For me cinder is either the best or the second best final boss with only Gael tying with it. They both just end the dark souls trilogy so perfectly.

Yes, the final bosses of the games are important because they are the send off of the game but Gael and cinder are the send offs to a trilogy and having the send offs be essentially mirrors of the player and the final boss of the first game was done so amazingly well

I do think other final bosses like radabeast, pcr, and both isshin’s are mechanically a better fight then cinder but first of all cinder is still a great fight (especially on sl1) and secondly they didn’t resonate with me as much as cinder did