The Bed of Chaos is one of the select bosses whose defeat is required to beat the original Dark Souls. Unlike the other bosses, however, which greet the player with a fair, straightforward challenge, The Bed of Chaos is an annoying puzzle that just feels lame to fight, making it Dark Souls' worst boss.
Unbeknownst to many characters in the world of Dark Souls, The Bed of Chaos is actually the Witch of Izalith, mother of all pyromancers. Long ago, when she tried to use her own Lord Soul to replicate the First Flame, the power consumed her and transformed her into a nasty bed of writhing roots. This monstrosity begat all the demons in the world of Dark Souls, and it now stands in the player's way as one of the four bearers of a Lord Soul needed to reignite Gwyn's Age of Fire.
It's too bad the player cannot even enjoy defeating her, however. The other bosses with Lord Souls, Nito, Seath, and the Four Kings, all have gimmicks of their own leading up to their fights, but they at least fight players fairly when the time comes. Meanwhile, The Bed of Chaos is a whole other beast. Instead of a traditional boss battle, where the player learns the opponent's attack patterns and whittles down their massive pool of health through strategically timed attacks, The Bed of Chaos is nothing but a puzzle. She dies in three hits, but she can only be hit in three specific, yet obvious, weak points. As the player rushes to reach these weak points as quickly as possible, The Bed of Chaos assaults the boss entire arena with wide, sweeping attacks. Bottomless pits open up in major sections of the arena floor, and The Bed of Chaos unlocks new attacks as the fight progresses.
Why Dark Souls' Worst Boss Fight Is The Bed of Chaos
Now, on paper, this Dark Souls boss doesn't sound so bad. Winning the fight is just a matter of avoiding her attacks and the holes in the ground long enough to make three hits connect in three places. However, in practice, this process is generally more frustrating for players than it sounds. The bottomless pits are seemingly random for new players, meaning they'll more than likely die just from the floor suddenly dropping from under their feet. Even if they manage to avoid this fate, The Bed of Chaos' wide attacks are liable to push both shielded and unshielded players into a pit, anyway. If a player is savvy enough to dodge the holes entirely, they'll still have a rough time with her other attacks, some of which are area-of-effect pyromancy spells that must be avoided, despite there being very little floor left for players to maneuver on.
More often than not, even skilled players find themselves dying to The Bed of Chaos two or three times before she goes down. Luckily, Dark Souls' developers did something unique with this boss' phase progression. Like many bosses, The Bed of Chaos has three phases that unlock as the player strikes her weak points. However, if a player dies during either of the later phases, The Bed of Chaos remains at that phase when they return. This design decision is an effective way of making The Bed of Chaos less annoying to fight, but it's also a bit of a giveaway the devs knew this Dark Souls boss was fairly cheap in the first place, as they didn't expect players to be capable of beating all three phases in a single try.
There are many other annoying things about The Bed of Chaos. For instance, the player is required to make a jump to reach her final weak point. Dark Souls does many things right, but jumping is usually not one of them, and it's a necessity in a boss fight that would have already been a sore spot in the community for years. Still, despite all these annoyances, most Dark Souls players will beat The Bed of Chaos rather quickly, even if that brief period of time is especially frustrating. In the end, it's one of the only major faults in a deservedly renowned game.