Just a heads up before we get into this—spoilers ahead for the last boss of . You've been warned, weary Tarnished.
Let's talk about Promised Consort Radahn, shall we? If you've been playing games since the OG days of Dark Souls 1 and Demon Souls, you'll have noticed a . There was a time where bosses like Artorias of the Abyss were feared, where Ornstein and Smough's wombo combos would send even the [[link]] most hardened gamer into a cold sweat.
Still, the fact remains: FromSoftware bosses [[link]] hit harder, swing faster, and drag their combos on for longer than they ever have. Their attacks are fiercer, trickier to read, and sometimes—in the case of Malenia's infamous Waterfowl dance—require a hyper-specific set of inputs to even start dodging.
Erdtree's final boss, Promised Consort Radahn, feels like the end of a long and winding road of design decisions. He is, in a lot of ways, an example of everything "wrong" with FromSoftware's new boss template. At a baseline, his combos will drag on for hours—but he's manageable. Then phase two kicks in like a sledgehammer to the head.
I finally put him to rights, though—and as I set down my controller, my thumbs sore from hours of movements that just don't take place in the natural world—I had the thought. "Gee, the champion of Radahn 2.0 has their work cut out for them, no matter who takes on the mantle." I've even been planning to write about it. I'm glad I held off, because I have never been proven more wrong.
- Evaporating Radahn with a .
- Slapping a bunch of tank gear
on and .
- .
- Doing the same thing .
And you might think—Harvey, those are very specific builds. Parrying aside, surely you're just describing cheese, here? And to that I'd say, someone beat him . The indomitable human spirit is both real and specifically designed to heap shame upon my gamer skills. My noble house may never recover.
I have larger concerns surrounding what FromSoftware's next step will mean for the layman player—as a developer, it really doesn't have a lot of room left to explore. Modern Miayazaki's torture facilitators already cause problem for certain builds with their vicious attacks, making many incantations complete trash by sheer virtue of long cast times.
But that's a separate issue. As the ingenious and dedicated souls community has so thoroughly proven to me, when it comes to filling the shoes of FromSoftware folk lore, I'm now convinced that the will be just fine.