Over the next two weeks, Dark Souls veteran Rich Stanton will be documenting his thoughts and experiences as he plays through the game. Join him as he enters Drangleic for the first time...

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King Vendrick doesn't react to my first blow, or the second. But after the third hits home he suddenly swings his blade in a great sweeping arc that almost removes my head. We're go. And the Black Knight Halberd +5, the pride and joy of my Drangleic adventures, suddenly feels like a toothpick – it's doing almost no damage.I dodge around, game for anything, but it's not too long before Vendrick catches me out and takes my health down to nearly nothing. I survive for about a minute before the hollowed-out King claims another undead. The damage I was doing though... either I'm missing an item or a weapon, or this is a half-hour boss fight that has to be executed perfectly.Back at the bonfire, I decide to bravely run away with my new ring – because I've seen plenty of doors that will respond to it. Perhaps what I need is behind one of them. First, a stopoff in Drangleic Castle; I want to see if the Queen's still on her throne and try out a new key acquired in the Shrine of Amana. The Queen tells me to seek the giants, and an invisible wall prevents me from skewering her with arrows. The new key works for a room at the very top of the castle – and man, it's a gory old time up there. Bleurgh!I have an idea of what to do. The 'corpses' of giants lie around one of the very first areas, and I visit them methodically. Each leads to a playable flashback where, after being squashed by giants plenty of times, I acquire several Giant's Souls. In the last I find the Lord of the Giants, and the bigger they are – and this guy is very big indeed – the harder they fall. There's something suggestive in the description of the Giant Souls: “Will the Giants' resentment of the king be pacified in death, or only emboldened?” We may have a solution to our Vendrick problem.But first I try out another door I'd spotted earlier, and it leads... to another gigantic area. Aldia's Keep feels like a mad scientist's castle and, though more linear and smaller than it first appears, has an atmosphere to it that much of Drangleic has lacked. And at the end? A dragon. Suddenly I'm pumped.In the previous entry I said I was missing my Anor Londo moment. The next section, the Dragon Aerie, is as close as Dark Souls 2 gets to this – it is simply an incredible sight. Again I'm slightly disappointed by the environment as a layout, but as a visual spectacle it takes some beating. Great farming spot, too, because it's full of crystal lizards.After a series of rickety rope bridges and rocky outcrops comes the Dragon Shrine, and at the end an Everlasting Dragon. The Everlasting Dragon from Dark Souls, all grown up? Maybe. Maybe. I swing at it anyway. The thing incinerates me in a flash. I spend the next few hours running back and forth to this boss, and dying instantly.Everything I loved about the Dragon Aerie, and Dark Souls as a skill-based game, is rather ruined by this boss – who's super cheap and a one-hit wonder. But I eventually put him down with the help of summons. Psychopathic urges satisfied, I head back to the Undead Crypt. It's time to finish this.King Vendrick awaits, and my hunch about the Giants' Souls pays off – I'd thought I might have to use them as items in the battle, but in fact just holding them means I'm doing decent damage. The Souls games do a great line in fallen kings, and Vendrick is another. He doesn't quite have the burned-out majesty of Gwyn, or the sheer menace of Allant, but there's something affecting in this once-great figure's sweeping swings of his greatsword – deadly as it is. Vendrick is a question of knowledge, and timing. Finally I have both, and he falls. But leaves no Soul? Odd.I'm exhausted. It's 3AM, and I've got to get up in the morning. Sleep is for the weak, and I warp to Drangleic Castle. The Queen is gone. A final door opens to the King's seal, and I walk down a long and lonely path towards a throne room. Inside, two guards await – The Throne Watcher and the Throne Defender, Smough and Ornstein lite.Or are they? In the first fight I get one down, and watch in astonishment as he's revived by his buddy to full health. You Died. All bets off for the return leg, I summon two dudes and destroy them. And then the Queen, finally, appears.This is it. Nashandra, as she's known, is a tough fight – and embodies everything I'm uneasy about in Dark Souls 2. She's a kind of bony queen, a horror figure surrounded by an aura of curse, and throws magic and AOE attacks one after the other at you. This kind of visual design feels too generic to me, too focused on gross-out impact rather than the sinister side.First time my remaining Summon and I go down. Second time, when I don't have to kill the Throne guards first, Nashandra dies in a hail of magic.The ending is ambiguous – as you might expect. The game puts me back in Majula, and I can start NG+ from the bonfire. So I begin the nasty task of killing NPCs, a Souls tradition, and feel even emptier than usual when I realise so few of them drop any decent items. In the days since, I've discovered NG+ is actually Dark Souls 2's best feature – and a significant advance over Dark Souls' implementation. But that discussion will have to wait for another time.The cat had mentioned something to me about a 'rotten' enemy - but the subtitles capitalised 'Rotten.' In Souls games this is basically a massive flashing arrow and, having already found the upper part of the Gutter, but not explored it, I use my Souls levelling up and warp there.The next few hours are a story of falling off walkways, lighting torches, getting poisoned, and dying to giant dogs in horrible ways. The Souls games seem to enjoy having a filthy environment each time, and the Gutter certainly fulfils this description - though most of my deaths do some from simply rolling off the scaffolding like a chump. Hey, it's a tradition.The Gutter isn't actually a huge environment, and I'm soon enough near the end. One tip here - check over the edge near the two worms that shoot out of the wall. And check again. Also: there's a bonfire incredibly near the boss fog.The Rotten, for it is he, is a giant poison butcher thing that really doesn't like my Black Knight Halberd. The approach to him is a nightmare of being poisoned, but the fight is the easiest Great Soul yet – not that I'm complaining.I warp back to Majula, and feel like I'm missing something. Call it the Anor Londo moment – that point in your Dark Souls journey when, though the greatest trials are yet to come, you're silenced by something glorious. Something that you've earned. I've bagged the four Great Souls, and I'm off to Drangleic Castle.From a distance Drangleic Castle looks incredible. Dark Souls 2 pulls the old Half-Life 2 trick of making it visible from many points in the world, so throughout you occasionally catch a glimpse of this structure stretching towards the sky and think – 'soon.' I make my way to the Shrine of Winter, locked until I'd acquired more powerful souls, and sure enough it opens. There's a sculpture of what looks like the Dark Souls Lordvessel inside, with three serpents coiled around it. Curiously enough the statues have been beheaded. I idly wonder if Frampt and Kaathe are still around somewhere, and push on.The approach to Drangleic is something else – it really looks the part. Inside it's a different matter. A strange ghost in the entrance hall gives a little flavour of the castle's heyday, but this is a rather linear obstacle course – I blitz through the castle in a half hour, talk to the Queen, and destroy a dual Dragonslayers boss.I push on, and it's not that Drangleic Castle doesn't offer a challenge – I die several times before eventually reaching the Mirror Knight. It's more that it's not quite the Anor Londo moment of awe I was looking for. Perhaps that's unfair, because there is one unforgettably grim sight right at the top. But it's also not nearly the end of the game.After this first visit to Drangleic, I find my way down to the Shrine of Amana. This is one of the toughest areas I've known in a Souls game, until I start Summoning at least, and also has a queer beauty to it. That is, until you fall into the water. Or get stomped by a zombie frog boss.It's hard to escape the sense that Dark Souls 2 is an increasingly rootless game, however – enormous, yes, but suffering from that size in not giving its enemies and locations enough screentime. My rate of progression now is such that I'm spending about an hour in each endgame location, snaffling items and destroying the bosses on my 2nd or 3rd attempt.The Shrine of Amana is dealt with in this way, and so is the Undead Crypt – though here I fall for another player's naughty trap, and shine a torch in the face of a merchant who's then permanently aggroed. The merchant warns you to put out any lights on the approach, but a sign said “Liar, therefore try torch” and, fearing ambush, I fall for it. The message was a lie, the merchant attacked, and I had to put him down. Oh well, at least I could buy his kilt in Majula afterwards.It's here, after a fight against a boss that feels like the descendant of Garl Vinland, I finally find King Vendrick. The once-mighty king is now a mindless shell, and not even a hostile one – his raiments lie in a pile with his ring (yoink!), and the body of this once-great Soul paces back and forth mindlessly, dragging a sword behind him. By now it's clear the true villain of Dark Souls 2 is either the Queen or, perhaps, the Emerald Herald. But Vendrick's here. I grit my teeth, and swing.I had my doubts at the start, and I'm still slightly dubious about the enemy design, but I've begun to massively enjoy Dark Souls II - every day I'm wondering how fast I can get my other work done in order to sit down and get it on.After rinsing through Heide's Tower of Flame I've unlocked an alternate route out of Majula that leads to Huntsman's Copse – the beta area. I've got such amazing gear by this point that the raggedy little enemies have no chance, and fall like skittles to my +2 Black Knight Halberd. I summon in some dudes to make things more interesting (for me) and end up blitzing through a skeleton boss, a mines section, and then a strange kind of miniature Sen's Fortress. Though the last seems like a tough area, nothing can stop me now. I don't slang or bang, I just smoke poison snake queens like it ain't no thang.I take the elevator up to the Iron Keep. This area continues the Sen's Fortress vibe, despite being lava-themed, and I'm delighted to start fighting the knight-like enemies that populate its halls. Finally I start dying, not so much to them but to the many environmental tricks Dark Souls II has started to pull. I open one door, peer inside, and get a red-hot blast of face-melting air; YOU DIED. You've got to laugh.The boss of this section, the Smelter Demon, is a bit of a cakewalk. I get the same sense from this guy that I did from the Dragonslayer - if I'd fought him earlier in my progression, he would've been a real problem. As it is I stick him with my halberd and it seems to work quite well. I'm confused by this as it's a fire weapon, and he seems quite fiery. But no sense in complaining!There's a bonfire straight afterwards and, I'm betting, my third Great Soul. It's bedtime but what the hell; I summon in some dudes (cannot emphasise what a difference the dedicated servers are making), and push onwards. Floor traps, lava gutters, flame-spewing switches, all are as naught next to the A-Team, and soon enough I'm at the boss bonfire and ready to go.I'd love to end this entry on a dramatic note. Truth is that this guy, a giant fire demon that breathes the stuff and tries to whack you with his arms, goes down so easily I can barely believe it. His attacks are so telegraphed and slow, particularly compared to a battle like The Lost Sinner or the Duke's Dear Freja, I dodge everything easily and with some help from my Summons he's defeated. I instantly feel a bit bad for Summoning on the first attempt, but all I can do now is celebrate Glorious Victory! My third Great Soul - and I've got a good idea for where to find the Fourth and last too.There comes a point in a Souls game where, after so long pushing the boulder uphill, you finally hit something like a downward slope. So it is for Dark Souls II. Having struggled to beat bosses that now seem like walkovers, I'm finding that large sections of the game are falling before my mighty might.I'd discovered Heide's Tower of Flame earlier but kind of forgotten about it. Now I return, Black Knight Halberd in hand, and absolutely wreck the faces of the giants guarding it. I step into the Tower of Blue and, oh, the feels – but anyway, I run him through. The Dragonslayer boss is nothing, and goes down in less than a minute. This is a massacre.I push on to No Man's Wharf and, on a whim, put down my Summon Sign. I'm really enjoying the online side of Dark Souls II, and even though there have been laggy fights it seems vastly superior to both Demon's and Dark - in terms of PvP I'll be playing this one for a while. Having helped another player work through the location, and being frankly a little overpowered for it, I run through and acquire the Pyromancy flame I should have had long ago.I've barely used any magic or miracles or hexes or pyromancies, because basically I'm a Real Man and insist on killing fools with a handheld weapon. But there's no harm in a few support skills. Earlier I'd un-petrified a character called Straid in the Lost Bastille, probably my favourite character so far in Dark Souls II, and toddle back to buy a few goodies from him.What's great about Straid is that he openly calls you 'twisted' and 'feeble' and all these other things, but you sense he does it to everyone. And he's always saying 'Very good!' after random things. He sells me some incredible pyromancies, including the frankly ludicrous explosive Flame Swathe, and now we're cooking. Very good. Very good indeed.Giant spiders - dontcha just hate 'em? Clearly someone at Fromsoft has an issue with giant wall-crawlers, because their games are always crammed with the blighters and Dark Souls II is no exception.After my rat-based escapades I've pushed back out of Pharros-zone and upwards, which leads to what seemed to be an old army encampment, and some rather clumsy boulder-based traps. Not a problem for this undead, but as I push on there's an increasing theme of insects and holes in the wall. I think I know where this is going.A mid-boss stands guard over a chapel, an interesting mix consisting of a sorceror and a 'congregation' of lesser enemies that are designed to distract. Sadly for these holy rollers I'm wholly badass, and steamroll them at the first time of asking. Upstairs in this chapel is Dark Souls II's equivalent of Oswald, who wants an unbelievable 116,000 Souls to absolve my sins. Well I never liked the idea of goodness anyway.The rest of this environment is a kind of crumbling town that you make your way down, which suffers from being somewhat similar to Oolacile but lacking art direction that's comparably strong. At the end however is a giant room, crisscrossed with enormous long webs. I knew this was coming. I pick my way down gingerly, killing countless smaller spiders, and push through the fog to face the Duke's Dear Freja.This boss fight has something. Many Dark Souls bosses fall apart when faced with multiple Summons, and are much easier with 2 or 3 players. But this giant spider, by simple virtue of having two giant bladed mouths and eight legs, can handle three players pretty effectively – and destroy equipment in a trice.It takes many attempts, and many deaths to a damn annoying and cheap laser beam (?!?) attack, before it goes down. I'm finally alone in this giant spider's den that's claimed so many victims, and then I notice the centrepiece.A giant dragon hangs suspended, head-down and swathed in webs. Long dead? It looks it, but the dragons in Dark Souls are supposed to be everlasting. The 'death' this scene implies is a true horror, with the final touch a thin strand of silk from the tip of the creature's mouth to the floor - suspending it, just so. Brr. I clutch that damn spider's soul close, and scuttle off.Something about this diary I should have made clear much sooner – I'm not looking at the internet, or guides, or asking for anyone's advice. When I first played Dark Souls it was a fortnight or so pre-release, and there was no-one to help. My subsequent obsession with the game meant I found out everything I could over the years, but I've never forgotten those first few weeks of struggling solo – and finding magical secrets that, had I simply read about them online, would never have felt the same.This is one of the downsides of the internet; the way any new product is near-instantaneously busted open by the anonymous horde. I think it's one of the reasons the Souls games are designed like they are, full of ambiguity and mystery, and crammed with things you might never see. But I digress. And in front of me is the Rat King.The Rat King seems suspicious of humans, but gives you the chance to join his covenant – which rewards you with a ring that can apparently pull players from other worlds into yours. This sounds amazing, and I immediately get back to the Doors of Pharros main chamber to try it out. Within a minute I have my first victim, a 'Grey Phantom' – and this is where Dark Souls II, for me, becomes incredible.The concept behind the Rat Covenant is simply brilliant. Not only are people getting pulled into my world, but they have to fight the enemies too; large slow-moving Mastodons, annoying rats, and Gyrm warriors. My first victim dies to a backstab while distracted by the AI – I could get into this.But it's what they drop that matters. You get a Rat's Tail, used to pay tribute to the Rat King, but also a Pharros Lockstone. In this room there are what must be twenty or thirty locations to use Pharros Lockstones, and I suddenly realise it's a house of traps – waiting for me to activate them, and pull in a noob.I devote an entire day to being the Rat King's servant, killing player after player after player. Yes it's completely unfair – I have the enemies on my side, and increasing number of traps, and now know this environment inside-out. But you know what? Who cares. Those who dare trespass on the Rat King's turf shall face my wrath. Dark Souls II; best rat-based game ever.