The Micolash boss fight, Bloodborne 

It’s not much of a secret that Bloodborne is my all-time favorite game. Its gray pathways and vein-purple sky have comforted me in the past four years since I started playing it, over, and over again, and I’m yet to find a game that attracts and disturbs me in the same exhilarating way. But the Micolash, Host of the Nightmare boss fight is bad. In a game full of challenging fights with operatic drama, Micolash feels low-effort, annoying, and way too tedious.

To lay even a single hit on Micolash, you need to corner him by chasing him from room to labyrinth room. But, despite all the stairways and corners in his boss room at your disposal, you have to run after him in the exact path the developers intended, or else you’ll get stuck in an infinite loop, and I’d rather eat glass.

Once you’ve stayed awake long enough to complete the puzzle run and have him standing in front of you, he’s weak and pool noodle-y. It only takes a few hits and well-timed dodges of his one-shot attacks to get him to a new phase of the fight, which is marked by more running around in circles and cornering. Usually, I bypass this by standing on a ledge above him and impaling Micolash with poison knives. A long-standing glitch traps him underneath me until he dies, and then I yawn and move on. – Ashley Bardhan, staff writer