Boss Battles the standard gameplay isn't set up to handle..

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Fayathon

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Nov 18, 2009
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Zachary Amaranth said:
Drakengard. From hack and slash to DDR gameplay.

I think I win the thread.
To date, I have beaten that boss three times without receiving the last ending. Words and images do not convey my level of unhappiness with that.
 

V da Mighty Taco

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Little Horn in Super Meat Boy - a boss whose difficulty is based entirely around whether or not you know beforehand that his attacks are coming. Most of his attacks are virtually instantaneous and you cannot possibly see them coming unless you know about each attack beforehand. This bites particularly hard in a game like SMB that's deliberately designed to let you know what you're suppose to do before you actually need to do it, whereas this one boss battle throws that concept out the window.

The real kicker for me though in this boss battle was that on about my third or fourth try (tries go by really fast in SMB), I had by complete accident discovered that each side of the map has a small spot where the vast majority of his attacks simply will not hit you. The only attack that can reach you in these two spots is the fist-sweep, which is coincidentally the only attack of his that's incredibly telegraphed and can easily be jumped over from this very spot. The entire battle goes from beating your ass unless you've memorized every little attack to becoming a complete cakewalk once you discover this. This not only makes this boss battle hilariously broken, but is the very antithesis of what Super Meat Boy as a whole is about.

Captcha: "create new things" I know I procrastinate too much Captcha. Quit reminding me. <_<
 

GrimHeaper

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Kirov Reporting said:
I have encountered this issue again recently with MGR:Revengeance. Blade Mode is brilliant, sneaking up on enemies and turning them into bitesize chunks and even the occasional in-battle parry, all are fair indicators that one-on-one or one-on-group battles are what this system was built for.

Then I battled a robot panther. Then I battled a transformer. Then I battled a cyborg gorilla thing. Each of these kicked the ever-loving crap out of me, while I wrestled with the camera, and felt like I'd brought a knife to a gorilla fight, because that's effectively where I was at. All of the pacing was shot to hell, it completely stalled my progress and left me feeling really deflated, after being a badass among other sword-wielders etc and feeling as though I had the system down, I was now being decimated time after time.
It fits the system just fine that's just you not doing that good.
If you thought they were trouble wait until you fight Armstrong who can shave all or half of your health off if you screw up.
I'm terrible at action games and if I can beat the game on easy,Normal, and hard with ease you can as well.
I even started beating very hard easily.
Revengeance mode is the only one I have problems with, you know those gekkos?
They one shot you.
Kirov Reporting said:
elvor0 said:
Metal Gear 4. That final boss fight had fucking awful controls, excellent spectacle and it's one of my favourite boss battles of all time, but the controls were hideous.


Er...hate to tell you this, but the bosses REVOLVE around the standard gameplay, which is the parry system. Parry is the core and soul of Revengance, master it and you feel like a god, neglect it and you will die. a lot. I winged the game right up until the boss rush, and the game just went "l2p or GTFO". The game has a completely consistent gameplay style throughout, it's not supposed to be a stealth game, it's a hack n slash, a spectacle fighter. The camera is fine, use the lock on, and while I'm loath to say it, to put it bluntly, learn to play. Act exactly the same while you're fighting them as you would anything else, avoid golden attacks, parry for anything else, and you'll be fine. In fact once you master the parry system, aside from the first level on revengance difficulty the game becomes a whooooole lot easier.

Trust me, we all had the same issues mastering the parry system, god knows myself included, but saying that the game is bad because you don't know how the game works is just misrepresenting the facts.
Whoa whoa whoa back up there sunshine.. When did I even come close to calling it bad? I said it left me feeling deflated and I felt like it shot the pacing to hell because it stopped me dead, but I still enjoyed the parts that weren't boss fights.

In terms of the camera, how do I do the lock on? I don't remember seeing anything about that, but it sounds like that would make parrying infinitely more of an option and easier to pull off. I appreciate you telling me to learn to play, but it's not like the parrying VR mission is exhaustive.. One enemy, a basic troop, telling you about the principle of parrying but not covering anything beyond that makes it a little hard to relate it to trying to beat up a walking tank ;)

Any other tips or tricks you found which made the parrying easier, or areas / attacks that it won't work for?
That's all there is to parrying, proper timing.
There is also a dodge in the game which you will need.
 

Casual Shinji

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hazabaza1 said:
Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

I don't like Bed of Chaos.
True that.

I'll take the Capra Demon and Smough and Ornstein over this fucker any day of the week.

The problem is not even that it's a hard Boss, but that defeating him is almost completely depended on luck.
 

Church185

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GrimHeaper said:
That's all there is to parrying, proper timing.
There is also a dodge in the game which you will need.
I actually never used dodge at all, didn't even buy it until way later in the game because I was saving all my points for the super OP Fox Blade. Then after I bought it I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to use it. I only beat the game on normal though.
 

GrimHeaper

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Church185 said:
GrimHeaper said:
That's all there is to parrying, proper timing.
There is also a dodge in the game which you will need.
I actually never used dodge at all, didn't even buy it until way later in the game because I was saving all my points for the super OP Fox Blade. Then after I bought it I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to use it. I only beat the game on normal though.
It's easy just hit the parry button and the one below it.
It's specifically designed so it all clicks together.
The reason you didn't need it is because of the fox blade anything else and you would.
Fox blade is DLC anyway.
 

AVATAR_RAGE

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Did I miss the memo that final boss fights are not supposed to be a test of everything you learned throughout the game?

I mean in MGR you have to use everything in the final fight, parry, dodge, blade mode, ninja run. You need to know when to engage and not to engage, or you will lose. I did not finish the boss first time around, it took me several tries, in fact I was pretty much on the verge of rage quitting. The fact that it is down to your individual skill is just awesome, because when you do eventually finish the fight you feel awesome.

What I do absolutely hate is when games has a QTE in the fight that is harder than the fight itself. "Great you beat the boss, now push A 700 times or start over" RE5 did this, and I hated it for it, countless anime games have done this, and I have hated them for it. This does not add challenge it just means I need a bionic arm.
 

Church185

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GrimHeaper said:
Church185 said:
GrimHeaper said:
That's all there is to parrying, proper timing.
There is also a dodge in the game which you will need.
I actually never used dodge at all, didn't even buy it until way later in the game because I was saving all my points for the super OP Fox Blade. Then after I bought it I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to use it. I only beat the game on normal though.
It's easy just hit the parry button and the one below it.
It's specifically designed so it all clicks together.
The reason you didn't need it is because of the fox blade anything else and you would.
Fox blade is DLC anyway.
I'm completely aware of how OP the Fox Blade is, it was made even more apparent when I started up new game plus on hard mode and every enemy died in one hit. But it doesn't work on bosses, and I wasn't able to afford it until right after I beat Monsoon. That means I went through almost the entire game without buying any upgrades or the ability to dodge. I simply found it too easy to parry, or to ninja run away from an attack I knew I couldn't parry.
 

Church185

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AVATAR_RAGE said:
Did I miss the memo that final boss fights are not supposed to be a test of everything you learned throughout the game?

I mean in MGR you have to use everything in the final fight, parry, dodge, blade mode, ninja run. You need to know when to engage and not to engage, or you will lose. I did not finish the boss first time around, it took me several tries, in fact I was pretty much on the verge of rage quitting. The fact that it is down to your individual skill is just awesome, because when you do eventually finish the fight you feel awesome.

What I do absolutely hate is when games has a QTE in the fight that is harder than the fight itself. "Great you beat the boss, now push A 700 times or start over" RE5 did this, and I hated it for it, countless anime games have done this, and I have hated them for it. This does not add challenge it just means I need a bionic arm.
Actually you didn't have to use blade mode or dodge at all during his fight. After trying again and again to kill him and succeeding after countless retries, my friend showed me you could simply ninja run to the left when he throws the huge boulder at you and dodge the attack completely. I didn't even know how to dodge when I beat him.
 

Exocet

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FEAR 2.

During the story, the game hypes you about colonel Vanek being a huge badass. You fight large mechas, large dudes with flamethrowers and lasers, even larger mechas, invisible lightning ninjas, and hordes of supercloned psychic soldiers (not just cloned, SUPERCLONED! Yeah, that's a thing now, deal with it), and the game just writes it off as the character mopping shit up.

But when the colonel appear, when the absolute badass of a colonel that's been hunting you down through the streets filled with the aforementioned baddies appears, you
get him stuck in an airlock, then open it, wrestle around with his gun for 10 seconds in a shitty QTE, then you move on

What the fuck?
How are you supposed to feel afraid if not only are you armed to the teeth, but nothing poses a challenge? Not even the bosses?
 

AVATAR_RAGE

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Church185 said:
AVATAR_RAGE said:
Did I miss the memo that final boss fights are not supposed to be a test of everything you learned throughout the game?

I mean in MGR you have to use everything in the final fight, parry, dodge, blade mode, ninja run. You need to know when to engage and not to engage, or you will lose. I did not finish the boss first time around, it took me several tries, in fact I was pretty much on the verge of rage quitting. The fact that it is down to your individual skill is just awesome, because when you do eventually finish the fight you feel awesome.

What I do absolutely hate is when games has a QTE in the fight that is harder than the fight itself. "Great you beat the boss, now push A 700 times or start over" RE5 did this, and I hated it for it, countless anime games have done this, and I have hated them for it. This does not add challenge it just means I need a bionic arm.
Actually you didn't have to use blade mode or dodge at all during his fight. After trying again and again to kill him and succeeding after countless retries, my friend showed me you could simply ninja run to the left when he throws the huge boulder at you and dodge the attack completely. I didn't even know how to dodge when I beat him.
But you still had to avoid his attacks in someway, dodging is just the easiest. And without blade mode you cannot heal during the fight. It was still a test of your skill and I am sure you used a lot of the tactics you developed in the rest of the game. So blade mode is needed for healing and dodging, although not needed is the most effective way of avoiding damage.
 

elvor0

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Kirov Reporting said:
elvor0 said:
Metal Gear 4. That final boss fight had fucking awful controls, excellent spectacle and it's one of my favourite boss battles of all time, but the controls were hideous.


Er...hate to tell you this, but the bosses REVOLVE around the standard gameplay, which is the parry system. Parry is the core and soul of Revengance, master it and you feel like a god, neglect it and you will die. a lot. I winged the game right up until the boss rush, and the game just went "l2p or GTFO". The game has a completely consistent gameplay style throughout, it's not supposed to be a stealth game, it's a hack n slash, a spectacle fighter. The camera is fine, use the lock on, and while I'm loath to say it, to put it bluntly, learn to play. Act exactly the same while you're fighting them as you would anything else, avoid golden attacks, parry for anything else, and you'll be fine. In fact once you master the parry system, aside from the first level on revengance difficulty the game becomes a whooooole lot easier.

Trust me, we all had the same issues mastering the parry system, god knows myself included, but saying that the game is bad because you don't know how the game works is just misrepresenting the facts.
Whoa whoa whoa back up there sunshine.. When did I even come close to calling it bad? I said it left me feeling deflated and I felt like it shot the pacing to hell because it stopped me dead, but I still enjoyed the parts that weren't boss fights.

In terms of the camera, how do I do the lock on? I don't remember seeing anything about that, but it sounds like that would make parrying infinitely more of an option and easier to pull off. I appreciate you telling me to learn to play, but it's not like the parrying VR mission is exhaustive.. One enemy, a basic troop, telling you about the principle of parrying but not covering anything beyond that makes it a little hard to relate it to trying to beat up a walking tank ;)

Any other tips or tricks you found which made the parrying easier, or areas / attacks that it won't work for?
>< Sorry about that, came across a bit aggressive there, damn you lack of tone in text *shakes fist* Actually yeah, it never mentions the lock on button at all to my knowledge, it's L1(or LB), which makes things a lot easier and you're right they were very bad at explaining how important parry is, I can't really give you any tips other than watch for the red glints enemies give off when they're about to attack, and pretty much all attacks are blockable aside from "missiles"(cut em) and attacks where the enemies glow gold, in which case dodge em providing you've bought offensive defence (A+X or X+Square), dodge also has a few frames of invincibility, so exploit them if you can.

For parrying the best thing to do is relax, watch for the glint and then just tap direction + parry, it's really difficult to master but when you get to Monsoon you won't get better practice than from fighting him.

I think the tutorials really could've been fleshed out more, I had to stumble through everything myself and they don't stress how important some things are, wheras if you've got someone with you that's played it they can tell you things the game really should and the learning curve goes a LOT smoother. But aside from a few key moments, dodge is far inferior to Parry, so don't use it as a crutch too much or you'll suffer later on (as I did).
 

hoboman29

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Both of my examples come from Devil May Cry 4.

First one is Dante (the serious boss fight not the tutorial). The reason being in that it takes a fast paced game and slows it down severely. To win the fight you have to counter Dante's moves but if you try to attack him any other time you will be countered and lose a good chunk of life bar. Also no other boss in the game requires you to really slow down this much except for...

Sanctus. Specifically the second encounter. Now the fight starts with you having to break a magic shield, no biggie. Once that shield breaks you have to knock him out of his flight which is much easier said than done. He will fly around, teleport and launch you across the arena with the real kicker being the short time window you have to act. If you do manage to make it to him before the shield reforms there's a good chance your attacks will be blocked. The final parts of the fight are frustrating too but thats for other reasons. This fight severely lowered my opinion of the game as it slowed the pace to a crawl and was more tedious than an action packed finale should have been.
 

Dansen

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Mar 24, 2010
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Casual Shinji said:
hazabaza1 said:
Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

I don't like Bed of Chaos.
True that.

I'll take the Capra Demon and Smough and Ornstein over this fucker any day of the week.

The problem is not even that it's a hard Boss, but that defeating him is almost completely depended on luck.
ninja'd

I'd also like to add that it is almost impossible to kill it with out dyeing at least once. It looks cool, but can we even really call it a boss fight? An enemy that takes a grand total of three attacks to take down?
 

hazabaza1

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Casual Shinji said:
hazabaza1 said:
Bed of Chaos.
Fucking Bed of Chaos dicks fuck me jesus.

I don't like Bed of Chaos.
True that.

I'll take the Capra Demon and Smough and Ornstein over this fucker any day of the week.

The problem is not even that it's a hard Boss, but that defeating him is almost completely depended on luck.
Pretty much.
A good tactic is to take out one thing, quit the game (puts you back at the fog wall and maintains her damaged status) and hope the sweeping attacks don't fuck you over when you go back in.
 

Nepukadnezzar

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Beyond Good and Evil, the final boss ...
when the controls changed directions that screwed me up royally. I am used to this kind of game, and now the controls were set to reverse .... wtf

And the last boss in Brütal Legend ... I had to use a walkthrough, I would have never summoned the deuce...
 

GrimHeaper

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elvor0 said:
Kirov Reporting said:
elvor0 said:
Metal Gear 4. That final boss fight had fucking awful controls, excellent spectacle and it's one of my favourite boss battles of all time, but the controls were hideous.


Er...hate to tell you this, but the bosses REVOLVE around the standard gameplay, which is the parry system. Parry is the core and soul of Revengance, master it and you feel like a god, neglect it and you will die. a lot. I winged the game right up until the boss rush, and the game just went "l2p or GTFO". The game has a completely consistent gameplay style throughout, it's not supposed to be a stealth game, it's a hack n slash, a spectacle fighter. The camera is fine, use the lock on, and while I'm loath to say it, to put it bluntly, learn to play. Act exactly the same while you're fighting them as you would anything else, avoid golden attacks, parry for anything else, and you'll be fine. In fact once you master the parry system, aside from the first level on revengance difficulty the game becomes a whooooole lot easier.

Trust me, we all had the same issues mastering the parry system, god knows myself included, but saying that the game is bad because you don't know how the game works is just misrepresenting the facts.
Whoa whoa whoa back up there sunshine.. When did I even come close to calling it bad? I said it left me feeling deflated and I felt like it shot the pacing to hell because it stopped me dead, but I still enjoyed the parts that weren't boss fights.

In terms of the camera, how do I do the lock on? I don't remember seeing anything about that, but it sounds like that would make parrying infinitely more of an option and easier to pull off. I appreciate you telling me to learn to play, but it's not like the parrying VR mission is exhaustive.. One enemy, a basic troop, telling you about the principle of parrying but not covering anything beyond that makes it a little hard to relate it to trying to beat up a walking tank ;)

Any other tips or tricks you found which made the parrying easier, or areas / attacks that it won't work for?
>< Sorry about that, came across a bit aggressive there, damn you lack of tone in text *shakes fist* Actually yeah, it never mentions the lock on button at all to my knowledge, it's L1(or LB), which makes things a lot easier and you're right they were very bad at explaining how important parry is, I can't really give you any tips other than watch for the red glints enemies give off when they're about to attack, and pretty much all attacks are blockable aside from "missiles"(cut em) and attacks where the enemies glow gold, in which case dodge em providing you've bought offensive defence (A+X or X+Square), dodge also has a few frames of invincibility, so exploit them if you can.

For parrying the best thing to do is relax, watch for the glint and then just tap direction + parry, it's really difficult to master but when you get to Monsoon you won't get better practice than from fighting him.

I think the tutorials really could've been fleshed out more, I had to stumble through everything myself and they don't stress how important some things are, wheras if you've got someone with you that's played it they can tell you things the game really should and the learning curve goes a LOT smoother. But aside from a few key moments, dodge is far inferior to Parry, so don't use it as a crutch too much or you'll suffer later on (as I did).
It doesn't hold your hand. I like that.
Anyway I'd like to point out that would be the logical placement for a lock on, since you know action game.
You're supposed to hit all of the buttons anyway to see what does what then familiarize yourself, then practice through repetition.
Nepukadnezzar said:
Beyond Good and Evil, the final boss ...
when the controls changed directions that screwed me up royally. I am used to this kind of game, and now the controls were set to reverse .... wtf

And the last boss in Brütal Legend ... I had to use a walkthrough, I would have never summoned the deuce...
I thought the Deuce was pretty obvious.
 

l3o2828

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Stepcharts in DDR have gotten way too insane to be an actual test of skill...this is just...well...insane.
 

piinyouri

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Zachary Amaranth said:
Drakengard. From hack and slash to DDR gameplay.

I think I win the thread.
I almost quit on that fight.
Easily one of the most frustrating things I've done.