The Four Kings have been completely overhauled, removing all of the more frustrating aspects of the original fight and adding new mechanics in their stead. Instead of a damage race where you're frantically trying to kill them as fast as possible, the Kings instead all spawn at once, but only one of them is "active" at a time, i.e. the rest will not attack you. Additionally, each King has been spruced up in terms of flavor and identity, each having their own distinctive name and attack patterns. A far cry from the widely loathed encounter of the vanilla game.
Both encounters with Artorias, Manus, and Sif. The first time around, you battle alongside Artorias against Manus to protect his trusty wolf companion — after a certain amount of time, Manus will take possession of Artorias and jump out of the arena. Later, you battle Artorias and Sif at the same time in a brutal encounter. Once their health gets low enough, Manus appears once again under the name of "Abyss Inside Artorias", and all seems lost... until the remains of Artorias' goodness reveals itself and joins you in one final climatic showdown to end the beast once and for all.
The Twilight Vagrant, an upgraded version of the rare Vagrants from the vanilla game that fights you by taking on the forms of all the people you've killed, up to and including Artorias himself. It's a unique, surprising encounter that makes great use of a heavily underutilized enemy.
Canon Defilement: While the mod does try to avoid this trope, it unfortunately plays this straight regarding quite a bit of the lore (especially with things from 2 and 3). One example is about Ariamis, where in Dark Souls III, the Painter is implied to be Ariamis. This mod instead has the Gaping Dragon, who was implied to been once Ariamis after his hunger overtook him. However, take this with a grain of salt, as the tidbit regarding the former may not be true.
The sheer absurdity of Dusk, one of the most genuinely nice characters in the series, being Evil All Along is a major one.
Another massive one is Gywnevere being sacrificed to the first flame by Gywn. Not only does it completely clash with Gywn's Martyr complex and Determinator nature, 3 all but states that she survived the events of the game, and went on to become the Queen of Lothric. The Soul of Cinder also uses Gwyn's fighting style, which would be impossible if he didn't personally link the Fire.
Just how did the Silver Knight armor not blacken even though it was burnt by the flames of chaos/the linking of the First Flame, again?
Crosses the Line Twice: Dying in this game is likely to happen at least once in the player's lifetime. Dying to PINWHEEL'S second phase!? What in Gwyn's name is this sorcery!?
The Bonewheel Skeletons in the Painted World's well are made even worse than in the vanilla game by having them materialize completely out of nowhere before they roll at you.
Likewise, the infamous pair of Silver Knight archers in Anor Londo are made even more deadly by having their positions changed. One is right at the top of the ramp you need to climb, and the other snipes you from high up above with very few safe spots from his line of sight. He's so high up that you can't even shoot back at him without the Hawk Ring or a Soul of a Weary Hunter to boost your bow range. And you need to kill both of them to progress Siegmeyer's questline in this mod.
Genre Turning Point: When it came out it was the Dark Souls Mod; the sheer amount of changes and additions it made to the base game was unheard of for the time, with extensively altered level and world progression (such as approaching the Depths from Blightown), lore and story elements heavily added upon (with almost professional Flavor Text), and even more gameplay changes, included added genuinley interesting mechanics (like pursuer bosses, puzzles, and countless secrets) Nowadays, however, due to how far Soul's modding has gone forward, the mod got completely outshined and outdone, including even later works of the same modder, as they all pushed the envelope further and better than Daughters ever could. It, however, is still appreciated for the fact it more or less kickstarted these kinds of massive Souls mods.
Hearing Kalameet's theme upon fighting the Capra Demon's second phase was intended to induce fear in even veteran players.
Shocking Moments: The fact that you can fight Gwyn in his LORD OF SUNLIGHT form as the True Final Boss has dropped some jaws.
Special Effects Failure: Whilst texture and model work is now quite possible with Dark Souls modding, the author admitted it isn't their forte, and as a result the mod features no new assets (everything is reused from the vanilla game). Some of it works...others...not quite as well.
The most notable example is the Abyssal Prince, which is restored from the vanilla game. The model that's used in the fight is clearly unfinished, and unmodified from said unfinished state, resulting in a hideous-looking cape, unfinished textures, a very weird-looking model in general, and very janky animations.
While the fight itself is pretty crazy, Gywn in his Lord of Sunlight form reuses his appearance as a hollow, and his new lightning sword is very glitchy, appearing as different lengths and the lightning effect being rather horrible on the eye, and as a result is visually far less impressive then the fight itself.
Tainted by the Preview: While the mod has its fans, there are those that disliked the idea of heavily altering the game.
That One Boss: The Demon Firesage in the Painted World not only has absurd damage, being able to two-shot you, it also has deceptive range that goes past the arena that you would fight it in. The upside is that at least you can perform a plunging attack on it, and this time, there won't be any roots blocking your path.
