Running back to the bosses in Soulsborne games is annoying

[GonzoCR]

I don't it mind as long as there is something to do in the run, like at least avoid enemies or whatever. But some runs are just stupid. Midir's run is wait for elevator -> elevator -> ladder -> long falling animation -> wait for Midir to finish rampage -> fight actually starts. Pure tedium. At that point just put a bonfire next to the hole.

 

[mrmickfran]

Yup

So glad it's practically instant in Sekiro

 

[DevilPuncher]

I still get shivers from the Four Kings corpse run. Shit was unbearable.

 

[Meatwad]

As a massive Souls fan I agree. The boss runs are the worst part of these games. They can range from annoying to absolutely frustrating. I just finished Sekiro and thankfully that game puts check points close to the bosses so there aren't any crazy boss runs in that game. Hopefully Elden Ring follows suit.

 

[Negatorous]

For me one of the worst runbacks is dying in the Swamp (5-2) if you didn't get a chance to kick down that shortcut. Because you have to go a LONNNNG way back and there is a ton of enemies to kill. You redo the whole area basically to get to the boss without that shortcut enabled. And it's huge (and full of poison)

 

[N.47H.4N]

Alright, anyone think that lamp right near Lady Maria shouldn't exist and the player should respawn from the elevator's lamp?

I personally would rather a checkpoint at the fog door with a harder boss to compensate for the checkpoint, but then again that takes away the purpose of finding shortcuts.

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a bonfire/lamp near the boss don´t takes away the purpose of finding shortcuts, there is a shortcut between Orphan of Kos and a lamp, which was great, made the run to the boss like 15 seconds, this is what I call great level design.

 

[Bunzy]

It really was annoying especially since loads take forever. It did make you focus on the fights more though since you didn't want to die. Demon souls remake was so nice having instant loads even though you had to run back to the boss.

 

[Red Liquorice]

I don't really care most of the time when playing, I'm used to it, but I certainly don't think it's necessary or part of the experience. There are plenty of bosses where you spawn right next to their arena and it doesn't 'ruin' the experience. It was part of the anachronistic design baked in to Demon's Souls and it lingered on through the series probably longer than it should have.

 

[Vitamin_B_Complex]

There is a bonfire in top of Sen's fortress.

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No one finds that on their first run, or only a lucky few.

 

[Red Liquorice]

I think the cage lift is more convenient than the bonfire in Sen's. :3

 

[LakeEarth]

The run from that one safe house to Vicar Amelia in Bloodborne will forever be in my head. Through the graveyard, up the curved stairs, dodge everything, short hallway, through the larger graveyard, don't look at the giants, through gates, up the main temple stairs, dodge everything, reach boss, lose.

 

[Ayirek]

I still get shivers from the Four Kings corpse run. Shit was unbearable.

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Yeah this is the only one I can think of off the top of my head that's downright frustrating every time in Dark Souls 1.

 

[Servbot24]

In their recent games it's very easy. But in some of their earlier games it could indeed be very frustrating that you couldn't even have a chance to practice against the boss because you'd show up half dead. I'm sure it was intentional, and tbh I'm not sure if I enjoyed that frustration or not.

 

[Tortahegesztő]

You can either run past enemies, or get some extra souls along the way for the moment you actually beat the boss.
On the other hand, I hate it when a fromsoft game use consumables for healimg instead of estus flasks.
You die at the final phase of a boss in Bloodborne?
Go grind some bloodvials chump, unless you want to try it without healing. Thanks Miyazaki!

 

[random88]

Magic is like the one thing that's hard to experiment with. If you didn't start with the two magic classes, I'm pretty sure you can't even obtain spells until you find Freke or something similar?

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As soon as you finish 1-1, you can buy both spells and miracles in the Nexus from Freke's apprentice and Disciple of God. And catalyst is easily found near the start of 1-2. But even without those, if you don't start as a magic class, you are probably interested in magic weapons, and you can get a very OP sword near the beginning of 1-4. DS is a game that encourages exploration.

 

[Lumination]

As soon as you finish 1-1, you can buy both spells and miracles in the Nexus from Freke's apprentice and Disciple of God. And catalyst is easily found near the start of 1-2. But even without those, if you don't start as a magic class, you are probably interested in magic weapons, and you can get a very OP sword near the beginning of 1-4. DS is a game that encourages exploration.

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I actually didn't intend to make that post because I corrected myself. Dunno why I hit post haha. But yes, I agree with you. Similar idea to the skeletons in Dark Souls. If you can't go a certain way, just try somewhere else.

 

[Deleted member 12833]

The worst, at least in Demons Souls, is the Ritual Path... 4-2. Good thing Old Hero is easy.

But that path, skeletons on cliff, manta rays shooting at you, shadowmen with their lasers and red phantoms if your tendency is towards black.

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Lmao. This is correct. Was doing this yesterday with a friend on NG+ and it was wrecking up.

 

[Kolibri]

Yep. The extra pressure is there for a reason. It's the same with old games. You just don't get the same experience using save states.

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Lady Maria was one of my favourite bosses in Bloodborne, specifically because it wasn't so mind-numbingly tedious. It was still challenging, though!
Logarius would've been my fave if I didn't have to run a marathon every time I died. It certainly didn't give me a better experience.
The long runs discourage using a new weapon or a different strategy, and encourage cheesing.

Bloodborne is one of my favourite games ever, and it's one of the few games I played enough to get a platinum trophy. But even now, I still don't see a good reason for this time-wasting.

 

[Tavernade]

I think there's a sweet spot between frustrating and rewarding, which probably involves less than 60 seconds of traversal and some weak enemies to rebuild stock of consumables with. I don't enjoy losing my time to it but when done right I sort of appreciate it.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Between the load times (especially on consoles) and the runback, it can take anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to retry a boss. Furthermore, it's not like players are actually learning anything from all the extra time spent climbing ladders, riding elevators, running down long hallways...

 

[gfbandito]

Actually, don't think of the boss run as an opportunity to rethink the battle, introspective, growth blah blah blah. You can do that while standing in front of the fog. Or right as you respawn.

Think of it as a supply run, finding better equipment, and levelling yourself the fuck up so you can get revenge.

 

[Mage_of_Cinder]

Yea, getting to the boss rooms in Demon's Souls is a pain in the ass. It's not so bad in later games though, save for Anor Londo bonfire outside the citadel in DS1. If you die by the giant sentries or archers, you gotta haul ass across 30 seconds of nothing.

 

[EntelechyFuff]

Sekiro solved this BS. And it didn't hurt anything. Baffles me why anyone would defend this today.

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It's worth mentioning that as the checkpoints got "better" in this series, the bosses became longer and more explicit skill checks.

It's true that the boss run to the final fight of Sekiro was nothing compared to the hikes found in Demons Souls, but no boss in DS is the sword saint lol

 

[Alek]

I find Nioh is a lot better for this than the Souls games. I feel like in Nioh the boss is never more than 20-30 seconds away. Sure they could be even closer, but there's never any real difficulty getting there.

 

[Jafku1]

The Great Gatsby

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Oh brother. Thanks for the novel buddy!

 

[Chettlar]

Yeah I get you, and thanks for the detailed response. Sorry I came across a bit confrontational, I'm just pissy because boss fights frustrate me in general. There's probably a better term than 'experimenting' for the process I'm going through to progress through the game!

I'm also doubtless making life harder for myself in certain areas in Demon's Souls, but then I did complete Bloodborne without parrying once. Just never got the timing down so that's the level of ability we're dealing with here.

Still don't like the run backs though 👀

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Hey that's fair. Hopefully if I can have at least have communicated like, what the point is of them without coming off as elitist.

Also yeah man if you can figure out Bloodborne parries the game is SOOOO fun with them.

Oh brother. Thanks for the novel buddy!

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Hey if it helped our conversation that's all that matters to me.

 

[Cats]

The entire experience is a whole, the stage IS part of the boss. You beating the stage and getting back to the boss is just beating phase 1 of the boss fight.

The issue is when the stage becomes trivial, is too hard, has annoying/cheap sections in it, or is too long. All of these are equivalent to the boss itself having too much HP, being too unfair, having cheap moves, ect. because again, it's hand in hand and the boss IS the stage, just another phase of it.

If the run is challenging, thought provoking, and a fair length, then I have no issue with it. A lot of the runs are just bad though and they end up being too long or too short, and it just breaks the whole idea around it.

I don't think From have perfected this formula and I do find my mind wandering on re-runs and just feeling annoyed rather than worried about getting back to the boss to not lose souls (or even just make it). I think the series could use a bit more playtesting in their final bonfire placements before the bosses. As of now, if I had a vote, I'd just vote for an instant retry of the boss with no load screens. Just reset the fight, starting positions, ect.

 

[shinespark]

Boss runs are tedious distractions from learning the boss. But beyond being tedious they make the actual fights less fun for me as well, since part of me is always worrying about having to run back to the fog door instead of just focusing on the boss.

I'm glad FromSoft started phasing them out in DS3 and Sekiro.

 

[BarryFishFinger]

Ok, tell me I'm missing something here - Islands Edge (4-1?), to get to the Adjudicator each time do I really have to run up the steps from the start past the 6 skeletons there, across the courtyard, up more steps, past the skeletons there, past the arrow trap then all the way around the back of the island dodging big skeletons with big swords and all the while dodging the flying manta rays shooting at me, just to basically double back on myself? I say 'run past', but I can't outrun those rolling bony tosspots so I have to kill most of them.

I mean there's clearly a broken wall at the top of the first set of steps, on the right, before you enter the courtyard which would lead nicely to the side path which would take me right to the Adjudicator but for some reason I can't just hop over the knee high gap in the wall. I also can't get to this lower side path by dropping off the cliff on the right hand side of the courtyard either.

Yeah. Not loving that. At least I can farm the first 6 skeletons over and over for lots of souls I suppose.

 

[Serpico99]

I beat DS1/DS3/BB and have trouble mustering the energy to do the giant knight boss in the DeS remake. I can tell the boss is pretty easy but the run back just turned me off. It doesn't help that it feels like playing a rough draft of DS1.

 

[Negatorous]

Ok, tell me I'm missing something here - Islands Edge (4-1?), to get to the Adjudicator each time do I really have to run up the steps from the start past the 6 skeletons there, across the courtyard, up more steps, past the skeletons there, past the arrow trap then all the way around the back of the island dodging big skeletons with big swords and all the while dodging the flying manta rays shooting at me, just to basically double back on myself? I say 'run past', but I can't outrun those rolling bony tosspots so I have to kill most of them.

I mean there's clearly a broken wall at the top of the first set of steps, on the right, before you enter the courtyard which would lead nicely to the side path which would take me right to the Adjudicator but for some reason I can't just hop over the knee high gap in the wall. I also can't get to this lower side path by dropping off the cliff on the right hand side of the courtyard either.

Yeah. Not loving that. At least I can farm the first 6 skeletons over and over for lots of souls I suppose.

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There is another faster way to get to that boss while also grabbing a real nice prize along the way (you've sort of found it but that isn't the way to get on that path)

 

[BarryFishFinger]

There is another faster way to get to that boss while also grabbing a real nice prize along the way (you've sort of found it but that isn't the way to get on that path)

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Oho! Give me a clue (or just tell me).

Spoiler

Please 😂

I did wonder if there was a way near where that big fat demon, there is a small courtyard blocked by burning wood pile but I couldn't see a way in there (hitting the wood) and I didn't see a way to roll off the top where the black skeleton is.

I think the game can be a little inconsistent with its vaulting rules, there have definitely been a couple of areas which look like you should be able to vault over a low barrier to something below and you can't (unless I'm doing it wrong)

 

[JudgmentJay]

For me one of the worst runbacks is dying in the Swamp (5-2) if you didn't get a chance to kick down that shortcut. Because you have to go a LONNNNG way back and there is a ton of enemies to kill. You redo the whole area basically to get to the boss without that shortcut enabled. And it's huge (and full of poison)

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I died to the last enemy before the shortcut not once but twice on one of my playthroughs (ng+) of the remake. That surprise charge attack they do can easily one-shot a low armor/hp character.

 

[Jaymageck]

Sekiro solved this BS. And it didn't hurt anything. Baffles me why anyone would defend this today.

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I'm curious, how did it solve it? I'm playing it now and as a newcomer to From Software games it seems to still have a bit of that problem. Unless it's just much worse in other games.

 

[GonzoCR]

I'm curious, how did it solve it? I'm playing it now and as a newcomer to From Software games it seems to still have a bit of that problem. Unless it's just much worse in other games.

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Pretty much every difficult boss in Sekiro is right next to an idol, at least I don't remember any hard fight requiring a long run back. Some bosses in Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 literally require you to run through the whole level again if you die. Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne are a little bit better about it but there still some dumb runs, not helped by the terrible load times in Bloodborne's case.

 

[ffvorax]

There is always a quick path to find and follow... well not ALWAYS is quick and easy, but most of the time.
But I understand the point.

 

[MikeProtagonist]

Oho! Give me a clue (or just tell me).

Spoiler

Please 😂

I did wonder if there was a way near where that big fat demon, there is a small courtyard blocked by burning wood pile but I couldn't see a way in there (hitting the wood) and I didn't see a way to roll off the top where the black skeleton is.

I think the game can be a little inconsistent with its vaulting rules, there have definitely been a couple of areas which look like you should be able to vault over a low barrier to something below and you can't (unless I'm doing it wrong)

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If you go on top of the wall with the archers and run over to the far side, it's possible to roll off the platform, over the broken wall and fall down behind some rubble. From there it's a straight route to the boss.

 

[Bear]

Yes running back to bosses is super annoying but what turned me off of Bloodborne was having to farm blood vials. Just refill them automatically on death. Forcing you to farm just wastes time, which I don't have much of.

 

[BarryFishFinger]

If you go on top of the wall with the archers and run over to the far side, it's possible to roll off the platform, over the broken wall and fall down behind some rubble. From there it's a straight route to the boss.

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Thanks! I'll try that.

They could have just put a gate or something into the broken wall instead so you still get to clear the level and then the run back to the boss would have been that much shorter and less of a ballache.

I think I'm finding that I prefer the structure of the later games where you can find other bonfires in the world. Still enjoying it though.

 

[TheAuldTriangle]

Demon's Souls can take the pish with this. First time playing DeS and having a love/hate with this more than any previous SoulsBorne due to the fact the run back to bosses can be so convulted and challenging than any previous games(imo). I actually said "nah fuck this game im out" multiple times but I persevered and will do to the end.

 

[random88]

Thanks! I'll try that.

They could have just put a gate or something into the broken wall instead so you still get to clear the level and then the run back to the boss would have been that much shorter and less of a ballache.

I think I'm finding that I prefer the structure of the later games where you can find other bonfires in the world. Still enjoying it though.

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It's not actually an intentional shortcut (I think so), but it was carried over to the remake

Demons Souls Islands Edge Speedrun Shortcut

#DemonsSouls #PS5 Demon's Souls PS5 #DemonsSoulsSpeedrunhttps://youtube.com/results?search_query=%23demonssouls

www.youtube.com

4-2 doesn't have any shortcut either, but everything is balanced I guess, since 4-1 and 4-2 bosses are the easiest in the game.

 

[Dinoegg_96]

The only thing I'm thinking during my way back to the boss is how annoying it is. I don't need crappy boss runs to reflect on strategies to beat the bosses.

 

[Negatorous]

I died to the last enemy before the shortcut not once but twice on one of my playthroughs (ng+) of the remake. That surprise charge attack they do can easily one-shot a low armor/hp character.

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It happened to me as well, you don't think they have it in them but they hit you real hard and multiple times and as you said if you are there with low armor due to the swamp or just have low HP still you can easily die. It is the one thing I always liked and hated about these games. Even when you get pretty strong a lowly dog or 2 can take you down if you don't lock onto them and kill them.

 

[Negatorous]

Oho! Give me a clue (or just tell me).

Spoiler

Please 😂

I did wonder if there was a way near where that big fat demon, there is a small courtyard blocked by burning wood pile but I couldn't see a way in there (hitting the wood) and I didn't see a way to roll off the top where the black skeleton is.

I think the game can be a little inconsistent with its vaulting rules, there have definitely been a couple of areas which look like you should be able to vault over a low barrier to something below and you can't (unless I'm doing it wrong)

Click to shrink...

Sorry I just seen this now but someone else spilled the beans to you. I didn't want to spoil anything for you and the hint I gave I thought would get you to look around a bit near that area of the map and you'd stumble across that low wall.

 

[StreamedHams]

save scumming is self care

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FTFY. Im here to enjoy games and try to balance other stuff in my life. I don't have time for death run BS.

 

[BarryFishFinger]

Sorry I just seen this now but someone else spilled the beans to you. I didn't want to spoil anything for you and the hint I gave I thought would get you to look around a bit near that area of the map and you'd stumble across that low wall.

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To be honest, having watched the video posted above of how to do it, I'd never have found that shortcut. Having to basically glitch roll off the top platform to get onto the wall is not something I'd have thought of doing, even the video got it wrong the first two times.

 

[Hopz2Brew]

It's forgivable.

 

[Deleted member 29280]

Yes running back to bosses is super annoying but what turned me off of Bloodborne was having to farm blood vials. Just refill them automatically on death. Forcing you to farm just wastes time, which I don't have much of.

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This criticism always seemed like missing the point of it being item management that rewards you for playing better in general. Enemies in almost every area drop them, you can buy them with echoes, dodging is super buff so you shouldn't be getting hit much at all, you can get health back by dealing damage quickly after you get hit so playing more aggressively helps you survive, you could just NOT waste them if you feel like you are more likely to die anyway. If you're having to farm them that often its not really the game's fault.

 

[Negatorous]

To be honest, having watched the video posted above of how to do it, I'd never have found that shortcut. Having to basically glitch roll off the top platform to get onto the wall is not something I'd have thought of doing, even the video got it wrong the first two times.

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I wish I could say I tested that jump out because I scoped out the path from the 1st part of the level like you did and then tried to find a way to jump down to it but I too found out by being told by someone else about it. I'm actually shocked it was carried over from the original version of the game to the PS5 remake.

 

[Bear]

This criticism always seemed like missing the point of it being item management that rewards you for playing better in general. Enemies in almost every area drop them, you can buy them with echoes, dodging is super buff so you shouldn't be getting hit much at all, you can get health back by dealing damage quickly after you get hit so playing more aggressively helps you survive, you could just NOT waste them if you feel like you are more likely to die anyway. If you're having to farm them that often its not really the game's fault.

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So instead of healing if I get hit early on in a fight I should just…. give up and die? Then be forced to fight/run back to the boss for several minutes at a time? Seems like bad game design.

I don't understand why so many Souls fans are against simple quality of life updates that make the game more approachable for people who don't want to waste hours and hours of their lives fighting the same fodder enemies just to try a boss again.