To say that every boss From Software has put in a Souls or Soulslike game is perfect would be a drastic overstatement. Every Souls fan knows there are certain bosses that didn’t work very well in their base game. Elden Ring Nightreign is a culmination of everything From Software has worked on to this point. As such, there are a lot of bosses making their return from previous From Soft titles. We have already seen bosses such as The Nameless King and The Duke’s Dear Freja, but what are some of the worst bosses the devs should avoid for Elden Ring Nightreign?
Royal Rat Vanguard
The Royal Rat Vanguard from Dark Souls 2 is a group of rats that collectively make up the boss fight, despite only one of them being the actual boss. When you enter this fight, you are tasked with killing rats one by one so you don’t get overwhelmed. After a while, a special rat with a mohawk will emerge. Defeating this rat will end the boss fight.
Overall, this is one of the more annoying boss fights in all of Dark Souls 2. There isn’t some grand boss that you need to take down. Instead, it is just a rat that keeps squirming around the boss arena, avoiding your attacks while its brethren nip and naw at your ankles. Putting this boss in Nightreign would be a mistake unless there are some major changes made that I don’t think From Software would want to go through the hassle of doing.
High Lord Wolnir
Wolnir is a strange gimmick fight in Dark Souls 3. You walk into a large, dark room with a lone item sitting on the ground. Picking up the item causes High Lord Wolnir to appear. Attacking him is completely useless because he takes next to no damage if you hit him directly. Instead, you need to attack his shiny bracelets. This is where all of his health is. Destroying a bracelet takes a chunk of his health away. Destroying all of them makes him fade back into the darkness from which he came.
Overall, Wolnir is one of the worst bosses in Dark Souls 3. You can make quick work of him if you know what you are doing. Most players who fight him don’t even know that he can summon skeletons. Putting him in Nightreign would ultimately lead to massive disappointment from the community, who will ultimately destroy him faster than they ever did in Dark Souls 3, thanks to the amazing weapons in Nightreign.
Dark Sun Gwyndolin
Gwyndolin is such a strange boss fight. They consistently run away from you whenever you get close, and you need to follow them down a hallway until you eventually deplete their health bar. This is all while dodging powerful attacks that can usually one-shot a character if they are armored enough or able to get to cover quickly. This boss works in the original Dark Souls game because it has a space for this boss. However, this boss wouldn’t work in Nightreign.
Nightreign is built around giving players a large, open map to explore. There are some confined areas in dungeons, but players will mostly be exploring ruins, castles, and encampments. There isn’t a location where Gwyndolin would work unless From Software feels like making them teleport around the open map. Considering the style of the fight, this wouldn’t work and would either infuriate players or lead to disappointment.
Pinwheel
Pinwheel is one of the easiest bosses in all of Dark Souls. He is so easy to defeat that new players can run down into the Tomb of Giants and kill him before progressing to the rest of the game. I used to do this during each of my runs just to get some extra souls to level up with. In the original game, this boss is known for being a disappointment to those who encounter him.
From Software should avoid bringing Pinwheel back from the dead for Nightreign. There are plenty of other bosses to choose from that would make much more sense than this monstrosity. The only way this boss could be made better is if you encountered an entire room of them as the boss. Even then, they would fall easily.
Bed of Chaos
The original Dark Souls has some interesting bosses. It also has some bosses that are so bad that players remember just how much they hate them. Sure, Pinwheel is a bad boss, but the Bed of Chaos is even worse. Instead of being too easy, this boss can be unbelievably difficult thanks to the wide gaps that are created in the boss arena that you need to parkour around in a game that doesn’t have the greatest movement.
The difficulty of Bed of Chaos comes from the strange movements you need to make, and not the actual boss. If this boss were to be put in Elden Ring Nightreign, players would easily be able to take it down thanks to the increased movement capabilities they have. Being able to jump the gaps created in the floor of the boss arena would trivialize this boss and make it even less enjoyable.
