Elden Ring is a game with a lot of stuff- a lot of caves, a lot of catacombs, a lot of items, a lot of NPCs, a lot of deaths, and you guessed it, a lot of bosses. And while there are only a dozen or so bosses that are actually required to finish the story, there are well over a hundred bosses in the game, from end-of-catacomb repeats like Ulcerated Tree Spirts to absolute wall bosses like Soldier of Godrick. It's something I really enjoyed about the game, and one of the few ways that I think Dark Souls 2 was kept in mind when designing Elden Ring. That game has a lot of bosses, and some of them are laughably easy. And in a series as difficult as Souls, I appreciate an easy win every now and then. Elden Ring continues this- I rarely died to a boss at the end of a cave or out in the field, but the rewards are usually pretty good, and it just feels great to one-try a boss.
And so, as is tradition on Tales from the Backlog, there had to be an episode where we tier rank the bosses. Now, because there are a million bosses in the game, I used a tier list that only included enemies marked as "Great Enemy" and above- 33 bosses in total. There are a few notable omissions from the list, but I felt good about this one. Joining me for this episode is a return guest on the show- Jim Rodeman. Jim was previously on the Hollow Knight and Hades episodes of the show, and I wanted to get his perspective on the bosses because his only experience with FromSoftware in the past was Dark Souls, and that was only a few years ago.
Here are our tier lists, and you can listen to the episode for our explanations:
Dave:
Jim:
And as always, we encourage you to make your own tier list using this link, and share it with us! And a great place to share it is in the Tales from the Backlog Discord server!
You can listen to this Break from the Backlog episode (Elden Ring Bosses Tier List) of Tales from the Backlog in the player below, or you can follow the links to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podcast Addict, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or search "Tales from the Backlog" in your favorite podcast app!