Malenia is one of the easiest bosses in elden ring, with all of the cheeses that you can do, the rivers of blood and mimic will dominate her, and the there is the wall one and so menu more.
I remember the first time I fought slave knight Gael I was in ng+3 and it was the hardest clap ever, I had to summon someone like 50 times, I burned through my stash of 70+ embers
I agree with your choices, but I disagree with your placement. Especially from Malenia. I'M NOT BRAGGING ABOUT MY "SKILL" ON THE CONTRARY, I DEFEATED HER BY PRESSING JUST TWO BUTTONS, THE "CIRCLE" AND THE "L2". Yes, she's a strong boss with a life recovery mechanic that punishes summoners, and it's not just any battle style that's going to be easy to beat her... But she's so easy to stun that, honestly, she is a joke, I admit that the first time it took me two hours to defeat her, but as soon as I noticed how ABSURDLY EASY it is to stun, I switched to my Blasphemous Blade and she became the EASIEST boss in the game
It is so never not amusing listening to the ceaseless lamentations of Fromsoft fans on souls games! Malenia Blade of Miquella was never an issue for me considering I breezed past it into her 2nd phase on my 2nd attempt. It was her goddess of rot form that truly made her notorious Waterfowl dance a humongous issue for me given how it one shot at times and (if not) also inflicted the disgusting scarlet rot debuffs. I still put Isshin above her even in terms of difficulty given Isshin is every but as punishing even whilst having about zilch of the things that make Malenia a tough boss. All Isshin does is push you to surpass your limit and milk you to the last drop of your worth of skill by making you apply all your garnered experience since the beginning of the game.
Malenia was definetly one of the hardest soulsborne bosses for me too... Until I figured out how to dodge the you-know-what attack. after that I realized she had a second phase and now she is the hardest souls boss for me
The pressure from life steal is also a good psychological weapon that makes it more intimidating. If you’re good at parrying, the Assassin’s Crimson Dagger is a great talisman to use for HP recovery purposes. Wish I had known about it before my multi days of attempts with the parry method…
@@osurpless The life steal is such an unnecessary mechanic. Having to borderline flawless a boss is bad game design. Take away the lifesteal and adjust her wombo combo and she's a great boss... For Bloodborne and Sekiro. Not Elden Ring. We're playing at Dark Souls speed. She's at Sekiro speed.
@@someguy9164 shit pinwheel and Soldier of Godrick are so fecking tough that it makes witches of hemwick with 0 insight (it makes the fight alot harder don't do it!) look like a joke think i died to soldier of godrick a gazillion googlilion times and Pinwheel steam rolled me, man much prefer the easier bosses such as Saint Isshin and Maleina blade of Miqeulla
DS3 was my first Souls game, and Friede was just nightmarishly hard for me. I ended up taking on Malenia way overequipped because of how hard I'd heard she was, and beat her in 12 tries. Friede was the Malenia experience for me. The invisibility was brutal to figure out, then she goes into this gank boss form and spams frostbite damage on you while Ariandel is constantly trying to obstruct your view of it, and then she goes into black flame tornado hate-nuke mode for this afaik unprecedented third full health bar just when you think the hell is finally over
Malenia was meant to be in Sekiro but accidentally ended up in Elden Ring. She’s like an OP Lady Maria that demands the finesse of Isshin. Amazing fight still, took me like three days
100% agree with her being a Sekiro boss tbh. In the 6 times I’ve beaten her I’ve always felt like I got lucky more than I did it skilfully. Lucky that she didn’t do that waterfall dance that is
For me Midir is such a weird one, it feels so unbeatable at first, but when you understand the fight it becomes one of the easiest bosses to beat without taking damage in all DS3
Agreed. Midir is actually an easy boss when you know his moves. He is one of the more predictable souls-bosses, every move has like second or even 2 seconds wind up. You can basically react to everything he does and he doesn't have any real mix ups.
Malenia is the only boss that made me dream about beating her. After 2 days of trying and failing I had an actual dream of me killing her, it was one of those super realistic dreams that make you wonder if it really happened. Took me a good 10 mins after waking up to realize that it was just a dream.
I personally thought melania was not hard but Radagon and The Elden Beast i think was like my melania i spent so long on them that instead of making a new build and rebirthing i made a new game on my new game every boss was easy ngl and i used colossal swords so i killed her without op Rives of Blood
same for me, he was the easiest super hard boss, but I think its mostly because his second phase is very short when you do decent damage. If the had a health pool as large as some other bosses he would be way harder I think.
Tbh elden beast and radagon is harder than maliketh. Imagine if maliketh was beast clergyman for a full health bar, and then maliketh had full health for phase 2.
@@heathermelton5688 That would suck. When I beat Malekith I managed to no hit him, but I had to because I used up all of my estus fighting beastclergy man. I'd rather just fight Malekith with 4x hp.
True. I think it comes down to knowing how to dodge his air combo and punishing right after. He looks scary and all, but once you nail that down. He's a lot 'easier' than gurranq.
To this day I have not beaten Malenia without summoning something to help. She is by far one of the most insane bosses, and honestly I think it's earned. You earn the fight you want by traversing all the way through Commander Niall's fort, Consecrated Snowfield, and the Haligtree, 3 TOTALLY OPTIONAL AREAS. You get what you wanted after all that.
Elden Ring: She just wants to sleep in peace, so she hides beyond so many traumatic obstacles; and you still seek her out? Cool. You totally deserve what you are going to get now.
I was so convinced I couldn't beat her, that I physically didn't have the skill caple enough to do this. I've never been more defeated in my life, knowing that my very best simply wasn't good enough. I even tried using a +10 mimic and I still got obliterated. Then right before I decided to leave this boss and except that I could never beat her I tried her a couple more times. And on my last attempt I did it, I won. Nothing is more satisfying than doing something you previously thought impossible
I’ve only beat her without the summoning once although I’ve only fought her in two play thrus I usually do something similar in every game my first play thru I might use summonings but I make myself beat the entire game without em on my second play through so yeah I was dreading fighting her and she got me quite a few times but what’s hilarious is when I did finally get her I beat her without getting touched lol I saved the clip and at the end of it I’m like hollering no I just didn’t😂😂 it took me a second to realize it though cause I looked at my health bar then was like okay it’s full but I had all my heals so I was confused like there was no way this boss that’s probably the hardest boss I’ve ever beaten in any game really but specifically fromsoft games. It’s the fckn healing bro that’s 100% what takes it from extremely hard to just fckn ridiculous lol
I found Isshin much harder than Malenia. It’s less about difficulty of bosses, but strength of your character. You have much more freedom in Elden Ring when it comes to build and strength of your character, so you can “cheese” Malenia with all sort of OP build but that’s not the case in Sekiro, in which you have to play fair and square as the developer intended. This is why after you beat a boss in Sekiro, you can come back and reliably beat it again and again…because you’ve truly master the fight.
Elden ring was my first soulsborn game, and when I fought Malenia for the first time, I just remember laughing at how difficult she was. I got pretty lucky and beat her a little after two hours, but it was still one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced in gaming.
Its really fun to read everyone’s experiences! I literally breezed through nameless king, gael, friede knowing theyd be difficult but struggled hard on bosses like midir, ludwig, and kos.
Malenia was so hard man, figuring out the waterfowl was one of the biggest challenges. And summons are basically free health restoration for her. Took me over 100 tries and a week, but i found that you had to be hyper aggressive in her first phase and take advantage of her being idle at times, looking forward to facing her again
It took me around eight hours to beat her I stopped counting attempts around 30 I agree with spirits basically being free health for her my final attempt that I beat her on I brought out a spirit just to rebuff myself and she instantly deleted the Spirit almost completely healing herself and she was on me a fraction of a second later and would have killed me had I not just used my buffs and physic flask. One of the things that helped me beat her was thinking of her as a Sekiro boss and not a Souls boss and despite dying to her many times she is by far my favorite boss in Elden ring.
@@johnapplesauce6129 That's the issue with Melania. She isn't built for this game. At least with the tools we're given. We're still playing Dark Souls. She's playing Bloodborne/Sekiro.
I actually personally haven't found Malekith to be too difficult. He's a rather enjoyable fight in my opinion and after a few good tries something kinda just clicked with me
@@DraZtheProbleM I actually did not. I did malekith alone and didn't use spirit ashes either. I think part of why I don't find him difficult is because of his similarities to Artorias. His attacks just felt familiar to artorias. And Artorias is the boss I have fought more than any other Fromsoft boss
It depends. Many say Guardian Ape's 2nd phase is a nightmare in Sekiro but I found it so much easier to read than the 1st phase that I beat the boss first try and I'm not a souls veteran
@@fall3nwolv3s89 This right here. Maliketh felt very natural to me after 2 or 3 tries, very similar to Artorias. The beat clergy man though ... I've probably died about 30 times on him between my 2 playthroughs but Maliketh took 5 tries in the first and 2 in the second.
Malenia got a huge reputation really fast. She's one of my favorite fights in these games, though I'll admit I'm a bit of a masochist. Her waterfowl dance is pretty crazy but once you have a handle on it and have a good read on the pace of the fight, it's not unmanageable. I really appreciated the fight and how her mechanics really encourage a 1v1, and the fight truly felt like a dual between expert swordsmen. A lot of people complain about her a lot and it might not be entirely unwarranted, but she's my favorite fight in the series so far even though she spanked my ass a huge number of times.
@@pokenoobmx3445 If you have to run it's not dodgable tho. If you're still in recovery frames after hitting her then you can't run away in time in my experience, so you're basically fucked if RNG decides to do it close up.
@@eeaahh it has a reliable rng, after an specific % of life, she will do it the next input she does, so you just have to check if she is gonna do it, if she doesn't do the animation then she is not gonna do the atack until you lower her hp first, she does it around 70-80% and then at 20-25%
@@pokenoobmx3445 She has patterns yes and I'm aware of them but it's just not reliable. I'm super careful too, past 75% I'm running back after almost every attack and throwing knives at her to bait the attack out. And sometimes I still get clapped regardless. I've had her do it twice in a row. Flurry, I hit her once, she does it again. It's just poor boss design imo, and even if you're consistent at avoiding it, it makes the pacing of the boss unbearably slow as you're constantly waiting for the move.
These were all really tough bosses, the Orphan definitely took me more attempts than Malenia, but at the same time I felt like I got lucky when I beat Malenia, whereas I did feel like the Orphan was manageable - it just took practice and patience. No boss has ever killed me more times than Amygdala in the Defiled Chalice Dungeon though; that was a painful experience. Laurence destroyed me for a while too, that was another fight where I felt like I got lucky as much as anything else.
Laurence never tested me, usually get him in one or two shots on varying play throughs. Ludwig was my wall, for days 😅 I don’t know why, but those Shadows of Yarnham with no allies on NG++ was the bane of my existence, the fact they almost always “counter” you while you’re attacking someone else would just one shot 😂
Fighting Gael was one of the best experiences I had. It was the culmination of dark souls saga where you will fight the darkest souls of all. While the I love DS and DS2 I still think that they constructed and designed best arena, boss and most importantly the lore with slave night Gael.
Experiencing Slave Knight Gael for the first time is undoubtedly what got me hooked, for likely the rest of time, on the soulsborneden series. The absolute feeling of utter hopelessness the first time you hit him, only to realize his health bar is the size of a viking longship. The sheer terror of seeing him go hollow, and just absolute confusion of what is going on as he stands like a human and fights you in earnest. The realization that he's just like you as he uses your own tricks against use, using summon signs to teleport around and a secondary crossbow seemingly out of nowhere. And of course, the infinitely dramatic end; the realization that as you kill Gael you are experiencing the finale to a 6 year long epic. Gael might not be the hardest boss; I'd agree he's not even the hardest boss in DS3. But thematically? Gael is the peak. He is everything Dark Souls, and he is the pinnacle of Fromsoft's design. The fight against Gael is nothing short of a masterpiece, and I mean it genuinely. It's a work of art.
Actually Gael is my favorite boss fight in all soulsborne games. He is very challenging, yes, but the fight never feels unfair - it's one of these fight you learn and understand better with every death. Plus the scenery and the cinematics are just beautiful.
@@midorayo1149 more like overrate. Most souls fans rank Bloodborne as not only the best from game, but the best game in general. But you won't see many bosses in tier lists because they're just not memorable
Agree.Orphan of Kos is aways a dreadfull experience but i manage to beat him eventually,Laurence i could only beat once and it was with a bloodtinge build,abusing Evelyn and bone marrow ash,just so i could keep as far away from him as possible
Malenia was the only boss I had to actively change my build to fight. My first playthrough was a strength build with the fingerprint stone shield and great stars, but she rendered any shield useless and my great stars was just so slow, I had to switch to the good ol prelate hammer & giant crusher, maximizing my jump attack damage so I can do as much damage in 1 hit as possible. She attacks so fast and with such little downtime I was only getting 1 or 2 swings of the great stars before she was on me again. I’m glad to say I didn’t resort to spirit summons though.
i did her while only using the turtle shield with carian retaliation (as it dosnt have 100% physical protection, i forced myself to rely on parrying only), bloodhound's fang, bestial seal (for blackflame blade and other buffs, no ranged spells) and only dealing damage via ripostes or the bhf's ash of war all while without leveling vigor, i did not wear armor, so i could light roll, as it trivializes waterfowl dance this was on my 2nd playthrough, took me 542 tries (1st was a faith/str build which i beat her in 5 tries w/, but it felt cheap)
Interesting, I can see guardian ape and owl, but Martry Logarias never destroyed me in bloodborne. I found the base game relatively easy but I guess I also played bloodborne after all 3 souls games so that could be why. Thanks for the comment!
@@Nightwalk2 well I played bloodborne first It was kinda hard and then dark souls 3 it’s harder than bloodborne but cuz now it’s not my first time playing soulsborne game it was a bit easier then sekiro didn’t feel it’s hard that much and now elden ring I felt like malenia and malekith r the only hard thing but dunno if they r the hardest so when u play the game after u play other souls games it become easier xd I suffered first time with bloodborne although I can do no death run now ;-;
Blood borne was the first soulsborne game I ever completed and after quitting and coming back to it later I actually beat it with quite some ease but Martyr Lagarius gave me the most trouble. After beating Bloodborne though it sparked the love for Soulsbornes in me again and now I’m completing Elden ring. I always loved them and played them all but I have never been able to beat any until Bloodborne, I got over halfway through Sekiro and I’d say I’m halfway through Elden ring now.
The reason I love talking about this is seeing how different people’s experiences can vary so wildly. For me, Radagon/Elden Beast was far and away the hardest boss fight of Elden Ring. Just goes to show how much different play styles can effect the experience.
Yeah, it is really interesting. I think Elden Ring does a great job at having bosses that punish certain build or play styles. After beating the game I was really surprised to see that Malekith was a road block for many people. I got him in two tries. For me Morgott was a real big struggle, I had to go away find a new weapon and respec
I beat radagon second try and elden beast first try but to be fair my friend said I got godly RNG in what moves the bosses did and I was pretty over leveled (150) because I had done most of the side content already.
I defeated Malenia a few minutes ago and my God… I felt the same as you about defeating her and thinking it was a lucky shot. Though she did the spin a bunch of times, my man Oleg helped me till her mid life on second phase. He died and my hopes where almost lost. But then, God smiled for me and my holy jump attack with double twinblades granted me victory. Bro, i literally left my food freezing to fight this dumbass, thinking it would last no more than 15 minutes. I was hours wrong hahahaha
@@GirGirGirGir160Malenia is pretty easy, the only good move she has is her lifesteal and if you time it right it's easy to dodge, I find Gael and the Nameless king harder than her, then again I played Dark souls 3 first so I had less experience compared to when I played elden ring, took me like 100 tries on Nameless king and around 130 on Gael, malenia only took me 30 tries Maybe the experience passes on who knows
Midir has become one of my favorite fights over the years, I’ve managed to no-hit him before and have spent hours being summoned in the Ring city just to fight him. As such I wouldn’t put him top 10 anymore as he’s actually quite simple once you know his main 4-5 attacks, but he’s still such a blast to fight!! On the other hand I’m still filled with dread every time I replay DS1 and have to fight O&S again, I don’t know what it is but I can never handle those two without at least 5 attempts. That’s the beauty of souls games though, what some players find easy can become other players greatest battle and best accomplishment!
For me it’s the complete opposite. My first time beating Midir must have taken the entire afternoon and I still got lucky for that attempt. On the other hand, O&S only took me 1 try the first time (though I did play DS1 after DS3 so I had some training). Really is crazy how everyone experiences these games’ difficulty differently.
first time beating DS1 I took the easy path of beating Super Smough.. Big mistake, since I got hooked on the game, and wanted to collect every item. So.. I had to beat Super Ornstein og New Game Plus. Some Gravelord Servant troll invaded me and cursed my Sens Fortress, which made it a pain to go back to level up my weapons. I was stuck fighting super Ornstein for several weeks, until I finally found that cheeky gravelord sign. What a pain to get Leos ring on NG+ !!! 10 years later I still hold this experience dear to my soul.
100% on this. O+S is my personal most difficult boss in all of souls games, while Orphan and Melania rank relatively low. Kinda crazy how different each boss is to each player.
this may sound really stupid to you but the Crystal sage for me is in my top 10 hardest in the hole series as i play really passively and the Crystal sage always kicks my ass for it.
I guess we could think of Malenia this way: *She's the only boss in the series that fought you at her absolute prime, literally, no one in the story had ever face her potential peak form, only you did*
@@ponglenis9273 But technically, Radahn never gets to fight her goddess form. She just nuked him with scarlet aeonia once and then immediately went into coma.
@@MrTonyMartino why would you say owl at hirata and not isshin? we have basically no idea when was owls prime but isshin get ressurected specifically to fight you at his prime no?
My list based on my experience. 1. Soldier of Godrick (Still haven't beat him) 2. Orphan of Kos 3.Demon of Hatred 4. Isshin Sword Saint 5.Midir 6. Gael 7. Godskin Duo 8. Milenia 9. Guardian Ape 10. Owl (Father)
My top 10 are 1: soldier of god Rick 2: pinwheel 3: true king Allant 4: royal rat vanguard 5: mist noble 6:mimic (no armor or weapons) 7: moonlight butterfly 8: phalanx 9: covetous demon aka Jaba the hut 10:cemetery shard
@@dorian4426 Isshin still has more moves and he does them in way quicker succession than malenia, and plus I still think Isshin is more aggro than she is, the only thing making Malenia so hard is that she's put in a game with ds movement, try fighting her in sekiro or Bloodborne and she wouldn't be nearly as hard
Whenever I defeated Midir or Orphan I felt confident in my abilities to beat the bosses again and again in subsequent playthroughs. But when I beat Milenia, it felt like a fluke, like I'd scraped by by the skin of my teeth, I still feel uncomfortable trying to beat her, and I kind of love her for that, it wouldn't feel like a souls boss if they didn't try to outdo their last magnum opus of difficulty.
@@user-xp1uf2ws2n facts, being naked is what got me my win vs malenia, best way to learn it, best way to retreat and best way to dodge waterfowl. I started Elden ring as my first souls game and beat Malenia within 2 weeks of me starting the game, only took me 6 hours to beat her and I found naked is absolutely the best way to do it. I ended that fight using only 6 +9 flasks
I personally never found Nameless King very difficult. His fight is very scripted and a lot of his attacks are very well telegraphed. The delayed attacks were not as common back then, so I can see why they have so many people trouble.
I've beat him 3 times and build is a huge factor. My pyromancer made him comically easy (1 try). My dex/int build struggled badly (8 tries). He's designed to punish heals, stamina mismanagement, roll spam, and inpatience. My str build was somewhere in the middle and took 5 tries.
@@Based_investor I just found his attacks pretty simple to dodge. The rhythm is easy to pick up and doesn’t change much. The delayed attacks are what many people find difficult about him.
@@boundary2580 I think the weird arena where you walk on clouds throws me off as well. There's no sense of space. Depth perception is distorted and movement just feel odd.
It's the delays + lack of proper depth perception + having to go through phase 1 each attempt gets tiring I think the Demon Princes are harder than him though
Midis and the godskin duo were by far my hardest first encounters. I had already knew what I would be dealing with for Melania by the time I reached her.
Yeah, that's why I just started cheesing him with poison knives on subsequent new game plus runs. Ain't nobody got time to chase his ass around just to get one shotted as soon as you fall down the hole to finally fight him for real...
Nameless King is actually my favorite boss fight from Dark Souls 3 purely because of my first experience with. All I ever heard about was how difficult he was and how impossible he was to do on your own. The absolute elation I felt after soloing him for the first time is something I will never forget
So any boss can be one of your favourite if you beat him on the first try after someone overhyped him? What about visual design, moveset, music, arena, lore background, etc?
@@aidanm9543 She is big enough girl to take care of hereself. Have you ever think of graduation from primary school? Im afraid that one will be pretty tough for you but you should definitely try it.
Laurence will always be my hardest. His second phase is just insanely damaging and every time you try to hit him you are risking being stunlocked and killed.
2nd phase is easy for me its that 1st phase that absolutely fucks me same with Ludwig. Orphan and Maria was the opposite for me, no problems getting to the 2nd phase and then getting stuck there for hours.
Malenia is easily the hardest boss I've ever fought in a souls game. My sister and I shared a save file, and of course, she beated her. Though, maybe it was because I enjoyed fighting her without little to no armor (finger maidens set) while using moonveil and uchigatana. I always loved how satisfying it was to dodge her waterfowl without any damage. Sadly my sister used ROB and a mimic to kill her, even canceled her waterfowl with the weapon
U literally using a bleed weapon...that is atleast her weakness...i was using a fkcing god slayer gs...and my god that was a nightmare as u can guess from the video
@@kiro253 you can make an argument that ur cheesing as well spamming jump attacks with a heavy weapon is just as easy as dual wielding katanas, respect to both of your styles
As someone that used ROB and mimic, I'd say it makes the fight more manageable. You still need to sync up attacks between you and your mimic, and dodge any of her attacks including waterfowl if she's targeting you. Not to mention, usually the mimic dies before or a lil after phase 2 and from there it's all you.
@@ace2311 Elden Ring was my first souls game ever, i beat malenia in first try with rob and mimic, in guess people are "not using this and that" to make this fight as hard as possible
I remember seeing the trailers for Elden Ring thinking "I want to fight Malenia, that's the boss I'm looking forward to the most," I also thought "I hope she's a good challenge and not easy." I was not disappointed. She's the boss I arguably know best in that game since I've spent so much time learning her moves, patterns, etc. Easily in my top 2 favorite fights in Elden Ring
First playthrough I was so intimidated I had to summon, but for the second one I forced myself to beat her by myself with no summon. Took me like 30 tries but I learned her patterns and parried her to death. I still have nightmares about waterfowl tho
@@gabrielemanconi4696 Same for me, first play through i used summons but on my ng 3+ run i decided to fight her without summons and took me over 60 tries but the feeling you get when you finally learn how to dodge waterfowl is so satisfying
My experience with Midir is a bit twisted. I have beaten him two times, on my first Playthrough he took me around 50-60 tries. Two years later I did another playthrough as a bit of fresh air from Melania, but now I beat the boss I had considered the hardest of DS3 in just two tries, and now I am conflicted how to feel about him
It is a difference between hard and unfair. Midir is a hard boss because you have to learn well his patterns. Yes, he has a one shot attack, but is not that frequent and difficult to dodge as Malenia's flurry one. I beat her in Ng+3 solo, with a strength build, and was hell.
@@ValentinPagliari I completely agree. Another comment stated that quite well in my opinion, he has a high skill requirement but a low skill ceiling. Once you know his moveset you can defeat him quite easily. The same would be true for Malenia if she didn't have her flurry, since you basically have to learn how to dodge it based on how close to her you are.
He's kind of like a puzzle boss. His moves require easy-to-execute movements to dodge, and his movement requires easy-to-execute movements to hit him, but figuring out when to do what on your own is difficult. Figuring him out is the hard part. Especially where to stand/run when he does his flame attacks
I always thought those guys were super easy. I was rocking dual wield colossals zwei/grafted. You can stunlock them easily with that. When i switched builds, they were instantly a fucking menace haha
Yeah first playthrough I ran up and poked him with my treespear until he died. No big deal. Second playthrough I must have died a dozen times trying to make it past him...
I just started Elden Ring a few weeks ago and right now I already struggle with Morgott, playing as a Astrologer this is kind of hard for me already but knowing the bosses yet to come frightens me 😂
I just got Elden ring 2 weeks ago which is my first ever soulsbourne game so up to that point I didn’t understand how the dodge mechanic worked because it was my first ever souls game and I had been relying on shields up to that point and that of course does not work in the majority of boss fights especially him since he has the magic blades that go through your shield. It took me about 3.5 hours of attempts to kill him
yeahhh i mean the earlier bosses aren't too much of challenge but there's an extreme difficulty spike in the late game. once you get to farum azula it's kinda ridiculous. the second to last (required) boss is like my favorite in the entire game though. also malenia is completely optional
@@demxc6581 i got all achievements last week so you're pretty accurate! thanks, i've read and heard from friends the same about DS3. I'll be on the lookout for a nice price on it and will definitely get it then!
One of my favorite bosses in all these games was Ludwig, the Holy Blade. The design of the character, as well as the arena are top notch to me and I very much struggled to beat him.
Boss design and area was creative but fighting in it was absolute hell for me. Having those super wide attacks and sudden turns with little indication made things very difficult for me- I’ve always hated fighting big enemies in small spaces it’s just uncomfortable and frustrating for me.
Don’t know how I’d rank them, but my hardest boss for each game are Flamlurker, Manus, Fume Knight, Orphan of Kos, Midir, Owl Father Remembrance or Demon of Hatred, and Malenia.
Manus is so easy compared to all the end game bosses in elden ring IMO I would put Godrick the grafted and morgitt on the same level of difficulty as manus ( assuming you didn't explore much before going to stormvail Castle and are not over leveled) Manus had a big health pool and all his attacks do big damage BUT every single attack is highly telegraphed. If you dodge a combo from manus or a heavy attack you always have time to get 1-2 hits. Against malekith for instance you can dodge a heavy attack and still not have time to retaliate, the only time you can get a hit in is between specific attacks.
@@epic1053 spirit summons are a part of the game but i never used anything broken like mimic, tiche, etc. i think i used depraved perfumer caarman. I think i was level like 135 or 140 cus i did mohg beforehand but not the haligtree.
Its always interesting how people can have such different experiences with these bosses. I beat Gael first try but struggled with Friede and Nameless King for hours
Having played elden ring and DS3 first time recently, I find DS3 much more challenging. I think it's because the mimic and summons in elden ring allows you to find cheese mechanics. Malenia wasn't that difficult when you give mimic rivers of blood and you spam moghyn spear (no hit in first phase). HOwever, if you take summons away, ER would be really really difficult.
Your judgement on Elden Rings difficulty would be raised if you did a solo run of the bosses, some of them are extremely difficult, I just refrain from using summons, kills the fun
Yeah that’s what I’m saying melenia isn’t that hard, the reason isn’t because of anything like her attacks it’s because most people use summons, comparing something without that is like something without the top 10 best counters for a boss, doesn’t really make sense when your talking about difficulty.
Very true, it’s very hard to compare which bosses are objectively harder depending from which point you’ve started getting familiar with playing souls games. For me Orphan of Kos was the hardest and most hair pulling frustrating souls boss I’ve dealt with and he still gives me anxiety and it was my 4th souls game.
Another really good trick with bleed greatswords is that if you have the flamberge, you can put any weapon art on there. If you put double slash or sword dance, it's pretty effective against her. I love her fight so much
Having played all the souls games starting with the original demons souls, I think this list is pretty damn good. Personally, I would have had Old King Allant on here, put Midir in the top 3 and switched around Malekith and Malenia, but that's only because I killed Malenia on my 4th attempt by playing hyper aggressive and getting really lucky by her being really passive in both phases. Malekith whipped my ass about 15 times with that first spinning move he does when he starts out phase 2.
For Maliketh you should get the blasphemous claw. He doesn't have much hp so 2 parries with a few hits in between are enough to take him down even at lvl1. That's how I beat him on my lvl1 run. I 100% agree with your ranking his moveset is really really tough. If he had more hp Maliketh could have been the hardest boss in all of elden ring
That was my strat lol. An uchikatana and the blasphemous blade. Took me 3 tries. And to be fair I’ve seen so many edits of his fight that I already knew his movement. It’s not like it was all new stuff I’ve never seen
Fax man just sits there stunned and let’s u get 2-3 fully charged heavy’s making him very easily staggerable in phase 2 not to meantion if he dose the right moves at the start of phase 2 it’s a free stagger as well if phase 2 wasn’t so easy to stagger with parries he would be much harder in my opinion
eldenring is kinda wired because a lot of bosses are hard by design but the game gives you so much tools to get extremly OP and than they become very easy again. After struggeling against malenia for multible hours i tryed to use bloodhoundstep and took me like 5 trys to beat her with it (i dont use any spirit ashes btw). Also every other Boss inclusing Maliketh was kinda a joke with it. OFC there are also a lot of other OP ashes of war like blasphemous blade, RoB, or sourcery in general etc. that make these "hard bosses" very easy. I think Sekiro is still the hardest game for a first time playthrough because you have almost no tools to make the fights easier
My top 10 hardest: 10. Darkeater, Midir - Total Tries after replay through: 12 9. Lady Maria - Total Tries after replay through: 15 (Ludwig probably would have taken her place, but for whatever reason after replaying Bloodborne a few months back... She took me like 15 tries. While Ludwig only took me 6) 8. Sister Friede - Total tries after replay through: 17 7. Orphan of Kos - Total tries after replay through: 19 6. Nameless King - Total tries after replay through: 22 5. Malekith, The Black Blade - Total tries after playthrough: 26 4. Owl, Father - Total tries after replay through: 29 3. Laurence, The First Vicar/Demon of Hatred - Total tries for both after replay playthrough: LTFV: 31, DOH: 33 (Both are tied for me since I always seem to really struggle with them no matter how many times I fight them) 2. Sword Saint, Isshin - Total tries after replay through: 43 1. Malenia, Blade of Miquella - Total tries after playthrough: I lost count. Lol.
I beat sword saint isshin in 22 tries, nameless king in just 2 tries, the father owl took me 12 tries and demon of hatred 15 tries, everything on my 1st playthrough of each game.
I haven’t beaten her yet, and it may just be Stockholm syndrome, but I’m finding myself loving the Malenia fight. I am so stupid good at phase 1 at this point. When I don’t make dumb mistakes I can decimate her first phase. And it feels amazing after I spent hours getting bodied by phase 1. I just think she’s crazy fun. Grueling but mostly fair, intimidating but learnable. And she has built in weaknesses that you can exploit, but sometimes the game punishes you for if you get to greedy with the exploit. Phase 2 makes her crazier and more aggressive, yet her weaknesses are more present. She’s not my #1 in Elden Ring but I think she’s great
Definitely, after a while I just started to use bh step just for that one single attack and learn to dodge every other moves properly, I think the fight becomes quite fair this way
No no you are right this boss fight is the most enjoyable boss fight in my opinion too i love how they did a great job with her OST too which made fight better
Honestly the waterfowl dance attack kinda ruined it for me. I adored the spectacle, music, design, and the moveset of malenia. But constantly worrying about one attack and only thinking about that attack for the whole boss took away from the whole experience imo
@@tarvis6454 i feel like depending on your build learning her triggers for waterfowl dance can be really difficult. I beat her with guts greatsword, no summons, no bhs, and I had this really awesome phase 1 combo (jump attacks, crouch r1s, stagger, crit then giants hunt) that got her down to about 1/3 or 1/4 health. 9/10 once she got up from giants hunt she would fly up for waterfowl dance. Knowing this I could give her enough space to successfully dodge it. Phase 1 became extremely doable once I learned this. The real trick to malenia is knowing proper spacing and not getting too greedy with hits. Especially in phase 2, let her do her clone move, run away to the other side of the arena if you have to. Definitely the most rewarding boss to beat, none other comes close
Malenia is really a question of builds and one's approach to the fight. That's where Elden Ring in general differs from the rest of the series - you've got such a huge variety of tools that there's at least one combination of things that'll make quick work of any boss. Fighting, say, Orphan is a similar experience no matter how you approach the fight because Bloodborne offers a fairly narrow set of tools to play with. Malenia on the other hand: Try beating her 1v1 with a tank build, then fight her with a +10 summon and a bleed infused weapon, or something that can knock her down. Vastly different experiences. Personally I had a +10 Luthel and a +10 Blasphemous Blade and beat her in a fairly short amount of time because spamming the Taker's Flame replenishes health and knocks her on her butt, and Luthel can tank her through much of the fight.
Exactly. Elden ring is extremely easy compared to other souls games. If you spam that laser spell or dragon rot spell on 99 percent of the bosses in the game you pretty much 1 shot them or take out most their health over time doing nothing. Adding a summon on top makes the game effortlessly easy in my opinion. The other souls games limit your options & make every route you take a challenge
I honestly respect you or anyone else who can beat melania without a summon. I also vividly remember me and my friends just sitting in a corner watching my other friend solo midir. Those two are such cool fights and probably in my top favorites of all time.
with no summon and no cheese ,malenia is a really tough fight but feel great when you beat her. If you use want to cheese then use swarm flies to stagger her constantly then you spam ROB's ash of war ... literally she can't even move
Beast clergyman advice; After he does his very fast double swing, he usually follows up with the move where he stabs the ground and then drags his dagger in a half circle. Outspace that attack and counter with a jumping attack, and then react to whatever he does after. He will always do a move that is reactable afterwards. And when he does beast claw, be at range so that he sends them forward rather than in a circle. Roll through those for a free rolling attack. These are the two safest punishes in the fight that I've found for no hits
Elden Ring is a weird one for me, because every single fight can be made very easy by using all your resources. Using mimic tear on a bleed build pretty much permastaggers Malenia P1, for example, and makes P2 a chill fight. Same with most other bosses in that game. On the other hand, using something relatively standard (no status, no special ashes of war, no summon), that fight is super super hard.
Yeah that's kind of my only gripe with Elden Ring, is that because there is a choice of builds, weapons, spells, and summons to use, the bosses are either unfair, tedious and even downright broken, or can be easily cheesed or one shorted. It's very hard to rank their difficulty in this sense.
@@Crichjo32 Yeah, it's really weird because I struggled a lot on Margit and Leonine Misbegotten (yeah, I know...), and even Astel, but I killed Malenia on my 3rd attempt. The game gives you tools that make some late game fights a walk in the park. I know that on my NG+ journey I won't use the Mimic Tear.
I completely agree with you. The game can range from easy to very heard depends on how you utilize tool that the game provides such as summoning or some op broken built. I think broken built is much more forgiving than summoning. Using mimic tear is the game on easy mode
Playing ER as any other Souls, i found it to be the easiest one. even without 'special' stuff. Malenia is the only one that i used Mimic on and more so i cuz I was like ''huh I didn't use this till now let's see how it goes.'' and then beat her like 3rd try.
I don’t really understand why people think they are super hard... Like Malenia. I am str/faith build use double great sword, no summon, no special skill like bloodhound step. None of the bosses with remembrance make me feel struggle.
The thing about most soulsborne bosses is that their difficulty is pretty universal for most builds, whereas in Elden Ring your build can completely change the difficulty of a boss.
That's also absolutely true for Dark Souls I-III though. Every fought Midir with pestilent mist? Or Aldrich on a Mage build? Sekiro and Bloodborne are the only games where I feel like the difficulty is at least somewhat consistent among the players, but even there a different weapon or shinobi techniques can make a huge difference. Like firecrackers against guardian Ape.
@@kunstlerischeintelligenz471 there is definitely a variety of bosses that cater to different builds but I feel as though Elden Ring was much less consistent than past games
i have the same experience with melania you had with kos my first playthrough, when the game first came out, I had a blood build, so I literally melted her first phase without her even using waterflow, and the fact you get free hits after her 2nd phase dive bomb meant I got her bellow half hp before the fight even begun, i think it took me like 4 or 5 tries. now on my 2nd playthrough, with a STR/Faith build, she absolutely wreaked me over and over and over. bloodhound step was my only saving grace. it took me over 20 tries. and much like you, I'm a soulsborn veteran, did SL4 on BB and no upgrades too, did sl1 on DS1 and DS3.
As soon as I saw Orphan of Kos being number 2 I knew that Malenia would be no. 1. And she's my number 1 by far too. Usually Soulsborne bosses take me around 10 attempts if they're hard and only Midir got me to like 20 attempts over 2 hours so. But I bashed my head into Malenia for around 2 days of total 6 hours and god knows how many attempts. And while she's the hardest boss I've ever slain solo I still stand by the point that she is not meant for Elden Ring. The way she moves and spams attacks, combined with her lifesteal on hit and waterfowl dance just screams that she was either meant for Sekiro or Bloodborne.
look up the guy that beat her with no rolls. its actually a noob trap and the best way to win is to be light and move around on your toes to space things out vs dodge rolling
Yeah, oddly enough, Fromsoft games tends to have at least one boss that doesn’t fit the gameplay and would be a great boss in a different game. Friede from DS3, Demon of Hatred from Sekiro, and now Malenia from Elden Ring.
Fighting malenia without armor on isnt too bad, but with armor, she becomes the hardest boss ive ever faced. So much so that i don’t consider it a victory beating her without getting hit on a naked run
I bet. They buffed light rolling and since I was a light armor user I was able to consistently dodge Waterfowl Dance, but with medium or fat rolling it’s so much more dangerous. Before the buff, however, she’d often catch me with one of her slashes.
This list is incredibly respectable as well as the quality of the video! Well done man! My list would be: 1. Malenia, Blade of Miquella - Elden Ring 2. Orphan of Kos - Bloodborne 3. Lawrence, The First Vicar - Bloodborne 4. Dragonlord Placidusax - Elden Ring 5. Slave Knight Gael - Dark Souls III 6. Nameless King - Dark Souls III 7. Ludwig, The Holy Blade - Bloodborne 8. Radagon of the Golden Order / Elden Beast - Elden Ring 9. Mogh, Lord of Blood - Elden Ring 10. Maliketh, the Black Blade - Elden Ring
@@deludedhollowbastard547 for me personally it’s his delayed tells combined with quick delivery, his end game damage, and very inconsistent combo strings. I’ve beaten him countless times, and have all of his attacks memorized. But I still feel a pinch of pressure every time I approach his arena as I sometimes do still die to him on the occasion
I feel you man. I tried tons of strategies to beat Melenia one vs one. I did try parrying and got pretty good at it but I could not make a progress. What worked for me was jump attacks and cheesy bleed from militia saw + seppuku + Frost and I did use bloodhound. So sadly I cannot say I did beat her in the traditional fashion. Though I can tell you I was able to dodge her spinny ultimate combo without the bloodhound after a while. It is doable. I did also attempt her so many times I would not be surprised if I did try to beat her around 150 as you did. Congratulations to you man for beating her with your setup. I did try that few times but still bleed was what got me through this fight. Amazing boss. Also my top one would be final fight from Sekiro where you face off against young Ishin.
I finally beat her with just my heavy greatsword. I had a bad phase 1 and entered phase 2 with 3 flasks. Lost all 3 quickly then git gud set it. Stayed really aggressive and didn't give her any space. I've never shook like that after beating a boss
Wondering where you'd put inner father. I found him far more difficult than isshin, and considerably harder than OG owl & owl father. I like the ton you took the video in, explaining your biases and how DS3 was your first game. It made your perspective really understandable even if I had minor disagreements...well it honestly didn't even feel that I disagreed because of your wording
For me Frede, Lady Maria, and Malenia hands down my two favorite fights in the Soulsborne worlds but they put me in my place so many times that I’d damn near Praise them as if they were The Morrigen herself split into three different worlds. My real honorable mentions would be Father Gascoine and Gehrman. Their fights just made me feel like I was truly fighting for my life in the Never Ending Night of The Hunt. (Bloodborne is my favorite game of all time.)
Those three chicks man... I was surprised not to see Lady Maria on this list, but when there's that many bosses it becomes hard to pick. There's a wallpaper floating around of those 3 ladies. So much pain in one painting.
Fun fact: Fume Knight will instantly go to phase two if your character wears Velstadt armor or just helm, not sure. If you didn't know that you would place Raime a couple positions higher
That's a completely self-imposed challenge that 0.1& of the players would do. It wouldn't just magically change the order of the ranking based on a completely niche mechanic.
One of the things I find fascinating about these games, and that makes me love them even more, is how much a ranking like this can change based on your own personal playstyle. In Bloodborne, for example, I know most people consider Orphan of Kos and Ludwig to be the hardest bosses. On multiple playthroughs, I've literally never died to Ludwig and only died to Orphan a handful of times on my first playthrough, and never on subsequent playthroughs. But bloody ROM still gives me conniptions.
Never died a single time on ludwig? I call bullshit. His first phase is way too unpredictable to one shot without at least somewhat learning his patterns.
@@jokabox93 I don't know what to say. I don't know why I'd lie about that and then admit to getting my ass handed to me by Rom every single playthrough.
@@deludedhollowbastard547 because she’s really hard for me no matter how many times I do her unlike Isshin or nameless who I can first try now no problem
Have you ever played charmless? Parry system isnt shit at that point. Unless you're literally perfect. No roll spamming In sekiro. I see inner iss as much harder than her if you go charmless
I'll never forget my first time fighting Midir; I very nearly beat him my first try using nothing but caestus but I died instantly to his laser attack. Since then I still haven't managed to beat him even after witching to much better weapons. The first defeat was just such a sour one... Good list though man. I agreed with all of them except for Gael. Not that he is 'easy' just that I believe his fight is so perfectly balanced you can pick up on his moves quickly and get into a great rhythm and beat him within like 15 tries (does that much sense?).
Malenia is hard for all the wrong reasons. I never felt the game is unfair, fighting Orphan, Nameless King, Sister Friede and other hard bosses of this genre. Every single time I died it was because of a mistake I made. I never had to use any special item, try to keep my distance from the boss on purpose to trigger an attack or use other cheesy tactics to survive. After beating those bosses I felt accomplished. Malenia however, is a different story. More than 90% of my deaths was because of one single move, aka Waterfowl Dance, that I couldn’t do anything to prevent. It came to a point when every time she’d go on air I was like “Here we go again, another death.” After beating her, I didn’t feel accomplished at all, I was just glad I got it out of the way.
I went str gs and found maliketh to be really intuitive after a few tries. He's difficult if you try to punish him in the middle of his long ass combos, but if you wait them out and position correctly for where he lands it becomes easy. He has 3 safe attack windows. First is after he does the 3 black blade air slashes at you. He jumps towards you, slices the ground horizontally, you roll and position behind him, get 2 hits in. He's easy to poisebreak so 3 jump attacks at 50 str got the job done for me. Giants hunt is good too. The second is after he finishes his regular slice combo that he always starts the fight with. He kinda rolls over and stabs the floor, get behind and hit. The third is after he does his ground jump stab that does aoe, dodge, then he does the forward stab aoe one mind slice, get behind him and whack him. It's 80% patience 20% positioning.
I disagree maliketh took my like 8-9 tries to beat with my dual greatswords build. He has very telegraphed attacks in stage 2 that you have to quick on. But malenia, dear God, took me around 50-70 tries to finally get her solo. She's just a monster plain and simple.
Yea it’s weird how different people struggle with different bosses personally maliketh was probably one of my easiest boss encounters in the souls games
@@redblade37 I also used dual greatsword but it took me like 2 hours of trying to kill him. For me the hard part was that after finishing a combo the downtime between his next move is so little that I'm never sure if I can get a hit in or not. So I ended up trading hits a lot until I eventually got better at the fight ig. Malenia must have taken me like 200 tries though, I was fighting her for days before I beat her
@@colinweinreich9878 nah for me he is the hardest boss in elden ring. i beat melania fairly quickly. just took like 2 hours but i couldnt beat maliketh for like a whole week. i had to leave him and level up a lot like three times
I agree malekeith actually took me more tries than malenia did but it's mainly because he kept jumping like a monkey and using his aoe attacks which were annoying af but his low health made him challengeable and that too he transforms at half health so sometimes I wonder he would have been a nightmare for me to deal with
I love seeing the good side of the Souls enjoyers where we can compare where people do better or have a more difficult time with different bosses. I beat Malenia in 18 tries and Maliketh in three, and O&S in 5 tries, but it took me FOREVER to beat Sister Friede and Gael. Always love to see the differences and skill gaps in game senses, and what some are better at than others while struggling with some objectively easy fights. Idk, it’s just really cool.
I think Malenia is incredibly difficult but for me I found the Elden beast (and radagon) way harder due to the fact you can’t stagger them and they hit for massive damage
I went with a katana bleed build and although she was a pain in the ass she always felt beatable in my attempts. Radagon and Elden Beast however… said fuck my life I ain’t winning, I died so much - out of desperation/rage I gave in and decided to respec and go all in with magic. Kamehameha’d that Elden bitch to hell.
I went against Melania with a bleed build and I still more trouble than against radagon and elden beast (they are immune to bleed) once you figure out radagon the elden beast is pretty easy since the moveset is pretty easy to learn
@@fede113 I also used a bleed build. While the moves of the Elden Beast may be easier to dodge than Malenia’s their are way more of them and them and they are way less openings then her to attack especially if he decides he wants to keep running away.
since i dont like to feel like i was lucky when i beat a boss i was determined to learn to at least survived Waterfowl dance. what i did was rolling twice in the first part (once in and once out). The i-frames allowed me to mitigate some of the damage. Then i rolled towards her to avoid the secord flurry . finally i stay still until she reposition for the third and inmidiately roll backwards. I would sometimes take more or less damage depending on execution but once realized that i could live throught it lost the fear to it. This would result in a more offensive playstyle where i would switch between constant agression and passitvity to bait her but if she wasnt triggering the attack then i would go "fuck it lets dance" since i knew that seing the attack at melee wasnt the end for me. Each time that i defeated her i felt like i learned something new about her behavoir or her moves wich lead to be able to do better each time. There were moment of frustration but overall my experience with her was really fun.
@@nate7418 i know, but sometimes you dont have the luxury of distance i just explained what ido when facing a surprise melee waterfowl dance at melee range. Imperfect? very much, but beats giving up the moment you see her hover in the air near you.
I would have loved to see you include the inner boss versions from Sekiro. For me they were way harder than their normal version and a nice addition to the game.
Difficulty also depends a lot on which NG cycle you're on. With some bosses going to max NG just means you have to able to do the exact same thing for longer Some become completely different. Flamelurker for instance in Demons Souls is trivial on the first playthrough but in max NG deserves consideration for this list imo. With any kind of melee it's not enough to dodge his attacks anymore, you have to manage distance every time you attack as well since his fire aura is enough to kill you without him ever landing a single hit.
Malenia is controversial for me. I tried her on a melee with dexterity build and she plastered me without me ever approaching her second phase. Then, re-speced to scocerer and beat her in four tries. She can be really trivialized but she punishes the R1 spammers hard.
Melee against Malenia is much easier than magic. With magic you need to keep space between you and the boss, but she will just straight dash to you over the map. Learn to dodge or avoid waterfowl dance and it's not that hard.
once you end up learning how to dodge two of malenia's attacks, it almost trivializes the entire fight, shes one of my favorites in elden ring which is why i have so many different builds and character who have all killed, malenia, also this might come off as a hot take but i wish maliketh had a full health bar, so many awesome bosses with cool second phases are almost deleted since they transform at about 35-40% health i.e. dragonlord, lichdragon, horah loux, mohg, etc.
Mohg doesn't really count since he gets his health back up to 70% after the phase transition. Lichdragon doesn't really have a 2nd phase and only adds 2 different moves, which is unfortunate because he had the potential to be better than Midir but From blew it with the mediocre and reused moveset.
While I do agree with the first part, though I just use a shield for some of her attacks bc it's consistent even though I could dodge, I still think Melania is one of their worst designed bosses. So is Maliketh, they just try my patience with their combo spamming. Did you use summons?
@@arthurdurham an aggresive boss makes the boss bad? i have about six different characters, strength, dex, bleed, priest, paladin, mage, and rl1 which i never used a summon for any
@@ThaPugster No, Bloodbourne is my favorite game and it's all aggressive but your abilities are directly matching the aggression. I just don't find the mechanics you can use in ER fit with how the bosses are designed. Spamming high damage combos with infinite stamina and instantaneous dodges. Though I'll say Melania's first phase has a lot of predictable attacks to dodge in concept, but depending on RNG will just spam the combos over and over and over, so you spend most of your time dodging and not attacking. But in geenral you're not nearly as fast as the bosses or able to cover similar ground or move cancel like them with little to no recovery time needed. Just bc I can beat them all without summons doesn't mean it's fun.
@@arthurdurham i agree with you on bloodborne but there are many items that perfectly balance the fast paced fights with slower builds, like the stonebarb which is basically essential for strength or you can parry if you are that type of guy, theres even lifesteal and beast blood pellet if you really want to play bloodborne in elden ring
I'm currently fighting Malenia naked with the Starscourge Greatsword double handed at level 115, and I got to say that, apart from some Waterfowl Dance bs, it's been the funnest Elden Ring boss for me, the satisfaction from learning her moves and playing almost hitless is unmatched. That being said, I haven't gotten to Godskin Duo yet, and so I haven't fought Malekith nor other late game bosses, so maybe They could be more fun
Maliketh is incredible and it would be a top 10 for me if it wasn't for his low HP (same for Morgott and Radahn) but in my opinion Radagon and the Elden Beast are much harder bosses.
Radans Hp isn’t low. The level to fight him at is 50-60 so maybe you were higher level than you were supposed to be without knowing. This is not meant as a insult, I am just confused on why you think his hp is low.
I actually found Gael to be pretty manageable but Friede and especially Midir were absolutely kicking my a***! With Malenia being the hardest boss in souls games I absolutely agree. Feel like Radhan deserved a spot because I found him to be extremely hard.
Malekith is interesting for me. On my first blind playthrough with some unoptimized garbage claymore quality build, he took me hours. But on subsequent runs where I actually know what I'm doing with my character he isn't bad. Malenia always gives me trouble though. Midir is similar a bit. He feels unconventional for how you typically fight dragons in souls games and feels hopeless at first, but once you understand how to play the fight in front of him rather than under him, he is actually easy.
I love how different things are. I beat Malekith first try. Didn't struggle. Godfrey beat the shit out of me for hours. Hardest boss in that game for me. Hands down.
@@tsunomat, That’s what I love about the game so much. Everyone has a different experience with the bosses and the game as a whole depending on how much and where they explore.
Hm, I'd probably disagree with a few of these entries. Gael deals like, no damage, so it is fairly easy if you're patient and have somewhat high vigor. NK is VERY consistent. He telegraphs his attacks very well. Like, just practice NK for 15-20 hours, and then it turns into a very fun, consistent and repayable fight Malenia maybe deserves between #3 and #5, but not #1. No way. Its the same as NK but a bit harder. Just spend 20 hours learning Malenia and then she becomes a very consistent boss. Of course the majority of this time is learnt dodging Waterfowl. But once you're able to recognize the dodge pattern for Waterfowl, the fight is very consistent and quite fun, so long as you're patient. The fight becomes very easy to no hit after a while. Oh also, she has like, 0 poise negation, to throwing a pebble is enough to stagger her lol. Regarding this actually, she can actually be staggered out of her hyper-armour before her long winded attacks such as Waterfowl, which can make the fight a lot easier if you know how to abuse poise correctly. I did an All-bosses run for my NG+8 run, and I beat all remembrances each playthrough, so, as you advance through New Games, Maliketh becomes a tad more difficult than Malenia. In NG+0, he is fairly easy because of how squishy he is. A literal toddler has more hit points. However, when Maliketh has almost double the health and damage on NG+7 and above, that low HP issue goes away and he actually becomes challenging because his health pool is actually somewhat significant. The solution of out-dps'ing him evaporates and the difficulty is around Morgott on a Rune Level 1 run. You definitely did Isshin and Orphan of Kos dirty lmao. EDIT: Was just thinking about this now, it was 100% a good call putting Midir at the top of DS3 bosses. I got through the entirety of DS3, my first soulsborne game on a shitty 48Hz laptop where I had a max fps of around 13. No, I'm not fucking joking I'm being serious here. On that old laptop that I only keep around for Uni purposes, I beat the entirety of DS3, including all of the DLC bosses, except for one. Yes, I was able to get through Sister Friede, NK, and I beat Gael second try, with my first try reaching 3rd phase. However, the only boss I couldn't beat, was Midir. To beat him on that laptop, instead of using fullscreen like I did for all the other bosses, I had to shrink my screen down to something ridiculously tiny like 480x360 or something (don't remember the exact dimensions), just so I could be able to challenge him on a consistent 30fps (which was revolutionary for me at the time). After doing that, it only took me like an hour or so, but still. Absolutely insane. (in case you're wondering what the laptop was, it was like a 2015 Dell laptop that had arounf 100gb out of 1tb remaining on the C drive lol)
I genuinely never understood how people found fume knight hard. His move set health and damage are all extremely manageable. I died to him once my first time around because I didnt know how slow the big flaming swing attack would be, but my second attempt he went down easy.
@@nedmacamden3019 Ive beaten him with a ton of different builds, and pretty much all of them yielded the same results, Fume Knight being easy. Ive done Dex w multiple weapons, strength w multiple weapons, hex build, sorcery, faith, an all rounded build. Maybe im just naturally built for the Fume Knight fight idk, but all Ik is I found him fairly easy
Good list! I'm missing some Bloodborne bosses though, Lawrence is harder than any ds3 boss, and i would also argue Ludwig is too. The defiled chalice watchdog is up there aswell, and the defiled amygdala, though not so much for me. But for the most part, i agree with you
I beat lawrence on my first try, but I was probably way overleveled because I only got around to him after all that chalice bs for the trophy. Might have to give him another go in NG+ or something. Defiled amygdala i resorted to cheese without remorse because that fight is just bullshit and artifically unfair, didnt seem worth it to actually fight.
@@jokabox93 Defiled Amygdala and defiled whatch dog are absolutely brutal, i just went for the head and prayed it didn't hit me. In my first playthrough of the dlc, i died to Lawrence 12 times, then on ng+ i beat him first try, and from that point i either beat him in 3 or 4 tries, or more than 15, even 20. I just haven't figured out his first phase, and that's probably the problem the other guy has with Midir
Updated list after finishing Elden Ring. 15. Demon Prince - It was a toss-up between this boss and Pontiff since he wrecked me so badly on my recent playthrough, but i went with this one since it can be a long drawn out battle, you have to pay a lot of attention, the damage can be insane and the second phase is just intimidating as hell. 14. Father Owl - This boss requires you to reach that mental flow state, and if you don't then he'll cut you up in seconds, he might just be the fastest boss in the series, and the Inner version makes him even more hellish. 13. Darkeater Midir - First playthrough wise, he'd definitely be higher. Midir's always a weird one, sometimes he'll give you an easy fight with easy to dodge moves, and sometimes he just goes on a laser frenzy which kills me every time, that laser barrage in phase 2 is the most intimidating move in the series for me. 12. Orphan of Kos - Orphan being here doesn't mean he's not 10/10 in terms of difficulty, his first phase for me is relatively simple to handle for me personally, but his second phase is one of the most intimidating phases in the series. Erratic and unpredictable, i can see why people have the most trouble with him. The reason he's here for me personally, his first phase takes up 50% of his health bar and can be exploited with backstabs to make his hellish second phase shorter. 11. Sword Saint Isshin - The only 4 phase boss in the series currently if we include Genichiro, he's the ultimate test for everything you've learnt up til this point. His sword phase if you're in a parry flow can be relatively simple, but when he pulls out that spear and his glock, that damn hyper armour and those combos are nightmarish to handle, the fight turns me into a coward and i just run away to avoid his combos lol. 10. Sister Friede - An exhausting endurance fight, the third phase is one of the most stressful in the series due to limited resources, her speed and combos. You have to remember all 3 phases properly and she always does things in every phase to make it stressful, such as invisibility attacks, healing, grabs etc, it's mentally taxing and takes me to my limit every time. 9. Slave Knight Gael - Many might find this an odd choice, but this boss kills me multiple times every playthrough, his damage is insane and his attributes turn this into a long drawn out endurance fight, he has minimal weaknesses and has the ability to end the fight swiftly. 8. Demon of Hatred - Insane damage and feels so awkward with Sekiro's mechanics, always a stressful fight, i don't think i've ever beaten him without using that whistle prosthetic. 7. Laurence the First Vicar - Always nerve-wracking to fight, his damage and delays are ridiculous, he could just choose to end the fight at any given moment if he feels like it especially at NG+. This fight always takes 7+ minutes for me, that's a lot of time to avoid a potential one shot, and that can happen frequently due to his delays roll catching you, having the highest damage in the game and Bloodborne's counterdamage. Some people call this boss unfair and i can definitely see why. 6. Pre-nerf Radahn - A boss that took me over 30 attempts, maybe i was underleveled, but his combos and complex design definitely made him nerve wracking to fight. I have a feeling he'll drop below many of the bosses on this list in the long term since he got nerfed and i've only faced him on one playthrough, but i can't pretend to ignore the torment he gave me on my first playthrough. 5. Radagon & Elden Beast - I struggled pretty hard with this fight mainly due to Radagon, his insanely delayed combos and erratic follow ups made him one of the hardest phases in the series for me, and he is immune to bleed, i am terrible at delayed bosses that hit hard and Radagon exploits that like crazy with his endless roll catching, surprisingly Elden Beast was much more manageable, his melee swings were easy to predict and you just have to run a lot because of his magic, from the 40 attempts Elden Beast only killed me 7 times. If Radagon had a second more difficult phase instead, this would easily be higher. 4. Ludwig the Accursed/Holy Blade - Until Elden Ring came along, Ludwig remained the most attempts i've ever had at a boss at 40+, 2 insanely lethal and distinct phases. And i haven't fully mastered it after all those years, he still kills me multiple times per playthrough. 3. Maliketh the Black Blade - This was the second boss that reached 50 attempts, another boss that is harder than anything from the previous games. The first phase is moderately difficult and requires a lot of memorization, but his second phase turns it up to 11, one of the deadliest phases in the series with comically high damage due to the DoT, even my final attempt i was left with a sliver of health, him and Mohg are pretty much tied, but i'll just place Mohg a little higher due to more attempts, but i had more close calls with Maliketh on my successful attempt.. One of my favourite bosses of all time too. 2. Mohg, Lord of Blood - This is the boss that finally broke the record that Ludwig held at my expense, Mohg almost took me 60 freaking attempts, even with bleed katanas, the shackle and the flask to negate the transformation damage. His first phase is manageable but difficult with his random aoe's that get me, but his 2nd phase is ridiculous, insane damage, bleed damage, limiting the arena, ridiculous hp and ending combos with follow ups to throw you off. By far harder than anything from the previous games for me. 1. Malenia, Blade of Miquella - When i heard the horror stories of Malenia, i didn't think it would be that bad, i'm someone who didn't find Orphan of Kos, Nameless King and Sword Saint Isshin excruciatingly difficult despite the difficulty hype from the community, sure they're definitely difficult but not absurd from my experience. I thought Malenia would be the same case, little did i know what i was in for lol. It took me 31 attempts just to reach the second phase, and a total of 131 attempts to beat her without summons which is more than Mohg and Maliketh combined. The hardest thing i've ever done in a game by far, 9 hours of agony. The second phase is agony, unending combos, minimal windows to attack in her second phase, the ridiculous clone attack and that borderline unfair waterfowl dance. It feels like Fromsoft secretly got frustrated that Sigrun the Valkyrie from God of War was considered harder than the fromsoft bosses for a lot of people lol. It's like they took a scrapped Sekiro boss, turned her into a Valkyrie out of spite against God of War developers, and turned the difficulty up to another planet, she's without a doubt the hardest fromsoftware boss and it isn't even close, fighting Orphan and Sword Saint back to back would be easier for me personally. Anyways that's it, sorry for the ramble.
I like the malenia fight... But i always thought that they made her difficult Just for the sake of being difficult. She is so stacked with this many mechanics that work against you. The constant healing, the unnecessary two full health bar phases and of course the waterfall dance... I get that it actually can be avoided even in close range but I've seen many vets saying that even by fromsoft standards that move is a little to much at times
yeah man. I agree. Don't get me wrong. I love a hard boss fight. But I just didn't enjoy the boss design. Low key, I think elden ring had some of the more boring boss fights. Very cool, fun, and pretty. But mechanics just didn't cut it for me.
Maliketh was super tough for me when I first fought him, and for like my first four playthroughs I was stumped on this guy. I always managed to beat him fairly quickly but I never felt like I really learned him until my fifth playthrough. Elden Ring bosses are different than previous games, you really have to work to get your damage openings. There’s positioning based boss attacks that can grant you openings if you outspace it. That’s one thing about Elden Ring is I feel that positioning is more important than in previous games. The Beast Clergyman also has combos that are pretty tough to deal with, and at first it seems like he never stops attacking but after some practice you’ll realize that’s not true and he does give you openings. That being said though his damage is incredibly high so I think he definitely deserves some respect as a top tier challenge. That being said though his health pool is so low that once you can learn the openings and/or use the blasphemous claw in phase 2 you can take him out so much easier. This is all judging him without spirit summons melee only and no freak one shot builds or anything. It’s unfair to judge the boss based on external factors, I judge boss difficulty based on their moveset and the fight itself. You could summon another player and have them fight the boss for you but that wouldn’t tell you anything about the boss difficulty itself, that’s why I think it’s unfair to factor in spirit summons and things like that when judging bosses.
I found a lot of the Elden ring content to have pretty easy bosses (STR Melee no summons) relative to the other ones. Staggering bosses and jump attacks prove to be very strong. Melania for example staggers at every hit you give her. Her only lethal attack is the waterfowl dance which again can be hit out of with just one hit. I found my hardest challenges in DS3 & BB. Haven't played Sekiro but going to give it a go!
Yeah idk why so many people think elden ring is so hard. Especially if you use the tools at your disposal. Compared to all other souls borne games, with the tools available to the player, Elden ring was a breeze for me. Especially if you go with a shield build. On NG+ I used a shield to test it out and it’s ridiculous how easy it is. Just hold block and use a poke weapon. Dodge grab attacks and that’s pretty much all you have to do.
bloodborne without using a broken weapon like the whirlygig saw has incredibly hard boss fights especially in dlc learning ludwig felt amazing but brutal at the same time similar to midir a fast moving piss off animal that wants you dead but orphan of kos I can't imagine most elden ring players even beating him if they struggle with malenia sure he doesn't have a second health bar but there no cheap trick to beat him either git gud by parrying or wait for backstab Opening plus die in one wrong move he should be #1 in hardest soul bosses
@@Seiga005 it all comes down to how appropriately leveled you are. most bosses are designed to be fought after exploring about 20-30% of the region they're found in, so if you fully explore the game most of the bosses are trivial
@@Seiga005 of course elden ring is a souls game at heart but u don’t have to play it like one instead of having to memorize a bosses attacks if your struggling use a op bleed / magic build or over lv / use summons elden ring gives u an option to make it the most difficult (maybe) souls game or the easiest (demon souls was easy tho so not sure) in my opinion elden ring is a lot more fun if u play it more like a traditional souls game with open world mixed in
I like how the bosses in this list are also some of From's most well designed. Personally the only bosses here that I can't praise much is Orphan and Malenia. Orphan because I havent fought it yet so no opinion, and Malenia because the amount of salt I had and still have with that fight is enough to end world hunger. :D Honorable mention would be Artorias because no matter how much I beat him he still manages to be difficult, unpredictable, and fun af
Godrick probably took me more total attempts (40+), but Malenia is by far the hardest boss in any of the games (even if her sicko mode slash was removed). Before Elden Ring, that honor would've gone to Friede for sure.
@@CrunchRatSupreem lol haha. Funnily enough on my second playthrough he gave me more grief than I expected. I carved through Margit then Godrick stopped me in my tracks. Karma to me for questioning you lol
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Howdy tarnished! If you liked this commentary, check out my video essay on Elden Ring :) th-cam.com/video/ZE__CQ-Ajvs/w-d-xo.html
Malenia is one of the easiest bosses in elden ring, with all of the cheeses that you can do, the rivers of blood and mimic will dominate her, and the there is the wall one and so menu more.
In my opinion, I need to put Ludwig from Bloodborne at the top
I remember the first time I fought slave knight Gael I was in ng+3 and it was the hardest clap ever, I had to summon someone like 50 times, I burned through my stash of 70+ embers
I agree with your choices, but I disagree with your placement. Especially from Malenia.
I'M NOT BRAGGING ABOUT MY "SKILL" ON THE CONTRARY, I DEFEATED HER BY PRESSING JUST TWO BUTTONS, THE "CIRCLE" AND THE "L2".
Yes, she's a strong boss with a life recovery mechanic that punishes summoners, and it's not just any battle style that's going to be easy to beat her... But she's so easy to stun that, honestly, she is a joke, I admit that the first time it took me two hours to defeat her, but as soon as I noticed how ABSURDLY EASY it is to stun, I switched to my Blasphemous Blade and she became the EASIEST boss in the game
It is so never not amusing listening to the ceaseless lamentations of Fromsoft fans on souls games!
Malenia Blade of Miquella was never an issue for me considering I breezed past it into her 2nd phase on my 2nd attempt. It was her goddess of rot form that truly made her notorious Waterfowl dance a humongous issue for me given how it one shot at times and (if not) also inflicted the disgusting scarlet rot debuffs.
I still put Isshin above her even in terms of difficulty given Isshin is every but as punishing even whilst having about zilch of the things that make Malenia a tough boss. All Isshin does is push you to surpass your limit and milk you to the last drop of your worth of skill by making you apply all your garnered experience since the beginning of the game.
I see why you wouldn't include the Soldier of Godrick. He would obliterate this ranking by merely looking at the other bosses.
You thought soldier of godrick was hard?? Have you ever even tried to fight mist noble?
Surely he hasn't fought Pinwheel 🤦🏽♂️
Just wait til you fight a mosquito. Its a real whiffest.
you know that the real boss in Elden Ring is the Subterranian Shunning Grounds, right? and the co-main boss is the Lake of Rot.
nah man soldier is tough but spiritcaller snail is absolutely OP to the point of being unfair/imbalanced. PLZ NERF!
Malenia was definetly one of the hardest soulsborne bosses for me too... Until I figured out how to dodge the you-know-what attack. after that I realized she had a second phase and now she is the hardest souls boss for me
The pressure from life steal is also a good psychological weapon that makes it more intimidating.
If you’re good at parrying, the Assassin’s Crimson Dagger is a great talisman to use for HP recovery purposes.
Wish I had known about it before my multi days of attempts with the parry method…
She's like Sister Friede, but even Friede could be cheesed with backstabs
Mimic tear and bleed makes it the easiest boss of all time.
@@osurpless The life steal is such an unnecessary mechanic. Having to borderline flawless a boss is bad game design. Take away the lifesteal and adjust her wombo combo and she's a great boss... For Bloodborne and Sekiro. Not Elden Ring. We're playing at Dark Souls speed. She's at Sekiro speed.
@@iziwi2910 to be fair it practically makes all bosses easy
I had much more difficulty with the owl father than Demon of Hatred, but the hardest boss for me is Soldier of Godrick, no contest.
Soldier of Godrick?? Not harder than Mist Noble of Sekiro. 🙃
@@someguy9164 shit pinwheel and Soldier of Godrick are so fecking tough that it makes witches of hemwick with 0 insight (it makes the fight alot harder don't do it!) look like a joke think i died to soldier of godrick a gazillion googlilion times and Pinwheel steam rolled me, man much prefer the easier bosses such as Saint Isshin and Maleina blade of Miqeulla
soldier of godrick is no joke
U obviously haven’t fought mist noble… Sekiro players tremble in fear when they here that name
Laughs in True King Allant
it’s crazy how everyone has such different experiences with bosses. I consider Ludwig the hardest I’ve faced and beat friede in about 9/10 tries
DS3 was my first Souls game, and Friede was just nightmarishly hard for me. I ended up taking on Malenia way overequipped because of how hard I'd heard she was, and beat her in 12 tries. Friede was the Malenia experience for me. The invisibility was brutal to figure out, then she goes into this gank boss form and spams frostbite damage on you while Ariandel is constantly trying to obstruct your view of it, and then she goes into black flame tornado hate-nuke mode for this afaik unprecedented third full health bar just when you think the hell is finally over
I've done kos in 2 try and Ludwig like 15 try so yeah it depend
Oh yeah that’s wild. Friede for me took more tries and more hours than any other boss I’ve ever faced. But like, Midir only took me 8 tries
Na bro Lawrence the most hated boss all the homies hate that nigga n fire giant but melania def #1
Fr, i beat orphan in 8 tries my first time, so when I heard it took this dude over 50, i felt proud of myself
Malenia was meant to be in Sekiro but accidentally ended up in Elden Ring. She’s like an OP Lady Maria that demands the finesse of Isshin. Amazing fight still, took me like three days
100% agree with her being a Sekiro boss tbh. In the 6 times I’ve beaten her I’ve always felt like I got lucky more than I did it skilfully. Lucky that she didn’t do that waterfall dance that is
Maybe she was a scrapped Tomoe 👀
I beat her on my 35th try on first play through on the 2nd one beat her first try lol
She’s not that hard
@@muri8655 tell me u use mimic + rivers of blood without telling me u use mimic + rivers of blood
For me Midir is such a weird one, it feels so unbeatable at first, but when you understand the fight it becomes one of the easiest bosses to beat without taking damage in all DS3
Agreed. Midir is actually an easy boss when you know his moves. He is one of the more predictable souls-bosses, every move has like second or even 2 seconds wind up. You can basically react to everything he does and he doesn't have any real mix ups.
@@yuomovaeh3028 its weird because nameless king also has fairly long wind ups and still ends up being so hard
Upload a vid beating midir w no damage taken please
@@jolts2429 look on my channel, I did it some time ago ahaha
Darkeater... Madea..?
Malenia is the only boss that made me dream about beating her. After 2 days of trying and failing I had an actual dream of me killing her, it was one of those super realistic dreams that make you wonder if it really happened. Took me a good 10 mins after waking up to realize that it was just a dream.
Just use the game’s mechanics smh 🤦♀️ Elden ring is the easiest game
@@joeyntl4904 tell that to Malina ,
I personally thought melania was not hard but Radagon and The Elden Beast i think was like my melania i spent so long on them that instead of making a new build and rebirthing i made a new game on my new game every boss was easy ngl and i used colossal swords so i killed her without op Rives of Blood
@@joeyntl4904 dark souls 3 and demons souls exist yknow
its a bullshit boss, easily one of the worst bosses in the souls series
Malekith was weird for me, I had an easier time with his second phase than his first phase. Something about his pace just clicked with me.
same for me, he was the easiest super hard boss, but I think its mostly because his second phase is very short when you do decent damage. If the had a health pool as large as some other bosses he would be way harder I think.
Tbh elden beast and radagon is harder than maliketh. Imagine if maliketh was beast clergyman for a full health bar, and then maliketh had full health for phase 2.
@@heathermelton5688 That would suck. When I beat Malekith I managed to no hit him, but I had to because I used up all of my estus fighting beastclergy man. I'd rather just fight Malekith with 4x hp.
True. I think it comes down to knowing how to dodge his air combo and punishing right after. He looks scary and all, but once you nail that down. He's a lot 'easier' than gurranq.
@@theminecraftjester1738 yea elden beast isn't as particularly difficult boss, just a huge spectacle finish. Pest threads wreak havoc on that boss.
To this day I have not beaten Malenia without summoning something to help. She is by far one of the most insane bosses, and honestly I think it's earned. You earn the fight you want by traversing all the way through Commander Niall's fort, Consecrated Snowfield, and the Haligtree, 3 TOTALLY OPTIONAL AREAS. You get what you wanted after all that.
the problem with that is randos are idiots who only heal her
Elden Ring: She just wants to sleep in peace, so she hides beyond so many traumatic obstacles; and you still seek her out? Cool. You totally deserve what you are going to get now.
I was so convinced I couldn't beat her, that I physically didn't have the skill caple enough to do this. I've never been more defeated in my life, knowing that my very best simply wasn't good enough. I even tried using a +10 mimic and I still got obliterated. Then right before I decided to leave this boss and except that I could never beat her I tried her a couple more times. And on my last attempt I did it, I won. Nothing is more satisfying than doing something you previously thought impossible
I’ve only beat her without the summoning once although I’ve only fought her in two play thrus I usually do something similar in every game my first play thru I might use summonings but I make myself beat the entire game without em on my second play through so yeah I was dreading fighting her and she got me quite a few times but what’s hilarious is when I did finally get her I beat her without getting touched lol I saved the clip and at the end of it I’m like hollering no I just didn’t😂😂 it took me a second to realize it though cause I looked at my health bar then was like okay it’s full but I had all my heals so I was confused like there was no way this boss that’s probably the hardest boss I’ve ever beaten in any game really but specifically fromsoft games. It’s the fckn healing bro that’s 100% what takes it from extremely hard to just fckn ridiculous lol
Blasphemous blade spam... ez lol
Cheesy tho
I found Isshin much harder than Malenia. It’s less about difficulty of bosses, but strength of your character. You have much more freedom in Elden Ring when it comes to build and strength of your character, so you can “cheese” Malenia with all sort of OP build but that’s not the case in Sekiro, in which you have to play fair and square as the developer intended. This is why after you beat a boss in Sekiro, you can come back and reliably beat it again and again…because you’ve truly master the fight.
And i bet 99% of ppl cheesed her. Even then she aint a walk in da park bur nowhere near Isshin TSS level.
Yea I think the only exception is maybe the Corrupted Monk cuz of the firecracker cheese tactic
bruh i love the way they added boss rush in sekiro
Cheeseing is actually how I beat Isshin on my first playthrough. I just baited out the right attacks and punished.
You can cheese Isshin too, you know that, right?
Elden ring was my first soulsborn game, and when I fought Malenia for the first time, I just remember laughing at how difficult she was. I got pretty lucky and beat her a little after two hours, but it was still one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced in gaming.
fight against nameless king that's a challange
I 0 hit her it's on my channel. GG get gud
@@MonkeyDIvan nobody cares
@@tobi9235 nameless king pales comparison to malenia
Malenia is way harder than nameless king. Unless you are using a bleed build. Other than that u are gonna get fked for a couple of hours
Its really fun to read everyone’s experiences! I literally breezed through nameless king, gael, friede knowing theyd be difficult but struggled hard on bosses like midir, ludwig, and kos.
Malenia was so hard man, figuring out the waterfowl was one of the biggest challenges. And summons are basically free health restoration for her. Took me over 100 tries and a week, but i found that you had to be hyper aggressive in her first phase and take advantage of her being idle at times, looking forward to facing her again
You can easily block waterfowl with a medium shield and barricade ash of war.
It took me around eight hours to beat her I stopped counting attempts around 30 I agree with spirits basically being free health for her my final attempt that I beat her on I brought out a spirit just to rebuff myself and she instantly deleted the Spirit almost completely healing herself and she was on me a fraction of a second later and would have killed me had I not just used my buffs and physic flask. One of the things that helped me beat her was thinking of her as a Sekiro boss and not a Souls boss and despite dying to her many times she is by far my favorite boss in Elden ring.
@@johnapplesauce6129 That's the issue with Melania. She isn't built for this game. At least with the tools we're given. We're still playing Dark Souls. She's playing Bloodborne/Sekiro.
@@johnapplesauce6129 jupp, 100% a sekiro boss wish we could parry with swords
@@DimiDeca91 dont wanna change my whole build for one boss
I actually personally haven't found Malekith to be too difficult. He's a rather enjoyable fight in my opinion and after a few good tries something kinda just clicked with me
I think it really depends on the build tbh
You used a summon didn't you?
@@DraZtheProbleM I actually did not. I did malekith alone and didn't use spirit ashes either. I think part of why I don't find him difficult is because of his similarities to Artorias. His attacks just felt familiar to artorias. And Artorias is the boss I have fought more than any other Fromsoft boss
It depends. Many say Guardian Ape's 2nd phase is a nightmare in Sekiro but I found it so much easier to read than the 1st phase that I beat the boss first try and I'm not a souls veteran
@@fall3nwolv3s89 This right here. Maliketh felt very natural to me after 2 or 3 tries, very similar to Artorias. The beat clergy man though ... I've probably died about 30 times on him between my 2 playthroughs but Maliketh took 5 tries in the first and 2 in the second.
Malenia got a huge reputation really fast. She's one of my favorite fights in these games, though I'll admit I'm a bit of a masochist. Her waterfowl dance is pretty crazy but once you have a handle on it and have a good read on the pace of the fight, it's not unmanageable. I really appreciated the fight and how her mechanics really encourage a 1v1, and the fight truly felt like a dual between expert swordsmen. A lot of people complain about her a lot and it might not be entirely unwarranted, but she's my favorite fight in the series so far even though she spanked my ass a huge number of times.
If they increased the windup for waterfowl dance by like 1 or 2 seconds or made the first volley dodgeable, the fight would be pretty much perfect imo
@@eeaahh it is dodgeable tho, you just have to run
@@pokenoobmx3445 If you have to run it's not dodgable tho. If you're still in recovery frames after hitting her then you can't run away in time in my experience, so you're basically fucked if RNG decides to do it close up.
@@eeaahh it has a reliable rng, after an specific % of life, she will do it the next input she does, so you just have to check if she is gonna do it, if she doesn't do the animation then she is not gonna do the atack until you lower her hp first, she does it around 70-80% and then at 20-25%
@@pokenoobmx3445 She has patterns yes and I'm aware of them but it's just not reliable. I'm super careful too, past 75% I'm running back after almost every attack and throwing knives at her to bait the attack out. And sometimes I still get clapped regardless. I've had her do it twice in a row. Flurry, I hit her once, she does it again. It's just poor boss design imo, and even if you're consistent at avoiding it, it makes the pacing of the boss unbearably slow as you're constantly waiting for the move.
These were all really tough bosses, the Orphan definitely took me more attempts than Malenia, but at the same time I felt like I got lucky when I beat Malenia, whereas I did feel like the Orphan was manageable - it just took practice and patience. No boss has ever killed me more times than Amygdala in the Defiled Chalice Dungeon though; that was a painful experience.
Laurence destroyed me for a while too, that was another fight where I felt like I got lucky as much as anything else.
Laurence is a bullshit boss honestly, beating him especially on NG+ takes so long that avoiding his broken hitboxes requires a little bit of luck
@@SUPRESSOR106 i dont find his hitbox bs,but the health and dmg is
@@poweringdom.1552 his narrow boss arena is the worst, I recently got to Laurence and I'm just fighting the camera :/
Laurence never tested me, usually get him in one or two shots on varying play throughs. Ludwig was my wall, for days 😅
I don’t know why, but those Shadows of Yarnham with no allies on NG++ was the bane of my existence, the fact they almost always “counter” you while you’re attacking someone else would just one shot 😂
Chalice amygdala and Laurence are aggravating - especially in NG+
I’m so glad that canonically malekith is so powerful. It’s the reason he was able to protect the rune of death because no one could beat him.
He’s still a bitch to fight though!
I love this fight. His character design is so cool and his combat style is super intimidating.
@@mintyfreshjenna Ik I’m wearing his armor in game it’s badass
Btw Ranni stole the run of Death
what a joke of a boss
Fighting Gael was one of the best experiences I had. It was the culmination of dark souls saga where you will fight the darkest souls of all. While the I love DS and DS2 I still think that they constructed and designed best arena, boss and most importantly the lore with slave night Gael.
Experiencing Slave Knight Gael for the first time is undoubtedly what got me hooked, for likely the rest of time, on the soulsborneden series.
The absolute feeling of utter hopelessness the first time you hit him, only to realize his health bar is the size of a viking longship.
The sheer terror of seeing him go hollow, and just absolute confusion of what is going on as he stands like a human and fights you in earnest.
The realization that he's just like you as he uses your own tricks against use, using summon signs to teleport around and a secondary crossbow seemingly out of nowhere.
And of course, the infinitely dramatic end; the realization that as you kill Gael you are experiencing the finale to a 6 year long epic.
Gael might not be the hardest boss; I'd agree he's not even the hardest boss in DS3. But thematically? Gael is the peak. He is everything Dark Souls, and he is the pinnacle of Fromsoft's design. The fight against Gael is nothing short of a masterpiece, and I mean it genuinely. It's a work of art.
Actually Gael is my favorite boss fight in all soulsborne games. He is very challenging, yes, but the fight never feels unfair - it's one of these fight you learn and understand better with every death. Plus the scenery and the cinematics are just beautiful.
I feel like Laurence, the first vicar doesn't get enough recognition as a challenging boss. That guy can be ridiculously frustrating
Laurence on NG+ first time took me more attempts than ANY soulsborne boss. Hellish.
i feel likepeople underrate bloodborne so much
I agree. It is in my top 5 list.
@@midorayo1149 more like overrate. Most souls fans rank Bloodborne as not only the best from game, but the best game in general. But you won't see many bosses in tier lists because they're just not memorable
Agree.Orphan of Kos is aways a dreadfull experience but i manage to beat him eventually,Laurence i could only beat once and it was with a bloodtinge build,abusing Evelyn and bone marrow ash,just so i could keep as far away from him as possible
Malenia was the only boss I had to actively change my build to fight. My first playthrough was a strength build with the fingerprint stone shield and great stars, but she rendered any shield useless and my great stars was just so slow, I had to switch to the good ol prelate hammer & giant crusher, maximizing my jump attack damage so I can do as much damage in 1 hit as possible. She attacks so fast and with such little downtime I was only getting 1 or 2 swings of the great stars before she was on me again. I’m glad to say I didn’t resort to spirit summons though.
i did her while only using the turtle shield with carian retaliation (as it dosnt have 100% physical protection, i forced myself to rely on parrying only), bloodhound's fang, bestial seal (for blackflame blade and other buffs, no ranged spells) and only dealing damage via ripostes or the bhf's ash of war
all while without leveling vigor, i did not wear armor, so i could light roll, as it trivializes waterfowl dance
this was on my 2nd playthrough, took me 542 tries (1st was a faith/str build which i beat her in 5 tries w/, but it felt cheap)
The guardian ape and the owl was the hardest for me with sekiro. Melania was a nightmare in Elden ring and Marty Lugarius was an agony in bloodborne.
Interesting, I can see guardian ape and owl, but Martry Logarias never destroyed me in bloodborne. I found the base game relatively easy but I guess I also played bloodborne after all 3 souls games so that could be why. Thanks for the comment!
@@Nightwalk2 well I played bloodborne first It was kinda hard and then dark souls 3 it’s harder than bloodborne but cuz now it’s not my first time playing soulsborne game it was a bit easier then sekiro didn’t feel it’s hard that much and now elden ring I felt like malenia and malekith r the only hard thing but dunno if they r the hardest so when u play the game after u play other souls games it become easier xd I suffered first time with bloodborne although I can do no death run now ;-;
Blood borne was the first soulsborne game I ever completed and after quitting and coming back to it later I actually beat it with quite some ease but Martyr Lagarius gave me the most trouble. After beating Bloodborne though it sparked the love for Soulsbornes in me again and now I’m completing Elden ring. I always loved them and played them all but I have never been able to beat any until Bloodborne, I got over halfway through Sekiro and I’d say I’m halfway through Elden ring now.
Orphan of kos was pure agony, Lugarius was a walk in the park
Damn I forgot how hard lugarius was, took at least 50 tries 🤦🏽♂️
The reason I love talking about this is seeing how different people’s experiences can vary so wildly. For me, Radagon/Elden Beast was far and away the hardest boss fight of Elden Ring. Just goes to show how much different play styles can effect the experience.
Yeah, it is really interesting. I think Elden Ring does a great job at having bosses that punish certain build or play styles. After beating the game I was really surprised to see that Malekith was a road block for many people. I got him in two tries. For me Morgott was a real big struggle, I had to go away find a new weapon and respec
@@pigzy9807 that's really funny because I beat morgott my third try but maliketh took me 63 TRIES it was awful lol
I beat radagon second try and elden beast first try but to be fair my friend said I got godly RNG in what moves the bosses did and I was pretty over leveled (150) because I had done most of the side content already.
yeah, different builds really affect the changes in difficulty for bosses, took me 8 tries for malenia, but for maliketh it took me 40-50 tries.
@@yorusaka3554 cant believe 8 tries for malenia, I mean, how did you know that fast that you could outrun and dodge water flow?
I defeated Malenia a few minutes ago and my God… I felt the same as you about defeating her and thinking it was a lucky shot. Though she did the spin a bunch of times, my man Oleg helped me till her mid life on second phase. He died and my hopes where almost lost. But then, God smiled for me and my holy jump attack with double twinblades granted me victory. Bro, i literally left my food freezing to fight this dumbass, thinking it would last no more than 15 minutes. I was hours wrong hahahaha
Equip Blas Blade = win
Broleg is the coolest. He helped me win against her as well. he also died in her second phase but his sacrifice shall not be forgotten.
she was such a cheap boss fight bro
Oleg best ash summon
you shouldnt have to be or feel lucky to beat a boss.
Malenia is merciless when you first encounter her but after dying more than a 100 times and memorize her moves, she’s not so bad lol
I've...every other boss if u know there move set
Like *
That's literally every boss.
@@JoeKing69she seems unfair at first though
@@GirGirGirGir160Malenia is pretty easy, the only good move she has is her lifesteal and if you time it right it's easy to dodge, I find Gael and the Nameless king harder than her, then again I played Dark souls 3 first so I had less experience compared to when I played elden ring, took me like 100 tries on Nameless king and around 130 on Gael, malenia only took me 30 tries
Maybe the experience passes on who knows
Midir has become one of my favorite fights over the years, I’ve managed to no-hit him before and have spent hours being summoned in the Ring city just to fight him. As such I wouldn’t put him top 10 anymore as he’s actually quite simple once you know his main 4-5 attacks, but he’s still such a blast to fight!! On the other hand I’m still filled with dread every time I replay DS1 and have to fight O&S again, I don’t know what it is but I can never handle those two without at least 5 attempts. That’s the beauty of souls games though, what some players find easy can become other players greatest battle and best accomplishment!
FR, when I first played the DLC I already went with the goddam ER hype to se Midir and it payed off
For me it’s the complete opposite. My first time beating Midir must have taken the entire afternoon and I still got lucky for that attempt. On the other hand, O&S only took me 1 try the first time (though I did play DS1 after DS3 so I had some training). Really is crazy how everyone experiences these games’ difficulty differently.
first time beating DS1 I took the easy path of beating Super Smough.. Big mistake, since I got hooked on the game, and wanted to collect every item. So.. I had to beat Super Ornstein og New Game Plus. Some Gravelord Servant troll invaded me and cursed my Sens Fortress, which made it a pain to go back to level up my weapons. I was stuck fighting super Ornstein for several weeks, until I finally found that cheeky gravelord sign. What a pain to get Leos ring on NG+ !!!
10 years later I still hold this experience dear to my soul.
100% on this. O+S is my personal most difficult boss in all of souls games, while Orphan and Melania rank relatively low. Kinda crazy how different each boss is to each player.
this may sound really stupid to you but the Crystal sage for me is in my top 10 hardest in the hole series as i play really passively and the Crystal sage always kicks my ass for it.
I guess we could think of Malenia this way:
*She's the only boss in the series that fought you at her absolute prime, literally, no one in the story had ever face her potential peak form, only you did*
I‘d say you and Radahn. He dumpstered her, so she had to unleash the scarlet rot. Which has happened twice. Radahn and you.
Not sure what do you mean by series, but Owl Father was in his prime at Hirata State.
@@ponglenis9273 But technically, Radahn never gets to fight her goddess form. She just nuked him with scarlet aeonia once and then immediately went into coma.
@@MrTonyMartino why would you say owl at hirata and not isshin? we have basically no idea when was owls prime but isshin get ressurected specifically to fight you at his prime no?
@@MrTonyMartino or is the point that wolf is imagining it and its the strongest version of owl just because its in his mind?
My list based on my experience.
1. Soldier of Godrick (Still haven't beat him)
2. Orphan of Kos
3.Demon of Hatred
4. Isshin Sword Saint
5.Midir
6. Gael
7. Godskin Duo
8. Milenia
9. Guardian Ape
10. Owl (Father)
guardian ape is easier than elden beast and radagon
Why godskin over Malenia
Godskin duo was easy. Malenia was basically Isshin, except on cocaine.
My top 10 are
1: soldier of god Rick
2: pinwheel
3: true king Allant
4: royal rat vanguard
5: mist noble
6:mimic (no armor or weapons)
7: moonlight butterfly
8: phalanx
9: covetous demon aka Jaba the hut
10:cemetery shard
@@dorian4426 Isshin still has more moves and he does them in way quicker succession than malenia, and plus I still think Isshin is more aggro than she is, the only thing making Malenia so hard is that she's put in a game with ds movement, try fighting her in sekiro or Bloodborne and she wouldn't be nearly as hard
Wait until he learns of Soldier of God, Rick
10. Rune Bear
9. Rune Bear
8. Rune Bear
7. Rune Bear
6. Rune Bear
5. Rune Bear
4. Rune Bear
3. Rune Bear
2. Rune Bear
1. Rune Bear
Honorable mention: FUCK Elden Ring
Fax
rofl.....i can relate
Love it
Whenever I defeated Midir or Orphan I felt confident in my abilities to beat the bosses again and again in subsequent playthroughs. But when I beat Milenia, it felt like a fluke, like I'd scraped by by the skin of my teeth, I still feel uncomfortable trying to beat her, and I kind of love her for that, it wouldn't feel like a souls boss if they didn't try to outdo their last magnum opus of difficulty.
Me beating Isshin even tho his fight is all skill based 😅
@@jonmann4980 yea exactly how i felt with isshin. However, with malenia i felt i earnes it with no summons. Tip: have a light load
@@user-xp1uf2ws2n facts, being naked is what got me my win vs malenia, best way to learn it, best way to retreat and best way to dodge waterfowl. I started Elden ring as my first souls game and beat Malenia within 2 weeks of me starting the game, only took me 6 hours to beat her and I found naked is absolutely the best way to do it. I ended that fight using only 6 +9 flasks
She’s not even a dlc boss… Elden Ring dlc difficulty will cause a few suicides I’m sure
@@OSRSUmbreon gg dude you are insane
I personally never found Nameless King very difficult. His fight is very scripted and a lot of his attacks are very well telegraphed. The delayed attacks were not as common back then, so I can see why they have so many people trouble.
I've beat him 3 times and build is a huge factor. My pyromancer made him comically easy (1 try). My dex/int build struggled badly (8 tries). He's designed to punish heals, stamina mismanagement, roll spam, and inpatience. My str build was somewhere in the middle and took 5 tries.
@@Based_investor I just found his attacks pretty simple to dodge. The rhythm is easy to pick up and doesn’t change much. The delayed attacks are what many people find difficult about him.
@@boundary2580 I think the weird arena where you walk on clouds throws me off as well. There's no sense of space. Depth perception is distorted and movement just feel odd.
It's the delays + lack of proper depth perception + having to go through phase 1 each attempt gets tiring
I think the Demon Princes are harder than him though
i didnt know that you had to hit his dragon in the head so it took me ages. but his second phase wasnt too bad
Midis and the godskin duo were by far my hardest first encounters. I had already knew what I would be dealing with for Melania by the time I reached her.
I’ll say it - Micolash on NG Plus was a low-key monster. He goes from being a joke boss to one-shotting you with Augur of Abrietas or just a punch.
I felt the same way with fools idol from demon souls. Those floor traps were brutal
Bro facts.
Was honestly piss easy in NG but NG+ he killed me loads
Yeah, that's why I just started cheesing him with poison knives on subsequent new game plus runs. Ain't nobody got time to chase his ass around just to get one shotted as soon as you fall down the hole to finally fight him for real...
His A call beyond was always a one shot kill and the fact you had a room the size of a closet to dodge out of it
Nameless King is actually my favorite boss fight from Dark Souls 3 purely because of my first experience with. All I ever heard about was how difficult he was and how impossible he was to do on your own. The absolute elation I felt after soloing him for the first time is something I will never forget
So any boss can be one of your favourite if you beat him on the first try after someone overhyped him? What about visual design, moveset, music, arena, lore background, etc?
@@llllNEOllllchannel Man I'm pretty emotionally attached to your mother despite her poor visual design
I regret to inform you that something has happened to your message so I can't read it, my dear. Can you send another one?
@@llllNEOllllchannel that's great but can you get something to eat on your way home? Your mom is starving
@@aidanm9543 She is big enough girl to take care of hereself. Have you ever think of graduation from primary school? Im afraid that one will be pretty tough for you but you should definitely try it.
Laurence will always be my hardest. His second phase is just insanely damaging and every time you try to hit him you are risking being stunlocked and killed.
Yeah fuck that 2nd phase
He’s hard in a bullshit way though
Lawrence in ng+ is definitely one of the hardest boss in souls game.
2nd phase is easy for me its that 1st phase that absolutely fucks me same with Ludwig. Orphan and Maria was the opposite for me, no problems getting to the 2nd phase and then getting stuck there for hours.
One of the worst bosses in the whole series so goddamn frustrating
Malenia is easily the hardest boss I've ever fought in a souls game. My sister and I shared a save file, and of course, she beated her. Though, maybe it was because I enjoyed fighting her without little to no armor (finger maidens set) while using moonveil and uchigatana. I always loved how satisfying it was to dodge her waterfowl without any damage. Sadly my sister used ROB and a mimic to kill her, even canceled her waterfowl with the weapon
U literally using a bleed weapon...that is atleast her weakness...i was using a fkcing god slayer gs...and my god that was a nightmare as u can guess from the video
@@kiro253 you can make an argument that ur cheesing as well spamming jump attacks with a heavy weapon is just as easy as dual wielding katanas, respect to both of your styles
As someone that used ROB and mimic, I'd say it makes the fight more manageable. You still need to sync up attacks between you and your mimic, and dodge any of her attacks including waterfowl if she's targeting you. Not to mention, usually the mimic dies before or a lil after phase 2 and from there it's all you.
Laurence see this
"Haha so cute"
@@ace2311 Elden Ring was my first souls game ever, i beat malenia in first try with rob and mimic, in guess people are "not using this and that" to make this fight as hard as possible
I remember seeing the trailers for Elden Ring thinking "I want to fight Malenia, that's the boss I'm looking forward to the most," I also thought "I hope she's a good challenge and not easy."
I was not disappointed.
She's the boss I arguably know best in that game since I've spent so much time learning her moves, patterns, etc. Easily in my top 2 favorite fights in Elden Ring
First playthrough I was so intimidated I had to summon, but for the second one I forced myself to beat her by myself with no summon. Took me like 30 tries but I learned her patterns and parried her to death.
I still have nightmares about waterfowl tho
I 0 hit Malenia
@@MonkeyDIvan I did that at level 1 last night. Didn’t take too long to learn all her moves, but actually doing it for real took awhile
@@gabrielemanconi4696 Same for me, first play through i used summons but on my ng 3+ run i decided to fight her without summons and took me over 60 tries but the feeling you get when you finally learn how to dodge waterfowl is so satisfying
@empreus Are you serious?
My experience with Midir is a bit twisted. I have beaten him two times, on my first Playthrough he took me around 50-60 tries. Two years later I did another playthrough as a bit of fresh air from Melania, but now I beat the boss I had considered the hardest of DS3 in just two tries, and now I am conflicted how to feel about him
It is a difference between hard and unfair. Midir is a hard boss because you have to learn well his patterns. Yes, he has a one shot attack, but is not that frequent and difficult to dodge as Malenia's flurry one. I beat her in Ng+3 solo, with a strength build, and was hell.
@@ValentinPagliari I completely agree. Another comment stated that quite well in my opinion, he has a high skill requirement but a low skill ceiling. Once you know his moveset you can defeat him quite easily. The same would be true for Malenia if she didn't have her flurry, since you basically have to learn how to dodge it based on how close to her you are.
@@zraven2931 I haven't played elden ring, but from what I'm getting, malenia is like a pvp boss that you have to learn how to space?
This is me with Ornstein & Smough. First playthrough they took me like 50 attempts. On NG++ I beat them first try
He's kind of like a puzzle boss. His moves require easy-to-execute movements to dodge, and his movement requires easy-to-execute movements to hit him, but figuring out when to do what on your own is difficult. Figuring him out is the hard part. Especially where to stand/run when he does his flame attacks
What about that teleporting double sword knight in the snow castle? I think he deserves a spot here. Killed me more times than Maliketh.
YES! That guy is insane. His 15 move combo is impossible to dodge. He’s on drugs.
I always thought those guys were super easy. I was rocking dual wield colossals zwei/grafted. You can stunlock them easily with that. When i switched builds, they were instantly a fucking menace haha
Yeah first playthrough I ran up and poked him with my treespear until he died. No big deal. Second playthrough I must have died a dozen times trying to make it past him...
Lol good
Call
Absolutely this one, that mf killed me more times than the main boss area
I just started Elden Ring a few weeks ago and right now I already struggle with Morgott, playing as a Astrologer this is kind of hard for me already but knowing the bosses yet to come frightens me 😂
have u beaten the game yet
You have to post when you get to Melania!!! She’s a wrecking ball!!
Rock Sling and meteorite staff make the game easy mode
I just got Elden ring 2 weeks ago which is my first ever soulsbourne game so up to that point I didn’t understand how the dodge mechanic worked because it was my first ever souls game and I had been relying on shields up to that point and that of course does not work in the majority of boss fights especially him since he has the magic blades that go through your shield. It took me about 3.5 hours of attempts to kill him
Inspiring to know that I'm currently playing Elden Ring (and it's my first FromSoftware game) and the #1 boss from this list is in that game lol
yeahhh i mean the earlier bosses aren't too much of challenge but there's an extreme difficulty spike in the late game. once you get to farum azula it's kinda ridiculous. the second to last (required) boss is like my favorite in the entire game though. also malenia is completely optional
Literally took me 60+ tries to beat milenia.
Pretty sure u are done with elden ring as of now. I recommend dark souls 3 if its on sale. It has the best bosses in the series imo.
@@demxc6581 i got all achievements last week so you're pretty accurate! thanks, i've read and heard from friends the same about DS3. I'll be on the lookout for a nice price on it and will definitely get it then!
@@B1TCH35K1LL3R it’s on sale if you are on PlayStation
One of my favorite bosses in all these games was Ludwig, the Holy Blade. The design of the character, as well as the arena are top notch to me and I very much struggled to beat him.
*Slaps Esteban Delgado across the face* How dare you not mention the over the top OST?
Boss design and area was creative but fighting in it was absolute hell for me. Having those super wide attacks and sudden turns with little indication made things very difficult for me- I’ve always hated fighting big enemies in small spaces it’s just uncomfortable and frustrating for me.
Ludwig is awesome, first 50 times this fight was sick, he is so fast and the second phase with MLS is just beauty.
Don’t know how I’d rank them, but my hardest boss for each game are Flamlurker, Manus, Fume Knight, Orphan of Kos, Midir, Owl Father Remembrance or Demon of Hatred, and Malenia.
Manus kicks my ass no matter how much experience i think ive gotten with these games.
Manus is so easy compared to all the end game bosses in elden ring
IMO I would put Godrick the grafted and morgitt on the same level of difficulty as manus ( assuming you didn't explore much before going to stormvail Castle and are not over leveled)
Manus had a big health pool and all his attacks do big damage BUT every single attack is highly telegraphed.
If you dodge a combo from manus or a heavy attack you always have time to get 1-2 hits.
Against malekith for instance you can dodge a heavy attack and still not have time to retaliate, the only time you can get a hit in is between specific attacks.
@@epic1053 i guess im just weird then. I also never really had a problem with maliketh lol.
@@pancakke08 did you summon or use spirit summon?
What build and level were you?
@@epic1053 spirit summons are a part of the game but i never used anything broken like mimic, tiche, etc. i think i used depraved perfumer caarman. I think i was level like 135 or 140 cus i did mohg beforehand but not the haligtree.
Its always interesting how people can have such different experiences with these bosses. I beat Gael first try but struggled with Friede and Nameless King for hours
Having played elden ring and DS3 first time recently, I find DS3 much more challenging. I think it's because the mimic and summons in elden ring allows you to find cheese mechanics. Malenia wasn't that difficult when you give mimic rivers of blood and you spam moghyn spear (no hit in first phase). HOwever, if you take summons away, ER would be really really difficult.
honestly the game is so much more fun if you just 1vs1 the bosses
Your judgement on Elden Rings difficulty would be raised if you did a solo run of the bosses, some of them are extremely difficult, I just refrain from using summons, kills the fun
u didnt beat Elden ring if u played like that. try beating malenia solo
@@mattguxxxtt9629 Geez the gatekeepers are still everywhere aren't they
Yeah that’s what I’m saying melenia isn’t that hard, the reason isn’t because of anything like her attacks it’s because most people use summons, comparing something without that is like something without the top 10 best counters for a boss, doesn’t really make sense when your talking about difficulty.
Very true, it’s very hard to compare which bosses are objectively harder depending from which point you’ve started getting familiar with playing souls games. For me Orphan of Kos was the hardest and most hair pulling frustrating souls boss I’ve dealt with and he still gives me anxiety and it was my 4th souls game.
YAAAAOOOOWWWWWW
Malenia took me 3 days (around 8-9 hours of fighting her), and changing my load-out from two colossal swords, to two bleed greatswords
Another really good trick with bleed greatswords is that if you have the flamberge, you can put any weapon art on there. If you put double slash or sword dance, it's pretty effective against her. I love her fight so much
took me 3 try lol
@@LeBeauFermier with what build
@@BloofyDawn Pure STR build naked with bare hands I bet
@@Rubenz343 surely
Having played all the souls games starting with the original demons souls, I think this list is pretty damn good. Personally, I would have had Old King Allant on here, put Midir in the top 3 and switched around Malekith and Malenia, but that's only because I killed Malenia on my 4th attempt by playing hyper aggressive and getting really lucky by her being really passive in both phases. Malekith whipped my ass about 15 times with that first spinning move he does when he starts out phase 2.
For Maliketh you should get the blasphemous claw. He doesn't have much hp so 2 parries with a few hits in between are enough to take him down even at lvl1. That's how I beat him on my lvl1 run. I 100% agree with your ranking his moveset is really really tough. If he had more hp Maliketh could have been the hardest boss in all of elden ring
That was my strat lol. An uchikatana and the blasphemous blade. Took me 3 tries. And to be fair I’ve seen so many edits of his fight that I already knew his movement. It’s not like it was all new stuff I’ve never seen
With shield and spear his become the easiest boss
Fax man just sits there stunned and let’s u get 2-3 fully charged heavy’s making him very easily staggerable in phase 2 not to meantion if he dose the right moves at the start of phase 2 it’s a free stagger as well if phase 2 wasn’t so easy to stagger with parries he would be much harder in my opinion
I struggled with him more than I do with Malenia
eldenring is kinda wired because a lot of bosses are hard by design but the game gives you so much tools to get extremly OP and than they become very easy again. After struggeling against malenia for multible hours i tryed to use bloodhoundstep and took me like 5 trys to beat her with it (i dont use any spirit ashes btw). Also every other Boss inclusing Maliketh was kinda a joke with it. OFC there are also a lot of other OP ashes of war like blasphemous blade, RoB, or sourcery in general etc. that make these "hard bosses" very easy. I think Sekiro is still the hardest game for a first time playthrough because you have almost no tools to make the fights easier
My top 10 hardest:
10. Darkeater, Midir - Total Tries after replay through: 12
9. Lady Maria - Total Tries after replay through: 15 (Ludwig probably would have taken her place, but for whatever reason after replaying Bloodborne a few months back... She took me like 15 tries. While Ludwig only took me 6)
8. Sister Friede - Total tries after replay through: 17
7. Orphan of Kos - Total tries after replay through: 19
6. Nameless King - Total tries after replay through: 22
5. Malekith, The Black Blade - Total tries after playthrough: 26
4. Owl, Father - Total tries after replay through: 29
3. Laurence, The First Vicar/Demon of Hatred - Total tries for both after replay playthrough: LTFV: 31, DOH: 33 (Both are tied for me since I always seem to really struggle with them no matter how many times I fight them)
2. Sword Saint, Isshin - Total tries after replay through: 43
1. Malenia, Blade of Miquella - Total tries after playthrough: I lost count. Lol.
Owl father was harder than sword saint ishin imo
@@hamzasheesh6553 Yeah. Owl Father was tough. Although Sword Saint Isshin totally kicked my ass.
I beat sword saint isshin in 22 tries, nameless king in just 2 tries, the father owl took me 12 tries and demon of hatred 15 tries, everything on my 1st playthrough of each game.
@@frooskys22 nice.
Frankly, Laurence being so far up makes sense.
“Boy, I love my game about proper positioning to have shitty area denial”
-Maxor, probably
I haven’t beaten her yet, and it may just be Stockholm syndrome, but I’m finding myself loving the Malenia fight. I am so stupid good at phase 1 at this point. When I don’t make dumb mistakes I can decimate her first phase. And it feels amazing after I spent hours getting bodied by phase 1. I just think she’s crazy fun. Grueling but mostly fair, intimidating but learnable. And she has built in weaknesses that you can exploit, but sometimes the game punishes you for if you get to greedy with the exploit. Phase 2 makes her crazier and more aggressive, yet her weaknesses are more present. She’s not my #1 in Elden Ring but I think she’s great
Definitely, after a while I just started to use bh step just for that one single attack and learn to dodge every other moves properly, I think the fight becomes quite fair this way
No no you are right this boss fight is the most enjoyable boss fight in my opinion too i love how they did a great job with her OST too which made fight better
I think they might have overdid it when players start getting stockholm on bossesfights 😂
Honestly the waterfowl dance attack kinda ruined it for me. I adored the spectacle, music, design, and the moveset of malenia. But constantly worrying about one attack and only thinking about that attack for the whole boss took away from the whole experience imo
@@tarvis6454 i feel like depending on your build learning her triggers for waterfowl dance can be really difficult. I beat her with guts greatsword, no summons, no bhs, and I had this really awesome phase 1 combo (jump attacks, crouch r1s, stagger, crit then giants hunt) that got her down to about 1/3 or 1/4 health. 9/10 once she got up from giants hunt she would fly up for waterfowl dance. Knowing this I could give her enough space to successfully dodge it. Phase 1 became extremely doable once I learned this.
The real trick to malenia is knowing proper spacing and not getting too greedy with hits. Especially in phase 2, let her do her clone move, run away to the other side of the arena if you have to.
Definitely the most rewarding boss to beat, none other comes close
Malenia is really a question of builds and one's approach to the fight. That's where Elden Ring in general differs from the rest of the series - you've got such a huge variety of tools that there's at least one combination of things that'll make quick work of any boss. Fighting, say, Orphan is a similar experience no matter how you approach the fight because Bloodborne offers a fairly narrow set of tools to play with. Malenia on the other hand: Try beating her 1v1 with a tank build, then fight her with a +10 summon and a bleed infused weapon, or something that can knock her down. Vastly different experiences. Personally I had a +10 Luthel and a +10 Blasphemous Blade and beat her in a fairly short amount of time because spamming the Taker's Flame replenishes health and knocks her on her butt, and Luthel can tank her through much of the fight.
Exactly. Elden ring is extremely easy compared to other souls games. If you spam that laser spell or dragon rot spell on 99 percent of the bosses in the game you pretty much 1 shot them or take out most their health over time doing nothing. Adding a summon on top makes the game effortlessly easy in my opinion. The other souls games limit your options & make every route you take a challenge
I honestly respect you or anyone else who can beat melania without a summon. I also vividly remember me and my friends just sitting in a corner watching my other friend solo midir. Those two are such cool fights and probably in my top favorites of all time.
Midir you say? I also loved soloing midir
It's easy you use rivers of blood +9 or 10 and have the lord of bloods exultation
@@xyloh8745 that’s the cheese way
@@xyloh8745 try using anything except cheese and then you're worthy of some respect lol.
with no summon and no cheese ,malenia is a really tough fight but feel great when you beat her. If you use want to cheese then use swarm flies to stagger her constantly then you spam ROB's ash of war ... literally she can't even move
Beast clergyman advice; After he does his very fast double swing, he usually follows up with the move where he stabs the ground and then drags his dagger in a half circle. Outspace that attack and counter with a jumping attack, and then react to whatever he does after. He will always do a move that is reactable afterwards. And when he does beast claw, be at range so that he sends them forward rather than in a circle. Roll through those for a free rolling attack. These are the two safest punishes in the fight that I've found for no hits
Beast claw can also be punished with jumping through the claw and attacking
Elden Ring is a weird one for me, because every single fight can be made very easy by using all your resources. Using mimic tear on a bleed build pretty much permastaggers Malenia P1, for example, and makes P2 a chill fight. Same with most other bosses in that game. On the other hand, using something relatively standard (no status, no special ashes of war, no summon), that fight is super super hard.
Yeah that's kind of my only gripe with Elden Ring, is that because there is a choice of builds, weapons, spells, and summons to use, the bosses are either unfair, tedious and even downright broken, or can be easily cheesed or one shorted. It's very hard to rank their difficulty in this sense.
@@Crichjo32 Yeah, it's really weird because I struggled a lot on Margit and Leonine Misbegotten (yeah, I know...), and even Astel, but I killed Malenia on my 3rd attempt. The game gives you tools that make some late game fights a walk in the park. I know that on my NG+ journey I won't use the Mimic Tear.
I completely agree with you. The game can range from easy to very heard depends on how you utilize tool that the game provides such as summoning or some op broken built. I think broken built is much more forgiving than summoning. Using mimic tear is the game on easy mode
Playing ER as any other Souls, i found it to be the easiest one. even without 'special' stuff. Malenia is the only one that i used Mimic on and more so i cuz I was like ''huh I didn't use this till now let's see how it goes.'' and then beat her like 3rd try.
I don’t really understand why people think they are super hard... Like Malenia. I am str/faith build use double great sword, no summon, no special skill like bloodhound step. None of the bosses with remembrance make me feel struggle.
Good list. 100% agree Midir is hands down the most difficult boss in DS3
The thing about most soulsborne bosses is that their difficulty is pretty universal for most builds, whereas in Elden Ring your build can completely change the difficulty of a boss.
That's also absolutely true for Dark Souls I-III though. Every fought Midir with pestilent mist? Or Aldrich on a Mage build? Sekiro and Bloodborne are the only games where I feel like the difficulty is at least somewhat consistent among the players, but even there a different weapon or shinobi techniques can make a huge difference. Like firecrackers against guardian Ape.
@@kunstlerischeintelligenz471 there is definitely a variety of bosses that cater to different builds but I feel as though Elden Ring was much less consistent than past games
Definitely true in DS3 also. NK (along with most other bosses for that matter) was trivial for a pyromancer, for example.
My pure strength build took hours and hours to beat elden beast. My 90 int spiral shard attempt deleted his health bar in about 3 minutes
Yeah use mhogs spear and one shot Malenia xD
That thing is a easy mode for the whole game
i have the same experience with melania you had with kos
my first playthrough, when the game first came out, I had a blood build, so I literally melted her first phase without her even using waterflow, and the fact you get free hits after her 2nd phase dive bomb meant I got her bellow half hp before the fight even begun, i think it took me like 4 or 5 tries.
now on my 2nd playthrough, with a STR/Faith build, she absolutely wreaked me over and over and over. bloodhound step was my only saving grace. it took me over 20 tries.
and much like you, I'm a soulsborn veteran, did SL4 on BB and no upgrades too, did sl1 on DS1 and DS3.
As soon as I saw Orphan of Kos being number 2 I knew that Malenia would be no. 1. And she's my number 1 by far too. Usually Soulsborne bosses take me around 10 attempts if they're hard and only Midir got me to like 20 attempts over 2 hours so. But I bashed my head into Malenia for around 2 days of total 6 hours and god knows how many attempts.
And while she's the hardest boss I've ever slain solo I still stand by the point that she is not meant for Elden Ring. The way she moves and spams attacks, combined with her lifesteal on hit and waterfowl dance just screams that she was either meant for Sekiro or Bloodborne.
look up the guy that beat her with no rolls. its actually a noob trap and the best way to win is to be light and move around on your toes to space things out vs dodge rolling
Yeah, oddly enough, Fromsoft games tends to have at least one boss that doesn’t fit the gameplay and would be a great boss in a different game. Friede from DS3, Demon of Hatred from Sekiro, and now Malenia from Elden Ring.
@@RevelCris its not a noob trap is a rng fight
@@forebread9405 friede fit very well considering how slow her turning speed is. Ds3 is actually the only game where every boss fits
@@RevelCris Let Me Solo Her seems pretty consistent, he uses rolls. Both styles work.
Fighting malenia without armor on isnt too bad, but with armor, she becomes the hardest boss ive ever faced. So much so that i don’t consider it a victory beating her without getting hit on a naked run
I bet. They buffed light rolling and since I was a light armor user I was able to consistently dodge Waterfowl Dance, but with medium or fat rolling it’s so much more dangerous. Before the buff, however, she’d often catch me with one of her slashes.
This list is incredibly respectable as well as the quality of the video! Well done man! My list would be:
1. Malenia, Blade of Miquella - Elden Ring
2. Orphan of Kos - Bloodborne
3. Lawrence, The First Vicar - Bloodborne
4. Dragonlord Placidusax - Elden Ring
5. Slave Knight Gael - Dark Souls III
6. Nameless King - Dark Souls III
7. Ludwig, The Holy Blade - Bloodborne
8. Radagon of the Golden Order / Elden Beast - Elden Ring
9. Mogh, Lord of Blood - Elden Ring
10. Maliketh, the Black Blade - Elden Ring
How is nameless king in the list bro
@@deludedhollowbastard547 difficulty is subjective, and I find him difficult. That is how, lol
@@MarAndJustinOfficial what makes him so difficult
@@deludedhollowbastard547 for me personally it’s his delayed tells combined with quick delivery, his end game damage, and very inconsistent combo strings. I’ve beaten him countless times, and have all of his attacks memorized. But I still feel a pinch of pressure every time I approach his arena as I sometimes do still die to him on the occasion
Interesting that you didn’t include Sister Friede, was she not difficult for you?
I feel you man. I tried tons of strategies to beat Melenia one vs one. I did try parrying and got pretty good at it but I could not make a progress. What worked for me was jump attacks and cheesy bleed from militia saw + seppuku + Frost and I did use bloodhound. So sadly I cannot say I did beat her in the traditional fashion. Though I can tell you I was able to dodge her spinny ultimate combo without the bloodhound after a while. It is doable. I did also attempt her so many times I would not be surprised if I did try to beat her around 150 as you did. Congratulations to you man for beating her with your setup. I did try that few times but still bleed was what got me through this fight. Amazing boss. Also my top one would be final fight from Sekiro where you face off against young Ishin.
I finally beat her with just my heavy greatsword. I had a bad phase 1 and entered phase 2 with 3 flasks. Lost all 3 quickly then git gud set it. Stayed really aggressive and didn't give her any space. I've never shook like that after beating a boss
Wondering where you'd put inner father. I found him far more difficult than isshin, and considerably harder than OG owl & owl father. I like the ton you took the video in, explaining your biases and how DS3 was your first game. It made your perspective really understandable even if I had minor disagreements...well it honestly didn't even feel that I disagreed because of your wording
yeah but inner isshin is harder than inner father
I find it extremely disrespectful that radagon isn’t on there bc I stayed up till 4am trying to beat that animal
Did you make yourself a bleed build😂😂😂
For me Frede, Lady Maria, and Malenia hands down my two favorite fights in the Soulsborne worlds but they put me in my place so many times that I’d damn near Praise them as if they were The Morrigen herself split into three different worlds. My real honorable mentions would be Father Gascoine and Gehrman. Their fights just made me feel like I was truly fighting for my life in the Never Ending Night of The Hunt. (Bloodborne is my favorite game of all time.)
Those three chicks man... I was surprised not to see Lady Maria on this list, but when there's that many bosses it becomes hard to pick.
There's a wallpaper floating around of those 3 ladies. So much pain in one painting.
Fun fact: Fume Knight will instantly go to phase two if your character wears Velstadt armor or just helm, not sure. If you didn't know that you would place Raime a couple positions higher
That's a completely self-imposed challenge that 0.1& of the players would do. It wouldn't just magically change the order of the ranking based on a completely niche mechanic.
Some would argue his second phase is easier.
Yes for second phase is way easier. But the whole fight isn't even that hard
One of the things I find fascinating about these games, and that makes me love them even more, is how much a ranking like this can change based on your own personal playstyle. In Bloodborne, for example, I know most people consider Orphan of Kos and Ludwig to be the hardest bosses. On multiple playthroughs, I've literally never died to Ludwig and only died to Orphan a handful of times on my first playthrough, and never on subsequent playthroughs. But bloody ROM still gives me conniptions.
Never died a single time on ludwig? I call bullshit. His first phase is way too unpredictable to one shot without at least somewhat learning his patterns.
@@jokabox93 I don't know what to say. I don't know why I'd lie about that and then admit to getting my ass handed to me by Rom every single playthrough.
@@jokabox93it happens man, my mate beat most of the elden demigods first try but would get shit on by the tree sentinels
Dude, I hate ROM. I legitimately struggle every single time on this boss. He would be in my top ten of harderst bosses for sure.
10. Fume Knight
9. Ludwig
8. Midir
7. Manus
6. Lawrence
5. Gael
4. Inner Owl
3. Sister Friede
2. Orphan of Kos
1. Malenia
How is friede 3
And how does friede even make the list honestly
@@deludedhollowbastard547 because she’s really hard for me no matter how many times I do her unlike Isshin or nameless who I can first try now no problem
@@pwegulian but what makes her so difficult for you? Is it the invisibility? Are you using backstabs?
@@deludedhollowbastard547 I am not very good at backstabbing her and I just find her kinda hard to read in phase 3
Malenia feels like a thrown away sekiro boss with her style of fighting. It'd be a very easy boss fight if you had sekiro's forgiving parry system.
na more like a mix of Lady Maria and Friede
@@eoIoIe Freya !??
@@vindicator879 my b Friede. was mixing up the name with a novel im reading.
Have you ever played charmless? Parry system isnt shit at that point. Unless you're literally perfect. No roll spamming In sekiro. I see inner iss as much harder than her if you go charmless
@@robertburris5140 nope. i might tho
I'll never forget my first time fighting Midir; I very nearly beat him my first try using nothing but caestus but I died instantly to his laser attack. Since then I still haven't managed to beat him even after witching to much better weapons. The first defeat was just such a sour one...
Good list though man. I agreed with all of them except for Gael. Not that he is 'easy' just that I believe his fight is so perfectly balanced you can pick up on his moves quickly and get into a great rhythm and beat him within like 15 tries (does that much sense?).
I see what you mean, like I said, returning to his fight it's not so hard now. I found it super hard first go around though.
Malenia is hard for all the wrong reasons.
I never felt the game is unfair, fighting Orphan, Nameless King, Sister Friede and other hard bosses of this genre. Every single time I died it was because of a mistake I made. I never had to use any special item, try to keep my distance from the boss on purpose to trigger an attack or use other cheesy tactics to survive. After beating those bosses I felt accomplished.
Malenia however, is a different story. More than 90% of my deaths was because of one single move, aka Waterfowl Dance, that I couldn’t do anything to prevent. It came to a point when every time she’d go on air I was like “Here we go again, another death.” After beating her, I didn’t feel accomplished at all, I was just glad I got it out of the way.
You never learned how to dodge
@@jasonbelcho8609 I got the platinum trophy for that game.
skill issue
@@firetitan19 “no argument”
@@xerxes5785you can simply dodge waterfall dance, you have to time it. I mean at that point it’s simply a skill issue
I went str gs and found maliketh to be really intuitive after a few tries. He's difficult if you try to punish him in the middle of his long ass combos, but if you wait them out and position correctly for where he lands it becomes easy.
He has 3 safe attack windows. First is after he does the 3 black blade air slashes at you. He jumps towards you, slices the ground horizontally, you roll and position behind him, get 2 hits in. He's easy to poisebreak so 3 jump attacks at 50 str got the job done for me. Giants hunt is good too. The second is after he finishes his regular slice combo that he always starts the fight with. He kinda rolls over and stabs the floor, get behind and hit. The third is after he does his ground jump stab that does aoe, dodge, then he does the forward stab aoe one mind slice, get behind him and whack him. It's 80% patience 20% positioning.
Such a high quality and entertaining video, was shocked to see the amount of views! Keep up the good content bro you’re doing great
Thanks for the kindness 🙏 it’s appreciated!
Finally someone who agrees with me on how tough Maliketh is. He took me close to as long as Malenia did.
I disagree maliketh took my like 8-9 tries to beat with my dual greatswords build. He has very telegraphed attacks in stage 2 that you have to quick on. But malenia, dear God, took me around 50-70 tries to finally get her solo. She's just a monster plain and simple.
Yea it’s weird how different people struggle with different bosses personally maliketh was probably one of my easiest boss encounters in the souls games
@@redblade37 I also used dual greatsword but it took me like 2 hours of trying to kill him. For me the hard part was that after finishing a combo the downtime between his next move is so little that I'm never sure if I can get a hit in or not. So I ended up trading hits a lot until I eventually got better at the fight ig. Malenia must have taken me like 200 tries though, I was fighting her for days before I beat her
@@colinweinreich9878 nah for me he is the hardest boss in elden ring. i beat melania fairly quickly. just took like 2 hours but i couldnt beat maliketh for like a whole week. i had to leave him and level up a lot like three times
I agree malekeith actually took me more tries than malenia did but it's mainly because he kept jumping like a monkey and using his aoe attacks which were annoying af but his low health made him challengeable and that too he transforms at half health so sometimes I wonder he would have been a nightmare for me to deal with
I love seeing the good side of the Souls enjoyers where we can compare where people do better or have a more difficult time with different bosses.
I beat Malenia in 18 tries and Maliketh in three, and O&S in 5 tries, but it took me FOREVER to beat Sister Friede and Gael.
Always love to see the differences and skill gaps in game senses, and what some are better at than others while struggling with some objectively easy fights. Idk, it’s just really cool.
I think Malenia is incredibly difficult but for me I found the Elden beast (and radagon) way harder due to the fact you can’t stagger them and they hit for massive damage
I have staggered both while using a generic greatsword.
I went with a katana bleed build and although she was a pain in the ass she always felt beatable in my attempts. Radagon and Elden Beast however… said fuck my life I ain’t winning, I died so much - out of desperation/rage I gave in and decided to respec and go all in with magic. Kamehameha’d that Elden bitch to hell.
I went against Melania with a bleed build and I still more trouble than against radagon and elden beast (they are immune to bleed) once you figure out radagon the elden beast is pretty easy since the moveset is pretty easy to learn
@@fede113 I also used a bleed build. While the moves of the Elden Beast may be easier to dodge than Malenia’s their are way more of them and them and they are way less openings then her to attack especially if he decides he wants to keep running away.
For me it was the complete opposite, but we are different and we have different playstyles so we can't really find a conclusion
since i dont like to feel like i was lucky when i beat a boss i was determined to learn to at least survived Waterfowl dance.
what i did was rolling twice in the first part (once in and once out). The i-frames allowed me to mitigate some of the damage.
Then i rolled towards her to avoid the secord flurry .
finally i stay still until she reposition for the third and inmidiately roll backwards.
I would sometimes take more or less damage depending on execution but once realized that i could live throught it lost the fear to it. This would result in a more offensive playstyle where i would switch between constant agression and passitvity to bait her but if she wasnt triggering the attack then i would go "fuck it lets dance" since i knew that seing the attack at melee wasnt the end for me.
Each time that i defeated her i felt like i learned something new about her behavoir or her moves wich lead to be able to do better each time. There were moment of frustration but overall my experience with her was really fun.
You gotta run away from the first three then roll through the jump over.
@@nate7418 i know, but sometimes you dont have the luxury of distance i just explained what ido when facing a surprise melee waterfowl dance at melee range. Imperfect? very much, but beats giving up the moment you see her hover in the air near you.
I would have loved to see you include the inner boss versions from Sekiro. For me they were way harder than their normal version and a nice addition to the game.
definitely. i’ve only fought inner genichiro so far, but i can imagine how painful owl would be
Difficulty also depends a lot on which NG cycle you're on. With some bosses going to max NG just means you have to able to do the exact same thing for longer Some become completely different. Flamelurker for instance in Demons Souls is trivial on the first playthrough but in max NG deserves consideration for this list imo. With any kind of melee it's not enough to dodge his attacks anymore, you have to manage distance every time you attack as well since his fire aura is enough to kill you without him ever landing a single hit.
Malenia is controversial for me. I tried her on a melee with dexterity build and she plastered me without me ever approaching her second phase. Then, re-speced to scocerer and beat her in four tries. She can be really trivialized but she punishes the R1 spammers hard.
that's because magic is the easy mode, but i don't use it anyways
@@ArtoriasGaming0516 Odd cause magic here is one of the weaker builds for her, feel that rivers of blood/bleed katanas is much better than magic here.
@@etikhad4754 RoB shits on her
Melee against Malenia is much easier than magic. With magic you need to keep space between you and the boss, but she will just straight dash to you over the map. Learn to dodge or avoid waterfowl dance and it's not that hard.
that's because magic and bleed/frostbite builds are the real easy mode of souslborne games
once you end up learning how to dodge two of malenia's attacks, it almost trivializes the entire fight, shes one of my favorites in elden ring which is why i have so many different builds and character who have all killed, malenia, also this might come off as a hot take but i wish maliketh had a full health bar, so many awesome bosses with cool second phases are almost deleted since they transform at about 35-40% health i.e. dragonlord, lichdragon, horah loux, mohg, etc.
Mohg doesn't really count since he gets his health back up to 70% after the phase transition. Lichdragon doesn't really have a 2nd phase and only adds 2 different moves, which is unfortunate because he had the potential to be better than Midir but From blew it with the mediocre and reused moveset.
While I do agree with the first part, though I just use a shield for some of her attacks bc it's consistent even though I could dodge, I still think Melania is one of their worst designed bosses. So is Maliketh, they just try my patience with their combo spamming.
Did you use summons?
@@arthurdurham an aggresive boss makes the boss bad? i have about six different characters, strength, dex, bleed, priest, paladin, mage, and rl1 which i never used a summon for any
@@ThaPugster No, Bloodbourne is my favorite game and it's all aggressive but your abilities are directly matching the aggression. I just don't find the mechanics you can use in ER fit with how the bosses are designed.
Spamming high damage combos with infinite stamina and instantaneous dodges. Though I'll say Melania's first phase has a lot of predictable attacks to dodge in concept, but depending on RNG will just spam the combos over and over and over, so you spend most of your time dodging and not attacking.
But in geenral you're not nearly as fast as the bosses or able to cover similar ground or move cancel like them with little to no recovery time needed.
Just bc I can beat them all without summons doesn't mean it's fun.
@@arthurdurham i agree with you on bloodborne but there are many items that perfectly balance the fast paced fights with slower builds, like the stonebarb which is basically essential for strength or you can parry if you are that type of guy, theres even lifesteal and beast blood pellet if you really want to play bloodborne in elden ring
I'm currently fighting Malenia naked with the Starscourge Greatsword double handed at level 115, and I got to say that, apart from some Waterfowl Dance bs, it's been the funnest Elden Ring boss for me, the satisfaction from learning her moves and playing almost hitless is unmatched. That being said, I haven't gotten to Godskin Duo yet, and so I haven't fought Malekith nor other late game bosses, so maybe They could be more fun
Bro, how THE FUCK DID HE GET TO MALEKETH WITH THAT HEALTH
Maliketh is incredible and it would be a top 10 for me if it wasn't for his low HP (same for Morgott and Radahn) but in my opinion Radagon and the Elden Beast are much harder bosses.
Radans Hp isn’t low. The level to fight him at is 50-60 so maybe you were higher level than you were supposed to be without knowing. This is not meant as a insult, I am just confused on why you think his hp is low.
I actually found Gael to be pretty manageable but Friede and especially Midir were absolutely kicking my a***!
With Malenia being the hardest boss in souls games I absolutely agree.
Feel like Radhan deserved a spot because I found him to be extremely hard.
Perhaps pre-patch, but I never faced the legend at his full strength
Malekith is interesting for me. On my first blind playthrough with some unoptimized garbage claymore quality build, he took me hours. But on subsequent runs where I actually know what I'm doing with my character he isn't bad. Malenia always gives me trouble though. Midir is similar a bit. He feels unconventional for how you typically fight dragons in souls games and feels hopeless at first, but once you understand how to play the fight in front of him rather than under him, he is actually easy.
I love how different things are. I beat Malekith first try. Didn't struggle. Godfrey beat the shit out of me for hours. Hardest boss in that game for me. Hands down.
@@tsunomat, That’s what I love about the game so much. Everyone has a different experience with the bosses and the game as a whole depending on how much and where they explore.
Hm, I'd probably disagree with a few of these entries.
Gael deals like, no damage, so it is fairly easy if you're patient and have somewhat high vigor.
NK is VERY consistent. He telegraphs his attacks very well. Like, just practice NK for 15-20 hours, and then it turns into a very fun, consistent and repayable fight
Malenia maybe deserves between #3 and #5, but not #1. No way. Its the same as NK but a bit harder. Just spend 20 hours learning Malenia and then she becomes a very consistent boss. Of course the majority of this time is learnt dodging Waterfowl. But once you're able to recognize the dodge pattern for Waterfowl, the fight is very consistent and quite fun, so long as you're patient. The fight becomes very easy to no hit after a while. Oh also, she has like, 0 poise negation, to throwing a pebble is enough to stagger her lol. Regarding this actually, she can actually be staggered out of her hyper-armour before her long winded attacks such as Waterfowl, which can make the fight a lot easier if you know how to abuse poise correctly.
I did an All-bosses run for my NG+8 run, and I beat all remembrances each playthrough, so, as you advance through New Games, Maliketh becomes a tad more difficult than Malenia. In NG+0, he is fairly easy because of how squishy he is. A literal toddler has more hit points. However, when Maliketh has almost double the health and damage on NG+7 and above, that low HP issue goes away and he actually becomes challenging because his health pool is actually somewhat significant. The solution of out-dps'ing him evaporates and the difficulty is around Morgott on a Rune Level 1 run.
You definitely did Isshin and Orphan of Kos dirty lmao.
EDIT:
Was just thinking about this now, it was 100% a good call putting Midir at the top of DS3 bosses. I got through the entirety of DS3, my first soulsborne game on a shitty 48Hz laptop where I had a max fps of around 13. No, I'm not fucking joking I'm being serious here. On that old laptop that I only keep around for Uni purposes, I beat the entirety of DS3, including all of the DLC bosses, except for one. Yes, I was able to get through Sister Friede, NK, and I beat Gael second try, with my first try reaching 3rd phase. However, the only boss I couldn't beat, was Midir. To beat him on that laptop, instead of using fullscreen like I did for all the other bosses, I had to shrink my screen down to something ridiculously tiny like 480x360 or something (don't remember the exact dimensions), just so I could be able to challenge him on a consistent 30fps (which was revolutionary for me at the time). After doing that, it only took me like an hour or so, but still. Absolutely insane.
(in case you're wondering what the laptop was, it was like a 2015 Dell laptop that had arounf 100gb out of 1tb remaining on the C drive lol)
I genuinely never understood how people found fume knight hard. His move set health and damage are all extremely manageable. I died to him once my first time around because I didnt know how slow the big flaming swing attack would be, but my second attempt he went down easy.
Might just be playstyle/builds. I’ve beat ds2 6 or 7 times, and I always die at least 20 times to Fume Knight
@@nedmacamden3019 Ive beaten him with a ton of different builds, and pretty much all of them yielded the same results, Fume Knight being easy. Ive done Dex w multiple weapons, strength w multiple weapons, hex build, sorcery, faith, an all rounded build. Maybe im just naturally built for the Fume Knight fight idk, but all Ik is I found him fairly easy
Funnily enough Gael was one of the few bosses I managed to beat on my first try.
Malenia is so fun to battle after figuring out her move set
Good list! I'm missing some Bloodborne bosses though, Lawrence is harder than any ds3 boss, and i would also argue Ludwig is too. The defiled chalice watchdog is up there aswell, and the defiled amygdala, though not so much for me. But for the most part, i agree with you
Lawrence is only hard because of his arena size, plus nameless king is way harder than Lawrence or Ludwig
I beat lawrence on my first try, but I was probably way overleveled because I only got around to him after all that chalice bs for the trophy. Might have to give him another go in NG+ or something. Defiled amygdala i resorted to cheese without remorse because that fight is just bullshit and artifically unfair, didnt seem worth it to actually fight.
@@jokabox93 Defiled Amygdala and defiled whatch dog are absolutely brutal, i just went for the head and prayed it didn't hit me. In my first playthrough of the dlc, i died to Lawrence 12 times, then on ng+ i beat him first try, and from that point i either beat him in 3 or 4 tries, or more than 15, even 20. I just haven't figured out his first phase, and that's probably the problem the other guy has with Midir
Updated list after finishing Elden Ring.
15. Demon Prince - It was a toss-up between this boss and Pontiff since he wrecked me so badly on my recent playthrough, but i went with this one since it can be a long drawn out battle, you have to pay a lot of attention, the damage can be insane and the second phase is just intimidating as hell.
14. Father Owl - This boss requires you to reach that mental flow state, and if you don't then he'll cut you up in seconds, he might just be the fastest boss in the series, and the Inner version makes him even more hellish.
13. Darkeater Midir - First playthrough wise, he'd definitely be higher. Midir's always a weird one, sometimes he'll give you an easy fight with easy to dodge moves, and sometimes he just goes on a laser frenzy which kills me every time, that laser barrage in phase 2 is the most intimidating move in the series for me.
12. Orphan of Kos - Orphan being here doesn't mean he's not 10/10 in terms of difficulty, his first phase for me is relatively simple to handle for me personally, but his second phase is one of the most intimidating phases in the series. Erratic and unpredictable, i can see why people have the most trouble with him. The reason he's here for me personally, his first phase takes up 50% of his health bar and can be exploited with backstabs to make his hellish second phase shorter.
11. Sword Saint Isshin - The only 4 phase boss in the series currently if we include Genichiro, he's the ultimate test for everything you've learnt up til this point. His sword phase if you're in a parry flow can be relatively simple, but when he pulls out that spear and his glock, that damn hyper armour and those combos are nightmarish to handle, the fight turns me into a coward and i just run away to avoid his combos lol.
10. Sister Friede - An exhausting endurance fight, the third phase is one of the most stressful in the series due to limited resources, her speed and combos. You have to remember all 3 phases properly and she always does things in every phase to make it stressful, such as invisibility attacks, healing, grabs etc, it's mentally taxing and takes me to my limit every time.
9. Slave Knight Gael - Many might find this an odd choice, but this boss kills me multiple times every playthrough, his damage is insane and his attributes turn this into a long drawn out endurance fight, he has minimal weaknesses and has the ability to end the fight swiftly.
8. Demon of Hatred - Insane damage and feels so awkward with Sekiro's mechanics, always a stressful fight, i don't think i've ever beaten him without using that whistle prosthetic.
7. Laurence the First Vicar - Always nerve-wracking to fight, his damage and delays are ridiculous, he could just choose to end the fight at any given moment if he feels like it especially at NG+. This fight always takes 7+ minutes for me, that's a lot of time to avoid a potential one shot, and that can happen frequently due to his delays roll catching you, having the highest damage in the game and Bloodborne's counterdamage. Some people call this boss unfair and i can definitely see why.
6. Pre-nerf Radahn - A boss that took me over 30 attempts, maybe i was underleveled, but his combos and complex design definitely made him nerve wracking to fight. I have a feeling he'll drop below many of the bosses on this list in the long term since he got nerfed and i've only faced him on one playthrough, but i can't pretend to ignore the torment he gave me on my first playthrough.
5. Radagon & Elden Beast - I struggled pretty hard with this fight mainly due to Radagon, his insanely delayed combos and erratic follow ups made him one of the hardest phases in the series for me, and he is immune to bleed, i am terrible at delayed bosses that hit hard and Radagon exploits that like crazy with his endless roll catching, surprisingly Elden Beast was much more manageable, his melee swings were easy to predict and you just have to run a lot because of his magic, from the 40 attempts Elden Beast only killed me 7 times. If Radagon had a second more difficult phase instead, this would easily be higher.
4. Ludwig the Accursed/Holy Blade - Until Elden Ring came along, Ludwig remained the most attempts i've ever had at a boss at 40+, 2 insanely lethal and distinct phases. And i haven't fully mastered it after all those years, he still kills me multiple times per playthrough.
3. Maliketh the Black Blade - This was the second boss that reached 50 attempts, another boss that is harder than anything from the previous games. The first phase is moderately difficult and requires a lot of memorization, but his second phase turns it up to 11, one of the deadliest phases in the series with comically high damage due to the DoT, even my final attempt i was left with a sliver of health, him and Mohg are pretty much tied, but i'll just place Mohg a little higher due to more attempts, but i had more close calls with Maliketh on my successful attempt.. One of my favourite bosses of all time too.
2. Mohg, Lord of Blood - This is the boss that finally broke the record that Ludwig held at my expense, Mohg almost took me 60 freaking attempts, even with bleed katanas, the shackle and the flask to negate the transformation damage. His first phase is manageable but difficult with his random aoe's that get me, but his 2nd phase is ridiculous, insane damage, bleed damage, limiting the arena, ridiculous hp and ending combos with follow ups to throw you off. By far harder than anything from the previous games for me.
1. Malenia, Blade of Miquella - When i heard the horror stories of Malenia, i didn't think it would be that bad, i'm someone who didn't find Orphan of Kos, Nameless King and Sword Saint Isshin excruciatingly difficult despite the difficulty hype from the community, sure they're definitely difficult but not absurd from my experience. I thought Malenia would be the same case, little did i know what i was in for lol. It took me 31 attempts just to reach the second phase, and a total of 131 attempts to beat her without summons which is more than Mohg and Maliketh combined. The hardest thing i've ever done in a game by far, 9 hours of agony. The second phase is agony, unending combos, minimal windows to attack in her second phase, the ridiculous clone attack and that borderline unfair waterfowl dance.
It feels like Fromsoft secretly got frustrated that Sigrun the Valkyrie from God of War was considered harder than the fromsoft bosses for a lot of people lol. It's like they took a scrapped Sekiro boss, turned her into a Valkyrie out of spite against God of War developers, and turned the difficulty up to another planet, she's without a doubt the hardest fromsoftware boss and it isn't even close, fighting Orphan and Sword Saint back to back would be easier for me personally. Anyways that's it, sorry for the ramble.
Thank you Redditor
@@HellonearthlABB Thanks, maybe i should start using reddit.
@@HMCarsSOA yep, they would definitely appreciate these type of comments
@@HellonearthlABB I see, looking back, it looks like i went a bit overboard lol.
@@HMCarsSOA i was joking, nothing wrong with your comment, someone might take time to read and enjoy it
Nice vid! I find Laurence to be harder than Orphan. He literally was a pain on the ass for me.
I just wrote a comment about the same thing. That boss is one of the only ones I felt to be unfair. His health bar and damage output is insane
I like the malenia fight... But i always thought that they made her difficult Just for the sake of being difficult. She is so stacked with this many mechanics that work against you. The constant healing, the unnecessary two full health bar phases and of course the waterfall dance... I get that it actually can be avoided even in close range but I've seen many vets saying that even by fromsoft standards that move is a little to much at times
yeah man. I agree. Don't get me wrong. I love a hard boss fight. But I just didn't enjoy the boss design. Low key, I think elden ring had some of the more boring boss fights. Very cool, fun, and pretty. But mechanics just didn't cut it for me.
I have to agree. I feel like Maliketh is where difficulty should have peaked in Elden Ring. I love Malenia but she is just stupid hard
Maliketh was super tough for me when I first fought him, and for like my first four playthroughs I was stumped on this guy. I always managed to beat him fairly quickly but I never felt like I really learned him until my fifth playthrough. Elden Ring bosses are different than previous games, you really have to work to get your damage openings. There’s positioning based boss attacks that can grant you openings if you outspace it. That’s one thing about Elden Ring is I feel that positioning is more important than in previous games. The Beast Clergyman also has combos that are pretty tough to deal with, and at first it seems like he never stops attacking but after some practice you’ll realize that’s not true and he does give you openings. That being said though his damage is incredibly high so I think he definitely deserves some respect as a top tier challenge. That being said though his health pool is so low that once you can learn the openings and/or use the blasphemous claw in phase 2 you can take him out so much easier. This is all judging him without spirit summons melee only and no freak one shot builds or anything. It’s unfair to judge the boss based on external factors, I judge boss difficulty based on their moveset and the fight itself. You could summon another player and have them fight the boss for you but that wouldn’t tell you anything about the boss difficulty itself, that’s why I think it’s unfair to factor in spirit summons and things like that when judging bosses.
I found a lot of the Elden ring content to have pretty easy bosses (STR Melee no summons) relative to the other ones. Staggering bosses and jump attacks prove to be very strong. Melania for example staggers at every hit you give her. Her only lethal attack is the waterfowl dance which again can be hit out of with just one hit. I found my hardest challenges in DS3 & BB. Haven't played Sekiro but going to give it a go!
Yeah idk why so many people think elden ring is so hard. Especially if you use the tools at your disposal. Compared to all other souls borne games, with the tools available to the player, Elden ring was a breeze for me. Especially if you go with a shield build. On NG+ I used a shield to test it out and it’s ridiculous how easy it is. Just hold block and use a poke weapon. Dodge grab attacks and that’s pretty much all you have to do.
What weapon are you using?
bloodborne without using a broken weapon like the whirlygig saw has incredibly hard boss fights especially in dlc learning ludwig felt amazing but brutal at the same time similar to midir a fast moving piss off animal that wants you dead but orphan of kos I can't imagine most elden ring players even beating him if they struggle with malenia sure he doesn't have a second health bar but there no cheap trick to beat him either git gud by parrying or wait for backstab Opening plus die in one wrong move he should be #1 in hardest soul bosses
@@Seiga005 it all comes down to how appropriately leveled you are. most bosses are designed to be fought after exploring about 20-30% of the region they're found in, so if you fully explore the game most of the bosses are trivial
@@Seiga005 of course elden ring is a souls game at heart but u don’t have to play it like one instead of having to memorize a bosses attacks if your struggling use a op bleed / magic build or over lv / use summons elden ring gives u an option to make it the most difficult (maybe) souls game or the easiest (demon souls was easy tho so not sure) in my opinion elden ring is a lot more fun if u play it more like a traditional souls game with open world mixed in
I like how the bosses in this list are also some of From's most well designed.
Personally the only bosses here that I can't praise much is Orphan and Malenia. Orphan because I havent fought it yet so no opinion, and Malenia because the amount of salt I had and still have with that fight is enough to end world hunger. :D
Honorable mention would be Artorias because no matter how much I beat him he still manages to be difficult, unpredictable, and fun af
Godrick probably took me more total attempts (40+), but Malenia is by far the hardest boss in any of the games (even if her sicko mode slash was removed). Before Elden Ring, that honor would've gone to Friede for sure.
Godrick or Godfrey?
@@TeChNoWC7 Godrick the Grafted.
@@CrunchRatSupreem interesting
@@TeChNoWC7 I know, I'm bad lol
@@CrunchRatSupreem lol haha. Funnily enough on my second playthrough he gave me more grief than I expected. I carved through Margit then Godrick stopped me in my tracks. Karma to me for questioning you lol