Between Asylum Demon, Tower Demon, Witches of Hemwick and Genichiro, he probably takes the cake for me.
At first, he’s a huge wall and pretty much impossible to beat for new players. Once you get the hang of the combat, it just clicks (literal shills running down my spine) and you end up appreciating the fight a lot.
What’s your pick?
For the umpteenth time Ludwig <3
Close to him Messmer and Midra many honorary mentions from ER/SotE edit: and Nightreign!
Hard agree on Genichiro, fucking SUPERB fight.
Ludwig is such an awesome fight where thematic transition is underlined with fantastic game mechanics.
Ludwig’s soundtrack is some of From’s absolute finest work
Ludwig is a really good pick - completely forgot about him. Only thought of Papa Guacamole when thinking of BB yesterday, strangely enough
My two favorites are Mohg from ER and pontiff sulyvahn from DS3, but havent played other souls yet.
I assume you like the real Mohg, Lord of Blood fight (the phase 2 goes crazy). But do you also enjoy the Mohg, the Omen fight (the one underneath the sewers)? It’s more of an extended phase 1 of the real deal, but I still quite enjoy it.
Of course, i was refering to lord of blood. It felt like if the entire game was just meant to prepare me to fail that fight. I really had to learn how to dance to his liking. Mohg’s second phase is so chaotic and you have so little time to take decisions that i really dont know how i beat him in the first place.
It was really hard but beating him was so rewarding that it made me understand what a good boss is soppose to be.
It’s a strange thing to say, but Mohg was plain hard and i wouldn’t call that fight unfair in anyway. I wish there were more bosses like him.
And, of course… the music.
I liked the Nameless King, second phase. It felt like such a well telegraphed fight. Each time I died, I could only blame myself. I had a lot of fun fighting him.
Huh, that’s tough… This probably the toughest question we had in these discussion threads yet…
Messmer: He is such sneaky bastard and I love his fight. Long interesting attack chains, but clear openings for your attacks. He also has two guaranteed attacks at the beginning of each phase, for which you can formulate a concrete plan. The second phase builds nicely on the moveset of the first phase with the addition of the arena wide big snake attacks which are fun to dodge and hard to punish.
Ludwig: Best Bloodborne Boss. Phase 1 is perfect for the fast pacing of Bloodborne. Phase 2 where it then switches to the huge sword attacks is the perfect mix-up.
Radabeast: And yes, I mean both Radagon and Elden Beast. A lot of people like only one, but I like the whole fight because it contains these two Bosses. Radagon is the epitome of humanoid Elden Ring Bosses. Elden Beast is a giant Boss, who actually uses his giant arena and cast bullshit spells that I actually now quite enjoy. (Side-note: Torrent is such a good addition to the Elden Beast fight.)
Honorable Mentions:
Guardian of the Ruins: My favorite Lies of P Boss. Such a ginormous Boss works really well in this game with mostly of big humanoid Bosses. I was really suprised how good the deflection mechanic worked on such a big boss and it felt really intuitive. But I haven’t fought him enough to call him one of my favorite fights. (Please Round8 make more giant Bosses. There are quite a lot of dragons in Oz… hint hint)
Bayle: One of my favorite Bosses in terms of style. Such an epic fight. But I have some gripes and some skill-issues about the combat itself. The bouncing standard flame-breath is bullshit and phase two gets sometimes a bit to visually busy for the fight (my opinion changes on this regularly); it still looks super awesome.
@Druid Really Asylum Demon? In terms of combat? Not Firesage or Stray Demon or Erdtree Avatars, but the basic Asylum Demon. I understand being nostalgic for it, but I would be really interested what you like about it in terms of combat.
Lots of good picks, really tough question, indeed.
Nah, I was just joking - you’re the first to question it :P
What else can I say but you have excellent taste :P
Tough. Champion Gundyr maybe? I love the flow of that fight. Tough, but not too hard. Nice rhythm. Feels fair. You can parry him, but you don’t have to.
Either him, Soul of Cinder or Dancer. For similar reasons on all of them. I’ve said it before but I prefer bosses in that Goldilocks zone of challenging but not too hard.
Oh yea, I get your sentiment on difficulty. From an absolute cinema POV, Khazan’s or Sekiro’s final bosses can barely be surpassed for me, but even though the latter has become pretty easy for me, the former was just infuriatingly difficult for me. I contemplated just quitting the game right then and there
Yeah I still have yet to attempt either of those, for good reason. I am not confident I will be able to beat them and I would prefer not to have to give up on a game at this point in my life. And I am not keen on spending days and days grinding a single boss anymore, those days may just be behind me.
Though I might have painted myself into a corner where I’m forced to try Sekiro at some point anyway. We’ll see…
Khazan, luckily, has difficulty options. No shame in making use of that. The game will still be plenty difficult :D
Sekiro definitely is a tough nut to crack, tho. I suspect you still might have to give it a shot sometime 👀
I hate dancer with all my soul. Never got so pissed at boss this much
Commander Honglan in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a delight to fight. The internet is full of people complaining that she’s too hard, but my friend beat her in 5 tries with a magic build. I, meanwhile, lost probably over 200 times (at a low estimate) trying to beat her with the starting longsword and the parry skill, and beating her was one of the most satisfying victories I’ve ever had in a soulslike. At no point did she feel unfair to fight, she’s just difficult. The fight felt very tight, fast-paced, and fluid.
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Consider editing out the name of the boss since there are people here who are or will soon be playing the game
