In this #eldenring / #fromsoftware analysis video, I give my thoughts on the qualities that make for good and bad magic-casting bosses. Enjoy! #gaming #gaminganalysis #darksouls3
This is a good take on Rennala , and i do Agree. 👍 A well designed magic boss must have a combination of spells & melee to keep the encounter more interactive ( less monotonous) and therefore give the player a sense of accomplishment.
They technically already made plenty of great “mage” bosses-in Armored Core 6. If you think about it, bosses like Balteus, Ibis, Ayre, etc. are pretty much mages with mech skins. They’re primarily ranged, can use energy blades, shoot lasers, can levitate, and use a variety of other cool projectiles, and they’re well balanced and exhilirating.
Hey, that's what I was going to say! That's why I was low-key hopeful for that fake leak "Spellbound". As the video points out these games have never been designed around ranged attacks hence why its "easy mode". Not to say that enemies have no recourse. Some enemies have good gap closers, some enemies can have their own ranged attacks, and some will "animation read" and dodge your projectiles. Magic builds have generally been disparate from the rest. In a hypothetical Spellbound game ranged and melee attacks wouldn't have to be differentiated. And range attacks could be integrated into the combat system. Look at the remnant games for example.
I actually really like Renalla P1 for the atmosphere and music. I'm fine with keeping it as is. P2 on the other hand could have been sooo much better. Design her like an AC6 boss, give her more spell variety, more agility so we aren't constantly running back in towards a stationary object, and take away the summons. Only issue with this is Souls combat only has 2 dimensions, not 3 like in AC6, the jump makes some variety but not really. Give us 3D Souls Miyazaki. Or you could design her the other direction and build the fight around the summons, but instead of the summons being 1:1 copies of enemies, make it more like Malenia's clones attack. Maybe she summons Agheel for 3 seconds to do 1 breath attack, then summon BHK for a quick combo. All this while Renalla is still right near the player so we can still punish while interacting with the summons, but also so Renalla can still cast spells with obvious windups, akin to Darklurker. But instead the summons end up just being you dodge once then sprint directly at Renalla and hope they don't chase you. Honestly my biggest issue with this fight is how immobile she is, like give her a Carian Slicer or Blade or something to get her to engage the player. Also her being staggerable but dodging away is just so awkward, and ruins any sort of flow to the fight. Red Wolf is so underrated its not funny.
To add- yes it is boring. And too easy. And doesn’t have enough health. And is too easy to find the copy. But at least it is hittable at any time, and there’s positional strategy with the cover. I owe most of this enjoyment to Feeble King’s DS1 SL1 run, tho
Not so sure I agree that Red Wolf is a good boss but balancing between ranged and melee to help mitigate the problems with Rennala is a decent take. I think I would have preferred if Moongrum (the Carian Knight) was a non-NPC boss protecting Rennala, who can no longer bring herself to fight. "Man in armour" fights sometimes get shit for lacking creativity but they are much easier to understand the attack patterns of (compared to a wolf) and, in this case, incredibly lore friendly.
I think they could have done something about the scaling. I feel like whenever I go to Academy right after Godrick fight and a bunch of dungeons here and there she is a bit too much to handle and if I level a bit too much she becomes incredbily easy. A lot of people complain about pacing issues in souls game but it becomes even worse in ER due to open world design and the freedom as well the possibility of getting lost and going to a totally random area only to come back and find that you are way over levelled now for something you missed earlier. As for Renalla I like her first phase but for the second phase she doesn't have enough get away tools if you are on the continuous offense. And her fight is also RNG heavy. Sometimes she would get a chance to get to second phase but other times she would just be reduced to zero hp. As for red wolf I had and still have a hard time reacting to his melee and charge attacks. I can still manage him because I don't do no hit or RL1 runs but for casuals like me his moves are a mixed bag for me. I would say he is an okay boss better than Renalla but except for the Lore implications he doesn't stick out for me.
Magic bosses always give me trouble on my first playthroughs. I died to crystal sage more times than I did Gael and Pontiff combined. Rennala killed me more times than Radahn, Morgot, Fire Giant, Godskin Duo, and Mohg, Lord of Blood. I don't have anything to say about dark souls 1 and 2. Dark souls 1 was incredibly easy for me, and dark souls 2 is dark souls 2. On my second playthroughs, every boss I've listed (except Godskin Duo. I've never struggled with Godskin Duo) gave me a lot of trouble, while the magic bosses go down without much trouble. Red Wolf of Radagon is one of the bosses that gave me trouble on my second playthrough. In conclusion, Red Wolf of Radagon is a great magic fight. Have a wonderful day.
Domo3000 would like to show you a bunch of cherry picked examples as to why DS2 is better than Elden Ring lol. Seriously, though, I also have issues with caster bosses the first time although to a lesser degree than you speak of. I wonder if it's the STR/DEX build or just my own poor choices.
While I do agree that FROMs' 'Mage" are typically pretty poor. Rennala is EASILY my favourite boss in the whole game. It's probably because she is close to what I personally want from a mage Boss (though I'll admit I'm not exactly typical in the bosses I like sometimes). I would also consider the red wolf more of a 'spell-sword' which isn't really my thing when it comes to mages.
Have to go with the opinion of fellow Red Wolf hater here that its fight is generally awful imo, especially the lesser Red Wolf that doesn't have the magic sword attack. Constantly spamming frame trap projectile that requires you to dodge in a specific way that does not even allow a window for a punishment afterward. And most importantly, constantly disengage far away from the player at the speed that is impossible for the player to catch up to him. The only redeemable quality of Red Wolf is its 3 hit sword combos are quite satisfying to dodge, but the lesser one doesn't even have it to begin with. I don't know if you have gotten to Loretta or not but imo, she is an example of a good caster boss. She will spam projectiles if you stay afar but they have poor tracking so sprinting is often enough to evade it while also letting you close the distance. When up close, she will engage you in melee combat with quite an enjoyable moveset that can be evaded by having good positioning. She will occasionally disengage from you but she does it slow enough that you can catch up to her by sprinting. Even her most annoying attack, the homing magic swords, has slow enough velocity so you can react to them without feeling too overwhelmed. In short, you can only engage with Red Wolf when it brings the fight to you, meanwhile for Loretta, you can bring the fight to her
Loretta is a great boss for sure, but idk I don’t find this to describe my experience with the red wolf. This video includes a full no damage run against the red wolf and I never felt frame trapped and was able to punish attacks about as frequently as most bosses.
Rennala (phase 2) is exactly what I expect from a pure spell caster boss. Constant casting and has some for of minion/familiar/summon to keep you off them. Whether her fight was executed well or not is a matter of opinion. I see the points you are trying to make with red wolf, but red wolf is not a 100% consistent fight. The RNG in his attack patterns can really ruin the fight if you are unlucky. I personally think Loretta would have been a better example. Though neither her or red wolf are pure spell casters, so they aren't 100% comparable to Rennala.
@@jermergerg i think she's fine, her whole thing is to encourage/teach the player to be aggressive and the second phase isn't that bad because you can just ignore the summons and run straight to her
@@jermergerg My apologies, I am not the best at articulating thoughts into text. The first part was just what I would expect from a pure caster boss fight, something I consider Rennala to be. I am however, neutral on whether or not her fight properly executes what it is expected it to be. I personally don't have any real issue with the fight but I also don't think it's amazing either. Basically the fight is what I expect it to be, and I can understand why people could consider it good or bad. The second half was just what I think of red wolf, it's not a consistent fight. Or I could say it's more closer to being consistently inconsistent. I had runs where I decimated it and others where it was nothing but a pain. I personally think Loretta would have been a better fight to use over red wolf. A number of pros you had for red wolf also apply to Loretta, only I find her to be a more consistent fight. My final thought there was that I don't personally consider Rennala's fight to be all that comparable to red wolfs (or Loretta's) since they aren't pure caster bosses.
Yeah I know the second phase does that as I said in the video, but there’s a difference between being aggressive and just hitting something over and over again Plenty of bosses teach aggression without being that one-note and artless IMO
I don’t think red wolf is better than Loretta, he’s just literally right before rennala. And yeah they’re not comparable but a point I made in the video is that in my opinion bosses that use literally only magic and zero melee are probably never going to be as dynamic as bosses that mix them.
I think the Red Wolf of Radagon is one of the most god awful cancerous fights in the game. It is just inexcusably terrible. Particularly some of his attacks than can frame trap you which is straight up inexcusable. I hate everything about this boss. Bar for bar I would take Renalla over Red Wolf any day. I've beaten both bosses melee only RL1 multiple times. Renalla can be quite RNG and it's extremely annoying if you're going for hitless. The same applies to Red Wolf though... The thing is that at least Renalla is somewhat good on a casual run. I quite enjoy the P1 due to the atmosphere. I agree that mechanically its not great but it's a puzzle boss... It doesn't need to be. Even though I'm a big fan of the highly mechanically complex fights like Morgott and Maliketh I have to acknowledge that every fight can't be that... There needs to be variety. It gave me a little taste of Demons Souls again and I appreciated that as a long time fan. P2 is probably the best caster fight Fromsoft has ever done although that isn't saying much...🙄 One major complain I have is that when she summons the game will automatically break your lock on even if she's fully in frame and will not let you lock onto her again. Why? This is extremely disorienting... Also, sometimes she will just bug out and not summon at all. This can make the fight incredibly RNG. Overall She's not great I agree. She's like high C low B tier and the aesthetics are doing a lot of heavy lifting there. At the end of the day though at least she had that. Red Wolf is just discount Sif made 10x more obnoxious and annoying. I just disagree that there's any redeeming qualities about it or that it should be the example of anything.
@@jermergerg There can be situations where he can cast phalanx and then go into the bite combo where you will be frame trapped. Or maybe it's just a skill issue and there's a way to avoid it that I don't know about...🤷♂️ I just hate that boss lol I left a like on the video because I line your content. Sorry if that was overly negative, the video is still good.
Rather than Sif, I think Sanctuary Guardian is the real template for Red Wolf. The quick bites, the ranged lightning, the hanging in the air. And I agree that Red Wolf sucks lol
@@carlschrappen9712 Well it makes it inconsistent, and consistency is what I value most in a flight personally, so yes. Like I said though it could very well just be a skill issue...
