http://www.healthytyping.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/21.jpg 

Did him in under ten attempts, admittedly by using 11 Estus Flasks at +8, full HP potion, Siegward Brew and an Ember and finishing on about 6 HP. But I fucking did it unlike these cooping asssniffers.

On the other hand Yhorm who gets his own cameo in the intro, went down first go with only 5 Estus used, and that can't all be down to the wonderful Onion Bro lending a hand.

weapon balance is a joke as well. get a straightsword (any will work), invest in physical scaling stats and good infusion, mash attack button like a madman - works on enemies, bosses, pvp players.

Works for me! Love it! 

...I tried him with a weapon infused with bleed and it didn't seem to do much more??

One thing that was useful was realising that the 2nd phase isn't that bad as the jump attack is fairly predictable.

What's parrying btw - blocking and then attacking when the enemy rebounds? 

Yhorm is a dumb fight. If you followed Siegward's quest, Siegward solos him for you with some random magical giant killing sword.

If you didn't, you have to realize that you have to run past Yhorm to his throne, pick up and equip the copy of the weapon that Siegward would be using which has no fucking use except that it has a weapon art that kills Yhorm in like 4 hits.

Or you can try and fight him properly and it takes fucking forever because he has a billion HP and isn't even that interesting to fight. 

https://youtu.be/1hrh94Dc-h0 <- that video is a good introduction to parries. although it's about dark souls 1, it's still relevant for dks3 in most aspects. some things work different, but the main idea is still the same 

is a disappointment for sure. but it's a fanservice, as it mirrors one of the demon's souls bosses. too bad they put that gimmick into a mandatory lord boss fight rather than into some optional boss encounter. 

I wish Yhorm had been more dramatic. Having Onion Bro around is always a morally uplifting experience, but I'd have been happy to have to put a bit more effort and tension in.

So far I think my favourite boss has been the Greatwood. Properly fucking bonkers and not that difficult. 

Probably your favorite boss because you could have a go at its balls, right?! 

was one that me and a friend had a few cracks at. We died 2 or 3 times because we couldn't quite figure out how the sword worked exactly.

It was pretty trivial after that.

I've enjoyed playing it mostly co-op, it's been really fun killing mobs and killing bosses. The occasional invasions have been exciting too. 

http://assets.vg247.com/current//2016/03/dark_souls_catarina_knight.jpg 

You can be permanently banned from multiplayer matchmaking by cheaters. So watch out everyone who cares for coop and pvp. From software's attitude to their pc customers is fantastic. 

And for this season's show, Shambler "Le Pincushion", is modelling a coat d'arms made of a billion fucking arrows that rained on him from the sky. Not only is this chic garment stylishly glittering with impaled metal, the countless puncture wounds provide excellent ventilation in the armour. And Shambler's flesh.

CUNTS. 

will make you his bitch...

I can't imagine doing that boss solo. Saying that though a lot of the bosses scale up with summons and have far more hit-points as a result.

There's a boss called "the dancer" who I could absolutely not kill in co-op that I managed to kill solo because he wasn't so much of a tank. 

It was recently discovered that the Miracle "Vow of Silence" works on Aldrich, so if you're doing miracles the boss is a cakewalk because you can just keep casting it to make Aldrich not cast spells for 10 or so seconds.

But for real strats... it's a bit easier once you learn to just always run at Aldrich, and in the second phase just run around in circles to avoid the arrow rain if it does that attack. Everything else Aldrich does you can just roll or ignore. I solo'd it after quite a few attempts, and coop'd it with Daz on his playthrough pretty easily. 

Fucking desperate. More attempts than the rest of the bosses put together?? Maybe.

I did a lot of swapping around items and armour to try to get the best options....and the one thing that finally helped was doing as few attacks as I could manage whenever I went in to attack. Just one or two unless she was doing that summoning fire shit. Any more and I'd get caught out in the open with some massive unavoidable and obscured-by-swirling-bollox health rapage. 

20+ attempts in a row trying to learn his attacks and what weapons might work
10 more attempts later
2 hours grinding to level up str, getting dark sword, and get weapon upgrades
20 more attempts learning that his attack combos / progressions are randomised
1 more hour grinding to level up str, get titanite chunk
3 more attempts (at this point I was working on a long term plan of ten attempts, then enough grinding for +1 str, then ten attempts, then repeat)

This is with optimising my weapon / armour for the build vs boss (the most anti-melee armour I could have while retaining fast rolling, +7 dark sword with heavy to scale with str), using stamina recovery ring + general health+stamina+weight boost ring + rolling invincibility boost ring + rolling invisibility b2b dex boost ring.

Anyway, bit after that was cool / surreal. Ended up like this:

Shambler: "Well I just gave the fire keeper a set of fire keeper's eyes and she's all grateful and stuff and wtf??"

GF: "Yeah, bitches BE CRAZY..." 

<Shambler> i'm gonna miss this game after i get to the final boss and ragequit it 

<Shambler> the style of the world and the aesthetics are utterly entrancing 

Okay so this is an obviously flawed game:

- The boss balance is completely fucked up. Some are so easy to be disappointingly negligble, some are so frustratingly hard there can never be any pleasure in the fight. And most of the latter are farcically simple when cooped. Totally unbalanced compared to the game in general.
- The boss arenas mostly spoil the gameflow and are quite arbitrary and out of character with the general progression / exploration of the game.
- The story / plot is entirely incomprehensible and obscure... "Learn it through the game, nub", yeah whatever I heeded all the available lore and it still made no fucking sense.
- The NPC quests are even worse, almost all of them are based on totally secret random conditions and actions that are impossible to quest and almost certainly fail on the first time playthrough.
- The PC port is adequately poor especially bad rebinding and not changing menus to kb+m style (despite the game obviously being perfectly playable with kb+m).
- Bonfire spacings are quite screwy.
- Lothric area always loads like a slideshow.
- Ithryll Dungeons and Smouldering Lake corridor sections are a bit meh.
- Online aspect is an immersion-spoiling mess of invasions messages and bloodstains everywhere.


But....but but but.....

+ The dark gothic fantasy aspect is done perfectly.
+ It looks utterly amazing in style and design (even on Low graphics).
+ Some of the scenes are mind-blowingly good - popping out in front of Ithryll Of Boreal Valley is THE more stunning scene I've seen in 18 years of gaming.
+ The exploration and interconnectivity is amazing.
+ The monsters and enemies are very cool, characterful, varied and impressive - including many of the bosses. Some of the designs are bonkers, some are inspiring, some of the attacks are hilarious/disturbing.
+ The amount of optional areas and secrets are great.
+ Some of the NPCs are cute / cool (Onion Bro!)
+ The overall world is so well done and immersive (despite the obscure / unconvincing lore), that it is actually a wrench to reach the end and stop exploring it.

In short I'd say it is maybe 80% perfect?? But that 80% is actually just SO good, it's worth 112.5% extra, so I give it 90% perfect. 

+ The non-boss combat is generally good, fair, and interesting, and the enemy variety and styles make it pretty rewarding. 

Even during my second playthrough, while emberred, I have never successfully fought off an invader. Not a single one. This is my only complaint about the game, the fact that I have to deal with others trying to kill me while I have my own problems going on.

I try to never stay emberred and if I am, I turn my settings to offline. 

Well, never got invaded properly, but just kept it offline. The online thing seems a lot of immersion-fucking bullshit. 

I understand the novelty of it. Gain increased HP at the cost of battling someone, but nine times out of ten that someone is a full armored level 200 tank wielding dual greatswords, charging at me like a battering ram. And here I am a level 50 sorcerer wearing a dress, watching my life flash before my eyes.

I don't like going offline, because that means I miss out on the important and often dirty messages left by others, that reveal secrets, ambushes, or their sick fantasies. As a result, before encountering a boss, I ember myself, and go offline, and continue from there. Once the boss is defeated, I just kill myself, and return online. Or the rare case I need assistance, or feel like helping someone get through a boss.

tl;dr Fuck invaders. 

How people still complain about invaders after all the effort the developers put into making invader's life as miserable as possible.

At the same time, everyone is totally fine with the fact you can summon not 1, not 2 but 3 potentially super op friendly phantoms that can destroy everything in the game without your involvement, including any invaders. You can even spawn fresh summons infinitely if they manage to fail and die somehow. And after obliterating a boss with a bunch of coop partners a lazy host receives exactly the same rewards as an honest player who puts his/her time to learn how to defeat a boss on his own.

"nine times out of ten that someone is a full armored level 200 tank wielding dual greatswords" - what? Just what? That's not possible, hasn't been ever in any previous games as well. Dark Souls 3 even restricts the upgrade level of the gear that an invader can use. The rules of matchmaking are right here: http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/online

Btw, pro tip: you don't have to go offline to use an ember. Just do it right at the fog gate to the boss. It will also heal you fully if you get hit on the way and allow to see occasional summon signs. No invader can possibly chase you down ever if you're one step away from the boss fight. Such an issue. Duh...

The only real bad thing online is cheaters, but that's a different can of worms. 

Yeah invaders usually have to overcome quite big odds in order to succeed. Plus you can use a seed to make the enemies hostile to the phantoms.