GIMME BOSS GIMMICKS

I've always liked this one I came up with for one of my old projects, it's a basic escape battle, but with enemies linked to heroes. It's a way to make a challenging fight against a stronger (invincible) enemy that you must run away from without making the fight very easy. Normally a boss would just either kill the player or the player would press "escape" and the battle would end.

In this encounter, there would be the same amount of enemies as heroes in the party. The boss character would be invincible. Each of the other minions would behave normally. After three rounds or so, each individual character in the party runs away, with the dialogue like, "This enemy is tailing me! I'll distract him from the group by running away! See you at town!" Of course not exactly like that, but you get the point. After this speech, a switch is triggered, causing the behavior of the enemy the hero spoke of to run that turn. This would happen for each minion/hero set, except the protagonist. The protagonist then must survive a few turns on their own against the boss.

This may seem simple, the strategy being just defend all the time, but the real meat comes with when a hero or enemy dies. If a minion is killed before they can be led off by a fleeing hero, then the hero that would normally leave the party that turn can stay, and help the protagonist survive against the boss. However, if a hero dies before they can lead off an enemy, then that enemy stays to help the boss against the protagonist. The player now can use offense in an attempt to defend the protagonist. It works quite well.

This make sense to anyone? I'll post more later if I remember any I've used.

A good boss for me, is one that makes you work hard. Usual encounters are a breeze, but the boss should put your skills and sword to the test. If you don't die a dozen times and struggle to survive, the boss failed as a challenge.

I must say I don't like transforming bosses that do so for no apparent reason. I mean, it's fine if it's part of the actual plot, but it seems every "ultimate" boss these days has some revival/multiple-part-fight property... I just don't think it's that interesting to warrant reuse. Though it may be interesting if the progress of the battle influences the transformation, in the sense that the boss morphs into a physical creature if MP is low, etc...

I personally hate any sort of transformation gimmick. It reeks of "That was only a fraction of my power. Now I'll show you my true power/suffering/poorwritingskills!" It hurts my brain and it gives me another reason to quit playing (doubly so if there some stupid villian monologue while doing so, the process takes five minutes, and I don't get a chance to use items since the party had their heads stuck up their own asses during the intermission)

I suppose "Any" is too strong of a word. If there's a valid reason for the transformation/powerup, I'm game. For example, using the were-creature example, if you're fighting a lycanthrope in human form and they don't want the fact that they're a lycanthrope to be revealed, I can see them fighting in human form at first until they get more desperate and transform, revealing his secret.

Now if the same lycanthrope was found in his secret hideout, he's planning on killing the party, and the and there's no one to hide from, why not have the lycanthrope start off transformed? When the fight starts with the lycanthrope in human form who changes during the fight, that's the shit I hate (unless there's another reason, like maybe the more the lycanthrope's in his transformed state, the more insane he is or something)


When the reasoning behind the transformation aren't stupid (ripped from DBZ, there just to have a transforming boss, SO YOU REVEAL YOUR TRUE FORM (Not complaining about SF64 here), ect.), that's what I hate. I did overgeneralize though, but most transforming boss that I could think of fell under the "That's a terrible reason/No reason at all" category

In this vein, I liked the FFVI boss battle against the andriod. He would rotate his elemental weakness, absorb and immunity during the battle. It was neat.

I also like killing undead bosses with a single fenix down (but not really. I think it's cheap ;) )

Yeah, if you played some of the optional bosses in Final Fantasy 12, there were a few who became very difficult because the room they were in prevented the player from spamming the most effective tactics. One of the Espers, for example, has a field preventing you from attacking, so you have to use Magicks and Technicks, which seriously reduces your damage output....not as much of a problem in the regular game, I imagine, but in IZJS it becomes a lot more difficult because most characters don't have Telekinesis. Another Esper prevents you from using magicks, which forces you to set up clever item-use gambits to survive.

The main problem with that sort of gimmick is if you force the player to make use of an aspect of the system that is only useful in that situation. Terranigma's Bloody Mary is an example, though as I hear it not an intentional one. Because of a glitch, the only thing that can effectively (read: for more than one point of damage at a time) hurt her are magic attacks that are almost completely useless in any other situation, so there's a good chance the player hasn't been using them or collecting the phlebotinum to make them work, making Bloody Mary a big chore for a lot of people. If you're going to force the player to use one aspect of the battle system to beat a puzzle-boss, make sure that aspect is useful in other situations.

author=Erave link=topic=1142.msg17163#msg17163 date=1211266278

author=WIP link=topic=1142.msg17157#msg17157 date=1211257100
I was going to bring that up, kentona. The Mage Master dude.

As for other interesting boss gimmicks, there are an infinite amount of ideas. What I know I hate about some bosses is how after you find their weakness, they become a complete push over.

A constant barrage of challenge is best.

How do you make a boss a challenge without giving him some weakness to figure out?

Well what I mean, is something like Flash Man in Mega Man 2. In the original it takes like what, 4 metal blades and he's toast. In the Anniversary Collection and such, it takes twice that, making the battle more challenging.

I was just saying that I don't think a boss should have a completely debilitating weakness.