-Review- The Godskin Duo - No Summons, No Damage, No Magic Tricks, No HUD

The Godskin Duo is a fight that personally broke me mainly because within itself is broken and I'm about to rain down on this messy mandatory menace of a concept from every angle I can possible approach it on because this is the biggest disappointment I have ever experienced in the From Software games. There are multiple problems that will be addressed here and I'm sure there's more depending on build differences along with variations of strategies. Personally challenge wise the sleeping pots will not be used along with my typical standards.

My strategy was to get the Apostle's health close to the second phase transition that way once the Noble was defeated I could get rid of the Apostle faster. Whenever this was successful I could basically fight one on one for the remainder of the fight. I chose to deal with the Noble's second phase while both Godskins were present because the fight seems to flow a lot better. I didn't explore the approach of dealing with Apostle's second phase in this situation very much however I do not recommend it due to how aggressive the Noble remains unlike the other way around.

Now that we got the consistencies down let's discuss the inconsistencies because of RNG. My biggest issue in this fight is the Noble's rolling attack on the pillars which is bizarrely random in it's viability due to the attack rolling over sometimes. After hours of practice and then some research from similar play style restrictions on Youtube I found that the middle pillars apparently had the lowest chance of the Noble rolling over. What was more annoying is that every player I talked to either never had the attack roll over the pillar or it never rolled over on the pillars in the middle so perhaps it's an angle issue that they were not even aware of. As you can see the pillar base shape is a hexagon which contains six possible angles to choose from and if there's a specific one that never allows the rolling attack to roll over then I couldn't find it. I basically had to stick with the middle pillars and cross my fingers. Rolling through the attack and running with it is an option however there's a chance the Apostle will just damage you with a fire ball which leads me to the next subject.

The fire balls is the attack that ruined most of my strategic planning and options. Parrying was out because it allows the other Godskin to approach just in time to throw a fireball. Trying to parry the Apostle is especially problematic because it takes two successful deflects to get a riposte so it's a colossal waste of time. The fireballs also had awkward chances with the pillars in situations of some going over broken pillars or clipping through the full pillar model when it should have been safe.

There's another problem relating to the Noble's rolling attack that I wanted to address. Whenever you can get the rolling attack to work properly and you want to deal extra damage during that time you can either use projectiles or position yourself perfectly to strike the Noble while at the same time not getting struck by the devastating hit box of the rolling attack.

Personally I would have gone for a no rolling challenge however since my primary weapons have a mid recovery time it would have double the duration for the fight so I didn't bother but it can be more comfortably done with much faster weapons like thrusting swords or katanas.

The next set of issues will be addressed coming up because not only are we reviewing the Godskin Duo but we're looking at the individual Godskin fights along with the Spiritcaller version to cover many more apsects.

Godskin Apostle is my least favorite of the Godskins because of the quirky animations that are not satisfying to punish. I also never felt comfortable parrying due to the deflecting simply not visually making sense so I stuck with specific attacks that had just enough to time to properly punish.

My strategy was to look out for the fire ball attack, the jump attack and the spinning weapon attack. Mostly I stuck with my weapon's thrusting attack which allowed enough distance to recover now of course I'm applying a no roll challenge so my options are limited on purpose and using rolling would obviously allow more strike opportunities however I wanted to extend the duration to display more of the fight. The battle doesn't get very interesting until the second phase which would have been better if it was like that phase for the entire fight because the attacks are a lot more fun to punish. The stretch sweep especially is fun to tackle due to how confusing it can look at first but if you time it just right you can get several good hits in. The stretching spinning weapon attack when dodged through properly allows a nice punish in a sort of similar way. The first phase attacks also speed up however it's a fair trade in my opinion.

In the Godskin Duo fight the jump attack becomes extremely deadly and it can happen at the most inconvenient times especially when you're trying to deal with Noble separately. The fire ball attack can also be thrown at moments that appears to have striking opportunities which doesn't punish the player properly since it's more of a discouragement caused by a random moment other than learning how the fight works.

Godskin Noble over time became one of my favorite boss fights in the game since most of the attacks are properly telegraphed unlike the Apostle. This fight is very engaging in both phases with rhythms changing through out the battle.

My strategy for the first phase was to bait out one attack in particular for me to parry. I found that after the fire ball attack if timed well enough will offer a distinct thrusting attack about eighty percent of the time. I also had to be very cautionary because if the attack didn't activate then I could have been open to attacks that have very wide hit boxes that do not seem to have properly registering parry windows for some reason. In the middle of baiting other attacks can occur that are very punishable which are basically the attacks that are not the basic sword attacks. The charge thrust has a very interesting window where you can run to the Noble's left side to totally avoid it but you must act quickly.

The second phase always seems to begin with the rolling attack so it must be scripted to one hundred percent initiate it. In my opinion the roll attack is executed the best way here since the arena compliments it in the best way by not allowing the pillars to break and be compromised. You can also attack through for extra damage but you still need to be careful about your positioning however it's still miles better than what's in the Godskin Duo arena.

My strategy for the second was to be significantly more cautionary due to this belly AOE attack that happens so suddenly dealing a extreme amount of damage so I switched from jumping attacks to thrusting attacks. Parrying basically remained the same though I had to be mindful of this mutiple super thrusting attack which when timed poorly can mess everything up.

In the Godskin Duo fight I had to apply a lot of cautionary rolls since I wasn't parrying the Noble's attacks I had to prepare for a double thrusting attack that has no indication of starting. This definitely applied to the Apostle since his attacks are much faster and unpredictable. Then of course you have the moments when they're both attacking you at the same time which I got really lucky several times throughout. Every video I've seen with similar play style restrictions has several moments of plain luck and unfortunately that's just how this fight works which also applies for half of the Smough and Ornstein fight from Dark Souls.

The Spiritcaller version of the Godskin Duo is better but the arena doesn't complement the move set of the Godskins at all mainly with Noble but at least it's a one on one fight that's reasonably stacked with another. This fight rewards learning how to fight the Godskins individually unlike the Godskin duo that punishes you with inconveniences around their design. It's still worth finding a strategy that works for you though so I can't entirely say it doesn't help knowing their move set and I deeply encourage anyone to fight them individually before tackling the Godskin Duo.

The Spiritcaller design works basically the same here so I'm mostly going to touch on my final thoughts on the main Godskin Duo battle from the beginning of the video.

Other issues I didn't address earlier like the Noble being able to thrust right through the pillar, the Noble's AOE attack that stays for several seconds which destroys spacing out the Godskins and the long attack animations from both really could have used adjustments for the fight to work. I'm not saying make the fight easier but more manageable and satisfying to experience. It's already a major inconvenience separating the Godskins so why must we be bothered by extremely long attacks? The rolling attack is the only one that's well thought out because you can still reasonable get strikes in if careful but then that's screwed up by getting rolled at a random chance.

I'm just shocked on the lack of effort. I know From Software can design amazing duo fights so why is the Godskin Duo left so half baked? It's so close to being one of the best duo fights I've seen but it's compromised by broken aspects and dare I laziness which the same applies to half of the Smough and Ornstein fight which gets a pass only because it's presentation is incredible other than that the battle design for the first phase is atrocious.

Do I recommend fighting the Godskin Duo without sleeping pots? I'm afraid so because other wise you'll have to deal with unavoidable RNG. Perhaps the fight was purposefully designed this way to encourage the players to go nuts with summons and magic tricks but that thought makes me even more disappointed because a boss shouldn't have heavy RNG elements other than mixing up attack patterns that makes a fight less predictable.

Jumping back into the Spiritcaller fight as you can see the Noble is performing the roll attack that can be manageable with a roll then running with it while also being aware of the end the of attack that can track your character slightly. I mentioned this because it's one of the coolest attacks I have seen in the From Software series however there's one small problem. At the beginning of the attack there's some kind of animation frame skip right before timing a dodge which can be very jarring for getting the timing down. I haven't heard anyone else criticize that so it may just be me.

To wrap up I just want to say it was a bitter sweet experience fighting the Godskins. I hate one but I love the other it's just too bad the game doesn't work well with them both together and I hope I was able to explain my concerns well enough. We're never going to see a From Software game without problems but I must say that the issues give these games character and it's fun to see the interesting methods of getting by like we have through all of the games.

I want to apologize if you heard some sniffing during this review. At the time of this recording Hurricane Ian finished the day before and it has tossed pollen in the air which triggers my allergies so it's was tough recording for this video. I want to thank you for listening this long and I promise the next reviews will be back to being short and sweet. This boss was just a weird moment for me in Elden Ring and I wanted to express how I fully feel about it's design.