I get my hands on them.
