Cheap/Badly designed bosses

YES, I DID use the search function, I am sure I didnt missed anything at all.

I think the title is pretty self explanatory. Those bosses that you belive are hard (or just plain annoying to battle), but for wrong reasons. In general, I personally hate any boss fight that makes you go to the last save/checkpoint, and said save/checkpoint is not near said boss, it just makes you fight the same enemies and whatnot AGAIN, and it can get very, VERY annoying quickly, even if the boss fight its decent, or even good!

More specifically, It reminds me of Crawmerax from Borderlands. It was one of the best boss fights than I personally had, but waiting an elevator to go all the way down (takes about 30 secounds) every SINGLE time you die is more frustrating than the fight itself...

Another honorable mention goes to recently played Dead Rising 2. Never before seen cheapper bosses than the ones in this game. To be fair, they were fun in their own way, but still... ugh. The fact than the save point in this game is rarely near the bosses means that you have to do a boring run to the boss localitation every single time you die (In fact, personally, this is what made them so annoying. Make them as hard as you want, but please put a checkpoint/savepoint near them ffs). Its definitily my to go example when I talk of cheap in games now. Its that bad.

Oh well, lets start with this!

edited 9th May '12 4:58:19 PM by NONAMEGIVEN

Isn't this just a complaint thread?

Hopefully not, I hate complain threads (or rather, when potentially good threads get locked because of said complainers)

EDIT: Also, this is for what YOU personally belive are Cheap/Badly designed bosses. I thougt to make this point, just because.

edited 9th May '12 1:46:54 PM by NONAMEGIVEN

The Egg Emperor of Sonic Generations (3DS). Extremely wonky hit detection, also, it's sometimes impossible to evade damage, at least I had major problems concerning this during this fight. While the general feel of the battle was very awesome, those issues sadly made it a pain. :(

edited 9th May '12 1:42:28 PM by Jaryl

Deus Ex Human Revolution

'nuff said.

Of course, the rest of the game was (mostly) fantastic...But the boss battles...Meh.

I pretty much feel this way about any boss that's basically just a damage sponge, if only for the fact that it's not much fun. An effective boss battle alters the gameplay in some respect and forces another level of strategising. In particular, I felt that Demons Souls had a lot of great bosses, such as the blind giant in World 4. If you had the Thief's Ring in particular, it was a deadly game of cat-and-mouse in a lengthy, pillared room. It was fun, tense and brought something new to the experience. While Dark Souls is by all accounts a worthy sequel and a great game all up, I don't feel it matches its predecessor in terms of boss battles.

All that said, not a lot of bosses are really that awful in games — just boring. The most common thing I see in terms of bad boss design is the aforementioned damage sponge boss that isn't very interesting to fight.

edited 9th May '12 2:02:31 PM by MadassAlex

Time Eater for console Sonic Generations. Probably the worst final boss of any 3D sonic game. Boring, confusing, annoying, and the default music is unforgivingly bland, which in a sonic game is a huge crime as the series is known for its usually good music. Thankfully you can change it to something better.

Son of Sun in Chrono Trigger. Just a stupid fight with a stupid gimmick.

Robot Y in Streets Of Rage 3. Not only do you have a time limit, but the guy spins around like a retard, is stupidly hard to hit and is a pretty dumb concept all together. He's pretty boring too, since the only real reliable way to beat him revolves around jump kicking him over and over.

Alpha 152 from Dead Or Alive 4. Her design is extremely unoriginal and boring, and while she has some pretty cool moves, she's absurdly cheap in an already pretty frustrating AI having game. Her character doesn't have much to her at all really so she just feels cheap for the sake of being cheap. Blargh.

Genra in DOA 3 qualifies as well thanks to the Camera Screw and wonky controls, but he's much easier to beat.

edited 9th May '12 2:11:06 PM by VertigoHigh

I agree with damage sponges. A difficult boss fight should be hard because the boss hits hard and makes you have quick reflexes and strategize, not because it takes a week to kill. Looking at you, Second Form Marluxia.

Possibly. IMO, a boss that purely operates off "be quicker" isn't much better than a damage sponge boss. For real quality, there should be actual exploitable patterns in the boss' behavior, so once you learn what to look for and how to avoid it, you don't need millisecond response time anymore.

^Disagree. I prefer bosses where they rely more on reaction and skill rather than figuring out a pattern. It feels like they're more of an actual enemy and not just an obstacle.

All the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. All of them. What the hell are bosses doing in my Deus Ex game, for a start? Cannot be bothered with covering more than one of them so here goes.

Why is the very first one pretty much impossible to beat the first time if you have a Stealth-oriented Adam Jensen? Why can he survive two direct missile launcher attacks to the face?

Why couldn't you sneak past the son of a bitch like you could do with most of the rest of the mobs in the game?

Eyedol in Killer Instinct. He can block attacks then even Fulgore and Spinal on hard don't have the reactions too if you time it hard enough and can break through your blocks without having to resort to teleporting like they can.

I, too have a beef with the design of the first DXHR boss, but for a different reason. Every time he punched me for getting in close, it would leave a large enough window for me to dispense a lot of bullets and regenerate all the damage inflicted by his punch before repeating the process. I realize that Tactical Suicide Boss is a trope, but this instance felt anything but intentional.

I didn't really mind the boss battles in Human Revolution. Each of them were easy enough once you knew their weakness (or you just bomb the crepe out of them for fifteen seconds straight). The final boss did a good job of implementing the various strategies you could use in the game. Even though a different weapon murders them in fifteen seconds flat.

The final boss of Cold Fear (long story short, Resident Evil 4 clone where you can actually aim and move at the same time). You have to protect a girl during the battle—if the boss grabs her, it's instant Game Over. He'll almost always start the battle off by dashing straight for her, snatching her within seconds if you don't draw his attention. His two attacks against you are charging and smashing into you or attempting to grab you. At that point, you've probably got a good-sized arsenal to take him on—but wait, he's completely immune to normal gunfire! The only way to damage him is letting him grab you, then breaking out of his hold and performing a counter attack on him. The best parts are that he sure prefers his smashing attack (which can send you flying off the platform you're on, with predictable results) and that running to avoid the smash attack depletes the meter you need to escape the boss's hold.

Million Gunman from No More Heroes 2. Suda, I don't get it. You made all these incredibly wacky and creative bosses that were (For the most part) a joy to fight. And then you give us a guy whose just....Some Rich Asshole. Who has a Golden Luger. That's it. He is not only bland, but he's more a chore than anything. He shoots, he runs, Alea iacta set and all that. Is it any wonder why Shinobu's Levels were the low point?

Gill from Street Fighter III. OH MY DEAR SWEET GOD. This MOTHERFUCKER is distilled agony. He is pure hatred made into digital form. I have lost so much time, time I could have been doing other things, things I would have appreciated, trying to get past this Son of a Bitch. Where to start? How about his inhumanly high HP? How about the fact that all his attacks do shitloads of damage, and that he can chip you with his normal attacks? How about the fact that said chipping means he can stun you in no time flat? How about the fact that he can RESSURECT HIMSELF IF HIS METER IS FULL. So if you manage to get past his onslaught of grotesquely overpowered tricks, he can just bring himself back to life! Sure, you can cancel the worst of it, but even then he can still KO you! Hell, it's so cheap that his other spectacularly overpowered Super Arts are preferable to Ressucrection! (Not so much Seraphic Wing, but in my experience, he very rarely uses Seraphic Wing)

Front Mission Evolved

Hands own the most horrible abuse of the Damage Sponge model I have ever seen. You know you've screwed up when the boss fights are the most boring parts of your game. -_-

Wendigo from Xmen Legends 2. Congratulations you have died due to an instant kill pit surrounding the arena. You could try dodging the wendigos charge but dropping into combat mode mean you can't dodge worth shit you can only shuffle while keeping your fists up.

Taboo Sho Minamimoto, I suppose. He wouldn't be half as bad if he didn't keep teleport-spamming as soon as you target him. The least I expect from bosses is getting a chance to attack them.

edited 9th May '12 5:22:55 PM by Fluid

As someone who just(finally) beat Zelda 2 The Adventure Of Link, I'm going with Dark Link. Every other boss was reasonable, find their weak point and stab it, Zelda fair. Dark Link, there is nothing to it but keep stabbing and hope he gets hit.

edited 9th May '12 6:35:28 PM by Cider

Marie from Skull Girls. She is one cheap motherfucker. She can't be grabbed, she can't be put into hitstun, and her damn skulls force you to act quickly or die to chip damage. Then, in her last form, she becomes the size of a grapefruit and begins spamming all of her most powerful attacks in succession. She fights nothing like the other fighters, so she doesn't even provide good practice for newbies.

That said, I actually found her pretty fun.

the pope in ac2.

its just...pathetic.

ac generally does not do boss fights well and they can go on forever

but with the pope, no matter what you do you have to fight him for like 10 fucking minutes before he'll lose his staff and ten continue for another 5 minutes

eventually it becomes clear that counter-kill/attacking is pointless and you might aswell just click click click

and then the ending arrives and ezio just walks away...

leading to a very crappy explanation in brotherhood which proceeds to call him out on his collosal stupidity for all of 10 minutes.

I don't know if he's been mentioned yet, but Mysterious Figure from KHBBS is cheap as hell. First off he never ever stops attacking ever, which mean the second you stop spaming dodge roll/cartwheel/dash you will get caught in a combo. Secondly everyone of his attacks without Once More or Second Chance is an instant kill. He can teleport behind you use half your ultimate skills including Mega Flare which hit the entire screen, cause your command deck to be scattered, and when he reaches half health he turns invisible and completely unable to target. And here's a video for good measure. By the way if this person wasn't using an infinite health cheat they would haven been dead within the first few seconds.

Please tell me that guy is a bonus boss similar to Sepiroth, and you're not required to beat him...

The final boss fight in System Shock 2 is awful, but the rest of the game is so great that it hardly matters.

The Testaments from Xenosaga III.

A pain in the ass to beat and to add insult to injury, once you "beat" them they pick themselves and essentially say "I let you win, I'm actually umpity-billion times stronger."