Ok right off that bat I absolutely disagree that the cleric beast teaches players to remain close. Recently when I played my first play through of bloodborne I absolutely hated that bass and staying close to him is not ideal in my eyes because he has many attacks that to me advise me to actually stay in midrange so that when he does jump forward towards me I can dodge into him, get a free hit then run back. Also because of the boss’s size it also discourages me from using the parry which is very vital in later stages in the game.
It's funny how you talked about Nashandra and how her making you hollow makes the boss better, but I didn't even know what those orbs did, cause I completed dlcs and was wearing one of the crowns since thought it was cool
I just did a blind play of Sekiro. I’ve always heard so much about Isshin as this monstrous last boss and went in expecting a grind. I found his combat extremely intuitive and beat him on my 4th attempt in maybe 20 mins. I loved the fight but was definitely underwhelmed by its difficulty.
Watching your fight, when he does the skills where he kind of charges up for a couple seconds before some kind of slash or spin or whatever. If you just deflect it (similar to the ashina expert bosses from ashina castle) you get 2 quick parries for lots of posture damage, and you can instantly punish him with damage too. So you can pummel him, and he does those pretty often. Highly recommend that.
The Seven Spears and general fight is reliable to stealth kill the general. I just played the game for the first time. Not sure if it was changed at all from original but you can repeatably use the sugar or spiritfall for stealth, sneak around the fire on the right, and backstab the general to either kill him or puppeteer him and let him get some chip damage in for you. When it’s 1 v 2 that fight is unbearable.
Friede was when I started feeling fatigued in learning bosses patterns in souls games. Like I get it, the first 2 phases are there to use up your resources, but it makes it such a chore to get through them every time to try and learn the third phase. I got to the third phase after I believe 4-5 tries on my first playthrough, but after 10-15 tries I was ready to stop playing for a while. In contrast when you can spend weeks on O and S and have tons of fun learning their patterns.
After nearly 200 hours of Sekiro and having achieved all trophies/achievements, I still think Lady Butterfly to be the hardest boss of all others to me lmao. Not even the erratic primate makes me struggle as this lady does.
Quick note about shura isshin: the fight is intended to be incredibly difficult without spamming mortal blade. the idea is that the player is forced to use the corruptive force of the blade to win, moreso than any other fight in the game. i don't like the fight itself very much because of that, but thematically it's a 10/10
there are quite a few differences in our opinion, but we do agree that the second guardian ape fight is the worst one. There is however one aspect I would like to focus on: You not killing the ape instantly makes sense. You, at most, had the opportunity to cut the centipedes out of the normal enemies, where the stab tended to be enough. For the guardian ape the centipede is more resistant, meaning it survives that last blow and is only killable to us as soon as its completely removed from the body of the ape. Which in itself is nothing we need to consider before he becomes a roadblock again, as we achieve our goal of the stone either way
Death (Rite) Birds are also clearly supposed to teach you about exploiting affinities-everything about them screams "undead" and -40% Holy resist on top of 400% extra damage inflicted vs anti-undead skills turn tough fights into absolute jokes
For Shume Masaji Oniwa, my tried-and-true method is to ninjutsu switch. A quick Bloodsmoke on the mortally injured rifleman nearby will draw both the spearman and the general towards you, but leave the general open for a backstab into Puppeteer, which makes the fight much more manageable.
32:32 kinda skill issue, personally armored warrior is a first try boss and I really liked him, I did I deathblow and it didn't do anything and I immediately though to push him off of the ledge because his deathblow animation have a huge stumbling back thing, and idk I felt like the easedrop was way earlier in the game and never thought about it
i did patches on my first and even second playthru and didn’t know about margits shackle until now. he was really only tough my first fight. had to do my research about the mohg fight tho lol.
I would’ve ranked the chain ogre at “C”. I can see the intention behind the boss, but broken hit-boxes paired with absurd damage made me walk away with the wrong lessons. I think Gyoubu is a much better example of how prosthetics make boss fights more manageable. On top of that, he teaches us that esoteric skills are equally as important.
As someone who kind of sucked at Sekiro, I will say thank you for giving the Shinobi Hunter an F. I knew FromSoft games were hard but fair, but that was just a fustercluck of a design fail.
They should have just kept long arm centipede Giraffe untranslated, Qilin or Kirin. which for some god forsaken reason gets translated to giraffe every time. Even in naruto that was a problem
Crazy how the first four shardbearers have all gotten the only S ranks so far from what I can tell. Really goes to show how much the uniqueness and story presence adds to the fights.
Elden Ring's boss roster including every encounter looks pretty average, but when you just look at the best of the best it really shines, even among the rest of From Software's library.
@@TheAkasharose 100% agree. It’s definitely a design choice I can see the pros and cons of, plus watching you systematically go through and explain the purpose of all the encounters does make me appreciate it more, even if it doesn’t measure up to the more consistent rosters of other games.
Rykard is awful and lava tickles you so most effective way to fight this abomination is just walk in him and spam to win. He is cool visually but I never understood how someone can rate him higher than d. His first face is better then 2, with stupid skull attack
Two shot a new player?! The bell bearing Hunter in Caelid 2 shot me with 50 vigor. I haven’t been playing Elden Ring thaaaaat long but long enough that I’m far removed from new player status. That floating sword attack is my kryptonite, it’s one of the only moves in the game that I consistently miss the dodge even after fighting him countless times. I know I know, git gud, although I’ve def gotten better at fighting him at this point
The worst boss fight in my opinion is a toss up between the horse guy or the bull. Not that they’re the most difficult, they’re just boring. THE MONK IS THE BEST THOUGH
The crystal sage take isn’t necessarily hot. I mean I suppose it is but I have the same issues with that boss as well. I kept hearing every corn ball online say the same thing “man it’s so easy, it’s the easiest boss in the history of gaming.” Yea I’ve been one shot several times after coming out from behind a pillar so yea, it’s not nearly as easy as some make it out to be.
I think I would have enjoyed Rennala, /if/ I had been able to actually have the fight. Samurai build, ran up to her at the start of phase 2 and got a Unsheathe off, staggered her before her first spell fired, burst her down with regular slashes, and that was it. I was I think a little underlevel for the area overall since I'd been skipping lots of dungeons and bosses and losing all my runes a lot - but to me, it felt like I got a free pass to skip the boss by accident or like I accidentally found a cheese mechanic by playing normally, and I'd actually wanted to fight her. I think the description you're giving would still hold if she had a bit more health, a bit more stagger resistance, and recovered from her stagger state faster - for me the fact that some players can functionally bypass the challenge is an unfortunate negative against its design. Great review video overall btw! Just adding my cents to the pile.
No, it's a good point - the biggest thing against Rennala is how easy it is to stomp her, even compared to the other early game Remembrances. The fact she staggers so easily makes her stick out, but does make her really exploitable in a way fights like Godrick aren't. I can definitely see it dragging her down in people's rankings!
