When Soulsborne bosses are at their best, they're incredible. When they're at their worst, they can be some of the worst encounters in gaming.

Over the past year, I wrote retrospectives on all five Soulsborne games, from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls II. I'm not exaggerating when I say that these games changed my life, and I've played each of them all the way through multiple times.



One of my absolute favorite aspects of these games are the incredibly designed boss battles they contain. At their best, they're some of the most memorable experiences in all of gaming; challenging, thrilling and immensely satisfying to overcome.



I've decided to rank every boss from every game from best to worst. With the inclusion of bosses from the recently released Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I have included 149 unique encounters from across all six games. I know that Sekiro isn't technically Soulsborne but it's from the same team and it hits many of the same notes that Soulsborne does for boss design, so I have decided to include it. Also, I've omitted most of the bosses from Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, with the exception of one that I like too much not to mention.



I've tried to include a bit of objectivity in this ranking, but for the most part this is just my opinion. I assigned each boss a score based on specific criteria and ranked them based on these scores. Then, I adjusted the rankings until I was satisfied. If you disagree, feel free to tell me your thoughts!



Unfortunately, before we get to the truly legendary encounters, we have to wade through the worst of the worst, and one boss comes out on top as the worst of them all...







149. Bed of Chaos



Game: Dark Souls (26 of 26)



Location: Lost Izalith



This is the worst boss in the series and it’s not even close. Every single aspect of this fight is bad. It looks disgusting, it’s incredibly frustrating and unfair, the run up is unbearably long and boring, and even the interesting lore behind it only manages to make it more disappointing in the end. There’s no joy to be had from this fight in any form and no skill to be tested beyond your most basic abilities. You can only run and hope you don’t get one-shotted by an attack you had no way of dodging, or a collapsing floor that showed no signs to warn you beforehand. Then, once you figure out its insultingly easy puzzle mechanics, the final resolution to the fight is just a slap in the face.



Most Soulsborne bosses have at least something redeeming about them, even if it’s just a tiny detail. Bed of Chaos has none. It’s the worst Soulsborne boss, and one of the worst bosses in gaming, period.







148. Royal Rat Authority



Game: Dark Souls II (41 of 41)



Location: Doors of Pharros



The Royal Rat Authority is only above the Bed of Chaos for two reasons; first of all, the bonfire for this boss is directly in front of its fog wall. Secondly, there’s an actual fight here...



Other than that, this fight is obnoxiously frustrating, visually repulsive and not in the slightest bit fun or engaging. As you enter the arena, you must fight four small rats that move very quickly and are difficult to hit. If they bite you, they will quickly inflict toxic, a status that drains your health at an alarming rate. Before you have time to do anything, the boss enters the arena and finishes you off.



It’s a fight that’s decided in the first few seconds, and the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against you. Once you finally make it past that hellish beginning, the rest of the fight is the very definition of bland and mediocre, with a boring visual design and a bland telegraphed moveset that is essentially a watered down Great Grey Wolf Sif with none of the emotional impact of that fight.







147. Demon Firesage



Game: Dark Souls (25 of 26)



Location: Demon Ruins



I could write on and on about all the problems this boss has, but I won’t. I won’t waste my time. It’s a blatant reskin of an earlier boss that is in turn a blatant reskin of an even earlier boss, and it’s not even good at that. It’s insultingly lazy and a complete waste of everyone’s time.







146. Twin Dragonriders



Game: Dark Souls II (40 of 41)



Location: Drangleic Castle



With the Demon Firesage and now this, we've passed the few truly atrocious fights and entered the “offensively lazy” category. The Twin Dragonriders are no different from your average Dark Souls II gank encounters, except even those tend to be much harder. This is just two large enemies – of the sort that was already a bad boss fight earlier in the game – throw into the same room with boss health bars and a soundtrack. The arena doesn’t even feel like a boss arena; it’s just another room. The fact that this fight comes at the climax of one of the most memorable areas in Dark Souls II makes it even more of a disappointment.







145. Centipede Demon



Game: Dark Souls (24 of 26)



Location: Demon Ruins



OH MY GOD MY EYES



This is probably the worst boss fight in the entire series from a visual perspective. Not just the boss itself – although it is hideous in all the wrong ways – but the arena as well. You fight the Centipede Demon while stranded on a small island barely big enough to move on while surrounded by some of the brightest lava I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it’s like staring at the sun.



If this wasn’t bad enough, the boss is aggravating to fight in the space you're given and just plain boring overall. If you want to actually have room to maneuver, you have to run across the lava to a much larger arena, taking large amounts of damage along the way. If you cut off the demon’s tail, you can get a ring that absorbs the lava damage, but good luck doing that because when this monster is on top of you the camera goes ballistic.



Just about the only saving grace of this fight is how easy it is. Once you cross over the lava into the larger arena, you can make quick work of this beast and then forget it ever existed.







144. Royal Rat Vanguard



Game: Dark Souls II (39 of 41)



Location: Grave of the Saints



I just…



I don’t get it.



It’s just a bunch of rats in a room.



Let’s… Let’s just move on.







143. Prowling Magus & Congregation



Game: Dark Souls II (38 of 41)



Location: Brightstone Cove Tseldora



Now we move on from fights that are offensively lazy to fights that are just bafflingly so. I have no idea what the thought process behind this boss could have been. It’s placed in a seemingly random location and is nothing more than a handful of standard enemies in a square room. There is nothing special about any of it. It feels like someone just threw a standard enemy mob together as quickly as possible, slapped a boss health bar on it and called it a day. It doesn’t feel like a boss fight at all, and it’s so easy that by the time you’ve gotten over the initial confusion as to what the hell is going on here, it’s over.



I don’t really know what else to say about this one. It’s just so… strange.







142. Belfry Gargoyles



Game: Dark Souls II (37 of 41)



Location: Belfry Luna



The Bell Gargoyles from the original Dark Souls are a great boss fight, and you won’t be seeing them appear in this ranking for some time. From Software likes their throwbacks, and Dark Souls II especially so. Sometimes throwbacks are good. Other times, they miss the mark entirely.



The Belfry Gargoyles do nothing to the original fight except crank up the difficulty to an obscene artificial extent. They are the exact same otherwise; an awful copy-and-paste that adds more gargoyles, more frequently with more health in a smaller arena, ruining the balance entirely. It’s only saving grace is a beautiful, atmospheric full-moon backdrop.







141. Covetous Demon



Game: Dark Souls II (36 of 41)



Location: Earthen Peak



The Covetous Demon is perhaps the worst boss from a character design perspective. He's a Jabba-the-Hut wannabe who looks like he was designed by an eight year old and tossed into a random crummy room that was put together in two seconds. Everything about this fight is ridiculous and almost impossible to take seriously, from the design to the absurd lore to the absolute lack of anything resembling difficulty. You almost have to put in effort to be hit by this thing.



There are some pretty cool mechanics to this boss, but because of how easy they're effectively useless. There are jars hanging from the ceiling that can be broken to drop hollows into the arena to distract the demon, and he has a move where he can swallow you whole and de-equip all of your weapons, armor and equipment. These rarely come into play because it's so hard to actually get hit, and you'll never actually need to distract him.







140. Leechmonger



Game: Demon's Souls (18 of 18)



Location: 5-1: Valley of Defilement



And rounding out the bottom ten is Demon’s Souls’ own Leechmonger. This boss is pretty much a joke. It’s just a large blob that throws muck at you, and it’s pathetically easy to fight once you’ve figured out how. It all depends on how much damage you do – don’t do enough, and Leechmonger will heal itself before you can do anything. Do enough, and that’s it. The fight’s over. If you use fire? I’ve seen people one-shot this boss with fire before. It’s overall just a ridiculously easy and unimaginative fight, and for that reason it finds itself all the way down here.







When Soulsborne bosses are at their best, they're incredible. When they're at their worst, they can be some of the worst encounters in gaming. The early installments have some particularly rough encounters, as they had not yet found the sweet spot that later games hit so frequently.



Things can only get better from here. Unfortunately, we haven't quite pulled ourselves out of the bottom of the barrel, but we're on our way to some of the greats.