Guardian Dragon

Wow! So scary!

    This is a pretty pedestrian boss, made all the more inconsequential by the fact that this boss appears at least three times more as an enemy in the Dragon Aerie (god, what a great-looking area). Now, I'm going to go off on a tangent here, so bear with me! One thing I HATE in the Souls games (and truly, any game) is their willingness to reuse bosses as enemies. Very rarely, this can be used to cool effect (I can't necessary think of an example off the top of my head), but mostly it's lazy, and I feel it severely cheapens the boss in question. I don't believe it happens in Demon's Souls past the Vanguard (who is the tutorial boss, with a big health bar and his name) being used as a once-per-playthrough mini-boss in 4-1. That's cool, because I would assume 99.9% of players were killed by Vanguard on their very first play through the tutorial, and it's nice to be able to actually kill him later on. Okay, Dark Souls drives me crazy with this! Taurus Demon, Capra Demon, Moonlight Butterfly, and Pinwheel are all reused as enemies later on. They REALLY couldn't have created a few other enemies for their respective areas? Instead of Taurus or Capra being one time bosses, they're reduced to bigger version of normal enemies (or the enemies are just smaller versions of the boss. Either way, I don't like it). I find this very lame and trivializing. And don't get me started with Asylum Demon being reused for Stray Demon and Demon Firesage. Finally, to end this tangent, for Dark Souls II, Flexile Sentry and the Ruin Sentinels are used as enemies as well (ol' Flexy only once as a one-kill deal). While this is still annoying, I don't find it quite as egregious as the first game.

Dual wielding +10 longswords (one is Raw) for this bastard!

    Which all brings me to Guardian Dragon. He's wholly un-unique, and boring. They could have just called him "Dragon #1". It would be like if, instead of Lost Sinner being at the end of Sinner's Rise, it was just a bigger version of those beasts you find down there. What's so special about THIS Guardian Dragon that he gets to be a boss, and gets his own big health bar? I don't know, I'm getting waaaay off topic here. Once you get through Aldia's Keep, you come to this boss, who guards the Dragon Aerie. You fight him in some cage-kinda thing, which admittedly is pretty cool looking. He'll breathe fire at you, he'll fly up, and he can stomp with his back legs, hit with his head, and swipe with his tail. The fire can be troublesome, and I'd say the most dangerous part of the battle. He can fly up onto the wall of the cage, and breathe fire from there. In fact, if he gets to flying around, you're in for a tough time.

It was certainly perilous to get this picture! Or my wife took it...

    But to alleviate this, just stick close to his legs. All you really have to do is avoid is stomp, which is a bit tricky because he stomps backward, so even if you roll back to avoid it, and think you're far enough away, you may very well not be. I just got up close to his legs, rolled when necessary, and attacked. If you get behind or in front of him, you'll face a painful tail swipe or head hit, respectively. If you're close, there's no need to worry about the fire, so really this battle just comes down to not getting squished by his feet. Definitely not a hard battle. I'm sorry this post was dominated by stuff other than this boss, but if I stuck strictly to him and this battle, it'd be done in one paragraph. Overall, a boring, meaningless fight against what amounts to a normal game enemy. He doesn't even look amazing. He's in line with the more "traditional" dragons of the series (the red and blue dragons of Demon's Souls, and the Hellkite Dragon from Dark), wherein he's red, has a tail, wings, etc. This is officially my least favorite boss of the game. Oh well, one dud out of 30 ain't bad.

Immolation! Let the fire consume you!

Times I died: 1
Difficulty: 2/10
Rating: 1/10

Well, we're at the home stretch. I have six bosses left. Let's travel back in time and enjoy our last "easy" battle.

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BOSS SOUL DESCRIPTION: "Soul of a dragon that guards the path to the shrine; Do the dragons watch over the land of their own will, or are they in the grip of one of Aldia's spells? 

 

Draekwing Ultra Greatsword

Drakewing Ultra Greatsword: "Drakes are likely descendants of the ancient dragons, and although their strength pales in comparison to what is described in legend, to mere humans they are still mighty beasts."