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[This is a repost of a gameranting post]
I am not a great fan of boss fights. Nevertheless they are an integral part of the gaming experience. After many boss fights I came up with a simple rule to determine if a boss fight is acceptable and when it starts ruining the game. The rule is measured in the number of times a player dies in a boss fight.
First Death / trial: The player just encountered the boss and spends this trial, learning the attack pattern of the boss. Sometimes getting killed forms a part of this learning process.
Second Death / trial: The player has learned the attack pattern of the boss and must now formulate a counter-attack. Again the player might get killed because he has not perfected his counter-attack.
Third Death / trial: having learned the attack pattern and formulated his counter-attack, the player is ready to win the fight. Some players might experience even four or more deaths before beating the boss (or throwing the game in the dustbin)
The first and second death are acceptable deaths, the player is simply not ready for the challenge offered by the game. But from the third death onwards the boss fight steers the game on a sloped road, which leads inevitably to the dustbin.
There are games where the boss forms the ultimate challenge after finishing a level. I don't have any issues with those fights since their goal is to test the players skill. But this is not the case for games with elaborate stories where the boss is just another obstacle before viewing the next chapter. In those games players want to see the end of the story and if an unbeatable boss denies them that end, they will rightfully blame the game designer and not their lack of skill.
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It is diffrent from Star Ocean II last boss, that is the only enemy on the game that does not flinch (thus you can not interrupt his 9999 damage spells just beating him continously like you can do to all other bosses) and also is faster than your characters (and also is the only enemy that cast magic while moving) unless you have some secret items, with the only reasonable way to defeat him without that said secret items are just leveling like mad and then pounding him mindlessy by simply overpowering him, no skill, no elegant solution possible.
As for your 3 death rule, I don't agree with it. I really don't mind dying 100 times to a boss as long as:
1. There isn't some long(or even short) unskippable cut-scene or area I have to clear prior to the boss.
2. I'm fighting the game, not the boss. For example bad camera for the boss, or just plain unavoidable damage. I think all damage should be avoidable on boss fights(unless it is an RPG), and most games do that, but there are a few that don't.
I really can't think of any bosses that were too hard, or that frustrated me. The only time I get frustrated on a game is when there are mandatory cut-scenes in between hard parts of the game. Not really because I have to re-watch them, but because I feel like it messes up my next attempt by basically "icing" me. The cut-scene has given me a reason to blame the game.
Compare that to the bosses in the Zelda games in which the very skills needed to beat them are the same skills required to get to them in the first place. That's a better way I think since you can teach the player beforehand and give them a fighting chance at first time success.
The most basic question from a design perspective would be "How does boss fight gameplay differ from 'regular' gameplay?" Or... "What makes this fight different?"
A few factors to consider and ask about your boss fight:
1. How long does it take? Within limits, players expect a longer, continuous, almost-no-chance-to-catch-your-breath experience. By almost any standards, this is acceptable.
2. Is the game pickier in its mechanics during boss-fights? This would be narrowing timing windows, harder-to-hit combat and movement targets, etc. This would be tricky... having to chain multiple high-precision moves in the heat of a boss-fight will get very frustrating very quickly. By the time a player gets to a boss fight, they're usually a little fatigued and won't be at their best performance, and their frustration-threshhold will be lower. Voodoo-dolls of game designers get populated with pins at boss-fights, not, regular gameplay.
3. Are new mechanics introduced? Bad, bad, bad if true! Learning a new mechanic almost always involves failure early on until the skill is mastered, and a boss fight will have enough other factors to challenge a player without this.
4. Is "reconnaissance by death" necessary? To what extent can a player learn the "trick" only by failure? If you have a situation in which you have to do something like "turn left and jump the instant you open the door" and there's no clue you have to do that before you open the door (i.e. the only way you can learn what you need to do involves guaranteed failure to generate the info you needed), you're in "recon by death", and you burn a lot of your available "frustration points".
5. Do time-pressures (get it done in 5 minutes or fail) make sense, and has this been introduced as a factor before?
6. After failing at the boss, do you have to do "bullshit stuff" to make another attempt? Forced cutscenes you can't abort, long "approach" sequence, etc... again, this will peg the frustration-meter real quick-like. If you're THAT in love with your cutscene and think it's so great the player should watch it many many times while they're angry, you need a reality-check.
7. Scarcity of resources during the fight (ammo, health) is something that lends itself well to the "invisible helping hand". If a player runs out of ammo during a boss fight and there's no way to get more aside from letting the boss beat you and starting over, the controller's going to end up embedded in the TV screen.
Boss fights should be exciting, and victory bought by effort, not stacked frustration.
Take the Virgil fights in Devil May Cry, he uses a bunch of attacks whose nature can be understood and avoided, but the times at which he uses said attacks are unpredictable. Things like dodging attacks should use the controls the player was already taught, for instance RE5s use of a QTE to avoid most boss attacks is really lame, annoying, distracting, and it cheapens the entire combat.
The other thing I dislike are really bad "find the weakness" scenarios. I don't mind a limitation placed on my ordinary gameplay, so for instance the boss can only be shot in the back, or I can only hurt it with fire etc. What I dislike is, "You must drag him over this spot, then press the button to lower the cage, then run over there avoiding the masses of enemies that now spawn, to press the button that activates the flame-throwers that will roast him inside the cage (WTF?!?!)." Especially when no direct hint is given to that effect. What's even worse in this scenario is when a timer is added, restricting the players ability to experiment and work out what they're supposed to do.
My last memorable experience was on Resident Evil 5. You had to coordinate with your "partner", however while playing solo, your AI partner is programmed to do the worst possible actions, adding a lot to your frustration.