How Elden Ring Ruined the Dark Souls Multi-Boss Fight 

Absolutely agree with the ideas expressed in this video, which go to address a larger point many people have been noticing particularly within challenge running communities : the quality of bossfights in Elden Ring has lowered compared to previous titles. While most of the bosses in ER are still good to great (including some masterpieces of design such as Maliketh, Mohg, Godfrey, Radagon etc) a lot of them were given questionable moves that go from annoying to borderline unfair : Rykard's earthquake slam, Fortissax's static lightning, Elden Beast's Stars and other bullshit. Let's not forget Malenia and her Waterfowl dance. And so on. In a series of games that always put emphasis on overcoming obstacles via trial and error and being responsible for your own deaths that act as a stepping stone to help you learn, having unavoidable damage or scenarios where you can die due to factors outside your control is confusing. It seems FromSoft took a step back on trying to design mechanically fair bosses in favor of presenting memorable encounters, even if they can be unfun (Morgott, Malenia etc) or cinematic fights whose gameplay design is accessory to the visual spectacle they are meant to convey (Ancestor Spirits and Elden Beast for example). But all of that is secondary to a major problem this new trend of design has brought, indirectly or not : the multi-bosses fights. There is not a single good gank fight in Elden Ring. This is probably one of the biggest disappointments that were delivered by this game (and fortunately one of the very few). From the older Souls to Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro, the quality of gank bosses had been constantly improving and getting better with each title. Demon Prince and Sister Friede phase 2 are some of the best gank fights in the series, and the Dual apes bossfight of Sekiro being very scriptable and controllable by the player, making each death be the player's fault in all these fights. And then Elden Ring released and we got what we have now. There are many, many factors coming into play in designing a gank fight, but the three main factors I would consider are the following : readability, synergy and control. Three factors every major gank fight from other titles mastered, and three factors Elden Ring multi-boss fights fail to achieve. - Readability : First is visual readability : The player must be able to proceed and comprehend everything that's happening at any given time, in the context of a fair and well balanced fight. Being ABLE to doesn't mean this state should be spoonfed to the player without effort, of course : if the player laser focuses themselves on one boss and neglects to keep the other in check, it's on them if they get tag teamed by surprise. If they get stuck between a wall and have the boss' model fills the screen causing them to get hit, it's also on them for making positioning mistakes leading them into being cornered. But it should be achievable to keep both enemies in check for the entire fight. For instance unlocking and making smart use of the camera to attack Ariandel while keeping Friede in check in the corner of your vision, or positioning yourself against the melee Demon in order to see the ranged Demon during the Prince fight. Is this achievable during the Valiant Gargoyles fight ? Well no, but also no. Unlocking is not something you can do as easily because the Gargoyles have complex patterns of attacks that often need you to position yourself a certain way to not be blendered or a roll timed very carefully. As a result you need to maintain your focus on the Gargoyle you're fighting almost exclusively just to survive... And they are very mobile enemies that you cannot predict the movement of. Double Apes in Sekiro and Ariandel & Friede are slow, and the Demons are easily predictable since the active one always runs straight at the player to attack. Meanwhile the Gargoyles are able to jump across a third of the arena in one single jump or backhop, or running around your character at high speed to deliver some attacks. This makes splitting your attention between one Gargoyle and the other in the background next to impossible. Preemptive tells of attacks, particularly ranged attacks is also a major factor in balance. Friede's ice paths and Demons toxic trails have very clear, non-damaging indicators acting as warning to the player that ranged attacks are coming - but the poison from Gargoyles damages immediately and blends in with the arena making it very hard to estimate the reach of. Same goes for Godskins being able to perform long range attacks through one another's model (black fireballs or Apostle's spaghetti extendo attacks in phase 2 going through pillars for example). Valiant Gargoyles can also transition from active to passive state immediately without any clear indicator for the player... and the newly passive one can still perform proximity attacks (and overlapping timings with the other) or switch back to active state a few moments later. Second and just as important is the audio readability. The game also accounts for players staying locked-on to an enemy by providing them with audio cues and other sounds to help them know what the other boss is doing in the meantime. Ariandel's charges and Friede going for a heal miracle have distinct sounds. Every single of the three toxic attacks the ranged Demon uses has specific audio cues to let players differentiate which one is coming without looking directly at them. If a Demon is ending his ranged cycle and going back to melee mode, the player will be notified not by one, but two power-up screams that are extremely loud. Meanwhile Godskins black fireball sound is inaudible if they cast it from far away, but it can reach through 2/3rd of the arena and tracks very effectively. The poison spit from Gargoyles has basically no audio either. It's also completely unrealistic to know what one Gargoyle is doing while outside of your camera view, as its grunts and roars all sound the same across most attacks and it can decide to randomly jump at you while attacking, in which case the audio cue arrives at the same time as the attack, which is... a very useful warning, yep. - Synergy : You went over this in detail so here also I won't repeat what you pointed out, but there are a few points you didn't mention that I will go over for precisions, however : There were atleast SOME attempts at balancing these fights out made by FromSoft particularly with the patch 1.04 (?) and the tweaking of the "group bosses AI", however most of them failed miserably at their purpose. These AI tweaks mostly affected minor ganks such as Double Crucible knights and Crystalians Duo/Trio, but the fix went way overboard and essentially neutralizes whichever enemy into not attacking at all and standing there passively while the other attacks, seemingly turning into back to back duels instead of actual group fights. As for the behavior changes that were already present before that patch, they only work half the time. For instance the Godskin Noble rolling attack you mention at around 8:52. Whenever the Noble is rolling, the Godskin Apostle does receive a command to stay passive and not attack throughout the duration of the roll, which you can see in action between 9:00 and 9:22. This order is glitchy however and if the Apostle is already attacking while the Noble goes for his roll, this prompt to initiate passive behavior will be overwritten by the attack queue and Apostle will keep acting aggressive as if nothing happened. - Control The last key factor to tie it all together. This aspect goes back to what I started adressing before : the player must be the only one at fault if they die. Once the player have learnt everything they need to understand a boss, it becomes fully controllable and can consistently be beaten without taking hits even for extended periods of time. By positioning yourself a certain way, you can juke Friede into sending an ice path in a certain direction while being free to attack Ariandel. You can keep distance to make sure Friede will never catch up and start using melee attacks, or run away to bait Ariandel's charges and fire breaths. You can identically exploit the tracking of the Demons toxic trails, and kite one Demon away from the other to never have their attacks overlap with each other. You can stay close to the Headless Ape in order to bait his Terror scream attack then run away, which will always cause the brown ape to follow you and perform a 5 hits combo you can massively punish with 4 charged R1s. This is brillant multi-boss design, as it constantly rewards you for mastering the bosses behavior and outplaying them with clever actions. Now let's see Elden Ring. Trying to bait Godskin Noble away from Apostle to fight him while using pillars as cover from Apostle's black fireballs is possible... up to a certain point in the fight where all pillars are destroyed and the fireballs will go over them to hit you across the arena. Trying to 1v1 the Apostle and his moveset of varying swipes that cover a large area around him is hardly doable before receiving a fireball or surprise thrust attack from the Noble. And then you have Gargoyles, who render any attempt at kiting them around completely obsolete due to their ability to gap close across extreme distances in the blink of an eye. Distance doesn't matter as they can use their poison breath from range or melee quarters equally. I had a Gargoyles fight where I purposedly baited the first Gargoyle to one side of the arena so the second would need more time to catch up, only for the second Gargoyle to gap close in two jumps and hit me in the face within 4 seconds of its health bar appearing. For context, running from one side of the arena to another as a player would take around 20 seconds at full speed. Thank you, Elden Ring. Very cool gank fights.

The godskin duo is one of the bosses that I absolutely don't feel shame to cheese it.

8:30 killing them both at the same time is the funniest shit in the game. It sits there for a good 20seconds before they respawn actual clown boss fight

I think FromSoft completely intended for players to use spirits to split enemy aggression, and simply didn't anticipate how difficult they would be to fight alone

The most annoying duo boss to me (aside from crucible knights) is this one random one in a perfumers grotto Its a flower and an omen killer Its not annoying to me because its hard, its annoying because the omen killer breathes a flame attack that coats the ground in front of it and you would think “oh cool the flower is weak to fire! Ill trick it into killing the flower” But no, it just ignores the flame damage, and its such a missed opportunity

"Elden Ring has dozens and dozens of bosses!" Me, fighting the same cat statue for the third time: "oh, cool."

the "but everything changed... when the second gargoyle attacked" with the faint opening to avatar the last airbender in the background was GOLD!

I hate how if you criticize one point about the game the fanbase dog piles you and say your bad

It's kinda annoying and frustrating when every boss is supposedly designed with spirit summons in mind but if you use any spirit that won't die in 2 Hits the boss is immensely trivialized, and if you don't use one it's incredibly annoying

Not being able to hit a Gargoyle with a critical hit because of uneven terrain. That hurt on a physucal level

The thing that annoys me the most about the foreskin duo is that if you manage to kill both of them before they can summon, they still get summoned back anyway even though neither of them are alive to be able to summon. You think the game would reward players for thinking outside the box. But no. The game breaks the established rules because fromsoft has a hard on for pissing their players off.

Arenas make a huge difference. Ornstein and smough’s pillars are incredibly important in making the fight work, and if they weren’t there (or could be destroyed) like basically every duo fight in elden ring it would just be annoying. Even simpler duo boss arenas have something you can do to separate the enemies, like the slopes in the bell gargoyle arena

You've probably heard of this already, but FromSoft has shown that they are listening to the community feedback and that is a wonderful thing, I don't remember which update it was, but a while back they somewhat remedied the issue of multi bosses by making one of the bosses more passive. Of course this doesn't fix the problem outright since these fights weren't designed with multiple bosses in mind in the first place, but it's reassuring to think that FromSoft is still the passionate developer we have come to know them to be.

my biggest gripe with the twin gargoyles in elden ring was the fact that the poison spit not only fills poison gauge but it also deal flat damage when you're in it. Don't have it hurt my health bar before the ailment bar is all the way full

What I hate about the bosses is that every single one of them has a AoE attack, range attack and reads your input to roll catch. Also, they have infinite stamina and FP

Smegma, forever my favorite boss of any game. Such an iconic character with a deep meaning to its name

I see a duo fight, I summon my mimic. No shame in it.

The problem isn't with the gank fights, the problem is that Fromsoft has changed the focus. With summoning being a key feature in the game and almost every boss allowing for summoning, if you don't summon, you're playing the game wrong. These fights weren't designed as gank fights, they were designed as all out brawls between you, your companions, and the bosses. But that's the problem, it now funnels you into a specific way of playing. This is the problem.

I hate when people automatically thinks that when you have a critique for the game you’re instantly frame as “not good” or just “get better” when in reality you can be good at the game but still have criticism, being good doesn’t give the game a criticism invulnerability, after almost 600 hours I can say the game has flaws and it needs some balance because some bosses are either to easy or unnecessarily hard.

Beautiful video. I did always feel highly frustrated in Elden Ring gank fights in a way where it was like "i never want to do this again" which I never felt with older games. I couldn't exactly put my finger on why that was, but this video beautifully explains it.

I think the watchdog duo fight in the tomb by the minor Erdtree in Caelid (the one by the giant pot) was a pretty good double boss fight, one usually stayed back and did fire attacks in a relatively passive way while the other came towards you in a *much* less passive way

"one boss with two hit boxes" or whatever you said, nailed it. I've never thought of it like that, but it's 100% accurate.

There were only two duo boss fights that I felt they were quite balanced. 1 - Perfumer Tricia + Leonine Misbigotten. Because the perfumer works as a support chapter giving lots of buffs to the Leonine. And the Leonine has a lot of attacks that you have time then change your focus on the perfumer to kill it easily. 2 - Beastman of Farum Azula duo. First of all because you can sneak and backstab one of them. One is a knife thrower and the other is a Fighter. The Knife thrower has lower HP and stance and works as a support character as well.

I think the problem also has a lot to do with the fact that (at least some of) Elden Ring’s bosses seem to be designed to be fought with summons and or spirit ashes. Which sucks for those that want to really challenge themselves.

Trick to avoid GSD fireball… bait the attack by putting something you either can’t use on your X button or something u can use really fast to still have enough time to avoid the incoming fireball. Edit: This works for multiple enemies and bosses. For example, Morgott’s golden dagger throw.

One of my favorite bosses in DarkSouls 3 is the Abyss Watchers. It is so unique due to how the watchers behave with one another: 1:The main Abyss Watcher rushes in, but will back away and be less aggressive once the second one comes in. 2: The secondary abyss watcher will rush you, and will be very aggressive. 3: The third abyss watcher is corrupted, and will attack the other two watchers. Once this happens the other two WILL focus on him, because it is their priority. It is such a memorable experience.

Not to mention the amount of damage every single hit is. In the O&S fight the ONLY time you had to fear getting one-shot at full health was Smough's slam attack. In Elden Ring, EVERY attack can nearly one-shot :D Or, they attack with such succession that it's basically a one shot regardless.

4:23 bro really said "Get down mister president!"

What's the armor your wearing in the elden ring part of the video?

"The Crucible Knight's moveset wasn't designed around having a Misbegotten Warrior in the same room." This statement alone summarizes the entire Multi-Boss fight experience in Elden Ring. Beautiful video.

I think this is because FromSoft wants to force you to use spirit summons and/or player summons. That's probably why the multi-boss design seems to disregard the soloing player.

I love Elden Ring so very much but I do wish it had better designed 1v2 boss fights. I hope in the DLC we get redemption with a multi boss fight where both bosses are designed specifically for that boss fight and their movesets compliment each other

Wanna know something I beat the foreskin duo but fatty summoned right when I lowered the health of the boss to zero but skinny didn’t disappear he stayed in the boss arena and kept trying to kill me it was so stupid

I wish more people knew it was okay to critique that which you love. I consider it being a better fan than unbounded lauding. I feel like they were trying to encourage the player to use new options, but with this being their first huge game, it's not entirely balanced. I feel guilty about Mimic Tear+10 outside of Malenia; it feels like I'm cheating, or using an exploit. I still think this is the best FromSoft game I've played behind Sekiro, but it's behind Sekiro: a tighter, more focused game in some ways, at least in the boss design.

i think those boss fights were design around the spirit ashes and summon mechanics.

Agreed with everything you said except at the End when you said elden ring wasn’t a masterpiece

"not by bashing your head in the wall until you did" as a strength build this is exactly what i do

Good critique. Yeah, I love Elden Ring, but From really fucked up with those duo fights. They weren’t so much challenging as they were cheap. You either struggle against the Godskin Duo, or trivialize it with Mimic Tear (Doppelgänger). I hope From will listen to the feedback and won’t make the same mistakes in an inevitable DLC.

There's a third way to deal with the rolling attack: run. But run to the side and slightly towards the noble, so that he just rolls in circles around you. Doesn't make it a good fight though.

I think the reused bosses like the Godskins and the Misbegottens are one of the biggest problems in the game. I would rather have less bosses than more of the same bosses

I personally didn't find Godskin Duo all that hard, but then again I do use spirit ashes and I summoned Bernahl lmao; which unfortunately feels like the way you're supposed to handle the fight. It's stuff like this why I think Sekiro is the best fromsoftware game. In Elden Ring it feels like the best way to deal with bosses is to circumvent their movesets entirely, either by distracting them with spirit ashes, spamming bloodhound step, or nuking them with comet azur. In Sekiro, there's no bullshit. You MUST engage with every move, and doing so is far more satisfying anyway because every deflect, mikiri, and head bop contributes to your eventual victory. It just feels way more fun and involving. If you try to play solo in Elden Ring, it feels like the boss is the only one having fun lmao.

Very accurate opinion. Most of the multi boss fights in Elden ring make me feel like fighting two Ornstein in an inappropriate arena at the same time, it's really unfair and chaotic.I hope FS can improve it in the DLC or in the next game.

I find Godskin duo fun and easy to fight, not just me right?

What a fantastic video. I think hands down that's the best critique of an aspect of Elden Ring I have ever watched/heard/read. Most of the critiques I heard always had some major flaw in it, like someone made a valid point but then banished it with mediocre arguments. Not here. Fantastic video structure, you support your point with amazing examples and the video is just a satisfying execution. It also shows how important the language is for you when making an essay. Well done.

It seems that's also why everyone uses magic, moonvail, or bleed besides them being OP. For many bosses in the game you have to take the cheap way out and have fast attacks with high dmg so you can have time to run away before you get ass blasted by 2 things attacking at the same time up close to you. If you use any great or collosal weapon in a duo fight ( like I tried to do) your animation takes so long that by the time you get a single hit on one of them the other one is right beside the one you're attacking already hitting you. You're essentially trading for dmg on one enemy without the health to do so.

I think Crystallians work now after their AI was patched, before all 3 were super aggressive, but after the patch the one that’s mainly attacking you will be aggressive while the other two will be more passive Spear one will be the most aggressive and be on top of you while the Staff will do heavily telegraphed range attacks and the Chakram one is usually really passive if you aren’t close to it. I think this particular gank fight works but the others straight up doesn’t. Godskin Duo being easily the worst offender.

I'm just loving that Virgil build. What armor are you rocking with that?

There's no such thing as unfair or hard boss, there's only not enough friends.

You've done a perfect job of vocalizing exactly why Elden Ring duo fights just feel off. The "One Boss, Two Models" concept clicked very quickly, while Elden Ring does not share the practice. After 1.05 things are better, but not by a whole lot, if you ask me. The fights went from 1v2s to a 1v1 where another guy (or guys) is kinda hanging out in the background waiting for his turn to play the game. From definitely dropped the ball on the bosses in this game.

I honestly think that the godskin duo was a major missed opportunity on From’s part. The duo was there in the first place to take back the rune of death from maliketh. Was thinking up a concept where when you kill both of them just once then they appear back weakened, then like the godskin noble would kill his own partner in a hurry to transform himself into a giant boss. That would have been so cool

Excellently made video, really liked the deep analysis on Friede and O&S. But something caught my eye and I couldn't not mention it- why in the Marika hell do you have +2 flasks at Godskin Duo?????

I feel like in a way they bit themselves in the butt a bit with the size of the map/Open world size. they felt the need to make it big and felt they needed to fill it with bosses and because they made so many boss points they needed to fill them and kinda just threw in 2 bosses together sometimes and it didnt quite work out. Also maybe they overcorrected a bit for people being able to summon spirits so they simply expect you to summon help.

Hey man, great points. The devs are actually actively trying to fix this issue, illusionary wall made a video on it. They're making some changes duo bosses so that the boss taking the back seat is more docile.

9:42 THIS 👏 RIGHT👏 HERE 👏 I am so sick of hearing easy cheese tactics being used to excuse bad boss design. The ability to poison micolash from the balcony did not make his boss fight any better The ability to throw fire bombs at the Bed of Chaos weak points did make it any less GARBAGE And using items sleep arrows or ash summons does not make any of these fights good either.

There are two multi-bosses that I enjoyed thoroughly, and it's from a Mod called Daughters of Ash; the first is Gravelord Nito coupled with Ciaran, now Nito is usually a freaking easy boss, even with his skeletons, but even without the latters, Ciaran proves to be a pain because she can Toxic you and she's fast, while Nito is always closing in on you and could just as much stab you in the back. However, I figured out that I could focus all of my attacks on Ciaran, as they share the same health bar anyway, and I just needed to get to the opposite side of the circular arena from where Nito is, because then I keep my distance from him, and the only thing he was able to do was his magic sword attacks that rise from the ground, but he always has a sound cue as to when he does it, so while I fought Ciaran, I always was conscious of Nito's screams, then rolled away from his magic attack. It felt awesome to have relied heavily on sound and to have pulled it off, because you usually have to "see" the attack patterns to avoid them, but no, I managed to use my ears to dodge, that made me feel like a badass. Then there are the Red Phantoms Ornstein & Smough; both are actually in their sort of "Super" forms, so Ornstein is giant, so it would appear the fight is very one-sided, but really it's not, because Super Ornstein would always stay in one place, throwing his slow but heat-tracking Lightning Spears, and they're easily blocked by even the broken pillars, so I just needed to keep these pillars between me and Ornstein as I fight Super Smough, whom proves to be just as much of a pain for sure since he summons toxins all the time, but eventually he just disappears like a ghost, during which Ornstein takes on the offensive, and Smough just so happen to rematerialize every now and then until he decides to stay in the arena for another stretch. Again, the fight may've given the first impressions that the odds were against me, but as I just needed to pay attention to their attack patterns, it was one of the easier Multi-bosses I've ever faced, which again made me feel kind of like a badass, because again it rewarded my attention to details. These bosses were so much fun to me, that they still are on my mind 4 years later.

What about those two crystal people? I don't remember fighting them elsewhere. It was the only good multi-boss fight I've had since they were designed to work together.

What was an awesome discovery for me for the ornstein and smough fight (after trying forever to get the super ornstein kill for his ring) was that you can actually use smough to block ornstein from attacking you; his spear won’t be able to reach the player so your focus shifts to dodging smough’s heavily telegraphed attacks while making sure he’s between you and ornstein. I absolutely love this boss battle, it’s practically a game of chess in its design

these videos go kinda hard bro keep at it

What’s the song in the beginning?

I liked the gargoyles. I think people are missing there's a sound cue whenever the "passive" one is about to throw poison, you don't need to have it on screen, just start running whenever you hear that. It does extend towards their back a bit but you can circle around them at a certain distance and it won't hit you, most of the range goes forward. Very easy to never get hit by it Godskin duo is shit and I endded up using summons

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! I'm honestly disappointed by the Godskin Duo. I mean, we see them so often throughout the game. But you know what would've been cool? Combo Moves. Apostle jumps on the Noble, then suddenly gets launched by the poomph towards you. Apostle creates a giant wall of black flame for half the arena, and then suddenly the Noble comes rolling out of it towards you. But not only are there no combo moves, but they are quite literally just separate enemies smacked together. I noticed that after playing Sekiro that there's a similar style with a duo boss near the end of the game. It's not fun, it's just artificial difficulty. As far as I can remember, I think that the only boss fights where Duos/Trios were accounted for were the Crystallians... and even then, they don't work super well together. It's just a constant onslaught of attacks with no consideration for one another. Feel free to ignore, just an idea for a Duo Fight. Demi-Human Queen + Troll. Obtusely shaped triangle room with various pillars. The Demi-Human Queen can jump from pillar to pillar, attacking with magic while the Troll tries to slam you. However, the Troll's Attacks can destroy these pillars, causing her to fall and allowing you to deal quite a bit of damage. It would be an early game Duo Fight that would probably be quite fun.

I'd love to see a full review of Elden Ring from you. While I thoroughly enjoyed it I got some problems with it too, and it would be nice to get your perspective on the game in a format that's (hopefully) not 12 hours long.

Whenever they fucked up the balance, I would just pull out my laser beam.

In the godskin duo fight after I completely depleted their joined health bar, the skinny one spawned in 4 more times but with only half his health, it was wacky

What annoys me most is the attitude of the community. I always have to preface by saying I liked Manus and other hard bosses I’ve killed, but even then, I get the “gir gud” type responses… about bosses I’ve already soloed. I’m also mad about Malenia, because without her obligatory force-you-to-be-overly-cautious-on-the-off-chance-they-cast-it-and-you’re-within-the-same-zip-code attack, she would be one of my favorite bosses in the entire series

Elden Ring is my first Souls game, and I also put in a ton of hours. Its a great game, but after going back and playing Dark Souls (still pretty early into it) I can see a lot of what people in the Souls community are griping about. Your video is spot on in describing the problems with the Duo bosses not being synergistic at all, and the quality definitely suffers. It seems like in ER they decided to replace all of that strategy with the ability for the player to summon spirit ashes to distract, or in some cases solo (Mimic Tear w/ strong build, Tiche, etc) bosses. It just seems like a lazy way to solve a problem, as the player has to choose between making fights borderline trivial by summoning or borderline impossible by going it alone. Its not a "git gud" thing, its bad design thing IMHO. And that's not even touching the glitch abusing that people are doing to make PvP untenable. I really hope that the DLC fixes a lot of these issues, otherwise I think that the replay value of ER will suffer greatly. Also, this video has made me more terrified and excited of my eventual Smough/Ornstein encounter in DS1. Great video

Pretty certain the second valiant gargoyle’s poison attack also follows you at a great speed forcing you just run away whereas the firsts just stays put or moves very slowly

I would say that there are types of duo/ ganks, single health bar, delayed second/* boss( with or without separate health bar), and combined ( separate health bar at the start). It's interesting that they had perfect examples of each one(A&F, BG and O&s), and yet they couldn't make one of the types work.

I feel like the Godskin Duo was originally designed to be a "real" duo boss fight where they compliment each other. Kind of like the one with the snail. You first fight them individually and then in the last phase, you have to use what you learned about them when fighting individually in a fight against both at once. Would explain this really strange health bar imo. But when the game grew more and more in scope, they needed bosses and therefore redesigned them both to be usable encounters in a 1v1 fight. But didn't really change much about the duo fight except that you fight them both directly (because you can fight them individually in the world).

Even in DS2 most of the gank bosses were fair. Ruin Sentinels? You can defeat one before the other 2 aggro, and then make one of them loose almost all health. Skeleton Lords? Yes, there are many, but small damage and columns for getting covered And IMO the best gank boss in the series is the Demon Prince. It's just so good and brutal

I play by the principle of if the boss doesn’t fight me fare I won’t if given the chance The gargoyles in elden ring was absolutely done with v1.0 mimic tear

14:17 "it's no masterpiece" FINALLY someone says this, thank you.

Very few types of people i would look and listen about their reviews and analysis: 1. Newcomers 2. Veterans that understand their beloved games down to a T 3. That one guy in the reddit/RU-vid comment section that perfectly sums everything up (A.K.A Jordien) You're the 2. Loved the video :)

"With the immense scale of Elden Ring, it's absolutely necessary" aaand there's the root of the problem in my opinion. Elden Ring is just too big. Much like DS2, they went for quantity over quality and it shows.

Ya unfortunately the design philosophy for multi-boss fights in elden ring is pretty much "they'll have a summon so theres no need to balance this as a 2 on 1 fight" which is too bad because more often than not using a spirit summon tends to then swing the advantage in the completely opposite direction and now the fight is trivialized and im not even talking about the really broken summons. Theres no nice comfy middle ground :( Summonable npcs are by no means a new feature for souls games but i guess before they had it so they could decide which npcs are available for any given fight but now you have a catalogue of different summons and one of them is bound to trivialize the fight. With all the previous souls games i enjoyed doing solo boss fights as a benchmark for my skill progression within the game. Elden Ring is the first game where ive really stopped caring about that and if the boss is being a PoS then im summoning backup. Also miss having unique boss tracks there might be just as many in elden ring but it certainly doesnt feel that way because of how many times they are reused.

guys i wanna remind you that input reading is fine if done CORRECTLY and USED correctly (note: no this shit will almost never work on 2+v1 situations) taking genichiro's 1st fight as an example here, he tries to use his bow to interrupt your heal and punish you, but he gives enough of a window to dodge as long as you time it, making his input reading a fun little challenge addon for the game to see if you're panicking from low health or still focused and calm enough to get out of the way with the proper maneuver now to see a few problems with the input reading of the godskin duo this shit does not work at all because: 1. they cast at the speed of light 2. they both fucking do it, WHY. 😁 with the fact that this punishment is buffed tenfold in tandem with the already stressful walmart copy paste of the smough and ornstein fight that is the duo, anyone would feel shit and automatically hover toward the decision of not healing for less risk, which is not good as a mechanic if you are actively pushing your player away from engaging in what should supposedly be a fun extra quirk to the boss, you are doing something wrong

A full on critique would be awesome. J9 already critiqued the broken ass state of PvP in this game, so maybe PvE could be the focus? idk, you do what you want

I think that the duo bosses were also designed with summons in mind. Because a passive boss can be murdered by your summon while you fight the aggressive one.

My biggest problem with the bosses is the input reading, but that was also nostly just an issue i had on my first playthrough. I just had to learn when was actually a safe time to heal. I also used to really despise the nobel's roll attack (i still kind of do) since it seemingly goes until he successfully hits you, but honestly its not that hard of an attack to dodge

God Damm this is such a banger Only 100 views?? Definetly deserves more, the duo gargoyles gave me a headache and probably the worst boss in the game

This video is phenomenal, it explains the difference in boss design from older titles to Elden Ring so well. I have a devil's advocate position I'm curious about your take on, if you see it. I think Elden Ring bosses are successfully designed to make more interactive, aggressive fights and to complement the player's access to options like spirit summoning, spellcasting and overpowered ashes of war. I'll start with the second point. Bosses in Elden Ring definitely have... different design than previous FromSoft titles, and not just the gank bosses. One-shot moves, moves that can't be dodge rolled or blocked, and hyperspeed are all much more common now. However, I also feel like the power level of the player character has gone up a lot. We're faster, our stamina regenerates more quickly, we have more buffs, we have more status effects, spells are more varied and powerful, incantations are a LOT more varied and powerful, and there are tons of absolutely ludicrous weapons and ashes of war. This isn't Dark Souls where I feel less powerful than even the rats and dogs. You can still easily die to a pack of dogs in Elden Ring, but I can also aerially carpet bomb the entire pack with dragon breath from outside their aggro range. Imagine the infamous entrance to Undead Settlement in DS3, but you have Hama's Cannon. We also have brand new tools in our tool belt: guard counters, jump dodges, jump attacks, stance-break(not entirely new I know) and spirit summons. It's those last two things that I think From chose to incorporate into their design practices the most. Stance-break obviously encourages aggressive play. It actually can encourage very risky play, since you get the most reward from charge attacks, jump attacks and guard counters. Bosses don't have very long windows for punishment after their attacks in this game and are generally more aggressive. They make you work for your stance-breaks, getting in every little hit you can and experimenting with things like getting a jump attack or charge attack instead of something safer. Spirit summons role in the fights is also pretty obvious. We have tons of setpiece battles scattered around the map that you can take on with your loyal companion(s), and gank fights are a blast when you and your summon are locking down different opponents and you're trying kill your mark before your summon loses their battle of attrition. Then suddenly it's a gank fight for the boss and it feels awesome. They also help with the increased aggression and input-reading heal punishes, giving you opportunities to buff and heal that were there naturally in past boss fights. I mostly played without summons my first playthough, but I invited Tiche to setpiece battles and gank fights(except the gargoyles) and I felt like I was hitting a difficulty level sweet spot that was perfect for me(except the gargoyles). Crucially, it's still possible to play the game without these tools. I mean, people have done it even without dodge rolls. But is it still fun to be a purist, or is it just harder? I think gank bosses suffered the worst, for the reasons you've listed in your video. I'm pretty sure that's why they ended up nerfing them into the ground so it's more like successive back-to-back duels than a gank. The gargoyles are the saddest example by far, getting the fight wrong almost as badly as DS2 did, maybe even worse. They are my least favorite enemy and it's not even close. But other bosses have changed as well. Traditionally, the trial and error process we love in boss fights has been about learning the boss's moveset and then reacting appropriately. You learn the timing on a delayed attack and then dodge it correctly, you learn there's an unreactable followup after a particular move and you dodge preemptively, etc. It's a game where knowledge is the deciding factor in overcoming an obstacle and the moment-to-moment decisions are mainly just correctly identifying visual and auditory tells. Elden Ring mixes it up though; there are boss moves that you don't just add to your knowledge library as things to react to, but which you keep in mind more actively because the boss _might_ use them. Margit sometimes throwing a retreat dagger after a combo is a prime example, and so are Waterfowl Dance and Godskin heal-punish fireballs. These tend to be the things I see people complain about the most in the new boss design, after gank bosses. Personally though, I was overjoyed when I realized that's what was happening. I now had to think about not just what the "correct" answer is to any particular stimulus, but what the "best" answer could be. A couple examples: for Godskin fights, I can't just run away and heal, I have to decide whether it's necessary to bait out a fireball first. I also learned more opportunities for healing without running away. For Malenia, the learning process included experimenting with which of my attacks were safe in different scenarios; if I use my tools correctly I can be really aggressive, but if I over-commit then I could get punished. I think this alone makes fights more strategic and interactive. When paired with the stance-break system you have a really fun element of risk and reward in your fights that used to go away as you became familiar with the fight. Margit _might_ juke me with a dagger after this combo, but it won't kill me if he does and I know he's _so_ close to a stance-break. Those kind of moments make for very exciting fights, even long after you know his moveset like the back of your hand. I remember people complaining about more bosses having roll-catching attacks in DS3. They're even more prevalent in Elden Ring now, but I haven't seen very many complaints. They add another step to your learning, sure. You can't just dodge the first part of the attack on reaction, you have to dodge a certain direction or position yourself ahead of time so you have an escape route. But if Dark Souls was a game where the only skill you need to win is dodging with the correct timing, it would be a very boring game. It's the strategic parts that keep the game interesting. Questions of giving up damage for stamina management or better positioning add nuance to the combat. Once people got used to it, I think people realized those roll-catching attacks were a good addition. I see the new changes much the same way. I don't think they gave bosses more powerful movesets just to balance around spirit summons and other "easy mode" options, I think they did it to create more interesting challenges for the purists too. It's different from the direction of the previous games, but I don't think it's worse. The easy mode is easier, the hard mode is harder, and both ways of playing are more fun and full of spectacle than ever before. I can get behind that. I know that challenge runners probably benefit the least from this. No-hit players don't benefit at all from risk/reward decisions and spectacle, they need sound, repeatable strategies. I understand the frustration, and I agree that Elden Stars and Waterfowl really aren't justifiable. However, for me the appeal of challenge runs has always been the learning process, putting together an otherwise uncommon strategy that will get me through an obstacle even under strict limitations. I don't expect challenge runs to inherently be the most fun way to play the game, I expect them to force me to learn again, which is fun on its own. The fights themselves might be drastically slower than normal, but that's okay. I don't think Elden Ring deviates from that formula at all: you absolutely can play the game with strict limitations, but you'll probably have to play differently than normal. I think that's the point, but I know there are people who disagree. I would absolutely watch a full-length critique of Elden Ring from you, no matter how long it is. Especially if it's long. Cheers!

I think the duo fights are like that cause they are balanced around you having a summon (whether it be one on the ground or summoned by the played) to take the agro of one of them and to fight the other.

is sister friede a boss that was added later? I don't think I have fought her before.

Probably because duo bosses in Elden Ring just consist of two seperate enemies that weren't designed to be used exclusively in a gank fight. It's just two normal enemies... Not surprised it doesn't work very well. O and S were designed with the gank mind, that's why it's so perfect.

I think they nailed the normal multi boss fight with O&S and they took it a step further with Twin Princes and made probably the best non traditional double boss in the series Edit: coming back after 3 playthroughs of Elden Ring and damn this might be a hot take but most of the bosses even the single ones were kinda disappointing

The crystallians are the only ones that actually have any of the features that allow them to work together, but for some of them that's thrown out the window, and for others they just stand there and do nothing.

Being overly ambitious is really the best shortcoming we could have hoped for Elden Ring. The Godskin Duo isn't some pair of comrades who've fought long and tirelessly alongside one another for many years, refining their abilities to better work in tandem with their partner- they're just two very powerful enemies in their own right doing everything in their own power to kill you. I can certainly recognize that the careful forethought and planning which was present in battles like Ornstein and Smough is absent in the multi-boss battles of Elden Ring, but at the same time, I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. The game isn't balanced well, and for good reason: how do you balance a game like this? Where the player can traverse to any region of the map they wish and collect any number of powerful weapons, abilities, summons, etc. all while levelling to a degree which can't be estimated? How do you make the game live up to the acclaim of the Soulsborne difficulty, when you can collect Moonveil from a random cave troll, a mimic tear summon, and anything else the player could ask for? I don't think it's unreasonable to wager that if the developers had stuck to their roots with the passive secondary boss mechanics, these duo battles would be just as forgettable as fighting these repeated enemies by themselves, since the prospect of annihilating the aggressive boss with Rivers of Blood while the passive boss just watches is all too likely. There's no such thing as a perfect anything, and Elden Ring is certainly not a perfect game. But I'll be damned if it's not FromSoftware's masterwork. They've taken elements from all of their games and combined them into this new, unique experience that stands apart from its predecessors. As a souls veteran, not an elitist, my humble indie game dev opinion is that this is the definitive Soulsborne experience. There's still hope for a DLC which could expand on missed opportunity for multi-bosses, but I don't like leaving faults up to the potential promise of future updates. This was a great video, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the matter of this being a masterpiece. I understand some folks are eager to throw the title of masterpiece out to a shiny new game, but this is in all sense of the word.

I beat the godskin duo today and you really put into words what I felt in gameplay.

can someone enlighten me what's the track that plays at 12:30 till the outro?

The Crucible Knight due fight was amazing, one of them is always defensive as you fight the other, and the gatekeeper boss to Radhan, the red wolf with Crucible knight, the Knight spawned each time just as im about to kill the wolf and in the fight he doesn't attack with the wolf, in the Godskin due fight, the fat one is always attacking whilst the skinny one is casting fire balls, the only bosses that attacked together were the Crystal tall bosses, and uhhh FUCK ELDEN BEAST

I managed to force my way through those fights with summons and unreasonably tanky builds without much issue but the problem stands, you can't just throw enemies that were DESIGNED to be fought alone together and say that's JuSt A dUo bOsS like that makes a lick of sense, not even touching on the overall stupid balaning in the game like Malenia breaking most of the game's rules and get guaranteed punishes ON THE PLAYER or shit like Astael waves of darkness which is guaranteed damage since you quite literally cannot dodge it, the game is still good and has many more good points than bad but holy fuck there's so much dumb stuff that i cannot belive they actually let it into the game.

I would have preferred a third of the bosses that are in the game currently than have so many awful duo bosses. From my calculations, I count 20 duo bosses, going off the definition that they must have two health bars. Including bosses with a shared health bar, like Godskin Duo and that one Erdtree Avatar, we have 22 bosses. If we're including bosses with other enemies added into the fight, even when it's their whole point like Tibia Mariner and Spirit-Calling Snail, we have about 37 "duo" bosses in the game. This isn't even getting into all the re-used bosses with no worthwhile changes, but I digress. Crucible Knights are an actual joke, and should only ever be fought 1v1 because of their superarmour, defence and fast pace. The only enjoyment you could get out of it is by flexing your parrying skill, something I as a Strength user am too illiterate to comprehend. Leonine was cool at first and I wouldn't mind fighting him two more times for the legendary armaments if 1) they made it like Draconic Tree Sentinel where they're similar but have new moves up their sleeves thanks to their unique swords, and 2) if they didn't put them next to random enemies that don't compliment them in any form whatsoever. Mini-bosses becoming enemies? That's the Soulsborne way. Regular enemies becoming mini-bosses? Oh no. Abductor Virgins? Cool on their own, together they hurtin'. Fell Twins? The void looks nice, but it's not a win. Kindred Pests? Put those foolish ambitions to rest. Nox Priests? No, please. Thank God most of the twin bosses like the Burial Watchdog's and Crystalarian's have little health so you can just trade damage instead of having to put up with them, but that still doesn't mean they're good. In fact, it just makes them even more boring. Valiant Gargoyles was the closest they got to something good and when I first fought them I was excited, but as shown by the overworld encounters they clearly weren't intended to be fought at the same time. The big arena is nice but the dreadful poison attack throws everything we've learnt from Friede and Demon Princes out the window. The Apostle and Noble fights are some of my favourite non-Remembrance bosses in the game because of how freaky and nimble they are and how they encourage both aggression and zoning. Too bad Godskin Duo is one of the worst fights in the series. When they appeared for the first time together my heart sank and after one attempt I knew I wouldn't be able to stand it. The only time in my entire 120-hour playthrough where I used spirit summons since I had forsaken them after testing them on Margit. Horrible boss. In summation: This ain't it chief.

I think the reason why Elden ring decided that duo choreography was not needed is because they had to account for a dozen more play styles and things the player can exploit. Your tools are literally countless. The strongest being summons, which depending on the boss fight you can have more than one. Like Godskin duo. Fromsoft decided we have grown past the need for “baby gloves”. They decided that if the player is able to fight any boss at essentially any level with anything they want. Their deligence went into the world. And the solo bosses.

7:59 I thinking, what is the four skin duo? Is he talking about a different game with the similarities with the godskin duo? I go to google and as I am typing it out it hits me T-T

I kind of agree but for the most part these design philosophies you mentioned earlier still exist in Gargoyle's / Godskin Duo (just very toned down). The Godskin duo has a complementary moveset because (like Smough) the fat noble always will reach you first unless the skinny one uses the very telegraphed gap closer. They also aren't design to intentionally use melee attacks through eachother so by strafing around them you'll basically be able to ignore the other. Not to mention they are both parriable which makes the fight a joke once you learn the parry timing. The Gargoyle's lack care in that design I think, but generally same philosophy applies. Greatsword will always be able to jump on you before Twinblade, the poison is a threat that ends your turn from afar. They aren't really intended to be passive because of how huge they are and how huge the arena is allowing for you to generally space them out the whole time. It's just really annoying to fish for a turn then have it ended by RNG poison. I think Elden Ring is generally going to be harder because of the sheer amount of options the game has now with jumping attacks, and unique animation AoW/Spells that allow the player to finesse through alot of the attacks. This is probably their way of trying to get people to learn to use these tools instead of rely on the old dark souls style combat.

The only elden ring duo boss that I felt worked and should've be implemented more was perfumer Tricia and the misbegotten warrior. Worked on a lore level and it was smart to have a aggressive boss bothering you while having to manage Tricia buffing him and throwing fire. That was a fun fight.

The main problem is, most of the bosses are made with one playstyle in mind. A fast, agile, dodge-rolling character with fast attacks. Try fighting those bosses as a full armored knight tank with a big weapon. It's not possible, unless you get a SPECIFIC piece of gear, with a SPECIFIC shield, and a SPECIFIC weapon like a spear. "Oh the option is there" is not an excuse. Why do I have all these choices if one choice is blatantly the best way to play and any other choice is just handicapping yourself? Cause I want a challenge? No I wanna have fun. The "Best choices" aren't fun.

I felt the Godskins to be more similar to the Four Kings, rather than O and S, in essence, a dps race where you’re rewarded when dealing damage (even after they’ve died, since Fromsoft hasn’t fixed this bug in a decade lol) fast, they also do actions that royally screw them over, such as destroying pillars, which makes it the perfect place to stay and cast something overpowered like ancient dragon lightning strike while the round one is performing the roll attack.

I actually didn't have too much trouble with the Godskin Duo, but I understand why a lot of people do. They are actually, quite literally unfair. Heal? Both of them throw a fireball that drains your health. You killed one? Nah it comes back. You got both of them to half health? Now they both do more damage and one has an attack that lasts a whole minute that you cannot dodge. It is a pretty ridiculous fight, and that's saying something when O&S is my favorite Souls boss.

A video on the difficulty spike in the late game (especially the haligtree) would be cool