History ThatOneBoss / Bloodborne

* The Shadows of Yharnam take precise positioning and decision making to beat, requiring the player to keep tabs on three different enemies, each with their own movement and attack speed. The first phase is relatively easy, as the magic user only occasionaly shoots straight-forward fireballs, the candle-wielder is slow and the katana wielder is aggressive and fast, though predictable. All three are relatively simple to stagger and the environment can be used to your advantage. The issues start from the second phase onwards. Once one of the Shadows reaches a third of their health, they will grow snakes, much like the snake parasites in Forbidden Forest preceding the battle. Each Shadow gains extra abilities, with the katana and candle Shadow gaining a rather generous boost to the range of their weapons. It can be difficult to get close to the melee users as they spam their long-ranged melee attacks. Then once only one Shadow remains standing, it will attempt a lengthy spell you must interrupt, as failing to do so has the Shadow summon massive snakes that deal an incredible amount of damage.
* Rom, the Vacuous Spider requires a great deal of patience to beat. Unlike the game's other {{Flunky Boss}}es, her minions are a huge threat--one attack will reduce most players to one-third their HP--requiring you to split your attention between the boss and the minions. Even worse, with each stage she'll summon more. If you want to play it safe, you can try to thin out the spider swarm before engaging Rom herself, but doing so is very time-consuming and open you up to a quick death by Rom's meteor showers while your back is turned.

As a ''[[ThatOneBoss/DarkSouls Dark Souls]]'' SpiritualSuccessor, ''Bloodborne'' [[ThatOneBoss ups the ante with plenty of brutal, difficult bosses]]. See the [[BonusBoss/{{Bloodborne}} Bonus Boss page]] for the optional ones.

As a ''[[ThatOneBoss/DarkSouls Dark Souls]]'' SpiritualSuccessor, ''Bloodborne'' [[ThatOneBoss ups the ante with plenty of brutal, difficult bosses]]. See the [[BonusBoss/Bloodborne Bonus Boss page]] for the optional ones.

As a ''[[ThatOneBoss/DarkSouls Dark Souls]]'' SpiritualSuccessor, ''Bloodborne'' [[ThatOneBoss ups the ante with plenty of brutal, difficult bosses]].

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orphanhardbloodborne_9.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Mercy for the poor, wizened child..."\\
[[ThatOneBoss Are you sure you aren't talking about us being the poor, wizened child?]]]]

* Rom, the Vacuous Spider requires a great deal of patience to beat. Unlike the game's other {{Flunky Boss}}es, her minions are a huge threat--one attack will reduce most players to one-third their HP--requiring you to split your attention between the boss and the minions. Even worse, with each stage she'll summon more. If you want to play it safe, you can try to thin out the spider swarm before engaging Rom herself, but doing so is very time-consuming and open you up to a quick death by Rom's meteor showers while your back is turned.
* The DLC, ''The Old Hunters'' brings the first boss, Ludwig the Accursed. A gigantic beast with over a dozen unique attacks, incredible speed and strength, with difficult to predict movesets and tells complete with savage combos. Ludwig is known as a skill check for the DLC, with several attacks fully capable of oneshotting a careless, or even careful player. Halfway through the fight brings the Holy Blade phase when the tempo changes and Ludwig wields the Holy Moonlight Greatsword. His strikes are frenetic and fast paced, with power AOE strikes and massive damage. Unsurprisingly, he's considered one of the greatest bosses in the game for his incredible, but fair, difficulty.
* The OptionalBoss of the DLC, Laurence the First Vicar, is a reskin of the Cleric Beast with a fire theme. The bane of many players, Laurence completely ditches the 'tough but fair' challenge in favor of attacks that are just a touch too aggressive and savage, with difficult tells, sweeping range and insane damage that requires a total lack of room for error. His final phase brings with it insane combos, leaving a trail of damaging lava and incredibly few windows for attack. Small surprise he's considered one of the most nightmarish bosses in the game.
* The penultimate boss of the DLC, Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower is known for her difficulty. With swift and graceful strikes, Maria combines the pure skill of a veteran hunter and is capable of dodging most anything you dish out. While her first phrase can be strafed about, her second and third phases bring the pain whe using her Blood Blades enhances her reach and damage enormously, coupled with increasing aggression. Like Ludwig, she's also considered a high quality and difficult boss, but one of the game's highest challenge.
* The final boss of the DLC, the Orphan of Kos is considered one of, if not ''the'' hardest bosses in all of [=FromSoft's=] history and is the page image for a really good reason. He is almost mindlessly aggressive and hard-hitting and while his first phase is comparatively simple to master, his second is the player killer. His attacks are nigh-impossible to parry, with painful and relentlessly combos, chaining AOE attacks and powerful lightning blasts that are exceptionally difficult to dodge if you stand in the wrong place. Finding windows to attack is hard enough, compounded by his insane health pool. Not for nothing is he known for his psychotic levels of difficulty to cap off the very difficult Fishing Hamlet.
* [[BossInMooksClothing The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst.]] [[spoiler: He only appears in the Grand Cathedral if you complete Eileen's quest line, after you find her wounded outside the door.]] He could potentially be the hardest hunter NPC fight in the entire game, he has a ''gigantic'' health pool standing at exactly '''3510''' which is the equivalent if not more than some of the bosses you face. Not to mention he also has maxed out stats and deals extreme amounts of damage, [[ThatOneAttack his Repeater Pistol can take half your health]] and he likes to use this constantly after dodging one of your attacks. Oh, and he likes to regularly use Old Hunter's bone which turns his strafing/dodging into outright TeleportSpam. You ''know'' a fight is especially difficult and brutal even by ''Soulsborne'' standards when the most common "recommended" strategy to beat it is by using a GoodBadBug to exploit the Hunter AI with Blue Elixirs...
* If you're exploring the [[BonusDungeon Chalice Dungeons]] and following the natural progression of dungeons you unlock [[spoiler:in the course of unlocking the dungeon to the [[BonusBoss Pthumerian Queen]]]], you are very likely to find yourself fighting the Watchdog of the Old Lords, which is [[CanisMajor a dog the way Cerberus is a chihuahua]]. While this beast is not much different from the giant monsters most players have been slaughtering by this point, what makes it an infuriating boss fight is the dungeon type in which it's fought in: a (Cursed and) Defiled Chalice Dungeon. In this dungeon, your HP is halved, as is the amount of HP you get from healing items. Fortunately, the physical damage you take is also halved. '''Un'''fortunately, elemental damage is ''not'' halved, and all of the Watchdog's attacks do fire damage. This means that even at high Vitality, the Watchdog can and will oneshot you with several of its attacks, and because it's so massive, it can obliterate you just by clipping you.

* Father Gascoigne is the WakeUpCallBoss to end all [[WakeUpCallBoss Wake-Up Call Bosses]]. Potentially the first or second (depending on whether you fight the Cleric Beast first) boss you encounter, he is entirely designed to teach players to adapt to Bloodborne's aggressive combat style and NintendoHard difficulty. He fights the player like an NPC or PVP player would - he dodges your attacks, he tries to parry you with his gun, and he never lets up. He also transforms his Hunter Axe into the two-hand version, giving his attacks serious reach. His third phase is where most players perish within a matter of seconds; he fully transforms into a beast, gaining ''extremely'' quick, aggressive attacks which often combo into each other, leaving you stunned on the ground while he quickly destroys your health bar. Unless you've spent most of the game so far practicing dodging and stunning, good luck. [[GuideDangIt If you found it]], the Tiny Music Box will stun him for a few seconds, which can be a blessing during his beast form (or human forms, if you need the help), but it has its drawbacks. It doesn't immediately stun him, leaving you a sitting duck for a critical moment, and it will only work a few times. Even worse, if you're unwise enough to overuse it ''before'' the transformation, he'll actually turn into a beast early, leaving you to fend off a LightningBruiser with extra HP and no music box to counter him.

* The Shadows of Yharnam require precise positioning and decision making to beat, requiring the player to keep tabs on three different enemies, each with their own movement and attack speed. The first phase is relatively easy, as the magic user only occasionaly shoots straight-forward fireballs, the candle-wielder is slow and the katana wielder is aggressive and fast, though predictable. All three are relatively simple to stagger and the environment can be used to your advantage. The issues start from the second phase onwards. Once one of the Shadows reaches a third of their health, they will grow snakes, much like the snake parasites in Forbidden Forest preceding the battle. Each Shadow gains extra abilities, with the katana and candle Shadow gaining a rather generous boost to the range of their weapons. It can be difficult to get close to the melee users as they spam their long-ranged melee attacks. Then once only one Shadow remains standing, it will attempt a lengthy spell you must interrupt, as failing to do so has the Shadow summon massive snakes that deal an incredible amount of damage.

* The final boss of the DLC, the Orphan of Kos is considered one of, if not ''the'' hardest bosses in all of [=FromSoft's=] history and is the page image for a really good reason. He is almost mindlessly aggressive and hard-hitting and while his first phase is comparatively simple to master, his second is the player killer. His attacks are nigh-impossible to parry, with painful and relentlessly combos, chaining AOE attacks and powerful lightning blasts that are exceptionally difficult to dodge if you stand in the wrong place. Finding windows to attack is hard enough, compounded by his insane health poor. Not for nothing is he known for his psychotic levels of difficulty to cap off the very difficult Fishing Hamlet.

* The penultimate boss of the DLC, Lady Maria is the Astral Clocktower is known for her difficulty. With swift and graceful strikes, Maria combines the pure skill of a veteran hunter and is capable of dodging most anything you dish out. While her first phrase can be strafed about, her second and third phases bring the pain whe using her Blood Blades enhances her reach and damage enormously, coupled with increasing aggression. Like Ludwig, she's also considered a high quality and difficult boss, but one of the game's highest challenge.

* If you're exploring the [[BonusDungeon Chalice Dungeons]] and following the natural progression of dungeons you unlock [[spoiler:in the course of unlocking the dungeon to the [[BonusBoss Pthumerian Queen]]]], you are very likely to find yourself fighting the Watchdog of the Old Lords, which is [[CanisMajor a dog the way Cerberus is a chihuahua]]. While this beast is not much different from the giant monsters most players have been slaughtering by this point, what makes it an infuriating boss fight is the dungeon type in which it's fought in: a (Cursed and) Defiled Chalice Dungeon, which reduces your HP by half. This means that even at high Vitality, the Watchdog can and will oneshot you with several of its attacks, and because it's so massive, it can obliterate you just by clipping you.

* The OptionalBoss of the DLc, Laurence the First Vicar, is a reskin of the Cleric Beast with a fire theme. The bane of many players, Laurence completely ditches the 'tough but fair' challenge in favor of attacks that are just a touch too aggressive and savage, with difficult tells, sweeping range and insane damage that requires a total lack of room for error. His final phase brings with it insane combos, leaving a trail of damaging lava and incredibly few windows for attack. Small surprise he's considered one of the most nightmarish bosses in the game.
* The penultimate boss of the DLc, Lady Maria is the Astral Clocktower is known for her difficulty. With swift and graceful strikes, Maria combines the pure skill of a veteran hunter and is capable of dodging most anything you dish out. While her first phrase can be strafed about, her second and third phases bring the pain whe using her Blood Blades enhances her reach and damage enormously, coupled with increasing aggression. Like Ludwig, she's also considered a high quality and difficult boss, but one of the game's highest challenge.
* The final boss of the DLC, the Orphan of Kos is considered one of, if not ''the'' hardest bosses in all of [=FromSoft's=] history. He is almost mindlessly aggressive and hard-hitting and while his first phase is comparatively simple to master, his second is the player killer. His attacks are nigh-impossible to parry, with painful and relentlessly combos, chaining AOE attacks and powerful lightning blasts that are exceptionally difficult to dodge if you stand in the wrong place. Finding windows to attack is hard enough, compounded by his insane health poor. Not for nothing is he known for his psychotic levels of difficulty to cap off the very difficult Fishing Hamlet.

* [[BossInMooksClothing The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst.]] [[spoiler: He only appears in the Grand Cathedral if you complete Eileen's quest line, after you find her wounded outside the door.]] He could potentially be the hardest hunter NPC fight in the entire game, he has a ''gigantic'' health pool standing at exactly '''3510''' which is the equivalent if not more than some of the bosses you face. Not to mention he also has maxed out stats and deals extreme amounts of damage, [[ThatOneAttack his Repeater Pistol can take half your health]] and he likes to use this constantly after dodging one of your attacks. Oh, and he likes to regularly use Old Hunter's bone which turns his strafing/dodging into outright TeleportSpam. You ''know'' a fight is especially difficult and brutal even by ''Soulsborne'' standards when the most common "recommended" strategy to beat it is by using a GoodBadBug to exploit the Hunter AI with Blue Elixirs...

* The Bloodletting Beast is a Chalice-only boss that fights like you took Gascoigne's third phase, threw in Blood-starved Beast's attack patterns, and then shot it up with a bathtub cocktail full of steroids. It has an enormous health pool, no blind spots in its attack patterns, and hits like a train. Its deadliest attack is a quick jab so powerful that the ''air pressure'' from the blow can send you flying, and its notorious [[ThatOneAttack body slam attacks]] have tremendous HitboxDissonance that can nail you even if you think you're far enough away. The only thing going for you here is that its limbs can be staggered, although good luck chopping down their beefy health without upgraded/gemmed Serrated weapons like the Whirligig Saw or Beast Cutter.
** The penultimate boss of the [[BrutalBonusLevel Great Pthumeru Ihyll Chalice]] is the Headless Bloodletting Beast. It's everything from before except with a twist; when you get it down to half-health, a massive centipede suddenly appears out of the neck stump and spits Rapid Poison bolts at you while flailing at you from across the room. This is all while the body still attacks you normally. [[NintendoHard Have fun]].
* Immediately before the aforementioned boss in the Great Pthumeru Ihyll Dungeon is the Pthumerian Descendant with the shotels. The boss is fast and ''insanely'' aggressive, never giving you a chance to take a breath or heal. Trying to keep your distance will result in the boss using his [[ThatOneAttack shotel boomerang attack]], which has no windup, is basically impossible to see coming, can easily one shot you at max Vitality if both shotels hit, and ''[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard can clip right through the pillars in the room]]''. Speaking of those pillars, they arena works against you big time, as the boss is so aggressive and quick that he'll often pin you against the wall or a pillar before tearing you to pieces in a lethal combo while the CameraScrew kicks in. Victory basically relies on you either [[LuckBasedMission shooting him constantly and getting lucky with Viscerals]] or tanking his attacks with a Lead Elixir and praying that you can out-DPS his health bar before you run out of healing.
* On the topic of Chalice Dungeon bosses, the Chalice version of the Abhorrent Beast. It's basically the same one you can fight in the Forbidden Woods, but with several times more health and 2 forms. Most of its attack animations are so ambiguous that it's hard to know what its going to do until it actually does it, and if you get hit, chances are you are going to get comboed, doubly so once you reach its second form. It also has a nasty habit of charging you when you try to heal or use an item, meaning using a vial at the wrong time could either make it go to complete waste and then some, or get you killed outright. Thankfully, it still gets poisoned from a single poison throwing knife, so if you have the patience, you can whittle it down with those while dodging its attacks.
* [[BossInMooksClothing The Bloody Crow of Cainhurst.]] [[spoiler: He only appears in the Grand Cathedral if you complete Eileen's quest line, after you find her wounded outside the door.]] He could potentially be the hardest hunter NPC fight in the entire game, he has a ''gigantic'' health pool standing at exactly '''3510''' which is the equivalent if not more than some of the bosses you face. Not to mention he also has maxed out stats and deals extreme amounts of damage, [[ThatOneAttack his Repeater Pistol can take half your health]] and he likes to use this constantly after dodging one of your attacks. Oh, and he likes to regularly use Old Hunter's bone which turns his strafing/dodging into outright TeleportSpam. You ''know'' a fight is especially difficult and brutal even by ''Soulsborne'' standards when the most common "recommended" strategy to beat it is by using a GoodBadBug to exploit the Hunter AI with Blue Elixirs...
* Defiled Amygdala, a Chalice Dungeon final boss and a pumped-up version of the optional one in the Nightmare Frontier. She's a giant with six arms and she can can sweep foes in a twenty foot arc, leap into the air and slam down with her giant body, shoot exploding lasers from her eyes, and turn her fists into arcane bombs. And when you get her down to 33% HP she ''rips out two of her own arms and uses them as trick weapons'', which doubles her instant kill radius, while cutting her vulnerability window in half, making it near-impossible to attack her weak points from the front. And the kicker? You have to do this with your health bar sliced in half, blood vials and all. Thankfully, she has a pretty limited moveset compared to most other Great One bosses so her attacks can get very predictable and easy to react to after a while, but she's still a MarathonBoss with 22,000 health while you're practically a OneHitPointWonder, so if you get careless and slip up, you're dead.
* The Watchdog of the Old Lords makes Sif look like a newborn puppy. Getting close to him to attack is difficult, as his bites and swipe combos can hit almost everywhere around him, and he has a powerful explosion move if you try to get into a blind spot. Most notorious of his moves is his flaming charge, which oneshots you pretty much regardless of your Vitality and has [[HitboxDissonance a very misleading hitbox]] that tends to clip you if you're slow by a fraction of a second or if you're out of position. Did we mention he's programmed to always use this attack when you enter the fog gate, and that ''he can cancel out of his other combos to charge at any time''? This gets taken UpToEleven in the Defiled Chalice, where ''all of his attacks'' are one-hit kills thanks to the Fire damage he does; the Defiled Watchdog is reviled as one of the hardest bosses in the entire game and DLC.
* The Loran Darkbeast, a Chalice Dungeon PaletteSwap of Darkbeast Paarl, is one of the most universally hated bosses in the game for a number of reasons. He's essentially a souped up Darkbeast Paarl with a few extra moves, the most infamous of which is an electric shockwave that he uses whenever you get under him which, given his propensity to leap erratically all over the arena, is often. He's so fast and jittery that it's difficult to land a solid hit on him despite his size, and his tendency to jump across the arena causes severe CameraScrew with the tiny room you're made to fight him in. It really doesn't help that he has over 20,000 HP. The only saving graces for this fight are that (similar to Blood-starved Beast) he's vulnerable to being distracted by Pungent Blood Cocktails, and his limbs can be broken.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/orphan_of_kos.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:The Orphan of Kos is NOT! HAPPY!!!]]

* The Loran Darkbeast, a Chalice Dungeon PaletteSwap of Darkbeast Paarl, is one of the most universally hated bosses in the game for a number of reasons. He's essentially a souped up Darkbeast Paarl with a few extra moves, the most infamous of which is an electric shockwave that he uses whenever you get under him which, given his propensity to leap erratically all over the arena, is often. He's so fast and jittery that it's difficult to land a solid hit on him despite his size, and his tendency to jump across the arena causes severe CameraScrew with the tiny room you're made to fight him in. It really doesn't help that he has over 20,000 HP. The only saving graces for this fight are that (similar to Blood-starved Beast) he's vulnerable to being distracted by Pungent Blood Cocktails, and his limbs can be broken.
* The final challenge before you complete the DLC, the Orphan of Kos is widely regarded as not only one of the hardest bosses in the game, but one of the hardest bosses in ''any'' FROM Software game! It's like a Hunter taken UpToEleven, throwing itself at you with blinding speed in a [[AttackAttackAttack psychotic frenzy of non-stop aggression]], hitting as hard as any boss in the game with huge variety of different attacks to choose from and possessed of a huge HP pool. If you can defeat this mad child of the Old Ones, it's unlikely that anything can stop you- but that's one hell of a big ''"if"!''

* The Loran Darkbeast, a Chalice Dungeon PaletteSwap of Darkbeast Paarl, is one of the most universally hated bosses in the game for a number of reasons. He's essentially a souped up Darkbeast Paarl with a few extra moves, the most infamous of which is an electric shockwave that he uses whenever you get under him which, given his propensity to leap erratically all over the arena, is often. He's so fast and jittery that it's difficult to land a solid hit on him despite his size, and his tendency to jump across the arena causes severe CameraScrew with the tiny room you're made to fight him in. It really doesn't help that he has over 20,000 HP. The only saving graces for this fight are that (similar to Blood-starved Beast) he's vulnerable to being distracted by Pungent Blood Cocktails, and his limbs can be broken.

* Rom, the Vacuous Spider requires a great deal of patience to beat. Unlike the game's other {{Flunky Boss}}es, her minions are a huge threat and require you to stay alert. Those little bastards will screw you either way: you can either pick off each spider one by one (a ''big'' risk once Rom starts fighting back), or ignore them and let their numbers grow. And the whole time, you're going to have to dodge Rom's meteor shower attacks, which will occasionally stunlock you for a ''very'' quick death. If you want to play it safe, you can try to get rid of the spider swarm before engaging Rom herself, as she summons only a limited amount and without them she's much easier to deal with, but doing so is very time consuming and requires you to split your attention between Rom and her minions to make sure you don't get pegged by a meteor shower while your back is turned.

* Father Gascoigne is the WakeUpCallBoss to end all [[WakeUpCallBoss Wake-Up Call Bosses]]. Potentially the first or second (depending on whether you fight the Cleric Beast first) boss you encounter, he is entirely designed to teach players to adapt to Bloodborne's aggressive combat style and NintendoHard difficulty. He fights the player like an NPC or PVP player would - he dodges your attacks, he tries to parry you with his gun, and he never lets up. He also transforms his Hunter Axe into the two-hand version, giving his attacks serious reach. His third phase is where most players perish within a matter of seconds; he fully transforms into a beast, gaining ''extremely'' quick, aggressive attacks which often combo into each other, leaving you stunned on the ground while he quickly destroys your health bar. Unless you've spent most of the game so far practicing dodging and stunning, good luck. You can use the Tiny Music Box to stun him for a second or two if you found it, but it only works a few times before he'll wise up (and it doesn't work at all once he turns into a beast).

* The Blood-starved Beast almost forces you to learn the new parry mechanic if you haven't yet: its moves are so sweeping and erratic that dodging is untenable as a long-term solution. Much like Father Gascoigne, it also has 3 forms, gaining poison and becoming even more unpredictable as the fight goes on, and starting from form 2 it has a grab attack that is almost [[OneHitKill guaranteed to kill you]] between the poison and the base damage. Unless you realize that [[GuideDangIt you can distract it for several seconds with Pungent Blood Cocktails, and that you can summon Alfred to help if you befriend him (and find his hidden summon sign)]], you're in for a bad time. Technically the fight is optional in terms of story, but you need to kill it to open up the Chalice Dungeons.
** Speaking of the Chalice Dungeons, it gets even worse when it reappears as a DegradedBoss and you have to fight it in a ''much'' smaller room, leaving you with a lot less space to dodge and heal.
* The [[WolfPackBoss Shadows of Yharnam]] can be a nightmare to deal with if you try to take them on solo. Two of them try to engage you in melee, one of whom is extremely aggressive and quick, with the last one constantly flinging fireballs at you, making it difficult to get a reliable hit in. A large tombstone provides some cover from the fireball Shadow but the player will be repeatedly pushed into the open by the other two. To make things worse, despite possessing separate HP, their second phase is activated by their ''combined'' HP hitting a certain threshold. If you don't focus all your damage on a single target, [[FromBadToWorse you'll face all three of them at their most dangerous phase.]] Thank goodness you can summon Henryk and Madaras to even the odds [[spoiler: and that Shaman Bone Blades can make the Shadows fight each other]]

* On the topic of Hunter battles, the infamous "Gank Squad" in Yahar'gul can also be very trying if you take them head on. In the lower part of Yahar'gul, in the room that used to hold the Hypogean Gaol lantern, there's a trio of Hunters that all come at you at once as soon as you aggro them. The first uses a Beast Claw and Hunter Pistol, the second wields a [[MoreDakka Rifle Spear and Cannon]], and the last wields a Threaded Cane and Flamesprayer alongside a Tiny Tonitrus. Once you first walk into the building you'll only see the Beast Claw Hunter, standing naked in the middle of the room with his back turned to you. Seems like a good opportunity to backstab right? Wrong. As soon as you attack him, the other two will come slinking out of the shadows and you're now stuck in a three-on-one fight against a group of Hunters who have a ton of health, never run out of bullets, and don't give a shit about MookChivalry. They're aggro-linked too, so picking them off one by one isn't an option. As with the Bloody Crow, most guides to defeating them recommend exploiting their ArtificialStupidity by locking yourself in the jail cell in the basement so they can't reach you with melee attacks and then hitting them through the bars until all three are dead.

* Ludwig from the DLC is QUICKLY shaping up to be this among the players. Not only does he relentlessly pummel you with attacks that have huge hitboxes, prances around the arena escaping your blows, he has not one but THREE different ranged attacks/charges and one jump attack that's nearly impossible to dodge without very careful moving around. And if you think his aggressive moveset is bad enough, halfway through the fight [[spoiler:he takes out the Moonlight Greatsword]] and completely changes his behaviour, requiring you to dodge one onslaught of deadly attacks with different timing after another. Needles to say, he's even worse on NG+, which is when most players who were done with the game and started the DLC came to fight him.
* [[spoiler:Orphan of Kos]] is the FinalBoss of the DLC. And trust us, you will FEEL it. A LightningBruiser with a ton of health, swift and devastating strikes, ranged attacks, occasional CameraScrew, a fondness for mixing up combos to throw players off, infuriatingly difficult to get a good hit in... It's an appropriately nightmarish fight. [[spoiler:And it has a second form, turning all that aforementioned crap UpToEleven.]] He's generally agreed to be one of the hardest bosses in the ''entire series''.
* The Loran Darkbeast, a Chalice Dungeon PaletteSwap of Darkbeast Paarl, is one of the most universally hated bosses in the game for a number of reasons. He's essentially a souped up Darkbeast Paarl with a few extra moves, the most infamous of which is an electric shockwave that he uses whenever you get under him which, given his propensity to leap erratically all over the arena, is often. He's so fast and jittery that it's difficult to land a solid hit on him despite his size, and his tendency to jump across the arena causes severe CameraScrew with the tiny room you're made to fight him in. It really doesn't help that he has over 20,000 HP. The only saving graces for this fight are that (similar to Blood-starved Beast) he's vulnerable to being distracted by Pungent Blood Cocktails, and his limbs can be broken.
* Micolash, the Host of Nightmares is generally considered a pretty unimpressive fight due to being a SquishyWizard who spends most of the fight running away from you. His first phase isn't so bad, as once you corner him his only move is to spam Augur of Ebrietas, which is very telegraphed and easy to dodge. However, in his second phase he ''really'' likes to spam [[BeamSpam A Call Beyond]], which is hard to dodge reliably and can oneshot you if it connects, making you go through the irritating process of chasing him down all over again. The only way to keep him from using it is to stay close to him, which doesn't always work because he likes to jump around so much... [[OutsideTheBoxTactic Or just get a powerful firearm enhanced with Bone Marrow Ash/Poison Knives before falling down and rain death from above]]. Adding to the pain is that unlike every other boss in the game a mutual kill on Micolash does not automatically count as a player victory because Micolash has to finish his dying speech before he counts as defeated, and the player's death animation is a lot shorter than his speech.

* Martyr Logarius. Not only does he enjoy spamming ranged magic spells while playing keep-away, but the actual attacks he performs with his scythe are hard to read and have weird timing if you want to parry them. After losing 30% of his health, then you can't even parry him anymore, he becomes much faster, and he gains the ability to fly up into the air and come down on you like a freight train. Mind you, it is possible to backstab him during his power-up animation, which in turn will allow you to parry his attacks in the second phase of the fight, but that's only a marginal improvement.

* [[spoiler:Ludwig]] from the DLC is QUICKLY shaping up to be this among the players. Not only does he relentlessly pummel you with attacks that have huge hitboxes, prances around the arena escaping your blows, he has not one but THREE different ranged attacks/charges and one jump attack that's nearly impossible to dodge without very careful moving around. And if you think his aggressive moveset is bad enough, halfway through the fight he [[spoiler:takes out the Moonlight Greatsword]] and completely changes his behaviour, requiring you to dodge one onslaught of deadly attacks with different timing after another. Needles to say, he's even worse on NG+, which is when most players who were done with the game and started the DLC came to fight him.
* [[spoiler:Laurence, the First Vicar]] is becoming very unpopular, especially with players in New Game+++ and above. His attacks are badly overpowered, killing players with even 80+ vitality in one hit (even his quick non-charged attacks). Many of his moves, already incredibly powerful, do area of effect damage as well, with extremely wide hitboxes and a stagger effect. His second stage has him dropping enormous pools of lava all over the cramped boss arena, making even getting close enough to actually hit him a game of luck -- while he's still able to hit you with his insane reach. In addition, many players find his design (a reskin of the Cleric Beast) to be very lazy from a series that prides itself on unique enemy design (Which, granted, isn't really that bad considering the Asylum Demon was reused three different times in ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsI''). Many players seem to be in agreement that [[spoiler:Laurence]] [[SNKBoss is one of the first Souls bosses to actually be broken instead of merely difficult.]] The only good bit of news is that he's optional, although you get a pretty sweet Caryll Rune [[spoiler: that lets you fully transform into a Beast]] if you manage it.

* Micolash, the Host of Nightmares is generally considered a pretty unimpressive fight due to being a SquishyWizard who spends most of the fight running away from you. His first phase isn't so bad, as once you corner him his only move is to spam Augur of Ebrietas, which is very telegraphed and easy to dodge. However, in his second phase he ''really'' likes to spam [[BeamSpam A Call Beyond]], which is hard to dodge reliably and can oneshot you if it connects, making you go through the irritating process of chasing him down all over again. The only way to keep him from using it is to stay close to him, which doesn't always work because he likes to jump around so much... [[OutsideTheBoxTactic Or just get a powerful firearm enhanced with Bone Marrow Ash/Poison Knives before falling down and rain death from above]].

* Micolash, the Host of Nightmares is generally considered a pretty unimpressive fight due to being a SquishyWizard who spends most of the fight running away from you. His first phase isn't so bad, as once you corner him his only move is to spam Augur of Ebrietas, which is very telegraphed and easy to dodge. However, in his second phase he ''really'' likes to spam [[BeamSpam A Call Beyond]], which is hard to dodge reliably and can oneshot you if it connects, making you go through the irritating process of chasing him down all over again. The only way to keep him from using it is to stay close to him, which doesn't always work because he likes to jump around so much... [[SequenceBreaking Or just get a powerful firearm enhanced with Bone Marrow Ash/Poison Knives before falling down and rain death from above]].

* Micolash, the Host of Nightmares is generally considered a pretty unimpressive fight due to being a SquishyWizard who spends most of the fight running away from you. His first phase isn't so bad, as once you corner him his only move is to spam Augur of Ebrietas, which is very telegraphed and easy to dodge. However, in his second phase he ''really'' likes to spam [[BeamSpam A Call Beyond]], which is hard to dodge reliably and can oneshot you if it connects, making you go through the irritating process of chasing him down all over again. The only way to keep him from using it is to stay close to him, which doesn't always work because he likes to jump around so much.

As a ''[[ThatOneBoss/DarkSouls Dark Souls]]'' SpiritualSuccessor, it not hard to expect that ''Bloodborne'' [[ThatOneBoss would have some brutal, difficult bosses]].

* [[spoiler:Orphan of Kos]] is the FinalBoss of the DLC. And trust us, you will FEEL it. A LightningBruiser with a ton of health, swift and devastating strikes, ranged attacks, occasional CameraScrew, a fondness for mixing up combos to throw players off, infuriatingly difficult to get a good hit in... It's an appropriately nightmarish fight. [[spoiler:And it has a second form, turning all that aforementioned crap UpToEleven.]] He's generally agreed to be one of the hardest bosses in the ''entire'' series.

* Father Gascoigne is the WakeUpCallBoss to end all [[WakeUpCallBoss Wake-Up Call Bosses]]. Potentially the first or second (depending on whether you fight the Cleric Beast first) boss you encounter, he entirely designed to teach players to adapt to Bloodborne's aggressive combat style and NintendoHard difficulty. He fights the player like an NPC or PVP player would - he dodges your attacks, he tries to parry you with his gun, and he never lets up. He also transforms his Hunter Axe into the two-hand version, giving his attacks serious reach. His third phase is where most players perish within a matter of seconds; he fully transforms into a beast, gaining ''extremely'' quick, aggressive attacks which often combo into each other, leaving you stunned on the ground while he quickly destroys your health bar. Unless you've spent most of the game so far practicing dodging and stunning, good luck. You can use the Tiny Music Box to stun him for a second or two if you found it, but it only works a few times before he'll wise up (and it doesn't work at all once he turns into a beast).