Twilight Princess

The water dungeon boss was epic. I liked the idea of the entire fight taking place underwater.

But if you ask me, I would say the best boss in a Zelda game is Goht undoubtly.

I can't stop listening to this

Yes.

Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.

And to give the game some more credit...I liked the whole "Twilit _____" theme in all the boss's title...especially Zant's.

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^^^ By hard, I mean actually being able to kill me a few times before I finally succeed in beating it...or atleast make me think I was in trouble...and do noticeable damage. Or harder to hit and harder to dodge at the same time.

The bosses, as cool as some may look, were all about as threatening as a giant blow-up doll. Especially considering how much hearts I had. And thanks to the nature of Zelda games, I always knew that the tool I got in the dungeon the boss was in will also be the boss's weakness. Who's the genius who put the one weapon that could defeat the temple's master when designing that temple?

edited 19th Nov '10 11:54:09 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Who's the genius who put the one weapon that could defeat the temple's master when designing that temple?

Hm, this reminds me, but I found the bosses of the first (and second and third I suppose) Zelda games to be much harder than they are in the 3D titles. The first game didn't have the "item you find in the dungeon will be the boss's undoing" mechanic, which might've contributed to that line of thought (and the fact I was younger back then). As well as the fact that the first game allowed you to go into any dungeon you managed to find.

For the most part, the only difficult part of dealing with the 3D title bosses is figuring out how to damage them, at least for me, and that's only when the bosses don't make it glaringly obvious what you need to do to them.

edited 19th Nov '10 12:03:31 PM by Customer

And even then, if you just listen to your faerie advisor, she flat out tells you what you need to do most of the time.

I'm waiting for a boss fight with a giant ogre monster that has "HIT ME HERE" and an arrow pointing to his crotch tattooed to his chest.

edited 19th Nov '10 12:05:55 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

But what Zelda boss doesn't make their weakpoints glaringly obvious? If it's not your cute little tsundere giving you obvious hints, it's the giant obvious eye somewhere on them, or some other weakness. Or if they're ice based, you always have to do something involving fire.

And I remember the old 2D bosses, I remember a 3 headed dragon(a fire head, a ice head, and a...middle head) that I'd die really really fast to. And a giant butterfly in a conveyer belt room full of those spikes moving around. I miss those old days. And there was that one really fast centipede boss where I had to attack it's tail, but damn was it fast.

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Pretty much. Lack of ways to die and easy bosses are usually the most common complaints thrown at 3D Zelda games. But lets be honest, you probably did die a couple dozen time in the original Legend of Zelda and probably lost count in Zelda 2, but even back then, most of the bosses were only hard because you had hardly any life left after navigating through a dungeon filled with Wizzrobes, Bubbles and Like Likes, or you didn't know how to beat a boss and had no helper to give clues.

Each 3D Zelda title only has about two or three bosses that are hard to deal with an one is often a miniboss that turns out to be tougher than most of the end level guys. But then they usually are fun even if they are easy.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Well some of the bosses in the 2D ones were genuinely hard if I remember correctly, like that 3 headed dragon boss. Later I learn that I shouldn't aggro against something that kills you much faster than you can kill it.

And yeah, the dungeons did do more damage back then than the ones now.

I can forgive Oo T being easier than normal, since that game was the first 3D Zelda game, I'd like to believe the developers were just not confident with themselves, so they made it easier just in case people couldn't handle the 3D controls. But I expected all the subsequent 3D games to go back to the old difficulties.

Trading off difficulty just for more complex puzzles is NOT a good trade off.

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Let's get one thing straight: With the exception, the SOLE exception of the two NES titles, all Zelda games ever have been easy. Not that I have any sort of problem with this, but I am a bit miffed at all the non-Nintendo Zelda clones (BG&E, Okami, Darksiders) being even easier if anything rather than striking out at territory Nintendo's not interested in.

Because it's wildly different than most Zeldas, and it's a hostilely unintuitive game that's actually pretty good once you get used to it, so people with an exclusivity complex rub themselves all over the thing.

If you're talking about the God of War-style “Press X To Pass Off Cutscenes As Game Design” thing, I absolutely agree. It's the perfect definition of Filler in an almost culinary sense: 1. “Wow, this is epically awesome!” 2. “Gee, I with I could make Link run along a dragon's back and hack it to pieces.” 3. “That felt like kind of a copou… Ooh, story cutscene!”

That was pretty good, but my favorite (even though it's really a miniboss) was probably the one with the stalfos king and his two lieutenants in MM. It took one of the funnest things the 3D Zeldas introduced (lock on sword & shield fighting) and made a boss out of it.

If they could bottle that lightning in a Ganon-shaped jug, they'd have a real winner (the TP final duel was nice, and TWW's was possibly better than that, but neither quite measures up in my opinion. The darknut fights in TP were almost as good.)

Eric,

edited 21st Nov '10 2:39:56 AM by EricDVH

What I liked about those 3 guys was the amount of Easter Eggs the developers put in their battle.

I can't stop listening to this

Moldorm is an interesting example. It's annoying as hell to hit its weakpoint, but few people will ever get killed by it. Instead you get knocked off the edge into the room below, which has hearts and a way to get fairies. When you go back to the room the boss fight starts from the very beginning. It doesn't even have to kill you to make you lose the fight. Your lose won't be recorded by the little number that tells you how many times you died, and by the time you finally kill it you'll be glad it doesn't as it's one more thing to remind you that you lost to the 3rd boss... and it only gets harder from here.

So, in the U.S., randomly stripping is a signal that you want to sing the national anthem? - That Human

You actually remember it's name....what about that boss you fight in a room with conveyor belt floors and blocks of spike everywhere? I think it was a butterfly or something...so long ago....

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Know what would be sweet? If SkywardSword would have boss fights whose difficulty rivals those old 2D Zelda games...while keeping with the improved visuals and 3D gameplay.

It makes me sad how much the Zelda games spiraled downwards when it jumped to 3D.

The Legend Of Zelda oughta be a Most Triumphant Example of It's Easy, So It Sucks!.

edited 22nd Nov '10 12:59:47 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Mothula

So, in the U.S., randomly stripping is a signal that you want to sing the national anthem? - That Human

I don't need my bossfights to be difficult. I only need them to be climatic and impressive. Those two might not be mutually exclusive, but having to try over 30 times to kill a boss is a great way to suck away the fun.

^^ thx. That's the kind of boss that makes me yearn for the older games...I try to imagine what it would be like if they remade those old boss fights into the new 3D Zeldas.

But I didn't even feel anything when I fight bosses in Zelda games now

Sure that giant dragon looks huge and impressive. But....-looks at all my hearts and a jar with a fairy-, okay, there is no way I can possibly die even if I Leeroy Jenkins it...-remembers the specific new toy that is the key to this temple's puzzles-, okay this must be his Achilles' Heel. Now I just gotta wait for my cute little partner to comment on something, or look for an obvious weak spot. (man these smileys are too small to tell apart...but I'm using the winking smiley)

Theres no...feeling, or tension in the bosses of recent Zelda games, not even Zant. Doesn't matter how cool they may look, you already know the boss will have a snowball's chance in hell in providing any sort of threat to Link before you even begin th fight.

It unintentionally turned Link into a Boring Invincible Hero...and you're controlling the invincible one man army.

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If it weren't for Midna, this game woulda been terrible. But even then...there weren't enough instances of Midna angry or scared while talking. I can still remember the way she talked during that burning bridge. Hehe.

Anyways, I don't remember any of the bosses in the old 2D games being so hard that I had to die 30 times just to beat. They just required a little bit of skills...and an eye for detail.

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All this talk about Link being a Boring Invincible Hero made me think...what would it be like to play a Zelda game where you play as the mooks and bosses of the Zelda games, and your mission is to protect your temple from Link instead?

edited 22nd Nov '10 1:44:08 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

There's the multiplayer in Phantom Hourglass, where one player controls the guards, and the other controls Link. Of course, since the 'guards' all happen to be an Invincible Minor Mook, I guess that sorta kills your point.

Maybe it would be more like playing the zombies in Left 4 Dead?

And yeah, I agree that the Zelda bosses are too easy in a sense. But they don't have to be difficult either.

edited 22nd Nov '10 3:21:47 AM by Kayeka

But the difficulty is what makes the boss battles exciting...and besides, they're BOSSES.

Isn't that sort of the point of a boss? The climatic epic fight at the end of every temple...something that's supposed to present a worthy challenge to Link...not knock out a quarter of a heart no matter what attack they use...

edited 22nd Nov '10 3:30:58 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

I guess we are running on a different definition of 'difficult'. I don't consider something difficult if it didn't kill me at least 3 times. If the boss in question knocks me down to a quarter of health before kicking the bucket, I consider them 'just right'.

That being said, Zelda bosses these days don't even require the use of potions. What good are two portions of 'Heal everything, and double strength' potion if I don't even get to use it when I actually need it?

Blizzeta. Barinade. Your argument is therefor of questionable validity.

In all seriousness though, yes the 3D games do have tough bosses.

To be fair, many of the 2-D bosses also stuck to the formula of the weapon you find in the dungeon being the key to beating them. The reason not all of them conformed to that seeming to have more to do with not every dungeon treasure being a straight-up weapon.

For example, sometimes you found armor as a dungeon treasure, or the Power Glove, or items that help further your exploration but aren't particularly combat-relevant, like that orb from the tower on Death Mountain in Ltt P. In those cases, the bosses were just tough enemies.

But when you found a weapon, it was usually relevant. Again looking at Link to the Past, the Bow and Arrow makes fighting the Armos Knights worlds easier than trying to slash them while they're moving, the Hookshot lets you break apart the little fuzzy armor guys from its dungeon's boss fight without having to get up in its face, the Hammer chips away the Helmasaur King's mask so that you can target his weak spot, Mothula is extremely vulnerable to the Fire Rod, etc.

It's just that those bosses also had alternative ways to fight them as well. The Sword DID work, just ineffectually, against most of them, and how many people here actually used the Hammer against the Helmasaur King when bombs blew his mask to hell faster and safer?

The thing about some boss fights in the 2-D games isn't that it was difficult to avoid taking damage, so much as that damage was a certainty. If you didn't have so many hearts, the boss would be Unwinnable because it moves so fast and attacks so much from so many directions that it's basically an endurance contest to see if you can live through more hits than it can. Not all the bosses were like this, some of them were actually challenging. But Mothula in particular is a profound example of the only real strategy being "take as much damage as you can while smashing it with its weakness weapon so that it dies first".

edited 22nd Nov '10 6:19:11 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Okay, now I'm stuck in the City in the Sky... I can't figure out how to reach that ball to hit with the Double Hookshots in the main hall of the city... If my calculations are correct, the ball should actifate the fan, blowing the rudders, allowing me to "Spiderman" my way between the rudders, allowing me to reach the boss's lair, but I just can NOT seem to reach that freakin' ball! Any help would be appreciated.

Above all, always remember to stay positive.

...oh, damn. I know EXACTLY where you are because I was stuck and frustrated there too. I know exactly the room. But I can't, for the life of me, recall the solution! >.<

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

^^I think you need to find the room above that hall, lower yourself into the hall with one clawshot, then use the second one to get to the ball.

I never said all the bosses in 3D Zelda weren't hard, we all know there are exceptions. And the original point of the page "Easy So It Sucks" was to mock that line of thinking. Most of the enemies in Wind Waker can be killed just by randomly stabbing around and those that can't tend to be easy to parry, yet that game still had the best sword combat of any game outside of Twilight Princess, which didn't require much more effort to cut apart your enemies well Darknuts were tougher...

Saw that one coming. Is the place where there is something you obviously can hit with the claw shot but it won't reach no matter where you stand?

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Suffer.Suffer.Suffer.

No seriously, I think we ALL know which place our poor guy here is talking about...Now, if for the love of god I could remember what to do...

@Signed: Um, actually, I think your opinion's a little...Divisive. I mean, look at the Best Boss Ever page. What is the picture? Raphael the Raven. Innovative? yes. Awesome as hell? Oh yeah. Ensemble Dark Horse? yippy, skippy. Difficult? Hardly.

Just look at the page, to my point of view, most tropers don't care much for difficulty in bosses, just as long as it is fun, and I agree. Not to diss you, but your point of view is a little too much different, just to give a little perspective, not to offend, really.

edited 22nd Nov '10 3:37:03 PM by Polarity

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.