I've just been put to shame: Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree player parries its final boss into the dirt like they're Gwyn, Lord of Chumps

I consider myself a middle-of-the-road soulslike player. When it comes to Elden Ring, I'm one of those stubborn people who doesn't use spirit ashes or summons, and that self-destructive streak persisted for all of Shadow of the Erdtree. I like a good two-handed sword. I don't (usually) wear a shield. I am a fan of a well-timed dodge roll—in summary, a Tarnished of simple pleasures.

After defeating most of the DLC's bosses in my humble, honest-work fashion, its final boss proceeded to grab me by the scruff of my neck and give me the mother of all divine swirlies for around 13-15 hours of attempts over two days. We're going to launch right into spoiler territory for it, now, though you probably knew that from the headline.

Promised Consort Radahn "made" me change up my build, swapping to a greatshield in order to deal with his barrage of faster-than-light nonsense. Many attacks, I reasoned, seemed borderline impossible to dodge. Only borderline, mind—but if you remember Malenia's waterfowl dance, which required a super specific set of inputs to get through, imagine a boss with around 4 different waterfowl dances to figure out and put into muscle memory. It's a special kind of hell.

After spending 10 hours bashing my head against that wall, I figured out that you could drop Scarlet Aeonia on him at the start of both phases—he had about a 20% chance of just killing me outright after his phase 1 jump, and it didn't always connect while he was doing his phase 2 orbital laser, but it was possible. It felt cheesy, but at least it was thematically appropriate considering that's what messed up Radahn the first time, and I was running out of Sunday. It worked, and I then proceeded to write an article you might have read.

Obviously, then, it's taken less than a week for me to be put to shame. Some absolute monster has managed to parry Promised Consort Radahn to death like he's Gwyn, Lord of Cinder from Dark Souls 1. I don't have any clown makeup on me right now, but it's in the post, and I will don my big silly shoes and curly red wig as soon as possible.

Took me 15 hours to parry the shit out of him from r/Eldenring

There are at least a couple of saving graces for me and my gamer cred, here. Firstly, the OP alleges it took them about 15 hours to learn how to parry Radahn until he became an embarrassed pile of snot, which is about the time it took me to learn how to do his first phase in my sleep, suss out that greatshields were useful, and theorycraft my dumb Scarlet Aeonia strategy.

The second is that the point I made pre-embarrassment—that Shadow of the Erdtree's bosses are so hard that they shepard players into tailor-made builds for their nonsense—still sort of applies here. After all, Strength builds seldom parry. We smash.

Still, there's something extremely cathartic about this. I'm especially a fan of how Radahn, the promised consort to a soon-to-be-god, stomps his little feet after every parry like you just told him he's grounded. The architect of my nightmares, reduced to a petulant child.

Parry window maestro Zane_Alcatraz lays out this cheeseless anti-Radahn build in the comments, in case you'd like to try it yourself:

Comment from r/Eldenring

Mind, considering it took them the better half of the day, that still makes Promised Consort Radahn far from a cakewalk. It'll be interesting to see if he receives any nerfs in the future—FromSoftware's already stepped in to boost the power of Scadutree Fragments early game, which would've been nice for me earlier, but I promise I'm not mad. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to tuck into this humble pie.

Leda quest: Track the Erdtree main quest
Ansbach quest: Help the former servant of Mohg
Hornsent quest: Complete the quest for vengeance
Thiollier quest: Pay homage to the saint of sleeping
Freyja quest: Where to find Redmane Freyja