Why Starscourge Radahn Is Among The Boss Battles In Gaming

I still get tingles thinking about it: that charge across the rust-coloured Wailing Dunes, the somber militaristic opening notes of the boss theme, the distant silhouette of the massive armour containing the Scarlet-rotted husk of the demigod Radahn—once a formidable and well-respected general, now a monster riding a painfully emaciated steed kept alive by unnatural magical means.

I haven’t played Elden Ring for many, many months, yet of all the game’s boss battles that still haunt me (in a wistful kind of way, not in a ‘God, that was atrociously hard’ kinda way), it’s Starscourge Radahn that keeps coming back to me. Having several friends who fell by the wayside with Elden Ring, unable to rise to that distinctive FromSoft challenge, there are many moments throughout the game that I wish they got to experience—discovering Siofra River Well for the first time, the mad heavy-metal second phase of Rykard, Lord of Blasphemy—but none quite as much as Radahn.

First, let’s talk about the buildup. Heading into the Radahn battle, there’s no element of surprise that you’re facing him; he’s not just ‘a guy behind a fog wall.’ In fact, there’s a whole festival leading up to the showdown, with warriors from across the land congregating at Redmane Castle to take on the larger-than-life challenge. The festival is arranged by Radahn’s followers, who wish to give their beloved fallen general a dignified death rather than just leave him madly munching on the corpses littering the beach forever.

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As you enter Redmane Castle to the sound of the soldiers chanting in Radahn’s honour, it’s the only time I recall in a Soulsborne game that everything feels almost normal. There’s a pomp and sense of ceremony here—bugles and banners and all—as the announcer greets the contestants to fight Radahn, hyping up their champion, and giving the leadup an almost absurdly heightened sense of celebration. I reiterate, Souls games just don’t do this kinda stuff.

After the announcer chap greets you, Warrior Jar Alexander, and the rest, he begins to tell Radahn’s story, and the game cuts to a cutscene showing Radahn shambling mindlessly among the bodies of the battlefield where he was cursed by Malenia. Again, I don’t recall any other Soulsborne game where the pre-fight cutscenes actually take you out of your perspective this way. You’re really being given a presentation on why this fight matters, building up its gravitas.

And when you finally cross that threshold into the battle arena, what a fight it is, breaking so many rules of sensible Souls boss conduct and in doing so pushing it into something greater. The Radahn fight feels like a battle rather than a mere duel, and it indulges in spectacle like no other Souls fight (sometimes even at the expense of challenge).

If you rode into the battle on Torrent (and given the immense distance you had to cover, you probably did), the dramatic musical turn the moment he fires his giant arrow volleys—which are easily eluded by simply circling away from them—is one of those moments. Then of course there’s the total headfuck where he jumps into the sky (taking the music with him), then crashes down on you in the form of a giant meteor. Again, it’s spectacular, and devastating if you actually get caught in it, but it’s actually quite easy to evade, keeping you in a battle that’s suddenly elevated to a cosmic scale.

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Then there are the allies—Blaidd, Alexander, even the dastardly Patches—who you can summon (repeatedly) inside the actual boss arena. Again, Souls rules always dictated that you summoned before passing through the fog gate, with no way of resummoning in the battle itself, but again an exception was made here in the name of spectacle. The resummons I happily made do without, but summoning your pals in as you’re initially charging across the battlefield was another one of those *chef’s kiss’ transcendent moments where a ‘Souls’ boss fight became so much more than that.

I can see the arguments for why this wasn’t even the best boss fight in Elden Ring. Its uneven difficulty meant it got patched a couple of times, there are various ways to cheese the fight (including the resummons, and getting Radahn to meteor-crash himself into the ocean), and the camera can get a bit messy tracking this fast-moving behemoth.

That’s not to say that the Radahn battle is easy overall, though it’s also far from the hardest in the game. I’ve seen the fight fall foul of the ‘harder is better’ attitude that you see in the Souls community, with players complaining that he ‘only took four turns to beat,’ or that ‘he’s sucked since being nerfed,’ or– just, whatever. Everyone’s free to set their own criteria for what a good boss fight is, but if your criteria for the quality of a boss fight is that it should take no less than 30 attempts to beat, then I can’t help ya. Don’t let that ‘git gud’ boss bravado get in the way of one of the most impressively presented boss fights in the series’ history, is what I say.

The Radahn is great in large part because it breaks with so many of the series’ conventions. It’s bombastic, and surprising, while still being plenty challenging and tragic, much as you’d want from a Souls boss. In a weird way, I can see why people wouldn’t call it the best Soulsborne boss, or even the best boss in Elden Ring based on the very particular criteria for what a FromSoft boss should be. But take off the Souls-vision and look at it in context of games as a whole, and it’s one of the most glorious boss fights out there.

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