Let me preach to you the gospel of liking both Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3. It is possible. I'm doing it right now!

Bayle without Igon -> gold medal Bayle with Igon -> platinum medal

there was a lack of hating on ancient dragons

If you’re not including Igon, it’s a tough debate, with Igon however, it’s simply undisputed (I am so very biased)

As a fan of Monster Hunter, I always found it odd that some players struggled or refused to ever free aim any boss encounters even when it's more advantageous to do so. However, when you mentioned that normal encounters very much don't demand that I understood why. I guess when a boss demands you use a skill that isn't taught, it can be quite frustrating.

All three fights are great, but I do think Midir and Bayle presents powerful rampaging dragons much better than Placidusax. Placidusax felt a bit too immobile and clunky despite having his teleport move.

I think you should've talked about the laser attack of each boss, in my opinion they're the pinnacle and the tradition in the tough dragon fights of FromSoft. (Also the runback to bayle's arena is by far the shortest one which is a + for me)

Bayle fans rise up

BAAYYYLE! VILE BAYYLE!!!

SOLID OF SCALE YOU MIGHT BE, FOWL DRAGON

Midir, palcidusax, and bayle may be challenging bosses in their own right, but I don't think I've ever faced a boss as hard and difficult as the dark souls camera

Midir best fought unlocked? Interesting take. I always thought staying locked on to the head is what makes the fight easier.

Not summoning Igon just for the voice lines is a crime

Midir is still the best

I feel like it’s a dance with Bayle rather than a fight, and every thing he does looks so dramatic while looking like a feral wild animal at the same time. My favorite part is his phase transition and his death animation, he tried his best to summon down thunder to charge his broken wing weapon but he didn’t realize he was already dead.

I would say, Placidusax becomes even more of a spectacle fight if you go into it with an ash of war like Raptor of the mists or Vow of the Indomitable! Being able to stand there as he readies his giant lightning nuke and just shrug it off, or land a jumping attack provided by Raptor of the mists is just so awesome. You can essentially avoid running away altogether with tools like those, as even with his divine breath attacks you can stay near him while he's doing and just counter the very end of it for even more damage.

Bayles fight was definitely the most fun and epic in the entire dlc, and unlike second phase Radahn, he actually felt fair

I wholeheartedly disagree with the lock on take on Midir. I was fight him lock on right in front of him only dodging backwards until he finishes his combos and I never have problems with his camera. Of course it does swing a lot up, down and side to side but it just makes the fight more cinematic and it doesn't interfere on the gameplay. As long as you keep him always in front of you its a flawless camera wich is impressive for such a big enemy and seeing how fromsoftware struggled so much with camera in this last dlc

The Midir lockon works perfectly fine?? I never considered to have problems with it in some sort of way? What is wrong about him? I could not figure out any way to stay locked on for the Bayle bossfight. With Midir, I never had problems at all 13:04 if this happens, Bayle falls apart as well The camera spins fast around Bayle, yes.. But if you are behind him after this combo 14:25 14:27 this next hit likely hits you. Thw camera is also too often inside of Bayle 14:33

After the first few attempts on bayle my thoughts were: oh damn midir and placi had a child^^

I personally prefer the older style dragons/bosses in DS1 and DS2. More recent games are too focused on making bosses be overly epic, having delays and fakeouts, crazy attack strings, teleporting and bosses flying all over the arena, aoe spam, etc. Which can lead to it being much more fun to watch, but worse to actually play. The difficulty is more memorizing the bosses attack strings and learning exactly what action to take with every attack, over just being good at the game (aka more variance in how you could win over performing the one correct reaction to properly dodge everything). Older games had a more strategical approach to combat because they were more tame and everything was slower. It felt like bosses had stamina and were bound by the same rules as you. It was more about spacing and felt like real one-on-one duels at it's peaks. The epic and more fast pace encounters stood out more because they were more rare and left to one or two bosses worthy of it. Now every late game bosses is nuking the whole arena and no longer has stamina at all.

You didn't fully touch on it, but I think the music on Bayle also is top tier and elevates it so well. The way it changes in phase to make it seem like even more impending doom is something to witness your first time.

I enjoy midir tge most, but bayle is so unbelievable close. I like Midirs aesthetic and lore, and his fight is great, I love how his fight evolves, he comvos more moves together.

With regard to the camera, do you think it would help if the camera zoomed out slightly? Similar to how Final Fantasy 16 handles large bosses but not to the same extent.

Midir all day for me, no disrespect to Bayle tho still an amazing boss fight.

very nice video man, hope this blows up because its very well thought out

I love Bayle too, he got complex moveset that requires good timing on dodges, positioning, even jump attack. My favourite is the tail swipe too, but also the slam attack in phase 2. After the slam theres lava erruption, so after dodging it you have to position yourself fast enough to be right infront of Bayle's head before the erruption goes off to get your punish. Its great that that move Bayle actually recover slower compare to the phase 1 slam, you can even get a full charge attack off. Even his laser move he will end up right infront of you afterwards. You can also jump over his phase 2 nuke to get a free jump attack, mastering the fight is immensely satisfying to me.

Midir is still my favorite simply because whilst Placidusax and Bayle are amazing bosses (Bayle is my favorite dlc boss) Midir is actually a dragon. The others are so mangled beyond belief that they are kind of slugs more than anything. I’ve always hated blob shaped bosses and both placi and Bayle are very much similar to the latter than the former, I.e. an actual dragon. I don’t understand how Sekiro learned the art of camera zoom out yet ER does not. So many bosses would be better if the camera was just more versatile.

Long comment ahead: Yeah, I had heard a lot about Bayle going into the DLC, so naturally I was intrigued to fight him and felt a sense of excitement once I realized that I was getting close to actually doing it. Now having fought and beaten Bayle, I can honestly say that I see the hype. He’s definitely one of the very best dragon fights From has ever done. With that being said, Midir is, in my opinion, the closest that they have ever come to the perfect dragon fight. None of them are without flaws, however Midir to me is the one who has the least amount of glaring ones. With the dragon fights, especially when it comes to Bayle and Midir specifically, I really think that it simply comes down to whether you prioritize the spectacle, or the fight itself; visuals or gameplay. When it comes to Bayle, I think it’s fair to say that he’s more of a spectacle than probably any other dragon fight they’ve ever made. The sheer amount of chaos going on and the visuals can attest to that. The reason why Midir is better is because the fight seems to be more polished in comparison, and it just feels more satisfying. Bayle has some very clear mechanical issues, some of which you already touched on in your video. To start with, he shares the same flaw (in my opinion) that many Elden Ring bosses do, which is that he’s super spammy at times. He rarely stops attacking and gives you few windows to land attacks of your own. Another thing is that when he does actually give you a window to attack him, it’s very short-lived, then he goes right back to attacking constantly. And his positioning can be weird at times too, which presents issues when he actually does leave a window to attack him as well as when you’re trying to avoid his attacks. A big one is when he lands in front of you, giving you an opening to hit him, and he awkwardly moves his head around which causes your attacks to miss. He reminds me of King of the Storm (The Nameless King’s first phase) in this regard, albeit more tedious because he has way more health and leaves less openings. The last thing is that his hitboxes can be downright questionable at times as well as inconsistent (you already kinda talked about this). With Midir, as with any other large enemy in these games, the camera can be an issue at times, but apart from that I don’t really have any complaints. His attacks are generally telegraphed and easily readable, he leaves solid openings to punish and doesn’t awkwardly move around as much causing you to miss when you try to hit him (though I have missed him occasionally due to this issue, just not as often), he doesn’t attack spam you, and his hitboxes pretty much all feel fair and I never find myself questioning when I get caught by something. Aside from that, while I wouldn’t say that he’s as much of a spectacle as Bayle, he is a spectacle in his own right. His attacks and animations look really cool, his transition into his second phase is awesome, and in terms of design (purely dragon to dragon), I think Midir is actually the cooler looking one of the two. Not to mention that his OST is peak. As well as the way that he terrorizes the city, and the buildup to eventually fighting him. As for Placidusax, to sum it up quickly, he’s another visual spectacle and one of the best they’ve done (possibly only surpassed by Bayle in that regard). As for the fight itself, he has some really cool looking attacks, and some of them are really fun to dodge. The main issues that I have are one of which you said already, that you pretty much have to spend the entire fight locked-off because it just feels awkward otherwise. The other is the positioning. Both Bayle, and especially Midir, practically force you to stay in front of them and hit them in the head through a combination of their movements and attacks which are clearly designed specifically to keep you in front of them. Placidusax on the other hand kinda discourages you from staying in front of him due to certain attacks (mainly his fire breath). Often times it just feels more convenient to circle around towards his back and attack him there. Which makes the fight itself not as fun in my opinion.

Regarding the aerial attack at 14:43, I used Bayle's claw opening up as a visual clue for when to dodge. Seemed to work pretty well for me cause I don't think I got hit with that move after figuring out the timing.

Bayle's phase two transition is so epic and also gets my #1 vote but yeah the dragons listed are 100% the top 3 without a doubt. Good video dude

This is a cool video, I love the concept of dragons and even if some of the fights are janky I'm glad they are still making them. I like Midir's visual style more and the fact that he's super intimidating at first but becomes easy once you understand the fight is cool to me. Also seeing clips of how cool Midir looked was what convinced me to try souls games so I'm super biased. Bayle is awesome though, super close second from my very not objective point of view, great video.

No. Too many of his attacks put him out of reach, which can often result in you running after him, only for him to jump away again before you can reach him. He’s a good fight if the AI doesn’t decide to screw with you, but he’s still not better than Midir. The fight is much better with Igon.

you deserve way more subs for an essay this smooth.

You can still take an offensive approach during Placid's slam nuke. The tip of his tail is outside the shockwave. You can run back there and get in a bunch of hits

Midir is by far the best dragon bossfight and imo one the best bossfight ever created by fromsoftware tied by gael. Its a perfect dance when you know how to fight it with absolute 0 dumbshit attacks that are undodgable or unreactable, its hp pool is more than enough and learning to fight midir properly (by staying next to his head) is so satisfying and the combat feels just insanely well. Talking about the Midir / Placidusax / Bayle laser beam attack, the midir one is the best also by far by the simple fact that midir doing his laser ultimate truely shows that he's giving absolutely EVERYTHING into that attack displayed by the fact that he is exhausted after doing it, it just feel fair, you play well against the boss that he's starting to struggle against you and then do that all out attack, Placidusax laser is cool af and felt like a cool reference to midir but it feels goofy to dodge and it doesn't give that "i gave everything" feeling after. Also placidusax basic attacks are complete garbage in terms of dodging, spacing etc.. its just a nightmare to fight against his firebreath, however the boss looks fucking cool. Bayle is insane and mix good references to midir moveset, i personally im sure i would love the fight if the lightning / fire effects didn't freeze my pc everytime he does an attack on phase 2. (also if you're a pc player, i prefer delocking when phase transition happens and just adjust the camera looking at each one of the fireballs that comes at you, it makes it easier to run away from it) anyway i would say Midir, Bayle and Placidusax, shout out to kalameet

Personally, as much as I loved Bayle in ER, I think Midir is still Fromsoft's best dragon.

Great points. While I love Bayle and consider him my favorite ER boss, Midir to me is still the best dragon boss mechanically speaking. There are 2 problems with Bayle. One as you already covered is the camera. While the camera does work sufficiently, it often takes you underneath him and you end up always being blinded or literally stuck inside the model, which can make for some janky moments. Second, while he has a very dynamic moveset that makes for some cinematic moments, it does create problems thats often found with a lot of ER bosses. He can often extend his combos without a buildup or enough time for you to react. For example, for his biting attack, he can extend it by doing almost a headbutt, which comes out quite quickly. This just leaves me guessing or always assuming he's gonna do it, so I end up either rolling through it, or wasting a roll. As similarly stated, some attacks come more quickly than you have time to roll out of. For example, he can sometimes just roar right in your face and multiple lightning strikes will follow. My only solution was to just keep a fair distance away from his head.

I could be wrong, but I image there is some middle ground they could zoom out so that the fight is more readable, and you can appreciate more of the visuals, while still being close enough to maintain scale

Bayle was an incredible fight. Took me about 6 tries and he was instantly my favorite dragon fight, and favorite boss of the DLC. Regarding your self proclaimed “skill issue” with playing not-locked on due to struggling with camera management-have you ever tried playing while holding the controller with a claw grip (in your right hand only, left hand normal.) This involves slightly shifting your fingers so that your thumb is on the joystick, pointer finger has access to all 4 letter/shape buttons, and middle finger is on the bumper/triggers. That makes it much easier to whip the camera around while unlocked

I find fighting while locked on to Midir's head extremely easy and natural, I'm surprised you don't enjoy it. He is still (at this moment) my favorite Fromsoft dragon boss, simply because of how engaging his fight is. There's no need to smack him in the ankles, his head is always present and there for you to take advantage of. With more practice against Bayle in the future I could see him rising, but for now he takes a close second. He has just a few too many massive AOE's that leave me feeling unsafe challenging him head on, but as I learn to deal with those I may find less of an issue with them down the road. I can appreciate that at least you admit that your struggle with free-aiming is a skill issue. Camera management is one of the most important mechanics that separate good players from great players, and learning when to lock on vs when to free-aim is extremely important in both pvp and pve challenge settings. Would a perfect lock on camera that always framed the target be nice? Yes. Is it practical from a coding perspective? I highly doubt it. But we can hope that some improvements do come down the road.

i wonder if they could incorporate a zoom out in conjunction with the snappier camera rotation, so if the boss is above you, it zooms out etc

great vid I really wish you brought Kalameet into the discussion though I understand this was meant to be about the 'modern' fights still I think it would have added something. subbed.

My perfect dragon boss fight should be: - Atmosphere: Placidusax - Music: Midir -Moveset: Bayle - Lore: A bit bias here, I love the battle of Placidusax and Bayle, but raising by gods and fighting The Abyss for eternity is really my favorite vibe - Design: Dragon God (Although he’s a demon) - Epicness: Divine Dragon - Intro: Kalameet (We get a whole cutscene before fighting him is an absolute cinema) And the boss fight shouldn’t have any camera issues like how we fight against Bayle (it’s terrible locking on him). That is how I create my personal perfect dragon fight based on my previous dragon fights

Great video! Can you do an analysis of Rellana?

its definitely Midir, like its not even close. the fight truly is the closest you can feel to fighting an actual dragon that said Bayle is sick and Igon obviously gives it bonus points making for a fantastic fight (it also has a metric fuckton of recency bias which you have to take into account)

I want to make a comment about the content of the video and add to it, because I really vibe with the topic. Thing is, I have nothing to add, because I 100% agree with everything you said! Sub earned

Gameplay wise it's Bayle, but holy shit Midir's soundtrack is unbeatable, it's straight up the best boss ost in the series imo (besides of course Ludwig's and Laurence's ost)

Another big issue with the camera in Bayle's fight, is that for some reason, you can only lock on to his head, whereas you can lock on to the legs and body of all the other dragons. It's impossible to fight Bayle using lock on when you are very close to him, because his head will be directly above you or even behind you, making the camera to go all over the place. This should be such an easy thing for FromSoftware to fix, and I'm baffled it hasn't been done so yet.

Sinh from Dark Souls 2 is pretty slept on (ba dum tiss), hes one of my favorite dragon fights in the series.

Bayle is literally Midir with better cinematics and worse camera angles and hitboxes. All they had to do was not allow the player to get under bayle and it would be the best boss fight in the game.

really good video, keep it up 👍

I used to absolutely despise the copy-pasted wyvern dragon fights in Elden Ring, but at some point I figured out that it's much more fun to try and fight them like Midir, and almost exclusively go for attacks on their heads. They stagger and crit animation on wyverns is so satisfying. I just wish that they did a better job conveying that to the player. Midir and Bayle's fights are great because the game almost always puts their heads right in front of you during a punish window when they finish attacking. If you look at Bayle and Midir, you notice that their models are stooped over so that their heads are pretty much eye-level with the player. The main issue I have with the wyverns is that their heads are placed way too high up, and sometimes entirely out of reach for certain weapons. You can get a few hits in during the roar animation that always folllows a stomp attack, but sometimes that entire window is eaten up when the wyvern's head ended up behind you because you rolled forward and under the boss to dodge the attack. Obviously if you are under the wyvern you're going to attack it's legs instead of running up to hit the head that you probably can't even reach anyway. And it's not even worth talking about the four-legged ancient dragon fights. Fromsoft gave up, and decided to make a 360° dragon fight where every attack has lightning or shockwave aoe cause the player has no incentive to be facing the front of the boss, and locking-on makes you want to throw up. Oh wait, there's a remembrance boss version with Godwyn lore? Oh, they just took the same shitty design, but added more aoe and deathblight. Thank you Dark Souls. Placidusax is fine, idk. He's like a fat version of the ancient dragons, but less annoying to fight cause you can't go under him and mess up the lock-on camera really bad. His cool attacks are really fucking cool though, and I think it's fine to have a boss that exists just for that. Especially now that Bayle exists to make up for it.

What I find interesting is how most bosses in Elden Ring+dlc at close to their prime, with two major exceptions being both the big dragon fights. They are both rotting corpses of what they used to be and they are still insanely powerful. Goes to show how strong a dragon can be

For me Bayle was beaten the 6th try, and he wasn't hard But Darkeater Midir was beaten after over 150 tries He was the hardest boss i ever fought on the gaming history 😅

I adore bayle as much as the next person but i personally feel like he's SO dilapidated and injured that he genuinely feels about a tenth as dangerous as he should. Depite the fact he's still fierce and definitely deadly, he seems heavily neutured just by his design to me. Still love him! But i put midir and even placi above him.

The transition descent has a very clear sound que for when to dodge if you lose visibility

I just finished dark souls 3 earlier this year and I feel like midir one of the best boss fights in the series he has the most damage multiplier on his head compared to other dragons who has less damaged multipliers on their head and incentivizes You to actually attack the head It’s a shame that the DLC performance sucks and that it stutters a lot on bayle and on the final boss. I think that this is the #1 thing fromsoft work on right now because a lot of people can’t finish the game.

People keep saying calling midir best dragon is being a ds3 fanboy who can't get past the glory days. I loved bayle but damn, I can't put midir on number 2. He's the og.

Igon made this fight legendary. You can't think of Bayle without hearing "Curse you Bayleeee" in your head 🗣

I actually found Bayle's camera to be the clunkiest of the 3 and stayed locked off for most of the fight while with the other 2 I did it locked on. I am very partial to placidusax so I still like the fight more however I see the argument that bayle is better. All 3 are fantastic bosses and for me at least were a huge highlight of their respective games.

idk what you mean about not being able to lock on midir bc imo the clips you showed without locking looked a bit disorienting. But I agree with your opinion although I am biased towards midir. But Bale is the dragon I was praying for in this dlc and I was so happy to see him in the trailer as there was no dragon like midir because placidusax was cinematic and only cinematic as his moveset wasn't satisfying for me. Bale's moveset was as vicious as Midir although the camera was a bigger issue for me than Midir while Bale also just looks really cool and has a fair moveset although some dodges are difficult but he has a lot of learning while midir was a bit more intuitive. (I'm so sorry this is so wordy) Overall I rank your opinion as based.

Contrary to popular belief Midir is actually quite viable to fight while locked on, its how i fight him myself. To put it bluntly the statement that "locking on makes proper engagement extremely difficult." is complete f**king nonsense and you don't know what you're talking about there, and I'll go over why below. The key to making it work is good postioning: you need to be close enough to be able to go in for attacks, but not too close either. Closer to medium distance which has some strengths, the biggest strength is that during the 5-hit berzerker combo atrack with this positioning all you need to do to avoid the last two hits is to simply walk backwards, no rolling required. The only times i break lock on are the flying fire breath, the phase 2 laser (run under his tail) and the savage rush. In fact i managed to beat Midir only taking three hits while playing mostly locked on: Hit 1: me mistiming a roll through his fire breath after a combo (style thing i do) Hit 2: getting too close while locked on (breaking my own rule) and getting hit by a humanity phantom that i couldn't see when he went for a fire breath, bad lock on postioning Hit 3: bad postioning under Midir during his phase 2 laser attack getting hit st the end of it Sorry if that was a bit of a rant, saying that locking onto Midir is bad is just wrong, with good postioning its an extremely viable way to fight him that enhances the specatacle of the fight. I personally feel that Placidussax isn't a great fight, the runback is bullshit (its way too easy to fall to your death, be it into the void or to the next platform which is a lethal fall) he's an example of how not to have a boss teleport (Radagon is an even worse example) and the fight is just a slog. I actually think that Fortissax is the better base game dragon boss. Bayle on the other hand I'm still unsure about, the way he can just charge you from the monent you enter the arena is just cheap as hell. The spectacle is great and Igon's VA f**king kills it, considering that Messmer won me over (the grab hitbox being one of my few complaints), maybe Bayel will win me over. However I'm not sure about that. However i find it ironic that you complain about locking onto Midir yet were fighting Bayle locked-on, seriously I feel that Bayle is what i think people claim fighting Midir locked on is like.

Hey guys, thanks so much for watching this video! I have literally never had this much engagement this quickly. On the few videos that have gotten these numbers, it's taken DAYS to get here. So, I'm not sure I'll be able to respond or react quickly to all of your comments, but I'll try. I really appreciate the engagement, even if it's to tell me I'm "objectively" wrong about an opinion :D

Lol wut locking onto Midir's head is fine actually I'd say it's the only dragon fight that doesn't hurt you for doing so since his head is so low all the time and his moveset always keeps him in front of you instead of over you.

Bayle had such a terrible camera that it just ruined the fight for me. Even while constantly retreating his attacks put him directly on top of you. Midir handled the camera much better. You can easily do the fight locked on and his attacks keep his head in front of rather than on top of your. I don't think you need to do any camera magic here, you just need to change the boss animations so that the basic attacks don't put the dragon's body directly on top of you.

Bayle's snappy camera just makes me nauseous :(

Black Dragon Kalameet deserves a honourable mention for being the first decent dragon fight

Midir’s epic phase 2 move is him doing his 10 second long combo twice that leads to you chasing him around the arena for 20 seconds Bayle has a better leadup with the Jagged Peak, lore with Placidusax and the Dragon Communion, and quest narrative with Igon, and his fight’s pacing is far more consistent and exhilirating It’s not even close.

Why would zooming out ruin that sense of scale? You would see how tiny you are compared to the creature.

What’s your opinion on consort radahn?

There was a sign on the ground that said to use scarlet rot. So I whipped out the flower, thank God I am a Faith build.

Can we just also acknowledge how good the npc summon is for this fight? It would pain me not to use Igon. The voice acting from him is amazing, the fight is 100% fair (looking at you gaius) and fun, the music is spectacular, and if your weapon doesn’t do enough damage, just like the stormruler in DeS and DS3 there’s a weapon it gives you for the fight. The arena is sick too Amazing fight in every way

when an enemy is large i lock on when theyre in view and turn it off if theyre going to make the camera wonky. That's the trade off when youre playing 3rd person games against large enemies. i think its also a result of the impatience to win and get the battle over with. If we were more patient, which im not, we wouldnt put ourselves in those compromised positions just to get an extra hit in. Thats also why its tough to critique bosses because some may agitate you because of your particular play style and habits. I'd love a video where you get two players discussing what bosses were hard for them and then you give each other advice/watch each other's fight against it in real time.

I play claw and can use thumb to aim and look around while ready to dodge with index finger and attack with middle finger, helps a lot with those look off moments

I always thought I was supposed to attack the legs, as the head is so awkward to keep in camera D:

Good video, but you should work on making it more cinematic . (Example at 5:40 you don't showcase Placi's lightning strike whatsoever) Otherwise it's alright, I just want to see the bosses epic moves.

While being incredibly cinematic and cool, i think Bayle suffers from some issues like wanky hitbox,not enough punish windows on the head,awful camera. I think midir has a better moveset than bayle that allows for more counterplay and more damage to the head. His moveset feels more fair and challenging to me. I am also not a big fan of excessive aoe usage in the second phase of Bayle. Overall really cinematic boss tho.

I always thought the best solution for camera issues with big bosses would be to just zoom the camera out. Seems like a pretty straightforward solution.

Was never a fan of the dragon boss fights. Somehow Bayle is my favorite fromsoft boss fight of all time. I actually enjoyed dying in the last moments of the fight several times trying to summon igon just so I could experience it again and again

I will say one strike I have against Bayle is visual clutter. Especially his phase 2 wing slam into flame lightning trail aren’t hard on the camera, but they are hard on the eyes. There’s a lot of visual clutter for me. Sometimes I don’t really know what’s happening and even if I can dodge it, it doesn’t feel satisfying to dodge. I never really had that problem with Midir, so for that reason, I’d put Midir slightly above Bayle mechanically. But still a good fight.

Camera tracking is probably the bighest issue FromSoft needs to fix. A lot of times, I don't even see the boss, I just react to the camera moving as a potential telegraph. The prime example of this being the Dancing Lion fight. Also, I absolutely LOVE Bayle. He's my favourite boss in FromSoft's already impressive catalogue of bosses(haven't played bloodborne). But when I was trying to learn him in the initial 20 or so rums, I found the he just kept pinning me against the wall with no space to counter or dodge. Even the Dancing Lion is guilty of this. Though now, I can bait out attacks to get him back to the center, those first few runs were NOT fun

As someone who isn't normally a fan of fighting dragons, Bayle was so much fun and I loved learning his moves.

"i like bayle because i'm good and it's okay if you suck"

The visuals are by far my favorite of any dragon fight, but mechanically I still prefer Midir.

Music foe Bayless fight is absolutely incredible

Placidusax and Divine dragon are the best imo. Yeah they're easy but goddamn those are some of the most epic boss fights FromSoft has ever done

Wish fromsoft added stuff to the base game from the dlc. Camera work can also be fixed if the front of the boss is always visible. Maybe when lockingnon we have a fixed camera point on an invisible model covering the front of the boss so we always know what its doing and maybe add some slight shifts in the direction of our character. The camera should also zoom way more out, seeing our speck of a character scurry sround gives more of a sense of scale

one thing i think helps both bayle and placidusax is their body shapes. because placidusax is flat to the ground and bayle is very hunched, youre less likely to end up under their body getting screwed by the camera anywhere near as hard as you can with almost every other dragon in souls history

You can lock on to midir completely fine IDK what went wrong though that you felt that you had to unlock

Functionally Midir is still the best dragon boss fight. In terms of presentation and themes Bayle takes the cake.

Just saying Midir doesn't have someone screaming "CURSE YOU"

I don't mind free aiming a camera but only if the game is built around it and doesnt feature a lock on, Dragons dogma is an example of a great camera with large monsters but no lock on

The part where you talk about Scale, I had always theorized that it should be possible to zoom out the camera and it would work much better, It Does, but you lose a bit of the Grandeur, But i recently started playing Genshin Impact (Flame me if you want, I was bored waiting for SotE so i played it bc it has some souls like elements... i've already played Nioh series, Wo Long, Remnant, Lies of P and other games like those.) And in the 4th act of the game, you fight a Boss named Shouki no Kami which everyone called Scaramouche. And in that fight, they zoom out the camera and pull it upwards... It does lose a bit of the grandeur since they zoomed out, but it got me thinking about the "Pull it upwards" part. So, I asked a friend of mine that knows how to Mod DS3 a little bit to just... change the lock on nodes for Midir. We made them higher, and me moved them backwards a bit, locked on his upper body, this inadvertently zoomed in the camera, so we zoomed it back out a bit so it was at the right scale... and it worked... Really well as well... We kept the grandeur, made it so the camera didn't throw its self on the attacks where he moved his head a lot, it also made it so there were less times the camera was pressing into the ground.

Yeah, Bayle probably is the best Fromsoft dragon. The only issue is that the bar for fromsoft dragons is so low that the title of "best dragon" means nothing because no matter what you do, dragons are either gonna be way too easy or completely miserable with no in between.

My #1 is still Midir but Bayle close #2

from a cinematic perspective = placidusax from a gameplay perspective = midir from a lore perspective = bayle/midir/placidusax bayle kinda sits inbetween placidusax & midir

I realise I'm in a tiny minority but I honestly think Sinh from DS2 is the best dragon.

What did you think of Fortissaxi?

Bayles very close but midir might be my favourite bossfight ever