Elden Ring Understands The Tragedy Of A Perfect Boss Battle

thegamer.com:

I’ve always been drawn in by the silence of FromSoftware’s world design. Ever since the release of Eternal Ring for the PS2 back in 2000 I’ve been enamoured by how it depicts bleak, apocalyptic fantasy settings that all but relish in their own misery.

The first-person dungeon crawler was a janky, overly difficult mess - a bit like Elden Ring amirite?!?! - but there was something about its foreboding music and first-person perspective that kept baby Jade playing for hours on end. As Mark Corrigan would say, everything feels completely and utterly fucked, and there’s a morbid appeal to unearthing the lost civilizations and miserable remnants of living beings that still struggle to call this place home.

Related: Elden Ring Is A Touching Love Letter To Berserk’s Kentaro Miura

But you rarely visit these locales in their prime. Dark Souls 2 saw us travel back through time to partake in epic conflicts, but these had already been etched into history, with us joining the fray long after things had begun to fall apart. Lordran, Drangleic, Yharnam, and now The Lands Between all feel the same. We are twisted voyeurs pilfering through the ruins of castles in search of precious resources, ripping weapons from corpses and opening chests that have long become coated with dust. It feels like these places haven’t been occupied for decades, except for enemies who only exist to strike down whoever passes by.

The same can be said for its bosses. Nobody does boss battles like FromSoftware. While other studios have produced exhilarating set pieces and adrenaline-fueled encounters, there’s an artistry to the royal lords and sprawling dragons you fight in Elden Ring that trounce anything that seeks to compete with them. Whether I’m stumbling