What makes a Boss Battle, Epic...fun...interesting? Options

[DrFaustVII]

I think, as mentioned before, a wide variety of bosses is always fun and exciting.
Some of my favorite fights were from Final Fantasy.
Primarily battles you don't really "fight": Holy Dragon (the zombie version), Gogo, and Magic Master.

The holy dragon had a LOT of health, so much that even a well leveled and geared party would take a long time killing it. His trick was that every time he cast Holy, he lost a chunk of health. I think if you hit it, it would steal life back, but its been a while. Basically, you had to have 2 heals in party and keep at least one of them alive until the dragon killed himself.

Gogo was the most frustrating boss I'd ever faced. You're in a sunken tower, so there is a breath timer. By the time you fight through all the monsters, make it through the maze, and try to manage treasure hoarding, the timer is half over. The battle starts, and there's Gogo... doing nothing... like he's trying to waste your time. You cast holy, he casts holy and kills that character! You resurrect the fallen character, he casts
flare, gigaflare, Odin Count 5, firaga, tornado, Odin Count 4, Odin, summon Bahahmut, death 5, meteor, Ultima ... my party never made it farther than that.
Very long painful story short, he wanted you to mimic him like a mime. Yes, he's doing nothing, but that's what you had to copy. Just leave the game alone for 2 minutes.

Finally, we have the Magic Master. He has extremely high magic resistance (or maybe absorption) and puts up a melee barrier. He also casts the most powerful spells in the game. How do you kill something you cant damage? Well, he relies on MP heavily, lets try to get that to 0. MP draining spells hit a little less than I would normally damage, but that's alright his spells are expensive. Eventually his MP hit 0, and he yelled something about not having enough power to go on then died.

Personally I like sometimes having to think of a way to kill the boss without beating them with the biggest shiniest sword or burning them with the most expensive spells.

[Ceiling Cat]

For me, a boss battle absolutely has to make use of one of its game's gimmicks to be interesting. It also has to be a different thing each time.
Some of the commonly used types of boss battle gimmicks are:

Counter attack stance
Whelk(FF6)
Heckraan(Chrono Trigger)
Mist Dragon(FF4)
Scorpion Guard(FF7)
FF5's first boss
This one only makes sense if the game uses ATB or any other dynamic system. You have to pay attention to the boss' stance and cease damage dealing if he enters a "counter stance", or else face painful retaliation. The punishment may vary in size, but insisting on attacking will surely kill you sooner or later. Best used early on to make the player get used to how the game deals with turns. Do NOT implement this in a turn or wait based system unless all characters have a "defend" or "wait" command.

Barrier change
Hyne(FF3)
Magus(Chrono Trigger)
This one is used best right after the players get access all kinds of elemental magic(Spekkio's training), and maybe a way.of telling the enemy's weakness on the spot if he gives no hints at that. (Scholar's Scan ability)
You absolutely must ensure the players enter the battle with some means of getting around the shifting weakness, whether it's giving them the magic right before the battle (Magus) or warning them directly of the barrier change. (Hyne)

Countdown
Magus, Black Tyrano(Chrono Trigger)
Once every few turns, the boss starts counting down - once he reaches zero, he unleashes a very powerful attack, and goes back to his usual routine. If the party is caught unprepared, it's dead. The variations of this strategy include a way to interrupt the impeding doom (especially if it's nearly guaranteed to kill you), and lowering the enemy's resistance/defense for the time of countdown. ("Magus risks casting a spell")

Multiple part boss
Dragon Tank, Guardian, Giga Gaia, Zeal, Mother Brain, Lavos, etc. (Chrono Trigger)
Whelk, Kefka(FF6)
Schizo, Bizzaro Sephiroth, etc.(FF7)
Crapload more examples everywhere
This can be played many different ways, but usually involves defeating the other parts in a sequence. The parts may also be a catalyst to the Countdown and Counter Stance strategies, making these turn off temporarily until the parts are revived (or not). An annoying move is making the parts weak/strong towards different things. Attacking some parts may be harmful, they're usually not meant to be attacked and die along with everything else.

Speed-run
Garuda, Zande, Dark Cloud (FF3)
Some late game bosses in Xenogears
This boss has ridiculous firepower or maybe even a one hit kill ever few turns, but also very low health or some sort of weakness, or perhaps means to partially avoid his attacks. (Jump) You're supposed to use every turn you get to deal as much damage as you can - healing yourself, if not necessary - is probably a waste of turns if you're going to die anyway. Kill it before it kills you.

Endurance
Ultima Weapon (FF6)
Aps(FF7)
You may or may not be supposed to beat the boss - but sooner or later, it kills itself if you last long enough. (Ultima dies when it runs out of MP, Aps damages himself with his Tsunami)

One-hit exploit
Phantom Train(FF6)
Jinn (FF3) //provided you saved a SouthWind
This one can be hard as hell - but guess what? He probably has a weakness that makes him die in one turn, sparing you the inhumane battle. (such as reviving undead)

Lose/Escape/Avoid
Bahamut, Nepto, Dark Cloud (FF3)
Golem, Lavos(Chrono Trigger)
You're not supposed to win this one. It's either a way of forcing the player to think of another way around, or a plot device.

[Reshiram//Exe]

This is how I personally construct my boss battles:

Entry line:You don't have to have a giant conversation here, you can also note down things that may happen if you use ___ during the boss, such as chrono trigger's "Masamune Lower's Magus Def!" when you attack with the masamune, if it's a normal boss I usually put something in the bosses character. However, this can get somewhat annoying, but I use it only on real bosses, not just strong enemies. If that made any sense....
Give the boss a fixed first attack: It's no fun if the boss kills you on the first turn. I recently constructed a boss( AA-Gamma spec.130) which charges it's lasers during the first turn, giving the player a fair game(You just lost it, by the way ) instead of blowing them to pieces during the first turn
How will the boss act?: will he raise his stats before launching a attack? Or visa-versa? Think about the character of the boss and don't give it attacks for the sake of giving it a diverse moveset. A boss with 2 moves is predictable, but a boss with 23 moves is annoying as you don't know what to guard against. Give the boss 6 attacks at most, and make the more powerful ones require a prerequired battle event.
Once the boss dies: If you have a more "epic" game, fix the final attack(Usually on the final boss) to something that looks amazing and is sure to kill the boss(Like in KH2, You fire a beam of light through the final boss that explodes.) Make the characters talk, and make sure that the finisher is something to be remembered. Don't do this on every boss, as that will look stupid finishing off something like a giant goblin with a pillar of flame. Treat the final boss like the end of the game, forget the ending and go all out.

Also, as the above post says, use the game's gimmicks to your advantage.

Don't make 90% of your post bold. ~Rob_Riv

This post has been edited by Rob_Riv: Mar 4 2011, 11:26 AM

[Harryb412]

There are lots of long posts in this topic, so obviously I've only given it a quick skim.
So apologies if someone else has posted this idea.

Now, I always try to incorporate events on the map to my boss fights. To get to the boss you have to solve some sort of puzzle on the map to get through its defences, and then in battle I try to utilize battle events to make the player think more about how to beat it.

A boss I once made was a giant fish, it spent its time in the river so you couldn't hit it. If you used the "splash" skill it would disturb the fish, making it leap out of the water at you and getting stuck on the land where it was vulnerable to attack.

[udivision]

Bosses shouldn't be immune to every ailment, that kind of takes away from possible strategies as people have mentioned.

Boss battles should let you let loose. You can finally use all of your strongest skills or smartest strategies and go all out. You don't have to worry about having enough items/FP/HP left for the rest of the dungeon like you would fighting a run of the mill opponent.

[merrill]

I've always thought the Persona series handles boss battles wonderfully. They aren't a dull grind where you spend 30 minutes cutting down essentially any other enemy except bigger and with 5x the HP, they are dangerous do-or-die situations with unique gimmicks that keep you on your toes and require well thought out tactics.

Party banter is an unfortunately underused factor for making bosses interesting as well. Assuming you have well realized and well written characters, relevant back-and-forth quips can amuse players throughout the battle and even be used to give hints concerning possible weaknesses and strategies.

[Reshiram//Exe]

Here's my advice for making a final boss.

Give the boss max health. No...Not because the player is expected to deal 9 Million(?) damage, but Instead, we can set up events to a specfic % of health, like I made a boss where you only have to "Half Kill" it before a storyline event kills it automaticially.

[Twilight]

Max health is a weak and lazy design method.
Bosses need to have a unique set of weaknesses, patterns that expand into varying strategies and other items to keep them interesting.
They should NOT have a looping attack pattern thats predictable, max stats, or status immunities.
Building off of Harry's concept, the boss could be weak to Volt based attacks and poison, but only when it's out of water. On land it's list of attacks could change to cause small tremors, fling or spit various items or fluids, or any other number of things. What makes a boss fun and interesting isn't a lazy approach, but a dynamic ai that can respond to a number of situations differently depending on what strategies the player decides to employ.

[Reshiram//Exe]

Max health is a weak and lazy design method.
Bosses need to have a unique set of weaknesses, patterns that expand into varying strategies and other items to keep them interesting.
They should NOT have a looping attack pattern thats predictable, max stats, or status immunities.
Building off of Harry's concept, the boss could be weak to Volt based attacks and poison, but only when it's out of water. On land it's list of attacks could change to cause small tremors, fling or spit various items or fluids, or any other number of things. What makes a boss fun and interesting isn't a lazy approach, but a dynamic ai that can respond to a number of situations differently depending on what strategies the player decides to employ.

The max health is to stop the boss dying and causing a storyhole loop. I personally like to give a boss a weakness; a strength and then a not so obvious technique to defeat it.

I.e: a player learns "Shock dud" that normally does nothing, but a water based jelly monster is highly weak to it. However, on even turns it will counter attack should you try to use it.

[Rukiri]

What makes a boss battle?

- Intense Combat
- Having the boss have larger HP (generaly 4X that of a normal enemy for the time period in the game)
- Great battle music
- Great Visuals
- Making sure the user is glued to the screen until the last second.

[Twilight]

The max health is to stop the boss dying and causing a storyhole loop. I personally like to give a boss a weakness; a strength and then a not so obvious technique to defeat it.

I.e: a player learns "Shock dud" that normally does nothing, but a water based jelly monster is highly weak to it. However, on even turns it will counter attack should you try to use it.

Again making bosses nothing more than HP Tanks is a lazy design method. Of course they'll have more health than what you've been fighting at that period of time usually 4x more like Rukiri said, too much health just makes the boss look like something to slow the player down rather than an actual battle that puts the player on it's toes. Instead play around with their stats like defense or resistance so they take less damage than the average creature. In addition they can have higher resistances to a number of elements that make them harder to kill. You can just as easily create a indefinite status effect at the start of the battle that reduces damage from a number of sources and remove it when you need to.

Pretty much the laziest bosses I've seen have an insane amount of HP and deal much more damage to the party than the common creatures up to that point (usually enough to bring the parties health down to half or outright kill them with one attack). The HP A boss should have shouldn't be a static Nx number either as every battle system uses a different set of algorithms. A bosses health and parameters should be designed around the battle system of the game and not a general design.

[Queue]

Or the player will find a broken hole in the game to defeat bosses aka Knights of the Round ala FF7. I agree with Twilight, if you don't want your boss dying, do what other games do: give it a means of becoming temporarily immortal (100% dodge / spell immunity would be a good example). That's assuming you want a plot device in that particular boss battle.

Having bosses learn based on what you do (especially if it's a reoccurring boss) would be my way to go. If you're doing a fairly obvious tactic, it should pick up on this and create a new condition to spice up the fight. Static pattern based AI really is a boring methodology for game design and should be an obvious no no.

[Arbor]

The best bosses I've ever had to face were in the game Demon's Souls. Each has a unique approach to it.

World 1-1: Phalanx
Giant oil blob covered in smaller oil blobs weilding spears. You have to set your weapon on fire and get in close. Problem is that the blobs will attack you when you do and you can die fairly easily.

1-2: Tower Knight
Dude is gigantic. There are archers all around so you must first dispatch those, while the tower knight is shooting magic missile things at you. Go down, attack his feet, run away as he falls, come back, waste his head.

1-3: Penetrator
Big sword, likes waving it around. Just beat the crap out of him. BUT you can do some special stuff and get an ally on your side.

1-4: False King
Can level you down. Yeah. Takes away a level. At level 70+ it takes sooo much to level. And has an AOE, and moves fast and deal a lot of damage. Ironically, the best way to reduce your damage is to take off all your armor so you can move faster.

2-1: Armored spider
Kicks the crap out of you up close, spits fire balls, slows you down with webs. Shoot from a distance, and poof! no more spider.

2-2: Flame lurker
Lots of fire. Goes nuts at low health and doesn't stop exploding in a ball of fire at you.

2-3: Dragon god.
Now this is very different. Its more of a puzzle. You have to activate two spear-launchy-thingy's basically, but you have to get to them without being set on fire or punched in the face.

There are many more, and each has its own method. use a bow here, kill this dude over here, make her depressed so she commits suicide (seriously, Maiden Astraea, look it up), and so on.

Another great game for boss fights is Shadow of the Colossus. That's all you do is face bosses. Get on this ones wings and stab-stab-stab, beat this one off a wall and stab-stab-stab, etc.

Now I do understand there is a slight barrier here. Most of us don't work with 3D. It's mostly turn-based tactics we're concerned about, so lets see if we can modify this...

DEMON SOULS

World 1-1

If we take Phalanx and convert that battle to RPG Maker, it might go something like this:

Its weakness if fire, so have a mage blast it with fire and have a special enchantment or item to light your other dudes weapons aflame. Whenever you physically attack there is a chance that you will be damaged back. To make it more difficult, you have to inflict a certain amount of damage to it to make its protecton blobs fall off. Its like adding more health to the boss, except to the player it seems more like having to kill more things before they can actually kill the boss.

SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS

The flying...thingy

There is one boss I remember in particular that was very fun. It was this giant flying creature. Now this would require some special scripting, but it could be done. The object was that you had to get on top of the bird and stab the crap out of its wings and tail in certain spots without falling off. This boss in an RPG maker game wouldn't be in a typical battle scene. It would be more like ABS style, just right there. You get on it, you stab it, you don't fall off, win.

I would say that in creating boss battles, its important not to just have it be some long drawn out health beat down. I know of some games like that, where all you do is hit the same keys over and over and over again until it dies. Hit-hit-hit-hit-heal-hit-heal-heal-hit-hit-hit....

You have to make them require some strategy, something unique beyond just doing damage.

[amaro57]

One more thing I like is a timed boss battle. Not an annoying one where you have to grind to be able to stand a chance, but let's say for example there's a story branch affecting boss, if you defeat it in the time limit, the story branches one way, lose, and it branches another. Here's the kicker, beat it or lose within a certain limit (first 5 minutes, between the sixth and 10th minute) and a special story branch or other event occurs. What would make this more challenging would a learning boss like Queue said, would make beating him in a time limit challenging. Of course, I usually prefer action boss battles compared to turn based in battles like this.

[Amy Pond]

Something people don't tend to bring up in these threads is the reward for defeating the boss. Fighting a boss and then just ending up in the same dungeon is boring. Fighting a boss and ending up with a new unlocked location, a cool item, or a snazzy cutscene - now that's interesting.

[Jackal26]

My favorite boss fight usually has favorite type of gameplay.


I like the ATB system... It is more fast pace and you have to think fast. Hesitation could kill a player in a boss fight.

Non useless skills... In Final Fantasy games I didn't understand the Death ability. It would have this count down for the amount of turns it takes to kill that monster. This ability was useless because most bosses are immune to the spell, and trash mobs are usually dead before the count down reaches zero. The ability to be able to use your entire arsenal and have some effect to the boss, whether it is good or bad, is a great fight for me.

Boss fight who have a moment of invincibility. For example someone was talking about fighting a Vampire who is invincible at night. During the day he is weak. He can still change the cycle of the day.

Resurrecting or regenerating bosses... one of my favorite fights in World of Warcraft was the Romeo and Juliette boss in Karazhan. You have to kill them around the same time as the other part of the boss.

Think of it as you are fighting an oversized Chameleon, and chameleons are known to regenerate limbs. So if you only attack his leg and you destroy it. He will regenerate it back to almost full health in a certain amount of time. So if you weaken it, you can get it to the point where you can kill the boss by destroying his limbs at the same time. Each limb may have certain abilities as long as it doesn't heal that monster. Then that would destroy the balance of the game. It adds strategy and you have to think twice before just focus firing on one area of the monster. Doing nothing but AoE attacks drains your mana very quickly. Using abilities to incapacitate different parts, while juggling your defensive abilities and attacks would make it an awesome fight. No attack spamming fest!

[Jonnie19]

I have only scanned through the earlier comments so if I repeat something others say I apologize:

Most enemies in RPG can just be hacked away at and you will win and defeat them easily! but with a boss you need to have a structure, I find the best bosses are the ones that have a set number of attacks, but a really nasty counter attack...I am referencing Sactury Keeper in FFX. That was a horrid boss...but no matter what I wanted to defeat him!

[psychofreak]

Almost all the bosses I design would be fairly easy if it weren't for a special ability to them that makes them seem impossible. Which also differentiates them from mooks. These special abilities can range from having almost fatal attacks, halve your character's stats or even hardly ever able to be hit. But whatever it may be there's always a way(at LEAST one method) to go around it. They're like an obstacle that tests the player's use of the abilities they learned and separates the clever ones from mindless button mashers. Mainly I just like to make button mashers suffer .

This post has been edited by psychofreak: May 17 2011, 05:11 PM

[Acewing]

I'd say Persona brings an interesting twist to it's boss's but I feel an actual boss: an entity that is both mysteries/omnipotent in it's own right...as usually the player has little idea what shape/form/abilities they may bring to the table as well as a set time limit placed upon said player; which I will convey in terms of a turn-based system as a median, I would honestly say that these entities are decent role-models that fit the bill (in my opinion):

In terms of actual challenge/difficulty - I tend to look towards something that requires some luck no matter what you do; something that requires you to not only be competent but also tactful and even then: it may not guarantee you a win but it will always be a struggle each encounter.

Example:

Hitoshura (DDS1) - Not only one of the most difficult bosses in RPG history, but if you take him down to around 50% hp: his pixie will immediately cast a spell (upon her turn) that recovers his health back to max. Although in terms of timing...you end up mostly trying to stall until the pixie's wasted almost all of its mp on a repeat of the same spell over and over. I would also like to add that you do have to do quite a lot of grinding in several aspects just to prepare for the "fiend", but his mechanic's work quite well in terms of an actual boss with proper merits. I could be quite vague here, but if you're curious go type his name in youtube. My words don't do him justice....the reward however is an item that is a carry-over to DDS2. So maybe a reward that's significant for sequels for a game would also be a good incentive for a player.

In terms of needing to defeat someone under some type of time-limit restriction....I'd say:

Lucifer (Devil Survivor) - It casts an AOE each turn that deals damage that stacks per turn; gradually building up to the point where you'll die if you can't defeat him before a certain turn. That's the only entity that came to mind in terms of an actual "time-limit" imposed, though it's still based on turns more-so than actual time.

I'd also like to state that both bosses are quite extreme but I believe they offer some idea (imho) as to what a "boss" should be: a being capable of anything at any time; having nearly the same liberties as the player in terms of determining when to out-right throttle you or impose a de-buff upon you while watching you squirm a bit, but doesn't fit into any "tamed" category where the player can analyze a step-by-step guide, then go engage it with confidence that all they have to do is follow a distinct pattern to lock-down his/her foe and win.

This post has been edited by Acewing: May 21 2011, 11:59 PM

[psychofreak]

Lucifer (Devil Survivor) - It casts an AOE each turn that deals damage that stacks per turn; gradually building up to the point where you'll die if you can't defeat him before a certain turn. That's the only entity that came to mind in terms of an actual "time-limit" imposed, though it's still based on turns more-so than actual time.

So do the damage still stack up on turns when he's immobilized? Like with sleep or stun?