Summary
- Patience is key to beating the Armor Spider in Demon's Souls, as the boss controls the pace of the fight with various obstacles.
- This boss teaches players to wait for their turn to attack, setting the tone for other FromSoftware bosses like Dark Souls' Artorias.
- Agility and aggression are not always the best strategies in boss fights; patience is the key to overcoming challenges in Demon's Souls.
For fans of FromSoftware's boss design, the milestone fights of Demon's Souls have long been the black sheep of the series due to the ways that they fall short of the fast-paced combat and reactive requirements to survive imposing movesets. However, instead of calling for rapid-fire dodges and a deeply learned rhythm of combos and delays, the Armor Spider quickly sets Demon's Souls' gimmick bosses apart with patience becoming the most important component to victory.
While there are plenty of ways to speed up the fight against the Armor Spider, such as grinding for levels or exploring other areas for powerful weapons, this Demon's Souls boss will always task players with a war of attrition. This is often the case for many of the early FromSoftware bosses, as players are forced to struggle against a gimmick that holds them back from imposing unlimited DPS on the long path to victory.
Armor Spider is the Very Model of a Demon's Souls Gimmick Boss
Red Light, Green Light with Deadly Stakes
The actual trick to defeating the Armor Spider is a series of running forward, briefly attacking the boss, then falling back to the entrance of the arena and waiting. It is a very simple task, but FromSoftware obscures the truth of it by forcing patience on players, giving them very little ability to deal massive amounts of damage, and making them wait between the slim opportunities to fight back. This is done with the flames that the Armor Spider periodically sprays over the floor and cannot be fully tanked through, no matter if the player has already gone and hunted Demon's Souls' best armor, or pumped levels into health.
With attacks like the burning floor and shooting webs at the player that slow their approach, the Armor Spider takes complete control of the pace of the fight. Once players learn to fall in line with this pace, the rest of the fight becomes a long game of "red light, green light," with various opportunities to run forward and deliver damage, followed by a need to escape. The actual act of beating the Armor Spider in Demon's Souls is a long test of patience that can easily be beaten without taking a single hit for players who can keep focused and properly read the boss.
Patience is the Core of FromSoftware's Best Boss Fights
One reason why the Armor Spider has become iconic for Demon's Souls is because it lays the groundwork early on for how players will need to approach bosses. While the test of patience is most obvious against the Armor Spider, with the boss periodically forcing players to fall back, it can be less obvious in other fights. However, this need to patiently wait for the player's turn to attack is exactly the case for any other FromSoftware boss, from Dark Souls' Artorias to Elden Ring's Consort Radahn. This makes Armor Spider a more prominent teaching tool by FromSoftware to guide the ways that players need to approach the remaining bosses that they'll struggle against.
The same red light, green light game is equally present in the combos of FromSoftware's toughest bosses, only not with Armor Spider's extremely obvious fire on the ground or foreleg swipes that clearly signal that it is time for players to stop attacking and wait their turn. In that way, the Armor Spider's test of patience is a welcome teaching moment to quickly show players that while aggression can be powerful for pushing down the timeline of a fight, it can't be the only strategy in the toolkit. The bosses of Demon's Souls impose too heavily on the player character for anything but patience to be the key to surmounting mountainous obstacles like the Armor Spider.
Demon's Souls
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 92 /100 Critics Rec: 99%
- Released
- November 12, 2020
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Bluepoint Games
- Publisher(s)
- Sony
- Engine
- Proprietary Engine
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Franchise
- Dark Souls
WHERE TO PLAY
Entirely rebuilt from the ground up, this remake invites you to experience the unsettling story and ruthless combat of Demon’s Souls.
From PlayStation Studios and Bluepoint Games comes a remake of the PlayStation classic, Demon’s Souls. Entirely rebuilt from the ground up and masterfully enhanced, this remake introduces the horrors of a fog-laden, dark fantasy land to a whole new generation of gamers. Those who’ve faced its trials and tribulations before, can once again challenge the darkness in stunning visual quality with incredible performance.
In his quest for power, the 12th King of Boletaria, King Allant channeled the ancient Soul Arts, awakening a demon from the dawn of time itself, The Old One. With the summoning of The Old One, a colorless fog swept across the land, unleashing nightmarish creatures that hungered for human souls. Those whose souls were stripped from them, lost their minds – left only with the desire to attack the sane that remained.
Now, Boletaria is cut off from the outside world, and the knights who dare penetrate the deep fog to free the land from its plight, are never seen again. As a lone warrior who has braved the baneful fog, you must face the hardest of challenges to earn the title “Slayer of Demons” and send The Old One back to its slumber.
- Number of Players
- 1-6
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5
- Genre(s)
- RPG
- How Long To Beat
- 23 Hours
- PS Plus Availability
- Extra & Premium
