What would you describe as a bad boss?

[MFG38]

Cortex in Crash Bandicoot 2 and its equivalents.

[NuMetalManiak]

When I read this thread I was actually thinking of a boss like in a job or something. If it were that case it would obviously a boss that tells you to do things their way and their way only even if you somehow discover a much better way of doing a job. Had one asshole boss do that thing.

 

But if we're talking video game bosses, well, there's plenty of examples on both the too strong and too weak side.

Too strong:
Damage sponge bosses in RPGs usually would be the worst of the too strong variant. There's honestly way too many to list from franchises like Final Fantasy or SaGa. I think Yiazmat is a notorious example due to how much health it has and how much time is needed.

Bosses with cheap and/or undodgeable attacks in general that turn a good challenge into something annoying after failing it more than ten times maybe. Also I'm not sure if bosses with extremely nasty arenas count (maybe NES Metroid's Mother Brain here) but they probably do.

 

Too weak:

Bosses with only one method of attack that are easy to figure out. Like the Wolfenstein bosses that fire with just the chainguns for instance. Not that scary when you play the hide and seek method. Also most platformer bosses have a very predictable moveset and are far too weak.

[BladeWolf]

Every House of The Dead boss ever. It's all just piss easy. From 1 to 4, I never enjoyed the series in general, I kinda felt it was a generic zombie shooter with cringe voice acting.

[Devalaous]

Drakengard's final ending comes to mind. Suddenly its a musical memory game, and I could never finish it. My max level and stats meant nothing, due to my bad musical sense. I hear the third game also does things like this. 

[Aaron Blain]

- Any boss who doesn't telegraph its attacks early enough that you can respond without having memorized its behaviors through trial and error.

- Any boss that has so many hitpoints that you have to repeat the same gameplay loop more than 3-5 times.

- Any boss that facilitates robbing you of the value added by your labor, and denying you democratic participation in the business.

- Any boss that doesn't follow the same rules as the rest of the game universe. For example, a boss that is arbitrarily and inexplicably invincible most of the time (yes, this makes me dislike whole swathes of gaming).

 

I know the first boss in Smash TV is a sort of joke, and it does change forms several times so it doesn't violate my bullet #2 above, but damn I just find it exhausting and irritating.

 

I really like Volgarr the Viking, in spite of bullet #1, but the trial and error on the giant snake boss was just too fussy and mysterious for me, and required me to replay way too much in order to get a precious few seconds of 'research/practice' in on the boss, so I've never gotten any further. Very bad gameplay design, IMO.

 

I think bosses are generally one of my least favorite parts of any game. I don't think they work well in Doom at all.

[seed]

All of Quake's boss fights because they're all gimmicks and not real fights.

 

Apart from that, any braindead boss who spams one attack until you die. Or spams non-stop. MK9 Shao Kahn says "hi" here.

[yakfak]

I feel like I've never played a good boss fight in an FPS and I kinda find them out of place anyway, not my taste to make an atmospheric game suddenly feel like Contra or something

 

(fave boss in any game might be Yunalesca in FFX?)

[Martin Howe]

A thread started by a user named Margaret Thatcher about bad bosses ... the irony is strong in this one :P

[Archanhell]

What no one knew is this thread will help me with TCTOA bosses, and I mean on the good sense, to avoid doing bad bosses and all

 

Alright so.

Those questions are kind of hard and more because I do not really have good examples, or examples that people will understand.

So I will just say all DooM bosses except DooM 2016 and Eternal's are bad, maybe some from DooM 3 Idk, never finished the game.

DooM 1, 2 and 64 bosses are boring damage sponges, kinda.

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Metroid Fusion - Ridley-X.

Spoiler

 

My biggest problem with Ridley in MF is that up to this point most bosses had cool tricks or patterns you can learn to help defeat them with minimal stress (barring Nightmare and Yakuza :X) but then this ear-rape of a boss comes on down and screams so loud your GBA speakers explode all whilst he casually picks you up and slam-dunks you back to the ground harder than a 10-ton anvil. If getting behind him sounds like a good idea, his tail just pile-drives you into the floor rapidly and is nigh impossible to dodge without good reaction timing.

 

 

Terraria - THE NIGHTMARE TRIO [Skeletrombone Prime, Destroyer and Twins]

Spoiler

 

So these three bosses are a pain each to kill. Whilst not the worst boss in Terraria (that would go to Duke Fishron for being completely useless all-round) The nightmare trio as I've nicknamed them can either go smoothly or with a ton of headaches.

 

The Destroyer is a giant mechanical worm that spawns a mini laser drone robot every time you damage 1 segment of the boss enough (and there's like 100-200 segments) and resists well over 75% of all debuffs you can inflict (I believe nearly all pre-plantera Debuffs). On top of that, you're swimming in a sea of red lasers and a boss that tanks everything unless you pierce it super hard.

 

Skeletron Prime is a mechanical skull that spins with 4 flying arm parts; 2 melee, 1 bomb and 1 laser. The biggest issue is trying to destroy said weapon parts is like threading the needle at mach 3. Along with that, failing to kill him in time just outright yeets itself towards you at sonic speed dealing 9999 damage.

 

The Twins are essentially 2 eyebals tethered. Retinizer will spread red lasers all over you with not a whole lot of room to dodge whilst Spazmatism will casually vomit all over you (literally) with cursed flames, a defuff that drains HP fast and is hard to get the resistance for, or will simply ram itself into you super quickly.

 

 

Duke Nukem 3D - Battlelord

Spoiler

Hey there kid! Like a boss that can tear through your HP super easily with a minigun or fire grenades that do lethal amounts of damage on Let's Rock! Difficulty!?

Boy do I have a treat for you! Yeah, this is the FIRST boss of DN3D and is quite possibly the hardest boss overall in Duke Nukem 3D. The biggest problem is that you don't get really any way to dodge its attacks apart from trying to crouch below near the slopes but that is inefficient if the boss starts firing from the central platform. Only way to easily kill it is to jetpack over its little pit and chuck in all your pipebombs first to try and chip some HP off before fighting it properly.

 

[jmac]

On 3/12/2021 at 6:31 PM, BladeWolf said:

Calamity Ganon - Breath of the Wild. Just a plain disappointment.

Especially when you've put in the time to get most of the upgrades. Getting to Ganon was much more difficult than actually beating him. Aside from the disappointing finish though, I thought breath of the wild was a fantastic game.

[Eurisko]

Resident Evil VII's last boss fight.

[NaMcOJR]

Old shooters from the 90's where the boss is a small-ish square sprite which takes 1000000000000 hits, then it explodes with an explosion so small it doesn't even cover the boss sprite. "The Last Day" comes to mind...

 

[xdarkmasterx]

Like most things, it's usually a combination of factors rather than "this is good, this is bad", but there's a few traits I see a lot, which usually aren't a very good sign.

 

-Doesn't justify its time to kill. If your boss only does a couple of different things and has no phase changes, I don't want to be shooting at it for 4 minutes.

 

-Unavoidable damage. This one depends on the game - nobody expects to be able to avoid every hit in CoD, but a game like Contra is another matter entirely.

 

-RNG invincible states. I think most people can relate to the frustration of a boss randomly flying out of reach for long periods of time :p

 

-Minions take the focus. Minion heavy fights can work well (ex: Doom Eternal), but if they're the main attraction then the boss itself often feels redundant.

[Sokoro]

Sirus, the awakener. "DIE!" and then you die....

 

It is pretty easy when you get to know it and use owerpowered build, but it was total bs when they introduced it.

[vyruss]

1 hour ago, Sokoro said:

Sirus, the awakener. "DIE!" and then you die....

 

It is pretty easy when you get to know it and use owerpowered build, but it was total bs when they introduced it.

I invite you to try the Maven now that it's the ultimate boss for the league.  That one's garbage.

[Scrabbs]

icon of sin in every doom game

[Sotenga]

I've got a specific example that was so bad that it made me not want to replay the game it was from: The final boss of Terranigma. Up until that point, nearly all bosses could be taken on fairly if you were agile enough. I also never had to grind up any levels to take on any of the bosses... until the last one which sticks you on a platform and forces you to take hits while windows to fight back are few and far in between. I had to grind heavily to stand a chance against this bastard and it really killed my mood overall, even when I finally beat them. I know TN gets a lot of praise, but honestly, I much prefer Soul Blazer and even Illusion of Gaia over it.

[jazzmaster9]

I've encountered a lot of less than stellar bosses in the years ive been gaming (Bed of Chaos, Shub-Niggurath, 90% of Dark Souls 2 bosses) but man Icon of Sin from Doom 2 left a sour taste in my mouth when I finished the game. the boss was as easy or as Hard as RNG wanted.

[Doomkid]

Both the Mastermind and Cyberdemon. As a kid the strung up Barons in the Tower of Babel gave me the creeps, but after that it was snore city. The Mastermind didn’t even have that, it was just.. nothing.

 

The IoS is the best of a bad bunch, and even it is housed in the lamest map imaginable and the method to actually ride the lift is more tedious than it probably ought to be.

 

E1M8 was the most memorable of the lot, but it doesn’t wear its age that well if I’m being brutally honest.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Final Doom's Icons of Sin aren't my favorites, in TNT the head is misplaced, so the rockets won't hit Jimmy Romero's head, the one in Plutonia is way too hard, and can become a little tedious if you get killed. IMO, those are the worst bosses in classic doom. IMHO

[VoanHead]

OG id software is a good example of like making really fun gameplay, sometimes confusing here and there, but at the cost of making really trash tier bosses.

[cracky-bracky]

Freedoom bosses are very underwhelming in my opinion.

[BrassKnight]

Most of the boss fights in Yakuza Kiwami, a lot of them have minions that makes the fight way longer than it should be and it's really annoying. The worst boss in that game was Jingu because of his two bodyguards, they're so difficult even with Tiger Drop and while Jingu hides behind them and tries to gun you down and throw grenades at you. At least after this, we get to the fight Nishiki as the final boss and it's actually good.

 

Coming from Yakuza 0, Kiwami was a bit of a disappointment when it comes to boss fights. Kinda wished they changed them a bit to make them better.

[holaareola]

On 3/18/2021 at 2:06 AM, Doomkid said:

Both the Mastermind and Cyberdemon. As a kid the strung up Barons in the Tower of Babel gave me the creeps, but after that it was snore city. The Mastermind didn’t even have that, it was just.. nothing.

 

The IoS is the best of a bad bunch, and even it is housed in the lamest map imaginable and the method to actually ride the lift is more tedious than it probably ought to be.

 

E1M8 was the most memorable of the lot, but it doesn’t wear its age that well if I’m being brutally honest.

Haha, IoS over E1M8 is one for the controversial opinions thread. I disagree! The complete break from space-bases to otherworldly abstraction with the weird star layout and texturing (nukage on the ceiling IIRC?) is so effective. Gameplay wise you have a decent difficulty bump from the dick move of including all those spectres, which not only piss you off by blending with the jiggling pixels of the noisy red floor (in 320x200 obvs) but also prevent you from taking down the barons with the RL immediately and having the whole thing over in seconds. The final good thing about it is once again to do with the weird layout. Even in modern Doom maps there remains a tendency to have large, convex (at worst circular) arenas. A concave shape like this makes it more interesting -- there's still a lot of space, but not all the space is created equal: if you get pinned down one of those spokes, you're pretty much finished. It's still far too easy in a mouselook age, but I think it stands up.

 

I agree with @yakfak though, I can't pin down why, but it feels like there is something uniquely difficult about creating good bosses in FPS games. It's a struggle to remember good ones, but the bad ones are countless. I find it much easier to think of good bosses in 2d sidescrollers.

[LUISDooM]

The final boss of Megaman 8Bit Deathmatch V6... While it is impressive on a technical standpoint (as well all the other bosses), it is absolutelly annoying to fight to.

The boss has LOTS of different high speed attacks (that get even more fast as you damage it), while you are slow as a snail and have a projectile attack that just helps you to dodge the boss attacks and stun him. The only way to hurt him is getting close after stunning it (something hard by itsef that gets harder/impossible as the battle goes on) and playing a "dodge" minigame (if you success, you hurt him, if not, you have to stun him all over again).

It's sad because I like how the final battle and the whole story is set up in general, but the final battle ruins it all. Given how impossible was to even damage it, I ragequitted after ~20 attempts and never tried again. Don't know if the boss was balanced better on a later patch (if it was made anyways)

Edited March 20, 2021 by LUISDooM

[Master O]

On 3/12/2021 at 6:56 PM, Margaret Thatcher said:

My example is Super Pierrot from Rainbow Islands Extra on the Genesis/Mega Drive (a different genre of game, but hear me out). In RI, you take one hit (ala Action Doom), and you die. Enemies and Bosses are designed around this, giving you room to maneuver through the vertically-scrolling playing field. Your main attack is shooting rainbows on a horizontal plane at a limited range. These rainbows stay on the screen, giving you the opportunity to walk on them and get to higher ground. What's more, you can jump on them and make 'em fall on enemies below. This breeds a specific type of gameplay, where you have to balance "I need to get to the top" and "I need to not die".

 

Enter Super Pierrot. (This guy's good at the game)

 

 

He takes up a large amount of space, so mobility's down. He also bounces around the room faster than Jimmy Savile running to the children's hospital, so good luck following that. When the fight starts, he summons 4 Pierrots (the smaller versions of him)that respawn once you kill them, so you're kinda fucked. You want to avoid the Pierrots, but SP blindsides you. You fire away at SP, but a Pierrot comes the fuck outta nowhere and claps your ass before it can even say "Nothing personnel, kid". You try to avoid both, but then you can't rainbow his clown ass and you get cornered. Also, when you spawn, your attack is one rainbow long, and you'r slow as shit out a sloth's ass. I fucking hate this boss and I want to put him into a woodchipper.

 

or maybe im butthurt romflao

 

 

Rugal Bernstein and ALL SNK fighting game bosses.

 

John Romero doesn't make you his bitch.  Rugal does.