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Dark Souls 2 Broke the Mold with Smelter Demons Over-the-Top Design

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1 month ago

October 13, 2024

Found in an initially innocuous room tucked away in the Iron Keep, the Smelter Demon is a challenge that can quickly greet Dark Souls 2 players as they arrive at one of the game’s toughest areas. However, this fight is more than a simple big, armored soldier with a sword, and helps to refine an earlier Demon’s Souls encounter that defined itself around an aggressive, flaming boss that acts as the backbone of a classic Soulslike fight.

In addition to the fight against the Smelter Demon in the base Dark Souls 2 world, the Crown of the Old Iron King DLC also introduced a rework of the boss that continues to elevate the design. This is mostly done by altering the timing of combos and shifting punishment windows, a design philosophy that has continued in FromSoftware titles and DLC bosses all the way through to Elden Ring.

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The Smoldering Smelter Demon is Both Form and Function

A Redesign of the First ‘Soulslike’ Boss

Many of the bosses in the Souls series, from Demon’s Souls to Dark Souls 3, can be filtered into one of two major categories. First, there are puzzle bosses like the Bed of Chaos, with the difficulty coming from discovering the gimmick that is required to complete the fight and then executing the expected solution. Then, there are the fights that boil down to a back-and-forth of either blocking or evading a boss’ combos before maximizing the brief opportunities to punish. It is in this second type of encounter design that The Smelter Demon and its predecessor find themselves in. As had become the more common philosophy for boss design by the time of Dark Souls 2 and continues to evolve into Elden Ring‘s brutally aggressive boss roster.

This push towards aggression and attack windows is how the Smelter Demon’s most prominent predecessor from Demon’s Souls had previously set itself apart from other bosses in the same title. That is to say, the Smelter Demon is an evolution of the design of the Flamelurker from Demon’s Souls, a brutally difficult boss that uses an aggressive moveset that can quickly end a fight before players even know what they’re doing. The similarities, however, go deeper than both bosses being designed around fire. In fact, it comes down closer to the way that the Smelter Demon trades out explosive claws for a giant flaming sword while still keeping the quick pace of the fight to the limits of what Dark Souls 2 can handle.

Continued Evolution Through Dark Souls 2’s DLC

In addition to the first fight against the Smelter Demon taking the feral design of the Flamelurker and updating it for Dark Souls 2, the DLC continued to push the design forward. This isn’t much of a surprise considering how difficult the Crown of the Old Iron King‘s bosses like Sir Alonne are. However, in the case of the DLC version of the fight, the blue Smelter Demon, this increase in difficulty doesn’t come from upping the pace or removing punishes entirely. Instead, this comes from slightly adjusting the speed and rhythm of attacks that change the dodge and punish timings from the original, but only ends up forcing players to learn the new pace instead of stopping their ability to be aggressive.

Both of these fights against the variations of the Smelter Demon add a level of difficulty to already difficult fights that can easily burn players into a reset at any point. This makes both Smelter Demon fights fresh additions to the otherwise easy Dark Souls 2 boss roster, as they test the player’s skill. It’s a continuation of a classic FromSoftware design philosophy that can be seen as recently as Elden Ring‘s Promised Consort Radahn, and it has been a key factor to the developer’s success in titles and DLCs following Dark Souls 2.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

Franchise: dark souls
Released: April 2, 2015
Developer(s): FromSoftware
Publisher(s): Namco Bandai , FromSoftware
ESRB: T For Teen Due To Blood and Gore, Game Experience May Change During Online Play, Mild Language, Partial Nudity, Violence
How Long To Beat: 36 Hours
OpenCritic Rating: Mighty