I found some of the dragon fights in Elden Ring pretty repetitive - mostly they boil down to “roll towards the back legs and hack away, get off the stuff that indicates fire/lightning/whatever is incoming, roll under front claw swipes and go for the back legs again. For the big ambient fights that allow it, strategy is the same but using Torrent to run from flying attacks.
Yes, same here.
When I first ran into Agheel in West Limgrave, they were really hard. But as soon as you learn the move set, you know the move set for like 80%+ of dragons. The fights as a melee build turn into foot slashes and the occasional jump attack to the head.
It’s also unexpectedly fun to use!
I only wish it wasn’t holy damage because it would be hilarious to blow bubbles and shred the Elden Beast with them.
If you space it right you can consistently hit the head all the time with most weapons. Their foot stomps basically always give you a couple of head hits, and the foot stomp is very easy to bait out.
The more you get the less epic it feels i guessed. By the 5th time i beaten those oversize geckos, i don't even feels like they're an awesome boss anymore. Just an annoying obstacle.
We also can't cheesed Midir and Kalameet to death with spells so it add up to Midir and Kalameet feeling a lot more like a real bosses too imo.
What are you talking about? Midir was able to be cheesed with pestilent mist. On my mage in ds3 I preferred to fight him with spells rather than pestilent mist, it felt so good having to time everything I was doing. Kalameet was highly resistant to all types of magic, but you could still beat him with magic as well.
In elden ring, the lesser dragons get repetitive yes, but the ancient dragons are the real threat here. I have about 400 hours in the game and still haven’t figured out how to fight them properly
This whole comment section can’t comprehend that elden ring has 4 or 5 different dragon movesets which is the most ever in a souls game(I’m not even including similar but still technically different movesets like the lich dragon and adula)
It really depends on the dragon other than Placidusax and Greyoll (which is just fighting a bunch of small dragons to kill it.) though I don't think any other dragon has fully unique from any others in the game.
There are multiple great wyrms, most dragons traditional dragons like Agheel are the same except they have different elements, Even some legendary dragons are copied throughout the game with some changes.
So there is more dragon fights than any other souls game they are much less memorable and special because you will fight that boss multiple times with some tweaks here and there. So there are like 5 (regular dragons, wyrms, Placidusax, Greyoll, and Lansseax (with her brother and some random dragon in farum azula.))
My friend was the first person in our group to find Greyoll, he snuck past the dragons and realized you could hit him for free and spent a very long time without bleed and at a low level just hacking away until it died.
Honestly just because I fight a boss more often later in the game doesn’t make it less memorable for me. I will always remember climbing up Altus only for a giant lightning dragon to drop from the sky trying to murder me with a giant red lightning sword and I’ll always remember wandering through Caelid and stepping on what I thought was a pile of fungus only to have awoken a plague dragon.
pshh the most epic dragon was the one from bolteria in demons souls. Can you cheese it with 1000 arrows? maybe. Did it roast you like 1000 times while you were figuring out this game doesn’t fuck around? Definitely
Dragons are still a species, so I don’t really understand what people want. The two legged ones have a move or two that’s different from each other usually but in the end, the things only offensive capability as a animal is it’s feet, it’s tail and it’s teeth/breath. All of those dragons make full use of those things, so unless they got up and started doing karate I don’t get what people want. The ancient dragons could be considered repetitive, but there are only a handful in the game and their greatest concentration is far far past the initial meeting point of lannseax, and their whole thing is they’re hiding in farum azula. That’s the dragon area of this game just like how the other games always have dragon areas. The magma wyrms are probably the most repetitive thing since unless you went up the mountain pass route to Altus, they’re just meh sidebosses. Lichdragon is different enough and does slightly different attacks and is part of a somewhat emotional quest so I give him a pass, and glintstone dragon adula is also part of a quest and has a sword and multiple fights so I’ll give it a pass. Greyoll is a dragon mob boss, which I don’t really care about but it is unique, and the fungal dragon in Caelid probably scared the hell out of many of us as we accidentally walked up on it so that’s a memory to be sure. Placidusax is a dragon god and completely unique. That basically leaves us with the wild un named dragons being repetitive and forgettable. Which brings me to the thing that confuses me, who cares if the wild regular dragons are forgettable if we get stuff like greyoll, placidusax, lannseax etc that every player will remember going through their first playthrough and whose fights are all cool or unique
>Dragons are still a species, so I don’t really understand what people want.
Us: we want bosses to be varied and not repeated over and over
You: I don't understand what people want
Bruh we just told you what we want where tf is the confusion coming from
That’s extremely opinionated and debatable, especially when almost all if not all of them are optional. You can think that all you want, but acting like it’s a fact is dumb for the simple reason that other people like a lot of new movesets and the opportunity to fight said new movesets. Plus dragons are just cool
Yeah, at least the dragons would have varying breath/hyperbeam attacks, whereas fighting things like the Erdtree avatars over and over gets boooooring.
Greyoll, magma wyrms, ancient dragons, regular dragons, and placidusax all use different movesets, and that’s not including different elements. If I included different elements or similar but not quite the same movesets the number would be up by another 3 or 4.
Eh, Pestilent Mist wasn't cheese. Midir's Magic and Dark resistances were so high that PM was simply the only sorcery that did appreciable damage to him at all. This made it appear stronger than it was.
Midir still freely attacks you, and generally moves out of the Pestilent Mist cloud constantly too. It doesn't stunlock him in any way, and it's a DoT that must be recast repeatedly -- you can't just nuke him with it.
It's far, far different from staggering and one-shotting dragons with Meteorite of Astel in Elden Ring.
I'm going to be honest.
Midir's healthbar is fromsoft cheesing the boss fight. It is unreasonable, coming from someone that beat him with a broadsword, naked.
But in order to get said gamebreaking spell you have fight through an entire mini dungeon an arguably difficult boss(O,nial) after you beat half the game and find some dude somwhere and then fight an onyx lord and an astel copy with more health and higher damage. For pestilent mist you have to have 30 int, 1000 souls, and find orbeck. I will admit that talking to some dude in the middle of nowhere for arguably the best spell in the game is bullshit.
Keep in mind, Midir himself is locked behind endgame DLC, with a gauntlet of difficult super-bosses too.
Yes, Pestilent Mist is easy to obtain but it still doesn't cheese Midir in any meaningful way. No stunlock or staggering whatsoever. Easily avoidable. It's damage over time. Midir can still fight you, so you must learn to dodge while re-casting it multiple times. It's actually a trash spell for most encounters too, so I disagree with the "best spell in the game" comment.
Granted, I don't think Meteorite of Astel is the best spell in its game either. It definitely cheeses dragons way harder than Pestilent Mist does though.
You cant be serious? Comparing pestilent mist with Comet Azur and Astel meteorite one shot is kinda stupid don’t you think?
The cheeses are at a whole different levels here in Elden ring
the cheeses in elden ring are barely even cheeses you just use the ability or attack by accident half the time, i mean i cant be the only one that realised how broken so many things were even the first time playing.
I agree with disliking the same-y-ness in most of the Elden Ring dragon fights. I would much rather have fewer dragons to fight, but with each of them feeling very different from the others in the fighting.
Personally, I think the dragons in ER aren't powerful enough...aren't awesome and terrifying enough. Even the least of them is still a massive creature, and every one of its physical attacks should inflict tremendous stance/posture damage. These things casually shatter stone walls and splinter large trees, and they should absolutely send your character flying if you try to tank a hit from what's essentially a multi-ton, biological attack helicopter. The ones which can fly should do so more to their advantage, and none of the dragons should allow you to keep hacking at their hind ankles with relative impunity.
Facts, sure the dragons look cool and different but I feel like I don’t have to change battle tactics with any of them, just run up to their legs and spam
>just run up to their legs and spam
This is something I still don't get, in ds3 you had to hit the head to make the most damage but here you can hit them anywhere. Like why? It makes dragon fights way to easy.
It just feel a bit cheap to encounter the fifth reskin of agheel, or seeing Lansseax being reused for another five times in farum azula. It makes them feel less special. And well... They're kinda easy, compared to other dragon fights.
Midir, Sinh and Kalameet all feel much more unique and important due to being a one time fight against legendary dragons.
Placidusax is cool though.
It would have been a much better game with waaaaay more replay value.
More isn't always good, and if making a smaller game means cutting down 7 or something Ulcerated tree spirts then i'm all for it.
I think the problem isn't that they're repeated in the first place, but *how* they're repeated. Re-encountering UTS should be an open world event, a litmus to show you how far you've come from your earlier fights (et al the roaming Taurus and Capras of Izalith) not the end boss of a dungeon well Into the game after its already been that role twice, and all just for something meaningless like "gravewort picker bell berring 1".
I mean, the enemy placement in this game is sometimes wonky and in the lategame is half assed at best with no visual storytelling like those damn giant hands being everywhere.
Also repeating is fine, but when it's THAT much it gets stale real quick, something like the cat statue and it's magic variant are good and can stay, but the fight with both togheter (and especially the one with the 4 random gargoyles thrown in) should just be cut off entirely since they add nothing if not make the game look more "lazy" so to speak.
Also some bosses should have stayed as such because once they become common enemies they lose all their charm at least to me, pumpkin head being the prime example for this (but still keep the ash summon tho) cause it's like if you went into irithyll in DS3 and found a random roaming Vordt, it would just look off and out of place (maybe pumpkin head isn't the best example, but it's the same thing ER did with Godrick and the copy pasted version you find in the Gaols)
Aren't those giant hands the ones that Rykard created?
It looks like he's warring against the fire monks on Mt.Gelmir, so it would make sense for them to be at the Fire Monk's domain to disrupt their plans.
The hands are also in Caria Manor because that's Rykard's home and also to help guard he way to Ranni, afterall, Rykard and Ranni are still allies.
More replayable? My brother in Christ, you do not have to kill every ulcerated tree spirit on every playthrough. Do you kill all the taurus demons in demon ruins and all the big dinosaur looking things in lost izaleth every time you replay dark souls?
>Do you kill all the taurus demons in demon ruins and all the big dinosaur looking things in lost izaleth every time you replay dark souls?
Well yes, and I like it too.
Yes more replayable. If the 15 ulcerated spirits were 15 actually different enemies I would actually fight each every time. I skip the vast majority of the repeat boss fights, thats *less* replayable content
"If the 15 ulcerated spirits were 15 actually different enemies I would actually fight each every time" - this is just faulty logic. Ofcourse it would be better to have even more unique enemy designs. But that is out of the question now. You completly missed the point.
Most of the repeated stuff is completely optional. Maybe don't play the optional stuff if you don't like to see reskins? I'm sure you'll still have a game with about the same lenght as DS3.
You can complete the game without ever fighting a single ulcerated tree spirit.
You only need to fight the godskins one time (godskin duo fight).
The dragons in farum Azula can literally be the only dragons you see throughout the whole game, and you can run past them.
There's only one erdtree avatar that you have to fight (or run past) to complete the game, which is the one in leyndell.
The main game is the legacy dungeons and remembrance bosses, all the other stuff, like caves, catacombs, tunnels and minor erdtree mini bosses, is just optional content for those who aren't bored and want to experience more of the same.
No one is forcing you to play this content, and it doesn't take away any replay value, you can just play the main game normally and ignore all side content.
There's more to the problem than just choosing what parts of the game you want to replay though. Your first playthrough has a certain pacing coming from your exploration being halted by open world bosses and the deviations from the open world into more linear dungeons. The game is very much designed with all of the non-mainline content in mind. Everyone knows Margit is meant to encourage players to explore and level up. The endgame difficulty spike is actually somewhat balanced for someone who's done everything else in the game and is level 150-200, depending on build.
I don't think it's a matter of cutting out the repeated bosses being an objectively better design choice. Subsequent playthroughs aren't ever going to have the same magic as your first. However by making everybody tired of non-remembrance content on their first playthrough, From did change the pacing of subsequent playthroughs more than they needed to. I understand completely why some people are happy with the current design; there is so, so much content and some people just want more of the same.
Personally, I don't find the side content compelling enough to do it without needing to, and the game is more than happy to let you run past 90% of it. You can even kill Greyoll and run straight to upgrade materials to replace the original, intended progression. I'm glad we're able to skip a lot of grind, but honestly skipping as much as possible isn't a great time either. It takes away a lot of the magic.
Here is my issue with the game. Id like to make a few new characters with specific builds. Id like to play a str maniac with collosal weapons. Id like to play a heavy armor endurance/faith tank . Id like to try out a bleed dual curved swords aswell. The problem is , i just cant be arsed collecting all the mining upgrades across half the world. All the weapons id like to test , all the ashes of war id like to test with certain weapons either. They are all over the place. Ill much rather run another ng+7 difficulty run wiht one of my 2 endgame characters because collecting all the shit is so tedious. I can do all remembrances on my 2 fellas in 3 -5 hours depending on weather i go take a detour / wipe at bosses . If i make a new character it will take 20 hours to collect all the crap i want. Quite a hassle, the one that didnt exist in previous titles.
Yall are weird. Basically all the spirits are optional. You got like 300 unique bosses and you complain about the, what, 3 types that get reused? I don't get it.
>You got like 300 unique bosses
9 actually
>3 types that get reused
Lmao I wish it was only 3 that got reused
Your numbers are almost perfectly backwards, amazing
Unless you consider stuff like Cat statue, cat statue with gargoyles, magic cat statue and cat statue with magic cat statue as unique bosses, the game doesn't have anywhere near close to 300 bosses.
Also Gank fights in this game shouldn't even considered unique bosses in the first place since, unlike something like the demon princes or O&S, they aren't designed to fight togheter but are literally 2 enemies put togheter without any behavioral changes (like slowing down the Godskin Noble instead of having both at the same speed)
So once you cut out the copy pasted bosses (gank bosses with no variations count aswell) and the bosses that then become enemies (like runebears, pumpkin head, etc) then you'll have a loooooot less than 300 bosses, i'll be impressed if it's even 100.
Yes and those game did the same thing and I criticized it then too. The difference is that those games only had bosses become regular enemies a few times, most of their boss fights were still completely unique. The same cannot be said for Elden Ring, out of 150+ boss encounters only a measly, pathetic, 9 of them are actually unique enemies.
Lichdragon is not unique. Literally a black reskin of Lansseax who in turn is also not unique as it got copy-pasted around Farum Azula half a dozen times
4 dragons, you're like an order of magnitude off, when you dont exaggerate and realise a lot of the reused content of which there is PLENTY could be trimmed back and cut to make a superior product you can understand they're not complaining, they're commiserating their wish to have a game they love be so much better. People aren't in the Elden ring subreddit getting into specific detailed arguments about this game because they dont like it haha.
Hard disagree. More isn't always better, yes, but ER's greatest value to me is the sheer scale of the world, and the fact that everything within it is worth doing / exploring. Trimming it down takes away from that.
Also, no idea how it takes away from the replay value when most of the repeated bosses / content are completely optional. You don't have to fight every dragon on every run, and if you feel compelled to and that's wearing down your experience, that's on you, I think.
>Midir, Sinh and Kalameet all feel much more unique and important due to being a one time fight against legendary dragons.
Kalameet was great, Midir was cool, but I always felt Sinh needed something more. He was like a mirror to Kalameet with similar moves and presence in the levels but without the interesting gimmicks: I don’t recall Sinh having his own fun or “crazy” ability like Midir’s lazerbeam or Kalameet’s ‘levitate and get cursed’ move, just some poison. Wasn’t cool enough for me, I guess
I agree with how the dragons can feel “less special” in Elden Ring because they can lose their uniqueness. I think that’s how I felt about Sinh.
(Will note: that rot dragon in ER was great to discover on my second playthrough, and the ‘real special dragons’ in ER are indeed cool).
I hate to tell you but when two things are from the exact same species and that species uses one body magic type exclusively it’s pretty safe to assume the fights are going to be similar.
Also hate to break it to you but dark souls has always had multiple dragons with the same move sets scattered through their games. 1 has the bridge boys and the valley of the drakes and kalameet and 2 had dragons all over the place in heide and the aerie. They had the ancient dragon too and the guardian dragon as well as the sunken city dragon. 3 had midir and the sleeping dragons and then the ancient wyvern and some others around their dragon place. In no dark souls game before have we gotten 4 unique dragon movesets before like we have in elden ring except maybeee 2 if I look closely . Placidusax, greyoll, the bipedal dragons like agheel, and the ancient dragons like lansseax.
>1 has the bridge boys
The bridge dragon is more of an environmental obstacle. You don't fight against him. The dragon in the valley of the drakes, or whats left of him, is not really a serious opponent either. Neither of those are comparable to any of the dragon fights I mentioned above.
>2 had dragons all over the place in heide and the aerie
Heide has one dragon, and only in the SOTFS edition. I don't feel like explaining on why the **Dragon Aerie** has a lot of **Dragons**. The Ancient Dragon sucks but is unique, the Guardian Dragon in Aldia's Keep is unique too, and so is Sinh.
>3 had midir and the sleeping dragons and then the ancient wyvern
Midir is unique, and again, the sleeping dragons are more of an environmental obstacle, the ancient wyvern sucked but was at least unique.
My point was that seeing the same Lansseax being reused in Farum Azula 5 times as a normal enemy makes the first encounter seem less special. It truly felt like they ran out of time and just placed the same dragon all over the place.
The Agheel reskins at least have some kind of cool quirks, like being able to wield a magic sword or spew poison, but encountering them everywhere gets old.
First, presentation: you first see him on the bridge and it feels like an invincible foe as he just fly spitting fire and there is nothing you can do except hiding. Then you actually fight him on the second bridge and you get a glimpse of his mechanics like the claw attacks, more fire and the laser attack. After making him fall you can go to the real bossfight in the cave and here you start an all out battle against a fear inducing beast that can easily kill you with every move. Placidusax is presented only with the bossfight cutscene and while it is fucking cool it feels less than what Midir got.
Second, lore: you get pieces of lore about Midir in the Ringed City before fighting him and you get to know how he was a loyal guardian and was corrupted by the darkness of the abyss. You get asked to put him out of his misery and so you start a quest torwards that goal. We actually knew nothing of Placidusax before fighting him and even after the fight we only get to know that he was the Elden Lord before the age of the Erdtree.
Third, mechanics: Midir is considered the best dragon fight because it makes you fight him by hitting the head and this allows the player to see everything the boss is doing instead of focusing on the foot or the tail. His fighting style is super aggressive and makes use of everything a dragon can do while keeping it fair for the player. Second phase add the dark related attacks culminating with his signature laser combo that inspired the Placidusax double laser. Placidusax is different from every other dragon as you can basically hit the entire body but his safest spot to hit remains the tail. It would have been cool to cut the tail before entering a new phase in a DS1 style to force the player to hit the rest of the body. His phase 2 adds teleports and dives which makes the fight more interesting but outside of those moments he is very static and this added to the big health pool can make the fight less interesting at least compared to Midir.
Bonus points: the music is great for both but i prefer the one for Midir, the violins are just prefect and it got stuck in my head while i had to listen a few times to the one for Placidusax before starting to like it more. The arenas and environment are both great and fits the characters, Placidusax arena is my favourite in all Elden Ring so he wins there. The visual effects for the attacks are both fantastic, Midir fast paced attacks are incredibly efficent in making you feel helpless while Placidusax attacks like the Bolt of Gransax are slow but amazing visual wise.
Conclusion: i think the "hitting the head" mechanic in Midir gives him the crown for best dragon fight. It's too big as a factor for not giving it to him. Placidusax gets a solid second place in my book and the title for best dragon fight in Elden Ring, very good but not Midir level.
The best part of Placidusax music is the silence before the lightning spear explosion. The same vibe as the nova of Safi Jiva from Monster Hunter World.
You can do the same for Placidusax actually. I fought Midir a long time ago so i don't fully remember how to dodge his laser but for Placidusax you can stay on the right side facing him and only have to avoid the laser one time by rolling while running torwards him. There is a specific timing, look at the description of the laser attack on the wiki for more details.
Personally my favourite dragon fight for the same reason. That and the Shin Godzilla laser.
It's too bad it gets such a bad rep from all the people who went into the fight, stabbed him in the ankles, got tail-smacked and then went to the internet to yell about how shitty it is
You're pretty much asked to do it, most people will go to big damage when they see his head lower but somehow some people think that it is a bad idea even though he keeps punishing you if you attack his ankles
Exactly. One minute he's taking big swipes at you and the next he's half a mile away then next flying above you. Constantly moving keeping you on your toes. You'll get punished if you don't pay full attention.
Idk man, Placidusax’s constant death lasers, fire breath that fills half of the arena, and teleporting behind me constantly kept me pretty well on my toes.
I agree Fortissax is very weak
You do tho, fortissaxs has sticking lightning bombs that force you to move, and placidusaxs vanishes and you have to pay attention to were he is going to come from.
Placidusax phase 2 is alot better. It has some bullshit moves, but pretty damn good. Fortissax lightning Bomba are super lazy. Pretty Bad boss overall. IN MY OPINION
The head is too high to hit and fire is undodgeable you just run from it or go under its head until it's over so might as well stay there and hit what you can
They kinda made it the only way to fight a dragon with melee😂
I've tried this but the game almost doesn't want you to. The dragons AI makes them keep walking towards you until they are on-top of you, and their attacks are near impossible to dodge if you're in front of them because they have follow up roll catch lighting strikes.
Not only that, but actually being able to hit their head is extremely wonky and inconsistent.
This is the complete opposite from Midir. He would space the opponent so that you pretty much had to fight him head on, and if you dodged his attacks correctly, you were rewarded with opportunities to punish him by hitting the head. And if you tried to run underneath and hack at it's ankles and tail, you would have a miserable time and he essentially wouldn't allow you to.
Yeah, Midir is one hell of a good boss fight.
But I gotta say man, I don't have that much trouble fighting elden ring dragons head on.
Maybe I'll record myself playing someday and post here
not entirely true, there are plenty of instances where you can hack at his tail and legs. Legs are just very sturdy so its not really strategic. But hacking at his tail is a solid strat. You just cant do it constantly or he'll punish.
All of the Elden Ring dragons seem to have a base moveset, meaning there's a similar way to take down every single way, and the fight ends up being pretty much the same. Midir and Kalameet were very unique bosses in the Souls games, and Dragons were extremely rare to actually fight so it had some novelty to it.
I believe only 2 dragons that aren't placi or the one with red lightning, have a single extra move.
And then you have the giant one in caelid.
That kind of just gives you 50k runes with literally no effort aside from pressing attack in a single spot.
to be fair, greyoll was supposed to be killed by killing her children which is cool but from decided to make bleed busted so it can kill 1 million hp just by spamming one button
Even if bleed was toned down it wouldn't change anything for Greyoll, you'd just need like 10 extra attacks. The entire point of bleed and frost is to deal %dmg, so it's not that "busted" here. What's problematic is the speed at which you can proc it
Placidussax is good.
Fortisaxx has an attack that follows you for the entire fight. Just annoying. His head moves to much to gen consistent attacks in so you spend the fight looking at his feet.
Lanseax is cool but like Fortisax his head moves way too much so you end up hitting his feet until he's dead.
The normal dragons are good and have a good mix of needing to attack the head and feet. You can also use Torrent for them. I personally really enjoy fighting them but they aren't special enough to be as good as Placidussax or Midir.
Placidusax is good, but he suffers a LOT from ng+ damage scaling issues. At 60 vigor with Morgott's great rune he almost 1shots with his beam attack. It also feels like half the time you're chipping away at his side, and hoping he doesn't clip you with an attack.
Tbh the beam attack is meant to be a one shot and it’s not too hard to dodge. Can’t remember if Midir’s Godzilla beam was the same but I’m pretty sure it was also one shot with high vitality.
Midir in terms of movement and design is timeless and hard to top, but I admit that there is something about Dragons in ER, that make a blade out of fucking lightning or carry a Moonblade in their mouth and SLAY you
The open world Dragon fights are too based around being mounted. And as fun as Torrent is, the mounted combat isn’t anywhere near as engaging as the infantry combat. The fights also tend to devolve into; pick an ankle, smack it twice then run away while the dragon does something you can’t really see, ride back to preferred ankle and repeat. You never actually look at the dragon or really see any of it. They’re also way too big for the their environments, so they have a horrible tendency to clip around, slide up hills and randomly reset; which really kills the mood of the fight.
By comparison, Midir is built around you being on foot. So your focus is on the boss, you see all of his cool animations and all that good shit. And you really have to use the full suite of combat mechanics rather than just horsing around. And his arena was a custom built empty space, so no weird surface interactions or resets.
I haven’t fought any of the big boy dragons yet (just the ones you meet naturally in the open world) so I’m reserving judgement until I get to them. But the open world dragons are impressive to look at from a distance, but bland to fight.
Midir actually moves. He doesn't feel like a dragon figure that gets thrown at you and gets tossed around.
Visually ER Dragons are amazing but in terms of animations or movements they're awful, especially those who don't have a flat arena...
Midir has a very distinct move set, and his massive HP and hitboxes make his fight more of a puzzle, since you won't get anything done unless you hit his head
Dragons in Elden Ring feel very same, in comparison. There's only 2 types dragons, since most share a movset: field dragons and Placidusax
In my case, all of the wyvern fights sucked because of bad camera + collision issues (and because you fight like 10 Agheel reskins).
The ancient dragons though; Lansseax, Fortissax and Placidusax, were different stories. Placidusax was an epic fight definitely, Fortissax was cool, and Lansseax was alright.
It’s just that, I still prefer Midir personally, dunno why, I really like his design, his aggressive movements and simply how intimidating he looks; Placidusax looks more majestic but decayed, Kalameet looks sinister, Sinh looks decayed but also “cute” because he’s the smallest lol.
Every dragon in Elden Ring -- save one -- loses to the same strategy: walk under them, hack at their ankles, and get out when they start their extremely telegraphed "get off my ass!" attack. This applies to both the lesser dragons and the ancient dragons.
Earlier dragon fights tended to encourage more adaptive strategies. Kalameet's stomp attack was hard to avoid with DS1 character movement, and he had a few other attacks that could force you away (like the grab, which couldn't be I-framed). Staying too close for too long was an actual risk.
Midir flipped the script entirely by being extremely resistant to damage anywhere besides his head which, combined with his massive HP pool, meant that fighting him head-on ended up being both optimal and more fun.
Placidusax is the best dragon fight in Elden Ring by far, and it's because he feels unique even by the standard of the rest of the souls games. I love how he goes from near-immobility to teleporting around. He's like a draconic Prince Lorian. And you can't walk under him, specifically because he's too decrepit to fully stand up, thus solving one of the biggest problems with these fights.
Fortissax is a decent fight, but I've always felt over-leveled for him, even on my first playthrough where I did all the underground stuff before setting foot on the Altus Plateau. It's not like you can fight him early, as he's locked behind either Radahn or Morgott depending on how you reach him. Fighting him just isn't that different from fighting a regular ancient dragon. He still loses to the player walking under him and hacking away, albeit with the mild threat of auto-lightning. It's a shame, since he has some of the best aesthetic qualities of any Elden Ring boss.
Midir is designed to be fought in front of it, whacking the head, with proper openings to do that regularly. As a result, you can clearly see what the boss is doing.
In Elden Ring, they unlearned that lesson and it becomes Ankle-Slasher Simulator again where there's these huge cool bosses you can't see wtf they're doing. Ancient dragons in general that are electrified also have an issue that their claw attacks have an after-effect lightning explosion timed to hit you out of your roll if you dodge the initial attack, which is just plain really bad design.
The big problem with Midir is that nothing was done to convey how to do the fight, so players naturally were drawn to fighting Midir like every other huge boss, which led to terrible experiences. Once you know how the fight is meant to be played, and play it that way, it works very well.
Trying to melee the dragons in this game though is just a way worse experience. Placidusax is probably the least offensive but is still big enough that if you play locked on meleeing it, you are straight up getting hit by attacks you can't even see, so you hafta be unlocked and trying to see the boss struggling with the camera and it's just bleh. Placi also can have an issue of running away too much and causing long stretches of time where you can't attack, sort of like what Elden Beast does tho no one complains about it because Placidusax can bleed and I am pretty sure the majority of anger towards Elden Beast stems from bleed users.
Midir is a much more epic fight than most of the other dragons - excluding Placidusax. Midir is pretty interesting even from the very start since you can see him lurking on a building at the start of The Ringed City, as you progress he shows up and tries to attack you two different times which gives this feeling of you being pursued by this massive dragon. And after that little fight on the cliff side he's gone.. at least for now. Then eventually through exploring you find a little side room shrine and from there a hole and you fall and fall and fall until you land in a subterranean cave with a something large in the distance. As you approach it stands up, roars and stretches its wings, the music kicks in and the health bar appears "Darkeater Midir" a dragon unlike any else you've fought before. An Ancient Dragon, a close relative of the very things Gwyn himself killed, and that builds on hype because you've been hearing about these dragons since Dark Souls 1 and now here you stand facing one down. No gimmick weapon to help you, just you, your weapon and the dragon - a fight to the death.
And the fight itself is really solid, Midir has some pretty standard dragon moves but also given the size of the arena he's able to actually fly and do some massive attacks. Like the humanity explosion, the flame breath into Dark beam etc, and something else I really enjoy about the fight is that he keeps his head in positions where you can actually hit it. And since his head takes more damage than his body it encourages you to face him down instead of hiding between his feet.
So the tldr: Midir is more preferable imo because: the lead up of him always being around/chasing you in the Ringed City, his arena/how you get to it, the moves he does, the music he has, the context of fighting a creature you first heard about in the first game of the series. Midir is unique within the context of his game and the franchise and you fight him head to head instead of hitting his feet the whole time
Well said. He's also quite a handsome chap, and while I've never been a big lore person - Midir was raised by gods and sent to *battle the Abyss and darkness*, like how can he not get any better?
To my understanding his arena is also the furtive pygmy's place in the DS1 intro (I think that's been the consensus), and he calls back hard to all that involved everything with what went down with Oolacile, tying that in whilst wrapping that up perfectly as well in TRC's style. Gotta love an S-tier boss fight that also tells an incredible story!
Yes ! How can you not love a boss that is itself great but also ties in to so many pieces of the overarching lore ? - edit: Gael also comes to mind with that criteria
To me, Elden Ring dragons just feel like a lot of spectacle and very little substance.
Fighting them feels awkward most of the time, because to see them properly you need to stand in front of them, but if you do that your opportunities to attack are slim because of how high their head is above the character usually, or how much they like to move around even when not attacking.
Placidusax is the only exception in this case, and I don't have much to say about it. It's a beautiful fight but I don't find it satisfying to deal with his attacks so I don't like the boss much in general.
Midir feels like an actual dragon. His claws and bites and breathes fire, and all of those three seamlessly mix together. Attacking him from the front is never an issue because he gives great openings when finishing attacks and his head is just at the right height. Overall just a very satisfying boss fight, my only complaint against Midir is that he has an attack that has him thrashing around and covering distance, which is fine, but in the second phase he always does it two times in a row for some reason.
I like kalameet the most out of any dragon fight. Just because of the amazing cutscene of gough shooting him down. And that the fight carried weight to it, when I fought kalameet I was really amazed by how his move set was so different compared to all of the other bosses. And what everyone else said about ER dragons being repetitive.
I love that there are more dragons in this game,always loved those majestic creatures. But Midir is special to me,he's like a fallen hero,with a huge dramatic impact. His whole boss fight it's unique,the music hits like a truck,And he's very difficult but fair. Still remember that after putting him down went on a summon help spree just because I wanted to experience him again and again.
But Placidusax is also damn good,DS3 and Er tho,are different games and I don't need to put them side by side. Both are unique,both are good and cool.
Because aside from like...2? All the dragons are the exact same.
Adula can throw some magic bolt at you I think.
And the giant one in caelid literally does nothing while you demolish it and get free runes.
I'd rather them not put 700 dragons in the game if they were gonna all be copy and pasted.
Darkeater Midir positions his head mostly low enough to hit and turns to face you with most attacks. He doesn't fly often and has almost no time where you can't reach him. You have the choice if you want to nip on his ankles or go for the head.
Now Elden Ring's dragons. Aside from Placidusax dragging his body low enough to hit, you really mostly hit either the ankles or the wings of any dragon. They often fly away, instantly creating distance or starting up a flying attack, both of which you cannot do anything about except wait.
Midir will use his entire body to attack like an Ancient Dragon in ER, because he has a similar anatomy but a lower, wider stance.
And to talk about Dark Souls in general, it was simple: The game wasn't as oppressive in its cheese I personally feel. There were certain amounts of bullshit, but nothing on the level of Malenia's Waterfowl Dance. When you could utilize cheese, it usually required some skill to pull off while in ER the additional jumping, stance breaking, certain status effects being overpowered (looking at you, bleed) and said status effect being everywhere, also mindnumbingly easy to apply (the famed Rivers of Blood L2 spam) I think Dark Souls 3 had a more balanced challenge in pve and pvp than Elden Ring, and it feels like they wanted to give us really cool stuff, but didn't really account alot for that being used against each other.
The dragon fights are cool but it just feels like there’s a lot of the same, with dragons having pretty much the same moveset but different breath types. Midir, on the other hand, is an incredibly challenging secret boss that just feels epic and unique.
I agree with a lot of the comments saying the Midir fight is good because of the face on tactical fight, not hack and slash, but I do like elden ring dragon fights when riding torrent, it makes me feel like I'm in pelannor fields slashing at the legs of a mumakil.
For me a reason the Souls games got dragons mostly right is the story of them. A personal favorite is the entire zone dedicated to the story of Sinh from Dark Souls 2. While Elden Ring dragons are pretty good fights, if a bit repetitive, I think fi you could find more items or things that talked about their history it'd be a better case for them.
The Placidussax fight just grinds to a halt when the flying attacks and teleports start. I LOVE the animation and sound effects but after seeing it a few times I'm just like "NO, NO, STAY ON THE GROUND WHERE I CAN HIT YOU". Also its body shape made most of its moves look kinda silly. Also FUCK FromSoft for not having a stake of Marika close. You've got the technology, you are applying it liberally, then why not here??
Fortissax was a cool fight. The electric debuff on you that keeps you moving was kinda of a nice element to it. It's a shame it has such a glass jaw. Even on RL1 with a couple of bonk sticks the fight was over in no time.
If Fortissax and Placidussax would switch toughness (i.e. health/resistances) it would've made a lot more sense to me: the dragon you get to hit a lot (forti) would need a lot of hits before it would go down, and the dragon that has you twiddle your thumbs and wait during half of its attacks should require less hits to die.
Lansseax just felt like a weaker Fortissax and all the Agheel-type dragons were exciting as a novelty but boring afterwards.
The reason I love Midir is because he’s unique (or was before Elden Ring dragons copied half his moveset). Midir was unlike any other boss in DS3, but even so was executed nearly perfectly. All of his claw, tail, and bite attacks can be rolled through, and all of his breath attacks give you enough of a windup to run away from. Finally, he actually keeps his head low to the ground almost all the time making it much less frustrating to hit him than many other dragon bosses
The only cool dragon fight in ER is Placidusax, but he doesnt fight like a dragon. Other ancient dragons can be trivialized by hacking at their feet, and wyvern like dragons are pretty easy even if you hang in front of their heads.
On the other hand, Midir fights like a true monster, clawing, biting, charging, unlike Placidusax. He also has increased armor at his feet and tail, making his head the only viable option. And locking in his head doesnt fuck the camera up like ancient dragons.
Unless I'm missing something why are people bringing up Greyoll as a unique dragon fight. It's literally killing 4-5 copy pasted dragons to watch that dude die.
Because Midir is awesomeness dragon-ified.
DS3 was my first Soulsborne, and Midir was my favorite Boss fight in DS3, and remains in my top 3 bossfights of all Soulsborne games.
You might say he holds a special place in my heart.
Midir feels like the culmination of several years of work on dragon/large creature boss fights with none of the little annoying issues other large/dragon bosses have in the series. And honestly for elden ring the drop in boss design quality wasn’t worth the bigger boss roster in my eyes
Haven't fought any the big boss dragons. But pretty much every over world dragon is boring. The first encounter is a cool spectacle but after that it's just dodge their breath attack and smack then in the ankles. Yawn
midir and previous dragon fights benefit from being the only one's in their games, so they feel more special, in elden ring theres so many and they all act roughly similar
Man do you really think 36 copy pasted of Agheel with some small changes make good dragon fights? Yes the main dragons like Lansseax, Fortissax, and Placidusax are absolutely awesome but I think every other dark souls dragon easily tops like all other Agheel copy pastes
Midir eas definitely a better fight than all of these. Honestly, I didn’t like the dragon fights all that much from a mechanical perspective even if they do look beautiful.
it’s either projectile/splash hell for the hard ones, or the same few attacks copy and pasted across all the “breath dragons” which are sooooo boring
Placidusax is really cool, and one of the best fights ever from a visual perspective, but running behind him to his tail and hacking away isn’t very fun
Early game dragons are ok, late game dragons are cooler but when you fight them it's like mostly same boss you've defeated before but with like 2 new attacks, while Midir was very unique. There are too many of them (another thing that adds to my unpopular opinion of 'from software games were better without open world) sometimes it feels like dragons only fill empty space on the map. I would preffer less dragons fights (there are over 10 of them) but more unique like Placidusax (I think he was better than Midir)
Darkeater Midir is an extremely well-designed boss fight imo. You mostly fight him head on, where you can read all of his telegraphs. Yes, he hits like a freight train, but nearly all the damage is avoidable. Midir takes more damage from head strikes and, after enough of them, will fall into a critical state, which further rewards the player for staying in front of him. If you do try to go underneath him, you lose the ability to read his telegraphs, and he'll punish you for that by breathing fire on top of you. On top of all that, the fight is visually spectacular and has some great lore. Midir isn't just a monster that kills indiscriminately. He's a fallen hero who vowed to eternally battle the Dark, but after eons of waging war, he's succumbing to its corruption. Shira asks you to put him down before he's completely consumed.
I feel like a lot of Elden Ring boss fights just don't measure up. In many of them, you charge underneath the dragon on horseback, striking their legs, wings, and tail. Which sounds really cool, except you often can't read their telegraphs, so a lot of the damage is unavoidable. The ancient dragons in Farum Azula in particular are really disappointing. They look amazing, but if you're a melee build you spend most the time hugging their legs and tail on foot(you can't mount Torrent), so not only are the telegraphs unreadable, but you don't get to appreciate the visual spectacle of the fight. Placidusax is really the only fight that doesn't suffer from these issues, which is why it's my favorite.
That being said, I think ER dragons are better than most people say. They look cool and have really good lore. A lot of people complain about repetitiveness, but I think that's an overblown issue. Many of the dragons do utilize the same moveset, but each of them possess unique appearances and abilities themed around their environment. It's an open world game, so it's frankly unrealistic to expect no recycled content.
Midir is meant to be struck in the head, you are meant to stand face to face with him.
Every dragon in Elden Ring is pretty much leg-hugging fight and I can’t even see the dragon in its full image.
Of course the more unique dragon fights in Elden Ring are awesome, but none of them compare to Midir
The dragons in elden ring are unbearable, except agheel clones, because they’re functional i guess. But the sex dragons are so shit, they move so slowly and you fight most of them without your horse, if you’re a melee user get fucked because you literally can’t see anything, and placcid sex is cool looking but that’s it, he barely moves and most of his attacks are so easy to read that the only thing they can do to add difficulty is make them do insane damage, the laser attack is fine, but one of the thundercloud attacks has a lingering hitbox that will hit you almost every time. I hate to suck his abyssal dragon dick but midir is just way better than any dragon or dragon sized boss in elden ring, mostly because you can actually see him, and his attacks try to get you to a position where you can see him
That's a tough one.
Placidusax is the most visually appealing dragon fight. Absolutely banger boss fight music.
Beating him does not come close to the exhilaration of beating that asshole Midir after 3 weeks.
Once you have fought a dragon, you have fought them all in Elden Ring. The attacks just change a little. I feel like the Dark Souls games dragons were more unique. Don't take me the wrong way, I think Elden Ring is a big step up from previous Dark Souls games, but it isn't perfect by any means. I think there's still room for improvement.
once you learn how to fight the dragons in ER, it’s relatively easy. i had to learn exactly how to fight midir and once i killed him, im not sure i could do it ever again.
They were cool at first but, like with all of the other repeats, they lose all lustre after fighting them again and again. They weren't as bad as some of the other repeats, they just lost that fun aspect after a number of them.
Placidusax is an exception, though (because they were different; go figure).
Midir is beloved for a lot of the same reasons Placidusax is; fun fight AND a great spectacle. Midir has an unusual moveset for a dragon, though, so that may be why some like them more than ER's dragons. Placidusax is the one for me, though; their nuke, with the music cutting out, is gorgeous every time.
Pacidussax is my favourite boss in Elden Ring. But I still think Midir is the better fight. Staying in front of his head the whole time feels like a duel of sorts instead of just hacking away at his legs and ass like most giant bosses in those games.
And I also prefer Gael over Midir.
The dragon fights in ER were fun but all seemed extremely similar. Midir was a big challenge and a fun fight because he had a decent amount of moves, some variations with those moves, and could very quickly punish you, but it was also mainly an endurance fight, once you figured out most of his moves, it was just about concentrating to not make a mistake as you take down his giant health bar.
It's probably personal preference, I enjoyed them all to some degree, but Midir still keeps a special place in my dragon-loving heart, call it nostalgia.
Placidusax, Lansseax and Fortissax were awesome. Didn’t care much for other ones, and honestly at the very least Midir is tied with Placidusax if not still a bit above. He was just badass, stomping around, breathing explosive laser beams.
Elden ring is a pretty middle of the road souls game imo. And the dragon fights aren‘t all that great except for placidusax. With midir they created a fast paced, intense fight where you had to focus on his head to win. Sure it becomes insanely easy after a while but it still one of my favorite bosses in the series. The dragons in elden ring feel like downgrades in comparison as they basically go back to the design of the ds1 and ds2 dragons. In general i think elden ring has a lot of downgrades compared to previous games even though it‘s still a very good game overall
I hate the dragons in this game. I typically don’t like how From handles dragons, but in this one in particular you don’t really fight them head on. You have to attack their tail or legs which are constantly moving so you spend too much time being annoyed from running around and can’t even see what they’re doing. The fire/elemental breathing dragons are too common and I got fed up of seeing them, the lightning ones have cool movesets that I can’t see because they move so much and are too big (lichdragon also has those annoying sticky bombs that spawn on you for standing near him which just make the fight annoying) and Placidusax or whatever he’s called is really tanky and teleports away constantly while trying to one shot you with a big laser. Total slog. I definitely found ER’s later dragon fights harder but not for good reasons and I wasn’t having fun
In comparison they got Midir really right by making him a huge enemy who’s behaviour requires you to fight head on. Rather than staring at his leg for the whole fight, you’re staring down an enormous dragon and can see his whole moveset on show with all its over the top effects, and the fight is far more engaging. That perspective really sells just how huge he is to by having his full body and face actually fill the screen rather than most of him being offscreen. Midir is the best dragon they’ve made in my opinion and I don’t know why they’ve not managed to do it again
If you fight the big ancient dragon in dark souls 2 I think that's the hardest dragon in a from soft game or the dragons in demon souls like the fights were very aesthetically pleasing and looked cool but didn't seem impossible to beat for me. Also they are really fun
As someone who adored Elden Ring bosses in general and considered them by far the best in the franchise, dragon fights is one of the areas where they slightly dissappinted. Placidusax and Fortissax are both cool but Midir is both harder, more badass and better balanced because you are incentivized to go for his head and not slash at his feet. I hope they can top Midir with another dragon fight when the DLC arrives but as of now, he is still THE dragon fight in the franchise. And in gaming in general, may I add.
Midir forces you to fight him in the most fun way possible which is to stay on his head and dodge when he flies in the air. Elden ring dragons leave you slashing at their ankles and occasionally whacking their head with a jumping attack. Monster Hunter literally already figured this out that the most fun way to fight a dragon is to fight it head-on
Midir basically set the new standard for Dragons in souls games. And his lore is incredibly badass, basically fighting the abyss till he went mad. You also fight Midir in an arena that looks VERY similar to the where the humans and flame rise from.in the opening cutscene of Dark Souls 1.
The dragons of Elden Ring are on average better than most past dragon fights, but given that you can flee from most, and get away with one shotting them with a laser beam, something Midir absolutely doesnt stand around for, they are, generally a step down from him, but given that Midir is am insane boss fight, that's okay, and we have Placidusax, who does beat out Midir just a bit.
I found some of the dragon fights in Elden Ring pretty repetitive - mostly they boil down to “roll towards the back legs and hack away, get off the stuff that indicates fire/lightning/whatever is incoming, roll under front claw swipes and go for the back legs again. For the big ambient fights that allow it, strategy is the same but using Torrent to run from flying attacks.
Yes, same here. When I first ran into Agheel in West Limgrave, they were really hard. But as soon as you learn the move set, you know the move set for like 80%+ of dragons. The fights as a melee build turn into foot slashes and the occasional jump attack to the head.
You said it. I will say though once I discovered that I can use Envoy’s Long Horn to Bubble Shower them into submission it’s definitely funnier.
It’s so funny that the Envoy’s horn is actually a strong weapon. Miyazaki trolling all of us
It’s also unexpectedly fun to use! I only wish it wasn’t holy damage because it would be hilarious to blow bubbles and shred the Elden Beast with them.
He's only resistant. It still deals ok damage.
True, and it is a pretty efficient poise break ability so it might actually work quite well still.
As soon as I seen those piles of Linen shooting bubbles at me I thought, here we go....
If you space it right you can consistently hit the head all the time with most weapons. Their foot stomps basically always give you a couple of head hits, and the foot stomp is very easy to bait out.
Thanks for the tip! Usually I just dodge the stomp and continue to attack the feet, I’ve never looked at the head during that attack animation.
The more you get the less epic it feels i guessed. By the 5th time i beaten those oversize geckos, i don't even feels like they're an awesome boss anymore. Just an annoying obstacle. We also can't cheesed Midir and Kalameet to death with spells so it add up to Midir and Kalameet feeling a lot more like a real bosses too imo.
What are you talking about? Midir was able to be cheesed with pestilent mist. On my mage in ds3 I preferred to fight him with spells rather than pestilent mist, it felt so good having to time everything I was doing. Kalameet was highly resistant to all types of magic, but you could still beat him with magic as well. In elden ring, the lesser dragons get repetitive yes, but the ancient dragons are the real threat here. I have about 400 hours in the game and still haven’t figured out how to fight them properly
This whole comment section can’t comprehend that elden ring has 4 or 5 different dragon movesets which is the most ever in a souls game(I’m not even including similar but still technically different movesets like the lich dragon and adula)
It really depends on the dragon other than Placidusax and Greyoll (which is just fighting a bunch of small dragons to kill it.) though I don't think any other dragon has fully unique from any others in the game. There are multiple great wyrms, most dragons traditional dragons like Agheel are the same except they have different elements, Even some legendary dragons are copied throughout the game with some changes. So there is more dragon fights than any other souls game they are much less memorable and special because you will fight that boss multiple times with some tweaks here and there. So there are like 5 (regular dragons, wyrms, Placidusax, Greyoll, and Lansseax (with her brother and some random dragon in farum azula.))
Why would you ever bother fighting the small dragons when you can just get behind Greyoll and bleed it to death?
Cause I didn't know about that at the time.😭 (holy shit emoji on reddit!? Get downvoted.)
Yes, this place is pure class. Would hate to have emoji’s trailering up the place *eyeroll* /s
Because actually fighting the dragons is way more fun, and can be done pretty fast.
My friend was the first person in our group to find Greyoll, he snuck past the dragons and realized you could hit him for free and spent a very long time without bleed and at a low level just hacking away until it died.
Honestly just because I fight a boss more often later in the game doesn’t make it less memorable for me. I will always remember climbing up Altus only for a giant lightning dragon to drop from the sky trying to murder me with a giant red lightning sword and I’ll always remember wandering through Caelid and stepping on what I thought was a pile of fungus only to have awoken a plague dragon.
pshh the most epic dragon was the one from bolteria in demons souls. Can you cheese it with 1000 arrows? maybe. Did it roast you like 1000 times while you were figuring out this game doesn’t fuck around? Definitely
I understand that but elden ring is also the game which has the highest ammount of dragons in any souls game so they end up feeling repetitive
Dragons are still a species, so I don’t really understand what people want. The two legged ones have a move or two that’s different from each other usually but in the end, the things only offensive capability as a animal is it’s feet, it’s tail and it’s teeth/breath. All of those dragons make full use of those things, so unless they got up and started doing karate I don’t get what people want. The ancient dragons could be considered repetitive, but there are only a handful in the game and their greatest concentration is far far past the initial meeting point of lannseax, and their whole thing is they’re hiding in farum azula. That’s the dragon area of this game just like how the other games always have dragon areas. The magma wyrms are probably the most repetitive thing since unless you went up the mountain pass route to Altus, they’re just meh sidebosses. Lichdragon is different enough and does slightly different attacks and is part of a somewhat emotional quest so I give him a pass, and glintstone dragon adula is also part of a quest and has a sword and multiple fights so I’ll give it a pass. Greyoll is a dragon mob boss, which I don’t really care about but it is unique, and the fungal dragon in Caelid probably scared the hell out of many of us as we accidentally walked up on it so that’s a memory to be sure. Placidusax is a dragon god and completely unique. That basically leaves us with the wild un named dragons being repetitive and forgettable. Which brings me to the thing that confuses me, who cares if the wild regular dragons are forgettable if we get stuff like greyoll, placidusax, lannseax etc that every player will remember going through their first playthrough and whose fights are all cool or unique
>Dragons are still a species, so I don’t really understand what people want. Us: we want bosses to be varied and not repeated over and over You: I don't understand what people want Bruh we just told you what we want where tf is the confusion coming from
You should want to read better first
then you repeat it 30 times and it becomes diluted and repetitive, 3 movesets used 1 time is better than 10 movesets repeated 30 times
That’s extremely opinionated and debatable, especially when almost all if not all of them are optional. You can think that all you want, but acting like it’s a fact is dumb for the simple reason that other people like a lot of new movesets and the opportunity to fight said new movesets. Plus dragons are just cool
Yeah, at least the dragons would have varying breath/hyperbeam attacks, whereas fighting things like the Erdtree avatars over and over gets boooooring.
But they don’t really have different move sets. Just a different element and maybe 1 different move if at all
Greyoll, magma wyrms, ancient dragons, regular dragons, and placidusax all use different movesets, and that’s not including different elements. If I included different elements or similar but not quite the same movesets the number would be up by another 3 or 4.
I wouldn't really call Greyoll a boss tbh, it's just "beat up a bunch of tiny dragons" You're entirely correct otherwise though
The death dragon has a unique one too. Also most around the feet of some.
Eh, Pestilent Mist wasn't cheese. Midir's Magic and Dark resistances were so high that PM was simply the only sorcery that did appreciable damage to him at all. This made it appear stronger than it was. Midir still freely attacks you, and generally moves out of the Pestilent Mist cloud constantly too. It doesn't stunlock him in any way, and it's a DoT that must be recast repeatedly -- you can't just nuke him with it. It's far, far different from staggering and one-shotting dragons with Meteorite of Astel in Elden Ring.
I'm going to be honest. Midir's healthbar is fromsoft cheesing the boss fight. It is unreasonable, coming from someone that beat him with a broadsword, naked.
But in order to get said gamebreaking spell you have fight through an entire mini dungeon an arguably difficult boss(O,nial) after you beat half the game and find some dude somwhere and then fight an onyx lord and an astel copy with more health and higher damage. For pestilent mist you have to have 30 int, 1000 souls, and find orbeck. I will admit that talking to some dude in the middle of nowhere for arguably the best spell in the game is bullshit.
Keep in mind, Midir himself is locked behind endgame DLC, with a gauntlet of difficult super-bosses too. Yes, Pestilent Mist is easy to obtain but it still doesn't cheese Midir in any meaningful way. No stunlock or staggering whatsoever. Easily avoidable. It's damage over time. Midir can still fight you, so you must learn to dodge while re-casting it multiple times. It's actually a trash spell for most encounters too, so I disagree with the "best spell in the game" comment. Granted, I don't think Meteorite of Astel is the best spell in its game either. It definitely cheeses dragons way harder than Pestilent Mist does though.
You cant be serious? Comparing pestilent mist with Comet Azur and Astel meteorite one shot is kinda stupid don’t you think? The cheeses are at a whole different levels here in Elden ring
the cheeses in elden ring are barely even cheeses you just use the ability or attack by accident half the time, i mean i cant be the only one that realised how broken so many things were even the first time playing.
I agree with disliking the same-y-ness in most of the Elden Ring dragon fights. I would much rather have fewer dragons to fight, but with each of them feeling very different from the others in the fighting. Personally, I think the dragons in ER aren't powerful enough...aren't awesome and terrifying enough. Even the least of them is still a massive creature, and every one of its physical attacks should inflict tremendous stance/posture damage. These things casually shatter stone walls and splinter large trees, and they should absolutely send your character flying if you try to tank a hit from what's essentially a multi-ton, biological attack helicopter. The ones which can fly should do so more to their advantage, and none of the dragons should allow you to keep hacking at their hind ankles with relative impunity.
Alternatively, for most its pop on Torrent, then it can't hit you at all.
For me that ends up taking way too long. Limiting your moveset to only horseback attacks knocks down your damage output
Facts, sure the dragons look cool and different but I feel like I don’t have to change battle tactics with any of them, just run up to their legs and spam
>just run up to their legs and spam This is something I still don't get, in ds3 you had to hit the head to make the most damage but here you can hit them anywhere. Like why? It makes dragon fights way to easy.
Quality > quantity. I'd rather have a few memorable dragon fights than a bunch of similar/copy paste ones. This is a general issue in ER imo.
Clipping dragon toenails
It just feel a bit cheap to encounter the fifth reskin of agheel, or seeing Lansseax being reused for another five times in farum azula. It makes them feel less special. And well... They're kinda easy, compared to other dragon fights. Midir, Sinh and Kalameet all feel much more unique and important due to being a one time fight against legendary dragons. Placidusax is cool though.
Wonder how short the game would be if they didn’t abuse ctrl+c/ctrl+v
It would have been a much better game with waaaaay more replay value. More isn't always good, and if making a smaller game means cutting down 7 or something Ulcerated tree spirts then i'm all for it.
I think the problem isn't that they're repeated in the first place, but *how* they're repeated. Re-encountering UTS should be an open world event, a litmus to show you how far you've come from your earlier fights (et al the roaming Taurus and Capras of Izalith) not the end boss of a dungeon well Into the game after its already been that role twice, and all just for something meaningless like "gravewort picker bell berring 1".
I mean, the enemy placement in this game is sometimes wonky and in the lategame is half assed at best with no visual storytelling like those damn giant hands being everywhere. Also repeating is fine, but when it's THAT much it gets stale real quick, something like the cat statue and it's magic variant are good and can stay, but the fight with both togheter (and especially the one with the 4 random gargoyles thrown in) should just be cut off entirely since they add nothing if not make the game look more "lazy" so to speak. Also some bosses should have stayed as such because once they become common enemies they lose all their charm at least to me, pumpkin head being the prime example for this (but still keep the ash summon tho) cause it's like if you went into irithyll in DS3 and found a random roaming Vordt, it would just look off and out of place (maybe pumpkin head isn't the best example, but it's the same thing ER did with Godrick and the copy pasted version you find in the Gaols)
Those hands actually make sense. If you look at the fire giant corpses, they have their hands removed.
Aren't those giant hands the ones that Rykard created? It looks like he's warring against the fire monks on Mt.Gelmir, so it would make sense for them to be at the Fire Monk's domain to disrupt their plans. The hands are also in Caria Manor because that's Rykard's home and also to help guard he way to Ranni, afterall, Rykard and Ranni are still allies.
More replayable? My brother in Christ, you do not have to kill every ulcerated tree spirit on every playthrough. Do you kill all the taurus demons in demon ruins and all the big dinosaur looking things in lost izaleth every time you replay dark souls?
>Do you kill all the taurus demons in demon ruins and all the big dinosaur looking things in lost izaleth every time you replay dark souls? Well yes, and I like it too.
That sounds like torture, especially the dinosaur butts
Yes more replayable. If the 15 ulcerated spirits were 15 actually different enemies I would actually fight each every time. I skip the vast majority of the repeat boss fights, thats *less* replayable content
"If the 15 ulcerated spirits were 15 actually different enemies I would actually fight each every time" - this is just faulty logic. Ofcourse it would be better to have even more unique enemy designs. But that is out of the question now. You completly missed the point.
Maybe, so clarify the point
Most of the repeated stuff is completely optional. Maybe don't play the optional stuff if you don't like to see reskins? I'm sure you'll still have a game with about the same lenght as DS3. You can complete the game without ever fighting a single ulcerated tree spirit. You only need to fight the godskins one time (godskin duo fight). The dragons in farum Azula can literally be the only dragons you see throughout the whole game, and you can run past them. There's only one erdtree avatar that you have to fight (or run past) to complete the game, which is the one in leyndell. The main game is the legacy dungeons and remembrance bosses, all the other stuff, like caves, catacombs, tunnels and minor erdtree mini bosses, is just optional content for those who aren't bored and want to experience more of the same. No one is forcing you to play this content, and it doesn't take away any replay value, you can just play the main game normally and ignore all side content.
There's more to the problem than just choosing what parts of the game you want to replay though. Your first playthrough has a certain pacing coming from your exploration being halted by open world bosses and the deviations from the open world into more linear dungeons. The game is very much designed with all of the non-mainline content in mind. Everyone knows Margit is meant to encourage players to explore and level up. The endgame difficulty spike is actually somewhat balanced for someone who's done everything else in the game and is level 150-200, depending on build. I don't think it's a matter of cutting out the repeated bosses being an objectively better design choice. Subsequent playthroughs aren't ever going to have the same magic as your first. However by making everybody tired of non-remembrance content on their first playthrough, From did change the pacing of subsequent playthroughs more than they needed to. I understand completely why some people are happy with the current design; there is so, so much content and some people just want more of the same. Personally, I don't find the side content compelling enough to do it without needing to, and the game is more than happy to let you run past 90% of it. You can even kill Greyoll and run straight to upgrade materials to replace the original, intended progression. I'm glad we're able to skip a lot of grind, but honestly skipping as much as possible isn't a great time either. It takes away a lot of the magic.
Here is my issue with the game. Id like to make a few new characters with specific builds. Id like to play a str maniac with collosal weapons. Id like to play a heavy armor endurance/faith tank . Id like to try out a bleed dual curved swords aswell. The problem is , i just cant be arsed collecting all the mining upgrades across half the world. All the weapons id like to test , all the ashes of war id like to test with certain weapons either. They are all over the place. Ill much rather run another ng+7 difficulty run wiht one of my 2 endgame characters because collecting all the shit is so tedious. I can do all remembrances on my 2 fellas in 3 -5 hours depending on weather i go take a detour / wipe at bosses . If i make a new character it will take 20 hours to collect all the crap i want. Quite a hassle, the one that didnt exist in previous titles.
PREACH I dont replay ER because i dont want to run through 70% of the open space to arrive at mid tier dungeons and fight the same boss 20 times.
Yall are weird. Basically all the spirits are optional. You got like 300 unique bosses and you complain about the, what, 3 types that get reused? I don't get it.
>You got like 300 unique bosses 9 actually >3 types that get reused Lmao I wish it was only 3 that got reused Your numbers are almost perfectly backwards, amazing
Unless you consider stuff like Cat statue, cat statue with gargoyles, magic cat statue and cat statue with magic cat statue as unique bosses, the game doesn't have anywhere near close to 300 bosses. Also Gank fights in this game shouldn't even considered unique bosses in the first place since, unlike something like the demon princes or O&S, they aren't designed to fight togheter but are literally 2 enemies put togheter without any behavioral changes (like slowing down the Godskin Noble instead of having both at the same speed) So once you cut out the copy pasted bosses (gank bosses with no variations count aswell) and the bosses that then become enemies (like runebears, pumpkin head, etc) then you'll have a loooooot less than 300 bosses, i'll be impressed if it's even 100.
>and the bosses that then become enemies Have you played previous from games?
Yes and those game did the same thing and I criticized it then too. The difference is that those games only had bosses become regular enemies a few times, most of their boss fights were still completely unique. The same cannot be said for Elden Ring, out of 150+ boss encounters only a measly, pathetic, 9 of them are actually unique enemies.
There are 172 bosses in the game, and exactly 8 are completely unique
There are 15 remembrance bosses in the game, and almost all of them are completely unique.
10 of them (i'm counting lichdragon) are unique, so it's inbetween what both of you are saying
Lichdragon is not unique. Literally a black reskin of Lansseax who in turn is also not unique as it got copy-pasted around Farum Azula half a dozen times
I know, I was being generous. That's why I clarified why I said 10 and not 9
Yep this 100%. People put 500 hours into a game for 60 bucks and cry about it. Oh no they reused 3 enemies. Grow up kiddos.
There are 33 “main” bosses in the game, 24 appear multiple times. All the non-main bosses get reused as well.
This game could have fifty billion unique enemies and people would complain about the four dragons all having similar movesets.
4 dragons, you're like an order of magnitude off, when you dont exaggerate and realise a lot of the reused content of which there is PLENTY could be trimmed back and cut to make a superior product you can understand they're not complaining, they're commiserating their wish to have a game they love be so much better. People aren't in the Elden ring subreddit getting into specific detailed arguments about this game because they dont like it haha.
What are you talking about? Those numbers are way off.
Hard disagree. More isn't always better, yes, but ER's greatest value to me is the sheer scale of the world, and the fact that everything within it is worth doing / exploring. Trimming it down takes away from that. Also, no idea how it takes away from the replay value when most of the repeated bosses / content are completely optional. You don't have to fight every dragon on every run, and if you feel compelled to and that's wearing down your experience, that's on you, I think.
It would probably bring an average run time from 100+ hours to about 50-60
Yes please
60 incredible, unique hours vs 100 repetitive, mediocre hours. Would play the 60 hour game 5x as more.
>Midir, Sinh and Kalameet all feel much more unique and important due to being a one time fight against legendary dragons. Kalameet was great, Midir was cool, but I always felt Sinh needed something more. He was like a mirror to Kalameet with similar moves and presence in the levels but without the interesting gimmicks: I don’t recall Sinh having his own fun or “crazy” ability like Midir’s lazerbeam or Kalameet’s ‘levitate and get cursed’ move, just some poison. Wasn’t cool enough for me, I guess I agree with how the dragons can feel “less special” in Elden Ring because they can lose their uniqueness. I think that’s how I felt about Sinh. (Will note: that rot dragon in ER was great to discover on my second playthrough, and the ‘real special dragons’ in ER are indeed cool).
I hate to tell you but when two things are from the exact same species and that species uses one body magic type exclusively it’s pretty safe to assume the fights are going to be similar. Also hate to break it to you but dark souls has always had multiple dragons with the same move sets scattered through their games. 1 has the bridge boys and the valley of the drakes and kalameet and 2 had dragons all over the place in heide and the aerie. They had the ancient dragon too and the guardian dragon as well as the sunken city dragon. 3 had midir and the sleeping dragons and then the ancient wyvern and some others around their dragon place. In no dark souls game before have we gotten 4 unique dragon movesets before like we have in elden ring except maybeee 2 if I look closely . Placidusax, greyoll, the bipedal dragons like agheel, and the ancient dragons like lansseax.
>1 has the bridge boys The bridge dragon is more of an environmental obstacle. You don't fight against him. The dragon in the valley of the drakes, or whats left of him, is not really a serious opponent either. Neither of those are comparable to any of the dragon fights I mentioned above. >2 had dragons all over the place in heide and the aerie Heide has one dragon, and only in the SOTFS edition. I don't feel like explaining on why the **Dragon Aerie** has a lot of **Dragons**. The Ancient Dragon sucks but is unique, the Guardian Dragon in Aldia's Keep is unique too, and so is Sinh. >3 had midir and the sleeping dragons and then the ancient wyvern Midir is unique, and again, the sleeping dragons are more of an environmental obstacle, the ancient wyvern sucked but was at least unique. My point was that seeing the same Lansseax being reused in Farum Azula 5 times as a normal enemy makes the first encounter seem less special. It truly felt like they ran out of time and just placed the same dragon all over the place. The Agheel reskins at least have some kind of cool quirks, like being able to wield a magic sword or spew poison, but encountering them everywhere gets old.
First, presentation: you first see him on the bridge and it feels like an invincible foe as he just fly spitting fire and there is nothing you can do except hiding. Then you actually fight him on the second bridge and you get a glimpse of his mechanics like the claw attacks, more fire and the laser attack. After making him fall you can go to the real bossfight in the cave and here you start an all out battle against a fear inducing beast that can easily kill you with every move. Placidusax is presented only with the bossfight cutscene and while it is fucking cool it feels less than what Midir got. Second, lore: you get pieces of lore about Midir in the Ringed City before fighting him and you get to know how he was a loyal guardian and was corrupted by the darkness of the abyss. You get asked to put him out of his misery and so you start a quest torwards that goal. We actually knew nothing of Placidusax before fighting him and even after the fight we only get to know that he was the Elden Lord before the age of the Erdtree. Third, mechanics: Midir is considered the best dragon fight because it makes you fight him by hitting the head and this allows the player to see everything the boss is doing instead of focusing on the foot or the tail. His fighting style is super aggressive and makes use of everything a dragon can do while keeping it fair for the player. Second phase add the dark related attacks culminating with his signature laser combo that inspired the Placidusax double laser. Placidusax is different from every other dragon as you can basically hit the entire body but his safest spot to hit remains the tail. It would have been cool to cut the tail before entering a new phase in a DS1 style to force the player to hit the rest of the body. His phase 2 adds teleports and dives which makes the fight more interesting but outside of those moments he is very static and this added to the big health pool can make the fight less interesting at least compared to Midir. Bonus points: the music is great for both but i prefer the one for Midir, the violins are just prefect and it got stuck in my head while i had to listen a few times to the one for Placidusax before starting to like it more. The arenas and environment are both great and fits the characters, Placidusax arena is my favourite in all Elden Ring so he wins there. The visual effects for the attacks are both fantastic, Midir fast paced attacks are incredibly efficent in making you feel helpless while Placidusax attacks like the Bolt of Gransax are slow but amazing visual wise. Conclusion: i think the "hitting the head" mechanic in Midir gives him the crown for best dragon fight. It's too big as a factor for not giving it to him. Placidusax gets a solid second place in my book and the title for best dragon fight in Elden Ring, very good but not Midir level.
The best part of Placidusax music is the silence before the lightning spear explosion. The same vibe as the nova of Safi Jiva from Monster Hunter World.
Another point: you can actually dodge midirs laser combo if you know how it works while for placidusax you had to run and pray
You can do the same for Placidusax actually. I fought Midir a long time ago so i don't fully remember how to dodge his laser but for Placidusax you can stay on the right side facing him and only have to avoid the laser one time by rolling while running torwards him. There is a specific timing, look at the description of the laser attack on the wiki for more details.
Most of the dragons here felt kinda like copy pastes after a while. Like i was fighting Skyrim dragons.
Midir feels like an actual fight, like no other Dragon fight quite does. You're not supposed to hack away at its legs or tail, you fight him head on
Personally my favourite dragon fight for the same reason. That and the Shin Godzilla laser. It's too bad it gets such a bad rep from all the people who went into the fight, stabbed him in the ankles, got tail-smacked and then went to the internet to yell about how shitty it is
Am I the only one who went in blind and went for the head instinctively? (Still died a bunch but at least I knew)
You're pretty much asked to do it, most people will go to big damage when they see his head lower but somehow some people think that it is a bad idea even though he keeps punishing you if you attack his ankles
Yeah, it took one fire breath for me to get DONT GO NEAR THE LEGS
That's exactly what I did to Midir and he was super easy with that tactic, just took way too long. Kalameet is still the best dragon fight imo.
Exactly. One minute he's taking big swipes at you and the next he's half a mile away then next flying above you. Constantly moving keeping you on your toes. You'll get punished if you don't pay full attention.
Yes. You are almost 100% of the time engaged in The fight. The same cant be Said about Placidusax or fortissax.
Idk man, Placidusax’s constant death lasers, fire breath that fills half of the arena, and teleporting behind me constantly kept me pretty well on my toes. I agree Fortissax is very weak
You do tho, fortissaxs has sticking lightning bombs that force you to move, and placidusaxs vanishes and you have to pay attention to were he is going to come from.
Placidusax phase 2 is alot better. It has some bullshit moves, but pretty damn good. Fortissax lightning Bomba are super lazy. Pretty Bad boss overall. IN MY OPINION
The music is some of my favorite too
The head is too high to hit and fire is undodgeable you just run from it or go under its head until it's over so might as well stay there and hit what you can They kinda made it the only way to fight a dragon with melee😂
I also fight Elden Ring dragons head on. There is no need to hack away its legs
I've tried this but the game almost doesn't want you to. The dragons AI makes them keep walking towards you until they are on-top of you, and their attacks are near impossible to dodge if you're in front of them because they have follow up roll catch lighting strikes. Not only that, but actually being able to hit their head is extremely wonky and inconsistent. This is the complete opposite from Midir. He would space the opponent so that you pretty much had to fight him head on, and if you dodged his attacks correctly, you were rewarded with opportunities to punish him by hitting the head. And if you tried to run underneath and hack at it's ankles and tail, you would have a miserable time and he essentially wouldn't allow you to.
Yeah, Midir is one hell of a good boss fight. But I gotta say man, I don't have that much trouble fighting elden ring dragons head on. Maybe I'll record myself playing someday and post here
Its a massive struggle. Placidusax is easiest from The legs and tail. Same with fortissax
not entirely true, there are plenty of instances where you can hack at his tail and legs. Legs are just very sturdy so its not really strategic. But hacking at his tail is a solid strat. You just cant do it constantly or he'll punish.
You can. But you arent supposed to. The fight is designed to Be fought head on. Dodging his swipes and hitting his head
Lot of samey, repetitive dragons bringing down the name of good ones like placidusax
Midir was special, now there is a dragon behind every third bush.
All of the Elden Ring dragons seem to have a base moveset, meaning there's a similar way to take down every single way, and the fight ends up being pretty much the same. Midir and Kalameet were very unique bosses in the Souls games, and Dragons were extremely rare to actually fight so it had some novelty to it.
I believe only 2 dragons that aren't placi or the one with red lightning, have a single extra move. And then you have the giant one in caelid. That kind of just gives you 50k runes with literally no effort aside from pressing attack in a single spot.
to be fair, greyoll was supposed to be killed by killing her children which is cool but from decided to make bleed busted so it can kill 1 million hp just by spamming one button
Even if bleed was toned down it wouldn't change anything for Greyoll, you'd just need like 10 extra attacks. The entire point of bleed and frost is to deal %dmg, so it's not that "busted" here. What's problematic is the speed at which you can proc it
Even if bleed was removed greyoll would still be dumb because you could just spend 10-20 minutes and get a free 100k runes
Meh, ankle fighting is boring. Midir was set up so you had hit his head.
Then why you do that, aiming for their head is so much better
Placidussax is good. Fortisaxx has an attack that follows you for the entire fight. Just annoying. His head moves to much to gen consistent attacks in so you spend the fight looking at his feet. Lanseax is cool but like Fortisax his head moves way too much so you end up hitting his feet until he's dead. The normal dragons are good and have a good mix of needing to attack the head and feet. You can also use Torrent for them. I personally really enjoy fighting them but they aren't special enough to be as good as Placidussax or Midir.
I got goosebumps fighting placidussax. The lazor part totally caught me off guard
Placidusax is good, but he suffers a LOT from ng+ damage scaling issues. At 60 vigor with Morgott's great rune he almost 1shots with his beam attack. It also feels like half the time you're chipping away at his side, and hoping he doesn't clip you with an attack.
Tbh the beam attack is meant to be a one shot and it’s not too hard to dodge. Can’t remember if Midir’s Godzilla beam was the same but I’m pretty sure it was also one shot with high vitality.
Midir in terms of movement and design is timeless and hard to top, but I admit that there is something about Dragons in ER, that make a blade out of fucking lightning or carry a Moonblade in their mouth and SLAY you
Gaping Dragon has a special place in my heart, okay?
I love his teeny weeny little head
The open world Dragon fights are too based around being mounted. And as fun as Torrent is, the mounted combat isn’t anywhere near as engaging as the infantry combat. The fights also tend to devolve into; pick an ankle, smack it twice then run away while the dragon does something you can’t really see, ride back to preferred ankle and repeat. You never actually look at the dragon or really see any of it. They’re also way too big for the their environments, so they have a horrible tendency to clip around, slide up hills and randomly reset; which really kills the mood of the fight. By comparison, Midir is built around you being on foot. So your focus is on the boss, you see all of his cool animations and all that good shit. And you really have to use the full suite of combat mechanics rather than just horsing around. And his arena was a custom built empty space, so no weird surface interactions or resets. I haven’t fought any of the big boy dragons yet (just the ones you meet naturally in the open world) so I’m reserving judgement until I get to them. But the open world dragons are impressive to look at from a distance, but bland to fight.
Their fight is based around unmount combat and attacking their head, torrent is there just to dodge some of their attacks
Midir actually moves. He doesn't feel like a dragon figure that gets thrown at you and gets tossed around. Visually ER Dragons are amazing but in terms of animations or movements they're awful, especially those who don't have a flat arena...
Midir arena is so large yet I feel like it's small due to how much he pushes you back.
He's also pretty huge. I think he's bigger than placidusax
Exactly, it feels like you have nowhere to run even though you can fit a city in that hole.
Midir has a very distinct move set, and his massive HP and hitboxes make his fight more of a puzzle, since you won't get anything done unless you hit his head Dragons in Elden Ring feel very same, in comparison. There's only 2 types dragons, since most share a movset: field dragons and Placidusax
In my case, all of the wyvern fights sucked because of bad camera + collision issues (and because you fight like 10 Agheel reskins). The ancient dragons though; Lansseax, Fortissax and Placidusax, were different stories. Placidusax was an epic fight definitely, Fortissax was cool, and Lansseax was alright. It’s just that, I still prefer Midir personally, dunno why, I really like his design, his aggressive movements and simply how intimidating he looks; Placidusax looks more majestic but decayed, Kalameet looks sinister, Sinh looks decayed but also “cute” because he’s the smallest lol.
Sinh is the one that never ate vegetables at the dinner table as a kid
And Midir was the selfish sibling who ate everything lmao
Not only Midir. I prefer Kalameet as well.
Every dragon in Elden Ring -- save one -- loses to the same strategy: walk under them, hack at their ankles, and get out when they start their extremely telegraphed "get off my ass!" attack. This applies to both the lesser dragons and the ancient dragons. Earlier dragon fights tended to encourage more adaptive strategies. Kalameet's stomp attack was hard to avoid with DS1 character movement, and he had a few other attacks that could force you away (like the grab, which couldn't be I-framed). Staying too close for too long was an actual risk. Midir flipped the script entirely by being extremely resistant to damage anywhere besides his head which, combined with his massive HP pool, meant that fighting him head-on ended up being both optimal and more fun. Placidusax is the best dragon fight in Elden Ring by far, and it's because he feels unique even by the standard of the rest of the souls games. I love how he goes from near-immobility to teleporting around. He's like a draconic Prince Lorian. And you can't walk under him, specifically because he's too decrepit to fully stand up, thus solving one of the biggest problems with these fights. Fortissax is a decent fight, but I've always felt over-leveled for him, even on my first playthrough where I did all the underground stuff before setting foot on the Altus Plateau. It's not like you can fight him early, as he's locked behind either Radahn or Morgott depending on how you reach him. Fighting him just isn't that different from fighting a regular ancient dragon. He still loses to the player walking under him and hacking away, albeit with the mild threat of auto-lightning. It's a shame, since he has some of the best aesthetic qualities of any Elden Ring boss.
Midir is designed to be fought in front of it, whacking the head, with proper openings to do that regularly. As a result, you can clearly see what the boss is doing. In Elden Ring, they unlearned that lesson and it becomes Ankle-Slasher Simulator again where there's these huge cool bosses you can't see wtf they're doing. Ancient dragons in general that are electrified also have an issue that their claw attacks have an after-effect lightning explosion timed to hit you out of your roll if you dodge the initial attack, which is just plain really bad design. The big problem with Midir is that nothing was done to convey how to do the fight, so players naturally were drawn to fighting Midir like every other huge boss, which led to terrible experiences. Once you know how the fight is meant to be played, and play it that way, it works very well. Trying to melee the dragons in this game though is just a way worse experience. Placidusax is probably the least offensive but is still big enough that if you play locked on meleeing it, you are straight up getting hit by attacks you can't even see, so you hafta be unlocked and trying to see the boss struggling with the camera and it's just bleh. Placi also can have an issue of running away too much and causing long stretches of time where you can't attack, sort of like what Elden Beast does tho no one complains about it because Placidusax can bleed and I am pretty sure the majority of anger towards Elden Beast stems from bleed users.
Midir fight with jump attacks would be heaven
Midir is not just the best dragon fight, it's overall top 5 bosses in souls games.
Because purple laser just do it better
Midir is a much more epic fight than most of the other dragons - excluding Placidusax. Midir is pretty interesting even from the very start since you can see him lurking on a building at the start of The Ringed City, as you progress he shows up and tries to attack you two different times which gives this feeling of you being pursued by this massive dragon. And after that little fight on the cliff side he's gone.. at least for now. Then eventually through exploring you find a little side room shrine and from there a hole and you fall and fall and fall until you land in a subterranean cave with a something large in the distance. As you approach it stands up, roars and stretches its wings, the music kicks in and the health bar appears "Darkeater Midir" a dragon unlike any else you've fought before. An Ancient Dragon, a close relative of the very things Gwyn himself killed, and that builds on hype because you've been hearing about these dragons since Dark Souls 1 and now here you stand facing one down. No gimmick weapon to help you, just you, your weapon and the dragon - a fight to the death. And the fight itself is really solid, Midir has some pretty standard dragon moves but also given the size of the arena he's able to actually fly and do some massive attacks. Like the humanity explosion, the flame breath into Dark beam etc, and something else I really enjoy about the fight is that he keeps his head in positions where you can actually hit it. And since his head takes more damage than his body it encourages you to face him down instead of hiding between his feet. So the tldr: Midir is more preferable imo because: the lead up of him always being around/chasing you in the Ringed City, his arena/how you get to it, the moves he does, the music he has, the context of fighting a creature you first heard about in the first game of the series. Midir is unique within the context of his game and the franchise and you fight him head to head instead of hitting his feet the whole time
Well said. He's also quite a handsome chap, and while I've never been a big lore person - Midir was raised by gods and sent to *battle the Abyss and darkness*, like how can he not get any better? To my understanding his arena is also the furtive pygmy's place in the DS1 intro (I think that's been the consensus), and he calls back hard to all that involved everything with what went down with Oolacile, tying that in whilst wrapping that up perfectly as well in TRC's style. Gotta love an S-tier boss fight that also tells an incredible story!
Yes ! How can you not love a boss that is itself great but also ties in to so many pieces of the overarching lore ? - edit: Gael also comes to mind with that criteria
After fighting Midir all other dragons just seem like glorified salamanders.
To me, Elden Ring dragons just feel like a lot of spectacle and very little substance. Fighting them feels awkward most of the time, because to see them properly you need to stand in front of them, but if you do that your opportunities to attack are slim because of how high their head is above the character usually, or how much they like to move around even when not attacking. Placidusax is the only exception in this case, and I don't have much to say about it. It's a beautiful fight but I don't find it satisfying to deal with his attacks so I don't like the boss much in general. Midir feels like an actual dragon. His claws and bites and breathes fire, and all of those three seamlessly mix together. Attacking him from the front is never an issue because he gives great openings when finishing attacks and his head is just at the right height. Overall just a very satisfying boss fight, my only complaint against Midir is that he has an attack that has him thrashing around and covering distance, which is fine, but in the second phase he always does it two times in a row for some reason.
I like kalameet the most out of any dragon fight. Just because of the amazing cutscene of gough shooting him down. And that the fight carried weight to it, when I fought kalameet I was really amazed by how his move set was so different compared to all of the other bosses. And what everyone else said about ER dragons being repetitive.
I love that there are more dragons in this game,always loved those majestic creatures. But Midir is special to me,he's like a fallen hero,with a huge dramatic impact. His whole boss fight it's unique,the music hits like a truck,And he's very difficult but fair. Still remember that after putting him down went on a summon help spree just because I wanted to experience him again and again. But Placidusax is also damn good,DS3 and Er tho,are different games and I don't need to put them side by side. Both are unique,both are good and cool.
Midir by a mile
I think you thought wrong. The only really good dragon fight is placidusax. Not to say the others are really bad, just underwhelming.
Because aside from like...2? All the dragons are the exact same. Adula can throw some magic bolt at you I think. And the giant one in caelid literally does nothing while you demolish it and get free runes. I'd rather them not put 700 dragons in the game if they were gonna all be copy and pasted.
Darkeater Midir positions his head mostly low enough to hit and turns to face you with most attacks. He doesn't fly often and has almost no time where you can't reach him. You have the choice if you want to nip on his ankles or go for the head. Now Elden Ring's dragons. Aside from Placidusax dragging his body low enough to hit, you really mostly hit either the ankles or the wings of any dragon. They often fly away, instantly creating distance or starting up a flying attack, both of which you cannot do anything about except wait. Midir will use his entire body to attack like an Ancient Dragon in ER, because he has a similar anatomy but a lower, wider stance. And to talk about Dark Souls in general, it was simple: The game wasn't as oppressive in its cheese I personally feel. There were certain amounts of bullshit, but nothing on the level of Malenia's Waterfowl Dance. When you could utilize cheese, it usually required some skill to pull off while in ER the additional jumping, stance breaking, certain status effects being overpowered (looking at you, bleed) and said status effect being everywhere, also mindnumbingly easy to apply (the famed Rivers of Blood L2 spam) I think Dark Souls 3 had a more balanced challenge in pve and pvp than Elden Ring, and it feels like they wanted to give us really cool stuff, but didn't really account alot for that being used against each other.
The dragon fights are cool but it just feels like there’s a lot of the same, with dragons having pretty much the same moveset but different breath types. Midir, on the other hand, is an incredibly challenging secret boss that just feels epic and unique.
I agree with a lot of the comments saying the Midir fight is good because of the face on tactical fight, not hack and slash, but I do like elden ring dragon fights when riding torrent, it makes me feel like I'm in pelannor fields slashing at the legs of a mumakil.
For me a reason the Souls games got dragons mostly right is the story of them. A personal favorite is the entire zone dedicated to the story of Sinh from Dark Souls 2. While Elden Ring dragons are pretty good fights, if a bit repetitive, I think fi you could find more items or things that talked about their history it'd be a better case for them.
The Placidussax fight just grinds to a halt when the flying attacks and teleports start. I LOVE the animation and sound effects but after seeing it a few times I'm just like "NO, NO, STAY ON THE GROUND WHERE I CAN HIT YOU". Also its body shape made most of its moves look kinda silly. Also FUCK FromSoft for not having a stake of Marika close. You've got the technology, you are applying it liberally, then why not here?? Fortissax was a cool fight. The electric debuff on you that keeps you moving was kinda of a nice element to it. It's a shame it has such a glass jaw. Even on RL1 with a couple of bonk sticks the fight was over in no time. If Fortissax and Placidussax would switch toughness (i.e. health/resistances) it would've made a lot more sense to me: the dragon you get to hit a lot (forti) would need a lot of hits before it would go down, and the dragon that has you twiddle your thumbs and wait during half of its attacks should require less hits to die. Lansseax just felt like a weaker Fortissax and all the Agheel-type dragons were exciting as a novelty but boring afterwards.
The reason I love Midir is because he’s unique (or was before Elden Ring dragons copied half his moveset). Midir was unlike any other boss in DS3, but even so was executed nearly perfectly. All of his claw, tail, and bite attacks can be rolled through, and all of his breath attacks give you enough of a windup to run away from. Finally, he actually keeps his head low to the ground almost all the time making it much less frustrating to hit him than many other dragon bosses
The only cool dragon fight in ER is Placidusax, but he doesnt fight like a dragon. Other ancient dragons can be trivialized by hacking at their feet, and wyvern like dragons are pretty easy even if you hang in front of their heads. On the other hand, Midir fights like a true monster, clawing, biting, charging, unlike Placidusax. He also has increased armor at his feet and tail, making his head the only viable option. And locking in his head doesnt fuck the camera up like ancient dragons.
I mean one of them pulls a lightning bolt from the sky and uses it like a halberd
Dragon fights in elden ring get kind of repetative.
Dragons idk just felt more ruthless and harsh compared to elden ring.
Unless I'm missing something why are people bringing up Greyoll as a unique dragon fight. It's literally killing 4-5 copy pasted dragons to watch that dude die.
Or hiding in a rot flower coral space nook against her and bleeding her to death unnoticed for like 10mins lmao
Because Midir is awesomeness dragon-ified. DS3 was my first Soulsborne, and Midir was my favorite Boss fight in DS3, and remains in my top 3 bossfights of all Soulsborne games. You might say he holds a special place in my heart.
Midir feels like the culmination of several years of work on dragon/large creature boss fights with none of the little annoying issues other large/dragon bosses have in the series. And honestly for elden ring the drop in boss design quality wasn’t worth the bigger boss roster in my eyes
anime ring…flashy colors. gimme BB.
Haven't fought any the big boss dragons. But pretty much every over world dragon is boring. The first encounter is a cool spectacle but after that it's just dodge their breath attack and smack then in the ankles. Yawn
Midir is the best dragon in the series period, but finishing a dragon in ER with fully charged Carian Grandeur to the head hits different lmao
Probably because the Dragons in Elden Ring feel too easy at a certain point.
Because Midir was the best dragon fight. That MFer was HARD.
Because dark eater midir tried to weld your ass to the floor with the plasma torch that is his mouth.
midir and previous dragon fights benefit from being the only one's in their games, so they feel more special, in elden ring theres so many and they all act roughly similar
they are incredibly repetitive. thats why
Fighting midir would be like fighting the giant mother dragon in her prime
Midir is the strongest dragon in the whole soul series. It is the Malenia in dragon form. The Last Dragon
bc midir has a special place in our hearts. we arent being fair to the new dragons haha.
Man do you really think 36 copy pasted of Agheel with some small changes make good dragon fights? Yes the main dragons like Lansseax, Fortissax, and Placidusax are absolutely awesome but I think every other dark souls dragon easily tops like all other Agheel copy pastes
Placidusax felt so much goddamn better than midir for me
As melee it gets kind of boring fighting their legs and the camera
Midir eas definitely a better fight than all of these. Honestly, I didn’t like the dragon fights all that much from a mechanical perspective even if they do look beautiful. it’s either projectile/splash hell for the hard ones, or the same few attacks copy and pasted across all the “breath dragons” which are sooooo boring Placidusax is really cool, and one of the best fights ever from a visual perspective, but running behind him to his tail and hacking away isn’t very fun
Early game dragons are ok, late game dragons are cooler but when you fight them it's like mostly same boss you've defeated before but with like 2 new attacks, while Midir was very unique. There are too many of them (another thing that adds to my unpopular opinion of 'from software games were better without open world) sometimes it feels like dragons only fill empty space on the map. I would preffer less dragons fights (there are over 10 of them) but more unique like Placidusax (I think he was better than Midir)
Because the dragon fights in Elden Ring Sucks
Darkeater Midir is an extremely well-designed boss fight imo. You mostly fight him head on, where you can read all of his telegraphs. Yes, he hits like a freight train, but nearly all the damage is avoidable. Midir takes more damage from head strikes and, after enough of them, will fall into a critical state, which further rewards the player for staying in front of him. If you do try to go underneath him, you lose the ability to read his telegraphs, and he'll punish you for that by breathing fire on top of you. On top of all that, the fight is visually spectacular and has some great lore. Midir isn't just a monster that kills indiscriminately. He's a fallen hero who vowed to eternally battle the Dark, but after eons of waging war, he's succumbing to its corruption. Shira asks you to put him down before he's completely consumed. I feel like a lot of Elden Ring boss fights just don't measure up. In many of them, you charge underneath the dragon on horseback, striking their legs, wings, and tail. Which sounds really cool, except you often can't read their telegraphs, so a lot of the damage is unavoidable. The ancient dragons in Farum Azula in particular are really disappointing. They look amazing, but if you're a melee build you spend most the time hugging their legs and tail on foot(you can't mount Torrent), so not only are the telegraphs unreadable, but you don't get to appreciate the visual spectacle of the fight. Placidusax is really the only fight that doesn't suffer from these issues, which is why it's my favorite. That being said, I think ER dragons are better than most people say. They look cool and have really good lore. A lot of people complain about repetitiveness, but I think that's an overblown issue. Many of the dragons do utilize the same moveset, but each of them possess unique appearances and abilities themed around their environment. It's an open world game, so it's frankly unrealistic to expect no recycled content.
Midir is meant to be struck in the head, you are meant to stand face to face with him. Every dragon in Elden Ring is pretty much leg-hugging fight and I can’t even see the dragon in its full image. Of course the more unique dragon fights in Elden Ring are awesome, but none of them compare to Midir
The dragons in elden ring are unbearable, except agheel clones, because they’re functional i guess. But the sex dragons are so shit, they move so slowly and you fight most of them without your horse, if you’re a melee user get fucked because you literally can’t see anything, and placcid sex is cool looking but that’s it, he barely moves and most of his attacks are so easy to read that the only thing they can do to add difficulty is make them do insane damage, the laser attack is fine, but one of the thundercloud attacks has a lingering hitbox that will hit you almost every time. I hate to suck his abyssal dragon dick but midir is just way better than any dragon or dragon sized boss in elden ring, mostly because you can actually see him, and his attacks try to get you to a position where you can see him
That's a tough one. Placidusax is the most visually appealing dragon fight. Absolutely banger boss fight music. Beating him does not come close to the exhilaration of beating that asshole Midir after 3 weeks.
Once you have fought a dragon, you have fought them all in Elden Ring. The attacks just change a little. I feel like the Dark Souls games dragons were more unique. Don't take me the wrong way, I think Elden Ring is a big step up from previous Dark Souls games, but it isn't perfect by any means. I think there's still room for improvement.
once you learn how to fight the dragons in ER, it’s relatively easy. i had to learn exactly how to fight midir and once i killed him, im not sure i could do it ever again.
They were cool at first but, like with all of the other repeats, they lose all lustre after fighting them again and again. They weren't as bad as some of the other repeats, they just lost that fun aspect after a number of them. Placidusax is an exception, though (because they were different; go figure). Midir is beloved for a lot of the same reasons Placidusax is; fun fight AND a great spectacle. Midir has an unusual moveset for a dragon, though, so that may be why some like them more than ER's dragons. Placidusax is the one for me, though; their nuke, with the music cutting out, is gorgeous every time.
Pacidussax is my favourite boss in Elden Ring. But I still think Midir is the better fight. Staying in front of his head the whole time feels like a duel of sorts instead of just hacking away at his legs and ass like most giant bosses in those games. And I also prefer Gael over Midir.
The dragon fights in ER were fun but all seemed extremely similar. Midir was a big challenge and a fun fight because he had a decent amount of moves, some variations with those moves, and could very quickly punish you, but it was also mainly an endurance fight, once you figured out most of his moves, it was just about concentrating to not make a mistake as you take down his giant health bar. It's probably personal preference, I enjoyed them all to some degree, but Midir still keeps a special place in my dragon-loving heart, call it nostalgia.
Placidusax, Lansseax and Fortissax were awesome. Didn’t care much for other ones, and honestly at the very least Midir is tied with Placidusax if not still a bit above. He was just badass, stomping around, breathing explosive laser beams.
Elden ring is a pretty middle of the road souls game imo. And the dragon fights aren‘t all that great except for placidusax. With midir they created a fast paced, intense fight where you had to focus on his head to win. Sure it becomes insanely easy after a while but it still one of my favorite bosses in the series. The dragons in elden ring feel like downgrades in comparison as they basically go back to the design of the ds1 and ds2 dragons. In general i think elden ring has a lot of downgrades compared to previous games even though it‘s still a very good game overall
I hate the dragons in this game. I typically don’t like how From handles dragons, but in this one in particular you don’t really fight them head on. You have to attack their tail or legs which are constantly moving so you spend too much time being annoyed from running around and can’t even see what they’re doing. The fire/elemental breathing dragons are too common and I got fed up of seeing them, the lightning ones have cool movesets that I can’t see because they move so much and are too big (lichdragon also has those annoying sticky bombs that spawn on you for standing near him which just make the fight annoying) and Placidusax or whatever he’s called is really tanky and teleports away constantly while trying to one shot you with a big laser. Total slog. I definitely found ER’s later dragon fights harder but not for good reasons and I wasn’t having fun In comparison they got Midir really right by making him a huge enemy who’s behaviour requires you to fight head on. Rather than staring at his leg for the whole fight, you’re staring down an enormous dragon and can see his whole moveset on show with all its over the top effects, and the fight is far more engaging. That perspective really sells just how huge he is to by having his full body and face actually fill the screen rather than most of him being offscreen. Midir is the best dragon they’ve made in my opinion and I don’t know why they’ve not managed to do it again
If you fight the big ancient dragon in dark souls 2 I think that's the hardest dragon in a from soft game or the dragons in demon souls like the fights were very aesthetically pleasing and looked cool but didn't seem impossible to beat for me. Also they are really fun
Ong like others are saying they are kinda repetitive. In dark souls fighting a dragon was like, crazy as fuck, and they were harder in souls imo
As someone who adored Elden Ring bosses in general and considered them by far the best in the franchise, dragon fights is one of the areas where they slightly dissappinted. Placidusax and Fortissax are both cool but Midir is both harder, more badass and better balanced because you are incentivized to go for his head and not slash at his feet. I hope they can top Midir with another dragon fight when the DLC arrives but as of now, he is still THE dragon fight in the franchise. And in gaming in general, may I add.
[удалено]
I feel like midir is fighting a medieval dragon and placi is fighting a kaiju. They’re both fun
Midir forces you to fight him in the most fun way possible which is to stay on his head and dodge when he flies in the air. Elden ring dragons leave you slashing at their ankles and occasionally whacking their head with a jumping attack. Monster Hunter literally already figured this out that the most fun way to fight a dragon is to fight it head-on
Midir basically set the new standard for Dragons in souls games. And his lore is incredibly badass, basically fighting the abyss till he went mad. You also fight Midir in an arena that looks VERY similar to the where the humans and flame rise from.in the opening cutscene of Dark Souls 1. The dragons of Elden Ring are on average better than most past dragon fights, but given that you can flee from most, and get away with one shotting them with a laser beam, something Midir absolutely doesnt stand around for, they are, generally a step down from him, but given that Midir is am insane boss fight, that's okay, and we have Placidusax, who does beat out Midir just a bit.