History VideoGame / BlackSouls

* RecurringBoss: The Drake Helkaiser is very much this. It initially confronts the player at the start of the game, torching Jeanne and engaging him in a downplayed [[HopelessBossFight hopeless boss fight]]. Whether defeated or not, the Helkaiser can be revisited when the player returns to the starting area, and can be defeated, and then returns multiple times throughout the player's journey, intercepting him on a bridge, now revealed to be undead, partially rotting. and after being defeated, and having defeated Miranda, can be found one last time in the Tainted Bog, now fully undead, defeating him this one last time even has even the game reassure you he's done for good.
->'''The corpse of your longtime foe Helkaiser turned into trash... He won't revive anymore.'''

* StarSpangledSpandex: The inside of Mabel's dress is black studded with stars, looking more like the sky at night rather than clothing.

* PeninsulaOfLevelGrinding:

* EscapeSequence: A rather unexpected one in ''DLC 3'' when going through the [[spoiler:Crimean Nursing Graveyard. At a certain point you'll have to cross the "Night Lookout" as it is referred in the written messages, a bone-chilling ghastly entity that chases you down through the upper floors of the Nursing Graveyard and will rapidly kill you if you're caught. The lights flicker on and off in intervals and you're forced to dodge obstacles and make your moves in complete pitch darkness. It eventually even leads into Grimm being forced to [[ComeOutComeOutWhereverYouAre hide it out in a cramped hospital room in which writings advise him to stand completely still before the entity giving chase bursts into the room.]] ''Sure enough, if you don't, it does NOT end well.'']]

* EarnYourBadEnding: Both of the games have well over a dozen Endings, some of them even going unlabeled-- but the inarguable reality is that the Endings you're presented with plainly ''(think "Ending A" for example, which is likely intended to be interpreted as the "main" or "first" one due to how the game lists them.)'' [[spoiler: are listed as such quite deliberately as they are meant to fool you into thinking you've achieved happiness, with A being a seemingly happy reunion of all party members and B (if you dont have Leaf's Ring of course) giving a happy conclusion with a girl of your choice, but the game immediately puts that notion into question by sending you back in time to do more. The more elaborate Endings are down the alphabetical list, were things ''are'' revealed for what they are and you get your questions answered, but they all involve confronting reality for the nightmare that it actually really is, leading directly or indirectly to the death of most if not all of your companions as you fight unholy Eldritch abominations of nearly insurmountable power, just for you to be sent back after it's all said and done anyways.]]

* AdaptationDecay: Secretly, pretty much [[spoiler:the entire force that drives both the earlier work of ''Red Hood's Woods'' and ''BLACK SOULS I'' and ''II''. The tales of these characters turn increasingly dark and their dim, miserable lives devoid of meaning or reason and their tragic deaths are revealed to all be the work of an evil Eldritch God who poses as your first and most loyal companion. In Ending C you confront the Outer One who reveals her true nature and your own as the tortured author of the original tales she spun who's been put in a world shaped out of your own creations, twisted.]]

** The first comes when getting Endings [[spoiler: F and G where you're put in a path to fight against every former companion and Covenant member.]] In this case the bosses are actually avoidable, though the narrow corridors may have you caught by one at some point, and some of them spell serious trouble.

* {{Superboss}}: The Old King, the boss at the end of the Chaos Dungeon, is much considered to be this. Immune to status effects and status decreases, with immense amounts of health and can even ''remove your buffs from you,'' will ''instantly kill you'' if you give him a negative status effect, and applies a series of debuffs on you. His second phase is even stronger and summons clones and grants him HP regen. His only notable weakness is being susceptible to poison, which just makes this an uphill battle for most builds and players.

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: This capacity is very much embodied by [[spoiler: Grimm.]] Growing from an imprisoned undead soul rotting away in a cell to an undying being so ''unimaginably powerful'' he is able to contest and defeat [[spoiler:Mary Sue, the God of the who created the world he is in and made him, Baphomet The Old Goat of the Woods who is Sue's mother and is comparable to her, and even when he has his progress reset and his memories wiped, goes on to do the same to Jabberwock, Mary Sue ''(again, and in a glorious fashion)'' and even the ''Crawling One,'' who ''rules'' the new Garden he finds himself in.]]

** The DLC 2 area of the Chaos Dungeon has a mode labelled Ashes Reignited, which is a floor-based boss rush mode where you take on 5 bosses per floor, a lot of them with multiple phases. The difficulty increases exponentially with each passing floor, and you even get some familiar faces from the first game such as [[spoiler: the Bebemoth, the Trashlord Kraken. Lust Demon Satyr and even your longtime rival the Helkaiser who even gets a fake-out death screen and returns with a new final form, the Ghost Drake Helkaiser.]]

** The first comes when getting Endings [[spoiler: F and G where you're put in a path to fight against every former companion and Covenant member. They are mostly avoidable, though the narrow corridors may have you caught by one at some point, and some of them spell serious trouble.]]

* {{Superboss}}: The Old King, the boss at the end of the Chaos Dungeon, is much considered to be this. Immune to status effects and status decreases, with immense amounts of health and can even ''remove your buffs from you,'' will ''instantly kill you'' if you give him a negative status effect, and applies a series of debuffs you. His second phase is even stronger and summons clones and grants him HP regen. His only notable weakness is being susceptible to poison, which just makes this an uphill battle for most builds and players.

* {{Superboss}}: The Old King, the boss at the end of the Chaos Dungeon, is much considered to be this. Immune to status effects and status decreases, with immense amounts of health and can even remove your buffs from you, will instantly kill you if you give him a negative status effect, and apply a series of debuffs. His only notable weakness is being susceptible to poison. His second phase is even stronger and summons clones and grants him HP regen, which just makes this an uphill battle for most builds and players.

** This is later revealed to be invoked, being [[spoiler:all by design of Mary Sue, who quite literally went and read the original fairy tales, and in pure distaste, thought this sort of inclusion of absolute lust and depravity would befit the tales and her own fantasy world and make them most exciting.]]

* HotterAndSexier: True to it's nature as an HGame, the series has a high focus on converting the fairy tale characters, normally much more "conservative" in media, into most of what you'd see as per the genre-- ''greatly'' accentuated figures, skimpy and revealing outfits, uncharacteristically provocative suggestiveness and interactions, and pretty much, ''genuinely everyone'' being willing to get down to business, if the need arises. Hell, for crying out loud, Red Hood, the normally happy-go-lucky and innocent damsel wearing a long dress and cape you see in your fairy tales in this game wears nothing but a black thong bikini with leather linings inside under her cape, which is always in view in ''II''. This is later revealed to be invoked, being [[spoiler:all by design of Mary Sue, who quite literally went and read the original fairy tales, and in pure distaste, thought this sort of inclusion of absolute lust and depravity would befit the tales and her own fantasy world and make them most exciting.]]

** For ''II'' we have Endings you have [[spoiler:Endings F and G which require a LARGE amount of criteria to be met (Speak with Red Hood 10 times, get Leaf's Ring, watch the 6 Memory Orbs, and then start New Game Plus and find a hidden interaction by cancelling a specific dialogue option), which then forces you to run through a gauntlet ''made out of the real monstrous forms of every companion/heroine and Covenant member in the game,'' then having to pick between siding with Mary Sue or with Red Hood before confronting The Crawling One. If you side with Leaf, Ending F has you forever trapped in the Crawling One's schemes despite all of this work, and if you side with Red Hood, G has a seemingly happy ending where you flee Wonderland and reunite with Red Hood, ''only for you to get sent back to the Library Dream immediately.'']]

** For the case of ''I'', with [[spoiler:Ending C that involves killing all of your companions at the Poseidon Hotel to fill out the Library, and for D it involves making a long questline for a Pact with the Outer One Baphomet who then, with your unknowing approval you will into raiding and destroying the entire world and leads to the death of all of your friends. ''You gain nothing out of these besides learning the truth, and you lose everything.'']]