Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

What are your favorite and least favorite bosses?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by newjerseyrunner, Jun 13, 2018.

  1. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner

    Joined:
    Jul 20, 2017
    Posts:
    966
    I would be very interested to know what some of your favorite boss fights were and also what some of your least were. For bad bosses, I'm thinking more of what crappy bosses in great games, as opposed to just a crappy game that happened to have a boss. Also please explain why they're good or bad (obviously I won't have played all of your favorite games.)


    For me the worse boss I've played recently was Ganon in BotW. Compared to all of the other bosses in the game, he's ridiculously easy and you only need a few mechanics. For a being of unimaginable magical powers, he was a huge disappointment and I felt like I was more mercy killing a wounded animal than fighting the wanna-be dark ruler of the universe.

    Other bosses I absolutely hated in great games were The Icon of Sin in DOOM II and Shub-Niggurath in Quake. They just spawn enemies and don't even attack on their own. It's just a matter of dodging or killing enemies while you either ride up a pillar and hope your rockets land or wait by the teleporter for the opportunity to telefrag Niggurath. Normally, I'd forgive older games because they hadn't figured it out yet, but id already did: the first doom's bosses as well as robot Hitler were awesome. I actually remember thinking for a long time as a kid that there was no way to beat Quake and that was the whole point (remember the shareware version of DOOM dropped you in an unwinnable pit at the end of it, so it wasn't unheard of to not have a win state.)

    I especially hate when bosses are just regular enemies with padded health. It kills the immersion for me when for every other elite in Halo 2, a plasma bolt/BR shot will kill it but for some reason the heretic leader is extra tough. Same thing with Tarturus at the end of Halo 2. Running from an invincible enemy and waiting for a NPC to bring it's shields down is just annoying.


    My favorite bosses are bosses that require a lot of skill. Kuro in Ori and the Blind Forest is one of the best bosses I've played in a while. It requires a lot of good movement and quick thinking to get around him.

    The cyberdemon in the original and reboots of DOOM is another great boss. He feels overwhelmingly powerful, and can only be beaten with a lot of skill. Circle strafing at a hundred mph while dodging rockets makes you feel badass.

    Every Bowser since SMB3 was been awesome. He's got a lot of mechanics and the fight often takes place in an arena that's constantly changing or falling apart.

    The mother brain fight in Super Metroid is also one of the best. It's really hard but doesn't seem unfair. The pacing is great in the sense that it makes you feel weak and have to be saved by the super metroid. This reinforces the power of mother brain because the metroid has destroyed everything easily so far, but mother brain not only fights back but actually kills it before giving you the most powerful weapon in the game and making you feel badass again.
     
  2. BIGTIMEMASTER

    BIGTIMEMASTER

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2017
    Posts:
    5,181
    The final dragon in Dragons Dogma was like, the ultimate video game boss.

    Worst boss? That's a no-brainer. Ceaseless Discharge from Dark Souls.

    I agree about Halo on legendary difficulty. Shooting the same guy, not missing any headshots, and still running out of ammo constantly isn't fun.
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  3. Martin_H

    Martin_H

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2015
    Posts:
    4,436
    Why not Bed of Chaos (same game)?
     
  4. BIGTIMEMASTER

    BIGTIMEMASTER

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2017
    Posts:
    5,181
    The bed of chaos. I forgot that one. Or maybe my mind tried to erase it.

    Eh, I'd still go with Ceaseless Discharge because that one was basically impossible to beat without looking up how the first time. And the way how was a total cheese with nothing prior to that in the game to suggest such a tactic.

    BoC was pretty heinous, but there wasn't any big secret. It worked like any other boss. You learn his moves, you learn where the floor is going to crumble. Just trial and error. But the Ceaseless Discharge, who would think to run all the way back to the fog door, and also keep him at just the right following distance to trigger the event? It's absurd.[
     
    Martin_H likes this.
  5. Martin_H

    Martin_H

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2015
    Posts:
    4,436
    I don't remember how, or if I looked something up, but I did beat C.D.. Maybe there's another cheese with a bow?
    I've looked up what you describe:

    I'm pretty sure I didn't do that, I was probably hiding where he does at the 1:10 minute mark and cheesed him with a bow and lots of patience. Still a lame bossfight though, I do agree. But Bed of Chaos was just frustrating random trial and error for me.
    And I also didn't like Gwyn, Lord of Cinder:
    I tried and failed for over one or two hours, then read in the wiki that he's easiest if you know how to parry, but I never used parry in the game, so I had to train parry for another one or two hours and eventually beat him. It wasn't satisfying to me because it felt like only a tiny fraction of what I'd learned during the game was actually relevant for the final boss.

    In Dark Souls 3:
    It took me 3 play sessions to beat Lothric and Lorian, then I tried the soul of cinder directly afterwards and got killed and ended my play session for that day after that first try. The next time I played, I've beat the soul of cinder on the first or second try, because I had gotten so much practice at dodging during the Lothric and Lorian fight, that by comparison this one was super easy. Bit of an anticlimatic letdown for a final boss, but at least I felt like I did "git gud" before the end of the game.


    Also fvck that Dragon in DS2 that sits in front of the Castle! I had to cheese that with a bow too and I have no idea how it's even supposed to be possible to get into melee range of him without dying.
     
  6. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

    Joined:
    Dec 5, 2013
    Posts:
    16,860
    Deus Ex: Human Revolution had some terrible bosses. Basically the whole game was about being stealthy and sneaky. Then at each boss point you walked out to the center of a room in a cut scene. Then you duked it out toe to toe with machine guns and rocket launchers. They completely broke from the flow of the rest of the game.
     
    EternalAmbiguity and Martin_H like this.
  7. iamthwee

    iamthwee

    Joined:
    Nov 27, 2015
    Posts:
    2,149
    I work in a supermarket for extra cash and my boss is she is a total meanie.
     
  8. Jongiks

    Jongiks

    Joined:
    Jun 15, 2018
    Posts:
    1
    Forum newb here. just got my attention on this thread. I love the D2E Ultimative Uberlevel bosses. Hard as but really fun. worse ones are those that do too few attack patterns.
     
  9. tsibiski

    tsibiski

    Joined:
    Jul 11, 2016
    Posts:
    592
    (SPOILER WARNING: Gears of War 2, Mass Effect 3) My least favorite boss ever would definitely be the final boss in Gears of War 2. A demented fleshy sock puppet made from a Brumak that touched immulsion.

    Not only is it the least interactive and boring boss fight ever. Literally point and click... but it makes no damn sense. Immulsion caused things to go lambent, not grow and become a gigantic tumor. Not only that, but it took time to cause that change. There is no logic in a creature growing to that size in seconds, no matter what they touch. It literally increased in size by a good 10 times - conservation of mass doesn't exist on Sera? Silly...

    The same thought process that went into the ME3 ending was what made them think that boss fight was logical or fun.

    Which reminds me... the blue hologram boy in ME3 is another awful boss fight. I know it wasn't supposed to be a boss. Nor was it a fight. But I sat there shooting him and punching him for a while. So he might as well be a boss fight.
     
    Last edited: Jun 15, 2018
  10. EternalAmbiguity

    EternalAmbiguity

    Joined:
    Dec 27, 2014
    Posts:
    3,144
    I have to echo Kiwasi with Deus Ex Human Revolution. I was thankfully in a position where I could mitigate things by buying the "instakill everything around you" skill and spamming it during the fights, but anyone who couldn't have who was playing stealthily was in serious trouble.

    The problem there was that the boss fight necessitated a certain kind of gameplay, while the rest of the game allowed you to circumvent that kind of gameplay.

    Another one I hated was the Arishok in Dragon Age ][. This enemy was way stronger and way faster than any other enemy in the game, to the place where my Rogue character had no chance whatsoever of beating him fairly. So I kited. For anyone who doesn't know, "kiting" is when you attack a boss then run away so they can't attack back. For me that fight was 5 times longer (or more) than it should have been because I spent the majority of the time just running away from him around the tiny arena we were fighting in.

    The problem there was simply that the enemy was too hard. There are other hard fights in the games and DLC, some extremely difficult ones. But this one just didn't work.
     
    Kiwasi likes this.
  11. ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    ThermodynamicsMakesMeHot

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2015
    Posts:
    224
    The Ruby Weapon from FinalFantasyVII.

    I hated and loved that boss.
     
  12. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

    Joined:
    Mar 26, 2013
    Posts:
    11,847