Boss Battle Problems?

#1 Posted by Devise22 (118 posts) - 5 months, 7 days ago

Should start off by saying I love this game. The story twists and stuff is all very interesting. The basic gameplay is frustrating but in a fun way. The soundtrack is very fitting and great.

However something needs to be said about the boss battles. They come out of nowhere in terms of their pacing and they play very badly I found. The fun of the gameplay is the patience/puzzle variety to the levels and level design. When you die in the game you usually always know why and can come back and make your way through it again. The boss battles are nothing like that. It's usually a solution that is very simple to figure out but given the nature of the control scheme and how the gameplay works can cause death pretty easily. Even in the boss battles I was able to beat in a few tries, I simply found them to spit in the face of what makes the rest of the game so great.

What does everyone else think?

#2 Edited by Ghostiet (4758 posts) - 5 months, 7 days ago

I found them to be okay. I actually liked the change of pace from somewhat improvisational gameplay into pattern and trail-and-error boss fights - a lot of the game for me was winging it and coming up with solutions that could fall apart at any time, so I enjoyed a boss fight that required to simply nail a concrete sequence of actions. Although the final part of the last boss fight is IMO absolute bullshit, since the most reliable way to end is cheese the fuck out of it.

That again, I am totally biased. Because Hotline Miami is amazing.

#3 Posted by DystopiaX (4852 posts) - 5 months, 7 days ago

They're ok. Only got up to the 2nd one (no idea how many there are) but I found the nature of figuring out how to kill the bosses (the 2nd one moreso I guess) interesting. I guess it didn't hurt that I didn't have to spend a long time figuring it out but I found them fun and interesting enough.

#4 Posted by Discoman (122 posts) - 5 months, 7 days ago

You sometimes seem to get screwed if you dont have the right weapon. That is in the molotov fight, but otherwise its alright. The final one takes some planning on where you'll kill the samurai chick.

#5 Posted by GERALTITUDE (1061 posts) - 5 months, 7 days ago

Yeah I found them problematic. On one hand they are still very trial and error meets pattern matching, which is HM in a nutshell, but on the other hand the range of solutions for the boss fights is extremely narrow (whereas I'd say it's otherwise wide open in the game). I found them frustrating my first time through the game (and still a little annoying when replaying a level) but more than them being mechanically different/frustrating, I found that the last boss fight was especially tone deaf. Two purple cats and a samurai girl? It's just weird. The game becomes very gamey with that boss fight. I mean, the game is gamey, and seems to be commenting on games a lot, but... yeah.

#6 Posted by Kraznor (1504 posts) - 5 months, 7 days ago

Agreed, easily my least favorite part of the game. Makes the first ending kind of lackluster as a result, really should have ended on a stronger note. That said, still love it, top game of the year for me, despite those issues.

Hotline Miami

A top-down action combat game with an 80s aesthetic, a brutal style, and a thoughtful, slightly surreal philosophy underlying the story about the nature of violence.

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