You should have played the Old Monk fight when the servers were active. It exceeds them triumphantly. Why He Is Great: The Fume Knight is the toughest boss in Dark Souls 2 and is considered by many to be the hardest fight in the entire series. In lieu of an actual opponent, they will just fight each other. The Nameless King and the player go blow for blow on a bed of storm clouds as he starts the fight riding a dragon. Adjudicator: What a weird boss. She can be fairly hard to spot amongst her clones, which is nice design. He’s just plain mean, and if his high health pool doesn’t get you down, the fact he can easily trap you into a number of killing moves will. A community for the video game Demon's Souls. @SilverTuna014, Matthew Byrd is a freelance writer and entertainment enthusiast living in Brooklyn. See, the battle against Yhorm can actually be fought with the Onion Knight at your side. He was the boss that invoked the greatest feeling a boss in these games can invoke. Check. Most will beat this boss on the first try which is kind of a shame. 14. It’s the kind of annoying fight that’s actually fairly memorable because of it, but I wouldn’t put the encounter in the Souls hall of fame by any means. Unfortunately, this fight lacks flair. It’s a memorable showdown. Dirty Colossus, however, feels like it could be the template that the team uses to build every other boss fight off of. This boss’s range of attack is frightening and the speed at which he arrives there is even worse. His attacks are capable of covering nearly the entirety of the arena you fight him in, leaving you with very little options in terms of escape. You enter the fight on a balcony overlooking the boss, from here he cannot hit you, and all you have to do is shoot him a good 10 times thanks to his tiny health bar and he's down. Leechmonger: Another really weird boss that feels like it was designed in the space of half an hour. That means no encounters with unique enemies you meet along the way that don’t have their own boss health bar or other identifiying elements. Regardless, the set-up to this fight makes it feel so very suitable for a final encounter. The only reason people compare the Dragon God to the Bed Of Chaos it's because both are pretty much puzzles instead of actual fights and both gave "high expectations" based on the lore and the game overall. Why He’s Great: This hulking wall of a boss battle unfolds on two fronts; upon the ramparts against the crossbowmen and then in the courtyard with the knight himself. This is your basic towering beast with a large weapon that so happens to be aided by the presence of pools of lava. This monstrosity uses its many arms and deadly fires to make quick work of even the best Dark Souls players. It shows us the tremendous creative scope of these games as well as re-affirms that the legacy of the Dark Souls series is so great that even the “worst” bosses from the franchise are ones that you can probably dig up memories of if you think hard enough. While Gwyn can be beaten fairly easily using your parry ability, it’s important to consider that the parry maneuver itself isn’t that easy to pull off and that the fight is set-up incredibly well. The fight consists of you taking all of them down, while the enormous Tower Knight down below fires his magic at you. Nevertheless, you can’t talk about the greatest bosses in these games without including the Demon’s Souls boss that made nearly every single player regret their purchase at least somewhat. This fight is very simply designed. This is a brutal, punishing fight that just so happens to make you feel like you can beat anything these games can throw at you. At the risk of spoilers for those who have not already figured it out, Sinh is the final dragon on this boss list and therefore my favorite dragon in the franchise. She grows more and more desperate to keep you away from the Fishing Hamlet and even resorts to the blood arts (the act of using beast-blood to enhance weapons) she once hated. Every now and then, the Dark Souls development team forget that they’re working on something special and dip into the deep pool of dark fantasy cliches. I can't speak for you, but for most it pushes this boss easily into the top 5. The fight itself does a good job of validating those claims, as the small space you have to work, combined with his sweeping style of attacks, can easily turn him into a nightmare worthy of his frightful appearance. Here’s what I will say about Nameless King. Lazily floating around the room and occasionally making a copy of himself, Pinwheel is the only Dark Souls boss that seems like he can’t wait to die. A cool-looking boss can overcome a lot of weaknesses in the fight. Maiden Astraea isn’t a boss in the traditional sense. You know, it’s almost kind of an honor to be named the worst Dark Souls boss of all time. As the first real Souls fight to force players to face multiple bosses at once, this encounter managed to frustrate the very best of players. Now they rule over the ruins of a formerly great kingdom and have taken a ghostly form that barely resembles their former selves. Once you get in the arena, his two swords give him a wide range of combos that mix the stabbing attacks of his longsword and the huge arc of his greatsword. It looks alot like him and clearly inspired him. Offline, this fight is nothing special at all, and online, there’s a chance that you can run into a player-controlled minion that often proves to be more frustrating than the boss itself. As soon as you enter the Capra Demon’s tiny domain, you are attacked by both the Capra and his hell hounds. What really makes this fight special, though, is how it scales. Beating this boss makes you feel like you should feel after beating a legendary dragon. He looks like a ruined pope, and his appearance betrays his true nature as a despot. You know what's best about him? The Blue Dragon itself does an excellent job of fighting like you’d want a dragon to fight. Opinions will always be divided as it concerns Gwyn. It was quite enjoyable for an early game fight. It’s like saying that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all-time. This battle is an incredibly simple – some would argue tedious – affair that doesn’t come close to testing the considerable skills the player will have acquired by the time that they encounter this dragon in Demon’s Souls. Amid a blinding snowstorm, the beast of darkness known as Lud descends upon you. That’s kind of a backhanded compliment, but it should take nothing away from the quality of this encounter. It’s still a great design, though. The balance of the fight’s difficulty is pretty good, and the way she is revealed from underneath the sand is neat, but the design of the two bosses is far too similar to not compare them. His combos follow no easy-to-learn pattern and there’s almost no way to “cheese” him. That may sound obvious, but apparently, it wasn’t, as that’s exactly what Royal Rat Vanguard is. Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. Taking place in a narrow mineshaft, you must pursue the armor spider down a corridor while trying to avoid its attacks as best as you are able. Such is the case with Looking Glass Knight. If only his lore was somewhat better, he could even get the top spot. After all, this boss fight demands that players abandon the comfort of the circle-strafe strategy and employ some expert combat rolls in order to win the day. We rank them from worst to best! He was a warrior in service of his father, but he eventually chose to switch sides and oppose him, joining the dragons. Why He Is Great: Sif is one of the most iconic fights in all of Souls and is an early example of the depth behind each of the bosses. As the tutorial boss in Demon’s Souls, Vanguard is there to teach players a very valuable lesson that they will carry with them throughout the rest of the franchise. It always feels necessary to get that out of the way before praising a Souls boss, given that the easier boss fights tend to hold a less than favorable position among many. 18. I really want to like Moonlight Butterfly more than I do. The atmosphere of this fight is an oddly peaceful one that only adds to the classic sword fight nature of this encounter. Pontiff Sulyvahn’s elegant dual-sword attacks are a quick as they are deadly. Dark Souls most of the bosses was pretty easy to me and not so great. This fight isn’t bad so much as it is frustrating. This not only makes tracking the boss difficult, but it also makes locking on impossible. This sorcerer looks like any regular enemy but puts up less of a fight than most them. King Allant: What a dissapointing fight. What is BGBSBW? This beautiful woman that so happens to have the body of a spider is one of the more visually striking bosses in the game and backs her memorable looks up with a rather tricky fight that often requires assistance or a particularly strong weapon to beat. Your mileage regarding the actual fight with Old Hero is going to depend on your use of an item known as the Thief’s Ring. They have phases and their fight ramps up increasingly to an all-out battle with a single warrior. Sif is the loyal companion of Artorias the Abysswalker who died long ago. The feeling of finally toppling Ornstein & Smough is unmatched in the entirety of the franchise. Given the incredible amount of lore surrounding this character, you would think that it would be impossible for this fight to lie up to expectations. He has the exact same mechanics. Those that dig deeper, though, will surely appreciate how Aldrich’s story ties into the stories of Gwyndolin, Smough, Anor Lando, and Prince Lothric. Here your progress isn’t directly impeded by choosing one path before another, but rather indirectly so as to encourage you to explore the game further for a better option. At this point, you’ll likely discover that Midir can kill you in just a few hits while you don’t’ seem to be able to do much damage to him at all. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. The bosses of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls are designed to be more than mere roadblocks meant to slow down your march towards the end credits. In many ways, Phalanx is a precursor to Royal Rat Vanguard. 7. Why It’s Great: The battle takes place in an unremarkable corner of the world, which makes it more surprising when you come across this wretched spawn. What’s worse is that he’s beaten by employing the “attack the glowing weak spot on the limbs” strategy. If personality goes a long way in making a Souls boss fight great, then the visual design can run the whole race. Dark Souls Bosses Ranked. This is a tough fight to rank. It was a truly spine-tingling and epic moment. Her attacks do decent damage, and I'd argue she's a very well-designed boss, as she is essentially a harder version of the Mind Flayer enemies you find all over 3-1. It is the first real challenge in Demon’s Souls and the best example of what to expect from the rest of the game. Dodging his attacks is key in the second phase, when he drops his longsword and bathes his great blade in dark fire, his damage output increases, and single strikes can kill you. Considering the lava is more of an annoyance than an actual threat, that one distinction does not save this encounter from becoming a low-tier fight. You know, Fool’s Idol isn’t really that much different from Pinwheel. It’s a subtle concept, but it adds a lot to this fight, as most remember being caught off guard and instantly killed by this boss at least once. But also kinda fun. This is a fascinating twist on the on the Metroidvania style of gameplay.