Music of the Week #200

Guess it’s break

It doesn’t feel right if I just picked up a series nearly halfway in and start getting some non-rushed opinions out there. You can take this as sign that I don’t really progress too much in the Summer line-up but I am deciding now to start some series and review them by the end. I’ll still be able to get some thoughts out on the Summer series albeit, at the end of everything.

Let’s ignore the fact that I’m late and continue right to the usual main event of these posts. This week’s theme is the iconic final boss theme of Gwyn. Introduced from the prologue and hinted throughout the entire game, Gwyn is said to have descended to the location where he and the fellow owners of the Lord’s Soul found the first flame and ignited himself to act as its source when it was discovered the flame was dying out. Remember, this took place a few good millennia before the game starts so when you find him down there in the Kiln of the First Flame, the once glorious Lord of Sunlight now stands as a hollow, Lord of Cinder. Where once he was shown throwing literal lightning from his hands, Gwyn now only pursues the player with his flaming sword. No words, no emotions, just another cursed soul to put down.

Music of the Week #199

Oh boy

To my worst fears, I have yet to find a series worth covering but that’s probably because I haven’t watched that much stuff in the new season, a problem I wish I could rectify if I wasn’t occupied. I’m currently enthralled in reading Dark Eldar books since I’ve been smitten with their culture of backstabbing and subterfuge and general dickery. Other than those, I’m practicing my fighting games techniques after watching EVO 2015.

I hope to get something out before it’s too late, it’s still relatively early in the season.

This week’s theme is one of my favorites from the series and one of the few tracks that doesn’t play in a boss fight. Conquering Blighttown’s shanty in its upper ramparts is one thing but braving the swamps to Quelaag’s domain is tough on its own. However, on the opposite end of the spider-silken home of the Chaos Witch, there lies a great tree and destroying not 1 but 2 invisible walls in its interior reveals a sprawling inner branch as you enter the Great Hollow. You venture down its branches, fighting off the creatures that made the hollowed tree their home and as you reach the far bottom, you emerge out into the bottom of the world, in the shores of Ash Lake. Aside from the hydra and the mysterious skull, you can traverse its singular pathway to find the last surviving dragon who will offer its blessings should you wish to join it.

Also fun to note that the music only plays once you move the camera up to stare at the wondrous vista.

Music of the Week #198

Eventually

Browser mishaps have delayed me immensely as my Chrome went through an entire yearsworth of updates but subsequently turned everything tiny as hell. So I had the pleasure to Mozilla Firefox but the only thing irking me is that when I imported by Bookmarks, the site icons are all blank and restore themselves if I visit the bookmarked link. Problem is, I way too many bookmarks so it’s really bugging me. Other than that, as the opening words suggest, I need to find a series to cover before I end up taking the Season of Summer off but in all honesty, Summer is a rarely good season, but that’s just me.

This week’s theme is one of my favorite themes from the game. Gravelord Nito is one of the four great ones that piqued my immense interest seeing as though he was a literal pile of skeletons. The Tomb of Giants is one of the greatest areas in the series but Nito himself is a bit of a letdown. Like this “Lord of the Undead” status suggests, he is accompanied by three skeletons who respawn if you don’t finish them off with a holy weapon, and 2-3 giant skeletons if you stray too far to the back of the room. Nito’s attacks are slow and he lumbers toward you. Coincidentally, his only ranged attack is the main fear since you drop a considerable distance when you enter his room and he can just impale you from afar. One flavor adding detail I love is that the entrance to his room is just surrounded by kneeling skeletons.

Music of the Week #197

Consumed

Summer season begins and the only thing I happened to watch was Monster girls after my friend reminded me of its adaptation. Not much else has caught my eye but I blame that to where my focus is being lured to. I recently bought a game that I’ve been meaning to get but honestly didn’t think it was worth the 60 dollars when it first came out, Space Marine. While I’m an enormous fan of 40K, I just didn’t find a simple game like that too worth it. But I purchased it for 5 dollars a few days back and I can say it was the best 5 dollars spent since it’s really entertaining.

Couple that with my friend buying a multitude of fighting games and our competitive spirits going overdrive in attempts to outdo each other. Such is the life of fighting games with friends. But even so, I hope to find something that will grab me this season.

Moving straight along, this week’s theme is that of the Four Kings. After slaying Sif and obtaining the ring that allows you to traverse the Abyss, you fight through the deceptively placed, early game deathtrap of New Londo and open the floodgates to let the sunken city out of its watery tomb. You go past its ghosts and climb down an enormous set of spiraling stairs until nothing but pitch darkness is before you. You equip the ring and jump down and in any other case the ring is not in your possession, you will die. At the apparent bottom of the pitch black pit, a deformed figure spawns and the battle begins. The Four Kings are regarded as one of the harder bosses and while they don’t provide much of a challenge in the first playthrough, each subsequent encounter will only increase the level of pain as it boils down to a DPS rush to kill a King before more spawn. But that feeling of encroaching doom in a pitch black battleground is exemplified with this theme, enjoy

Music of the Week #196

Feels off

While posting consecutive music posts without anything inbetween has been before due to my negligence, it feels really off not having anything there. The new seasons starts soon and I’m still on the fence on what series is actually worth the time capping and following on this site. Part of the reason why I loved Jojo so much is because it was something I looked forward to every week and was definitely going to have some opinion on it, even though it mostly ended on summaries. That being said, Part 3 was not the most thought provoking part in general because of its simplicity of fights and bare basic plot points. Also, it was my least favorite part in the Stand series as I’ve mentioned oh so many times.

Once I’ve got something I’ve reread multiple times (pretty much everything after Part 3) I’ll have more to talk about in weekly posts.

This week’s solemn theme is that of arguably the most emotional fight in the Souls series next to Maiden Astraea’s. Great Grey Wolf Sif was the beloved pet of Knight Artorias, one of the four knights of Gwyn, and after mysterious circumstances that involve time travel, was killed. Sif guards his master’s grave and uses the very sword his master used to stop you from obtaining a ring called the Covenant of Artorias that allows you to travel the abyss. If aforementioned time travel is fully explored and you rescue Sif from a predicament in the past, Sif will recognize you in current time. To make things worse, Sif starts limping and falling over when he is low on health and it’s quite a sad sight to see.