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Few games leave you with as much unfinished business as Dark Souls. A single playthrough is only ever a paltry slice out of an array of delicious possibilities, and you can never walk away with the sense of contented closure that most games would. Sure, you may have defeated Gywn, Lord Of Cinder and seen the end credits, but there's always the lingering knowledge that there is so much more to come, or that you could have done things completely differently.It didn't help at all that my initial playthrough concluded before the DLC was even announced. If I'd known that I'd have the run through half my game again in order to even access any of the extra stuff, I might have been mindful to hold off 'finishing' it. But it was too damned late. I either had to start over from scratch, or man up and get cracking on New Game Plus. Obviously, I took the latter option. The sheer amount of time invested into my character was too much to walk away from. The crazy amount of grinding to ascend specific weapons, and to boost my stats to even the odds a little - there was no way I was letting that go. I had to keep going. I needed to gain some semblance of closure.
But to return to Lordran for a second playthrough required a special set of circumstances. I knew that I'd need a clear run of a few days - maybe a week. Anyone with a job, kids and any kind of social life and parallel interest knows that finding the right kind of window for a proper Soulsfest is tricky. Almost exactly two years after Dark Souls' debut, I was back in.
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