It is, admittedly, quite nice that after the long legacy dungeons that were Leyndell and Volcano Manor that the walk up to the plot-relevant boss in the Mountaintops of the Giants is relatively just simple exploration. Which, I suppose, makes sense considering that the Mountaintops have been abandoned and left to ruin, with all its giant inhabitants frozen, and the lands picked apart by the various cults around it.
As an aside, I did unlock the notoriously annoying 'invisible world' puzzle to get to Miquella's Haligtree (a combination of Unseen Form to stealth past the invisible assassins and general long-range spells to two-tap the archers made it easy for a level that is apparently notoriously difficult for pure melee builds) but I don't think I'll be doing the Haligtree until later.
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Deathbird
Turns out that the Death Rite Bird is the stronger version of a recurring boss that I have never encountered, not even once, throughout my playthrough,. And you could encounter them as early as the Weeping Peninsula! The regular Deathbirds show up at several specific spots at night, similar to the Night's Cavalry, except far cooler than those Nazgul groupies. It's just a bit of a shame that there wasn't a hint at all to their existence until I fought the much stronger version of them. I did go back and wipe out the lesser Deathbirds pretty quickly, which is admittedly a bit anticlimactic since I am definitely a bit overlevelled compared to these Limgrave and Liurnia enemies.
But what a design, huh? I think I actually like the regular Deathbird more than the Death Rite Bird, as metal as those wings with wailing spirits stitched to them look like. The Deathbird looks a lot more... more primal. It's got a nice vibe of being 'just' a monster associated with death and corpses compared to the other varieties of death-themed enemies we have here.
I really do like just how... fucked-up the Deathbird is. Its body is so long, so slender, not what you'd expect from a 'bird' or even a humanoid figure. But for the most part it stalks around with the body scrunched up into that not-quite-snake, not-quite-bird pose you see on the left. The snubby, bloody wings are cool, and I absolutely love the head design, which looks much more morose and unsettling without glowing lights inside. The cross between a baby and a bird's skull is quite creepy!
Albinauric Archer
I've spoken in fragmented bits all over this review series about the Albinaurics, silver-based artificial life that faced much persecution by the Golden Order who see them as abominations that did not fit into rigidly-defined places in life. So far, we've mostly seen the 'First-Generation' Albinaurics who look like shriveled-up old men crawling on the grounds, who has lost the usage of their legs. That is, save for one specific female Albinauric and a survivor of the massacre on the Village of the Albinaurics, Latenna. Who gets around riding on a wolf, and joins us as a spirit ash. Spirit ashes, by the way, is a mechanic where you can summon spirits to aid you in combat in specific areas of the game. Latenna is probably one of the most unique ones in that we actually get to see her pre-mortem; and being an Albinauric, she can't actually move around. So you do have to place her in a strategic spot to make her be a devastating, well-protected turret.
In the Mountaintops, however, we get to see the rest of Latenna's sisters. Female Albinaurics are way more common here. Their legs are still non-functional (again, for whatever reason relating to their nature) but they get around this by riding around on winter wolves and shooting devastating arrows to any Tarnished that wander into their territories. In a very cute easter egg that is very hard to trigger, if you summon Latenna near a wolf she'll actually tame it and ride it for the duration of her summoning.
I respect that. I really hate these ladies because they killed me so many times when all I wanted was to loot the snow-fields, but I do like the story told about these Albinaurics. At least some of them are living happily with their doggies, romping around in the snow. I don't find their designs particularly interesting, again, since they're just weird humans, but I find myself liking the story and worldbuilding around the Albinaurics a lot.
Wisp
These guys show up in Siofra River as well, but I never talked about them? Not so much enemies as a random asshole hazard I can't actually hit, but they can and will shoot out lightning at me. The fan wikis call them 'Wisps' after apparently a term in one of the art books. Extremely annoying to navigate around in the snowfields, especially because they are as white as the surroundings.
Blood Albinauric
Going through the Consecrated Snowfield (or alternatively, engaging in a quest with the very unpleasant Varre) nets you a portal to a different subterranean chamber called Mohgwyn Palace, which is where Mohg, Lord of Blood, attempts to do his own bid on power. Like many tyrants throughout history, Mohg has managed to twist the oppressed to work for him. Some of the Albinaurics go and hide out with Miquella in the Haligtree -- a demigod that wants peace and harmony, and we'll talk about him later.
We also see a lot of blood in his realm, being, y'know, Lord of Blood and everything, and some of the Albinaurics are stained red by this blood. When they spot you, they scream and their body explodes into bloody thorns before they do their roly-poly charge towards you. The shirtless ones wear a horn, and use them to summon the giant skeletons summoned by the Tibia Mariner, and I died an embarrassing amount of times not realizing that they were summoned by the Albinaurics.
I do think the juxtaposition between their dumpy, goofy faces and the horrifying blood rituals happening all around them adds to the unsettling presence these guys have. It is quite nice to see them back; the Second-Generation Albinaurics have been kind of ignored since Lirunia.
Blistered Crow
Lurking within Mohg's bloody realm are these Blistered Crows. The 'Monstrous Crows' in Caelid were already horrifying enough, but they just pile on the terror on adding even more meat clumps and blisters. It's quite uncomfortable to look at, and the wings on this thing have seemingly regressed into clumps of tumorous flesh. They also combine the attack patterns of the Crow with the other giant Tyrannosaurid enemy, the Monstrous Wolf, which is absolutely something that caught me off-guard. Instead of just jumping and pecking, the Blistered Crow can belly-flop and then just slither on the ground trying to chomp you. You can't do this to me, game! You can't condition me to expect certain attack patterns and, like, subvert it to make the enemies harder!
Frost Troll
Jumping back to the Mountaintops of the Giants, the true part on the south is filled with many gigantic figures that have frozen and died, their bodies turned into statue-like corpses by the cold environment around them. I suppose asking the game developers to animate true giants that size for anything but a boss fight would be asking too much... but the giants' descendants, the trolls, are right there! Unlike the near-skeletal, zombie-like trolls we see in other areas, the Frost Trolls in the Mountaintops are very furry, giving them a nice yeti-like look. That's neat!
Colossal Fingercreeper
Fingercreepers also show up. Now, for reference, the 'Lesser' Fingercreepers are around the size of a dog or something, and the regular Fingercreepers are spider-hands big enough to grab your character around like a doll.
Now, the giant mutant dogs and crows from Caelid, for whatever reason, show back up in the Mountaintops. And there's a wonderful jump-scare moment as one of these dinosaur-sized crows is just walking around... and a GIANT Fingercreeper just drops down from the mountain and one-shots it flat. It's a scripted event, sure, but it is one hell of an effective one! I think that might be more scary than if I just had to fight my way through a bunch of tall dudes.
Many of the giant corpses in the Mountaintops, by the way, are missing their hands. Prior to the DLC, a common theory is that their hands (and fingers!) were chopped off and used to create the regular Fingercreepers. There are a bunch of really large, mountain-sized corpses in Caelid and the Mountaintops that are just part of the environment, so presumably if this theory holds true, they were the originators of these Colossal Fingercreepers.
Borealis, the Freezing Fog
We get another named dragon fight, this time in a large frozen lake that takes up a chunk of the map. Borealis herself would be basically similar to Adula, Greyll and the other 'lesser' dragons, except with a ice breath and a different set of resistances... except for one thing. The entire fight takes place within her titular 'Freezing Fog', where it's just entirely blanketed by this environmental hazard that makes it difficult to tell where Borealis is hiding and forces you to react to her screams and ice breaths. The developers actually thought ahead with the target-lock thing and put a ton of spirit jellyfishes so you're never sure whether the thing you locked on to is actually the dragon or just one of the decoys.
This fight, by the way, was not too much trouble for me since I played a caster build and between my Night Comets and Latenna the Albinauric, all it needed was to pinpoint where Borealis is and then just have her go back and forth between two ranged attackers. But the difficulty in seeing Borealis and her intense resistance to certain types of melee damage makes her a tough fights for melee builds, apparently! One of my friends who mains swords was quite miffed to find out that I didn't have trouble with the ice dragon other than the visibility. That does speak to a nice design philosophy with the intense variation of weaponry and spells in the game, where there are some things that some builds do better than others. Except for archery. Archery sucks if you're not an NPC.
Great Wyrm Theodorix
Another named repeat enemy is the Magma Wyrm called Great Wyrm Theodorix. He's a fair bit stronger than the regular Magma Wyrms (which haven't shown up all that much) and drops three hearts. Descriptions tell us that he's actually a troll that engaged in dragon communion, which means that dragon communion isn't exclusive to humans, and that anyone non-human that engages in dragon cult stuff eventually becomes these imperfect salamander dragons. Not much else to say here, other than the fact that the battlefield he's in also has a couple of other wildlife (a giant octopus and a giant crab) that might join in and turn the tides in or against your favour.
Fire Giant
And our next boss is the Fire Giant. Really? Just... 'fire giant'. Not even 'Fire Giant, Guardian of the Flame of Ruin'? Not 'Last of the Fire Giants', because he is the last living specimen? Not even a name? Random Demi-Human Queens and Banished Knights have names, but not you, big plot-relevant boss? And... yeah. The Fire Giant is huge, but he's at first glance just what you'd expect from an enemy called 'Fire Giant'. Viking-esque braids of red hair, and a skin like rocks and ashes. He's huge. He summons fire at some point in the fight. Bizarrely, he fights me with what I think is meant to be a shield, but looks more like a giant ornate plate. There's some neat details like one of his legs being actually wrapped up with a splint... that uses his braids of hair as material for the splint.
After the sheer weirdness of Astel and Rykard being my previous two major bosses, this guy is a bit of a letdown, honestly. I did find it fun that as his health goes down, the Fire Giant actually subverts the 'big lumbering titan' trope in video games and actually beings rolling around like what Dark Souls and Elden Ring characters infamously do to dodge attacks. Which the Fire Giant does to put a lot of distance away from you... but also sometimes to cover distance to get to you. And several dozen tonnes of ancient giant flesh is absolutely going to take you out. But other than the hilarity of having a big boss doing the 'Dark Souls rolls', I found the Fire Giant so... bland. He's impressive, yes, but we've also fought giant dragons, gargoyles, and serpent-abominations at this point. There's a story about how the Fire Giants, after their defeat, were bound to serve the Golden Order with a curse, but it's told in some very easily-missed item descriptions and I wished we actually had at least a couple of NPCs that mention it.
That is, until you realize that the Fire Giant's torso and abdomen is weird. It's like... it's shaped like a nose and a mouth? Around 75% health or so the stomach-mouth actually begins to open, allowing the Fire Giant to shoot out slow-moving fireballs. Neat!
And at around half health, the 'phase two'? The splinted leg snaps in a rather brutal cutscene. The Fire Giant then decides to rip his fucking leg off, and offer it to his gods... and the eyeball on his chest opens up to reveal that, the Fell God of the Giants. The second phase has the Fire Giant lose the use of his legs, but his long arm drags him around while the belly-Cyclops face unleashes a lot of ranged fire magic. Oh, and clearly the Fire Giant's arms are still powerful, since he can roll around just as nimbly as before. It's a pretty neat change in pace for the fight, with a lot of the attack patterns being completely different.
This transformation and the sheer weirdness of the cyclops-like face in the body makes this boss a lot more memorable than he would otherwise be. Not my favourite boss in Elden Ring, and not having a proper 'dungeon' associated with him doesn't really help, either. But after defeating the Fire Giant, we kind of kick off what's essentially the endgame... and I get randomly teleported somewhere! But we'll cover Crumbling Farum Azula next time!
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