LogFAQs > #930291706

#24: The Abysswalker (Knight Artorias, Dark Souls 1)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgy1TV12LDc

Now that's one hell of a way to introduce your boss.

Ornstein and Smough are the bosses that come to mind for most people when they think of Dark Souls 1, but Artorias is often a close second. Oddly enough, the big reason why we love Artorias so much is because he doesn't play by the rules of DS1. He's hyper-aggressive, it's hard to read what he's throwing out most of the time, and he just keeps swinging at you. Considering how deliberately clunky Dark Souls 1 gameplay is, his smooth transitions and difficulty to read stand out. It's an absolute thrill to learn his patterns, and then panic when he decides to change them. He's not quite playing Bloodborne, but you can see the seeds of that game in this fight.

I contend that Artorias has the best aesthetic of a corrupted knight in gaming. He drips the darkness of the abyss, even weaponizing it occasionally. His sword attacks are wild, but they still have that modicum of technique to keep them deadly. Unlike most bosses, he plays your game too, dodge-rolling away from your attacks and taking time to reassess his situation. Most of all, he's not that much bigger than you -- a cool foil to the player, and also impossible to juke underneath him like we all did to his poor doggo Sif.

His lore is pretty cool too, though like most Dark Souls lore, you have to dig deep to find it. I won't bore you with it here, but you can look it up on the wiki. It's good stuff. Sadly, it doesn't do much to enhance the boss fight with story hype like Yunalesca or many other on this list, but Artorias doesn't need to rely on that. He's a damn fun fight that's hard-but-fair, and taking him down was the most satisfying experience in DS1.
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