I had two challenges to overcome with Day 6: First, I decided to heed my own advice and start streaming the playthrough. Yes, I probably should have done this from the beginning, but better late than never. Since I've only streamed via Twitch once or twice with the Castlevania stuff and not using a PS3, I wasn't sure how things were going to go. Thankfully, Twitch and Elgato have been around the block a few times so things are streamlined, and it was pretty easy to set up with only minor fiddling with the interfaces to get cooking.
The real issue with the stream, though, was the crazy, years-long problem with Demon's Souls servers. Without trying to really suss out the hows and whys of it, DS was the definition of "sleeper success" for both From Software and especially Atlus, and neither had any idea the game's online functionality would last this long. Because of what I can only assume was an overload of players on a rickety engine and a subpar server from 2009, playing in online mode will occasionally cause debilitating performance issues to the game. Voices and sound will go out of sync. Loading and saving will take noticeably longer than it should. Occasionally, the frame rate drops so badly you'll think Don Draper is trying to sell you your own nostalgia. The Demon's Souls community have tried cockamamie ways of dealing with this over the years, but the long and short of it is that you either tough it out or quit out of the game and restart.
This is something I don't often deal with in video games anymore, a network connection that hobbles the actual game. When I encountered it again on Day 1 for the first time in many years, I was starting to have heart palpitations. Was this, my fifth PlayStation 3, about to go to yet another busted console cemetery? After all, most of my PS3s have gone kaboom shortly after finishing a Souls game, I supposed it would probably be poetic that this one dies during my final month with the game that inflicted the curse to begin with. Do I even replace this thing, though? After February is over, I was thinking of retiring it altogether. I hated having to think about this, and was seriously expecting the worst. Thankfully, an audience member from the stream reminded me of the game's long-running issue with staying online. I don't think I need to push this old horse any further than it needs to go, so I'll try to keep play sessions short going forward. But sigh of relief all the same.
The second major challenge of Day 6 was what I can only call the worst boss fight of the game, the Maneaters. This is somewhat infamous in the DS community for continuing the game's tendency for bullshit. Essentially, you're on a bridge, and in flies a large gargoyle-type thing with a snake for a tail. It's a tough customer, and only made tougher by an environment that you can easily fall off of if you're not spacial aware (or the AI just gets sick of playing fair and it bum rushes you off the ledge). Sounds kind of lousy, but negotiable with some practice, right? Well, smart guy, a second gargoyle-type thing flies in to double the fun when you get the first down to 50% of its health or a certain amount of time happens.
I suck at this. I start a new game and dread this fight like I just broke an antique vase and my parents are on their way home from work. There are times where I've done better with it and finished it after half hour of slamming my face into a brick wall and there are times where it's burned whole nuggets of my own happiness away. In a game that I love so much, I hate this fight like I hate Kid Rock singing the National Anthem. It's a urinal cake on top of an actual cake. It's the worst.
But not this time. Armed with the Soul Ray spell and a whole lot of nerve, I dropped the first Maneater before the second one flew in. Knowing the fight and the arena well enough to remember that getting to the middle of the bridge was the best area to move around in, I maneuvered past the first gargoyle-type thing in anticipation of needing more space to breath and I chucked enough spells at it in the process that it was good and dead by the time I made it to the sweet spot in the arena. This sunk my stress level by orders of magnitude. It was still a tense fight, and I almost botched it a couple of times on the bridge, but then, something magical happened: the servers decided to start acting up again, ratcheting down the frame rate and moving everything to a crawl. My knee-jerk reaction to this was anguish and that the Maneater was going to get a win it didn't deserve, and on my best ever run at it to boot. But it stopped dead in it's tracks, the enemy data streaming to and from the server had frozen it in place. I don't care if you think I cheesed the game. My flashing this fight and plowing through it on my first go was a cathartic moment. It has, and will never, happen ever again. I peppered that motherfucker with so much magic you'd think we were at a Liberace farewell show.
Another hurdle down. At this rate, I need to start thinking of future plans for the rest of the month. I suppose I could roll another character and start from scratch, or I could just head into NG+. That might be getting ahead of ourselves, though. Now that the worst boss in the game was dead, I needed to move into the worst level of the game.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
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