One aspect about Goldfrey I like is how it relates to Morgot. Seeing as this is the last opponent between you and the Elden throne, Morgot specifically chose to summon his dad as the last line of defence, which is both cute and kind of heart-breaking at the same time.
also Goldfrey's axe has 2 heads, seeing as the last time morgott saw his father, or rather the way he remembers him is from before the exile. The proper Godfrey has a broken Axe hardened and ruined through years of combat, while morgott portrays him in his mind's eye as a young, strong pristine warrior in shining armor with a shiny big axe
Man, I love Mohg. He was actually an extremely difficult boss on my first playthrough, one of the most. After so many attempts I swallowed my pride and summoned Mimic Tear, and Mohg was dead in about 30 seconds. I just started laughing maniacally for like a minute afterwards. But for the boss himself, he's close to perfect. He's one of the few bosses whose mechanics I'm fairly confident in my knowledge of; his fucking incredible score, the unique weight and character his weapon gives his animations, the fact he has a tendency to circle you menacingly, further emphasizing the nature of the duel, and like you mentioned, the astoundingly deep context he and his fight are steeped in. Sir Ansbach, the man, the myth, the chad, my beloved.
@@BunnyGirlMethonestly, i’m kinda surprised SoC didn’t get a greatshield with his greatsword moveset. absolutely adore the boss as is, but a fiery shield could’ve been real cool. then again, i just played through ds2, and i’m not sure i ever wanna get parried that often again
I'm partial to Alecto's simplicity. The fight feels, to me, like an angry brawl. Ranni, at some point, clearly had a falling out with the Black Knives. This fight is revenge for Alecto against Ranni, but also our revenge against Alecto for the deaths of Blaidd and Iji. The evergaol system almost feels like a boxing ring at times, and its in this fight I feel that really harmonises with the boss encounter.
very quick note mate: the apostle in the divine tower doesnt block the great rune, it's actually in the opposite direction as you go down from the middle to fight him but up from the middle to activate the rune. great vid so far as usual
That Maliketh sequence: the opportunity is during the downward slam. If you're close, it will whiff. Once you've got off one big hit/flurry during the slam, watch to see whether the destined death follow up is coming. The leaping slam afterwards would have ended in an explosion if you'd stayed close, but because you ran away he chased you.
during the ground poke you can bait out the other leaping slam by staying at range a little. then run under him to get behind him during it. you can punish during the AOE, it doesnt hit behind him
@@glisteninggames2981 I've still got to practice it, plus the evade and punish for the destined death from the overhand slam. I have a much higher view of Maliketh than OP, but I'll admit that his glass canon nature does make it hard to get a sense of mastery with him. People tend to win when he doesn't do his trickiest moves, rather than after learning they'e learned them.
What happened with you and Maliketh at 1:57:29 is more of a positioning mistake rather than just "randomness". He will use destined death after his downward slam if you're too close to him and to avoid it you need to be running away towards his back to the side or if you're in front of him you can run away from him. The other destine death followup is because you're running away from Maliketh after he plunged his sword down hence why he swirls towards you for his destined death attack. Many of Maliketh's attacks and combos are dependent on your positioning and while this is mostly shown in phase 1, it also plays a big part in phase 2 since it can determine whether or not you get hit by his weapon art or not
Not arguing against this but I felt the point he was eventually making was that you CAN learn all the specific positioning you need to do in response to Maliketh’s moves, it’s just not fun to do at a certain point because it’s a) not intuitive what he’s going to do next and b) you have to go through the whole process of getting another shot at him. Not even necessarily saying that’s how I feel about the boss but that’s what I interpreted his point to be
You are correct in that, and I probably should have gone into more detail as to why I think the positioning of Maliketh makes him feel 'off' to me. One of my favorite pieces of Maliketh's moveset his when he does a backflip out of melee range to shoot a projectile, then grab onto a column before diving down into a slam that does an AoE if the player is too close. Every action is clear, and it's clear what the player did to trigger each step. The player was too close - so he lept back. The direction the player dodged the projectile put him near the column, leading to the slam, and the player was too close after, leading to the follow-up. These kind of positioning strings follow the internal logic the rest of the game drills into the player - roll through or jump over attacks to force the enemy back, and respect large slams, as most in the late game have secondary effects. The string discussed there doesn't follow the game's logic. I pressed in towards his hind-legs (the most reliable to hit part of his hurt-box) during an overhead slam. This behavior is rewarded everywhere else in the game, but punished with Maliketh. Then, after he landed his first leap - a move triggered by me moving away from him, he started to glow red. In the entire rest of the game, this means an AoE and you can take the moment to heal in mid-range, so you can keep the momentum of the fight going once the explosion is done. With Maliketh, staying at that mid-range the rest of the game encourages ends up punished. Now don't get me wrong - there is an internal logic to Maliketh. People have beaten him with less than nothing, especially once they start to master the Blasphemous Claw as a counter to his harder to dodge moves. But the speed Maliketh moves combined with how many slight variations of his attacks that exist to cover slight deviations on the player's positioning mean that you'll go from a part of the fight that feels instinctual to something that requires knowledge of manipulating his AI not to master and abuse the boss, but in order to feel the rythmn and the pulse of the fight in the same way that a player can link into the rythmn of fights of Godfery. For me, that's what holds him back.
@@TheAkasharose im going to assume youre talking about ground slam into destined death here, as shown in timestamp. if youre talking about ground poke into flip into destined death instead, feel free to correct me. the only other boss that uses destined death is the black blade kindred. he also has an attack that rewards you for rolling into the destined death explosion instead of away. it has the same spinning motion before the attack hits as well. destined death is a separate mechanic from other AOE effects and even if you saw something like this for the first time, id still really like it. it forces the player to think critically about what's happening and what they need to do. you could of course stay away from destined death and get hit. but if you pay attention, you see that the ball is only in front of maliketh. so getting behind it for dodging is the correct answer. i think it would be boring if every AOE worked the same. love this gimmick
A little bit about both, since the back to back nature of how quickly the fight demands extraordinary precision on positioning with multiple fake-out endings to a combo in the middle of one string of attacks is what made me highlight that specific set of attacks. I definitely see the logic behind dodging behind Destined Death - for me, Alecto's jumping destined death burst that she puts into combos or punishes players staying at melee range works the best (since she also boasts one). No matter where you are, there's always an option - she's a small enough foe that you won't run into her hitbox by sprinting forward and rolling behind her to i-frame through the edge of the attack and punish, but if you aren't close enough for that, you can run away and still be able to jump in to punish the attack. It demands you watch out for the attack as a mix-up, but doesn't force the player to adjust their positioning to have to always plan for it. With the level of tracking and the size of Maliketh, if the player attacks the front of his left knee and he decides to do that attack, two rolls isn't enough to get behind him (though I do want to try to sprint after editing that section together, that's an option I noticed I never tried). If you're behind his left knee, however, you're able to get behind both the spin into slam or the roar - and punishing that attack is RIDICULOUSLY satisfying, honestly one of the best feelings in the game. And this might be where personal taste comes into play - when he does the spin and and I dodge, I feel amazing. But the fact you have to be constantly positioning to prepare for an attack that may or may not come has always felt unsatisfying for me. I mentioned this in another comment, but Maliketh rests RIGHT on that cusp between Above Average (B) and a Highlight of my Playthrough (A). He is a great boss - there is no doubt in my mind about that, and there's nothing as frustrating as Waterfowl Dance holding his design back. But needing to preemptively dodge attacks isn't something I've often enjoyed in games, and Maliketh plays with that idea a lot from the ground up. I can see a lot of adoration, and positioning to avoid future attacks and control his AI can form a game of mental chess against a gorgeously animated enemy makes Maliketh a unique fight that, when people say he's their favorite boss in the game, makes perfect sense to me. And maybe that's enough to have boosted him into the A Grade - even if I prefer a lot of the A Grade encounters myself. Either way - I always appreciate the insight as to what you love about him! He definitely provides a unique challenge to the rest of the game - honestly, he feels like more of a variation on the basic gameplay loop than the Fire Giant does to me!
2:01:16 I'm very glad Fromsoft wasn't deterred by the... mixed... reception to Gideon in regards to experimental NPC fights. Gideon as a customisable culimination of NPC questlines that rewarded dilligence and attention to exploring the entire world of the game is something of a prototype to what I'll just call Leda's bossfight. While I do really enjoy Gideon, I think Leda and her allies are simply an unforgettable, greatest of all time moment for Fromsoft that outshines Gideon in every way. My one biggest gripe with Gideon is the summons (or rather, the lackthereof). Gideon feels especially designed for summon assistance and yet he doesn't get NPC summons, they (Nepheli and Shabriri) are instead saved for Godfrey. Nepheli coming to face Godfrey is somewhat fitting given her heritage, but Gideon serves as the antagonist through much of her questline, and I feel like it would be a fitting "reward" for the players forsaking Nepheli's spirit ash to Gideon earlier in the game. Additionally, Shabriri has no relevance to Godfrey at ALL. Gideon's inherent weakness to madness, his odd apparent refusal to learn frenzied flame incantations, and the lore of Vyke would make Shabriri a much better summon for Gideon, IMO
Especially with Shabiri's spells grabbing player models! I understand why that summon unlocks for Godfrey instead, but Shabiri does feel designed for Gideon more. And I love the point on Leda - especially with the heavy focus on dialogue running under the fight, which Leda took and amplified even further to an amazing effect.
My strategy with Malenia was to use the ash of war in Mohg's spear to make her bleed while starting the waterfowl dance, which more often than not stuns her and stops the attack altogether lol. I didn't want to change weapons for one boss so I had to figure something out and it was actually very fun to do.
it went from what i consider to be a C tier fight, to a clean A tier, with this change. honestly, the promised consort nerfs had the exact same change on my feelings/rankings on the fight.
I somehow managed to do both my playthroughs on Radahn before the nerf, but the fight seems massively improved. I'm really excited to fight Elden Beast and Radahn with those changes.
@@TheAkasharose but for hard numbers consort Radahn has about 8 extra recovery frames after each attack and his brightness on his light attacks is turned way down.
@@DaitylSword The Recovery frames look nice and the cross-slash change was absolutely necessarily, but just the fact I can see what's going on with his teleporting rushdowns is the biggest improvement. The shades would linger so long that the attack became one of the most visually cluttered attacks in the game.
Can’t praise the time and effort you’ve put into this series of videos enough! You’ve really done a marvelous job! And I do find almost all of your rankings absolutely justified. The exceptions being Malenia and Maliketh. The former I’d give an A, as for me using a shield is a perfectly viable counter to the Waterfowl dance. It makes it much more akin to Mohg’s phase transition, although a bit more annoying due to its higher frequency. Maliketh on the other hand is one of my all time favorite bosses, who imho definitely deserves an S. Like a less tanky, but more agile version of Godfrey - his attacks are well telegraphed, but also deal an enormous amount of damage. Learning his move-set and punish widows is challenging, but very rewarding. And ultimately his agility is something that makes him stand out from the rest of the bosses. But those are just two nitpicks in an otherwise excellently researched, written and edited video. Can’t wait for your DLC ranking video!
I knew Malenia and Maliketh would be the big two debated ones - and I think you make good points on each. For me, the random nature of Waterfowl hurts it a lot (seeing her do it three times in a row on one attempt can be infuriating), though the power of freeze pots means that her moveset gets to take the centerstage it deserves. Maliketh is still weird to me - I'm going to focus a lot on the Blasphemous Claw on my next run, and I feel like forcing myself to learn to parry and take advantage of the item might also make the parts of the moveset that still feel overwhelming click. Because I feel there's an incredible fight there, it just never quite clicked for me. And glad you liked it - I'm excited to dive into the DLC!
I know I keep leaving comments, but I'm doing so as I watch the video. Man. . . Malenia. She's a bitch, in a good way. To be honest, her and Mohg are the two bosses I know the movesets to the best. Btw, her triple flurry slash is reliably dodged by rolling into her to your left and backing up to avoid the following slash. Her attacks do that very well: having multiple ways to dodge, and having ways to not have to dodge. You can roll to avoid that follow up slash, or just back up. You can dodge *with* her grab and airborne thrust to end up right next to her, keeping up your aggression, or you can dodge away, which is more initially natural and gives valuable space. Like you said, she's uniquely easy to stagger, but her hyper armor and knowing which moves have it is one of the most important parts of learning her. Phase 1 is so uniquely full-fledged, given a whole health bar for her first phase unlike any other boss. Of course, waterfowl dance exists, and I still hold it to be bullshit, despite being able to lure it out with thrown projectiles activating her input reading, to make her rush you and trigger attacks like waterfowl relatively safely. That's a trick I learnt from Magnolia on RUclips. My problem with it is that I can't reliably avoid flurry one at close range, often killing me, and it's extremely easy to trigger when being up close and aggressive, where her fight is at its best. Her second and third flurries are borderline non-lethal by comparison. Genuinely, flurry one is the worst part about waterfowl, and I think the single worst thing about the fight as a whole. Even her new moves in phase 2 don't reach that low: her clones, while dangerous, can still be run, jumped and rolled from, her scarlet aeonia is extremely easy to avoid by unlocking the camera and staying underneath her and then retreating - her dramatically increased aggression and difficulty to actually read the fight because of her wings are what make phase 2 hard, but waterfowl. . .that damn move. Love the fight so much, but I won't defend this part of it.
You perfectly put into words what I've thought about Fire Giant. I did really feel the pinch when I just couldn't upgrade anymore, and it was through mastery of his timings in NG+ that I actually began to really enjoy the boss.
it's crazy to me that in 2024 people still refuse to hit ANYTHING but fire giant's hands. when he does the volcano rocks attack, none of the rocks land under him and you get a goddamn 15s window to wail at his legs. sure it's not a lot of damage per hit but he's wide open. And that's not to mention, you can hop on the horse in 2nd phase and just ride around him and hit the stump where his leg used to be. It takes a while but if you do that literally only the direct fireballs and ds3 rolls can hit you, both can be avoided by just running around on torrent. I remember once doing that on a 3 person seamless co op game for 25 minutes (health scaling) because my 2 friends were already too tilted to continue fighting him. That being said, still an annoying boss, but i'm just critiscising this weird shared approach to the boss.
I smacked the stump of his leg with my greatsword my first playthrough - I would just get caught by the rolls a lot. I never knew the Volcano didn't hit near him - I always assumed that I needed to back up. Definitely going to try that next go around, especially with Frost or Bleed, which is just... incredible against him.
@upsideproductions2 malenia isn't even that bad. Waterfowl dance is more of a spacing issue than a skill issue. Plus with the new deflecting hardtear, you can literally just parry it sekiro style
@upsideproductions2 that's the hard part of her fight, she attacks frequently, and there's not gonna be lots of room for error. Luckily, you can bully her out of her attacks pretty easily. I recommend a milady, the fast attack speed really helps
Had to dislike when Maliketh got a B after Malenia. He really isn’t that unpredictable but rewards you for paying close attention. He only does the big destined death AOE follow ups when his sword is imbued with destined death which happens after he shoots the projectiles. But if his sword isn’t glowing he won’t do it plus if you expect the follow up every time and position behind him it’s a big punish window. But if you’re standing infront of him he’ll do it almost every time. You can also immediately run backwards to avoid it easily. I don’t consider myself a great player and i no hit ng+7 maliketh more consistently than any other boss because of how predictable/readable his phase 2 has become for me. Phase 1 is the real challenge. Gurranq is much less predictable. Both Maliketh and Malenia are at least A tier & at most top 3 fights in the game. B tier feels like bait.
gurranq is very simple too imo dodge any melee combo from side to side, until he does overhead. walk backwards from overhead and punish. jump attack the claw AOE and roll poke everything else. idk why people struggle with him so much. rather small moveset for a late game boss
42:58 This Bell Bearing Hunter was the bane of my existence on my first playthrough. After getting teleported by that trap I, wandered around Caelid during the first 3-4 hours of my first playthrough, being completely lost, running from everything, all without dying or realizing I could've teleported out after I left the trapped mine. I then come across the merchant, got shot by that Blue arrow Golem, rest at the site and getting freaking jump scarred by this Hunter. Afterwards throughout the 90 hours of my first playthrough, I tried to beat him on multiple occasions and I just couldn't. In the end, one of the very first bosses I encountered in the game ended being one of the last ones I killed. He may well be the boss who has killed me the most times in the game
@@ennayanne oh yeah definitely, it was quite an intro into the game for me in an area where I was like WTF IS THAT. I still kinda wonder how I didn’t realize I could teleport after escaping the mine. My theory is that I tried to teleport when I was in the mine, but you can’t do that until the boss is killed, and I guess I just didn’t try to do it on other graces later
i imagine the adula stat difference is because they wanted the healthbar to look reasonably like you could challenge him there. If the defenses were so high first go around, i think most players would have seen the scratch damage done to him and think- as the game often teaches you- that you're supposed to come back and do him later. They might even miss out on exploring the entire area and starting the Ranni questline earlier if the dragon made them think they're somewhere way over their level. It's a bit unelegant, but I think it makes sense with this in mind
I actually find Adula confusing from a lore standpoint because you two are literally working for the same person lol, also the first fight is completely optional and changes nothing
@@jeremytewari3346 i think the souls games always have a level of decision making where they prioritise gameplay over lore. Sure Adula might have been super helpful during the Radahn fight, but then you don't get a cool dragon enemy to fight idk maybe there's some deepest lore that someone Vaati or adjacent could get on about how Adula is actually on the two fingers side. Who knows
Funnily enough the Beastmen feel like one of the only fight where the bushes make sense to me. Imagine this. You jump in, and hide in bushes, since both me and my friend are distracted, we dont see you come in. You punch my friend. Seeing you I start brawling you. My friend throws rocks at you. Now, since you are distracted, sometimes my friend can disappear into the bushes. Ofc Beastmen are not coded like that but I often find that happening to me. Almost as if the boss learns to use the stealth gameplay. Idk may be Placebo. PS. I think Rellana is the perfected Morgott. Many positioning openings, does not stagger, many jumpable and strafable attacks, significant delays, but her stats are high enough to not die in 3 hits from a properly buffed and levelled character. While many consider her an improved Malenia, cause female swordsman goes brr..., but I feel like she has more in common with Morgott rather than the Maria, Friede, Malenia trio.
I feel she blends Morgott and Malenia together - the way she closes the distance matches with Malenia more (attacks that press in as a part of the moment vs Morgott's quicksteps), but the way combos link and spin together match Morgott's barrage of weapons a lot more.
11:07 You could argue that, as Adula is a knight of Ranni, she is growing in power as you and Ranni do. Or, you could argue that her first phase was just a "friendly spar" from the perspective of the dragon, given that she and the player are potentially allied at time. From a story perspective, Adula actually has a master who cares for her. Ranni holds her allies close, and trusts Adula to watch over the star-strewn altar you have to walk down to reach her. Compare that to Lansseax who was left alone after Vyke was imprisoned.
25:35 the poison method against the Draconic Tree Sentinel is 100% absurdly easy to do, though it is also not the only way to cheese this boss. Due to his arena being right next to a cliff, some players have found that you can lure him to a cliff sneaking past him and then using Kukris before staggering him, forcing him to lurch forward straight off the cliff to his immediate death. It's genuinely really silly to watch
45:32 no, the Godskin Apostle does not block access to Radahn's Great Rune, since the two items are in the opposite directions of eachother (the Apostle is at the bottom of the tower which you access from the left doorway at the tower access point, while the great rune is at the top of the tower accessed through the right door). What the Apostle is guarding is the God Slayer's Greatsword, a very solid collossal sword that has some relevance to the lore of the Godskin's creator, the Gloam Eyed Queen
1:05:16 the biggest issue with Niall's fight is actually this specific massive attack... because if you manage to get a stagger on him as he's charging up for it, then he will IMMEDIATELY perform it with no windup the moment he gets back up from the stagger or a riposte if you decided to go for that. In short... for the love of god, DO NOT STAGGER HIM DURING THIS, YOU WILL DIE
1:58:00 so a thing with a lot of Maliketh's combos is tha5 he will try and perform different attacks to catch you running away from him or transition certain consistent combos into several different enders that you need to be prepared for. The big downward slash he does off of his most basic combos, for example, can transition into the destined death attack you showed in the prior footage, a leap to the wall into a downward sword stab, or into a leap away projectile attack, all of which can be dealt with by running in after attempting a punish on the downward sword slam The particular attack the timestamp here is pointing to is another example of this, as this leaping spin into the destined death flurry only happens if you try to run away from him after the starting stab. If you stick close, he will instead do a quicker explosion attack that is much less threatening, incentivizing you to stay in and not run from him. A surprisingly consistent sentiment with this fight, which I did share for a good amount of time, is that Maliketh is the easier phase of the 2 phases, since the first phase is equally aggressive, but is more slippery with less telegraphed attacks (his 2 hit slash attack he can start his combos with in particular) and less direct openings for damage, though the 2nd phase certainly is no slouch either
2:03:57 Imma be real... this is the 1 and only take in this entire video that I can wholeheartedly disagree with completely, because from my experience beating the game 11 times... Gideon has always been one of the worst fights in the entire game, being a massive spam fest where either he runs away forever and spams absurdly strong spells while casting a buff which makes it so you can't combo him for a second and is liable to murder you in 3-4 rapid spell casts that feel incredibly unfun to get hit by... or he ends up being a complete joke where you take advantage of his initial monologue and murder him as soon as the fight starts. The idea of it being customizable is cool in theory, but in practice it just results in him getting a slightly less spammy set of attacks if you went off and beat the optional bosses. Not to mention fighting him after dying to him at least once in a playthrough makes subsequent attempts substantially harder as he doesn't do his monologue more than once, making it so he's guaranteed to get a bunch of spells off and more than likely get both his hammer's debuff and his incantation buff off before you can even reach him. Imo, this is a D or F tier boss, no questions asked
Definitely on the way! I already have Hollow Knight & Death's Door recorded - I'm hoping to talk about boss design in a variety of games once I finish this series!
I know Malenia has problems. But she’s the first boss I got into a flow state with, and she will be my favorite because of that. Her base combos are so good, I can’t help it.
45:31 I believe the apostle only blocks access to the Godslayer Greatsword (an extremely cool and pretty strong weapon in its own right, to be fair). If you're just after the Rune, you can just scale the outside of the tower to find a ladder.
The Dragonbarrow Black Blade Kindred is actually perfectly avoidable if you leave by the side of the top of the stairs instead of right under his legs. He basically never wakes up unless I want him to.
He's also perfectly avoidable if you just leave right under his legs. Bosses are very rarely fast enough to catch up with you, even if you're not on Torrent.
Watching these videos has really made me realize just how crazy cool the remembrance bosses are and how bland and reused the rest of the boss roster is.
Amazing video man, dare I say your magnum opus. Just because I disagree with some of your takes doesn't mean that I can't understand and appreciate your incredibly engaging analysis of the bosses. Godfrey/Hoarah Loux is absolutely my favorite fight in the game, with Morgott being a close second so it's great that we can agree on that. I disagree with what you said regarding Fire Giant and Placidusax though, I just find them incredibly tedious to fight since they're always moving around the arena (in Placidusax' case, teleporting) and wasting time as a result. However, your critique of Malenia helped me realize my biggest underlying issue with the game as a whole: the lack of a true balance between two extremes. You could either try to properly dodge Waterfowl but then get hit in the most bugged and unfair ways imaginable, or you could throw a freezing pot at her to cancel the move but lose the satisfaction of dodging it. You could challenge yourself by soloing Godskin Duo without sleep pots but get tortured by pure gank, or cancel it all out with sleep pots and summon a spirit ash to draw the aggro of the second Godskin but bypass the fundamental challenge of a duo fight to instead participate in what is essentially a boring-ass normal Godskin fight. You could try to power through a boss without summons but then be subjected to some bullshit unfair attacks (e.g. Waterfowl and Elden Stars), or go back to the boss after grinding for a stronger build only to absolutely trivialize it because you're now way too overpowered. There's no true "normal" difficulty in Elden Ring, there's only a Very Easy Mode and a Very Hard Mode. As someone who personally enjoys challenging myself to overcome incredibly tough bosses in Souls games, the potential for this game to have incredibly punishing difficulty is obviously what draws me to it a lot of the time. But I don't just want "hard" bosses, I want incredibly well-designed fights that are genuinely enjoyable whilst just so happening to be a challenge. "Dynamic" difficulty shouldn't just be the enemy preventing the player from doing the same roll-R1 spam, it should be allowing the player to gain extra combat options alongside the enemy. Maliketh can leap in the air, chuck anime sword projectiles at you, drain your vigor, deal DoT damage and mix-up his combo strings; the only thing added in Elden Ring in comparison to the previous Souls games is just the R2 stance breaking system, other than that it's still just the same roll-R1 combat loop except that you now have to roll instead of attack sometimes (e.g. Margit's dagger slashes preventing you from punishing him during half of his openings). Successfully manage to parry all of Genichiro's attacks in his insane 9 hit combo and you're rewarded by dealing massive posture damage to him as well as an extra punish window. Successfully manage to dodge the entirety of Malenia's Waterfowl Dance and you're rewarded with... not dying. You can't even fucking punish her because of the dumbass extra hitbox at the end of the Waterfowl chain. Sekiro has true dynamic difficulty because you need to master Wolf's moveset as much as you need to master the enemy's movesets; Elden Ring substantially iterates upon the enemy's abilities but doesn't appropriately upscale the player's abilities enough to make it feel dynamic, which instead makes boss fights feel less like a well-choreographed one-on-one dance and more like a pompous endurance test that's overwhelming instead of engaging.
astel the naturalborn of the void had a starry sky because it stole the night sky from the deeproot depths eternal city. the stars of darkness astel hasnt stolen nokron or nokstella's skies so its boss room is in darkness
Elden Ring was the first of the seven games I played, and getting thru the first and third Dark Souls, it's sticking with me that Elden Ring's duo bosses just didn't really match the measure of the other titles. Well, as far as I think of it, cause I don't recall how they all fell on your ranking. I feel like the principles of reusing bosses ended up detracting from the potential of duo bosses in the game somewhat, because I'm pretty sure that almost every boss that can be fought as part of a group engagement can be fought solo elsewhere. Except for I dunno, maybe a couple of the crystalians? The sort of purposeful dual-boss design (which I'm not gonna list cause there's like. Five which are sticking out to me) is something that felt sorely missing when I replayed through ER.
@@Mr.Starlight_gaming I don't mean during the speech. I mean during the fight. It's really not difficult to deny his attempts at zoning you. Anyway, IMO, literally everything else about Gideon makes him an A tier boss. His lore, story, and setup as an antagonist and his placement in the Ashen Capital is just... better than Malenia. Simple as that. Malenia is yet another insane warlord swordsman in a series full to the brim with insane warlord swordsmen. It's boring. It's been done before. She doesn't really have anything else going for her. Aesthetically she's cooler than Gideon, I guess, but Malenia utterly fails to live up to the expectations established by Radahn, Caelid, and the sword monuments. They're both potentially hard bosses with extremely unfair, frustrating attacks and mechanics, but it's easier to manage Gideon in every single way, and Gideon is just cooler in literally every regard.
As an Int/Faith caster main, Gideon being A tier is really vindicating for me. I love the combos that can be pulled off with the huge spell list. Imagine if he could use spells from the DLC!
I agree with your opinions on Melania, even if I thinks were goes into A-tier. She is almost undodgeable sometimes and I'm positive at some point she didn't have life steal or waterfowl but was later added in for increased difficulty. Melania is much harder than Consort Radahn because he can be dodged reliably, and yet, after well over a thousand hours in Elden ring, and about 25 on Melania alone, I still cannot dodge sword wiggle or waterfowl to save my life.
Malenia and Maliketh danced between the B and A Grade throughout the entire scripting process for this video. By far the hardest grades I've ever had to assign to something.
I'm not sure their a better fight, but i like the godskins more solely because its in Elden Ring, a game with a combat system that's actually fun to play.
You are insane if you think the Godskin duo is good in any way shape or form. I simply disagree. Kind of hard to believe anything else you say when you are SO wrong about something that is SO obvious. A fight being viral does not mean it is good, only that it is viral
@JorgeGuzman-mc7pc Well the difference is I don't think that everything you have to say about the bosses in the game is invalid if we disagree on a boss's quality. For the record, I do not care about Godskin Duo. I just take sleeping pots and turn it into a 1v1. Then I get to fight two good bosses, though I think the Apostle is much more fun than the Noble.
I never really liked Elden Beast's appearance and overall existance to begin with, I don't wanna say that Elden Beast didn't have any lore significance, but I still find it pretty lame when the Final Boss for a game is just some big dude that you've never seen before I can tolerate this in some cases, like in Dark Souls 3, but this case is especially frustrating with the incredibly climatic fight with Radagon, why couldn't we had a second phase with him? I've never seen a boss overstate its welcome more than the Elden Beast
One of my most hated aspects of the game, and more so the dlc, is Remembrance Bosses not being worthy of their remembrances. Astel is not a one-of-a-kind fight because there are more than one Astel's in the game, thus Astel does not deserve the remembrance and goes two tiers below where it would have gone, in this case c -tier. Luv the video Tho.
I think in Astel's and Divine Beast Dancing Lion's case they make a lot of sense...lorewise. Lorewise, neither of them are unique, so it makes sense to find more of them scattered around the world. With that being said, on an actual gameplay level, reuses generally just bring the presence of the original boss down, and are a poor band-aid fix to cram more content into areas, so I don't particularily like them either. I've also heard some people complain about Radahn being a reuse, but in my opinion that fight is so different to its base game counterpart that it really can't be counted as a "reuse".
While imo the second Astel was handled poorly, it could have been brilliant, and still held the value of the first one. If the cave itself built up the second Astel then it would have been less of an ‘I’ve already fought this’ to an ‘oh god there’s more of them’. As it stands almost all the caves and catacombs don’t build up to their bosses, which makes them feel cheaper and just put in there for content. If the items found in them directly correlated to the bosses it would be so much better.
I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense, I'm simply saying that an enemy that appears more than once is not important enough in lore/presentation to merit its remembrance. Similar to how Rellana is significant enough in the lore for the remembrance, but the lack of buildup before or in the boss arena makes her feel a lot less worthy of said remembrance than say, her sister.
I think it also becomes a question of if it's the fault of the original fight that what is clearly designed to be a rematch exists. The second Astel has a less atmospheric arena, and without the intentionally some other comments mentioned, doesn't do anything to build anything up more - but does that mean that the first Astel's arena is less gorgeous or that the drastic shift into atmosphere at the end of the Lake of Rot is less effective? It definitely takes away in later runs, but I'd still fight the Naturalborn before I'd fight Stars of Darkness.
@@Firebee033 I’d say the first Astel has plenty of build up - we’ve most likely seen the falling star beast and the chrysalis enemies, so naturally we wonder what this thing is turning into. The lore of eternal cities as we’ll allude to Astel stealing their night sky, so he is fairly build up. Gaius has a much worse presentation for a remembrance boss imo.
1:42 "Without further ado, let's get started with the end of the base game of Elden Ring. But before we do..." Dude, you just further ado-d
One aspect about Goldfrey I like is how it relates to Morgot. Seeing as this is the last opponent between you and the Elden throne, Morgot specifically chose to summon his dad as the last line of defence, which is both cute and kind of heart-breaking at the same time.
also Goldfrey's axe has 2 heads, seeing as the last time morgott saw his father, or rather the way he remembers him is from before the exile. The proper Godfrey has a broken Axe hardened and ruined through years of combat, while morgott portrays him in his mind's eye as a young, strong pristine warrior in shining armor with a shiny big axe
@@yeetme890Wait that’s actually such a good observation!
Man, I love Mohg. He was actually an extremely difficult boss on my first playthrough, one of the most. After so many attempts I swallowed my pride and summoned Mimic Tear, and Mohg was dead in about 30 seconds. I just started laughing maniacally for like a minute afterwards. But for the boss himself, he's close to perfect. He's one of the few bosses whose mechanics I'm fairly confident in my knowledge of; his fucking incredible score, the unique weight and character his weapon gives his animations, the fact he has a tendency to circle you menacingly, further emphasizing the nature of the duel, and like you mentioned, the astoundingly deep context he and his fight are steeped in.
Sir Ansbach, the man, the myth, the chad, my beloved.
The opening of his track, with the strings starting low and rising up to the choir joining in? Absolutely astonishing composing right there.
In Dark Souls, you parry final boss.
In Soviet Ring, final boss parries you.
Soul of Cinder can actually parry you if he’s in his curved sword and pyromancy moveset.
I found that out the hard way.
@@BunnyGirlMethonestly, i’m kinda surprised SoC didn’t get a greatshield with his greatsword moveset. absolutely adore the boss as is, but a fiery shield could’ve been real cool. then again, i just played through ds2, and i’m not sure i ever wanna get parried that often again
The hype train has been rerouted to platform 3, all passengers gather your Pogchamps and proceed to platform 3
this reminds me of that time I went to twitch dot TV and saw lots of epique meams and emoats
I'm partial to Alecto's simplicity. The fight feels, to me, like an angry brawl. Ranni, at some point, clearly had a falling out with the Black Knives. This fight is revenge for Alecto against Ranni, but also our revenge against Alecto for the deaths of Blaidd and Iji. The evergaol system almost feels like a boxing ring at times, and its in this fight I feel that really harmonises with the boss encounter.
very quick note mate: the apostle in the divine tower doesnt block the great rune, it's actually in the opposite direction as you go down from the middle to fight him but up from the middle to activate the rune. great vid so far as usual
That Maliketh sequence: the opportunity is during the downward slam. If you're close, it will whiff. Once you've got off one big hit/flurry during the slam, watch to see whether the destined death follow up is coming. The leaping slam afterwards would have ended in an explosion if you'd stayed close, but because you ran away he chased you.
during the ground poke you can bait out the other leaping slam by staying at range a little. then run under him to get behind him during it. you can punish during the AOE, it doesnt hit behind him
@@glisteninggames2981 yep, Jordien does this in his Maliketh Mastered video
@@alecsiantonas6520 yeah i did this at RL1 too. feels awesome to pull off and not too hard once you know about it
@@glisteninggames2981 I've still got to practice it, plus the evade and punish for the destined death from the overhand slam. I have a much higher view of Maliketh than OP, but I'll admit that his glass canon nature does make it hard to get a sense of mastery with him. People tend to win when he doesn't do his trickiest moves, rather than after learning they'e learned them.
You omitted how comically large is the ass of Loretta's horse.
What happened with you and Maliketh at 1:57:29 is more of a positioning mistake rather than just "randomness". He will use destined death after his downward slam if you're too close to him and to avoid it you need to be running away towards his back to the side or if you're in front of him you can run away from him. The other destine death followup is because you're running away from Maliketh after he plunged his sword down hence why he swirls towards you for his destined death attack. Many of Maliketh's attacks and combos are dependent on your positioning and while this is mostly shown in phase 1, it also plays a big part in phase 2 since it can determine whether or not you get hit by his weapon art or not
Not arguing against this but I felt the point he was eventually making was that you CAN learn all the specific positioning you need to do in response to Maliketh’s moves, it’s just not fun to do at a certain point because it’s a) not intuitive what he’s going to do next and b) you have to go through the whole process of getting another shot at him.
Not even necessarily saying that’s how I feel about the boss but that’s what I interpreted his point to be
You are correct in that, and I probably should have gone into more detail as to why I think the positioning of Maliketh makes him feel 'off' to me.
One of my favorite pieces of Maliketh's moveset his when he does a backflip out of melee range to shoot a projectile, then grab onto a column before diving down into a slam that does an AoE if the player is too close. Every action is clear, and it's clear what the player did to trigger each step. The player was too close - so he lept back. The direction the player dodged the projectile put him near the column, leading to the slam, and the player was too close after, leading to the follow-up. These kind of positioning strings follow the internal logic the rest of the game drills into the player - roll through or jump over attacks to force the enemy back, and respect large slams, as most in the late game have secondary effects.
The string discussed there doesn't follow the game's logic. I pressed in towards his hind-legs (the most reliable to hit part of his hurt-box) during an overhead slam. This behavior is rewarded everywhere else in the game, but punished with Maliketh. Then, after he landed his first leap - a move triggered by me moving away from him, he started to glow red. In the entire rest of the game, this means an AoE and you can take the moment to heal in mid-range, so you can keep the momentum of the fight going once the explosion is done. With Maliketh, staying at that mid-range the rest of the game encourages ends up punished.
Now don't get me wrong - there is an internal logic to Maliketh. People have beaten him with less than nothing, especially once they start to master the Blasphemous Claw as a counter to his harder to dodge moves. But the speed Maliketh moves combined with how many slight variations of his attacks that exist to cover slight deviations on the player's positioning mean that you'll go from a part of the fight that feels instinctual to something that requires knowledge of manipulating his AI not to master and abuse the boss, but in order to feel the rythmn and the pulse of the fight in the same way that a player can link into the rythmn of fights of Godfery. For me, that's what holds him back.
@@TheAkasharose im going to assume youre talking about ground slam into destined death here, as shown in timestamp. if youre talking about ground poke into flip into destined death instead, feel free to correct me.
the only other boss that uses destined death is the black blade kindred. he also has an attack that rewards you for rolling into the destined death explosion instead of away. it has the same spinning motion before the attack hits as well. destined death is a separate mechanic from other AOE effects
and even if you saw something like this for the first time, id still really like it. it forces the player to think critically about what's happening and what they need to do. you could of course stay away from destined death and get hit. but if you pay attention, you see that the ball is only in front of maliketh. so getting behind it for dodging is the correct answer. i think it would be boring if every AOE worked the same. love this gimmick
A little bit about both, since the back to back nature of how quickly the fight demands extraordinary precision on positioning with multiple fake-out endings to a combo in the middle of one string of attacks is what made me highlight that specific set of attacks.
I definitely see the logic behind dodging behind Destined Death - for me, Alecto's jumping destined death burst that she puts into combos or punishes players staying at melee range works the best (since she also boasts one). No matter where you are, there's always an option - she's a small enough foe that you won't run into her hitbox by sprinting forward and rolling behind her to i-frame through the edge of the attack and punish, but if you aren't close enough for that, you can run away and still be able to jump in to punish the attack. It demands you watch out for the attack as a mix-up, but doesn't force the player to adjust their positioning to have to always plan for it.
With the level of tracking and the size of Maliketh, if the player attacks the front of his left knee and he decides to do that attack, two rolls isn't enough to get behind him (though I do want to try to sprint after editing that section together, that's an option I noticed I never tried). If you're behind his left knee, however, you're able to get behind both the spin into slam or the roar - and punishing that attack is RIDICULOUSLY satisfying, honestly one of the best feelings in the game. And this might be where personal taste comes into play - when he does the spin and and I dodge, I feel amazing. But the fact you have to be constantly positioning to prepare for an attack that may or may not come has always felt unsatisfying for me.
I mentioned this in another comment, but Maliketh rests RIGHT on that cusp between Above Average (B) and a Highlight of my Playthrough (A). He is a great boss - there is no doubt in my mind about that, and there's nothing as frustrating as Waterfowl Dance holding his design back. But needing to preemptively dodge attacks isn't something I've often enjoyed in games, and Maliketh plays with that idea a lot from the ground up. I can see a lot of adoration, and positioning to avoid future attacks and control his AI can form a game of mental chess against a gorgeously animated enemy makes Maliketh a unique fight that, when people say he's their favorite boss in the game, makes perfect sense to me. And maybe that's enough to have boosted him into the A Grade - even if I prefer a lot of the A Grade encounters myself.
Either way - I always appreciate the insight as to what you love about him! He definitely provides a unique challenge to the rest of the game - honestly, he feels like more of a variation on the basic gameplay loop than the Fire Giant does to me!
2:01:16 I'm very glad Fromsoft wasn't deterred by the... mixed... reception to Gideon in regards to experimental NPC fights. Gideon as a customisable culimination of NPC questlines that rewarded dilligence and attention to exploring the entire world of the game is something of a prototype to what I'll just call Leda's bossfight.
While I do really enjoy Gideon, I think Leda and her allies are simply an unforgettable, greatest of all time moment for Fromsoft that outshines Gideon in every way.
My one biggest gripe with Gideon is the summons (or rather, the lackthereof). Gideon feels especially designed for summon assistance and yet he doesn't get NPC summons, they (Nepheli and Shabriri) are instead saved for Godfrey.
Nepheli coming to face Godfrey is somewhat fitting given her heritage, but Gideon serves as the antagonist through much of her questline, and I feel like it would be a fitting "reward" for the players forsaking Nepheli's spirit ash to Gideon earlier in the game. Additionally, Shabriri has no relevance to Godfrey at ALL. Gideon's inherent weakness to madness, his odd apparent refusal to learn frenzied flame incantations, and the lore of Vyke would make Shabriri a much better summon for Gideon, IMO
Especially with Shabiri's spells grabbing player models! I understand why that summon unlocks for Godfrey instead, but Shabiri does feel designed for Gideon more.
And I love the point on Leda - especially with the heavy focus on dialogue running under the fight, which Leda took and amplified even further to an amazing effect.
My strategy with Malenia was to use the ash of war in Mohg's spear to make her bleed while starting the waterfowl dance, which more often than not stuns her and stops the attack altogether lol.
I didn't want to change weapons for one boss so I had to figure something out and it was actually very fun to do.
Thank the lord they gave the ability to use Torrent in Elden beast. Fight is way more fun now to me anyways
it went from what i consider to be a C tier fight, to a clean A tier, with this change. honestly, the promised consort nerfs had the exact same change on my feelings/rankings on the fight.
I somehow managed to do both my playthroughs on Radahn before the nerf, but the fight seems massively improved. I'm really excited to fight Elden Beast and Radahn with those changes.
@@TheAkasharose Radahn is such a beast he had to be nerfed twice in the same game
@@TheAkasharose but for hard numbers consort Radahn has about 8 extra recovery frames after each attack and his brightness on his light attacks is turned way down.
@@DaitylSword The Recovery frames look nice and the cross-slash change was absolutely necessarily, but just the fact I can see what's going on with his teleporting rushdowns is the biggest improvement. The shades would linger so long that the attack became one of the most visually cluttered attacks in the game.
Can’t praise the time and effort you’ve put into this series of videos enough! You’ve really done a marvelous job! And I do find almost all of your rankings absolutely justified. The exceptions being Malenia and Maliketh.
The former I’d give an A, as for me using a shield is a perfectly viable counter to the Waterfowl dance. It makes it much more akin to Mohg’s phase transition, although a bit more annoying due to its higher frequency.
Maliketh on the other hand is one of my all time favorite bosses, who imho definitely deserves an S. Like a less tanky, but more agile version of Godfrey - his attacks are well telegraphed, but also deal an enormous amount of damage. Learning his move-set and punish widows is challenging, but very rewarding. And ultimately his agility is something that makes him stand out from the rest of the bosses.
But those are just two nitpicks in an otherwise excellently researched, written and edited video. Can’t wait for your DLC ranking video!
I knew Malenia and Maliketh would be the big two debated ones - and I think you make good points on each. For me, the random nature of Waterfowl hurts it a lot (seeing her do it three times in a row on one attempt can be infuriating), though the power of freeze pots means that her moveset gets to take the centerstage it deserves.
Maliketh is still weird to me - I'm going to focus a lot on the Blasphemous Claw on my next run, and I feel like forcing myself to learn to parry and take advantage of the item might also make the parts of the moveset that still feel overwhelming click. Because I feel there's an incredible fight there, it just never quite clicked for me.
And glad you liked it - I'm excited to dive into the DLC!
I know I keep leaving comments, but I'm doing so as I watch the video.
Man. . . Malenia. She's a bitch, in a good way. To be honest, her and Mohg are the two bosses I know the movesets to the best.
Btw, her triple flurry slash is reliably dodged by rolling into her to your left and backing up to avoid the following slash. Her attacks do that very well: having multiple ways to dodge, and having ways to not have to dodge. You can roll to avoid that follow up slash, or just back up. You can dodge *with* her grab and airborne thrust to end up right next to her, keeping up your aggression, or you can dodge away, which is more initially natural and gives valuable space. Like you said, she's uniquely easy to stagger, but her hyper armor and knowing which moves have it is one of the most important parts of learning her. Phase 1 is so uniquely full-fledged, given a whole health bar for her first phase unlike any other boss. Of course, waterfowl dance exists, and I still hold it to be bullshit, despite being able to lure it out with thrown projectiles activating her input reading, to make her rush you and trigger attacks like waterfowl relatively safely. That's a trick I learnt from Magnolia on RUclips. My problem with it is that I can't reliably avoid flurry one at close range, often killing me, and it's extremely easy to trigger when being up close and aggressive, where her fight is at its best. Her second and third flurries are borderline non-lethal by comparison. Genuinely, flurry one is the worst part about waterfowl, and I think the single worst thing about the fight as a whole. Even her new moves in phase 2 don't reach that low: her clones, while dangerous, can still be run, jumped and rolled from, her scarlet aeonia is extremely easy to avoid by unlocking the camera and staying underneath her and then retreating - her dramatically increased aggression and difficulty to actually read the fight because of her wings are what make phase 2 hard, but waterfowl. . .that damn move. Love the fight so much, but I won't defend this part of it.
You perfectly put into words what I've thought about Fire Giant. I did really feel the pinch when I just couldn't upgrade anymore, and it was through mastery of his timings in NG+ that I actually began to really enjoy the boss.
maliketh in B is crazy sorry 😭
it's crazy to me that in 2024 people still refuse to hit ANYTHING but fire giant's hands. when he does the volcano rocks attack, none of the rocks land under him and you get a goddamn 15s window to wail at his legs. sure it's not a lot of damage per hit but he's wide open. And that's not to mention, you can hop on the horse in 2nd phase and just ride around him and hit the stump where his leg used to be. It takes a while but if you do that literally only the direct fireballs and ds3 rolls can hit you, both can be avoided by just running around on torrent. I remember once doing that on a 3 person seamless co op game for 25 minutes (health scaling) because my 2 friends were already too tilted to continue fighting him. That being said, still an annoying boss, but i'm just critiscising this weird shared approach to the boss.
When I fought him I hit him anywhere I could! Having a bleed weapon is efficient anywhere we hit him right? This approach worked for me fine.
I smacked the stump of his leg with my greatsword my first playthrough - I would just get caught by the rolls a lot. I never knew the Volcano didn't hit near him - I always assumed that I needed to back up. Definitely going to try that next go around, especially with Frost or Bleed, which is just... incredible against him.
@@TheAkasharose cold raptor talons are a criminal offense against him lmao
Same with Bayle now. The head is literally right there! stop going for the legs!
@@yeetme890 I mean, Cold Raptor Talons are just a criminal offense lol
Malenia and Maliketh are like the 2 most easy S-tier bosses, ranking them that low is actually a massive skill issue
Maliketh that low is def a skill issue. Malenia In b tier is justified though.
@@upsideproductions2 nah she's top 5 bosses in the game easy
@upsideproductions2 malenia isn't even that bad. Waterfowl dance is more of a spacing issue than a skill issue. Plus with the new deflecting hardtear, you can literally just parry it sekiro style
@@LJK69420 fair enough, it can be quite annoying when she starts the attack and I have no stamina though.
@upsideproductions2 that's the hard part of her fight, she attacks frequently, and there's not gonna be lots of room for error. Luckily, you can bully her out of her attacks pretty easily. I recommend a milady, the fast attack speed really helps
Ranking Gideon above Maliketh is... certainly a choice
Had to dislike when Maliketh got a B after Malenia. He really isn’t that unpredictable but rewards you for paying close attention. He only does the big destined death AOE follow ups when his sword is imbued with destined death which happens after he shoots the projectiles. But if his sword isn’t glowing he won’t do it plus if you expect the follow up every time and position behind him it’s a big punish window. But if you’re standing infront of him he’ll do it almost every time. You can also immediately run backwards to avoid it easily. I don’t consider myself a great player and i no hit ng+7 maliketh more consistently than any other boss because of how predictable/readable his phase 2 has become for me. Phase 1 is the real challenge. Gurranq is much less predictable. Both Maliketh and Malenia are at least A tier & at most top 3 fights in the game. B tier feels like bait.
gurranq is very simple too imo
dodge any melee combo from side to side, until he does overhead. walk backwards from overhead and punish. jump attack the claw AOE and roll poke everything else. idk why people struggle with him so much. rather small moveset for a late game boss
"Ive been waiting for this!" -akihiko sanada
42:58 This Bell Bearing Hunter was the bane of my existence on my first playthrough. After getting teleported by that trap I, wandered around Caelid during the first 3-4 hours of my first playthrough, being completely lost, running from everything, all without dying or realizing I could've teleported out after I left the trapped mine. I then come across the merchant, got shot by that Blue arrow Golem, rest at the site and getting freaking jump scarred by this Hunter.
Afterwards throughout the 90 hours of my first playthrough, I tried to beat him on multiple occasions and I just couldn't. In the end, one of the very first bosses I encountered in the game ended being one of the last ones I killed.
He may well be the boss who has killed me the most times in the game
would've been so much cooler if it actually didn't let you teleport away at all.
@@ennayanne oh yeah definitely, it was quite an intro into the game for me in an area where I was like WTF IS THAT. I still kinda wonder how I didn’t realize I could teleport after escaping the mine. My theory is that I tried to teleport when I was in the mine, but you can’t do that until the boss is killed, and I guess I just didn’t try to do it on other graces later
Its always funny seeing Maliketh clip into one of the pillars and have to teleport back to the center of the arena. Maybe not in a good way though
Maliketh even speed blitzed the Physics Engine.
Need dlc boss analysis asap, cant wait
i imagine the adula stat difference is because they wanted the healthbar to look reasonably like you could challenge him there. If the defenses were so high first go around, i think most players would have seen the scratch damage done to him and think- as the game often teaches you- that you're supposed to come back and do him later. They might even miss out on exploring the entire area and starting the Ranni questline earlier if the dragon made them think they're somewhere way over their level. It's a bit unelegant, but I think it makes sense with this in mind
It's not a bad theory - I hadn't thought about the intersection with starting Ranni's quest!
I actually find Adula confusing from a lore standpoint because you two are literally working for the same person lol, also the first fight is completely optional and changes nothing
@@jeremytewari3346 i think the souls games always have a level of decision making where they prioritise gameplay over lore. Sure Adula might have been super helpful during the Radahn fight, but then you don't get a cool dragon enemy to fight
idk maybe there's some deepest lore that someone Vaati or adjacent could get on about how Adula is actually on the two fingers side. Who knows
Always love these videos, I'm very excited to see how you feel about the DLC bosses!!
See this is better. Premiering five days from now means it'll just vanish into the subscription feed, it's pointless
The upload messing up and me not noticing until yesterday might have worked better in the long run!
Funnily enough the Beastmen feel like one of the only fight where the bushes make sense to me. Imagine this. You jump in, and hide in bushes, since both me and my friend are distracted, we dont see you come in. You punch my friend. Seeing you I start brawling you. My friend throws rocks at you. Now, since you are distracted, sometimes my friend can disappear into the bushes. Ofc Beastmen are not coded like that but I often find that happening to me. Almost as if the boss learns to use the stealth gameplay.
Idk may be Placebo.
PS. I think Rellana is the perfected Morgott. Many positioning openings, does not stagger, many jumpable and strafable attacks, significant delays, but her stats are high enough to not die in 3 hits from a properly buffed and levelled character. While many consider her an improved Malenia, cause female swordsman goes brr..., but I feel like she has more in common with Morgott rather than the Maria, Friede, Malenia trio.
I feel she blends Morgott and Malenia together - the way she closes the distance matches with Malenia more (attacks that press in as a part of the moment vs Morgott's quicksteps), but the way combos link and spin together match Morgott's barrage of weapons a lot more.
Already know I'm goin to love it before I watched it
Hooray, he is back! Love me a good Over Analysis video!
11:07 You could argue that, as Adula is a knight of Ranni, she is growing in power as you and Ranni do. Or, you could argue that her first phase was just a "friendly spar" from the perspective of the dragon, given that she and the player are potentially allied at time.
From a story perspective, Adula actually has a master who cares for her. Ranni holds her allies close, and trusts Adula to watch over the star-strewn altar you have to walk down to reach her. Compare that to Lansseax who was left alone after Vyke was imprisoned.
If there are no godskin duo defenders, i am deceased.
Actually S tier.
apostle on his own is S+ and noble is A. how tf did they ruin this lmao
Alright, gonna do what I did for the last 2 videos and make a thread on extra points for certain bosses that may or may not be interesting to hear
25:35 the poison method against the Draconic Tree Sentinel is 100% absurdly easy to do, though it is also not the only way to cheese this boss. Due to his arena being right next to a cliff, some players have found that you can lure him to a cliff sneaking past him and then using Kukris before staggering him, forcing him to lurch forward straight off the cliff to his immediate death. It's genuinely really silly to watch
45:32 no, the Godskin Apostle does not block access to Radahn's Great Rune, since the two items are in the opposite directions of eachother (the Apostle is at the bottom of the tower which you access from the left doorway at the tower access point, while the great rune is at the top of the tower accessed through the right door). What the Apostle is guarding is the God Slayer's Greatsword, a very solid collossal sword that has some relevance to the lore of the Godskin's creator, the Gloam Eyed Queen
1:05:16 the biggest issue with Niall's fight is actually this specific massive attack... because if you manage to get a stagger on him as he's charging up for it, then he will IMMEDIATELY perform it with no windup the moment he gets back up from the stagger or a riposte if you decided to go for that. In short... for the love of god, DO NOT STAGGER HIM DURING THIS, YOU WILL DIE
1:58:00 so a thing with a lot of Maliketh's combos is tha5 he will try and perform different attacks to catch you running away from him or transition certain consistent combos into several different enders that you need to be prepared for. The big downward slash he does off of his most basic combos, for example, can transition into the destined death attack you showed in the prior footage, a leap to the wall into a downward sword stab, or into a leap away projectile attack, all of which can be dealt with by running in after attempting a punish on the downward sword slam
The particular attack the timestamp here is pointing to is another example of this, as this leaping spin into the destined death flurry only happens if you try to run away from him after the starting stab. If you stick close, he will instead do a quicker explosion attack that is much less threatening, incentivizing you to stay in and not run from him.
A surprisingly consistent sentiment with this fight, which I did share for a good amount of time, is that Maliketh is the easier phase of the 2 phases, since the first phase is equally aggressive, but is more slippery with less telegraphed attacks (his 2 hit slash attack he can start his combos with in particular) and less direct openings for damage, though the 2nd phase certainly is no slouch either
2:03:57 Imma be real... this is the 1 and only take in this entire video that I can wholeheartedly disagree with completely, because from my experience beating the game 11 times... Gideon has always been one of the worst fights in the entire game, being a massive spam fest where either he runs away forever and spams absurdly strong spells while casting a buff which makes it so you can't combo him for a second and is liable to murder you in 3-4 rapid spell casts that feel incredibly unfun to get hit by... or he ends up being a complete joke where you take advantage of his initial monologue and murder him as soon as the fight starts. The idea of it being customizable is cool in theory, but in practice it just results in him getting a slightly less spammy set of attacks if you went off and beat the optional bosses. Not to mention fighting him after dying to him at least once in a playthrough makes subsequent attempts substantially harder as he doesn't do his monologue more than once, making it so he's guaranteed to get a bunch of spells off and more than likely get both his hammer's debuff and his incantation buff off before you can even reach him. Imo, this is a D or F tier boss, no questions asked
I had a question. Would you be ranking bosses outside of FromSoft’s catalog?
Such as bosses from Nioh, The Surge, Lies of P, etc?
Definitely on the way! I already have Hollow Knight & Death's Door recorded - I'm hoping to talk about boss design in a variety of games once I finish this series!
I know Malenia has problems.
But she’s the first boss I got into a flow state with, and she will be my favorite because of that. Her base combos are so good, I can’t help it.
45:31 I believe the apostle only blocks access to the Godslayer Greatsword (an extremely cool and pretty strong weapon in its own right, to be fair). If you're just after the Rune, you can just scale the outside of the tower to find a ladder.
The godskin apostle actually doesn't guard radahns rune, but the sword of the GEQ
This is cinema!❤️
The Dragonbarrow Black Blade Kindred is actually perfectly avoidable if you leave by the side of the top of the stairs instead of right under his legs. He basically never wakes up unless I want him to.
He's also perfectly avoidable if you just leave right under his legs. Bosses are very rarely fast enough to catch up with you, even if you're not on Torrent.
Watching these videos has really made me realize just how crazy cool the remembrance bosses are and how bland and reused the rest of the boss roster is.
The highs of Elden Ring are absolutely wild - especially in the DLC.
Anyway here's another Crystallian duo.
Amazing video man, dare I say your magnum opus. Just because I disagree with some of your takes doesn't mean that I can't understand and appreciate your incredibly engaging analysis of the bosses. Godfrey/Hoarah Loux is absolutely my favorite fight in the game, with Morgott being a close second so it's great that we can agree on that. I disagree with what you said regarding Fire Giant and Placidusax though, I just find them incredibly tedious to fight since they're always moving around the arena (in Placidusax' case, teleporting) and wasting time as a result.
However, your critique of Malenia helped me realize my biggest underlying issue with the game as a whole: the lack of a true balance between two extremes. You could either try to properly dodge Waterfowl but then get hit in the most bugged and unfair ways imaginable, or you could throw a freezing pot at her to cancel the move but lose the satisfaction of dodging it. You could challenge yourself by soloing Godskin Duo without sleep pots but get tortured by pure gank, or cancel it all out with sleep pots and summon a spirit ash to draw the aggro of the second Godskin but bypass the fundamental challenge of a duo fight to instead participate in what is essentially a boring-ass normal Godskin fight. You could try to power through a boss without summons but then be subjected to some bullshit unfair attacks (e.g. Waterfowl and Elden Stars), or go back to the boss after grinding for a stronger build only to absolutely trivialize it because you're now way too overpowered. There's no true "normal" difficulty in Elden Ring, there's only a Very Easy Mode and a Very Hard Mode.
As someone who personally enjoys challenging myself to overcome incredibly tough bosses in Souls games, the potential for this game to have incredibly punishing difficulty is obviously what draws me to it a lot of the time. But I don't just want "hard" bosses, I want incredibly well-designed fights that are genuinely enjoyable whilst just so happening to be a challenge. "Dynamic" difficulty shouldn't just be the enemy preventing the player from doing the same roll-R1 spam, it should be allowing the player to gain extra combat options alongside the enemy. Maliketh can leap in the air, chuck anime sword projectiles at you, drain your vigor, deal DoT damage and mix-up his combo strings; the only thing added in Elden Ring in comparison to the previous Souls games is just the R2 stance breaking system, other than that it's still just the same roll-R1 combat loop except that you now have to roll instead of attack sometimes (e.g. Margit's dagger slashes preventing you from punishing him during half of his openings).
Successfully manage to parry all of Genichiro's attacks in his insane 9 hit combo and you're rewarded by dealing massive posture damage to him as well as an extra punish window. Successfully manage to dodge the entirety of Malenia's Waterfowl Dance and you're rewarded with... not dying. You can't even fucking punish her because of the dumbass extra hitbox at the end of the Waterfowl chain. Sekiro has true dynamic difficulty because you need to master Wolf's moveset as much as you need to master the enemy's movesets; Elden Ring substantially iterates upon the enemy's abilities but doesn't appropriately upscale the player's abilities enough to make it feel dynamic, which instead makes boss fights feel less like a well-choreographed one-on-one dance and more like a pompous endurance test that's overwhelming instead of engaging.
astel the naturalborn of the void had a starry sky because it stole the night sky from the deeproot depths eternal city. the stars of darkness astel hasnt stolen nokron or nokstella's skies so its boss room is in darkness
Elden Ring was the first of the seven games I played, and getting thru the first and third Dark Souls, it's sticking with me that Elden Ring's duo bosses just didn't really match the measure of the other titles. Well, as far as I think of it, cause I don't recall how they all fell on your ranking.
I feel like the principles of reusing bosses ended up detracting from the potential of duo bosses in the game somewhat, because I'm pretty sure that almost every boss that can be fought as part of a group engagement can be fought solo elsewhere. Except for I dunno, maybe a couple of the crystalians?
The sort of purposeful dual-boss design (which I'm not gonna list cause there's like. Five which are sticking out to me) is something that felt sorely missing when I replayed through ER.
I had no idea astel has a tail stab attack, must be rare
This video would be about 5min long if From didn't reuse bosses
How dare you put malenia in the same grade as the fire giant!
Lol
I could be wrong, but doesn't the divine tower of Caelid Godskin actually guard the godslayer greatsword?
No you gave Gideon spammi Ofnir an A and Maliketh and Malenia only a B... How dare you???
Yeah that placement was insane
I agree with Gideon being better than Malenia lmao, each being in which tier I’d put them in, but Maliketh should be S.
How annoying Gideon is entirely depends on your build. It's entirely possible (and easy) to just... not let him spam you. Just walk up and hit him.
@@tTaseric does beating an npc before they can fight back make an A tier boss tho?
@@Mr.Starlight_gaming I don't mean during the speech. I mean during the fight. It's really not difficult to deny his attempts at zoning you.
Anyway, IMO, literally everything else about Gideon makes him an A tier boss. His lore, story, and setup as an antagonist and his placement in the Ashen Capital is just... better than Malenia. Simple as that.
Malenia is yet another insane warlord swordsman in a series full to the brim with insane warlord swordsmen. It's boring. It's been done before. She doesn't really have anything else going for her. Aesthetically she's cooler than Gideon, I guess, but Malenia utterly fails to live up to the expectations established by Radahn, Caelid, and the sword monuments.
They're both potentially hard bosses with extremely unfair, frustrating attacks and mechanics, but it's easier to manage Gideon in every single way, and Gideon is just cooler in literally every regard.
Just a minor correction on pronunciation, Siofra is pronounced as She-Phra, it’s a common Irish name
Hoping now for the DLC Bosses
As an Int/Faith caster main, Gideon being A tier is really vindicating for me. I love the combos that can be pulled off with the huge spell list. Imagine if he could use spells from the DLC!
placidusax can do his nuke before phase 2 fyi
Lets goo
Get off the horse and fight the dragons head on, targeting the head. The ranking with the horse hit and run tactic is next to useless.
I agree with your opinions on Melania, even if I thinks were goes into A-tier. She is almost undodgeable sometimes and I'm positive at some point she didn't have life steal or waterfowl but was later added in for increased difficulty. Melania is much harder than Consort Radahn because he can be dodged reliably, and yet, after well over a thousand hours in Elden ring, and about 25 on Melania alone, I still cannot dodge sword wiggle or waterfowl to save my life.
Malenia and Maliketh danced between the B and A Grade throughout the entire scripting process for this video. By far the hardest grades I've ever had to assign to something.
41:55
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Hot take Godskin duo is better than ornstein and smough.
Also great video
I'm not sure their a better fight, but i like the godskins more solely because its in Elden Ring, a game with a combat system that's actually fun to play.
@@Mr.Starlight_gaming I love ds1 but I can’t say you’re wrong about that
You are insane if you think the Godskin duo is good in any way shape or form. I simply disagree. Kind of hard to believe anything else you say when you are SO wrong about something that is SO obvious. A fight being viral does not mean it is good, only that it is viral
"Someone has... le different opinion??? 😨 NOOOOOOO😱😱😱😱"
@@jeff3221 and I’m giving MY opinion. Simple as that. You are clearly only trying to go viral, you don’t even care about boss quality.
@JorgeGuzman-mc7pc Well the difference is I don't think that everything you have to say about the bosses in the game is invalid if we disagree on a boss's quality.
For the record, I do not care about Godskin Duo. I just take sleeping pots and turn it into a 1v1. Then I get to fight two good bosses, though I think the Apostle is much more fun than the Noble.
idk ive seen some insane challenge runners glazing godskin duo
'I simply disagree' 'You are so wrong' opinions aren’t statements of facts
I never really liked Elden Beast's appearance and overall existance to begin with,
I don't wanna say that Elden Beast didn't have any lore significance, but I still find it pretty lame when the Final Boss for a game is just some big dude that you've never seen before
I can tolerate this in some cases, like in Dark Souls 3, but this case is especially frustrating with the incredibly climatic fight with Radagon, why couldn't we had a second phase with him?
I've never seen a boss overstate its welcome more than the Elden Beast
One of my most hated aspects of the game, and more so the dlc, is Remembrance Bosses not being worthy of their remembrances. Astel is not a one-of-a-kind fight because there are more than one Astel's in the game, thus Astel does not deserve the remembrance and goes two tiers below where it would have gone, in this case c -tier.
Luv the video Tho.
I think in Astel's and Divine Beast Dancing Lion's case they make a lot of sense...lorewise. Lorewise, neither of them are unique, so it makes sense to find more of them scattered around the world. With that being said, on an actual gameplay level, reuses generally just bring the presence of the original boss down, and are a poor band-aid fix to cram more content into areas, so I don't particularily like them either. I've also heard some people complain about Radahn being a reuse, but in my opinion that fight is so different to its base game counterpart that it really can't be counted as a "reuse".
While imo the second Astel was handled poorly, it could have been brilliant, and still held the value of the first one. If the cave itself built up the second Astel then it would have been less of an ‘I’ve already fought this’ to an ‘oh god there’s more of them’. As it stands almost all the caves and catacombs don’t build up to their bosses, which makes them feel cheaper and just put in there for content. If the items found in them directly correlated to the bosses it would be so much better.
I'm not saying that it doesn't make sense, I'm simply saying that an enemy that appears more than once is not important enough in lore/presentation to merit its remembrance. Similar to how Rellana is significant enough in the lore for the remembrance, but the lack of buildup before or in the boss arena makes her feel a lot less worthy of said remembrance than say, her sister.
I think it also becomes a question of if it's the fault of the original fight that what is clearly designed to be a rematch exists. The second Astel has a less atmospheric arena, and without the intentionally some other comments mentioned, doesn't do anything to build anything up more - but does that mean that the first Astel's arena is less gorgeous or that the drastic shift into atmosphere at the end of the Lake of Rot is less effective? It definitely takes away in later runs, but I'd still fight the Naturalborn before I'd fight Stars of Darkness.
@@Firebee033 I’d say the first Astel has plenty of build up - we’ve most likely seen the falling star beast and the chrysalis enemies, so naturally we wonder what this thing is turning into. The lore of eternal cities as we’ll allude to Astel stealing their night sky, so he is fairly build up. Gaius has a much worse presentation for a remembrance boss imo.
i straight up hate everyboss in elden ring lmao
my most controversial elden ring opinion is that i like elden beast more than radagon. idk whats going on in my brain