I finished up the Research Hall in Bloodborne after dying at least 3 times from gravity and a couple more times from the enemies. The boss that awaited me at the end, Living Failures, wasn’t one of my favorites. It felt kind of like a beefed up Celestial Emissary, except damage to each individual Failure reduced the boss’ health bar rather than a single Failure being responsible for the health bar. Individually, the Failures weren’t particularly dangerous. They hit hard, have remarkable reach, and some of their attacks cover a wide area around them, but they are pretty easy to dodge around. The true difficulty comes when three or more Failures are present at one time. Two are decently manageable, but three or more makes things difficult. Since some use ranged attacks and some melee, it was quite the juggling act trying to manage everything. Part of me wishes that the attacks did just a little less damage to make it less of a hit and run battle, but the other part of me recognizes that even in its current form, it isn’t that hard of a fight. I defeated the boss on my first attempt, after all.
What came next, though, was without a doubt the highlight of the game for me. Immediately following the Living Failures is another boss fight, this one with Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. She stands as my favorite boss in the game so far, and I have a hard time believing any of the others will take that place. She struck the perfect balance of difficulty for me. She’s fast, has some hard-hitting combos, and will take advantage of the slightest mistake, but she is staggered easily, can be parried easily, and fighting her is just a blast. I died to her probably 10 times, but I didn’t even care. It probably helped that there’s a lantern right outside the fog gate, so there’s no long, annoying run back to her fight, but I also just enjoyed the fight so stinking much. I felt like I knew exactly how I messed up and why I died each and every time, and I got a little better with each attempt. I discovered around attempt 5 that an incredibly effective strategy was to perform 2 to 3 quick attacks and then fire my blunderbuss. Almost without fail she would attempt an attack after my last melee attack, and I would get off a successful parry. Sometimes she would use a delayed over-the-shoulder attack that would prevent me from getting the parry and just stagger her out of that attack. Those were more dangerous moments, because that usually gave her time to quick step away.
This was especially true in her second and third phases. In her second phase, she gains a blood effect on her weapons. This significantly increases the amount of damage she does and drastically increases the range of her attacks (heck, she has one melee attack that reaches across the entire boss arena; the only saving grace here is the attack’s long wind up). This is when things get really dicey. The strategy of stunlocking her and getting off a quick parry still worked, but the consequences of making a mistake were dire. Her third phase builds even further on this by adding a fire effect to her attacks that lingers just a little bit after her attack passes, making dodges quite difficult.
My strategy of stunlock and parry only worked as well as it did because I got her up against a wall, and even then I almost screwed everything up on my final attempt. I ran out of stamina trying to keep her stunlocked in her third phase. She had maybe 10% of her health left, and I was unable to attack or quickstep for a moment. She took advantage of the pause and unleashed a quick combo on me. I almost set my controller down because I thought she killed me. I couldn’t see any of the red of my health bar. Thankfully I dodged away, and instead of pressing her attack, she started to slowly circle me. I healed twice, threw caution to the wind, and went on the offensive. I managed to kill her with my last drop of stamina.
It was an exhilarating experience. I don’t know if she could objectively be considered a perfect boss, but she was a perfect boss for me. I absolutely loved it, and if I don’t enjoy any of the other boss fights left in the game, I will still be satisfied that I got to experience this gem of a boss fight.