There’s nothing like turning on a new video game and experiencing its gameplay for the first time, especially a game’s first boss battle.
There have been plenty of great first boss battles over the years, but a recent Reddit thread posted on r/Gaming asked which one was the best. The original poster listed several examples that they believe “set the standard of bosses for that game.” These included Valus from Shadow of the Colossus and Poseidon from God of War 3. The latter franchise was one that frequently came up in replies to the thread, with some even saying that every first boss in PlayStation’s fantasy action series was fantastic but for different reasons. However, Baldur/The Stranger from 2018’s God of War got plenty of love for its music, gameplay, and how well it sets up the rest of Kratos and Atreus’ journey in the reboot.
Several titles developed by FromSoftware were also discussed in the thread. There were mentions of the Cleric Beast (or Gascoigne depending on how you played, as there were several conflicting answers) from Bloodborne and Gundyr from Dark Souls 3. FromSoftware’s masterpiece Elden Ring also came up several times, unsurprisingly. Due to the open-ended nature of the game’s world, players came up with several different answers for who is the true first boss of the game.
Is it the Grafted Scion that you encounter after you initially create your character? Is it the Tree Sentinel in Limgrave that pops up after the tutorial? Or maybe it is Margit the Fell Omen, the beast that lives outside of Stormveil Castle. It makes for a fascinating discussion in the midst of an already interesting question.
But the debate also underscores just how good the boss battles in FromSoftware games can be, first or otherwise, and that each one fulfills the purpose of setting their respective games up for what is to come.
