Why are there no more epic boss battles?

[Brendan Stepladder]

I am confused where is this lack of awesome boss battles comeing form? Off the top of my head Satan( Resistance 3) The beast (Infamous 2) Wheatley (portal 2) Dr. Nefarious (Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time). I fail to see how any of these are worse then Bowser form the N64 or before. What am I missing?

Since when was Bowser a good boss fight? It was tedious, and the camera combined with the poor grabbing controls made it a pain in the ass.

Ok that wasn't really the point it's just that's a boss battle I think everyone has done.

I think a better example would be something from Ocarina of Time, then. Still, points for effort.

 

[notyouraveragejoe]

Vanquish pulled some good ones

Yeah, very good ones considering it was a third person shooter.

Twisted Metal (new one) I felt had some epic boss fights with brilliant design. Similarly, the boss fights in Batman: Arkham City could be really good (my favourite is the Freeze one as it requires tactical planning and use of almost all moves).

Rayman Origins while still doing the "weak point" thing was an intelligent one I felt with the bosses all looking cool. Finally, Demon's Souls had great boss fights but as mentioned before (like Dark Souls) lacked the context to make them amazing.

Still...with my Nostalgia Glasses I miss the boss fights that were in Skies of Arcadia. THOSE were amazing!

 

[Casual Shinji]

How has no-one mentioned God Of War 3 yet? I'm pretty sure Kronos is on record as the biggest boss ever included in a videogame. He stands a genuine mile high, you traverse his entire body as if its one ginormous level, and absolutely brutalize him in a thousand different ways.


Fuck, every boss in GOW 3 was pretty damn spectacular. It says a lot when one of the least exciting bosses in a game is a 50 foot scorpion you fight in the middle of a mountain.

Yeah, but then Kronos was pretty easily dispatched which feels a bit undeserving to his character seeing as you spend a good 1/3 of the first game running around on top of him.

For me GoW3 handled its boss battles rather poorly. You start the game fighting the fucking God of the Sea who himself is fighting a Titan, and you end the game with the weakest boss battle; the fight with Zeus. That's not a good way to pace your game. The battle with Hades and Hercules were badass though.

 

[Roofstone]

Lollipop Chainsaw's bosses are pretty epic, all things considered. They quite remind me of the old arcade game bosses, with different phases and attacks that needs dodging.

 

[TimeLord]

Devil May Cry 4 had you fight against a reanimated statue the size of a skyscraper that flew in the air while trying to perform karate and shoot magic and energy beams at you.

I love the Devil May Cry games.

 

[orangeapples]

Nowadays it's just pew pew, kill everyone, pew pew, strong monster, hit weak spot, pew pew, dodge attack, hit weak spot, pew pew.

I didn't read the rest of the topic, but a lot of the old games were a very similar thing. Lots of boss battles involved finding the vulnerable spot and attacking it while dodging attacks. Now the weak spots are glowing and we have lock on, but the concept is still the same.

Really, you just summed up a huge chunk of classic video games...

 

[OniaPL]

Lost Planet 2 was fun, but aside from the massive monster in the image the fights didn't qualify as "epic".
And the train scene was just frustrating.

Vanquish had great boss battles, especially in the challenges. I wish more shooters would take a more "fun" route of shooting like Vanquish did.

Yes, while videogames become more serious boss battles become less easy to justify. But why can't games offer both experiences? I sometimes want to shoot headshots with realistic weapons, and sometimes I want a giant-ass sword I can shove into a monster.

Yes, a lot of bosses in the history of video games are about hitting a weak spot, but that's just shitty. It's lazy design that makes for a boring experience.

I also find that I yearn for more optional, really difficult boss battles. For example, in FFX when I for the first time ran into a Dark Aeon, i was both extremely excited and shitting my pants. While the design wasn't the best in those fights, I miss stuff like that; tests of skill, that not everyone can complete. Tests of skill that reward you.

Vanquish challenges, they were exciting, for example.

 

[Shuguard]

I strongly recommend looking into the monster hunter series if you want epic boss battles. Specifically monster hunters unite or (if you can get your hands on it) monster hunter portable 3rd. Boss battles can go from 10 mins to a full 45 mins of constant battle.

The reason i recommend these two over others in the series is that you won't need a new system (if you own a PSP) and there's a lot more content in them.

 

[Snotnarok]

Most bosses today are giant monsters that are beyond a railway that you have to shoot at from a distance.

God of War has ALWAYS had great boss battles. Darksiders had some pretty amazingly fun battles too.

 

[Nathan Josephs]

you should play some peace walker online with the optional battles. that stuff is made of legend.

 

[RJ 17]

Guess I'll just boot up the emulator, pick up the controller and replay Final Fantasy IX or something.

First of all, FF9 fucking sucked.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd argue that it depends on 1: your definition of "epic" and 2: what games you play.

Not that anyone was paying attention by the end of the game, but the boss battle against Knight Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II was pretty epic. The boss battle against Alduin in Skyrim was pretty epic. Hell, even the last stand at the missle tanks in Mass Effect 3 was pretty epic (as it stands in place of a boss battle).

 

[RavingLibDem]

I figure some old games had good epic boss battles, but it is important to keep a balance in every boss fight between epicness, difficulty and relevance; and what I think is good that not all games now believe that they need a boss fight all the time, or even to end a game. It makes it all the more satisfying when you find a good game, with a good boss fight, that actually fits

 

[ZigTheHunter]

Look no further then Xenoblade Chronicles, that game has some of the best boss battles in any game I have ever played; from the incredibly music, to the character interactions, make the boss fights the true highlights of the game. there's plenty of build-up, foreshadowing, and story importance to nearly all of them. You will want to kill this boss, you want to make them pay, you want to see the character succeed, you want to know how things turn out. While not very hard these fights are still intense, they will get you pumped, and if your not overleveled then these fights can go sour in an instant, so you will need to make decisions fast. Each one is different requiring different strategies, you can't just go crazy on them and hope to win.

Also Kid Icarus: Uprising that game as well has great music and the character interactions during it are great, but while there is a great variance in difficulty levels, the bosses always seem to die faster then you would expect, only on the highest difficulties will they really last a good while, but the trouble is getting there without dying, since each time you die the difficulty level is lowered.

 

[ZigTheHunter]

Guess I'll just boot up the emulator, pick up the controller and replay Final Fantasy IX or something.

First of all, FF9 fucking sucked.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd argue that it depends on 1: your definition of "epic" and 2: what games you play.

Not that anyone was paying attention by the end of the game, but the boss battle against Knight Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II was pretty epic. The boss battle against Alduin in Skyrim was pretty epic. Hell, even the last stand at the missle tanks in Mass Effect 3 was pretty epic (as it stands in place of a boss battle).

That's just your opinion, FF9 is an amazing games, one of the best in the series, plus the creator of the series says that it his favorite and says its the closet to what he envisioned Final Fantasy to be, if you dislike it, then you kind of dislike what Final Fantasy stands for.

 

[Casual Shinji]

How has no-one mentioned God Of War 3 yet? I'm pretty sure Kronos is on record as the biggest boss ever included in a videogame. He stands a genuine mile high, you traverse his entire body as if its one ginormous level, and absolutely brutalize him in a thousand different ways.


Fuck, every boss in GOW 3 was pretty damn spectacular. It says a lot when one of the least exciting bosses in a game is a 50 foot scorpion you fight in the middle of a mountain.

Yeah, but then Kronos was pretty easily dispatched which feels a bit undeserving to his character seeing as you spend a good 1/3 of the first game running around on top of him.

For me GoW3 handled its boss battles rather poorly. You start the game fighting the fucking God of the Sea who himself is fighting a Titan, and you end the game with the weakest boss battle; the fight with Zeus. That's not a good way to pace your game. The battle with Hades and Hercules were badass though.

Personally, I really enjoyed the last fight with Zeus. He wasn't as huge or as over-the-top as the likes of Kronos, but it was a pretty lengthy battle staged out over three or four different arenas, and you could tell the developers were thinking outside the box for the whole thing. I mean, the fight starts off as a pretty awesome emulation of 2D fighters like Street Fighter, then somehow by the end morphs into a first-person hack and slash fight, where you get to beat the crap out of Zeus while viewing from behind Kratos' own eyes.

Personally, I wasn't disappointed. The fight with Zeus didn't need to have the bombast of the fight with Hades or Poseidon, it was much more up close and personal. Hammering circle to bludgeon Zeus' head into a messy pulp provided all the catharsis I was looking for.

It was ultimately just a retread of the Zeus fight in GoW2 though, which was all around a better battle in my opinion. That 2D section was very cool, but after that it just becomes a rather standard affair. And this was supposed to be the fight to end the series. The fight was actually going to include Gaia in a sort of three way battle, but due to budget restraints it got cut.

 

[RJ 17]

Guess I'll just boot up the emulator, pick up the controller and replay Final Fantasy IX or something.

First of all, FF9 fucking sucked.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd argue that it depends on 1: your definition of "epic" and 2: what games you play.

Not that anyone was paying attention by the end of the game, but the boss battle against Knight Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II was pretty epic. The boss battle against Alduin in Skyrim was pretty epic. Hell, even the last stand at the missle tanks in Mass Effect 3 was pretty epic (as it stands in place of a boss battle).

That's just your opinion, FF9 is an amazing games, one of the best in the series, plus the creator of the series says that it his favorite and says its the closet to what he envisioned Final Fantasy to be, if you dislike it, then you kind of dislike what Final Fantasy stands for.

Well that's the great thing about opinions, they're just like assholes: everyone's got one. I'm entitled to my opinion that FF9 is a childish mockery of the classic Final Fantasy games and so boring that it can't be played beyond the first disc. Just as you and (apparently) the creator believe it's the best of the bunch. If you ask me, the last genuinely good FF was Tactics for the original Playstation. FF8 was the start of the downhill slide which has brought us to the abomination known as FFXIII.

 

[Cheesepower5]

Suda 51 makes the craziest, most awesome and badass bosses of any modern game visionary. Not since the first 3 Metal Gear Solids were the bosses this varied and personified. No More Heroes has a Pokemon-esque library of ridiculously cool bosses and the fights in Shadows of the Damned are big and epic, and each boss gets a funny story-book introduction. The best is stinky crow... "I bet you do more fapping than flapping."

 

[OniaPL]

Lost Planet 2 was fun, but aside from the massive monster in the image the fights didn't qualify as "epic".
And the train scene was just frustrating.

Vanquish had great boss battles, especially in the challenges. I wish more shooters would take a more "fun" route of shooting like Vanquish did.

Yes, while videogames become more serious boss battles become less easy to justify. But why can't games offer both experiences? I sometimes want to shoot headshots with realistic weapons, and sometimes I want a giant-ass sword I can shove into a monster.

Yes, a lot of bosses in the history of video games are about hitting a weak spot, but that's just shitty. It's lazy design that makes for a boring experience.

I also find that I yearn for more optional, really difficult boss battles. For example, in FFX when I for the first time ran into a Dark Aeon, i was both extremely excited and shitting my pants. While the design wasn't the best in those fights, I miss stuff like that; tests of skill, that not everyone can complete. Tests of skill that reward you.

Vanquish challenges, they were exciting, for example.

Half the time, those bosses weren't of skill, but of how long you grinded.

Well, yes, that's why I said that the design of those fights sucked. But the way they were set up and presented to me made me excited.

 

[OniaPL]

Guess I'll just boot up the emulator, pick up the controller and replay Final Fantasy IX or something.

First of all, FF9 fucking sucked.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd argue that it depends on 1: your definition of "epic" and 2: what games you play.

Not that anyone was paying attention by the end of the game, but the boss battle against Knight Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II was pretty epic. The boss battle against Alduin in Skyrim was pretty epic. Hell, even the last stand at the missle tanks in Mass Effect 3 was pretty epic (as it stands in place of a boss battle).

DA2 fucking sucked, and so did Meredith. That fight was shit, that story was shit, and the whole character was 60% shit.
Alduin sucked. It was yet another fucking dragon.
And the last stand sucked. Run to cover, blast blast blast, run to another cover, blast blast blast. Nothing that broke the monotone of blasting the same dudes. Don't get me wrong, I thought the combat was fine, but if it wasn't for the story, wouldn't play the game.

 

[RJ 17]

Guess I'll just boot up the emulator, pick up the controller and replay Final Fantasy IX or something.

First of all, FF9 fucking sucked.

Now that that's out of the way, I'd argue that it depends on 1: your definition of "epic" and 2: what games you play.

Not that anyone was paying attention by the end of the game, but the boss battle against Knight Commander Meredith in Dragon Age II was pretty epic. The boss battle against Alduin in Skyrim was pretty epic. Hell, even the last stand at the missle tanks in Mass Effect 3 was pretty epic (as it stands in place of a boss battle).

DA2 fucking sucked, and so did Meredith. That fight was shit, that story was shit, and the whole character was 60% shit.
Alduin sucked. It was yet another fucking dragon.
And the last stand sucked. Run to cover, blast blast blast, run to another cover, blast blast blast. Nothing that broke the monotone of blasting the same dudes. Don't get me wrong, I thought the combat was fine, but if it wasn't for the story, wouldn't play the game.

As I said, it primarily depends on what your definition of "epic" is. Clearly we've two different opinions on the matter.

I'd consider the Meredith fight to be "epic" because of giant statues walking around and a whole host of NPCs joining in the fight.

I'd consider the last stand in ME 3 to be "epic" because of the context of the situation combined with everything that's going on. Banshees, Marauders, Brutes, and the entire time a Reaper Destroyer is shooting at you as your running around, trying to stay alive.

I'll agree that the Alduin fight wasn't fantastic, just another dragon fight. However when put into the context that you're in the Land of the Dead fighting alongside the spirits of ancient Nordic heroes to take down a dragon said to be the bringer of the end of the world.....yeah, I'd consider that a pretty epic battle as well.