Let's Vent: Horrible Bosses

[lrrose]

Sarah in Suikoden III.

In Suikoden III, most attack spells have areas of effect and can inflict friendly fire. The problem is that there is no way to reliably control or predict where your party members will be when the spell goes off, so casting an attack spell is a good way to wipe your own party.

The AI cheats and knows exactly when to cast attack spells.

Sarah is a mage with devastating attack spells and an absurdly high evasion stat. She fights alongside five powerful monsters. The trick to beating her is to use a spell called Silent Lake to prevent everyone in the fight from casting spells. The problems are that (1) Silent Lake takes forever to cast, (2) Sarah or her monsters will most likely kill your caster before he can cast Silent Lake, (3) Sarah’s evade stat is so high that you might not even defeat her before Silent Lake wears off, and (4) her monsters don’t use magic and so are just as devastating with Silent Lake in effect.

Suikoden III is probably the hardest game in the series, largely because its combat system wasn’t well fought out, and Sarah is the epitome of that wonkiness.

[Chaz]

Regarding Sonic The Hedgehog bosses, as much as Sonic 3 & Knuckles remains my favourite Sonic title ever, the Robotnik fight in Marble Garden Zone Act 2 is a pain in the arse - God help you if you played as Tails alone, like I did. There’s literally only two directions you can hit Robotnik from in that part without getting hit yourself.

And of course, because Dark Souls bosses are being discussed, I’ll share my least favourite boss from each game so far:

In Dark Souls 1 we have the Capra Demon, who’s fairly early on in the game so no real spoilers there. Trying to fight them in such a cramped room with two zombie dogs trying to maul you as well is just a clusterfuck. Double points for frustration after I watched Geop’s playthrough, in which he put up a counter for how many times he died to the Capra Demon, and then proceeds to make me feel absolutely inadequate by killing it on his first try. Thanks, Geop. (No seriously though, that was super awesome)

For Dark Souls 2, the Ruin Sentinels proved to be a thorn in my side, although this is in part because I play as a squishy spellcaster and having to keep track of three different bosses with three discrete health bars is a nightmare. To compound the misery, it wasn’t until after I beat the boss with a friend, that another friend told me the entire fight was optional. Yaaay.

For Dark Souls 3… hm. A lot of the bosses I fought were pretty fun. If I had to pick a least favourite, it’d probably be either Pontiff Sulyvahn with his twin magic sword dancing bullcrap, or Aldrich, in particular his second stage and that hail of magic arrows that lasts for a goddamn hour, or at least one second longer than the amount of stamina I have for running away from the damn thing.

Also, on a related topic, I almost want to create a counter-thread to this one where people can gush about their favourite bosses, because for every horrible boss I’ve fought, there are at least two amazing boss fights that blow me away and make me want to fight them over and over again.

[spaceyroach]

That’d be a good idea! I considered making this a general bosses thread where we talk about our favorites and least favorites. But I felt that would’ve been a bit broad so I focused on the “least favorites” aspect. But, as you say, there are plenty of not-terrible bosses out there worthy of praise.

[LynxWinters]

In Platinum’s Legend of Korra game there’s sections where you ride your polar bear-dog Naga through what is essentially Temple Run. In these parts of the game, you lose your normal health bar and instead just get three points of health, losing one if you run into an obstacle. You can use your elements for things like a one-hit shield or a double jump, but the core of it is just not very interesting to play, and Naga stages are the worst part of the game overall. But hey, at least they don’t make you fight anything!

…Until later in the game where you have a boss fight with three mecha-tanks. The tanks have normal amounts of health, but you still only get two mistakes. The water shield absorbs a hit, but the cooldown can be kind of long while you’re learning the attack patterns. Naga can swipe at things in front of her, and your Fire power is a ranged attack that goes straight ahead, but it takes a lot of these attacks to take down one tank. It’s nice that the tanks only attack one at a time, but they also swap out randomly which makes the fight take even longer.

Oh, and if you play the game on hard difficulty you only get one health point on Naga instead of three, the tanks get more health, and your items don’t make you hit any harder. That boss fight is the worst part of an otherwise fine game.

[Brob]

In Devil May Cry 1 the first phase of the final boss is – inexplicably – a Space Harrier segment. It has inverted controls too. I imagine the change in gameplay was supposed to be a cool thing for people who had played games like Space Harrier before, but I hadn’t so the expected skill level to get through that section was well beyond my grasp for quite a while.