Dark Souls One and Three Thread

Phew. Aldrich was a bit of a road block for me in the same way the Abyss Watchers were. His seemingly endless arrow storm in phase two would reliably muller me as well as his big soul arrow attacks that I seemed to be terrible at dodging. The camera also was troublesome until I realised I was better off not locking on. Eventually got him and got warped to the old hooded lady back in Lothric. Shat myself when the Dancer boss appeared since I held 50000+ souls, but had enough time to homeward bone out.
Had another go at her(?) and was pleased to get a good way into her second phase before dying. Feels doable, and also looks to be a massively fun boss. By that point, however, I needed to call it a night, mainly because of how sodding long Aldrich took me (the bastard).

Ergh you're making me consider another run.

Yeah, the bosses in this game appear pretty top tier throughout. So far, there has not been a single poorly designed one. Yes the Deacons,
Wolnir and Yhorm were too easy, but they were still fun/impressive to make up for that.

Having said that, I usually see some merit in most FromSoftware bosses so I am very easy to please. Bed of Chaos I have always liked, with only Capra and the redundant Firesage being poor bosses in that game. DS2 has a high number of rather average bosses but each also has something that makes them better to exist than not. Other than Lud and Zallen, who imo should have been two buffed ice-reindeer rather than endlessly appearing in the level beforehand.

Bloodborne was all excellent in my opinion, other than the four non-boss Chalice Bosses (brainsucker, silverbeast, 3 fatties and the big pig).

Good post.

Can honestly say I think DS3 has the most consistently fun bosses to fight out of the whole Soulsborne series (including Sekiro and Elden Ring). There's a load of them and I can only think of a handful I didn't enjoy taking down.

Hopefully saving the best for the dlc (assuming they are actually doing one)?

I think From are generally quite hit and miss with their bosses. Many of them aren't really good, just nortorious, like Capra. It's as if they looked at it last minute, thought it was too easy and just decided to jam a couple of adds in, resulting in a completely unfair fight that will kill most players as soon as they enter the room. It's a terribly designed boss but I do like it. I think there's a lot of that with From games though. The demon archers in Anor Londo is absolutely awful game design that should have been fixed during play testing - it's not fun - but it became a meme, so people love it

Plenty of weak bosses in all their games though, either due to frustration or being too easy/boring. I'd say Bloodborne is the most consistant when it comes to bosses, difficult to think of any really bad ones

That era also had a lot of boss-focused games though, perhaps due to the success of Shadow of the Colossus. Monster Hunter is pretty much all bosses, and it was the biggest thing ever in Japan at the time. Smaller games like Knights in the Nightmare focused a lot on them too.

I think bosses were never really in danger of disappearing, maybe just in those COD-style shooters where admittedly bosses were completely out of place and never very fun to fight. Luckily they do seem to have mostly disappeared from those games now.

I think the God of War games were also quite popular, and Zelda. Bosses in FPS games have always been a bit lame so I'm not surprised by the sentiment that they should stop using them

And if you can't wait for that, this popped up in feed today:




Seems pretty ambitious for a mod tbh. 

The QTE-filled fest that was God of War probably wouldn't feel so good now.

It's not like Dark Souls hasn't evolved itself. The bosses in the first game and in Demon's Souls were pretty disappointing in comparison to the later games. They also didn't acquire new abilities after losing enough health.

Back to Dark Souls III and the bosses are certainly coming thick and fast. First Dancer immediately follows Aldrich (or I guess Yhorm if he was the last of the three to fall), then quickly onto Oceiros after the very short Consumed King's Garden before coming up against Champion Gundyr in the also short Untended Graves.

The bosses are all fantastic of course, Dancer being extremely fun to fight and precise, Oceiros being more chaotic (once he loses his mind completely) but deliberately so, and Gundyr being a clever re-use of the first boss with a greatly expanded moveset.

The two areas mentioned are far less stellar and I assume I must be in optional areas like the Smouldering Lake, which was also a massive dip in quality compared the the amazing main areas. The Garden was so short yet filled with difficult enemies previously encountered but buffed. The toxic ground was odd and cheap too, as it wasn't even presented as sludge, just random whiter ground.
There seemed to be no build up to the clearly fascinating Oceiros, he so needed his own specific area that would give him more context than just a boshed together small area.
The Untended Graves are even more budget, being just the started area without the beautiful views, and again no new enemies. I gather originally the Cemetery of Ash was to be visited in different time zones, and this was an unfinished second time. As it is in the final game, it appears to be just a random Dark area that has the same layout as the Cemetery.

Bloodborne's optional areas of the Nightmare Frontier and especially Cainhurst (and Hemwick? I forget if that is optional) seem a lot more polished than DS3 optional areas so far. Signs of a rushed development perhaps?

You are, in fact, canonically traveling through time when you go to the Untended Graves (or did so at some point previously? You tell me) which is indicated by the dialogue. See if you can find other parallels. I don't think the lack of pomp and circumstance around the transition to the Untended Graves is an indication of the area being in some way unfinished.

It appears to be just the Untended Graves, since everywhere else isn't as dark as there, but given that you can only leave Firelink Shrine through warping, who knows what their actual relation to each other is?

Really LOVE the look of this and I wouldn't mind paying the developers an once-off fee to play it once finished; won't be arsed with patreon though...