I was like, "woah!!! cool dark area with pretty shiny liquid and dark trees and sun flowers... oh!!! a boss!!! Oh shit that's a giant murderous sunflower, that's cool as fuck! That seemed really eas- ah, of course." And then the phase 3 happened and I went :( The finishing blow landed, the creature felled, and then the area just... dark, lifeless. All that shine, gone. Did a bigger *:(* God that final phase music is so gut wrenching to me.
"Oh tarnished. Thou art like an ember kindling eternally, a dream with no end. Thou tryest over and over again, determination forever set ablaze by thine ambitions to overcome me. Thou believest me to be another stepping stone in thy conquest of this realm, but lo and behold, for I too refuse to die."
This boss was something special, for one, it had attacks that actually felt satisfying to dodge (very rare), and it fully embodied the three best parts of Elden ring, that being the feeling of utterly destroying a boss (first phase), the challenge of actually learning its attacks instead of trying to kill it as fast as you can (second phase), and the mystery (third phase). It kind of drops the ball in the third phase with that explosion attack, it's fine the first time, but when it does it four times in a row with random timing in between each blast, that's kinda stupid, and I'd rather not die at the end of a boss because an attack i had already learned to dodge had been changed to be undodgeable at close range. Should've been the final boss of the dlc, i don't care how dramatic and cool the actual final boss was, this fight is simply more fun, and it's certainly able to retain more of its excitement, even once you know how huge its healthbar really is, something the final boss could not do. My defense for using a tank build against the final boss is that the final boss was using a tank build too.
@@diaz926 I liked the boss because it was a difficult fight that was both readable and had unique way of handling fazed fights. I didn't like a lot of the other bosses but Dancing Lion takes the cake for comically awful design with a camera that has a near sexual relationship with the wall and attacks covered with enough effects, it feels like I'm dodging abstract art.