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SHOULD THE LAST BOSS BE SUPER CHALLENGING?
Posts
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
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LockeZ
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CloseYou can't actually lose the section of Lufia 2 after the final boss. It's not an extra challenge. It's just an interactive ending.
The "final final bosses" of FF7 and FF10 are the same way. If you beat Jecht and Safer Sephiroth, there is a 100% chance you're capable of beating Yu Yevon and Cloud's Inner Sephiroth in a single attempt.
I agree that the final real challenge of the game should be the ultimate version of the primary type of challenge of the game. If your game has more than one primary type of challenge, so should its finale! Final Fantasy games have dungeons and bosses as their two main challenges, so each game ends with a final dungeon and a final boss. The boss is at the end of the final dungeon and not the beginning because otherwise the dungeon doesn't work. There has to be something after a dungeon or it would totally change the way that the resource-conservation game plays, which would make it not really be the same type of challenge as the rest of the game's dungeons. In earlier dungeons it's sometimes enough for there to simply be more dungeons afterwards, but in the final dungeon that's not an option. The only thing you can put after the dungeon is a final boss!
In a game like Legend of Zelda where there's no actual resource-conservation to speak of, the gameplay of the dungeon doesn't really directly interact with the gameplay of the boss fight, and it would actually be totally possible to have the final boss fight at the beginning of the final dungeon. However, Zelda's rigid dungeon structure doesn't do this in any other dungeon, and so it would be awkward.
Also, if your game has a primary villain with a face and a personality, it feels really good to kick that villain's ass. So good that, usually, to me, it feels like it should be the end of the game. Plus, the nature of bosses through an entire game is that every one of them is inherently a climactic part of the gameplay. That's what a boss is. It's a big, climactic battle at the end of a bunch of little ones. So people expect the game's climax to be a boss, for a variety of reasons.
The "final final bosses" of FF7 and FF10 are the same way. If you beat Jecht and Safer Sephiroth, there is a 100% chance you're capable of beating Yu Yevon and Cloud's Inner Sephiroth in a single attempt.
I agree that the final real challenge of the game should be the ultimate version of the primary type of challenge of the game. If your game has more than one primary type of challenge, so should its finale! Final Fantasy games have dungeons and bosses as their two main challenges, so each game ends with a final dungeon and a final boss. The boss is at the end of the final dungeon and not the beginning because otherwise the dungeon doesn't work. There has to be something after a dungeon or it would totally change the way that the resource-conservation game plays, which would make it not really be the same type of challenge as the rest of the game's dungeons. In earlier dungeons it's sometimes enough for there to simply be more dungeons afterwards, but in the final dungeon that's not an option. The only thing you can put after the dungeon is a final boss!
In a game like Legend of Zelda where there's no actual resource-conservation to speak of, the gameplay of the dungeon doesn't really directly interact with the gameplay of the boss fight, and it would actually be totally possible to have the final boss fight at the beginning of the final dungeon. However, Zelda's rigid dungeon structure doesn't do this in any other dungeon, and so it would be awkward.
Also, if your game has a primary villain with a face and a personality, it feels really good to kick that villain's ass. So good that, usually, to me, it feels like it should be the end of the game. Plus, the nature of bosses through an entire game is that every one of them is inherently a climactic part of the gameplay. That's what a boss is. It's a big, climactic battle at the end of a bunch of little ones. So people expect the game's climax to be a boss, for a variety of reasons.
