"I am not going to start an SL1 run right now" says local Natalie as she opens Dark Souls Remastered and creates a character she does not intend to level up
I've killed all the mandatory bosses up through Nito, Bed of Chaos, and Sif, as well as Stray Demon, Priscilla, and the Izalith bosses. It's easier than my first casual run somehow. I'm not even using pyromancies!
I'm doing this in parallel with one friend working on a hitless run, another friend playing it for the first time using a spellcasting build, a third playing it with my help after never really playing action games at all, and a fourth meticulously hoovering up all items through NG+ cycles. At the same time, two friends are trying Dark Souls 2 for the first time and the biggest DS2 sicko of us all is starting her first new run in years. My wife, who's only played a few hours of Elden Ring and none of the others, nevertheless loves cataloguing knowledge and helping to share it around. Everyone is periodically streaming their efforts to the group.
It's just such a wonderful environment. We have people here who've been playing these games since release, people who never touched them until last year, and people like me who have been gradually becoming deeper sickos over the past few years. The games themselves are magical in their own way, of course, but what's really special is the way they speak to people who approach them from all different angles and say "whatever you like, you can be a sicko too".
