Plenty of Progress, Only One Boss

It's kind of amazing to me how far into the game Irithyll Dungeon felt at the time, when now I return to it feeling as if it's a much easier, earlier area (some of the guards go down in one hit now.)

After defeating (kind of cheesily, as I used a summon) the Dragonslayer Armor, I went through the Grand Archives and actually managed to keep the ember I had used before it (and Champion Gundyr) all the way to an area basically past the Archives with a three NPC gank squad waiting for me. I whittled down their numbers, dying after I took down the caster, then again with the katana-dude, and then the last guy was not too hard on his own. This group feels very similar to the gank squad in Yahar'gul in Bloodborne, and I think I'm in a similar phase of the main game.

Anyway, with easy access to the bridge back into Lothric Castle, I decided to explore a bit. I went into Ariandel a bit more, and I'm rather shocked at how much I've gone through without hitting a true boss. It's a pretty labyrinthine area, but I've managed to get through the Corvian Settlement and defeated Friede's knight lackey and met "Aria" as the fans have come to call her. The subsequent area is a very twisty outdoor area that reminds me a lot of Bloodborne's Forbidden Woods, as the enemies aren't terribly difficult, but you're running a constant battle of attrition.

After dying there without making much progress but having killed about a million Follower soldiers, I went to Archdragon Peak. This area definitely feels like the "not messing around" secret tough part of the game. The Untended Graves was really cool and atmospheric, but other than Gundyr himself, was not terribly difficult. But these snake/dragon dudes are not messing around. I did manage to kill the Ancient Wyvern, which was not nearly as trivial as I expected such a gimmick boss to be. The worst part was when I made it to the end of the gauntlet but did my plunge attack at the wrong time, missing the dragon and splattering myself on the stones below. The subsequent parts of Archdragon Peak do not seem terribly easy either, so I'm weighing my options on where I want to go next.

For now, these progress reports are kind of for my own reflection later on, though I'm eager to write a big comparison between Dark Souls III and Bloodborne at some point.