Elden Ring has reviewed exceptionally well, but one of its more glaring issues is repeated boss encounters. The open world of the Lands Between is packed full of content, with caves, catacombs, mining tunnels, and plenty more. These mini-dungeons are Elden Ring's fixed version of Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, but they are marred by similar final fights. Especially in the latter half of Elden Ring, these boss fights can become tiresome as new gimmicks are introduced to add a faux layer of variety.
This is especially disheartening because the mini-dungeons are generally very fun. There are so many that they understandably share aesthetics and architecture, but their layouts and enemy combinations are sufficiently varied. One catacomb will look similar to one that was previously explored, but may be surprisingly long, have unexpected enemies, or new platforming challenges. The variety in the mini-dungeons themselves is rather impressive for such an expansive game, but their bosses don't necessarily share that trait.
A highlight of Elden Ring is its thrill of the unknown, and in the early parts of exploring the Lands Between, wondering what powerful enemy will cap off each dungeon is a large part of this. Thoroughly exploring rewards players with Runes and new items, but some of the excitement starts to wane when the player starts to expect what bosses they'll encounter. Oftentimes there will just be a large over world enemy, like a Troll, with a different type of weapon, or a common boss like the Erdtree Burial Watchdog will reappear, accompanied by a different group of regular mobs.
Elden Ring's Repeated Bosses Is Not Easy To Fix
Elden Ring has well over 100 boss fights, and making an entirely unique encounter for each one would be a massive development project in itself. Players taking their time in Elden Ring will likely find and explore many of its crypts but may grow tired of facing off against the same bosses. This wasn't really an issue in FromSoftware's previous action RPGs, since the tightly designed, more restrictive game worlds built up to each boss encounter. Some would turn early bosses into late-game mobs, like the Capra Demon in Dark Souls becoming a weaker, common enemy in the Demon Ruins, but that distinction doesn't carry the same issue as Elden Ring's reused bosses.
Despite this being one of the more noticeable criticisms that can be lobbied at Elden Ring, it's unreasonable to expect FromSoftware to not use such a development method. Much of the game itself has been born out of well-utilized asset flips, which resulted in the impressive three-year turnaround from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for a huge open world like Elden Ring's Lands Between. Designing and programming hundreds of unique bosses is just unnecessary, in spite of how impressive a feat it would be. Plenty of open world games have trouble with lackluster enemy variety, and Elden Ring's propensity for boss encounters just happens to make this one of its more unfortunate downsides.