Major spoilers obviously. Do not click if you haven't beaten the desert guy.
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So i just beat Radahn and o boy, that was a lot.
One the one hand, it's probably the most cinematic boss battle From Software ever made. It's kind of a set piece, a legitimate raid boss where you have to switch aggro and get in DPS where you can and swerve around the battle field looking for a tiny opening and respawning allies. He's outshining pretty much most end bosses ever made.
The opening is, while getting a little repetitive, brilliant. I wonder what the percentage is of people who got one-shot by the first arrow. It sets the tone and feels legitimately terrifying. Radahn does NOT play around. He's a mad god and you just stepped into shooting distance.
The visuals of the dunes, the music, the red sky, the charge of the phantoms, his absurd arrow rain, the MASSIVE swords, the tiny fucking horse on which he is tokyo drifting across the dunes, the falling-meteor-move. It's all genuinely cool and among the best things From Software has ever done.
One the other hand his third phase (second half of HP pool) is pure bullshit. It's difficult enough to get hits in before, but once those 4 purple orbs are out, you are just not getting near him. Insane reach, speed, constantly moving, undodgable aoe attacks, a combo of homing orbs and aoe stuns and several long range one shot moves and projectiles. If you get bad luck, he just wipes your summons in a combo and then chases you pretty much until the end of time.
I ended up poisoning him with poison darts and just hiding in the dunes, while occasionally respawning a dude. Didn't even see him die, because i was so scared of those one-shot orbs.
Elden Ring bosses in general are very very tough, with their kind of endless combos, heavy delays and insane tracking but usually there is a moment of revelation, of pattern recognition and joy after beating something you thought unbeatable. And i'm sure someone is already beating Radahn with no summons, fist only SL 1, but i personally have no desire to fight him ever again. Riding in circles and throwing darts to kill a god didn't feel exactly rewarding.
Thoughts? :::
Yep, mechanically that's the absolute worst fight in the game hands down. It's designed to be cheesed like that and it just feels bad because it's just 100% move RNG against a boss that you just flat out can't melee at all without being wrecked with erratic, fast AOEs and one-shot tracking projectile spam. Or maybe, theoretically, you could learn to fight him in melee without the summons except how do you even reach him in the first place without them, since his ranged attacks alternate between sniping and a very long lasting tracking AOE that can only be outranged, not dodged or outrun? Every pull starts off a long slog just to start fighting the boss at all and it's miserable.
See that's what I was thinking . . . until I ran into the literal next boss after him.
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Valiant Gargoyles
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They're the worst general type of boss, but I don't think that fight was as bad as Radahn is. You just need an upgraded big weapon that'll chunk them and some luck, namely that the first one doesn't just start running away after it hits half or zone you out with its poison, because you need to burn it down in about 15-30 seconds after the second one spawns.
Tbh I don't think even the duo crucible knight fight is as badly designed as Radahn, and that fight is easily the hardest one I've run into so far.
Any duo fight gets the Sword of Night and Flame weapon art from me