History Awesome / DarkSouls

* Hawkeye Gough, retired and blind, aids you by picking up his massive greatbow and sniping Black Dragon Kalameet out of the sky, grounding him so that you can fight him properly. The music helps sell it, but what makes it even more amazing is when he begins to feel around for his bow. You can literally see plumes of dust falling off of him and his bow. He's been stationary ''that long''. And even out of practices as he might be he only fires once and hits Kalameet through the wing and square in the side.

* The layout of Anor Londo is the level design's finest hour, featuring gorgeous architecture lit by a perpetual sunset (until/unless you break the area's illusion and plunge it into darkness) that is matched by the visual design of enemies such as the Painting Guardians and the Silver Knights, DifficultYetAwesome buttress- and rafters-based combat, and an overall structure that is intricate and deliberate without being a place you're liable to get lost in. The one knock against it is that you don't respawn at the bonfire near Gwyndolin's boss fight even if you light it, requiring an unnecessary trek from the first bonfire.

* Beating the game becomes an accomplishment for the player in general, due to the sheer amount of stuff that you can find throughout your journey. Of the two possible outcomes of your journey, picking the Dark Lord ending is ''insanely'' satisfying: you've been through hell and back, killing gods and overpowered beings all over the place, and at the end of it all,[[SpannerInTheWorks you give Gwyn's questionable plan a middle finger]] and become humanity's champion, bringing about an age where they can finally rule, free from those JerkassGods' dominion.

* In a meta sense, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na0g_DsNXr8&ab_channel=InfernoPlus Dark Souls Except It's Halo by InfernoPlus.]] Not only did he add custom maps to Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition's arena mode, not only did he create ''custom gametypes'' such as Capture the Flag(or well, Lizard), he ''rebalanced nearly every item in the game'' to be viable but not broken. Highlights include;
** Nerfing backstabs to be harder to land(like in the second game) and making it so that using anything besides a dagger requires a kick to be landed to open an enemy for a backstab.
** Adding ''weapon arts'' to the catalysts to encourage experimentation.
** Balancing item weight and poise so that you always have some poise, while also completely destroying Havelmages by making heavy armor decrease magic damage.
** Changing Chaos Storm so that it takes four attunement slots, but effectively nukes ''everything'' around you(including the framerate).
** Completely reworking the redundant spells to have unique aspects, as well as adding Nito's sword spell as an obtainable miracle.
** Nerfing the Ring of Favor and Protection and Havel's Ring into the ground, which he states has indirectly buffed every other ring(though he still buffed some of the less useful ones).
** And most of all, he made this mod completely ''free'' to download and play, and with some help made it so that you only connect to people running the mod, preventing unfair matches between vanilla and modded players. He could have easily made it an exclusive prize for his patreon, but purely out of passion for the game he made it available for anyone to play.

* When reaching around midpoint of the game, formidable early bosses such as the Capra Demon and the Taurus Demon will become regular, respawning enemies. Except with how leveled-up your player is since the first facing them, they’re no longer the daunting threat that they were when you started. The game is showing you just how far you’ve come.

* Ringing the first Bell of Awakening in the Undead Parish. It's the first major task you are given in the tutorial, and it sounds simple enough. And then, after TheManyDeathsOfYou, and a number of boss battles, you climb up the tower and pull the lever. The bell sounds, the camera zooms out, showing just how far you've come. Sure, there's a lot more game to go, but you've just proved to yourself (and others, as you can hear the Bell beinh rung by other players) that the game isn't impossible, as long as you don't give up.

* Ringing the Bells of Awakening.

** And most of all, he made this mod completely ''free'' to download and play, and with some help made it so that you only connect to people running the mod, preventing unfair matches between vanilla and modded players. He could have easily made it an exclusive prize for his patreon, but purely out of passion for the game he made it available for anyone to play.

* In a meta sense, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na0g_DsNXr8&ab_channel=InfernoPlus Dark Souls Except It's Halo by InfernoPlus.]] Not only did he add custom maps to Dark Soul: Prepare to Die Edition's arena mode, not only did he create ''custom gametypes'' such as Capture the Flag(or well, Lizard), he ''rebalanced nearly every item in the game'' to be viable but not broken. Highlights include;

* Completely reworking the redundant spells to have unique aspects, as well as adding Nito's sword spell as an obtainable miracle.

* Dealing enough damage to a large enemy to stagger them is awesome for a couple of reasons. One is that they often have a pretty high amount of poise, and so figuring out you ''can'' stagger them just feels amazing. Additionally, if you exceed that damage threshold by a large amount all at once, you'll be treated to the image of a big monster ''sent flying'' by the force of the blow. Finally, since staggering an enemy puts them in a CycleOfHurting wherein you can hit (and therefore stagger) them again, such an attack generally heralds a CurbStompBattle in your favor.

* Speaking of boss fights , Tarkus. He well earns his reputation as a MemeticBadass for being able to casually handle the boss you summon him for [[lablenote:for the curious]]The Iron Golem[[/labelnote]] [[OneManArmy by his lonesome.]]

* Speaking of boss fights , Tarkus. He well earns his reputation as a MemeticBadass for being able to casually handle the boss you summon him for [[lablenote:for the curious]] The Iron Golem [[/labelnote]] [[OneManArmy by his lonesome.]]

* Speaking of boss fights , Tarkus. He well earns his reputation as a MemeticBadass for being able to casually handle the boss you summon him for [[lablenote: for the curious]] The Iron Golem [[/labelnote]] [[OneManArmy by his lonesome.]]