As players progress through Demon’s Souls, they’ll likely find themselves stuck at a variety of huge, intimidating bosses. Boss battles are the name of the game with the Souls franchise as a whole, so it should come as no surprise that there are some imposing ones here in the series’ progenitor. Of the five Archstones found in the game, each offer a unique type of challenge and its own brand of powerful bosses, but the Archstone of the Digger King holds three deadly demons that often top lists of the strongest bosses in Demon’s Souls.
Demon’s Souls‘ story is approached in a non-linear fashion. After players beat world 1-1, they are then able to progress through all five Archstones in whatever order they want. Because of this, and since bosses don’t scale with the player’s level or progression, just how difficult something is will depend largely on how early in the game players tackle it. Even so, the bosses have an innate difficulty that transcends soul level, so choosing which of the three is the most difficult can still be done. While fighting their way through the Digger King’s Archstone, players will come across the Armor Spider, Flamelurker and the Dragon God himself.
The Armor Spider is every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare, and also shows that FromSoftware has had a thing for fiery spiders even before Dark Souls terrorized players with Quelaag. This beast can provide a huge challenge to players for a number of reasons. Though the Armor Spider’s fireball attacks can be easily dodged for the most part, it is also capable of ensnaring the player in a sticky web, causing them to move slower and lose the ability to roll. Get caught in one of these and players will find themselves at the mercy of the Armor Spider until the effect runs out, during which time it can deal incredible damage.
Melee characters will struggle a lot with this fight too, as once the player closes in to try and deal some damage to its weakspot, it begins using erratic and hard to predict attacks. Slicing at the player with its sharp legs and stabbing about with an unpleasant stinger, players will be hard-pressed to keep up in close combat. Those that try to fall back will be beset by fire and webs, and that’s not even mentioning the Armor Spider’s ability to flood the small tunnel that is its boss arena with oil and light it aflame, pushing foes back to the entrance of the room or else burning them alive.
The Flamelurker is infamous among the Demon’s Souls community thanks to its speed and ferocity. Despite being twice the size of the player, it can leap around the battlefield nimbly and close distances fast to deal heavy fire and physical damage. To make matters worse, many players will aspire to defeat this demon early on in their playthrough, as the Searing Demon’s Soul it drops is required in order to make boss weapons at Blacksmith Ed.
Unlike some other fights in Demon’s Souls, the Flamelurker doesn’t have any particular gimmick that players can exploit to find an easier path to victory outside of its weakness to magic. Beyond that, the tense battle is a pure test of the player’s ability to dodge swift blows and find proper openings. Magic based characters may have an easier time here thanks to the heavy damage he takes from spells, but even they will find it difficult to keep at a safe distance. The Flamelurker remains one of the greatest challenges that players face in Demon’s Souls even after the remake.
Anyone who’s seen the trailers or even watched the opening cinematic of the game is familiar with this charming demon. The Dragon God acts as a flagship for Demon’s Souls, so many newcomers are surprised to find that he can be fought so early on. If this battle went anything like the others, forcing players to go toe to toe with the beast, there would be no contest, but luckily that is not the case. Instead, the Dragon God fight is more like a puzzle than a boss battle, tasking players with clearing debris and dodging attacks while they make their way over to two ballistae.
Though this definitely falls into the category of boss fights that can be defeated with gimmicks, that doesn’t make it any easier. The Dragon God’s attacks are incredibly difficult to avoid, and for most players they will result in instant death upon being hit. Without knowing that players can watch his eyes to tell if they are in his line of sight or not, it takes sheer dumb luck to get past his barrage of blows and fire to send a ballista round flying into him. Even after downing him, his mere breath poses a serious threat to players.
Between these three monstrous threats, which is the most difficult for players to overcome? Overall it depends on the player’s skill, their familiarity with each boss’ mechanics, their build, and how far into the game they’ve progressed before facing them, but the Flamelurker is probably the hardest despite all of these variances. Though difficult, the Armor Spider can be surpassed by most with careful strategy and a bit of dedication. Likewise, it’s only a matter of time before players figure out the trick to beating the Dragon God.
With Flamelurker, there’s no easy way out of the fight or anything like that. Players have to study its attack patterns closely, take huge risks approaching to deal some damage, and make use of everything they have available to them in order to come out on top. Naturally, each individual will have their own opinion about which of these three bosses is truly the hardest, but Flamelurker checks all the boxes and seems to be a huge inspiration for the boss design in later Souls games.
Demon’s Souls is available now on PS5.
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