What makes a good boss fight?

Thirith on 10/11/2016 at 12:30

I'm currently greatly enjoying Owlboy - but one of the elements I'm not a huge fan of are the boss fights. They're not terrible, but I find them considerably less fun than the rest of the game... which made me think about what makes a good boss fight for me. As difficulty/challenge isn't at the top of my list of what I look for in games, it's rarely the boss fights that I find most memorable, so others are certainly more qualified to give useful and interesting answers to this question. I'll still try to outline some thoughts:

* A good boss fight should require skills acquired in what precedes them, but it should build on them.
* A good boss fight should be part learning, part skill. I'm thinking of the likes of Dark Souls, where you learn the bosses' patterns, but even once you understand those patterns you still need to play well in general.
* A good boss fight should be clear in its presentation. This ties in with the learning element: if the presentation is vague or if there's too much noise and not enough signal, it's almost impossible to learn, which reduces the fight to button mashing and luck.
* A good boss fight should *never* be preceded by an unskippable cut scene, no matter how short. After the third or fourth time, they all feel endless.

For me, Owlboy fails to some extent on most of these, especially compared to, say, the bosses in the Super Mario games. None of it is egregious, but in comparison with everything else that the game gets utterly right, it's difficult not to be somewhat disappointed.

So, which boss fights do I enjoy? The answer here is going to be fairly boring. I'm a fan of the final confrontations in Portal and Portal 2, because the bosses have personality, the fights follow logically from everything the games have taught me, and my butterfingers are up to the challenge. On the other side of the spectrum, I like many of the Demon Souls/Dark Souls/Bloodborne bosses, because the game is a good but exacting teacher, and when I succeed I feel like I've achieved something. Finally, if you want to call it a boss fight: I love the final confrontation with The Transcendent One in Planescape Torment, and how, depending on your build, you can win through conversation.

Nameless Voice on 10/11/2016 at 14:44

I agree with your points.

I feel that a good boss fight should use the same game mechanics as the rest of the game, only pumped up to 11.
A good example is the Cyberdemon in the original Doom. He's just an insanely tough monster who shoots rockets. You beat him in the same way as you beat any other monster - by pumping him full of lead while avoiding his attacks.
Contrast the Cyberdemon in Doom 3, who is instead a puzzle boss. You beat him by killing the constantly respawning imps to power up your soul cube and then use that to kill him. It's a really underwhelming fight that barely even uses the skills you've acquired throughout the game, instead relying solely on the Soul Cube (which, IMO, is a horrible game mechanic to have in a Doom game anyway, though that's a a bit beside the point.)

Continuing on from that, you should also be able to beat the boss using your specific build and playstyle that you've used throughout the game. The Fallout games are great here, since you can often win boss fights by talking, science, or other skills rather than just through direct combat.
Counter-examples are the boss fights in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, or the final boss in Risen. That last one deserves extra mention: at the end of the game, you have to fight a big boss in a small arena. You are given a special weapon, shield and set of armour, which are enchanted to give you the skills required to use them effectively, and the boss fight consists of avoiding his attacks and the shifting hostile terrain (which constantly opens instant-death drops under parts of the arena, IIRC), and then killing him with your melee weapon. Not only is it a complete change of pace from the rest of the game, it forces you into a warrior's confrontation with the boss, even if you had been playing as a mage up until that point.

Also, a boss fight shouldn't have things which are just annoying and detract from the boss fight.
Having small enemies in with the boss is an example of that - I hated the bosses in Dark Souls (such as the Capra Demon with the dogs) that forced you to deal with annoying smaller enemies while being pummelled by the boss, or die to them while fighting the boss.
The boss fights should be about the boss himself. Unless summoning other creatures is a part of his theme (which can be fine), he should be fought alone, not in an arena filled with minor annoyances that detract from him.

Malleus on 10/11/2016 at 15:20

Quote Posted by Thirith

* A good boss fight should *never* be preceded by an unskippable cut scene, no matter how short. After the third or fourth time, they all feel endless.

Hmm, the Soulsborne bosses are preceded by an unskippable run-up to the fight from the last bonfire. After the third or fourth time, these all feel endless too, especially when the boss kills you faster than it took to get there. Yet you inculded them among your favorites.

I personally don't really like the concept of bossfights, and prefer games that don't have them, and when they do, then at least prefer when they fit the game flow, when they don't feel like an interruption. Like, I don't know, Daud in Dishonored. But if a game has to have bosses anyway, then your list is certainly a good set of criteria.

Thirith on 10/11/2016 at 15:33

Quote Posted by Malleus

They can definitely feel like that, but much of the time I used the path from the bonfire to the boss to warm up, to get psyched by killing some minor goons, or I'd think and decide to proceed elsewhere because I'm not quite ready yet for the boss. It's only rarely that I basically did the exact same approach to the boss several times in a row.

Malf on 10/11/2016 at 15:38

Diablo 3's got some nice bosses, with the added bonus that because it promotes constant replay, you frequently get to re-visit particular boss fights and absolutely trounce them with improved gear.
By the way, for all you co-op types, they've just released the (https://eu.battle.net/shop/en-us/product/diablo-iii-battle-chest) Battlechest for Diablo 3 which includes the expansion, Reaper of Souls, for the very reasonable price of £24.99. G'wan, someone buy it so I have someone to play with!

Buuuut, back on topic...
I've always liked the bosses in the Metroid Prime games and Zelda: OOT & Windwaker. Sure, the formula gets a bit obvious after a while, and them having weak spots is open to all manner of lampooning, but it works and they're directed well.
They generally act as bookends to sections where you've been learning to use a newly acquired game mechanic, and to that extent, test you to make sure you've learned enough to continue. That these games then end in a big boss battle where you have to use every trick you've learned up to that point is just the icing on the cake.

Also (and yes, I own this), Lollipop Chainsaw had spectacular boss fights. Fighting against an undead punk's swear words during a concert? Battling a fifty foot tall, fat, zombie Elvis impersonator? Definitely memorable.

Then there's Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which teaches you through abusing you, but feels so fecking good when you get that S-rank. Again though, that's partly down to expert direction, and well, let's face it, Platinum Games being at the helm. There's very few games of theirs that aren't memorable, and they all feature outrageous boss fights.

Of course, Platinum started when Capcom shut down Clover Studios, who produced one of the first games I'd ever played with a boss rush mode, Viewtiful Joe. The mechanics of that game allowed for particularly cinematic and fun boss fights. Bastard hard on higher difficulties too.

And I think that's where you begin to spot a pattern: personally, I think boss fights are generally best in the "Spectacle Fighter" genre, typically dominated by Japanese developers with a long history of genre games.

I just hope the rumours are true and we eventually get Vanquish on PC <3

Tony_Tarantula on 10/11/2016 at 15:54

Devil May Cry 3 and 4 also had some great bosses, as did the Souls Series.

The biggest factor is that they tend to play out like a good anime fight: you come up against an opponent who appears overwhelming until you begin to understand how they fight and develop a strategy counter them. Those two series I cite in particular because they gave you just enough information to figure it out yet not enough to make it obvious. For example a dark souls boss will often stop and change his stance slightly preparing to lunge at you, while one Boss in Devil May Cry 4 had a spear attack that could be deflected or even thrown back at the boss by using Nero's "devil bringer" hand. In that case it wasn't obvious but could be figured out based on fights with previous enemies.

Big difference betwee those examples and glowing red "shoot the weak spot here!" moments.

demagogue on 11/11/2016 at 08:54

For me one of the most important parts of a good & memorable boss fight is the way it fits into the narrative. It feels like a gimmick if a boss is thrown in just because it's a gaming trope. But if an NPC is built up over the course of the whole game, especially if it gives you a lot of good reasons to see them go down, then it's really cathartic when you can finally fight, and of course it can give a great feeling of completion and climax that makes you feel good for finishing the level/game, if it's presented well and not just a gimmick. This improves the boss fight even if the actual fight isn't all that different from any other AI.

henke on 11/11/2016 at 09:17

Quote Posted by Malleus

Hmm, the Soulsborne bosses are preceded by an unskippable run-up to the fight from the last bonfire.

IMO those are wayyyyy less aggravating than having to sit through unskippable cutscenes over and over. At least you're still doing something. I think what's most infuriating about those cutscenes is that you're all fired up from playing a the bossfight, your adrenaline is flowing, and you just wanna get back to pushing buttons and making shit happen immediately, but instead you're forced to just sit there and watch some dumb bullshit.

TannisRoot on 11/11/2016 at 11:51

Aggressive bosses shouldn't have be able to one shot you or have a "gotcha!" that isn't highly telegraphed. I feel that Ludwig from BB is not the best boss he could be because of this. He hits so hard and is so aggressive the fight is basically reduced to a bl4 run for all characters. That makes the fight much harder to learn and because Ludwig has such a diverse move set, it can be frustrating.

Maria and the Orphan of Kos as excellent boss fights IMO and "fair". They are both very aggressive bosses, but they don't one shot, allow some room for healing, and have a great rhythm for a fight.

In fact I'd argue that Maria is the best boss in BB when theme, music, arena, and tone are all taken into account. It communicates almost the entirety of Maria's story with just the boss fight alone. You get a sense of her character, how she fits into the world, her tragic life, all from fighting her in what can only be described as a dance of death. It's epic.

I mean listen to this!

[video=youtube;8mByDcrNSV0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mByDcrNSV0][/video]

Thirith on 11/11/2016 at 12:13

I loved Orphan of Kos; all too often in the Souls games and in Bloodborne I ended up relying on other players helping me out, but I beat Orphan of Kos, being my very last Bloodborne boss, alone, without any help. It took me a fair number of tries, and at the end I was shaking, but I managed, and it felt good... and sad... and ominous, like so much in Bloodborne.