While most Soulslike players were busy with Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, one dedicated player somehow managed to get through Dark Souls 2 without using the left joystick at all, outright disabling walking, climbing ladders, and turning. around themselves freely.
If you don’t believe it, YouTuber Ymfah has shown the entire run and all of its trials in a new video where he demonstrates all the clever ways to get around using the left stick. Just because you can’t walk doesn’t mean you can’t move – at its most basic, this challenge basically substitutes walking for attacking or backing away. When you attack, your character moves forward, so you can still move around the map by swinging wildly over and over again until you reach the target, or backtrack and jump backwards.
Except it’s not that simple. As Ymfah found out early in the run, you still have to figure out how to turn so you don’t end up throwing your arms at the wall the rest of the time. Fortunately, this can be achieved in a few different ways – locking onto an enemy will make you turn towards them and you can very, very slowly turn by moving backwards and forwards (attacking and then reversing) on ​​the slope. The latter was absolutely essential for the YouTuber at the start of the challenge, as there simply aren’t enough enemies to lock onto in the opening area to successfully get to the door and start creating your character.
After this point, turning becomes easier as Ymfah chooses the Bandit class, which gains access to a bow, allowing them to turn with it whenever they want (provided they’re not already holding another weapon and shield, that is). Binoculars obtained a little later do exactly the same thing. However, as you’d expect, the trials are far from over – defeating stronger enemies is a huge effort when your character isn’t able to be as nimble as usual. Fortunately, there are sometimes Phantoms (NPC summons) to help, but each area requires a well-thought-out strategy, and even later in the run after grinding the levels to become a powerful wizard, Ymfah hit a series of brick walls. bosses.
Bosses aside, one of the biggest obstacles was not being able to use ladders. On many occasions, Ymfah had to plan entirely new routes after encountering self-imposed dead ends. This was such a big problem that shortly after Ymfah took on the Dragonriders boss duo in Drangleic Castle, he had to call a real player to climb the ladder for them and fight a bunch of enemies to activate the elevator so they could go up and continue. Hello, someone they may have had to walk, but it wasn’t them.
Admittedly, Ymfah had to pull some slightly dodgy save-file shenanigans towards the end of the run, after the next ladder seemed to be a dead end. By loading another save file and activating a Bonfire checkpoint after the ladder they were held back by, then overwriting the challenge run file and exiting the game after entering the boss arena, they could use the Aged Feather to return. to ‘the last fire where he rested.’ At this point, the game determined that it was a Bonfire accessed on a different save file, allowing them to continue the run without walking on the actual save run. It’s very complicated, but it falls into the same category as another player climbing a ladder to take an elevator down, only with more obstacles.
All in all, it is incredibly a lengthy challenge that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to attempt at home. So much so that you’d assume Ymfah was the first to even consider taking it on, but it’s worth noting that one smaller YouTuber, Qui, actually beat them to it three years ago, so shout out to her.
While you’re here, be sure to check out the top 10 games like Dark Souls which will test your ability to survive.