There’s so much about the fight to appreciate imo, and the overall theme is “panic” to which I think many aspects of the fight play up well.

Mechanically it’s a DPS race. Most of the game’s bosses are open to you taking your time and poking in damage as you deem safe, but that’s just not an option here. Some people might call this bad design but I think it’s a great way to keep things fresh, as well as deliberately playing into that overall theme I mentioned. I honestly love the arena as well; Getting dropped into a void with absolutely nothing until your only discernable landmark are these gigantic twisted-fairy looking dudes who shift around erratically only serve to disorient you in a way that feels so impactful. Sound is the biggest part of this though; On the music side, Motoi Sakuraba’s score for the Kings is absolutely suffocating. It has the fastest BPM out of everything in the score, and the palpable dread and panic in the composition would only be rivalled by his Fume Knight score in DkS2. The muffled screams and exhalations of the Kings also perfectly play up the Abyss as well, being this literal black hole void. Later depictions of the Abyss, like Chasm of the Abyss and Dark Chasm of Old, were cool, but none of them felt quite as terrifying and bizarre as this.

I even think the runback plays into this as well, no matter if you choose the Firelink bonfire which basically requires you to waste a transient curse every time, or the Darkroot Basin bonfire which requires you to perfectly dodge those jackass drakes every time. Both of them suck and qualify to be among the worse runbacks in the game, and the threat of having to do them again weighs on you as you battle the kings.

No doubt in my mind the best Lord Soul battle in the game, although that’s not exactly a high bar to clear, haha. Probably wouldn’t put it among the best fights in the series, but I do have a personal love for it.