/v/ - Video Games

undertale

I feel Grigori is right up there for best overall boss, the way it flows and what you do during it. Mechanically its nothing special but its a really fun fight that feels right.

Vergil has to be the best one though right? The way he mixes in with Dante (and the players) journey, his evolution from basic Yamato, to Beowulf+Yamato+DT to finally the big finale with Super Yamato+Super Devil Trigger. He is a rival fight and everyone loves rival fights, he evolves alongside you and he tests you hard.

>>15996944

Vergil from DMC3 is great. All the bosses in most Metal Gear games are great, even the highly repetitive ones like those found in Peace Walker. Fuck you, Dark Souls has great bosses, and Bloodborne, although I think some of the bosses in Bloodborne are a little too aggressive. Resident Evil 4/5 have some good bosses; I'd mention the earlier games, but most of the time the player is encouraged to run away from foes, so they're not exactly built with boss battles in mind. Final Fantasy games have some good bosses, they're creative and they make you work out a strategy or solution to a problem in order to prevail.

>>15997169

While they improved the mechanics going on from Demon's Souls, they left behind the boss variety. Also, Lady Astraea is the best OST and one of the best moments in the series.

Doing the Jetstream Sam DLC in MGS Revengeance damageless on the highest difficulty was pretty hard, not sure if it counts though.

Now I think about it, theres not really a boss I can think of that is super difficult no matter what, as long as you learn how to fight a boss its easy

>shmup

>giant space/airship

>locational damage

>starts becoming more and more tattered during the fight, eventually catching fire

>explodes into a fireball that takes up the entire screen

>too gimmicky, don't really test your skills, or rely on cheap tactics to give the illusion of difficulty

You mean every single boss battle ever? Boss battles are always shit. Always. They are just a 'OH LOOK ITS SO HARD 10000000 HP OH YOU KILLED THAT GUESS WHAT THAT ISNT EVEN MY FINAL FORM NOW KILL ANOTHER 10000000 HP ISNT THAT FUN' or 'OH LOOK YOU CANT KILL ME YOU MUST DESTROY THESE OTHER 5 THINGS FIRST THEN MAYBE YOU CAN HURT ME' 5 times over.

The best boss fights are when you just kill them like any other enemy.

Don't even respond to it.

>>15997114

Grigori is good, though I'd say Awakened Daimon is more of a true boss in the sense of having to plan before the fight, prepare the right pawn combinations, items, etc.. You can kill Grigori easily as long as you know how to dodge his most powerful attacks, whereas the only way to easily kill Awakened Daimon is via exploits which take time to master.

>>15997253

>>15997255

Sure it's half-bait but besides Psycho Mantis I don't know any boss battles any different, I guess I haven't really played many games with bosses, is it a console thing? Anyway, what are some good ones?

>>15997278

As I stated above, try giving Demon's Souls a try. I don't know the current state of emulation, but last I heard Demon's Souls works almost completely fine with only a few frame drops in a couple places they show up on hardware as well but they don't affect anything major.

I'm gonna have to say Galbalan from Ys: The Oath in Felghana is pretty damn good. You use every single ability from a basic attack to every single kind of magic ability you accumulated in the game to knock that beast down and while it's very possible to win without a single scratch a moment of complacency will end you. It does have a glowing weak spot but that's mostly just the first phase and the music does help make up for it.

Alternatively there's Vergil from Devil May Cry 3 which was already mentioned.

>>15997346

Damn, I recently replayed Ys and even though I was playing the PSP version which is easier (having beaten inferno on the pc before), he still gave me a lot of trouble. And it's really satisfying when you finally beat him, I can't get enough of that game.

Daaka from Prince of Persia 2.

>The real boss is a kinda secret boss

>It takes a beating like a true legendary enemy

>one mistake and he makes you a new hole

Plus the stakes are really hyped up, plus you are fighting for that sweet witch pussy.

Overall, a good fight. Not the best, but pretty butt clenching.

As much as I dislike the game I find myself really enjoying the final boss of Ys Seven and replaying the game solely to replay that boss. It's a four stage boss where you fight it using all seven characters and it feels like a very epic(in the correct sense of the word) fight that also requires some good item management and variety in character use. And the music is pretty good since it blends a lot of music queues from the rest of the game, and I think I hear a bit of Strongest Foe from Felghana too.

>>16006894

>Daaka

Dahaka you zoggin git.

>>15997346

I have an intense dislike of any boss that has volleying as a key mechanic, and how the end of that battle just devolved into a tennis match with with a projectile that has a funky hitbox and vacuum attacks designed to pull you off course to you flub the swing, you have to do atleast 5 back and forths to register a hit and then repeat the process four more times and just to rub salt in the wound if the vacuum attack hits your sucked into a ten second cut scene to watch yourself take damage. Everything up to that point was great but what a piss poor way to end the game on.

>>16006925

You wot, the boss battles are just protracted garbage. Oath has 1000x better bosses.

>>16006972

I know, I just like the root of existence in particular. It's a shame you have to go through the rest of the game to play it.

>>16006974

If the root of existence was all the stages with just adol it would be a really great boss, but you end up having to use the trash characters and it takes half an hour to get through each stage.

>>16006979

That's why you use trainers and level up everyone to Adol's level. Kind of really highlights how shit the game is.

Sin and Punishment Star Successor has so many cool bosses that the compilation video of all boss fights in the game is two hours long

>>16006867

Usually only exclusive to very challenging and good shmups, you look at fantasy zone or gradius they don't have very interesting bosses, especially the first gradius.

Azel from God Hand. There's something satisfying about bosses that use the exact same moveset as the player. Bonus points for how aggressive enemies are in general in that game.

>>15996944

Shagaru Magala was a fun "last" boss in MonHun 4U.

>>15996944

All bosses in Shinobi III for Mega Drive.

>>15996944

>Too easy, too gimmicky, don't really test your skills, or rely on cheap tactics to give the illusion of difficulty.

thats always been the case

>>16007025

By far my favorite elder dragon to farm. Beautiful, but relentless, hits like a truck and punishes bad play through the virus, but rewards fighting well. His battle has an ebb and flow to it that keeps even hard grinding from getting too stale.

And the storge armor has some prime-ass aesthetics and skills to boot. Only bad thing about him is the need for those cancerous gore feelers for pretty much every weapon of his. And his weapons being in frogspeakif you're assblasted about je suis monté at least

>>16007295

Her final boss fight in tooie is definitely inferior but is still pretty in line with the spirit of banjo, mainly when she stops the entire fight to ask you obscure trivia questions.

>>16007314

Oh don't get me wrong BK is 10x better than Tooie, but I appreciate Tooie's attempt to try and innovate things, even though it didn't really succeed all that much.

The bounty hunter from Zeno Clash had a pretty cool fistfight as his final confrontation, although like the game itself I doubt it's aged well since I played it six years ago.

>run into the wastelands outside of town, which isn't much better than the wasteland

>pursued by your fucked up family of beastmen and tards led by hermaphroditic father-mother bird creature

>after you get to the desert, a bounty hunter appears and engages you in a couple boss fights wherein he shoots you from atop a giant animal and you have to run for cover

>eventually you take refuge in a quaint seaside town where he finds you and catches you completely by surprise

>fistfight against the backdrop of the ocean

>"i'll just use one hand to defeat you, to make things challenging"

>beat him up enough and he's forced to use both hands

>battle ends with him dying, having finally met his match

It's a genuinely hard fight, too, because every enemy in Zeno Clash is unique, and thus has unique tells for left/right/weak/strong punches and kicks, and you only fight the hunter via fisticuffs once. It's a very clever way of making the fight challenging without him being superhumanly fast or strong.

>>16007319

>>16007314

>>16007304

>>16007295

>Be 8-10

>Read through a random strategy guide at a gas station

>You can put passwords in TTC

>You wot m8

>Funny codes to change your model

>Poewr-up spells

>STOP AND SWAP

>SECRET EGGS AND A KEY

Oh man, that game

>>16008597

I still have yet to play it. I really want to

Adam's fight in Automata was fucking amazing, shame it isn't more difficult, same with most bosses in the game, the factory's boss being another highlight.

>>15996944

>rely on cheap tactics to give the illusion of difficulty

Let me guess: you dance around them until the telegraph their attack, you dodge it, use the item you got in the current dungeon on the boss's weak spot while it's still stunned from the attack, then you hit it a couple times, and repeat four or five times all the steps above.

>>15996944

>where can I find the perfect boss battle?

Intrusion 2, vid related. It's a fucking kickass game.

>>16010704

She was easy even if you never figured out the trick via codec. All you had to do was sniping her from underneath the abandoned truck in the area.

>>16010747

>All you had to do was sniping her from underneath the abandoned truck in the area.

Yeah, that worked a couple of times, but then she'd just sic the Frogs on you.

Too many good ones to list, but off the top of my head

>Megumi "Shades" Kitaniji (The World Ends With You)

>Craft (Mega Man Zero 4)

>Dark Hero Jet Black (Viewtiful Joe 2)

>Lightning Flash Phosphora (Kid Icarus: Uprising)

>Henry Cooldown (No More Heroes)

>Lord Brevon (Freedom Planet)

Maybe these aren't the best ever, but they stick in my mind.

A boss should be mobile. In most action-oriented games the player is more agile than just about every enemy by a degree of magnitude. Having someone that can outmanuver (or at least keep up with) the player immediately changes the game. A good boss won't just stand there and let you hit them. They move, react, and make you react in turn. Finally, a good boss should be make it feel like you EARNED that win. No one wants a boss that just rolls over and dies.

>>16012796

Why is Sans such a big meme now.

>The Perfect Boss?

My personally favourite boss fight is Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls 1.

>What makes it a good fight?

The framing of the fight is important - it's a culmination of everything else you've been doing. You must pass these guys to continue, unlike other parts of the game where you have options to proceed and can tackle multiple areas for some kind of progress, once you need to get to the Lord Souls, these guys have got to go. They are the gaurdians of the final third of the game, and probably the high point.

You fight them in an arena with few features - a long room with pillars. Ornstein is fast, uses a spear and lightning attacks, and is slightly more aggressive. Smough is large, uses a huge hammer, and a bit slower. The fight is about seperating them and remaining aware of their positioning, as well as knowing which one will be easier for your build to handle. Once you kill one, the other one takes on some of the dead one's qualities, meaning there's a meta strategy around figuring out which secondary fight you'd rather tackle: Smough with lightning powers, or giant Ornstein?

>Is it your favorite boss?

It might be. I have trouble thinking of a better one, anyway.

>Honorable mentions?

Artorias from the same game gets a mention, but he's a lot simpler: A very fast and strong opponent that forces you to recognize downtime and act on it properly. Meta-Knight from Kirby, in most of the games he shows up in, simply because of how comically serious it is and how fun it is. I'll always have an affinity for bosses with lots of little gimmicks and tricks, ones that have multiple roads to success. Metal Gear Solid and its series has a lot of these: The Fear and his stamina being such an integral part of the fight, The End and everything about him, Psycho Mantis and his bullshit.

>>16012796

Sans works well because of its positioning and the route you're forced to take to him. The game can assume you're incredibly familiar with the combat system, even more so than the other routes, because Genocide requires a systemic grind of every area. Sans thus takes most of the things you've learned from the system and turns it on its head, while rewarding competence and destroying the use of crutches.

For those unfamiliar with Undertale due to having avoided it, I'll explain:

Undertale's combat system has a little qte that changes depending on your weapon, and then the enemy gets to shoot at you. The form of their attack depends on the enemy, but you're represented as a heart-shaped sprite in a white-bordered box. Evade the enemy attacks for a little bit, usually only for about five to ten seconds, and you get to act again.

The first thing that happens in the fight with Sans is that he dodges your attack, which no enemy does. His attacks, while only dealing 1 damage apiece, ignore mercy invincibility, which again, is not present anywhere else in the game. As the fight goes on and Sans grows more desperate and tired, he starts to attack you outside of the combat sequence - bones will appear in your menu if you try to use items. So if you rely on come crutches present through the rest of the game, like skating on high damage to quickly kill enemies, mercy invulnerability to power through attacks, items to recover from mistakes, Sans actively takes those away from you and forces you to dodge his attacks properly. It bears mentioning that his attack sequences tend to be quite long - some of them in excess of three times of what normal enemies can commit to. It's long, it's harsh, and doesn't let up, which is notable in a game that isn't really all that hard otherwise. The only other boss on the route of any notability is Undyne, but she's not nearly as wild as Sans is. He fucks with the 'gravity' of the arena, shoves your sprite around, etc. At some point, he'll even try to trick you into using "Mercy", at which point he simply ends the fight and kills you.

If you've a bit of time, try to find a video of his fight without commentary. Even if you have no knowledge of the game, it's kinda wild to watch.