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Bosses have been ranked by the first encounter in a new game or Chalice dungeon so there will be no Defiled Watchdog of the Old Lords or New Game+ Laurence, the First Vicar. Ability to cheese any boss has also been considered which means we have to say sorry but goodbye to the likes of Slave Knight Gael and Old King Allant who become trivial in such circumstances. While bosses such as the Bed of Chaos and the Ancient Dragon have been disqualified for being poorly designed, meaning they're downright unfair and hard for the wrong reasons. Since we're talking about raw difficulty through skill and strategy here, not getting the best of RNG. So with all of that into account, let's go.
#10 Gehrman, the First Hunter
(Bloodborne)
Kicking off my list is my personal favourite boss across the five games, the second of three final bosses, which sounds weird out of context but trust me if you haven't played the game. His difficulty in comparison to the other two though certainly makes him seem like the real final boss, if that makes sense.
With big reaching, attacks that only get faster the further into the fight you get, as well as not being too bad at stunning you back with his pistol, Gehrman is a worth adversary. Once you've learned his move set he does become easier but with that said, it's what makes it one of the best fights in my opinion. It's like Soulsborne defined. You fight, die, analyse what you did wrong and how you can do better next time against certain moves and then try again. Despite failing numerous times I never really felt cheated or that I had been unfairly beaten. I just planned my next bout and went back at him.
And of course, let's not forget that Gehrman deserves some further credit for his dedication to Fashion Souls by bringing out his top hat for the battle. Youth may now evade him but you can't take away his sense of style.
#09 Dragonslayer Ornstein & Executioner Smough
(Dark Souls)
The definitive Dark Souls boss. No list is complete without the dynamic duo. Their move sets go hand in hand and if you don't try to keep them apart during the fight you'll probably be dead fairly quickly. Even with that tactic in mind that doesn't stop Ornstein from flying at you from across the arena with his charge move, or Smough using you as a personal toilet seat.
Of course everyone's favourite Sunbro Solaire is a big help in this fight for keeping them apart, if you decide to use him, however once one of the duo go down Solaire's usefulness pretty much comes to an end, a very swift end if Smough is the one to go down first. In fact I'd say if you had to take Ornstein down last every time I probably would have placed these two higher on the list.
#08 The Nameless King
(Dark Souls III)
The King of the Storm is probably mid tier boss in terms of difficulty and by the time you've got the hang of him you might not even be losing any flasks to beat him, despite his somewhat dodgy hitbox. That's only the beginning of the fight though and once you've upset the King by slaying his dragon buddy he will go all out on you with fast and aggressive attacks as well as buffing himself with a meaty pool of health. It's not surprising Gwyn got so upset at his firstborn's betrayal because he sure lost a formidable fighter.
Of course it is possible to cheese this boss with a crossbow and keeping your distance so he just walks towards you but even then he will still try and attack you, just not quite as ferociously but he can still take you down if you're stupid about it. I'd consider the technique more like an easier mode, rather than a full on push over. Not to mention you still need to beat the first phase without it.
#07 Darkeater Midir
(Dark Souls III: The Ringed City)
I almost felt like this was the dragon version of Gehrman, in the sense that he was a big (sorry) but fair challenge that would punish you heavily for mistakes but could feel really rewarding when you finally began to get the hang of the fight.
Midir changed up the winning formula for big beasts by not letting you just hide under him and avoid most his moves, unless you wanted to get crushed to a pulp in a seconds. If you want any chance of beating him you have to face him head on which is pretty intimidating considering his size and Godzilla laser breath. Then there's the fact he makes good use of his wings, has that darn tail sweep and also decides to charge and demolish your health if he feels your not giving him enough attention. Oh, and let's not forget about that massive health pool he has too.
Midir changed up the winning formula for big beasts by not letting you just hide under him and avoid most his moves, unless you wanted to get crushed to a pulp in a seconds. If you want any chance of beating him you have to face him head on which is pretty intimidating considering his size and Godzilla laser breath. Then there's the fact he makes good use of his wings, has that darn tail sweep and also decides to charge and demolish your health if he feels your not giving him enough attention. Oh, and let's not forget about that massive health pool he has too.
#06 Black Dragon Kalameet
(Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss)
After fighting Artorias it didn't seem like it could get any harder but then Kalameet came along and made him look like a walk in the park. One problem I had was how difficult I found it to differentiate between some attacks, such as the one where he goes on his hind legs which is his biggest opening or if it was the one where he flies up and spits fire down doing major damage.
Again, somewhat similar to Darkeater Midir he isn't too easy to just smack from underneath, however unlike Midir it is actually possible without dying immediately but with Kalameet's inconsistency you could even argue it only makes it harder, as you know you won't stand a chance underneath Midir but the temptation to try with the Black Dragon is there but rarely ends successfully.
And as further brownie points, if you want to make things more difficult for yourself and don't want Gough's help it becomes an even bigger challenge just to bring him down from the sky to begin the fight. Let's just hope that anyone who fought him realised that you could do that, otherwise he'd probably be topping quite a few lists.
#05 Martyr Logarius
(Bloodborne)
Almost disqualified for being too unfair due to a bug in his second phase that can make his planted sword disappear while hell rains down on you. One of the few, if only, bosses where I've heard it's just better to give up then let him charge up for his second phase, and considering how easy it is for him to end up charging up next to a ledge or with his back to a wall to stop you from preventing him doing so, it certainly can be a short fight if you get it wrong or just end up unlucky.
His rapid speed in casting spells can easily punish players as well as the variety of spells he can cast with such minimal change in animation. If you manage to bait his sword attacks in the first phase enough you might be able to get into his second phase easily enough but then he changes from his slow walk of the first phase into a flying maniac who is unrelenting in his pursuit of you for the second and if that sword plant move bugs up or you don't have the right equipment to break it quickly he can overwhelm you easily. Trying to keep track of everything that's going on and trying to land a few hits in his second phase as he flies around the arena was certainly a challenge.
His rapid speed in casting spells can easily punish players as well as the variety of spells he can cast with such minimal change in animation. If you manage to bait his sword attacks in the first phase enough you might be able to get into his second phase easily enough but then he changes from his slow walk of the first phase into a flying maniac who is unrelenting in his pursuit of you for the second and if that sword plant move bugs up or you don't have the right equipment to break it quickly he can overwhelm you easily. Trying to keep track of everything that's going on and trying to land a few hits in his second phase as he flies around the arena was certainly a challenge.
Not only is he a tough boss but failure to beat him also means having to run back through half of Cursed Castle Cainhurst, probably one of the most frustrating routes to get back to a boss fight in the series, especially when it's such a difficult one too. I have to admit that he managed to make me pretty mad.
#04 Darklurker
(Dark Souls II)
So you'd have thought getting to this boss would have been the biggest challenge, it's kind of like the Old Yharnam Queen and the Chalice dungeons in Bloodborne, other than that it doesn't take so long and the Darklurker is far harder than the final Chalice dungeon boss.
So once you get the Darklurker's move set down it's not so bad, sure the homing orbs move can be annoying but manageable. You get it down to half health and then you realise this boss isn't going to be quite like the others, as far as I can remember, the Darklurker is the only boss across all five games that splits itself into two but both forms remain as strong as each other. Your tactics from the first stage go out the window as one of them starts throwing fireballs at you while the other one who's off screen, because you can't keep track of both of them with one camera with the way they move and teleport around, starts launching the homing orbs at you.
I was stuck on this boss for hours, I tried so many times that the NPCs in the dungeon before it stopped spawning. As a melee character I simply could not handle the second phase. Eventually I gave up with that tactic and upgraded my pyromancy flame and went in with the Demon's Souls special - firestorm. Once I had the glove upgraded to a good level the second phase was a piece of cake. If I hadn't have used the pyromancy flame though I could still have been attempting to beat this boss to this day.
#03 Sister Freide & Father Ariandel
(Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel)
A unique boss in the regard that it is the only one with three different health bar phases, four if you count both bosses during the second phase. Having to survive the first two phases was hard enough only to be greeted by an even harder third phase where she's flying around, throwing ice as well as magic everywhere and getting in crazy hits with the range on her scythe. If Freide's poise wasn't so easily broken this boss could have topped the list.
Hey, I may have said Slave Knight Gael wouldn't make it on this list but somehow he's still found a way on because he's certainly helpful as a summon with the second phase and the third if he survives. If only we could have summoned him in his Ringed City form though.
This is one of the only fights where I thought maybe it would have actually been justified to put in a checkpoint. I know, I know, that would make it much easier. I'm not saying they even should have done, just that I would have understood it if they had. Although something I didn't really like about the fight was how you couldn't track Freide's footsteps in phase one, like you could Crossbreed Priscilla in Dark Souls, but instead she just jumps and teleports behind you, whispering "nothing personal, kid" as she hits you with her scythe once more.
#02 Orphan of Kos
(Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)
The most aggressive boss that will give you no room to breath and has possibly the best set of attacks in all of the five games. Getting caught by any of his attacks in his second phase will leave you in big trouble and trying to dodge that lightning move without fighting him on the water is a death sentence. Trying to leave space between the two of you will result in him launching a devastating charge attack that's incredibly difficult to dodge, while if you stay near him you risk getting caught in one of his deadly fast combos.
The second phase feels more like a fight to survive rather than going toe to toe as he ramps up to the speed of a train flying off the tracks. Combine this with his continuous screaming and he is actually pretty scary, I don't think any boss in Souls had me so stressed on the edge of my seat constantly attempting to hold off their frenzy. Never has a placenta been so terrifying. He's easily the hardest boss in Bloodborne and deserving of the top spot, well at least if this one other boss wasn't the bane of my experience across the five games.
#01 Fume Knight
(Dark Souls II: Crown of the Old Iron King)
What else can I say about him though, Fume Knight Raime wins again by topping my list.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Maneater
(Demon's Souls)
Fairly easy to cheese like pretty much any boss in Demon's Souls however the game that started it deserved a mention and the Maneater duo weren't as easy to cheese as some of the other bosses, as well as being one of the hardest in the game when ignoring such easy techniques.
Knight Artorias
(Dark Souls: Artorias of the Abyss)
That darn triple spin attack, is he going to do it two or three times? Doesn't like to leave you alone other than when buffing himself which can make healing a challenge.
Afflicted Graverobber, Ancient Soldier Varg & Cerah the Old Explorer
(Dark Souls II: Crown of the Sunken King)
The infamous gank squad that managed to be the hardest of their respective DLC. As a gank squad they feel unfair to fight as well as hardly fitting in as a boss.
Burnt Ivory King
(Dark Souls II: Crown of the Ivory King)
Certainly epic and grandiose. I've heard that no one has managed to beat him at NG+7 without the Knights help too.
Father Gascoigne
(Bloodborne)
The toughest first boss in any of the games. The amount of trouble he caused me in his beast form just because I was trying to dodge away from his attacks rather than towards was maddening.
Blood Starved Beast
(Bloodborne)
Difficult for his early placement in the game, not to mention just how dangerous his poison is at that point. I'd just got through Father Gascoigne and then found myself in even bigger trouble against this boss. I had a big fear of this boss and when the time came to do the Chalice dungeons I was pretty uncomfortable at the prospect of facing it once again. If I struggled anywhere near as much as I did originally he probably would have been high in the top ten but thankfully I managed to absolutely dominate him and beat him with ease, so much so that he didn't even make the top ten.
Ludwig, the Accursed Holy Blade
(Bloodborne: The Old Hunters)
Probably the most epic fight across the five games and one of the most fun too. Both phases present a different challenge with your timing in the second stage under special scrutiny.
Aldrich, Devourer of Gods
(Dark Souls III)
He might not have a huge health pool but he sure does hit hard, espicially that arrow bombardment move.
Lorian, Elder Prince & Lothric, Younger Prince
(Dark Souls III)
A surprisingly fast boss that requires you to be on your toes at all times and is probably the toughest Lord of Cinder.
Soul of Cinder
(Dark Souls III)
FromSoftware admitted they were disappointed with Gwyn as a final boss because he didn't require the player to use so many of the skills they had learned through the game for the finale. It certainly feels like they atoned themselves with this boss who does exactly what Gwyn didn't by testing just how far you've come since the start. Sure, some parts can be easier, such as his mage form, but the rest is still a big challenge with those combos he can rack up.
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ON NO MAN'S SKY: COMPARING THE HATE AROUND THE GAME TO THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT
The bandwagon of continuous hate I've seen towards this game is both incredible and depressing. Even when I've just been playing the game myself I always seem to have people popping up on Steam trying to tell me how bad it is. Being one of a few thousand people who actually thought it was a decent game, I thought I would examine some of the things that went wrong with the game, some things wrong with the industry and some things wrong with the way people act.
Before No Man's Sky even came out I noticed certain communities seemed desperate for the game to fail, why anyone would want an ambitions indie project to fail I can't really get my head around, but perhaps it was just a reaction to all the excitement and hyperbole that was being pumped into the game before release.
When the game finally released, on PS4, we didn't really hear much, even with people reporting crashes and other issues, there didn't seem to be too much outrage yet, perhaps that's even because people hadn't had the game long enough to really judge it. Two days later the PC version is released and all hell breaks lose about how the game is unplayable and broken, when it seems to possibly even be in a better state than the PS4 version, at least judging from my own PC experience to others on the PS4.
Now whether this means that PS4 players are more tolerant, or less reactionary than PC players I don't really know, it wouldn't surprise me if it were true though. It just seems to me that the moment people realised it wasn't Skyrim in space, they all jumped to the conclusion that No Man's Sky was the worst game ever created and that Hello Games are the worst thing since the Nazi Party.
There are no excuses for some of the performance issues people had with the game, but when Hello Games and Sean Murray announced that they were working on improvements and further content, everyone just continued to barrel further hate towards them with very few even bothering to acknowledge what they said. You can look at the messages on Twitter, they said all they needed to say really, but people question where they have gone, and why they aren't doing anything. Is this not just evidence that people won't listen to anything they say now, and will just abuse them if they do? All most people seem to have done is ignore them and continue with their agenda of hating the game.
So what about the trailers, and how they were misleading? What about what we saw at E3 and how it didn't correlate to what was in the game? How many games have actually really done this? The answer is many, but for some reason No Man's Sky gets all the stick for it. Now I'm not saying this is a good practice at all, no company or trailer should mislead people, but what I'm trying to say is that people could try and realise this is a widespread problem, not just a problem with No Man's Sky. If people really want to see things like this change, complain about it with every game that does it, rather than just the ones you don't like, or think it's cool to hate on.
Let's use an example then, the internet's favourite gaming company CD Project Red, along with the apparent "best game ever made" The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Here is the game at E3 2014, ironically from the same E3 show year as that No Man's Sky trailer that everyone is happy to complain about.
So, instantly 30 seconds in, you can see that the Witcher 3 received a large graphics downgrade since it was first shown, but that's all cool, it can be forgiven, unlike No Man's Sky. One minute in and you can see that the UI and in-game interface changed dramatically before the game was released, but that's not worth complaining about, even though it is with No Man's Sky. Further in, at about 1:35 in the video, the developer states you can "you can perverse any view-able location in the world" as well as being able to go to "Every single mountain peak in the distance". In the actual game both of these statements are simply untrue, in "No Man's Land" in the game you can go up a single mountain, and if you go too far to either side of the map, even despite the map implying you can go there, you will be blocked off and the game will send you back. The in game map is incredibly misleading, as about 1/4 of the world is blocked off by these invisible walls, but that's all fine, misleading people like that, unlike those No Man's Sky people who are just liars. They then claim the sequence was "one small part" of the game, when this whole quest doesn't even appear in the final game.
How about multiple misleading trailers to add to it?
Remember the game looking this good? Because I sure don't. Incredibly they downgraded these graphics to the E3 ones, then downgraded further to the actually release ones. At 1:04 you can see that good old mermaid quest, one to remember wasn't it? Aside from the part where there are no mermaids in the game, that part of Skellige you see before seems to be missing from the game too, although I'm happy to be corrected if I've miss-remembered that part. Rather bemusing that people get so worked up over a sand worm not appearing in No Man's Sky when this game did the exact same thing with a mermaid.
So the first 45 seconds of this trailer aren't in the game, most notably that scene with Geralt walking into Emyhr's throne room, which was replaced by a low key behind the scenes meeting. Hear that amazing monologue by Eredin, the main antagonist who has been built up through the first and second games? I bet you can't wait to hear all sixteen lines he has from the actual game, oh, and he doesn't look the same either. The lines in the trailer are misleading too, since, unlike the Witcher 2, where no choice really seemed right, The Witcher 3 has 4 set endings (they originally claimed it had 36), all of which easily seem to be able to be described as good or bad ones. At around 1:50 in the trailer it shows a horse race with more than three riders, you never take part in one with over three in the actual game, isn't that familiar with a certain complaint about the amount of frigate ships you see in No Man's Sky?
I could go on about problems with The Witcher 3, such as the sloppy third act, or that the story seemed to ignore most of what happened in the second game, but that's for another time.
Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the Witcher 3, it's a good game. But to claim that Hello Games are liars and misled everyone to buy their game with false advertising, and then were the only people to ever do that? Come on. No Man's Sky deserves some flak, but so much of the ammunition being used against it could be applied to almost any game, even really great ones like The Witcher 3.
Trailers released for both games shortly before release don't seem to have any deceptions in them that don't represent the final product, so drop your pitchforks and think for a moment. Perhaps waiting to pre-order a game a couple of weeks before release could curb this problem, maybe not even pre-ording at all. Maybe people should keep expectations more in check, rather than letting hyperbole get the better of them. The problem could lie at the door of gaming companies, developers and publishers, trying to push a certain deadline and missing out content. Maybe it's all these things and more.
So, in the worst case scenario for Hello Games, they decide to close down because their portfolio has been ruined by the hate for No Man's Sky. Good job internet, you got them. But why stop with these misleading trailers because Hello Games are gone, CD Project Red did it and everyone loves them. Blindly, joining a hateful bandwagon with no constructive criticism, just pointing, shouting and laughing, at one small game studio isn't going to solve this problem.
The real moral of this story is don't trust E3 trailers. Watch Dogs, Witcher 3, No Man's Sky, the list goes on for misleading trailers shown at E3. The thing is that these games are usually shown off there for the first time, while still heavily under development, so it's not surprising that they often don't represent the final product when it releases a few years after.
Thanks for reading.
Here's my review on No Man's Sky incase you can't believe how and why I actually think it's alright: https://theunorthodoxnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/no-mans-sky-2016-written-review.html
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