Discussion Final boss fight design, the good and the bad (please use spoilers!)

[PixelKnight]

This thread is obviously going to be packed full of spoilers, so I encourage liberal use of the spoiler tag and being clear what game you are talking about in the spoiler for any relatively recent games. All good? Let’s go!

I love a final boss fight. I like the grand spectacle of them. I like the way they act as a cap for the game (to the point where it’s relatively rare for me to stick around for a post-game afterwards). But there’s stuff about them that has often either sealed the deal on a game stuck in my memory as ‘that was epic!’, or ‘that was a complete slog, I’m glad that’s over’.

What encouraged me to make it was the final boss of Fire Emblem TMS.

Spoiler

The final boss is a brutal fight, but a thematic one you’ve been working towards. Its setup is a ritual, which the game links to the history of entertainment descended from ritual dance. One line that adds so much to the game in linking modern media to FE’s rituals and magic. During the fight, you are taking heavy damage, but have the tools to deal with it as both the sessions and random dual skills offer a range of things you can exploit for breathing room, plus a new, expensive ability to weather the boss’s attacks for a round, just long enough to regroup. It is truly the culmination of both the combat system at the core of the game and the story and its themes.

So what exactly are the kind of elements that make good final boss fights, or poor ones? I’ll list some below, but interested to hear your thoughts. This isn’t a decisive ‘all games must do this/avoid this’ list, but it’s certainly a list of things I’ve noticed enough in decades of playing video games.

The Good
A reward for mastering the mechanics. A game that encourages you to have mastered the key combat mechanics of the game, where your muscle memory is now enough to get you through and feel badass. Parry mechanics often fall under this (see: BotW/TotK) although I confess I largely suck at timed counters.

A thematic, visual spectacle that brings the campaign to a pleasing crescendo.
Whether it’s a duel that you’ve been itching for since Lord Evilbloke kicked you in the face and burned your village, on the deck of the war engine he used to do it. Or in the throne room of a warlord you’ve pursued back to their lair after foiling their dreams of conquest. Or perhaps on something falling down an endless pit while the game’s themes of ‘descent into hell/oblivion/madness’ evoke a sense of ‘we were always gonna end here’. I like such spectacular endings that are rounding the game off thematically before anyone has used an attack ability.

Surprise!
While it might sound like it doesn’t work with the above, you can have a thematic ending without the player seeing exactly what form it will take coming. It just has to feel right, but at the same time not be predictable. See final phase of TotK’s final boss.

The bad
‘Oh, it’s this again’
Have you ever played a game where the final boss is massive, only its head and hands are on screen. You know the drill already. Dodge the hand’s slam attacks. When they are on the ground, get on top of them, dodging projectiles. Then use the height gained to attack the head. I’ve seen this in so many games since the NES. I get that it’s a template for a good boss fight involving pattern recognition, dodging, attacking, an enemy so big that it’s clearly stronger than you and not being able to just hammer the attack button, but if I see a boss fight and immediately know how it works, it feels a bit like a tried and tested win for mechanics over ‘surprise!’ above.
However! That doesn’t mean you can’t put a new spin on it. For example, it’s not the final boss, but a late stage in Mario Wonder has

Spoiler

‘go around the airship knocking out turrets before dealing with the core’. It feels like a reference to R-Type’s stage 3 from over 30 years previous. The complete genre shift renders it fresh again

Split into teams!
You now need to use all the characters you haven’t levelled up or equipped for at least a dozen hours in this one, compulsory, most difficult fight in the game. You don’t know what their new abilities from rapid levelling up do. There’s 6+ of them but only 3 get xp at a time. Haven’t seen this in RPGs for a while, but I really wish that games wanting to do this would at least give you some kind of warning, or preferably have reserve characters catch up really fast.

All that stuff you’ve learned while preparing for the big showdown? Forget that, genre shift!
The opposite to ‘reward for mastering mechanics’, this is where the final battle is some wild-ass minigame or a different genre entirely, abandoning the stuff that’s made up 95% of the game. Not too common these days, but Mass Effect 3 probably lands here- if players were expecting a big fight to end an interplanetary war that’s pursued humanity back to earth, a moment it leans on from the start of the game, they got something that was a poorly written lecture with a multiple choice question from an NPC instead. Really it’s about surprising and exceeding player expectations being way better than surprising by being underwhelming.

Anyway, what are your favourite and least favourite aspects of final boss fights/final encounters, or examples of any of the above? What would you add to the list, and what title would you give to describe it?

 

[Vookatos]

I don't mind a genre shift as long as there's still a satisfying conclusion to the game's mechanics. See Bayonetta or Wonderful 101: actual final fights are effectively minigames, but penultimate bosses still utilize all the gimmicks and the difference in presentation is only done to do something on a grander scale.

I've also been a fan of Nintendo's latest approach to 3D Mario final bosses with them being platforming challenges starting with 3D Land. 3D World, Odyssey all knock it out of the park.

Right now, and this is an opinion that will change depending on a number of factors, I'd say Okami has my favorite final fight. It's sufficiently silly, epic, and at times really sad. The design of the creature is evershifting and constantly surprising, so the long battle never feels stale.

On the other hand trying to think of bosses that disappoint me the most at this point, there's Bayonetta 2, which sticks very close to Father Balder's fight from one, but not making it as memorable, which results in the sequel having a worse final fight than the previous game's penultimate boss

 

[PixelKnight]

Yeah that’s all fair, you can get away with genre shift if you pull off ‘thematic’ and ‘surprise’. In the same way, I think you can get away with lack of surprise if the encounter is still really, really fun. I guess it comes down to player expectations- if they are ‘I don’t mind what it is but I hope it’s exciting and fitting’ and you match that, then great. If they come away going ‘was that it? Huh.’, then it’s probably not quite right

 

[Lugia667]

I don't think any recent worst final boss fight can top Suicide Squads

Spoiler

it's literally a repeat of the first boss fight. Braniac literally turns into a Purple Flash

 

[meatbag]

Split into teams and use all the characters you haven’t levelled up or equipped for at least a dozen hours in this one, compulsory, most difficult fight in the game. There’s 6+ of them but only 3 get xp at a time

Already got a little irritated just reading this. Most recent game I played that sorta did this with Live A Live. Thankfully I had some powerful items to cheese my way through those parts of the boss rush.

A reward for mastering the mechanics

That's definitely what I want from a final boss fight-- something that challenges everything I've learned from the game so far.

 

[MissingNo.]

One really great final boss fight that comes to mind for me is Dark Souls 3's. Not because it is a particularly notable final boss in terms of mechanics, but thematically it's really well executed.

Spoiler: DS Series spoilers

It feels a bit like a culmination of Dark Souls as a whole. The theme you hear playing as the fight starts is Gwyn's theme from DS1, giving you instant nostalgia if you played that game. The boss itself is said to be the amalgamation of every Undead ever who managed to link the flame over countless cycles. Mechanically, this is represented by the boss repeatedly morphing its weapon to represent different builds.

I just think it's neat!

 

[Koren Lesthe]

Star Ocean : The Second Story (PS1 & PSP version only).
As much as I love this game, the last ten bosses of the game are extremly difficult but the final one takes the cake.
He even takes more of said cake if you dare to do a side quest by just going in Private action mode in one town (this event is now a Post game only option in the remake so you can't ruin your save by mistake anymore), because by doing so, the final boss becomes insane and you find out that there was something that was limiting his power (!).

The true final boss have now all of his stats multiplied by 2, including his speed AND his spellcasting time is divided by 2.
Just add to the fun part that he still have "Earthquake", a spell that can instant 9999 your entire team (it goes through your defenses and is non elemental so you can't protect / absorb it), even at level 255.

The "easiest" way to defeat him is by using Bloody Armor that makes you invincible to everything but drains around 1000 Hp per second, and your healer CAN'T wear one (except Noël, but he's the last character to join you if you have enough room in your party).

Fun fact : In the Remake, the latest patch added all the ten last bosses back in a Raid Battle mode, where they are even stronger than before and have each a special advantage during the entirety of their battle. What kind of advantage the Raid final boss have ? He is stronger than his "Unlimited" one and negates the Bloody Armor effect. Good luck ! (at least this is just a bonus challenge and not a required boss to see the ending).

 

[BotenAnna]

Y'all should try Drakengard sometime.

 

[Razgriz]

For me there's three kinds of final bosses that work:

• "Choose your own difficulty": In many older games, the nature of the save system makes it so that the only boss you can reliably fight over and over again is the final boss (NG+ was usually a rarity). To this end, many old final bosses usually were a challenging regular boss fight that could have some hidden condition attached to it to make it even more difficult. Zero Mission tripling the health of the Ridley Robot if you get all items so it can withstand your massive arsenal is a really basic example.
• "You, but stronger": A big personal favourite, although designers often make this the penultimate boss for some reason. This is basically an enemy that has a movekit that is very similar to the player but with tools the player doesn't have access to, meaning you essentially are going to have to duel with the boss to overcome them. Soul of Cinder from Dark Souls 3 is the one that jumps to mind - it's first phase has several dozen mini-phases it can dynamically hop in and out of, and each resembles a playstyle you yourself can do in the game. Vergil is also a timeless example whenever he's the final boss in a DMC game.
• "Overcoming the insurmountable wall": You see this guy early in your adventure? The one you had no hope of beating? Yeah, well he's the final boss. Go and get strong enough to defeat him. Chrono Triggers Lavos, but also Ganon from BOTW are really good examples of this. There are a few bad variants of this one though. When I say early, that doesn't mean "show the final boss only in the first and last cutscenes"; a good final boss in this format should have a constant looming presence over the narrative. Secondly, while actually facing the boss early is technically optional, doing a hopeless boss fight designed to kill the player is just lame. If you can face the boss early and somehow defeat it, reward the player for it. They were the crazy bastard going outside the lines, give them something for it.

As for final bosses that don't work; genre shifts are usually a bad thing, but there's also the "literal exam" style of final boss, where the boss tosses out extremely easy to avoid attacks, but if you get hit by any of them, you just die instantly. That just feels really lazy and is the poorest way to do a skill check to see if the player has mastered the mechanics. For some reason that trick in specific just refuses to die, even these days.

Similarly, the final boss should avoid relying on cheap tactics to be difficult; players expected some form of a fair match going in (about 90% of the difficulty of Elden Beast is far more the fact that it constantly runs away from you rather than the boss itself being an actual challenge).

 

[PixelKnight]

For me there's three kinds of final bosses that work:

• "Choose your own difficulty": In many older games, the nature of the save system makes it so that the only boss you can reliably fight over and over again (NG+ was usually a rarity). To this end, many old final bosses usually were a challenging regular boss fight that could have some hidden condition attached to it to make it even more difficult. Zero Mission tripling the health of the Ridley Robot is a really basic example.
• "You, but stronger": A big favourite, although designers often make this the penultimate boss for some reason. This is basically an enemy that has a movekit that is very similar to the player but with tools the player doesn't have access to, meaning you essentially are going to have to duel with the boss to overcome them. Soul of Cinder from Dark Souls 3 is the one that jumps to mind - it's first phase has several dozen mini-phases it can dynamically hop in and out of, and each resembles a playstyle you yourself can do in the game. Vergil is also a timeless example whenever he's the final boss in a DMC game.
• "Overcoming the insurmountable wall": You see this guy early in your adventure? The one you had no hope of beating? Yeah, well he's the final boss. Go and get strong enough to defeat him. Chrono Triggers Lavos, but also Ganon from BOTW are really good examples of this. There are a few bad variants of this one though. When I say early, that doesn't mean "show the final boss only in the first and last cutscenes"; a good final boss in this format should have a constant looming presence over the narrative. Secondly, while actually facing the boss early is technically optional, doing a hopeless boss fight designed to kill the player is just lame. If you can face the boss early and somehow defeat it, reward the player for it. They were the crazy bastard going outside the lines, give them something for it.

As for final bosses that don't work; genre shifts are usually a bad thing, but there's also the "literal exam" style of final boss, where the boss tosses out extremely easy to avoid attacks, but if you get hit by any of them, you just die instantly. That just feels really lazy and is the poorest way to do a skill check to see if the player has mastered the mechanics. For some reason that trick in specific just refuses to die, even these days.

Similarly, the final boss should avoid relying on cheap tactics to be difficult; players expected some form of a fair match going in (about 90% of the difficulty of Elden Beast is far more the fact that it constantly runs away from you rather than the boss itself being an actual challenge).

I really dislike making the player act out a no-win battle. Where if I fight hard I might use consumables I didn’t have to as the dev doesn’t care if I actually try to fight (like the character would) or just have them stand around and get hit and get it over with. I mentioned it in the rpg thread recently but there’s a DS SRPG called Rondo of Swords that does the right thing and rewards for pulling off a win in an unwinnable scenario. Sure, you are forced to retreat, but you are rewarded for fighting hard.

 

[Irene]

Kefka from FFVI is an example of the good for me, because not only is it a thrilling and epic fight, but it also reaches two thematical high points of his character and the whole struggle the game is about.

From the whole lead-up through Kefka's Tower leading to a fitting conclusion to his character ("You all sounds like excerpts from a self-help book!") to all the variants of the battle, ending in "the angel of death", the ultimate form that perfectly represents what a god he has become.

All to the notes of one of the most prominent boss battle themes ever:

 

[Razgriz]

I really dislike making the player act out a no-win battle. Where if I fight hard I might use consumables I didn’t have to as the dev doesn’t care if I actually try to fight (like the character would) or just have them stand around and get hit and get it over with. I mentioned it in the rpg thread recently but there’s a DS SRPG called Rondo of Swords that does the right thing and rewards for pulling off a win in an unwinnable scenario. Sure, you are forced to retreat, but you are rewarded for fighting hard.

They can work, I just hate it if the game actually hardcodes the players defeat and doesn't properly signify when the fight is meant to be unwinnable.

For a good example of a no-win battle preview, I was thinking of the encounter against Lavos in the Ocean Palace. That fight is by design unwinnable; Lavos has stats that are jacked up way higher than anything else in the game (even the actual final boss version doesn't have those stats), so he'll usually oneshot your party one-by-one. That is, unless you've grinded like a madman and have party stats maxed out.

Then you can beat him, and the game will acknowledge as such by letting you get to his other phases and after that, the most difficult to achieve ending (which you otherwise can only get by doing the entire fight at the start of an NG+ cycle, which usually means using only Crono and Marle - almost as difficult of a challenge).

No player would normally even attempt to beat Lavos that way; there's so many more effective options later on and it's blatantly obvious that you're not meant to fight it there (the game outright says you're facing it at the peak of its power and it's AI script is also heavily simplified to make sure it plays the cutscenes correctly). But it's an excellent way to showcase exactly why you should be scared of Lavos whilst also rewarding a player crazy enough to try beating it anyway.

 

[jnWake]

Example of a final boss I really like is Kirby: Planet Robobot. First, you have a regular Kirby battle against Haltmann, who has been the antagonist for the entire game. After beating him, plot shenanigans happen and the true final boss battle is against Star Dream, a supercomputer-ship thing. However, instead of a regular Kirby battle you get a genre shift into a rail shooter after Kirby's robot fuses into Meta Knight's Halberd. It's just so much non-sense that you can't avoid loving it. There's even more silliness afterwards with the surprise return of an old Kirby boss and a Gurren Lagann-inspired sequence... It's just pure insanity. It also helps that the music that plays through the battle is incredible, featuring callbacks to other themes from Robobot but also themes from old Kirby games.

 

[Hailinel]

Fire Emblem Engage does a pretty good job with its final boss.

Spoiler

After a generally non-descript first phase, the second phase kicks off with Sombron taking his dragon form and the nine tiles of space that occupies. He also summons Dark Emblems that represent either the main antagonists or final bosses from all of the mainline games preceding Engage. Sombron has a shield that heavily mitigates your attacks until you take out a wave of these Dark Emblems.

The creative bit is that if you know the identities of the Dark Emblems (who all use descriptive monikers that hint at their identities rather than their names) you can deal effective damage to that Dark Emblem with a character equipped with the respective Emblem Ring of the hero from the same game. (For example, 'Judgement' is Ashera from Radiant Dawn and a unit equipped with Micaiah's ring will deal the most effective damage.)

And then when Sombron's shield is brought down, he's open to more damage. And if Alear Engages with their S-rank partner, their partner gets a boosted critical chance against Sombron.

 

[PixelKnight]

Fire Emblem Engage does a pretty good job with its final boss.

Spoiler

After a generally non-descript first phase, the second phase kicks off with Sombron taking his dragon form and the nine tiles of space that occupies. He also summons Dark Emblems that represent either the main antagonists or final bosses from all of the mainline games preceding Engage. Sombron has a shield that heavily mitigates your attacks until you take out a wave of these Dark Emblems.

The creative bit is that if you know the identities of the Dark Emblems (who all use descriptive monikers that hint at their identities rather than their names) you can deal effective damage to that Dark Emblem with a character equipped with the respective Emblem Ring of the hero from the same game. (For example, 'Judgement' is Ashera from Radiant Dawn and a unit equipped with Micaiah's ring will deal the most effective damage.)

And then when Sombron's shield is brought down, he's open to more damage. And if Alear Engages with their S-rank partner, their partner gets a boosted critical chance against Sombron.

Yeah this was a really well crafted battle for a game where a large chunk of it’s theme was a celebration of the series as a whole

 

[Leica]

Sekiro's final boss is a pretty great "final exam" type of boss. Genichiro is where the game asks you to learn to play properly, Isshin is where the game puts it all to the test in a final exam kind of way, very satisfying once you win and if you play through the game after you'll immediately notice how much better you've gotten. If it has one blemish it's is repetitive first phase.

It's also uniquely positioned as a Fromsoftware boss that's actually the hardest fight in the game for once, that's surprisingly rare. Neither Owl (Father) or Demon of Hatred are close, IMO

 

[StretchNStripes]

I think I'll give a shout out to Pikmin 3's final area and final boss. The actual fight against the Plasm Wraith is pretty standard for the series (though in terms of design, I love it, it's so eerie). It uses all the elemental hazards you've become familiar with, so using the proper types is important to defeating it quickly.

But the whole area leading up to the final battle really captures a lot of the great elements of the series and turns it into an experience that feels tense but true to the game's mechanics. It's also fairly forgiving if you're not great at the game, as you more than likely have enough days that you can spend quite a few getting the area mapped out and prepared, but still feels tense despite that.

Even after playing it multiple times, I still feel a little bit of dread when I go to replay that segment. Love that whole sequence.

 

[xghost777]

I think you largely nailed it PixelKnight. One I wanted to talk about were the team final fights. I don’t like them when they are sprung on you for just the final battle, but if the dungeon leading up to it also featured teams, something like Kefka’s Tower in Final Fantasy VI, then I’m cool with it. (Kefka himself though is an odd example since it’s a fairly unique final boss fight where you essentially have twelve lives. I can’t think of another game that does it quite like that.)

Actually one more final boss design thing I don’t like that’s mostly confined to RPGs, are final fights that stretch over an hour especially when they don’t have checkpoints. It’s especially demoralizing when a boss is just a big HP sponge and right as its nearing death that’s when it enters its desperation phase and does that one thing that interrupts your healing rhythm or whatever so now you have to slog through the boring first 50 minutes or whatever to get back to the only tricky part. Even when the worst doesn’t happen though, the moment I realize I’ve been fighting a boss that long I just start to get bitter and start thinking if I die here I’m going to be so mad lol.

 

[Red Monster]

Metroid Dread has a perfect final boss. It’s brutally difficult, in fact it might even be overwhelming at first. But eventually you start to get the patterns down, and before you know it Samus is stomping Big Bird into the ground. It’s a fantastic fight that tests every skill you’ve learned over the course of the game, and uses pretty much every upgrade you’ve found. It’s the ultimate culmination of Metroid Dread.

 

[GAP]

I feel that games stumble very often by making the final bosses easier instead of harder if you’ve done most or all of the optional stuff. Games miss an opportunity to challenge people who have proven themselves or their interest in the title by going out of their way to do extra content. BotW and TotK spoilers follow:

I was a bit disappointed in BotW to have the Divine Beasts just save you fighting the Blights back to back and then shaving a ton of health off of Ganon instead of doing something more interesting like having an extra phase/attacks and things like having water on the ground for Cryonis (something multiple combat trials prime you for) or having gusts of wind for verticality. Ultimately wasn’t a super big deal and was optimistic they’d realize this in the next title.
I was much more disappointed to see that the Ganondorf fight in TotK follows an almost identical path. Which was very bewildering to me since Link growing his allies and strength back while Ganondorf does the same seemed like a very obvious path. Really quite the bummer. Your partners do show up though which is cool

One of the only examples I can think of where a game steps up to challenge a player at the end for engaging with it more is Metroid Zero Mission where going into the final fight with 100% makes the boss hit twice as hard and have three times the health. A concept they sadly never brought into any other future Metroid titles. A shame since it would’ve served Dread nicely. Thankfully that game still has a very cool fight conceptually

 

[PixelKnight]

I think you largely nailed it PixelKnight. One I wanted to talk about were the team final fights. I don’t like them when they are sprung on you for just the final battle, but if the dungeon leading up to it also featured teams, something like Kefka’s Tower in Final Fantasy VI, then I’m cool with it. (Kefka himself though is an odd example since it’s a fairly unique final boss fight where you essentially have twelve lives. I can’t think of another game that does it quite like that.)

Actually one more final boss design thing I don’t like that’s mostly confined to RPGs, are final fights that stretch over an hour especially when they don’t have checkpoints. It’s especially demoralizing when a boss is just a big HP sponge and right as its nearing death that’s when it enters its desperation phase and does that one thing that interrupts your healing rhythm or whatever so now you have to slog through the boring first 50 minutes or whatever to get back to the only tricky part. Even when the worst doesn’t happen though, the moment I realize I’ve been fighting a boss that long I just start to get bitter and start thinking if I die here I’m going to be so mad lol.

Yeah I don’t mind ‘split into teams’ if there’s a lengthy dungeon section where you’ve got time to play with the inexperienced units, where they are levelling up through doing a new dungeon section you had to do anyway. You can equip them, make them function as a team, experiment with their abilities etc. FFIX did something similar in one dungeon. It’s when it’s sprung on you just for a tricky boss with no foreshadowing that it can feel a bit cheap, as you’re all psyched up for a fight and then the game is all ‘now do it with one arm behind your back, lol’

Even then, reequipping doesn’t take long, but level grinding can, so if a game is going to do this, I don’t mind when reserve characters are only a few levels behind or catch up fast, like in Trails. In that case, you’re way more likely to experiment along the way anyway. But if there’s shedloads of reserve units and the only way they level up is to do the same battles over and over again, right when you’re one battle away from the end of the game, that always felt groan worthy to me.