How Would You Make A Boss Fight Fun But Challenging?

[cojo965]

So, some backstory, I finally made it back to Daimon's sanctum in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen to fight his awakened form. Once I reached it, however, I found out that his awakened form is one of the most broken boss fights I have ever seen. It didn't help that in an attempt to find a reliable way to fight him it takes even a high leveled player around two hours playing well to kill him. TWO FUCKING HOURS!? WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA!? It takes even longer counting the deaths because he is stupid strong. I am a firm believer in game balance so I naturally started going over ways to make the fight challenging but not so much that it will exasperate the player. Here are the ways I came up with:

1. Too many spells too quickly drains Daimon and leaves him open. A classic, but effective.

2. Have his power come at the cost of resistance. One of the most infuriating things about Daimon's awakened form is his resistance to all forms of damage so this would be the easiest to do. On this note...

3. Make the weak point reliably weak. The player in the video I watched was a good 20 to 30 levels above me and even then striking Awakened's weak spot barely scratched him. This kind of resistance makes the player feel like they're wasting their time and may make them say, "fuck it," and just watch the end cutscene online rather than get to it themselves. Barring those two...

4. Keep resistance, but decrease damage output. Nothing is more irritating than a boss that reacts to your attacks like a fucking mosquito trying to kill a 100 ton Argentinosaurus but deals damage like it noticed. So this remedies that.

5. No one likes insta-kill moves. So after two and a half health bars are gone Awakened will use a vortex move that if you're caught in will kill you instantly unless he is knocked out of the animation. It is easy enough for the player to avoid but no one told the Pawns to watch the fuck out for it so you'll likely lose all three of your Pawns and have to solo him and, again, he takes damage like a ************ so it's hard to interrupt. Lastly, there's...

6. Keep resistance and power, but give it less health. As I have stated repeatedly, Awakened has high resistance to all forms of damage, so he doesn't need eleven fucking health bars. Four, maybe five will do but not a full eleven. Normal Daimon got away with it because at least his weak spot was both easy enough to hang on to and took damage worth a damn. Awakened's weak point, meanwhile, not only barely takes more damage than hitting him anywhere else, but is also incredibly easy to be knocked off from.

Rant over. How would you make a boss fight fun yet challenging, without being so much so that it irritates the player?

 

[Malakashii]

Interesting question. I've never played Dragon's Dogma sadly so the context was very useful to me. I'll try to answer the best I can!

A really good boss fight, as well as challenging, would go beyond just the mechanics for me. The narrative behind the battle and the wind-up to it as to why I really despise this guy I'm about the pound into so much paste can make some of the most memorable experiences for me. To wit, the mechanics of the fight with The Joker in Batman Arkham Asylum may have been a little routine, but the narrative and the journey towards it was so strong that I not only didn't mind, but loved the experience of finally beating him.

But on the point of how to do a challenging fight well, I would suggest a multi staged battle. Ideally three or more stages that are tough to beat where you have to get in a routine of the boss' attack pattern, but have checkpoints after beating each stage. As the example you stated had this high level player whaling away on Daimon for two hours, failure becomes all the more disheartening when starting from the beginning AGAIN. A tough fight that you have to be careful and precise with your dodges and attacks that rewards us with progress makes the frustration a lot easier to handle should you be knocked down after going at it for a solid hour.

Lastly, a fun boss battle could be simply the spectacle. Kingdom Hearts and the God of War series had a way of doing this with their boss battles brilliantly, especially on the harder difficulties. A flash of colour and feeling of raw power as you pummel a colossal foe gives that rush of adrenaline that makes you want to push through the challenge.

Hope this was what you were after!

 

[TehCookie]

A simple/vague method would be to have the boss require mastery of the skills in the game, which would vary depending on what kind of game it is. There should always be signs for attacks, preferably audio and visual cues. The bigger the cue the bigger the move is going to screw you over if you get hit (aka you can tell when their supermove is coming). Have them be aggressive, not counteractive. I always found the funnest battles to be fought on the defense, while only the skillful can go on the offense. The boss should have a weakness, but make the boss beatable without utilizing it with it just being there as a bonus not a necessity. No one hit kills or boss invulnerability, that's just frustrating. I'd also avoid the dodge his attacks until you can hit him, those feel more like a goose chase than a battle. Also the most important thing is if the player dies, they should know why and know how to not make that mistake again in the future.

I never played Dragons Dogma so that's just generic blueprint.

 

[shootthebandit]

Just look at any boss from the metal gear series and youll see how a good boss is implemented

For example when you fight psychomantis its really difficult however you can change your controller to another port and he cant read your mind. Another example is the end in MGS3 he can be killed in 3 different ways. You can snipe him early on but the shot is incredibly hard to pull off, you can actually have a sniper battle with him or you can set the clock forward a few years and he dies of old age. These are subtle little things that made the boss fights incredibly memorable

Also the bosses from MGS4 are all very memorable especially the first octopus one

 

[The Wykydtron]

First of all, for the love of god don't just stack more HP and call it difficult. It's just time wasting and damn annoying.

As much as I didn't care for Devil May Cry 3 in general, the Dante vs Vergil boss fights were really well done. You have the challenge of working out his attack patterns with two stages (sort of, if you count Devil Trigger) and with the good brother vs brother context behind the fighting.

You need a good reason and motivation to fight bosses for it to be really fun. I'll reference the DMC reboot Vergil fight actually. It had gameplay resembling the final boss in DMC3 with its own unique spin on it and I really liked how Vergil was the good guy until the end but they hit such an impasse that as much as they don't want to, they have to draw swords and fight over it. 'S better than them being enemies from second one in DMC3.

Also all the mandatory boss fights in Persona 4. Save someone's life, progress the mystery along, go through some awesome character Shadow stuff all while having difficult but not impossible boss fights? Yup, don't mind if I do. Also featuring one of the best recurring pre-boss fight lines ever.

"I am a Shadow, the true self."

 

[ShinyCharizard]

The best boss fights are the ones that are just like normal enemies that are more difficult (Dark Souls, Metal Gear Rising Style). The fucking worst boss fights are the lazy shoot the glowing spot or the "follow this exact pattern three times" type (looking at you DMC reboot).

 

[Darkslayersparda]

For all that's good in this world pls try and let the final blow be in gameplay not a cutscene after , the most guilty is the devil may cry series . You spend all that time sweating then boom cutscene and Dante finishes them with an over the top move or gun shot , that's doesn't feel fair

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

The Metal Gear Series has always managed it well by making the bosses more like puzzles with multiple approaches than just straight up fights. Seriously, the fight against The End in MGS3 has like a million solutions to it... all of them interesting and fun but also challenging. Same thing with The Boss at the climax.

I can't think of many other series's where I constantly look forward to the boss fights like I do in Metal Gear Solid, I'm even looking forward to MGS5 for this exact reason.

Sadly Boss Design seems to have completely vanished in North America so I don't know if we'll ever seen good or interesting boss fights outside of the few Japanese Games that still get made.

 

[BarkBarker]

fun but challenging? A opening for absolute wreckage if you pull off a harder action than the norm, the norm would be to simply get out the way, to pull off a well timed *insert mechanic here* will reward you with a chance to utterly unload your fury upon them, with a VERY clear indication of the level of damage you are doing, I don't want to punch them or beat them to a pulp, I want to counter their attacks then throw all my fury at them as they get slammed against the wall, with VERY audible breakage of a few bones and the wall crumbling with debris and cracks in the wall, I find it fun when my input can have a significant effect on my opponent, I like it when, under high pressure of high damage or a punishing situation (but not too punishing, mmkay?), you make it through and get a chance to go to TOWN on your challenger, I only want to feel like I struggled if the game character also appears to struggle, there is no point me whooping him but the game poses it as hard, or if it was brutally difficult but the game has me being super fucking showy in the following cutscene. completely emasculating me.

 

[krazykidd]

silly goose, challenge is fun . Thats the easiest way to make a boss fun , is to make him challenging . The only way to make an easy boss fun is to make him Wacky to beat . Running up to a boss and pressing X till he dies is not fun. And it's harder to make a boss wacky than to make it challenging.

The best way is to make each boss require you to have at least be able to compentently use all the skills you have learned up to that point .

 

[Ishal]

Rant over. How would you make a boss fight fun yet challenging, without being so much so that it irritates the player?

I've really wanted to play that game. OP. Dark Arisen is supposed to be really fun i hear.

Best most interesting fights I've done have been in MMO's. Since they are raid bosses they are fighting against multiple players and so have more latitude with their arsenal.

There are a ton of "tropes" or various things bosses can do in MMO's that are both fun and challenging.

My favorite example of this is the partner fight. The party of characters will enter a room with not one, but two bosses. These bosses almost always have certain mechanics that are specific to them individually ex: the blue guy uses ice attacks and the red guy uses fire attacks. The players will need to isolate the boss mechanics quickly or they will all die. In one encounter one of the bosses would incapacitate the tank who was holding aggro, he then targeted the damage dealers in the group and killed them immediately, wiping the raid.

The two bosses also tend to have different buffs that the players need to deal with. A common one is if they bosses are standing next to or near each other they do more damage while taking less damage themselves. To counteract this, the two tanks must separate them and the party must in turn separate. This could cause problems if they need help and the rest of the group is far away.

Finally, there is the berserk mechanic. This one is the most tricky for some players. If they decide to focus all their attacks on just one of the bosses and they kill him, his partner freaks out and goes nuts. This usually involves him getting significant buffs to damage resistance and damage dealt, enough to either kill the party outright or give them a very hard time.

There are tons of others but I think that is it for now.

 

[shootthebandit]

The Metal Gear Series has always managed it well by making the bosses more like puzzles with multiple approaches than just straight up fights. Seriously, the fight against The End in MGS3 has like a million solutions to it... all of them interesting and fun but also challenging. Same thing with The Boss at the climax.

I can't think of many other series's where I constantly look forward to the boss fights like I do in Metal Gear Solid, I'm even looking forward to MGS5 for this exact reason.

Sadly Boss Design seems to have completely vanished in North America so I don't know if we'll ever seen good or interesting boss fights outside of the few Japanese Games that still get made.

I love the metal gear bosses. if you dont mind me asking how did you kill "the end" in MGS3? I sniped him early on in the game when his assistant wheels him threw a big door, the time frame to pull off the shot is really narrow and i pulled it off by shear fluke

also when you fight vamp again in MGS4 he keeps coming back until you inject him with nanites, seriously i must've depleted his health bar half a dozen times (and died about 20 times) before i realised.

from what i remember resistance 2 although nowhere near as atmospheric as its predecessor (fall of man) the boss fights were pretty good: a giant 300 foot tall monster (was a scripted fight but the sheer size was impressive), an invincible swarm you had to lure into a chamber, i giant queen that spawned loads of little monsters at you