Dark Souls taught me to celebrate small victories

Learn to parry Dark souls requires intimate knowledge of your opponent.

To know when you should press the parry button for each distinct enemy type, you will inevitably die over and over again, because you press that button too early or too late. And so, learn to parry Dark souls it is making an agreement with yourself that you are going to go through a specific set of failures, in the hope that eventually you will have learned something.

The entirety of Dark souls works that way, which you probably knew even if you never played it, as it is almost ten years old and has been reviewed by many critics since. I played part of Dark souls and Dark Souls 2 several years ago – enough to understand that his grim world of armored skeletons was repetitive and grueling. I could also say that if I had stuck with that, I would have found it rewarding, but it would take a level of patience that I didn’t think I had.

In other words, I didn’t think I was the type of person who could play a game like Dark souls. Turns out I am, but I only found out about it this year, when I tried Dark souls again amid the pandemic and deep depression.

I did not beat Dark souls yet, but I’m further than I’ve ever been before (just reached the Gaping Dragon), and like so many people before me who suffer from depression and have entered Dark souls, all I can think of now is what Dark souls taught me failure and resilience. Which brings me back to the parade.

Image: FromSoftware / Namco Bandai Games via Polygon

For most of my trip to Dark souls, I didn’t bother to learn how to parry. I play as a knight and used a two-handed ax for much of the game; parry cannot be done with a two-handed style of play. Eventually, however, I hit a unique enemy called Havel the Rock. You don’t have to defeat Havel to progress in the game, but I found him so irritating that I decided, one evening, that I would defeat him rather than overtake him. I also decided that I was going to do it parrying.

It took me three hours to learn how to successfully ward off Havel’s attacks. For the majority of those three hours, I didn’t hit the button at the right time, and Havel was able to knock down almost my entire health bar in one hit. After getting hit, I rolled frantically and struggled to take a sip from the Estus vial before Havel managed to hit me again – which invariably he would, and then I would die. I would wake up to my campfire in Darkroot Basin, dust myself off, and drive back to Havel, where I lay on my back, get hit, run, get hit again, then die … again.

In those moments, I often said to myself: “I’ll never learn this” and “Why am I doing this?” I would wake up by the fireside and sometimes I would just let my avatar sit there. On the other side of the screen, I was sitting there too. We both contemplated what we had chosen to endure. Was it really worth trying to learn how to do this? Was it even possible? Was i able to learn to parry? Do I have to use another strategy to beat Havel, because there are a lot of them? Should I stop trying to beat him?

From Software / Bandai Namco

Eventually I would find it in myself to try again.

From time to time, during those three hours, I managed to pull off a parade against Havel. But these moments seemed fleeting, imprecise, unknowable. What had I done differently? I was dead before I had time to contemplate.

Eventually, after more attempts than I bothered to count, I began to notice that in order to parry Havel effectively, I actually had to get quite close to him. I had to position myself directly in front of his swing, in full view of his ascent, my shoulders aligned in front of his. It was only then that I managed to time the parry correctly, fully observing the oncoming shot. I had to stand in this dangerous place, forcing myself to be calm, ready for a hit that I knew was coming – one that I would convince myself I had the ability to stop. And in those times when I did parry effectively and hit him back, bringing Havel to his knees and shaving off some of his life bar, then I had to do something even more difficult: put my shoulders in place and prepare to parry him once again.

In the end, I defeated Havel using all parries and counterattacks. It took seven perfect parries in total to bring him down, each followed by an attack on my part. In my winning fight, Havel didn’t manage to hit me once. My main memory of that battle, however, is not my parries or attacks, or even the moment Havel finally crumbles to dust. My fondest memory is when I had to return to Havel between each successful parry, straightening my shoulders once more, hoping that I could successfully parry him on his next parry.

I had already done it. But could I do it again? Okay, I had done it four times. Could I do it a fifth? Etc. These moments were the most terrifying but also the most rewarding. I knew that an unsuccessful save on my part would lose my entire match. So I had to stay calm, even as I stood face to face with death.

Image: FromSoftware / Namco Bandai Games via Polygon

If you fail Dark souls, there is nothing to do except try again. Or you can give up and succumb to the insignificance of it all. This existential fear is part of the scaffolding of Dark soulsworld. His characters live in fear of “going hollow” – deteriorating into one of the hordes of boiling skeletons. Your character is already in a dark descent into this state at the start of the game. Based on how the other characters describe him, the experience of going to Hollow coincides with abandonment, lack of motivation, and loss. of his humanity in both a metaphorical and a literal sense.

The form of depression I have in real life is similar. I describe it to most people as “sometimes I’m sad for no reason”, but there is actually a reason, which is the broadest existential sense that has absolutely nothing to do with anything I do and that everyone else does. Sometimes the sheer size of the universe and the pointlessness of any individual action leaves me in a state of emotional paralysis so extreme that it prevents me from accomplishing anything. Many years of therapy, meditation classes, prescription drugs, exercise and many other tools in my arsenal keep me from “going hollow” in my day to day life, although the threat still looms. .

Sometimes it’s worse than usual. During a catastrophic event, such as a global pandemic, my individual actions feel less and less important in the face of oppressive neglect from systems much larger than me. However, I make sure that my own actions have some value by donating to food banks, participating in community relief efforts, and choosing increasingly optimized masks for myself and my friends. I take care of myself so that I can take care of others. I engage with the art that matters to me, write and edit stories about that art, and try to tell myself that these actions matter.

I admit that I have lived through many days this year where these actions seemed unnecessary to me. And yet, I got up and did it all, over and over again. Sometimes I could perceive a fleeting victory, a certain sense of connection – the only successful parry before going down and awakening to the glow of fire of another attempt.

Image: FromSoftware / Namco Bandai Games

I cannot perceive a wider meaning in the actions that I take Dark souls. Of course, I try to ring a few bells, beat some bosses, and learn more about the weird world my character lives in. But the overview of what I do in the game remains unknown to me and ultimately unimportant. The point is not the seven perfect parries in a row, or even the defeated mini-boss at my feet. The point is, I kept walking towards Havel between each of them.

When I remember these wins being so hard fought and so small, it hurts. The actual version remembers to eat lunch, or to go for a walk, then remember to do it again the next day, and try not to overthink how you should keep doing this over and over again. , as many days in a row as possible, in order to feel good. Not even great – just OK.

The big picture sucks. I prefer not to watch it. Dark souls don’t let me do it, and that’s why it has become my greatest comfort – an exercise to force me to assess only one problem that is right in front of me. Each enemy must be approached with the same care and patience. A long series of failures is also a long series of attempts, proof that I have stubbornly chosen to continue to care, despite the lack of great reason to do so. I chose not to go Hollow.