The Best Cinematic Boss Fights In FromSoftware Games, Ranked

Key Takeaways

• FromSoftware games are known for extreme difficulty and incredible spectacle in their cinematic boss fights.
• Players face massive foes with over-the-top attacks in dramatic locations, heightened by special effects and orchestral music.
• Iconic boss fights like Yhorm the Giant, Looking Glass Knight, and Gehrman provide unforgettable and epic encounters.

The legendary FromSoftware is one of the most acclaimed video game developers in the industry. While its games have received considerable praise for numerous reasons, the two things they’re most well known for are extreme difficulty and incredible spectacle. These two highlights frequently go hand in hand, especially when it comes to the developer’s iconic boss fights.

The best FromSoft fights are dramatic, cinematic experiences, where the intense peril and high stakes are heightened by bombastic special effects, sweeping orchestral scores, and dramatic locales. These foes are massive and dangerous, bristling with powerful weapons and extreme, over-the-top attacks, which helps sell how deadly they can be in a fight. Here are ten of the most cinematic boss fights players can experience in FromSoftware games.

10 Yhorm the Giant (Dark Souls 3)

A Legendary Blade

The epic conclusion of the Dark Souls trilogy features some of the series’ most explosive battles, and Yhorm the Giant is a particularly cinematic one. This titanic foe rests, forsaken and alone, in a tomblike throne room deep underground. When he rises to engage the player, he pulls out some truly thunderous attacks and shrugs off the player’s best moves like they’re nothing.

In order to defeat Yhorm, players should retrieve the Storm Ruler, a mythically powerful sword hidden behind the giant’s throne. This sword’s special weapon art is the only thing that can bring him to his knees, and the potent, magical strikes of the Storm Ruler ringing through the giant’s hall add another level of spectacle to the battle. Furthermore, if players have advanced enough in Siegward’s quest, he will appear to aid them, lending his own Storm Ruler to the fight and turning the battle into a truly epic culmination of his personal journey.

9 Looking Glass Knight (Dark Souls 2)

A Twisted Reflection

The Dark Souls trilogy is infamous for its proliferation of armored knight bosses, and Dark Souls 2 in particular has an abundance of these. The Looking Glass Knight still stands out, however. The arena, a rain-soaked castle promenade in the midst of a thunderous storm, is already a deeply cinematic setting for a duel, but it’s aided by the Looking Glass Knight’s own thunderous lightning attacks, which light up the duel with dangerous magic.

The Looking Glass Knight is aided in his attacks by warriors that he can conjure from his own mirrored shield. These fighters can be real players, conjured to battle in intensely heightened PVP combat. The intensity of fighting such a grand, cinematic boss, while at the same time fending off attacks from other real players, makes for a truly unforgettable encounter.

8 Praetor Rykard (Elden Ring)

Devour the Very Gods

Elden Ring‘s various shardbearers are legendary figures, semi-divine champions who are directly tied up in the brutal history of warfare that has torn the Lands Between apart. Praetor Rykard is a particularly unique shardbearer, as his quest for power led him to renounce his divinity entirely and give himself over to a massive, primordial serpent.

In terms of combat, the God-Devouring Serpent has a gimmick that should prove familiar to long-time Soulslike veterans. Players are all but required to equip a special spear designed to kill serpents if they want to stand a chance against the immense snake. Once they’ve damaged the beast enough to awaken Rykard himself, the blasphemous praetor will unleash explosive and devastating fire magic, tearing his own lair apart in a ferocious display of power that will likely leave players trembling even after they’ve put an end to his reign.

7 Great Grey Wolf Sif (Dark Souls)

A Duel of Legends

Great Grey Wolf Sif is one of the most iconic bosses in Dark Souls and with good reason. The basic premise of a titanic wolf with a sword in its mouth is memorable on its own merits, but there are numerous additional factors that heighten the spectacle and make Sif an iconic encounter for everyone who’s faced her.

The moonlit grave where players fight Sif is a deeply cinematic locale, made even more intense if fans have played the game’s DLC and learned more about the tragic legacy of the legendary warrior buried there. Sif’s frenzied strikes and remorseless attacks make the battle a duel worthy of any warrior, and her increasingly battered state as the fight wears on adds a sense of tragic inevitability to this fearsome clash.

6 Soul of Cinder (Dark Souls 3)

A Fateful Duel

The Soul of Cinder serves as the final boss of Dark Souls 3‘s base game, and the culmination of the endless, tortured cycle that has ground on and on across the entire trilogy. This creature is the embodiment of every Lord of Cinder that has ever linked the First Flame, and it awaits in the broken, twisted remains of the world, fighting bitterly to keep its cycle alive.

The shattered and warped landscape surrounding the First Flame makes for a bitter and melancholic arena, littered with the weapons of past Lords and the ruins of an age stretched well past its breaking point. The Soul of Cinder fights ferociously with a wide variety of weapons, recalling attacks, movesets, and even leitmotifs from Lords of games past. This is a brutal and bitter send-off to one of gaming’s greatest dark fantasy epochs, and it is not to be missed.

5 Bayle the Dread

With a Hail of Harpoons

The infamous Bayle the Dread is a legendary dragon, one of the strongest to exist in Elden Ring‘s lore. In ages past he even challenged the legendary Dragonlord Placidussax, in a thunderous battle that left both of them scarred forever. When players ascend the treacherous, drake-infested slopes of Bayle’s mountain lair, the cataclysmic dragon does not hesitate to display all the power and ferocity that let him challenge the dragonlord himself.

Among Elden Ring fans, the fight with Bayle is most infamous for the maddened drake warrior Igon, who can be summoned to help bring an end to the fell dragon. His wild, exultant cries punctuate an already hectic battle as Bayle rains fiery destruction down on his mountaintop arena. This incredible battle is truly a fight for the ages.

4 Burnt Ivory King (Dark Souls 2: Crown of the Ivory King)

A Fallen Ruler

The clash with the Burnt Ivory King is a true battle in every sense of the word. In order to face this tragic, fallen ruler, one must first fight through his countless waves of loyal knights, each of whom has been burnt and charred by the same chaos flames that have claimed his once-noble soul. By journeying through the frozen city above, players can recruit untainted knights who will nobly give their lives in order to redeem the corrupted king’s memory and bring them on a last march into the depths of his loss.

From the very start of the fight, the battle with the Burnt Ivory King is a memorable and cinematic endeavor. Players plunge into a deep pit, surrounded by their recruited knights, and the battle is instantly joined by the king’s corrupted minions. The first phase of the battle is a true chivalric melee in the depths of a fiery abyss, and when the king himself arrives, he does so in grand, unforgettable style. The Burnt Ivory King’s fighting style is unrelenting and brutal, with a sword massive enough to cut the player down from almost any distance.

3 Gehrman, The First Hunter (Bloodborne)

Keeping the Dream Alive

Depending on the choices the hunter makes during their blood-soaked journey through Yharnam’s twisted streets, Gehrman is likely to be the final battle awaiting them at the end of the road. This elderly hunter, once a sort of mentor for the player, is finally revealed as a servant of the eldritch forces who created the dream that has trapped him and hunters like him. At the end of the player’s brutal quest, Gehrman offers them freedom; a chance to escape the dream and return to the real world, oblivious of the horrors they’ve witnessed.

Refusing his offer leads to a tragic duel in the pastoral fields of the Dream which once served as home and sanctuary for the player. Gehrman’s age belies a vicious, lightning-quick fighting style, amplified with a variety of devastating eldritch sorceries. In true FromSoft fashion, the intensity of the duel only heightens the sorrow of it, as two former comrades tear each other apart according to the inscrutable whims of a godlike alien mind.

2 Ice Worm (Armored Core 6)

Taking the Shot

FromSoft is best known these days for the Dark Souls trilogy, as well as similar games like Bloodborne and Elden Ring. But it has a rich history in mech combat games, and Armored Core 6 is just the most recent and arguably most spectacular example. The game’s war machines are titanic; even the smallest enemy would dwarf a warrior from Dark Souls. But the Ice Worm is on another level.

This massive, serpentine foe is orders of magnitude larger than the player’s mech, as well as the NPC-controlled mechs that join the battle. Despite its incomparable mass, the Ice Worm follows the pattern of gimmick bosses from Soulsborne games past. Players are all but required to equip the VE-60SNA Stun Needle and use it to pierce the Ice Worm’s primary shield. Once this is accomplished, their ally Rusty will launch a massive Rail Cannon, staggering the great beast and shutting down its secondary shield. The spectacle of the rail cannon striking the worm, as well as its overwhelming size blasting across the wastes toward the allied mechs, makes it a cinematic showdown comparable to Dune itself.

1 Slave Knight Gael (Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City)

The End Of The World

The Ringed City, Dark Souls 3‘s final DLC, flings players far into the future, to see the inevitable end of the trilogy’s unceasing Age of Fire. While the titular Ringed City first appears to be a gleaming metropolis, a haven from the decay that’s afflicted the rest of the world, this shining glory is eventually revealed as a facade. Once players have revealed the city for what it is, they are left in an endless, ash-choked wasteland, alone with a civilization’s worth of corpses, and Slave Knight Gael.

This recurring character has been on an endless crusade, seeking the power to rebirth the fallen world at any cost. When the player encounters him at the end of all things, he is all but feral and attacks savagely on sight. In the endless, crumbling ruins of everything that’s come before, three games’ worth of decay and ash, the player must take Gael on in a devastating one-on-one duel, a clash of might like nothing the trilogy has ever seen. Gael’s powerful magic and mighty blade make for an intense challenge and a perfect culmination of everything Dark Souls has been since it debuted.