'Elden Ring': Your Worst Boss Is The Most Awful Thing FromSoftware Has Ever Done
This article contains minor spoilers for Elden Ring
FromSoftware has done a lot of awful things to its players over the years. Terrifying monsters that just happen to look like treasure chests. Ornstein and Smough. Blighttown. Not making Bloodborne 2. A litany of awful offences.
But through all the hardships, I’ve learned to forgive. I have to. FromSoftware loves screwing with its players, after all. At this point, you know that when you boot up a FromSoft game, you’re stepping into a world that willfully, joyfully breaks the established rules and uses our experiences of other video games against us.
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Elden Ring is no different. FromSoft has created a gorgeous, massive open world filled with enemies, traps, and unexpected moments that will make you scream and put down your controller before inevitably coming back ten minutes later to see what was over the other side of that hill. It is a masterpiece. But there’s one boss in Elden Ring that takes the piss like never before.
The Fire Giant, the colossal boss that guards the Forge Of The Giants, and the final act of Elden Ring, is maybe the worst thing FromSoftware has ever made. It is awkward, time-consuming, and needlessly difficult in all the worst ways.
It should be such an epic moment. After dozens of hours of hardship, you’ve fought your way to the peak of the Mountaintops Of The Giants. The end of the game is finally in sight. But as you trudge across the snow towards your destination, a hulking monstrosity comes bounding towards through the icy white tundra. The scene is set for a spectacular showdown.
Unfortunately, it swiftly descends into what I can only describe as an experience that’s marginally less fun than washing my hands in broken glass.
Let’s start with the name, shall we? Fire Giant. Consider the minds that worked on Elden Ring. In one corner, we have FromSoft, an acclaimed studio known for naming bosses things like Starscourge Radahn, Isshin The Sword Saint, and Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower. In the other, we have George R.R. Martin, author of one of the most celebrated fantasy series of the last century. Between them, they came up with “Fire Giant”. This is our first indication that this fight isn’t going to be up there with the best of them.
It’s all downhill from there, really. The aim of the fight is to slash away at the Fire Giant’s left foot while doing your best to avoid his many, many attacks. Sounds great on paper! In reality, it doesn’t work brilliantly.
The Fire Giant is, I think, the largest boss in Elden Ring. This is a problem for several reasons, the most obvious being that we’re expected to focus on one small part of him: his left foot. Let’s assume you make over to the bastard without being wiped out by one of his devastating long-range attacks and start hacking at his foot. Because of the sheer size of this boss, you can’t actually see the rest of him while you’re stood underneath him attacking. This means you have very little indication as to when he’s going to perform an AOE attack that will wipe out most - if not all - of your health.
Oh, and if you do manage to get a few good hits in without croaking, eventually he does a massive roll away from you, forcing you to jog back over to him while once again looking out for those ranged attacks. Take off enough health, and the Fire Giant will live up to its name by hurling two types of fireballs at you. One is slow moving and eventually explodes in a massive radius causing huge damage. The other is incredibly fast, homes in, and is a pain to dodge. It also causes huge damage.
I should stress that you can use Torrent in this fight, but that comes with some pretty substantial caveats. For one thing, it’s much harder to navigate the fight on Torrent while locked on to the Fire Giant, and way harder to dodge those attacks. All it takes is one good hit and your horsey friend is put out of action. There’s also the fact that this boss has a disgusting amount of health, and simply driving by on Torrent whenever there’s an opening would take forever.
Just for added fun, if you summon the one nearby available NPC to help you out, you can’t then also use Torrent, for reasons that I’m sure were clear to FromSoft at the time. On my successful attempt, I found it better to avoid Torrent and simply run back and forth across the fight’s huge open space. It takes ages however you do it to be honest, which makes it all the more annoying that the Fire Giant has the capacity to one-shot even the tankiest of builds with one well-placed attack. You can do everything right, get the Fire Giant down to its last sliver of health, and then make one stupid mistake that ensures you have to start all over again.
Elden Ring has a huge amount of truly impressive bosses, which is perhaps why I was so surprised by how thoroughly miserable an experience the Fire Giant is. It’s like FromSoft purposefully designed this one to be a massive waste of time.
And in case you think I’m alone in my hatred of the Flame Giant, I’m not. Reddit is awash with threads lamenting the boss as one of the worst things FromSoft has ever done. Loving Elden Ring But The Fire Giant Is Really Bad. Fire Giant is Objectively Terrible. Fire Giant... How Do I Even? Even some of the Souls community’s more dedicated players have admitted they saw no other option than to cheese Fire Giant with a glitch, which has sadly already been patched out by the looks of things.
I said in my Elden Ring review that one of the best things about the game is that you can simply leave if a boss is giving you trouble and go elsewhere to level up. That holds true for the vast majority of the adventure, but the Fire Giant is such a chungus of death and destruction that it can still wipe out players well over level 100 with ease.
It is an enraging encounter that will undoubtedly go down in FromSoft history as one of the most needlessly grating. I already want to replay Elden Ring, and stand by my assessment that it’s FromSoft’s finest game to date. But I also know the Fire Giant will be waiting for me on that mountain, ready to punish me all over again. And I’m truly scared.
Topics: Elden Ring, Fromsoftware