Why Are Elden Rings Bosses Controversial and Will The DLC Fix Them?

Personally I love elden ring bosses and they’re my personal favorites in the series. They definitely have a high learning curve and difficulty height but after numerous play throughs I can damn near do a hitless run on every boss and they offer so much replay value due to build variety. Never really understood the hate for the bosses

I'll go ahead and tell you the future: When the next Souls game comes out, people will complain that strength weapons are useless. That nothing so slow could compete in a combat system so fast. A few months later, speedrunners and challenge runners will realize that strength weapons dominate. That their ability to stagger bosses makes them uniquely powerful, arguably "easy mode" for some fights.

Elden Ring blew up and everyone wanted to get a piece of the hype cake. Negativity draws attention, and Elden Ring is a hard game, so complaining about difficult bosses, which is relatable to many, drew a lot of attention. The bosses in Elden Ring ARE more difficult than the Dark Souls bosses imo, but I never had any issues with their design. The entire discussion is obviously subjective, but I feel like a lot of it was driven by youtubers trying to get views rather than people actually sharing their own opinions on the game

Imagine calling Maliketh bad lmao these people are such scrubs man

Personally, I love ER's bosses, and think they're probably the overall best in the series. They have the most complex movesests and are generally the most challenging bosses in the entire series. They do a good job at escalating beyond what DS3 threw at me, and I've become a better player for it. I hope one of the DLC bosses gives a challenge that manages to one up even Malenia.

I’m not sure if you’ve been catching up on the dlc news, but I’ll try to give some spoiler-free answers to these questions based on the things I’ve seen in the trailers / early access videos Yes, the bosses in the dlc will do lots of damage, some have lots of complexity to their moveset, and yes there will be more OP summons. The whole discussion will inevitably happen again. There will be reused enemies and bosses to an extent, but not as much as in the base game. Catacombs and dungeons will be more unique than in the base game too I started off with Elden Ring and beat DS1 and DS3 after. I don’t mind the high mechanical complexity in ER because it gives you more options to interact with the mechanics. And I’m NOT talking about items or summons. You can jump over lots of attacks to do jumping attacks, and even use the jump attack recovery to duck under followups. The posture system rewards you for finding openings inbetween combos ( to keep stance meter from depleting ) and strafing some attacks to have more time to get a charged heavy off. Which results in more stance damage and a devestating riposte. The other souls games only gave you a roll, and maybe a parry to work with. Sure, bosses take longer to get the hang of, but the gameplay they offer is more varied and engaging. Even if you don’t like the high complexity fights, there still are lots of minibosses that give a ds3-like experience. Such as Crucible Knights, Misbegotten Warriors, Grave Warden Dualists, Bell Bearing Hunters etc. Summons are a way for casuals to enjoy the game without doing all the tryhard stuff i just mentioned. Because it really is a beautiful game and it would be a shame if some people wouldnt get to experience it because of the difficulty. I understand the concerns, but I genuinely think the ER boss design philosophy is for the best

I think it's impossible to dislike ash summons being included in Elden Ring without comparing your playstyle with other people. More options to tackle an open world game is not a bad thing. Play your way by not summoning if you want. I don't understand why you'd complain about the game having them if they aren't a requirement.

I don’t know man, I played like a troglodyte and I’ve never found the bosses more rewarding. I think what people didn’t understand was that playing like a troglodyte in Elden Ring didn’t mean panic rolling and R1 spamming when it’s your “turn” but playing aggressively to make your own “turns” and using your entire moveset to maximize for posture damage. I only summoned on bosses on my subsequent playthroughs that were tedious gank fights. The “intended experience” was almost certainly NOT to use summons, though they are obviously a more developed mechanic here for players who would like to lower the difficulty.

Some notes I would like to make. 1. The videos you quoted are from a few months after ER released. So many people were stuck in the DS3 R1 + Roll Mentality which works horribly in Elden Ring. People did not want to use weapon arts, summons anything. So they suffered. These people wanted to give some opinion while ER was still popular to ride the hype train. Of course they did, its their job, but it did specifically stop people from being anle to appreciate the boss design which only shines on subsequent playthroughs. 2. The Intended Experience.... aah. I dont think Elden Ring has a defined intended experience. The only thing that I believe the devs intended was 60 Vig for Endgame builds, and 40 Vig for Midgame builds. Other than that the experience was intended to be unbalanced, but fun for a lot of different builds. The thing is every build in ER is viable. Contrast that to how horrible luck builds were in DS3. In ER, u have options for most builds. 3. I think this time there will be far less complaints in the DLC, cuz people are seasoned players they are not stuck with the DS3 mentality they are doing close to hitless and deathless runs of this game. They now know Elden Ring Combat. 4. Personally I find Elden Rings full boss Roster (including dungeon bosses btw) only second to Sekiro's. I live DS3, but after ER, its bosses feel very very easy and simple. Bosses which are normal enemies have more complex movesets than some DS3 bosses, just look at Ancient Hero of Zamor or Crucible Knight. Does ER have bad bosses, yea quite a few, but it has way more fun and interesting bosses. The only reason Sekiro is beter is that its combat system is so so good, the bosses automatically feel good. Only 3 bosses I actually dislike in Sekiro, Ape Gank, and the two bulls. Anyways good video bro

I play the game without summons while using simple non broken builds and I love fighting the bosses. Saying that the players who lile Elden ring bosses are exclusively people who use summons and broken builds is stupid and fells like you are talking down to us who enjoy the bosses without using these tolls. This take is flat out stupid and was either poorly thought or explained

If we're counting just the remembrance bosses and miscellaneous required bosses, Elden Ring has my favorite boss lineup, and like Magicat said, you dont have to fight every optional boss

I have like 700 hours on Elden ring and never felt like that before, I love the majority of bosses wouldn’t change anything

Elden Ring gives you so many tools to make the bosses easier-it can be the most difficult or least difficult souls game and it’s up to you. I think that’s pretty cool.

I honestly don't understand the issue about boss scaling, if you missed some boss and came back later and you steamroll them. what's the problem? if you missed them at the appropriate level, that means you went to a much stronger enemies and the difficulty is in there, you already experienced a difficult part of the game. my first playthrough I immediately went to Caelid thinking it's the next area. only to know it's a mid-late game area. but I didn't have an issue beating margitt when I was level 25 because to me I already had a difficult gameplay in caelid. it just make sense to go back stronger

Personally, I NEVER felt I was playing wrong during my no-summon first playthrough, and after 600 hours and plenty of co-op help offered to randos, I can say with great confidence that all bosses are designed to be 1v1, with the possible exception of some multi-fights. That said, all the Enemies Felled and the open-world Great Enemies are different tiers of minibosses, with the trophy/achievement bosses being true, major bosses (plus obvious ones like Elden Beast and the Caelid G Apostle). Matter of fact is, ER's bosses ARE an evolution of Souls combat in that they ask you to more than just roll your way to victory. Jumping, positioning, sprinting, hitting during wind-ups and in between attacks (no trading needed, even with colossals), and using your weapons' whole kit situationally; this is what it asks of its no-cheesr players against the harder bosses. You don't need to be a top-tier player to use these strats, due to key design choices such as weaker tracking on boss moves and the increased delayed attacks, as well as the additions of jumping attacks and guard counters. Spirit ashes don't bother me due to ER's open-ended nature and heavy build variety, which communicated very well that experimentation and expression are at the heart of the game's combat and grander design. They would bother me in a more linear game. Big bursts of endgame damage are easily counterable through talismans, appropriate armor, consumables (Boiled Crab is the GOAT), and/or physick tears (Opaline Hardtear is the GOAT). This IS an RPG at the end of the day; it's not a design flaw to have these elements matter. Waterfowl is a bit unintuitive for my liking too, but there are SO many ways to deal with it. I do think it's s little disingenuous to have pretty much only negative creator videos as examples, and ignore the plethora of more positive ones(VG Matthews' video is objectively horrible, on top of that). Hell, there's a recent Magicat video where he goes into greater depth why he loves ER's bosses (Top 10 Games by Boss Quality). I also just think we've mostly moved past this discussion - with the occasional exception, as this video proves - now that players better understand the combat and bosses. Sekiro had a similar issue in its early days, with complaints of no builds and repitition in both the boss lineup and general combat flow. Look where we are now with both games.

Alot of these videos came out a few months after Elden Ring released and we just didn't know how to approach combat on this game, once we figured out we have to attack them during their combos and stance breaking is the way FromSoft wanted us to fight them, player opinions changed since then, mine included. Oh and VG Matthews video was terrible, he ran an awful build and played bad purposefully for his video, like he was under Maliketh and didn't even attack him and avoiding most of his attacks and then complained saying he has no punish windows.

I don't think the bosses were balanced around spirit ashes. I also always play solo because the boss having to handle multiple targets breaks what I love about these games, but even then end game bosses took about the same amount of tries as Sword Saint Isshin or Demon of Hatred (besides Malenia, but I believe making the most difficult boss they've ever done was the design intention with her). Even Godskin Duo, while I agree they are a subpar boss, they still are within the difficulty of past games solo. Also, summoning has always broken bosses, since they were never designed to handle multiple targets. Fromsoft has added these NPC summons to games before as an alternative to online summoning, just go back to Bloodborne and see how many fights you can use the Old Hunter Bell for (though even that was added on the DLC). So I disagree that it was balanced in the past, it's always been a built in easy mode. I do agree that it has been exacerbated by the mimic tear and the spirit leveling, I think this is what is causing a lot of the split of experiences in the player base (although different experiences was somewhat of an inevitability given the open nature of Elden Ring).

Man this video is filled with confirmation bias, misinformation & lack of Elden Ring’s combat understanding. The bosses were controversial back then because people played it like DS3, but now everybody favors them over other Souls titles, even in the YouTube polls, Elden Ring wins a lot in the best bosses questions, I put it as my favorite bosses in the Soulsborne series. Joseph Anderson, VG Matthew & a couple other YouTuber "critiques" most of their complaints are either factually incorrect, or just outright hilarious, because I think they're the best in the series by far when optimized, they prioritize heavily on players' positional awareness, complex combo branchings, delayed attacks that can be punished and/or can be used to replenish stamina, directional rolling, not just having to get the timing right like it was with the overwhelming majority of DS3 & BB bosses, and they force cautious aggression, bosses in ER attack so often that you have to study them at a much deeper level than you would with DS3 & BB bosses, yes ER bosses are harder & require much more nuance than before, they no longer have anywhere near as many "safe punishes" as previous Souls titles (there are many still), and there's nothing wrong with that, they only increased their difficulties, I feel it's mostly similar to Sekiro in someway, just because From Software adds a bit more complexity to bosses doesn't mean they're unfair, are there some few questionable or bad attacks in Elden Ring bosses? Yes there are, like in any Souls game. And about Spirit Ashes: IDK how many people got this wrong, it's honestly absurd, summons have always existed in previous Souls entries, you could invite other players to help you in your world, but now they made it easier to get help without needing to resort to waiting until someone joins you, Ludwig from BB had 3 summons very close to his fog gate, does that mean he was made with those in mind or that "the game expects you to use them?" No, absolutely not, it's optional, like any build or any magic/melee weapons or any OP consumable (like Beast Blood Pellets from BB, trivializes the game so badly lol) the game throws at you, most of what I see are those who call themselves "Souls vets" their egos were hurt so they convinced themselves that the game expects or demands you to use them to play it "the intended way", the bosses are absolutely made with 1 player in mind, and when you use summons or Co-op, that boss rhythm & flow gets destroyed and now you essentially have a big target (which is the boss) doing unregulated combos because it's too busy trying to decide which player to attack so you just have to wack it until it disappears which can be fun, I've had a lot of fun with that, but by no means they were designed with those in mind. Not a good video, it should be outdated.

"difficulty of ER is so close to its peak" No it isnt not even close. They can do some mutch with it. They can do bosses with 2 or 3 times more helth so players will nead to lear every move. Moust of the attack will deal half of your HP. Bosses will have more super moves that can instal kill you . They can do some gimick fights. Bosses without stun or imunity to some types of damage . Bosses that you need to use every mechanick like jumping or runing. Bosses that you are forcet to deal some damage becose if not something bad will hapend. You can make arena hazard too or in favor of the boss. Some bosses that you need to chage build. I just want bosses that I can go 100% with the strongest weapon ,(build) and with mimick tear and it still be chalange . I want bosses that I fight 3 days and thinkink(what if I will never be able to kill this thing ).

I like the bosses design more than ds3, I like that if you to want play aggressive you have to attack in between combo and also use the delayed attacks as a punish window, I like that you can jump over tons of attack and the bosses has frame trap attacks that forces a directional rolling and positioning. In term of bosses design Sekiro > ER > DS3 > BB > the rest