Greetings all, as we merge the blackest of Fridays with the darkest of Souls. The Souls games have always been a major timesink for me due to their immersion, their unwillingness to hold your hand and, most of all, the colorful and varied boss encounters that are likely to hand you your own undead ass a few dozen times apiece. These boss encounters are always the pinnacle of the Souls experience, as you painstakingly learn their tactics and how to use those tactics against them, and there's nothing quite like seeing that big "YOU VANQUISHED" (or equivalent) whenever you finally defeat them. I would say the essence of any Souls game is its boss battles, and there's usually a lot of them.

With that in mind, I've decided to write about my Dark Souls II playthrough using these bosses as a focal point. I'll briefly touch on the locations they inhabit, since a lot of work has evidently gone into these environments, but it'll largely be spent describing the bosses; their appearance and their attack patterns in particular. Hopefully I can figure out some context for what they are and why they're guarding their specific area, but I might overlook a few things.

So, yeah, this is another reactions blog, albeit one with a bit more depth and a lot more complaining. Welcome to Dark Souls II: Bosswatch!

Things Betwixt

The game's tutorial area, described as a realm between realms. At least that's what the title of this place implies. Personally, it just makes me peckish for caramel candy bars. There's a bunch of tutorial areas with enemies behind fog doors, or there's a direct path to the exit directly ahead if you're already familiar with the series and just want to get on with it. Of course, if one's actually genuinely familiar with the series, they know that there's going to be some useful hidden stuff concealed in these tutorial areas because that's how Souls rolls.

Visually, it feels kind of foreboding. I mean, I guess it's supposed to, given the horrors to come. Lots of giant dead trees and low visibility. Makes for a good switch when you eventually emerge into the sunlight of Majula, the game's hub and only safe haven. Well, but for a few oddly aggressive pig rat things.

Ogre

I don't know how to describe the ogres in this game. They look kind of like monstrous bipedal hippos with goofy expressions. A hungry, hungry hippo, it turns out, as one of its favorite moves is to pick you up and bite you several times. It's three hugely damaging attacks that causes the bleeding effect (which is just a huge damage boost on top) so it's pretty much instant death unless you're rocking some high defense and/or HP totals.

But then it's not really a boss, just a tough enemy you meet very early on. I cut my teeth (or its teeth) on a nearby ogre in Things Betwixt to make sure I hadn't completely forgotten everything from last year's Dark Souls playthrough. While I defeated one, eventually, I decided to come back once I had some modest armor and a decent spear/halberd weapon to take care of the other two wandering around, since that's what I used in DS1. The ogre near the house of the old women who introduce you to the game had a ring on him, so that was pretty fortuitous. Of the many changes made to DS2, I think having more ring slots is one of the few I'm onboard with. Clearly, From Software fondly recalls their Eternal Ring days.

Forest of the Fallen Giants

I feel that anyone who has seen any promotional material for the game, and specifically the Giant Bomb content pertaining to it, is familiar with this region. It's a collection of ruined buildings and dead trees not entirely unlike Dark Souls's opening area the Undead Burg. The enemies are weak but plentiful, and there's a few dead ends and shortcuts to find. There's a few mysteries around here too (I still have no idea how to fight this particular salamander type creature that I can see many floors below one of the bonfires) and (at least) two bosses.

Last Giant

The Last Giant is one of many large humanoid trees that you occasionally spot while exploring The Forest of the Fallen Giants, which can be easily mistaken for odd statues. They have enormous holes where their faces should be, so there's always something a little off-putting about them. It takes one of them waking up and lurching towards you before you understand just how unsettling they can be.

I guess this is the first boss for most people. He pretty much sets a precedent for the vast majority of enemies I'll meet in the next couple of areas: really big guys who move really slow but hit really hard. Got caught a few times by his stomp and his swing range, the former only because the hitbox detection in this game is so wack. You spend pretty much the whole battle walking between his legs and hacking his feet. It wasn't the most challenging boss encounter, neither was it the most interesting.

The Pursuer

I'd already met this guy previously further down in the ruins, on top of a random roof, but I died fairly quickly. I didn't really know what to expect at the time, and it wasn't introduced as a boss fight (no fog door, and he didn't have a boss health bar). I guess it was the game's way of building some early intimidation for this specific boss, but I wonder what would've happened if I had beaten him then and there. He doesn't look like much, like a gleaning white knight hovering off the ground with a nasty looking spear, but he moves pretty fast compared to the sluggish undead in this area.

Either way, the Pursuer is easily the toughest boss I fought in the early game, largely because I hadn't upgraded my weapon too much yet and was doing slithers of damage to his health bar. He guards a shortcut to a much later dungeon down a different route too, so maybe he was meant to be a little more of a challenge. Predictable attacks, but again I got dinged by that awful sense of how far an enemy's weapon ought to extend compared to how much it actually does. I think I died twice or thrice from underestimating the length of a combo chain (that little spin finisher in particular), and about a dozen times because a swing was able to hit me despite clearly missing by a yard.

Heide's Tower of Flame

I don't know who Heide is, but their Tower of Flame sucks. There's towers, for sure, but hardly any flames. I'm giving this place a bad Yelp review, because I only yelped a couple of times when I fell off the haphazard walkways into the ocean far below. Pulling a Metal Gear Scanlon, as we call it 'round these parts.

Dragonrider

After a brief visit to Lost Bastille, I thought I'd instead check one of the other routes out of Majula to make sure I wasn't going anywhere too high level just yet. Heide's Tower of Flame was within easy reach, but... well, let's just say this game is clearly very fond of the "big and slow" enemy archetype. After beating down (and being beat down by) eight-foot tall knight dudes for an hour, I accidentally wandered into Dragonrider's boss room and mistook him for yet another of these large enemies. Beat him in one shot, since he moves and acts exactly like everything else around here just slightly faster and with more health. I imagine hitting those switches to raise the platforms in his small arena probably made the fight more palatable as well.

Old Dragonslayer

Goddammit, why is Ornstein in this game? At least he doesn't have his portly companion around to back him up. I also found out too late that the recently acquired Old Knight Halberd is very strong but also very fragile, with a terrible durability that was already running low when I went into the fight. He got me with his speed and combos a few times, as once he stuns you with that first blow and follows up with three more, there's not a whole lot of stamina or health left to weather it. He's easy enough to get around, though, and most of his attacks are the forward stabby kind that leaves him open. Didn't take long to slay the dragonslayer. Figures that there's nothing behind him other than a bonfire and some covenant I don't qualify for.

Huntsman's Copse

This is an alternate area you can get to by talking to a priestess lady you first meet in Heide's Tower of Flame. She sets herself up in this circular spinny chamber thing near Majula that you need to pay her to activate. Good thing I only have to do this once, because I can then teleport to the bonfires on either route. I'll probably be seeing her again anyway though, as I've been thinking of spending points on Faith to cast a few handy miracles, since I got a lot of use out of the heals and homeward bone-type spells last time. Miracles always seem the most practical of the spell categories. But that's neither here nor there. The Huntsman's Copse is this game's equivalent to those forests in Dark Souls and its DLC area, filled with rogues and other shady sorts.

Skeleton Lords

So, all right, let me tell you what's up with these guys. This fight seems to be your Gravelord Nito equivalent, where every skeleton with a bone to pick rises up to help their undead master and gives you a headache of a group battle to deal with. The three Skeleton Lords are actually fairly weak, or at least they are compared to my level ~50 dude. Rather, it's how they die and spawn four new skeletons (with a neat flying ghost skull effect that reminds me of Doom II's Icon of Sin) that complicates matters in a boss fight where you're already having to keep an eye on numerous enemies. That said, even dealing with a pack of weak skeletons when there's a couple of fireball-casting liches hovering around isn't the hard part. The hard part is when the last Skeleton Lord dies and he releases unto this world a quartet of bonewheels. Now, if you're unfamiliar with bonewheels, they're absolutely the pits when they're in a group and you're in a big open area. Like, say, a boss fight room. Like, say, the room what this boss fight is in. It's a super cheap battle that I perhaps made a little easier on myself due to my level (I swear I've only gone to, like, four other places. No grinding either), but my oh my is it obnoxious all the same.

Earthen Peak

The Earthen Peak, which follows both the Huntsman's Copse and the customary poison wasteland that is Harvest Valley, is a place that immediately reminded me of Sen's Fortress: There are poison pools, poison vases and traps everywhere, and lots of precarious walkways and nasty archers. No snake people (well, until the boss), but lots of headless Mannikins and mummified Silverbacks to give you migraines. There's even a few pyromancer types too.

Covetous Demon

The Covetous Demon guards the entrance to the Earthen Peak, but I suppose he could also be considered the boss of Harvest Valley too. I feel like I saw the title transition before then though, running through a few rooms with poison vases before the fog door. He's an enormous slug-like demon that is perhaps not the game's most pleasant boss to look at. This is usually the point where I compare him to a prior Souls boss, and there's been a few that are grotesquely bulbous, but honestly fighting him reminded me a lot more of Empress Bulblax from Pikmin 2.

Between my +7 Winged Spear and half-decent level, the Covetous Demon wasn't quite the challenge it appeared to be. I dimly recall watching a clip from an old "Best of Giant Bomb" video from indefatigable community member @turboman where Vinny got ate by this boss and lost all his armor, and I imagine that was how this boss might present a challenge: players running back with their second-best armor set, frantic to recover all their priceless gear. Despite the old phantom hit problems again (it appeared to have no range, as a Jabba ersatz with stubby arms, but clearly that wasn't the case) I beat it in one try.

Mytha, the Baneful

Mytha's one of the few bosses I got to hear some backstory on before I met her. Apparently she's the ancient Queen of whatever kingdom this was, who turned to sorcery to keep herself eternally beautiful. The poisonous fluids she used to maintain her immortality also turned her into a lamia creature, and she lost her head in the process and has to carry it around with her. Sort of like a mix of the legends behind the gorgon Medusa, the infamous blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory and Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her. Possibly the three greatest (great meaning large or immense, I use it in the pejorative sense) female monsters in history?

There's a trick to this battle, in much the same way as there was one for the Dragonrider. I didn't realize it until I'd abandoned it as being too difficult, but there's something you can do to remove a lot of the poisonous pools in the Earthen Peak which includes the one that covers the entire boss arena that will ensure that the boss is constantly at full health (poison heals her, naturally) while you end up dead within seconds. Once the poison pools have been taken care of, she's a cinch. Actually, a lot like Ornstein with that big spear, but with sorcery and poison to worry about in addition (neither can be blocked without a bit of health loss, unless you have a special shield). Once again, I'm probably too overleveled for this part of the game. I suspect the game's built in such a way that they intend you to finish one of the paths to the four McGuffin Flames you need before moving onto the others? But even then, you'd be overpowered for the alternate paths. An odd progression system, for sure, though one that has a precedent with Dark Souls.

Lost Bastille

The Lost Bastille can be reached as early as the Forest of Fallen Giants, but given how much trouble I had with the Pursuer boss I put this one on the back-burner for a while. I did manage to find a new blacksmith, McDuff, on my first visit, but he won't trade with me just yet. I know I keep comparing places in this game to equivalents in the earlier Souls games, but it often feels like the game is doing it deliberately. The game's dropped several hints, in fact, that support the idea that Dranglaic might've been Lordran many thousands of years ago, and most of these new structures were built on the ruins of the old. Anyway, given that this is a moody prison with a lot of nasty enemies roaming around and a few vertiginous pathways, it immediately reminded me of the Tower of Latria from Demon's Souls. It's at least a bit more picturesque than that dank hellhole of Cthulhus, with some beautiful moonlit ramparts.

Ruin Sentinels

Another day, another multi-boss of deliberate knight types. These skinny ladies probably gave most people heading through Lost Bastille a lot of problems, as their lengthy reach and relatively small fighting arena means you cannot ever turn your back on one of them. Given that there's three of them, it's not easy to keep them all in view. The game does throw you a bone by letting you take down one separate from the other two by fighting her on the ledge you emerge onto after going through the fog door. That means you only have to fight the other two simultaneously. Not tricky, but again I feel I'm a much higher level now (almost 70) than I perhaps ought to be for this part of the game. Blame it on all this skipping around I'm doing. (I went to get the Dull Ember for McDuff for a Uchigatana, for the record. Of course, now I find out that it's not as good as this wimpy spear I've been using so far, and doesn't even exceed its Dex-boosted damage scaling bonus which is the whole point of katanas. Well, that and looking cool. And, yeah, okay, the much higher counter-attack damage if we're getting all technical.)

Belfry Luna

This is odd. I found this tower by using one of Pharro's Lockstones, which are rare items that occasionally reveal secret areas if you use it in the right place, but it seems to be an area built specifically for a PvP covenant. There's all these squat dudes in yeoman armor, and it's just a few floors and then a boss. Do players really spend time just sitting in this little tower waiting to invade people?

Belfry Gargoyles

Hey, remember these guys from Dark Souls? Remember how much fun it was fighting two of them at the same time? Well, here's five. It's a dumb remix boss battle, like Ornstein, and like Ornstein there's not a whole lot to the fight if you're already familiar with it from fighting something very similar in the previous game. It's a bit like the Maneaters fight from Demon's too, come to think of it, which strengthens the Tower of Latria comparison. You're not only faced with multiple opponents, but you're also on the clock as more of them tag in the longer you stretch the fight out. Rather brutal, but one that--once again--I feel I might have been overqualified to handle in my mid-70s. I certainly don't mind the boss battles where I only die once or twice, as I feel like that's a good balance between the "How do I stop dying?" and "Aha, is this our chance?" steps of boss strategizing. I do take exception to the repetition and callbacks with most of these bosses. Just doesn't feel like they tried too hard this time. I'll reserve final judgement until after the game is done though; chances are they back-loaded this with all the weird and nasty ones.

Sinner's Rest

Given the build-up, it would've been safe to assume this was one of the big four Lord Souls I'm meant to be chasing after, and I'd be right. The Lost Bastille ended quite spectacularly, with a big tower that lead an underwater passage to a rather neat keep lying in a cove underneath the rest of the complex.

The Lost Sinner

As for the Lost Sinner, well, it's another big dude with deliberate attack patterns again, albeit one that moves very quickly and turns the lights out before the fight. I'm glad I found that Bastille key after the Gargoyles, since using it to turn more lights on thereby allowing me see the guy made things easier. At the same time, I feel like I missed some awesome Zatoichi-style blind swordsman action by illuminating the arena beforehand. At any rate, I beat him in two tries. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging (Lord knows I've died due to the stupidest shit a hundred times over), just marvelling at how the boss fights in this game are a far cry from the original's. It helps that half of them have been almost identical sword/spear duels with slightly larger opponents wearing armor.

The Bit at the End

Anyway, beating the first big story boss of the game ought to be a decent stopping point for this initial episode of Dark Souls II: Bosswatch. I'll continue to keep a journal on the foes I meet for future parts to this series, and I'll try to be more positive the next time the boss turns out to be some giant dude with a sword again. No promises though.

Meanwhile, I have something big planned for December 1st. It's not another series of Desura Dementia, since that didn't seem to drum up much interest in 2013 and I haven't bought nearly as many Indie Royale bundles this year, but it's akin in spirit. Hopefully I can get another Bosswatch out before it begins.

Thanks for stopping by, and be safe out there on Black Friday. Don't get run down by demonic forces while grabbing all those discounts, like I did with a certain chariot boss coming up in the next episode...

Yeah, the bosses in this game are pretty weak unfortunately. While some of them are certainly very fun to fight, the majority of them don't pose a huge threat. They also seem to be lacking the lore connections that makes encountering them such an epic feeling.

Regardless, there's a few upcoming bosses I'm very curious to hear your take on. Keeping posting these and don't go hollow!

There are two different ways to get to them, neither of which is necessarily obvious...

Fighting the bonewheels alone at the end is actually the best case scenario. Each of the three skeleton lords releases a different set of minions upon dying, regardless of whether you've killed any of the other skeleton lords yet. So it's possible to kill the one who releases bonewheels first, and then you have to fight bonewheels plus the other two skeleton lords together. Or, for example, if you kill all three skeleton lords at the same time, they'll release all of their minions at once, forcing you to fight bonewheels and a horde of ordinary skeletons in a big mob.

If Covetous Demon eats you, he doesn't actually take away your armor, he just unequips it from you. A little known extra element to this boss fight is that you can shoot down cages that dangle from the ceiling in the boss room to release emaciated prisoners who act as temporary decoys for the boss. But the boss is so easy that it's normal to just kill him without ever needing to look around for gimmicky tricks like that.

Some do, but if you're in that covenant, you don't have to stay in the tower to get summoned there. As long as you're wearing the covenant ring, you can be summoned from pretty much anywhere in the game. The belltower serves a useful purpose for early game PvP, which is always plentiful there with very little waiting for fights.

Although it naturally feels that way during the fight, additional gargoyles are actually summoned as you bring down the aggregate boss health bar. Two come to life at the start, then a third jumps in when the health bar reaches 90%, a fourth at 70%, and the fifth and final at 50%. If you spread your damage amongst many gargoyles, you're more likely to fight more of them at once, but if you focus down one at a time, you'll fight fewer together.

In fact, the Lost Sinner is actually female, though I didn't realize that my first time through either. Turning on the lights has the additional benefit of increasing your lock-on distance for the boss. When the lights are out, not only is it harder to see the boss coming at you, but your lock-on range is substantially reduced.

I, too, felt a bit disappointed with the bosses in Dark Souls 2 after my first playthrough because so many of them fit the mold of fighting a large humanoid swinging a melee weapon at you. As I continued additional playthroughs of the game, I learned more and more of the nuances to many fights that I had missed initially, gradually giving me more appreciation for the boss' differences. Also, the DLC (particularly the second and third) contain some fun boss fights that are challenging and break from the standard melee humanoid pattern.

@savage: Duder, thanks for all the extra context and info. It's sort of like how I keep learning new things about MGS 2 from watching Metal Gear Scanlon (besides how not to approach Strut F), despite beating it a month ago. I suppose it's a sign of how well-made a game is, or at least how lovingly its elements were crafted, if it's filled with little details most players don't even notice until an additional playthrough (or someone helpfully points them out).

To address each of these:

1. I actually went back to the Forest of the Fallen Giants to take care of those salamanders, though they gave more than they got on average. I was looking for a way to mitigate the Smelter Demon's fire attacks (oof, more on him in part 2) and heard there was a fire protection ring down there. The falling + cat ring trick is one I used, but I imagine there's a way to get past the salamander blocking that tunnel you can reach elsewhere?
2. I thought that at first, but I went into the Skeleton Lords fight about four times and each time the order of the minion spawns was identical (viking types, regular types, bonewheels). It might just be that I killed the same Lords in the same order each time, which seemed unlikely given how much they move around, so I went with Occam's Razor and figured they were just saving the big guns for last. I'm glad I managed to spare myself from having to fight liches, skeletons and bonewheels simultaneously.
3. Ah, that's a good way of handling that. It would anger players too much to lose all their best armor. Makes slightly less sense that the demon could undress you with its tongue (not to mention the gross mental image) but I can appreciate how there were two ways to go about that particular nasty surprise, and it's good they went with the kinder approach. The cages thing flew by me because I so rarely use ranged attacks, but this valley of mages and all the crystal lizards I keep missing is making me think twice about it. Maybe I'll boost my Vigor a bit more so I can carry a bow with me.
4. So that's the deal with that place. I'm still not a fan of how these games do co-op, having players wait around in regions they either have yet to beat themselves or have already cleared out, and I guess I assumed PvP was the same deal. I've heard a lot about how the covenants aspect is more pronounced in this game, letting you join and drop them more easily. I want to check out that one that lets you try extra dungeons/bosses at some point. (Covenants are one of the few things I did research on, given how they sometimes hide specific spells/items within their progression.)
5. That would explain why they would occasionally join the fight sooner than expected. I did end up spreading the damage around a little because I have a long-reaching weapon, but who doesn't generally focus on one enemy at a time in circumstances like those?
6. Man, I didn't see that at all, even with the lights on. It'd help if this game deigned to have more lore in it. Her armor became available at the vendor in town, but the descriptions are all "armor worn by a forgotten prisoner" with no hints as to who this prisoner might be. Either her identity's a little too well hidden in other pieces of scattered lore or they just left it a mystery on purpose. Well, there's always those YouTube lore videos for all the stuff I probably missed.
7. Yep, I'm already starting to get a little tired of these melee humanoids, as you put it. Similarly to what @claybrez was saying (and thank you for your post, duder), I wouldn't mind so much if there was a little more lore hidden around. NPCs with history on the area (like Gilligan in Earthen Peak, or that chancellor guy in Dranglaic Castle), perhaps. It might be pushing it to request that the player can contact NPCs back in Majula via their Codec for more background info though. I gotta stop crossing the streams...

@mento:

1. If you snipe the salamander to death with a ranged attack, you can then jump through the hole he shoots through. It's a difficult jump, however, that usually takes a number of tries to get.

2. Of the three skeleton lords, the bonewheel spawner is the one who hangs back the most to lob spells at you, making it natural to kill him last. The other two skeleton lords chase you more aggressively, making you more likely to kill them first. I suspect this is intentionally designed to make the boss fight more manageable for its relatively early placement in the game.

4. One thing I appreciate about Dark Souls 2 over the first game is that once you put down your summon sign, you can cross through areas where fog doors had once been, such as the entrance to a boss room, without cancelling your summon sign. This way, while you're waiting to get summoned, you're not chained so strictly to the area where you put your sign. Also, many of the PvP covenants allow you to be summoned to any valid PvP area as long as you're wearing the appropriate covenant ring, regardless of whether you're currently in that particular area.

6, 7. I also wish the lore was more like Dark Souls 1, where it was more intriguing and more more fully realized.