Any ideas to make a challenging starting boss fight?

[Mega Man Volnutt]

Any ideas for a challenging boss for the beginning of the game? I wanna make it really tough to beat, but not impossible.


-  The boss is slow. 


- Think Final Fantasy. I have a lot of FF related skills set that bosses could use. From Fira to  Holy to Haste to Regen.


- The boss hides in her shell to avoid damage. Counterattacks with water.


- The boss is weak to the main character but can give the 2nd character in the party a beating.


- The main character should be around level 15 to stand a chance against her

 

[KayZaman]

If me, i'll do a first boss battle like FFVIII where the boss is strong but you have to find his weakness. Like this video:







I just give idea but you can get more than that. Good luck.

 

[cekobico]

Is she Cagnazzo?

 

[lokirafael]

Make it a tricky boss stead of a raw power boss:


- Boss that spawn minions to cast healing spell. (So the player need to kill the little annoyances)


- Boss that shift imunit to elements.


- Boss that can only be damaged under a specific state, like a boss that drop its barrier when under sleep spell (and wake up when hit, so the player need to make each hit count)


- Boss that spam status effects and do most of the damage indirect.


- Boss that has to lure enemies with taunt and kill with counter.


- Mechanical boss that are immune against everything but enter in Overload when hit by thunder (Heal him, but break his imunit for a couple of turns).


- And much more.


For the 1st boss I would make it a progressive state. Everytime you hit it with his weakness his elemental attack get stronger and his weakness more damaging to him.

 

[Aoi Ninami]

In my opinion, the first boss shouldn't be too challenging -- the player is still getting used to the unique mechanics of your game, and conquering the first boss should feel like a reward for having mastered the battle system. Even games like Touhou that revel in super-hard bosses have relatively simple first bosses. The feeling of challenge and reward helps the player keep playing, by promising bigger rewards (in the same form of feeling of satisfaction) to come on conquering progressively harder challenges.


In the RPG Maker game I'm working on, the first boss is a little puzzle, but it can be brute-forced if you don't solve the puzzle, so that you don't feel punished for failure. At this point, your only two characters are a fire mage and a physical attacker, and Nurikabe happens to be strong against both fire and physical. You can just attack until it dies, but you should notice that all available attacks are weak and look around for how you can improve your attacking strength. The solution is for the mage to cast a buff on the physical attacker, which is an option you probably won't have used up to this point. So you're rewarded for looking at all your options and choosing the one best suited to the situation.

 

[Valryia]

First trap: Make the boss tedious. Yazmat (from Final Fantasy 12) is a known example, though i think his other attackpatterns make him interesting enough, unlike Omega (in the same game). Only give the boss more hp to allow him to use all of his attack patterns, unless you want the player to circumvent a final "rage phase". A good example would be the superboss of shin megami tensei: digital devil saga 2, Satan. He heals himself fully if you get her (?) below a certain treshold and the player has to burst her down.


Second trap: Making the boss (completly) random. Ozma (from Final Fantasy 9) is known for that, but it is mitigated by its relativly low HP and that he can AI manipulated to a degree. Personally, i would highly script my own superbosses.


EDIT: Now that i have actually read the opening, why do you want to do that? Difficulty spikes should be left out! The best first bosses should give tension, not frustration!

 

[kovak]

Squad, go for squad.


Low HP for each enemy and each of them being focused on a particular aspect.


They don't need to be strong, but considering that they are a team it might be challenging.

 

[KoldBlood]

As others have said; the first boss doesn't need to be TOO challenging but if you are planning on making bosses that require specialized tactics to defeat then I do suggest that you show the player this during the very first fight so that they learn early on that the game's bosses aren't just a "How long can you spam your strongest attack and heal?" test. As @Valryia said making the boss fight in a pattern or phases will go a long way to helping the observant player anticipate and predict the bosses actions and plan ahead (just don't make it TOO easy). This will make the player feel smart and clever with the ultimate reward being the defeat of the boss.


Start with a boss that requires relatively simple strategy (or multiple solutions) to introduce the player to the concept. Then on the next boss bring the amount of strategy required up a level. Then again on the next and so on. This way the player will learn more intuitively as the game progresses and as they gain more skills and party members the battles can grow more complex and require more of those skills to be used. As in puzzle design you don't start with your biggest conundrum first, you lead into it.


When designing the strategy for my first boss fight I first asked myself these questions: "Who's in the player's party?", "What level are they?", "What skills do they have access to?", and "What equipment do they have access to?". This will give you a baseline of abilities your player can use in the battle. Design around that and don't be too convoluted or vague with your design, make sure your player has the means to figure out what they SHOULD be doing. Whether that be via a monster "Scan" item/skill, a document they find, a conversation between characters, a warning from an NPC, or even using the minor enemies throughout the dungeon to teach the player, on a smaller scale, the "tricks" to defeating an enemy that uses a certain ability, state, or defense mechanism(s) that the boss will use later in the dungeon.

 

[Diretooth]

There are different routes you can take. Two that come to mind are: Barrier Change Boss: This boss changes its elemental resistances, forcing you to use other attacks to hit for massive damage. A good example is Magus from Chrono Trigger. Puzzle Weakness: I recently had the concept for a boss battle where the main characters had to use information gathered to defeat a powerful gargouille. Said boss has strong DEF, but when you case fire, then ice/water on it, it shatters, killing it instantly. This makes your player have to learn its weakness through investigation or, in rare cases, intuition.

 

[Mega Man Volnutt]

If me, i'll do a first boss battle like FFVIII where the boss is strong but you have to find his weakness. Like this video:







I just give idea but you can get more than that. Good luck.

"They have Icecream?"


But thanks everyone for the suggestion. 

 

[trouble time]

If your healer is avalible from before your first boss, then all you need to do is make sure your party can outheal the boss, at that point you can make the boss feel challenging without it actually being challenging. I'd also advise to make sure the first boss highlights whatever is most unique about your battle system, and that mechanic needs to be used to beat the boss but it's very hard to lose. A fight that's hard to lose can still be tough to win, rather than the boss doing a lot of damage when you make a mistake it could just lead to a slightly longer fight, and I find it better to be a bit light on punishment early in the game.