The Tower of Heide isn’t exactly the most difficult area in Dark Souls 2. There isn’t that much tension when you defeat the Dragonrider. The guy’s easier than any other bosses. And the area connecting it to No-Man’s Wharf is relatively devoid of enemies, aside from a couple knights. So it should be a leisure walk.
Well, something could still surprise you. How about a glitch that removes the textures from the enviroment? I hadn’t seen that in a while, since Shadow Man 2 to be precise.

But you might think “fine, a bug can happen, but at the next area loading it will be fixed”. Indeed, it gets worse. Try to enter No-Man’s Wharf and the game won’t be content with zero textures anymore.

Too bad this is a dead-end area. After you kill the boss, there will be a loading screen that brings you to the Lost Bastille. You can’t explore further and see what happens. That’s a shame, as I wanted to see just how long the game engine could hold up like this. And besides, I died while I was trying to get back to the bonfire, and that solved the issue by itself. I mean, good luck not dying at least once in here.
Finding a bug in a game is disheartening, for sure. Deleting that character, returning to the game after 12 months, and finding still the same bug? Well, that gets a little annoying. On the other hand, I can’t really blame a company for abandoning what was presumably the lowest-selling version of a game which has already received a next-gen remaster. And hey, if I’m lucky, maybe I could trigger it again.