[Elden Ring] Improve boss hitbox precision

This is the third and final part of my RL1 Boss Review project, and will solely focus on the single boss I have neglected to cover thus far: Radahn, Consort of Miquella. No-hitting this boss at RL1 SB0 was bar none the hardest thing I have ever done in a video game, ever. I have spent more time fighting this boss than I have with my entire extended family, but do I even like him? Let’s find out. **Link to Part 1 (Base Game Bosses)**: [https://www.reddit.com/r/onebros/comments/1i2rt3o/rl1\_boss\_review\_part\_1\_base\_game/](https://www.reddit.com/r/onebros/comments/1i2rt3o/rl1_boss_review_part_1_base_game/) **Link to Part 2 (The Other DLC Bosses)**: [https://www.reddit.com/r/onebros/comments/1jzqj07/rl1\_boss\_review\_part\_2\_dlc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/onebros/comments/1jzqj07/rl1_boss_review_part_2_dlc/)  **Grading Scale** Grade S: masterpiece. Grade A: near-masterpiece. Grade B: good. Grade C: average. Grade D: shit. Grade F: dogshit. **Part 3: Consort Radahn** One month. 75 hours. 13 reasons why I should’ve quit and 1 reason why I should’ve persevered - guess which one came out on top? Imagine if your boss gave you a billion bucks and laid you off from work permanently, since you’d now have enough income to permanently retire. Obviously that would be an incredibly ideal scenario in every way, but it would still feel wrong you know? Do you really deserve for your daily pain and boredom to finally come to its end in the most random, sudden and arbitrary way imaginable? That’s how I felt when I finally beat Radahn. Everyday I kept reiterating to myself that I would beat him and I would feel the greatest sense of triumph, relief and accomplishment that I will ever feel in my life. Even as I kept teetering on the verge of quitting more and more, I still clung onto the hope that my perseverance would pay off and that it would be 1000% worth it to push forward just a little bit more to get that final kill. But upon landing that final blow I did not feel victorious nor did I feel relieved; I felt surprised and confused. I did not exclaim “YES!!!!!!” in glorious triumph nor did I shout “FUCKING FINALLY” as an assertion of my freedom, instead I uttered “huh?” in bewilderment. Was I truly allowed to leave my prison sentence? Have the Gods truly deemed me worthy of my emancipation? What did I do differently this time that finally resulted in my success whilst my thousands of other attempts were failures? None of this felt real, like at all. I did still feel immensely victorious and euphoric, don't get me wrong, just not in the way I expected. Was the destination worth the journey? **Mechanics** Miquella’s light pillars are the cell bars to your prison. If Phase 1 encourages close-range combat then Phase 2 outright forces it - dodging away from any of his attacks will get you fucked in the ass. It is the single most overt test of roll positioning in the entire game, even if it’s not the most complex one. In fact I’d go as far as to say that Radahn is one of the most mechanically simple ER remembrances; he does have a lot of fucking moves but quantity does not correlate with complexity. Rellana and Messmer’s basic combo starters (i.e. the uppercut and the fire stab) have countless potential follow-ups, yet Radahn’s stomp is guaranteed to precede the earthquake combo. There are a few mix-ups every-now-and-then (e.g. the quick right hand slash preceding either the quick left hand slash or the delayed left-side double slash), but it’s generally true that when Radahn uses a move you’ll always know what he’ll use next beforehand. Midra also has a similar moveset simplicity, but he makes up for that by enabling creative dodge methods through jumping, crouching and strafing. Radahn’s hitboxes are so absurdly massive that anything other than a roll is completely out of the question. Radahn feels completely averse to doing anything interesting as an encounter. He constantly evokes imagery from his Soulsborne boss brethren without a fundamental understanding of what made them so engaging on a mechanical front. He has Godfrey’s stomp but you can’t jump it. He has Pontiff’s combo but you can’t reasonably outspace it. He has Lorian’s femboy but they share the same healthbar. Dude even imitates himself by having fucking Starscourge Radahn’s meteor, but you obviously can’t i-frame it with Torrent dismount or track its movement in the air. He does have moves like Mohg’s Bloodflame Slash that you can strafe, but these are few and far between compared to bosses like Rellana and Messmer who offer you a non-roll dodge on nearly all of their moves. Bosses like Morgott and Maliketh also share a similar ultra-aggressive endless-combos vibe, but you could bait out their favorable openings with specific positioning. Radahn can do whatever the fuck he wants whenever the fuck he wants. His gap-closer moves like the Spinning Gravity Bomb, Starcaller Cry and Lion’s Claw? He can do those right in your face too! The Pontiff combo that he uses as a close-range pressuring tool? Not only can he use that at long-range but he can also zip right into you during the beginning of the combo to bring you back into close-range! Standing behind him in order to limit his moveset? He’ll immediately do a 360 cross-slash to reposition himself right in front of you! Radahn has no positioning-based moves (e.g. Ludwig’s ass kick) because, well, why would he when he can already use whatever move he wants wherever he wants? I mentioned back in Part 2 how Messmer excelled in highlighting his intelligence to the player - Radahn is the yang to his ying in how he excels in flaunting his sheer stupidity to the player. Even literal fucking animals like the Golden Hippo have moves like the sideways bite that solely react to your positioning. No RL1 kill of Messmer/Rellana/Romina/Midra will ever be the same, everyone has different ways of approaching their moves due to the sheer level of creativity they enable as encounters. Almost every RL1 kill of Consort Radahn is nigh-identical to one another, there’s next-to-no experimentation that can be done with him and this can absolutely lead to it becoming vapid and monotonous as you attempt him more and more. He feels more like a DS1 boss on steroids than an Elden Ring boss. However, in spite of being the most dodge-hit boss in the series, the dodging and hitting can actually be intrinsically fun. His constant aggression ensures that the tempo of the fight is always ticking, which makes his general combat flow especially satisfying as a result. The low-angled camera can be annoying but it helps to frame Radahn as the relentless larger-than-life foe that he is, and it really accentuates the intimidation factor that he’s aiming to accomplish. There’s no other boss in the game that nails the Dark Souls feeling of overcoming a seemingly impossible obstacle more than Consort Radahn - his mechanics, visuals and OST perfectly succeed in emphasizing this. The primary challenge posed by Radahn is less so the act of dodging and punishing his attacks in a vacuum and more so your ability to consistently execute them. If you instantly roll the moment you see him raise his right hand, thinking that he’s going to use the quick right hand slash, he may instead end up using the delayed overhead slam that will perfectly roll-catch you. If you roll the P2 stomp even a frame too early you’ll get clipped by the insane lingering hitbox. If you roll the moment after his quick right hand slash thinking that he’ll follow up with the quick left hand slash as usual, you’ll absolutely get roll-caught if he uses the delayed left-side slash instead. This fight is incredibly unforgiving towards your split-second reaction/intuition prowess: if you can’t react to the correct move with the correct dodge timing then you will get hit, which will almost always be an instant death at RL1 if you aren’t using Opaline. It’s not that hard to react to his moves properly maybe once or twice, but flawlessly executing it moment-after-moment in a multi-minute fight is absolutely brutal. That’s one of many reasons why you see so many RL1 runners trying to maintain a constant position in front of him during Phase 2: you really do not want Miquella’s luscious locks obscuring the telegraphs for reaction-check moves like the Cross Slash. This is especially the case for any SB0 runners like me, where you’ll likely end up garnering a final PCR kill that lasts 5+ minutes. A boss kill lasting \*that\* long can become almost wearisome and routine if said boss isn’t varied enough themselves. Radahn is far from the most complex boss, but his quantity of moves is incredibly massive and definitely helps to justify his nature as an endurance test. However, I can’t deny the sheer level of jank that can also make low damage PCR runs a pain in the ass. Using ranged moves at point-blank, the i-frame ignorer, inconsistent clone tracking… all of these definitely suck but they pale in comparison to the real final boss: the uneven terrain. The trench at the center of the arena fucks up so many of his attacks, most notably in making light pillars spawn so much closer to Radahn that you’re pretty much guaranteed to get hit by them. This is only a gaping issue when you’re in that center trench since the rest of the arena isn’t too bad, but you are literally scripted to spawn in there during the beginning of Phase 2. Maybe you could try kiting him away from the trench? If only the act of kiting Consort fucking Radahn wasn’t an actual death sentence in-of-itself, all of his most dangerous P2 moves are his ranged ones and your goal should be to sticking to his front at all times. This is Radahn’s fight and there’s nothing you can do about it. Radahn is simultaneously the most exciting and most torturous endurance boss in the entire series. Even the tiniest of inconsistencies can ruin fights like these and Radahn is the epitome of this flaw. The terrain jank fucking sucks because it’s so jaw-droppingly stunning in terms of the art direction. The way the skulls are unevenly planted throughout the arena functions as a poignant contrast against the gorgeous sunlight captured in-between the two towers. The path to paradise begins in hell - the blood shed by Marika on her quest to achieve apotheosis has been left to dry in the Shadowlands among the rotted corpses used to build the foundation of the Gate itself. Miquella, in attempting to reject the brutality of Marika’s Golden Order, ends up attaining the very same malignant philosophy that his mother was consumed by: utilitarianism. The belief that the ends justify the means - that the natural cycle of life and death can be dismantled so no one will live in fear of death, or that the seduction of your brother against his will is worth it so that you may achieve godhood and bring forth an Age of Compassion. Like mother, like son. The decaying corpses spread throughout the arena would ideally enhance your engagement in Miquella’s story through their harrowing connotations… at least until the uneven elevation fucks up the light pillars and gets you clipped. Putting Radahn in a flat arena would instantly solve all of these problems, but I’m sorry man because that feels like a cheap and easy way out. Chucking away the artistry of the arena purely due to the potential for it to bug Radahn’s AI feels insanely disrespectful to the game devs who put their heart and soul into crafting them, yet at the same time I can’t deny how much of a pain in the ass that the uneven terrain can turn this fight into. A compromise must be made either way and it fucking sucks. That’s all I can really say about this fight on a gameplay level. Radahn isn’t really anything to gush over mechanically compared to the sheer complexity of his peers within the rest of SOTE’s boss roster, he really is just Dodge & Hit: The Boss in comparison. The lore and storytelling is the much more interesting aspect to analyze about PCR, for better or for worse. If you don’t gaf about lore then you can skip ahead to the “*Conclusion on Radahn*” section, where I return to purely analyzing the game on a mechanical front. **Themes/Storytelling** Part of what makes Radahn feel so fascinating and puzzling to me on a thematic front is less the boss itself and more the build-up towards it - in this case the lack thereof. Miquella had been given no established connection to Radahn outside of their obvious familial relation up until the final hour of the DLC. It felt like Miyazaki was almost begging me to dismiss the boss as a glorified fan-fiction, which is exactly what I did after encountering him the first time. The good news is that I’ve grown to appreciate the decision to make Radahn Miquella’s consort on a storytelling level over time. I love how PCR is the thematic and structural inverse to Godfrey’s fight: the imagery of the angelic Miquella embracing Radahn to control his rage clearly evokes the courteous Serosh grasping onto Godfrey to tame his bloodlust. But while Radahn succumbs to Miquella’s seduction in his second phase, Godfrey forcefully emancipates himself from Serosh to become Hoarah Loux once more. This is a brilliant form of contrast on paper but Radahn's moveset fails to convey his transformation on a mechanical front. Godfrey’s Phase 1 moveset was aggressive as hell but there was still a sense of honor and elegance throughout his movements - meanwhile Hoarah Loux flails around in a seemingly erratic and unpredictable manner, ripping you apart with his bare fists and bathing himself in the showers of your blood. Radahn goes from very aggressive in Phase 1… to being exactly as aggressive in Phase 2. His moveset and animations feel just as if not more brutal and unrelenting once Miquella takes control of him, and the storytelling of the fight really falls flat in that regard. I’m not saying that he should be easier in Phase 2, in fact the added clone attacks are a welcome addition to the spectacle of the duel. I just think that there’s much better ways of making Miquella’s presence felt throughout the fight other than just adding light pillars at the end of his P1 attacks. Whenever I try to analyze the storytelling of PCR, I always end up talking about Miquella. But what about the man himself, Radahn? I’m gonna be honest: Radahn really isn’t that interesting of a character at all. Whenever he works well as a character it’s always in service to everyone around him: the reverential glory he inspires towards the Redmanes, the great strength he possessed that forced Malenia into embracing the Scarlet Rot within her that she despised, being a literal vassal for Miquella to enact his Age of Compassion, etc. As a plot device Radahn is exceptionally great, but he feels sorely lacking if judged as an independent character. All the other demigods have so much nuance to their character due to the gray morality they possess - e.g. should the tragedy of Morgott’s upbringing excuse his constant persecution of his own people? Radahn doesn’t really have any tragic flaw, like at all. He’s just a dude chilling around and trying to be friendly with everyone. Aside from him being the Consort of Miquella, the only DLC lore tidbit that added to Radahn’s character was… the fact that he was chill with Messmer and Gaius. Ironically enough, Godfrey succeeds within the “chill legendary warrior” archetype far more than Radahn ever could. Godfrey’s chill honorable exterior is not enough to mask his relentless bloodlusting interior, both figuratively and literally, yet he’s still chivalrous enough to earn respect from the player. Radahn also has a brutal warmongering interior, but his strength is glorified so much that the game almost expects you to mindlessly glaze Radahn. That’s one of many reasons why I initially found Radahn being Miquella’s consort to be such a disappointing conclusion to the DLC’s story: Radahn is such a nothing character that they might as well have made the final boss a 1v1 with Miquella. **Conclusion on Radahn** How do I grade this boss? Even after articulating thousands of words worth of my thoughts on him, I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. But not because of the boss being mechanically complex in-of-itself, no, it was because of the impact it had on me as a person. I would spend 5-6 hours per day practicing him for two weeks straight and still didn’t come out on top in the end, ultimately leading me to my two week exile from playing Elden Ring, which by extension led to my victory against him literally an hour after I returned from my rest. Radahn made me psychologically analyze myself and dissect my flaws - he made me ponder why I would always roll the stomp early even after I kept telling myself not to, or why I had zero difficulty reacting to the Cross Slash in Phase 1 yet would always react to it too late in Phase 2 even when Miquella’s hair wasn’t blocking my view of it. He encouraged me to identify my biggest mental flaws and deduce solutions to get rid of them, or at least mitigate their influence in the meantime. But most importantly of all, the two week break I took from him is what encouraged me to escape the obsessive clutch of Elden Ring and play other games. One of those other games was Bloodborne, which would go on to become my favorite game ever. I was obviously gonna play Bloodborne eventually, but the stress wrought by RL1 SB0 Radahn is what inadvertently incentivized me to appreciate the hidden beauty of Bloodborne, both mechanically and artistically. I would’ve never loved the game as much as I did without the influence of Radahn, for better or for worse. Promised Consort Radahn deadass changed me as a person, and I still can’t decide if I even like him. But like I said earlier, the weight of Radahn lies less in the boss itself and more in its influence. Poetically enough, Radahn still ends up cursed to being a vassal that influences others without any intrinsic value in-of-himself - the ruthless instigator of my torment and self-reflection. The legendary demigod who inspired the hearts of those around him. The yang to Malenia’s ying. The promised consort of Miquella’s age of compassion. I will not give Radahn an S-grade, or an F-grade, or any of those damn grades. He will be given the brand new Sisyphus-grade. For to me, he is more than a video game boss. To me, he is the symbol of the overwhelming challenge humanity suffers to overcome, even when victory seems cursed to be impossible. **Grade: Sisyphus** **Conclusion on Elden Ring (or: What RL1 Taught Me About This Game)** Even if you don’t aim for a hitless, RL1 runs really highlight many moments where the devs almost expect you to get hit, and the pre-nerf Cross Slash is only the most extreme of many examples of this throughout the game. And I’m not just talking about moves like Waterfowl, pre-nerf Cross Slash and Elden Stars where the dodge method is too esoteric and unintuitive for your average player to deduce on their own: there are many bosses that have variable follow ups that either come out lightning fast or extremely slow, yet share nearly identical telegraph animations. Radahn’s right hand slashes are far from the sole example of this: Dancing Lion’s headbutts, Messmer’s 360 slashes, Malenia’s quick right-hand slash/delayed twirl, etc. These moves are never outright “undodgeable” for obvious reasons, but they clearly demand a lot more from the player than what these games are usually known for. Dark Souls has never been about lightning-fast reaction times or Street-Fighter-ass combos - these games have been very simple in terms of raw execution, they just punish sloppiness first-and-foremost. For example, moves like Godfrey’s Phase 1 fissure AOE are pretty simple to avoid since you just have to input roll at the right time, but they balance that out by making the move an easy one-shot. The low margin-of-error really helps add a level of thrill to each and every boss encounter no matter how simple they may be on a fundamental moveset level. This simplicity has always been a core tenet of these games to me - and while Elden Ring does stay true to this for the most part, there is a clear sign of Miyazaki desiring to bring these games to the same level of mechanical complexity as their peers within the action genre. Moves with esoteric dodge methods such as Waterfowl and Elden Stars alongside the aforementioned reaction-check moves are nowhere near anything you’d see in a Ninja Gaiden game, but it could definitely get there if these games continue down the path they’re going. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, it’s just a fascinating reflection of how far we’ve come since Demon’s Souls. I love how much of Sekiro’s gameplay was subtly incorporated into ER: jumping, crouching, guard counters, poise-breaks, etc. I haven’t even mentioned the Deflecting Hardtear in the room! These additions to the gameplay loop really help to even the player’s odds against the increasingly aggressive enemies, but not too much to the point of losing that classic Dark Souls feeling of overcoming tremendous odds. The stance-breaking system in particular is the single best part of this game’s combat in general. If Sekiro’s posture system encouraged aggressive play then Elden Ring’s posture system encourages creative play: you can’t just wail on the bosses and stunlock them as much as you could in Sekiro, you instead need to maximize the few punish opportunities you have in order to get a poise-break as efficiently as possible. To me, Dancing Lion’s corkscrew attack is the best representation of everything great about Elden Ring’s boss design. It feels like the perfect evolution of what Waterfowl set out to do conceptually, in how it is a move that can be approached through a multitude of esoteric yet rewarding methods. However, unlike Waterfowl there is a clear basic way of dodging it, but the fun comes in fully optimizing the move until it goes from being the most intimidating asset in their moveset to, essentially, free damage for the player. Waterfowl is still a great move though, in fact I wish Fromsoft would incorporate more Waterfowl-esque moves in order to actually encourage said creative dodge methods from the player. Jump and low-profile dodging is criminally underused by players outside of the RL1 community, mostly due to a severe lack of boss moves that actually force their use. Godfrey, Rellana, Dancing Lion and PK are the sole exceptions, but these are all endgame bosses so it was clearly too late by then. This game is way more than just rollslop but it does a shit job at proving that it’s not, especially with the posture bar being invisible. Overall, I still do love this game even in spite of it all. Out of every game in Fromsoft’s catalogue, Elden Ring is the one that I have the most love-hate relationship with by a landslide. The gift-that-keeps-on-giving open-world design, the constant sense of adventure, the build variety, the posture system, the lore and storytelling, the top-tier bosses, all of these absolutely prop it up as the masterpiece it really is. But the constant jank, frustrating design choices, wasted opportunities, and unequivocal feeling of mechanical regression from Sekiro (e.g. roll being input on button release, removal of the pause button, etc) indubitably weigh the game’s merits down and actively hinder my motivation to replay it. Bloodborne, DS3 and Sekiro all have their own fair share of flaws but I can easily ignore all of them because of how high the highs are, but ER’s lows are so low that turning a blind eye is easier said than done. But even though I have to play the game in spite of these flaws, it does a damn good job at trying to make up for them. Doing RL1 definitely brought more of the game’s issues to the limelight, but it also enhanced its greatest strengths even further. That feeling of confused yet satisfied accomplishment after no-hitting RL1 SB0 PCR is something that no other game, let alone any other Soulsborne game has ever evoked for me. Just remembered that this game doesn’t allow you to marry Malenia and bring forth an Age of Rot… fuck Mike Wazowski bruh 0/10 I take back everything good I said.