With the first expansion to "Dark Souls III" coming out next Tuesday, I thought that it would be a good time to reflect on my adventure into the salt. "Blood borne" was my first Fromsoft Souls game and boy was it challenging. I remember the days of grinding for blood echoes and vials in the starting area for an hour just so I could adjust to its fast play style and farm back whatever materials I had lost in the process. Once I learned the controls and got the timing down, it was time for my first boss, the Cleric Beast. The Cleric beast is essentially the second Asylum Demon from "Dark Souls." Although it’s optional, it’s a good way to get a feel for how the boss fights will be set up. It wasn’t a hard fight, but it did take me two tries to kill. I wish I could say the same for the next boss.

After wandering around aimlessly for a half hour, I discovered the first real boss in the game, Father Gascoigne. Gascoigne is a Hunter like yourself, and he uses the Hunter’s Axe and the Blunderbuss. He doesn’t seem right in the head in his opening cutscene, and you find out why when you either play the music box three times or drop his health down half way. Once you do, Gascoigne’s play style changes as he becomes a beast, probably from the consumption of too much blood, and his moves become twice as fast and more deadly. He smacked me around a few times in this form before I finally learned his moves, and then I killed him with little health to spare.

The next boss would be, Vicar Amelia, and just like the Cleric Beast, she too took me two tries to beat. It was even closer than my last fight because I had ran out of blood vials and silver bullets. As I continued my adventure, I made quick work of the Blood Starved Beast and continued down the main path of the game. Now to me, the Forest is the most annoying part of the game, simply because it’s all one area with just shortcuts. It took me a while, but I eventually made my way through, only to be greeted with a second part to the forest filled with Serpent Men that deal heavy damage. Just like the first part, I eventually found my way through, just to beat the Shadows of Yharnam on the first try. Onward to Byrgenwerth, was smooth sailing, aside from the asshole brainsucker trying to steal my insight. The area may have been easy, but the boss wasn’t. Rom, the Vacuous Spider, was a challenge indeed for first time players. If you didn’t die to his legion of spiders, you died to the icicles falling from the sky. He took me about five to seven tries just to beat him because I tried to rush my way through him instead of taking out his army one by one.

Now this is the weird part of the game: as I made my way through the distorted and deranged, Yahar’gul, I fought my next “first try” boss called, The One Reborn. The One Reborn is giant mass of severed bodies in a failed attempt at creating a Great One by sacrificing everyone in the town. Once I got out of that mess of a place, it was time to face Micolash, Host of the Nightmare. I got lucky going through this maze of a place, and even luckier to beat this arcane using A Call Beyond, by spamming the asshole on the first try. My adventure was soon coming to an end as I destroyed Mergo’s Wet Nurse on the second try, but only to have to make a hard decision once I made it back to the Hunter’s Dream. I choose to fight, and boy-oh-boy was I in for an asskicking. Gherman, The First Hunter, was by far one of the hardest bosses in the game and the most memorable. His theme is beautifully emotional, and the fight contradicts the music by being so intense and extremely fast pace. His combative style was far greater than mine at the time, but just like all the other bosses, so too did he fall. Unlike the others, I actually felt sad beating him, despite him being such a challenge.

With that, I hope the new "Dark Souls III" expansion will be as great as I expect it to be. I’ll be looking forward to playing it when it drops.