I Ranked & Reviewed 162 Soulsborne Bosses - Complete

hello hello and hello and welcome to my latest video on the Magnificent world of souls born a world of demons Knights beasts Samurai demigods and much much more a world of castles rancid underground settlements Dark Twisted cities holy temples mysticalm of magic need I go on the thrust of this intro is to illustrate how delightfully Fantastical and fantastic these games are from demon souls to the Dark Souls Trilogy to bloodborne to seu all the way to the Glorious golden Elden ring oh Elden ring I love every one of these games and over the past decade or so I've indulged in repeated playthroughs of every one of them to the point where I know them very well the level layouts the enemy placements the stats mechanics and systems and especially the bosses as such I recently put out a couple of videos where I went through my personal picks for the best and worst bosses from each game and then the best and worst levels and I had a lot of fun putting together my selections and then explaining my reasoning though I admit that some of my picks may have been unconventional to say the least the thing is though I had so much damn fun putting together those videos that a seed was planted in my mind an idea a proposition if you will that being to just go the whole hog and rank and review every Souls born boss from worst to best and folks that's exactly what I'm going to do and here we are and here you are so a few things to get out of the way before getting stuck in if an enemy does not have a boss health bar they ain't in the running for this video so no Hydra from Dark Souls 1 or stray demon from Dark Souls 3 for example also I know SEO isn't considered a Souls born game by a lot of people which is fine I get it but regardless I'm including seo's bosses anyway the more the merrier and speaking of seu the only only bosses I'll be taken into consideration from that game are the ones which drop memories like gicho corrupted monk Etc I won't be talking about the mini boss type enemies mandatory or otherwise cuz there's a hell of a lot of them many of them are simply variants of other mini bosses and there's enough bloody bosses to talk about even without them trust me for the exact same reasons I'll also only be considering the remembrance bosses from Elden ring like godric Moog Etc so no minor dungeon or field bosses for day and the same goes for bloodborne's chalice dungeons I know there are a few really cool bosses like the blood lighting beast and Beast possessed soul but most are simply regular enemies with boss health bars or just more challenging variants of story bosses thus if my calculations are correct the final boss count from all seven games comes in at a hefty 162 it would have been 160 but I've chosen to consider Emma the gentle blade and isin ASA as separate bosses same with with Radigan and the Elden Beast as for my actual criteria for placing bosses at particular ranks and for putting any one demon higher than any other Beast or what have you well look folks ultimately it's just based on how much I like and respect that boss there is nothing objective about this list I made no effort to make my choices safe and agreeable and conventional and you might even be shocked and disgusted at some boss placements and I get it it's very easy to get he when you see a boss you love get disrespected by some chump from Scotland of all places but look folks if I putting together a list of best and worst Souls born bosses I'm putting together my actual pcks not just ones that I think most people will agree with well I think that's just about all the provisions particulars and specifics being highlighted and so I see little need in prolonging the intro much more than is necessary if you find yourself enjoying the video hey why not subscribe to to the channel I'd sure appreciate it and lastly before I kick off with boss number 162 please allow me to give thanks to my kind patrons for their support and with all that being said let's get down to Brass tax shall we look I know I just gave a whole spiel about my list being unconventional and everything but as Avant guard as my tastes often range I still just couldn't bring myself to put anything other than the Bed of Chaos as the alltime worst Souls born boss it sucks that bad often when discussing even really crappy bosses you'll still find some people who go no you know I actually like that boss and look I'm sure even the Bed of Chaos has its enthusiasts but they are rare the encounter really is that bad there's no real fighting involved the run back is torturous most of the boss's moves are cheap are they're doing excessive damage or being designed to sweep you into a crack in the ground and even when you manage to destroy its weak points at either side of the Arena you can still get one-shotted inside its core with a last ditch chaos storm there's also just an inherent lack of satisfaction with enemies like this you can't directly attack them I see this big health bar and I see this admittedly rather badass looking chaotic flaming creature but I can't actually whack it with my great Scythe it's more like the arena itself is the boss and even when you do finally get inside turns out it's just some dumb bug take that I'd love to say that my mind had changed somewhat the Bed of Chaos over the years since I first faced it but it hasn't this boss remains a certified stinker the next boss right to be mercilessly mocked and shamed is none other than The Afflicted grave robber ancient Soldier VAR and Sarah the old Explorer aka the gank Squad see every Souls born game features bosses against NPC type enemies and they tend not to be highlights of the experience but even so usually they're still enjoyable enough to find fight same as when you get invaded by offline Phantoms at certain areas well as well regarded as Dark Souls 2 is when it comes to PVP content I happen to think it has the weakest NPC combat I hate when a character with some meaningless Bland name invades me when traversing through the Lost land of Drang Lake because there's almost never any actual lore related to these figures and the best strategy for victory tends to be stun lock the enemy and then keep them stun locked well everything I dislike about these sorts of Encounters in Dark Souls 2 is present in the gank Squad boss and then some there's three of them they have non-unique armor and weapons you can easily get stun locked to death by one or two of them especially when you take into consideration the arrows constantly being fired at you by Sarah and a major aspect of the battle involves constant running around the obnoxious Arena to regain a favorable position to allow you to pick them off one by one also although it's not entirely fair to take the run back into consideration when assessing the boss itself I do have to mention the Shocker of a run back through the Cave of the Dead past an absurd number of enemies and these horrible statues which cause petrification buildup which is an instant death by the way I really can forgive a lot about a boss fight's mechanics if other elements of it are cool like its presentation or even Associated War but the gank Squad ain't got nothing I like huh gank Squad more like no thank Squad is in no thank you I prefer to fight a different boss all right for the next couple of entries we're going to go way back to souls borns routs back to Demon Souls a game which I like very much though I'm afraid I don't think it's a highlight of many of its bosses and the boss I'm thinking of here lies at the end of the second level in the tower of latria it's the maners now I know there will be a few Demon Souls fans who just recoiled in horror at this choice but nonetheless Nostalgia for a really great game of as side I detest the maners there's a lot of AI Tom fery present in Demon Souls if you'll pardon my language and this Tom F Tom FY was in no way addressed or fixed in the 2020 remake of the game for PS5 For Better or For Worse and as a result the often odd behavior of certain enemies and bosses was now highlighted even further by those glorious nextg graphics and as far as I'm concerned no boss in this game is as odd juny and downright unpleasant as the maneaters they'll randomly fly off into the night mid attack before awkwardly circling back sometimes being unable to even get onto the damn walkway cuz they flew in too low or landing on a pill to chill there for a few seconds before hopefully jumping back down and rejoining the fight and sometimes they'll even use attacks mid-flight which were clearly only intended to be used when grounded which just looks really goofy the arena itself is one of if not the single most pilous Arena and all of souls born being a narrow walkway which is very easy to fall off of or be pushed off of and I can take that it's rough and tough but that alone is not a deal breaker but when you take that and sightway Jun into account and the moments where all you can do is stand there and watch one of them make get another baffling circuit through the air before returning it just makes for a crappy boss experience so much so that I hate fighting these things and here we have another classic Demon Souls stinker one which is remarkably similar to the Bed of Chaos in several ways and which is also considered the worst Demon Souls boss by many it's the dragon God honestly if it weren't for the maneaters it would also be my least favorite from the game but for as much as I don't enjoy the dragon Gods shtick I enjoy the maners even less the main thrust of the boss is to activate the Contraptions at both sides of the Arena Each of which depletes a massive portion of its Health before getting in close to deliver the cigra the trouble trouble is that if you're a bit too Indiscreet in your movements along the narrow Rubble littered Paths of the Arena the dragon God can easily one shot you with its fire breath or an enormous Fist and when this happens it could be really really aggravating I know that many folks simply didn't quite pick up on the gimmick here upon first entering the arena that being to look at the color of the Dragon God's eyes and to only run to the next power when it's looking away but even when you do understand that the experience just feels kind of clumsy and clunky also there's that Bed of Chaos thing again of seeing this big monster and just not being able to fight it with the boss feeling more like an environmental hazard than an actual enemy you're engaging in combat with the spectacle of the Dragon God is admittedly great and it certainly is very intimidating when you first see it but this is never an encounter I look forward to rather it's just one to grimley's Soldier through and then on to the next Arch demon for number 158 we're back to Drang Lake and my boss of Cho CH happens to be one that wasn't even in the game when it first released instead being added in patch 1.10 as the true final boss Alia scoler of the first sin now I'm not a great lover of the nandra fight which was the game's previous final boss but it wasn't terrible just underwhelming Alia however is so bad I'd honestly have preferred he was never added into the game at all for most of the encounter he'll be bathed in flames and thus out of range of melee strikes not to mention having significantly buffed defense while hurling Fireballs at the player or sending spikes up from the ground from its tree likee appendages the attacks are limited repetitive and easily avoided but the worst thing is that for most of the fight all you can really do is stand back and try not to get hit before rushing in for the 3 seconds at a time where Alia is actually vulnerable and then repeat the cycle until his health bar is fully depleted I know that Alia as a character is very important to the story of Dark Souls those two and that it made sense for them to add him in and he does appear at several points throughout the players's journey to provide dialogue but as a boss I've always found him to be utterly unenjoyable and unengaging I hope you're prepared for some more Dark Souls one boss is now cuz I've got three in a row for you starting with the centipede demon coming in at number 157 the centipede demon is the boss lying directly before the Bed of Chaos guarding the entrance to lost isth from the demon ruins arguably two of The Game's weakest levels I've always found this boss's design to be overly chaotic now I'm aware of how silly that sounds by the way being that it's a demon literally having been created by chaos itself but even so bloody hell what a mess and it's messy design has an unpleasant effect on the fight itself because when coupled with the classic Dark Souls camera High jinx it can be tough to work out what the hell's even going on at times the worst thing about this fight though is the arena gimmick because it's full of magma which will burn your we feet in seconds flat and thus either you stick to one of the small Islands taking care not to accidentally roll into the magma or you destroy the Senti be Demon's tail to get the orange charred ring a bit earlier you'll have fun frantically equipping It In the Heat of battle and then still taking that continuous obnoxious chip damage afterwards that will continue on in Lost ISO withth I don't hate this boss or anything but I'm just really not a fan nothing about it feels tight or polished but rather it's like one of the the devs turned to everyone at a meeting and said hey what if we have a boss that's just made out of a bunch of massive centipedes and also there's magma everywhere but in Japanese I imagine the meeting sounded like this let's stick with the whole magma theme for number 156 shall we and with another boss found in the demon ruins one who prevents traversal down to its deeper levels see ceaseless discharge now if I was judging the boss purely on scale and spectacle alone then ceaseless discharge would probably rank very highly indeed the sight of this Mighty scorching Titan as you enter its Arena really is awesome especially if it not actually attacking you unless you either attack it or NAB the gold hem set however unfortunately for it I am not solely judging the boss on how it looks because mechanically well it ain't great it doesn't have many attack at tall and they're very slow but even so the hit boxes here can be shall we say questionable I'm not suggesting that this is a particularly difficult boss though if you try to take it on right after beating quag when you're still likely to be rather low-leveled then it certainly can pose issues especially if you're getting one-shotted by its attacks though it's always fun to just return later on when you're much stronger to destroy its health bar the boss isn't offensively bad or anything it's just really not very engaging you see an animation starting you brace for impact hoping the eye frames will be kind to you this time the attack lands and then you whack its weird tentacle arm thing a few times and repeat of course there is also the strategy of baiting its long range grab for an easy cheesy alternative kill which is pretty cool I guess but all in all just not a very good boss yet another demon from the animals of Dark Souls one here I'm afraid and I'm sure another which will come as no surprise to anyone the cap Red Demon the utterly bothersome goat head fiend lurking in glor Undead bar and holding on to the key to the depths the very first time I played Dark Souls 1 I got to the Bellard gos then straight up gave up and did not touch the game for another year or two that's how badly they damaged me then when I did eventually pick it up again I still had a hard time of course but feared significantly better at least until I met the c r demon good Lord I still keenly remember the sheer frustration and outrage I felt upon on being flattened smoked and muled every time I entered through that fog gate and I know I wasn't the only one nowadays this fight is nothing to me because I understand the game's mechanics very well but on a first playthrough where everything's still new and scary this fight is Hell the cramped Arena the two dogs thrown in just for the hell of it the crappy run back it's no fun and even the strategy that's recommended for those struggling is pretty clumsy having to bait the demon up the stairs and have it drop back down so you can land a few hits and then repeat it's not great furthermore you see the same enemy copy pasted ad nauseum later on in the demon ruins which just kind of retroactively cheapens this encounter even more and here we have our first boss from seiro and in my opinion the worst boss from that entire game The Headless Apes now despite the array of mixed opinions on the guardian a boss fought earlier in the game it happens to be one of my alltime favorites specifically for the awesomeness and creepiness of its second phase and so you might think I would have similar affection for the Headless Apes boss but no the single biggest ball like for this encounter is the inclusion of a second ape because now whilst you're trying to dodge the Headless ap's wide arching swings thrusts and perilous attacks you've got another F delivering wild arm swings and swipes and to tell you the truth I hate it the one Saving Grace is that the smaller ape really doesn't have all that much health or posture but even so this encounter has just never worked for me it is really challenging but not in that tight satisfying way characteristic of most Securo bosses instead feeling overly chaotic and downright unreasonable at times there are some bosses in this game that I don't super look forward to because of how intimidating they are like Isen swords but for the Headless Apes I don't look forward to them because well to put it scientifically I think think this fights [ __ ] for number 153 we must travel back to Demon Souls I'm afraid this time to Stone Fang tunnel to the end of its first level to the layer of the armor spider this really isn't a super difficult encounter but at the same time I do tend to die on it at least once on any new playthrough though my main gripe with the armor spider is how tedious and repetitive the fight is the bosses of demon souls are a great deal more simplistic than those found in the later games which isn't necessarily a bad thing I mean more complexity doesn't automatically equate to higher quality but sometimes that limited AI does come into full View and it can really draw you out of the experience and make you feel like you're just contending against a cycle of moves this is how I feel when fighting the armor spider especially with the attack where it douses the ground in a flammable liquid before setting it a light forcing you to run to the back of the arena and repeat the cycle of moving forward past the fireballs and weage getting some hits in whilst dodging its melee hits then doing it all over again a few times and I guess the fact that the boss is entirely stationary also doesn't help with all this I don't think the armor spider is a terrible boss but nor do I enjoy fighting it at all and plus its inclusion here in the level has always felt a we bit random to me one thing I do really like about Dark Souls 2 is the sheer amount of stuff in it it has a ton of armor sets loads of weapons and a damn plethora of B es though the upshot is that quite a few of them really aren't very interesting and a perfect example is the Royal Rat Vanguard which is barely a boss at all down in the Grave of Saints far below the sunny vistas of maula Lies a boss fog wall and when you enter a fog wall you expect an exciting boss be a knight in shining armor or a bizarre monster or God knows what else but behind this particular fog wall lies a bunch of rats the fight is is just with a bunch of rats but one of them has a mohawk and that's about all there is to say really I guess the extra bit of spice added to the battle is that the rats do a wee bit of petrification buildup on attack I've never been petrified once during this fight it's just not very difficult to avoid their attacks it's not that this boss is unpleasant or anything it's just that the only things that even qualify as a boss are the health bar and the fact that it's behind the fog wall and nothing else lame I have very similar feelings towards the in Magus as I do towards the Royal Rat Vanguard again it's just a bunch of regular enemies which pose no real challenge he just progressively take out more of the congregation whilst avoiding any lightning Spears chucked your way as well as the dark AOE attack the probably Magus itself literally only has two attacks of its own seemingly designed to only slightly inconvenience you as you go about depleting the two boss health bars this really is about as nondescript as a boss can possibly get and I'll be honest I've already already ran out of things to say about it so probably best to move on to the next entry and that next entry is the folding screen monkeys though it's probably the single most unique boss in this entire list only really being classed as a boss because of its health bar and the fact you are rewarded with a memory for defeating it honestly the fight's more of a puzzle than anything else featuring four monkeys who each have their own quirks which makes them uniquely challenging to capture well mostly challenging the idea is to use the different features at Each corner of the large Arena to your advantage to counter the strength of that specific monkey you want to capture and kill and I guess it's a pretty cool idea and the kind of near puzzle type thing which is very uncharacteristic of fromsoft games but regardless I don't enjoy this encounter it's pretty novel the first time you play through the game but on repeated playthroughs it is just a pain in the ass when I'm frantically flying through the level desperately trying to catch some Cheeky Monkey only for it to evade me once again again I can't help but think I don't want to be doing this right now I want to be out in the world delivering plunging death blows and fighting actual bosses not messing around before all this bloody monkey business I do appreciate what fromsoft were going for here and I like that they tried something new but for me it all gets old very quickly these things just drive me bananas I'm sorry we ain't done with Dark Souls 2 just yet folks cuz there are still a few more of its bosses to appear down here in this scorned depths of the list which brings us to number 149 the skeleton Lords again we've got another group fight with a crap ton of enemies but the skeletons instead of rats although the Three Skeleton Lords themselves are unique enemies they pretty much just behave like regular enemies to the extent that they can even be backstabbed defeating one will then summon a load of regular skeletons which also have to be taken down to gradually lower the boss health bar which acts as a shared Health pool for all enemies in the fight they seem to have made this fight significantly more hectic in the score of the first sin version of the game cuz I don't remember there being this many skeletons in the battle the one time in the vanilla version and I guess that's kind of cool but even so the boss just boils down to a fight against a bunch of skeletons and it really ain't that interesting also I just find the concept of it to be kind of lame that there are just these three so-called skeleton Lords sitting in this random cave under a waterfall it all just feels a bit arbitrary on and ultimately uninteresting well we had one rat-based boss already with the Royal Rat Vanguard but here we have yet another introducing the Royal Rat Authority located in the doors of faros the name of the boss is kind of weird to be honest cuz that's clearly a coyote or a dog or something a big old woof woof not a rat so I'll say what everyone already knows about this mangi mut and its obnoxious pain sized helpers this fight is an awful mess in every way it's attacks of really awkward timings in hit boxes the smaller dogs can be difficult to hit because of their size and whilst it can be a challenging fight the challenge comes from how Goofy and clunky it all feels there's nothing tight about this encounter and for all the criticism You Can level at it dark souls I really does have some tight boss encounters the thing that kept me from placing the Royal Rat Authority just a bit lower on this list was its visual design cuz to be honest I do really like how disgusting it looks it even has an attack where it straight up vomits on the ground and it's really gross but also kind of sick pun intended finally we have our first Dark Souls 3 entry in the list and while there are a couple more from the game coming soon I do rate the game's bosses very highly I'm a massive fan of Dark Souls I and I think it has some of the best bosses in all of souls born but I'm afraid halflight simply does not make the cut I guess it shares similarities with the gank Squad being an NPC based fight with halflight Spear of the church who is accompanied by several painted Guardian type enemies though there is also a PVP element to the fight of course just like with the old monk from demon souls and the looking GL night from Dark Souls 2 although the PVP aspect might put halflight a fair bit higher on the west for some it doesn't for me I have little to no interest in PvP and I almost always play these games offline and so whenever I go up against half fight I just fight the regular version nonetheless I don't really think this is a bad encounter it's just not that great although half fight himself can be very annoying to fight with his various special attacks the NPC type fights can get particularly difficult in Dark Souls 3 and halflight is no exception this next entry happens to be similar in nature to halflight again featuring a PVP aspect where you could end up facing Earth with an actual player with Demon Souls being the first Souls born game to implement this interesting and creative feature and that's the only reason why I have placed the old monk just ahead of halflight as I've said I'm not a PVP guy and so when I fight bosses like this I'm fighting the basic offline versions and in the case of the old bunk there's nothing particularly impressive or interesting about it other than his extravagant choice of headwear I suppose it just plays out like a regular encounter with a phantom anded with claws except with a homing Soul mass type spell which automatically triggers from time to time and there's really nothing else that's special or distinctive about this boss the lower significance of the demonic yellow turbine and the story of the old Monk and how badly he [ __ ] everything up in latria is all awesome but even so all that external flavor doesn't really do much to alter the actual feel of this fight at number 145 we have the boss found at the top of the Dragon Shrine the ancient dragon something kind of unique about this boss is that you can actually talk to it beforehand and in fact you need the Ashen Mist Heart it gives you to even finish the game engaging it as a boss is totally optional though also optimal if you want to have the best chance of later defeating King Vendrick as enormous and truly awesome as the ancient dragon looks fighting it is a whole other matter because this might be the single most boring boss in all of souls born just as I earlier criticized the armor spider for having rather blind and transparent AI the same is true for the ancient dragon except here it has way more Health to whittle down and one small mistake can easily mean death forcing to start over despite its fast size you don't really feel like you're actually contending with it because most of its body is Out Of Reach rather you hit its toes a few times run off as it flies up for a large AOE fire breath attack bait it into a forward fire breath attack then run in and attack the toes again and repeat until the feet it doesn't make for an engaging boss encounter at all it's a shame too cuz it really is a sick looking boss and the arena is incredible too but sadly the fight as a whole really ain't up to much at number 144 we have the leechmonger the rising monstrosity which concludes The Damp misery of the valley of defilements opening level and a monster which is the spitting image of the uroboros makono boss from Resident Evil 5 which actually only came out a month after demon souls in Japan yet again I think the biggest failing with this boss is the AI and that's not the last time I'll be saying that for a Demon Souls boss either I've never died to the leechmonger and nor have I ever came remotely close to dying cuz it's just too damn easy and I think this clip of me fighting it perfectly illustrates this I really didn't feel like I was in much danger here so not very engaging is it if you do get hit by one of its attacks your health will drain for a short amount of time but not enough for it to cause any real concern and the boss can also regenerate it health a bit as if it's just popped a life gem or something but again it's all just a bit too weak not meaningfully adding to the challenge the arena is very cool and rather unique and the boss looks pretty cool and to be honest after the treacherous tribulations of the level which preceded it it is kind of nice to fight something so straightforward but all in all the leechmonger just isn't all that impressive as a boss funnily enough my next pick happens to be a boss from the very next level of the game found at the end of the swamp of Sorrow it's the dirty Colossus again the level leading up to it is a growing grind of swamps and [ __ ] with in intimidating enemies and confusing level design but again the actual boss of the level really isn't particularly difficult its melee attacks are very easy to dodge has virtually no ability to chase you down once you're out of range and it really doesn't have very much health when compared to the difficulty of the level leading up to it some folks praise Demon Souls bosses for being more akin to puzzles but it's more about figuring them out then going in for the kill rather than the intense exchanges founded in Dark Souls 3 and Elden ring and that is somewhat true but for a boss like the dirty Colossus there's really nothing to figure out you just run up and hit it a bunch and indeed the sheer lack of challenge here is why I've placed it so low in the list cuz it's a cool enough counter in all other regards it just feels a bit weak and impotent for lack of a better word at number 142 we have the Executioner Chariot found in an optional section of huntsman's cops guarding the way to the Brotherhood of Blood Covenant I guess this is something of a gimmick fight cuz for the first phase you don't actually fight it headon at all I mean you could try but good luck rather the strategy is to move further around the arena avoiding the damaging spokes of The Chariot by diving into the AR hoves along the way before pulling the lever at the end to lower the gate dismantling The Chariot from the two-headed Dark Horse which gives it motion after which it can be fought conventionally honestly it's a really cool idea for a boss and very unique however as cool as the idea is the execution of it is a bit bloody frustrating being cornered in pretty much any Souls born game tends to be a death sentence and the same is absolutely true in Dark Souls 2 and that aspect contributes to why I don't like this encounter because the many skeletons throughout the circular Arena will frequently box you in whilst you're Sheltering from the damaging Chariot or even prevent you from reaching the safe spots entirely it can just be really frustrating one cool kind of hidden trick though is to Simply Dodge roll through the Chariot as it comes around though I guess this can be easier said than done if your adaptability isn't up to scratch everyone's favorite stat also with Dark Souls 2 being the Undisputed king of horrible horrible boss runbacks of course the run back to the Executioner Chariot is appropriately horrible making each frustrating death all the more aggravating now we have a boss which I know ranks as the worst in Dark Souls 3 for many people and I do get why but it's one I've never been able to fully scorn despite common opinion it's the curse rotted Greatwood you see I don't judge bosses purely on mechanics cuz come on we all know there's more to souls born bosses than their hitbox and move set there's the associated War the scale the sound design the sheer awesome factor of it and it's that awesome factor that has always left me with a soft spot for the curse rotted Greatwood cuz holy [ __ ] this is one awesome looking boss actually fighting it however isn't quite so awesome I guess one of the most annoying aspects of it is that it's really difficult to get close to it for very long due to the size of both it and its attack hit boxes still the first phase is easy enough as it takes huge damage from the weird grow sacks along its body and limbs but it's the second phase where things get substantially more Awkward cuz now it's the pale spindly arm that has to be hit to deal any actual damage and it just feels way harder than it should it's always moving it's always attacking and even when you can get in for a hit or two it never feels that satisfying cuz you just need to pull straight out again that's what she said magic and consumables can certainly help but even then it's hard to actually connect with the arm itself due to how thin it is nonetheless I consider the curse rotted Greatwood to be one of the most incredi looking Souls born bosses and if the mechanics were better tuned I assure you it would be significantly higher on the west but then by that same token if the visuals weren't so excellent it would probably be a good bit lower at number 140 we have Old King alant honestly bosses like this can be kind of difficult to rank because okay what was the developer intention here was it to make a challenging fast paac encounter no obviously not it was to make a dramatic one filled with mixed emotions and even Confusion by the player and in that sense this boss is a complete success I don't think it's is bad at all nonetheless if we were to dispense with all the Romantic Notions of what the developers intended and whatnot and instead judge the boss purely based on how good the fight is well I guess I'd put it right here at number 140 though not with any enthusiasm it's just a bit of a difficult one to place to the point where if someone had it significantly higher on their own list because of Old King alance significance to the game story I'd get it once again we are back to Dark Souls 2 and I'm afraid there's going to be plenty more appearing down here in the lower section of the list too though to any Dark Souls 2 fans watching do not despair because I think it has some awesome bosses too who will appear very high in the rankings sadly though Nashandra is not one of those bosses Nashandra was of course the original final boss in the game before the update which added in alia who as I've discussed ended up being even worse I'll say up front that I do really like her design it's very HR Giger in style and I also find out entrance here to be very creepy but sadly that's about where my praise ends it's not that the fight sucks it's just that it's very very underwhelming as Shandra doesn't have that many attacks she moves kind of slowly and she's way too easy for a final boss a far cry from the likes of Gwyn so of Cinder or Gman she always initiates the fight by placing three curse orbs around the arena too which gradually fill your curse meter and I've always found this attack to be both lame and weak the curse status effect got a significant Nerf in Dark Souls 2 compared to how it was in the first game to the point where all it does here is lower your max HP a bit easily cured with a human effigy and the method of getting rid of these curse orbs is equally as lame could they at least have added in a sound effect or particle effect or something here it just feels and looks like you're hitting the air if nandra appeared as a regular boss earlier on in the game I'd probably have rated her a fair bit higher cuz it's not that she's bad it's that she was never good enough to be a final boss at number 138 we have L and Zan the twin tigers found at the end of The Frigid outskirts AKA one of if not the single worst level in all of souls born you see if I was to judge L and Zen purely on their own merits as a boss they might have rated a bit higher however when you take into account that it's just a doubled up repeat of an earlier boss and when you consider the sheer frigid [ __ ] hell of the level leading up to it well by the time I make it to the damn fog gate I'm already in a pissy mood and if I die to the boss and that puts me in an even worse mood cuz one I don't much like to get ganked by a boss we've been through that already and two I don't like shitty Boss run backs and this one is about as shitty as they come I'm not entirely sure how fair it is to judge a boss on the area leading up to it and in an ideal world I wouldn't but I just can't disregard it here it's too significant and detrimental to the experience to the point where when you say the words L and Z to A lot of Dark Souls 2 fans they immediately think oh God The Frigid outskirts that place sucks the level is intrinsically tied to the boss I'm afraid I don't like either of them for as tough as the Asylum Demon and Taurus demon surely were for brand spanking new players of Dark Souls the real difficulty Spike did not arrive until the fight with the Gargoyles on the rooftops of the undead Parish and as a result that particular boss encounter has a lot of notoriety amongst Souls fans not because it's really super difficult but because it's where the game requires a sudden elevation in what it demands from the player and then they went and repeated the gargoyle fight in Dark Souls 2 except they made it less iconic and more kind of [ __ ] it is an entirely optional fight of course as are many bosses in dark SCE 2 being found in a hidden area of the Lost Bas steel but g n I just don't like the way the boss was executed rather than there being one gargoyle and then another which joins after enough damage has been dealt to the first here you have two which immediately spring into action and then more progressively join the fight as more damage is dealt to the shared Health pool to the point but you can have a whole bunch of gargoyles on screen at the one time encouraging you to focus on defeating one before moving onto another rather than just spreading the damage out things can get very hectic very quickly and although it is just about manageable it gets really annoying trying to focus on one of them but being attacked by several others often forcing you to run around the rooftops to try and isolate one for just long enough to fully deplete its individual health bar before moving on to another I guess the actual boss mechanics are solid enough but I just don't like fighting multiple enemies at a time in Dark Souls 2 it never feels smooth and this boss is all about fighting multiple enemies at once now we're getting more into the region of the west where the bosses are a bit more on the lame or underwhelming side rather than being bad or truly flawed and I think a perfect example of a lame boss is scorpiones NASKA who guards the way to the doors of faros from the Shaded Woods I'm sure nearly everyone who saw NASKA for the first time probably thought much the same thing probably something along the lines of ah so it's like quog but as a scorpion some folk might even like the idea and design but personally it does nothing for me and when compared to qu NASKA has significantly less presence and power I guess the opening of the fight is kind of cool the way how at first it just looks like a woman who is stuck in the sand before revealing that no oh actually it's a massive scorpion thing she uses a mixture of Soul magic and melee swipes from her enormous Stingers which all feel kind of standard though a nice touch is that you can actually knock her Stingers off if you continuously Target them her dumbest attack though is where she digs down into the sand then chases you before emerging up for an attack because tons out this could happen she was on underground for a full 23 seconds there before coming back up what the hell was she doing down there I'm afraid Dark Souls 2 is on a roll here ladies and gentlemen well mostly gentlemen at number 135 we have the r tund Rascal itself the Covetous Demon found in Earth and Peak honestly if you were to ask me the single most defining feature of the cover this demon I wouldn't talk about its size or the rather interesting mechanic where you can shoot down corpses from above to distract the boss for a bit instead I would talk about how damn easy it is there's just no challenge to this encounter whatsoever its attacks are very slow and well telegraphed it doesn't have all that much health and won't do too much to defend itself even as you have at it and the whole corpse mechanic just isn't even remotely necessary for victory though I do like that it's there despite the utter lack of challenge here I do actually enjoy fighting the Covetous Demon there's nothing unpleasant or obnoxious about this encounter and there's something pretty fun about just hitting it a bunch and watching its health bar go down in a very simple way but overall it's just a low effort boss plus fromsoft brought it back as a mini boss type enemy in the crown of the ivory King DLC except whiter I remember back on my first playthrough of Dark Souls 1 on my first explorations of Dark Root Forest finding myself truly Enchanted by its atmosphere and Ambiance and the strange inhabitants wandering around its expanse like the mushrooms the boot things and the stone guardians but it wasn't until I nervously stepped through the high up fog wall that I became truly Enchanted both with the level and with dark souls as a whole as that beautiful Serene music began to play followed by the soft glimmering Descent of the Moonlight Butterfly it really is a beautiful boss experience but that beauty doesn't quite extend to the actual mechanics of the fight if you're a magic focused player I guess you're going to have a more than easy time here but if you're more melee oriented then most of the fight consists of just trying to avoid its powerful magic attacks either blocking it with a shield with decent magic defense like the crest Shield or simply rolling through the projectiles before the butterfly gracefully perches on the wedge for a nibble of a sweet Mossy treat before I hack it to death with my great Scythe take that you dumb butterfly as boring as the fight can be mechanically the mechanics are still solid enough and the whole Moonlight Butterfly Experience ultimately is a pleasant one let's stick with Dark Souls 1 for another entry shall we introducing the boss of the Catacombs pin wheel now pin wheel does have the reputation of being one of the all-time easiest Souls born bosses though a significant reason for this is that most folk take him on quite late of course you can access the catacombs extremely early even before venturing into the Undead Burg pin wheel can be your second boss if that's what your heart truly desires but generally that is not advisable because the catacomb is a difficult area at the best of times and especially difficult for a low-level character which makes the easiness of the level's boss a bit confusing as such on my most recent playthrough of Dark Souls I decided to take on pin wheel a bit earlier than normal not before going to the undead Parish but before venturing down Into the Depths and Bight town and turns out it's still a really easy boss the only real difference was that it took a way bit longer to kill than normal but other than that it's the same old pin wheel we all know in love I am on record as not being the biggest fan of Dark Souls 2's Brightstone Cove selora level at all I think it's bland to look at and even blander to play through and nor do I enjoy its enemies or level design and I'm also not a big fan of the level boss the juke's dear Freya the enormous two-headed spider that possesses one of the great Souls required to gain Passage through the Shrine of Winter the main feature of this boss is its two heads those being the only parts of it vast body which are vulnerable to damage though a nice touch is that one head will literally fall off after enough damage has been dealt forcing you to go around and attack the other end you can sort of see it here although the head ended up bugging out a bit H get it bugging cuz it's a spider a [ __ ] off I guess my main point of disdain for this fight is all the smaller spiders thrown into the mix Freya herself isn't super difficult on her own and so to up the challenge a bit all these smaller enemies have also been added in but as I would have preferred the boss itself be more challenging also if you happen to summon in one of the nearby NPC Phantoms for the fight like Manhunter oara here what a dumb name then it pretty much breaks the boss and renders it semi Harless because both heads can't attack at the same time it's an okay boss certainly not among the worst that Dark Souls 2 has to offer but nor is it among the best I'll be honest I'm already sick to death of talking about Dark Souls 2's bosses and I haven't even gotten onto any anything from bloodborne or Elden ring yet but alas another Dark Souls 2 Challenger joins the fry it's metha banful queen found at the end of Earth and Peak guarding the entrance to the iron keep one thing I really appreciate with dark souls 2's bosses is how often it introduces external factors which can be activated or manipulated to affect conditions inside the actual Boss Arena this isn't something the other games do much at all yet it happens a ton in this game and it's really cool and creative however the specific method of lowering the difficulty for the meth of fight is a we bit too uh obuse for my liking requiring you to set this particular windmill a light with a torch so as to somewhat drain the pool of poison inside the arena bit weird once inside though we're faced with the Headless Serpentine Queen herself who uses a mixture of spear attacks tail sweeps and soul magic she also has a really cool attack where she throws her head at you which then explodes for a magic AOE attack but me and Jester Thomas here nailed her before she could use it I kind of feel the same way towards metha as I do towards scorpion s nka she's just a very standard boss and even their actual move sets are rather similar except metha is part serpent instead of part scorpion the poison element of the arena is quite a nice touch though and even if you lower the poison pool she can still regen her health a bit by working in the perimeter and small touches like this are why I put metha a bit ahead of NASKA and finally I have graced this list with an appearance of a boss from my favorite Souls born game bloodborne and the boss I have chosen is mik lash host of The Nightmare if I was taken the Chalice dungeon bosses into account a bloodborne enemy would have been included earlier on this list trust me but as I've said I am not taking them into account and so yes it has taken until number 130 before something from the game has finally appeared I really don't think any of bloodborne's bosses are bad but there are a few underwhelming ones and I do think mikash is one of them which is a shame cuz it could have been incredible cuz parts of the encounter are incredible the music and atmosphere are superb perfectly complimenting the Labyrinth the nature of the halls of The Nightmare all the while mikash rants Raves and mocks your Hunter as you desperately try to chase him down if you don't understand the gimmick of having to lure him into specific sections of the level then it can be very frustrating when you can just never seem to catch him but once you do back him into a corner the actual fight begins and unfortunately this is where the experience kind of breaks down mikolash has no unique attacks of his own but rather he'll only use basic unarmed punches spam the augur of a breus or as can be particularly problematic he'll use a call Beyond in phase two which has the potential to easily One-Shot you it's really odd that fromsoft did this because it both could and should have been so much more I mean we're fighting him and a nightmare for God's sake there are Terrors and Horrors everywhere and then you encounter MH and it's just some nerd with a dumb cage on his head even so the other elements of this boss fight do Elevate the experience by a fairly significant degree hence why mikh did not appear earlier on this list aha back to Dark Souls 3 coming in at number 129 we have the ancient won this is another boss I actually found a bit difficult to place because it's highly unconventional despite what you may assume upon seeing the enormous gray wyon drop down into the huge Arena you're not supposed to attack it directly with acting more like a dynamic environmental hazard the real task is to Simply move on through the level P the serpents both small and large taking care not to get roasted to death on the way by the stalking draconic Menace below before situating yourself above its scaly head to drop down for a plunge attack and killing it in one devastating hit the dealing excess of 72,000 points of damage so you might be wondering why the hell I don't have the ancient wyver down as the worst boss in Dark Souls I behind even halflight and the curse rotted Greatwood and that's simply because I really enjoy moving through this Boss Arena I like the idea of this stalking nearly invulnerable boss trying to kill you as you move along the upper sections to position yourself for the killing blow now I must take care not to glamorize the whole Affair too much because I'm not saying it's superbly executed or that the wyvern's AI doesn't leave something to be desired but I don't have an inherent problem with gimmick fights as long as the gimmick is fun and or cool and I do think the whole plunge attack thing is very cool unless you miss the head and fall to your death that can happen we already looked at one of the four significant initial bosses from Dark Souls 2 with the dukee steer Freya who possesses one of the great souls and for number 128 we have another the Old Iron King the final boss of the Iron Keep now I do like nice big chunky monsters whose vast pools of Health I can Whittle down and I guess as far as that goes the Old Iron King has got me covered but mechanically it leaves a lot to be desired for a start for as large and intimidating as it looks the design is a bit generic and furthermore perhaps most of the challenge of the fight comes more from the surrounding magma than actual damage from the boss's attacks in fact the possibility of one of its attacks pushing you into to said magma is of much more concern than the damage they do especially that treacherous little patch of lava around the corner from the exit fog wall also why does the boss just stay still and hold position after each one of its attacks I mean the answer is obvious is to give the player a chance to deal damage but logically why would it do that it makes no sense or maybe I shouldn't be questioning the in-game logic of a massive Magma monster maybe that's dumb despite these gripes I do still enjoy fighting the Old Iron King more so than the duuk steer Freya though I sometimes wonder the extent to which the soul and boss Soul reward for beating each Dark Souls 2 boss plays into my enjoyment of fighting them cuz this game really is generous with the rewards and there's a certain amount of Base satisfaction that I get from seeing my soul counter double anyway I'm rambling now so let's swiftly move on to the next entry hemwick charal Lane is an awesome area and without a doubt one of the most atmospheric levels in all of souls born a smoky ashy expanse of gravestones and horror complete with trolls shrieking women and roaming executioners sadly however the level boss doesn't quite live up to the distinctive Brilliance of the level itself introducing the witches of hemwick like I said before I don't consider any of bloodborne's bosses to be bad but the witches of henwick are without a doubt one of the weaker ones the thing is that the enemies you fight here are simply regular enemies you've already fought earlier or elsewhere though if you come into the fight having spent away all your insights beforehand then these shadowy creatures won't appear at all trivializing the whole encounter it's just a fight against these two hack type enemies who you may have already seen in yahar Gul except here they're partially invisible and that's about where it runs out of interesting features really not got all that much to say about the witches of HCK to be honest it's kind of unremarkable though it's more of an okay got to fight this boss now kind of deal than a God got to fight this boss Now situation ation here we have another bloodborne entry to the list two in a row and it's the optional fight with the celestial Emissary at the end of upper Cathedral wart who prevents passage on towards the altar of Despair where abitus awaits I mean I'll make no bones about it this is a gank fight a gank fight with a large gang of these bizarre alien boys who despite looking rather foolish with their wobbly blue heads can hit surprisingly hard though that's especially true of the main one responsible for the actual B health bar who balloons up to several times its original size in Phase 2 look I know this fight sucks I know you're just fighting some regular enemies with a boss health bar and I know it's essentially a more Cosmic version of the Royal Rat Vanguard boss from Dark Souls 2 but nonetheless I like it I love popping a bolt paper and a beast blood pellet and then going to town on a big crowd of these things with my Beast cutter and watching that health bar disappear it's just really satisfying and fun and so despite how mechanically and conceptually Superior many previous bosses maybe in comparison to it I'm putting it in number 126 sui that was a joke please do not take legal action against the channel well I just can't get enough of Dark Souls 2 now can I here at number 1125 we have the guardian Dragon found at the end of aldia keep guarding the way to the elevator which takes the player all the way up to the dragon eie which I think is one of the best looking levels in the game the thing about the guardian dragon is that it's very inoffensive I wasn't offended by the fight at all it's about as standard as a dragon fight can be before the classic attacks ranging from The Stomp The Bite the fire breath and my personal favorite the fireball magic or Miracle users will have a very easy time with it especially if you throw out some lightning Spears though the fact that it like to fly around a lot can make a melee focused approach a bit awkward to implement though that is a common complaint with dragon bosses in general I've never really found the guardian Dragon to be very very difficult to beat really it's just another decent enemy with a boss health bar and it's fine by me though you do go on to fight what are essentially cones of it in the following level once again we return to demon souls and again to the Tower of latri except my pick for number 124 is the boss for the world's first level prison of hope it's the Fool's Idol I have memories from the first couple of times I played Demon Souls back in the PS3 days of running up to the Fool's Idol and destroying her health bar before she had much of a chance to do anything which is why it surprised me so much when I took her on again years later on the PS5 version and actually had a pretty hard time the main point of pain for me Isn't just the fact that she creates clones of herself everywhere it's those damaging green traps on the ground which would catch me out as I'm making my way to her clones to determine which is the real boss to tell you the truth I found this extremely irritating and frustrating but then I realized that you can tell which is the true Fool's Idol by targeting each one if it's a clone it'll have its own smaller health bar whereas the real Idol will not I guess this goes back to the whole puzzle element of Demon Souls bosses that people talk about I think it's done really well here because of its unusual subtlety well we've seen this kitty cat before haven't we or at least too like it back in the L in Zin fight that I put at number 138 but I've put Ava a good deal higher because one it really is a decent boss at its core and two there's no excruciating run back and three you fight Ava before fighting Wad and Z it is the first of its kind and that does count for something yet again and not for the last time in Dark Souls 2 we have a case where the difficulty of the boss can be lowered by actions taken outside of the actual Boss Arena though that difficulty is substantially lowered in this case rendering Ava fully visible after collecting the eye of the Priestess further on in the level it is entirely possible to defeat the boss whilst it's invisible via careful observation of its particle effects and by its sound cues but unless you're a very skilled speedrunner I wouldn't really advise that strategy there's no special reward for beating it that way I remember back when Dark Souls 2 first came out and a lot of folk were complaining that too many of the bosses were just dudes and ladies in armor which I guess they found Bland compared to the variety of outlandish demons found in Dark Souls 1 I mean personally I like fighting Knights of all varieties in these games as well as monsters and so this was never really a complaint of mine but nonetheless I also enjoy fighting monsters and I especially like the idea of fighting an enormous white tiger and that idea was executed well with the Ava encounter with its leaps swipes and even magic in my opinion bloodborne's one and only DLC the old Hunters is the single greatest DLC of any game I already adore almost everything about bloodborne's base game but then the old hunters came along and straight up surpassed it with its even more visceral horror incredible level design and legendary bosses but speaking of its bosses there is one encounter in particular which doesn't really come close to matching the quality of the others and that boss is the living failures this is another one of the fights against a set of identical enemies who will continuously spawn until their shared Health pool has been fully depleted just like the Four Kings though with a markedly less impressive move set mainly consisting of wild swings and brainless head bashes complete with Arcane homing projectiles of course despite all this there are a couple of things I like very much about this encounter for one the arena looks incredible the way this enormous sunflower shifts in the wind throughout the fight is awesome but more to the mechanic side of things the living failures have one of the coolest ever Souls born attacks in their Arsenal with their Cosmic meteor shower for as in your face as much of the horror of bloodborne is it absolutely gets into the realm of Cosmic horror and I think these astral elements are especially interesting and compelling and so when the skywalks turns all Galactic here for their meteor attack it gets me every damn time and elevates the living failures from a rather Bland gank fight into something just that bit greater udex Gunder is the very first boss of Dark Souls 3 initially appearing as a static statue towards the end of the cemetery of Ash leading up to Firelink Shrine see I do enjoy the Gunder fight however I don't think it's great as a first boss specifically because of its second phase it's all great at first but a conventional but still cool array of moves from glaive and fist but then he whips out the puss of man party trick and things break down a bit I've beaten Dark Souls 3 tin times at this point including at level one but gundar's second phase can still get me sometimes because it can be so difficult to interpret his animations here and I don't think that's a great quality for the game game's first boss especially when so many of the game's other bosses feel so tight and Polished in comparison I do think udex Gunder is a fun fight but if I had my way I think it would have been better if he just stayed in his first phase throughout the whole fight then maybe you can encounter a p of Man enemy just outside just like you do a bit later in the high wall of wrick not only did Dark Souls 2 bring back an altered version of the gargoyle boss fight but it also brought back uncle orstein or at least some dude wearing his armor and wielding his weapon I'll be honest I know and understand very little about Dark Souls 2's lore and so I've got no idea why this guy is even here but nonetheless I like this fight it's certainly not even half as challenging as the original on scen in small fight from the first game but even so the old dragon sler has an enjoyable and somewhat rhythmic move set which makes for a great early game Boss though it is also optional just like the Dragon Rider found at the opposite end of hid's tower of flame I happen to love the Tower of flame level and one of the reasons for that really is that I get to fight the old dragon slayer though for whatever reason the score of the first sinim version went and made all that a great deal more Awkward fun fight though and I think it's a really cool touch that he still uses his butt slam except now it does dark damage instead of lightning just a cool we Elemental tweak they added there the crucifixion Woods really isn't my favorite Dark Souls 3 level it is cool in several ways but ah there's something about his layout that doesn't quite gel with me I think it's the excessive number of enemies ltered everywhere I prefer fewer strong enemies than a greater number of weaker ones it just makes dispatching them feel more gratifying enough rambling about the level itself though cuz this is about the boss of the crucifixion Woods the crystal Sage with its big floppy hat this is another clone type boss and is actually rather similar to the Fool's Idol now that I think about it at least in terms of mechanics if not appearance it's the kind of Boss where two people can have drastically different experiences too in terms of difficult Y and I myself have had varying experiences here on different playthroughs if you're too laxs in taking care of the Clones or you're delilly Ding and dealing enough damage to the true Crystal Sage who can be identified by the purple color of its crystal ball then the fight can quickly devolve into a chaotic mess of Crystal projectiles flying Every Which Way resulting in a frustrating and overwhelming boss experience but even so this is a solid fight with a solid visual design and solid mechanics it's solid enough you do fight a more difficult version of it too later on in the grand archives which is way more of a headache than this encounter one of the alltime greatest Souls born boss moments occurs in the osiros boss fight once around 40% of its HP has been depleted whereupon the consumed King takes his Invisible Child and violently smashes it into the ground and that's the kind of thing I like to see I know that sounds weird but what I mean is that I like the edge of these games the grit the horror and brutality and even if the baby in question here is invisible that is pretty darn brutal the first phase and second really are completely different though in fact it's kind of like the opposite of the Ludwick fight who starts off all wild and beastial before regaining his intelligence and composure where is here ayos starts off using speech standing on his hind legs and even casting magic before going apeshit in the second half of the fight he does have some rather [ __ ] attacks in that second half though which is quite unfortunate in particular the near instant charge attack is unreasonably difficult to react to I do like the idea of him totally losing his [ __ ] like this but the actual execution of it mechanically could have been better it's one of those bosses that feels more difficult than it should I still like it though and osiros as a character is really cool and disturbing especially with his weird pale appearance and that he doesn't seem to have any actual eyes whereas oyos was something of a perversion of the form of a dragon I guess you can say much the same about the gaping Dron dragon from Dark Souls 1 except this thing is anomalous in a different way when it comes down to it the gaping dragon is neither a difficult or technical boss but nonetheless I remember having a very tough time with it on my first journey through the game though at the same time I had a very poor understanding of the game's mechanics in fact I didn't even understand the invincibility frames were a thing until my second playthrough I know it seems obvious now but there's nothing in the game that suggests you can simply roll through attacks and I'd never seen anything like that in other games either and so I used an awful lot of shields in the early days being a SE Beast of such prodigious size the gaping dragon is distinctly slow and lumbering with much of its attack animations like its forward crawl so you do have to watch out for that one cuz it removes about half your health if you get remotely near it even from the back even so this thing has some surprising acrobatic skills which require Swift repositioning L you get flattened by its vast form and then swallowed into that gate ging gaping hole I remember playing this game with a buddy a good few years ago and upon seeing this boss emerge up from the other end of the Arena he said something along the lines of that looks dumb I don't like that boss design well I do like this boss design and I also love that you can cut its tail off for the Dragon King great Axe though I've never properly used that weapon now that I think about it probably due to its strength requirement of 50 speaking of having a poor understanding of the game's mechanics I also didn't understand that equip load was a thing either in the early days so I remember equipping the outrageously heavy Dragon King great ax and not even being able to roll due to being overburdened but I just thought that's what happened when you equipped a heavy weapon or armor such ignorance but then that process of slowly gaining an understanding of how the world of mechanics actually worked played a big part in making those early playthroughs so damn special sitting rather comfortably at number 116 I have the Taurus demon which for most people is the second boss they face in Dark Souls after the initial Gauntlet through the undead barg perhaps after a tense encounter with a black knight if I were to judge the Taurus demon solely as an enemy I probably wouldn't have placed it higher than so many others I mean you end up fighting a multitude of them later on in the demon ruins just like the kaer demon however this boss battle just has too much cultural significance maybe cultural isn't the right word there but everyone remembers the panic and their hearts once this thing jumps down from the tower and how your immediate reaction is to panic and run the [ __ ] away then there's the two halls shooting down at you from the tower to your rear which might just give you the idea to go for a plunge attack cuz God knows when you're a rank amateur rank amateurs at Dark Souls you need all the tricks and fine cheeses available to you like I said the enemy on its own isn't tremendously interesting but the arena and even its placement as an early game Boss are solid and speaking of the Arena I don't believe there's ever been another one quite like it anywhere else in Souls born well here's another one that might surprise people a bit but I really like the first boss of Dark Souls 2 The Last Giant found in the depths of the Forest of Fallen Giants which makes a lot of sense actually see it's really not a technical boss at all to the point where all of its attacks are easy to read and easy enough to dodge but even so I love the design and its move set is just Pleasant for me to work with the last Giant certainly doesn't make for a challenging first boss certainly not like udex gundar but you can still die to it and again I don't quite love the idea of a very challenging first boss anyway unless it's one you're supposed to die to like genichiro or the grafted cion by the way one of my favorite Souls born tropes is when things rip their own arm off and or use the arm as a weapon and it's so sick when the last giant does this for extra range but was it really worth ripping your own arm out of its socket for a range buff just a really cool simple boss and I also love the implication that this is actually the shattered giant Lord who fail the low after being defeated in the battle for Drang Lake when the Giants invaded the land coming up next is SE the scaleless a holder of one of the four Lord souls in Dark Souls 1 who resides in the juke's archives before making a frantic entrance into the Crystal Caves as the player approaches its Crystal of immortality the Crystal Caves is one of those levels that looks strikingly beautiful but that I don't really enjoy playing through very much and I kind of have the same opinion when it comes to se itself this is one of the coolest looking bosses in all of souls born I love how huge pale and crystalline it is however the act of actually fighting it has always felt a wee bit awkward with how its weird legs can block your movement or how annoying it is to avoid damage when they start thrashing around and how Bloody common it is to get stuck in there with a clam when you first enter nonetheless this really is a spectacular fight and the Crystal of immortality aspect is a really nice touch I like waiting right by it while SE slowly slithers over and then [ __ ] rolling right through it take that also this was still back in the days when you get awesome secret weapons from cutting off the taals of dragons and SE was no exception to that getting you the legendary moonlight great sword I'll never understand why from soft stopped including that feature in later games I mean why wouldn't you keep that up it's so sick now the next four entries in the list are all very similar to each other and as such I'm going to cover them collectively cuz I really don't especially prefer one over the other due to them being based off of the original it's Vanguard the Asylum Demon the stray demon and the demon fire sage like I said the Vanguard was the first such enemy who came in this particular shape and I guess the most defining feature of this boss is that classic butt slam and and thank God it has that butt slam because it's by far the easiest of its attacks to avoid and counter and they'd even go on to add a new iteration of the enemy in Elden ring too with the air tree Avatar of these four iterations though I guess the Vanguard is the most unique and that you're generally supposed to die to on your first encounter unless you're really good whereas with the Asylum Demon you're supposed to initially run away from it and then with the stray demon and Demon fire Sage well those are just straight fights so you can fight the Vanguard as an optional enemy later on in the first level of the Shrine of Storms for its Demon Soul a lot of people have an inherent dislike for reskin bosses but I really don't as long as the boss fight is still good and the stray demon and Demon fire Sage fights which appear in the Undead Asylum and Demon ruins respectively are decent enough fights even though while the stray demon has a somewhat expanded move set compared to the tutorial boss the demon fire Sid seems to have the exact same move set to the stray demon as far as I can tell except with a fire effect added and that's kind of a shame these are all simple encounters but they're encounters I've always enjoyed Dark Souls 1 is really good at providing the player with these big meaty bosses with chunky health bars to diminish and indeed who among you can resist the fat ass of the Asylum Demon at number 109 we have the deacons of the deep a straight up gank fight appearing at the end of the Cathedral of the deep around aldrich's vast coffin I've shown some disrespect for a few gank fights earlier on in this list and so some of you might be wondering why I've included one so much higher and I guess this simple reason for it is that this one is just fun in fact the best thing about this boss is just how many deacons there actually are cuz it gives you a great opportunity to pull out your most extravagant spells pyromancies Miracles or sweeping melee attacks and just going to town dealing some serious satisfying damage I guess the fight can get a wee bit chaotic but not too chaotic and almost never really frustrating probably due to the low damage the enemies actually inflict the feature of the red Haze markers floating to the particular Deacon who needs to be damaged to lower the boss health bar is really cool and how this Pope dude appears around about halfway through it's just an enjoyable fight with lots of damage and flashiness and at number 108 we again have a boss from the valley of defilement an arch demon in fact and another tricky one to judge it's madeen Australia Maiden austrialia is very different from almost every other boss on this list though I suppose she shares the most similarity with Old King alant the maiden herself will never attack you instead sending her Champion gal Vinland to defend her and even he won't initially attack you unless you keep trying to get past him though sadly the actual fight with gal is neither challenging nor particularly well executed due to the fact that his weapon can bounce off the walls of the cave even so this boss is not about challenge or complexity it's about instilling mixed emotions in the player but whether or not they're the good guy in all this though personally despite how nice maid arria looks and how godamn incredible her soundtrack is I don't think she's a good guy at all regardless of her intentions the valley of defilement is a miserable rotten plague ridden hell hole surface level low discussions deide th this is an effective encounter I don't know if I'd call it a good boss and so I can't really justify putting it any higher on the list but I think the developers achieved what they set out to do here and made an a St it no doubt makes for one of the most memorable bosses in all of souls born a lot of folk criticize Dark Souls 3's ashes of arandel DLC for being a bit too short when it first came out but personally I was always happy enough with the length mainly because the content was so excellent not to mention the stunning wintry visuals mind you it is a fact there are only two bosses included in the DLC the infamous sister Freda and the somewhat more forgettable Champion's gravetender and his loyal Great Wolf at first you don't quite know what you're getting into with the fight because the only initial enemies are a pack of wolves a common feature in the painted world but then the Champion's grav tender himself joins the fight though he seems to have forgotten his trousers what was he doing with these wolves it is a fairly standard NPC type fight at first but the grav tender does have a unique weapon called the won heart which he drops upon the feet which might be the only single Dark Souls weapon that includes both a sword and a shield the real enemy of Interest here though is the Great Wolf though this won't be the first time you have seen it this thing makes an appearance earlier on in the level two though it can't be fully defeated in those encounters I'll be honest this boss fight is kind of forgettable and it's not even required to be beaten to finish the DLC but I do think the Great Wolf in particular makes for a really enjoyable fight and complement the Great tender very well in comparison to the infuriating cluster [ __ ] that is the Headless Apes I'm sure everyone remembers that first time they used the key on the door to the Bergen worth lunarium and stepped out seeing the feeble form of Master William sat on his rocking chair who is by this point unable to even speak instead only moaning and pointing towards the Moonlight lake with his staff at first I thought well obviously I'm not supposed to jump down there I'll die but then I thought hm I guess I I'm supposed to jump down there and down I went into one of the most striking Souls born boss Arenas there ever was though Elder ring would later pay some tribute to it in phase two of the fight with rala despite being called a spider ROM sure does look pretty damn strange with its vast shimmering body not to mention the tiny legs it scuttles around on though if you later visit the mysterious altar of Despair you get a good indication of how ROM would have looked with her original legs like many interesting boss fights there's something pretty unique about it that being that ROM will not attack you in the first phase just allowing you to Pummel her with your chosen trick weapon most effectively with the aid of a bolt paper and Beast blood pellet though after the vacuous spider teleports away that's when she starts pulling out all the Arcane attacks the biggest threat to success in this encounter though is without a doubt the army of smaller spiders which spawn in in great number anytime Ram teleports to the point where there can be dozens of them in the Arena at the one time ROM can absolutely deal massive damage with her Arcane attacks and even when she simply thrashes around but good God the smaller ones hit so hard you could even say they hit excessively hard and you can't call yourself a bloodborne veteran until you've been near one shotted from one of these things dive bombing you mind you for as Troublesome as this boss can be the chalis dungeon version of ROM is so much worse having more spiders more health and a smaller Arena it's it's actually possible to take ROM out really quickly if you're efficient and accurate in your attacks and if you're bold enough to ignore the spiders but the safest way really is to painstakingly take out all her minions and then focus on her and it can get tedious having to do this on every attempt even so I do still enjoy the fight particularly how unconventional it is how gorgeous the arena is and how significant ROM is to the story to the extent where the game World under go a significant change once she's been defeated accessible by entering the memory of J in The Forest of Fallen Giants which puts you right in the thick of the battle for Drang Lake stands the giant Lord at the other end of the defenses tall imposing and well armed and handsome now I'll be the first to admit that this is one of those cases where my logic can break down a we bit because while this is absolutely a flawed fight I still really like it the camera stinks so much so that you can only ever see about half of its body and and even once you get close to it it will mostly use Stomps not the most interesting attack from a boss like this albe it with the occasional easily avoided sword swipe and despite this being a very late game Boss it's damn easy to the extent that it's great for farming Souls if you've got some Spar bonfire Aesthetics despite all this I simply find the giant Lord to be really enjoyable to fight and the idea that you and it are doing battle in the middle of this much larger battle there so much chaos in the background is really sick and goes to show that tight mechanics and intense difficulty are't everything when it comes to making a fun boss not sure I'd call this a great boss but it is fun and that's the most important thing the catacombs of carus isn't exactly my favorite level in Dark Souls 3 and as for the demon ruins which lies far below it I have even less fondness as for the area boss though I think I have a greater opinion of it than many Dark Souls I players you fight all sorts of skelet throughout the Dark Souls games but High Lord wer has to be the largest and spookiest even more so than those big [ __ ] from the Tomb of the Giants but don't even talk to me about those bloody dogs they've given me enough grief like a sizable portion of souls born bosses W is a gimmick fight rather than the strategy being to Simply attack him head on these three bright glowing bangles on his bony arms are the weak points exploding in a satisfying flash of white light when destroyed and taking off a third of his health each time I've said before I am a okay with gimmick fights as long as they're fun and I've always found the W near fight to be pretty damn fun though I have gotten unlucky before where he spammed his forward charge attack to the point where I get overwhelmed by the purple bong smoke and die and that sure ain't fun but what can I say I still like it enough mind you I'd completely understand anyone who put wnir significantly lower and I do agree that there was some Mis potential to this fight I think I would have preferred that they ditch the bangle gimmick ditch the smaller skeletons that flood the arena and make it more of a straight fight but hey this is what we got instead and it's all right the first Dark Souls game did only receive a single DLC that being the much loved ures of the abys content pack which arrived a bit over a year after the base game sure wish I could say the same for shadow of the air tree but alas here we wait our Tes of the Abyss introduced some sick bosses but it all starts off with a very decent boss the sanctuary Guardian who guards the way to UIL Sanctuary hence the name Sanctuary Guardian got that I have always liked the visual design of it but at the same time it's always seemed a tad out of place to me I mean you never really encounter anything else in Dark Souls 1 that looks like this though I guess you have traveled much further back in time here which explains away that it's a very fair boss with some cool attacks both from flight and well grounded and the lightning range attacks make use of that hidden effect in Dark Souls where they get extra damage and range if they hit water a cool touch that's very easy to miss which makes it even cooler in my book and not only did from soft see fit to provide extra weapons as a reward for cutting off Dragon Tales but they even did the same thing here with the sanctuary Guardian for its Guardian tail furthermore if you come back to this Arena later on there are two Sanctuary Guardians here though due to the lack of a boss health bar it's not officially a part of this list but nonetheless that's a pretty intense challenge in fact despite how many times I've finished Dark Souls and its DLC I don't think I've ever actually beaten these two and nor am I likely to excluding the fight against the Vanguard in the tutorial which you're very likely to die on the first genuine boss of demon soul is against the fanks at the end of the first level of bataria which happens to be my favorite world as far as first bosses go I think the fank is excellent and a great conclusion to a great level also the gates of bolaria you'll be fighting lots of draglings many of whom will drop fire bombs and even tarp time two consumables which are very useful throughout the level itself however it's when you get to the fanks that these things really come into play and I always look forward to standing back and chucking a few firebombs at the slimy glowing core and watching the splash damage being done to the Lesser enemies surrounding it I get a similar sort of kick from fighting the fanks as I do with the deacons of the deep there's just a lot of enemies huddled tight around each other and I'm going to see how many of them I can hit with a single attack FX really isn't difficult to figure out and nor is it difficult to beat but you can still die to it if you get careless and these are attributes I really appreciate in an opening or early game Boss I mentioned before that one of the reasons I enjoyed Dark Souls 2's Tower of flame level so much is that I get to fight the old Dragon sler who I consider to be a straightforward and enjoyable Boss by have very similar feelings towards the level's other boss the Dragon Rider this really is one of the easiest fights in the game and that goes for both this version and the version later on in Drang L castle where you fight two dragon Riders but low difficulty aside I absolutely love fighting this enemy and as silly as it might sound its visual design plays a big part of that the Dark Souls games feature a ton of awesome armor sets which are super detailed remarkably welld designed and memorable with the elite night set from Dark Souls 1 being a favorite of mine and one that also makes an appearance in Dark Souls 2 and three do you know what doesn't make an appearance in Dark Souls 3 though the Dragon Rider set or the Dragon Rider halir bow twin blade or great shield and that makes me sad cuz I think this is one of the sickest looking enemies in the trilogy yes its move set is very limited and basic and yes you do encounter it as a regular enemy later on in the game but even so I just love to fight it let's stick with the theme of very simple bosses for a second shall we and journey on to the end of the first level of the Shrine of Storms past the skeletons storm beasts and more skeletons to the treacherous layer of the adjudicator see whilst the Dragon Rider is very easy having just a few basic hboard moves the adjudicator literally only has two possible attacks a tongue attack it uses at long range and a brutal chop attack it uses at close range the issue is that these attacks ain't [ __ ] it's so bafflingly easy to defeat this boss and just never take damage due to how limited its options are to the point where I think it should have been given at least one more attack to sometimes throughout furthermore sometimes it won't use any attacks at all as can be seen here during my magic run where the boss's AI flat out broke and spite of all these profoundly unimpressive attributes the adjudicator is still a sick boss with a sick Arena the design of it is crazy with that gaping bloody wound on its side not to mention the whole having a bird for a head thing though blueo did change up its appearance a fair bit in the remake for whatever reason really don't know why they did that and nor do I like what they did with the original adjudicator theme the one that sounds like this if you play through bloodborne paying little to no heed of the third umbilical cord items found in the optional areas then the final boss of the game will be none other than Gman the first hunter or possibly even mer Go's wet ners if you chose the easy way out with the game's final choice however providing you've consumed three third umbilical cords the true final boss is revealed coming down from on high Moon presence my opinion of the Moon presence has similarities to how I feel about nandra it's a good boss but not quite final boss material and certainly not up to scratch when compared to Gman even so I don't want to detract from it too much because I do enjoy it and to be honest after fighting Gman something comparatively easier makes for a pretty nice change but I don't find the moon presence terribly challenging I do find it difficult to not get hit by it I guess its animations can make it a bit hard to tell when it's attacking and when it isn't it is one of the very few Souls born enemies with nearly unavoidable damage too unless you kill it extremely fast I guess so you can quickly get the health back from this particular attack by making use of bloodborne's rally mechanic you know it's a shame that bloodborne is stuck at 30 FPS I know however I feel that people are still a bit too harsh on its visuals personally I get used to the lower frame rate after about 10 minutes of any new playthrough to where I stop even noticing it and despite the game having came out back in 2015 it still looks [ __ ] incredible God damn I love this game I think the first boss that gave me trouble in Dark Souls 2 was the pursuer being a pretty big step up and challenge when compared to the last giant which comes just a bit before it on the same level but an even bigger step up and challenge arrived when I dropped down into the arena where the the three ruined Sentinels awaited me cuz there's three of them and only one of me usually this would spark Swift Scottish Anger from me prompting me to shoot Thunderbolts from my ass as Mel Gibson so finally put it but in this case I rather like it you don't fight all three right off the bat instead being stuck on a platform that's just one of them encouraging you to kill it before the others jump up here too which they can then after one's been defeated now you've got just two left and while it's still challenging for sure it's also reasonable and doable with smart spacing tactics I simply must mention the Ruin Sentinels awesome boss theme 2 the one that's playing now for whatever reason Dark Souls 2 soundtrack rarely gets any love and I tend to disregard it myself quite often but when I actually stop and listen to some of its tracks a track like this I'll usually find myself saying hang on a minute this song [ __ ] slaps the dark Beast PDL battle does something I always like to see in a Souls born game where it lets you see the Monster before the battle even initiates making you wonder whether you should press on or turn back it's one of the things I loved about Elden Rings field bosses the way you'd often see them roaming around building the tension as you approach before the battle actually begins parl is a completely optional fight and also slightly awkwardly placed see if you get kidnapped by one of these uh what are they called oh then they drag you off to the Hogan jail in yahar In AAP sack and from the lower levels you can encounter dark Beast parl who explodes into thunderous action for a frantic and Loud fight but if you miss the yahar G event then you'll encounter parl much later when you're likely to be much more powerful and when you can make very short work of it and not have to find out how much of a [ __ ] pain in the ass it can be when you're trying to hit thin yet somehow still hairy legs parel's AOE attack is the biggest nuisance here though with proper timing it can be eye framed through but the true strategy is to make use of bloodborne's stagger system targeting specific limbs to keep it from food powering up and becoming a real challenge super cool encounter but fighting it early on can get quite frustrating especially if you're using a weapon with poor range it's one of the things that always kept me from being a big fan of the death birds from Elden Ring 2 they're just kind of awkward to actually hit we've already spoken about the belfree Gargoyles but that was specifically their somewhat shallow reappearance in Dark Souls 2 but here a good bit higher on the list we have the original encounter the original [ __ ] this moment for many firsttime Dark Souls players myself included that's not a joke by the way I literally sold the game after getting repeatedly hammered by these things and didn't play it for another year and a half or something but I'm glad I did play it again cuz I realized they weren't actually as hard as they first seemed for a start if you've introduced yourself to S beforehand which you absolutely should have then he's available to be summoned providing you haven't ran out of humanity and providing you even understand what the hell Humanity is/ does on your first playthrough which is not a given also the Gargoyles really aren't very tanky same with most bosses from the first Dark Souls actually and furthermore the second gargoyle's fire breath attack is actually really easy to punish despite all that the encounter really can be a hot spot of frustration especially considering the annoying run back and if you've used up all your humanity and gold Pine resin already really sick boss and absolutely iconic the perfect boss for the awesome level that is the undead Parish it's kind of a theme in Demon Souls where the arch demon have some twist or gimmick or something which makes them irregular to actually fight with the exception of false King alant which is just a straight up fight the storm king is no exception so being one of the largest Souls born bosses and a solid gimmick fight the first pH simply has you taking down the many smaller storm beasts hovering around in the sky ideally with the nearby storm ruler sword though magic or a also suffices once enough of them have been failed however the Storm King makes its grand entrance and it's all pretty [ __ ] epic as you slice at the sky dealing huge chunks of damage to its vast alien body each time mind you as much as I enjoy hitting this thing I don't so much enjoy the defensive aspect of it when it sends those weird projectiles that you they kind of encouraged to just hide behind this Stone structure but I don't really find this as engaging as it perhaps should have been it's not a very fun sort of evasion a lot of fans of the original Demon Souls on PS3 rag on the remake for having diminished atmosphere and looking rather sterile in comparison and I do agree with some of these arguments but I also think the Remake excels in other places and a perfect example of that is the Storm King fight with the dramatic music and weather effects if you're going to have a gimmick boss best to try and make it as epic as possible we've already covered the absolute Sher of a boss that was the gank Squad way back at number 161 but there are another two bosses found within the crown of the sunken King DLC who are sub substantially better and one of those is Alana squalled Queen she's kind of like a mini version of nandra but with an expanded move set not to mention being just much more challenging I can deal with her pretty efficiently nowadays but I absolutely struggled on my first playthrough of the DLC like really struggled and a big reason for that is that she can straight up summon vat to the fight multiple times in fact on top of the magic she spits out and it's really hard and she's surprisingly tanky for a Dark Souls 2 boss mind you on my most recent playthrough I got lucky and she didn't summon vat a single time I just got the skeletons which aren't anywhere near as bad despite how Bloody difficult it can be to keep track of multiple enemies at once here this is a case where I think it works well Elana's pyromancies really keep you on your TOS while you're taking out her minions and Dark Souls 2 is kind of short on actually difficult boss fights and so I like this one she also gets bonus points for me for the fact that there's a small chance that instead of summoning the skeletons or they start she'll summon a small Pig instead I hereby award Alana five bonus points because of the small Pig I've had very different experiences with the one reborn which has shifted it in position from being one of my favorite bosses in bloodborn to one where my emotions are rather mixed see if you come into this fight well prepared at a high level with a good weapon and maybe even with a beast blood pellet for some extra damage then you can end things very quickly due to the Stagger potential of the boss chaining charge attacks with visceral attacks for crazy damage if however you are a wee bit underleveled and actually have to fight the damn thing this boss can be nightmarish it can just be so difficult to actually get close to the thing due to having a multitude of disgusting often ambiguous lens and appendages constantly kicking out at you to the point where it can be hard to tell where you're supposed to actually hit it from and these attacks really really hard not to mention its ranged attack but it spawns a load of Blood and Guts on top of you I always take out the maidens up above to begin with but then this triggers the boss's second phase early so even that comes with a downside I completed a level four run of bloodborne last year and had a ton of fun with it but there were two bosses just two that gave me an extremely difficult time one was Gman who must have taken me well over a hundred attempts and the other was the one reborn who took far less attempts but caused far more frustration even so this is a cool looking boss maybe the most disgusting design from soft has ever came up with and it can be fun and cathartic battle with the right setup but I can't justify putting it any higher on the list I guess fendrick shares some parallels with Old King a want within both being Kings and being utter Shadows of their former selves by the time you finally meet them though in the case of Vendrick the encounter is anything but easy in fact when you first en counter him after taking down the stat his defense will be so absurdly high that your chances of actually defeating him are slim to none though it is technically possible just not advisable yet again we have another Dark Souls 2 example where things you can do outside the Boss Arena have a real effect on conditions inside it with vendrick's defense stat dropping substantially for every giant Soul you obtain up to a maximum of five that being the number where his defense finally goes down to Baseline the thing I've always appreciated about venrick is that while his move set is very limited and basic he can still be really difficult just when you get cocky and think you've got this Shandling Hollow all figured out he'll catch you at the tail end of one of his wide arching swings and destroy your health bar or surprise you with a longrange jump attack from across the arena and I really like that it's just a large man carrying a large sword swinging it from side to side with the occasional overhead slash but it's still engaging challenging and quietly emotional the way he doesn't even react to your presence when you first walk in sick simple fight when someone says the words an orlondo to his Souls fan many of them will immediately think of orstein and Smo the terrifying Guardians who prevent the way to princess gwy ofir but let's not forget about gwyn's other child the dark son gwiin you can gain access to him by becoming a member of the Dark Moon blades or by taking out gwy by I personally always just go the route of getting the Dark Moon Seance ring from the catacombs and passing beyond the fake Statue of Lord gwin before barging rudely into his unique and memorable Boss Arena the first bunch of times I attempted gwindel on my first playthrough went really really badly because if you haven't figured out that you're supposed to seek shelter from his attacks and then Dodge R through the strong magic attack he can end you remarkably quickly particularly with his knife projectiles mind you once you work out this strategy the job is half done because as elusive as he may be with his teleporting Tendencies gwindel does not have all that much HP the boss is a great deal simpler than many others that fell lower down in the rankings but even so it's built on a solid idea and executed well and I'm really glad this boss is here because it does a lot to add to how awesome a level an Orlando itself is one aspect of Dark Souls 2's gameplay that has attracted well-deserved critique over the years is just how difficult the levels are in comparison to the bosses in large part due to the extent to which the game enjoys throwing multiple enemies at you at once and how unpleasant it feels to fight multiple enemies at once in this game and few areas throw as many enemies at you at once as the shrine of a Mana so the score of the first sin version of the Iron Keep also thoroughly takes the piss a bit Jesus despite the difficulty of the level leading up to it the boss itself really ain't so bad in comparison but it is a boss that I like super grotesque design and there's something profoundly Ambiguously disgusting with the way it peels its outer layer to reveal its skull like Visage many of its attacks involve flopping its weird arms out at you as well as its water projectiles but my favorite is the one where it rears up to its full size before belly flopping down at you I like it for the same reason I enjoy the appearance and attacks of the curs rotted Greatwood big weird enemies with grand attacks just please me on some weird level apparently the painted world of Aramis was the first level that fromsoft actually designed for Dark Souls and it really shows though I do mean that in a good way it's very dense and intricate with Myriad secrets and treasures for those willing to look for them the final boss of the level is crossbreed Priscilla located in a circular Arena Beyond which lies the exit to the painted world back to an Orlando of course even after getting to the end of the level past bone wheels and Undead dragons you don't actually need to fight Priscilla you can just leave her be as she requests and return to the land of the living but I'm here to kill bosses in chug Estus and I'm all out of Estus that's not true I have six left actually Priscilla has the rare ability to turn totally invisible a trait shared by a certain baby from Dark Souls 3 and this can make the fight particularly challenging when you don't understand how the hell to work out where she's going to attack for especially when you take into account the bleed buildup from her life hunt scythe awesome Weapon by the way at least when used in conjunction with a blood shield and a blood bite ring of course the trick is to watch out for footprints in the snow and then strategically position yourself for an attack cuz she really doesn't have all that much HP though this has the adverse effect of making it difficult to cut her tail off for her dagger without actually killing her I feel similarly towards Priscilla as I do towards gwindel it's a great fight with a simple mechanic for the player to figure out and the encounter as a whole carries a lot of essence for lack of a better term the beginning of bloodborne is mercilessly difficult for new players of the game even with me having been a very experienced Dark Souls 1 and two player at the time I remember getting absolutely rocked by all the villagers in Central yanam and no wonder when you consider how many of them there are and how much more fastpaced the combat is when compared to those first two Dark Souls games especially the second one the first mandatory boss of the game is father gascoin but before that at the end of the great bre you are introduced to the source of that scream heard earlier when climbing the game's first ladder it's the cleric Beast I'll tell you what for a first boss it's pretty freaking tanky even more so if you choose the threaded cane as your starting weapon instead of the stronger saw Cleaver or Hunter's axe the cleric Beast isn't some basic [ __ ] of a boss with a handful of attacks either it's got a fairly complex move set complete with grab attacks and Buffs and you might even find that you need all of those 20 blood vs to take it down of course I earlier praised the phax boss from demon souls for how much it encourages you to use firebombs and tarentine to make that fight easier and a similar thing is done here where you could use oil ears and Molotov cocktails to make that big health bar more manageable although a bit tricky the cleric Beast is still a very appropriate boss for the central yanam level at this point in the game things are still somewhat comprehendable with the theme of beasts and blood and so what better opening boss an especially formidable beast and leave the whatever the [ __ ] this is until much later as violent bloody and frankly insane as the opening beats of bloodborne absolutely are though things become a bit more eerie in the cathedral Ward where you encounter the church servant type enemies looking more pale and strange than beastial but the first proper anomaly for many people will likely come just outside Odin Chapel as they get lifted up into the air and crushed by some invisible force of course there is a monster responsible for this though it doesn't come into full view until much later it's an amag dawa a lesser amag dawa to be precise and one which can't be directly fought the boss version comes later at the end of the optional level that is the nightmare Frontier a level that a lot of people really don't like it turns out like almost any boss my first instinct upon seeing this thing leap down was to run up and start whacking its most easily accessible body parts those being the legs because for most Souls born B is it tends not to matter where you actually hit them it'll do the same damage regardless that strategy does not work for amigdala though with its legs taking poultry damage the real targets are its arms and particularly its head this can be pretty difficult though and even awkward cuz it means you need to bait out certain attacks and then run in for a couple of hits and hope for a stagger amda does seem to have a bit of an AI flaw though but it's not difficult to bait out its easily dodgeable jump attack for some three hits to the head and sometimes it will even just Spam this attack if you position yourself just so I mentioned before with the last giant fight from Dark Souls 2 that I get very um excited when I see bosses rip their own arms off cuz it's just cool and sick and gnarly and so you can imagine my delight when this happens now that's a sick move this amigdala does not give a [ __ ] it does make it a bit harder to hit the arms though because the ripped off arms don't take damage of course this can be a tricky fight but it's nothing crazy though I still have nightmares about the defiled amigdala within the Chalice dungeons where you only have half Max HP that might be one of the most brutal Encounters in all of souls born people who fought it will know what I mean when I say that this boss is located in a Dark Souls 2 level that you never even need to set foot in same with hid's Tower of flame actually though the home of the flexile Sentry is no man's Warf specifically the ship one of the things I like most about the flex Sentry is just how weird it looks in fact it took me a while before I even realized it was some sort of double lizard thing and there's not really another enemy in the game that looks anything like it it's a shame that the item description for its Soul tells you next to nothing about it as well as its intriguing appearance the file Sentry just has a really cool slick move set and I love how it changes depending on which side is facing you and how you can get yourself any one of its three weapons with its Soul either the W sword the AR sword or the barbed club say what you want about Dark Souls 2 but it has so many cool weapons to choose from and it makes beating a boss all the more exciting when you know that you can get its weapon or weapons this battle also has a kind of subtle feature where the longer you fight this thing the higher the water in the arena will rise to the point where your Mobility gets restricted though I think most people beat it long before that actually happens so I guess it's kind of pointless but I still appreciate that it's there the intro cinematic to Dark Souls 1 is sick we can all agree on that it excites and ignites the imagination with all mysterious talk of dragons Gods souls and darkness and I found a way it introduces the important figures like Gwen and SE to be really effective at making you want to know more about them but of all the characters shown in that cutscene the one I was most initially compelled by was Nito grave W Nito what a cool design for a character or Monster might be more accurate seeing as how it doesn't have any actual dialogue the actual fight with it has always been a bit of an eyebrow Razer though cuz I'm sure I'm not alone and expecting a wee bit more Neo itself looks awesome in the fight and very creepy spooky but the main source of but the main source of challenge doesn't really come from Nito it comes from the smaller skeletons who will simply revive when killed and certainly the larger ones at the back thankfully though you can't avoid AR gr the larger ones if you don't move back there and you can even counter the resurrection aspect of the small smaller ones by using a Divine weapon and even more thankfully there is friendly fire for this boss fight with nito's my Asma attack often hurting its bony mates more than you I guess it's Nito speed that's its biggest weakness cuz it's really not difficult to just get in there and lay into it and then get back out me the my asthma attack is coming though the delayed effect of its ground grave Lord sword attack with the women's scream as an indication of when you should roll is genius really adding to the horror and flavor of this spooky silent being my favorite part of the fight though is at the end when you see that it's not just some weird floating thing with a purple cape but that it actually has a full skeletal body I'm not saying this boss couldn't have been better but I do still like it a lot next up we have the rotten a boss that actually has some distant relationship with grave Lord Neto to the point but if you beat it in New Game Plus you get the old dead One Soul referring to Nito now the rotten does not have as great a presence as the grave Lord but nonetheless it does have a rather UNS Ling design and the moment when you realize that it is the source of all those statues throughout the gutter and the Black Gulch gives a welcome Touch of depth to this meat monster to fight though the rotten has always been a boss I've liked despite being so horrific in appearance I've always found something enjoyably conventional in its move set which mainly consists of chops and slashes with its large Cleaver or its free arm So speaking of its arms both can be cut off if specifically targeted which is sick but then they do grow back which is also pretty sick unfortunately both I and others have fell victim to some pretty questionable hit boxes from its grab attack though as ever the adaptability stat likely plays some foul part in this like the Old Iron King fight there are fiery environmental hazards but the difference is that these ones don't just kill you upon standing in them and they're pretty easy to avoid and so I like their inclusion it's an extra element to be aware of whilst avoiding the big Cleaver just a very solid boss it's fun to fight what more could a girl ask for well I guess this one might be a point of controversy in the comment section but even so at number 83 I have the flame worker another 83 is a bad place to be in this list at all but I know that it is many people's favorite Demon Souls boss one they'd put a lot higher but not me its design is cool enough but I've never really been all that taken with it it's just never quite swept me off my feet as it seems to have with so many others I simply see the flame worker as a solid enough boss that introduces a good bit of challenge to a game where the boss is generally aren't all that challenging mind you I'd be lying if I said I was any good actually fighting the flame worker cuz I'm not I think it's the big explosion that accompanies many of its attacks that always throws my timing off cuz the rowing in such in Demon Souls has always felt just a bit awkward to me even in the remake not trying to make excuses or anything though I'm not trying to blame the game it's also surprisingly tanky for a Demon Souls boss I'm pretty much the only one where I feel at a real disadvantage if I don't have a buff like a sticky white stuff though as usual a half decent magic build can trivialize the fight the flame looker has always seemed like a boss I'm supposed to really like but at the end of the day I just think it's decent maybe if Demon Souls was my first Souls game I'd look upon its bosses with more fondness and appreciation but I'm afraid Dark Souls was my first love and so I'll take a quag over a flame worker any day of the week mergo is a very mysterious character in bloodborn who although being very significant to the plot is never actually seen though it is heard first faintly with exploring yanam after defeating Rome and then strongly at the end of The Nightmare of mensis being guarded by meu's wet nurse and enigmatic Phantom of sharp blades and dark cloth difficulty wise I put mergo at around 5 and 1/2 out of 10 or maybe even a six if I was feeling generous and the main reason this score isn't higher is because of one specific attack that forward blade flurry thing it's just way too easy to punish her other attacks are far harder to deal with with all off putting timings and massive damage but I've always felt that her difficulty was overly compromised a bit to the point where it's not that hard to take her out before she even makes it onto her second phase like I did here the second phase is spooky though the way all goes dark as you desperately Sprint around the arena trying not to get caught out by any of her attacks all the while Merle continues to cry in the background at least until the nightmare is slain despite the difficulty issue maro's wiers is a very solid boss so there is something a bit unsatisfying about the lack of a blood spring that occurs after hitting her compared to the literal rain of blood that occurs after killing some rans Beast finally we had to get literally halfway down the list before I saw fed to stick an Elden boss in here as much as I love Elden ring I don't think it's the greatest game of all time or anything and I didn't think I worshiped its bosses so much but when I was organizing my rankings I just couldn't bring myself to place any of them particularly low but here we are finally introducing the Elden Beast now the fight with the Elden Beast is technically part of the same larger boss battle with Radigan even using rigan's body as a literal sword however the two enemies are so utterly different in every way that I'm considering them separately by no means is the Elden Beast a perfect boss not even close I mean for a start here are three flaws with the fight one it's very mobile to the extent that a lot of the battle is spent trying to get to wherever it's moved to and spent dodging its many long range attacks two it has one of the most bafflingly [ __ ] attacks in the game that being Elden Stars a move that is absurdly difficult to not take damage from to the point where it's nearly impossible and the Elden Beast can even fire off two into the arena at the same time not to mention its other ranged attacks which you can also use whilst you're trying to avoid Elden Stars I did a level one run of Elden ring last year and this attack absolutely drove me up the godamn wall to the point where I have to use some weird trick where you run counterclockwise around the boss's body just when it starts casting it to throw off its pathing I am not a fan of this move three the fact that you have to fight Radigan all over again if you die to Elden Beast might be a bridge too far Radigan is a very difficult boss who's likely to require most of your skill and Crimson flasks and then you've got a whole other boss to beat on top of it that's also no pushover and will also require plenty of healing yes you had to go through genichiro every time before fighting isin sword sent back in SEO but you can quickly get to the point where that fight becomes trivial which is not the case for Radigan even with all these critiques of the Elden Beast this boss is just so [ __ ] epic it's one of from soft's coolest designs looking like some sort of ancient astral amphibian and its move set while admittedly obnoxious to deal with at times is undeniably gorgeous and Grand from its wild looking Divine punishment grab attack to its Elden ring ground attack to its long range Divine dragonesque golden sword beams what do you want me to say despite its flaws Elden Beast is still kind of awesome and I think it would be much more highly regarded by Elden ring fans if only the game didn't force you to refight Radigan every bloody time over the years I've had quite a mixture of opinions on dragon bosses in Souls games I mean it makes sense when you consider the kind of shitty ones like the ancient dragon or even the ancient wyver which I personally enjoy considerably more but when it comes to the black dragon calam fight it seems you either love it or hate it I guess the two common characteristics of most dragons are the reason for this those being that they tend to fly around a lot preventing you from actually being able to hit the [ __ ] thing and also that they're able to breathe fire over large swaths of the Arena fire that can be difficult to avoid and both of these factors are certainly true of calamate on my first playthrough of the Dark Souls DLC I had a fairly challenging time with the sanctuary guardian and a difficult time with both artorius and Manis but K meat was on another level I just could not deal with its fire breath attacks I found it so difficult to get out of the way in time and when I took damage from them it was very big damage it's telekinesis grab also always used to get me despite how desperately I try to roll away from it and of course that comes with a unique Calamity status where you take double damage for around a minute after sheesh the fight's not impossible though obviously and there are strategies to deal with all of cate's attacks but even after all these years I am never confident when descending down this Ladder into the valley below and this is one of Dark Souls 1's hardest bosses but it's also a pretty great boss and along with Hawkeye go it Heralds in one of the single greatest Souls born cutscenes by the time you come across the Regal ancestor spirit it's highly likely you already have faced off against a regular ancestor Spirit a near identical boss which takes place in an identical Arena though it's not till beating the Regal variant that a remembrance is given so there's the Regal ancestor Spirit as an enemy and then there's a Regal ancestor Spirit as an experience mechanically the enemy is quite interesting to fight against but certainly not among the most engaging of Elder ring bosses but as an experience when you take the gorgeous visuals and beautiful soundtrack into account the encounter as a whole is straight up moving and I think the nearly divine and well Regal appearance of the ancestor spirit is made even more effective when you consider how frightening and monstrous so many of Elden Ring's other enemies and bosses are visuals aside so this boss can pull off some interesting moves like how it has the ability to heal itself and the way it learns new attacks based on which ghost animal it revives from throughout the fight and that mechanic of it dying and being reborn from a new animal really adds to the whole I guess emotional flavor of the boss like I said mechanically it's a good fight but the other elements of the encounter play a major factor in elevating it into something a bit special so every now and then I'll get a comment about my distinctive accent most people don't seem to have any opinion of it some people really like it and a few people hate it so for this next one I'm going to try doing it as an American statistically at least 80% of Watchers have dropped off by this point so why not we're now past a half by point of the rankings and thus while there were some great bosses already mentioned all those to come are certifiably sick and at least some way for number 78 I've got the Throne Watcher and Defender the boss immediately preceding the fight with Nashandra though thankfully you don't have to fight them all over again if you do die to nandra unlike when you die to Isen sword Saint or the Elden Beast the Throne Watcher and Defender actually shares a mechanic with the witches of hemwick Of All Bosses H those being to defeat the other Knight quickly after defeating the first otherwise the first one will simply get revived and this can happen happen adnasium which is pretty rough when you consider the fact that this is a hard that's enough of that and this is pretty rough when you consider the fact that this is a hard enough boss already I'm not normally a fan of being sandwiched by two enemies in Dark Souls 2 but frankly these two particular enemies are really really cool I love how the defender is a bit slow and heavy while the Watcher is more light and acrobatic and how they both buff their weapons with lightning halfway through the battle though I do think it would have been cooler if they'd both gotten different Buffs like maybe lightning and fire or lightning and dark while I have beaten them solo before I do tend to summon an NPC Phantom or two for the throne boys cuz if you've been following their quest lines somewhat you can even summon Ben Hart and Van G for the fight which again is very cool Dark Souls 2 is really great NPCs with some of the best personal ities and voice acting in the series and I like that you can take them into battle here at the end I've already covered almost all of Demon Souls bosses by now to the point where there are only a few left but my pick for number 77 is the penetrator the level boss for 13 inner W which happens to be my favorite level in the whole game something I've always enjoyed about the penetrator is that it's one of the most straightforward fights in Demon Souls it's just you and a Dark Knight with a massive sword have at it the penetrator attacks do have a distinct ferocity dexterity and heaviness to them when compared to most other Souls born Night Fights which is interesting considering this was the first Souls game Blue Point added in some very sick blood and fire effects to its attacks in the remake though these were not actually there in the original instead there was just a blue Soul magic type effect before as incredible as the penetrator looks though both it and its attack animations I don't think I've ever actually died to it I remember my first time fighting it after playing through 1 three which can be a very challenging level and I saw that intimidating cut scene and its crazy armor and massive sword but then I actually fought it and turned out it was pretty slow and strangely easy even so it's always been a really enjoyable fight for me and makes for a great conclusion to a fantastic level plus seeing a fat official get penetrated at the start gives the boss extra bonus points for sure one of demon Soul's better bosses as discussed bloodborne did have a single DLC and oh what a DLC it was but even before the release of the old Hunters there existed a disconnected location just a bit outside of yanam past a broken bridge which always felt like some small DLC content that from soft just threw in anyway I'm talking about forsaken castle kinghurst and for number 76 I'm talking about the decrepit boss who sits Sentinel on its lofty rooftops martyr larus if you've been conversing with Alfred throughout your journey then you'll already have a bit of background on the violent animosity between the executioners and the V Bloods and why the leader of the executioners Martin larus might be waiting up here half Frozen and seemingly dead before reanimating and commencing one hell of a rooftop boss battle they'll take care to not you know die cuz the run back is a bit of a [ __ ] Mar larus is one of those bosses that absolutely pummeled me on my first few attempts cuz of That Awkward attack but he sent SS a red arcade skull out which you think you've avoided before he triggers it to explode into a larger skull with an even larger AOE damaging the inexperienced player like me many of the boss's attacks do revolve around these distinctive red projectiles particularly in phase one you can of course gain similar Powers yourself through the use of The Executioner's gloves it's the second phase where the fight becomes much more melee oriented though with larus getting far more up close and personal with violent slashes from both sword and scythe and for as difficult as these can be to avoid they're also what makes the boss somewhat manageable even at a lower level cuz of course he can be staggered with a well timed gunshot and the best time to do this is with his downward sight slam unless the camera [ __ ] you over very sick optional boss from a sick optional area and leading on to perhaps the single sickest quest line moment with Alfred and Analise Alfred you sick bastard sin is the final of three boss is from Dark Souls 2's crown of the sunken King DLC and another Dragon enemy one that I've always really enjoyed fighting I like it when from soft experiments with different dragon types and they definitely went on to experiment a lot in Elden ring with dragons who spit fire Frost magic and even rot but before all that we had sin the slumbering dragon whose fire is infused with toxic and who seems to be made of stone that stone part isn't purely aesthetic either you actually lose 1.5 times the normal number of durability points from your weapon when hitting this thing which makes the use of more fragile weapons like katanas more problematic at least without the aid of repair powders and perhaps the bracing knuckle ring I love the idea of a toxic dragon and I think they executed the idea really well with sin I've never found it to be as intensely intimidating as calam me but it's certainly a challenging one nonetheless mind you being a dragon it does have a tendency to fly around a lot and thus a certain portion of the the battle will be spent running after it or simply evading its toxic Fireballs or flying attacks and just like Alana Who Lies directly before it sin is pretty tanky having one of the highest HP pools in the game at a bit over 10K definitely one of from soft's better Dragon fights and with a super cool design and the stone skin element is a great touch they could have just made it a visual designed fler but no they actually Incorporated it into the battle to make it more challenging and I appreciate that from soft your hard work has not gone unnoticed The Forbidden Woods is without a doubt the most confusing level in all of bloodborn perhaps a bit too confusing to be honest I sometimes find myself getting a bit lost when wandering around Cathedral Ward not to mention the research Hall but the Forbidden Woods is on another level a vast Twisted Maze of serpents and swamps which prevents passage onto the secluded School of Bergen worth where both Master William and ROM await before Bergen were through the shadows of yanam await all three of them this can be a very tough fight or fairly manageable depending on how you approach it if you spread out the damage between all three without actually taking any of them out then their second phase can be a nightmare to manage with the Fireballs coupled with those high damage long range serpent strikes furthermore of the obvious play does seem like go for the one spitting at the Fireballs first this is what was tripping me up on early attempts at the Shadows because this this enemy with the mace is actually the easiest single one of the three to handle at the end to the point where its AI kind of breaks when it's on its own and within melee range like many of bloodborne's harder bosses it does throw you a bone with the ability to stagger them for critical hits but even when you do Land one for big damage you know you've still got another two to deal with constantly moving around and gaining new attacks as the fight goes on particularly the serpent summon attack when only one of them are left which I've always found difficult to consistently avoid usually resorting to just Panic rolling although the shadows of yanam seem a wee bit lame initially looking like just another three human sized enemies who you even see repeated somewhat later in the nightmare of mensis this is a great fight that's really well done and the different weapons and attacks which they all have make for a challenging well-rounded and fair battle as I regretfully stated in my last video on the best and worst Souls born levels meibo Village is my least favorite level in SEO I don't think it's bad but I just don't really enjoy playing through it all that much due to the whole respawning enemies thing that kind of pushes you to just run through the village rather than taking your time but I am a big fan of the level's boss the corrupted monk I've heard of people being kind of disappointed with this encounter even being disappointed with just how easy it was for them but me myself personally I've always found this to be a difficult fight unlike most bosses in the game the corrupted mck has just one health bar meaning only a single death flow is required but the catch is that it has a lot of health and a lot of posture and furthermore it will straight up block most of your attacks meaning that you need to choose your moments to attack it rather carefully to put it simply the corrupted monk just has an excellent move set consisting of extravagant Combos and perilous attacks both frosts and sweeps it's a straightforward but still very engaging fight where you just need to learn its attacks and how to deal with them getting in scraps of damage when you can of course with it being an apparition type enemy Divine confetti works very well for extra damage as long as you haven't already used all of it up on the Headless but if you want to be really cheap then it's actually possible to Aerial death blow it at the start of the fight with the use of the firecrackers folks listen before you grab your pitchforks and torches for me not putting the burnt Ivory King higher please hear me out the burnt Ivory King enemy itself is [ __ ] excellent he looks awesome he has a killer move set his entrance is incredible and the encounter is tense and challenging all to the point that I'd like to place him a good bit higher however what I don't like is the near 3 minute melee with his burnt L kns beforehand well that's not strictly true because I actually do like it and I love the whole thing of traveling around alien Ro beforehand to find all the Loy kns so as to make the boss fight more manageable it's brilliant stuff but what's not brilliant is having to redo that that first bit of the boss fight every single time before the boss actually shows up it's great the first time okay the second but then every time after that I just wish the game would let me fight the godamn boss without having to go through the whole rigar roll every time it's like having a crappy Boss run back except you can't run through it you need to fight these things each time and sadly it just Mars the overall experience for me unless you beat the boss first time then it's all good I suppose we've been through the guardians of the first Bell of Awakening the Bell Gargoyles and they make for a pretty formidable encounter sure but at the same time things are still bright and familiar and even Sunny up here on top of the undead Parish but if you travel down into Lower Undead barg and then the depths and then light time before traveling to the ominous entrance to quags Lair guarded by Boulder throwing enemies through a poison swamp well the sun has long since been left behind s would hate it here although the idea is that qu is a half woman half spider this is a remarkably outlandish visual design for a spider having way too many eyes and being half engulfed in flames in fact now that I think about it the quag spider is kind of like a more Alpha version of ROM we of course already discussed scorpiones NASKA who appeared much further down in the list and while that boss wasn't offensively bad or anything it was rather uninspired quag is way sicker though and with a more distinctive set of moves she has her slashes sweeps and thrusts with her flame sword SL Spear of course but the spider potion makes frequent use of lava attacks which remain on the battlefield restricting where you can freely roam throughout the fight but also giving you the Apple opportunity to get in there and attack though whenever you do get a bit too eager and excited and stay in for too long what am I talking about again there comes that massive damage a attack telegraphed by quag flopping down her torso just like with most Dark Souls one bosses quag is no issue for me to beat nowadays but on a first playthrough she was a brick wall of difficulty and the fact that you're cut off from everything down here in BL town with no obvious way back up to the surface makes it all the more desperate especially if you're working with a poorly reinforced weapon and you didn't buy the Smith box or repair box for a while and for me The Old Demon King was kind of like the Dark Souls 3 version of pin wheel I know that sounds weird considering they could not be less similar but what I mean is that I usually leave the demon ruins and its boss until the late game even though that level is accessible before even getting to AEL and so by the time I would venture down there I'd usually just walk into the arena take the boss down quickly and easily and then get the hell out of Dodge making for a pretty forgettable boss however turns out if you take on The Old Demon King earlier on this could be a hard fight certainly not among the hardest the Dark Souls I has to offer but one that I've certainly die to a few times its attacks do really high damage have massive range and every now and then it will send Fireballs down from the sky forcing you to take shelter behind the huge stacks of demon corpses mechanics and everything as sides though I think that aspect might be this boss's strongest um aspect Dark Souls 3 is of course a profoundly apocalyptic game centering around the end of fire and the end of the world and by this point in time even the demons have nearly all died out to the point where there are only a handful of them left in the entire game either wandering aimlessly or being surrounded by their dead kin as is the case with The Old Demon King and this is all done really really well the encounter even has a similarity with the Sith fight from Dark Souls 1 but it becomes significantly less powerful towards the end and can barely fight back now I'm not saying I was fighting back tears or anything here but nonetheless fromsoft did succeed in making me feel sorry for a demon and for that and for the actual mechanics of the fight The Old Demon King deserves a placement above so many others the true final boss of the Iron Keep is of course the Old Iron King not to be confused with The Old Demon King who I just covered but before that awaits the Smelter Demon an optional boss in fact I guess it just has one of those move sets that really appeals to me it doesn't seem to have a huge array of moves or anything but they are large sweeping and scary especially in the second phase where it plunges the sword into its flaming core for extra damage and extra range I'm not the biggest fan of mandatory damage in Souls born bosses through I know the fire damage that comes from standing close to the Smelter Demon can be avoided by using ranged attacks I don't much like being punished simply for trying to get close to the boss so that I can actually you know attack it even so this is a great enemy and despite the fact that its moves are kind of slow it's still challenging intense it design is also fairly distinct from most other enemies in the game because although it's called a demon it's really just a monstrous hunk of iron which was imbued with the soul of a demon it's more like you're fighting a demonic machine than an actual creature kind of like the Iron Golem from Dark Souls 1 the actual route to abitus is quite easy to miss for a start you've got to get to the upper Cathedral Ward which is only accessible by acquiring an easy toiss key from yahar goul and then after defeating the celestial Emissary in an arena which seems to be a dead end you have to crash on through the window here and pass above the grand Cathedral where you fought vicer Amelia earlier before descending down to the altar of Despair where abitus awaits the Left Behind great one for a start aba's design is [ __ ] crazy it looks like nothing recognizable with its corpse-like leathery skin and the bizarre tubes protruding from its face and head if you can even call that a face this is another boss that's a bit similar to the one reborn and that if you're buffing enough you really can destroy it at a good pace through well plac blows to its head for staggers and critical hits but when you actually need to contend with its move set it can be very challenging and intense not least of all because Abus has one of the most difficult to avoid moves in the game with its charge attack the hitbox really is kind of [ __ ] with this one a subtle and devious aspect of the second phase is the Obscure sphere that covers the boss's body which deals gradual damage when you step inside it not too dissimilar to the way you take contact damage from the Smelter Demon actually and then you've got the whole frenzy buildup thing I remember finding frenzy to be such a [ __ ] status effect because it kind of is but then I experienced the terror status effect from SEO which is even worse back to Aus though this is a pretty great fight but it could have been better if it was only a bit less messy the camera not to mention the chaos of the boss's design can make it a bit difficult to tell exactly what's happening at times at number 67 I have saw fit to place the arch demon of bataria himself false King alant yes I know this is what many people consider to be the best boss in Demon Souls but personally while I do think alant is a good boss in the context of the entire Souls Bor catalog he's nowhere close to being the best and I don't even consider him to be the best boss in Demon Souls it really is a straightforward fight with a dude with a sword but that's not a bad thing at all in fact it's really all you need for a great boss fight but I guess my main gripe with false King aant is that while I've always considered him to be good he's kind of underwhelming both in terms of mechanics and challenge I mean I guess he is The Game's most challenging boss well either him or the boss Who Shall Not Be Named but in Demon Souls that's really not saying all that much beating him first try is very doable especially with all the healing grass you're likely to have by this point also I've always found his AI to be kind of scuffed to the point where he'll sometimes just Spam the same attack multiple of times in a row especially his big AOE blast though turns out you can actually interrupt this attack which I recently learned even so he shouldn't be able to just Spam it like this it's dumb I get that this is one of those bosses that you're supposed to kind of worship but I just don't false King alant is a good boss but that's really as far as I can go in my praise and to be honest if he appeared in a different Souls game he probably would have ranked a fair bit lower well I've already covered the other three major holders of the fragments of the Dark Soul and here at number 66 we have the only one remaining and my favorite two the four Kings there are a few noteworthy attributes with this boss for one the arena itself is deadly not deadly as in there are environmental hazards or death pits everywhere but deadly is then it will literally kill you if you drop down here without wearing the Covenant of artorius furthermore there aren't Four Kings there can actually be more if you take too long in taking them down or even less than four if you're really fast also this is one of the very few bosses in Dark Souls history with the most common recommended strategy for people who are struggling is to literally just tank the damage specifically with the help of either hav set or the stone guardian set either of which will give you enough defense and Poise to let you survive most hits and then simply top up on some ests when your health gets a bit low mind you this strategy Works considerably less well on New Game Plus and then beyond that it doesn't really work at all cheese strategies asides though the Four Kings make for an intense and difficult boss and a fantastic conclusion to the Fantastic level that New Londo Ruins I used to hate this level for being so dark and difficult and spooky but I've come to appreciate its atmosphere and lay out much more since then and how a whole other even more dangerous lower level is revealed after draining the water out into the valley of the Dres which it directly connects to I guess there's just one thing I'm really not a fan of here and it pertains to their move set specifically the magic homing projectile it just lasts way too long to the point that even if you do avoid it when it first comes at you it's just going to keep coming at you until you either get hit by it or block it apparently it does go away at some point if you keep avoiding it but I've never seen that happen myself it really lasts ages even so iconic Dark Souls boss fight and one of the very few where a separate cutscene triggers immediately as you deliver the finishing blow making it feel that much sweeter now it's entirely possible to defeat Ziro many times and never fight lady Emma a single time instead having her as an alai throughout your entire Journey but if you're going for the sh ending which also happens to be the easiest ending in the game and one which straight up cuts the game short then Emma will step in to take wolf down due to him having given into the Demonic evil Brewing inside him although she's not the true enemy of this entire boss encounter with his subsequent fight being with isin as Emma is still a formidable opponent with a distinctive and surprising fight style moving very quickly around the arena and making use of techniques like the Ash and across no doubt talk to her by Lord isin though she also has moves that are similar to those that giniro uses Emma isn't the most difficult boss in the game but she's not supposed to be with this fight being more of an emotional precursor to the true fight with isin Asha just like how gichuru is before isin sword sent her posture and health are quite low and her attacks aren't too difficult to learn but it's designed this way for you to quickly get good at dispatching her quickly so that you're thoroughly warmed up for the real adversary mind you I'm still not too sure exactly how I feel about the whole newer from soft trend of making you fight two bosses in a row but it certainly feels more reasonable here than it does with the fight with Radigan than the Elden Beast lady butterfly's whole shtick is the use of Illusions to Dazzle and confuse you get warned of this by the Fallen harata Samurai just outside the Hidden Temple but it's not until phase two of the fight where you actually witness these Illusions I mean I guess her greatest trick is making you think that she only has one single health bar but sadly not she's got another one up her slee not to mention the ability to summon spectral minions to distract you while she Zips and flips around on near invisible wires up above before descending down for a series of death kicks and combos this is also one of the first bosses you face but it's advised to partially deplete her health and then go for her posture so as to slow down her posture regenerate as with many of seo's bosses you really can get into a great rhythm with lady butterfly though she does frequently break up the dance by flying Skyward but then you can always counter these with a swift shuriken for some bonus posture damage and a couple of free hits similar secret weaknesses also appear elsewhere in SEO and it rewards the experimental player who likes to make use of the marad Shinobi tools on offer instead of solely relying on your sword great fight with a variety of tricks and surprises and while challenging it's not as mercilessly difficult as several of the games other bosses while Demon Souls is not my favorite Souls born game I have always liked how each of its five worlds differ so much in atmosphere and level design and that with the exception of the fat officials who appear in both bolaria and stone Fang tunnel every world has its own distinct enemy types and indeed the same is true of the Shrine of Storms who has some particularly distinctive enemies and bosses we've already covered the adjudicator from the first level and the arch demon of the world and now we have the old hero who appears at the end of the world's second level really unique design for this game to the point where the only other being who even vaguely is resembles the old hero is Old King Doran though Doran does not match the enormous size of this boss not too sure why there's that constant yellow glow around the boss in both the original and the Remake but whatever it's intended to signify it really does add to the memorability of its design once again we return back to the concept of Demon Souls bosses being puzzles to be figured out because the old hero is in fact blindfolded which when combined with a thief's ring means that it cannot detect where you are significantly increasing the randomness of its attacks and kind of trivializing the fight you really don't have to use this strategy it's not like it's the key to evening out the playing field but regardless of whether you take it onc conventionally or use rather underhanded tactics this is a great boss and even when it's blindly thrashing around and slashing throughout the arena the old hero still manages to remain intimidating thanks to that distinctive yellow glow and his frequent screams of Rage while I'm certainly not saying it's the best boss in Dark Souls 1 I will say that the Iron Golem is one of the most enjoyable world to fight lots of bosses have great intro cut scenes hyping you up for the battle to come or maybe even providing you with some interesting dialogue to expand on the boss's character but sometimes you don't need a damn cut scene sometimes all it takes is for you to walk into the arena and see the boss and the hype is there and that is absolutely the case with the Golem standing Sentinel at the other end before initiating combat with an air projectile from its goem axe God damn what an awesome design for a boss it's not not just the way it looks that makes me enjoy it though cuz it's a pleasure to fight too a she pleasure having a range of simple attacks that are fun to learn and counter at first you might think that the optimal approach is to just walk through its legs every time but then it has that attack where it shuts its legs and walks you in for the followup axe attack my favorite thing about the Iron Golem experience though is how heavy it feels and I think that is one of the things that makes Dark Souls 1 bosses have so much more presence compared to those found in the second game they just have some a size and impact to them even the way the ground shakes every time the iron golem Attacks here it doesn't really matter that it's not very difficult because it's a great boss experience nonetheless of course just like how there's the option for a cheese with the ceaseless discharge fight the iron Glo also has a major weakness balance after its legs have taken enough damage it will begin to stumble leaving it completely open to attack after which it will either fall down again leaving it even more open or if it's situated on the narrow part of the Arena it will simply fall down for an easy instant kill well I do appreciate that they added in this alternate strategy to win the fight it's also a bit misplaced because the Iron Golem really isn't a challenging enough boss to justify it in fact when I fight it I specifically make sure to not have it fall off the sides because I'd rather just fight it straight up awesome boss though and it's a shame they never brought back its armor or weapon for Dark Souls 2 or three guyu onwa is kind of the first proper boss in SEO I mean you do fight in the tutorial but even if you win that fight you still lose there's also the ogre located in Ashen outskirts not to mention a couple of particularly powerful Samurai B Class these more as many bosses as challenging as they may be there can be no doubt that guu is a proper boss though that much becomes obvious right as he Poway introduces himself what an entrance back when I first saw trailers of SEO and saw my first glimpses of this boss upon its horse I wondered how well that was going to work in a from soft game having a moving entity with an additional entity riding on top of it each with her own animations but turns out it works really well cuz this boss fight ended up both looking and feeling remarkably smooth though it can certainly make for a tough and intimidating early encounter I've always considered SEO to be a brutally difficult game I'm good at it these days but that's because I've played through it many times and so have a good knowledge of enemy attack animations but back on my first playthrough I had an incredibly hard and often unpleasant time certainly on the bosses but especially on the mini bosses Yu also gave me a run for my money particularly with the exaggerated attack wind ups where the animation often starts a full second or two before the hitbox actually comes which I consider to be the basis for a lot of seos difficulty but even so it just makes it all the more satisfying when you finally figure the timings out and why not squeeze in a few cheeky hits with a shuriken wheel from range great early game Boss with a nice wide open Arena to make use of and the game even makes use of the same Arena later on in the infamous demon of hatred boss fight which spoiler alert I really really like at number 60 we have morgot the omen King the level boss of lale Royal Capital this is a boss I used to have a much higher opinion of than I now do I mean I still think morgot is great otherwise I wouldn't have placed him as high as 60 but even so I do have a couple of issues with his design morgot as a character is incredible and the cut scenes where he appears are among my favorite in the game back when you fight him before Stormville and in lale and then there's his incredible dialogue during his transition to phase 2 and Jesus that is one of the best looking weapons in all of souls born I went for an Arcane deck build on my second playthrough of the game just to try it out as far as my issues with morot through well the times I enjoyed the fight the most were when I didn't really have to fight him that hard it's commonly agreed by many that there are balancing issues in Elder ring where if you've been diligently exploring in the previous regions by the time you get to alter's Plateau everything can feel too easy as if the devs didn't quite account for this and the same thing holds true when facing off against morgot when I'd get to him I'd be getting hit a bunch but it just didn't matter all that much I had enough health and Crimson flasks to win the war of attrition and enjoy the awesome spectacle of his huge array of golden attacks and extended combos however it was when I took him on during my level one playthrough that I realized that I didn't like this boss quite as much as I thought I did because now I actually had to fight him and really learn his Combos and you know not get hit and sadly I did not come away from that with the same appreciation for the encounter Elden ring really upped the overall difficulty compared to the previous games but at the same time it gives you a plethora of powerful skills and tools to level the playing field but when you dispense with those tools and have to fight its bosses Raw those massive attacks and NeverEnding combos can stop being quite so attractive instead becoming just frustrating to try and deal with I'm aware that my reasoning here doesn't quite seem sound because it's like I'm trying to say that playing at level one is the standard for which bosses should be judged but that's not quite what I mean I just mean that my level one run actually put me in tune with morgot Mechanics for the first time and those mechanics weren't as sound and satisfying as they'd first seemed mind you I still have morgo at number 60 which is a fantastic placement so I don't think it's a bad boss or anything maybe I just need to get good I imagine some people might be quite surprised at my choice to place vort so high in the rankings I mean he's only the second boss you fight being found in the high wall of wrick he's not especially challenging and I guess he's really just not a boss you even hear about all that much but even so I think very highly a V for a start awesome intro cut scene the way he quietly appears from this pale portal right behind you stalking through it dripping with some foul ambiguous fluid coarse hair sticking out through the cracks in his armor super cool stuff and I really think he has one of the best visual designs in all of souls born it's this messed up perversion of the form of a dog and the way he still has several human elements to his appearance like having actual hands for a start it's the player's first encounter with the frost status Effect 2 which was brand new in Dark Souls 3 and I love the way his eyes start glowing blue in Phase 2 and he just goes wild violently charging around the arena and throwing out streams of frost breath V really isn't a complex enemy and he's unlikely to take even a brand new player too many tries to beat but he's just an excellently designed boss the high wall of wrick is a brilliant opening level but one of the best parts of it is that I know I get to fight vort a boss with an awesome theme a super cool design and fun attacks that are enjoyable to punish I'm there to have fun when playing the souls games not to be made [ __ ] miserable by some boss I feel like I'm fruitlessly banging my head against so condemn me if you must but know this I do not regret placing vort so highly he's a good dog he's a good boy he's my boy my pick for number 58 is one of the only two examples in all of souls born but a choice you make in the boss's first phase affects what happens in the second the other example is of course onstein and small but here we have the demon in pain and Demon From Below SL demon Prince the first boss of the Ring City the DC the ring City comes in two major portions you have the actual ring City where most of the bosses are fought but before that there's the drag Heap a greatly expanded and even more apocalyptic version of the place where you do battle with the soul of Cinder before getting to travel to the ring SEO in the derel remnants of Firelink Shrine awaits two particularly anguished and ferocious demons this is a fight against two enemies so you can summon Gil which for me is advisable cuz this is a long and difficult battle though also an example of a two-on-one fight done well it is not an overly chaotic melee like the Headless Apes fight or a purly balanced [ __ ] Shu hook with the godkin or Valiant gargoyle Jew but instead the enemy AI actually acts appropriately here and that even though you can summon help this encounter was clearly designed to be fair when taking on alone with plenty of openings to punish their moves and the fact that they're both not equally aggressive at all times taking on two ferocious demons once might seem challenging enough already but then in a seriously awesome phase transition the demon you killed last will transform into the demon Prince also determining which special attacks it has you can see I killed the demon in pain last year and so I got the version with the massive Fireballs but if you take down the demon From Below last it will send out exploding lasers instead and holy [ __ ] it all looks and feels so dramatically awesome this boss is very challenging not least of all because of the the collective amount of HP everything has here in fact I think this overall boss encounter technically has the second highest amount of HP in the game after yawn coming in at over 21,000 though it doesn't really feel like that when actually playing like most of Dark Souls 3i's bosses the demons feel very finely tuned difficulty Wise It's hard and definitely intense yet it never takes me more than a few attempts and you know what I kind of like that sometimes it's nice to not have to die to a boss at least 20 times before eventually learning all of its moves and combos Dark Souls 3 contained many references and callbacks to the first game in the series and while some complained that it was done a bit excessively I still enjoyed many of these moments but by far the biggest self- reference came at the end of AEL of the Boreal Valley when things start to look a we bit familiar and you think is this no and then you travel up the elevator and realize that you are slap bang in an Orondo all over again for things are considerably less bright and Grand now with the noble Royal Sentinels who gathered the castle before now replaced with foul deacons of the deep and in place of unseen and small alrich devour of gods now awaits and as if anondo itself wasn't a big enough call back Aldrich has taken on the aspect of two major bosses from the first game those being gwindel and also Nito with the blade of aldrich's weapon looking like the grave Lord's great sword it's not just aldrich's appearance that pays homage to gelin though because he also makes use of that same Violet Dark Moon magic though at close range she'll resort to exaggerated sweeps of his grave Lord glaive which takes on a fire aspect in the second phase orich does teleport around the room a bunch kind of like the crystal Sage appearing to launch a few attacks and then relocating though I still find it satisfying I just really like slashing at the disgusting sludge that makes up its body though in this particular battle I tried using pyromancy and ended up wiping it out in little over a minute the one attack of this bosses that I've never really liked though was the arrow attack it's not completely [ __ ] or anything but it reminds me of the godkin Noble's rolling attack but it just goes on for a bit too long but then I guess that just adds to the difficulty of the fight not that it's really one of the games have this fights or anything as discussed lady Emma is the penate opponent to close out the sh ending of SEO but after she has been mercilessly dispatched isin as steps up of course for the other endings it's isin sword sent who wolf do battle with isin in his absolute prime the greatest swordsman in the land but here we're fighting an old man ravaged by illness that does not mean he's a pushover though because this is still a difficult Battle Mortal illness or not most of he's attacks are ones he also uses in his swords form but here the techniques are that bit more grounded and conventional well up until he starts causing pills of fire to appear from the ground in a second phase anyway a feature which does not happen at all when fighting his true form though frankly I'll take the fire nonsense over his spear nonsense any day of the week it really is difficult to talk about Isen Ash without comparing him to his ultimate version because this ultimately is a weaker version of him but even so it's a final boss for the bad ending he's perfect that makes for a pretty sad ending for an amazing character I consider leech Dragon fortox to be the third greatest Souls born Dragon Battle and again it's a dragon with a Twist and I like that we've already gone through to sin the slumbering dragon from Dark Souls 2 who made use of toxic but Fortis sax utilizes fire red lightning and deathly death plight I'm a big fan of all the different variants of elements the elen ring has especially when it comes to all the different types of flame though even with lightning you have regular lightning ice lightning and red lightning the lightning of the ancient dragons which brings us to fortox this is an optional boss of course accessible by finishing up the prince of death quest line and entering into his dream where the leech Dragon itself awaits beneath a nightmarish Sky Box with the unsettling appearance of ulcerated dead flesh before we even get into its attacks by golly this is one gnarly looking Dragon appearing partially blackened and corrupted by its own death blight and the constant presence of that distinctive red lightning adds to the spectacle all the more speaking of the lightning this boss fight does have a rather unique mechanic where you have to keep moving otherwise you will be damaged by P iotic red lightning fulminations which follow you wherever you move and adds a real sense of urgency to the battle and then there's the occasional clouds of death bite which get thrown out which means instant death if that meter fills up then you have the Ferocious attacks by fortox itself ranging from bites claw combos flying attacks fire breath and more the first time I fought Fortis saxs I was actually a wee bit disappointed because well for a start I didn't know the boss existed before it being my first time playing the game and so by the time I did eventually take it on I was a we bit overleveled and I didn't really feel like I was properly experiencing it if you take for sacks on earlier th it's way more challenging and frantic and I think it's the second best dragon fight in the game anyone who's thoroughly beaten Elder ring can probably guess who I think is the number one Dragon but I won't be mentioning that ancient creature until much later I've done lowlevel runs for three from soft games now I've done a level one run in Elden ring a level four run in bloodborne and a level one run in Dark Souls 3 though I did only take on the main story bosses in the L case of those bosses there were only really three which gave me proper grief there was the soul of Cinder dancer of the Boreal Valley and my pick for number 54 pontiff salivan even on a regular run through this has always been a very hard fight for me always guaranteed to take a number of attempts before I finally managed to take him down svan has all bases covered with his attacks he's fast has great range has really long combos does great damage and he even has a phase two where he creates a clone of himself which even after being defeated can simply be respawned again it's a really difficult fight and I think it's one of the hardest in the game to the point where unlike most other Dark Souls 3 bosses I've never really gotten comfortable with fighting him it's always a desperate struggle I know some folk make use of pares which he is completely vulnerable to but try as I might I've never been able to get remotely good at parrying in Dark Souls 3 even on basic enemies never mind [ __ ] bosses the duplication aspect of the fight does seem a bit unfair at first but it is cleverly done whereas mimik simply does whatever solivan does himself but with a second or two delay and so while it is undoubtedly difficult to manage you at least know what's coming the pursuer is another example of a relatively simple boss who I just find really really fun to fight you can first fight him around Midway Through The Forest of Fallen Giants where he abruptly drops in Via a bird and thus does the fight commence it's done in a pretty unique way too because although this isn't technically a boss fight if you beat him here you do get the Fel Soul reward as well as his boss soul and his Ring of Blades and the Boss Arena further ahead will be completely empty though you do only have one chance if you die here then he will never come back to this specific location furthermore the pursu does of course turn up elsewhere in Dr Lake 2 in more of a mini boss capacity though this was enhanced in the score of the first sin version where he appears much more often all those interesting features aside though the pursu is a highly enjoyable enemy to fight it's a big Knight with a big shield and a big ass sword and that tends to be enough to keep me satisfied whereas the last giant located earlier in the same level makes for a nice easy opening boss the pursuer is a decent bit trick here probably requiring some more level UPS before taking him on though there is always the option of used using the ballistas to remove a massive chunk of his health I prefer fighting him the oldfashioned way though cuz I just really enjoy dealing with his move set and he's one of those enemies where when you learn him well enough you can simply move to avoid some attacks without even having to dodge and this feels extra satisfying to pull off despite how straight forward the pursuer appears though there is some hidden depth to its move set if it manages to land its curse impale attack its appearance will change slightly with dark gas emanating from its armor even giving access to a couple of new curse based moves and this is the sort of thing I really appreciate in a boss fight secret attacks or rare moves that most people might never even see so this might be another controversial one though I'm sure it won't be as controversial as my next entry the original Smelter Demon the one faced in the Iron Keep already placed very favorably in my list coming in at a highly respectable 69 but a boss that I enjoy even more is the blue Smelter Demon found within the crown of the Iron King DLC when this DLC first dropped people spoke highly of it as they did with all three of Dark Souls 2's dlc's but they did not speak quite so highly of its optional boss which was apparently just a reskin of the Smelter Demon now with a blue flame instead of red well it is a reskin and with differently shaped horns but there's more to this boss than a mere pallet swap what they essentially did here was take the regular Smelter Demon which I already like and make it way deadlier if you do go into this fight simply expecting the same enemy but with more health and higher damage well yes you will get that but on top of that it [ __ ] with your expectations by adding in delayed attacks sometimes it will seem like a combo's ended before it will throw in another hit or it'll do a jumping sword plunge attack and remain in position so you go up to punish the attack before it throws out a big AOE blast it's not a whole new boss or anything and they didn't exactly flip the concept of the Smelter Demon on its head but even if it is a repeat of sorts I love fighting this boss and it's D Dam hard too of course I can't go without mentioning the Horrible Boss run back leading up to it and in fact I'm only just now realizing that three of the worst run backs in the game are specifically for the optional bosses from each of the three DLCs that aside though yeah it's horrible to the point where I don't believe I've ever actually bothered to fight the enemies in the iron passage it's just a shitty chaotic area to move through as quickly as possible so the fact that there's a magic Caster who casts a spell which specific Ally SS you down make this more of a pain in the ass than it perhaps needed to be even so it's really not all that difficult to run through once you know what to expect and unlike with L and Zin and the gank Squad the blue Smelter Demon is actually well worth fighting okay here we go then it's malth the Black Blade well I guess I better make my case for why I didn't put him significantly higher let me start by saying that I love marth's first phase with the Beast clergyman it's one of those fights that I found very tough at first before gradually coming to really enjoy it as I learned how to deal with its many attacks both ranged and melee in fact if I was ranking the Beast clergyman alone here I would probably have put him at around the 30 Mark in my ranking however after the Beast clergyman comes into his true form malth the fight is completely transformed becoming far more intense challenging and downright explosive and to tell you the truth truth it's just way too much for me ever had a boss that you just never get better at you fight it again and again and maybe even look up boss guides on YouTube or recommendations for optimal builds and yet you just can't seem to be not [ __ ] at fighting it yeah for me that's malth I know his attacks can be avoided and punished but they nearly always get me in particular his black flame explosion type moves not to mention his insanely high damage sword attacks which is pretty much all of his attacks honestly I'm not saying malth is a bad boss because otherwise I obviously would not have put him as high as number 51 what I'm saying is that I don't enjoy fighting him and back on my very first playthrough when I met malth was about the time where I started to feel rather alienated by Elden Ring's difficulty mind you there is the option of using the bamus claw here which acts as a special party for certain of his attacks and all I can say is thank God this is here because I [ __ ] need it Malik was quite a difficult boss for me to place because I do acknowledge that if I was better at fighting him he'd probably be way higher up but as it is this is an encounter I dread getting to and when I do eventually take him down my relief comes more from the knowledge that I don't need to fight him again rather than me having had a fun time I think a lot of people were pretty disappointed by the fight with Y the Giant and I guess I can see why I mean it is a gimmick fight and when you first see the sight of him in the game's opening Cuts scene you might be hoping for a certain type of fight something really special not necessarily a battle using the same storm ruler gimmick that first appeared in Demon Souls though in a game so filled with Dark Souls 1 references it was nice to see a demon souls 1 even if it's not a straight fight as such I love this boss encounter you simply charge up the storm ruler for a few seconds after which a powerful wind blast attack can be Unleashed dealing major damage to your arm and even staggering him a bit if you manage to get a head shot it's mechanically simple and this isn't a very difficult fight but even so I just think it works super well y looks incredible and his attacks are terrifying especially in Phase 2 where he becomes ambered and everything starts to burn there is massive tension when you're holding down that charge button and he's running right at you for another downward slash with his enormous machete and because of this it's cathartic as hell when you unleash the attack and deplete that giant health bar bit by bit mind you the storm R is technically option here you don't have to use it though I do find it to be a more engaging method of combat than attacking his legs 300 times folks in my book darker meder is the second greatest Souls born dragon and oh my what a badass looking Dragon it is even more so than fortox it's like its very scales are composed of crystallized darkness which of course makes sense with medor being the Eater of Darkness to the point where its fire breath also does additional dark damage being C with a distinctive black tinge madir is also kind of a special one for me in a way you could say because it's one of the very few Souls born bosses that I initially just gave up on I loved the ring City DLC when it first came out and with difficulty I managed to beat his three bosses then I found out there was another boss I still had to take on the same Dragon I'd earlier knocked off a cliff but it now awaited in its enormous underground layer dark eater medar I must have attempted it a good 20 to 30 times but I just could not make any progress it wasn't even like I was slowly getting better I would just get leveled every time by both its melee attacks and its dark infused fire and so like a [ __ ] I gave up for six [ __ ] months I did eventually come back though with a clear head and finally manag to beat it though I think I had to look up a few YouTube tutorials first although there is another Souls born Dragon I think ranks higher madir is the most ferocious every one of its attacks has has such a dark maddened rage to it that is designed to intimidate you I think my initial error when facing the boss was to do the usual thing and hug its legs but this just failed every time usually getting me burnt or slammed to death I had considerably more success when I remained more in front of it to bait out favorable attacks before going in for a few shots To The Head And if you do prioritize attacking the head the game grants you a gift and meder gets staggered allowing for a massively damaging critical attack which you don't get if you just go for the leg really difficult dragon fight but really well done and as far as the Dark Souls Trilogy goes mad really is the ultimate dragon and finally we have the first occurrence of what I consider to be the best boss from its particular game it's the tower Knight that's right the tower Knight as was discussed back when I covered the Iron Golem fight I can't get enough of big heavy bosses and they don't come much heavier than the tower Knight the Ironclad demon waiting at the end of batari is second level the format of this fight would of course go on to be repeated somewhat with bloodborne's the one reborn though I much prefer it here in the original I'll admit that clearing the archers on the top does kind of feel like busy work but even so I wouldn't change it it's once they're all dead and gone that the true battle truly begins though because now you've got the tower Knight's massive Shield slams and spear thrusts to contend with and you even take damage from getting in the way of its shot hops back all of its attacks are super slow and very very well telegraphed but they remain super dangerous to the point where if they connect the mechanic for actually beating the tower Knight is very visually satisfying too as you hack at its ankles yielding sprays of Blue Soul power each time before it topples over to allive for some real damage to be dealt to its head and body the tower Knight is a lesson on how big bosses should be done sure make them slow make it so that their attacks are easy to read but also make them dangerous and for God's sake make make it a damn spectacle I guess you could say that Lawrence is bloodborne's version of the blue smarter demon also being a reskin of the B game Boss that appears again in the DLC and the similarities do not end there because just as the blue smarther demon attracted its cheer of criticism so did Lawrence even so I've always considered the fight to be excellent and while it is very difficult I've also found it to be very rewarding the first time you see this flaming Beast it's totally non hostile laying in the night nightmare version of the grand Cathedral and you can't even attack it here it's only Upon returning with Lawrence's skull however that the fight begins with his skull rousing Lawrence from his stuper this boss mostly plays out like the cleric demon fight back in central yanam except like the blue Smelter Demon it has way more health does way more damage and has some extra moves all with an added fire effect to of course complete with the occasional explosion this fire effect truly comes into play in phase two though this being where Lawrence shows this isn't a mere rking having a whole other form with completely new attacks and being made to make cocky players fall apart as the boss spews fire and desperately Claws and drags itself along the floor of the cathedral as I've previously stated there are certain bosses that I can never get significantly better at like malth sure I always beat them in the end but I never attain true confidence with them then there are other bosses where I get destroyed at first then again and again and again except instead of remaining [ __ ] at fighting the boss forever more I consistently find myself getting better each time to the point but when I do eventually beat them I could probably go for a round two right there and then and beat them all over again and the same is true for future playthroughs well this is what happened to me when I first fought Lawrence yes I found him super hard and had to make many a run back from the chapel then up the stairs past the Boulder and that terrifying executioner thing but the process remained satisfying the whole way through and never overwhelming it's hardly the most original boss in the game but I'm glad they included it in the DLC nonetheless I know I placed a lot of Dark Souls 2 bosses very low down in the west but I assure you it was not done out of any malice because folks it will be my pleasure to present several of the game's bosses that I think far more highly of starting with the Lost Center a holder of one of the game's four great Souls it's not just the Lost centner itself that I love but but also what you can do directly beforehand to make the fight that bit easier if you picked up the bestel key earlier in the level then the doors at either side of the fog wall can be unlocked allowing you to ignite the oil there at first it's not at all clear what it will even do but upon entering the arena it is fully illuminated giving you a better view of the boss and allowing you to Target as normal whereas if you take it on in the darkness your lock on Range gets a big Nerf even though the was Center is by far the most grounded of the four great ones essentially being amassed Woman in Chains compared to the giant spider giant demon and giant corpse creature that makes up the other major bosses I have always considered her to be the most interesting and enjoyable to fight for one her hands are literally manacled together throughout the whole battle adding an extra bit of badassy to this enemy because as challenging as she already is it implies that she would be even more so if she wasn't partially bound up even with his physical restriction there's this really enjoyable Style to the Lost siners moves that makes her a joy to fight for me her swings and stabs are all super well animated and I also enjoy how mobile she is jumping around the arena and delivering thrusts from behind H thrusts from behind eh again hardly the most outlandish anime design in the game and she certainly doesn't have the most outrageous move set but still way tighter in execution and style than most of the game's other bosses and there's even a brief Cameo with the chaos box from Dark Souls 1 now that I'm particularly happy to see it again after how it treated me on our last encounter the corrupted monks scored very respectably in my list at number 73 because I've always had a lot of respect for the difficulty of the encounter and how distinctively stylish her moves are but the true version of the monk exceeds the former in several ways yes it is a repeat of an earlier boss but instead of being an apparition it's the real deal and instead of having just a single health bar it has three and with more tricks up her sleeve not to mention an entirely new and more horrific phase where a [ __ ] centipede Sprouts up from her neck not entirely unlike a certain Guardian AP boss from earlier on in the game the first phase really is very similar if not identical to the last time you fought the boss the arena is far more distinct taking place on a bridge and there are even grappling points to hook onto for more advanced evasion tactics these grappling points come in really handy for the second phase though where upon the monk casts a thick fog throughout the arena and all but disappears making you wonder what the [ __ ] is coming next but this can be used to your advantage allowing you to straight up aerial death L the boss canceling out the second phase entirely I'm not sure how intentional this was or whether it counts as a cheese tactic but in any case it feels damn good pulling it off and plus she has three whole health bars anyway cut me some swack it's the third phase which demonstrates so much of what I love about SEO see when I first saw the trailers and such for the game sure I was looking forward to it cuz it was a front soft game but I wasn't entirely taken by the setting to me it looked like it was going to be a more grounded and maybe even historical type of game compared to Dark Souls and bloodborne but as ever with these games first appearances can be deceiving because SEO gets into all sorts of disturbing and grotesque territory especially when it comes to the subject of immortality specifically immortality via infestation which is seally Dam rated in the corrupted Monk's third phase she still retains much of her dexterity and acrobatic skills here and washes out with if anything an enhanced ferocity with her naginata except now the Twirls slashes and stabs are interspersed with disgusting terror-inducing vomit attacks complete with maniacal screams and even the music becomes significantly more Twisted to mimic the Twisted Corruption of the monk just a brilliant fight with a terrifying enemy all set within a beautiful Arena line just before the game's most memorable level Fountain Head Palace when discussing the fight with morgot at lale I mentioned that while my opinion of that boss remained quite high it was partially SED after taking it on at level one and I did acknowledge that this was a bit of an unorthodox way to judge how good a boss is however my pick for number 44 Estelle is an example of a boss where I started out with a not great opinion of it and then ended up with a significantly better opinion after fighting at a level one before that to me I still was a boss with one of the coolest craziest visual designs in the game with its terrifying skull face which covered the large dating eyeball beneath but then you have its long tail which looks like some weird collection of colored space debris in the form of an elongated stinger and then there's its enormous facial pincers and its long translucent Wings it looks amazing except I'd never quite enjoyed actually fighting the damn thing but then nor did I tend to have that much trouble doing so the fights tended to be messy but I'd get the the job done on level one thought there is no messiness allowed I had to learn its attacks exactly I had to learn the correct position and timings and I had to know when to get in close and when to back the hell off at first this was a painful process and if anything it made me like Estelle even less but again we have a case where I'd find myself getting a bit better every time gradually understanding the boss and getting more confident and by the end of this whole process when I finally beat the boss at level one I it in significantly higher regard and saying that though even though there were attacks I thought were [ __ ] to begin with before getting much better at handling them like it's radiating ground shock wave attack I never quite figured out the asteroid attack it does around halfway through the fight I'm sure there is a way to consistently avoid it but it always seemed a we bit random to me and as such I never really figured it out ah gimmick fights gimmick fights gimmick fights the souls born games have many of them but they do have their place and as discussed throughout this video there are plenty that I like very much one of the absolute best however comes towards the end of Seco in the Divine realm it's the Divine Dragon the first phase of the battle is just with loads of these really weird and sickly looking old dragons of the tree who devolve into fits of poisonous coughing throughout the fight at least before you progressively take out several at once with repeated death WS after which the Divine Dragon itself appears this whole encounter really is a Visual and musical Feast although you can die to it it's clearly not meant to be especially challenging and to me the fight with the Divine dragon is more of an experience than any sort of conventional fight only at the very end do you even make physical contact with it with a primary means of damage beforehand coming from projectiles of divine lightning from the strange tree root grappling points at least if you manage to dodge or deflect the dragons vertical and horizontal slashes the soundtrack that plays here is not only the greatest in the game but one of the greatest in any from soft game and then just as wolf gets Blown Away on screen after doing enough damage the soundtrack blows you away even more upping the emotional intensity to expanding levels as you desperately trying to make your way closer to the dragon again as it desperately throws every last attack at you before wolf is propelled higher than ever before for one final bolt of divine lightning after which all that's left to do is collect your gracious gift of tears and then leave this Divine being in peace the Divine dragon is very different in Aesthetics feel and scale to near every other foft boss and to be frank this whole encounter is beautiful in fact you could even say it's divine at number 42 we have the looking last night forly known as The Mirror Knight sure it's another dude in armor with a big sword but it's the shield where things take a bit of a Twist here because as infered by the boss's name it uses an enormous mirror to block damage that is one strong freaking Shield too blocking out 100% of your damage and due to its massive size you need to work that extra bit hard when it comes to good positioning by the way I doubt the looking glass's design was actually inspired by it but its helmet has always reminded me of one of the fighters from the movie Gladiator and there really is a distinctly Roman aesthetic to the boss's armor not only that though but there's an extravagant Grace to its move set which gives it that heavy impactful feel that I think so many of Dark Souls 2's bosses kind of lack though that just makes me extra appreciate the ones that do have it I've already discussed the PVP aspect of the old Monk and halflight fights from demon souls and Dark Souls 3 two fights that I don't look very highly upon but that same PVP idea is here again for the Looking Glass night where you could end up fighting against a player controlled Phantom who dramatically burst out of the enormous mirror Shield just like with the other such bosses though although a cool feature the PVP aspect just isn't something I ever make use of and so while it is worth mentioning it doesn't really affect my rating PVP or noo the Looking Glass Knight is just one of Dark Souls 2's many excellent fights with a big dude in armor as much as Dark Souls 1 is filled with demons dragons and half mad holos it also isn't afraid to toy with softer elements too like the aforementioned Moonlight Butterfly which really is just a pleasure to behold but as well as its aesthetic shifts the game also takes emotional ones especially when fighting the old companion of artorius great grey wolf Sith the somber undertones of it might even be missed on you at first if you're not too clued up on the relationship between Seth and artorius but this is of course the grave of the Fallen wolf Knight and the reason why Sif attacks you in the first place so as to defend it though if you come here after first defeating ures in the DLC you get an alternate cut scene where Seth detects the scent of his former friend making the encounter take on a bit of a different even sadder tone I love that they went in and added a new cut scene for an earlier encounter especially seeing as how they would have had to get the voice actor for the wolf back in studio like many fights from Dark Souls one this one is Iconic I mean it's a huge wolf with a saw between its teeth for God's sake what's not to like Si's placement all the way over here in Dark Root Forest is quite interesting because there's really no strong reason you need to go into the Dark Root region at all for most of the game in fact now that I think about it much of this level is optional including the Moonlight Butterfly fight and the Basin area with the Hydra though I'm sure lots of players encounter Sith quite early on if they decide to venture into the dark Mossy jungle from the undead Parish at least if the Titanite demon doesn't scare them off if you do encounter him early he can be a huge pain not least of all because there's like one bonfire in the whole of Dark Root forest and it ain't particularly close but personally I usually only take him on after an Orondo to get the Covenant of artorius ring needed for the Four Kings sift doesn't necessarily make for the most mechanically satisfying fight especially as how the most effective strategy K it is to try and remain underneath its soft belly to avoid it forward slashes and flips but that doesn't really matter it's still a great encounter with an awesome looking enemy and like The Old Demon King from Dark Souls 3 Sith becomes enfeebled when nearly dead and straight up starts limping favoring his injured left paw and it's so sad I would say that the nameless King is pretty much the most difficult encounter in Dark Souls 3's base game there are strong contenders like pontiff svan and maybe the soul of Cinder but to me the nameless King retains his crown though if we're taking the dlc's into consideration I do consider sister Freda to be even harder still like many brutal bosses it comes in two phases with each phase feeling very different the first phase is against the king who flies around the stormy Arena from on top of a feathered wyvern throwing out lightning Spears from overhead and slamming down onto the ground with his enormous weapon for the wyvern itself also plays a major role in offense being capable of breathing fire it's one of those phases that I just flat out resented at first wishing it wasn't even there and I could just move straight onto the more difficult second phase especially when I'd find myself having to chase the wyver around the arena but like any good precursor to a much harder boss you really can get to the point where the first phase pretty much stops being much of an issue though admittedly if you really find yourself struggling on that second phase the inclusion of the first can cause extra unwanted fatigue it is that second phase in particular that causes all the issues though because to put it simply the namess king is one tough customer he has a ton of attacks both ranged and melee many of which do extra lightning damage and because of the size of his spear he has excellent range too meaning that you really have to be smart when picking your moments for healing speaking of healing this fight nearly always leaves me nearly devoid of remaining Estes by the time the boss goes down cuz for me this encounter always makes for a desperate struggle but in a way I can really get behind the ESS King doesn't have a single attack or combo that's even remotely [ __ ] you can see everything coming and the animations are clearly and appropriately telegraphed there's no trickery or real cause for frustration it's just a thunderously tough boss with a brilliant move set who is here to provide the most significant challenge found in the base game on my first playr I couldn't even beat nameless King soul and had to resort to summoning help which still resulted in several deaths before Victory eventually came my way I can beat him Soo now of course but he never feels easy for me and I don't think he ever will and I think that's how it should be with this boss after playing through the jaw dropping away incredible Stormville castle level and then making it to the hideously incredible demig god boss that is godrick the grafted the bar was set very high for me right from the start the game builds a great deal of hype and anticipation Around The Shard bearers and godric more than lived up to it I was blown away by that encounter and so when I set off for the Academy of R lucaria I had similar expectations hoping that although she wasn't technically a demigod that rala would make for a similarly excellent boss fight well folks while I don't rate rala quite as highly as godrick suffice to say I was not at all disappointed by this fight in fact I think it's also incredible for as gimmicky as it certainly is I even love the first phase of the fight to be honest I'm getting a bit tired of calling bosses gimmicky cuz it sounds kind of cheap and derogatory but I really don't mean it that way anyway by the time we meet her rwa is a mere shadow of her former self rambling away whil endlessly birthing and then Reviving her host of malformed children it's actually pretty messed up as are most things in Elden ring the strategy is of course to strike the three children highlighted with a golden aura after which the Amber shell which rala is suspended in comes crashing down leaving her open for damage it's hardly a very challenging first phase and you can deplete all the health here in just two or three Cycles but the visuals and music here are beautiful especially with a Non-Stop vocal accompaniment of all the children in the room it's done really well because their voices aren't part of the soundtrack or anything they just complement it very effectively the second phase is where the battle really begins though here we're only actually fighting a spirit version of rala summoned by a magical snare set up by her daughter rannie I somehow missed this detail entirely on my first playthrough and thought that the true rala had simply woken up here but no this is a mere projection offer as she was in her prime as the true Queen of the full moon I earlier mentioned the balancing issues the Elden ring has when I was talking about morgot but you can even encounter this issue as early as rala on my first playthrough I actually found her to be very difficult to handle her spells were powerful but in particular when she starts summoning dragons trolls and blood Town Knights it was a real challenge but then I hadn't really explored Leona all that thoroughly if you do explore both Leonia and LM grave well beforehand though then by the time you get to Rena she might just go down way too quickly because of how leveled up and upgraded your character is bear in mind that Leonia is absolutely massive and who knows you might have even spent a good bit of time in kid before entering the academy difficulty and balance issues asid though I truly was enchanted by this entire encounter especially when I find myself in another vast Moonlight Lake just like in the ROM fight from bloodborne the abyss Watchers are rather unique amongst Dark Souls 3's five Lords of Cinder in that unlike the others they all collectively share as the Lords of Cinder throughout their wolf B this also makes the fight rather unique and that instead of being against just one Mighty fool or even two like with the twin princess fight you're fighting a group of them but yet another unique aspect is that not only are you fighting the abyss Watchers but they're fighting each other even before you get there the idea is that they're so singularly focused on destroying any entity with even the faintest taint of the Abyss that they're locked in Eternal conflict with each other with them all having gradually been corrupted by the abyss due to their frequent contact with it meaning that unless a certain Ash in one intervenes they're doomed to carry on killing each other then Reviving forever in this large Hall the fight itself really isn't one of the best in the series and nor is it really in the most difficult even when one of the Abyss Watchers absorbs the blood of its Fallen Soldiers imbuing it with the power of fire for an even more dramatic second phase but it's that damn emotional aspect that Dark Souls 3 does so incredibly well that sets this boss apart and a major component of that is of course that wonderful swelling soundtrack and the way it always seems to Crescendo at just the right moments beautiful fight with a great group of tragic and badass Warriors as far as I'm a aware unless I'm forgetting something I believe Vicor Amelia is the only example in the whole game of a woman transforming into a beast and what a transformation it's very um artistically done too with the way the camera shifts to a different angle where only Amelia's Shadow is exposed as she changes from a human to a Savage beast in mere seconds and as sick as it would have been to actually see the transformation American Werewolf in London style I think this way of depicting it was way more effective particularly with the way the blood sprays onto the near by Statue to hammer home how violent the change is style and cinematography aside though Vicor Amelia also makes for a tremendous main boss with her defeat being a requirement to win the password to gain access to the Forbidden Woods then onto Bergen worth she's got a ton of health and a plethora of savage attacks as she lashes out with her claws and slams her fist down on the church floor just like with the one reborn and dark Beast parl staggers are supremely important here so as to give you extra openings for attacks and then big fallout damage with a critical though unlike any other boss in the game Amelia can actually heal herself after enough damage has been dealt with a strangely sad praying animation I think that is an aspect of the boss that makes it stand out so well whilst Amelia has transformed into a crazy looking Beast there are still traces of the human Vicor here with some of her animations and the beast's white far and clothing give it a somewhat senty Vibe you can really feel the beast's torment too with the way she screams during every single attack in a way that manages to sound half beastial and half feminine I'm very glad they went on to use much the same arena for the Lawrence fight later on in the DLC too cuz it makes for a perfect location to fight these horrific Beasts of the church by the time you reach old yanam you will have encountered a variety of f beasts and strange pale men in central yanam the cathedral Ward and throughout the ruins of oldum itself but as you enter into the Church of the Good chalice a different sort of Beast awaits looming ominously at the far end of the church by the altar the blood starved Beast this creature has always been terrifying to me because compared to all other beasts fought thus far it's so much more foul and noxious to the point where instead of Blood splattering Out each time you hit it the arena is instead doused in sprays of some other toxic fluid even spilling out as it darts around the arena in desperation for its next fix of blood there's a Savage urgency in its lashes and lunges at least before it returns back to the unsettling predatory PR before the next sickening onslaught of desperate attacks I've already covered a couple of bosses where you take damage just by standing near to them like abitus and the smelter demons but in the case of the blood sared Beast you can get poisoned by staying too close after enough contact with its disgusting life fluid it also has one of the most devious attacks in the game where it suddenly comes to a halt before lashing out for a grab attack that has killed me every time it's ever made contact though after after getting nailed by it a few times you do learn to watch out for it you have to the Bloods side Beast is actually an optional boss same with the whole of old yanam and while I'm not actually the biggest fan of old yanam as a level I do consider myself to be a member of the wed Beast fan club there are a lot of things I adore about the battle with seo's Divine Dragon but there is also the fact that it's a bit of a gimmic battle and that you don't fight it conventionally with your sword you've got to use a very specific strategy to defeat it well if you were to look at the size and design of the fire giant without having any knowledge of how the fight actually plays out you could be forgiven for expecting another gimmick fight hopefully another great one instead though this is a straight fight between a man or woman and a giant there are really any tricks here or special swords or Divine lightning no you're just fighting a Titan with a Titanic health bar and it is [ __ ] epic everything about it the expansive Arena the size of the boss the way it roll RS are the arena literally flattening trees on the way the scale of its fire attacks the impact and weight of its Shield attacks the powerful soundtrack its Roars of anger and pain and then you have the phas transition where it rips its own [ __ ] leg off you guys know by this point how much I like it when an arm gets ripped off but a leg my God I will confess though that I've never quite been a lover of the second phase when compared to the first in the first phase you can simply attack its feet and ankles for good damage and then even more damage as that thing falls off its ankle but in phase two most of its body gets a sizable defense buff and just staying under him gets to be way more dangerous I've have already mentioned that I did a level one run of the game and by the way that run happened to be the most difficult thing I've ever done in over 20 years of gaming but in particular the fire giant at level one was sheer hell taking it on with a B of health and Crimson flasks is one thing but when you literally can't afford to t a single Le hit it's a whole other story and I'll never do that challenge again I'm not exaggerating here it must have taken about 10 [ __ ] hours before I beat it I guess it was kind of fun I know there are people who really don't like this fight but even after all the pain and suffering it has caused me in my life I love it now while coming in at number 34 is absolutely nothing to sniff at I imagine there might be more than a few raised eyebrows at me not perhaps including sister Freda in the top 20 or even the top 10 well if I'm being perfectly honest the main reason is the difficulty of her third phase black flame Freda sister Freda is of course the only mandatory boss in the ashes lar Andel DLC fought right at the end though you can meet and speak to her much earlier if you wish after opening the entrance to Father Ariel's lir however the Catalyst for the boss fight has been triggered leading to what I consider to be the single most difficult boss in all of Dark Souls 3 there are three phases here though even even the first phase can be a massive headache she does huge damage and has a bunch of Tricks one of which has her go invisible before leaping off to a different point in the arena and it's for you to work out where she's moved to sometimes I can work this out and sometimes I can't which makes it very difficult to avoid her next attack the second phase is significantly more explosive with Father ariando joining in two violently slamming his fire filled vessel around the arena bathing everything in Flames all while Freda sends damaging dreams of ice in your direction not to mention her Swift and deadly scthe combos it's intense but thankfully they do have a shared Health pool and so it's generally a good idea to focus fire on Father Ariel's enormous frame here to end phase two it's phase three though that I don't think I'll ever come close to mastering cuz personally I think it's a bit much every now and then in a Souls born game I'll encounter a boss that just overwhelms me but usually I overcome that and get to the point where the boss becomes less intimidating with black flame Freda though that moment never came I always get overwhelmed by her insane combos of fire ice and dark she does so much damage her combos are so [ __ ] long and it's really difficult to not get tagged by the elemental Havoc she reeks upon the arena and I must confess it's not really for me I think phases 1 and two are both fantastic and challenging but phase three goes into territory where it negatively affects my enjoyment there are certainly a decent few bosses I really enjoy from Dark Souls 2's base game but the dlc's introduced some special ones especially the crown of the Iron King and my pick for number 33 is another optional boss from that DLC sir Alon despite fromsoft being a Japanese developer the main aesthetic found in the souls games is of a medieval Dark Fantasy persuasion with only occasional nods to Eastern elements though those nods are very special when they do appear for the S alone though you are straight up fighting a samurai armed with an enormous udachi and equipped with traditional samurai armor and it is in fact sort of one's armor which must be touched to enter into the memory of the Old Iron King sadly this short level leading up to it is absolutely awful in every way it is lousy with alwn kns and Fireball hurling flame lizards but it also just looks like [ __ ] seriously this is one of the laziest looking levels in the game it's like they just copy pasted a bunch of wall and doorway assets together and stuck a bunch of enemies inside it and that's a real shame it would have been way better if he just got walked directly inside the boss fight here because despite how pure the level is the boss is one of the best in the game you do encounter Echoes of s On's fighting style earlier in the Iron Keep of course with the Alon Knights and captains but the real deal is significantly more impressive graceful and formidable he can be very tough at first due to how distinctive his attack animations are often getting into position and then suddenly striking it with his enormous blade and then this is likely to take at least a few attempts before you get a hang of the timing even so this ultimately is an honest battle between two swordsman and it's just a case of learning his combos jump attacks and in particular his cursed thrust attack draining some health and buffing him for a period afterwards in a very similar manner as the cursed thrust of the pursuer it's not just the fight that's grateful this is one of the best looking boss Arenas in the series you're not in some expansive outdoor area or in a blue Moonlight Lake you're just in a small small Hall with one of the most reflective floors I have ever seen the surface has been buffed to Perfection now I know a lot of people don't really like this boss and I'm well aware of the main reasons why from seeing so many folk complain about it back when the game first came out it's the demon of hatred found in the same Arena where you earlier fought gyobu onwa after the interior Ministry invades ASA the main reason I kept hearing for why people disliked or even hated the demon of hatred was that the game's been teaching you to deflect everything the whole way through the game and then all of a sudden you get to this monster and that goes out the window now it's more about dodging its attacks than deflecting attacks like it Stomps and fireballs and all the other weird [ __ ] it does plus this fight is less about building posture and more about simply depleting its Health hence there being less of an emphasis on deflecting and speaking of its Health let's not disregard the fact that it's one of the very few enemies in the game with three whole health bars to deplete with each one of those health bars consisting of a fuckload of Health well I heard these points and criticisms but to be honest none of them really resonated with me who gives a [ __ ] if the game requires a different strategy from you for one of its bosses just adapt I never understood why people found it so outrageous that the game threw something a bit different at you the Blazing Bull and guardian ape fights also promote the use of Dodges in smart spacing over deflecting people were also saying ah the game basically just throws a blood born at you to which I thought find by me that's not to suggest however that I consider the demon of hatred to be an easy boss in fact I'd say my first experiences fighting it were very similar to my experiences with Warren's first Vicor I must have died about 40 plus times on my first playthrough cuz make no mistake these attacks do take a lot of getting used to and at times this fight can be just as much about knowing when to hold back and not attack the boss does gain a few new attacks in each phase transition but most of his move set does remain the same with a difficulty intensity and temp temperature being up to just a bit more as each one of those large health bars are depleted this can be a long fight and it'll take a good bit of learning and adaptation but I flat out consider the demon of hatred to be one of the best bosses in SEO and I always have and as with many standout bosses there's more to it than just the battle because this is of course the demonic form of the sculptor who became consumed by the Flames of hatred transforming into a raging rampaging demon I didn't actually realize this at first so the dialogue as you delivered the final Shinobi execution really caught me off guard and returning back to the dilapitated temple afterwards only to see it now completely empty as a very somber moment ah the dark Locker a boss that many people consider to be the greatest in Dark Souls 2's base game if not the whole game I don't rate it quite that highway but as you can see by the fact that I have it at number 31 I still do think very highly of it and rightly so before we even get into the boss though again I have to mention the inexplicably torturous and unpleasant bloody runback the dark luer is of course an optional boss essentially acting as a reward for getting through all three chasms of old as per the pilgrims of the dark Covenant the issue is that if you die to the dark worker which is more than likely considering it's one of the toughest bosses in the game then you have to play through one of these chasms of old all over again before you can reattempt the boss despite the fact that you've already done the dungeon why though it's the dumbest [ __ ] ever I hate it if I wasn't a fairer man I'd like to impact my judgment of dark worker itself however as bafflingly needlessly punishing as the run back is the dark worker is a top tier boss fight because of the way it's tied to the KMS this fight is one of the very rare cases where there's no fog wall to walk through instead you're literally just dropped into the fight with no time to breathe because the Angelic yet haunting form of the dark luer is right there waiting for you it's certainly one of the more mysterious looking bosses in the game with the way its face is completely obscured in darkness under its white Hood if it even has a face at all and then there's the fact that it has four arms Plus at one point in the fight the dark loer divides into two for Double the Trouble unlike most cases of Boss duplication though there's not a real version and a fake one here but rather both are real and as such they both take real damage even though my opinion of Dark Souls 2 has deteriorated a bit over the years it's still a game I finished probably 15 damn times or something at least and so I'm pretty damn good at it but the dark worker fight still gives me trouble for as much as I do hate the run back I will say that it also has the effect of putting some extra pep in my step because I never want to die here and have to play through a whole [ __ ] dungeon again for no reason well well well we are in the region of the top 30 Souls Bond bosses now this is serious stuff folks where it gets extra difficult to to choose who deserves to go where but I've done my best I'm sure it won't please everyone but hey he can't please everyone so why try at number 30 I have selected vat the Royal egis who I consider to be the best boss in Dark Souls 2's base game vat is encountered at the end of the undead crypt after the shrine of ammana kneeling as if in prayer within a solitary circle of light shining in from above Beyond which lies the shambling remains of the now Hall King Vendrick here are some of my favorite things about VAT as a boss everything I love that sick armor the enormous bellchime hammer it uses the weight and heft of his powerful slams and swings how dramatic and confrontational his soundtrack is and even his placement here still defending his King in this dark Crypt it's not an especially technical or difficult fight but it is difficult enough and V start also has a second phase where his weapon and body become imbued with the dark adding an extra layer of inry to this character where despite his fixation with the light he still became at least partially corrupted by the dark because of his time spent down here theat is not alone in this list though because I also consider his brother who appears in the crown of the Iron King DLC to be an incredible boss and he too will be getting a shout out in due time at number 29 we have the boss which comes directly after the group encounter with the living failures at the top of the research Hall bloodborne did of course come before dark souls I which means means lady Maria came before the rather similar sister Freda though of the two bosses I do prefer Maria like I said for as great a boss as Freda was one of my critiques was that her third phase in particular feels that the game's throwing too much at me too many fast Combos and Elemental vortexes with Maria though I can't really use that excuse because this is bloodborn and bloodborn is a faster paced game even so that's not to say that just because wbor has more appropriate mechanics that I excel at fighting Maria cuz I don't she's really fast has very off-putting delayed attacks with long animations and sudden long range slashes and stabs and just like sister Freda she has three distinct phases the factly just one large health bar her second phase UPS the intensity by adding an additional blood element to her attacks giving her extra damage and range but then in the third phase of course now everything has to be set on [ __ ] fire and so now you've got the both the blood and fire effects to watch out for and by CH it gets very difficult and intense honestly if it weren't for the fact that you can stagger her with a gun just like you can with Gman I think Maria would be bloodborne's most difficult boss but thankfully she can be sagged out of almost any attack though at the same time she can also stagger you and even deliver a unique critical Honestly though Maria is one of those bosses that I don't quite love but where I do think she's absolutely excellent if that makes sense and welld deserving of such a high spot in the rankings but why stop there with the F fals why not talk about Millennia blade of Micha as well I have an exceedingly troubled history with Millennia to the point where I've never struggled on any other boss as much as I have with her although I do love Elden ring this was not quite the case on my first playthrough or more specifically the last third of my first playthrough as I drew closer to Elden Ring's final stretch I really started to feel fatigued by both its sheer size and its difficulty I struggled so much on that playthrough to the extent that I wasn't even having any fun with some of the late game bosses finding myself more frustrated than Enchanted even with me making frequent use of spirit ashes the peak of my frustration however came when I got to alale particularly when I encountered Millennia by this point I was honestly just ready for the game to be over but I still wanted to beat all the main bosses before I ended things at the air tree and so for several hours I banged my head against the wall of difficulty that is the blade of Micha getting ravaged by her combos bodied by her grab attack and absolutely [ __ ] devastated by waterfall dance every damn time and even if I did have a promising attempt well sooner or later she'd catch me out and just regain most of her HP back even if I was using a shield and by that point I'd have used up most of my Crimson flasks and that was before I even made it to her more difficult second phase which comes with an even greater variety of deadly extravagant attacks with an additional element of scarlet raw added to them all the humanity were these struggle sessions enjoyable for me absolutely not that I eventually managed to beat her only with the help of an online Fantom yes after some time but I did of course embark on a second Elden ring playthrough a month or so later this time with a better attitude and where I'd Endeavor to not use any Spirit ashes or even Miracles or sorcery and all I can say is that this made for one of the most enjoyable playthroughs of any game I've ever had I explored the world way more thoroughly I found dungeons side quests and bosses that i' missed the first time around and I just flought out was playing better including when I got to Millennia I still had a very difficult time but I beat her soul and instead of taking me about 6 hours it took me about 45 minutes all of which left me with a more positive opinion of her as a boss even so and I'll not mince my words here I absolutely detest water fil dance in fact I think it's one of the worst attacks in Souls born history yes it looks badass but that's about the only positive thing I have to say about it and that's because even after gaining a good degree of Competency at fighting her almost every time I died to Millennia the attack that killed me was waterfall dance as in nine out of 10 times when I died to Millennia it was that attack that killed me not her other attacks yes I know there are ways to avoid it and some I would be able to avoid it but never consistently never just when I think I'd figured out the correct movements and roll times to evade it it would clip me or just flat out destroy me and sorry but I just don't think it makes for a well-designed boss move even nowadays I have to resort to just using a shield for this attack and just let her regain a bunch of her health back if it weren't for waterf dance as well as the fact that she can pull out surprisingly early in the fight and then many more times after that melenia might have been in the top 20 or even the top 10 but as it is that one attack profoundly affects my ability to enjoy this boss and so I can't place her any higher than number 28 udex gundar appeared significantly lower on the list but the main reason for that was his Messi second phase which in my opinion makes him a less than ideal first boss because rather than being challenged with a selection of clear tight attacks all of a sudden things take a far more Abyssal turn and the challenge comes from trying to work out what on the boss is actually doing with those crazy monstrous animations well fortunately that first encounter isn't the last time you see gundar because he returns again in his Champion form in the untended graves area much later and here the whole P of man element has been ripped out and what you're left with is one of the most fast-paced and straightforwardly enjoyable boss battles in the game not only that though but he's been buffed in just about every way having way more attacks Combos and tricks I'm not saying that I wish they'd have you fighting something as complex as this as an early game Boss but this is the way Gunder is meant to be challenged just like with pontiff solivan if you're competent enough at Dark Souls 3's parrying this can be used against gundar to great effect but sadly I am incompetent at partying in this game and so that's not an option for me regardless sick boss ah on scen in small the notorious level boss of an orlandoo the one that everyone warns you about when on your first run of the game and for good reason Anor Londo itself is a demanding level especially if you're not the best at taking on its silver Knights but most firsttime players are not ready for the double two-phased boss battle which awaits them beyond that enormous fog wall sure you fought the Bellard gos earlier and sure there were two of them but this ain't that now I'll be the first to say that the on fight really isn't as mechanically smooth as it could have been for one half the time when you enter the arena on Steam will kind of bug out a bit and do this weird absurdly long range lunging animation right at you from the other side of the hall which looks really junky and as such can be difficult to avoid also the hitbox of sm's devastating charge attack is really difficult to not get tagged by to the point where sometimes when I see it I just resign myself to the fact that I'm almost certainly going to take some damage this really isn't the most well-oiled encounter in the soul series but even so it plays such a significant part in giving the game its merciless reputation that I had to include it here so don't think that I'm putting it in the top 30 just because of its reputation cuz this is a great battle I remember when I first saw that opening cut scene and how intimidated I was because I knew I was probably going to be on these guys for a while but I was also enthralled by how sick they looked this spear wielding wolf Knight and then the giant that is small with that crazy Hammer which happens to be the single heaviest weapon in Dark Souls 2 by the way as intimidating as onsr the game still does offer up a strategy with the six pills to the sides of the room allowing you to position yourself behind them so as to not get hit by Smalls brutal charges while you're taking chunks out of ornstein's health bar the health situation is another Saving Grace here because they really don't have all that much of it and thus while these two are very dangerous this isn't a marathon of a fight or at least the first phase isn't as for the second phase well it seems that almost everyone who plays the game takes down onstein first leaving them with super SM and no wonder because I for one have always found super onstein to be way more terrifying I think it's because SM seems to stay about the same size for both phases roughly whereas onstein goes from being relatively normal sized to turning into a giant and I don't like it superm does of course regain all his health back for Phase 2 as well as getting a big increase to his max health and now he does even more damage and gets an extra lightning butt slam AOE attack got to say though I've never been a big fan of this particular attack SM uses it too frequently to the point where sometimes he just spams it and your only option when he does use it is to just run away so things aren't any better with super onstein either cuz he also gets the same attack despite the odd issue or two I have with this boss battle it's legendary it's notorious it's [ __ ] iconic it's a Souls born classic out of all the souls born games the one with the most interesting and flavorful world and lore is bloodborne though Elder ring does come very close there are many interesting beasts higher beings and significant figures located in and around yanam who all have varying degrees of darkness and Madness associated with their characters and it's all great and nightmarish and very compelling but my favorite character of them all has to be father gascoin you can of course interact with gasco's daughter in central yannam before the fight who ask asks after her mother before gifting you with a music box a trinket which his family used to play for him when he'd start to forget himself when the Sweet Blood would sing to him tempting him to give into the Beast inside this is bloodborn though and there are no Happy Endings and indeed by the time you make it to the tune of Odin gasco's wife fola is already dead having been butchered by the man himself who then sets his bandage covered eyes upon you the first phase of the fight more or less plays out as as if you were fighting a regular Hunter cuz gasco's choice of weapon is the Hunter's axe which might even be the same weapon you come to the fight with those movements and animations are that extra bit more Savage and blood Thursday compared to those of a regular Hunter thankfully though he can be staggered by your firearm the second phase is where gascoin really comes into his own fully giving into beasthood and literally exploding into another form one infinitely more ferocious dispensing with all man-made weapons in favor of tooth and claw this phase is designed to punish the Panic rolling player because each time you dash back in terror gascoin is right there to meet you though again his aggressiveness can be punished with a stagger plus he's especially weak against fire here mechanically the gascoin fight is excellent and a steep difficulty Spike for many firsttime broad born players on their way out of central yam but it's his backstory dialogue and even visual design that makes him one of my favorite bosses in the game I earlier cited pontiff salivan as being one of the three bosses which gave me an immense headache on my soul level one run of Dark Souls 3 with so of Cinder being another but as well as that there was also the dancer of the Boreal Valley which honestly must have taken about 70 attempts before I beat it challenge run nonsense aside though I love everything about the dancer she was also one of the first bosses people even saw of the game back before dark souls I even came out because I remember some YouTubers and pressed being invited to an event to try out the game and take her on though I believe her name used to be Dancer Of The Frigid Valley just like how the Looking Glass night used to be called The Mirror Knight you can really see why they chose her to showcase the game too because she has one of the weirdest and most interesting visual designs and animations in the game appearing deformed and alien yet still possessing a strange Grace and just like how they gave vort a fantastic intro cut scene the same is true of the dancer this is a late game Boss Of course required to be defeated so as to gain entry to lothric Castle but if you want to take her on early even before fighting vort then you can I've always like to Wi games like you do that even when you have very little chance of actually beating the boss cuz there's always a chance that you will beat it though I distinctly remember thoroughly dispensing with all Notions of Victory after getting one-shotted by The Dancer's grab attack there's a really creepy vibe to the whole encounter and several things contribute to that for one there's the excellent soundtrack and then you've got dancers or portions and its nearly impossibly hunched moving animation and the fact that it's really difficult to make out any facial features behind that metallic Veil and like ponti solivan she uses two different swords each imbued with a different element when I think of the Excellence of Dark Souls thre's bosses the dancer is one that I think of and several others still to come we've already covered half of the bosses found in Dark Souls ones are Tories of the ab best DLC but now that we're talking about the best of the best in Souls born it's time to cover the others and at number 23 we have Manis father of the Abyss Manis is of course the very creature who drags the player back in time to UIL from the Abyssal portal found in darkr Basin but he also serves as the dlc's final boss located at the bottom of the chasm of the Abyss the Manis fight is one of the very rare cases which features a special optional item which can only be used against that one specific boss in the fight against Malik and Elden ring you you can use the blastphamous claw of course to par some of malak's attacks but for Manis if you found a silver pendant behind the illus wall back in U seal Township then it will offer protection against mance's three dark based attacks the fight can still be beaten without this item of course because these attacks are avoidable conventionally which is nice but still I always appreciate a unique touch with a boss plus the silver pendant animation is really sick Manis has always had a reputation as being a very tough boss but got to be honest I've never quite found this to be the case it's fast does high damage and has devastating combos we all know the particular combo I'm talking about but even with those special dark attacks I've never really struggled with Manis all that much though that's not meant as a slight rather this is just a great fight with an enormous Prime eval monster the run back could have been a bit less shitty though cuz I've never been too big a fan of having to run all the way back through the chasm every time I die but I'm not going to deduct points for that here manness makes for a brilliant conclusion to a brilliant DLC though there is a certain other Dark Souls 1 DLC boss who I consider to be even better than Manis or who could it be the fight against gicho was one that I completely missed upon first reaching as a castle just like how my first run of Elden ring didn't go quite as well as it probably could have the same is true of SEO cuz when I got to the Ashna Castle area I didn't realize that you could actually get in the castle and so instead I just traveled through the abandoned dungeon to senu Temple and even reached the end of that large level so the actual doors to the temple itself were close to me cuz turns out you can get inside the castle and you're supposed to take on gicho at the top so I went back and did that that story wasn't quite as interesting as I thought it would be sorry SEO is a super tough game right from the get go from the regular enemies sure but also the mini bosses and definitely the regular bosses you first encounter gicho in the tutorial but it's one of those fights where even if if you manage to win you still just lose anyway in the cut scene which follows with no special reward either way later on though after honing your skills as a Shinobi a great deal more and with the aid of the Shinobi prosthetic wolf once again encounters gicho and this time it's more of a fair fight mind you gicho still has two health bars to deplete and then even after those are gone he has another phase Al together with brand new attacks including the lightning of Tomo I remember hearing a lot lot of people struggling with this fight and no wonder the game Demands a lot of you up until this point but with the Gino fight it demands even greater precision and faster reactions gicho has long combos with very specific timings he has a great B which will often used specifically to punish you for healing and he even has a perilous attack mixup where you need to watch him really closely to figure out whether he's going to use a Thrust a sweep or a regular attack most of the same difficulty is present in his second for form but with the added pressure of the lightning attacks though these actually end up being an unexpected help to the point where you want him to use them as successful lightning counter results in big damage to both health and posture and the counter really isn't too difficult to pull off once you get the hang of it but it does look and feel very satisfying especially if you're out of heels and are getting desperate it's a difficult fight for sure but I actually think its difficulty is perfect for this stage in the game because it lets you know what's demanded of you and certain later game bosses go on to trivialize the challenge of even this encounter at number 21 I have chosen Gwyn Lord of Cinder you see this legendary figure in the game's opening cut scene and you hear other characters talk about him and you even trse his Grand Castle in an Orondo but it's not until the very end of the game at the end of the killing of the first flame beneath Firelink Shrine that you actually meet him though by this point he's been reduced to a smaller burnt up husk of his former greater self due to the extent to which his powerful Soul has served as kindling for the fire even so he still makes for a more than formidable opponent an outstanding final boss with one of the most beautiful soundtracks of all time it's used very effectively here too the way it hits you as soon as you step through that fog gate it's sad and somber and does so much to turn this encounter into something a bit more than a boss as weepy eyed and emotional as the music can make me though this is any anything but some soft simple encounter because gwy it's hands down the most aggressive boss in the game even if you arrive here with 20 Estus flasks the issue is that it's really difficult to actually use them without getting hit in the process and canceling out the heel if you even survive at all he's always on you slashing away with his long Blazing Sword combos complete with the occasional kick or grab mixup years ago a buddy of mine played through the game whilst I watched and over the weeks he made it all the all the way to the end all the way to Gwen and then gave up he just couldn't beat him he tried and tried maybe 60 times or more but nope could not do it and that was that he never ended up beating the game Gwyn is really tough but something that makes him more frustrating than he needs to be is the unnecessarily long run back the K of the first flame is an incredi looking area and I love how every black knight variant appears here but why do you have to run through this whole are every time you die I've ragged on Dark Souls 2 a lot for its runbacks and so I have to do the same here I think this run back is one of the worst in the series and it's one people don't really talk about all that much I guess because of how great a boss Gwen is but even so it sucks having to do this every time and it makes it that extra bit frustrating when you do die here fortunately Gwyn can be somewhat trivialized with the use of pares especially with the use of the Hornet ring and yes I do sometimes use this strategy though it does feel kind of cheap but regardless Gwyn is one of the great at number 20 we have one of the single most powerful destructive and dangerous beings in all of souls born it's General Redan scourge of the Stars like many my first exposure to Redan was in an early cinematic trailer for the game showing the battle between himself and Millennia an encounter which would conclude in the complete Devastation of an entire region of the lands between that being CED you hear Snippets of information about the general throughout the game but the most commonly agreed sentiment is that he is or was the most powerful demig God of them all this all serves to make the buildup to the actual fight super intense the way you hear all this talk of a festival and then there's the rousing speech by jiren and then you actually see what remains of ran in their companying cut scenes his wits having long since been ravaged by Millennia Scarlet rot reducing him from an all powerful demigod to a Hing tortured Beast Beast despite redan's Fall From Grace he remains extremely formidable and even though he's lost most of his Former Intelligence his prowess in battle seems largely untouched to the extent that the intended way to defeat him is with the help of not one Phantom but many he is absolutely massive the attacks from his thick twin great swords boost incredible power and range he throws out the most Savage combos found anywhere in the game and to top it all off he is still a master of GRA gravity magic this comes into play in phase one with his gravitational shock waves but especially in phase two where he shoots off into the sky before plunging back down onto the battlefield as if he were some Comet entering through the red atmosphere of CID from some outer sphere while his sweeps and Slams are terrifying in Phase 1 this is nothing compared to his violent swirls through the air in Phase 2 all while several enormous purple Boulders hang in the air behind him daring you to drop your guard for just a few seconds seconds only for them to be heaved your way through the air for what can easily be a one hit kill I've used the word battle when referring to boss fights many times throughout this long long video but nowhere is it a more accurate term than here at the Redan Festival because this is nothing less than a desperate battle against a powerful God beast and such is redan's power that after his defeat the very Stars resume their motion having only been held in stasis by Redan giving you a vivid demonstration of why he is known as the scourge of the Stars anyone who watched my video on the best and worst levels from each Souls born game may remember that my number one favorite level from Dark Souls 3 is lri Castle I love a good Castle type level which is one of the reasons why bolaria is my favorite world from Demon Souls but lri Castle o it's a good one because not only do I love playing through it but it also features not one but two of my favorite bosses in the game one of which is the Dragon s armor I remember seeing the name of this boss somewhere online before I encountered it in game Thinking hm that's a funny name for a boss we fighting armor well yes actually we are though that's because it's being possessed and controlled by a particularly enormous Pilgrim butterfly who flies off right as the fight begins remaining of the sidelines to occasionally spray the arena with a damaging red explosive Mist I'm not too sure what the exact lure relationship is between the armor and the character of orstein CU to be honest I'm surprisingly ignorant of a lot of the finer details of Dark Souls L but I do love how much larger more warped and heavy it is here ornstein's armor certainly had a real heaviness to it in the first game but it did not look crude whereas this armor and especially the weapon and shield are definitely crude the boss's great shield in particular just looks like an enormous hunk of Twisted iron and the ax has similar attributes with weight power and toughness clearly taking priority here over any sort of of refinement or elegance and all this comes through in the dragon SW Armor's fighting style you know me by now I love a strong sense of heaviness and impact with my bosses I want to see the screen Shake I want to feel the attacks through the [ __ ] screen and the dragon SL armor boss fight gives me exactly what I desire in that regard and then some and hey the intense roaring soundtrack really doesn't hurt either does it well I don't think the dragon SL armor is the best boss in Dark Souls 3 that's only because Dark Souls I has a bunch of top tier bosses soon to be mentioned but God damn it I love this fight like I said a few entries ago when talking about the Gwyn fight an emotional element can transcend an encounter into something truly special especially if the boss you're up against has a tragic backstory as was absolutely the case with Gwen well that's same tragic element well and truly returns in the fight against Gman another final boss and with with another absolute tear jerker of a soundtrack for most of the game gin's role is that of the Hunter's helper there to provide you with wise guidance on the night of the hunt he's also of course confined to a wheelchair not to mention that he's also somewhat elderly looking and no wonder because Gman was of course the very first Hunter even before Ludwig well despite not appearing to be especially threatening his inner Hunter comes out in full force if you reject his offer of supposed Mercy at the foot of the tree and the Hunter dream kicking off the game's final fight or its penultimate fight if you du a visit by the moon presence I'd say that the next most similar boss to Gman when it comes to fighting style is lady Maria from the DLC and no wonder with Gman having been Maria's former Mentor this is a straight up fight between one Hunter and another no beasts no great ones and no nightmare creatures Gman uses an early version of a trick weapon with his burial blade which also becomes available to the player after his defeat but it adds a good level of variety to the fight with him seemingly being able to switch from its long sight form to its shorter blade form at will also allowing him to use ranged attacks with his Hunter's pistol at the same time though he is fully vulnerable to staggers which is by far G's biggest weakness in fact it's kind of another similarity to the gwin fight where you can significantly reduce the challenge with the use of pares though here the staggers aren't quite as easy to pull off like qu requiring a fair amount of studying his sudden attack timings just like in the Maria fight like many of the best bosses in Souls born Gman is a tragic and complex figure and the fight itself is one of the best in bloodborne everything else about it is just as excellent from the incredible Arena to The Soaring soundtrack just like I did before the Asylum Demon type enemies much earlier I'm going to do another Collective entry here with grape Shinobi grape with great Shinobi owl and Owl father due to them being so similar while I have heard people Express disappointment with with the great Shinobi I will fight saying it was just a bit too easy well yeah not for me it's a fight I'm good at now but back in my first playthrough I struggled against owl even more so than genichiro who you fight earlier in the exact same Arena owl's appearance here is likely to come as quite surprise seeing as how you saw him perish from his battle wounds back in harata estate but it turns out that he simply faked his death here and indeed such a deceptive trick is hardly surprising from a Shinobi although I is wolves a father he is not a good person and his motives are far from Pure those being to kidnap the Divine Heir so as to receive his gift of immortality trouble is Kuru is our master in this game and as such it's Wolf's duty to protect him even if it means breaking the iron code and thus Begins the fight with the great Shinobi I is very different from Wolf in stature being an enormous man and using a far larger weapon but even so just as wolf uses a variety of tools to Dazzle and damage damage with the aid of his Shinobi prosthetic a makes use of similar techniques throwing firecrackers to stun igniting smoke bombs dowsing sections of the arena in poison and even throwing orbs to cause a small green AOE which temporarily prevents you from healing just like being hit with a wi Talisman in Dark Souls even aside from all these tricks though owl is a formidable swordsman doing massive damage with his powerful sord attacks and he even has the unique ability to directly counter your thrust attacks unless you to catch him off guard he'll also just block most of your attacks much like the corrupted Monk and so a focus on posture buildup tends to work more effectively than health depletion the great Shinobi I will fight is suitably superb considering wolf is fighting his former father and Manor here but this is not owl at his Peak although it's an easy fight to miss unless you're going for the purification ending returning to harata estate later on in the same blazing Arena where we defeated lady butterfly gives you the opportunity to fight owl father and this version of the great Shinobi is considerably more difficult although a knowledge of 's tricks from the previous fight will give you something of an upper hand he also plays off this knowledge by tossing in follow-up attacks or even canceling animations alt together to catch you off guard his arsenal of trickery is also expanded here not to mention his health and damage potential speaking of enhanced trickery in face 2 owl gains the ability to seemingly transform into a blue spectral owl providing him with movement through the arena and additional offensive capabilities and it all feels so much more demanding compared to the first time you fought him in fact with the exception of the special boss versions you can unlock via all the gauntlet content I will father is the second most difficult fight in the game to the point where by the time I eventually beat him I am straight up relieved number 15 is a special one in this list because this is the last entry where you're going to hear me use the words gimmick fight after this the bosses are comparatively more straightforward though certainly not conventional in every case my pick here is rard Lord of blasphemy and for the third and thus far final time in Souls born the use of a special giant killing weapon is involved that being the serpent Hunter its usefulness is no secret of course with the weapon already having been placed in front of you right as you enter reichard's hellish layer but it makes the battle significantly more manageable both its God devouring first phase than the Miss second phase with rard himself it is entirely possible to defeat rard even without the spear and I've seen people do it but it looks absolutely miserable and there's no good reason to try it other than bragging rights the first phase really isn't super complex and the serpent doesn't have a huge selection of moves but the moves it does have are big explosive and sometimes poisonous it can be fairly difficult but as with many other bosses with two distinct phases the serpent is meant more as a tense precursor to the real fight because in Phase 2 rard Reveals His vile features showcasing one of from soft's weirdest but most disturbingly memorable Boss Designs and then rard starts to speak in that garbled hissing Manner and it's all so messed up and awesome fromsoft are among the best at disturbing Boss Designs and there's been a ton of them in this list I honestly think rard is their most disturbing and even disgusting the way a serpentine body is sliced open down the middle is grotesque and even his signature Blasphemous blade weapon is constantly wriggling and rising and moving in his hands to fight he's unusually difficult for a gimmick boss though at the same time the massive chunks of damage you can do with a serpent Hunter does a lot to keep you from feeling out clast by R card's size and power and with a wee bit of practice you can get to the point where you're breezing through the first phase despite the weapon power though there are times in Phase 2 where all you can really do is run the [ __ ] away dodging and sprinting in away from the demig god screaming skull projectiles as the already morbid scorched and gory Arena becomes ever more chaotic not every boss in Elven ring is a winner but one thing's for sure it never disappoints when it comes to the demigod fights they are always as epic and intense as they should be and rard is no exception this is the last Dark Souls 2 boss on the list but even so heck number 14 ain't bad at all and I'm very glad to have him on here it's the F KN from the crown of the Old Iron King DLC there are a lot of great bosses from both the base game and dlc's but for me the fum Knight Takes the Cake I have died many many times to this boss from the slashes and stabs from it smaller sword to the slow heated Ax from its fume Ultra great sword and everything in between but I'm glad because even when I was struggling with a fum Knight's range of high damaging attacks and his very large pool of Health I was enjoying every damn minute of it sure some people complained about how many of Dark Souls 2's bosses were just dudes in armor but for me some of those dudes and armor happen to be my favorite bosses in the game like the pursuer Looking Glass Knight the Dragon Rider F stat and then the ultimate dude in armor with what might just be the ultimate sword holy [ __ ] that thing's massive the fum Knight who also happens to be vat's brother in the lower to the extent that if you enter the fog ball wearing vat's helmet the boss will trans I straight to phase 2 right from the start which is pretty deep this is also another one of those bosses that while I did struggle at great deal at first I can take on very comfortably now to the point where I can usually beat him on my first try and look I earned that I paid my dues I die to this guy enough what more can I say about the fum Knight I think he's the best boss in Dark Souls 2 and one of the alltime souls born greats and I salute him for it just a few entries of the list I spoke about how challenging and intense the fight with owl father was and indeed I consider him to be the second hardest in Seco but as for the number one most difficult and my entry for number 13 I'm choosing Isen swords sent the final boss for all but one of the game's four endings of course you fight is as enough to close at the sh ending but while that does make for a difficult boss it's nothing compared to the real deal this sword Sint who climbs out of the corpse of his adopted grandson genichiro gicho serves as the precursor to the fight with Hein but apart from one new attack he has with the use of the other Mortal blade all his techniques are very familiar to the extent that you can quickly get very good at deflecting his attacks to deliver a swift death blow and due to the merciless difficulty of the true final boss here you'll likely have ample opportunity to take on giniro again and again although I do think there are two or perhaps even three more difficult bosses in Elden ring when SEO first came out isin was was the hardest boss they'd ever came up with hands down he has the most varied move set in the game has massive damage dealing potential and just when you think you're starting to nail his first phase he pulls out a spear and pistol in the second phase and becomes twice as difficult and I really do think the second phase is with a true challenge wise the first is difficult and you will die several times but even so the inherent rhythm of it gradually starts to make sense especially when he's throwing out thrust attacks for easy building makiri counters but for Phase 2 well I've never gotten competent at it I've gotten better sure but try as I might I always get overwhelmed here his range increases he gets access to more special attacks he does more damage the combos become [ __ ] outrageous and the animations become more dramatic to the point where it's difficult to nail down exactly when you're supposed to deflect sometimes I never have an easy time with pH 2 and I likely never will but hey I don't think this is a boss you're ever supposed to get comfortable with so I'm okay with it thankfully phase three really isn't quite so bad because just as gicho does at the end of his battle isin pulls out the lightning of tomoy offering you fairly easy opportunities for big health and posture damage though he's still very threatening here and has still ended many a run for me and the fact of my poor heart is normally pounding by this point also adds to the pressure honestly e is one of those bosses is That's So intensely difficult that I don't even look forward to fighting him and I'm always exceedingly glad when he's down but even so he is one of from soft's most incredible creations and plays a major role in giving SEO its well- end reputation as one of from soft's hardest games just like with the Millennia fight my early encounters with MOG were not especially enjoyable although a major difference between these experiences is that on my first playthrough I somehow smoked him after just a few attempts by simply running up and hitting him with everything I had to be honest I don't really know how I did this because I wasn't very good at the game back then as I later realized m is one of the hardest bosses in the game and one of the best there are many things which make the Lord of blood so challenging but most of my initial deaths were caused by me seeing him start an animation from a certain distance and then I thought there's no way that attack is going to reach me only for that attack to then reach me and often kill me he has very very long range with a sacred spear weapon to the point where it's deceptively long though the frequent followup blood flame explosions certainly don't help matters and you're desperately trying to avoid damage and the delayed blood flame Talons attack is designed to catch you out because while it looks like the initial sanguin swipe does damage it doesn't it's the falling explosion that Nails you I always appreciate a nice bit of infight dialogue and so obviously I'm a big fan of Mor's Latin countdown though I have always found the mandatory damage which follows during the transition to phase 2 to be a bit questionable mandatory damage isn't common in Souls born bosses but it does happen occasionally and it always rubs me the wrong way a bit because this is a series where if you're good enough at the game it doesn't matter how difficult the boss is you can beat it damage free you can beat Millennia at level one with no armor and your bare fists if you've got the skill which I don't by the way because all damage is avoidable even waterf dance but then Mo comes along and no you can't not take damage unless you manage to beat him before the phase two transition yes you can get the special Crystal tier but this only negates most of the damage not all of it I will stop bitching about this now though cuz it's hardly a serious issue I have it's more of a principle thing despite it the m fight is incredible and Incredibly intense especially when he grows Dark Wings in Phase 2 and starts spraying wood flame everywhere this is one of those fights where the the boss is just always on you always doing something always hunting you down regardless of how far away he is because even if you've got a bit of range he can just throw blood flame your way and then catch you as you're sprinting or rolling to avoid it he's so aggressive that it can be difficult to even know when to attack and this can straight up extend the length of the fight because of how carefully you need to pick your moments MO is one of those bosses but the more I fight him the more I like him yes I've been known to get frustrated at the intensity of face too but even in these moments I can't deny how sick it all is and very very bloody I consider the orphan of caused to be the second greatest boss in bloodborne though I did really have to think about whether it might be the first greatest second place in a game is good as this though is no disgrace and not only is Orphan of cause among the best in the game but it's absolutely among the hardest though I have covered a handful of other bosses which aren't immediately aggressive to the player when you first encounter them it's slight slly different when you meet orphan of cause after crawling out of the steaming womb of its mother's beached corpse it will stare up longingly at the moon and if you don't approach it here it won't actually attack you I mean it's not like you can just turn around and leave or anything but still very cool detail showing that it only seems to be guarding its mother's body against yet another Blood crazed hunter orphan's weapon of choice is very unique being a large squirming placenta attached to its arm which it swings and slams around the shore of course screaming and streaking the entire time just as the best bloodborne bosses do orphan is quite aggressive here but not absurdly so and it will slow the pace sometimes to allow you to attack or heal though just as with the Maria and Gman fights and the similarly sized wood stared Beast often can be staggered phase one is downright hard but phase two is just on the cusp of being too [ __ ] much here the aggression is massively increased as well as the damage ferocity and speed spe and with even more ranged attacks as it showers you in sprays of rancid red fluid freshly ripped straight out of its fleshy placenta oran's second phase actually reminds me of moges and the way you barely get a moment to breathe and when there's an equal focus on just not dying as there isn't deing actual damage to the thing whilst I have gotten reasonably comfortable with orphan's first phase over my many playthroughs of the DLC this is not the case with the second phase it is wild frantic and desperate which was clearly exactly what from soft were going for and it all makes for one of the greatest and most terrifying Encounters in the game well folks this is it the top 10 the absolute best of the best out of all seven of these games Souls born's finest the pantheon of Legends and I think a perfect pick to kick off this countdown of great is dragon lord placex the secret boss of crumbling faram aula plac ax is the ultimate dragon yes dark Mader black dragon calamy and leech Dragon Fortis ax are fantastic fights but the Lord among them is the most ancient anomalous Dragon of them all the two-headed Titan floating within some distant Coliseum existing in some different time right from the start you can tell this isn't going to be an ordinary Dragon Battle placd a is absolutely enormous has two heads with a stump where there was once a third has scales that so ancient and weathered that they look to be nearly petrified and perhaps most strikingly of all is the only being in the game which breathes bright golden fire the dragon makes frequent use of red lightning too which it calls forth with Mighty Roars though one of its most all inspiring attacks the one which is so powerful that even the music hushes in anticipation of the coming blast is its bolt of placex a move that's surprisingly easy to avoid but does an amazing job of displaying the dragon Lords in impossible power a very important aspect of the fight though is to know when to back off this isn't one where you can just hug the rear and go to town no you will be fried with its golden Flames if you try this or at the very least flattened by its body or swiped with claws made of phantom red lightning placex has a second phase to of course and a surprising aspect of it is that it's initiated by the dragon seemingly disintegrating into the air only to be seen making a short circuit of the cuse see them in cloud form before reappearing for a sequence of thunderous swipes an attack that's even more of a ruinous explosive spectacle than it B attack however is placeis Sax's room seeming to be something of an homage to a similar attack used by darker Mader except with lasers covered with the brightest gold rather than the dark between the time of demon souls and the time of Elden ring there have been countless dragon battles and some have been excellent but none have managed to match dragon lord pedes and I'm not sure this dragon can ever be matched now this entry is a bit of an unconventional one I know because mechanically I don't really love the first phase of the fight the guardian ape is a bit awkward to fight in that I've never quite understood whether the game wants me to deflect or Dodge the ap's attacks and I actually have similar feelings about the Blazing bu fight from earlier on in the game nonetheless the large open arena is fantastic especially the way you're clearly encouraged to Grapple from tree to tree to help avoiding certain attacks but also the way the ape can just destroy these trees as the fight drags on and the design of the ape itself is fantastic the way it's doing all this with a massive sword sticking out of its neck that's pretty badass but the prime reason the guardian ape is so far up on this list is because of the second phase of the fight that first time I thought I'd finally beaten it only for it to start squirming before getting up and undulating around the arena mimicking the motion of a worm has to be one of my favorite video game moments ever from any game it's grotesque and creepy and the way that music shifts in Phase 2 to sound more dissonant and high pitched is genius especially when it's complimented by the terror inducing shrieks from The Headless ape itself only for it to carry on swashing at you with uncanny Grace from the enormous Katana that had been buried deep into its neck just moments before it's not just a sheer surprising awesomeness that phase transition that I do love though because Phase 2 itself is also one of the best fights in the game in a way it's actually more straightforward than the first phase despite the boss not having a head here it's all about bold deflections then the occasional evasion after a perilous attack so that raising its posture bar will likely be the goal for most people rather than trying to deplete all its Health like in the first phase yes they did go and [ __ ] all over this fight with the Headless ape encounter afterwards but despite how much I dislike that boss I still love this one I love it and I will never forget that moment when I realized the battle was far from over as outstanding as the old Hunter DLC is it actually takes a wee while before you encounter the first boss and it builds the anticipation as you wonder what the hell the game's going to throw at you traveling through Twisted incomplete nightmare versions of the cathedral ward in central Yana then through a river of blood but it's the source of the blood which brings you to Ludwick first Hunter of the church now transformed into the most monstrous frenzy Beast seen so far it's a terrifyingly difficult fight as you're set upon by tooth and stomped on with hoof and despite how many times I've beaten bloodborne this nightmare version of Ludwick can still give me nightmares before I work out how and when to dodge its ferocious onslaught of Primal attacks always accompanied by some of the loudest most beastial shaks of any enemy in the game putting even the cleric beast and Vier Amelia to shame Ludwick is an extremely tough boss but you gradually work out how to deal with it and then phase two happens introducing that familiar pale blade of Legend the holy Moonlight sword and all of a sudden Ludwig regains some lost sentients even speaking in a refined English accent which is probably the last thing you expect after the shrieking cacophony of the first phase Phase 2 plays out very differently to the first though the actual difficulty level pretty much remains about the same except instead of avoiding bites Stomps and violent charges now you're dashing out of the way of blue sword slashes and Arcane eue attacks all while one of the greatest video game pieces of music thunders in the background with ludwick's theme incredible boss in all regards and in my opinion the single greatest boss in wbor though there was some stiff competition with the whes of Orphan of course and Gman but as superb as both these fights were the number eight spot goes to Ludwig I'm sure everyone feels all sorts of different emotions when they first step through that golden fog gate to enter inside the air tree for the very first time and with you having just defeated godre first elen Lord Christ knows what the game's going to throw at you in there well what the game throws at you is Radigan of the golden order the Secret side of Queen Marica who transforms into her male Avatar before our very eyes initiating one of the most challenging fights in the game with one of the hypest soundtracks kicking in as rigan's internal Elden ring lose a bright Gold by this very late point in the game you're used to the fact that most of what you fight will attack you with varying degrees of savagery and urgency some of your fools come in the form of demigods some are tarnished some are constructs and some are dragons and some come in other forms alt together but they seldom take their time in getting to where you are and then attempting to [ __ ] you up well Radigan also has the ability to thoroughly [ __ ] you up but the distinctive thing about this boss is the way he moves around the arena with a unique calmness or even dare I say grace even with his attack animations many have a sort of powerful slowness to them not a sluggishness but a certain deliberateness be it from a golden stomp a sequence of swings from his hammer or an explosive slam honestly I enjoy looking at radigan's movements and attacks just about as much as I enjoy actually engaging with them because I love the everpresent themes of order Grace and gold in Elden ring and rigan is the living embodiment of all those three elements even having attacks which flash the enigmatic form of the Elden ring itself onto the ground before you yes lots of folk had this larger battle somewhat soured as a result of the follow-up fight against the Elden beast but Elden Beast or know Radigan of the golden order is a God among bosses and more than worthy to be included in the top 10 Stormville Castle is one of elen Ring's best levels and if it weren't for the existence of there then it would be my favorite level in the game as intricate expansive and dangerous as the castle is through the highlight of it comes at the end when you encounter your first demig God the grotesque Abomination that is godric the grafted there isn't a single demig God fight an elder ring that disappoints and quite right too these are supposed to be the most powerful beings in the ones between descendants from Queen Mar herself and bearers of shards of the Elden ring well godric is certainly not the most Brave or Noble of these demigods but nonetheless he's resorted to a psychopathic practice known as grafting defeating the tarnish who come to the castle to oppose him before robbing them of the limbs attaching them to his ever expanding frame to the point of True Body horror the grafting has clearly had a profound effect on his strength too because godric makes for a formidable opponent and an incredible first demigod he'll roll around the gravestone litter Arena to deliver powerful leaping attacks with his axe or storm-based projectiles from range and such is godric's strength that he can cause many Quakes from the sheer force of slamming his enormous ax into the ground and I always love any attack in this game that encourages me to jump over it it's why I also love godre stomp attack later on in the game same with The Crucible knights with all these additional limbs being attached to his body with arms being attached to more arms and legs being attached to more legs there's a disturbing wrongness to the way godric moves and attacks especially just how deceptively quick he can be though I've always found the most disturbing and awesome moment in the fight to be the phase transition where he removes an arm my favorite and then grafts a literal dragon head to his blood spurting stump I repeat the man attaches a dragon onto his arm was there ever any doubt that godric would be appearing in the top 10 I was already hooked into Elden ring when making my way through the dark depths and blighted battlements of Stormville Castle but when I encounter godric I couldn't stop smiling during his intro cut scene and when I saw that transition cut scene I couldn't wait to just die so I could watch it again and by that same token whenever I start a fresh playthrough of Elden ring I can't wait to get to Stormville Castle so I can relive the battle once again we have talked about every boss from the first Dark Souls game all except one the boss that I consider to be the greatest of them all knight artorius from the artorius of the abys DLC you hear Tales of artorius throughout the base game of course and even fight his loyal great grey wolf deep within dark wood forest but it's not until venturing through UIL and the DLC that we finally encounter the legendary Knight himself though by this time the cloying taint of the Abyss has long since robbed him of his capacity for reason just as it would later do to the abys Watchers in Dark Souls I artorius makes for one of the most challenging bosses in the game with his dextrous swipes thrusts and leaps from all the way across the the Boss Arena he's a very aggressive enemy perhaps not quite as aggressive as gwy but even so you need to pick your moments for attacking and healing well cuz he's fast and can move from one side of the Arena to the other before you know it the whole Abyssal corruption element of this character is pushed very strongly with the trails of dark sludge he leaves behind when he moves even going so far as to use this as an attack this also comes into play when arturis attempts to buff drastically increasing his damage output it isn't a face too as such because very few bosses from the early Souls games actually featured multiple faces but if he manages to get the buff off it increases his Threat Level significantly you can of course interrupt his buff but it means running directly to him to frantically attack before it succeeds which is sometimes will despite your best efforts like pretty much any Dark Souls 1 boss the artorius fight isn't especially technical he doesn't have a huge array of attacks and nor is he among the most difficult Souls born encounters but while all these things do matter and do help they're not essential for a legendary boss because to me Knight artorius absolutely is legendary in his presence Design Story and sheer enjoyability he is Dark Souls 1 at its best I earlier spoke about how lothric Castle was my number one favorite level in Dark Souls 3 during my discussion of the incredible boss that is Dragon SL armor but there's one more boss to talk about from that level the only remaining Lord Of Cinders and my favorite of them all it's Prince loick and his brother lauan the Elder Prince I absolutely love a good intro cut scene which expands on a boss's character with interesting and insightful dialogue and that is exactly what I get with the twin princes and then again in the transition Cuts scene to phase two although it is specifically lothric whose remains must be collected and placed on the highest Throne back in Firelink Shrine the main enemy for most of the battle is waran a powerful hero of the Kingdom who has since been reduced to a far more beasal form even having lost the use of his legs and now without the ability to even speak despite this he makes for a singularly powerful opponent legs or not but the main contributing factor which adds to the challenge of the fight is Lauren's constant ability to teleport although the teleporting is actually being done by loick a figure who may be frail of body but who possesses the ability to perform powerful Miracles aiding his brother in battle from above it's an extremely cool idea for a boss which is used to incredible effect because the teleports aren't done at random they are directly tied into specific attack animations to the point where lauran will sometimes begin an animation get teleported to a different spot then deliver the actual attack and if that isn't one of the all-time coolest boss mechanics then I don't know what is the second phase plays out somewhat similarly to the first except here roick joins the battle more directly after having revived his his brother an act which he will perform every time you deplete Lauren's HP and thus the aim here is to take out lothric who almost tenderly hangs from his brother's back the Brotherhood aspect of the fight is very well done to the point where you almost feel bad for coming up here and disturbing them then forcefully taking wri's ashes back to Firelink despite his wish to Simply Let the Fire fade excellent fight which is again flavored by one of my favorite boss ingredients tragedy now I don't know about you viewer but by the time I first got to the end of Dark Souls 3 I was moved in fact I'd actually booked a whole week of work in anticipation of the game's release just so I could play it every day which is exactly what I did and when I did complete the game I remember thinking that might be the best game I've ever played now I don't think quite that strongly about Dark Souls 3 these days though I do still love it but the game just did such an amazing job of absorbing me into its cold Dying World whether you choose to wink The Flame or let it die but before you earn the right to do either of those things the soul of Cinder must first be defeated there is one boss in Dark Souls 3's DLC that I like even more than soul of Cinder but as far as the base game goes this is the best fight the first phase makes use of a variety of different play Styles imitations of typical builds the player themselves might have used during their time of these games from a DEX focused cover sword pyromancy style to a more balanced sword style and even a pure magic Style with the boss's coiled sword changing forms and serving as different types of weapons suited to each style not all of these are equally easy or difficult to deal with though in particular I've always had a nightmare with a curved sword form to the extent I sometimes just stay the [ __ ] away from the boss until it switches but it's an extremely cool idea which is unique to the soul of Cinder because I believe the idea here is that you're fighting an incarnation of every former Lord of Cinder combined into one which must be defeated before you earn the right to link your soul to the flame then phase two happens and Gwen's theme kicks in and you see it start to use some of gwyn's attacks and oh my God it makes for one of the most amazing moments in the Dark Souls Trilogy I don't care if the game sometimes went a bit too heavy but the references to Dark Souls one because when it hits me with [ __ ] like this I'm all in and the boss even throws out lightning Spears which is one of those attacks that Gwyn should have had in the first game soul of Cinder is the perfect conclusion to one of the greatest video game trilogies of all time yes there were the DLCs of course but putting them aside for a minute this conclusion was Perfection and as I watched the ending cut scene and as the credits rolled I felt a real Pang of sadness that the Dark Souls story was over but also grateful I was there for the ride Godfrey has my favorite move set of any boss in Elden ring in fact even though he is in the number two spot I'd go a step further and say that he is my favorite move set of any Souls born boss there's a mysterious element which can come into play when taking on certain Souls born bosses it's not there for every fight but every now and then when on some tough encounter perhaps on your 10th or 11th attempt or more you enter into a flow a state of being where you and the boss are engaged in a dance a mortal test of Rhythm and I feel that Godfrey's move set facilitates this flow better than any other boss particularly with his frequent foot Stomps encouraging the use of jumps by the time you finally meet Godfrey there's been an immense level of Legend and hype associated with his name and power and you might even start to wonder whether or not he'll even truly be in the game at all of course you fight a golden reflection of the man in the a Tre Sanctuary but that's a mere imitation of the real thing because the real thing is significantly substantially more vicious and epic as with several other excellent bosses on this list there's a terrifying transition as Godfrey sheds the body of his Beast advisor SOS from his back embracing his true identity as horor Lou Chieftain of the bad ones adopting a different fighting style and stance entirely one with a focus on Brutal hand-to-hand combat complemented with kicks slaps and throws including brutal power bombs complete with an tearing open your character's chest if it's a killing blow absolutely awesome fight mechanic and seriously the second phase is one of the most terrifying in all of souls born he's so damn aggressive with long weird wind ups to his attacks and this is one of the most difficult fights when it comes to trying to find a time to squeeze in a heel because he's always right on you with the next Savage attack Godfrey is the single sickest boss and character in Elden rain and even though your time with him is very brief the entire climactic encounter with him is pretty much Eld ring at its glorious golden best and that's really saying something well this is it folks position number one my all-time favorite Souls born boss someone even better than Legends like artorius Ludwick and Godfrey who could it be well I guess this is the part I'm supposed to do that thing of showing a shitty boss instead as a joke and then showing my actual pick I'm not going to do that cuz that's kind of lame my pick for alltime greatest Souls born boss is slave night Gale fought at the end of the Ring City DLC the encounter takes place in the largest arena in the Dark Souls series it features not one but two of The Game's best cutscenes and it's all accompanied by such an overwhelming feeling of desolation and Devastation I've already spoken about the apocalyptic feel in Dark Souls I and those end of the world elements coming through in many places in bosses but none more so than when fighting Gail here at some lost point in time the world has completely Fallen to ruin having been reduced to Ash dust and NeverEnding storms and what better Arena to do battle with the Fallen slave Knight than this I've spoken about bosses whose demeanors and even levels of sentience and intelligence take a dramatic shift partway through the fight and the same thing happens in the Gale fight to an extent he begins the battle by moving and attacking in a nearly animalistic manner running on all fours like some Madden Beast with wild wide arching swings and combos from his broken great sword a blade ruined after Untold centuries of searching for fragments of the Dark Soul for his lady's painting it's a challenging phase but at the same time everything is very clear fair and comprehendable and you've also got an entire Arena to make use of if you want after losing about 35 to 40% of his HP though Gail begins to bleed and this is a very special type of blood here the moving on all fours and beastial Roars and combos comes to an end because now Gail musters up every ounce of power contained within his ruined soul to deliver a thunderous onslaught of fire lightning Miracles and everything else now anytime an attack is delivered it's immediately followed by an elemental miasma from Gail's skull adored Cape enhancing the impact ferociousness and Desperation every time he Strikes Out ladies and gentlemen in my humble opinion Souls born doesn't get any better than slave night Gale it's the perfect fight it has everything I love in a boss fight with none of the [ __ ] Gail is not the most difficult boss here though and in fact I'm not even sure I'd put him in a list of top 20 most difficult bosses but that's okay in fact it's more than okay because if you compare Gail to much more challenging bosses like Millennia malth or even e swords I'm choosing Gail every [ __ ] time I'm not trying to detract from those three bosses when I say that but rather what I'm trying to emphasize is that this encounter is tuned to near Perfection and thus out of 162 Souls born bosses the masterfully tragic fool that is slave night Gil is at the top of my [Music] list well folks there you have it there's my list I was a orally going to do it as a three-part series but then I changed my mind and decided to do it in two parts but then after discussing it with one of my patrons shout out to my man toasted down in the comments I said [ __ ] it and decided to just make it one long long video I'd love to say it was fun but it wasn't in fact the whole experience was [ __ ] brutal especially doing this in 2 weeks but to be honest I wouldn't have done anything any different cuz the video's done now and out there and here you are watching the concl and by the way congratulations for making it this far statistically you shouldn't have and I hope you accept a heartfelt thank you from me for watching the stuff let me give a final thank you to my kind patrons for their support and on that note finally cheers for watching and cheer [Music] on

Channel: CANDLE Type 1a

Views: 114,818

Keywords: Soulsborne boss ranking, soulsborne boss list, best and worst dark souls boss, best and worst elden ring bosses, soulsborne boss critique, dark souls scottish, Soulsborne boss review, dark souls boss review, Bloodborne boss ranking, bloodborne boss review

Id: 4FAYneRxQbs

Length: 270min 1sec (16201 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 27 2023