10 Video Games With The Most Epic Boss Line-Ups Of All Time
2. Dark Souls
Yes, Demon's Souls is arguably where this whole 'Souls' craze started, but Dark Souls is when it really gathered momentum. Much of the joy of playing Dark Souls comes from its brutal challenge, which is ruthless when you make mistakes but rewarding when you play with patience and skill.
This ethos really shines through in the boss battles, which you can always anticipate by the huge foreboding fog gates you need to traverse to fight them. The fog gate lets you take a deep breath and brace yourself, before stepping on through to fight whatever horror awaits on the other side.
Every boss battle is meticulously designed (well, apart from that creative fart that was the Bed of Chaos), varying between one-on-one duels against nimble knights of similar stature to yourself, to formidable goliaths where you counter-intuitively need to get as close to as possible to have a chance of beating.
Battles against the likes of Artorias and the Great Wolf Sif are not only mechanically perfect, but also take on a tragic quality thanks to great soundtracks and in-depth backstories. Then there are the memorable encounters against the Grim Reaper-like Nito, and the infamous Ornstein & Smough, where the elation you'll feel after beating them at the 40th time is unrivalled by that in any other game.
Well, except for maybe one...