FromSoftware is currently basking in the success of their recent open-world, soullike experience, Elden Ring. This game was so successful that it quickly became the best-selling title in its then-publisher Bandai Namco’s history. The game was so successful that it went on to win a bunch of Game of the Year awards and is also getting a very large expansion that has been in development for two years now. Yet, Bloodborne remains their most standout game to this very day.
It was a PlayStation 4 exclusive that launched back in 2015. It was a very successful venture for Sony as well as its developers, FromSoftware and Japan Studio. The other thing that this game has is the most annoying boss ever in a Soulslike. It turns out this boss is also the favorite boss of director Hidetaka Miyazaki.
Why does Hidetaka Miyazaki love Bloodborne’s most hated boss?
Over the years, FromSoftware has made numerous soulslike games. In those soulslike games, they have introduced a bunch of bosses that players have to fight and defeat. Those bosses have had very detailed lore behind them too.
Out of those bosses, some people love, others they hate, and some end up being just annoying. But no boss in the whole FromSoftware franchise is as annoying as Rom, the Vacuous Spider. This spider is a dumb creature that serves a great purpose in Bloodborne’s story.
When players defeat this accursed spider, their eyes are opened to the true horrors around them. Horrors such as lesser amygdala spread all around the Cathedral Ward. But one thing all the seasoned players might remember is that she’s not as easy as one might think. Defeating Rom is a struggle that only the strongest of the strongest can get through.
Yet, game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has immense love for this character. And he has a very straightforward reason for this: he finds her cute. While he also finds her design to be good and her boss arena to be simple yet brilliant, the cute part struck the hardest.
“if you ignore gameplay for a moment, it’s Rom, the Vacuous Spider. From the design and atmosphere to that kind of plaintive air she has, I really like her. There are some oddly cute aspects to her moves and modeling.”
Finding Rom cute is not something every fan of the game can do. She is an incredibly annoying boss and for the right reasons. She attacks players like a truck, so hard that if they are on a lower level, they will instantly die.
Then she spawns those annoying little spiders that can do equal amounts of damage to the player. The worst part is that those little things come out of nowhere sometimes. Finally, Rom is a coward; she teleports after being hit a little. And she also uses one of the most dangerous arcane attacks in the game.
Some of these aspects are unacceptable, without a doubt. These things combined ensure that this boss fight moves away from players being skilled to players just doing as much damage as they can as fast as they can.
Rom is inspired by a very similar boss in a previous game
Not many fans would know that the design of Rom was based on a boss that previously appeared in Dark Souls 2. Duke’s Dear Freja does most of the same things as Rom. She is also dangerous and annoying to fight.
But one thing that makes her a bit easier to defeat is that she cannot run far away, given the fact that her boss’s arena is not open. She is confined to a cave-like area, while Rom has a whole lake to run around in.
