Turn-based RPGs that have good bosses?

[rusty_shackleford]

Do these exist?

[Oyster Sauce]

You may have heard of a game called Baldur's Gate 3

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Trails of Cold Steel 1 & 2 on nightmare difficulty, namely the end of chapter boss battles.

• I remember the two dog bosses at the end of chapter 2 being very difficult, since they have high enough HP that you can't just pop S-crafts and delete them. They deal a lot of damage so you can't just have one guy tank both. You need to use positioning to make sure that they are facing away from each other, and it is a struggle to keep both tanks healed. And then IIRC, once one died, the other got a buff which made the fight still hard as it went on.
• The chapter 4 boss in the castle had the ghost who could imprison a party member, quickly depleting their HP and would only be released when a high amount of damage was dealt to the boss. That was challenging.
• The chapter 6 boss would throw out mines on the battlefield which would soon detonate and had high HP, which made it a struggle to clear them in time, or to move your characters out of range, or to cast spells to protect your party members who would be caught in the blast.
• Etc.

Sakura Wars V (made by the same devs who would later go on to make VC). In this installment, your mechs can also transform into jets and fly and enter an alternate flying map. For the boss fights, you need to both move your mechs around through a level on the ground and also send mechs up into the air to navigate to other platforms or to attack the boss from certain angles or intercept incoming adds. I remember the airship defense mission at the start of the final chapter being pretty challenging.

Valkyria Chronicles 1 & 4 because you need to move your characters around the map to get into position before attacking the boss, all the while under a time pressure and trying to avoid getting killed by automatic return fire. Selvaria was pretty difficult with the machine gun while she was up on the castle battlements, and Crymaria was a grenadier class so she could conjure and send ice projectiles that arc over walls. The tank bosses are very scary and difficult to kill before the final battle with them. The big wonder weapon supertanks require you to manipulate the environment to impede them and then you have to send someone to climb the ladder and lob grenades into their vents.

The Banner Saga 1 & 2: Bellower at the end of TBS1 (before the nerf patch) and Eyeless towards the end of TBS2 were pretty hard, as not only did they have high strength but they were accompanied by a lot of adds. Fortunately if you know how to cheese TBS' combat (basically you want to reduce the adds' strength to near zero, but don't kill them, keep them alive so they pad out the enemy's turnrate) then it becomes easier as the difficulty is frontloaded.

[J1M]

Has a few bosses that didn't die in the first round like the BG3 dragon:



Also:

[rusty_shackleford]

Has a few bosses that didn't die in the first round like the BG3 dragon:

Is this any good?

[rusty_shackleford]

You may have heard of a game called Baldur's Gate 3

DOS1 & 2 on tactician do have pretty good boss fights. DOS2, for the first half or so, anyways.

[1998]

[Acrux]

Has a few bosses that didn't die in the first round like the BG3 dragon:

Is this any good?

It looks like a puzzle game disguised as a tactics game to me. Kind of like Into the Breach.

[Vergil]

Are there any games with good bosses in general honestly? Except a small handful in Devil May Cry?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Are there any games with good bosses in general honestly? Except a small handful in Devil May Cry?

Shadow of the Colossus. The bosses are big and frightening when they look at you and lumber towards you and shake the screen and have menacing glowing eyes and growls which, but the gameplay is slow paced enough that you can flee or find cover or buy time to think about what you could do to fight them. You have high tension without the frustration and tedium of the player dying over and over. You can usually figure out the solution on your own - which makes you feel good - without Dormin having to give you explicit instructions on his 2nd or 3rd hint. There is also the very final fight where you play as a colossus trapped underneath a temple trying to smash a squad of crossbowmen.

World of Warcraft has several unique boss encounters. The Four Horsemen which have to be tanked apart from each other in different corners. The ICC gunship battle where you jetpack back and forth to the other airship. The green dragon in ICC where you need people holding off adds while healers heal the green dragon. Galakras where you need people fending off the incoming tanks and waves of soldiers while other people march up the towers. Orgegorger which has you running through a maze fleeing from pacman trying to deny him buffs. Hans'gar and Franzok where you fight on a conveyor belt. Sylvanas has a cool setpiece where you chase her across giant giants. Echo of Neltharion where he is raising earth walls trying to separate the raid and he is punting the tank across the realm, shattering earth walls. Fights like Mimiron or Larodar where there is high tension as the room becomes consumed in flames and there is increasingly little room left to stand in. Tindral where you have to mount up and fly and chase him in the air.

Tokyo Xanadu's base game final boss where you the boss banishes one party member after another, so you wind up having to use every character. You can also control which character is going to get banished if you want to hang onto one or two until the end.

Granblue Fantasy Relink has generally okay boss fights. Some of them are WoW esque in there being phases and you having to kill adds to stop a bar from filling. What GBF does better than WoW is making its WoW-esque fights more intuitive, so you don't have to do over and over to discover esoteric mechanics or read an out of game guide to understand what you need to do to win.

Final Fantasy XIV used to have an interesting WoW-esque boss fight with Steps of Faith, where you had to stop a humongous dragon from making his way across a bridge and reaching the city of Ishgard. He was really huge and being underneath his feet would insta-kill you. The tanks and NPCs had to hold the adds while other people ran up the various towers and fired harpoons at the dragon. It felt really intense. Sadly this trial got scrubbed when the devs reworked every instance to allow you to solo them with NPC trust party members.

[Vergil]

Shadow of the Colossus

Entirely based around a gimmick. Shallow of the Colossus barely counts as a video game.

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there any games with good bosses in general honestly? Except a small handful in Devil May Cry?

For better or worse, WoW has had a lot of good bosses over the years, and influenced the design of bosses in singleplayer games.
Having an actual feedback cycle where designers have to respond to their players fosters a much better environment for boss design than regular singleplayer games.

Can't comment on anything put in WoW recently tho.

[Vergil]

For better or worse, WoW has had a lot of good bosses over the years, and influenced the design of bosses in singleplayer games.

I can't tell any tangible difference between one dungeon and the next except layout.

[J1M]

Has a few bosses that didn't die in the first round like the BG3 dragon:

Is this any good?

I enjoyed it. The focus is on tactics and using the environment to your advantage.

[J1M]

Has a few bosses that didn't die in the first round like the BG3 dragon:

Is this any good?

It looks like a puzzle game disguised as a tactics game to me. Kind of like Into the Breach.

In my experience it felt less like a puzzle game once you have gained a few levels.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Can't comment on anything put in WoW recently tho.

Some highlights (timestamped):

Ice Spider boss that you fight while ascending a spiral staircase. She tries to web people and yank them off.




Zskarn was pretty fun. He activates traps on the floor, and he also spawn golems that slowly run across the room and must be killed before they activate more traps and there is no place left to stand. Paladins can use Divine Shield invincibility to run into traps and detonate them to free up room.




Aforementioned Echo of Neltharion fight where he raises earth walls.




Larodar where the room is filling up with fire:




Aforementioned Tindral fight where you mount up and fly to chase him during battle. He also spawns vines that trap people and have to be AoEd down quick, and also drops seed bombs that you have to use your defensive abilities to run through and detonate.




Ulgrax where you have to toss stuff into his mouth:




A double boss fight against two enemies generals who distrust each other. You have to aim their abilities at each other, ie making the Crytplord charge through the other guys' webs.

[The_Mask]

The Three Magi fight in Septerra Core:
You fight them 1 by 1 before, and so you know their weaknesses and using their weaknesses to chain-hurt them. It's one of the cooler fights during the game, because it tests your attention and imagination.

The Spark Master fight in Divinity: Original Sin 1
Simply because its difficulty can be severely cut if the player uses their brain before and during the fight.

The fight against "Harrow" in Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Simply because if you choose to save the children, it doesn't have to happen. Sometimes "combat" means to choose the better moral option.




Honorable mention: The fight against The Beast of Foundry in Underrail
Because it was completely different from the rest of the game. And because I, personally, like using alternative means of fighting and this fight laughs in the face of conventional ways of fighting things.

[MrTwinkls]

Do these exist?

Do bosses from XCOM 2: War of the Chosen count? I liked these.

[Dorateen]

I enjoyed the boss fights in Grimoire, with the extra dramatic battle music. And the victory message:

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS