Throne Defender & Throne Watcher

Bad boys

     These boys are the real deal. If not for certain help (I'll get to that later), I would consider these guys the hardest bosses in the game for me. Perhaps I still do. Maybe From went easy on some of the later bosses, but these guys (and the boss fight immediately proceeding this one) are ROUGH!
    Firstly, the run-up to this boss is annoying, and it gets old fast. You have to wear the King Ring, and it opens (very slooooooooowly I might add) a big door in the Castle. Luckily this door is just steps from a bonfire. After the door opens, you'll be in the Throne Of Want, which is reminiscent of the Kiln Of The First Flame. It has an ashy, dark look. The whole area is just a dark chasm, with a LONG bridge, lined with torches. It takes quite awhile to run along this bridge. There's no way to run along it without losing stamina. You have to run until your stamina runs out, then walk while your stamina fills up, then run again, then walk, then run, etc. It loses its luster quickly, I'll tell you that. It's probably a comparable run to Gwyn in Dark Souls (as far as the amount of time it takes), but this is more annoying, even though there are no enemies.
    Once you get through here, and walk through the fog gate, you'll see two knights. The area you are in is similar to what your just ran through: dark, looks like everything was burned, and there's a curious looking white dome structure in the background. The large area is a platform, with falling hazards all around you. BE AWARE OF WHERE YOU ARE! I died two or three times just because I was backing up and fell off the platform to a very annoyed death. I found myself doing a lot of strafing with my shield up, and, well, the area is smaller than you think it is.

Here they are, as you walk through the fog

    There's two knights, as I've said. One is an old man with a long, grey beard, and bronze-looking armor, along with a sword and shield. This is the Throne Defender. The other is clad in white, with a mask over his face. He also has a sword and shield (his shield has a face on it, and looks awesome). His sword is shorter than the Defender's. This one is much quicker than the other, with backflips, jumps, and general dodginess. If you haven't guessed, this is the Throne Watcher. You fight these two bastards together, and they basically stay at each other's side the whole time. I'm gonna say it now, but (surprise surprise!) I spoiled this battle for myself with reading. If you kill one of them, the other one will revive him to full health. Wow. I would have been pissed if I killed one, only to have him resurrected. So how do you get past this? You have to damage them concurrently. What I mean is, make sure their health bars match. If you hit the Defender five times, go and hit the Watcher five times. You have to kill them both within a few seconds of each other, I believe, so that they don't resurrect each other. Very interesting mechanic that I REALLY wish I hadn't spoiled for myself (even though it would induce the aforementioned, "been pissed").

A bit closer. Fuck these guys

    This is the Ornstein and Smough battle of this game. They are both aggressive, strong, and they will hound you. They will either both attack at the same time, or one will attack, then the other will start their attack as the first finishes. Several times I was killed because I chose a bad time to heal, thinking I had the time, only to get run through with one of their swords. My original strategy was to keep my shield up, and absorb their attacks (luckily it didn't seem like their attacks were super powerful), waiting until they had both finished attacking. If I could bait them to both attack, then I could get a few hits in on one (or both). I rarely tried to attack one if they had both not attacked first, because every time I ended up taking damage. Hopefully this makes sense.
    Try as I might, I could not beat these guys. I would either: fall off the edge; pick a bad time to heal (Estus is tough in this battle); pick a bad time to use aromatic ooze (ugh that was a bad one); or get overwhelmed by both of their attacks at the same time (I said their individual attacks aren't super powerful, but if you get hit by them both, especially if they are doing combos, forget about it. You'll die. Have a shield up? You'll lose all your stamina, get stun-locked, and die). There was a few times I got them both down to 30%-or-so of their healths, but I couldn't finish the job. They just don't give up. Oh, by the way, when they get low on health, less than 50%, they both buff their weapons with lightning! How nice! Oddly enough though, one is yellow lightning, and one is blue lightning. But this is a legit buff (unlike Smelter or Velstadt), like they are using gold pine resin: they back off from the fight, and buff their swords. It eventually wears off, and they'll back off and re-buff.

Man, these guys are tall!

    Okay, now my shame. If you couldn't guess by my introductory paragraph, yes, I summoned help for this battle. I ended up summoning a Sunbro near the bonfire, hoping to at least grab another Sunlight Medal. Right in front of the fog gate, there are two NPC's to summon, so I figured, eh, what the hell, and summoned Head Of Vengarl. With my team, we geared up, prepared mentally, confidently walked through the fog, stared down our enemies... And absolutely smoked them. The guy I summoned had a CRAZY POWERFUL lightning spell (Sunlight Spear I think?) that he sat back, and just launched at them. For perspective, my one handed longsword attack did between 205 and 222 damage. ONE of his lightning spears did 450 (!!!). Man, spells are overpowered as hell, huh? So, suffice to say I didn't need Head Of Vengarl, but for what it's worth, he lived through the battle! He and I smacked the bosses up close (each drawing aggro from one boss), while the Sunbro provided spell coverage. The battle lasted less then a minute.
    I'm pretty disappointed I pussed out and got help for this battle. Oh well, I'll take them out in NG+. I thought this was a great, challenging battle to (almost) cap off the game. Good boss design, too. After you take the two out, you get a cut-scene, and are immediately thrown into the final battle...

Times I died: 14
Difficulty: 9.5/10
Rating: 9/10

Here we go. Hope you caught your breath, 'cause it's time to take down Nashandra.

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THRONE DEFENDER SOUL DESCRIPTION: "The throne of the King is sacred, and requires an appropriate guardian."

 

THRONE WATCHER SOUL DESCRIPTION: "The throne of the King is sacred, and must be observed closely at all times." 

 

Watcher Greatsword

Watcher Greatsword: "The Watcher has stood by the throne for ages. Will his wait be worth the while?"

Defender Greatsword

Defender Greatsword: "The Defender has stood by the throne for ages. Will his wait be worth the while?"