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Best bosses in Western Developed games?

Oryx, The Taken King at the end of the King's Fall raid.

The whole raid has taught you how to succeed here, every section teaches a technique to be used here and it's glorious how it all comes together.

The way this fight makes every player feel like their role matters, that if they fail it could all fall apart, the music and the effects (the corrupted light, damaging Oryx, the Thunderdome among many) enhance the huge, epic feeling of the battle and the venue is magnificent. A multi level arena, with ample cover and places to fight from, the design of the arena enabled many techniques, the standard way, 16 or strat, no knights (a risky but clever way to get lower level Guardians through the fight) and of course solo. Solo!
I love this fight, easily my favourite FPS boss, shout out to the Darkblade fight as well, it's far simpler but really fun and shows how the strike boss fights have improved in year 2 of Destiny
 
zoukka said:
GoW bosses are epic but not very fun to play in the end. Especially on repeated playthroughs.

Metroid Prime series is the correct answer. Boost Guardian was fun, Dark Samus very atmospheric and Quadraxis epic as shit.



It makes perfect sense. In a "top-100" bosses since the PS2 era there would probably be only a few ones from western games. The difference is like day and night.
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it's not, most western bosses are in PC games.
 
Only 1 mention to Dead Space bosses? FLOP THREAD

I remember enjoying the boss fights in Transistor, Child of Light and the main targets in the Assassins Creed games.

Oh oh oh, Metroid Prime and Luigis Mansion 2 bosses are incredible too!
 
Dusk Golem said:
Sonic 2 would technically qualify, but it's kind of a cop-out answer. A lot of the big Japanese Sonic Team members were in California during the development of Sonic 2.

I think he answered mainly that to throw off the definition of 'Western Developed.'
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Why was that? That's pretty wild considering the time.
 
Gonna Second Gruntilda from the Original Banjo Kazooie, everything about that fight was perfect.

One of my fave "Final Exam" Bosses in game history.

Rare used to make pretty dope Bosses back in the day, Kaptain K. Rool is one of the best platform game bosses ever.
 
atheon-article-piece-destiny-vault-of-glass-guide-3-the-labyrinth-atheon-s-chamber-png-162948.jpg

Atheon from Destiny.

Shoutouts to pushing him off the edge.
 
Wolfenstein had some interesting boss battles.

For the worst boss battle ever I nominate Two Worlds 2.
The last thing I want is to see the character I have developed the whole game forced to fight in a generic shooter in which his abilities don't factor in.
 
That "invincible" boss in Dead Space. The first and only time that kind of gimmick worked for me.

A lot of WoW stuff. The troll raids and Ulduar really stand out to me.

EDIT: Rift had a lot of fun boss encounters. Too bad the game shifted to "pay2win"
 
Man, I can barely come up with anything. It's a generalization that happens to be true; Western devs suck at boss fights. :P Unless they copy Japanese games.

Like Salt and Sanctuary has legit awesome boss battles, but they're obviously inspired by Japanese games like Souls games and Super Metroid, Castlevania SotN, etc.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver had some cool "puzzle" boss fights. They were kind of trivial once you figured it out though, but they were pretty clever at least.

Bound By Flame had some OK boss fights, for a western action-RPG. Sadly the last boss was complete dogshit. :( Don't know what they were thinking...

God of War had some decent bosses but the QTE shit kind of ruins it. Kind of sad that it's listed among the "best" of Western games though, as it pales compared to the best Japanese games boss fights.

Mayyyybe Metroid Prime (wasn't a fan tbh, but for various reasons not related to bosses). It's an American dev, but working on an originally Japanese franchise. So I guess it can count... just barely. :P

oimori said:
sorry for very latest title, but UC4's
Rafe
was really amazing.
Click to expand...
You're kidding right? He said best not worst...
 
The Metroid Prime series take the cake for me. But of those games Metroid Prime 2 is best. And out of the 3 games it probably had the smallest degree of involvement from NCL.

I've seen many Quadraxis pictures in this thread already, and I couldn't agree more. Such a perfect fight. It could've been the final boss.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Man, I can barely come up with anything. It's a generalization that happens to be true; Western devs suck at boss fights. :P Unless they copy Japanese games.

Like Salt and Sanctuary has legit awesome boss battles, but they're obviously inspired by Japanese games like Souls games and Super Metroid, Castlevania SotN, etc.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver had some cool "puzzle" boss fights. They were kind of trivial once you figured it out though, but they were pretty clever at least.

Bound By Flame had some OK boss fights, for a western action-RPG. Sadly the last boss was complete dogshit. :( Don't know what they were thinking...

God of War had some decent bosses but the QTE shit kind of ruins it. Kind of sad that it's listed among the "best" of Western games though, as it pales compared to the best Japanese games boss fights.

Mayyyybe Metroid Prime (wasn't a fan tbh, but for various reasons not related to bosses). It's an American dev, but working on an originally Japanese franchise. So I guess it can count... just barely. :P
Click to expand...

I kinda have to go with this. Every boss I think of as amazing and one I'd love to fight again are all from Japanese games. Souls bosses, Zelda bosses, Platinum Games bosses. When I try and think western ones I go to places like maybe God of War but then as you said, the QTEs kind of take away from it.

I would probably say a Metroid Prime boss would be the best but can't really think as it's been so long since I played them but I do remember really liking some of the ones in 2 and 3.

Does Through The Fire And The Flames in Guitar Hero 3 count?
 
the Scarab from Halo 3. A dynamic, complex boss that still feels a generation of design ahead of most other games.
 
SMG said:
the Scarab from Halo 3. A dynamic, complex boss that still feels a generation of design ahead of most other games.
Click to expand...
Forgot about this. The Halo 3 Scarab is loads of fun to try taking out in different ways. It's fantastic just how many situations are designed into the arenas and the boss so that you're never restricted to attacking it in just one fashion. It's the only Halo boss that actually plays to Halo's strengths as a sandbox shooter.
 
Destiny has some great bosses. Mindless bullet sponges aside concepts like the ones involving the Atheon fight (and VoG in general) are absolutely fantastic.
 
Undertale. No set of bosses I've seen have played a bigger narrative role nor pushed their simple mechanics to such limits. Mettaton and
Sans
alone are worth putting this game in top 10 lists for boss battles. I'll admit that they can drag on and how sparing a couple of them are difficult to figure out, but the good far outweighs the bad.
I'm still salty that it never made it into Watch Mojo's Top 10.
 
I feel like if you bring up something like Destiny which draws its roots from MMO's it's a massive disservice not to give credence to WoW. WoW without a shadow of a doubt has the best MMO boss fights. I agree Atheon and Oryx were fun. But they don't even hold a candle to the best raid bosses in WoW.
 
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