#don't @ me because i have a severe bias against the beast bosses

[hepburnlangham]

@catsbreads

After finally finishing all the chalices, I have developed the Official Tea™ on all the chalice bosses. This is one hundred and ten percent objective and I am completely right.

1. Pthumerian Descendant. The perfect balance of a boss. This isn’t as great as Kos, Gascoigne, Maria, or any of the story mode greats, but this fight stands out as the most challenging without either being a total parry fest or a beasty clusterfuck. The patterns are hard to read and the timings are hard to nail down, making this fight much more engaging than the standard hunter-type fights. The only thing I don’t like is his boomerang move thing, since he’s gotten some very cheeky kills on me through it, but whatever. That’s mostly my fault.

2. Pthumerian Elder. How many times do we gotta teach you this lesson, old man?? Sit down smh. He comin’, oh lord. He fuckin’ swinging! He’s gonna smack ya with that flaming scythe!!! Oh shit wait he transformed it into a flame crossbow! This old man has style.

3. Undead Giant, Chain variant specifically. It’s an interesting change of pace, since he’s not very aggressive at all so you’re playing offence instead of defence. Figuring out how to safely get in at all is fun, though it can be a really slow fight if you play it safe.

4. Keeper of the Old Lords. Cool hat!!!!!! Similar to Forgotten Madmen in that it’s a fairly standard hunter fight where you just spam viscerals, but it’s neat. :) Defiled version is notable for being the only boss in that chalice that doesn’t fucking suck.

5. Forgotten Madmen. I’m a sucker for PvE hunter fights so this one delivers. Another dude swooces in to give you some combo slaps. The armor they give is very cool. I like shlapping around with the snake scarf.

6. Bloodletting Beast. Thicc boy. He has a lot of slaps to give you. A great iteration of the standard beast boss. The headless version later on gets a special shout-out for being an actually interesting reused boss, since it’s got some new moves that change it up a bit. Plus the weird snake thing popping out is uhhhhh gross in the best way

7. Beast-possessed Soul. Isn’t this that random dude at the bottom of the Healing Church Workshop? I always killed him with a backstab into a visceral before he could even do anything so it’s nice that they fleshed him out into an actual boss. Nothing too complex here, just a nice and simple fight.

8. Blood-starved Beast. The arena gimmick of all that poison water is an interesting addition-- you’re basically always going to be poisoned by the time you get to the final phase. Kind of annoying but it’s interesting enough and the fight was solid enough as is.

9. Merciless Watchers. I find these funny little dudes to be endearing despite being weirdly easy. They appear as pretty regular enemies in later chalices which is cool, good sense of progression. I dunno they’re just neat :)

10. Yarnham, Queen of Pthumuru. The most narratively relevant boss, which is very cool, and the gimmick is interesting, but ultimately it’s, uh… It feels like this boss should have happened a lot earlier? By the time you get to the final chalice, you’ve already been through so much shit that this is a walk in the park. Hell, the two bosses right before her were way harder. I’ve literally never had a problem with this fight. All you gotta do is spam R1. Honestly only saved by being cool and not being offensively annoying in any way.

11. Ebrietas. Weird slug insect beast thing? Who is she. I used two summons for this fight and it took like twenty seconds so uhhhhh lol

12.Loran Darkbeast. Paarl V2. Not a bad fight persay, but it’s not particularly interesting outside of getting punched in the face with electricity. Weirdly easy if you get some momentum going. Kind of just a standard beast boss honestly, but at least this time it’s actually challenging unlike story Paarl.

13. Abhorrent Beast. Suspicious Beggar’s wild twin brother. Cool design, but it’s really obvious he was never meant to be a boss since the fight’s basically the same thing the whole way through. Fighting this multiple times in the fixed dungeons was… annoying. I fought him twice in a row due to the chalice route I chose.

14. Watchdog of the Old Lords. First fight is fun, you fight a big fire dog. He slaps you around like a treat ball a bit as monsters often do with hunters. Defiled version is trash, though. Fire damage barely scales with the HP loss so you just die a lot. Encourages cheesy play, which is always bad.

15. Rom. Did we really need a second iteration of the world’s least spidery spider? No. Now it’s just worse because it has none of the narrative meaning or the cool setting.

16. Amygdala. While I don’t necessarily like this fight much anyway, the Defiled chalice version is incredibly awful. The amount of one-shots this boss has is just infuriating, and the only consistently viable strategies are incredibly cheesy and tedious. The only reason this isn’t at the bottom is because it’s an actual boss that poses actual challenge compared to the next four.

17. Celestial Emissary. This guy is actually a threat for once, unlike how he is in the main story, but even then he’s still really easy. The only way you’re gonna die is if you’re not even trying.

18. Loran Silverbeast. Just a wolf guy. At least it’s one of the less bad enemies that they reused as a boss for some reason.

19. Maneater Boar. The fact that they stopped caring at this point really just jumps out. The pigs were scary when you meet them for like, the first time you ever play Bloodborne, but now they’re just… bad.

20. Brainsucker. This squid boy isn’t even a boss! He has no talent. Awful.