Does anyone else agree that the boss fights in this game are mostly bad?

[Iskandar]

Just to preface, I love fromsoft games, I've completed dark souls 3 fifteen times, and played every single souls/Bloodborne game multiple times. I even almost completed a no hit run on dark souls 3 a few months back (got hit against Twin Princes), so I am not a bad player by any means. I have also completed Elden Ring as well.

But honestly the boss fights in this game just seem really poorly designed, almost everys ingle boss outside of the story bosses are reskins (I must have fought Erdtree avatar over 10 times now lol) and they all just spam attack quickly like a BloodBorne boss giving you no opportunity to heal and do a full attack combo (in Bloodborne the HP regeneration attacks and the fast paced nature make this balanced), the bosses themselves just dont seem fun to fight for me. I cannot think of a single Elden Ring boss that even comes close to the fun of fighting Ludwig, Gael, Friede or Midir, hell even some DS2 bosses like Alonne and Fume Knight are way better than the bosses id describe as fun in this game.

Also there are no standout boss soundtracks, no boss track in this game comes close to Abyss Watchers or Ludwig.

Also can we talk about the amount of unfair gank bosses in this game? Seriously it's like Dark souls 2 all over again, FromSoft forgot what made O&S such a good and fair boss fight. 2 crucible knights and 2 GodSkins is just really awful boss design.

I love this game and I'd give it a 9/10, but honestly out of all of their games this is one of the worst Fromsoft games for boss fights, the worse being Dark Souls 2. BloodBorne and DS3 bosses top this games bosses in literally every single way. It feels like the game is trying to force you into using spirit summons to defeat certain bosses.

[A-Silly-Bun-Bun]

Well according to data miners apparently Rahdan has 195 different attack data entries.....which is insane. Which is the most fromsofts ever done

[Playerjjjj]

I think the game just has way too many bosses overall. From decided that nearly every cave, mine, and ruin had to have a boss and that led to constant repeats and bosses that are just regular enemies from later in the game. Couple that with almost all of the wandering bosses being repeated and it makes for a very lackluster experience. I wish they'd scaled back the quantity and focused on quality. It sucks to find a cool, unique-looking boss only to fight it 6 more times throughout the game.

Even ignoring the sorry state of the minor bosses, there's also the issue of From trying to be more experimental with a lot of the major fights. Radahn and Rykard are spectacle fights a la Divine Dragon or Yhorm the Giant; Rennala is a puzzle boss who ends up being a pushover for most builds. Godrick, Mogh, Morgott, and Malenia are solid battles, but that's four fights in a game with endless bosses. I don't mind From going for bosses outside their comfort zone, but they rarely end up being all that fun to fight compared to their typical fare. Haven't quite finished the game yet, so hopefully the final bosses are decent.

I agree that the boss music is a little underwhelming compared to From's previous work. Since Dark Souls 3 their osts have been pretty meh. Might have something to do with the addition of ambient music from Sekiro onward. The only Elden Ring boss track that sticks out to me is the Godskin theme. Love that one. The ambient themes for the Altus Plateau and Leyndell are quite good as well.

[Aldain]

I personally feel they lean a bit too far into the "spam all the nonsense" category at times.

[ChiefKeefSoldier]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Calen:

Of course there is, ER recycles bosses quite a bit.

People talk ♥♥♥♥ about Dark Souls 2 bosses, but Elden Ring recycles bosses like a chef who just spotted food about to expire.

There's like 3 godskin apostles and nobles, 3 gargoyles, 4 tree sentinels, and most of the bosses show up later as basic enemies

[duckfist]

Bosses were awesome. But without the expectation that everything with a big health bar to have a completely unique character model, animation, and attacks. I happen to enjoy DS2, though. That said, screw every "duo" fight. They're not necessarily super hard, just really tedious to execute by generally having to kite for a long time, slowly chipping away at them.

[tim.]

I don't like a lot of the reused bosses, and often times they feel like reskinned and mildly changed versions of each other (Fast Guy, Fast Attack, Lots of Health), but i can forgive a lot of it because of the sheer size of the game and how much content is in it. You can't really expect (apparently) 83 unique bosses that are all equally impressive and cinematic. It is just an unfeasible workload for any dev team, especially one with like 300 employees. If you want to get mad about it, at least wait for the DLC/Patches to see if they improve upon any of it.

[Ǵ̶͓̂͑lí̴̤̀̄́tcĥ̸]

I think they are mostly ok-good - there are some greats and a few bad, and one absolutely terrible one imo.

Repeat bosses only become ok/meh or whatever (or bad to some) after the first one has been faced and defeated, in which most people probably liked it. It was new, at that point. So I don't consider calling a boss that has repeats bad to be logical, but I will agree the repeats themselves bring disappointment.

That aside, the actual bosses - Malenia is probably my favorite. She has that one weapon art of course that's just...ridiculous, but the rest of the fight to me feels incredibly even - none of her other attacks are that tough to dodge and she can be easily staggered for multi combos, just like your character, so she felt right to me despite her reputation.

Radahn, I can't recall my level, but first time playthrough I didn't summon NPCs because in other Souls games iirc if you summon an NPC that is involved in a quest and it dies, it's dead, and you can't complete the quest - so if it dies you either suicide, or have to kill the boss while the NPC survives. I don't think that's the case with Elden Ring after looking into it but at the time I didn't know, and Wolf man and a certain giant Pot, alongside the rest, got utterly smashed by Radahn lol. They were fleas to him - so I had to beat him without summons. Honestly, he wasn't too hard for me, though he took more attempts than Malenia did. His second phase comet attack did give me some issues since I seemingly have to dismount and dodge those on foot, or they'd act as a blender and stagger kill me in multiple attacks that may as well be considered a 1-shot - and the approach to him every new attempt was very annoying, but I still dug him.

The terrible boss for me was, by far, Mohg (the real one, the Bloody arsehole himself). Obviously his first form was easy (since I encountered his avatar prior and was already somewhat used to his delayed bs) although he could still occasionally chain rng-based combos of either instant or delayed attacks together in ways that sometimes just felt impossible to read properly .... but his second phase, wow. The start of it didn't bother me as much as others, I had to waste 2 flasks or a certain physick due to it and he healed, but since I knew I could take 2 hits from it, heal, then take the last hit and heal again and was safe otherwise, I was able to wail on him a bit while he was casting that and pretty much offset his heal, give or take some hits worth of HP. But everything about the delay stuff I mentioned from his first form is even MORE delayed in his second form, as most of his first form attacks become slower, and EVERY attack leaves a trail of blood fire - then he also gains much more mobility with highly abused flight and a few fast attacks, more AoE with his ground stab, more stagger capability, the whole damn room is on blood fire which can bleed stagger you if you're not careful (usually resulting in him slapping you to death after) and the guy just doesn't stop moving until he casts his bloody rain attack so I can't even punish him when he DOES stop.

Takes a fight that was already slow, makes it even SLOWER, but in a weird way since he's hyper aggressive, he fills the whole room with death while throwing blood and near room-sized slashes around, all of which leaves a pile of blood flame behind, etc. etc. and the progressive delay on his second form makes dodging him, for me anyway, a huge pain in the arse. So within the slowness, very swift death still awaits that one time you blink or the game skips a frame (or a legit mistake).

Other than that boss though, so far so good. Malekith was a bit overly agile for such a high damage boss that flails around, not to mention a somewhat equally annoying first phase of the fight - this made him probably my least favorite boss until Mohg, but I still considered Malekith a good boss with probably the best theme so far.

Etc. etc. this is too long already, apologies.

[Sir Latrine de Bretagne]

In my experience so far it's pretty weak compared to Sekiro, Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 in terms of boss design.

[ZTL-Altima]

They are bad only compared to Demons/DS1/DS3/Bloodborne, which are top level From games.

Bosses here are DS2 level. Head and shoulders below From top standards.

[Ranch]

I barely played the other games but playing this game i can appreciate it is difficult and that you are supposed to learn each boss and perfectly counter them to win. That said some of the bosses do feel recycled and more frustrating than they should be. I know there are people who love this and can do this, but its clear ALOT of people cant.

[XGear]

Elden Ring is all about how many level do you have to fight the boss you found. Above lvl? Good fight, Equal level? Hard Fight; Low level? Just die..."

[Ploobis]

the people giving this jester are huffing copium

[Koala 4peace]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ploobis:

the people giving this jester are huffing copium

Shall we talk about the people that necro this thread? Because it won't be good for someone...