Astonishing Showdown with Elden Ring's Crystalian Unveils an Epic Twist

Highlights

Crystalian bosses in Elden Ring stand out due to their unique gimmick, offering a challenging and intimidating first encounter with seemingly insurmountable foes.

The player must use Elden Ring's Stance Break mechanic to overcome Crystalians, as they have strong defenses at first, causing weapons to only deal minimal damage.

Subsequent clashes with Crystalians present fresh obstacles, like dealing with multiple bosses and the introduction of Lesser Crystalians. However, some players may find the mechanic wearing out its novelty.

With 165 boss encounters in Elden Ring, it takes a special kind of enemy to stand out from such a diverse group. However, the Crystalian bosses found early on in Liurnia of the Lakes quickly distinguish themselves with their unique gimmick, creating a powerful and intimidating first encounter with an seemingly unbeatable foe.

Although the FromSoftware boss lineup does include gimmick bosses in nearly all of their Soulsborne titles, from Demon's Souls to Elden Ring, the Crystalian variants of bosses manage to fulfill the "gimmick" requirement while still providing a significant challenge before and after their specific weakness is discovered.

Crystalians Show the Importance of Elden Ring's Stance Breaks

To overcome the Crystalians and their deceptive tactics, players must utilize Elden Ring's Stance Break mechanic effectively. This mechanic allows for staggering enemies and bosses, creating an opportunity to perform a riposte. When facing the Crystalian, players will find that this is the only way to deal significant damage using most weapon types, particularly in the initial stages of the fight. The boss has incredibly high defenses, rendering even the most powerful weapons ineffective, regardless of the encounter version.

However, once the player successfully breaks the Crystalian's stance, a riposte can be executed, resulting in the cracking of its crystal skin. This breakthrough exposes the Crystalian to standard damage from attacks. Remarkably, the damage inflicted by Elden Ring's stronger weapons after the cracking is so substantial that the Crystalian transforms from a formidable boss into a mere standard enemy. This progression makes the fight initially seem almost insurmountable, as weapon switching and build adjustments have no impact on damage dealt. However, as the encounter progresses, it becomes surprisingly straightforward.

Later Encounters Reset the Gimmick by Adding Additional Challenges

In Elden Ring, FromSoftware goes beyond the norm when it comes to bosses. Instead of just facing off against one Crystalian boss, players are required to fight them multiple times. This means there are two sets of Crystalian Duo fights, along with a very challenging Crystalian Trio encounter featuring scarlet rot infected variants. This forces players to handle multiple Crystalians simultaneously, while maintaining enough pressure to break their guard before they get a chance to kill you.

Later in the game, there are also Lesser Crystalians which provide unique encounters. These enemies are tough to escape from due to their boss-level frequency of attacks and high aggression. However, towards the end, the novelty of this unique mechanic starts wearing thin and becomes somewhat tiresome. Nonetheless, the Haligtree area introduces a variant that incorporates Elden Ring's Spirit-Caller Snail boss as a lesser enemy, creating a difficult obstacle that can't simply be sprinted through.

The Soulsborne series, which originated with Demon's Souls and its few gimmick bosses, embraces this type of encounter in FromSoftware's boss design philosophy. Thus, when players encounter a Crystalian for the first time in Elden Ring, it becomes a unique experience. However, the potential problem lies in the overuse of the Crystalian, as any gimmick can become tiresome when repeated excessively without significant variation.

Elden Ring can now be played on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.