Bosses in RPGs

[rusty_shackleford]

I was playing Dark Envoy and the boss fights are pretty good, just like their previous game(Tower of Time). Most RPGs do not, in my opinion, have good boss fights.

How is a 'gimmick' fight defined?
None of the boss fights in Dark Envoy feel like a gimmick fight despite there being environmental mechanics or new mechanics to learn. The game still feels like it's playing by the same rules as before, it's not breaking the rules it set. The mechanics feel like upgraded versions of previously introduced mechanics, or mechanics that by themselves are not overly punishing but are when combined. Additionally, the bosses are killed the same way you normally kill an enemy rather than through some newly introduced mechanic.

What are examples of your favorite boss fights in RPGs?
A lot of the D&D-based games tend to do very well with this because unless they've screwed up they're bound by the rules and have to be creative inside the ruleset rather than outside of it. Again, they're usually tough because of overlapping mechanics that individually are not so tough. Kangaxx can be tough(if not prepared, and especially so if using SCS) because of overlapping mechanics involving undead immunity, lich-specific protections, and a vast array of spells(SCS).


[edit]
I can't think of any memorable BG3 bosses. I think it may be due to their over-reliance on gimmicks + the difficulty is extremely undertuned past the first area.

[revenant]

Boss battles are rather gimmicky by definition and belong mostly to the realm of JRPG's (i.e., not real RPG's) where the purpose of the fight is to learn the dance steps so you can perform them correctly in order to win.

In normal RPG's "boss" battles are mostly defined by stat discrepancy between the player and the enemy encounter. Like I consider Agathoth or the Qantari Demon in the Tower of Zamedi in AoD boss battles because these critters have way more stats than the player character (attacks per turn, hit points etc.) so the player needs to get creative in order to beat these encounters.

[Slavic Sorcerer]

When it comes to bosses, I can't think of any fav one gimmick/mechanic wise
Gimmick/mechanic to me is just something to overcome. Something that base and elite mobs don't have
Usually it's just immunity or resistances to damage types, or straight up immune-to-damage phases that artificially prolong the fight
Or after mentioned "dance step" to win, maybe creativity

But design wise? That's a different talk.
That's how you elevate the memorability of the boss, in my eyes at least
Mechanics and gimmicks can be bland, but with good design, OST, abilities, and even context of the story can make a difference

That's why I love Dark Souls and Elden Ring bosses

From the top of my head: Elfriede from Dark Souls 3 DLC
3 phases with different abilities related to Elfriede, beautiful OST, badass intro, unassuming yet memorable design

While the design of Renalla is far from my preferences, the OST really pushed it to the memorable side
Second phase transportation to an endless lake-like area with the moon glowing above it scratches something in my brain in a positive way

As for BG3...I mean I liked Ketheric as a character. His boss fight was meh out of context, but with the story it had some weight
With some tweaks to the style itself, I could see his Avatar of Myrkul form it in Dark Souls

Gimmick wise, the aura of Chill Touch effect was annoying to me as a healer
This is the first time in a while when I've seen specific spell category being blocked; aside from standa

[Dorateen]

Interestingly, the chief antagonist of Pool of Radiance, the demon Tryanthraxxus who wished to keep his identity hidden, was referred to throughout the adventure as "The Boss".

[SoLong]

Hm.

Honestly, my favorite bosses might be gimmik fights? I have no idea if it counts...

Anyway, my favorite boss is Demi-Fiend from Digital Devil Saga. Mostly because it's a puzzle boss and I play my first playthrough of games blind.

Instead of a "normal" boss fight the boss basically plays like a mirror version of a previous protagonist: Summoning allies at the start of the battle and calling in more when you defeat them. Unlike basically everything else in the game the boss also pays attention to your elemental resistances... in the sense that if he detects you having any he'll start using the previous game's protagonists ultimate attack to start wiping you out.

So basically it's a fight of endgame protagonist vs random group of mooks... but you're controlling the mook team in the scenario.

Outside of this one-shot attack the stuff he summons can also be pretty hard to beat because you can't make yourself immune to the attacks and killing the supports too often will power up the boss. On the other hand, ignoring the mobs completely and focusing only on the boss will also cause him to pull out stronger attacks.

Ironically this means the boss incorporates several design considerations from previous bosses: Some of the got stronger the more you attack them so you had to switch targets after a while. Others constantly summoned so much **** you'd never get done killing them so you had to decide which summoned mobs are dangerous and while ones could be ignored to focus on the boss for a while. So many mechanics weren't actually new but having to juggle them all at once made it more stressful than the other bosses combined.

I did, however, find a small way to make it easier that I think was not intended: A weak-as-**** MP drain attack.

One of the nastiest mobs the bosses summons casts an instant turn-to-stone attack (that you're not allowed to shield against because the boss will one shot you). The only other attack is a skill that removes buffs from your party. Now, what you're supposed to do is constantly buff your party while this freak is out so he'll spell his buff dispel instead of wrecking you.

Turns out that unlike the boss, the mobs don't have unlimited MP. The instand death move does not use MP but the dispel does. So I could drain the mob dry and it would constantly try to dispel buffs, fail, and be a sitting duck for the rest of the fight, significantly simplifying it. That part wasn't even in any of the guides I read in my second run.

The fun bit? Even if you have all of that down there is still a non-zero chance that bad luck will cause you to lose. It was frustrating during some parts of the fight but felt really good when I finally won.

[wndrbr]

I like bosses that are basically just high-level NPCs with player's like abilities. Cloackwood mines mage (forgot his name) from BG1 is a good example - he's a high level mage, and he's dangerous not because of some special mechanic that was introduced specifically for this fight, but rather because he utilizes a full arsenal of spells available to high level mages. And you fight him just like how a character would've fought a high level mage in-universe, i.e. by casting Silence and Dispel.

[J1M]

Boss battles are rather gimmicky by definition and belong mostly to the realm of JRPG's (i.e., not real RPG's) where the purpose of the fight is to learn the dance steps so you can perform them correctly in order to win.

In normal RPG's "boss" battles are mostly defined by stat discrepancy between the player and the enemy encounter. Like I consider Agathoth or the Qantari Demon in the Tower of Zamedi in AoD boss battles because these critters have way more stats than the player character (attacks per turn, hit points etc.) so the player needs to get creative in order to beat these encounters.

A game without boss fights is like sex without orgasm. You can do it, and many words will be used to say that it's okay, but everyone knows something is missing.

[Slavic Sorcerer]

Boss battles are rather gimmicky by definition and belong mostly to the realm of JRPG's (i.e., not real RPG's) where the purpose of the fight is to learn the dance steps so you can perform them correctly in order to win.

In normal RPG's "boss" battles are mostly defined by stat discrepancy between the player and the enemy encounter. Like I consider Agathoth or the Qantari Demon in the Tower of Zamedi in AoD boss battles because these critters have way more stats than the player character (attacks per turn, hit points etc.) so the player needs to get creative in order to beat these encounters.

A game without boss fights is like sex without orgasm. You can do it, and many words will be used to say that it's okay, but everyone knows something is missing.

Exactly
Why bother myself to get better upgrades and skills, if there are no bosses to give me a reality check?

GW2 has mostly bad boss design. They rely on "immune to damage" phase to prolong the fight a lot
Yeah, there might be some dance steps along the way (aoe attacks pattern you have to memorize to not constantly lose HP)
But for the life of me I cannot think of a boss fight in GW2 that would be memorable - even by design, OST, or context

[maidenhaver]

Any wide open room with lots red barrels or terrain to glitch out of his attacks is a good boss fight.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

When I think about boss fights I enjoyed, WoW pops up a lot.

• Flame Leviathan from Ulduar where each player gets into a vehicle (some of them are multi-person vehicles, ie one person driving and another is a gunner) and you fight your way through a dwarf army and then fight a humongous tank, and there are supply crates being airdropped by helicopters that have to be shot down.

• The gunship battle in Icecrown Citadel, where you have players manning cannons and people using jet packs to jump over to the other airship to try to assassinate the enemy commander before jumping back.

• Spine of Deathwing, where you jump onto the back of a huge dragon and start ripping out his scales and trying to hang on for dear life while he barrels rolls trying to shake you off.

• The Siegecrafter fight where a B-team splits off from the rest of the raid to jump onto a conveyor belt, trying to destroy the inventions, but they can't destroy all 3 inventions in time so they have to pick which 1 or 2 they want to destroy while the 3rd when will survive to be deployed and will have an effect on the raid like the big electromagnetic that will push or pull the whole raid.

• Hans'gar & Franzok where you fight two bosses on a moving conveyor belt, dodging presses stamping down from above.

• The operator Thogar fight in the train station where you are constantly looking both ways, dodging trains left and right, and reenact the train station fight from the 2003 Clone War cartoon.

• Blackhand where he's calling out siege engines and tanks and infantry to stop you throughout the fight, and as the fight goes on you crash through several floors, and then by the end the whole room is on fire and Blackhand is screaming at you as he goes berserk. That was intense.

• The Sylvanas fight where you are chasing her, jumping across the giant chains.

• The Neltharion fight where he is constantly raising up earth walls trying to separate the raid, and hits the tank like a truck and punts him half way across the room, shattering the earth walls.

I think it's because WoW's combat - as in the moment to moment act of pressing 20 different buttons in a particular order to deal damage - isn't very fun, so to make fun fights the designers usually try to force movement in creative ways and dress it up atmospherically. You're not just dodging any AoE; you're jumping into a pit on Deathwing's back so you don't fall off when he barrel rolls. You're not just dodging an AoE; you're dodging a train speeding at you. "Oh, the boss went over there! I need to equip this jetpack, or hop on this conveyor belt, or walk across this ice bridge that Jaina is conjuring before my very eyes, or get blasted across the gap by a gust of wind to get there!". When combined with the music and voice acting, it makes the experience immersive.

I liked the Shadow of the Colossus boss fights for similar reasons. The act of stabbing the boss isn't fun. It's the movement of trying to position the boss and then trying to scale him while he's stomping around or trying to throw you off that's fun.



I also liked the missions in Valkyria Chronicles 1 and 4 where you fight a boss vehicle. The boss vehicle feels indomitable, being immune to all attacks except from a very narrow, hard to hit location, and they lumber around the field towering over everything else and dealing heavy damage to anything within range.

[Tweed]

The best boss fight ever is The Rathe in EQ.

There are a total of 12 Rathe Council members. 6 of them are mezzable and 6 of them are rootable. The rootable ones can be rooting while pulling, but eventually will need to be tanked. This means 6 tanks are required. They all hit for roughly 3,000 damage when they are at full HP. The lower HP they have, the less they will hit for. This means that you should DPS down all the mobs to roughly 5-10% to keep them from hitting too hard. You must also kill all of the Rathe Councilman at roughly the same time (within 6 or 7 minutes) so you need to have them all at low HP then kill them quickly.

You will split your raid up into 3 teams: The Mez Team, Tank Team, and the Pull Team. The Mez team should be in the “drop down hole” tunnel area. The Tank team should be across the water around the outside of the temple.

[General Reign]

I enjoyed the boss fights in Bayonetta but I could not honestly say they were better designed, they just appealed to me more thematically. I find it hard to think of decent boss fights...I did like that one dragon boss in BG2 since I could place 100 traps down before hand to get a decent leg up on it.

[WhiteShark]

Voidspire Tactics has two of my all-time favorite RPG boss fights and they're both optional.

• The Necromancer is in a secret area that one must explore carefully to find. If one manages to make it there, he's confronted with a very difficult arena fight. The Necromancer stands on a central raised area raining down powerful attacks on the party. To the left and right are pathways leading around and up to the raised area, but these are guarded by powerful undead and some gate/lever mechanisms - not a gimmick; this game has many environment interactions. It took me many tries to work out a viable tactic, but when I did, it was satisfying because it took unique advantage of the game's systems. The loot was very good, too, and included the boss's unique (iirc) bow.
• Near the end of the game is a dialogue-triggered optional fight with an extremely large number of opponents. It's not a boss fight per se, but the sheer numbers make it harder than anything else in the game. Anybody who tries to fight normally will quickly be overwhelmed. Even better, taking the fight makes a later boss fight harder as well. Felt great to beat this and the one after on the hardest difficulty setting.

[Lich]

More than 90% of RPGs would be improved if their boss fights were deleted.

[Lich]

What could make a game designer think it's a good idea to add a boss with five phases, immunities to everything, some boring gimmick way to kill it that ignores the game's system that all other characters are expected to work within, five times more turns/action points than the main character, super special unblockable skills no one else can use, and worst of all, when its HP goes down to zero, it blurts out two vague phrases and runs away/kills itself/curbstomps the main character in a cutscene? Game developers love to play with themselves and self insert.

[TKVNC]

Bosses are actually stupid anyway.

Anytime you have something that blatantly disregards the hitherto established rules, you immediately shatter any immersion.

Ironically, KCD did really well with the Runt fight. Being able to bash his head in, and one shot him, is incredibly immersive.

[Breathe]

Anytime you have something that blatantly disregards the hitherto established rules, you immediately shatter any immersion.

That's probably why I prefer the human boss fights in all of the souls games. When I first got to Lady Maria in Bloodborne I was abnormally pumped. All the hunter fights are good.

[Norfleet]

And you fight him just like how a character would've fought a high level mage in-universe, i.e. by casting Silence and Dispel.

That's not how you fight a high-level mage. High-level mages are best fought while they're expending their Concentration checks on taking a ****. It takes a lot of concentration for an old man to take a ****. I'd know.

[maidenhaver IV]

Devs are gay when they approach boss fights from the "and if they he doesn't want to fight the boss, I will let the player talk the boss into killing himself" angle, instead of "**** yes, its time to kill that sonofabitch!"

[logincrash]

Devs are gay when they approach boss fights from the "and if they he doesn't want to fight the boss, I will let the player talk the boss into killing himself" angle, instead of "**** yes, its time to kill that sonofabitch!"

Bullying a boss to death seems just as fun as beating him to death.

[Tweed]

Devs are gay when they approach boss fights from the "and if they he doesn't want to fight the boss, I will let the player talk the boss into killing himself" angle, instead of "**** yes, its time to kill that sonofabitch!"

There's a right way and a wrong way to do it. The right way is confronting the villain—who isn't a saturday morning cartoon bad guy—with how is idea for the future won't work and showing him the evidence is he realizes what a vile monster he truly is. The wrong way is *argue at length*

[Lich]

You should have to kill the villain or get the bad ending. No worthwhile villain would change his worldview because some random adventurer talked to him.

[J1M]

You should have to kill the villain or get the bad ending. No worthwhile villain would change his worldview because some random adventurer talked to him.

In the moment: "you win! Everyone is friends now!"
Epilogue slides: "villain was lying and kills everyone in their sleep, game over, you lose"

[SoLong]

What could make a game designer think it's a good idea to add a boss with five phases, immunities to everything, some boring gimmick way to kill it that ignores the game's system that all other characters are expected to work within, five times more turns/action points than the main character, super special unblockable skills no one else can use, and worst of all, when its HP goes down to zero, it blurts out two vague phrases and runs away/kills itself/curbstomps the main character in a cutscene? Game developers love to play with themselves and self insert.

To play devil's advocate, some of the hardest bosses that follow this format I've found interesting to fight simply because you have to try and find a strategy that works against them. I find it rewarding to find combinations of skill/magic/whatever that are strong, but if I can just curbstomp everything it kind of takes the fun out of them game after a while.

Yes, you should have sections where you just annihilate a bunch of fools (power fantasies are fun!) but also something challenging in-between.

I agree that damage sponge bosses (and bosses that just defeat you in a cutscene after you beat them) aren't fun. If a boss isn't supposed to be able to be beaten, make him too powerful to beat or just give the boss infinity HP and way too strong skills for this section of the game.

[SoLong]

You should have to kill the villain or get the bad ending. No worthwhile villain would change his worldview because some random adventurer talked to him.

You don't have to change the villain's worldview. If what the villain wants doesn't conflict with what you want you could just point out that the current conflict is pointless and a waste of resources. That might not work on cackling supervillains, but the more realistic lawful evil guys can probably be convinced to just cut their losses and leave. This is especially the case for villains whose methods, rather than the goal, are the problem.

Alternatively a relatively sane villain could realize that he can't win and should live to fight another day. This goes especially for villains that are long-lived or immortal while the hero is mortal. Too many games just subtract 100 IQ from the villain when a tactical retreat or simply waiting the hero out would serve as well.

Of course, then you wouldn't have a game.

And yes, the obviously evil maniac who wants to destroy the world should just get a bullet to the head. Being Batman and sparing people who you **** well know will continue to kill is just stupid.

[rusty_shackleford]

Problem with final boss is, I assume, it's often finished last or near last.

Rushing deadlines or just burned out, not good. Perhaps better to do it near the start of development.

[SoLong]

Problem with final boss is, I assume, it's often finished last or near last.

Rushing deadlines or just burned out, not good. Perhaps better to do it near the start of development.

Exactly! It's something I've preached ever Mass Effect 3 with that awful ending. Just do the beginning, then the end, then the bits in between. Some fluff in the middle can always be cut when time grows tight, but a trashy ending will be fresh in people's memory when they talk about the game later.

[maidenhaver IV]