Boss Battles

[JAD94]

Hey guys so lately I've been working on my project, the perfectionist, and just looking over the boss battles making sure they are fair and such. And I started thinking about all the memorable boss battles I've ever faced in other games. So I wanted to ask what are you most memorable or favorite boss battles from games youve played? What are the hardest or which ones do you hate? What constitutes a Good or memorable boss battle?

For me, I absolutely love the sephiroth fight in kingdom hearts 2. For one reason because its kind of a secret and optional fight and its pretty challenging. The payload for beating him is well worth it though!

 

[bgillisp]

Personally, I like my boss battles to be short. As in, you either lose them or win them quickly, within 10 - 15 rounds. Anything longer than 15 rounds starts turning into a long battle of attrition, which can bore your fatigue your players.

For boss battles I did not like:

-The monster hunts in ff12. Some of those took me 30+ minutes to get the kill, and sometimes an unlucky shot caused a game over 20 minutes in. If you want people to rage quit your game quickly, include these kind of battles, where a cheap kill can end a battle on turn 101.

-The final fight of Rogue Galaxy, only because it was 2 hours long. If your boss battle takes me longer to play than it takes to watch a movie, you have some serious HP bloat.

-All boss battles in Tales of Xillia 2. They were majorly HP bloated. I had a party that could KO all the random monsters in under 20 seconds, sometimes in one hit, but the boss battles still were 5 - 8 minute affairs where I could easily lose (especially as many had attacks that did more damage than I had HP!). Make sure your bosses are too super powered compared to the monsters in the area. If the party cannot beat it with what they have via a normal playthrough, it is probably too powerful and/or too HP bloated.

-All final fights in FF13 (one, two and three). They were HP bloated monsters, and could KO a party that got through rounds 1 and 2 easily even. There is no reason to suddenly escalate the difficulty on the last round of a final fight just because it says final boss in the name. If anything, it should probably be easier than the previous rounds, just because the party is hurt and tired. FFXIII-2 was probably the worst offender with what they did on round 4 of the final fight (especially as it made zero sense in the context of the story to even have that round!)

 

[Matseb2611]

My favourite boss fights that I can think of right now:

Dark Souls:

Ornstein and Smough - a 2 on 1 battle, one of them is small and fast, the other is big and slow. Great AI and a fun battle (no co-op and stuff, all solo).

Manus - Nearly every move this guy does is deadly and can rip off huge chunks of health. Despite being rather big, he is also very fast and vicious. Kept me on the edge of the seat every time I fought him (again, no co-op or using Sif, all solo)

Artorias - this is pretty much a duel. This guy is fast, strong, and unpredictable.

Black Dragon Kalameet - Probably even more deadly than Manus. You slip up and make a mistake, and you're roasted meat.

Titan Quest:

Typhon - it's you versus this huge monster which can breath fire at you, drop meteors, and all sorts of other horrid things. Very hard on first try, much more manageable once you've beaten him a few times and learnt all his attacks.

Hades - He changes his tactics during the fight 3 times. Besides, you're fighting the God of the Dead. You can't get more awesome than this.

Talos - an enormous construct that uses a mix of a long-ranged fire attack and constant stomping upclose.

Hydra - Its poison breath is lethal, and surprisingly enough, the safest place to fight it is right upclose.

FF6:

The final battle - mainly because I loved how it had you setup your party so that they would enter the fight one by one as their allies fall in battle.

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow:

Puppet Master - I like how it had him put dolls inside traps and then have you appear in their place, so you had to stop him from doing that

Gergoth - A huge monster inside a tiny room.

Sonic 1:

Starlight zone boss - Using seesaws to launch bad guy's bombs back at him

Sonic 2:

Casino Stage Boss - You had to time your moves right so to hit the enemy precisely and not landing on things that can hurt you

Oil Ocean Boss - Dodging his laser shots is super fun

I'll try to think of some more.

 

[Warpmind]

A good Boss Battle doesn't have to be especially long, nor too short - bgillisp's 10-15-round approximation seems good.
Also, a good Boss Battle needs something... different. As a general rule, I'd say a Boss who is *merely* an upscaled regular minion is a Bad Boss. A Boss needs something extra to emphasize their increased prowess; possibly some weird special ability, or a few lines of monologue during the fight where it points out something important about the minions or the world in general, establishing the Boss as an intelligent being. Or perhaps the Boss is the only creature in the area able to wield a certain kind of magic, which while not weird by the party's standards certainly makes the Boss stick out as a unique creature.

Also, a really good Boss Fight needs to bring in some alternate tactics for the party - the application of skill combinations that have perhaps been ignored in favor of other things, but have exceptional effectiveness in this fight (but make it somewhat obvious that trying something weird will be useful), or give the boss a couple of minions that have very different traits, like elemental resistances and such, than the boss itself. Give the boss a special ability such as a unique Guard variant which allows them to use an Item in the same turn, if possible - say the Boss has an 300-point MP pool, favors a spell costing 150 MP per casting, and he has two Full MP elixirs to allow him to cast the Big Spell two out of three turns until he's out of MP, then switch to physically clobbering the party...
Make the boss somehow unique, rather than just a local minion 20% larger and in a different color.

Oddly, some of the finest Boss Fights I've been in have been in tabletop roleplaying - D&D 3.5, to be precise. One campaign, the DM set up a really weird, chuckling monster which turned the Attack of Opportunity rules upside down, due to its extremely alien nature; it never attacked anyone on its turn, but any time anyone tried to do something - including things that normally wouldn't provoke an attack of opportunity, such as straight up attacking the thing, the thing would retaliate first (bad news for spellcasters). Unless we chuckled while doing whatever, in which case the creature assumed we were kin to it...

It doesn't have to be a big, hulking monster or an insanely overpowered demon or somesuch to make for a great Boss Battle - it just has to be a memorable challenge.

 

[DarthVollis]

Any boss fight that takes a long time to defeat like Yiazmat from Final Fantasy 12 better have a great reward. I have seen so many boss fights that when you win all you get is a little message.

 

[Julien Brightside]

I remember Chrono Trigger had a lot of interesting boss battles.

Each boss had a certain uniqueness to it.

 

[omen613]

FFX's Yunalysca Boss battle is a memorable one for me. The whole keeping one person in the zombie state was fun and different. 

Usually bosses that make you have to break your "usual skill rotation" are the best because now you have to actually think. And don't be afraid of making a "few" bosses require you to get a game over at least once to learn how to beat them...just be sure to let them save right before the fight.

I personally like to see enemies steadily build towards an instant win condition if the player doesn't stop them during the setup phases. Easiest example would be the boss summons a minion every X turns that doubles the bosses attack power....so if you don't kill off the minion before the next one is summoned. Things add up quickly. Just be sure to communicate this to the player with a simple text box display "Boss' Power is doubled" on summon and "Boss' Power is halved" on minion's death.

Next step is to stop and think....ok so what is the simplest way to beat the boss with that super basic concept? obviously it would be to just kill the minions off ASAP.

So now as the designer lets put an obstacle in front of that plan. 

How about the minion's summoned have random weaknesses...Could be enemies you fought in random battles on your way to the boss that you learned how to defeat. This one is weak to magic, that one has super high DEF so piercing damage, the other one has super high evasion so we need our 100% accuracy skills spammed on him....that one spams cure on itself so be sure to silence it first.

or if you wanna raise the difficultly level up a notch.....

The minions all look exactly alike but are weak to a random elemental magic. you have to cast elemental magic on it till you figure out which one it is weak to....which could waste precious turns until the boss summons the next minion.

And if you wanna raise the difficulty even HIGHER...you could make it cast the one element that the minion is strong against it counter attacks with a strong attack wasting a turn healing or even reviving.

So basically my process is

1. How does the boss plan to beat the party?
2. How can the party stop the boss's plan?
3. How can I put an obstacle in front of the party's plan?

 

[imascribble]

I enjoyed fighting Yami from Okami the most, I think. Great music, several different battle mechanics, and it forced you to use every skill you've acquired throughout the game to go through the stages to beat him. There's more, but I can't bring any to mind right now. Too tired

 

[Tigersong]

I enjoyed playing Shadow of the Colossus because, well, what other game has bosses you can climb on?

 

[DarthVollis]

Ever since that one so many games have bosses that you climb on. It is sad it see that people cannot come up with new ideas.

 

[arekpowalan]

There are many types of bosses I capture from playing video games: power bosses, multi-stages bosses, army bosses, and puzzle boses. All of them can be designed to be bad or good.

The power bosses are typical bosses that rushes the player characters with raw power. They are very tough physically but the simplest to beat. These bosses serve the best as initial enemies where the player isn't yet getting used to the game mechanic, so there won't be a lot of a lot of strategy to beat them. However, if there are too many of these bosses, the game can become repetitive and dull. Bosses that take too many hit to die also are not good either.

The multi-stages bosses are bosses that invoke multiple forms or stage that create different battle patterns and there require different strategies to deal with. This type of boss is very common with final bosses, where the enemy mutate into multiple forms in attempt to beat you. Lavos from Chrono Trigger is one of the most iconic boss of this type, mimicing over 8 bosses inthe first form, and then has another two versions of the core unit you have to deal with. The best part is you can totally skip its first form. Neevertheless, too many of this kind of boss, however, will cause the battle to feel longer than it should.

The army bosses tend to appear along with the bandit and pirate tropes. They appear in the group of 3-8 units, with the leader sitting in the back row. Every turn, the mooks will zip away your health, argubly more than one power boss can do. You can't kill the mooks either because they'll just respawn, forcing you to focus fires on the leader and take him out before you're gradually bled to death. In my opinion, this type of boss is the most annoying, but alsp effective as the battle will set the villains up as gangsters or powerful strategists. I tend to feel very statisfy outsmarting these bosses in Lufia 3: The Legend Returns.

Lastly, puzzle bosses are bosses that require specific methods to beat. You can see these bosses a lot in Zelda and Titan climbing games: Hit here with this tool first, then climb there and slash the weakpoint. Rinse and repeat. In FFIV, there's also the Magus Sisters and the CPU that deploy units in the syncronized fashions you have to beat in specific orders to beat them. These bosses tend to be unique and very interesting to fight against, but they also can become annoying if there are too many of them.

In my final opinions, having many types of bosses in one game is a good idea. You can have variety of bosses from from the straightforward power contest ones to the strategic ones. It helps the player not getting bored easily.

 

[Dragnfly]

Sticking strictly to RPGs and similar games I liked:

-Some of the ones in Chrono Trigger because they often had some sort of gimmick which was fun to play with.

-Most any boss in Valkyria Chronicles was fun to fight because you had to move so precisely.

-I never played KH 2 (not a KH fan) but fighting Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts 1 was completely epic.

-Shadow Hearts 2 final boss. I cried manly tears. Good for story reasons, not so much for gameplay.

-Dragon Lord, Dragon Warrior 1. Just because he was probably my first RPG boss. I lost to him, like, 40 times. But then it was "gain a level, try again" and eventually victory was mine. Happy memories.

-The final boss of Queen's Gate. You had to be really careful what you did in that fight and she hit really freakin hard.
 

For bosses I didn't like:

-Melfice from Grandia 2. Because hehehehe hehehehehe heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheSHUTUP!

-Lenoy or whatever his name was in one of the japanese Alphedia games. Because fighting a dude for almost an hour because he can heal and gets 2-3 actions per turn only to have him auto-cast an instant death spell without warning when you finally kill him is complete bullcrap. Especially since the only accessory to avoid instadeath spells you can get before then requires a very well hidden sidequest, and you only get 1 of them so good luck with his 2nd form. I just cheated around it.

-Bloodbane, Valkyrie Profile. WAY too much HP. Felt like I was fighting the guy for hours.

Basically, if the fight drags out too long or completely removes all your hard work, or especially if it's a bonus boss with crap rewards, I hate it.

For my current project I have normal bosses which are just mandatory fights that are tougher than usual, and then I have character bosses which are more cinematic and are more like Re:Kinder's puzzle bosses. You can likely grind enough to just beat them down but in a standard fight you need to figure out their gimmick and a way to counter it. Not in a Knights-of-the-Round kind of way either.

 

[Matseb2611]

I generally don't like climbable bosses, maybe because vast majority of times they are nothing more than a series of quick time events and flashy cutscenes. Press this button - flashy cutscene - now press this button - another flashy cutscene. That's not fun. I want to fight the boss with my own two hands, not watch a darn movie. A boss fight that certainly comes to mind here is the Hydra boss in the first God of War. Many rave about it as being one of the best boss fights in gaming. Well, I strongly disagree with that.

Apologies for that little rant up there.

Edit: Might as well also add that ANY boss battle that requires me to hammer down on some button really fast for whatever reason is an instant turn off.

 

[Another Ned]

Most memorable boss battles?
The final boss in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Because it's the most anti-climatic and easiest final battle I have ever experienced. I was so disappointed that I'll never forget it. The combat "tactics" consisted of waiting until your special attack gauge was filled, unleashing special attack, and waiting again.

But positive examples:
Dragon's Dogma, the red dragon. Only one phase felt long-ish, and that's only because I was pretty low-level for that fight. It's a dynamic boss fight, utilizing many of the game's mechanics.
But I love Dragon's Dogma's combat anyways. Ever wanted to ride a chimera while trying to kill its spellcasting goat head while the beast tries to shake you off? Or jump off a cliff onto a cyclops' neck to get your daggers into its eyes?

And the final bosses in Planescape: Torment and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Because they both allowed me to defeat the final boss via dialogue. I don't know how the actual combat for the boss fights are, but both are games where I could spec a pretty much eloquence-focused character and talk my way through many situations – including the final confrontation with the respective end bosses.
I want more games like that.

And now I noticed that I barely remember any bosses apart from that. Maybe because I usually was focused more on hitting them with stuff until dead, which didn't make them exactly memorable for me. And most of those I do remember, I remember because they were boring, or annoying, or I did something stupid and had to replay an unnervingly long boss fight prior to the one I got my game over, because of no save points in between, which is why I never touched that game again (looking at you, Silver).

This thread made me realize that I also should begin thinking about my project's bosses some time soon.

 

[Dragnfly]

I generally don't like climbable bosses, maybe because vast majority of times they are nothing more than a series of quick time events and flashy cutscenes. Press this button - flashy cutscene - now press this button - another flashy cutscene. That's not fun. I want to fight the boss with my own two hands, not watch a darn movie.

I'm with you on this solely because it feels to me like the developers going all Shadow of the Colossus just don't "get it". Everywhere that's a QTE in, say, Castlevania:Lord of Shadow, would be raw gameplay in SotC.

I've thought long and hard about how to do a gigantic boss in RM but it seems pretty much limited to "the boss is the dungeon" (FF4 giant of babel style) or "boss tower" (FF6 final battle style)

Most memorable boss battles?

The final boss in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Because it's the most anti-climatic and easiest final battle I have ever experienced. I was so disappointed that I'll never forget it. The combat "tactics" consisted of waiting until your special attack gauge was filled, unleashing special attack, and waiting again.

And the final bosses in Planescape: Torment and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. Because they both allowed me to defeat the final boss via dialogue. I don't know how the actual combat for the boss fights are, but both are games where I could spec a pretty much eloquence-focused character and talk my way through many situations – including the final confrontation with the respective end bosses.

I'm a big fan of talking down the final boss after the battle, mostly because I love when a villain is struggling to try and be good-ish in the sequel. In Ar Tonelico 2,

Spoiler

Jakuri's cosmosphere had me crying buckets it was so beautiful and would've been impossible if I'd killed her at the end of the first game.

The only game I played all the way through where you could talk down the final boss and not have to fight them at all was Fallout 3, and that was handled horribly. Well, I played 1 and 2 back when they were newish but I don't remember them at all. Fallout 3 showed the villain as having no major defining traits EXCEPT for an iron conviction and then you talk him down right as he's attaining a personal victory with flimsy dialogue choices that didn't even sway my opinion, much less Mr. Absolutely Devoted to his Cause. If Planescape and Arcanum did good at it then we have a valuable lesson here. A maxed out Charisma stat may be what will mechanically ends the game, but really well-planned writing and considering everything you know about the villain is the most important part of a pacifist resolution.

 

[Matseb2611]

I've thought long and hard about how to do a gigantic boss in RM but it seems pretty much limited to "the boss is the dungeon" (FF4 giant of babel style) or "boss tower" (FF6 final battle style)

You could probably do it span several battles. Like first the party is fighting the boss' feet. Once they've beaten that, they fight his arms and tentacles or any other limbs he has. And once that's beaten, they move upwards to his head. Perhaps even you could make it more interesting. Say if the party loses to his head, instead of Game Over they just get pushed back down to the lower stage and have to beat that again. Or you could have some way of letting the player participate in all 3 fights at once, but constantly switching between them. Will be hard to pull off, but it'd be awesome. Say if one party casts a certain state on the boss' feet, then his head becomes more vulnerable, or something of that sort.

 

[Dragnfly]

You could probably do it span several battles. Like first the party is fighting the boss' feet. Once they've beaten that, they fight his arms and tentacles or any other limbs he has. And once that's beaten, they move upwards to his head. Perhaps even you could make it more interesting. Say if the party loses to his head, instead of Game Over they just get pushed back down to the lower stage and have to beat that again. Or you could have some way of letting the player participate in all 3 fights at once, but constantly switching between them. Will be hard to pull off, but it'd be awesome. Say if one party casts a certain state on the boss' feet, then his head becomes more vulnerable, or something of that sort.

You ad some great things to some ideas I had. Thanks.

I do have a gigantic mecha boss in my project and I was doing it "boss is the dungeon" style where the party splits into 3 teams and each has their own unique route which of course meets up at the end like Final Fantasy 6 or Wild Arms 2's final dungeons. One character's route is pretty much all timing traps because battles would be unfair. EXP is shared anyway so it's not like they lose out. I show that the boss is mobile by having the far-off background when you're on it's outer parts be different as you progress.

But wow, I never even considered one group doing things to gimp another groups mini-bosses or the main boss. That's a great idea! Mind if I use it? Of course not exclusively. (I'd imagine you're cool with it since you suggested it in the first place but I always ask)

 

[Matseb2611]

Yeah lol, go for it. I would've probably kept it a secret if I didn't want others to use it. It'd be nice to see this battle idea in some games for sure.

 

[Wavelength]

There's one other type of boss I can think of that Arek didn't mention in her(?) very good list - Story Bosses.  The type of boss where the fight itself is meant to advance the story somehow, moreso than fulfilling any type of gameplay aesthetic (like power or puzzles).  These types of battles aren't used enough IMO and can really invest the player in the story by making it feel more interactive.

It's actually surprising to me to think about how feel RPG Battles really come to my mind as paragons of great design.  Nyx from Persona 3 had an amazing "crescendo" feel to it, and involved some extremely cool and varied gameplay mechanics.  It was also too long, too random, and way too difficult, and I almost gave up before I won on my 20-something-th try (three months after I first got to this boss).  The battles against Prinnies in Disgaea (particularly the Bowling-themed one) stick out to me as really cool ones, too, although I'm not sure whether they'd be considered a boss or not - the "theme" of the battle is so well done and the player can make things very easy by realizing it's a Puzzle battle but can still win if they don't.

That's a philosophy I really like - mixing Puzzle elements with the other boss types.  Throw some twist at the player to make them figure out how to best take advantage of it... but allow them to win it with brute force and general battle strategy if they don't figure it out.

 

[Dragnfly]

Mentioning Disgaea reminded me of an amusing one from Prinny 2 (I know, not an RPG). The boss is basically a woman bigger than a castle who gets tied up talking to her friend on her celphone instead of fighting you. So you're basically just trying not to die while this gigantic person is chatting away very animated, putting her feet up on the parapets (where you are), shifting her relaxing position, etc. It was hilarious.

I think one of my oldest memories of a puzzle boss (thought fairly light) was FF4 (FF2e LOL) when you'd get guys who'd wall (reflect magic) themselves and then wall you, or they'd have a countdown to absolute murder and only Kain and his Jump ability could survive and have to selectively get the party revived and back into fighting condition but only if you timed it right. Otherwise, Kain would land, go "hey guys is he dead yet?" and then eat a meganuke along with everyone else.

Also, FF4 had a story battle of note when Edge

Spoiler

confronts his parents-turned-monsters

. Though for the record I hate those boss fights where you have to lose. I get around those by just showing the enemy's badassedness in a cutscene.