What’s a good boss idea ruined by bad execution?

[Perkilator]

As we all know, all bosses in gaming stem from an idea. It could either be a good idea, a bad idea, or (in this case) a good idea ruined by execution. To your memory, what’s a boss that fits this category?

For me, it would be Petey Piranha in Brawl. He has cages with Peach and Zelda trapped inside them, and it’s up to you to rescue them. However, where this battle has a strong idea, there are two glaring faults to its lazy execution:

1. All Petey does is jump very slowly and swing one cage at a time almost as slowly. No fire breathing, no goop shots, no Nipper plants, jus those two attacks. And they’re so easy to avoid, you could probably do the battle on Intense and not lose a single life if you know what you’re doing.

2. Those two health bars for each princess’s cage? They determine which princess joins you, but that’s really it since the levels after are exactly the same on different playthroughs, but with a different princess. If it were up to the more creative me, that bottom health bar would’ve been used as sort of a time-based health bar for the caged princesses (a green health bar that goes slowly goes down) and the top just go to Petey. And the princess’s cage that was attacked the most (this wouldn’t deplete the bottom health bar, only throw Petey off like it does in the actual game) would determine which one joins you

Oh, and his rematch is even worse for being exactly the same as before, two health bars for each cage and everything, but now without the princesses. Petey could’ve easily been able to cage the players and slam them down (kinda like how he does in Ultimate as Piranha Plant’s Final Smash), but NOPE. Same slow jumping and cage swinging, and the two health bars mean nothing now.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Perkilator

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Idoun from FE6.

A final boss who gets oneshotted without almost no investmemt says everything.

[X-Naut]

Any duel boss in Fire Emblem. The variable nature of growth and even whether you trained the unit means that static one-on-one encounters do not work. Either the boss in question has to be underwhelming in some capacity (be it outright or with optimal preparation), or there has to be an out for the player in the event their unit gets trounced. It could work if you're given the option to fight this way, but Fire Emblem can't execute a good duel in gameplay outside of arena matches.

[NinjaMonkey]

1 hour ago, Perkilator said:

All Petey does is jump very slowly and swing one cage at a time almost as slowly. No fire breathing, no goop shots, no Nipper plants, jus those two attacks. And they’re so easy to avoid, you could probably do the battle on Intense and not lose a single life if you know what you’re doing.

He's the first boss in the game, of course he's going to be easy to beat.

[Perkilator]

1 hour ago, NinjaMonkey said:

He's the first boss in the game, of course he's going to be easy to beat.

He could at least put up more of a fight.

To put it in perspective; I by no means have any Olympian gold medal standards, I just wanna have a fair fight that’s fun. Look at Robot Sandy from Battle for Bikini Bottom (one of my favorite games ever, btw.); she has three whole phases, each with not only different attacks, but different ways to attack her back.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Perkilator

[vanguard333]

Grima in Fire Emblem Awakening:

Awakening had the frankly brilliant idea of making the final boss also the map, as your characters fight Grima while standing on its back. This is a fantastic idea with a lot of potential for unique gimmicks and challenges. What do they do with it? Absolutely nothing!

Grima could try to get the characters off his back by tilting, rolling, flying up, flying down, tail swipes, etc. The possibilities were as huge as Grima. Instead, it's just another boring, generic map filled with enemies we've already faced and that you don't really even have to fight in order to get to the boss, and Possessed-Robin is frankly very boring and generic for an FE final boss. 

[Ottservia]

20 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Grima in Fire Emblem Awakening:

Awakening had the frankly brilliant idea of making the final boss also the map, as your characters fight Grima while standing on its back. This is a fantastic idea with a lot of potential for unique gimmicks and challenges. What do they do with it? Absolutely nothing!

Grima could try to get the characters off his back by tilting, rolling, flying up, flying down, tail swipes, etc. The possibilities were as huge as Grima. Instead, it's just another boring, generic map filled with enemies we've already faced and that you don't really even have to fight in order to get to the boss, and Possessed-Robin is frankly very boring and generic for an FE final boss. 

While I agree they could’ve done more with it, I’m just gonna chalk a lot of it up to hardware limitations. The 3ds is powerful but it ain’t that powerful. I simply think a lot of what you suggest wasn’t possible in the engine they were using though I could be wrong on that one. Like if you wanna fight a dragon with that kind of mobility and real time action, I don’t think a turn based tactical rpg is the best place for that. If you want that go play monster hunter.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Ottservia

[NinjaMonkey]

1 hour ago, Perkilator said:

Look at Robot Sandy from Battle for Bikini Bottom

Who isn't the first boss in that game, so your comparison falls flat on it's face.

Quote

Grima could try to get the characters off his back by tilting, rolling, flying up, flying down, tail swipes, etc.

This is Fire Emblem, not Kingdom Hearts.

Edited March 27, 2020 by NinjaMonkey

[Perkilator]

32 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

Who isn't the first boss in that game, so your comparison falls flat on it's face.

King Jellyfish was an optional mini-boss who could be skipped entirely, and Robot Sandy is mandatory. I would know because I used to quit Jellyfish Fields early once my Golden Spatula count reached 5, which was the minimum requirement to enter Downtown Bikini Bottom (which i was eager to get to because I wanted to progress through the story more than anything) and then get its Golden Spatulas to 10 to Goo Lagoon. And then after that, I opted to get at least 5 more Spatulas there to get to Robot Sandy, because her level required 15 Golden Spatulas to enter.

I’m sorry for coming off as pushy, but I didn’t make this thread to start arguments with people who don’t agree with me. Let’s stop this and get back to the topic.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Perkilator

[vanguard333]

25 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

This is Fire Emblem, not Kingdom Hearts.

I've never played Kingdom Hearts, so I don't understand the comparison.

 

52 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

While I agree they could’ve done more with it, I’m just gonna chalk a lot of it up to hardware limitations. The 3ds is powerful but it ain’t that powerful. I simply think a lot of what you suggest wasn’t possible in the engine they were using though I could be wrong on that one. Like if you wanna fight a dragon with that kind of mobility and real time action, I don’t think a turn based tactical rpg is the best place for that. If you want that go play monster hunter.

I suppose, though some of the ideas I suggested would only take a cutscene and for the map to have alterations to it; both of which are perfectly achievable on the 3DS (the latter of which Fates proved through Dragon Veins). 

I just thought of another thing they could've done that would've added a bit of challenge and easily could've been achievable on the 3DS: every now and then, Grima unleashes a breath attack on the stage, and the units have to use the ridges on his scales as cover by standing on certain tiles (otherwise they take a fair bit of damage). 

[Perkilator]

1 minute ago, vanguard333 said:

I've never played Kingdom Hearts, so I don't understand the comparison.

In Kingdom Hearts 2, the final boss takes a dragon-like shape and does similar things to what you’re describing.

…

Anyways, to keep from derailing this thread; another potentially fun boss ruined by bad execution was Cortex in Crash Bandicoot 2, and this goes for the N. Sane version as well*. In the original game’s case, Naughty Dog could’ve made the jet pack movement automated and the control being changed back to moving eight directions on the D-Pad or analog stick, but NAH. They kept them exactly the same as the preceding jetpack levels players were just getting the hang of. You then have to catch up to Cortex painfully slowly, and spin him when you catch up. I lost to him the first time because I was trying to work around the rocks and mines with the weird jet pack controls, and then I just barely won the first time.

Oh, and he doesn’t even fight back with his laser gun. Yes, I know it was removed in the N. Sane Trilogy*, but he still had it in the original. If it were up to me (at least in regards to changing how he was fought in the N. Sane Trilogy*), I’d do this:

-Change the jet pack control scheme specifically for this fight, with players only needing to move how Coco did in Crash 3 against N. Gin.

-Have Cortex bring out his laser gun to shoot mines and blow up meteors.

-Make the fight require that Crash spin the meteors into Cortex to damage him.

-Give Cortex 5 hit points.

*My copy of the N. Sane Trilogy was my first proper taste to classic Crash gameplay, as I’ve never owned the original 3 on PS1.

[vanguard333]

Morpheel (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess):

It's already a bad sign when the first phase of the fight is basically Morpha from Ocarina of Time, but the second phase had a lot of potential: it reveals itself to truly be a giant eel-like creature, and you have to swim above it and hookshot to its eye while it's moving. Here's the problem: it's just swimming around aimlessly, and that's it. You have to actively go out of your way to take any damage as a result of the boss. There's no real challenge to this boss, and it's the last boss of the first phase of the game. Normally, the last boss of the first part ramps things up as an indicator of how much more challenging the game's going to get. This boss has less challenge than the previous two bosses. 

[BrightBow]

No more Heroes 2 could probably provide several examples but the New Destroyman is probably the most blatant in how he just... doesn't... work!
Destroyman after being bisected in the first game coming back as not one, but two cyborgs, one for each half, is exactly the kind of crazy that should make for a fun boss fight. It's very much not.

Once you get the first Destroyman down, all you can do is camp by his body until the other one decides to stop flying around and come down trying to revive him, then get 2 or 3 hits in. Rinse and Repeat for like 10 minutes or so. It takes ages and is just dull. Clearly the fight isn't meant to play out that way, but it really is the only thing you can do.
You might be tempted to try to chase after the second one, but that just... doesn't... work. All it does is give him time to fully restore his buddy to full health. You HAVE to stay near the body or you have zero chance to prevent a full revival. Nevermind that doing anything that involves relying on Shinobu's terrible jumping controls is bound to bite you in the rear.
And even if you were to reach him before he decides to fly away, you only get like 2 or 3 hits in. Same as when he tries to revive his buddy. So trying to take down Nr 2 without camping near the body of Nr 1 would actually take even longer because that method just isn't reliable.

Edited March 29, 2020 by BrightBow

[Sasori]

Qada, Einheria, Spoiler and Ominas is a fight that has a good idea behind it, but its execution is much less fun.

I can appreciate that they put some thought into the magic team with a pretty advances strategy. It becomes much less neat when they can one shot your entire party in one turn.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Sasori