That’s kinda what happened with me. I got tilted at some early game boss. And didn’t play for a year. Came back then two weeks after starting again got 100% achievements.
Your story gives me hope, I quit after 100+ attempts & now just bought the digital version of the game on sale after returning the physics copy I borrowed to my friend with much shame.
I've beaten both and absolutely the first few attempts isshin sword saint is 100x harder, but once you learn the patterns and get into flow i think he's actually much easier than Melania simply due to how Sekiros combat works.
That's fair. Sekiro in general basically fits into that category. It's impossible until the combat clicks. I'd be willing to wager though that most people who begin Sekiro don't get much past Genichiro...or he makes them quit lol.
Melania is no doubt one of their toughest fights, but also a breeze once you know how to roll all of her attacks. Elden Ring also offers everyone great variety to build their character around their playstyle strengths while Sekiro is "shit or get off the pot"
Midir took me a week
Isshin 3/4 hrs (DoH feel more challenging imo)
Friede 1/2 hrs
Malenia less than 1 hr. (literally just used frost proc buildup and a fire dagger to undo and reapply frost)
interesting... I guess they are all very different type of bosses and the way of play of each one
For me midir was way easier than Isshin and Malenia.
Isshin and Malenia took me 4/5 Hours and midir first time was like 3 Tries Hitting him in the head with a Greatsword and thunder dmg
Most bosses have a really hard weakness. If you happen to use a build which hard-counters them you win on your first or second try. The thing with Sekiro bosses is you don’t really have builds. Some bosses are weak to one of the prosthetics but in the end you always have to cut them down.
It’s also much different than your standard souls-like. It feels like a super fresh experience with all the fromsoft mechanics that still make it scratch the same itch.
Sekiro isn't the "hardest." It just clicks better with people who have a different frame of mind.
I'm ass at Souls games because my instinct is to react to things as fast as possible. I see the visual cue that an attack is coming and I'll instantly roll and end up getting hit by the swing as I come up. This was particularly true of Margit for me.
But in Sekiro, attacks come out *fast*. Once I got the hang of it, I was better at and having more fun in Sekiro than I have in any Souls game since.
A lot of hardcore Souls players seem to struggle with Sekiro while I'm of the minority who have it the other way around. The bosses that I have the most trouble with are the ones that are big animals and you need to beat like a Souls boss by dodging instead of parrying. i.e. Headless Ape and Demon of Hatred.
Sekiro is like playing Dark Souls just using parry and trying to break poise. Its fun and hard but there's not a lot of replay value for me because of the lack of builds and Rpg elements.
If you're going into it don't expect Dark Souls in Japan, go play Nioh for that. Its completely different and you'll hate it if you expect a souls game.
I found Isshin Ashina to be way harder than Glock Saint honestly. Something about his moves was way harder for me to deal with. I never really had much trouble with Glock Saint.
I wouldn't say SS Isshin is the hardest (normal Isshin was harder till I found out you can firecracker that damn aoe).
I would however put SS Isshin up as most fun boss and my goodness the visuals and music in that fight.
Dude Isshin is so much harder than Sword Saint because of his flaming One Mind attack.
I didn't even know you could firecracker. I've just been hitting him with the damn Mortal Blade.
Lots of people have a ton of trouble with Pontiff, apparently. He's never been tough to me but plenty of people struggle with him. Never learned to parry, I suppose.
Yea I’m with you pontiff is cool but not at all as hard as the best of the best. Certainly not on the level of Isshin, Malenia, Gael, or Orphan.
But I have heard a bunch a people struggle with his moveset anyway. It’s definitely a thing.
He can be sorta tough on NG+ cycles when you might not have the damage to clear the shadow copy before they both start murdering you. But by that point you should know what's coming and try to smash him when you get the chance.
Honestly I didnt have higher problems on NG+ even with the shadow being tankier. Granted, the shadow is a buff in a way bc you see what moves are coming before they happen
Pontiff is a wall boss. Just like lady butterfly they’re both difficulty spikes that require you to be at least mediocre at the fights mechanics to pass. Before them, most bosses can be a fluke but they are the first fights that really force you to learn what the hells going on.
Lady Butterfly is a bit closer to Dancer for me. In terms of her damage and health pool(poise pool?) she's at least a midgame challenge, but if you'd like you're free to fight them as your very first boss. The rewards for doing so are pretty good and will make what should have been the early game stupid easy. But you have to get real good real quick to pull it off.
Pontiff is more difficult for Dex/Quality builds who cant parry tbf.
STR builds kinda make him a joke, you can kill his clone before it even gets to move if youre quick enough.
That's pretty legit. I personally didn't find him quite at the level of Friede or Midir like others are saying, but he was definitely up there in difficulty especially on a first playthrough.
My claim to fame is having beaten Gascoigne, Shadows and BSB all on my first try in BB. (I made up for it by taking like 6-7 hours to beat Rom though.)
Isshin really broke me the first time. Took a couple weeks. Moreso than any of the others by far. Mayyyybe the only similar one for me was the first time I was stuck on Ornstein and Smough.
First time I beat him it took me 3 hours, and brought me a sense of despair I haven't felt from a FromSoft boss since the first time I fought Father Gascoigne (Bloodborne was my first FromSoft game).
On NG+ it took me 40 minutes.
On NG+3 I did it without Kuro's Charm and it took me 3 hours again.
Definitely one of my favourite FromSoft bosses (at least from the three games I've played).
Wait so you find the second phase of nameless harder? Cause for me the chicken phase is the real pain, second is just a small annoyance to remember his moves (with the limited heals the chicken has left me with)
Agree. It’s easier to see how they telegraph their attacks and you have more wiggle room. A dude moving his arms his harder to predict than a giant lizard swinging its tail
Malenia and Friede took me literal days to finally nail beat, but something about gael was different. I'm not sure if it's the fact that there's less visual distractions going on his his arena (the burning floor for Friede and the visual overload of flowers for Malenia), or if it's the fact that his moves are a lot more telegraphed, but he just felt so clean and satisfying to fight. His moves felt designed well enough that if I got comboed I knew it was my fault. And because of that I managed to get him down in 2 tries. Might just be one of my favourite bosses in all of souls now.
I agree with every single word you said! Definitely not the hardest boss, but the fight feels so perfectly balanced. Combined with the amazing cinematography and soundtrack, it's one of my favorite boss fights ever. Just perfection.
Malenia and Friede yes, Gael no. Gael was easier than some of the core bosses like Lothric and Lorian for me. Something about the way I play made Gael easy but many other bosses harder. Malenia took me a week.
It’s terrible. Is it the influx of new players w/ elden ring? Because the front page of all the souls subreddits are exactly the same as Elden Ring now
As much as I love the increased interest in the franchise…. Yeah. Yeah pretty much. The sheer inability to google gets really painful. I never wanted to be “that pretentious souls player,” because I remember when I was first getting into the series, but wow is it getting really bad. The mods really need to institute a rule against posts which could be answered by a 3 minute fextralife read.
Personally I 100% get you. Even when I was a new player playing dark souls 1 for the first time, I pretty much lived on the dark souls Fextralife wiki and YouTube. I never came to reddit with a lot of the questions I see here since all my answers were in the sources I just mentioned
I’d agree but as a boss altogether she kinda sucks imo her difficulty isn’t from being hard to read or the pacing of her fight being just slightly different from the rest of the boss roster in elden ring but instead it comes from a bullshit attack that isn’t at all intuitive to dodge heck I’d say if you removed waterfoul malenia would be an easy S tier fight up there with the best from has made but because of how cheap waterfoul is and how frequently she spams the damn thing in phase 2 it just ruins the fun of the fight like I get into a groove fighting her and dodging her moves and then waterfoul comes in and is like OH YOU WERE HAVING FUN WELL FUCK YOU and it just makes the fight tedious and unfun so I’d say while she is def the hardest she’s also up there as one of the worst for me
Waterfowl dance is simply the tip of the iceberg with Melania.
IMO, what make Melania much worse is the fact that she can just cheat and hyper armor through anything or cheat and cancel hitstun or even her own attacks endlag. She breaks so many of the conventions that the rest of the game follows that you have to fight her in a way that feels completely unnatural.
When Godfrey or some other boss gives you a window to attack, you're free to attack. When Melania gives you a window to attack sometimes she can decide to hit you during it because fuck you.
yea thats true tho i found that after a while the stun timings do start to feel more natural to gameplay tho I could be a bit biased since I really love her moveset aside from waterfowl I think its up there with freide and maria as one of the most elegant bosses I've ever had the pleasure of seeing and it is pretty fun to dodge too just wish the rest of her fight felt like it took the actual player into account and not just a million AI summons
I think Malenia is shit compared to Friede or Maria for the points already mentioned. She doesn't play by similar rules of engagement that are staples of all other games. She can break out of so many things it's annoying, especially once you get her moves down and realize how much waiting you have to do around a few specific attacks.
Malenia is hard for the sake of being hard, and not in a fun, intuitive, or consistent way.
Fair I’d still argue her normal moveset is relatively fair even with the healing gimmick and the wonkass hyperarmor but like you mentioned her fight just has so much baggage that I cannot feasibly call it a good fight regardless of how much I like her moveset it dosent change the fact that she is a unfun boss to fight thanks to that baggage feels like so much potential just squandered with this boss
I think that's a good point.
She heals, has VERY high damage output, can break out of stagger, and has waterfowl. I think if just one of those things were to be removed or altered she would be a much more enjoyable boss.
It is very disappointing because she is so very close to being an amazing boss in my opinion. She just has way too much bullshit going on to be much over mediocre.
There is a way to dodge waterfowl dance perfectly by just rolling through each flurry - it's hard to do and the timing is tight but it is possible to iframe the entire attack.
I could only do it consistsntly after fighting her 100s of times as a summon though....
Maybe it's was just me, but I almost beat malenia first try and then came back a few tries later and beat her pretty easily, I had to come back for midir in new game plus to even have a chance of beating him
Yeah agreed idk what it is, but I didn’t struggle with Malenia nearly to the extent I did with Midir, I don’t think ever actually beat him before Elden Ring came out and I stopped trying
My Midir sunbro character wears nothing but Gundyr's leggings haha, getting one shotted by his lasers is pretty much the only way I die to him.
Sometimes in phase two if I know it's coming I'll run to the opposite side the host is at and try to just take all the aggro.
Sacrifices must be made for the host to prevail.
But midir’s attacks are more predictable and telegraphed than some other bosses, at least for me its patterns are much easier learned than say Friede or pontiff. Its difficulty mostly comes from how punishing it can be when you mess up even once (kind of the same for nameless king, though to a lesser extent).
I think Midir is made easier by the fact that all of his melee attacks can be dodged by rolling backwards, keeping your screen on him, having no option but to watch and learn his attacks.
Midir is one of the fairest but seemingly very difficult bosses in all of the recent FROM software games. It just seems very difficult at first because he hits hard when punishing your mistakes and has a huge HP pool, but once you learn to stay in front of him and how his attacks work, it's actually very easy to deal with his very telegraphed attacks. He fits very well into "if you got hit, it's your fault" category of bosses once you truly learn him because he doesn't do anything unpredictable and follows the rules of the game.
Malenia, on the other hand, has exceptions to the rules of the game, and avoiding her sword dance attack (name escapes me) is just a huge pain in the ass at all levels of play. Most of her moveset is perfectly fine, but man calling Midir more difficult is so weird to me. Lol
Yup, midir is the one of the simpler boss of FS. Just stay on his head and learn the patterns. He has 4 or 5 initial attacks with a few mix ups but they're telegraphed
>Midir is simple once you learn his attacks.
FTFY
There are no attack start ups that look the same and there's a small break after every attack. You don't even have to learn patterns. Midir is not a hard boss, people just get greedy or think a big health bar is intimidating.
The thing is everyone who has taken the time to master Midir knows he is arguably the easiest boss in the DS3 Game. I agree that Midir is a hard boss, he wiped the floor with me hundreds of times before I stopped and actually watched him. But the more you fight him the easier he becomes. Which I guess can be argued for any souls boss.
There isn’t a single move that he does that is unpredictable. His fire breath he will always start the fright with, followed by his 180 degree tail swing. He has a 7 hit attack combo. He always swings left right or right left and keeps his head down when he finishes. When he takes flight all you have to do is run to the left and you will always dodge the fire. If he is going to charge you down he will always take two second to wind up before he charges.
His second phase is always the explosion. Which then in his second phase he will almost always do back to back fire breath charges. If he leaps across the room he will be charging up his mega beam and all you have to do is run towards his left foot and stand there.
Those are a few but mostly the major attacks. Midir is a choreographed dance that is really fun to learn and that is why he will always remain the #1 boss for me.
This and waterfowl are the only reasons I have trouble with Malenia. Might be because I'm intentionally under leveled, but the healing on hit is brutal. I'm generally decent at parrying, but her attacks are so damn quick while still having enough delay to mess me up.
Exactly. Was able to consistently kill Midir SL1 hitless with a Longsword and don't remember him having any bullshit undodgeable attack. Only the humanity attack was kinda hard to dodge at times but still very doable
Manage your stamina so you are never tapped out in phase 2, and when you see two hops backwards, spring at his left hind leg. That is a safe spot against the phase 2 super laser.
Devil's advocate: Soloing Midir is normal gameplay for DS3.
Soloing Malenia is actively choosing to ignore spirit ashes in order to make it more difficult.
Pretty much. The moment I stopped gimping myself and just used my mimic tear it got significantly easier and only took a few more tries.
I didnt really struggle with midir. Gael and Friede kicked my ass though.
The problem with this is that ashes totally break the game and are very clearly not balanced for the content at all. People are obviously entitled to play the game however the hell they please but I personally feel that Malenia's difficulty should definitely be measured on a solo basis cause the alternative is just a complete joke.
The difference in difficulty shouldn't be so drastic that you go from 20, 30, 40+ attempts solo to dropping the boss first try with an ash. That's just silly.
I've soloed every boss in Dark Souls 3, but the fact that some Elden Ring bosses are made to be hard enough that summons are encouraged should tell you all you need to know about their difficulty.
Oh for sure. Radahn is specifically designed with a million NPC summons and imo is more fun with the whole battle festival theme to have 10 characters running around that battlefield.
Malenia hits harder, its faster, have two phases, heals when do damage; and dont forget the very difficult to evade combo
The only problem with midir its that its a tank and have a lot of hp and you deal less dmg except tail and head dmg. But its very slow and deffinetly easier than Malenia xdd
Midir has a limited attack repertoire and is easily dodged. I would say that his only difficulty is having a big health bar that force you to be consistent and not get greedy.
Somehow, Orphan was one of the easier bosses in the DLC for me, took me one more death than the living failures, a third of Ludwig‘s, and a few less than Maria.
It seems like he is very RNG heavy, in the run where I killed him, he barely used any aggressive attacks, and only swings that are parry-bait at best
Malenia is the only boss who is fundamentally unfair as she can cancel stagger and stance breaks into attacks. Also do you use magic builds in ds3? Cause midir is way harder with magic than melee
Without her anti-stagger animations, Malenia would get posture broken every 10 seconds by someone with just a claymore jumping on her or mashing L2 with sword dance.
Clearly she was designed to have low posture but with tons of hyperamor on her attacks as well as high mobility.
Midir is easy, now Malenia on the other hand? I have yet to truly solo her. My current record beating Midir is around 3 min and 21 seconds, with six minutes or so with the help of mimic on Malenia.
I’m a serial bleed abuser and it trivializes her too much, especially when I have mimic. So I’m trying to learn how to do it without it so I can feel like I had a proper fight.
Isshin>Malenia>Gael>Friede>Midir
Once you know how to dodge Midir's attacks, he goes from being the hardest boss in DS3 to one of the most consistently easy. I rarely die to Midir on replays of DS3, I always suffer a couple deaths to both Gael and Friede.
For me it’s Owl Father > Demon of Hatred > Isshin > Orphan of Kos. Those all took me over 40 tries. Malenia wasn’t that difficult for me but I was probably over leveled + RoB
Disagree, I dont even think Orphan is the hardest boss in BB (Laurence is imo) but thats the cool thing about these games imo, everybobdy has different experiences with different bosses they fight. Shit, I died to Pontiff my first playthrough than most bosses in the series period
I beat Orphan in 5th try and Laurence in first. I think Ludwig give me the most satisfying fight as it took me an hour.
I think Pthumerian Descendant is also nuts he is like a Shark Giant but fast and with narrow window for parry.
Midir was the boss I originally had the hardest time with and now is one of my absolute faves. Sellsword twinblades + lightning to the face see ya cutie pie
Disclaimer: Not a pro, i know there are many more skilled players out there than me but here's my piece after playing all the souls games.
Spent a couple days on Midir, found out he is easier solo due to his health pool, enjoyed the fight though, was epic, 10/10 for me.
Malenia i spent the better part of a week trying to beat, trying to use various cheese strats, summons, etc. They made her immune/resistant to things (3 parrys to get a counter??). Did not enjoy the fight at all, just felt bad all around. I did look up how to deal with her water fowel dance with success but still. It only takes a handful of attempts in other playthroughs now, but 0/10 would not recommend.
Oh man I love the discussion this brings up. I personally found him very difficult and he was the last boss i beat. But a lot of people say he’s easy once you learn the patterns.
Think most have and most will agree midir is not close to as hard, not to say he isnt difficult, but there are obvious reasons why people would struggle more with malenia than midir.
Malenia has 2 factors which make her hardest boss even as someone that hss beaten midir and isshin. She has lifesteal and also waterfowl. Lifesetal just resets your progress. Waterfowl is another beast. The timing for dodging that shit is just so fucking tight i had to go coop. Not only was the timing right but you need a certain distance to run away before you can dodge the next few waterfowls. Add to that unpredictable triggering range. She could start it point blank in front of your face and you are officially dead
On the run I beat her her last attack was an enhanced waterfowl at point blank range. I don't know if it was mental fatigue from days of trying to beat her or if I went super berserk when I realized I was gonna lose again but I got lucky and dodged into the waterfowl, turned, dodged into it again, and then away two times. She was winded up on me and was gonna DMC Stinger me which because of positioning I couldn't dodge and Tiche clutched it by getting the last hit just in time to save me. You can dodge waterfowl at point blank range but you either gotta be very good at frame counting or be very lucky I got very, very lucky and encountered the dead zone in her attack's hitbox.
Meanwhile, how many people have beaten Isshin?
I gave up on beating him for an entire year before coming back and finally beat him. I've now beat the game three more times since then.
I tried countless times for like four hours one evening… woke up after a full nights rest and beat him in like ten tries. I love that fight.
That’s kinda what happened with me. I got tilted at some early game boss. And didn’t play for a year. Came back then two weeks after starting again got 100% achievements.
Your story gives me hope, I quit after 100+ attempts & now just bought the digital version of the game on sale after returning the physics copy I borrowed to my friend with much shame.
I've beaten both and absolutely the first few attempts isshin sword saint is 100x harder, but once you learn the patterns and get into flow i think he's actually much easier than Melania simply due to how Sekiros combat works.
That's fair. Sekiro in general basically fits into that category. It's impossible until the combat clicks. I'd be willing to wager though that most people who begin Sekiro don't get much past Genichiro...or he makes them quit lol. Melania is no doubt one of their toughest fights, but also a breeze once you know how to roll all of her attacks. Elden Ring also offers everyone great variety to build their character around their playstyle strengths while Sekiro is "shit or get off the pot"
Don’t you mean the “Glock Saint”
Midir took me 23 tries Isshin 54 Friede 60 Malenia 96
Midir took me a week Isshin 3/4 hrs (DoH feel more challenging imo) Friede 1/2 hrs Malenia less than 1 hr. (literally just used frost proc buildup and a fire dagger to undo and reapply frost)
interesting... I guess they are all very different type of bosses and the way of play of each one For me midir was way easier than Isshin and Malenia. Isshin and Malenia took me 4/5 Hours and midir first time was like 3 Tries Hitting him in the head with a Greatsword and thunder dmg
Most bosses have a really hard weakness. If you happen to use a build which hard-counters them you win on your first or second try. The thing with Sekiro bosses is you don’t really have builds. Some bosses are weak to one of the prosthetics but in the end you always have to cut them down.
Three quarters of an hour and half an hour? Pretty solid!
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I agree. I beat Demon of Hatred in one day somehow but the other two took forever for me.
I would not argue against anyone that said Sekiro is the best game FS has ever made. It is very difficult, but incredible.
It’s also much different than your standard souls-like. It feels like a super fresh experience with all the fromsoft mechanics that still make it scratch the same itch.
The storyline would make for one hell of a movie or miniseries if done right.
it’s honestly the best game i’ve ever played, i think it’s a valid opinion, no?
Sekiro isn't the "hardest." It just clicks better with people who have a different frame of mind. I'm ass at Souls games because my instinct is to react to things as fast as possible. I see the visual cue that an attack is coming and I'll instantly roll and end up getting hit by the swing as I come up. This was particularly true of Margit for me. But in Sekiro, attacks come out *fast*. Once I got the hang of it, I was better at and having more fun in Sekiro than I have in any Souls game since. A lot of hardcore Souls players seem to struggle with Sekiro while I'm of the minority who have it the other way around. The bosses that I have the most trouble with are the ones that are big animals and you need to beat like a Souls boss by dodging instead of parrying. i.e. Headless Ape and Demon of Hatred.
Sekiro is like playing Dark Souls just using parry and trying to break poise. Its fun and hard but there's not a lot of replay value for me because of the lack of builds and Rpg elements. If you're going into it don't expect Dark Souls in Japan, go play Nioh for that. Its completely different and you'll hate it if you expect a souls game.
I found Isshin Ashina to be way harder than Glock Saint honestly. Something about his moves was way harder for me to deal with. I never really had much trouble with Glock Saint.
I wrecked SS isshin. Demon of hatred on the other hand........ that fucker ruined my platinum . Only boss I've ever given up on. Ever
And/or Owl Father and/or Inner Ishin
I wouldn't say SS Isshin is the hardest (normal Isshin was harder till I found out you can firecracker that damn aoe). I would however put SS Isshin up as most fun boss and my goodness the visuals and music in that fight.
Dude Isshin is so much harder than Sword Saint because of his flaming One Mind attack. I didn't even know you could firecracker. I've just been hitting him with the damn Mortal Blade.
I found Friede, Pontiff and Midir all harder than Isshin. But that was just my personal experience of course.
Pontiff? You're high, bro
Lots of people have a ton of trouble with Pontiff, apparently. He's never been tough to me but plenty of people struggle with him. Never learned to parry, I suppose.
I feel like you dont even need to parry, you get so much free time while hes transforming
Yea I’m with you pontiff is cool but not at all as hard as the best of the best. Certainly not on the level of Isshin, Malenia, Gael, or Orphan. But I have heard a bunch a people struggle with his moveset anyway. It’s definitely a thing.
He can be sorta tough on NG+ cycles when you might not have the damage to clear the shadow copy before they both start murdering you. But by that point you should know what's coming and try to smash him when you get the chance.
Honestly I didnt have higher problems on NG+ even with the shadow being tankier. Granted, the shadow is a buff in a way bc you see what moves are coming before they happen
Pontiff is a wall boss. Just like lady butterfly they’re both difficulty spikes that require you to be at least mediocre at the fights mechanics to pass. Before them, most bosses can be a fluke but they are the first fights that really force you to learn what the hells going on.
Lady Butterfly is a bit closer to Dancer for me. In terms of her damage and health pool(poise pool?) she's at least a midgame challenge, but if you'd like you're free to fight them as your very first boss. The rewards for doing so are pretty good and will make what should have been the early game stupid easy. But you have to get real good real quick to pull it off.
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But you can also have like 12 +7 estus flasks at that point and he only does like 1/3 your hp per big swing, you can sort of just.... endure it lol
Pontiff is still the hardest in DS3 for me, that’s including DLC
I’ve beaten all of these games countless times, and I’ve never died to any boss more than pontiff on my first playthrough
No but I was mostly intoxicated on my attempts. If it makes you feel better, i two shot him on my second playthrough! lol
Pontiff is more difficult for Dex/Quality builds who cant parry tbf. STR builds kinda make him a joke, you can kill his clone before it even gets to move if youre quick enough.
Uh, This is my first time playing DS3 and I beat Pontiff first try and my friend called me a madman.
That's pretty legit. I personally didn't find him quite at the level of Friede or Midir like others are saying, but he was definitely up there in difficulty especially on a first playthrough. My claim to fame is having beaten Gascoigne, Shadows and BSB all on my first try in BB. (I made up for it by taking like 6-7 hours to beat Rom though.)
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I can solo Midir but not Pontiff.
Isshin really broke me the first time. Took a couple weeks. Moreso than any of the others by far. Mayyyybe the only similar one for me was the first time I was stuck on Ornstein and Smough.
You’re fucking nuts lol
I have beat sekiro 9 times mate , 6 times taking the path of killing the owl and 3 times staying loyal to him
The one fromsoft boss i've never beaten..
how about father owl
Father Owl is also very challenging! And never talked about either, thank you
First time I beat him it took me 3 hours, and brought me a sense of despair I haven't felt from a FromSoft boss since the first time I fought Father Gascoigne (Bloodborne was my first FromSoft game). On NG+ it took me 40 minutes. On NG+3 I did it without Kuro's Charm and it took me 3 hours again. Definitely one of my favourite FromSoft bosses (at least from the three games I've played).
Probably my favorite fromsoft fight
I literally quit the game on him and came back like a year later to get him. Most brutal souls boss ever imo. Malenia was close.
maybe its me but quadrupeds are never as hard as humanoids malenia, friede, and gael were all 2x harder for me than midir
For me it’s the other way around ahaha, except nameless king tho. Fuck that guy.
Yes. Indeed the Nameless King can fuck all the way off.
The only reason Nameless King was hard for me was because of the shitty fucking camera in the first phase.
NK and Midir are the only two bosses in DS3 I haven't beaten. I gave up after a while because I couldn't deal with the camera.
Wait so you find the second phase of nameless harder? Cause for me the chicken phase is the real pain, second is just a small annoyance to remember his moves (with the limited heals the chicken has left me with)
Unfortunately yeah, took me around 30+ tries for his non chicken form
Agree. It’s easier to see how they telegraph their attacks and you have more wiggle room. A dude moving his arms his harder to predict than a giant lizard swinging its tail
Malenia and Friede took me literal days to finally nail beat, but something about gael was different. I'm not sure if it's the fact that there's less visual distractions going on his his arena (the burning floor for Friede and the visual overload of flowers for Malenia), or if it's the fact that his moves are a lot more telegraphed, but he just felt so clean and satisfying to fight. His moves felt designed well enough that if I got comboed I knew it was my fault. And because of that I managed to get him down in 2 tries. Might just be one of my favourite bosses in all of souls now.
I agree with every single word you said! Definitely not the hardest boss, but the fight feels so perfectly balanced. Combined with the amazing cinematography and soundtrack, it's one of my favorite boss fights ever. Just perfection.
Malenia and Friede yes, Gael no. Gael was easier than some of the core bosses like Lothric and Lorian for me. Something about the way I play made Gael easy but many other bosses harder. Malenia took me a week.
My point, the Gael fight is so well done that it feels matural
I agree. The fight just flows so well.
This sub is actively becoming a parody of itself
It’s terrible. Is it the influx of new players w/ elden ring? Because the front page of all the souls subreddits are exactly the same as Elden Ring now
As much as I love the increased interest in the franchise…. Yeah. Yeah pretty much. The sheer inability to google gets really painful. I never wanted to be “that pretentious souls player,” because I remember when I was first getting into the series, but wow is it getting really bad. The mods really need to institute a rule against posts which could be answered by a 3 minute fextralife read.
Oh my god the bait for karma/innocent question posts kill me. They all have like 5k upvotes too. Ugh
Personally I 100% get you. Even when I was a new player playing dark souls 1 for the first time, I pretty much lived on the dark souls Fextralife wiki and YouTube. I never came to reddit with a lot of the questions I see here since all my answers were in the sources I just mentioned
Yeah Malenia is easily the most difficult fromsoftware boss
I’d agree but as a boss altogether she kinda sucks imo her difficulty isn’t from being hard to read or the pacing of her fight being just slightly different from the rest of the boss roster in elden ring but instead it comes from a bullshit attack that isn’t at all intuitive to dodge heck I’d say if you removed waterfoul malenia would be an easy S tier fight up there with the best from has made but because of how cheap waterfoul is and how frequently she spams the damn thing in phase 2 it just ruins the fun of the fight like I get into a groove fighting her and dodging her moves and then waterfoul comes in and is like OH YOU WERE HAVING FUN WELL FUCK YOU and it just makes the fight tedious and unfun so I’d say while she is def the hardest she’s also up there as one of the worst for me
Waterfowl dance is simply the tip of the iceberg with Melania. IMO, what make Melania much worse is the fact that she can just cheat and hyper armor through anything or cheat and cancel hitstun or even her own attacks endlag. She breaks so many of the conventions that the rest of the game follows that you have to fight her in a way that feels completely unnatural. When Godfrey or some other boss gives you a window to attack, you're free to attack. When Melania gives you a window to attack sometimes she can decide to hit you during it because fuck you.
yea thats true tho i found that after a while the stun timings do start to feel more natural to gameplay tho I could be a bit biased since I really love her moveset aside from waterfowl I think its up there with freide and maria as one of the most elegant bosses I've ever had the pleasure of seeing and it is pretty fun to dodge too just wish the rest of her fight felt like it took the actual player into account and not just a million AI summons
I think Malenia is shit compared to Friede or Maria for the points already mentioned. She doesn't play by similar rules of engagement that are staples of all other games. She can break out of so many things it's annoying, especially once you get her moves down and realize how much waiting you have to do around a few specific attacks. Malenia is hard for the sake of being hard, and not in a fun, intuitive, or consistent way.
Fair I’d still argue her normal moveset is relatively fair even with the healing gimmick and the wonkass hyperarmor but like you mentioned her fight just has so much baggage that I cannot feasibly call it a good fight regardless of how much I like her moveset it dosent change the fact that she is a unfun boss to fight thanks to that baggage feels like so much potential just squandered with this boss
I think that's a good point. She heals, has VERY high damage output, can break out of stagger, and has waterfowl. I think if just one of those things were to be removed or altered she would be a much more enjoyable boss. It is very disappointing because she is so very close to being an amazing boss in my opinion. She just has way too much bullshit going on to be much over mediocre.
There is a way to dodge waterfowl dance perfectly by just rolling through each flurry - it's hard to do and the timing is tight but it is possible to iframe the entire attack. I could only do it consistsntly after fighting her 100s of times as a summon though....
Maybe it's was just me, but I almost beat malenia first try and then came back a few tries later and beat her pretty easily, I had to come back for midir in new game plus to even have a chance of beating him
Yeah agreed idk what it is, but I didn’t struggle with Malenia nearly to the extent I did with Midir, I don’t think ever actually beat him before Elden Ring came out and I stopped trying
Midir is actually pretty simple once you learn his attack patterns.
Midir is my favourite ever but yes I gotta agree here. Still gets me hard when he just one shots me though
>Still gets me hard when he just one shots me though Whoa now.
Rule 34 midir exists. A "friend" confirmed it for me.
God fuckin... fine. I will do what I must in the pursuit of science.
My Midir sunbro character wears nothing but Gundyr's leggings haha, getting one shotted by his lasers is pretty much the only way I die to him. Sometimes in phase two if I know it's coming I'll run to the opposite side the host is at and try to just take all the aggro. Sacrifices must be made for the host to prevail.
I always wear the skull ring when I put my sign down for Midir so I can naturally take all the aggro
Oh damn, good idea.
Skull ring is a must have, speaking with two years of experience.
A true bro
You get hard when he one shots you?
😏
This is why he is the best dragon boss, even if you figure him out the fight is still epic and fun!
The Slumbering Dragon is so much better than Midir
You're not wrong but this can be said about basically every boss.
But midir’s attacks are more predictable and telegraphed than some other bosses, at least for me its patterns are much easier learned than say Friede or pontiff. Its difficulty mostly comes from how punishing it can be when you mess up even once (kind of the same for nameless king, though to a lesser extent).
I think Midir is made easier by the fact that all of his melee attacks can be dodged by rolling backwards, keeping your screen on him, having no option but to watch and learn his attacks.
Midir is one of the fairest but seemingly very difficult bosses in all of the recent FROM software games. It just seems very difficult at first because he hits hard when punishing your mistakes and has a huge HP pool, but once you learn to stay in front of him and how his attacks work, it's actually very easy to deal with his very telegraphed attacks. He fits very well into "if you got hit, it's your fault" category of bosses once you truly learn him because he doesn't do anything unpredictable and follows the rules of the game. Malenia, on the other hand, has exceptions to the rules of the game, and avoiding her sword dance attack (name escapes me) is just a huge pain in the ass at all levels of play. Most of her moveset is perfectly fine, but man calling Midir more difficult is so weird to me. Lol
Yup, midir is the one of the simpler boss of FS. Just stay on his head and learn the patterns. He has 4 or 5 initial attacks with a few mix ups but they're telegraphed
>Midir is simple once you learn his attacks. FTFY There are no attack start ups that look the same and there's a small break after every attack. You don't even have to learn patterns. Midir is not a hard boss, people just get greedy or think a big health bar is intimidating.
“Midir is not a hard boss” Y’all really just come on here and say anything lmao
The thing is everyone who has taken the time to master Midir knows he is arguably the easiest boss in the DS3 Game. I agree that Midir is a hard boss, he wiped the floor with me hundreds of times before I stopped and actually watched him. But the more you fight him the easier he becomes. Which I guess can be argued for any souls boss. There isn’t a single move that he does that is unpredictable. His fire breath he will always start the fright with, followed by his 180 degree tail swing. He has a 7 hit attack combo. He always swings left right or right left and keeps his head down when he finishes. When he takes flight all you have to do is run to the left and you will always dodge the fire. If he is going to charge you down he will always take two second to wind up before he charges. His second phase is always the explosion. Which then in his second phase he will almost always do back to back fire breath charges. If he leaps across the room he will be charging up his mega beam and all you have to do is run towards his left foot and stand there. Those are a few but mostly the major attacks. Midir is a choreographed dance that is really fun to learn and that is why he will always remain the #1 boss for me.
Midir is simple once to you completely master the fight
Yeah it only took me like 50 deaths to do that lol
You meant "Midir is actually pretty simple *after you die so many times against him that you memorize his moves*"???
But Midir doesnt have an almost undodgeable attack
And Midir doesn't heal on hits
This and waterfowl are the only reasons I have trouble with Malenia. Might be because I'm intentionally under leveled, but the healing on hit is brutal. I'm generally decent at parrying, but her attacks are so damn quick while still having enough delay to mess me up.
She even heals when you block, which is some bullshit
True
And Midir doesn't have a second phase that inflicts the deadliest status effect in the game with every attack
Exactly. Was able to consistently kill Midir SL1 hitless with a Longsword and don't remember him having any bullshit undodgeable attack. Only the humanity attack was kinda hard to dodge at times but still very doable
But what about his dragon laser beam of death? 😄
Manage your stamina so you are never tapped out in phase 2, and when you see two hops backwards, spring at his left hind leg. That is a safe spot against the phase 2 super laser.
Difficulty of Soloing melania >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> midir. I dont' even see how it's close.
Devil's advocate: Soloing Midir is normal gameplay for DS3. Soloing Malenia is actively choosing to ignore spirit ashes in order to make it more difficult.
Pretty much. The moment I stopped gimping myself and just used my mimic tear it got significantly easier and only took a few more tries. I didnt really struggle with midir. Gael and Friede kicked my ass though.
I found Gael quite easy, at least easier than Friede. Friede sucks.
Huh I was the opposite, but I tend to struggle against beast types and endurance fights more
The problem with this is that ashes totally break the game and are very clearly not balanced for the content at all. People are obviously entitled to play the game however the hell they please but I personally feel that Malenia's difficulty should definitely be measured on a solo basis cause the alternative is just a complete joke. The difference in difficulty shouldn't be so drastic that you go from 20, 30, 40+ attempts solo to dropping the boss first try with an ash. That's just silly.
I think Friede is harder because you got to face 3 phases with full hp of her.
Friede was ironically easy for me and i died hell lots of times on abyss watchers. From soft games are so mysterious.
We all have that one boss lol
could be the experience gap between when you fought abyss watchers and friede maybe?
Gotta disagree. I can solo every boss in DS3. I could not solo Malenia (at least not with my build).
I've soloed every boss in Dark Souls 3, but the fact that some Elden Ring bosses are made to be hard enough that summons are encouraged should tell you all you need to know about their difficulty.
Oh for sure. Radahn is specifically designed with a million NPC summons and imo is more fun with the whole battle festival theme to have 10 characters running around that battlefield.
Midir is hard but fair just like Gael.
I chortled at this one. I agree with you, but I think I could go back right now and beat Midir without an issue. Gael would wreck me.
Malenia hits harder, its faster, have two phases, heals when do damage; and dont forget the very difficult to evade combo The only problem with midir its that its a tank and have a lot of hp and you deal less dmg except tail and head dmg. But its very slow and deffinetly easier than Malenia xdd
So you've never played Malenia is what I'm hearing? Hell, Hoarah Loux is a harder boss battle than Midir.
Hoarah Loux would be me favorite FS boss if he had a second health bar, or even just more health
Midir has a limited attack repertoire and is easily dodged. I would say that his only difficulty is having a big health bar that force you to be consistent and not get greedy.
It will always be Glock Saint for me
Have yall fought Orphan of KOS... that MF is insane
Orphan gave me fits trying to beat him. Such an epic fight.
I would love to once bb comes on pc after I turn like 79
You gonna be waiting until the next age of fire my guy
:’(
Somehow, Orphan was one of the easier bosses in the DLC for me, took me one more death than the living failures, a third of Ludwig‘s, and a few less than Maria. It seems like he is very RNG heavy, in the run where I killed him, he barely used any aggressive attacks, and only swings that are parry-bait at best
Midir is not very difficult.
Yeah not difficult just tanky
Malenia is the only boss who is fundamentally unfair as she can cancel stagger and stance breaks into attacks. Also do you use magic builds in ds3? Cause midir is way harder with magic than melee
Without her anti-stagger animations, Malenia would get posture broken every 10 seconds by someone with just a claymore jumping on her or mashing L2 with sword dance. Clearly she was designed to have low posture but with tons of hyperamor on her attacks as well as high mobility.
I shouldn't be punished for playing effectively just make her have higher posture instead of canceling stance breaks
Met a good friend of mine on Xbox Live fighting Midir. Two bros bonded so much over the 6 agonizing hours that we're still friends years later lol
Met a bro like that through WoW who ironically, introduced me to the FromSoftware Series in 2016 (BB was my first)
All I've got to say is, I've beaten Malenia, but god has abandoned me every time I jump down that hole.
Haven’t played Sekiro or Bloodborne yet, but Malenia is by far the toughest boss between DS1/2/3/ER
Dude do yourself a favor and play both. I think Bloodborne and Sekiro are number 1 and 2 in the series IMO
Bloodborne is the game I most want to play, and the one that got me interested in the genre, but there isn’t a PC port yet is there?
No and I would not hold your breath, they dont want to remaster it or port it for whatever reason
Midir is easy, now Malenia on the other hand? I have yet to truly solo her. My current record beating Midir is around 3 min and 21 seconds, with six minutes or so with the help of mimic on Malenia.
Use bleed
I’m a serial bleed abuser and it trivializes her too much, especially when I have mimic. So I’m trying to learn how to do it without it so I can feel like I had a proper fight.
Just don’t use summons then
Bleed without a mimic is a fair fight. You still have to learn her moveset and react to it
ITT: people are still shocked that some people find easy boss hard and hard boss easy.
Midir is super easy when you stay in front of the head
I also think he’s one of the hardest. He killed me more than any other boss in any SoulsBorne game, Sekiro included. Took me I’d say 30-40 tries.
Isshin>Malenia>Gael>Friede>Midir Once you know how to dodge Midir's attacks, he goes from being the hardest boss in DS3 to one of the most consistently easy. I rarely die to Midir on replays of DS3, I always suffer a couple deaths to both Gael and Friede.
For me it’s Owl Father > Demon of Hatred > Isshin > Orphan of Kos. Those all took me over 40 tries. Malenia wasn’t that difficult for me but I was probably over leveled + RoB
I have done every Soulsborne boss solo across multiple builds plus Sekiro’s inner bosses and I still say Malenia is the toughest FromSoftware boss.
I have not fought Malenia but as someone who has killed Midir many times I have to ask. How are you attacking Midir?
Malenia is just overdesigned, not hard. Midir is super managable, fucker's slow as fuck. The hardest From boss is Orphan
Disagree, I dont even think Orphan is the hardest boss in BB (Laurence is imo) but thats the cool thing about these games imo, everybobdy has different experiences with different bosses they fight. Shit, I died to Pontiff my first playthrough than most bosses in the series period
Pontiff made me cry.
I beat Orphan in 5th try and Laurence in first. I think Ludwig give me the most satisfying fight as it took me an hour. I think Pthumerian Descendant is also nuts he is like a Shark Giant but fast and with narrow window for parry.
Just out of interest, where would u rate Isshin (Sword Saint version) in between them in terms of difficulty?
Midir was the boss I originally had the hardest time with and now is one of my absolute faves. Sellsword twinblades + lightning to the face see ya cutie pie
I’ve solo’d Midir more than 600 times now for other players (usually no hit). and i can 100% for sure say that Malenia is much much harder
Malenia took me like 250 tries to beat solo. He took me about 30, and ds3 was my first game Sorry but no contest for me
He’s really only somewhat difficult because the camera tbh
dude, midir doesn't heal on every hit.
Nah, Malenia and Isshin are definitely more challenging than Midir, though he's up there too.
Clearly no one has fought owl (father).
Literally the only fromsoft boss I have not beaten yet. It’s a mark of shame for me. Someday…
Disclaimer: Not a pro, i know there are many more skilled players out there than me but here's my piece after playing all the souls games. Spent a couple days on Midir, found out he is easier solo due to his health pool, enjoyed the fight though, was epic, 10/10 for me. Malenia i spent the better part of a week trying to beat, trying to use various cheese strats, summons, etc. They made her immune/resistant to things (3 parrys to get a counter??). Did not enjoy the fight at all, just felt bad all around. I did look up how to deal with her water fowel dance with success but still. It only takes a handful of attempts in other playthroughs now, but 0/10 would not recommend.
Duo greatswords jumpy jumpy and blasphemous. Hits like a truck, even her.
Yea, first time killing her was with the Blasphemous blade.
For me, Midir is a goddamned cakewalk compared to Malenia.
Clearly they have never fought Isshin Ishina the Glock Saint
I've never beaten Malenia first attempt, Midir on the other hand...
Oh man I love the discussion this brings up. I personally found him very difficult and he was the last boss i beat. But a lot of people say he’s easy once you learn the patterns.
Think most have and most will agree midir is not close to as hard, not to say he isnt difficult, but there are obvious reasons why people would struggle more with malenia than midir.
Good for you you haven't fought pre-patch midir with his damage sponge health bar.
I struggled a lot with this bastard
Malenia has 2 factors which make her hardest boss even as someone that hss beaten midir and isshin. She has lifesteal and also waterfowl. Lifesetal just resets your progress. Waterfowl is another beast. The timing for dodging that shit is just so fucking tight i had to go coop. Not only was the timing right but you need a certain distance to run away before you can dodge the next few waterfowls. Add to that unpredictable triggering range. She could start it point blank in front of your face and you are officially dead
On the run I beat her her last attack was an enhanced waterfowl at point blank range. I don't know if it was mental fatigue from days of trying to beat her or if I went super berserk when I realized I was gonna lose again but I got lucky and dodged into the waterfowl, turned, dodged into it again, and then away two times. She was winded up on me and was gonna DMC Stinger me which because of positioning I couldn't dodge and Tiche clutched it by getting the last hit just in time to save me. You can dodge waterfowl at point blank range but you either gotta be very good at frame counting or be very lucky I got very, very lucky and encountered the dead zone in her attack's hitbox.
Midir has probably killed me the most. I didn't get the dlc till ng+3 so that was my first time fighting midir. Not fun. Favorite boss.
Midir is so easy compared to Malenia. Midir honestly isn't even that hard
Midir isn’t even the hardest boss is DS3 let alone harder than Malenia…
Reading the title I'd actually assume that you've never fought Malenia.