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

[DirgeNovak]

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

But that was the entire point. He's getting inside your head and trying to control your thoughts, and you have to fool him to be able to beat him. Kind of like a non-retarded Psycho Mantis

OT: As much as I love the game, a lot of the Skyrim bosses were god-awful. Getting through a dungeon filled with easy enemies only to end up against a stupidly powerful boss that kills you in two hits is ridiculous. You either have to pause every three seconds to drink potions or find an AI exploit.

 

[shadow skill]

Giant bosses in every brawler that are not just set pieces. All they do is cause the game to degenerate into one or two moves, every single time.

As for Rising that is more of a difficulty spike than anything else. A better example is the fact that the Mastiff has a move that will break the lock on (Which is already effectively useless, since it just means you are going to be stuck trying to prioritize some other target eventually.) and make it nigh impossible to parry or block in alot of situations because there are usually other dudes on screen while the Mastiff is doing its' thing.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Every hidden final stage in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.

Even on the off chance that the game itself is consistently good, the Super Sonic section at the end always has completely different controls and they're always floaty and terrible. I swear, at least half of the one in Unleashed wasn't even finished. It really says something that not only is the one in Sonic '06 not immediately distinguishable from the rest in terms of quality, it might actually be one of the better ones.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

And one of the least rewarding, all things considered.

I think winning it and getting the last ending is probably more frustrating than never seeing it.

 

[Uratoh]

I'm gonna call out 'many recent World of Warcraft bosses'. Obviously there's only so much they can do with the game's mechanics...but when you have a boss that requires characters to fly through rings and collect powerups while avoiding bombs...

 

[TheDoctor455]

Any of the boss fights in Alpha Protocol. Unlike the rest of the game, where almost any build can work with a little effort...

each of the bosses only has a few builds that can work against them at all. Around three mostly. Two of which allow you to kill them at all, and one turns them into almost instant kills.

The kicker? For the most part, which builds work on each boss... don't tend to overlap that much.
Also... why in the hell is one guy magically immune to a shotgun, but is almost instantly killed by less than a single clip of submachine gun fire? Or another guy immune to pretty much everything EXCEPT hand-to-hand and a very specific pistol ability that you have to focus on for the ENTIRE GAME up to that point (pouring ALL of your points into it pretty much) in order for it to work.

Also... if you don't manage to kill most of the bosses in that game... most of them have regenerating health. (to an extent in most cases, thankfully)

Other games...

EVERY. SINGLE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEATHCLAW. IN. LONESOME ROAD.

Normal Deathclaws were bad enough, but these fuckers LEVEL UP WITH YOU.

 

[major_chaos]

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

How... How is that even remotely winnable?

OT: Even as the Escapist's resident Dead Space fanboy, that across 3 games they never managed to make a boss that went past "tolerable". The very first boss in DS1 is the closest to actually being good despite the fact that you are basically fighting a wall. I also have little patience for bosses with way too much health, turning what should be an intense fight into a war of attrition. Dawn of War 2 was awful about this, and Borderlands 2 comes close at times.

 

[Ryotknife]

I would also like to vote for DE:HR

Although i can think of one example that has the opposite affect. Alpha Protocol is basically a tactical/stealthy ish game the likes of rainbow six. Yet there is one boss fight where you have to fight a knife wielding lunatic (who sometimes uses dual smgs). When he pulls out that knife, you can not use stealth tactics or hide behind cover. You got to run away, arms flailing in the air with a high pitched scream until he gets tired.

It was basically a run and gun fight, the complete opposite of what the game is suppose to be.

And yet, it was AWESOME (the music helped).

 

[darkcalling]

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

How... How is that even remotely winnable?

My guess is that they were challenged to make a chart not even the Flash could beat. I really like that song though.

OT: I can agree that DE:HR's bosses felt a bit out of place but I personally didn't have that much problem with them as a semi stealth lethal force character build. Once I got the typhoon for emergency use that helped a LOT.

 

[spartandude]

The deamon prince at the end of space marine.

its just a quick time event and even then not an exciting one.

 

[NightmareExpress]

I'm going to second DX:HR. After playing as a silent assassin type, being thrown into a room with a walking tank type dude with a machine gun arm was just infuriating.

One way to kill him: be sneaky and let him suicide via grenades over time.
One way to kill him: throw the various canisters around the room at him.
One way to kill him: use about 25 taser batteries on him.
One way to kill him: burn up your ammunition

One way not to kill/bypass him: Diplomacy and real stealth.

A few months later I discover via an interview that the bosses were outsourced to another company and the man responsible for the broken boss battles describes himself as "more of a shooter kind of guy" and was unfamiliar with the Deus Ex franchise. Huh, I was wondering why I particularly hated those parts of the game and mostly enjoying the rest. Went to the company's website and it looked stunningly unprofessional. Not surprised.

Oh, and the bosses in The Witcher 2.
I didn't think the combat in The Witcher was particularly awesome to begin with...but a majority of the bosses just felt ridiculous. Words fail me when really explaining them, but they're not as "organic" as they should be. They amount to following an incredibly repetitious procedure that involves attacking while they're not invulnerable and then rolling far away and being a chicken; running aimlessly without pause being a good way to avoid attacks. Some (like the Kraken ripoff) are ridiculously scripted and artificial feeling, punishing the player should they dare deviate from the intended way of combat.

 

[Johnny Wishbone]

Umm.....Ass Creed 3.

The final boss "battle" is a scripted chase, followed by a cutscene, followed by slowly dragging yourself to the docks, followed by another cutscene, followed by slowly dragging yourself up a path to a building, followed by a cutscene where you share a drink and stab the guy at a table. No combat, no stealth, and definitely no satisfaction.

Worst. Game. Ever.

 

[elvor0]

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.

Oh quite quite, it was a kick in the face in terms of hardness these days, but a thoroughly enjoyable kick in the face, the game was totally skill based, and there was nowhere where I felt the game was unfair, any time you couldn't get any further it was a case of the game saying "l2p or GTFO", but yeah pressing all the buttons would be the logical course of action, but it's not me who was having the issues

But I do think they could've put a little more stress on how /important/ parry is in terms of a core game mechanic. It's most certainly awkward to get the hang of given it's the same button as attack, which for ages I was saying "oh this is stupid, why the hell would you do that?!11?!" but then it all falls into place and you become a badass cyborg ninja man.

 

[prophecy2514]

Any other tips or tricks you found which made the parrying easier, or areas / attacks that it won't work for?

As others have mentioned, watch for the flash of red glint (indicating an attack) flicking the control stick in the attack direction and pressing the parry button. yellow flashes are unblockable attacks, so in this case the evade maneouver should be used to jump out of the way.

Another piece of advice, once you parry successfully, you must let the control stick come back to the center (let it go) before parrying again. I mention this because it took me a while to figure out why I was parrying the first attack but not the rest of the 4 string combos used by both monsoon and jetstream sam. This is why I suggest flicking the control stick rather than holding, it'll make parrying these longer quicker attack combos much more easily

 

[CloudAtlas]

I generally don't like boss battles much. Too often, it's just about learning to perform a certain action at a certain time. Just one step above QTEs in terms of complexity. Even better if those bosses have ridiculous amounts of health, so you need to execute the same action a gazillion times - but die yourself if you just make one or two errors. Not exactly what I'd personally call very intriguing. And not excactly what makes me feel heroic either, for that matter.

 

[Ishal]

I think a lot of MMO's have bosses that kind of fail on their delivery of "a certain set of actions must be performed to do damage blah blah"

ToR and GW2 had problems with this. SOA's fight in ToR was just bugged to shit with the platforms you are supposed to fall on disappearing all the time.

In GW2, Simin: Risen High Priestess of Dwayna was a pain in the arse. I forget how the battle went exactly, but the gist of it was she would go invisible and start to regen her health, the only way to stop it (supposedly) was to use the mechanic of picking up these orbs and having them reveal her. Most of the time these just didn't work, and I think only the person carrying the sphere could walk around to get in range of her, she'd shoot some magic or something that would insta-kill anyone w/o a sphere so everyone else needed to hide. Or that might have been another boss, i can't remember. But the intended mechanic was often bypassed by a party going in with heavy dps spec and just knocking the piss out of her til she died. Best way to do was to try and get her into a corner and just spam aoe and poison. Her regen would be like +50 and the party would do like 53 damage to her. It took forever... ah those were the days

 

[sXeth]

Dragons in pretty much any game thus far.

You have ye olde "Stand and slap fight the inexplicably not flying enemy" standard of Skyrim/All the BG/NWN series.
Demons Stone had one that kept its ass away, but would hover for no real reason so you could shoot it (With a spell it should've been immune to, but thats an aside)
Lord of Shadows went SotC style and had the dragon be the level, which was somewhat better, but still felt obviously scripted.
Dark Souls was only marginally past slap fighting style with a more actiony approach.
Even Dragons Dogma couldn't seem to really get a good grip on it. The mini-dragons just decide to come down and fight for no reason (You can blast them down, but they'll come down regardless, which kind of neutered the need for a planned attack). The final one starts fighting you inside, and once you get through that, again goes into a pattern of coming into range (and hanging around overly convenient ballistas). The set piece is certainly well put together, but still comes off as pandering to you.

 

[White Lightning]

Dragons in pretty much any game thus far.

You have ye olde "Stand and slap fight the inexplicably not flying enemy" standard of Skyrim/All the BG/NWN series.
Demons Stone had one that kept its ass away, but would hover for no real reason so you could shoot it (With a spell it should've been immune to, but thats an aside)
Lord of Shadows went SotC style and had the dragon be the level, which was somewhat better, but still felt obviously scripted.
Dark Souls was only marginally past slap fighting style with a more actiony approach.
Even Dragons Dogma couldn't seem to really get a good grip on it. The mini-dragons just decide to come down and fight for no reason (You can blast them down, but they'll come down regardless, which kind of neutered the need for a planned attack). The final one starts fighting you inside, and once you get through that, again goes into a pattern of coming into range (and hanging around overly convenient ballistas). The set piece is certainly well put together, but still comes off as pandering to you.

I like to think the Dragons in Skyrim atleast are landing because they're tired and are catching their breath. I mean, It can't be easy flying around like that while breathing fire and fighting, also they are pretty big so flying on it's own would probably be tiresome.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls.

For one, any fight that is basically a gimmick, or for that matter, a platforming puzzle in a game that isn't a platformer, doesn't mesh with the standard gameplay. But Bed of Chaos in particular was really annoying, because there are aspects of it which you can't counter or pre-empt, unlike the vast majority of the game. The tiles that survive falling in tend to be around the roots that go through the ground, sure, but you don't know when to start jumping until you've fallen in once and had to try again. The sweeping attacks from those stupid arms have ridiculous knockback and kill you more often than not by pushing you into a hole regardless of the shield you're using, and you can't time your run in between attacks because if you stay in one place the fire kills you. The final approach involves falling through the ground onto a root that you can't see until the ground falls in, basically guaranteeing you a death. It's just BS and a really unfortunate waste of the Bed of Chaos boss fight. And this is coming from someone who recognises Sen's Fortress as completely intuitive.

 

[Zetatrain]

I generally don't like boss battles much. Too often, it's just about learning to perform a certain action at a certain time. Just one step above QTEs in terms of complexity. Even better if those bosses have ridiculous amounts of health, so you need to execute the same action a gazillion times - but die yourself if you just make one or two errors. Not exactly what I'd personally call very intriguing. And not excactly what makes me feel heroic either, for that matter.

Well it's one huge step above QTEs IMO. With QTEs you just watch for the flashing button and then press it. In non QTE boss fights you have learn to anticipate the attacks which involves looking for an attack pattern or a trigger (like distance)and then how and when to avoid it. It basically tests your ability observe and make deductions.

Granted I'll admit that whole the trial and error approach usually leads to many deaths which can be infuriating at times. Still most of time I find boss fights that require multiple tries to be more rewarding than ones that can be easily completed on your first try.