Most Unfair Bosses In FromSoftware Games

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FromSoftware is famous for creating challenging and memorable boss battles. While their games, from Demon’s Souls to Nightreign, consistently feature some truly outstanding fights, they also include a number of underwhelming or frustrating encounters that can detract from the overall enjoyment.

Often, fights feel frustratingly unfair due to a particular enemy attack, ability, or even the design of the battle itself, like having to run back a long distance or the awkwardness of the boss’s location. These encounters become more about mental fortitude than precise timing or skill; players need to stay focused and persistent, even if it means repeatedly failing due to seemingly cheap or unfair tactics.

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Ancient Dragon

More Health Than Necessary

Details:

  • Dark Souls 2
  • Enemy-filled runback
  • Huge health pool and absurd damage

The Ancient Dragon fight had the potential to be amazing, but it ends up feeling disappointing and irritating. Getting to the fight is a major problem – you’ll constantly run into groups of enemies who will damage you unless you spend a lot of time eliminating every single one.

The battle itself features an enemy with a massive amount of health, requiring a lot of attacks to defeat. Even when you can hit it, it doesn’t stay down for long, often flying away and covering a large area with fire. Most of the fight involves trying to do as much damage as quickly as possible while avoiding being instantly defeated. However, compared to other dragon battles in games, this one isn’t particularly challenging.

Chained Ogre

Too Hard, Too Soon

Details:

  • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
  • Early fight that feels incredibly challenging
  • Contrary to the parry-centric gameplay

Okay, so Sekiro is all about parrying. Seriously, if you don’t get good at it, you’re gonna have a rough time with the bosses, especially later on. Take the Chained Ogre, for example. While you can block some of his stuff, he mostly just throws out super dangerous attacks constantly. It’s less about fighting him directly and more about running around and dodging everything he throws at you!

This boss is very aggressive, constantly attacking and rushing forward without pausing. What’s especially frustrating is that it can knock you off a cliff nearby. While falling doesn’t always mean instant death, it feels really unfair, especially since you encounter this boss so early in the game.

Royal Rat Authority

All The Bad Things At Once

Details:

  • Dark Souls 2
  • Obnoxious gank fight
  • Terrible camera angles

The Royal Rat Authority is a good example of what not to do when designing a boss fight. It relies on overwhelming the player with multiple weaker enemies – a ‘gank’ situation – which feels frustrating instead of challenging or rewarding.

What really makes this boss difficult are its surprisingly large hitboxes and unpredictable attacks – you can easily get hit without seeing it coming, sending you back to the starting point. To make matters worse, the smaller enemies constantly respawn, turning a simple task into a repetitive and frustrating chore that you have to deal with every time you die, making the whole fight feel unfair.

Maneater

How Much Frustration Can One Boss Have?

Details:

  • Demon’s Souls
  • Small arena with little room
  • Janky design

Many players find the Maneater boss fight in Demon’s Souls frustratingly difficult. This is because the fight happens on a very narrow bridge with a deadly fall, and even a small mistake can lead to instant defeat. The boss is also incredibly aggressive, using quick attacks and powerful blows that can easily knock you off the edge.

The most frustrating part of this fight is that a second powerful enemy appears before players usually finish off the first one. This overlap creates a lot of confusion, as attacks come from all sides in a small area. Combined with the enemies’ large health and sometimes unreliable attacks, it feels less like a challenging fight and more like a struggle against flawed game mechanics.

Lud And Zallen, The King’s Pets

Not Worth The Pain At All

Details:

  • Dark Souls 2
  • Absurdly long and tedious runback
  • Two fast enemies at once

Lud and Zallen are notorious for their frustrating boss fight approach, and the fight itself isn’t very fun. The area where you fight them, the Frigid Outskirts, is one of the worst in the game – it’s a cold, barren place with poor visibility and never-ending enemy attacks, making even getting to the boss a difficult task.

Once players reach the main area, they face a revamped battle against two relentless enemies. These enemies attack quickly and erratically, potentially dealing massive damage very fast. The fight isn’t straightforward – it’s a drawn-out process of slowly reducing their health, hoping to finally win.

Smelter Demon (Blue)

On A Clock From The Start

Details:

  • Dark Souls 2 – Crown of the Old Iron King
  • Terrible runback
  • Frustrating magic AoE

The Blue Smelter Demon is a frustrating boss, relying on unfair tactics. Its most annoying feature is a constant aura that damages you over time, even if you avoid its attacks.

This boss fight is noticeably more challenging than the original, mainly because the boss is much more aggressive. Players have to constantly manage incoming damage and dodge a relentless stream of attacks throughout the entire battle. To make matters worse, the journey back to the boss after a defeat is incredibly difficult, with a large number of enemies that can cause just as many deaths as the boss itself.

Libra, Creature of Night (Everdark Sovereign)

More Mad Than Madness

Details:

  • Elden Ring Nightreign
  • Overwhelming NPC summons
  • Frustrating madness mechanics

The boss battles in Nightreign are known for being incredibly impressive to look at, but also very difficult – some of the most challenging FromSoftware has ever created. Each boss presents a unique challenge, and Libra is a particularly interesting fight that introduces chaotic elements. However, the Everdark version of Libra ramps up the difficulty to an entirely new degree.

Battles are now much faster and harder, demanding quick reflexes and constant attention just to dodge attacks. What’s really frustrating, though, are the enemies that copy the players – they make already difficult fights feel unfair instead of challenging.

Bed Of Chaos

Barely Even A Boss

Details:

  • Dark Souls
  • The fight often ends in a single mistake
  • New players need to learn by dying

The Bed of Chaos is famous, but mostly for how frustrating it is. It’s hardly a traditional boss fight – you can often defeat it with just a few hits. The real challenge isn’t a powerful enemy, but the difficult environment and clumsy layout of the arena itself.

Despite a slow start, the core of this game is about skillful movement and running – which is tricky since it doesn’t have a jump button! Players frequently misjudge jumps and fall, making the game feel frustrating rather than enjoyable, even though the actual combat is simple.

Promised Consort Radahn

Nerfed But Still Brutal

Details:

  • Elden Ring – Shadow of the Erdtree
  • Teleporting attacks and insane combos
  • Visual clutter at all times

Okay, so SOTE is seriously tough. I’ve heard from a ton of players – people who’d already sunk hundreds of hours into the original game – that it felt way too hard. Radahn, the Promised Consort, was a prime example. He was absolutely brutal when the expansion first came out, and even experienced Souls-like players thought he was just unfair. They actually had to tone him down after launch because he was that punishing!

The first phase of the fight is relatively simple, but things get much harder as the boss loses health. Its attacks become deceptive, masked by beams of light, and moves like the instant-kill grab and aerial slam feel unfair. This led many players to consider the boss poorly designed and the fight as a whole to be frustratingly difficult.

Malenia, Blade Of Miquella

Far From A Relaxing Dance

Details:

  • Elden Ring
  • A single attack ruins a good run
  • Self-healing with every blow

Many players consider Malenia to be the most challenging boss FromSoftware has ever created. Beyond just being difficult, she’s often criticized as being unfair and unpredictable. Her attacks not only deal massive damage, but also restore her health, which feels frustrating and can quickly undo a player’s hard work after even a small error.

But the most challenging part of fighting Malenia is definitely her Waterfowl Dance attack. It’s responsible for countless player deaths and is the main reason she’s so difficult. Up close, dodging it is nearly impossible without using a strange camera angle. Even when players learn the timing, the constant danger of the attack makes the fight much more stressful than it should be, because she can instantly launch into the air and devastate anything in front of her at any moment.

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2026-02-22 06:07