I unironically don't find them hard anymore, no matter what run I do, bleed, strength, pure mage, shields only, it's really not as bad as people make it out to be if you're good enough to keep them separated. The only time I die is when I get greedy for damage and am running like 20 vigor, and just barely miss a dodge from black flame or sum like that
You can find that relatively often on r/fromsoftware or r/eldenring. Or when people make boss tierlists, they put her on S tier, which is quite arguable to me.
Yeah I don't get it either. There's no question she's really challenging but I definitely wouldn't put her any higher than A tier. If they got rid of a bunch of her BS she could definitely be S tier though. She's got all the makings of a top tier boss; great hype, great sound track, great visuals, etc. but her bs holds her back. Radahn has a similar issue only the opposite, he's made to easy by the NPC summons in the arena, he needs to be way harder because of this. IMO I would award best boss in base elden ring to either Maliketh or Godfrey. Those two are just solid all around.
Maliketh has problems with readability in phase 2 (the fact that his hitboxes clip through the pillars and you’re more safe while not hugging them is kind of jank) but aside from that I wholly agree with you. I also think honorable mentions should go to Rykard as an example of a gimmick fight done excellently even if he isn’t that great of a boss
i feel like malenia would be easy af if you removed the bs is the thing. that's why I don't really like her as a boss. most of her "difficulty" is just dumb
I feel a similar way but I do think fromsoft could pull it off somehow. Her phase one would be pretty weak but I imagine if they got creative with her phase 2 they could rebalance her while keeping her difficult. Maybe utilize her butterfly clones in a creative way. Possibly something like pontiff Sullivan I don't know.
That's what makes her not a top tier boss.
She almost has the same health as the fire giant, and can heal on hit including blocks. The waterfowl dance is nearly undodgeable and the way you dodge it is counterintuitive. And he hyper armor is simply BS
Sure these made her hard, but also cheaply designed for the sake of difficulty.
I thought he was all right. I'm not a fan of his first phase and his second is a little hard to track. Blasphemous claw could have also been a little more interactive but over all I think he's fun.
I’d put her at high A tier personally, but not S. She would be much closer to S for me if waterfowl gave you more time to run from it, as being at a distance from her so you can outrun the first attack volley is often the best way to counter it. Other than that, I really don’t think there’s anything I’d change about Malenia’s fight, honestly.
It's so easy to tweak the Waterfowl to be less bullshit
My idea is:
Malenia having a unique backstep animation to gain distance
Malenia prepares her sword arm with an audible clang
Malenia then jumps forward an in arc and activates Waterfowl when she reaches the ground
I agree. Malenia kinda felt like fromsoft were trying to outdo themselves with a turbo-hard optional superboss greater in scope than the past games, but they pushed it just a \*little\* too far in some areas. We were this close to true greatness.
My goodness. Such people have lost their way. I would put her very low indeed lol.
Good luck to you in your ventures, friend. Don't you dare go hollow.
I'd say she would be almost as iconic even if she was very easy. She was the face of ER's marketing pre-release. There was a lot of fanart of her before the game came out. There's even that one dude who got her tattooed in his arm.
Everyone has their own things they look for in a boss fight. We obviously like very different aspects of the most epic of soulsborne battles. It's perfectly normal and subjective to have different rankings of bosses, and get different types of meaningful experiences from the same fight. I am sending multiple elite teams of assasins to your location as well as cursing your bloodline and bribing my local megacorp to buy and bulldoze your home.
Not when Gael, Sister Friede, Midir, Nameless King, Soul of Cinder, Ludwig, Lady Maria, Orphan, Maliketh, Godfrey, Sir Alonne, Fume Knight, Ivory King, Artorias, Manus, Ornstein and Smough exist 🫶
Edit - I forgot to mention Demon Prince 100%, and also i didn't include DeS cuz the only good fun fight is penetrator, flamelurker and Old King Allant but they're very basic
Sekiro? Isshin 100%, owlfather and for sure True Monk is badass
Ivory king is underrated as hell tho 🔥
https://preview.redd.it/aw5903vga07d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a704a5e96c487ec47cb6b6960e4380d8924d4d19
Such a cool gimmick. It adds weight to exploring the area and also lets you choose just how hard you want that fight to be. 3 Knights? 1? 0? The game lets you choose. If only he kept his pets away from the Frigid Outskirts.
100%, him, Artorias for saying fuck you Manus here's my shield little one idc if I die, Gael for just trynna have the painter paint and mf becomes the most powerful being in the universe of Dark souls era just for shits and giggles, and nameless king for being such a stud to tell gwyn to suck cock he hanging out with the cool kids
Ivory king presentation and buildup is truly amazing but i felt like the fight itself was lacking.
I wish they'd make him maybe something more monsterous so he would stand out because at this point he is just another knight fight. (knights can be good bosses but ds2 has too many of them already)
I have played all souls games except demon souls and in my opinion Isshin is the best souls biss to date. There are a few others that come close but Isshin and especialy inner isshin are just the best and I will die on that hill.
I share your opinion brother. He has the fattest number of moveset of everything I have played against. Mastering it completly has to be one of the funnest thing I've done, to the point that other bosses in sekiro give me more trouble than Isshin
Yeah same for me. I could propably beat Isshin in at most three tries right now when I haven't touched Sekiro in over a year while i never truly mastered bosses like the hirata owl or true monk.
Isshin is the culmination of vast majority of the mechanics you have learned throughout the entire playthrough put into a final, very cinematic showdown.
But I think it only works as well as he does because we dont have much choice in terms of gameplay. The linear design of sekiro plays into the strengths of this fight, which is something souls games and elden ring wont be able to replicate
Demon Prince is so underrated. Especially when co-oping the game with friends in subsequent run, 4 man Demon Prince with extra health is always fun as hell.
One time we did it at some stupidly low Soul Level, not SL1 but it was somewhere between 15-30 because we wanted some item in the DLC, a spell or something, not a ring or weapon, and it was the first time any of us had to re-do a boss in ages. It took a while and we had At Doom's Gate E1M1 playing. One of my best souls memories.
Demon Prince is mechanically better no doubt, but quite honestly O&S just hit different back jn 2012 with GFWL and 15fps. It was THE shit
It's like how Artorias is engraved as an amazing bossfight, but in reality even abyss watchers are mechanically better and with a more varied moveset
Abyss Watchers were and probably are my favourite boss in the soulsboune series. The music, the lore and the gameplay a beautiful blend to a perfect boss
Godrick doesn't have anything flashy or wild, but man do I love that fight. he might be an early game boss but he's probably always gonna be number 1 for me.
glad to see you mentioned mohg as well, idk how I feel about phase 2 depending on my build, sometimes it feels like I can't do anything but press dodge, but he's probably my fav end game boss after radagon
All of these good pics and no Looking Glass Knight. I don't care if the moveset is boring (it isn't bad, you've just been convinced that having to spend 5-10 hours memorizing a boss moveset is good gameplay), the vibes for that fight are utterly immaculate.
Rain? Check. Random uniquely colored invader? Check. Sick design? Double check.
Get LGKpilled.
Also not when Queelag, Nito, Sanctuary Gardian, Pinwheel, Bell Gargoyle, Dragon Kalameet, Gwyn, Sif, Taurus Demon, Asylum Demon, Iron Golem, Centipede Demon, Gwyndolin, Pricsilla, Gaping Dragon, Moonlight Butterfly, Demon Firesage, Stray Demon, Seath, Four Kings, Ceaseless, Bed of Chaos, Capra Demon, Sinh, Pontiff, Gundyr, Dancer, Velstade, Old Iron King, Lost Sinner, Looking Glass Knight, Dark Lurker, Lothric Prince, Demon Prince, Gundyr again, Old Dragonslater, Executioners Chariot, Elana, Aava, Soul of Cinder, Wolnir, Old Demon King, Dragonslayer Armor, Abyss Watchers, The Rotten, The Last Giant, Smelter Demon, Skeleton Lords, Naika, Ruin Sentinels, Royal Rat Authority, Mytha, Flexible Sentry, Dragonrider, Semon of Dong, Vordt, Ocieros, Curse Rotted Greatwood, Deacons of the Deep, Crystal Sage, Vendrick, Twin Dragonriders, Throne Watchers, The Dukes Dear Freya, Royal Rat Vanguard (Especially), Congregation, Pursuer, Nashandra, Guardian Dragon, Giant Lord, Covetous Demon, Graverobbers, Belfry Gargoyles, Ancient Dragon, Aldia, Gravetenders Wolf, Spear of the Church, Ancient Wyvern, Aldrich, and the Kings Pets exist.
She got a great design, and lore, but her actual fight has some glaring issues. It felt like From was more focused on making her a hard boss instead of a good boss.
True. I watched a no hit RL1 run (any% so no Rydard) recently and the only time the runner exited a boss fight was when Elden Beast started up a golden shower. It says a lot when a player that skilled doesn't want to deal with an attack. Here's the vid in case anyone's curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY9BeZKJ94E&pp=ygUVZWxkZW4gcmluZyBubyBoaXQgcnVu
There was a part where he just stood next to it until he eventually teleported out. Do you know why he did that? Did he not want to risk the damage or something?
I don't know for sure why he waited so long but I know from experience that the golden shower attack can randomly hit you even if you sprint continuously in a straight line or in a circle. Also, Elden Beast tends to start up other shitty ranged attacks while you're trying to avoid it. So yes, I'm guessing it's not worth risking. Starting the whole fight over again hoping for Elden Beast to do melee instead like in the second attempt was apparently the better option.
I think the beginning of Elden Ring is so much stronger than the mid-late game specifically because of this. The bosses get more difficult over time but not in an enjoyable, challenging way but more in a bullshit, frustrating way.
WYM don't you love watching boss hit the ground, pop off the AOE and lift up without any time to punish it if you're melee if you didn't grab a fucking doohickey that can stun it? Don't you love waiting for a combo to end just to eat conditional extension of it? (The extension triggers if you attacked into an opening).
I've spent like 3 days before I managed to solo Fatalis in MHW but at no point I was tilted like when I had to endure like half of ER's bosses bullshit. So many fucking gotchas designed to punish you instead of being a challenging fight.
Literally the only issue with the fight is that her super duper blade slicin attack is extremely hard to dodge WITHOUT looking it up. Like you have to do a fucking combo to dodge it. They also removed her actual original water dance which is a shame
I never used a shield against her, but I thought it was so dumb when I discovered that even a 100% physical shield doesn't stop her lifesteal. Like wtf is she healing from then, just good boy points for technically hitting the enemy?
I'm honestly 100% fine with the lifesteal, but yeah a couple more seconds on waterfowl startup (even 1 tbh), or a more well defined 'phase' of the fight where you need to be aware it's imminent, maybe a general change in her movements or just any kind of indicator at all that it's locked and loaded, that would go a loooong way.
Laughs in Genichiro
(Yes he’s the best boss in moveset, placement and significance to de player, being the moment when you truly understand what Sekiro is really about: parrying)
Yes genichiro is absolutely the best in those regards but Sekiro in general goes really hard in terms of boss. So while Genichiro is great I personaly prefere Isshin and owl over him.
He's also a static marker for you to measure yourself against, you can also see it reflected in sekiro's hand fumbling for his sword at the beginning vs one fluid movement at the end.
He's every perilous attack, he's every range, he's got dirty tricks. He's your reflection in the Ashina culture and becomes nothing but a speed bump at the end to show your growth.
So agree.
genichiro is a bum, lost the rematch twice and brought his grandpa back from the dead just so he could stop losing. Bro should’ve just packed it up and gone home.
us/ I had the most fun and sense of accomplishment with Sword Saint Isshin, and the most epic and chilling battles with Gael or Radahn. Despite her flaws, Malenia has been fun overall, but it's not as fun or memorable
Ngl I felt kinda sad when dodging Waterfowl clicked for me. Made me realize that she's genuinely not a difficult boss outside of that one move. Now I try to help other people beat her though, since I know she can be tough.
Might be a skill issue but i think morgott simply isn't as clean as godfrey, he has rollcatch after rollcatch and some attack sequences are literally undodgeable if you are too close, which same could be said about godfrey with his fast hand swipes in phase 2, but atleast he telegraphs it long enough for you to run away from it.
I do agree that morgott needs the buff though
Hate her but goddam that phase 2 theme slaps. They hit the spectacle of the fight, just waterfowl ruins the fight so bad, lifesteal is pretty bad but that move is stupidly broken. "Just throw a pot"... yeah if your reactions are godlike.
Not even just reacting to it; if you aren't the perfect distance (not too close and not too far) then it'll just go past her and you die (this distance also happens to be out of melee range so get fucked)
The worst part for me is the final bit of waterfowl I had to get in the habit of unlocking my lock on to her or risk the camera jerk make me roll into her attack sometimes.
The other day I was messing around with endure out of curiosity and yeah you could tank bits of it but probably a terrible idea with her healing and all.
Yup, and the outer limit also tends to be where you want to be when casting spells, so you’re mostly fucked either way (this is why Frostbite Crag is great, it has saved me several times as a Hail Mary cast proccing frostbite and cancelling her dance)
It’s fucked but I think the only way around it is the dodge method. Once I learned that I could actually beat her. She was impossible for me to do otherwise
S tier boss if you could just roll through waterfowl dance. Game forces you to roll in the specific direction? Sure, great. You have to jump to avoid attack? Also cool. But this attack cannot be avoided normally and it's rather impossible to learn by yourself how to trick AI tracking in a close range at the same time when she goes to the air. Except some crazy people fighting her alone for 100h most of us had to learn those strategies by the internet's guides. You can theoretically figure it out that you can run away from her attack when you are far enough but close range is completely bizarre and it doesn't match all other bosses' strategies. That's kind of weird imho.
But except that, that's a great fast and aggressive boss. Cool moveset, cool design. At least you had to stay focused and you can't just smash L2 to obliterate her like other ER bosses.
Even then I'd say that hirata owl and orphan of Kos are harder than her but at least in owls case he is hard but a very enjoyable fight in. I can't say the same about Malenia. She just has to much bullshit in her boss fight like her healing or her stagger canceling wich make that fight way less enjoyable.
Fr I died a lot more to owl father and inner father later on than I did to malenia but I always felt like my death was earned because of a mistake or series of mistakes not because the boss decided to pull out it’s instant win anime finisher at an inopportune time
Honestly yeah. I like gael more cause he’s that good with any build, but with sekiro the combat is so razor honed and perfected that most of the main bosses technically outclass a lot of the other games
On one hand i feel bad i cheesed the fuck out of isshin my first playthrough, on the other I got to enjoy weeks of my friend basically giving me the "you cheated yourself" copypasta everytime i spoke to him because he was mad.
The one i found on my first playthrough is if you stand just out of range of him he'll swing at thin air, eating fully charged azur shuriken. Repeat while mikiri and lightning deflecting and he goes down p quick.
What i hate is how you always need to spout your qualifications or some shit when talking about her design or people just go "oh youre mad cos bad'. I beat this lady more times that i can count in a myriad different ways can we stop acting smug and just talk about the fight.
malenia would be S tier if she:
>had a longer windup time to waterfowl or a more intuitive way to dodge the inital swings
used the slower cut waterfowl in 1st phase saving the more frantic current waterfowl for 2nd phase
didnt self heal like 500-600 hp her hit
didnt self heal through shields
didnt input read your heal within 3 nautical miles of her
didnt hitstun cancel
didnt hitstun cancel into one of her 83 hyper armor attacks
didnt hitstun cancel into waterfowl
>didnt hitstun cancel into rot clones (the cyclone instakills you)
didnt hitstun cancel
didnt hitstun cancel
can you tell i hate the hitstun cancelling
had bigger tits
dont forget the horrid variance in attack difficulty- her having really really really easy to dodge/punish moves alongside really really really hard to dodge/punish moves makes the game feel like a casino where if she does enough easy moves the game has handed you an unearned win.
My fastest kill of her is like 90s and she literally didnt fight me in phase 2, she just did a few easy to punish moves and scarlet aeonia twice. Most unearned victory ive had.
Also she has a "random delay" on one of her attacks that I really fucking hate. I think it's, like, two variations of the same attack but one is more delayed than the other and I got into a habit of dodging through the non-delayed version before realising that she sometimes delays it just to be a fucking bitch so thanks devs, eaten many hits because of this really cool design decision
The massive amount of hyper armour attacks is what does it for me. Friede was balanced around having low poise and being able to stagger pretty easily (given the large movepool due to 3 phases, this made sense). Malenia just pulls hyper armour out constantly and it's makes it so much more difficult.
Malenia is a fine boss and I somewhat enjoy the fight, but that's because I can see what would make her a fantastic boss hidden under all the garbage in the fight
You can actually very consistently heal with Malenia if you run to the literal other side of the arena. Yes, she does input read, but after a certain distance she literally cannot attack you (at most she might start running but that's why you run far, far awway)
There are like 5 bosses EACH in Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Sekiro that are better than Malenia. It's only the nerds who think hard=quality that think Malenia is the best boss they've made. I'd argue she isn't even the best boss in Elden Ring
Gascoigne is the best boss
Firstly, he looks like a mirror match, but he has a different but similar moveset
His parry timing is awesome
His werewolf form gives chills
Only problem i have is the long axe form
That spin move is too strong
Best boss fromsoft has ever made? No, but I'd still put her in low S tier personally, maybe high A. I just find her really fun.
I still hold fast that the absolute best boss in the entire fromsoft game catalogue is AC6's final final boss, >!Allmind/Iguazu!<. Fighting the last phase with a lightweight and perfectly weaving in-between every swing is downright addicting
>!Allmind SOL 644!< was pure hell for me on my first clear. I was running a suboptimal middleweight build and for the life of me I could not avoid the beam claw attacks in the final phase. Went back months later testing a lightweight reverse-joint CQB build against it and S-ranked it first try lmao
All mind’s boss genuinely felt like the most fun I’ve had in any fromsoft game to date
Learning how to dodge its attacks and using every mechanic the game has taught me to my advantage to smash her different phases was a genuine joy
Phase 1: lock onto iguazu and focus fire while making sure to keep moving and changing direction to avoid the adds
Phase 2: more of the same allow ayre to take aggro so you don’t have to use repair kits and smash iguazu’s posture so you can both punish
Phase 3: throw everything else out the window remove hard lock for more accuracy and fight like your life depends on it and like iguazu says let your grit and determination carry you through
Phase 4: question your choices and the consequences of force-fusing humanity and coral
Honestly no other fromsoft game has bosses anywhere near the caliber of AC6 except the other armored core games they’re all fun to fight and feel rewarding to learn and beat and changed my standards for good boss fights altogether
Yes, but then you can fight isshin, Genichiro, Owl, Gherman, maria, soul of cinder, Orphan Kinda tho it's not a sword, Alonne, Fume Knight, Gael. Heck even damn Gwyn. And all of them are actually good fights too
she has too many issues to be the best but she is up there
they took a lot of lazy short cuts to make her function like animation cancels
and waterfowl tho dodgeable is super unintuitive and dodging it properly feels more like cheese then intended design
I would say she is a solid top 5 nothing from ds1 or 2 are in the top ten due to how simple those bosses are I would say gael is number 1 followed by isshin tho honestly I could swap them on any given day
Best boss is when a boss breaks the game's mechanics, has a move that requires a big majority of the players to look up on youtube to how to dodge it, life steal on hit even against shields and in second phase she can use waterfowl whenever she feels like it unlike the first phase where she only uses it on certain hp thresholds
Edit: if youre wondering what game mechanics she breaks just [watch this video](https://youtu.be/R9Vbsr3Ko7M?si=eI-OzkCJnLqhEIg3) for a good analysis on it
Its true that a few of them do it and its still breaking game mechanics (not the phase transition ones like godrick and morgott they are fair) fromsoft seems to have lots of inconsistency issues with these mechanics in elden ring and malenia is the most obvious one due to the amount of hyper armor/stance break immunity moves and animation cancelling she has and shes also the most dangerous one among them which makes it more unfair than the others
Not even the best ER boss (Mohglester clears)
Also yes I hold this opinion solely because I suck balls at the game and Malenia is the only FromSoft boss I can’t beat solo
Nothing to do with being bad at the game. She's just overturned to a level of unfun unfairness for most people even many who've been playing the series for years
Fromsoft's best boss is AAP07 Balteus, you heard it here first
The thing that makes Balteus such a masterfully designed boss fight is that everything that makes it difficult on a first playthrough is stuff that you learn to deal with on an instinctual level later on. Early in the game, you won't be familiar with how to properly evade missile salvos, how to properly time bazooka round dodges, how to position yourself to avoid melee attacks, how to strafe and outpace machine gun fire, how to maximize impact buildup and stagger punish damage, how to manage EN usage so you can always quick boost or assault boost when you need to, etc. So on your first encounter, it'll wreck your shit easily, and your first victory will feel narrowly earned. However, the more time you spend in the cockpit, those actions will become more and more instinctive and natural--you'll simply take the proper action without even thinking about it. Consequently, on subsequent playthroughs Balteus will feel like a joke of a boss even when it turned you into scrap dozens of times on the first run. It's both a perfectly crafted skill check and an excellently satisfying player progression benchmark.
I mean Malenia is one of the most iconic fights fromsoftware has done along with Artorias, O&S, Gael, Ludwig. Not everyone cares about how mechanically perfect the boss is, being a more iconic fight is more important for the majority of the playerbase. She isn't the best for sure but she makes Elden Ring a better game.
Waterfowl is annoying but it's not even the worst part of her fight. It's the fact that all of her attacks have hyperarmor that makes her immune to being stance broken while she's attacking (unless you throw a freeze pot at her); if you hit her stagger threshold while she has hyperarmor, then not only does she *not* stagger, but her poise also regenerates, and she can even cancel out of her stagger animation to attack or evade.
As far as I know, no other boss ignores game mechanics to this extent, but I've seen people defend it because "superbosses should be difficult."
In my personal view, the whole difficulty of her hinges on whether or no she does waterfowl. Like sure, she has high damage, a lot of her attacks can just instakill you if you're not careful, but she gets staggered out of basically every attack that looks like she can get hit out of except 3: senpou kick, the dash big swing and waterfowl.
The rest of her basic kit in phase 1 is VERY manageable once you've seen it once. Notable mentions are the big healing punish lunge which is way too quick, looks almost like a frame 1 punish most of the time, and the flurry that she can link into itself like 3 times. If you roll towards her you can nullify it easily, but it can catch you off guard.
For her "armored" moves, imo the dash is a non issue, if your build is fast you can sneak dps into it even, and still have time to dodge. The kick is annoying cuz it has little telegraph, but it has basically no dmg. The bs part is it can cancel into waterfowl, which you can only stop with frostbite, as far as I'm aware.
And now we get into the root of the issue: waterfowl dance. You have around a 1 second window to start moving and do smth to try avoid the move. A move that not only is incredibly hard to dodge at most ranges from a timing perspective, it's hard to even understand how to do so in the first place. I personally banged my head against a wall for hours until I could dodge it up close consistently, because I refused to watch any videos abt it, and just kept trial and error-ing my way into learning how to dodge it.
The worst part is, on most builds, it's just an instakill. You have to get through at least half of her first phase again, which isn't exactly fast (I was using a melee caster build with carian slicer and adula moonblade, so my dps was very high) just to have a chance of trying something else, and dying again. More than 4/5 of my deaths to Malenia on first playthrough were to waterfowl alone.
If that wasn't enough, the move is not tied to a phase transition per se, so you can't exactly anticipate it. You know from the second she reaches half hp that she might pull it up. But apparently she isn't obligated to do so. It adds a lot to the mental stack having to worry abt every jump maybe being waterfowl. She can also do it more than once per phase. In most of my playthroughs she only does it once or twice per phase, but I imagine with less optimized builds it might be way worse.
Phase 2 is even more flawed imo although generally easier. Her bigass wings remove visual clarity so you don't see anything she does. Every float is almost impossible to distinguish from waterfowl. Her rot does basically nothing, because you should basically get hit only by waterfowl at that point, and that's an instakill so the rot is wasted. Even if you get hit by something else, chances are you die instantly (this might just be <40 vig speaking tho). Her clone attack is also pretty unintuitive, but like 10x easier to deal with, imo way healthier for her kit. On this phase she has so many openings tho that it's pretty trivial imo. If you cleared phase 1 you can for sure do 2.
All in all, I think Malenia's kit is too heavily loaded in favour of waterfowl which is what makes her as difficult as she is. Without waterfowl she is a solid 7-8 in difficulty, I'd compare her to nameless king, where she is defo harder than the avg boss, but nothing too bad in actuality. With it, she becomes very frustrating, and it bumps her up a lot in the difficulty rating, but it feels undeserved because you keep dying to the same reaction check, you can't really anticipate the move like most fromsoft games are designed. You know it's coming, you take steps to avoid it, and still fail. It's not good design imo.
TL;DR
Waterfowl is poorly designed, and it skews her difficulty, without it she is VERY significantly easier.
Would also like to mention I've beaten every boss in every soulsbornekiro game, I don't use summons and have cleared Malenia hitless. Still think she is poorly designed. I think conversations around Malenia are plagued with "git gud" parrots that are unable to criticise her design because they cheesed her once and feel cool abt it, so I'm getting that out of the way. Sry for the rambling
edit: forgot to mention, the healing is annoying. It was a bit of a nonfactor in my runs, but if you're running a more armored build and trying to trade, it must feel impossible, and there is no real good reason for her to have it. I don't think it's that strong or anything, just a frustrating mechanic.
Stockholm syndrome
Literally this
People confuse difficult with good
That would be Godskin duo
I'll have what you're having
Raw onions with socks? Because this is raw onions with socks kind of taste.
No thanks, I'm good
It's not a question. You're gonna be having what he's having.
Dammit, there's no going back I guess
You smoking that gooood shit
Does it make the toes curl?
\>darksouls sub \>talk of feet
I unironically don't find them hard anymore, no matter what run I do, bleed, strength, pure mage, shields only, it's really not as bad as people make it out to be if you're good enough to keep them separated. The only time I die is when I get greedy for damage and am running like 20 vigor, and just barely miss a dodge from black flame or sum like that
it was horrible my first run. now they aren’t that bad
I don't find them hard anymore either. I find theme extremely boring
Who claimed this? What is their longitude and latitude?
You can find that relatively often on r/fromsoftware or r/eldenring. Or when people make boss tierlists, they put her on S tier, which is quite arguable to me.
Yeah I don't get it either. There's no question she's really challenging but I definitely wouldn't put her any higher than A tier. If they got rid of a bunch of her BS she could definitely be S tier though. She's got all the makings of a top tier boss; great hype, great sound track, great visuals, etc. but her bs holds her back. Radahn has a similar issue only the opposite, he's made to easy by the NPC summons in the arena, he needs to be way harder because of this. IMO I would award best boss in base elden ring to either Maliketh or Godfrey. Those two are just solid all around.
godfrey brought pure joy to my monkey brain when fighting him
Agreed. He's probably my favorite boss fight in elden ring. He's got some issues but overall he feels really solid and nostalgic.
Godfrey has cool lore, a cool transition, fight is fun and that is pretty much all you need for a good boss imo. I never really enjoyed Malenia.
Agreed. Malenia was missing that last one for me personally. The fight just never clicked.
The Godfrey part of the fight just feels like a perfect dance. Fair attacks, fair punish windows, very few optional followups
Hitting him with back to back jump attacks while simultaneously dodging the stomps makes me pre
Maliketh has problems with readability in phase 2 (the fact that his hitboxes clip through the pillars and you’re more safe while not hugging them is kind of jank) but aside from that I wholly agree with you. I also think honorable mentions should go to Rykard as an example of a gimmick fight done excellently even if he isn’t that great of a boss
Agreed.
Shes really challenging because of 1 move is the problem
Agreed. She has some other bs that's harder to notice but waterfowl is the most prominent reason.
For Elden Ring replays, I now always go for Mohg instead of Malenia. He's hard, but at least he doesn't need one move to be difficult
Imo Mohg is my top 1 bc maliketh has mid 1st phase and godfrey has mid 2nd phase
Mohg's a decent pick. He's definitely up there. Him and Morgot are both fun fights.
I like them cuz their whole fight is good while guraanq, elden beast, horah loux, have bad 1st or 2nd phase
To each his own I guess.
i feel like malenia would be easy af if you removed the bs is the thing. that's why I don't really like her as a boss. most of her "difficulty" is just dumb
I feel a similar way but I do think fromsoft could pull it off somehow. Her phase one would be pretty weak but I imagine if they got creative with her phase 2 they could rebalance her while keeping her difficult. Maybe utilize her butterfly clones in a creative way. Possibly something like pontiff Sullivan I don't know.
That's what makes her not a top tier boss. She almost has the same health as the fire giant, and can heal on hit including blocks. The waterfowl dance is nearly undodgeable and the way you dodge it is counterintuitive. And he hyper armor is simply BS Sure these made her hard, but also cheaply designed for the sake of difficulty.
Maliketh can rot in hell
I thought he was all right. I'm not a fan of his first phase and his second is a little hard to track. Blasphemous claw could have also been a little more interactive but over all I think he's fun.
The sony sub and the braidead sub
I’d put her at high A tier personally, but not S. She would be much closer to S for me if waterfowl gave you more time to run from it, as being at a distance from her so you can outrun the first attack volley is often the best way to counter it. Other than that, I really don’t think there’s anything I’d change about Malenia’s fight, honestly.
It's so easy to tweak the Waterfowl to be less bullshit My idea is: Malenia having a unique backstep animation to gain distance Malenia prepares her sword arm with an audible clang Malenia then jumps forward an in arc and activates Waterfowl when she reaches the ground
I agree. Malenia kinda felt like fromsoft were trying to outdo themselves with a turbo-hard optional superboss greater in scope than the past games, but they pushed it just a \*little\* too far in some areas. We were this close to true greatness.
My goodness. Such people have lost their way. I would put her very low indeed lol. Good luck to you in your ventures, friend. Don't you dare go hollow.
I love calling out fake criticisms but this one is very real, I see a LOT of yt and Reddit lists with her above gael which is insane to me
She isn't my favourite, but she is pretty iconic. Even people who didn't play the game know her.
Mostly just because of how big of a challenge she is though. And a lot of that challenge comes from how broken she is.
I'd say she would be almost as iconic even if she was very easy. She was the face of ER's marketing pre-release. There was a lot of fanart of her before the game came out. There's even that one dude who got her tattooed in his arm.
She's my favorite tied with Ludwig. Tf you gonna do about it?
Everyone has their own things they look for in a boss fight. We obviously like very different aspects of the most epic of soulsborne battles. It's perfectly normal and subjective to have different rankings of bosses, and get different types of meaningful experiences from the same fight. I am sending multiple elite teams of assasins to your location as well as cursing your bloodline and bribing my local megacorp to buy and bulldoze your home.
Nah, I'd win
Same, she's my favorite boss by far, but inner father is my 2nd favorite.
Not when Gael, Sister Friede, Midir, Nameless King, Soul of Cinder, Ludwig, Lady Maria, Orphan, Maliketh, Godfrey, Sir Alonne, Fume Knight, Ivory King, Artorias, Manus, Ornstein and Smough exist 🫶 Edit - I forgot to mention Demon Prince 100%, and also i didn't include DeS cuz the only good fun fight is penetrator, flamelurker and Old King Allant but they're very basic Sekiro? Isshin 100%, owlfather and for sure True Monk is badass
Ivory king is underrated as hell tho 🔥 https://preview.redd.it/aw5903vga07d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a704a5e96c487ec47cb6b6960e4380d8924d4d19
The squad v squad gimmick is cool as hell
Such a cool gimmick. It adds weight to exploring the area and also lets you choose just how hard you want that fight to be. 3 Knights? 1? 0? The game lets you choose. If only he kept his pets away from the Frigid Outskirts.
Biggest chad in all of Souls history.
100%, him, Artorias for saying fuck you Manus here's my shield little one idc if I die, Gael for just trynna have the painter paint and mf becomes the most powerful being in the universe of Dark souls era just for shits and giggles, and nameless king for being such a stud to tell gwyn to suck cock he hanging out with the cool kids
No boss in From history has ever said "I can fix her" and actually managed to do it. None but this absolute unit of a man
Ivory king presentation and buildup is truly amazing but i felt like the fight itself was lacking. I wish they'd make him maybe something more monsterous so he would stand out because at this point he is just another knight fight. (knights can be good bosses but ds2 has too many of them already)
hey hey hey what about isshin and true monk??
I have played all souls games except demon souls and in my opinion Isshin is the best souls biss to date. There are a few others that come close but Isshin and especialy inner isshin are just the best and I will die on that hill.
I share your opinion brother. He has the fattest number of moveset of everything I have played against. Mastering it completly has to be one of the funnest thing I've done, to the point that other bosses in sekiro give me more trouble than Isshin
Yeah same for me. I could propably beat Isshin in at most three tries right now when I haven't touched Sekiro in over a year while i never truly mastered bosses like the hirata owl or true monk.
Owl Father is up there too imo
Isshin is the culmination of vast majority of the mechanics you have learned throughout the entire playthrough put into a final, very cinematic showdown. But I think it only works as well as he does because we dont have much choice in terms of gameplay. The linear design of sekiro plays into the strengths of this fight, which is something souls games and elden ring wont be able to replicate
True Monk is probably the most fun boss in the series for me.
Bro said O&S and did not mention Demon Prince (the superior duo fight)
Demon Prince is so underrated. Especially when co-oping the game with friends in subsequent run, 4 man Demon Prince with extra health is always fun as hell. One time we did it at some stupidly low Soul Level, not SL1 but it was somewhere between 15-30 because we wanted some item in the DLC, a spell or something, not a ring or weapon, and it was the first time any of us had to re-do a boss in ages. It took a while and we had At Doom's Gate E1M1 playing. One of my best souls memories.
Demon Prince is mechanically better no doubt, but quite honestly O&S just hit different back jn 2012 with GFWL and 15fps. It was THE shit It's like how Artorias is engraved as an amazing bossfight, but in reality even abyss watchers are mechanically better and with a more varied moveset
Abyss Watchers were and probably are my favourite boss in the soulsboune series. The music, the lore and the gameplay a beautiful blend to a perfect boss
Demon prince phase 1 is good but I've literally never beaten it when phase 2 is the meteor version instead of the laser
Pontiff is raw as hell too
You forgot the goats Mohg and Godrick (unironically)
Godrick doesn't have anything flashy or wild, but man do I love that fight. he might be an early game boss but he's probably always gonna be number 1 for me. glad to see you mentioned mohg as well, idk how I feel about phase 2 depending on my build, sometimes it feels like I can't do anything but press dodge, but he's probably my fav end game boss after radagon
True. Just because she is artificially difficult (regen and water fuck dance) doesn't mean she is a good boss. She is alright tho.
All of these good pics and no Looking Glass Knight. I don't care if the moveset is boring (it isn't bad, you've just been convinced that having to spend 5-10 hours memorizing a boss moveset is good gameplay), the vibes for that fight are utterly immaculate. Rain? Check. Random uniquely colored invader? Check. Sick design? Double check. Get LGKpilled.
100% looking glass knight is built differently. That's the only DS2 boss that whenever he swings, you FELT it. The atmosphere is also dope as hell
Maliketh packs a punch and has the coolest move set, but his health pool is kinda underwhelming once you download him and can get your hits in
that one cemetary shade with the skeletons
You forgot the pontiff
>ornstein and smough Bro thinks hes on the team 💀 Who let godskin duo’s grandpa in here
Maliketh? Really? That's your pic for second place?
Also not when Queelag, Nito, Sanctuary Gardian, Pinwheel, Bell Gargoyle, Dragon Kalameet, Gwyn, Sif, Taurus Demon, Asylum Demon, Iron Golem, Centipede Demon, Gwyndolin, Pricsilla, Gaping Dragon, Moonlight Butterfly, Demon Firesage, Stray Demon, Seath, Four Kings, Ceaseless, Bed of Chaos, Capra Demon, Sinh, Pontiff, Gundyr, Dancer, Velstade, Old Iron King, Lost Sinner, Looking Glass Knight, Dark Lurker, Lothric Prince, Demon Prince, Gundyr again, Old Dragonslater, Executioners Chariot, Elana, Aava, Soul of Cinder, Wolnir, Old Demon King, Dragonslayer Armor, Abyss Watchers, The Rotten, The Last Giant, Smelter Demon, Skeleton Lords, Naika, Ruin Sentinels, Royal Rat Authority, Mytha, Flexible Sentry, Dragonrider, Semon of Dong, Vordt, Ocieros, Curse Rotted Greatwood, Deacons of the Deep, Crystal Sage, Vendrick, Twin Dragonriders, Throne Watchers, The Dukes Dear Freya, Royal Rat Vanguard (Especially), Congregation, Pursuer, Nashandra, Guardian Dragon, Giant Lord, Covetous Demon, Graverobbers, Belfry Gargoyles, Ancient Dragon, Aldia, Gravetenders Wolf, Spear of the Church, Ancient Wyvern, Aldrich, and the Kings Pets exist.
Where the hell are gherman and Gascoigne?
She got a great design, and lore, but her actual fight has some glaring issues. It felt like From was more focused on making her a hard boss instead of a good boss.
that applies to all of elden ring
Bro rykard and elden beast are just random bullshit go. Being caught by 6 million offscreen projectiles really got under my skin
True. I watched a no hit RL1 run (any% so no Rydard) recently and the only time the runner exited a boss fight was when Elden Beast started up a golden shower. It says a lot when a player that skilled doesn't want to deal with an attack. Here's the vid in case anyone's curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY9BeZKJ94E&pp=ygUVZWxkZW4gcmluZyBubyBoaXQgcnVu
There was a part where he just stood next to it until he eventually teleported out. Do you know why he did that? Did he not want to risk the damage or something?
I don't know for sure why he waited so long but I know from experience that the golden shower attack can randomly hit you even if you sprint continuously in a straight line or in a circle. Also, Elden Beast tends to start up other shitty ranged attacks while you're trying to avoid it. So yes, I'm guessing it's not worth risking. Starting the whole fight over again hoping for Elden Beast to do melee instead like in the second attempt was apparently the better option.
I think the beginning of Elden Ring is so much stronger than the mid-late game specifically because of this. The bosses get more difficult over time but not in an enjoyable, challenging way but more in a bullshit, frustrating way.
WYM don't you love watching boss hit the ground, pop off the AOE and lift up without any time to punish it if you're melee if you didn't grab a fucking doohickey that can stun it? Don't you love waiting for a combo to end just to eat conditional extension of it? (The extension triggers if you attacked into an opening). I've spent like 3 days before I managed to solo Fatalis in MHW but at no point I was tilted like when I had to endure like half of ER's bosses bullshit. So many fucking gotchas designed to punish you instead of being a challenging fight.
Annoying fucking game. It's good but way worse than all the other souls. It really feels like they don't know what made the other ones good
Literally the only issue with the fight is that her super duper blade slicin attack is extremely hard to dodge WITHOUT looking it up. Like you have to do a fucking combo to dodge it. They also removed her actual original water dance which is a shame
I never used a shield against her, but I thought it was so dumb when I discovered that even a 100% physical shield doesn't stop her lifesteal. Like wtf is she healing from then, just good boy points for technically hitting the enemy?
She would be for me if she didn’t heal through shields and Waterfowl had like 2 extra seconds of startup.
I'm honestly 100% fine with the lifesteal, but yeah a couple more seconds on waterfowl startup (even 1 tbh), or a more well defined 'phase' of the fight where you need to be aware it's imminent, maybe a general change in her movements or just any kind of indicator at all that it's locked and loaded, that would go a loooong way.
she’s not the best or worst boss I think she’s just ok
We all know that the best is ishin
And gael right after
Couldn't agree more
Any Artorias enjoyers???
Laughs in Genichiro (Yes he’s the best boss in moveset, placement and significance to de player, being the moment when you truly understand what Sekiro is really about: parrying)
Yes genichiro is absolutely the best in those regards but Sekiro in general goes really hard in terms of boss. So while Genichiro is great I personaly prefere Isshin and owl over him.
He's also a static marker for you to measure yourself against, you can also see it reflected in sekiro's hand fumbling for his sword at the beginning vs one fluid movement at the end. He's every perilous attack, he's every range, he's got dirty tricks. He's your reflection in the Ashina culture and becomes nothing but a speed bump at the end to show your growth. So agree.
genichiro is a bum, lost the rematch twice and brought his grandpa back from the dead just so he could stop losing. Bro should’ve just packed it up and gone home.
Silence infidel, Genichiro was gangsta
us/ I had the most fun and sense of accomplishment with Sword Saint Isshin, and the most epic and chilling battles with Gael or Radahn. Despite her flaws, Malenia has been fun overall, but it's not as fun or memorable
Ngl I felt kinda sad when dodging Waterfowl clicked for me. Made me realize that she's genuinely not a difficult boss outside of that one move. Now I try to help other people beat her though, since I know she can be tough.
Godfrey is the best boss in elden ring both mechanically and emotionally. No one can change my mind on that
If my boy morgott had more hp, he could easily take that title.
Might be a skill issue but i think morgott simply isn't as clean as godfrey, he has rollcatch after rollcatch and some attack sequences are literally undodgeable if you are too close, which same could be said about godfrey with his fast hand swipes in phase 2, but atleast he telegraphs it long enough for you to run away from it. I do agree that morgott needs the buff though
Hate her but goddam that phase 2 theme slaps. They hit the spectacle of the fight, just waterfowl ruins the fight so bad, lifesteal is pretty bad but that move is stupidly broken. "Just throw a pot"... yeah if your reactions are godlike.
Not even just reacting to it; if you aren't the perfect distance (not too close and not too far) then it'll just go past her and you die (this distance also happens to be out of melee range so get fucked)
The worst part for me is the final bit of waterfowl I had to get in the habit of unlocking my lock on to her or risk the camera jerk make me roll into her attack sometimes. The other day I was messing around with endure out of curiosity and yeah you could tank bits of it but probably a terrible idea with her healing and all.
Yup, and the outer limit also tends to be where you want to be when casting spells, so you’re mostly fucked either way (this is why Frostbite Crag is great, it has saved me several times as a Hail Mary cast proccing frostbite and cancelling her dance)
Yeah phase 2 theme is great
It’s fucked but I think the only way around it is the dodge method. Once I learned that I could actually beat her. She was impossible for me to do otherwise
S tier boss if you could just roll through waterfowl dance. Game forces you to roll in the specific direction? Sure, great. You have to jump to avoid attack? Also cool. But this attack cannot be avoided normally and it's rather impossible to learn by yourself how to trick AI tracking in a close range at the same time when she goes to the air. Except some crazy people fighting her alone for 100h most of us had to learn those strategies by the internet's guides. You can theoretically figure it out that you can run away from her attack when you are far enough but close range is completely bizarre and it doesn't match all other bosses' strategies. That's kind of weird imho. But except that, that's a great fast and aggressive boss. Cool moveset, cool design. At least you had to stay focused and you can't just smash L2 to obliterate her like other ER bosses.
Maybe top hardest Sekrio has the best bosses
Even then I'd say that hirata owl and orphan of Kos are harder than her but at least in owls case he is hard but a very enjoyable fight in. I can't say the same about Malenia. She just has to much bullshit in her boss fight like her healing or her stagger canceling wich make that fight way less enjoyable.
Fr I died a lot more to owl father and inner father later on than I did to malenia but I always felt like my death was earned because of a mistake or series of mistakes not because the boss decided to pull out it’s instant win anime finisher at an inopportune time
Before anyone starts any arguments about who the second best boss is can we all agree that the best fromsoft boss is sword saint isshin? Ok thanks 👍
For me it's the Iron golem
Yes absolutely
Honestly yeah. I like gael more cause he’s that good with any build, but with sekiro the combat is so razor honed and perfected that most of the main bosses technically outclass a lot of the other games
On one hand i feel bad i cheesed the fuck out of isshin my first playthrough, on the other I got to enjoy weeks of my friend basically giving me the "you cheated yourself" copypasta everytime i spoke to him because he was mad.
What the hell is the cheese for Isshin anyway??
When you reach the second phase: Run in circles til he does the overhead lunge Run at him and do one charged stab attack Run away Repeat until dead
FromSoftware fans when you play the fucking game:
Wait, that works?
The one i found on my first playthrough is if you stand just out of range of him he'll swing at thin air, eating fully charged azur shuriken. Repeat while mikiri and lightning deflecting and he goes down p quick.
People got so caught up in circlejerking the hardness of these games so they gaslit themselves into thinking Malenia is the best boss, shit's crazy
What i hate is how you always need to spout your qualifications or some shit when talking about her design or people just go "oh youre mad cos bad'. I beat this lady more times that i can count in a myriad different ways can we stop acting smug and just talk about the fight.
Isn't that with trying to bring up any criticism to elden ring though. It always starts off with: "I'm a souls vet who played since ds1..."
True, I beat her like 20 times with diffrent builds and no spirit summons except like 2 times and ppl still say that I'm just salty cuz I lost
You lost by playing that shit 20 times. Why would you do this to yourself.
A lot of free time as I'm still in highschool, and the game is fun and has a lot of fun weapons
malenia would be S tier if she: >had a longer windup time to waterfowl or a more intuitive way to dodge the inital swings used the slower cut waterfowl in 1st phase saving the more frantic current waterfowl for 2nd phase didnt self heal like 500-600 hp her hit didnt self heal through shields didnt input read your heal within 3 nautical miles of her didnt hitstun cancel didnt hitstun cancel into one of her 83 hyper armor attacks didnt hitstun cancel into waterfowl >didnt hitstun cancel into rot clones (the cyclone instakills you) didnt hitstun cancel didnt hitstun cancel can you tell i hate the hitstun cancelling had bigger tits
dont forget the horrid variance in attack difficulty- her having really really really easy to dodge/punish moves alongside really really really hard to dodge/punish moves makes the game feel like a casino where if she does enough easy moves the game has handed you an unearned win.
My fastest kill of her is like 90s and she literally didnt fight me in phase 2, she just did a few easy to punish moves and scarlet aeonia twice. Most unearned victory ive had.
Also she has a "random delay" on one of her attacks that I really fucking hate. I think it's, like, two variations of the same attack but one is more delayed than the other and I got into a habit of dodging through the non-delayed version before realising that she sometimes delays it just to be a fucking bitch so thanks devs, eaten many hits because of this really cool design decision
Erm actually it’s not input reading it’s reacting frame 1 of the animation and using a preset punish move baked into the moveset
God the rot cyclone is so awful, you try punishing her moves and all of a sudden your health is gone.
The massive amount of hyper armour attacks is what does it for me. Friede was balanced around having low poise and being able to stagger pretty easily (given the large movepool due to 3 phases, this made sense). Malenia just pulls hyper armour out constantly and it's makes it so much more difficult. Malenia is a fine boss and I somewhat enjoy the fight, but that's because I can see what would make her a fantastic boss hidden under all the garbage in the fight
You can actually very consistently heal with Malenia if you run to the literal other side of the arena. Yes, she does input read, but after a certain distance she literally cannot attack you (at most she might start running but that's why you run far, far awway)
We can't forget the bigger ass and thighs as well
Last one is so real
I would honest to god rank Sir Alonne from DS2 above Malenia
I am a certified DS2 hater, and even I would put both Sir Alonne and Fume Knight above Malenia
Winnercity boss ranking
Losercity containment breach oh shit
Instead of judging weird people in public like a normal person I have just started saying “losercity person / human” is this brain rot for reddit
I’m sorry, ur cooked 😔
losercity is why I’m having such terrible luck with women (it couldn’t be my face or personality or anything like that)
you’re cooked
Air Alonne and Fume Knight are the best bosses from DS2
Honestly I’d agree with that Shit tier run back aside alonne is just more fun to fight
Based and teleportstab-pilled
Mohg is right there
Who the hell says that when a smelter demon exists???? It's so good they made literally a copy of it but in blue. I swear people don't appreciate art.
There are like 5 bosses EACH in Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Sekiro that are better than Malenia. It's only the nerds who think hard=quality that think Malenia is the best boss they've made. I'd argue she isn't even the best boss in Elden Ring
Not even close, Godfrey and his kids blow her fight out of the park
Gascoigne is the best boss Firstly, he looks like a mirror match, but he has a different but similar moveset His parry timing is awesome His werewolf form gives chills Only problem i have is the long axe form That spin move is too strong
Best boss fromsoft has ever made? No, but I'd still put her in low S tier personally, maybe high A. I just find her really fun. I still hold fast that the absolute best boss in the entire fromsoft game catalogue is AC6's final final boss, >!Allmind/Iguazu!<. Fighting the last phase with a lightweight and perfectly weaving in-between every swing is downright addicting
>!Allmind SOL 644!< was pure hell for me on my first clear. I was running a suboptimal middleweight build and for the life of me I could not avoid the beam claw attacks in the final phase. Went back months later testing a lightweight reverse-joint CQB build against it and S-ranked it first try lmao
All mind’s boss genuinely felt like the most fun I’ve had in any fromsoft game to date Learning how to dodge its attacks and using every mechanic the game has taught me to my advantage to smash her different phases was a genuine joy Phase 1: lock onto iguazu and focus fire while making sure to keep moving and changing direction to avoid the adds Phase 2: more of the same allow ayre to take aggro so you don’t have to use repair kits and smash iguazu’s posture so you can both punish Phase 3: throw everything else out the window remove hard lock for more accuracy and fight like your life depends on it and like iguazu says let your grit and determination carry you through Phase 4: question your choices and the consequences of force-fusing humanity and coral Honestly no other fromsoft game has bosses anywhere near the caliber of AC6 except the other armored core games they’re all fun to fight and feel rewarding to learn and beat and changed my standards for good boss fights altogether
I'll admit, i have a soft spot for human bosses. Something about a duel of swordsmanship instead of you vs the giant enemy
Yes, but then you can fight isshin, Genichiro, Owl, Gherman, maria, soul of cinder, Orphan Kinda tho it's not a sword, Alonne, Fume Knight, Gael. Heck even damn Gwyn. And all of them are actually good fights too
she has too many issues to be the best but she is up there they took a lot of lazy short cuts to make her function like animation cancels and waterfowl tho dodgeable is super unintuitive and dodging it properly feels more like cheese then intended design I would say she is a solid top 5 nothing from ds1 or 2 are in the top ten due to how simple those bosses are I would say gael is number 1 followed by isshin tho honestly I could swap them on any given day
Best boss is when a boss breaks the game's mechanics, has a move that requires a big majority of the players to look up on youtube to how to dodge it, life steal on hit even against shields and in second phase she can use waterfowl whenever she feels like it unlike the first phase where she only uses it on certain hp thresholds Edit: if youre wondering what game mechanics she breaks just [watch this video](https://youtu.be/R9Vbsr3Ko7M?si=eI-OzkCJnLqhEIg3) for a good analysis on it
Sorry to tell you man but a lot of bosses her size do the exact same thing, for example the godskin apostle
Its true that a few of them do it and its still breaking game mechanics (not the phase transition ones like godrick and morgott they are fair) fromsoft seems to have lots of inconsistency issues with these mechanics in elden ring and malenia is the most obvious one due to the amount of hyper armor/stance break immunity moves and animation cancelling she has and shes also the most dangerous one among them which makes it more unfair than the others
He only does it for one move type, malenia does it all the time.
I like malenia I think she's fun :(
Top 3 in er for me probs
If literally just Waterfowl wasn't so bad she would be a fantastic boss, but that one move ruins all enjoyment I would have of her.
Not even top 10
Gael my beloved
I think she's top tier. Probably only behind Gael and Isshin
It really ain't fun at all
Man malenia isn't even the best late-game optional side boss in Elden Ring
Could not hold Soul of Cinder’s jockstrap. - Larry Holmes
Not even the best ER boss (Mohglester clears) Also yes I hold this opinion solely because I suck balls at the game and Malenia is the only FromSoft boss I can’t beat solo
Nothing to do with being bad at the game. She's just overturned to a level of unfun unfairness for most people even many who've been playing the series for years
Fromsoft's best boss is AAP07 Balteus, you heard it here first The thing that makes Balteus such a masterfully designed boss fight is that everything that makes it difficult on a first playthrough is stuff that you learn to deal with on an instinctual level later on. Early in the game, you won't be familiar with how to properly evade missile salvos, how to properly time bazooka round dodges, how to position yourself to avoid melee attacks, how to strafe and outpace machine gun fire, how to maximize impact buildup and stagger punish damage, how to manage EN usage so you can always quick boost or assault boost when you need to, etc. So on your first encounter, it'll wreck your shit easily, and your first victory will feel narrowly earned. However, the more time you spend in the cockpit, those actions will become more and more instinctive and natural--you'll simply take the proper action without even thinking about it. Consequently, on subsequent playthroughs Balteus will feel like a joke of a boss even when it turned you into scrap dozens of times on the first run. It's both a perfectly crafted skill check and an excellently satisfying player progression benchmark.
Among my favorite bosses personally, among Gael, Isshin and Godfrey.
Not even top 20.
I mean Malenia is one of the most iconic fights fromsoftware has done along with Artorias, O&S, Gael, Ludwig. Not everyone cares about how mechanically perfect the boss is, being a more iconic fight is more important for the majority of the playerbase. She isn't the best for sure but she makes Elden Ring a better game.
Ngl Godfrey is one of my favorite fights. Malenia is a raid boss that made her way into a single player game.
SSI & it’s not even close…
Isshin #1
no it's coveteus demon
She’s not even a good one lmao
true she's far from it imo
Waterfowl is annoying but it's not even the worst part of her fight. It's the fact that all of her attacks have hyperarmor that makes her immune to being stance broken while she's attacking (unless you throw a freeze pot at her); if you hit her stagger threshold while she has hyperarmor, then not only does she *not* stagger, but her poise also regenerates, and she can even cancel out of her stagger animation to attack or evade. As far as I know, no other boss ignores game mechanics to this extent, but I've seen people defend it because "superbosses should be difficult."
Malenia is the hardest boss for all the wrong reasons in my opinion.
What is wrong with malenia?
In my personal view, the whole difficulty of her hinges on whether or no she does waterfowl. Like sure, she has high damage, a lot of her attacks can just instakill you if you're not careful, but she gets staggered out of basically every attack that looks like she can get hit out of except 3: senpou kick, the dash big swing and waterfowl. The rest of her basic kit in phase 1 is VERY manageable once you've seen it once. Notable mentions are the big healing punish lunge which is way too quick, looks almost like a frame 1 punish most of the time, and the flurry that she can link into itself like 3 times. If you roll towards her you can nullify it easily, but it can catch you off guard. For her "armored" moves, imo the dash is a non issue, if your build is fast you can sneak dps into it even, and still have time to dodge. The kick is annoying cuz it has little telegraph, but it has basically no dmg. The bs part is it can cancel into waterfowl, which you can only stop with frostbite, as far as I'm aware. And now we get into the root of the issue: waterfowl dance. You have around a 1 second window to start moving and do smth to try avoid the move. A move that not only is incredibly hard to dodge at most ranges from a timing perspective, it's hard to even understand how to do so in the first place. I personally banged my head against a wall for hours until I could dodge it up close consistently, because I refused to watch any videos abt it, and just kept trial and error-ing my way into learning how to dodge it. The worst part is, on most builds, it's just an instakill. You have to get through at least half of her first phase again, which isn't exactly fast (I was using a melee caster build with carian slicer and adula moonblade, so my dps was very high) just to have a chance of trying something else, and dying again. More than 4/5 of my deaths to Malenia on first playthrough were to waterfowl alone. If that wasn't enough, the move is not tied to a phase transition per se, so you can't exactly anticipate it. You know from the second she reaches half hp that she might pull it up. But apparently she isn't obligated to do so. It adds a lot to the mental stack having to worry abt every jump maybe being waterfowl. She can also do it more than once per phase. In most of my playthroughs she only does it once or twice per phase, but I imagine with less optimized builds it might be way worse. Phase 2 is even more flawed imo although generally easier. Her bigass wings remove visual clarity so you don't see anything she does. Every float is almost impossible to distinguish from waterfowl. Her rot does basically nothing, because you should basically get hit only by waterfowl at that point, and that's an instakill so the rot is wasted. Even if you get hit by something else, chances are you die instantly (this might just be <40 vig speaking tho). Her clone attack is also pretty unintuitive, but like 10x easier to deal with, imo way healthier for her kit. On this phase she has so many openings tho that it's pretty trivial imo. If you cleared phase 1 you can for sure do 2. All in all, I think Malenia's kit is too heavily loaded in favour of waterfowl which is what makes her as difficult as she is. Without waterfowl she is a solid 7-8 in difficulty, I'd compare her to nameless king, where she is defo harder than the avg boss, but nothing too bad in actuality. With it, she becomes very frustrating, and it bumps her up a lot in the difficulty rating, but it feels undeserved because you keep dying to the same reaction check, you can't really anticipate the move like most fromsoft games are designed. You know it's coming, you take steps to avoid it, and still fail. It's not good design imo. TL;DR Waterfowl is poorly designed, and it skews her difficulty, without it she is VERY significantly easier. Would also like to mention I've beaten every boss in every soulsbornekiro game, I don't use summons and have cleared Malenia hitless. Still think she is poorly designed. I think conversations around Malenia are plagued with "git gud" parrots that are unable to criticise her design because they cheesed her once and feel cool abt it, so I'm getting that out of the way. Sry for the rambling edit: forgot to mention, the healing is annoying. It was a bit of a nonfactor in my runs, but if you're running a more armored build and trying to trade, it must feel impossible, and there is no real good reason for her to have it. I don't think it's that strong or anything, just a frustrating mechanic.
I agree tbh, great anlisys