Boss Fights - Yea! or Nay!
GreenWarlock
Member Posts: 1,354
Playing through ME trilogy again, it reminded me why of several reasons I loved the 1st game so much. One big mark in its favor, for me, is the lack of Boss Fight mechanic. Not that there were not end of level battles with clear 'boss' enemies, but they play by regular game mechanic. ME2 bosses start with the "play for so long before invulnerable boss briefly exposes a weak spot that you can hit now, as long as you avoid the insta-death attacks'. I find these frustrating at the best of times, but in a story-led RPG they are incredibly immersion breaking as I am now clearly playing a tired trope of a game mechanic rather than the story.
On the other hand, I know some folks love the final challenge of a game being some kind of combat puzzle that is very different from the regular mechanic to get this far, especially when the solution takes some figuring out.
BTW, I think BG1 and 2 fit within my Nay category as while there are definitely challenging bosses with frustrating immunities that might take some figuring out, that is true for many different foes throughout the game. Karoug is probably the biggest outlier.
On the other hand, I know some folks love the final challenge of a game being some kind of combat puzzle that is very different from the regular mechanic to get this far, especially when the solution takes some figuring out.
BTW, I think BG1 and 2 fit within my Nay category as while there are definitely challenging bosses with frustrating immunities that might take some figuring out, that is true for many different foes throughout the game. Karoug is probably the biggest outlier.
- Boss Fights - Yea! or Nay!36 votes
- Boss fights - Yay!69.44%
- Gross fights - Nay!30.56%
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Comments
Take DA:O. My favorite fight is the Broodmother battle. It took me a long time to figure out the best tactics to defeat it. Follow that with the bleeding eyes statue that rotates, it takes the hack and slash out of the game and replace it with tactical knowledge.
Done wrong, you are just wailing against some creature constantly until it falls. Those bosses are just weak development.
I dislike really, really hard bosses though. The fight shouldn't be tedious, and I dislike games with only 1 viable solution. Probably because I'm kinda dumb and can't figure them out.
Pretty fun analysis (with pictures!) Of boss battles that seemed topical enough to share.
*Some spoilerish elements I suppose?*
edit: Also worth noting is how the final boss of MGS4 turns into a 3d fighter with music and fighting styles across the games. It was an awesome gimick that just felt like the ultimate finale!
My favorite bosses are normally other humanoid types as opposed to monsters. On my first run of BG:EE watching my Blackguard cross swords with Sarevok was SUPER cool. My bastard sword vs his two handed blade!
Edit: I derped, didn't see that last part of the opening post XD Sorry was using the phone-version of the site.
Anyway, yeahhhh if I'm playing a game for immersion I dislike those puzzle-type bosses. If I'm playing Zelda which I play more for the gameplay then yeah I don't mind I suppose because I buy the game specifically for that type of boss. If It's an RPG of some sort where I'm supposed to take the world seriously then that kind of boss can work if it's something cool like you learn the weakness beforehand from a book/codec/whatever resource for information and there's a lore reason to back it up.
Like if hypothetically there's a guy in steampunk power armor but every once and a while it over heats and you have to attack the vents and in a book earlier you read these things have overheating problems and the vents are easily broken then it's like ohhhh ok. Hit the vents and when it tries to cool down it'll just explode or something.
One thing I've always liked about D&D though is that if an enemy can do it then so can you. Enemy boss guy has tons of magic resistance on his armor and a +3 Flaming/Frost/Shock sword? You can do that too! Enemy guy casting instant death spells that require certain defenses to block? Well you too can have the amazing power of Finger of Death. I like that a lot.
The other thing that can annoy is when the boss is too hard, and very different in gameplay to the rest of the game. If that is the final boss at the end of the game, I'll take it. But often it is the mid-game/end-of-level bosses that are the most annoying, and now they are holding me back from the gameplay I signed up for to enjoy. At this point, they become anti-fun.
Some interesting comments above relating to BG bosses which I deliberately tried to exclude from the definition. I love the confrontation with a big-bad after a suitably epic quest, as long as they play by the same rules as the rest of the game. Sarevok/Firkraag/Irenicus and the rest play by the same rules, they are just a (sometimes much!) harder challenge in terms of statting. Closest to a true boss-mechanic in BG saga (that I have played, still not tested ToB properly) is Kangaax, but he has the benefit of being entirely 100% optional, and despite his crazy gimmick attack, can still be taken down by a straight fight without any metagaming (Mace of Disruption FTW!)
When I look at ME1, I don't see boss mechanics despite a couple of fights with the big bad you meet in the opening mission. The closest we come is probably the Thorian, although that is mostly a Maguffin through the actual gameplay, combat is a regular tussle with its many guardians. That changed in ME2, especially the penultimate fight with a boss who for no reason, would raise his armor of ultimate invulnerability from his 4 weak spots for timed intervals, before closing again. Why would anyone build something that way?! There was no reason to not be armored.
ME3 has the even sillier plot device of a character going all Dragon Ball on us, standing invulnerable in the middle of combat while given a free reset, or two. There was no attempt to sell this other than "well, we figure you know how a game is played".
I like the idea of Titan Souls described above where the game nothing /but/ boss mechanic. You know what you are getting going in, and can settle down to the kind of evil/patient gameplay necessary for the challenge.
I find it quite boring when enemies pull immunities out of their butts and have limitless spells. The most dull enemy of them all is a dragon. When I see a dragon in a game, I call it lazy design.
I like when an important enemy/antagonist in the story is actually not almost impossible to kill. Makes it more believable when everyone can be killed without using a nuke. Besides there are other ways in which the enemy can have the advantage over a PC: number of enemies, traps, positioning, powerful item (single), or ability (one). The good example would be having immunity, but also a big weakness.
I especially liked it in Anvil of Dawn, where you actually *don't* fight the main antagonist - the warlord. He can still kill you, but it's his guard that is the toughest enemy (not as much if you obtain the SoulWrought) and there are no bosses to be seen.
On the other hand, some of my favourite bosses came in MGS3 (with the obvious exception of The Pain), where you had more than one viable tactic to take them down depending on your particular strengths (I liked to stealth and snipe wherever possible... but CQC button-mashing was also an option).
The sniper-duel with The End is probably the most fun I've ever had in front of a computer screen! So much so, that in the many times I've played that game, I've never been able to bring myself to take the alternative approach of dropping him early.
"[Heavy breathing]... This... is the End!"
However, playing a game like God of War or Dark Souls where there are absolutely boss fights galore, there's nothing (personally and subjectively) wrong with them in my book.
Another bugbear with me is hitting them with a "special attack" to trigger a "dazed" status.... complete with little stars/birdies!
I'd say where the boss fight falls apart is when the boss fight requires a sequence of maneuvers that don't feel good to follow. If you have to do eight separate things that don't flow together when done correctly, then it stops feeling like a dance and starts feeling like homework.
I do think that it is a tough balancing act for game developers, for whom I have a LOT of respect. Balancing a game for playability is tough (or so I imagine). You want to make each level a challenge, and you want to heighten the suspense/anticipation/difficulty with each pass. Sometimes I imagine it is difficult to reach that point and not go further; particularly when talking about such a wide and varied set of skills, or a wide selection of options within the game itself.
/rant
Well, I like boss-fights if they're good, like Baldur's Gate (with SCS) or Angband (not bosses, uniques, like in D2, but hey), but not if they're like those in LoZ or other action games.
The overall presentation matters a lot too: ideally a good boss character/battle doesn't just pop out of the blue, but is foreshadowed and built up throughout portions of the game, with screen time given to the antagonist and encounters that don't end in combat. Irenicus is a great example of this.
The whole thing is also illustrated quite well by the boss battles in Ascension compared to vanilla ToB. In the former, all of the five are given special abilities that in my opinion serve to give them more of an identity and make the encounters with them more exciting (though some would probably say 'frustrating' instead). Illasera for example is a regular (and quite weak) fighter/mage in vanilla, but with Ascension she's turned into a kind of archer/ranger with invis detection, dispelling arrows and extremely good aim.