Summary
With 165 boss encounters inElden Ring, it takes a special type of enemy to stand out among such a robust crowd. However, the Crystalian bosses that can befound as early as Liurnia of the Lakesquickly make their mark as their unique gimmick empowers and intimidating first encounter with a seemingly insurmountable foe.
The FromSoftware boss roster isn’t completely devoid of gimmick bosses, with at least one appearing in nearly every one of theirSoulsbornetitles, fromDemon’s SoulstoElden Ring. In the case of the Crystalian variants of bosses, though, these enemies manage to tick off the “gimmick” box while still managing to offer a meaningful fight before and after the specific way to take them down has been discovered.
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Crystalians Show the Importance of Elden Ring’s Stance Breaks
Challenging the Crystalians and passing through their gimmick requires the player to make themost out ofElden Ring’s Stance Break mechanicthat staggers enemies and bosses and opens them up for a riposte. For the Crystalian this is the only way to do any kind of consistent damage with most weapon types, at least at the start of the fight. This is because when players first fight the Crystalian, the boss' defenses are so high, that even maxed-level weapons will only manage to do chip damage, regardless of which version of the encounter is being faced off against.
Once theplayer breaks the Crystalian’s stance, however, it not only opens the enemy up for a riposte, but it also cracks its crystal skin and attacks will suddenly start doing standard damage. In fact, once the Crystalian has been cracked, the damage from some ofElden Ring’s stronger weapons becomes so significant as to recontextualize this “boss” creature down to being little more than a standard enemy. The result is a fight that seems nearly impossible at first, since no amount of swapping weapons or resetting builds can cause any real damage at first, before becoming shockingly simple as the encounter goes on.
Later Encounters Reset the Gimmick by Adding Additional Challenges
As is often the case with the wide variety of used andreused bosses inElden Ring, FromSoftware didn’t see it as enough to simply put the players up against one Crystalian boss, instead reiterating the fight multiple times. This elevates the single Crystalian into two sets of Crystalian Duo fights, along with an incredibly difficult Crystalian Trio encounter using variants infected with scarlet rot. All of these push the initial gimmick by including the need to manage more than one Crystalian at a time, while still managing to keep up enough pressure to break the guard of one before it can be killed.
The addition of Lesser Crystalians in later sections of the game also offers unique area encounters, as these enemies are difficult to run away from with their boss-level frequency of attacks and heavy aggro. However, by that time, the unique gimmick has unfortunately run its course and begins to overstay its welcome. That being said, a variant found in the Haligtree does manage toutilizeElden Ring’s Spirit-Caller Snail bossas another lesser enemy to descent effect to make this area difficult to simply sprint through.
Considering that the entire start of what fans refer to as theSoulsborneseries started with a handful of gimmick bosses inDemon’s Souls, this type of encounter is clearly welcome in theFromSoftware boss design philosophy. So, on an initial playthrough ofElden Ring, the first time a player runs into a Crystalian is a novel encounter. The only issue that players might now have with the Crystalian is overuse, as any gimmick can easily outstay its welcome when repeated too often without too much change between iterations.
Elden Ringis available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
