While most Soulslike players have been keeping themselves busy with Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, one dedicated player has somehow managed to get themselves through Dark Souls 2 without using their left control stick at all, outright banning walking, going up ladders, and turning themselves around freely.
If you don't believe it, YouTuber Ymfah has shown off the entire run and all of its trials in a new video, in which they demonstrate all the clever ways to get around using the left stick. Not being able to walk doesn't mean you're not able to move – in its most basic form, the challenge essentially substitutes walking for attacking or backstepping. When you attack, your character moves forward, so you can still traverse the map by swinging wildly over and over again until you get to your destination, or by going in reverse and hopping backwards.
Except, it's not that simple. As Ymfah discovered in the very opening of the run, you still need to figure out how to turn yourself around, lest you get stuck throwing hands at a wall for the rest of time. Thankfully, this can be achieved in a few different ways – locking on to an enemy will make you turn towards them, and you can very, very slowly turn around by moving backwards and forwards (by attacking and then backstepping) on an incline. The latter was absolutely crucial for the YouTuber at the start of the challenge, since there just aren't enough enemies to lock onto in the opening area to successfully get to the door to start creating your character.
After that point, turning gets easier, as Ymfah picks the Bandit class which gets access to a bow, allowing them to spin around using it whenever they want (assuming they're not already holding another weapon and a shield, that is). The Binoculars acquired a bit later do the exact same thing, too. As you'd expect though, the trials are far from over – beating beefier foes is a massive effort when your character isn't able to be as nimble as usual. Mercifully, there are sometimes Phantoms (NPC summons) to help, but every area demands a well-thought-out strategy, and even later in the run after grinding out levels to become a powerful magic wielder, Ymfah hit a number of brick walls with bosses.
Bosses aside though, one of the biggest hurdles throughout was the inability to use ladders. On multiple occasions, Ymfah had to plan out totally new routes after being met with self-imposed dead ends. This was such a major problem that shortly after fighting the boss duo of Dragonriders in Drangleic Castle, Ymfah had to summon a real player to go up a ladder for them and fight a bunch of enemies, in order to activate a lift so that they could get upstairs and continue. Hey, someone might have had to walk, but it wasn't them.
Admittedly, Ymfah did have to pull off some slightly dubious save file shenanigans towards the end of the run, after yet another ladder seemed to present a dead end. By loading up a different save file and activating the Bonfire checkpoint after the ladder they were being held back by, then overwriting their challenge run file and quitting out of the game after entering a boss arena, they were able to use an Aged Feather to return to 'the last Bonfire rested at.' At this point, the game determined this to be the Bonfire accessed on the other save file, allowing them to continue the run without walking at all on the actual run's save. It's very complicated, but sort of falls under the same category as having another player go up the ladder to fetch a lift down, just with more hurdles.
All in all, it's an incredibly tedious challenge that I can't imagine anyone would want to try at home. So much so, you might assume that Ymfah was the first to even think about taking it on, but it's worth noting that one smaller YouTuber, Qui, actually beat them to it around three years ago, so shout out to her.
While you're here, be sure to check out the top 10 games like Dark Souls that will test your survivability.
