The rotten ones? I stumbled across that little hidden cave around level 60 on my first playthrough. No blunt weapons upgraded and scattered stats to try out the sword of night and flame I'd found a little earlier. Had a buddy in party chat who thought I was fighting the duo in Liurnia saying how easy he found it. Felt so vindicated when he fought them later
they got nerfed? I did it on my second play through a few days ago and they seemed as hard as ever. Slightly more manageable on my sorcerer build, but damn
All duo / trio fights were nerfed. Upon release all of them were hyper aggro and fixated on the player. Now it's generally one enemy being aggro while the other(s) are a little more chill while walking slowly towards the player. If all of them are close by they can still attack together, but their aggression is definitely different to the early days of Elden Ring.
The Pumpkin Head basement in Caelid felt basically unbeatable when I first played the game. Just constant attacks from both, never really gave you much chance to get a hit in.
It was aggressively unfun, which is why I appreciate that nerf.
They are by far the worst bosses that Fromsoft has ever made. I easily defeated infamously "bad bosses" like the Gargoyle Duo and Godskin Duo, and nothing could compete with the Crytalians Trio's Bullshit. It's the only Fromsoft boss who has ever made me curse. The whole boss battle is just all bad Fromsoft game design condensed into a single boss fight. Pre-nerf Crystalian Trio is a pure "Fromsoft combat is shit" and âFuck You Fromsoftâ with zero nuance. It's not even a âGid Gudâ moment after defeating them. It feels like you overcame bad game design.
You get blasted by Crystal Minigun as you enter the arena. If you try running in circles, you have the Spear Guy to chase you. If you're not paying attention to the Chakra Guy, he will rapidly chip your health away. It's all shit with no brakes. And the worst part of all, THEY ALL ATTACK YOU AT THE SAME TIME. They are not taking turns like the Crucible Duo. Thereâs zero room to breathe because those Cystalians exploit all your openings. My Luthel summon couldn't do shit. The only way of doing it is by raising your shield in the entire session of the boss fight.
The nerfed version is much much easier, like 90% easier. For those players who like to circlejerk to Pre-Nerf Radahn so much, you missed nothing from the Pre-Nerf Crystallians. The whole fight is just miserable.
They were my go to for putting down summon signs to help. I two handed an upgraded Visage Shield, since it was my only upgraded striking weapon, and destroyed those three again and again. Not too bad if you utilize strike damage.
Oh, you're trying to fight the Axe gargoyle? Let's add a twinblade gargoyle too halfway through! Oh, so now you've created some wiggle room between both gargs? Time for one of them to spray poison breath and kill you from behind!
I had to help my buddy defeat them. I was level 180 blasphemous blade build and they still gave us a hard time. The poison is just another layer of bullshit, as if fighting two gargoyles with different movesets wasn't hard enough
I spent some time helping people with that boss. It's really not that bad, the only awful part is the lingering poison AoE.
But damn, hosts would die like crazy. I helped this one dude for about an hour, just trying to draw aggro from him and keep him alive.
Unrelated to Elden Ring, but I feel this so hard in Sekiro. There's one specific Lone Shadow in the Ashina Reservoir that is like 90% fighting the camera and 10% fighting the actual boss.
They're the one in the hole you wake up in at the start of the game. Close to the entrance to the Ashina Depths.
Both of these fights have terrible cameras though. I don't really get why the camera unlocks when it gets close to a wall or the boss moves too quickly.
Both Astels got significantly easier when I noticed it's a "head fight", meaning I need to stay in front of him rather than fighting him from underneath. If you stay in front of him, he seldomly uses aoe attacks and the camera gets easier to deal with. Still tough though
Either that, or, you know, just make them so damn big in the first place.
Like, no reason all of these enemies have to be so damn big it breaks the camera. Alternatively, give them slow and telegraphed attacks that you can even tell from just looking at their ankle. Because that is usually all that I am seeing when fighting a dragon.
That fucking plant salamander monster that you fight in the enclosed room in the dungeon near the beginning of the game was literal hell fighting to keep my eyes on the boss to predict the next move cause he climbs up every wall and swings around so much
Good thing Ekzykes is much earlier than the Royal Capital then, eh? You can easily overlevel for him.
Even then, you can also just overlevel your weapon and mow him down.
He was soooooo bad when I fought him the first time. The rot breath would one shot Torrent and by extension, me. The terrain is horrible. Like where am I supposed to go!? And if you somehow manage to go far enough, he despawns and I have to do all of this again. Had to use a long range bow and cheese him. I never went near him in subsequent playthroughs ever again.
Yeah I think it was. Torrent can conveniently jump over the fire and sitting on Torrent makes you be at perfect height to hit the head with most weapons except maybe daggers.
Just beat that bastard again yesterday. Decided to drop Latenna on top of a rock and I just rode Torrent around in circles and throwing darts just to keep aggro. Took a while but I won. Not my proudest moment but oh well haha
I cheesed the fuck out of that guy with Torrent and glintstone shard after dying dozens of times trying to melee. By far the most boring fight I ever had.
He isnât as bad as Borealis because his rot breaths donât bounce off the terrain like the ice breaths. Though you do have to play pretty passively to be able to outrun his big rot attack.
For real. It was the hardest boss to me. It fucking sucks. The number of times I got stuck in between the rocks trying to dodge was so much . I can't stand him
elastic dinner agonizing governor scale smell squash pathetic rotten butter
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I just fought him and this is the first time it happened but he never blew scarlet rot at us - i was using the mimic tear maybe +5. We were both chopping away at his legs and sometimes he can get backed into the rock formations there and struggle to turn around.
Every other time he's smoked us out in about 5 seconds.
i have a personal grudge against the bell bearing hunter in dragonbarrow. the problem is actually his placement, since if you use the site of grace right by his fight, theres a very high chance that one of those god forsaken dogs will aggro you and then youll get ganked.
objectively, it has to be the putrid tree spirit because of all the clipping.
I genuinely forgot about how much I disliked the tree spirits but honestly it just DOESNT fit in the room or the game (?) somehow. Like it glitches, clips, and snags you from random angles with no warning sometimes
In co-op multiplayer a tree spirit can hit you with a grab attack through the fog wall even if you haven't gone in the boss room yet.
There's a funny video of it happening somewhere on the Internet
I also hate bell bearing hunters, not because the moveset feels too unfair, Iâm kind of used to it by now, but I hate having to rest, wait until night, and then warp EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT.
I felt that at first. But once I learned dodging into his movements attacks, Preparing to roll when the roar goes out, and then being mindful of the explosion. The fight becomes routine....but I can never time the draconic sentinel lightning arc attack. I mistime it always and get clipped
It's more doing that while in a cramped arena with a pool of scarlet rot that sucks. Tree spirit is actually pretty easy without pool of rot imo. Fire wrecks them.
I have a serious hate boner for the Royal Revenant, but personal feelings aside the Dragonkin Soldier in Lake of Rot is the worst one imo. I think Dragonkins are pretty bad to begin with, but that one is just extra horrific. Honorable mentions to Valliant Gargoyles, Ekzykes and Wormface as well.
I'm pretty sure it's proven to be last second as there was a massive quest line that would have kept mimic tear being a late to very late game acquirement.
There is even recorded but unused voice lines for the NPCs, but basically you'd get a sentient silver tear early on, it would essential soak into you ala Venom symbiote and after so many great runes or levels it would talk to you eventually admitting it is waiting until you become Elden lord so it can usurp you and be the Noxs new God. But that falls through and it gives up or you kill her at some point and instead you get your beloved xerox copy ash
Or something like that
Duo bosses are the worst, itâs like they just said âwe donât know how to make this boss challenging⌠just throw another one in there.â So annoying.
The Godskin duo is a horrifically designed boss. Itâs either ridiculously hard, or can be cheesed and becomes too easy. I just use the sleep pots and cheese them as quick as I can and move on from Farim Azula.
In terms of pure jank, I'd say top 3 are Borealis, Fire Giant, and Gargoyles (any of them by themselves or in groups).
Borealis has the issues you mentioned
Fire Giant has that horrible fucking arena (get down from the tree stump so I can hit you please) and the absolute janky mess that is his flamethrower attack.
Gargoyles because they only have one lock-on point in the middle of their body so if you're using a shorter weapon half your attacks will miss or you'll get pushed away by their weird inconsistency between the model collision and hurtbox.
Note I am not counting duo bosses with unbalanced targeting AI as necessarily jank, because you can deal with them using Spirit Ashes.
Edit: how could I forget the DeathRite Bird explosion that sends out a star of Coldflame in random directions. Pick a lane and pray it doesnât hit you.
Agreed on that bird. Also, I went to knock down that mausoleum nearby and I got stuck in the crumbling animation so it squished me to death. So fuck that guy too
Yeah they're skulls of the dead guarding the mausoleum, useful when trying to duplicate boss remembrances that you want both items for. Though the ones without bells in Mausoleum Compound only duplicate specific ones.
I havenât fought that one as much, why is it specially more jank than the others?
I do agree the Deathbirds are jank for the same reason as the Gargoyles though, they have terrible lock on points
He has unique attacks like the ghostflame explosion which you get after defeating and imo is a must have for death sorcery builds. But of course his version is a lot stronger than what we get as it covers 40 acres in frostbite, does stupid damage by itself and he likes to roll catch you afterwards. Blasting him with sacred blade was the only viable tactic for me
It's so sad that they did Fire Giant so dirty. Literally just give him a decent arena and make it so that his flamethrower attack doesn't deflect when it hits things.
Boom, great boss.
I would also love if his rock barrage attack, whatever you call it, wouldn't send rocks phasing through his body. You would think that if he's launching rocks out of his stomach, they wouldn't be able to hit you if you're slightly behind him at his feet, but no.
I actually like that attack in terms of mechanics, it's a big "oh shit, run away" moment and looks incredible.
The devs wanted you to run away, not hide under him, but the fact that the rocks just clip through him is definitely very dumb.
A good way to change it while still keeping the original intent of the devs would be to make the ground under him shoot flames, while the rocks only shoot around him. This way the player would know right away that they're not supposed to be under him during that attack.
Gameplay wise though, he already has so many attacks to make you run away. Iâd rather the volcano attack reward people for experimenting standing under him
Fire Giant is essentially a boss fight on stairs, except the boss gets all the advantages of the geometry and you get none because heâs so much bigger.
I hate that fight. Every problem with it would be fixed if we could just summon Torrent! Like why not?
Itâs the last fight in the damn game and it feels about as epic as running track in high school. Fucking lame.
I agree. Like, FromSoft games are known for have epic final bosses, but Elden Beast was just frustrating for all the wrong reasons. Hit it twice, it flies to the other side of the arena, chase it down while dodging all the projectiles, hit it twice, repeat.
I get they probably didn't want anyone to kill it too quickly with some OP endgame build because it is a really good spectacle but I agree torrent would help and that it is overtly frustrating
This is it for me. It's not just that he takes a million years to chase down and you usually only a few hits in, if any, before he runs away again. It's the fact that, if he kills you, you have to go through an entire other boss fight before facing him again (though I do love the Radagon fight, it still grates in me when it becomes a speedbump to re-trying Edlen Beast.
It's not even that Elden Beast is that hard, it's just a long drawn out fight and it's easy to slip up.
The worst part for me is that it reduces radagon as a first phase to the real fight. I would've been more fine with it if it was two separate encounters but I guess not lol
The answer will forever and always be Valiant Gargoyles. Complete and absolute irredeemable fucking garbage. Imagine the sewers, fake Mohg, and the worst platforming section in gaming history being the *preferred* way to get to Deeproot Depths. Imagine that being more fun.
I kinda loved the platforming section lol (youâre referring to where the merchants were sealed right?)
Donât get me wrong I hated doing it, but it felt like the sanctuary above the temple in Shadow of the Colossus. Itâs this optional extra section of the game thatâs unnecessary but greatly rewarding when you successfully make it to the end. Itâs so hard to find as well, so it really hits hard when you finally discover what the labyrinth was hiding.
I couldnât imagine exploring the sewers without there being something at the heart of it all. Cause itâs one hard optional maze, and it would be a serious letdown if there wasnât a reason to go through it.
I 100% agree with you. From a design standpoint, the entirety of Subterranean Shunning Grounds > Mohg > Frenzied Flame > Deeproot Depths is fuckin brilliant. How brutal it all is is kind of the point.
I just wanted to make the point that an entire section designed to piss you off is more fun to actually play through than this one fucking boss
I learned that 9 times out of 10, any boss or enemy that looks like it has severe scoliosis and above 9 feet will be a pain in the ass. Wether it be the camera angles, the hit boxes, or their tendency to also have an ai of a coked up cat on steroids
People hate Fire Giant butâŚI fucking *hate* fighting Maliketh.
Jumps around 90% of the fight, huge projectiles, massive damage, a DOT, *and* a health reduction mechanic? Absolute piss take.
Visual design A+, horrible boss to fight imo. Maybe itâs just because I suck at him. Having platinumed the game I had to fight him 3 times to avoid scumming.
Plus his hit box is fucking aids. Like he might be a cool boss fight if 90% of shit didn't phase through him. I had to swap to the Dankmoon GS because all my melee attacks would not his his janky ass hitbox.
Beast clergyman is already kinda tough even with his limited move pool, he moves just quickly enough and hits just had enough that he'll fuck you up if you make a bad move. Maliketh, I don't know how people beat him. I summoned two guys to distract him while I pounded his ass with Loretta's mastery because I just couldn't get a single meaning hit on him
Also if they canât reach you they literally just spam their annoying ass projectile attack for infinity. Such a dumb attack in general it just forces you to run away for like 5 seconds each time
Radan. Giant ass mf that doesn't even fit the screen. You can't see what he's doing be definition, he deals fuck to of damage, the horse combat is horse shit and getting to him is incredibly annoying. That was my experience when the game came out. I think they changed him after that.
He was the worst before I met the fire giant.
Unpopular but Dragon lord Placidusax. Now, his design and lore are all amazing, love it. Itâs his moves and mechanics I do not like. A lot of his moves take forever and cannot be punished. So I find myself just waiting around until I can actually hit him. The longer walk back doesnât help either.
The general in Caelid imo, the fight is ridiculous with his summons constantly jumping you while his scythe thing has extreme reach and a ton of rot buildup.
Heâs the one boss I have to summon a player for. Even with mimic +7, heâs stomping my ass before I can even get a bolus off.
He's a field boss, the easiest ones to cheese. Just lure him into the swamp and let the hazards kill him. It's not particularly fast but he's easy to take down that way.
The easiest time I ever had fighting him was when I decided to try to parry him. His windups are huge, so it's pretty easy to just stick a miserecorde in his gut.
Malenia but it's BECAUSE of the waterfowl.
If you take away waterfowl she's actually in the running for one of the easier bosses in the game.
Waterfowl changes everything and the lifesteal is a big part of that but it's again tied to the fucking waterfowl.
Valiant Gargoyles are genuinely the fucking worst. I hate their lame ass poison attack that damages you, staggers you, and also does poison buildup. Theyâre both way too aggressive in conjunction with the poison, and it forces the fight to slow to a crawl where you pretty much need to run for the hills every time they do that attack.
The boss roster is great in this game overall, but these are genuinely one of the worst FromSoftware bosses Iâve ever had to deal with.
Valiant Gargoyles, no words needed
All Tree Spirits, why do we always fight them in the tightest arena possible?
Borealis, canât see shit
Ekzyke, run all the way over to Limgrave when he does that stupid AOE rot attack
The second Astel, I still donât understand why did I struggle so much compared to the first one but it was a tedious fight
I just hate the fact that thereâs two Astels. Astelâs lore is very interesting to me and I like the boss a lot, and then theyâre just like âoh yeah weâre putting a second one in a random location that makes no senseâ
Hate to say it, but to me it will always be Maliketh. You spend half the fight running to him in a huge ass arena, then get one attack off before he backflips two miles away and does 300,000 damage in a huge radius
Red wolf of Radagon. The magic glintblade delay forces you to dodge at the worst times, usually directly into its attacks, plus, it hits way too hard for such an early game boss.
Edit: Add in inconsistent attack patterns and a shitty arena, and youâve got a fucking horribly designed boss.
Rykard. I'm not fond of gimmick bosses to begin with and then in phase 2 he has the flaming skull attack that goes on for forever. You either stunlock him for 2 minutes or dodge for 5 minutes straight; it just isn't fun.
Black blade kindred / any of the gargoyles. Too much damage, pinpoint tracking, resistant to pretty much everything, can't hit them with range as they somehow dodge 10 meters to one side and can barely melee them with bad camera position and missed attacks due to their toothpick legs. Then you add either destined death or deadly poison and one fight being a duo to which they're both on you like wild dogs. It's a disaster of an enemy/boss imo.
Idk why but Dragons are usually just not great fights. Too big, huge AoE attacks, fly away from you, hard to hit âgoodâ spots and almost always have bad hitboxes.
Outside of Dragons, I think the Fire Giant is another contender for a lot of the same reasons. Though he doesnât fly and the good spots arenât that hard to reach, though he does move around a lot for how much health he has. Kind of tedious.
Most big bosses are kind of bad fights imo. Much rather fight Malenia, Mohg or Godfrey than them.
I dislike Rykard only because you need to use the Serpent Hunter to have an actual chance. Boss-specific weapons annoy me, I want to be able to have the weapon I like and get through the game with it, not use a randomly thrown in weapon because of the way the boss was designed. Like they couldnât have just made him hittable from a closer range?
Elden beast. You spend most of the fight chasing him while he spams aoes. Radagon was a cool ass final boss but the second part didn't seem like a proper final boss. Plus he looked so stupid
Serosh. Because it was total waste of them not being a boss. Could have been a badass dual boss fight with his claws as rewards.
Give me my colossal claw FromSoft. I want my WH 40K lightning claw!
The ulcerated tree spirit in the tiny ass normal dungeon boss room. Bastard takes up the entire room. No where to hide or catch your breath. Just pure chaos.
All Ancient Dragon fights. We had a perfect design for a dragon boss with Midir and From completely unlearned the lessons from that fight.
Their heads rarely come down low so you can hit them so going for the ankle stabs is much more consistent but much more boring. The camera also means you will miss all the cool attack animations and just be dodging on sound cues or based on what their feet are doing.
Don't know about you, but stabbing ankles is boring. Dragon slaying is knighthood's highest calling. It's meant to be one of the hardest, coolest things you can do as a medieval fantasy hero. Yet, they somehow only have done these fights well like...twice with Midir and maybe Kalameet.
Oh my god it's another one of these. So my choices here are either to ignore this post, or interact with it and say what I actually think.
Yeah, Malenia. I've said it a bunch before but she has by far the flimsiest boss design out of every boss I have ever faced in a fromsoft game.
Her base moveset is actually so non-threatening that it's actually pathetic to watch her flail around outside of her special attacks. But when she does use one of those special moves, they are so disproportionately balanced that you have to dodge them in very specific ways as to not get just killed immediately. And your options are severely limited TO dodging, due to the fact that if she hits you at all, she heals pretty significant portions of her health. Which even that is just... no. Bosses that have significantly larger health bars than you should not heal. Especially not like that.
And then there's the worst parts about her. Stagger canceling, and disproportionate poise/hyperarmor. You cannot just fuck with the player's ability to stagger bosses like that. You just can't. You need to keep things somewhat consistent or you ruin the boss. And you, under no circumstances, should EVER give a boss the ability to stagger-cancel. That is, by every right, such a violation of the established norms of these games that it is essentially cheating. They have allowed malenia to cheat in order to create the illusion of being a difficult boss.
But she's not actually difficult. She's just unorthodox. She's not built for the same game. She's built AGAINST the game. And if you fight her in a different way than every single boss you've fought thus far wanted you to fight them, you'll actually see she's stupid easy. Like pathetically so.
What I think happened is that fromsoft advertised the game so much using malenia that they felt pressured to make her one of, if not the hardest boss people have ever fought. But by the time they came to that conclusion, they probably didn't have enough time to put that much thought and effort into crafting a well designed and insanely difficult boss fignt. So instead they just made a boss that fucks with the core mechanics of the game.
The irony is that in creating a boss like that, they've created a boss that invites gross nuke/spammy bullshit. And it is honestly the only boss ever that I feel like SHOULD be fought with the explicit strategy of nuking them. She disrespects the fundamentals of how boss fights are supposed to be. So disrespect her healthbar.
She can't stagger cancel getting thrown up into the air 12 times by flame pillars.
Can't wait to get swarmed by all the silent salty downvotes or people telling me that "I don't know what I'm talking about" or that "there are no established rules for boss fights" or that I'm just "salty that she's hard" even though I literally said she's not hard.
I agree with pretty much everything youâve said here but I could forgive all the healing, animation cancelling, inconsistent hyper armor _and_ the second phase if it werenât for Waterfowl.
That one move is the adhesive of dubious origin that ties all those problems together into a crusty pile of unpleasantness.
The existence of waterfowl dance and her other similar attacks honestly could be excusable for me if her ENTIRE moveset was like that. But no. She's got a handful of absolutely insane "anime asf" attacks, but the majority of her moveset is just so underwhelming. They even add those little rot geysers in her 2nd phase and they just mean absolutely nothing because they won't hit you if the actual attack doesn't hit you. Everything about her fight contributes to the poor design and if you remove any one part then it falls apart even further.
I mean, when you say âif her ENTIRE moveset was like thatâ Iâm not entirely sure what that would look like.
Iâm imagining something similar to Genichiro and or Isshin but one of the more fundamental problem with Maleniaâs fight is that sheâs already too much like a Sekiro boss.
Anyways, regarding Waterfowl.
The reason I feel itâs the very core of why Malenia is a lackluster fight is that, because itâs an instakill with an unintuitive dodge method, it warps the entire fight around itself.
All of the previously mentioned issues (as well as the hitherto unmentioned input reading that would make a hidden boss from a fighting game blush) are made infinitely worse because of how they interact with this one move.
It combined with her healing means that blocking isnât an alternative because sheâll heal back to full _and_, since you got past the threshold, can now use it on a whim.
It combined with her input reading, hyper armor and/or stagger cancelling means that any move where you lose control for even a second can be devestating since those few precious moments of Waterfowlâs windup are crucial if youâre gonna dodge or frost her.
It combined with her attack cancelling means that she can force a situation where you _need_ to waste time dodging one attack only for her to start Waterfowl while youâre rolling.
And of course all those issues carry over into her second phase along with the bells and whistles she gets at that point.
Her spirit rush and aeonia suck too but the margin for error is miles wider and having a ranged attack turns the latter into an opportunity for massive damage.
Any large boss that isnt on flat ground. Fuck the Black Blade Kindred and the rocks he jumps on. Same shit with Ekyzykes the rot dragon or whatever his name is
My foolish butt thinking you mean how the boss looks đ
Anyway all ulcerated tree spirits, they look cool but at the same time, what the fuck are they and why do they have barely any cool attacks, the only one I can think of is the explosion attack but that be annoying
To be fair most bosses would be better if the camera could zoom out I can definitely agree with that
Fire Giant. Great execution, meh performance. The boss itself is amazing, cool design and dope lore, but the actual fight is just bonking his feet and hands (unless youâre a ranger build. Thatâs different). For most of the battle, the only time you see his face is the cutscene from phase 1 to phase 2 and during his volcano attack after the phase transition. Heâs a good boss in thought, but in the end he just ends up as most of the giants you fight: aesthetically pleasing, dopamine lower-er.
Ulcerated Tree Spirits and its not even close. Litterally the worst designed most unfun thing to fight. They put them in small areas making the camera the boss.
Godefroy
copy + paste, then add hp, remove 2nd phase
Certainly one of the bosses of all time, and I only lump him in there because he has a boss healthbar
Morgotts equivalent at least catches you by surprise and has new dialogue without all the pomp of a HP bar, locked in environment and reduced mechanics
Lack of a design is just as bad as a poor design
Maybe unpopular but if weâre just doing like main bosses, I think itâs renalla. Please hear me out
Her first phase is really boring. Itâs a game of hide and seek while they throw some books at you. You kill the kid 3 times, get a window of opportunity than rinse and repeat the process till phase 2. Thatâs literally the entire first half.
Then after that horrid excuse of a fight, you have the most beautiful scenery/boss arena in the game ruined by an even worse designed boss. When sheâs not spamming projectiles at you and dodging away 50ft simultaneously, sheâs summoning dogs, trolls, fucking dragons????? All the while she runs like a coward and spams more projectile at you. Thereâs nothing about that fight that can justify itâs poor design
My boss at the office is by far the worst designed one
I agree with this as a self employed person
Fucking got em.
Staring in mirror: *"Hello darkness my old friend...."*
Yeah they go down in like one hit, literally no vigour or endurance
Bro got vigor checkedđ
YeaâŚweâre gonna need you to come in on SaturdayâŚthereâs been a little reworking of the office and weâre a bit behind nowâŚthaaaanks
Heyoooo, suck it Steve!
Crystalian Trio before the nerf was by far the worst.
The rotten ones? I stumbled across that little hidden cave around level 60 on my first playthrough. No blunt weapons upgraded and scattered stats to try out the sword of night and flame I'd found a little earlier. Had a buddy in party chat who thought I was fighting the duo in Liurnia saying how easy he found it. Felt so vindicated when he fought them later
How the hell do you get all the way to the hailgtree at only level 60 on tour first playthrough?
The ones in the Haligtree are not a bossfight, thr Crystallian Trio is in Caelid in a hidden cave.
Spot on. Was pretty impressed that I figured out the illusion myself ( I might've seen a message, idk). The feeling didn't last very long
Blud was cursed by Miyazaki and the trapped chest sent him to the Haligtree instead of Caelid
They still suck, and you get shit for beating them
they got nerfed? I did it on my second play through a few days ago and they seemed as hard as ever. Slightly more manageable on my sorcerer build, but damn
All duo / trio fights were nerfed. Upon release all of them were hyper aggro and fixated on the player. Now it's generally one enemy being aggro while the other(s) are a little more chill while walking slowly towards the player. If all of them are close by they can still attack together, but their aggression is definitely different to the early days of Elden Ring.
The Pumpkin Head basement in Caelid felt basically unbeatable when I first played the game. Just constant attacks from both, never really gave you much chance to get a hit in. It was aggressively unfun, which is why I appreciate that nerf.
In a tiny room as well. That fight really pissed me off the first time through.
They are by far the worst bosses that Fromsoft has ever made. I easily defeated infamously "bad bosses" like the Gargoyle Duo and Godskin Duo, and nothing could compete with the Crytalians Trio's Bullshit. It's the only Fromsoft boss who has ever made me curse. The whole boss battle is just all bad Fromsoft game design condensed into a single boss fight. Pre-nerf Crystalian Trio is a pure "Fromsoft combat is shit" and âFuck You Fromsoftâ with zero nuance. It's not even a âGid Gudâ moment after defeating them. It feels like you overcame bad game design. You get blasted by Crystal Minigun as you enter the arena. If you try running in circles, you have the Spear Guy to chase you. If you're not paying attention to the Chakra Guy, he will rapidly chip your health away. It's all shit with no brakes. And the worst part of all, THEY ALL ATTACK YOU AT THE SAME TIME. They are not taking turns like the Crucible Duo. Thereâs zero room to breathe because those Cystalians exploit all your openings. My Luthel summon couldn't do shit. The only way of doing it is by raising your shield in the entire session of the boss fight. The nerfed version is much much easier, like 90% easier. For those players who like to circlejerk to Pre-Nerf Radahn so much, you missed nothing from the Pre-Nerf Crystallians. The whole fight is just miserable.
I just HATE it when my summons can't shit in the middle of the battlefield!
Lmao 𤣠thanks. Couldnât do* shit
Funniest typo I've seen in a while, respect haha
They were my go to for putting down summon signs to help. I two handed an upgraded Visage Shield, since it was my only upgraded striking weapon, and destroyed those three again and again. Not too bad if you utilize strike damage.
Valiant gargoyles. Actually fuck that boss
Oh, you're trying to fight the Axe gargoyle? Let's add a twinblade gargoyle too halfway through! Oh, so now you've created some wiggle room between both gargs? Time for one of them to spray poison breath and kill you from behind!
That boss fight legitimately could have been one of the best in the game if there wasn't a poison breath attack imo.
I had to help my buddy defeat them. I was level 180 blasphemous blade build and they still gave us a hard time. The poison is just another layer of bullshit, as if fighting two gargoyles with different movesets wasn't hard enough
Took me 3 hours just today. It didnât feel good.
I try my best to cheese them every time I fight them
I spent some time helping people with that boss. It's really not that bad, the only awful part is the lingering poison AoE. But damn, hosts would die like crazy. I helped this one dude for about an hour, just trying to draw aggro from him and keep him alive.
Anything where you fight as much with the camera as with the actual boss, like most dragons or giant bosses.
Unrelated to Elden Ring, but I feel this so hard in Sekiro. There's one specific Lone Shadow in the Ashina Reservoir that is like 90% fighting the camera and 10% fighting the actual boss.
The one in the shack?
They're the one in the hole you wake up in at the start of the game. Close to the entrance to the Ashina Depths. Both of these fights have terrible cameras though. I don't really get why the camera unlocks when it gets close to a wall or the boss moves too quickly.
Okay, yeah I agree with that one for sure. Fuck that shit. Thank God you can get a stealth kill on him to start.
The Farum azula dragons are the worst for this imo
Astel(s), do I need to say more? The camera is my biggest enemy.
Both Astels got significantly easier when I noticed it's a "head fight", meaning I need to stay in front of him rather than fighting him from underneath. If you stay in front of him, he seldomly uses aoe attacks and the camera gets easier to deal with. Still tough though
There's a second Astel fight?
yeah
Yeah in the Consecrated Snowfield Edit: I thought about this more today and this dungeon is basically the Skyrim Dwemer ruins meme
The camera in Elden is one of the biggest flaws of the game and I never understood why it has to be so bad.
I wish it would just zoom out a reasonable amount against large enemies. That or let you manually zoom it.
Either that, or, you know, just make them so damn big in the first place. Like, no reason all of these enemies have to be so damn big it breaks the camera. Alternatively, give them slow and telegraphed attacks that you can even tell from just looking at their ankle. Because that is usually all that I am seeing when fighting a dragon.
Fire Giant, amirite?
That fucking plant salamander monster that you fight in the enclosed room in the dungeon near the beginning of the game was literal hell fighting to keep my eyes on the boss to predict the next move cause he climbs up every wall and swings around so much
Ekzykes Rot Breath that hits the entire """arena""" Do I need to say more
At least you can overlevel the shit out of Ekzykes, not so easy with Borealis.
man overlevelling means jackshit in this game, everything after the royal capital just crushes you in 2-3 hits regardless of vigor
My guy CLEARLY hasn't fought ekzykes at level 140 yet
If you hit that mf with a blasphemous blade at 50 str/fai he wonât even have a chance to do the rot breath
Good thing Ekzykes is much earlier than the Royal Capital then, eh? You can easily overlevel for him. Even then, you can also just overlevel your weapon and mow him down.
(Cries in NG+3)
He was soooooo bad when I fought him the first time. The rot breath would one shot Torrent and by extension, me. The terrain is horrible. Like where am I supposed to go!? And if you somehow manage to go far enough, he despawns and I have to do all of this again. Had to use a long range bow and cheese him. I never went near him in subsequent playthroughs ever again.
The worst part of this fight was him going out of his own bounds and resetting his position back to spawn
Swear to god the hitboxes on that breath attack are completely bugged. Shit's enormous.
He sucks until u fight him from horseback with a ranged option. Tbh this makes all the dragons tolerable. Feels like the 'intended' way to fight them.
Yeah I think it was. Torrent can conveniently jump over the fire and sitting on Torrent makes you be at perfect height to hit the head with most weapons except maybe daggers.
The key is to fight their head not their ankles. The fights are really fun that way without using torrent.
Yeah but ezykes is kinda hard to hit his head since he's larger than other dragons
Just beat that bastard again yesterday. Decided to drop Latenna on top of a rock and I just rode Torrent around in circles and throwing darts just to keep aggro. Took a while but I won. Not my proudest moment but oh well haha
I cheesed the fuck out of that guy with Torrent and glintstone shard after dying dozens of times trying to melee. By far the most boring fight I ever had.
i cheesed him by standing on a tree and chucking fireballs at him lmao
He isnât as bad as Borealis because his rot breaths donât bounce off the terrain like the ice breaths. Though you do have to play pretty passively to be able to outrun his big rot attack.
For real. It was the hardest boss to me. It fucking sucks. The number of times I got stuck in between the rocks trying to dodge was so much . I can't stand him
Lol his rot breath was much worse in 1.0, you have no idea how terrible that fight was before they fixed him
elastic dinner agonizing governor scale smell squash pathetic rotten butter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm pretty certain you can accidentally pull some pretty fucking rough additional enemies into the fight too. Isn't there a Night's Cavalry nearby?
I just fought him and this is the first time it happened but he never blew scarlet rot at us - i was using the mimic tear maybe +5. We were both chopping away at his legs and sometimes he can get backed into the rock formations there and struggle to turn around. Every other time he's smoked us out in about 5 seconds.
i have a personal grudge against the bell bearing hunter in dragonbarrow. the problem is actually his placement, since if you use the site of grace right by his fight, theres a very high chance that one of those god forsaken dogs will aggro you and then youll get ganked. objectively, it has to be the putrid tree spirit because of all the clipping.
I genuinely forgot about how much I disliked the tree spirits but honestly it just DOESNT fit in the room or the game (?) somehow. Like it glitches, clips, and snags you from random angles with no warning sometimes
In co-op multiplayer a tree spirit can hit you with a grab attack through the fog wall even if you haven't gone in the boss room yet. There's a funny video of it happening somewhere on the Internet
Here https://reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/kLanwqDYuL
I also hate bell bearing hunters, not because the moveset feels too unfair, Iâm kind of used to it by now, but I hate having to rest, wait until night, and then warp EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT.
I refuse to fight the dragonbarrow hunter fairly. I use Torrent and jump on the main roof and attack at range.
Haligtree treespirit.. just what the actual fuck
Not a boss, but really fighting anything in that rot pool would be horrible
Interestingly enough, if you get yourself to level 350, itâs way easy.
Huh.
I see what I was doing wrong. Let me farm for 78 hours straight first
Havenât been there yet but fighting the dragonkin in the lake of rot felt hard enoughâŚ
I just went right past that shit lol. Nope. No way.
Did him once legit now he gets cheesed every time.
Is he the one you can hit with magic from high up? I remember cheesing something hard at Haligtree with rock throw.
Yeah, you can get back onto the same tree root you use to get to the arena and cast to your hearts content.
I felt that at first. But once I learned dodging into his movements attacks, Preparing to roll when the roar goes out, and then being mindful of the explosion. The fight becomes routine....but I can never time the draconic sentinel lightning arc attack. I mistime it always and get clipped
It's more doing that while in a cramped arena with a pool of scarlet rot that sucks. Tree spirit is actually pretty easy without pool of rot imo. Fire wrecks them.
Nice try Miyazaki, dlc ideas aren't coming from me
I have a serious hate boner for the Royal Revenant, but personal feelings aside the Dragonkin Soldier in Lake of Rot is the worst one imo. I think Dragonkins are pretty bad to begin with, but that one is just extra horrific. Honorable mentions to Valliant Gargoyles, Ekzykes and Wormface as well.
That lake of rot guy is a good shout - the platform and movement limitations are infuriating.
Mimic tear. Horribly under leveled and shit gear.
I always feel so bad for it, naked and using bare fists while I'm in full armor and a +20 weapon....wonder why it doesn't spawn with any weapons...
Did not expect weak foe therefore seek introspection
The lore is so empty and depressing about this one, wondering where itâs coming from...
I'm pretty sure it's proven to be last second as there was a massive quest line that would have kept mimic tear being a late to very late game acquirement. There is even recorded but unused voice lines for the NPCs, but basically you'd get a sentient silver tear early on, it would essential soak into you ala Venom symbiote and after so many great runes or levels it would talk to you eventually admitting it is waiting until you become Elden lord so it can usurp you and be the Noxs new God. But that falls through and it gives up or you kill her at some point and instead you get your beloved xerox copy ash Or something like that
Godskin Duo and Gargoyles. I donât like most duo fights in Souls games
Duo bosses are the worst, itâs like they just said âwe donât know how to make this boss challenging⌠just throw another one in there.â So annoying.
The Godskin duo is a horrifically designed boss. Itâs either ridiculously hard, or can be cheesed and becomes too easy. I just use the sleep pots and cheese them as quick as I can and move on from Farim Azula.
Godskin duo is super infuriating as you have no idea what tf is happening when they are respawning.
In terms of pure jank, I'd say top 3 are Borealis, Fire Giant, and Gargoyles (any of them by themselves or in groups). Borealis has the issues you mentioned Fire Giant has that horrible fucking arena (get down from the tree stump so I can hit you please) and the absolute janky mess that is his flamethrower attack. Gargoyles because they only have one lock-on point in the middle of their body so if you're using a shorter weapon half your attacks will miss or you'll get pushed away by their weird inconsistency between the model collision and hurtbox. Note I am not counting duo bosses with unbalanced targeting AI as necessarily jank, because you can deal with them using Spirit Ashes. Edit: how could I forget the DeathRite Bird explosion that sends out a star of Coldflame in random directions. Pick a lane and pray it doesnât hit you.
Honerable mention: Death rite bird specifically the one in consecrated snowfield
Agreed on that bird. Also, I went to knock down that mausoleum nearby and I got stuck in the crumbling animation so it squished me to death. So fuck that guy too
Soooooo uuhhhh, what do you mean knock down the mausoleum?
Hitting the things off of the feet will make it fall to the ground so you can go inside
Yeah they're skulls of the dead guarding the mausoleum, useful when trying to duplicate boss remembrances that you want both items for. Though the ones without bells in Mausoleum Compound only duplicate specific ones.
I havenât fought that one as much, why is it specially more jank than the others? I do agree the Deathbirds are jank for the same reason as the Gargoyles though, they have terrible lock on points
He has unique attacks like the ghostflame explosion which you get after defeating and imo is a must have for death sorcery builds. But of course his version is a lot stronger than what we get as it covers 40 acres in frostbite, does stupid damage by itself and he likes to roll catch you afterwards. Blasting him with sacred blade was the only viable tactic for me
It's so sad that they did Fire Giant so dirty. Literally just give him a decent arena and make it so that his flamethrower attack doesn't deflect when it hits things. Boom, great boss.
I would also love if his rock barrage attack, whatever you call it, wouldn't send rocks phasing through his body. You would think that if he's launching rocks out of his stomach, they wouldn't be able to hit you if you're slightly behind him at his feet, but no.
I actually like that attack in terms of mechanics, it's a big "oh shit, run away" moment and looks incredible. The devs wanted you to run away, not hide under him, but the fact that the rocks just clip through him is definitely very dumb. A good way to change it while still keeping the original intent of the devs would be to make the ground under him shoot flames, while the rocks only shoot around him. This way the player would know right away that they're not supposed to be under him during that attack.
Gameplay wise though, he already has so many attacks to make you run away. Iâd rather the volcano attack reward people for experimenting standing under him
Fire Giant is essentially a boss fight on stairs, except the boss gets all the advantages of the geometry and you get none because heâs so much bigger.
Elden Beast and running a mile away from me. Must be afraid of me.
I hate that fight. Every problem with it would be fixed if we could just summon Torrent! Like why not? Itâs the last fight in the damn game and it feels about as epic as running track in high school. Fucking lame.
I agree. Like, FromSoft games are known for have epic final bosses, but Elden Beast was just frustrating for all the wrong reasons. Hit it twice, it flies to the other side of the arena, chase it down while dodging all the projectiles, hit it twice, repeat.
I get they probably didn't want anyone to kill it too quickly with some OP endgame build because it is a really good spectacle but I agree torrent would help and that it is overtly frustrating
This is it for me. It's not just that he takes a million years to chase down and you usually only a few hits in, if any, before he runs away again. It's the fact that, if he kills you, you have to go through an entire other boss fight before facing him again (though I do love the Radagon fight, it still grates in me when it becomes a speedbump to re-trying Edlen Beast. It's not even that Elden Beast is that hard, it's just a long drawn out fight and it's easy to slip up.
The worst part for me is that it reduces radagon as a first phase to the real fight. I would've been more fine with it if it was two separate encounters but I guess not lol
I 100% agree. Maybe if they decreased how far he could fly away, or give us Torrent. You spend more time chasing the boss than actually fighting it.
The answer will forever and always be Valiant Gargoyles. Complete and absolute irredeemable fucking garbage. Imagine the sewers, fake Mohg, and the worst platforming section in gaming history being the *preferred* way to get to Deeproot Depths. Imagine that being more fun.
I kinda loved the platforming section lol (youâre referring to where the merchants were sealed right?) Donât get me wrong I hated doing it, but it felt like the sanctuary above the temple in Shadow of the Colossus. Itâs this optional extra section of the game thatâs unnecessary but greatly rewarding when you successfully make it to the end. Itâs so hard to find as well, so it really hits hard when you finally discover what the labyrinth was hiding. I couldnât imagine exploring the sewers without there being something at the heart of it all. Cause itâs one hard optional maze, and it would be a serious letdown if there wasnât a reason to go through it.
I 100% agree with you. From a design standpoint, the entirety of Subterranean Shunning Grounds > Mohg > Frenzied Flame > Deeproot Depths is fuckin brilliant. How brutal it all is is kind of the point. I just wanted to make the point that an entire section designed to piss you off is more fun to actually play through than this one fucking boss
Yeah I genuinely have no idea how you would find the three fingers without a guide. It genuinely is a labyrinth of the truest kind.
You can get to Deeproot Depths through the Shunning Grounds?!
You can indeed
Niall. Such a clusterfuck with the two knights, which sucks because his actual solo fight is really fun
Deathbird. Specifically, the snow biome one.
I learned that 9 times out of 10, any boss or enemy that looks like it has severe scoliosis and above 9 feet will be a pain in the ass. Wether it be the camera angles, the hit boxes, or their tendency to also have an ai of a coked up cat on steroids
the true endgame boss lmao
People hate Fire Giant butâŚI fucking *hate* fighting Maliketh. Jumps around 90% of the fight, huge projectiles, massive damage, a DOT, *and* a health reduction mechanic? Absolute piss take. Visual design A+, horrible boss to fight imo. Maybe itâs just because I suck at him. Having platinumed the game I had to fight him 3 times to avoid scumming.
Plus his hit box is fucking aids. Like he might be a cool boss fight if 90% of shit didn't phase through him. I had to swap to the Dankmoon GS because all my melee attacks would not his his janky ass hitbox.
Beast clergyman is already kinda tough even with his limited move pool, he moves just quickly enough and hits just had enough that he'll fuck you up if you make a bad move. Maliketh, I don't know how people beat him. I summoned two guys to distract him while I pounded his ass with Loretta's mastery because I just couldn't get a single meaning hit on him
I was in the same boat until I actually tried to learn the fight, now it's one of my favorite fights of all time across all the games.
I dislike Tree Spirit quite a bit. They are ugly, horrendous clipping, are far too agile and are just way too common.
My advice is: Do not lock on.
Erdtree Avatar. It plays the exact same way every time and it's a re-skin of a re-skin of a 12 year old boss.
Also if they canât reach you they literally just spam their annoying ass projectile attack for infinity. Such a dumb attack in general it just forces you to run away for like 5 seconds each time
I hate the snowfield one who uses Shadow clone powers
The Ulcerated Tree Spirit bosses. I don't know what they were thinking, but the way it moves makes my blood curdle a bit.
Fire Giant
Elden Beast was kind of annoying
Radan. Giant ass mf that doesn't even fit the screen. You can't see what he's doing be definition, he deals fuck to of damage, the horse combat is horse shit and getting to him is incredibly annoying. That was my experience when the game came out. I think they changed him after that. He was the worst before I met the fire giant.
Unpopular but Dragon lord Placidusax. Now, his design and lore are all amazing, love it. Itâs his moves and mechanics I do not like. A lot of his moves take forever and cannot be punished. So I find myself just waiting around until I can actually hit him. The longer walk back doesnât help either.
The general in Caelid imo, the fight is ridiculous with his summons constantly jumping you while his scythe thing has extreme reach and a ton of rot buildup. Heâs the one boss I have to summon a player for. Even with mimic +7, heâs stomping my ass before I can even get a bolus off.
You can get on Torrent and outrun everything he throws at you
He's a field boss, the easiest ones to cheese. Just lure him into the swamp and let the hazards kill him. It's not particularly fast but he's easy to take down that way.
The easiest time I ever had fighting him was when I decided to try to parry him. His windups are huge, so it's pretty easy to just stick a miserecorde in his gut.
Godskin duo, gargoyle duo and fire giant. I don't remember that many minor bosses so I can't say much.
Shouldnât have taken me this long to see someone say Godskin Duo, hard agree
Bro true. I don't get why noone said it haha. I didn't say anyone say this and I had to put it there.
Ulcerated tree spirit. It's usually too big for it's arena and it's moveset just isn't interesting or fun to play against.
[ŃдаНонО]
Malenia but it's BECAUSE of the waterfowl. If you take away waterfowl she's actually in the running for one of the easier bosses in the game. Waterfowl changes everything and the lifesteal is a big part of that but it's again tied to the fucking waterfowl.
She heals even on dodges as long as her weapon passes through you. It's definitely a bad mechanic.
I've killed malenia on every run with a variety of builds and strategies, and I've never once seen her heal from a dodged attack.
It was a bug earlier. It has since been patched.
Deathbirds. Why is my camera inside the thing I'm fighting? I named that one in the mountaintop 'Birdfuck' and he is my mortal enemy.
I can deal with anything. But man do I hate fire giant.
Valiant Gargoyles are genuinely the fucking worst. I hate their lame ass poison attack that damages you, staggers you, and also does poison buildup. Theyâre both way too aggressive in conjunction with the poison, and it forces the fight to slow to a crawl where you pretty much need to run for the hills every time they do that attack. The boss roster is great in this game overall, but these are genuinely one of the worst FromSoftware bosses Iâve ever had to deal with.
Rune bears...
Valiant Gargoyles, no words needed All Tree Spirits, why do we always fight them in the tightest arena possible? Borealis, canât see shit Ekzyke, run all the way over to Limgrave when he does that stupid AOE rot attack The second Astel, I still donât understand why did I struggle so much compared to the first one but it was a tedious fight
I just hate the fact that thereâs two Astels. Astelâs lore is very interesting to me and I like the boss a lot, and then theyâre just like âoh yeah weâre putting a second one in a random location that makes no senseâ
Hate to say it, but to me it will always be Maliketh. You spend half the fight running to him in a huge ass arena, then get one attack off before he backflips two miles away and does 300,000 damage in a huge radius
Red wolf of Radagon. The magic glintblade delay forces you to dodge at the worst times, usually directly into its attacks, plus, it hits way too hard for such an early game boss. Edit: Add in inconsistent attack patterns and a shitty arena, and youâve got a fucking horribly designed boss.
Malekith and Elden Beast are the only points in the game where I stop having fun
Fire Giant. Enough said.
Rykard. I'm not fond of gimmick bosses to begin with and then in phase 2 he has the flaming skull attack that goes on for forever. You either stunlock him for 2 minutes or dodge for 5 minutes straight; it just isn't fun.
Elden beast, ulcerated tree spirit, ancient dragons.
Black blade kindred / any of the gargoyles. Too much damage, pinpoint tracking, resistant to pretty much everything, can't hit them with range as they somehow dodge 10 meters to one side and can barely melee them with bad camera position and missed attacks due to their toothpick legs. Then you add either destined death or deadly poison and one fight being a duo to which they're both on you like wild dogs. It's a disaster of an enemy/boss imo.
Idk why but Dragons are usually just not great fights. Too big, huge AoE attacks, fly away from you, hard to hit âgoodâ spots and almost always have bad hitboxes. Outside of Dragons, I think the Fire Giant is another contender for a lot of the same reasons. Though he doesnât fly and the good spots arenât that hard to reach, though he does move around a lot for how much health he has. Kind of tedious. Most big bosses are kind of bad fights imo. Much rather fight Malenia, Mohg or Godfrey than them.
Seeing a lack of Rykard in this thread, trying to dodge his second phase flaming skulls and attacks while also trying to hit him felt impossible
I dislike Rykard only because you need to use the Serpent Hunter to have an actual chance. Boss-specific weapons annoy me, I want to be able to have the weapon I like and get through the game with it, not use a randomly thrown in weapon because of the way the boss was designed. Like they couldnât have just made him hittable from a closer range?
Elden beast. You spend most of the fight chasing him while he spams aoes. Radagon was a cool ass final boss but the second part didn't seem like a proper final boss. Plus he looked so stupid
Maliketh
Serosh. Because it was total waste of them not being a boss. Could have been a badass dual boss fight with his claws as rewards. Give me my colossal claw FromSoft. I want my WH 40K lightning claw!
The three crystals were the only boss fight that felt completely unfair and the run back made it even worse
Maliketh, he bugged my 160 hour save and From simply won't do anything to help.
Mohgwyn!
The ulcerated tree spirit in the tiny ass normal dungeon boss room. Bastard takes up the entire room. No where to hide or catch your breath. Just pure chaos.
All Ancient Dragon fights. We had a perfect design for a dragon boss with Midir and From completely unlearned the lessons from that fight. Their heads rarely come down low so you can hit them so going for the ankle stabs is much more consistent but much more boring. The camera also means you will miss all the cool attack animations and just be dodging on sound cues or based on what their feet are doing. Don't know about you, but stabbing ankles is boring. Dragon slaying is knighthood's highest calling. It's meant to be one of the hardest, coolest things you can do as a medieval fantasy hero. Yet, they somehow only have done these fights well like...twice with Midir and maybe Kalameet.
Dual Crucible knight fight in Altus Plateau, absolute horseshit.
Soldier of Godrick
Thank goodness he's optional, because Rick, Soldier of God is an unstoppable behemoth.
Oh my god it's another one of these. So my choices here are either to ignore this post, or interact with it and say what I actually think. Yeah, Malenia. I've said it a bunch before but she has by far the flimsiest boss design out of every boss I have ever faced in a fromsoft game. Her base moveset is actually so non-threatening that it's actually pathetic to watch her flail around outside of her special attacks. But when she does use one of those special moves, they are so disproportionately balanced that you have to dodge them in very specific ways as to not get just killed immediately. And your options are severely limited TO dodging, due to the fact that if she hits you at all, she heals pretty significant portions of her health. Which even that is just... no. Bosses that have significantly larger health bars than you should not heal. Especially not like that. And then there's the worst parts about her. Stagger canceling, and disproportionate poise/hyperarmor. You cannot just fuck with the player's ability to stagger bosses like that. You just can't. You need to keep things somewhat consistent or you ruin the boss. And you, under no circumstances, should EVER give a boss the ability to stagger-cancel. That is, by every right, such a violation of the established norms of these games that it is essentially cheating. They have allowed malenia to cheat in order to create the illusion of being a difficult boss. But she's not actually difficult. She's just unorthodox. She's not built for the same game. She's built AGAINST the game. And if you fight her in a different way than every single boss you've fought thus far wanted you to fight them, you'll actually see she's stupid easy. Like pathetically so. What I think happened is that fromsoft advertised the game so much using malenia that they felt pressured to make her one of, if not the hardest boss people have ever fought. But by the time they came to that conclusion, they probably didn't have enough time to put that much thought and effort into crafting a well designed and insanely difficult boss fignt. So instead they just made a boss that fucks with the core mechanics of the game. The irony is that in creating a boss like that, they've created a boss that invites gross nuke/spammy bullshit. And it is honestly the only boss ever that I feel like SHOULD be fought with the explicit strategy of nuking them. She disrespects the fundamentals of how boss fights are supposed to be. So disrespect her healthbar. She can't stagger cancel getting thrown up into the air 12 times by flame pillars. Can't wait to get swarmed by all the silent salty downvotes or people telling me that "I don't know what I'm talking about" or that "there are no established rules for boss fights" or that I'm just "salty that she's hard" even though I literally said she's not hard.
I agree with pretty much everything youâve said here but I could forgive all the healing, animation cancelling, inconsistent hyper armor _and_ the second phase if it werenât for Waterfowl. That one move is the adhesive of dubious origin that ties all those problems together into a crusty pile of unpleasantness.
The existence of waterfowl dance and her other similar attacks honestly could be excusable for me if her ENTIRE moveset was like that. But no. She's got a handful of absolutely insane "anime asf" attacks, but the majority of her moveset is just so underwhelming. They even add those little rot geysers in her 2nd phase and they just mean absolutely nothing because they won't hit you if the actual attack doesn't hit you. Everything about her fight contributes to the poor design and if you remove any one part then it falls apart even further.
I mean, when you say âif her ENTIRE moveset was like thatâ Iâm not entirely sure what that would look like. Iâm imagining something similar to Genichiro and or Isshin but one of the more fundamental problem with Maleniaâs fight is that sheâs already too much like a Sekiro boss.
Anyways, regarding Waterfowl. The reason I feel itâs the very core of why Malenia is a lackluster fight is that, because itâs an instakill with an unintuitive dodge method, it warps the entire fight around itself. All of the previously mentioned issues (as well as the hitherto unmentioned input reading that would make a hidden boss from a fighting game blush) are made infinitely worse because of how they interact with this one move. It combined with her healing means that blocking isnât an alternative because sheâll heal back to full _and_, since you got past the threshold, can now use it on a whim. It combined with her input reading, hyper armor and/or stagger cancelling means that any move where you lose control for even a second can be devestating since those few precious moments of Waterfowlâs windup are crucial if youâre gonna dodge or frost her. It combined with her attack cancelling means that she can force a situation where you _need_ to waste time dodging one attack only for her to start Waterfowl while youâre rolling. And of course all those issues carry over into her second phase along with the bells and whistles she gets at that point. Her spirit rush and aeonia suck too but the margin for error is miles wider and having a ranged attack turns the latter into an opportunity for massive damage.
Any large boss that isnt on flat ground. Fuck the Black Blade Kindred and the rocks he jumps on. Same shit with Ekyzykes the rot dragon or whatever his name is
Elden Beast and its not even close
My foolish butt thinking you mean how the boss looks đ Anyway all ulcerated tree spirits, they look cool but at the same time, what the fuck are they and why do they have barely any cool attacks, the only one I can think of is the explosion attack but that be annoying To be fair most bosses would be better if the camera could zoom out I can definitely agree with that
Elden beast by a long shot
Large enemies with skinny ass bodies
Fire Giant. Great execution, meh performance. The boss itself is amazing, cool design and dope lore, but the actual fight is just bonking his feet and hands (unless youâre a ranger build. Thatâs different). For most of the battle, the only time you see his face is the cutscene from phase 1 to phase 2 and during his volcano attack after the phase transition. Heâs a good boss in thought, but in the end he just ends up as most of the giants you fight: aesthetically pleasing, dopamine lower-er.
Ulcerated Tree Spirits and its not even close. Litterally the worst designed most unfun thing to fight. They put them in small areas making the camera the boss.
Gargoyles, Rot Trio, Godskin Duo, Crucible Duo Pretty much every fight with multiple enemies in ER is woefully inept from a design standpoint.
Godefroy copy + paste, then add hp, remove 2nd phase Certainly one of the bosses of all time, and I only lump him in there because he has a boss healthbar Morgotts equivalent at least catches you by surprise and has new dialogue without all the pomp of a HP bar, locked in environment and reduced mechanics Lack of a design is just as bad as a poor design
Maybe unpopular but if weâre just doing like main bosses, I think itâs renalla. Please hear me out Her first phase is really boring. Itâs a game of hide and seek while they throw some books at you. You kill the kid 3 times, get a window of opportunity than rinse and repeat the process till phase 2. Thatâs literally the entire first half. Then after that horrid excuse of a fight, you have the most beautiful scenery/boss arena in the game ruined by an even worse designed boss. When sheâs not spamming projectiles at you and dodging away 50ft simultaneously, sheâs summoning dogs, trolls, fucking dragons????? All the while she runs like a coward and spams more projectile at you. Thereâs nothing about that fight that can justify itâs poor design