In light of the finale of Exquisite Corps, let's talk about good final boss design in games.

Exquisite Corps has finale met its conclusion in what ended being, well, a very polarizing finale with are commanders debating whether the set up for the final room was good game design or not. So maybe instead of XCOM, what games have some of the best or really good final boss design.

A good, obvious pick is Mike Tyson from Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Just when you think you've won it all as a rising boxing champ, taking down Super Macho Man. You haven't seen anything yet. You got to fight boxing legend Mike Tyson in his prime and he does not loosen his foot off the metal. Many of his punches are lethal and will take you down quickly You need to be super keen on his ques in order to find out when to dodge and hit. As you might have seen one Dan Ryckert learning about the techniques to knock out Tyson:

Also while this game's last boss isn't necessarily the final challenge of the story per say, the "Final Boss" of this game was epic in Celeste.

This fight is again not the "final challenge" as there are two more chapters afterwards in Celeste, but this is by default the "Last Boss Fight" of the game and an amazing one at that.

The final boss fight in Hollow Knight is really cool. It's a long fight that goes through a few "stages" (like most boss fights do), but the different attack patterns actually contribute to the narrative.

At the start, it's just the Hollow Knight, fighting like any other combatant. They've got a variety of dashes, teleports, slashes, and stabs. Standard stuff.

As you do more damage, they start attacking with the corruption/mutation stuff. They start spitting acid at you. They start swiping at you with weird tentacle limbs. But they're still also using standard sword (nail) attacks.

As you go further, they stop attacking with the nail entirely, opting to only use the weird body horror stuff. Eventually the Hollow Knight stops even being a humanoid (bugoid?) shape or humanoid with a weird tentacle arm, but entirely a mass of writing limbs and flesh that thrashes around and throws itself through the air at you.

Finally, it goes back to an earlier stage where it's semi-humanoid and using a mix of normal and mutated attacks. But it adds one more move. Every few attacks, the Hollow Knight stops attacking you and starts stabbing the absolute shit out of themselves. It's helpful because by this point, the fight has been going on for a while, and it gives you a very brief moment to heal and/or attack. But it also communicates that the Hollow Knight is not just some completely evil character who has some wild mutation abilities. They've been infected and controlled by this parasite thing. Over the course of the fight, you've been able to weaken it enough to loosen its control enough for the Hollow Knight to (metaphorically) say "I couldn't do this alone, thank you for helping me finally die".

All without a word of dialogue.

Probably my favorite final boss in all of gaming is Metroid Prime from, well, Metroid Prime.

Not only is its design super cool, but I absolutely love the way the battle plays out. Prime will actively change himself throughout the fight to only be vulnerable to one beam at a time, meaning you're forced to use all of your equipment that you've gathered up to this point. He has plenty of attacks that will sneak up on you if you're not paying attention, he'll actively try to catch you off guard or make you lose your footing, and if you let him, he'll hit like a truck. You have to be on your game the whole time, watching for his tells, keeping track of the boss arena and generally just keeping up with every twist and turn. And he has a second form with entirely different rules after you're done with the first!

I loved fighting him so much that after beating him on Normal, I immediately went back and 100%ed the game on Hypermode so I could have that epic fight again in all its glory (also because Metroid Prime is a freaking awesome game). It was long, it was a test of endurance and reaction time, and it was totally worth it. To this day, it's the only game I've immediately replayed after beating.

One of my funniest gaming memories actually came from that fight:

*I've just beaten the first form after a very long battle. My dad is watching me play on the couch.*

"Well, you finally beat him!"

"Dad...you want to put the hot chocolate on.'

"Why?'

"He has a second form."

"WHAT??"

Speaking broadly, I think a good final boss design is one that requires you to understand and use most/all of the skills/concepts you learned during the game. Whereas a bad final boss design is one that requires an entirely different skill set than the rest of the game or one that can be easily cheesed.

A bad design example, I beat Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I last night, one of the more JRPG-ass JRPGs I've played in a while. It has a decent, relatively well-developed combat system that uses all the standard RPG elements (health, mana, basic attacks, items, and skills and spells that can damage, heal, buff, or debuff). The final boss, an actually the boss before that too, throw all of that out in exchange for essentially a punishing series of rock-paper-series match-ups based on figuring out the stance the enemy is in and taking huge damage if you get it wrong.

The other kind of bad example is Gwyn in Dark Souls, since all you need to do is parry and if you can do that he's a joke. Nothing else you learned how to do in the game matters.

A good example, based off another game I played recently, is the final boss of Steamworld Heist. Its a hell of a challenge, requiring you to use all your characters to their fullest and really understand how to properly position your characters and all the nuances of the aiming system.

@fezrock: Steamworld Heist is a great example too! I remember beating the final boss on that and was thrilled with the fight from beginning to end. I’m with you it does a good job forcing you to use your character’s weapons and powers in the best use possible. Also like XCOM, there are other enemies that I guess you don’t need to kill as long as you kill the boss, but Heist does a better job at making these enemies legitimate threats than XCOM that you might as well get them out of the way before you focus on the main boss again.

@fezrock: I wasn't a huge fan of that last fight in Cold Steel 1, despite the fact of how amused I was that I was getting a tutorial before the last fight. I'm a big fan of 2 as well,but all the bosses in that one share a move that makes the fights way more of a pain than they should be.

At the other end of the spectrum, parrying isn't something you ever really NEED to be able to do in order to get up to that point. So if you have gone through the entire game dodging, blocking, and tanking attacks (like I did) instead of getting good at parrying, you might get up to Gwyn and hit a brick wall (like I did).

My example of the best Boss for an RPG filled with Choices, is actually the Archdemon from Dragon Age: Origins. Its perfect in the sense that the fight itself is hard and tricky (as it should) and brings everyone who you met and choose (in some cases) to the battle.

Its pretty epic and sadly that Bioware never could replicate the same moment in the sequels.

A bad final boss (or boss in general) is one that breaks all the rules the game has established in such a way that it's jarring and often creates a cheap sense of difficulty. And I think a lot final bosses are bad because they do just that. You know that parry/super move/whatever we taught you? Well, it doesn't work at all here. You know how every enemy only gets one turn? Well, this boss gets three in a row. Why is the boss suddenly invincible? Keep fighting until this arbitrary timer runs down and you'll see a cutscene that will explain/fix that.

Like...I actually think the design of Gwyn is borderline genius specifically because he's so easy to cheese if you you're good at the game. Yes, game designers, to more of that.

Bayonetta 2 and MGR bosses are also good examples because they're essentially just a test of your skills ramped up to 11.

As for bad examples, I finished up Darksiders 1 yesterday and nothing you've learned in that game matters during the last fight. First, you have to awkwardly steer your horse so that you hit the boss during it's running animation or it literally doesn't register and the act of simply brushing up against him means you take damage. Then, he flies out of the arena and you can't lockon anymore, so you have to pick a direction and run so he can't divebomb you. During the second phase, the boss seemingly blocks all of your attacks and since he has no hitstun, at any point during your barrage the boss can just hit you with a combo of his own, most of which you can't breakout. After "hitting" him enough times, you get this QTE that seemingly does nothing. After winning that QTE three times, you beat the boss. Oh yeah, and that big, bad chaos form they gave you 1/3 of the way through the game just doesn't work on him because reasons? I like that game a whole lot, but that is a bad boss.

Drakengard 3 is another example. The boss itself is cool as shit, but suddenly it's an 8-minute rhythm game where one hit equals death for you. That's bullshit.That's a bad boss.

I would say that most of the rpgs with good stories I have beaten over the years have had what felt like 'good' boss design. They served the core function of either being a significant story reveal, or a final hurdle towards earning the ending I'd been working towards with anticipation. Certainly the most memorable bosses I ever beat were in the games I most cared about.

@bladededge: Can you give the examples you're thinking of? Because when I think of basically all of the CRPGs and JRPGs that I love, I generally uniformly hate the end boss fights and I feel like I'm missing games in light of this post!

EDIT: As to give an actual contribution to the thread (sorry!): I usually hate almost all final boss fights for the reason @babychoochoo said: it feels like they too often break their own rules in this misguided attempt to challenge the player. I'm more of a fan of my cinematic experiences now, that don't require you to bang your head against the game or get frustrated, especially in instances where you're an overpowered superhuman by the end. I personally really liked the finale with Gwyn (again stealing from @babychoochoo, sorry duder!) because it felt like it was allowing me to use what I've learned throughout the course of the game in ways that still made sense within the fiction.

Ideally, I think a great final boss should be

1. Introduced way in advance and be a memorable character
2. Have great gameplay, a final culmination of what you've been taught so far
3. Be somewhat of a challenge
4. Have some wonderful spectacle or setpiece to really make it clear that this is the climax and have it stand out from the earlier trials

Some games can manage to get by with one of these. You can also subvert the boss tropes if it fits your game. I don't mind that Demon's Souls' final boss(Allant) is a complete pushover, because it's incredibly atmospheric and story-relevant, and right before him you face a very hard and climactic boss fight(False Allant). On the other hand, I think Gwyn is a weak final boss because he's either an easily abused pushover or an impossible wall just depending on if you can parry, bro. The only part I like is his unusual and memorable music. The last phase of the final boss of Dark Souls 3 was a much better version of the same idea.

I think most Metal Gear games manage with the spectacle part, usually with a big mecha fight and then a follow-up fight with the pilot. The gameplay usually suffers because they reduce all your options in the duel with the person, though. If your spectacle and story is incredible enough, I can live. Metal Gear Solid 4's final boss is mechanically awful, but because of the story, the cutscenes, the presentation with the music and animations and UI, it feels like the perfect culmination of the series.

They avoid the barebones gameplay in Metal Gear Solid 3, which essentially has 4 final boss fights, including a chase sequence, all of which are spectacular. Dueling Volgin, the spectacle sequence on the bike, a rematch with Volgin on the Shagohod, followed by a great stealthy final battle against The Boss... And both of those characters have gotten more than enough screentime at this point to be worth remembering. Metal Gear Rising Revengeance is also fantastic about it. An awesome mecha fight, a ton of quotable cutscenes that portray an unforgettable villain, including some spectacle sequences, and then a final difficult duel.

I'd also like to mention Dragon's Dogma. The final fight is terrible, but it's entirely a simple story boss, so I'll go by the rules I laid out in that mail I sent in to the Bombcast recently and say semi-final bosses count.

The second to last boss is The Dragon, Grigori. He's there from the first minute of the game, and while he disappears for much of the story, he steals every scene he's in. When you get to the actual fight, you get several chase and spectacle sequences, including some QTEs, but then at last you're just thrown into a giant arena and it's you against him, using all you've learned to take on this foe that towers over every other monster. It's a phenomenal fight.

Of course, this depends on the game. I don't hold it against for instance Super Mario Bros. that its final bosses usually suck, 'cause combat isn't what those games are about. Doing some simple thing three times is about all they've got in terms of combat depth. However, even games with simple combat can benefit from making an event out of its bosses. Yoshi's Island has some very fun bosses that all do unique things visually, including a final boss where the perspective changes somewhat but the gameplay does not. All of Kirby's platform games have gone for this sick RPG- or anime-style godlike boss that seems way cooler than what should be in an easy pink blob platformer game, including a Gurren Lagann homage for Planet Robobot. I love what they do with their bosses in general, and their final bosses are always a treat.

I think the worst job a ton of games do with their villains is reducing them to QTEs, a gang of mooks, some tower defense, a cutscene or whatever else other way we can get out of actually making this a fight. Somewhere along the way it just looks like many devs decided that they were either incapable or uninterested in making good boss fights, so they entirely stopped trying. Maybe it just doesn't fit with their attempts at a more serious or Hollywood-like story. Additionally, a strong final boss needs focus. You can't just throw some random doofus into a final fight and expect people to remember him. A lot of Japanese games are on my good bosses list just 'cause those guys tend to make gamey games, and they spend a lot of time on their villains. I rarely play a Japanese game that's 50% combat and then has a super bad final boss the way, say, Mass Effect does.

Just off the top of my head, examples of bad final bosses from some games I've played over the last few years(spoilers, natch, keep a look out):

- Horizon Zero Dawn. The semi-final boss is just some human dude that you run circles around, followed by a final boss that consists of nothing except enemies you've already beaten many times before.

- Tomb Raider 2013. The best you've got is an armored dude you tumble around and shoot in the back a few times, followed by a cutscene.

- Bioshock Infinite. Instead of actually fighting the giant monster that's hounded you all this time, you use it in a tower defense segment.

- God of War. I have no idea why they did this, but in the final fight Kratos grows to titanic size and has a fight in an entirely new system with Ares. Neither you nor him feel big, and are constrained to a very tiny arena. Each hit one of you does drains the other person's energy. This lasted forever.

-Half-Life 2. What do you do for a final boss again? Shoot some dumb pillar in the center of a tower while the doctor yells at you?

- Alan Wake. You throw a few flashbangs into a tornado. It's real dumb and underwhelming.

-Bastion. Bastion's bosses are overall pretty weak. I think they entirely consist of the plant monster that just sits still and shoots at you, and also the underground crocodile monster? I feel like the devs were on a tight budget when it came to animations, so both of those only have like two frames of animation. For the final boss, they just forego any fight and just has an event match where you smack some dudes with a pillar, then walk out while carrying your buddy. It's a decent story moment, but it's no climactic boss fight to a game where all you do is fight.

- Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 3.Mass Effect 2 is usually the one that gets a lot of flak here for having a final boss that people didn't feel fit the tone, but in my opinion it's probably the closest the series has gotten to a decent boss fight, possibly save for the shadow broker. Meanwhile, Mass Effect 3 has nothing, while Mass Effect 1 has Saren as a reskinned version of the regular Geth Hopper enemy. It's no good, and a big bummer as the finale for those games.

- Skyrim.The final boss is done in a flash, visually unimpressive and indisctinct from all previous dragons, and despite his amazing title of World-Eater is just an unimpressive and forgettable boss. I could swear those viking dudes from Valhalla beat him for me while I wasn't looking.

All of the games above attempt to do some big setpiece in place of having an actual good boss, but none of them worked for me. If pressed, Horizon was the closest to being fun, because it's a pretty grand setpiece taking place in a familiar location with all your allies.

I'd say the Master from Fallout. It was great because it offered multiple ways of beating him, depending on your playstyle. You could straight up shoot him if you were a tank character. You could talk him into killing himself if you were a Charisma based character. And if you were a stealthy character, you could set a nuke off in the base and never have to encounter him.

@therealturk: Oh man, that one completely slipped my mind and it's a really, really great example. Little 16 year old me's mind was blown by that whole encounter, especially because that was my first real CRPG after a wealth of JRPG "just have more hit points than the last dude and his 2nd, 3rd and 4th forms" that I had plowed through.

The final boss of Persona 3 is not only one of my favourite boss battles, it’s also my favourite example of a boss rush.

The tl;dr of who the final boss is is basically it’s Death (in the form of the Greek goddess of the night, Nyx), and she’s going to end the world.

Like a lot of the Persona series’ asthetic, all the bosses are based on the tarot compendium. You fight these throughout the game as bookends to story chapters, before heading to the final battle. Well, Death is tarot card #13, and when you start the fight, she summons tarot card #1, the Magician. What’s cool is that you are essentially fighting the same boss you fought 100 hours or so ago, appropriately matching strength and HP and all. So, he’s a total pushover who you beat in about two rounds. You fight the members of the compendium in order from numbers 1-12 as they were at their respective moments in the game. So it’s not only a boss rush, it’s also a showcase of how far you and your team have come.

But by the time you reach numbers 10, 11 and 12, those are pretty much full boss fights in their own right, being relatively recent. Only after beating 12 does Nyx come back and the actual fight starts straight from where you left off; no breaks, no checkpoints, no free heal. “Beat every prior boss and then beat Death herself” says Persona 3. Reminds me of the kind of shit an action movie hero has to do: kill all the henchmen and right hand man before finally being “allowed” to face a fully prepared and healthy boss character.

Oh, and a boss version of the P3 theme Burn My Dread is playing during this, too. The presentation of this fight is maybe the only single thing I can say trumps it’s equivalent in P4.

Nyx is so cool.

I think that Bloodborne has an inverse boss design, remedied by the DLC. Gascoigne, Cleric Beast, Amelia, BSB and even Rom in her unique way are fun challenges to conquer, but Mergo, Micolash, The One Reborn, and side bosses like Darkbeast Paarl and Amygdala are just painfully boring or tedious.

I'm sitting here trying to think of memorable final boss encounters and honestly none spring to mind, and I've been playing games for quite a long time. The only thing I remember about JRPG bosses mainly is how bloody long they take, but none really stand out in terms of, "wow" factor or fun.

Vergil 3 is the best final boss in video games.

This isn't a topic for debate.

Seth from Street Fighter 4 builds upon years of oustanding end boss design in fighting games, by giving you a fair fight that’s both challening and enjoyable.

...seriously though, screw 99% of fighting game bosses.

I think a final boss should aim to make the heart race, build off of what the game has been teaching you, and hit that super delicate balance of being challenging without being punishing (and leaving the player with a sour taste).

I liked the end boss in Shadows of the Damned. From what I recall, it kept to the game’s general rules and mechanical teachings and forced you to use all your tools to get the job done.

Dragon Age: Origins’ Archdemon is another that I remember being really good. It stuck to the rules and provided an interesting challenge.

The Boss from MGS3 was amazingly memorable and well done, too.

I remember really enjoying the final boss from Ninj Gaiden (Xbox). The fight was fine, but the set-up was amazing.

While not amazing, Wolfenstein: The New Order’s boss was great for story reasons, and totally acceptable from a gameplay perspective. The same goes for MGS4. That fight gave me goosebumps.

As for bad bosses...most of them. Atlas from Bioshock, for starters. That fight tossed all the rules aside and just shat a bullet sponge at you.

Halo:CE’s “boss” was that amazing escape sequence. Halo 2 had Tarturus, and that was pretty iffy.

I completely disagree, I'm pretty sure I even made a thread on these forums inspired by how unlikable that boss fight was. I tried it on Normal, I tried it on Easy, I watched several walkthroughs, and gave it a couple dozen tries over a full week and never could defeat that fucking mechanized piece of fascist garbage. That game in general was like the epitome of horrible boss design for me, all of my worst memories of that game involve a boss. In that sense I suppose it's kind of fitting that each successive boss in that game made me want to drop the game entirely and watch the cutscenes on Youtube, and then the final boss actually made me go through with it.

Glad you got something out of it, though!

I don’t recall having much trouble with that boss at all and in general it felt like a good moment.

Buuut I had a similar experience with Beyond Good & Evil, which I finally played through last year. The final boss made me want to pull my hair out and just about ruined the game I had enjoyed a bunch ’till that fight. It was possibly the angriest I’ve ever felt, while playing a game. Maybe it was a piece of cake for others, but I wanted to break my controller while playing.

Anyhoo...glad that someone mentioned Half-Life 2. The game might be one of my all time favourites, but the fight against Breen is nothing to write home about. Nihilanth from the first one isn’t anything special either.

I don’t know about *great* design, but Wheatley from Portal 2 is one of my favourites. Bob whatshisname from DmC is great too.

@nodima: If a boss fight frustrates too much, that’s bad. It failed for you, so I’m sorry to hear that.

For me, he took a me 2-3 tries for each phase on hurt me plenty or bring it on, or something.

I didn’t think it was fantastic gameplay, but I found it good enough from a “learn to move, explore, adapt, and pick your spots” perspective. You had to learn the map and utilize most of your tools. It kinda reminded me of Bioshock Infinite’s ending (a game I also like more than most).

The thing that made it so memorable for me was more theme and story than gameplay, though. Deathshead is pure evil. He wasn’t cartoonish so much as he was this pure evil that had to be killed. He had done the worst and most horrific things in front of you, to you, and he basically represented all the must horrific things about the nazis. I felt hate for him, which may be one of the only time a game has made me feel that.

Frankly, as much as I enjoy the bombast of The New Colossus, I kinda wish they’d have ended that series with The New Order. That ending cinematic was perfect.

Given the "strategy" nature of X-com i would have expected the fight to go on, but defeating the captain/general/commander and having their underlings fold happens all the time in games, thus i didn't have a problem with the final boss. It's more intriguing that the game in general doesn't really account for snipers, besides smoke the enemy doesn't really have any sniper defence.

How to fix X-Com's final boss:

Have the main baddie be un-beatable until you beat all of the goons around him.

Fixed.

Quantum Break

No, actually, The Boss in MGS 3. It takes all the skills you know and makes you make the most of them. Camo, CQC, whatever guns and tools you think will help you. Not only is it mechanically really well done, but the story, the characters, the visual design and music all come together to form something unforgettable.

Devil May Cry 3 does the same thing. Pushes you to your limit, as everything going on in the story hits a fever pitch. I guess I like a final boss that means something.

Best FIRST boss (to take some liberty here):

Murai from Ninja Gaiden

Bladewolf from Metal Gear Rising: Revenegance (maybe he was second after that first bananas Metal Gear Ray boss...)

Both of these guys REALLY set the tone for the rest of the game. If you mashed your way to them, they’re there to correct that habit.

Both are incredibly difficult until you learn the rules, then they become pushovers.

We've had favorite final boss threads but it's pretty hard nail down when you consider the nitty gritty of overall design. Like I'd say that while XCOM2 has a much better final boss encounter than EU/EW, your end game soldiers tend to be so powerful that it ends up feeling every bit as anticlimatic as the first game. I almost wish that War of the Chosen could've changed the final boss to being all three of The Chosen at once. People have already named some good ones so I'll try to mention some other stuff.

Admittedly I haven't played it since it came out on PS2 but I remember thinking the final boss of Okami was awesome. I seem to recall you needing to use pretty much every single brush power to get through all phases of the fight.

Maybe Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow's extra mode where you play as Julius, Yoko, and Alucard and the final boss is Soma as Dracula reincarnated. I like that he starts using various dominated monster abilities that you get to use as Soma in the normal game and then turns into that big Dracula monstrosity from the classic games.

This might be a weird one but that first The Amazing Spider-Man movie tie-in game. At the end you just fight a big Spider Slayer bot, however you're fighting a really huge yet nimble enemy as you swing through the city and to me it was easily the best enemy encounter in the entire game for the sheer spectacle. Sadly that fight falls victim to QTEs which were long since played out already.

Someone would have to confirm how good the actual fight is but I like that in The Witcher 2 you can just choose to not fight Letho, which is what I did. What can I say, I think this person made some good points.

If "final challenge" does indeed count, than my favorite is definitely Lingering Will in Kingdom Hearts II FM. A lot of Kingdom Hearts boss fights are actually quite similar to Punch Out in that they require pattern memorization of tells that an attack is about to happen, what to do to defend against each attack, and when/how long it is safe to gets your own hits in. Lingering Will is the culmination of this, requiring near perfect execution much like Tyson does. Not only is it fantastic mechanically but it also adds to the lore, sowing the seeds for Birth by Sleep.

I am a bigger fan of victory lap final bosses. Ones that build more towards an emotional climax than being a tough challenge. Undertale Pacifist's is a good example. My personal preference for the end of a game would be to have the challenge boss be close to the end but definitely have a victory lap boss afterwards. Of course the trick of any victory lap is to make it still feel challenging even if the player is actually in no danger.

Undertale's boss fights, for the pacifist run, anyway, are really good and subversive. It's got that sense of feeling clever when you figure out a boss' weakness. While the final bosses don't have that since they're all pushovers(or in the case of old beardy, just a bad bullet hell boss, and in case of the other time traveler, a real jerk), I think the emotional sentiment and music help those feel amazing.

Okami's final boss is amazing. As a villain, Yami is kinda nothing. Never speaks, that I can recall. Is just some vaguely evil force behind the other evil dudes, opposite to you when it comes to elements. But in terms of a fight, he's got all these different forms. He steals your tools, but he'll regurgitate one up if you beat it out of him, so you work your way back up to full power as you pummel him while this dramatic music plays. Then he pulls some third form bullshit I think, and there's a cutscene of Ammy just being far too weak to do anything. You're weak, you're in this spaceship far from home, Issun isn't here with you, things are looking bleak. Then the camera turns to earth... and Issun has been spreading your word, doing some preaching, all the people you've helped know about you, and their faith coalesces into power and restores you into a full god as this music plays. That tune then plays over Yami's final form. That's terrific.

Platinum Games have been doing really cool things with music in their games. I love how the Bayonetta bosses work. First you get a traditional fight theme. Then, when they get low on health and enter their final phase, you get this thing. And then when you beat them, you get this jazzy song. It reinforces such a different mood from angry rock or pompous orchestral tracks, and it makes it clear how Bayonetta is gaining more ground.