What makes an epic bossfight?

[Hades]

I think we all had a game where the encounter with one of the bosses and us go ''wow''.

Either the boss was hard as hell, was fun to fight against, had awesome stuff happen on the background, a good soundtrack or you finally get to crush that villain that has been terrorising the heroes throughout the game.

So what do you think is the most important factor in a boss fight that just blows you away?

 

[Rylee Fox]

I can't really pick the most important factor of a boss fight. It's all important to me.

The first thing I do when getting to the first boss of a new game, is listen to the music. A good boss theme makes the battle that much better. Xenosaga Episode 1 was terrible at this because it didn't even have a boss theme.

Buildup to the boss is another thing. Has this enemy been mentioned throughout the game so far as being some unstoppable beast? I can tell you I look forward to fighting that thing!

Difficulty is a very huge part. When fighting a boss, I expect it to be hard. If its not, I'm left feeling rather empty. I do hate easy bosses.

Fun factor. Is the boss fun to fight? A boss that pulls out interesting attacks that I haven't seen before, or that are a puzzle just to figure out how to damage are both fun to me.

One of my favorite bosses ever is the final boss of Phantasy Star Online Ep 2: Olga Flow. It has everything I look for in a good boss battle. It's second form killed me and my friend in 1 hit, but I had so much fun fighting him, I really didn't care.

 

[Joseph Harrison]

Shadow of the Colossus always stands out in my mind for having the most epic and satisfying boss fights, although I'm not sure if it counts seeing as how it only has boss fights. I played a bit of Dragon's Dogma and the boss fights in that were pretty sick. The Broodmother in Dragon Age Origins was really good because it was soooooo difficult and the lead up to it was cool and the fact that it was near the end of the Deep Roads made it feel so taxing that defeating the fat ***** was so rewarding and satisfying.
I'll post later if I can think of some other good ones.

 

[NightmareExpress]

Just a person of equal caliber with roughly the same equipment.
Someone who can kick your ass without needing to look like someone who probably could (in other words, someone who doesn't look like the typical towering gargantuan with overkill weaponry).

Bonus points if it's the final battle and it's a one-on-one duel.

 

[NinjaSniperAssassin]

Story significance. Persona 3's final boss and Persona 4's shadow bosses were awesome fights because you had a damn good reason to want to beat the snot outta them. Borderlands 1's final boss was shit for a number of reasons, but the main one was that it suffered from a major case of pulled-out-of-arse syndrome. No prior mention of it, no reason for it to exist, no real reason for you to want to kill it other than the fact that it was the final boss. Bioshock 1 had a similar issue, not quite as blatant but still annoying.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

Remember what Yahtzee said in his Deus Ex retrospective about boss fights? That boss fight should be some sort of final exam that will test everything we've learned up to this point and that we should know why that boss wants to kill us or why want to kill them? Well, Nyx Avatar from Persona 3 fits that description perfectly.
1) He keeps switching between all 12 arcana, so basically while fighting him we fight every single type of enemy we've encountered before. Then he switches to the final Death arcana, the one we haven't seen before and we don't know what we should expect.
2) We know who that is. Nyx Avatar isn't some random schmuck who came out of nowhere, he used to be our friend! He was a good guy, someone who never wished to harm anyone, but had no choice to become that monstrosity.
3) We know the consequences if we lose. The Fall will come and all humanity will become the Lost. What are the Lost? Oh, you mean all these empty shells of a human that we've seen on streets throughout the whole game! Yeah, I don't want that to happen.
4) All the little details. Freaking amazing music, boss design, the fact that he doesn't mock you, but rather inspire you, all of that makes Nyx Avatar one of the most epic bosses out there.

 

[Scrustle]

I like a boss fight that feels unique, but draws upon various skills you learn from the game.

It should challenge you by behaving in a unique and interesting way, but it shouldn't be cheap. It should be distinct from usual enemies, but it should be in a way that, if you have sufficient skill at the mechanics, you should be well equipped to deal with. But it shouldn't be obvious though. Having tells for attacks is good, but having them being too easy to see isn't fun. Like if it's a really slow swing with a huge wind-up that even a sleeping idiot could see coming then it's too easy. That makes it even easier than usual enemies a lot of the time. It should be enough to see and react to, but nothing more than that. It shouldn't be something that you can't react to at all though. Attacks that are unblockable and undodgeable are terrible.

The method for beating them shouldn't be too obvious either. Your options shouldn't be too limited, but you should have to experiment and learn what you need to do to beat it. Perhaps use the skills you've acquired in a different way, but there should at least be a hint or a window of opportunity to guide you towards the correct method.

It should have a good ending too. Some kind of payoff at the end. Be that a cool cutscene for the final flourish, or a short section of the fight allowing you to do that flourish yourself. Something that makes you go "Hell yeah!". Something that makes you feel incredibly empowered for overcoming that test.

A good example of this is one of my favourite boss fights in recent history. Monsoon from Metal Gear Rising. He's really unique in that if you just try to attack him blindly, he'll separate his body and your sword just goes through thin air. You need to parry his attacks to get him to stagger so you can get some hits in. The way he attacks you is really interesting too. He uses a smokescreen and jumps out of the clouds at you. His attacks are fast and can come from any direction, but you have just enough time to react and parry. Once you get the timing down you can relatively easily parry every single one. It takes a lot of focus though. Later on he'll throw tanks and helicopters at you, which you have to use Blade Mode to defend against. Different to how you use it in usual play, but it's intuitive and exciting. Then at the end you have a really slick QTE, which finishes with the flourish of you using Blade Mode on him as he's pinned against the side of a building. You can slice him in to hundreds of pieces, and the music (which is one of the best tracks in the already amazing soundtrack) has built up to it's most intense at that moment. I was left feeling way more satisfied and pumped than from any other boss fight in any game I've plaeyed for years.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

boss fight should be some sort of final exam that will test everything we've learned up to this point

Ikaruga

I don't know what you're talking about, but you really should write more if you don't want to get warning for low content post.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I like Boss fights where the confrontation is foreshadowed and built up. You get to see them a few times beforehand where in whatever manner they show you, the player character, how serious they mean business. Like Mendez in Resident Evil 4. In the first couple of cutscenes he reveals himself to be a total bruiser who can kick your ass in like 2 seconds... and then you're locked in with him in a confined space. FIGHT!

 

[skywolfblue]

Most of all I'd say strategy. The boss needs to have more to it then just being "hard" (say, having extremely high damage spells), it needs to be "clever" or behave in a fashion that promotes thinking by the player. Making the player dance, making the player position conscious of other players, getting multiple players to sync together as a team and play their part, etc.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Music is to boss fights as paint is to make up. A good paint can save a bad prosthetic, but a bad paint can ruin a good prosthetic.

Relevance is also important to the fight.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Story significance.
A fight which the whole game was leading up to.
Sure, the music and setting help just how epic it is, but the true epicness comes from what kicking the shit out of the boss will mean for the world and characters.
I like to think of the final mission in Mass Effect 2 to be a boss fight in itself, because the bloody thing tests you from start till finish, and it ends in a pulse-pounding, tension building moment of satisfaction few games can reproduce.

 

[Requia]

I'm not really sure what makes a good boss fight, but I know what makes a bad one:

Grind: Specifically bosses where defending myself is easy, but killing the boss is hard. Anything where the boss's attacks are easy to dodge/take cover from, and the boss itself needs to be plinked to death. This is just boring. The example that comes to mind is Half Life, the boss's attacks could be ignored by circling around it, and the only real risk is in running out of ammo because it has a ludicrous amount of health.

Guide dang it: I should not need to look up a guide in order to figure out the secret weakness/way to defend myself from a boss. If the boss has a weak spot or attacks with a certain timing pattern that should be obvious. Though I've only ever seen this in games that are full to bursting with the problem anyway (you don't need to call it out, if undead enemies are harmed by healing magic, then its to be expected than an undead boss will be, conversely if the boss is the only enemy in the game with a weakness to healing magic that's fucking stupid).

Forcing a specific playstyle: If the game gives me three different ways to get to the final boss, I should be able to use three different ways to beat him, Deus Ex bossfights suck because if you choose to play it as a stealth game you lack both the experience with the combat system and the combat upgrades necessary to fight the boss.

Giant robots in a game that doesn't normally have giant robots (this is me picking on mass effect 2).

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Being made by Platinum Games

Seriously, have you seen the stuff they've made? It's all over the top, epic campiness

 

[knight steel]

Hmmm I'm sorry but you just can't choose one,it whole bunch of things that come together that makes a Boss fight memorable-sure if one thing stands out it helps but without everything else it falls flat.

Here are the thing I believe are important:
1-story significance:it should mean something,it it's just there for the sake of having it what's the point?
2-unique:It has to stand out from the crowd in order to stick in my mind.
3-scale: Should feel larger than life,like this is nothing compared to the smaller stuff
4-appearance:Make it look amazing and it will impress
5-music:Helps set the mood for the fight
6-difficulty: If it's not difficult then it really no different that the average fight
7-build up:makes me want it more and builds up tension/excitement.

 

[TrevHead]

Platinum / Treasure style boss fights are my bag as are good old shmup boss fights by the likes of CAVE. Something that tests my skills but there's also some puzzle that needs to be worked out.

The cardinal sin of boss fights is not giving the player enough info for whatever they're doing is the correct thing. A common mistake is not having a boss healthbar like Gears of War does.

 

[Valnyan]

I think we all had a game where the encounter with one of the bosses and us go ''wow''.

Either the boss was hard as hell, was fun to fight against, had awesome stuff happen on the background, a good soundtrack or you finally get to crush that villain that has been terrorising the heroes throughout the game.

So what do you think is the most important factor in a boss fight that just blows you away?

You mentionned it all. I'll just add that I think the boss should not be too "hard" either. It depends on the kind of game and the purpose of the boss but, unless the boss should feel like this, the fight shouldn't feel like you can't win otherwise it just becomes tedious and frustrating and your eventual victory becomes more of a "wow, glad I'm done with that" rather than a "wow, I want to play the game again just for that moment !".

Generally instead of a difficult fight I think it is better to have the boss looking difficult. For that the best way is to have one or several "tricks" to understand to beat it, so that someone who know it and practiced it can consistently beat it while still requiring the player to use different approaches to the fight.
For example, what made me remember boss fights in old games like R-Type or Ghost'n'Goblins was the attack patterns.

As for what is the most important to me, again, I'd say it depends on the game. In an RPG, for example, I'll want the bosses to be more than just "big enemy block path kill" so a good introduction, even if it is a non-sentinent monster/robot, giving them a bit of "character" developpement to tell the player why they should care for it more.
In more "action driven" games, as said earlier, a few good tricks. If the boss feels impossible to beat at first and then I notice that I have to aim for this part or that I can use this or that piece of scenery or simply that its attacks are avoidable if I learn the cues.

But, no matter the kind of game, I usually notice the soundtrack first. Not saying it is the most important thing, it's just one of the element and, as much as the others, it can make or break a boss fight.
Not all boss fight need a good music to become memorable. But it can really add to the atmosphere of the fight and make you feel "here".

 

[Valnyan]

Double post, sorry.