After watching the latest LoLS and seeing Vinny tackling Knight Artorias, it got me remembering how much damn fun I thought he was to fight.

I was playing a Dex character, so my whole thing was about speed, so facing a tough, fast, persistent enemy with very few cheap attacks was incredibly enjoyable. Yeah, he killed me a few times, but I never got frustrated in the way I did with some other bosses.

So, I was just wondering what your favourite boss fights were throughout the game and why you found them so dang enjoyable.

Ornstein and Smough. The first time I went in super cautious and slow, they almost immediately cornered me and smashed me to a pulp. I said fuck that, tore off some armor, equipped my Balder Side Sword and went in dancing and swinging. A few minutes later they both lay in a heap on the ground with my battered, victorious carcass the last one left standing!

My biggest disappointment was the final boss Gwyn. I utterly destroyed him first try (+15 Balder Side Sword, Crystal Magic Weapon and 40 dex, 38 int made very, very short work of him.) Old King Allant in Demon's Souls slaughtered me a good dozen times before I got the best of him. Though I was packing an Epee and Short Bow with a far less focused build for that fight.

For me it was pretty much Artorias! Such an awesome fight. I could feel he was really strong and fast, and I had to work really hard to beat him, but it never felt unfair or frustrating.

Artorias is basically the best fight in the game. I think Kalameet is cool in a similar way too, but still gets beaten out by the 1v1 manfight with the Abysswalker.

If we are talking bosses that aren't from the DLC, then probably Sif.

Yeah, Sif was awesome too. I felt fucking terrible when he started limping around all wounded and shit.

Same here. I just did that fight with a new character and just kept swinging so that I could avoid that bit.

Artorias, Gwynn a close second. Being able to parry and riposte bosses is something rare in video games that I value dearly.

Artorias as the best fight (i agree with the majority here) , and Quelaag because I was really underpowered, and stuck for 2 years at the bonfire across from her which made me want to give up. After seeing Vinny push on, I had to give it another go.. I beat that bitch and finally the game (almost twice now).

I remember a similar feeling back in 3-2 Demon's Souls when I finally beat the two maneaters as an underpowered mage in my first playthrough. Goddamn did that fight piss me off.

Biggie and Smalls, Artorias, or Manus. I'd say O&S take it though, they were quite challenging, but I ended up taking them down on my second or third try. I guess I just got lucky when I heard that O&S were considered the toughest bosses. I found the hardest fight to be 4 Kings... until I fought Gwyn.

Maneater...no wait....

I have to echo Artorias. I haven't beaten Kalameet or Manus yet(I got stuck on Kalameet, never found fighting dragons fun. In any video game ever for that matter). Though, I think I have a tendency toward bosses that are giant and clunky. My favorites from Demon's Souls were probably King Allant followed by Penetrator.

After Artorias is probably Gwyn. First time I beat him was as a Dex character without riposting him. Holy fuck was that frustrating and intense.

Gaping Dragon for me, it just looks so cool. And its not too hard.

I don't like Gwyn because he's too far from the bonfire/Lord Vessel. I still make fatal mistakes and all the running becomes aggravating. I don't want any large empty spaces in the sequel.

My favorite is probably O&S, even though the fight is cheap on the player, with the pair being able to attack through each other and the camera, targeting and strafing system better designed for keeping enemies in front.

Artorias and Gwyn. If i'm a dude with a big ass sword i really like a good old-fashioned duel against another dude with a big ass sword.

Sif, more for the lore than the actual battle and the fact that he's a giant fucking wolf, it sucks that you still have to fight him if you do the DLC first. Though it's not like there's much competition, I thought most of the bosses were really weak compared to Demon's Souls which had truly excellent bosses.

I really liked Sanctuary Guardian and Crossbreed Priscilla. I haven't managed to defeat Manus or Kamaleet yet.

Sif and Smough / Ornstein were my favorite (never found the latter particularly dificult / cheap for my playstyle, just tons of fun) from the normal game. I really enjoyed Artorias in the DLC, too. They just felt the least gimmicky and were resultantly the most fun to play for me.

I actually really liked fighting Gwyndolin. It wasn't the most challenging, but it looked cool.

Gwyndolin WORKED me for a while on NG+. Cool fight though.

O & S. I love that you can play it out in different ways.

Sif is a close second just because its pretty fucking awesome fighting a giant wolf with a greatsword in its mouth.

Artorias was lots of fun, I may finally pay up just to see Vinny fight him. I went in with my Divine Claymore +10, really wary about it because the boss before him was shrugging off that damage and sure enough I was doing barely 100 damage on him, if that. I wasn't confident enough to chuck off my armor to fast-roll, and nothing else I had did any more damage than that so I said screw it and tanked everything but his consecutive flipping chops, and attacked using my favorite one-handed R2. If I wasn't able to smack him out of his little charge move though it would've taken me even longer to beat. It felt like an awesome duel between gentlemen with no environmental hazards to worry about.

After him Sif was kind of trivial, but it was worth doing the DLC first for that cutscene.

Hmmm... I've got to say it's close between Manus and Artorias. Manus is probably my favorite though, just because I find his moveset less predictable and he's the only boss that still gives me trouble. However, he's also the one I've fought the least. To be honest I really enjoyed all the bosses in the DLC.

Non-DLC I'd probably also say Ornstein and Smough, maybe the Bell Gargoyles?

In Demon's Souls my favorite boss was the Adjudicator, man he was just cool and funny looking.

Edit: Also Artorias and most of the DLC bosses are really hard if you're not used to rolling and have usually relied on blocking for defense. Although I'm quite certain the first time I fought him I just tanked him and ironically used the Greatshield of Artorias haha.

Any of the bosses with a smaller model, helps keep the hit boxes in check. Trying to stab the really big ones can just come off a little too clunky at times. I do like Nito though.

Artorias and Manus are great fun.

Iron Golem when you don't drop him off the edge and just scratch at his ankles.

I pretty much like any one on one fight. Not a huge fan of multiple bosses/bosses with monsters alongside them. I can't handle that shit.

Gwyn in general, though the DLC bosses are all pretty awesome as well. Ornstein and Smough is probably 5th or so on the list. Sif is way too easy to be a good boss, don't think I've ever died to him.

The reason I like Gwyn so much is because you go in expecting this fucking epic boss fight on top of a mountain with gods after all the shit you went through to get there. Instead you get this dying god in a cave with really sad beautiful music. It's just another way Dark Souls says fuck you to other games and totally trolls you. He was incredibly easy but I don't know if I'd want it any other way.

I always thought people who thought fighting Sif was sad were crazy. It's a giant wolf trying to kill me, I don't give a shit when it starts limping. That's a good thing, but not apparently not good enough if it's still swinging a goddamn sword at me.

Now, the cutscene change if you rescue him in the DLC before fighting him, now that's sad.

Yeah, it's got to be Artorias. No gimmicks, just a moveset that you have to learn to avoid or defend against. Those kind of 1v1 battles are always great.

I have not played teh DLC, but having watched Load your Last Souls earlier this week, yeah, Artorias looks amazing, but i can't rightly vote for him since i haven't actually fought him.

I gotta go with O&S. Those fuckers took forever to beat. Hell they still give me a bit of trouble. I'd also like tog ive honorable mention to the church gargoyles. No one else will mention it, and most people won't admit it, but fuck man. Those guys were tough. Honestly, in the top 3 bosses that gave me trouble in the entire game. Granted now i can beat them without getting hit easily, but my first time through. SHIT.

Smores and Oreo's

All of the DLC bosses are quality

Sounds like you used a guide, don't complain about anything ever if you use a guide or walkthrough. Gwyn is really tough if you're just playing the game normally, can be easy if you run the right build, but if you run basically any standard semi-tanky build and don't parry him/don't beef up your weapon to absurd amounts its so damn awesome. False King is a joke by comparison, particularly if you have warding (and False King is a good boss but he's like 8th or 9th hardest in the series at this point). Your complaint is as stupid as people complaining that Gwyn was too easy when they used Iron Flesh and Avelys near launch.

I really liked the Four Kings fight. I felt the most tense in Dark Souls when I knew I had to kill the each King quickly enough so that I didn't have to fight a second one that spawned.

I used no more guide for Dark than I did for Demon's: which was looking up a couple weapons and upgrade material drops. I died multiple times on every other boss in Dark Souls (well, only once to Sif, no DLC.) Hilariously, Bed of Chaos killed me a good twenty times before I figured it out. It's possible I got lucky with Gwyn, he just kept making big sword swipes that left him wide open to attack, and I did only fight him the one time. I felt like Allant was laser-focused on my ass and I could barely do anything. I was also significantly more confident in my playing Dark Souls having beaten Demon's Souls and was parry-riposting, kicking and using strong attacks like a boss: all of which I was afraid to even try in Demon's Souls. My armor was also some of most flame-resistant in the game, but I didn't know that at the time. (Black Iron just looks awesome!)

Also, the part I bolded is pretty stupid.

Ceasless Discharge, because the first time you meet him he seems ridiculous to fight, with insane amounts of damage that just smooshes you and can't be dodged or blocked with just the standard stuff unlike most of the other bosses. But he brought out the inner munchkin in me. I huffed and I puffed, let my inner rpg nerd out and I geared up to be the tankiest mother this side of the undead asylum, said "come at me bro" and took his fury on head on like a man. After that I felt indomitable, an unstoppable force and an immovable object in one.

Black Dragon Kalameet when I went back and played the DLC. The boss itself is not anything super special. But due to his fast and constant movement patterns leaving only a small window for a melee character to try and go for the tail (for the weapon). The fight became much harder and more prolonged, being more of a test of my tank build and endurance against his onslaught, while trying not to kill him and chop off that damn tail. As soon as the tail came off, I massacred that bastard.

I liked so many of them, the highlights being 4 kings, Nito, all 4 DLC bosses, Sif, Gaping Dragon....I'm sure I'm forgetting many.

A shorter list might be... which ones did you not like?

-Ornstein and Smough - too tough, had to summon in help.

-Seath - but only because I was being stubborn and not paying enough attention to the cursing

-Gwynn - I was probably a little OP...it felt very anti-climactic

-Stray Demon - I had to read up on cheap strategies to fight him...I really thought I would have to just skip that boss at the time.

@sinusoidal: Yeah if you don't play the game blind basically what you'd have is Black Knight Armor and whatever weapon, definitely not a +15, definitely not Crystal Magic Weapon (though if you had decent sorcery its possible it could be easy on a blind run, or miraculously got Solaire summoned somehow), you also wouldn't have exactly 40 of whatever stat except possibly Vitality or Endurance since that's not readily apparent until your 2nd or 3rd playthrough. Basically looking up stuff is going in with a pre-determined impression thus somewhat invalidating your point of view; it's like this for any game but for a game like Dark Souls it could even cripple the experience. There's no difference between looking up information and summoning a white phantom whenever possible for a reason other than the lulz (Summoning two white phantoms only to have them die instantly to Quelaag's explosion is an exceptional example of good humor for instance, plus Q has a shitload more HP afterward). Protip to all the Bed of Chaos 20 (?) death people, you can walk-off on to the root, no jump is necessary. I figured this out the first time through the game with no issue and have frequently beaten the boss without dying at all, there seems to be a massive cadre of Bed of Chaos haters out there but it's a fine puzzle boss in my opinion. If you died to every boss except Gwyn then you got miraculously lucky or were like SL 120 or something (Normal-ish SL for Gwyn being around 75-85, DLC basically added 3 Gwyn Caliber fights so if you leveled for each of those in turn obviously you'd wind up overleveled for the last one), that 4 hit swing combo is the fastest attack in the game, faster than anything Artorias or Manus throws out.

Most memorable was probably O&S, mainly because I bought the game on launch day on Xbox and put 40 hours in and could never beat him. Then it was on sale on PC so I thought I'd get it again because I wanted to see the DSfix, and I beat him on my first try with pretty much the same build.

It has to be artorias for me to. My least favourite was those two archers in anor londo.

@sinusoidal: False King was definitely more brutal than Gywn. The most memorable thing about fighting Gwyn was how anticlimactic it was. Didn't know you could parry him though. That cool!

It's a toss-up for me between Artorias and Gwyn. I think I like the Artorias fight a little more since it's such a epic "rival battle" as Two Best Friends call it.

The fight gets my heart pumping in a way no other boss battle does. A boss that has the opposite effect on me?

Gaping Dragon *ZzZ*

Gonna go with the one everyone else says: Artorias

Second would probably be Fatty and Beanpole

I'm also rather fond of Sif and Priscilla

If you felt bad doing that, I hope you never have to face Maiden Astraea from Demon's Souls.

Mine was Kalameet. I went up against him with my Shield of Artorias, and just slugged it out for ten minutes. The way he relentlessly attacks and barely gives your stamina a chance to recharge just made the fight so "fair," and it felt like a boxing match or something. I can honestly say I've never had a fight in a video game that felt like that. I got goosebumps because of how awesome it was. The same goes for Artorias, but to a lesser extent.

Crossbreed Priscilla, Gaping Dragon, and Gwyn are my favorite from a character design perspective. CBP's "puzzle" is also really cool.

Artorias is my favorite to play, hands down. Playing against him on my DEX build was some of the most fun I've had in a long time. It has the one-on-one, equally matched feeling of Gwyn but is a bit harder and requires more diligence and patience. The music is really, really good as well.

This theme alone tells me more interesting things about the lore of Dark Souls in general than most games put in their word-vomit codices.

Artorias, easily.

Ornstein and Smough ... the music and the place and all makes it an awesome battle also Artorias of the Abyss. Hated the 4 kings

Meh, she just offed herself after I whacked Vinland. Her decision.

Yea Artorias. Those really well done 1v1 man mode fights are always awesome. Same thing with Hercules fight in GOW3.

Sif. He isn't necessarily the best designed boss in the game, but that fact that the reason for him attacking you is to protect you. Then when he starts to limp. Man, that made me feel AWFUL!