The Impact Factor

Perspectives: The Top 10 Souls Bosses

Special Feature

Hey everyone! I hope you’ve liked my crazy amount of Bloodborne and Souls talk here on The Impact Factor! If you haven’t already, please check out my Bloodborne review. I’m pretty proud of it! Also, I hope you all have seen my special two-part article in which I ranked the Souls games. Part one can be found here, and part two here. Writing about the Souls games brought back a lot of great memories, chief among them being the series’ incredible boss fights. Souls bosses put player skills to the test, pitting them against hulking monstrosities, powerful warriors, and sinister beasts. When you look at the entire series, there are a lot of boss fights. So I thought it would be fun to go through them all and rank my top ten favorite bosses. The ranking is a combination of a couple things: how fun it is to fight them, how creative the boss fight is, how cool they are, etc.  The list is weighed heavily for how unique and challenging the fight was, though. In the end, coming up with a final ordering was really hard. I wanted to include so many bosses. But I cut it down to the top ten and here were are! I won’t go into too much detail about the fights, but there will be boss name SPOILERS, some general descriptions of the top 10, and one image of each boss on the list. Let’s get into it!

DISCLAIMER: I haven’t played the Dark Souls II DLC so none of those bosses were in consideration for this list.

Honorable Mentions:

German, The First Hunter

Gwyn, Lord of Cinder

Four Kings

Great Gray Wolf Sif

The Lost Sinner

#10 Gaping Dragon, Dark Souls

I just had to include this one on the list. The Gaping Dragon fight is just so awesome in so many ways. The monster is massive and its attacks are extremely powerful. Just expect that if you get hit, you die. In all honesty, the actual fight itself wasn’t why it is included at the #10 spot. Beating the boss is pretty simple—stay around its back legs, and run away when it jumps into the area. No, the reason I included it is its amazing design. I love the Gaping Dragon’s reveal: where a tiny snake head gives way to a colossal, twisted horror. Everything about the Gaping Dragon is interesting. I mean, its chest is a gnarly maw of sharp teeth. How cool.

#9 Flamelurker, Demon’s Souls

I know a lot of you probably hated this fight. So did I, until I went back and played through Demon’s Souls again. Flamelurker is one hell of a boss fight. Unlike a lot of other bosses in Demon’s Souls, he is fast and aggressive, constantly in your face attacking you. But I love him for that reason. He’s probably the hardest boss in the game. You absolutely have to get his patterns down, and learn where to punish his attacks. There is no other fight quite like it in Demon’s Souls, but his style lives on with bosses like Manus, Father of Abyss or the Cleric Beast. The feeling of joy when I finally beat the Flamelurker warrants his inclusion at the #9 slot on this list.

#8 Smelter Demon, Dark Souls II

Probably another controversial pick. If any boss was going to mess you up on your first playthrough of Dark Souls II, it was this guy. He was pretty slow and predictable, but his attacks hit like a truck. With his high defense and damaging fire attacks, this fight could be a long one. Similar to Flamelurker, you really had to watch yourself in this fight—one small slip up and you’re dead. The arena you face him in is small to prevent any magic shenanigans, meaning for most players, you go toe to toe physically with this guy. I love his design too, and wore his armor set after getting it later in the game. Make sure to douse yourself in water before attempting this fight!

#7 Martyr Logarius, Bloodborne

You might be noticing a trend here. Like Flamelurker and the Smelter Demon before it, if any one boss is going to put you through the ringer during your first Bloodborne playthrough, it’s this guy. His introduction is so great. You approach an emaciated warrior sitting in a chair who awakens from his deathly slumber to prevent the player from reaching the throne behind him. I love his design; you can feel his history in each one of his attacks and movements. Martyr Logarius looks and feels extremely powerful. The player needs to navigate dodging his powerful magic attacks and brutal physical strikes, while making sure not to fall off the roof on which the fight takes place. As the fight goes on, Martyr Logarius evolves and changes his moveset, adding even further challenge to an already tough fight. He took me seven attempts during my first playthrough, and though there were some frustrations, the reward for beating him after the epic struggle was totally worth it.

#6 Looking Glass Knight, Dark Souls II

The Looking Glass Knight boss fight probably has my favorite setting of any of the bosses on this list. After working your way to the top of a grueling castle, you enter this arena on the rooftop. Storm raging, the Looking Glass Knight shudders to life, electrifying his sword, and begins to walk slowly toward the player. This fight is rad in so many ways. The boss looks and sounds powerful. His large mirror shield is impervious to damage, forcing the player to roll to his exposed flank or punish his length attack animations. Thunderous electric strikes sweep across the arena, keeping the player on his or her toes at all times. Plus, if you’re really unlucky (and playing on NG+) the Looking Glass Knight can summon another player through his shield to fight you. Yup. That can get out of hand fast. Looking Glass Knight is probably the coolest boss of the Souls series, and one that was hard to forget upon completion of Dark Souls II.

#5 Father Gascoigne, Bloodborne

I don’t know if any one boss fight taught you more about the combat system in a Souls game than Father Gascoigne. An early boss, Father Gascoigne pushes new players to the limit on what they have learned about Bloodborne’s deceptively complex combat system. To beat him, the player must rely on everything in his or her arsenal: jump attacks, speedy dodges, using objects in the environment to the player’s advantage, and, of course, parrying with gunshots into Visceral attacks. As you fight the Father, he changes up his style of fighting. By the time you’ve finished the fight, you’ve essentially fought three different bosses. Gameplay elements aside, Father Gascoigne is just such a badass fight. The player can see his descent into madness as Gascoigne hacks away at his previous victim. The graveyard you face him in is dark and eerie, crumbling to his mighty attacks. Upon reflection, Father Gascoigne is my favorite boss fight in Bloodborne. As a side note, the same tactics you use to beat this boss are pretty directly applicable to PVP, which is neat!

#4 Old Monk, Demon’s Souls

The Old Monk boss fight blew me away. To this day, I still can’t believe how creative and innovative Miyazaki and team are. After fighting your way through the precious spires of the Tower of Latria, you ascend up the stairs of an old library. The boss waiting for you is just some guy with a crazy piece of headgear. Until you realize what’s going on. The ‘Old Monk’ has already long since passed. To fight in his stead, he summons a player from another world (indicated by a crazy head wrap). You read that right: the Old Monk boss fight is another person found around the world who is playing Demon’s Souls. This made the fight unpredictable and exciting. Who would the Old Monk pull for you to fight? Would you be pulled to do his bidding later in the game? Of course some issues can arise with other players being extremely cheap / not wanting a fair fight, but that wasn’t my experience. That tension that came up as a result of need to defeat another player to progress the story was immense, and beating them was oh so satisfying. Oh, and I did get summoned by the Old Monk later in the game. The fight is just as fun from the other side.

#3 Knight Artorias, Dark Souls

What. A. Fight. Knight Artorias, from the exceptional Artorias of the Abyss DLC, is probably the purest test of player skill of any Souls boss. He is quick and brutal, dealing immense damage and leaving a precious few openings for player counterattacks. To make matters worse, he attacks pretty unpredictable, making it hard to know how to dodge any given attack. A year or two ago, the general consensus online was the Knight Artorias was the best boss in the Souls series. He’s certainly the toughest boss fight in all of Dark Souls. Probably the hardest boss in the entire series. But with that challenge comes immense rewards. When you finally get his attacks down, his moves studied, his fight is an intense choreography of dodges, strikes, healing, and running. You really, truly feel like you earned something when you beat Knight Artorias. But the fight is even more than that. Knight Artorias is of tremendous importance to the lore and world of Dark Souls, so getting to fight him was total wish fulfillment. In addition to his rich history, Knight Artorias is just freaking cool. His giant sword, his dark tattered armor—I love the boss’s look. Putting him in the #3 slot may be controversial but, well, I liked two other bosses better.

#2 Black Dragon Kalameet, Dark Souls

While everyone raved about the excellent Knight Artorias fight from Dark Souls’s one and only piece of DLC, I had my own favorite: the Black Dragon Kalameet. All throughout the Souls series you encounter dragons, but before Kalameet (or after, for that matter), none of those fights had been particularly satisfying. None felt like you were fighting a dragon. The couple dragons in Demon’s Souls all could be picked off with arrows. The dragon on the bridge in Dark Souls only had a couple of attacks and felt cheap to fight. The Gaping Dragon, despite its amazing design and reveal, was a relatively straightforward (and easy) fight. The couple of dragon fights in Dark Souls II are similarly underwhelming. This is absolutely not the case for Kalameet. The Black Dragon Kalameet is a real dragon fight. You need to constantly dodge its bite attacks, flame breath, sweeping tail, and its powerful telekinetic abilities. You could not just simple hide by its butt and attack its tail or back legs. You would die really fast. Beating Kalameet put the player to work, requiring perfection to finish off this brutal boss. And the fight was so fun too. You always knew exactly what you had to do—actually performing the right dodges and attacks was the challenge. If you lost, you knew it was your fault. The whole lead up to the fight is so great. Black Dragon Kalameet almost made my #1 here, but was narrowly beaten out for the slot.

#1 Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough, Dark Souls

For anyone who knows the Souls series, I’m sure you saw this coming. And know why I put it as my number one. For the rest of you, let me get into a little more detail. Ornstein and Smough is an exceptional boss fight. Following the trend with the kind of bosses I like, Ornstein and Smough would be the one fight to stonewall your progress in Dark Souls. The fight is brutally challenging, and so unexpected. Even just walking into the boss fight had players, myself included, terrified. There were two bosses, each with their own health bar! Neither of the two bosses is a joke either; each one could be its own boss fight. Taking on the bosses was rough going. You had to dodge both bosses’ attacks, while also doing damage to them? Crazy! The fight tested the player in ways no fight before it ever had. And the surprises kept coming. Once you had finally downed one of the bosses it was easy going, right? Wrong. The remaining boss would absorbing the fallen bosses power and, with newfound strength, came a new powerful moveset. The fight takes place in the beautiful and massive chapel that, combined the boss song (my favorite from all four Souls games), creates a memorable and amazing boss fight. Nothing has topped this fight for me out of the dozens upon dozens I have faced during my time with the Souls games. You’ve got to give props to Dark Souls, taking the top three boss spots is impressive!

What a great song!

Thoughts, comments, concerns? Let me hear ‘em. Leave me a comment or let me know on twitter, @alexsamocha