Whenever I see people talking about the Artorias of the Abyss DLC, they mention every boss but Sanctuary Guardian. Sure, his fight isn't the spectacle of the other three, but I think he is mechanically more fun than plenty of bosses in the base game. What's your take on this?

The thing about Sanctuary Guardian is that it's probably one of the most aggressive bosses in Dark Souls 1. Unfortunately I feel that most people play the safe strength/tank build and so it's attack combos and rushes fall flat on their shields. The proof? You'll hear most people talk about how hard Artorias is when mechanically the Sanctuary Guardian is harder. The 1 thing Artorias has is that he'll step all over most tanky builds. It would be the first time that people who tank actually needed to learn how to dodge and time their attacks.

In Dark Souls 2 Raime and Sir Alonne served a similar roll where Raime stomped all over tank builds and he forced people to learn how to dodge and avoid his attacks. Sir Alonne was too fast for a lot of people and he had methods to punish tank builds.

Since I was a Dex build in both games I was able to appreciate every boss's moveset because I needed to learn how to dodge everything and each failed dodge would usually mean death (weak armor and low health for me).

It makes me very happy to know that tank builds are more or less done in Bloodborne. People will need to learn to actually fight instead of the turtle strategy.

I think of Artorias as a one on one dream fight. He pushes you to your limits and beating him feels like winning the lottery. I bowed to his nonexistent corpse after beating him. An honorable match. Plus Vinny v. Artorias is the best thing ever.

Manus and Kalameet are the "monster" bosses. Awesome and interesting for sure. Lord knows I'd have given my kingdom for a few more of those guys in DS2.

But that's why I think the Guardian is so cool. He's still a monster design, but he's not ten times your size. Maybe that's part of the reason why Kalameet/Manus don't have elaborate arena moves like his fly and shock attack; they're just too big to pull off something that technical and still keep them and their attack fairly in camera view. Plus, Guardian has an attack that exists only as a shield break. That's hype.

Artorias is probably my pick for favorite fight as well as most mechanically interesting, but Guardian is a close second and is far above Manus and Kal on the "challenging AND interesting" scale.

I remember really liking this boss. Such a great design. Unfortunately I only played the DLC with one of my experimental characters and was a bit under leveled. It beat the shit out of me maybe a dozen times but it was a fun fight every time. I especially like fights where I can cut off the tail.

I should really finish the DLC. I never beat Manus and don't know where to fight Kamaleet.

@golguin: I never realized that about Artorias punishing tanks more. I usually play with a light roll and no shield, so to me Sanctuary Guardian and Artorias were just two more bosses that required me to learn movesets and roll timings. Now that you mention it though, I do seem to recall my first fight with Sanctuary Guardian going easier back when I used shields more often. I can appreciate people having extra fondness for Artorias because he forced them to roll though, I have that same feeling towards O&S.

Exactly! He's very unique for Dark Souls, which is funny, because back when I knew nothing about these games and confused them with Monster Hunter, I thought there'd be a lot more fights like his.

I recommend everyone finish the DLC, it's some of the best content in the game.

I think the boss is cool, but having to deal with the respawning lightning horses (that have an almost identical move set) in Dark Souls 2's "Frigid Outskirts" has somewhat soured me on fighting the Sanctuary Guardian.

@sunbrozak: there is a finite number of horses that can spawn, sit by the first pile of ruins and continue to kill them until no more appear. They are the quickest enemy to despawn in DS2

@claybrez: Yeah, for as much shit as people give DS2 (and granted, I still think it deserves it), even the original DS is kind of light on mechanically interesting, non-humanoid bosses. The Gaping Dragon is one who's hard unless you know how to approach it, then it's easy. But I feel he gets a pass based on visual design alone.

The Hydra's kind of the opposite problem, where he would be SO effing cool if his fight wasn't so drab and had so much waiting with no risk of danger in it. You were one of Hercules' impossible tasks, you should be able to hit a stationary target!

I guess the Gargoyle's count, if only because they've served as so many first-timers' "Ohhhhhh, now I get Souls" moment; including my own and Patrick's. But other than that, they lose their challenge if it's just one, and I hate the "mor guyz = hard rite?" design, so I'm disqualifying them.

Is Sif the only real standout from the vanilla game? I'm wracking my brain and I feel like I'm forgetting some, but I know Sif is my personal favorite vanilla boss.

I always loved how fast and aggressive this boss was, even if I didn't find him as hard as the other dlc bosses. Artorias is still number one for me, but this guy might be number two. Special mention should also be given to how you encounter him. You start the dlc, you're expecting to have the usual pattern of working through an area to reach a boss fight, but then you find a fog door and have to deal with one of the fastest, most aggressive bosses in the entire game basically 10 seconds in. It's a hell of a way to kick things off.

It's kinda crazy to think that the dlc for Dark Souls 1 has arguably the best 4 bosses in the entire souls series. The area design and basic enemies weren't too amazing, but damn if they didn't bring their A game for the boss fights.

Ornstein and Smough is the best boss in the vanilla game for my money and I'll continue to sing their praises for as long as I live. I used to think of them as slightly broken but once I figured them out (fast rolling, less lock on), they were the most enjoyable boss to solo. They're always intense but like every other souls boss, once you get their rhythm down they're never that hard again (still hard, just not THAT hard). Only problem with the fight is that the second forms aren't as interesting as the first phase of the fight IMO.

This is pretty much how I feel. Sanctuary Guardian is the opening action scene of the blockbuster that is Artorias of the Abyss. It starts the DLC with a bang, and it also foreshadows what you're in for: the most aggressive bosses in the whole damn game. It really is the best DLC ever created. At least by Souls standards.

Oh, I'm aware. Took several dozen times running through the damned place to figure that out, mind you.

@claybrez: Oh, O&S is exempt from my equation there. That's because there being two of them makes the fight more interesting in itself. Wouldn't work if they weren't a slow-but-tough/fast-and-low-defense combo; see the Throne Watcher-Throne Defender fight as evidence. I'll agree the second form is less interesting and even easier, but it sure as Hell makes for a great reaction: "..................Are............are you kidding right now? No? *sweats loudly* ........kay."

It also feels like a great cap off of that fight in particular. Like it wouldn't work anywhere else, but here it's a great This Is Dark Souls moment. Like being told at the end of a marathon "Oh, dude. Um, yeah. The, uh, the finish line's like five more minutes down this road. Sorry!"

When I said Sif was my fav, I should have amended by saying in terms of tone and feeling. Dunkstein and Slamough is easily the best in terms of sheer fight design, hands down.

He's the only DLC boss I fought and I thought it was a really fun and difficult fight.

He's the first boss in a run of four fantastic bosses, which makes him easy to overlook. I think it's a good fight though. As for the vanilla bosses, my favourite is probably Four Kings or Gwyn. The "problem" with Gwyn is that he goes down incredibly quickly once you know what you're doing. That makes sense in the context of the fight, but it means it leaves you wanting more time against him.

I love all the DLC bosses, I think Artorias is also very popular because he is a person who fights you one-on-one in an arena. A lot of Dark Souls is about huge, imposing bosses. He's just a guy with a sword and some acrobatic skills, which speaks similarly to the Gwyn fight - there's something very satisfying about fighting a character who is "another human of roughly equal skill to you".

Raime was straight up hard tank build or not, I don't care what your build is they were the hardest boss in my opinion of DS2. Possibly the hardest boss of Dark Souls period to me.

Alonne was actually laughably easy, I never got all the nonsense I heard about him. I almost killed him on my first attempt blind (I was like 3-4 hits away) and I beat him easily on attempt two since I had already cleared out the area leading to him and didn't need to fight half the stuff the second time through, thus had way more healing padding when I got there. Once you know his attacks they were very easy to dodge or block.

@poobumbutt said:

Yeah, you're totally right. The second forms are necessary to close out that fight. I can only call the second forms simple because I've played them a million times, in reality they were even more daunting than the first part (you mean I have to beat this tag team every time just to reach a super-powered version one on one? WHAT?!).

Sorry, somehow I heard favorite "vanilla game boss" and no mention of O&S and I completely missed the point of your original post. The more I think about it, DS1 really doesn't have too many good non-humanoids like you said. I like Moonlight Butterfly but it's barely a boss. The only ones that are really unique in tone and creature type are Sif like you said, Quelaag (I wish these games would return to the idea combining a humanoid and beast again, and no I don't mean just clone it and make another Scorpioness Najka >_>), and Seath but his fight has some real problems. I guess DS1 just beats DS2 in the variety of its humanoid enemies maybe? When you compare Four Kings, Nito, O&S, and Gwyn, there's a lot more variety than say Ruin Sentinels, Pursuer, Mirror Knight, and Velstadt.

The DaS DLC is one of the best examples of a developer learning from mistakes they made in the base game.

The bosses do not all have the same weakness (pyromancy in the main game) and are far more effective in combat due to the key addition of Aggression. Aggression is usually the key element to make a Souls boss powerful.

This only made my disappointed with the bosses in DSII bigger when I realised the lessons learnt from the DaS DLC were not implemented in its sequel. Oddly enough they seemed to have re-learned some of those lessons in the DSII DLC.

Making a slow, unaggressive boss actually very challenging in a Souls game will probably be the next great achievement in Souls game design.

They already made challenging slow bosses in Dark Souls 2. It's called overhead mace smashes with very good tracking. Velstadt gave me a lot of issues as someone that used i-frame to dodge into his attacks for better positioning as opposed to just dodging his attacking and then running next to him.

@golguin: I've always beaten Velstadt on the first try. Those infinite stamina autotracking mace knights at the Dragon Shrine are way worse than him.

Also ridiculous tracking is not the solution I'm hoping for of course. That just makes the player feel cheated.

This boss was very memorable to me because it the first boss where I (accidentally) used the Havel's Greatshield ability that makes you all spikey (and kills durability of weapons). I first thought I was "cursed" in some way by this boss. Pretty sure almost the exact same thing happened when Brad was doing the Dark Souls playthrough with Vinny.

There's a Sanctuary Guardian forum? This boss is good, at the time when it came out it was easily in the top 10 in Souls history. With Dark Souls 2 it falls down to the 10-15 range. I made a divine weapon out of his tail, it kind of sucks but it does stagger skeletons in one hit.

Just curious, what newer bosses do you think top it? I've heard a lot of good things about the DS2 DLC (I've yet to play it), I'm guessing you mean some of those?

@claybrez: Darklurker, Pursuer, Mirror Knight, Velstadt, Freja, Ruin Sentinels, Lost Sinner, Smelter, almost every DLC boss. There's probably something I'm missing.

@fredchuckdave: Gotta disagree on the majority, there. Pursuer has such a blind spot on his weapon side, it's amazing he didn't kill himself by walking off a ledge. Velstadt's basic as Hell by that point of the game. Freja has adds, barf. And the Sentinels are a good example of what seems like DS2's devs not understanding why O&S were so rad.

No guys, it's not that there were TWO of them, it's that their differing attack patterns played off each other so well, there being two of them actually made the fight better. Fighting two of the exact same enemy is not the same thing. Too many times this statement could be applied to a DS2 boss, not just the Sentinels.

I'm actually looking forward to playing DS2 again when the remastered version drops, because it's been a really long time since I've fought those bosses. Lost Sinner & Velstadt in particular seem fights I may have overlooked. I got DS2 earlier in my souls career, so I think I may be underrating some of the bosses because I used shields more back then.