For the Seven Ashina Spears gank boss, you can crouch close to the general for long enough to turn him yellow (alerted), then pop a gachiin's and hide on the platform until he walks up, get behind him and stealth deathblow. This fight has a ton of variance, because you can also choose to puppeteer the general and make your life way easier. Again, it is an endgame optional fight, so I think it's fine to be as frustrating as it is - it's supposed to make you think outside the box. Same thing with Shigekichi - he has a crap ton of health, but you can remove his armor and make him take more damage using the spear's pull function. I completely agree with Ujinari Mizuo feeling lame, the fight itself is cake, especially if you use the fire umbrella. However, the lore implications are pretty cool - if you've gone through the surgeon's storyline and sent either Kotaro or the samurai to them, you learn that they're experimenting with the rejuvenating waters to build super-soldiers for Ashina. These experiments are disgusting, and mostly fail, but they turn the subject (and eventually Doujun himself) into red-eyed monsters that are super aggressive and afraid of fire. Once you kill them, you get red lumps, which tell you about these experiments and how they create monsters. Ujinari Mizuo, I'd imagine, has taken one of these lumps, and as an Ashina samurai, prepares to fight in defense of the city. It's symbolic in how Ashina has corrupted itself by using its ancient water to turn people into demons - and also shows the moral contrast between Isshin and Genichiro - Isshin refuses to stoop to such levels to protect his land, but Genichiro would gladly "forsake humanity itself".

Lovely video, but quick correction: Shichimen warrior attacks ARE deflectable.

Two suggestions for over-analysis: Furi and Black Myth Wukong. Furi is one of my favorites as a boss rush game with bullet hell elements. It has consistently great bosses and excellent progression through each boss built into it's mechanics. Hard mode would be to rank each boss phase independently. Wukong is interesting to me because I think it places slightly less emphasis on the boss to focus on the player character. It's less about learning boss movesets compared to Fromsoft games and more about maximizing your resource usage effectively. This means boss design takes a very different approach and I'd be interested to hear your take on it.

Great video, just one little suggestion; the music is _really_ loud and distracting at points, maybe keep that more in the background. Apart from that banger vid though!

Midra is very simple, but has great mixups in phase 2, but the way you can express yourself in the fight is very enjoyable, keeping the tempo up without having to roll. You can jump a lot of his kit as theres plenty of low sweeps, as well as being able to strafe a bunch too. His ghostly spin can also be ducked under which is really funny, but is a nice window to get reprieve through healing or stamina recovery. Though, I wish Midra took more advantage of the flame of frenzy, similar to how Mohg did with his bloodflame, testing your object permanence/spatial awareness. But wanting more is a good problem for Midra to have. Messmer is similar despite having a more complex moveset. The decision making with rolls, strafes, jumps and the attacks you can weave in during the combo feels incredibly satisfying, and lends to a lovely feeling of rhythm and makes him probably my favorite, alongside Bayle, Gaius, Rellana, and Putrescent Knight.

What is this not being a fan of trial and error shit?? That's literally how bosses have always been learned in these games

2:17:47 cat in your voiceover??

scadu level 13 for relana? i hit promised consort at level 20 and i was barely 7 for rellana: she was my favorite fight. her being resistant to slash attacks explains why i was doing so little (i thought it was the fire she was resisting). turns out guard counters from katanas were right in the sweet spot for punishing her moveset and the only one i had upgrade was rivers of blood. that i had a mage build and basically only fought her with a weapon i barely had the stats to wield is a testament to her captivating moveset also her most punishable attack is the double overhead crossswing, you can guard counter it twice for style if you want. being summon and keeping aggressive enough to tank for the host and often guaranteed posture breaks which could be further safely punished with 2/3rds of a rivers of blood weapon art was a heck of a couple days. still terrible damage, but it sure was fun

Okay but holy shit some goddamned Romina appreciation! I genuinely love this series of yours, and I find our sometimes-conflicting takes to be a positive, but Romina's sections are my absolute favorite pieces of your work. You simultaneously expressed so much of what I felt about her, and made me think of the fight from entirely new angles, and I honestly love you for that. Gushing over a weird centi-scorpion momm---I mean lady, incoming: Romina being called a Saint, makes her relationship with Malenia, and the Outer God of Rot they're both avatars of, a really unique one. Malenia is an unwilling divinity, so a “Saint”, someone with willing and powerful religious faith, accepts the rejected offspring and once-willing worshippers of this failed goddess - the Pests of Rot. I think even her physical form is influenced by this: she's monstrous, but she has this hypnotizing synergy with her body (parts of which feel almost independent at times, but never out of control). We already well know that Scarlet Rot is fantasy radiation, with mutative properties. And while Malenia, this intended goddess, resists and loses nearly every part of herself, Romina embraces the sickly circle of life and decay the Rot represents (I think of it like Nurgle from Warhammer). Letting it take her, change her, and objectively, in a way, make her more. And isn't she beautiful? The colors of her area, arena and design itself - bright and deep pink and purple, with dozens of plants and butterflies growing, dying and returning and growing just as quickly. Compare that to the natural London landscape that is Caelid, or the sickly dark muck of the Haligtree. She and Malenia are genuine opposites in every conceivable way, but they're connected together as deeply as anything in the world, as I think her soundtrack represents. Besides the fact I fucking love it, its incorporation of the most iconic, dramatic cresendo from Malenia’s phase 2 track, when she's closest to the Rot, re-represented in the haunting church organ of Romina’s sound (I think it's an organ anyway). In phase two, when she's closest to the Rot as well, I think. Because that's how bosses in the game work, when they're in the most danger they tap most deeply into themselves, whether they want to, like Romina, or don't, like Malenia. So, yeah, she's a pretty good boss too lol. (She genuinely is an excellent boss-I love how you brought up the visual clue in her air plunge.) I genuinely wrote up half-a-dozen more paragraphs before writing above much of what I wanted to say. I'm genuinely writing these exact words in a Google doc so I don't lose it. Also, I could've sworn I commented this yesterday, so I hope I'm not accidentally reposting it.

I like Metyr. I feel like she’s a ‘what if Rom was good’ kinda boss. Not what if Rom was great, mind you, but what if Rom just didn’t suck.

Definitely did the Lamenter dirty here. At least Death Knights got to shine

knight of the solitary gaol honesty feels like a guts reference 😭

1:35:37 (note: maria refers to itself in third person) maria had gone from a strength faith build switching between 2 magma blades, magma wyrms scalesword + monks flameblade, flamberge + blasphemous blade and magma whip candlestick + giants red braid to a quality build with a new dlc weapon type each in all six weapon slots so maria disagrees edit with extra infodump: smithscript cirques (maria used the regular backhand blades until it got these) firespark perfume bottles beast claw carian thrusting shield (dueling shield for the short time between obtaining these two) smithscript daggers dryleaf arts

1:34:27 cat

bro started so negative I felt like I needed a shower 😂 I haven't gotten all the way through the video but I gotta say, while the bosses were not great mostly, the number of them and world makes it feel more varied and fantastical. It's like World of Warcraft level of fantasy, sure, but the general theme of Dark Souls 1 and 3 being the same kind of speaks volumes to how stale the base formula of Miyazaki's game design actually is. I know you could be pedantic with that example, but it's the fundamental reason why Ubisoft and Bethesda game design has gotten so critiqued for being the same as the last. Dark Souls 2 is the one you can go to that is still in the Fromsoft category but feels different enough to freshen things up. Just don't expect to be on the edge of your seat with mountains of action. 😂

I would love for you to rank the Monster Hunter bosses (monsters)! They are, (imo) alongside fromsoft, the leading contestants of brilliant bosses in the gaming world and have many factors and characteristics that would make for interesting discussions and analyses.

Elden Ring: Sacabadabado of the Erdtree

How can you argue Chained Ogre as an A? It is the first "real" boss of this game and teaches everything wrong to a already miss-trained playerbase of Souls games. You need to get up to enemies face and fight in Sekiro. Chained Ogre has shitty hitboxes, not intuitive hit-deflection pattern. You just teach players the loop of roll-hit-roll-hit around bosses which is completely wrong for this game. And stealth is not very easy to do in first try, its back is blocked. You don't know you need to push yourself into a gap if you have not already played this game. Sekiro has the best fight design out of every single Souls games but I absolutely hate the placement of Chained Ogre and Blazing Bull.

Leda and Allies isn’t a boss fight. Other than that, remarkable video and you should be proud. Black Myth Wukong would be a good boss analysis series

Ghost dragon as B?

Great job on the video. I have a lot to say about Metyr. This might sound strange but I actually think they did not go hard enough. Metyr should've sent us to outer space in the second half of the fight. We should've been surrounded by horrible darkness and a sea of stars. Fingers moving in the edges of the arena (to make sure we actually knew where it was before the white wall of wind jumpscared us). Sometimes you can forgive a boss for having crappy moves when you can really understand what they were going for, but they just did not go far enough this time. They nailed it with Bayle, Midra and Radahn, but Metyr falls flat because it escalated purely, solely by getting new moves that people dislike, and a music track that though cool conceptually, stops fitting the environment you're fighting in.

Midra was such an amazing fight that I’m STILL mad all these months later that he wasn’t a boss that came with a second ending to the dlc

Bro i love the sentinels they're one of my favourite ds2 fights. Imo they work really well as a gank fight which i feel like ds2 is based around. Super fun to run between them. Something like the gargoyles imo are rubbish cas i suck at them

The Lamenter Main body can literally be seen in the video dude. He's got a red loincloth

Holy crap the fact that this video is longer than every other Elden Ring part speaks so much to the volume of this DLC

a fume knight fun fact is that in lore he has a bad relationship with velstad and if you enter his arena wearing velstad armor the fume knight will go to second phase from the beginning of the figth because he wants to kill velstad and he will go all out from the start

You think you can make a boss analysis of Elden Ring: Nightreign?

I really wish Messmer had more hp. It goes down so quickly. And I wish he had more mix ups and combos in phase 2 especially. I saw a mod that did just that. It didn't add any typical bs you'd see from a mod but actually improved the fight even more imo. I still love his fight tho.

Most people don't seem to know this except people who played the review copy but Radahn used to have many more combos in the review copies of the dlc that FS completely cut out or altered for the final version. It's honestly a bummer cos some of those combos looked really cool. Don't believe me? Go watch FightinCowboy's Let's Play ep44. You'll easily notice just how much more ridiculously hard and overtuned Radahn used to be.

I'm sad you didn't mention the DBDL's grab as it's imo one of the most interesting attacks in the game mechanically

inb4 all bosses are F

22:27 Something that is worth to say. Malenia, while she has 18.000 hit points on her health bar, this mainly counts as her first whole phase. On the second phase she recovers aprox 14.000 extra hp. This means she has 33.000 HP. Now, if you count that is very likely to fight Rellana with a decent SB level (4 more or less), her health bar is the equivalent of what would be like 25k HP. Which is why stuff like Radahn having 47.000 hp is not a big deal because at that point you will deal like 200% damage thanks to the SB system, assuming you dont fight him underleveled.

Listening to the numbers and enemies, it is clearer and clearer to me that Forbidden, Farum, and Dragonbarrow are all connected, likely even physically in the past. Great videos! I binged all 3, and will be watching the DLC one.

Scadutree Avatar is the best boss of the DLC. Probably because he reminds me of older fromsoft bosses

I really disagree on Messmer, he might have one of my favorite cutscenes and vocal performances in the game. The way he seems bored, surprised, confused, and then indignant, followed by enraged in phase 2 is just amazing and it all comes through his voice. It really speaks to Messmer's true motive without any item descriptions required

Oh man, I was actually wondering if you were gonna do Lies of P. Another Crab's Treasure would also whip.

Cuphead would be amazing to see a boss analysis of

Can’t wait for the Hollow Knight list! You should try Nine Sols as well. Parry heavy Hollow Knight is the best way I can describe it

This was such a great series. I don’t even know how many boss analysis videos I’ve watched for all these games but I can say without a doubt yours have been by far the best.

I handled the last ghostflame dragon by swooping in on torrent, jousting down one or two enemies, and then avoiding the drake. I found it very fun!

Few interesting things about the Scadutree Avatar that I'm upset you didn't note 😭: 1) The impenetrable thorns are similar in nature to the ones we see preventing us from entering the Erdtree. This gives more similarities to the Scadutree and Erdtree and does make you wonder who created it. 2) We know the Scadutree is falling apart, being brittle, so the same is reflected in its Avatar. The weakening tree is symbolized very well in this fight. The Golden attacks shrouded by shadow are representing the Scadutree's power, which brings my favorite point 3) In Phase 3, when the Scadutree Avatar uses the WoG-like attack with the holy beams coming out, it is unalloyed gold. The Avatar is using Miquella's broken rune in the fight, which still has some vestiges of Miquella's power in it, so it is using unalloyed gold and a fragmented Great Rune to empower itself in Phase 3.

I LOVE fights that once you've learned the moveset, they feel like a dance with the boss. Midra felt like a perfect example of this, and was the only boss that just felt so good to fight that as soon as I beat him, I went and told my friends how cool this hidden-away boss was. Truly lived up to the quick definition for S-tier, I wished I could just reload a save and do it again. As such, I'm happy to see Midra make the top of the list.

1:43:55 I have to HARD disagree. Romina's music is the best in the entire DLC for me, and I audibly gasped once the big part of the song plays when she enters her second phase (at least, thats when it played for me). It feels so big even for a boss like Romina, and it helps me specifically because fromsoft uses that song for the first DLC story trailer. it feels so good to me.

Honestly, I think Midra, Messmer and to a slightly lesser extent Romina, are some of the bosses with *the* best designed movesets fromsoft has ever made, they're genuinely the definition of hard but fair and so fucking fun to fight in every aspect. Also, another amazing video! :D (and as for recommendations for games that focus on bosses: Ender Lilies! a genuinely amazing 2d souls-ish metroidvania with ~10 dedicated boss encounters with their own complex movesets and several phases for each, I think you'd like it! especially if you liekd something like Hollow Knight. ALSO, the Blasphemous games if you've heard about them, also genuinely fucking amazing)

I know this video is about the actual fight, but the Grafted Scion is perfect for setting up the lore meta for both the first legacy dungeon and the Golden Order.

I got goosebumps when you said midras theme feelings like falling up, that's what I keep saying to people that it feels like falling into emptiness, no bottom, no top, and you're spinning as you drop.

6:48 "the new aesthetic justifies at least the first encounter with the dragon." Foreshadowing is a literary device--

For the final ranking it would be better if you just showed a tierlist instead of reading the whole list

Loved all of the videos in this series. I have different opinions on some bosses but you've done a great job explaining your rankings. Also an editing note: don't worry about throwing up word corrections on screen if you mis-pronounce something while you're reading your script. Your writing style reminds me a bit of Noah Caldwell-Gervais, and like him I think you're worrying too much about those minor things (things that go away with experience). If people are going to complain about stuff like that, they are not giving constructive criticism, they are being pedantic assholes.

Shoutout to my glorious queen, Count Ymir, Mother of Fingers, for being an epic trans icon even in this harsh and oppressive world. Anyways, Ymir's ass. He's geniunely bizzare as a fight, both in-game and story wise. In game, he plays like no other NPC, even summoning other enemies to help him. He blurs the line between a traditional boss and an NPC boss. Story wise, though, this fight makes no sense. What is Ymir's plan here? He's just sent you after one of the most powerful beings in the history of the Lands Between, a creature that can summon *black holes* like it's nothing, and he expects to win against you? I'm sorry, that doesn't make him look insane, it makes him look like an incoherent idiot.