Dark Souls 2 is the black sheep of the Fromsoft herd, beloved only by those rare, intelligent, and cultured individuals who understand that, as Miyazaki himself says, much of what made Elden Ring so great can be traced back to changes the ill-loved sequel made to the Dark Souls formula. But even its most devoted defender probably wouldn’t disagree that its DLC bosses were like, stupid hard.
But not hard enough that you can’t beat them by stabbing yourself in the gut about four dozen times, as demonstrated by Dark Souls 2 player DSelizabeth with an awe-inspiring and/or absurd NG+7 Sir Alonne Seppuku-only kill.
Watch On
The arguable apex predator of the rogues gallery of rude DLC bosses is Sir Alonne from the Crown of the Old Iron King. If you’re not familiar, Alonne is a whole pile of cool guy archetypes mashed into one suit of armor: he’s a depressed Dark Souls knight, and a wandering samurai, and an enigmatic figure who departed for parts unknown at the height of his powers.
He was also, by 2014 Soulsborne standards, an absolute bastard. While it’s now a common (and painful) feature of Fromsoft boss movesets, Alonne was one of the earliest, worst offenders when it comes to attacks with lengthy animation delays that bait you into rolling early.
He could dash across the length of his boss room and chunk most of your stamina bar with one attack. He had long-distance wave attacks. He could kick your shield guard and parry your attacks. He also had, I’m willing to wager, the most controller-snapping boss runback ever seen in one of these games. It was part of a DS2 DLC trend of co-op centric side-missions that were just brutal in singleplayer.
All those speedbumps didn’t prevent DSelizabeth from stunting on him with what is probably the world’s highest-concept execution of the “stop hitting yourself” theory of combat arts. Wearing Alonne’s own armor set and using his own sword, DSelizabeth gradually whittled down his NG+7-enhanced health bar with his weapon’s unique seppuku skill.
Unlike the typical parry action, hitting the parry button with the Bewitched Alonne Sword makes the player plunge the katana into their own stomach, taking a chunk of damage in exchange for increasing its AR scaling and its bleed damage build-up.
Those damage buffs are irrelevant here, however, because DSelizabeth isn’t actually hitting Alonne. Instead, the heroic sicko is killing Alonne with what would be an afterthought to most players. When you stab yourself with Alonne’s sword, it briefly activates a pulse that slightly damages nearby enemies.
And when I say slightly, I mean slightly. To kill Alonne on NG+7, DSelizabeth had to commit seppuku 47 times. I counted.
A few of those were misses, admittedly. But it’s still an impressive display of mastery over animation timings, character placement, lifegem and repair powders usage by the dozen, and the general coldheartedness necessary for killing a guy with the raw psychic damage of watching someone wearing his clothes disembowel themselves half a hundred times.
Read the full article here
