So this and all the other Deus Ex Games and DLC on Steam are 75% off at the moment. I'm kind of tempted to get DE:HR but I'm put off by reports of the questionable quality of the boss fights. Are the boss fights all that bad? Are they tough to get through? I tend to favour a stealth approach and get the impression that the boss fights would be punishing for that kind of play-style.

Dudebro, its already 75% off. Just go for it.

You can't stealth your way through a boss fight but sneak around plenty beforehand to stock up on weapons and shoot them in the face. There are hidden caches of weapons and ammo all over the place.

@djames216:

Boss fights aren't that hard if you use your noggin a bit and have at least one or two of variety of provided tools, with you. Frequently those tools are readily provided in the very levels before the boss or even in their very arenas. There are a dozen and one ways to kill every boss with minimum of fuss, yes even for stealth pacifist characters. Some tactical use of items is all that is required.

My stance is that everyone who bitched about DX:HR boss fight are a bunch of pussies or CoD mouthbreathers. Come at me bro. Uprights!

Joking aside. They can be considered bad design, because they force you into a conflict, even if you are a character that avoids it for the rest of the game. And they also provide a jump in difficulty and require a use of arsenal/abilities/items that are not otherwise needed much in other game sections, thereby catchign a lot of people unawares. Especially the very first one can kind of come out of nowhere, then you are basicaly asked to figure out how to kill them while being under fire with a fairly fragile character. But hey you have been warned, and being a little bit prepared will already make it much easier to handle.

Personally I loved the bossfights, because they force you out of your comfort zone pace, and make you try to figure out what would be the best/easiest approach. The multiple solutions are frequently quite simple and make those fights laughtably easy. But i also see how they can completely frustrate someone.

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

The boss fights are the worst part of the game, the rest of it is definitely worth playing though.

boss fights are the absolute worst, but game still rules. just keep some weaps on you no matter how stealthy you are.

The boss fights are piss easy, and there's not many of them.

@wordfalling , @Tennmuerti , @SharkEthic , @Ramone , @killacam

Thanks for the feedback, its very much appreciated. I feel like being aware of the boss-fight issues beforehand, lessens the negative impact that they create. And I am a sucker for a good story. So I'm gonna take the plunge.

The boss fights are really short and infrequent. I would say just stick to having one fully upgraded gun and lots of EMP grenades, you'll be fine. I played stealthy the whole game.

Buy both of the Typhoon upgrades to make the boss fights much easier, even if you're otherwise specializing in stealth.

Boss fights aren't hard at all. If you favour a stealth approach just stock up on a few grenades and powerful weaponry like revolvers with exploding ammo or something. I took down bosses easily with the right stuff while putting nothing into combat. Seriously, don't sweat it man, people here are crazy or something.

I just wish bosses would have more options on how you approach them. Basically you're just locked into a room with them, cutscene rolls and then fight. A dialogue or something would be much appreciated here. That being said, I managed to take down bosses with not much frustration. The last boss gave me some trouble because of story related things, but other than that, they are doable even without the Typhoon augs and whatnot.

Grrr...kinda tempted to buy the DLC. I haven't really turned it on since last year and supposedly they tweaked the crap out of it to make it run smoother with the later patches.

Go for it. Its one of the best story driven games of this generation. And the Boss fights aren't hard. Infact I remember one can even be finished in a matter of seconds. (But then then if I say who and how its a spoiler now is it?)

If it hadn't been for those boss fights, DX:HR probably would have been game of the year for me; don't let the boss fight stop you from getting it though, they are maybe 15 minutes of bad content in an otherwise excellent +30 hour game.

I paid full price and have no regrets, $15 is a no brainer.

Worth the cheap price but the game was a bit of let down.

how does it look on pc? i already played it on 360. but plan to get a pc this year. just wondering if it's a big enough improvement to justify.

boss fights are shit, game is awesome, price is awesome

@killacam said:

how does it look on pc? i already played it on 360. but plan to get a pc this year. just wondering if it's a big enough improvement to justify.

It's nothing mindblowing. Cutscenes especially are pretty low quality.

@Tennmuerti said:

Personally I loved the bossfights, because they force you out of your comfort zone pace, and make you try to figure out what would be the best/easiest approach. The multiple solutions are frequently quite simple and make those fights laughtably easy. But i also see how they can completely frustrate someone.

I never really thought about it, but that's exactly why I thought the boss fights were okay. Once I found the easy-win strategy against a couple of the bosses, I'd went back and saw how else I could exploit game mechanics to my favor in the same fight. The taser and gas grenades were pretty much the winning combo, I thought.

@SharkEthic said:

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

Sounds like something a chump would say :P

I had a blast rocking through DX:HR tasering fools and remaining hidden. I'd argue that it's a weaker game overall if you play it as a straight-up shooter.

When it feels like you're nearing the end of a level start picking up mines. Play the boss fight like you normally would. If you find it frustrating or not fun, just throw a bunch of mines between you and the boss as soon as the fight starts. Most of these encounters can be ended within a few seconds by doing this.

Don't let what you've heard keep you from playing an excellent game. There's discussion to be had about their quality and how they're handled, but they're a complete non-issue when it comes to enjoying DX:HR.

Boss fights are lame but totally worth it otherwise.

@SharkEthic said:

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

Well, F.

great, been meaning to pick this up.

@Cloudenvy said:

@SharkEthic said:

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

Well, F.

I didn't think it was that hard. The trick, like most other games, is to shoot the bosses in the face with the rocket launcher!

The P.E.P.S. isn't terrible either.

@iAmJohn said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@SharkEthic said:

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

Well, F.

I didn't think it was that hard. The trick, like most other games, is to shoot the bosses in the face with the rocket launcher!

The P.E.P.S. isn't terrible either.

I don't have either of those! then again, I've only been playing for 2 hours.

The boss fights range from very mediocre to bad but have only a minimal chance of getting actually stuck and are infrequent so they're a minor nuisance. I paid 20 € with all DLC during the last sale I think and enjoyed my time. It's not up to the level Deus Ex 1 had when it came out and it has significant flaws. But the whole package is still pretty damn good if you're looking for a new DX-type game right now. I played the game obsessively and in a pretty comprehensive fashion as I'm bound to do and that led to all the mechanics overstaying their welcome, especially hacking and all that mediocre e-mail stuff (that I still wanted to see since there's cool stuff every so often). Also if you do plenty of side content it has minimal consequences to your character progression choices since you get just about everything you want much different to the other DX games.

It uses the engine of the Crystal Dynamics TR games and has an odd but very unique look. It worked for me and does cyberpunk pretty convincingly but it is no technical marvel. It seems to have slight optimization problems on Nvidia cards because of one of those dumb cooperation deals. But that's another minor nitpick and nothing more. If you're interested in it at all and have at least 20 to 30 hours to sink into it (if you want to complete the story) than I'd say buy it for that price since it's not like you have a glut of other options in that style.

@SharkEthic said:

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

I would say put skills into the Typhoon ability, and make yourself resistant to electricity. That takes care of the two hardest boss fights with no problems at all (and being immune to electricity is also awesome).

Get it, it's a great game.

@Cloudenvy: Well, I played the entire game on the hardest difficulty doing a non-lethal stealthy playthrough my first time through and bosses are both the hardest and the simplest thing in the game (they are the crappiest either way). They are really hard if you're trying to play the game the normal way. But the moment you just say "fuck it, I don't care anymore" and abuse the game, all the bosses (except the last one, which is all right) are 15 seconds long. Here's the trick: Make sure you got explosive grenades and mines in your inventory (like 1 stack of each to be safe) and as soon as the fight starts throw a mine or grenade on the boss. When it explodes, the boss will have some recover time. Use that time to launch another grenade/mine to stun it again. If you time it well, you can stun lock the boss and it will die with ~6 explosives (I'm not sure, but I think so, and I was playing on the hardest difficulty setting).

And there you go. Now enjoy playing the game the way it's supposed to be played (stealthily) and don't worry about boss fights and putting points in lethal weapons :'D

And if someone is still on the fence, 75% is totally worth it. People bash on the boss fights (and I completely agree, they suck HARD) but they don't take long and everything else in the game is pretty SWEEEEEEET.

@Cloudenvy said:

@iAmJohn said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@SharkEthic said:

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

Well, F.

I didn't think it was that hard. The trick, like most other games, is to shoot the bosses in the face with the rocket launcher!

The P.E.P.S. isn't terrible either.

I don't have either of those! then again, I've only been playing for 2 hours.

Most bosses have ammo and grenades lying around, exploding barrels even. Also in my case, I had enough Praxis points to invest some into the defensive augs. Really, any way is viable, some just take more caution than others.

@JamesJeux007: Will I just come across some kind of store where I can get explosives from at some point?

Thanks for the advice!

@Cloudenvy: Yeah, but you don't even need to buy anything anyway, you'll come across a lot of explosives on your way and even if you're missing some, there are a ton of ammo/explosives/weapons in the rooms where you fight the bosses.

@JamesJeux007: Alright, I'll try not to be obsessive abount finding explosives and such.

Dudes go get it you wont be disaponted.

If people are still concerned about playing this game because of boss fights, I just made a video explaining an easy strategy to get rid of those fights so you can fully enjoy the game. It is a great, amazing, AWESOME game, and for 75% off it is totally worth it (remember the pack includes all the DLC and Deus Ex 1 and 2).

Here's the video (you may think it contains spoilers... but nope) :

You've failed somehow if you don't buy it at that price. The game is fantastic.

But what about the DLC? I'm thinking of buying the Tong and Missing Link DLC, but I've heard mixed things, and it's more a matter of if I should bother rather than is it worth the price.

@Cloudenvy said:

@iAmJohn said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@SharkEthic said:

I went the stealth route, and yes, the boss fights were terrible as a result, though I still managed to get through them all. In the end it wasn't a deal breaker.

Word of advice though: don't go the non-lethal route as well at stealth. Pour some points into your assault riffle skills, and you should be good.

Well, F.

I didn't think it was that hard. The trick, like most other games, is to shoot the bosses in the face with the rocket launcher!

The P.E.P.S. isn't terrible either.

I don't have either of those! then again, I've only been playing for 2 hours.

You won't get them for a little while longer (and even then, you have to look around a lot to find them that early in the game).

The bosses are fine even on the hardest difficulty if you take the Gary Whitta route of shoot them. Particularly in the face. A lot. It's the typical thing of learning the boss' pattern (sounds weird for a Deus Ex game) more than anything. If you're going full stealth (which I always find loads more fun than just shooting everything, since you can do that in pretty much any other FPS), you'll have more inventory space free and all you need to do is save one powerful weapon for the boss fights only.

Play without killing anyone, play without being seen. Those are two tough but rewarding challenges.

Good luck!

I really liked the game, however the boss fights were terrible. Just utter crap.

They suck but they don't suck so much that they make the game worthless, and 75% off is a fantastic deal for the game.

Boss fights are terrible, but can be mitigated by you putting points into the typhoon and using it twice at close range.

The boss fights are so dumb. But it's a good game nonetheless.