Revengeance had truly awesome boss battles, but Armstrong was without the doubt best.
Don't fuck with this senator.
Edit: Beaten by a much better post.
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Best Boss Battles of 2013 (here there be spoilers)
- Thread starter maxcriden
- Start date
Don't fuck with this senator.
Edit: Beaten by a much better post.
Eppy Thatcher
God's had his chance.
Massive internet brofist to all my fellow Dragon's Dogma homies...
Specifically - Daimon, Death, the first time you take on a Griffin and the first time the Red Drake in Devilfire wipes your whole party. Too much good stuff in that game to list.
Specifically - Daimon, Death, the first time you take on a Griffin and the first time the Red Drake in Devilfire wipes your whole party. Too much good stuff in that game to list.
Armstrong was good, but I think you guys are going a little too far with it.
Mistral and Sam were better fights in the same game - probably the best of the year.
Deathstroke from Arkham Origins was pretty good too - it pulled off a decent cinematic boss fight while still retaining enough "control" over the encounter.
Mistral and Sam were better fights in the same game - probably the best of the year.
Deathstroke from Arkham Origins was pretty good too - it pulled off a decent cinematic boss fight while still retaining enough "control" over the encounter.
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Revengeance was pretty good in that department.
But I really liked Killer is Dead's finale.
Mediocre game but great last boss.
+Dragons dogma.
Regular encounters with some enemies are like boss fights, and the real bosses are crazy.
But I really liked Killer is Dead's finale.
Mediocre game but great last boss.
+Dragons dogma.
Regular encounters with some enemies are like boss fights, and the real bosses are crazy.
Sam was certainly a great character, but I can't be the only guy who thinks his fight was a little... anti-climatic? Far too easy, you can even kill him in less than a minute if you really want.
XANDER CAGE
Member
Deathstroke - Arkham Origins
This was precisely the kind of bossfight I was wanting post-AC: 1 that worked within the melee combat mechanics. You couldn't just simply press Triangle to win, you had to pay more attention to your actions for once & be a little smarter. More so than any fighting game I felt this boss captured the feel of the fistfight showdown between equally matched opponents.
I wish it was a little shorter and had relied a little more on the actual normal combat mechanics instead of the weird stripped down "cinematic" version we got, but it was pretty cool.
Also, I agree with the OP on Dream Team's bosses. I'm a big fan of Alpha Dream's visual style and I found the gyro controls in the Bowser and Zeekeeper battles to work well, and they were rather minimal. I think my favourite boss in that game was the Elite Trio
I really liked how they summoned hoards of enemies to pull off some pretty unique attacks, and managing to KO them all at the same time is satisfying. Plus it's really cool how you actually fight these guys. That rare moment when the team of comic relief bad guys gets serious.
Also agreed on the spider in Luigi's Mansion 2. I think it's a shame there weren't more puzzle-based fights in the game, because the first boss is definitely the best. Maybe the final boss is good too? I'm still stuck on that one mission where you have to kill every kind of ghost under a time limit. I'm terrible at it.
The final boss is awesome, well worth beating that (very difficult) mission you're stuck on. You can do it, MrBadger! (And I agree that the Elite Trio was another awesome battle in that game!)
Sam was the easiest boss for me, even easier than Sundowner, who was also a pushover. I enjoyed their fights in the context of the game, even if they represented little challenge compared to the rest of the bosses.
Sundowner was too easily exploitable and Sam was just too simple.
Awesome transcription work, and holy shit, where did you get that image? Is there a 1600x900 wallpaper version?'I have a dream.' That one day every person in this nation will control their own destiny. A nation of the truly free, dammit. A nation of action, not words, ruled by strength, not committee! Where the law changes to suit the individual, not the other way around. Where power and justice are back where they belong: in the hands of the people! Where every man is free to think - to act - for himself! Fuck all these limp-dick lawyers and chickenshit bureaucrats. Fuck this 24-hour Internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit! Fuck American pride! Fuck the media! FUCK ALL OF IT! America is diseased. Rotten to the core. There's no saving it - we need to pull it out by the roots. Wipe the slate clean. BURN IT DOWN! And from the ashes a new America will be born. Evolved, but untamed! The weak will be purged and the strongest will thrive - free to live as they see fit, they'll make America great again! ...In my new America, people will die and kill for what they BELIEVE! Not for money. not for oil! Not for what they're told is right. Every man will be free to fight his own wars!
And yes, Senator Armstrong is definitely my pick for Best Boss Battle of 2013. Maybe Best Boss Battle EVER.
Guy is INSANE.
Depending on my mood, I sometimes prefer Mistral
Clickable.
I like how WoW's bosses are stylized as an idea (being mechanic-based that you had to deal with, as opposed to being a paint-your-own picture style like Platinum bosses), it's just that I always found how to deal with them to be needlessly complicated. Then again I almost never raided and didn't really do dugeons that extensively (I did a bit during cata but I dropped doing it to focus on story in pandaria at the cost of my interest in WoW), so I guess I would really be the guy to ask.
Kid Icarus's fights were stylized similarly, but obviously nowhere near that level of precision.
EDIT: Since we are on the topic, if a boss has an exploit I usually ignore it when I rank my fights as I am a purist and will abstain from using said exploit. As such I do like Sundowner, but cheap shots from the copters and the oddly paced finisher (for MGR at least, it wouldn't have been out of place in W101) knock it off.
I'm glad to see so much Armstrong in this thread. When the game came out people hated him, but it looks like good taste triumphs overall.
I honestly thought Rising was pretty average with a lot of half-baked or poorly executed ideas but a lot of potential. Armstrong was the one boss fight where all of that finally came together in a way that resembles a genuinely great game. Armstrong gives me hope for the future.
I honestly thought Rising was pretty average with a lot of half-baked or poorly executed ideas but a lot of potential. Armstrong was the one boss fight where all of that finally came together in a way that resembles a genuinely great game. Armstrong gives me hope for the future.
Huh, I really liked Motley Bossblob.
With the Boss Blitz level, though, you really get the best of all worlds.
I like to think of him as American Hitler.
GungriffonEX
Member
W101 & MGR.
I was not ready for Armstrong in the Sam DLC on hard. I was his punching bag for a good 20 minutes till I worked out a strategy.
I was not ready for Armstrong in the Sam DLC on hard. I was his punching bag for a good 20 minutes till I worked out a strategy.
This one for me too.
Boss looks great, and the battle was very stressful since the boss is just so damn big!
matrix-cat
Member
It took me a solid hour and a half to beat Armstrong on Hard my first time through. Every time I thought I had his number he pulled out some new move, and I'd used up all my nanopastes on the fights before him. It was this perfect, tough-as-nails experience where I started out getting utterly stomped within seconds, thinking there was absolutely no chance I'd ever beat this guy, then I learned a little more, tried some new techniques and got a little bit further every time. It was never frustrating, never cheap, just hard, and by the time I finally beat him I was dodging and blocking every single attack like a pro.
That QTE at the end where Raiden pulls the sword out of Armstrong's chest, spins around and then slowly, calmly squares off in a perfect Samurai stance to make the final cuts is the most glorious thing ever.
That QTE at the end where Raiden pulls the sword out of Armstrong's chest, spins around and then slowly, calmly squares off in a perfect Samurai stance to make the final cuts is the most glorious thing ever.
I can see why someone would prefer Sam, but mistral? Nah, mechanically she's one of the weakest bosses in the game, she doesn't have that many attacks (and they aren't particularly interesting either), you're constantly being pestered by dwarf geckos and she's way too easy to beat.
Sam also suffers from being too easy but at least he's got a large variety of attacks at his disposal (he's got at least basic 4 combo strings plus all his special moves).
But at the same time, everything the Sam fight does, the Armstrong fight does better IMO. It's more epic, harder, longer, Armstrong's attacks are more diversified (I don't think he's got more of them it's just that they have vastly different effects). I also don't really like that if you want to get a good grade on the Sam fight you need to either go out of your way to pick up items or intentionally draw the fight out.
Yeah it's so great. As soon as Raiden started putting himself into the right stance I understood that I was gonna have to
Zandatsu
SneakyStephan
Banned
Most of the large creatures in dragon's dogma and the dark arisen expansion are a blast to fight
I also really liked the kael'thas fight in tempest keep back in TBC in wow
a 25 minute fight with like 6 different phases that required a huge amount of coordination, especially the last 2 phases where everyone was a crucial cog to keep the encounter going and if one person died things started to fall apart quickly
One of the last super hard wow bosses before blizzard switched to the 'let's just make new bosses hit too hard to tank then nerf the dmg later so the fight becomes trivial' model (though they did nerf the hp and dmg of all the weapons and minibosses to make him much easier after a while)
http://www.wowwiki.com/Kael'thas_Sunstrider_(tactics)
I also really liked the kael'thas fight in tempest keep back in TBC in wow
a 25 minute fight with like 6 different phases that required a huge amount of coordination, especially the last 2 phases where everyone was a crucial cog to keep the encounter going and if one person died things started to fall apart quickly
One of the last super hard wow bosses before blizzard switched to the 'let's just make new bosses hit too hard to tank then nerf the dmg later so the fight becomes trivial' model (though they did nerf the hp and dmg of all the weapons and minibosses to make him much easier after a while)
http://www.wowwiki.com/Kael'thas_Sunstrider_(tactics)
striferser
Huge Nickleback Fan
Team Revengeance
Senator fight really take the cake though.
Senator fight really take the cake though.
When Origins launched the internet was full of people who couldn't wrap their heads around the fight. So many were having trouble that Kotaku even did a piece on how to beat it... in the most unvaried fashion. I think the source of the problem was that many players were just hammering counter when Deathstroke went into his own counter attack animation (you have to wait for the slow-mo parts of his move). I imagine it could be confusing, because Deathroke's counter attack animations appear to show him actually hitting Batman, which doesn't really happen during standard combat
You can use nearly all of Batman's moveset during the fight, it's just that Deathstroke can react to each attack in a similar manner to how the player can as Batman. Most people will have beaten it by just following the prompts, countering and mashing the attack button. You can never take a hit and never miss a counter this way, but it's possible to beat Deathstroke without ever losing your combo. You're not locked into Deathstroke's reactionary QTE attack pattern. I'm guessing a lot of people just never test this for themselves.
AntiFacebook
Member
The final boss of Rouge Lagacy.
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
I find the boss in Last of Us funny as the bosses in Uncharted, honestly, kind of suck. Which is a shame as you could imagine maybe some pretty cool boss battles in that universe. And then the Last of Us doesn't really seem like a game that would work well with boss battles, but there is one single boss battle in The Last of Us, and it's actually pretty fantastic.
I don't know if to say it was the best boss battle of 2013, I still need to play a lot of games from 2013, but that one did stick out.
I don't know if to say it was the best boss battle of 2013, I still need to play a lot of games from 2013, but that one did stick out.
Doctoglethorpe
Member
My favorites are when it feels like we're fighting a real, natural challenge. Its always disappointing when a boss is designed to appear crazy overpowering and then compensates for the fact that we need to be able to beat it by being predictable and slow.
For 2013 its definitely the Deathstorke fight imo.
For 2013 its definitely the Deathstorke fight imo.
PotionBleue
Member
This boss' concept, albeit simple, was brilliant in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
Stalblind Boss Fight
Stalblind Boss Fight
Oh yeah, this was a really fun boss battle. The game was full of fun, memorable battles, and I thought the final boss was great.
Triggerhappytel
Member
The final boss from SteamWorld Dig. I loved this boss a lot; I thought it was a really good way to finish the game, generally quite easy but could be tricky if you didn't pay attention, and narratively it was a pretty interesting conclusion (particularly that the mine caves in and you never see Rusty again, only the townsfolk talking about him).
Guacamelee: All of them.
On Hard Mode, all of the Guacamelee boss fights are insanely difficult-and insanely fun. They're all require mastery of the abilities you have in the points in the game you fight them during, and all of them are pretty challenging. Especially Jaguar Javier. Damn tough fight.
On Hard Mode, all of the Guacamelee boss fights are insanely difficult-and insanely fun. They're all require mastery of the abilities you have in the points in the game you fight them during, and all of them are pretty challenging. Especially Jaguar Javier. Damn tough fight.
unknownstranger
Member
This is probably my pick as well. Also giant battles in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team were awful.
Looking forward to checking out the Wii U version!
I dunno what to tell you, I loved them. Did you like the giant battles in Bowser's Inside Story?