|
Post by Bumpyroad on Jan 27, 2021 1:22:06 GMT -5
- Ninja Gaiden Black has some nasty ones (Alma etc.)
And...a witch in a red dress:
|
|
|
Post by Apollo Chungus on Jan 27, 2021 6:23:49 GMT -5
I can throw in a couple.
I've been playing Fairune, which is an okay enough Zelda-style adventure game with the combat from the old Ys games where running into an enemy hits/kills them but deals some damage to you. I managed to get to the very end of the game, when it suddenly changes genres and puts you up against a boss from a vertical shooter. So with no prior training in this area, you now have to dodge projectile patterns while shooting at this enemy weaving around the screen. It's not cool, and made even worse by the fact that dying forces you to tediously backtrack to this point and do the whole thing over again. Bleugh.
Alpha-152 from Dead or Alive 4 was always a pretty infamous one for me. DOA4 was already a much more difficult game than the previous ones, owing to a greater emphasis on counters and the removal of the easier difficulty modes that I used to play in, but then throwing in this crazy powerful teleporting liquid lady was the final straw. It wasn't challenging in the same way that the Tengu from 2 was, where you still had a decent fighting chance despite some of the insane moves he had. It was just frustrating as heck, and really put me off from replaying the Arcade mode more than once or twice since I knew I'd always have to fight her again.
|
|
|
Post by kaoru on Jan 27, 2021 7:44:46 GMT -5
I never finished Fairune because of that shmup boss xD
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2021 7:56:21 GMT -5
To me that just sounds like bad game design. I'm not really a fan of when games change genre on you. The player bought the game because they liked the core concept, so it's going to be off putting to at least someone. If the dev's do decide to do something like that the new genre should always be approached with the idea of being someone's first time playing that kind of game, and the difficulty should reflect that.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Jan 27, 2021 10:00:38 GMT -5
I guess I can see someone with limited experience having trouble, but it's even easier than the first two bosses of Ys II which are conceptually similar; those have harder to dodge attacks and more difficult aiming since you don't automatically point up. It is a change since the rest of the game doesn't use projectiles, but it's literally only the final boss on a single screen.
Edit: I'm not trying to disparage anyone's abilities, but it's arguably already an easy version in any of the phases.
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jan 27, 2021 10:18:26 GMT -5
To me that just sounds like bad game design. I'm not really a fan of when games change genre on you. The player bought the game because they liked the core concept, so it's going to be off putting to at least someone. If the dev's do decide to do something like that the new genre should always be approached with the idea of being someone's first time playing that kind of game, and the difficulty should reflect that. I had that issue with Moonwalker on the Genesis, where the final boss is one of those early "3d shooters" where you see the enemy on a radar and you have to try to move your ship/target around to try and locate it... I'm not describing it well, but it's the type of retro shooter I like the least, and I found that boss to be a real pain. I like the idea of genre-mixing in theory, and a lot of times a sudden, short-term switch can be surprising and impressive, but it can easily turn to tedious, so I agree that those segments should generally be easy, even in a challenging game.
|
|
|
Post by ommadawnyawn2 on Jan 27, 2021 10:20:27 GMT -5
Would agree with the MJM final boss for the MD/GEN. Sega was generally not as good as Nintendo at easing the player into new gameplay styles or mechanics back then. Most devs weren't really.
|
|
|
Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jan 27, 2021 11:12:15 GMT -5
I honestly can't think of too many examples from the top of my head, even though I generally think boss battles are the weakes part of 90% of games out there. Recently, Luigi's Mansion 3 had a pretty annoying final boss. That's for a large part due to the finicky mechanics that I couldn't get to work consistently in that game. But it's also the only boss with a time limit. Cuphead's final boss is very difficult, but it's a boss-focused game, so it's really more like the final stage in that regard, and the whole game is pretty challenging, so it's not too bad. But it is quite a step up (though I found the robot boss to be harder). Splatoon 1 and 2 of all games have pretty big difficulty spikes at their final boss. That's also due to the fact that the rest of the single players are just really easy. Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion also has a very difficult boss battle at the end, though it isn't the climax of the game, it's a boss that has a bit of a reputation. Pokémon Red/Blue requires quite some grinding until you're strong enough to tackle the Elite 4, but that's more an example of an RPG stretching out its length. Cadence of Hyrule is pretty easy until you hit the final boss, which I found more annoying than CotD's final boss. The final battle against Dracula in the early Castlevania games were pretty tough. Castlevania 1, 3 and the first two Game Boy ones were some that I find hard to do even today even though I know the strategy to take him down. I've not had much experience with CV Bloodlines but I suspect Dracula is hard in this one as well with the limited continues. Dracula in CV1 is pretty hard, but it's not really too much removed from what you expect after playing the rest of the game, and he's easier than the preceding boss. So I personally didn't think he was that bad, all things considered.
|
|
|
Post by Apollo Chungus on Jan 27, 2021 16:39:55 GMT -5
I guess I can see someone with limited experience having trouble, but it's even easier than the first two bosses of Ys II which are conceptually similar; those have harder to dodge attacks and more difficult aiming since you don't automatically point up. It is a change since the rest of the game doesn't use projectiles, but it's literally only the final boss on a single screen. Edit: I'm not trying to disparage anyone's abilities, but it's arguably already an easy version in any of the phases. That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I have little to no experience with shmups apart from playing a demo of Ikaruga on the easiest difficulty a few months back. It's a genre I've historically never had much interest in, despite how many groundbreaking and awesome games there obviously are. So it's likely that Fairune's final boss isn't very difficult, and more that I just suck at shmups in general. (Incidentally, I have no problem or self-consciousness about admitting my own lack of skill at any given genre. I suck at sports games, RTS games, and most fighting games as well.)
What only bugs me about Fairune specifically is that the style of challenge changes from the rest of the game, and I don't just mean in terms of mechanics. Although it's an action-RPG, Fairune is a generally sedate affair where you can take your time, walk around, and consider carefully how to approach and solve its simple puzzles. You don't even need to use any buttons except for when you have to use an item at a very specific spot. But then you get to its finale, and suddenly you're having to think on your feet while dodging attacks constantly with different patterns, mashing a button repeatedly to fire projectiles and lining yourself up so those shots actually hit the boss - and you have to do three increasingly tougher, increasingly faster variations on this idea in a row.
It's a drastic shift in what the game's expecting to you, and as the finale, it doesn't feel like that shift really fits within any mechanical or thematic ideas that had been set up to this effect. So it just comes off as an unnecessary difficulty spike that keeps people who aren't very good at shmups from finishing it. Yeah, it's the very end so it's not really a big deal when the player's already seen the rest of the game, but I'd argue that's exactly the reason why you shouldn't shut them out at the last second when you've already let them in so far.
|
|
|
Post by jorpho on Jan 27, 2021 23:32:59 GMT -5
It's totally epic, but the final fight with Bowser in SMW2: Yoshi's Island is a nasty bit.
I'm not sure if I should count Psychonauts, but the final segment right before the final boss is utterly obnoxious that I barely had patience to figure out the final boss afterwards.
And on that note I could bring up the final puzzle in Full Throttle, a nasty piece of senseless arcade trickery.
At the moment I am beset by Mega Satan in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, but the game being what it is, it's probably only just a matter of time before I hit upon a sufficiently ridiculous item combo that effortlessly stomps him flat. I do not think I will have the patience to 100% this one – just too much RNG.
|
|
|
Post by retr0gamer on Jan 28, 2021 5:04:00 GMT -5
I guess I can see someone with limited experience having trouble, but it's even easier than the first two bosses of Ys II which are conceptually similar; those have harder to dodge attacks and more difficult aiming since you don't automatically point up. It is a change since the rest of the game doesn't use projectiles, but it's literally only the final boss on a single screen. Edit: I'm not trying to disparage anyone's abilities, but it's arguably already an easy version in any of the phases. That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I have little to no experience with shmups apart from playing a demo of Ikaruga on the easiest difficulty a few months back. It's a genre I've historically never had much interest in, despite how many groundbreaking and awesome games there obviously are. So it's likely that Fairune's final boss isn't very difficult, and more that I just suck at shmups in general. (Incidentally, I have no problem or self-consciousness about admitting my own lack of skill at any given genre. I suck at sports games, RTS games, and most fighting games as well.)
What only bugs me about Fairune specifically is that the style of challenge changes from the rest of the game, and I don't just mean in terms of mechanics. Although it's an action-RPG, Fairune is a generally sedate affair where you can take your time, walk around, and consider carefully how to approach and solve its simple puzzles. You don't even need to use any buttons except for when you have to use an item at a very specific spot. But then you get to its finale, and suddenly you're having to think on your feet while dodging attacks constantly with different patterns, mashing a button repeatedly to fire projectiles and lining yourself up so those shots actually hit the boss - and you have to do three increasingly tougher, increasingly faster variations on this idea in a row. It's a drastic shift in what the game's expecting to you, and as the finale, it doesn't feel like that shift really fits within any mechanical or thematic ideas that had been set up to this effect. So it just comes off as an unnecessary difficulty spike that keeps people who aren't very good at shmups from finishing it. Yeah, it's the very end so it's not really a big deal when the player's already seen the rest of the game, but I'd argue that's exactly the reason why you shouldn't shut them out at the last second when you've already let them in so far.
It's always a dick move when games do this. It's like the Anti MGS3. The Boss in MGS3 is one of the best bosses of all time as you have to use every trick you've learned throughout the game up to that point to beat her. Fairune completely throws everything out the window and plants you in a new genre. It's also one of the many, many, many reasons I hate MGS4. I find the final boss to be awful and it's insane how people think it's good. It throws all the mechanics in the game out the window for a terrible fist fight while blasting you with unearned nostalgia.
|
|
|
Post by kaoru on Jan 28, 2021 9:43:12 GMT -5
Edit: I'm not trying to disparage anyone's abilities, but it's arguably already an easy version in any of the phases. It probably also depends on the platform, between smartphone's touch controls and proper button intputs in the console releases.
|
|
|
Post by dsparil on Jan 28, 2021 10:10:13 GMT -5
Edit: I'm not trying to disparage anyone's abilities, but it's arguably already an easy version in any of the phases. It probably also depends on the platform, between smartphone's touch controls and proper button intputs in the console releases. Yeah, it does come off as more of a crappy move on mobile since the grid-based movement and lack of an attack button of the rest of the game are otherwise well suited to the platform.
|
|
|
Post by protoman85 on Oct 7, 2021 15:46:33 GMT -5
I think all final bosses in the Megaman Battle Network series are hard no matter how good I've become leading up to them. Gospel in 2 was probably the worst but that was also because I had to beat Bass right before fighting him. Otherwise I'll just list some games where I've fallen at the final boss: Jungle no Ouja Tar-chan(Super Famicom) boss fights play like a 2D fighting game and time ran out with him having 1 point of health left. The Great Battle IV (Super Famicom) again boss fights are side-view giant mech fights and I died when the boss has 1 point left. Grand Theft Auto Vice City, might be a surprise but I had full health and armor when I went to face Sonny and his two goons and I died quick. Super Bonk 2 (Super Famicom) got the final boss after doing a required boss gauntlet, game over'd after figuring out what I needed to do, too late.
|
|
|
Post by klausien on Oct 7, 2021 17:56:18 GMT -5
Ys 3 on Genesis. It would possibly be the best version of the game if not for the unbeatable end boss. Unless I'm doing something wrong, the difficulty spike is breathtaking.
|
|