What makes a good bossfight?

[DanteLives]

Should be like Clayface from Batman: Arkham City. Clayface has two forms and minions for the second form.

What I mean is that the boss should have weaknesses as well as slight resistance to helpful attacks like throwing the Freeze Blast or Freeze Cluster Grenade at him.

 

[Nero18]

Should be like Clayface from Batman: Arkham City. Clayface has two forms and minions for the second form.

What I mean is that the boss should have weaknesses as well as slight resistance to helpful attacks like throwing the Freeze Blast or Freeze Cluster Grenade at him.

Clayface was good but while we are on the subject of Batman Arkham City my favourite was Freeze. It wasnt to hard and it didnt come down to spamming or mashing combos. It was about thinking and outsmarting your enemy. Loved that one.

 

[Aerosteam]

Using your knowledge and items you have acquired before the fight to defeat the boss. And having multiple ways to beat the boss is a huge bonus.

When a message comes up saying: "Use that against this so you can hit the weak spot!", even when it's subtle, it's a bad boss fight. I'm looking at you, Legend of Zelda.

You know that Kayran boss fight in The Witcher 2? That is how you do a boss fight.

 

[Mistilteinn]

A good boss to me is like any of the Vergil fights in DMC3, the second Dante fight in DMC4, the second Riku fight in Kingdom Hearts, Lord Gwyn in Dark Souls (no parrying), and the False King Allant in Demons' Souls. Basically...

-A boss that is relatively your size (10-story giants are overrated)
-Many different attacks of varying styles (long-range, close-range, magic, etc.)
-A drastic shift in their attack pattern as the fight goes on*
-A sense of proving that you're better than them once the fight ends
-Great music and atmosphere to give you the sense that this fight is going to be different from the dozen boss fights before

*Not always needed, but it helps keep things fresh, as Allant and Gwyn don't alter their patterns, but still keep you on your toes at all times

 

[Rawberry101]

Some posters have already mentioned this, or came close, but a good boss fight must be challenging but not impossible. Boss fights are the culmination of everything you have learned in a game up to that point. You should have the tools necessary to defeat it but it should stretch your limits unlike the wasted minions before it. QTE's are also a cop out and a sign that the game mechanics are flawed IMO.

 

[Frission]

Make it hard and add awesome music to tide over the frustration . There problem solved.

 

[mailh20]

there is one thing that all great bosses would have a meaning if the dastardly villain has killed/injured the beloved charters that you are invested in it makes the boss all the more emotionally powerful and as far as gameplay there is not a better boss that adapts to your play style like Mr. freeze in AC one that is recent in mind for me is a boss in castlevania dawn of sorrow this one guy he will attack you back with what your using having for you to switch out your abiltes constantly and don't think you can have him copy weak power attack with big power repeat no he will find the strongest one and keep until he is intdoused to a new stronger one

 

[eimatshya]

A good boss fight is a test of what you have learned to do in the game, so it depends on the game.

For example: A shooting boss fight in what was previously a stealth game is a bad one, because it feels out of place

I agree. Although I find I can overlook this sometimes when a boss's personality is built from the story leading up to him (although ideally you would want a boss that both builds out of the gameplay *and* the story leading up to him).

Spoiler: Minor Alpha Protocol spoiler

For example, the boss fight with Brayko in Alpha Protocol's Moscow hub didn't build out of the gameplay very well since it was possible to take a stealth based approach to avoid head on confrontations with the guards leading up to the boss fight. However, when you got to Brayko, the boss, stealth is only minimally applicable, and the fight still comes down to face to face confrontation. That said, I still enjoyed the fight because Brayko's love of cutting people up with knives, cocaine, and 80's culture had been built up throughout the level, which made the battle feel appropriate in some way (even though I couldn't employ stealth very effectively against him).

i think the most important things are (most these are found in shadow of the colossus)
a sense of threat and i'm not talking how much damage the boss actually does, it's why most of the boss fights in da didn't feel that great, because they don't really have any weight to them, that and they're essentially fought the same as every other monster, or they need to feel epic or climactic

I agree. Boss fights in DA:O were often just a long drawn out process of whittling down an opponent's horrendously long health bars (e.g. Ser Cuthrien). For me, this made them feel really tedious. The final boss fight was decent, however, if I recall correctly.

Also, boss fights SHOULD NOT HAVE AN UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENE before the fight. If you die a lot on the fight and have to start over from the beginning multiple times, having to sit through the same cutscene each time gets old really fast.

On a similar note, you should not force the character to stop fighting and chat with the boss. I'm cool with having the option to do so, like if you want to try to turn them or learn about their motivation or something, but when a game manages to build up a sense of urgency and then you suddenly have no choice but to stop all the action, it can be frustrating. For example:

Spoiler: Mass Effect 1 spoiler

The game did a great job of building up tension as you chase after Saren at the end, hoping desperately to catch him before he can summon the reaper armada that will wipe out the galaxy. But then, when you catch up to him and see that he's doing something with the computer, the game forces you to start talking to him instead of opening fire. This led me, the player, to not pay much attention to what they were saying because I was mashing the space bar to skip ahead to the part where I get the option to start the fight. I was all pumped up to stop him; I didn't want to start talking. I wanted to get to the terminal as fast as possible to make sure I could reverse whatever he had been doing... you know, so we didn't all die. Not waste time talking about an issue that seemed already decided.

Games do that sort of thing a lot. They build up a sense of urgency with stuff like, "your friends are trapped and you only have a few minutes to save them... but you have time to have this conversation with the boss." I think it's important not to derail the sense of tension with out-of-place exposition. Story is good. I love a game with a good story. But it is still a game, and the story should enhance and give context to the gameplay, not interfere with it.

 

[Jarek Mace]

Deus Ex.
"I WILL DEFEAT YOU!"
"K"
*Steps past, walks out the door*

Also, Baldurs Gate I, II, and Throne of Bhaal. They were somewhat easy, but the music. My god...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V6ayeiKkT4

Fighting my way through some of the toughest bastards in Faerun with my trusty scimitars complimented by my cloak of displacements and boots of speed, still gives me a joygasm.

Captcha: Melody pond. I wouldn't call them melodies.

 

[Frission]

Deus Ex.
"I WILL DEFEAT YOU!"
"K"
*Steps past, walks out the door*

Also, Baldurs Gate I, II, and Throne of Bhaal. They were somewhat easy, but the music. My god...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V6ayeiKkT4

Fighting my way through some of the toughest bastards in Faerun with my trusty scimitars complimented by my cloak of displacements and boots of speed, still gives me a joygasm.

Captcha: Melody pond. I wouldn't call them melodies.

Nostalgia. The music for Baldur's Gate was epic. Is there any other game where you truly FEEL like you've gone from a complete weakling to a god?

An added criteria is that it must feel climatic. No matter the scope of the game. The boss can go from a dying old man, to a god, but it has to feel like the completion of something.

 

[Best of the 3]

Epic music. Seems to have only been mentioned once here. You know the effect it has, when you're facing that last boss, and the tempo of the song increases, the sounds change tune. Has a large effect on how important the moment will feel.

 

[ThePenguinKnight]

For me the most important thing is having a story to back the boss up. I don't want the boss to exist only to hinder my progress, I want it to matter.

Quick time events kill just about every boss battle for me immediately.

 

[Lugbzurg]

A good boss battle (or any form of boss, really. Yes, there are bosses out there that aren't fights. Take Lego Racers 2 for example, and it's Boss Races...) should have you utilize everything you've learned up to this point.

It's supposed to work like a pop quiz for videogames.

 

[RubyT]

I have to admit that I don't like boss fights. I play games more for the escapism, so dying a lot and spending a lot of time on figuring shit out frustrates me very easily.
From that perspective, I can better comment on what makes boss fights horrible for me:

- Not knowing whether my conventional weapons can kill it. It's one place where I might tolerate some sort of health meter above his head. 'Cause nothing sucks more than wasting all your good ammo on something that can only be killed when three lights flash and he does a tap-dance routine.

- Instakill bosses. If I basically only have 5 seconds to live in each iteration and I have nowhere to be safe. Typically you're locked in a room with some giant boss. I get too pumped up from that.

- Savepoint is not right at the beginning. Worst example of that was a bossfight in Dragon Age 2, where I died a couple of times because one of the henchmen had a ghastly attack that dropped half my party. The game had saved before the cutscene to that fight, a particularly long cutscene with plenty of dialog and even a partymember returning.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Being trapped in a large room with multiple levels and routes while a single dude trapped in a mobile walk-in refrigerator hunts you down and learns to deflect every attack after you've used it, forcing you to use another one next tWAIT A MINUTE.

 

[StriderShinryu]

As a couple others have posted, what really makes a boss fight for me as well isn't something that's necessarily in the fight itself, it's in the build up. Especially when dealing with final bosses, it's important to actually have the fight feel important and the enemy feel powerful. You need to feel that A.) fighting the boss has meaning and B.) that the enemy you've seen growing in power maybe over the course of the entire game actually lives up to what you've been seeing.

Personally, I like variety in my bosses. I enjoy the multi stage fight, the tactical smart fight, the reflex testing fight, the tough guy who in reality just relies on his minions fight.. heck, I even enjoy the bullet sponge endurance test at times, but I don't like it when any of those formats are repeated too often within the same game. It just feels lazy when every second boss, or even every single boss, are basically the same thing even if that "thing" is good on it's own.

The two things I hate in boss fights are excessive QTEs and game rule breaking. QTEs in general are garbage and are just crutches for uninspired game design. If you can't think of a cool mechanic for a boss fight or want to do something cool but your engine can't handle it, it's not okay to just slap in a QTE instead.

Game rule breaking, though, is probably even worse in my eyes. Fighting games are notoriously bad for this. I don't care if it's the final boss and he's all cool and powerful and stuff, he should still perform within the rules set out by the rest of the game. I shouldn't all of a sudden not be able to block anything. If I smartly block or dodge an attack, I should be able to counterattack. Etc. Even if a boss requires an obscure mechanic you may have been able to get through the previous game without using, it should still be an actual mechanic that exists and isn't just some BS thrown in out of nowhere for the fight in question.

 

[Lunar Templar]

I'm a go ahead and point at 'No More Heroes 1 and 2' and ' Devil May Cry 1, 3 and 4' and say, that

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

Lots of ways to defeat the boss. Case in point: MGS3.

The fight with The End is the greatest fight in gaming history. There are so many factors and strategies at play in that fight. You can kill his spotter parrot, track him down and confront him up close, get into a sniper duel with him, or just literally wait him out until he dies, among many other things. Or, you can just skip the boss fight entirely and kill him after a short cut scene a few areas earlier.

I also like hyper realistic fights, like Grinko from Splinter Cell or Mark Parchezzi from Hitman: Blood Money. When, the fight can be ended in a single bullet, things get really intense. I always found it strange how in some games (namely Deus Ex Human Revolution) the bosses are typical humans with unprotected heads, and yet 3 assault rifle magazines to the cranium doesn't do anything. I understand it's for gameplay purposes, but at least give them a durable looking helmet. Maybe their skulls are augmented.

Good music also helps. Even though the DX:HR boss fights piss me off a little bit with how ridiculous they are in design, they sure have hella good music.

 

[Brainstrain]

Boss fights should serve the story. If Agent Deathman killed 400 mooks on the way to Nefario's lair, it's ridiculous to pull out a pair of handcuffs in the cutscene. You made a game where I solved every single problem by shooting it; it's ridiculous that now that there's another person worth talking to, my guy's going to have a heart-to-heart.

QTEs are boring. If you make a good cutscene, I want to look at it, not watch the center of the screen for XYAB prompts. The absolute WORST is "Wet"...every villain in the game is dispatched in a cutscene! EVERY SINGLE ONE. The torturer, the big bad, the henchwoman, all by pressing X, Y, A or B at the right time.