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Are final bosses too easy in games?

#1



JCM

I've just watched this video on youtube, killing 22 final bosses in 5 minutes
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv5Wmb7Ga7U:wvui8w09][/youtube:wvui8w09]
And it reminded me of the disappointing ping-pong at the end of Twilight Princess.

What was the most disappointing boss fight for you guys?


#2

Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q74e0ilk63U:2h0cx6ox][/youtube:2h0cx6ox]
this was the most annoying boss ending I've ever played.


#3

bhamv3

bhamv3

Fallout 3 had a disappointing final boss. Colonel Autumn goes down to a headshot with any decent weapon.

I liked how they started with Quake 2, because that was seriously easy. Save a quad damage and an invulnerability until that battle, and you automatically win.

Also, I don't play enough games, I didn't recognize many of the games in the video. Which game had that woman with the really freaky arm, shooting dinosaurs?


#4

Math242

Math242

Saren is very meh (Mass Effect)
Final boss in GoW2 sucks


we need more bosses like Jon Irenicus (BG2)


#5

bhamv3

bhamv3

I found Saren's final form to be a decent challenge. Nothing overwhelming, of course, but probably the toughest fight in the game. The only one that might be tougher is if you rescue Liara right after leaving the Citadel, at a low level. The krogan mercenary's pretty tough.

I just thought of another one. Half-Life 2's final boss is you shooting energy balls at a giant teleporter.


#6

Math242

Math242

even on insane, i've never died to Saren. ever.


#7





All of those games are either FPS or the Tomb Raider view (third person, I think?). Most of those kind of games are pretty easy to beat, honestly.

Then again, the days of the near-impossible to beat games are a thing of the past, now that games have become a bigger market for casual gamers.

That said, easy boss battles I've encountered. I always throught Max Payne 1 & 2 were usually pretty easy. Zeromus in Final Fantasy IV is usually a walk in the park. The ending (much like any fights) in Indigo Prophecy is a joke.


#8

figmentPez

figmentPez

bhamv3 said:
I just thought of another one. Half-Life 2's final boss is you shooting energy balls at a giant teleporter.
Click to expand...
Ugh, I hated that battle. Never bothered to finish it without cheating. Opposing Force's end boss was slightly better, but I still hated how it gave zero indication of when you were actually damaging it.

Personally, I'd rather have an easy boss that's over quickly, than a drawn out fight that isn't fun, or one where winning is mostly random.


#9





It depends on how it's handled.

Best example of an AWESOME boss fight that continued the story? Okay, two examples:

-Portal: [spoiler:2t2vuupj]The neurotoxin is what killed everyone else in the facility![/spoiler:2t2vuupj]
-Metal Gear Solid: [spoiler:2t2vuupj]The giant freaking fight with Metal Gear itself, then the fight on TOP of it, then the big chase. That shit was EPIC, yo. And hard as hell. I had to hit continue dozens of times for each battle.[/spoiler:2t2vuupj]


#10

Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Ultima III: Exodus, the ending boss sucked, AND was easy: You put 4 cards into a machine and blew it up.


#11

Shegokigo

Shegokigo

Depends on the definition. Hard because the end boss is only beatable by pure luck or hard because you have to be a 'twitch' gamer to dodge all incoming attacks?

All the FPS games I've picked up recently have had dissapointing end-game bosses:

Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Heroes of Might and Magic: Dark Messiah, Half Life 2. Though there were fights in each of those games that were usually "optional" but prooved harder than the final "required" boss.

Kind of like the Final Fantasy series and it's "Ultimate Weapons" bosses or Kingdom Hearts and the Sephiroth fights.

I think I prefer that style, it caters to both the "hardcore" and the "casual". Allowing the casual to finish the game while still challenging those looking to duke it out with the gods.


#12



chakz

All the games I've been playing are woefully out of date. So the last boss I beat was from FFX. I'm sorry to admit that these days I'm actually grateful for an easy final boss . Feels like I don't have the time or energy to make a proper job of it anymore.


#13



Mr. Lawface

Math242 said:
we need more bosses like Jon Irenicus (BG2)
Click to expand...
YES!!!


#14

Jay

Jay

Last night I finished Dead Space on Hard (first gameplay) and the final boss was absolutely cinematic and epic. The graphics were literally amazing and it a cool thing but... difficulty was non-existant. Didn't even get HIT once. It was a joke and disappointing (so was the ending).

Fallout 3 ending was non-existant if you has a certain type of character... in reality the ending of the game was a "choice" and didn't require any combat skill in any shape of form.


#15

Shegokigo

Shegokigo

Looking forward to Dead Space soon.

Waiting on getting my PS2 fixed so I can play through Dragon Quest 8, after that on my list is Dead Space.


#16

figmentPez

figmentPez

Shegokigo said:
Half Life 2.
Click to expand...
I was about to ask if you really thought the defense of White Forest was easy... then I realized I was thinking of HL2: Episode 2. You're right, the end of HL2 was oddly easy. I also thought the end of Episode 1 was rather dissapointing.


#17

Jay

Jay

Make sure to play it on hard! It's technicially like "medium" to real games. Once you finish it, you unlock "impossible". which is more challenging (aka, you get like 1/3 ammo so get statis maxed asap and punch THEM NECROMORPHS IN THE FACE). I'm on Chapter 3 on Impossible now. When you suck now, it hurts! :)

We should play system shock2, yo.


#18

Shegokigo

Shegokigo

Episode 2 pt2 was easier if you realize you can "run over" the smaller walkers without much hassle.


#19



Joe Johnson

Sadly, I played H2:E2 on the 360. It was a decent port, but trying to drive that FUCKING car with a 360 controller sucked ass!

I actually enjoyed the end of H2 (the original). I'm REALLY sick of final bosses. I liked that it was more of a puzzley ending. I get that you need some sort of climax (at least according to Maslow :D ), but I'm bored of the whole "fight the impossibly strong, really big dude, who has lots of weapons". Mafia had a final boss, and it just pissed me off - it really didn't fit in with the game at all.


#20





Fable 2 has the lamest final boss ever.
[spoiler:3bdgbipj]I got bored listening to him drone on and so hit the button to shoot him in hopes of starting the final battle. Instead, my 1 shot killed him. Game over. Anticlimactic doesn't even begin to describe it.[/spoiler:3bdgbipj]


#21

MindDetective

MindDetective

General Specific said:
Fable 2 has the lamest final boss ever.
[spoiler:1wckxtx0]I got bored listening to him drone on and so hit the button to shoot him in hopes of starting the final battle. Instead, my 1 shot killed him. Game over. Anticlimactic doesn't even begin to describe it.[/spoiler:1wckxtx0]
Click to expand...
I was going to mention this one too.

Btw, got a Hammer doll? :-p


#22

Gusto

Gusto

General Specific said:
Fable 2 has the lamest final boss ever.
[spoiler:2x6ugum2]I got bored listening to him drone on and so hit the button to shoot him in hopes of starting the final battle. Instead, my 1 shot killed him. Game over. Anticlimactic doesn't even begin to describe it.[/spoiler:2x6ugum2]
Click to expand...
Hahahahah!

"Now what?"


#23





MindDetective said:
General Specific said:
Fable 2 has the lamest final boss ever.
[spoiler:37f1jwpj]I got bored listening to him drone on and so hit the button to shoot him in hopes of starting the final battle. Instead, my 1 shot killed him. Game over. Anticlimactic doesn't even begin to describe it.[/spoiler:37f1jwpj]
Click to expand...
I was going to mention this one too.

Btw, got a Hammer doll? :-p
Click to expand...
No, I never got one. Plus, I got bored with the game and sold it already. I've got Fallout for my wandering around killing stuff needs.


#24

Jay

Jay

General Specific said:
Fable 2 has the lamest final boss ever.
[spoiler:b7qshbx1]I got bored listening to him drone on and so hit the button to shoot him in hopes of starting the final battle. Instead, my 1 shot killed him. Game over. Anticlimactic doesn't even begin to describe it.[/spoiler:b7qshbx1]
Click to expand...
Dude, I totally forgot about this and one of the huge reasons why I was disappointed by Fable 2.

[spoiler:b7qshbx1]Unlike you, I waited for the speech to end, the "rogue" guy shot him instead, 1 hit kill and it was "game over". I DIDN'T EVEN GET TO SHOOT. I was all hyped for a Jack-like battle and then... completely robbed. I was seriously like WTF. Nevermind easy boss battle, some of these games this past year DONT EVEN HAVE A FINAL BOSS.[/spoiler:b7qshbx1]


#25



curbstreet

I remember playing Spider-man 2 when it game out and having a pretty hard time beating Mysterio the first couple of times he shows up. He gave me such a hard time that when I ran into him as he was robbing the convience store my heart dropped. I remember watching his health or power bar charge up several times in a row right before the fight. He starts fire of blasts (if I remember right) and I'm just panicked almost ready to just say screw it just use the game for only swinging around New York. The Web swinging was so awesome. Anyway I go to punch him and I knock him out with one punch. I laughed so hard at that, really made the game and such a funny way to screw with the player, fitting to for Mysterio to be trying to can me too. Man I need to by Web Of Shadows so I can web swing around a current gen New York.


#26

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

I think the only really good finally boss I've seen in awhile was Liquid Ocelot in MGS4: It's an incredible homage to the first MGS game and after all the bullshit Ocelot has put you through (over 4 games no less!) it's really satisfying to finally make him suffer for it. It's also pretty poinent, seeing two men in their 70's (physically at least) begin to slow down and pant, as they give each other wicked haymakers to the face with the last bits of energy they have... finishing a battle that neither of them started. You'd never see that in a Hollywood action movie.


#27

Bowielee

Bowielee

curbstreet said:
I remember playing Spider-man 2 when it game out and having a pretty hard time beating Mysterio the first couple of times he shows up. He gave me such a hard time that when I ran into him as he was robbing the convience store my heart dropped. I remember watching his health or power bar charge up several times in a row right before the fight. He starts fire of blasts (if I remember right) and I'm just panicked almost ready to just say screw it just use the game for only swinging around New York. The Web swinging was so awesome. Anyway I go to punch him and I knock him out with one punch. I laughed so hard at that, really made the game and such a funny way to screw with the player, fitting to for Mysterio to be trying to can me too. Man I need to by Web Of Shadows so I can web swing around a current gen New York.
Click to expand...
Then you, my friend will LOVE Web of Shadows. The webslining is the best part of the game.

Actually, thinking about it makes me want to reinstall the game and take some time swining through new york.


#28

Gusto

Gusto

curbstreet said:
Man I need to by Web Of Shadows so I can web swing around a current gen New York.
Click to expand...
Have you played Prototype? Just getting around is one of my favourite parts of that game.


#29



curbstreet

I have Prototype and I enjoy it but it's almost too mission based for me. It is super fun to explore and walk around and the utter brutality is awesome but it lacks all the side stuff to do that GTA4 has.

I appreciate that Prototype is telling a specfic story and a story that is vastly different from GTA4 or even fallout3. I'm begining to find out that one of the reasons I like sandbox games like GTA4 or Fallout 3 (more rpg then sandbox I know) is because just wandering around aimlessly teaches you about the world that the story is taking place in and for me thats every bit as much fun as doing the main story.

Prototype does not seem to have much in the way to do other then the main story, admittiedly though I have only got to the part where the infection has just started spreading.

Also for anyone that has played the new Ghostbuster game how funny was the stuff that Vigo would say when you clicked on his painting, which is true Ghostbusters style was just leaned up againist a wall in the garage.


#30



JCM

Bethesda seems to have a bad time trying to make great boss fights. Fallout 3, Morrowind, but the worst? Oblivion´s Lord Dagon.

Hey, the main baddie redeems himself, turns into a huge dragon and fights another gigantic monster, while you just watch like an NPC as the villain destorys the main baddie and saves the day.

Only worst RPG endboss was Planetscape:Torment, where you make the boss surrender by choosing the right conversation from the dialogue tree.

:facepalm:


#31

figmentPez

figmentPez

JCM said:
Only worst RPG endboss was Planetscape:Torment, where you make the boss surrender by choosing the right conversation from the dialogue tree.

:facepalm:
Click to expand...
What was wrong with that? I found no problem with the end of PS:T. It wasn't a very combat oriented game anway, though you could fight him if you chose.


#32



Mr. Lawface

figmentPez said:
JCM said:
Only worst RPG endboss was Planetscape:Torment, where you make the boss surrender by choosing the right conversation from the dialogue tree.

:facepalm:
Click to expand...
What was wrong with that? I found no problem with the end of PS:T. It wasn't a very combat oriented game anway, though you could fight him if you chose.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I thought the perfect ending to a game primarily about dialogue was to beat the boss with dialogue.


#33

Cajungal

Cajungal

Morrowind's end boss had the most ridiculous voice. It reminded me of that smartass lion from south park. There was an add-on to make the voice more demonic somewhere, but I never used it.

[spoiler:wf4dg1mi]Whenever he said, "How can you kill a god--" I'd just say "---young lion apprentice???"[/spoiler:wf4dg1mi]


#34

Allen who is Quiet

Allen, who is Quiet

I think how hard the final boss is depends on


#35

Simfers

Simfers

Personally, I don't think anything will ever beat Safer Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. Three discs and hours upon hours of build-up and he goes down in a single round without even firing off a single attack. I was underwhelmed, to say the least.


#36

CynicismKills

CynicismKills

Simfers said:
Personally, I don't think anything will ever beat Safer Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. Three discs and hours upon hours of build-up and he goes down in a single round without even firing off a single attack. I was underwhelmed, to say the least.
Click to expand...
I was always a little sad about Kefka, myself. If you taught even the worst magic-users Ultima, it was like two rounds of that and he was toast.


#37

figmentPez

figmentPez

CynicismKills said:
I was always a little sad about Kefka, myself. If you taught even the worst magic-users Ultima, it was like two rounds of that and he was toast.
Click to expand...
Or you could equip fire shields, cast merton and heal yourself at the same time you attack.


#38

CynicismKills

CynicismKills

figmentPez said:
CynicismKills said:
I was always a little sad about Kefka, myself. If you taught even the worst magic-users Ultima, it was like two rounds of that and he was toast.
Click to expand...
Or you could equip fire shields, cast merton and heal yourself at the same time you attack.
Click to expand...
Yeah, or even the Ghost Train, wasn't a final boss but a Fenix Down to the face and he was done.

OH

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. You could kill the final dude with a Cure.


#39

Bubble181

Bubble181

King's Bounty: the Legend, as far as new games go. You have a (mostly optional) quest to face 7 partial clones of the bad guy before taking him down (this doesn't make him any weaker, it's just some cool battles :p). Those are all relatively hard. The actual final battle, though, you can win in 1 round, without the enemy ever even getting off a spell or an attack, on easy or medium. Even on impossible, it's a much, much easier battle than most of what you've encountered before.

Also, vanilla Diablo II and Titan Quest. Both had ridiculously easy end bosses. In up to date patched versions, I think the end bosses are about a dozen times stronger - literally. Heck, the optional end bosses in DII nowadays would kill the original Diablo from DII in one hit.


#40



JONJONAUG

CynicismKills said:
Simfers said:
Personally, I don't think anything will ever beat Safer Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. Three discs and hours upon hours of build-up and he goes down in a single round without even firing off a single attack. I was underwhelmed, to say the least.
Click to expand...
I was always a little sad about Kefka, myself. If you taught even the worst magic-users Ultima, it was like two rounds of that and he was toast.
Click to expand...
I went into that fight with both the Doublecast relic and the "all spells for 1 MP" relic, so every round was "Quick-Ultima-Ultima-Ultima-Ultima". Kefka didn't last very long.

Anyway, I've found that while the Shin Megami Tensei franchise tends to be very difficult in general, the final boss fights are usually pretty easy. Katsuguchi in Nocturne was incredibly easy, Lucifer in the same game was easy although long (what with having the max possible HP and everything), DDS2's final boss was so easy as to be an anti-climax after everything you've gone through over the course of the two games, and Persona 3 gives you an easy way to get to level 90 and above in under 20 minutes while the final boss is vulnerable to the 9999 damage attack you can get at level 88 (while the boss only has 4500 or so HP in its final form). In SMT2 the final boss (YHVH) was significantly easier than the boss before him (Satan, who's fight mostly consisted of "Satan pointed at (name)! (Name) has died!").

Devil Survivor had a somewhat harder time than usual though, considering that you [spoiler:21yq2woa]fight what appears to be the final boss, then you fight all the Bel demons again in order, then you fight the true final boss. All of this happens without any recovery in between, so the fight becomes "hope you brought Divine demons with you for MP recovery"[/spoiler:21yq2woa]


#41

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Perhaps, but Persona 3's boss could confuse you in it's final form. It did this to me and one of my team restored it's HP to full, just as I ran out of Soma. I was not pleased.


#42

R

Rawling

JCM said:
And it reminded me of the disappointing ping-pong at the end of Twilight Princess.
Click to expand...
What did you find disappointing about it? Quite a few of the Zelda games have ping-pong of some form in the last boss, or some late enemies.

I was pretty disappointed by the end of Bioshock; after the atmosphere of the game I thought a generic superpowered crazed maniac-type boss was a bit... well, generic.


#43

Frank

Frankie Williamson

JCM said:
Bethesda seems to have a bad time trying to make great boss fights. Fallout 3, Morrowind, but the worst? Oblivion´s Lord Dagon.

Hey, the main baddie redeems himself, turns into a huge dragon and fights another gigantic monster, while you just watch like an NPC as the villain destorys the main baddie and saves the day.

Only worst RPG endboss was Planetscape:Torment, where you make the boss surrender by choosing the right conversation from the dialogue tree.

:facepalm:
Click to expand...
Was Oblivion a different game in Brazil? Sean Bean's character Martin wasn't the main villain at all.

Also, Planescape: Torment's ending could have gone a dozen different ways depending on who you bring and what you say. Another reason Torment is one of the best games of all time.


#44

Shawn

Shawn

I think a decent end boss is one that happens in stages. Kinda like a Dr. Wiley boss fight where you have to defeat him 3+ times, with a different strategy on each, til you get him out of his robot.

...then sometimes he turns into an FUCK-A-YOU alien that requires the Bubble Lead to beat. God help you if you didn't save your Bubble Lead.


#45

Draxo

Draxo

These kids who are spoiled with easy games and bosses need a dosage of Ninja Gaiden.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jluv2HxFEqs:1ouij0wh][/youtube:1ouij0wh]

I get the feeling that some easy bosses are just due to bad game design.

That being said, there is such a thing as -too hard-.


#46



Pojodan

Wrost end boss ever?


Super Mario Brothers.

One jump. ONE JUMP! And you win.

What a robbery.


#47

Kovac

Kovac

SeriousJay said:
We should play system shock2, yo.
Click to expand...
Shodan a little on the easy side :\


#48

Jay

Jay

Yes, she was but at least it required some level of talent and the fight was more difficult depending on the build you created for your character, on a custom impossible mode she was quite the challenge. :)


#49



Aisaku

JONJONAUG said:
[
Devil Survivor had a somewhat harder time than usual though, considering that you [spoiler:1wgy9qgf]fight what appears to be the final boss, then you fight all the Bel demons again in order, then you fight the true final boss. All of this happens without any recovery in between, so the fight becomes "hope you brought Divine demons with you for MP recovery"[/spoiler:1wgy9qgf]
Click to expand...
From what I've experienced with Devil Survivor, that game expects you to fail the first few times until you figure out the right strategy to beat a boss.


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