Deus Ex: HR... boss battles... why all the hate?

[Rad Party God]

Even if you took the time to take the boss down non-lethally (like I did, stunning the crap outta Barrett on the hardest difficulty during my first playthrough), you're still treated to a cutscene in which the boss is brutally killed.

Pretty much exactly like with Metal Gear Solid 2, there was the option to take down most bosses non-lethaly (good luck with Vamp), but even if you did, you were still "rewarded" by a cutscene where they brutally die.

Yes, they were annoying in DX:HR, but not a complete deal breaker like some make them seem to be.

 

[sethisjimmy]

How does the fact that a lot of other games have bad boss battles excuse Deus Ex's boss battles from criticism? Even the developers admit the bosses were terrible and out of place.

Also I hate how people always suggest using the Typhoon like it was the greatest thing. No. Praxis kits are rare, and the Typhoon serves literally zero purpose outside of boss battles, I don't want to waste 2-3 valuable Praxis on that.

Great game otherwise, but there's no need to make excuses for what is a blatant flaw.

 

[Windcaler]

Now I've played and beaten the game, and I did it on the hardest difficulty setting, so I experienced the worse that game would have had to offer when it came time for the boss fights. So, I'm curious.

I mean, they were a bit annoying: the fact that the fights really took me out of the rest of the game since I was going for a pure stealth game with no kills. But considering all the hate that I'm still seeing now and then. Can someone tell me how they set the game apart for hundreds of other games where I've seen bad boss fights.

And honestly, compared to other games I didn't even think they were that bad.

Also, it's been a while since I played so maybe I forgotten a bit.

The problem IMO was that the bosses were only combat focused. If your Jensen was a stealthy guy, or a hacking expert, you couldnt make use of those skills. That first boss fight for example, he knows where you are the whole time so stealthing around and sabotaging something to injure him wont work. Neither are there turrets or robots you can hack to fight the guy for you if youre a hacking character.

The only way you can fight the bosses is by guns blazing when the rest of the game says build your character how you like. Thats the problem IMO, bosses could have been designed to fight with all playstyles but they werent. This translates into bad boss design

 

[ultrachicken]

All the bosses are very beatable if you just make sure to keep and upgrade a pistol of some kind specifically for them, but the fact is they're not very fun to fight, remove the aspect of choice, and completely screw over stealth folks who didn't prepare properly. At least Barrett can be defeated without using any weapons (exploding barrels everywhere).

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

I'm basically repeating what everyone else has said.
For a game which is meant to be about utilising your own method to progress through the game, the boss fights lock you into a situation with only one possible method: Guns Blazing. The problem is that the game caters to a lot of different playstyles, most notably stealth, which has you avoiding combat (or sneakily picking off enemies one by one) and you'll be upgrading your skills accordingly. With the boss fights you have to dramatically change your playstyle to fight one specific enemy and even worse, you can't really go back through the levels once you're in vicinity of the boss room so chances are, depending on your playstyle, you're also going to be ill-equipped to deal with the truckloads of health that the bosses have.

 

[Theminimanx]

Apparently Deus Ex 1 had some really great boss fights so to have them be so bad in HR made people nostalgiacry or something.

Hit the nail on the head.

Every single boss in the original Deus Ex offered multiple approaches. Like Genocidicles mentioned it was entirely possible to take out the first two without even firing a shot, and the third one you can literally just avoid.

On top of that, there's the issue of lethal vs. non-lethal. The original Deus Ex allowed you to get through the entire game without killing a single person. Yes, even the one who blocks the locked door during your escape can be bypassed non-lethally. Deus Ex: Human Revolution appeared to give you the same freedom... until the boss fights. Even if you took the time to take the boss down non-lethally (like I did, stunning the crap outta Barrett on the hardest difficulty during my first playthrough), you're still treated to a cutscene in which the boss is brutally killed.

Okay, I'm really curious, what are these multiple approaches you speak of? Because aside from the killcodes, I don't think there were any. And don't tell me about skipping them, because that's not the way the developers intended you to play. Bypassing the third boss is an exploit, not an intended option. If I remember correctly, the devs were actually surprised about someone being able to beat the game without killing anyone.

The fights themselves were also not that great either. Sure, Gunther Herrman was a really interesting character, but from a gameplay perspective, it was just a fight against the same AI you'd been facing throughout the entire game, only this one had a bit more health. I'd even say that more thought was put into the HR fights than the ones in the original.

 

[Yopaz]

Well, I was one of those who did stealth and hacking. It was nightmarish. I beat some of the bosses by pure luck others after slowly planning my strategy and failing that a lot having to retry.

Now I don't have an intense hatred for them, but the boss fights weren't good. Just a minor disadvantage from an otherwise great game though.

 

[Reaper195]

The problems I had with the bosses was that there was no other way to kill them aside from shooting them with bullets. And when I've got no guns because fuck guns....I have to restart from a muuuuch earlier save. I carried around an assault rifle with a tonne of ammo and upgrades just for bosses. I also didn't like how little the game was focused on action. It was waaay to easy to get raped by gunfire, and when you have a boss walking right at you firing a SAW...I died so many times against Barret, I nearly gave up on the game. Although I felt like he was definitely the hardest.

 

[The White Hunter]

I focused on stealth and hacking. Here was my boss battle.

FUCK FUCK FUCK....I don't have anything but a pistol....
Oh sweet, a room full of weapons! That's convenient! My character is terrible with them...
BANG BANG BANG...reload...BANG BANG BANG....reload...fuck, I died
Let's try that again...
BANG BANG BANG...hide reload...BANG BANG BANG....hide reload....BANG BANG BANG....fuck, I died
Sigh...again
BANG BANG BANG...hide and reload...BANG BANG BANG....hide reload....BANG BANG BANG....hide and reload....fuck, I'm out of bullets...why won't this fucker just die!...oh right, it's because I'm terrible with everything the game has given me...fuck, I died
This is getting pretty God damn annoying
BANG BANG BANG...hide and reload...BANG BANG BANG....hide and reload....BANG BANG BANG....hide and reload....fuck, I'm out of bullets...run to the room where I found all the guns for more bullets....BANG BANG BANG...hide and reload...BANG BANG bout fucking time he died!

Finally, the boss is dead. I can go back to pretending that I'm playing Splinter Cell! Let's go Solid Snake! Use your blackjack to knockout the guards!

This.

Especially that ***** who electrocuted the floor, I invested NOTHING in being electricity proof damn it because whenever i needed to cross electirified floors I made a path of crates like any sane person wo'd rather have upgraded his giant robot hacking skill!

 

[Terragent]

I'm, uh, not entirely sure how Anna Navarre counts as the "third boss" in DX1; that would be Walton Simons, inasmuch as anybody in DX1 qualifies as a "Boss Fight".

The fight with Anna in UNATCO can only really have one outcome, but you're given plenty of options to tangle with her in different ways prior to that - you can ambush her in the 747 (place LAMs correctly and she's vapourised in the middle of your conversation with Lebedev!), and if you choose to fight her in Battery Park then you have plenty of options for hit-and-fade attacks or bypassing her and trying to sneak out through the ventilation shafts.

Gunther can only really be defeated by shooting him until he retreats or dies, but you can just turn invisible and hack the computer without him being any the wiser.

Walton Simons provides you all sorts of ways to deal with him in the Ocean Lab; you can set environmental traps for him (electrified rails, explosive/toxic barrels, luring him near the transgenic creatures), and you have many ways of fighting him in a stealthy manner (or once again, bypassing him) - some enterprising players have even managed to get him to drown himself while pursuing them! The final confrontation with Simons at Area 51 is a lot more straightforward, but you do have the amusing option of using Aggressive Defence System to get him to blow himself up with his own hand grenades.

The bigger issue, though, is that, barring Anna Navarre, none of the DX1 fights were really meant to be classical boss fights where you're locked in a room with them and their death is the only way to progress. They were hostile encounters with enemies who happened to be particularly dangerous, and much like the rest of the game, you were given a wide range of options to defeat, bypass, or simply ignore them. They certainly didn't get bullshit magic invulnerability to half of your most effective attacks - if you wanted to ignominiously blast Anna out of existence with a single GEP rocket, then that's what happened - she'd get blown up and die instantly, much as you'd expect anybody who's just been hit with a high-explosive rocket would. Barrett, by contrast, just stands there as if nothing has happened to him and keeps on shouting his stupid taunts. He might as well have been given a big glowing health bar.

 

[WanderingFool]

Because Deus Ex is a series about choices. The boss battles took that away completely

This is the same problem with Alpha Protocol. You could go through the levels anyway you wanted, but with the bossfights, you always Had to fight them. Theres no talking them down, you taking them out stealthily, but just a straight forward dakka bossfight. Despite loving AP (and DEHR), these are faults that I stand.

 

[J Tyran]

The other aspect that annoyed me besides the limited way of dealing with them was how much it ripped out of the bosses backstory. The Tyrants had a pretty detailed character development but none of that made it into the game, Namir for instance just comes across as a wise cracking smart arse but he has a real belief in his cause. Same for Barrett, the bad boy tough guy act is actually a front he presents to fool people into underestimating him. He is actually pretty smart and dangerous but in the game he is played as he seems.

 

[sunsetspawn]

At least the third boss was freakin awesome. The first two were basically terrible all around, but the third guy I actually really liked. It had a cool gimmick, and actually involved stealth.

On that fight I had been carrying a hacked turret around with me. When I stumbled into the boss room hilarity ensued.

I can understand people's issues with the boss fights, but it wasn't that big a deal. I think the bigger deal is that you didn't actually have to specialize. By the end of that game I was maxed out with praxis to spare. Certain skills should've locked out other skills like 1 & 2.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I mean, they were a bit annoying: the fact that the fights really took me out of the rest of the game since I was going for a pure stealth game with no kills.

That.

Often, while playing, I would sneak in via the roof or something and skip most of the enemies. I'd be sneaking and invisible, crawling through ducts, utterly undetected.

And then, at the boss fight, Adam would un-stealth and walk into the center of the room and gawk like a tourist. It was out of character for one thing. For another thing, it meant that I had to carry a bunch of inventory-filling heavy weapons to deal with bosses. I carried a Rocket Launcher the ENTIRE GAME just for bosses.

 

[J Tyran]

For another thing, it meant that I had to carry a bunch of inventory-filling heavy weapons to deal with bosses. I carried a Rocket Launcher the ENTIRE GAME just for bosses.

No need for that, you can fling barrels and things at Barrett. Then let Federova kill herself by letting her Claymore the servers and electrocute herself and then finally you can one hit melee kill Namir as he leaps over the low walls.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

For another thing, it meant that I had to carry a bunch of inventory-filling heavy weapons to deal with bosses. I carried a Rocket Launcher the ENTIRE GAME just for bosses.

No need for that, you can fling barrels and things at Barrett. Then let Federova kill herself by letting her Claymore the servers and electrocute herself and then finally you can one hit melee kill Namir as he leaps over the low walls.

Wow. That is... bizarrely specific. And relies on the ability to fling things with deadly force early in the game (or are barrels default? I never really used the 'throw stuff' attack method as, the few times I tried it, I always missed and then got peppered with gun-fire).

So, did you get these boss strategies from the internet or something? Cause I played the boss fights blind and for the most part the best method was Rocket, Grenade (stun or EMP), Rocket, Grenade, Rocket, Grenade, Rocket - and if the boss wasn't dead yet, I either dropped down to a shotgun or pistol or died and tried again.

The exception was Federova because she was too fast for rockets. For it her was grenades and the shotgun.

 

[thejackyl]

You have to remember: it's a prequel to Deus Ex, people had high expectations for it.

And I can see why. I played Deus Ex back in 2004, and bought HR when it came out. After I beat HR I replayed the original and while the combat was dated (Obviously, time has not been kind in that regard, also graphics and voice acting), I enjoyed how every path was viable in one way or another (except swimming).

Spoilers:

Anna: You could kill her before she is even a boss, with a well placed mine. Or fight her later like normal
Gunther: You can figure out his kill-phrase, or fight him head on.
Walter Simons: You could fight him or run away (and fight him again later.)
Last Boss, whose name escapes me: You had 3 ways to kill him depending on which ending you wanted.

As for HR:

First guy: Grenades and Gun, or gas/stun tanks, or typhoon (All direct kills)
Second Boss: Gun, EMP grenades, or typhoon
Third Boss: Stealth takedown (glitch, I'm assuming), Typhoon, Gun, or Death by Turret/Printer (All direct kills)
At least the last boss you could beat several ways, though in the end you still had to shoot her until she dies.

 

[J Tyran]

For another thing, it meant that I had to carry a bunch of inventory-filling heavy weapons to deal with bosses. I carried a Rocket Launcher the ENTIRE GAME just for bosses.

No need for that, you can fling barrels and things at Barrett. Then let Federova kill herself by letting her Claymore the servers and electrocute herself and then finally you can one hit melee kill Namir as he leaps over the low walls.

Wow. That is... bizarrely specific. And relies on the ability to fling things with deadly force early in the game (or are barrels default? I never really used the 'throw stuff' attack method as, the few times I tried it, I always missed and then got peppered with gun-fire).

So, did you get these boss strategies from the internet or something? Cause I played the boss fights blind and for the most part the best method was Rocket, Grenade (stun or EMP), Rocket, Grenade, Rocket, Grenade, Rocket - and if the boss wasn't dead yet, I either dropped down to a shotgun or pistol or died and tried again.

The exception was Federova because she was too fast for rockets. For it her was grenades and the shotgun.

It is kinda specific and not really obvious in some cases, like with Namir people would usually avoid trying to melee a boss by that point. It is certainly not ideal either, just trying to suggest some alternatives so if you play through again you dont need to carry a heavy weapon for the bosses.

You can fling barrels and things as default though, you can even kill them with stun guns but in my experience its hard to collect enough to ammo to do that.