Bloodborne’s Micolash is a Lesson on NPC Boss Fights that FromSoftware Still Hasn’t Learned

FromSoftware has continued to struggle with NPC bosses, and even the developer's highest points like Bloodborne have missed the bar with these fights.

Leading up to the finale of Bloodborne, FromSoftware made the bold decision to include a boss with heavy lore significance, but lacks much of the staying power when it comes to the actual fight. The result is Micolash, a mad scientist type obsessed with gaining as much knowledge as possible regardless of the cost, and using that to spam Hunter's Tools with seemingly infinite stamina and quicksilver bullets.

This is an issue that has come up in other FromSoftware titles aside from Bloodborne as well, where an NPC boss is set up to feel like a thrilling PVP fight against a player with a powerful build. Unfortunately, this rarely comes off as well as the best PVP encounters, generally devolving in an enemy with access to all the player's tools, but not hindered by the player's limitations.

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The first thing that players will notice when going up against Micolash is the fairly unorthodox way that the actual encounter starts, not taking place in some giant boss arena, but a narrow staircase. This leads to the first part of Micolash's encounter that really grinds against the pacing of the rest of Bloodborne's Nightmare Frontier, as players are forced to chase him down and corner him in a room with a door that locks behind them. It's a rather frustrating section of the fight that starts off incredibly weak, with what appears to be RNG determining whether or not the boss will even dart off into the actual encounter room in the first place. There is a way to use careful positioning to always siphon him into the kill box, but it likely won't be apparent for first-time players.

To make matters worse, once the player is finally able to get Micolash into a corner where they can start the actual fight, the encounter doesn't get any better from there. The majority of Micolash's attacks are entirely pitiful, with him mostly choosing to swing his fists rather than using any of Bloodborne's trick weapons. However, the boss supplements this lack of physical strength by constantly casting spells using the Hunter's Tools Auger of Ebrietas and A Call Beyond, which can either catch a player in a stunlock combo or outright burn through a max-Vitality build in one shot.

These spells can make the task of defeating Micolash less of a heart-pounding encounter of quick reactions and intentional positioning, and more of a roll of the dice for when and how often he'll spam these attacks. Worse still is the way that A Call Beyond sends its individual attacks out in random directions for a time that makes it impossible to dodge in some cases. The unfortunate result is a fight that most players would be happy to cheese with poison knives from a balcony than actually engage with on subsequent playthroughs.

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The issue of NPC bosses utilizing powerful spells and spamming attacks that players otherwise have no ability to counter due to the limitations set upon them continues to appear in FromSoftware titles. Most recently, Elden Ring's Gideon Ofnir is another example of this type of encounter that had a lot of potential to pit the player against a PVP mage build, that comes up short because it breaks the rules of its own game. Similar to Micolash, Gideon also spams spells with no end in sight to either his FP or Stamina, making the RNG of which spells he'll use more impactful than anything the player tries to do throughout the fight.

However, even as these fights continue to come up short of nailing what is best about FromSoftware PVP, it can still be impressive to see how a handful of encounters don't ruin the entire experience of either Bloodborne or Elden Ring. These are two of the developer's highest-rated games, being some fans' favorites in the series, even if there are bumps in the road like Micolash or Gideon. The question moving forward is how to improve the design of these fights, and observing the actual Soulslike PVP between players and crafting NPCs around player limitations may be the best answer.

Bloodborne is available now for PS4.

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Jared Carvalho is an avid lover of gaming, and the author of Level One (under the pen name Jerry Schulz).