In defence of “the boss situation”…

[Mr_Blank]

I really don’t see most of the boss repetition as an issue (some of them I do think are a problem) and I’ll explain why.

First off, some repeat bosses are repeated for narrative purpose. The avatars, spirits, cavalry, and watchdogs are all large groups of people and there aren’t supposed to be only one or two. The cavalry is a group that morgott used to hunt the tarnished after his form in stormveil, Margit, was defeated. The burial watchdogs are meant to protect the burial place of heroes and royals from theives and plunderers. The erdtree avatars (and to some extent the spirits) are meant to protect the minor erdtrees so that they may grow. These bosses are all supposed to be repetitive as it aligns with the lore.

ALSO, these bosses (cavalry excluded) eventually become normal enemies that can sometimes respawn. The erdtre avatars that aren’t bosses usually drop lords runes, and the erdtree spirits almost always drop a golden seed. These can be found in leyndell, the haligtree, the lake of rot, and the consecrated snowfield. And in later catacombs, especially in leyndell, the burial watchdogs become normal and respawnable enemeies that don’t drop singular items. So why do this? simply to tell the player that avatars, spirits and watchdogs are no longer great enemies. In early game, these enemies were considered major threats which is why they are bosses. Now, I. The late game, the game expects the tarnished to have grown much stronger, which is why these enemies are no longer considered boss level threats. Other examples of this include the duellists, the heroes of zamor, godskin a the unnamed dragons, and ESPECIALLY the beastmen. Seriously I’ve never heard anyone who complains about boss repetition ever complain about the beastmen of farum azula going from a boss to a Normal enemy in farum azula. All of these bosses repeating make sense from a Lore perspective, and most of them eventually become normal enemies.

Second point is centred around the dragons. While the dragons do have similar movesets, the named dragons all have special moves that make them unique. glinstone dragon adults has the ability to use a glinstone great sword, Ezekeyes has rot breath, and can cover the entire area of his fight in dangerous rot. Borealis has special frost abilities that cover her feet and freeze the nearby area. Agheel and greyll both have fire breath, but their environments are significantly different, making it feel like a different fight. Even if the boss has similar tactics to others, you cannot say it’s a repeat boss, it’s contradictory. The models of the named dragons are all vastly different, as are the environments you fight them in, and the special abilities each of the named dragons have. And for the dragons around dragonbarrow, refer to my first point.

Finally my third point is actually agreeing with the issue, but not really to the same extent as others. Some bosses have zero right to be the same, as it takes away from the commanding difficulty and respect players have for the fights of other bosses. Commander Niall is a fantastic fight with punishing moves to dodge, and an overall cool design. The issue is that this fight becomes infinitely less interesting when players already fought this exact same boss in caelid, with commander o Neil. The issue here is that this boss does not fall in with reason one or two, it is not visually distinct and only has 1 difference from niall, being the rot attacks. O Niels existence adds nothjng to the lore, and he could have been written off dead and have nothing wrong with the story happen. We could of had Ezekeyes guard the unalloyed gold needle, at least that would line up with the dragon guarding the glinstone key, instead of having a random Florida man looking around caelid for Miquella. This issue also applies to Godefroy, a repeat of one of the five rememberance bosses. His fight makes godrick, one of my favourite fights in the game, feel a lot less special, as we’re just fighting him again hit without the dragon or the voice acting. This also applies to the normal ancestor spirit, mohg the omen, and golden Godfrey.

These bosses in my third point shouldn’t be repeated, and I understand why people dislike fighting them again. However, that sentient is not shared for a majority of the bosses that are “repetitive”. Ever ruined the game for me, never got boring (mainly because the only boss I find bring to fight is the zamor jackasses), and every time I did fight a boss, “unique” or not, I felt rewarded, whether it was more runes, a new item, or just another boss bar drained and on my belt of ER bosses defeated,

TL;DR, I personally believe the repetitive boss issue only applies to some bosses, such as the mohg the omen, godefroy, and commander Niall, but is not as big of an issue as people would make you believe. Godskins, zamors, duellists, avatars, spirits, watchdogs, dragons and others all have a lore purpose that makes their “repetition” valid, especially when a lot do these fights ARE unique, and only feel similar to other fights.

[vamirez]

All these reasonable points, and more, have been made again and again in this endless discussion, starting a year ago. However, those complaining like to exaggerate, they don't want to compare to other games, they just want to be right... so, GL :)

(I've had a dude basically exploding in rage and claiming that the Zamor dudes are copy/pasta because 1-2 of them traveled out of their home and can be met EARLIER in the game ;))

[Sauron]

Did you notice, Neil guards the start of millicent's quest and Niall the access to her last location?
I think you will hear more of this millicent and her siblings in the dlc.
Lore wise i think Neil has PTSD while Niall doesn't.

[Sabaithal]

I don't really get why Millicent invades you though. Never made much sense to me, none of her dialogue seems connected in any way...

[Sauron]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

I don't really get why Millicent invades you though. Never made much sense to me, none of her dialogue seems connected in any way...

When she invades she has both of her real arms. Idk what the meaning behind this is.

In souls games everything is kept pretty vague and that creates atmosphere enough.
I think they just write a bunch of fatalistic prose for the item descriptions to suite the visual and sound design.
Seriously, if they had a full-fledged, written story, why wouldn't they tell in detail so the players understand it.

edit: ik this is getting off topic.
i got now well over 400hrs in, i have no deep problem with the bosses (as long as they die)

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by MarcoPES:

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

I don't really get why Millicent invades you though. Never made much sense to me, none of her dialogue seems connected in any way...

When she invades she has both of her real arms. Idk what the meaning behind this is.

Conclusion: Its not Millicent, its her evil twin (one of many) and the PC just doesn't know its not her because they all look identical

Further conclusion: Tarnished is racist

[Betrayal]

I like repeated bosses.
I see a tree avatar.
I go brrrrr.
Tree avatar is dead.

[WhiteMamba]

I dont mind boss repetition at all. If you consider how big the game is and how long it takes to discover everything then the time between seing the same boss might be similiar to the time you'd beat DS1 or DS3, start NG+ and reach the same bosses by new game cycle. I dont mind dragons being similiar at all, its just encountering more significant enemy and I'm truly amazed that FS still can bring us unique and awesome dragon boss fights (Placidusax)

Now, what I really really REALLY HATE is Godrick's reskin. You cant just copy paste a main story boss, that is a very unique, has an awesome theme, cutscenes and many characters talk about him. Also I dont like 2 Mohgs, and I dont like that Mohg and Morgott are twins in general, it feels to me like "lets make a one boss, equip him with 2 different movesets and copy 2 of them to make 4 boss fights". Champion Gundyr was the only copy boss that was done right, in any other case the copy of main boss takes away what was unique in the 1st encounter.

[RopeDrink]

What "boss situation"? The map is gigantic, and the vast majority of it is completely optional content. It's infinitely more practical to lace the optional areas with mini-bosses, (copy/pasta or not), rather than trying to make every single encounter unique -- much like how even major MMORPGs will invariably start recycling old assets to flesh out regions.

You'd be waiting a long, long time to make ER's extensive number of boss arenas contain unique and balanced encounters, and considering <50% of ER's vast number of players have even burned the tree, you can imagine how many optional areas have gone completely unnoticed even now.

Main boss encounters are far more important, and there's quite a few decent mini-boss variants, along with a surprisingly small smattering of normal mobs turned into bosses (eg. Giant, Rot-Worshipping bugs, Rune Bear, etc). I would rather have the glorious sense of exploration and secret hunting via repeated fights (vs) plugging tonnes of caves because there are no unique encounters to put inside them.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Godefroy copy, Margit copy in front of leyndell, bs wolf of radagon multiple times, anastacia invader multiple times because killing her one time is just not enough, Millicent in the swamps even though it makes no sense at all, I don´t even know how many of those annoying ulcerated tree spirits, godskins in every second corner of the map.. so many dragons that they become basic critters like sheep.. ect

I get it, you can always try to rationalize everything, but I personally get annoyed when I constantly have to fight the same bosses and when they then start to drop two or three of those copies at you the game completely loses any appeal to me.

Dear Fromsoft, sometimes less is more. I bet many here would have prefered a smaller world with more unique encounters. I get burned out by this game every single time I reach mountaintops and can´t bring myself to keep playing because all you´ll get is even more copypasta just with higher stats.

[zanzibaroz]

One word: Godefroy.

[Yal]

Originally posted by WhiteMamba:

Now, what I really really REALLY HATE is Godrick's reskin. You cant just copy paste a main story boss, that is a very unique, has an awesome theme, cutscenes and many characters talk about him. Also I dont like 2 Mohgs, and I dont like that Mohg and Morgott are twins in general, it feels to me like "lets make a one boss, equip him with 2 different movesets and copy 2 of them to make 4 boss fights". Champion Gundyr was the only copy boss that was done right, in any other case the copy of main boss takes away what was unique in the 1st encounter.

Mohg is extra confusing because his fake doppleganger has an achievement tied to it, not his real form??

(Also the reused Astel feels wrong)



IMO the reused bosses would've been more okay if there'd been more gameplay tweaks between them (Putrid Avatars are more challenging than Erdtree Avatars because they have the rot cloud area attacks, but since the best way to deal with that attack is "run away and wait until it's safe to return" it makes the fight less engaging and not more) - e.g. the Ice Spear Night's Cavalry could've been able to use that ash to get a projectile attack the others wouldn't use, some other random cavalry could dismount the horse and spend the fight on foot just to mess with your muscle memory, Erdtree Avatars could each have one unique attack per location (in Liurnia it could have a glintstone-based projectile, the Leyndell one call down lightning to hit around it, etc), and so on - a handful of reused bosses does this but for a lot of them the stats is the only thing that changes, or potentially fighting two at once.

(Also, the giant lobsters from Liurnia is the hardest enemy in the game and THEY never get used for a boss fight, but the Runebears are used once? Wh-what)

I also think it would've been better to have more "AI invader" bosses like Adan, Thief of Flame and Necromancer Gerrick instead of reusing some monsters a dozen times - there's so many cool movesets and ashes-of-war that you could turn into a boss.