As a Dark Souls Spiritual Successor, Bloodborne ups the ante with plenty of brutal, difficult bosses.
- Father Gascoigne. The Gatekeeper boss for Bloodborne, is awesome but also completely destroys new players. He fights as a stronger version of you, with hard hitting axe attacks, but the most devastating attacks he has are his gun attacks, dealing massive amounts of damage for the early game, forcing you to stay on the aggressive. What balances his out is his weakness to parrying and the fact he can't really onehit you, meaning if you stay on the aggressive and learn the parry system, he becomes much more manageable. In his second phase, he transforms his axe (but unlike you, he can still use his gun with his weapon transformed) and gains a truly nasty hit radius. His third phase is the most threatening, where he turns into a feral werewolf and can be best described as an absolute shitshow. He carries over his weakness to parrying but his FERAL attack patterns mean your dodges will have to be on point. Overall, if you can beat Gascoigne, you can beat anything in Bloodborne. It's possible to find an item that leaves him open when used... but the third time you use it, he immediately enters his third phase regardless of his health. And the item only works three times.
- Vicar Amelia. Father Gascoigne was the first boss to show you how punishing the game can be, but Vicar Amelia is made to cause rage. She has a large health pool compared to previous bosses and her attacks cover wide and long areas, so keeping your distance without being sliced to pieces is difficult. In her second phase she will become much more aggressive and can even heal if you make the mistake of keeping your distance, forcing you to throw Numbing Mist at her to stop it. As an extra "screw you", her hair tends to completely fill the screen when you're behind her, making it impossible to see what you're doing. Be ready with Fire Paper and a good Serrated weapon, especially if you're courageous/skilled enough to decide to take her on early.
- The Shadows of Yharnam take precise positioning and decision making to beat, requiring the player to keep tabs on three different enemies, each with their own movement and attack speed. The first phase is relatively easy, as the magic user only occasionally shoots straight-forward fireballs, the candle-wielder is slow and the katana wielder is aggressive and fast, though predictable. All three are relatively simple to stagger and the environment can be used to your advantage. The issues start from the second phase onwards. Once one of the Shadows reaches a third of their health, they will grow snakes, much like the snake parasites in Forbidden Forest preceding the battle. Each Shadow gains extra abilities, with the katana and candle Shadow gaining a rather generous boost to the range of their weapons. It can be difficult to get close to the melee users as they spam their long-ranged melee attacks. Then once only one Shadow remains standing, it will attempt a lengthy spell you must interrupt, as failing to do so has the Shadow summon massive snakes that deal an incredible amount of damage. The only saving grace is that you can summon Henryk and the Younger Madaras Twin, but not by much.
- Rom, the Vacuous Spider requires a great deal of patience to beat. Unlike the game's other Flunky Bosses, her minions are a huge threat—one attack will reduce most players to one-third their HP—requiring you to split your attention between the boss and the minions. Even worse, with each stage she'll summon more. If you want to play it safe, you can try to thin out the spider swarm before engaging Rom herself, but doing so is very time-consuming and open you up to a quick death by Rom's meteor showers while your back is turned.
- And to top it off, the rematch with her in the Chalice Dungeons is much tougher still. It's the same setup as before, except the arena you fight her in is now a lot smaller. On the up side, this means she doesn't have a lot of space to run away to, but conversely, neither do you, so enjoy being swarmed by the baby spiders while Rom jovially spams meteor showers at you. And god help you if you happen to run into her in one of the Defiled Chalice Dungeons.
- Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos. Widely considered the hardest boss in the main game, with some arguing she is up there with some of the DLC bosses in terms of difficulty. Thankfully an optional boss, Ebrietas is surprisingly fast for her size and build, with hard hitting, relentless attacks - including hand smashes with a follow up tentacle strike to catch rolls, a grab attack that oneshots you, frenzy buildup ranged attacks, and one of the worst charge attacks in the series that turns her whole body into a hitbox. The second phase adds a magic spell into the mix that deals scary amounts of damage and forces either precise rolls or for you to unlock and run away. Her head takes double damage but you have to learn what attacks let you hit the head back, and the rest of her body takes trivial damage from blunt weapons, meaning you'll be there a while (fortunately Bolt Paper and Thurst deal a lot of damage), making this a fight of endurance. The safest position is behind her, constantly moving into range when she runs, but in Phase 2 with that laser, you have to be viligant. But this means you'll be fighting with her camera, because her model is so huge! Overall, a very difficult fight, one that lives up to the title of being a Great One.
- Martyr Logarius, the Final Boss of Cainhurst Castle. Just surviving his first phase can be extremely difficult, as he spends it spamming high powered, area of effect magic spells that make even getting within striking distance of him a near-suicide mission, and even if you do manage to get that close, he can unleash on you with a massive melee combo that easily wipes out your health bar if you aren't careful, and can't be parried. The second and third phases are actually mildly easier because he at least can be parried, but only if you're extremely quick on the draw. However, that's also when he gets a lot more mobile, flying up into the air to slam down on you with his melee weapons. If you're even still alive by the time the third phase rolls around, odds are you've long since used up your Blood Vials and Bullets...
- The DLC, The Old Hunters introduces its difficulty with its first boss, Ludwig the Accursed, a gigantic beast with over a dozen unique attacks, incredible speed and strength, a difficult to predict moveset and tells, and savage combos. Ludwig is known as a skill check for the DLC, with several attacks fully capable of one-shotting a careless, or even careful player. Halfway through the fight, Ludwig enters his Holy Blade phase where he eschews his unpredictable attacks in his first-phase in favor of frenetic and fast-paced strikes and AOE attacks that while much more readable, still deal massive damage. Unsurprisingly, he's considered one of the greatest bosses in the game for his incredible, but fair, difficulty.
- The penultimate boss of the DLC, Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower is known for her difficulty. With swift and graceful strikes, Maria combines the pure skill of a veteran hunter and is capable of dodging most anything you dish out. While her first phrase can be strafed about, her second and third phases bring the pain whe using her Blood Blades enhances her reach and damage enormously, coupled with increasing aggression. Like Ludwig, she's also considered a high quality and difficult boss, but one of the game's highest challenges.
- The final boss of the DLC, the Orphan of Kos is considered one of, if not the hardest bosses in all of FromSoft's history. He is almost mindlessly aggressive and hard-hitting and while his first phase is comparatively simple to master, his second is the player killer. His attacks are nigh-impossible to parry, with painful and relentless combos, chaining AOE attacks and powerful lightning blasts that are exceptionally difficult to dodge if you stand in the wrong place. Finding windows to attack is hard enough, compounded by his insane health pool. Not for nothing is he known for his psychotic levels of difficulty to cap off the very difficult Fishing Hamlet.
