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Does Three Houses have the best bosses in the series?


Jotari
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Fire Emblem bosses have always had a bit of an issue I think. Basically they either stationary targets with 1-2 range that you can hack at at your leisure with little chance of death, or they are moving bosses that can't be too strong otherwise they'd destroy you're weakest units. Occasionally a moving final boss is precisely that strong and takes a long time to take down, but can also easily be fenced in and then hacked at at your leisure with little fear of death.

But Three Houses has added in a lot of elements that change that up. Distant Counter on a lot of important bosses for one lets bosses actually carry powerful 1 range weapons without being complete chumps who can be picked off from afar. Gambits are another thing they can use to stop you enemy phasing them quickly. And even baiting a moving boss who uses gambits can be very dangerous. And then they just plain have giant bosses with multiple health bars you need to take out with your entire party. So with all these developments added, does Three Houses have the best bosses in the series?

I honestly don't know. I feel it should, yet I honestly struggle to think of any bosses that made a big impression on me, outside of the final bosses of each route. And I'm not sure why. Honestly it could be down to something as simple as Three Houses' lacking in the presentation department when it comes to combat animations. And also if you ask me which game, if not Three Houses, does in fact have the best bosses, I'm not sure I could give a confident answer (my gut is going to Thracia of Binding Blade, but that might just be because I like those games over all. Genealogy of Holy War manages to have a lot of memorable bosses due to them using Holy Weapons too). IDK. What do you think about how Three Houses bosses measure up against the rest of the series. And if you don't think it has the best bosses, which game do you think manages to pull that off.

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I think Three Houses has the best bosses from the games I’ve played, but that’s more because there are very few memorable bosses from other games- Rudolf is the only boss I legitimately enjoy fighting, and even then the fact that he won’t ever attack Alm makes it pretty easy to deal with if you want. Anyway, I’d say 3H has the best bosses because there are a few I legitimately enjoy like Nemesis, The Umbral Beast, Ladislava, etc. But overall its boss quality isn’t good.

If you want a reason I’d point to the fact that it’s so easy to break 3H that even with strong bosses like monsters and stuff, you’re still shredding through them anyway. Something like the Wind Caller may have been memorable if he didnt go out like a chump regardless. And we’ve all heard the memes of the Death Knight and how threatening HE is. A bit of training and focus on areas like Reason for Lysithea or Lances for Bernie and Dedue trivialises this supposedly super strong enemy to the point he’s literally become a meme. Cindered Shadows was a good example of what bosses in 3H become when you take away that freedom to customise, and while people’s opinions on the final boss are mixed I personally loved it. It wasn’t the kind of boss you could one shot, it was the kind of boss you needed to throw your whole army at to take on, both in terms of damaging it and in taking out the phantoms that heal it, plus the random position shifts force different units to the frontlines and leave you constantly scrambling to regain your footing. It doesn’t ever let up and you need to focus to take it on, and ultimately that level of engagement is how I measure a good boss.

So thats my take home message I guess. 3H would have had far more memorable fights if those bosses were in a game where the customisation of your units wasn’t so central. But overall I’d still rank it the best in terms of bosses just because at least the ideas were there and they tried.

Edited by Anathaco
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I don't think so-There are quite a few who stand out as really annoying. The Wind Caller, Immaculate One, Miklan, Nemesis and DK are stand out to me as memorably bad, and I've only played through one route. (Admittedly, I haven't fought the immaculate one, but from the looks of it, it is the Wind Caller but worse.)

That said, we do only really remember the bad ones, and the average boss isn't that annoying, although I found most of them to be quite weak. It certainly isn't easy to have a boss who is neither annoying nor easy.

 

Personally, I feel that FE8 generally does bosses quite well. The only really bad one that comes to mind is the schmexyness of Gheb, and the rest are overall quite good. Same goes with RD, but quite a few lategame ones having proc skills that are basically instakills kinda bites.

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3H has the best bosses in the series fairly easily, I think. Most other bosses in the series are just some immobile enemy who maybe can threaten a few people with crit and is maybe annoying to kill due to decent evade (though often not even that). I really liked the monster bosses in 3H... the extra abilities they gain as they lose HP bars, the use of the tactical grid system in how you destroy pieces of their barriers, the decision of when to break them. Indech, Macuil, and the final bosses are all pretty cool.

The human bosses are also fine for what they are; usually at least offensively threatening on Maddening (and often mobile), though very easy to kill in one or two attacks. They feel like elite enemies and serve their purpose fine, although they aren't the highlights the best monster bosses are.

27 minutes ago, Anathaco said:

Cindered Shadows was a good example of what bosses in 3H become when you take away that freedom to customise, and while people’s opinions on the final boss are mixed I personally loved it

I only played Cindered Shadows once, so I don't know if this always happens... but for me when he used his staggering blow he stunned himself and became unable to counter for an entire round, turning him into a complete sitting duck and I promptly killed him easily. Very anticlimactic!

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Well...I guess. I think a lot of the concepts are unique, but the bosses themselves...idk I guess I’m neutral. However, I will say that Azure Moon’s final boss is truly amazing and has never been done before (unless you count FE13 and Robin being a main character but that’s another can of worms). Also for Verdant Wind, it’s funny how Claude’s journey started and ended with killing a bandit so that’s cool. As for Edelgard, meh. I mean, it’s a dragon gone off the deep end and we’ve fought them like several  times before this game. To me, the boss fights weren’t anything special, but for me, story is the most important thing when it comes to video games which is why I like how each boss was portrayed in the story. 

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Maybe I'm forgetting a fire emblem game where bosses are notably challenging without being downright broken, but yeah, I think they put in enough effort this time around that you could say this game has the best bosses. Not that it's some huge metric by which to rate Fire Emblem games. Some new ideas were real duds. The Nemesis chapter with its twelve elites doesn't work. They are sufficiently powerful with awesome relics and crests, but they're stationary (even on Maddening) and can be taken out with ranged attacks at the player's leisure. And it's also a map that doesn't hurry the player forward in any way which further exasperates their non-threatening nature. I feel like if you asked me to fix that chapter, I'd either dump distant counter on every elite, or make it so they respawn after a while next to Nemesis and have to be killed again to keep Nemesis vulnerable.

It also helps that so many maps are kill boss chapters rather than your standard rout or seize. There will be turns where you're weighing your chances at ending a map early not because you want to end the map early but because doing so can avoid disaster from all the other enemies about to get their turn or ambush spawns ready to ruin your day. I like that the game's maps have multiple bosses to fulfill that condition rather than the one guy sitting on a throne. It may make the maps feel more rout-ey, but I think going after some tough guy in the distance is more engaging than just mopping up mooks who are just standing around waiting to die in a more enemy phased-focused fire emblem game like FE7 or Awakening.

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1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I only played Cindered Shadows once, so I don't know if this always happens... but for me when he used his staggering blow he stunned himself and became unable to counter for an entire round, turning him into a complete sitting duck and I promptly killed him easily. Very anticlimactic!

For me at least I never got the chance to really utilise that since my units spawned too far away to do much- the best I could do was have like 2 or 3 units go for the attack, and depending on the units that might have taken out a single health bar.

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Challenging FE bosses? Is that an Oxymoron?

All joking aside, FE does have a problem with Bosses. How to make them difficult without being rage-inducing? To be truthful, I couldn't tell you. I'd say TH is a step in the right direction, but it's still a bit lacking. Partially because of the Bosses, and partially because of the potential madness that the Player can release upon the enemy. DK? Dark Spikes, Horseslayer, etc. Boss Monsters? Gambits. Everyone and Everything? Dimitri, Edelgard, Felix, Claude, etc., etc., etc.

You can demolish anything in this game... except at the start. Because you only just got your units, you've had no time to min-max or skill hunt. You have little to no resources. You are thusly forced to strategize your way out of the map. You have to play well if you want to win. And to be honest? I kinda like it that way.

But I'm getting sidetracked. The point is, in my opinion, the sandbox part of TH is what undermines it's Bosses. As previously mentioned, Cindered Shadows' Final Boss is a wonderful example of what FE Bosses can be. But all the other bosses in TH? No, I daresay it has not the best Bosses in the series. Hell, not even in the top three, at least for me.

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I guess you could say TH has the best bosses overall, though it's only because of the monster bosses. DC on bosses is...something, but it still comes down to "gang up on the boss with a few units in one turn."

Best final boss in the series still goes to Radiant Dawn, though.

34 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

Challenging FE bosses? Is that an Oxymoron?

Who said anything about FE bosses being challenging?

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i'll be very concise in expressing my opinion on this:

No, it doesn't, just like no other FE game does (aside from Ashera, thank you, @Florete, for the reminder)
There are some good ideas (way higher stats compared to every other enemy in the same map, and more actions on the same turn, to name a few) which imo would be decent first steps in completely revamping how bosses work in Fire Emblem, but the execution imo is just as bad, if not worse, as other FE games, considering how frustrating some of 3H's bosses are

Edited by Yexin
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My take on this is that Fire Emblem is at its best when it isn't even trying to make bosses a thing. It's predominantly a game of armies versus armies, and trying to squeeze the square peg of a boss fight into the round hole that is the series' core mechanics has never worked for me. It's possible to make games where a 12 vs 1 battle is fun and compelling, but that isn't what FE mechanics are designed for and it isn't what they're good at. For me, the ideal boss fight is no boss fight at all, so by that metric, I'd consider Three Houses to be one of the worst games in the series for boss fights since it actually devotes more time to them.

The final boss of Cindered Shadows is my single least favourite map in the game by a long way, and may even be my least favourite map in the series. I found it way too long and tedious without being at all dangerous or challenging or ever making me think there was any chance I would fail. The less we get of that sort of thing, the happier I will be.

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It has the worst bosses of the series, for no other reason than that the RNG is too damn strong in them. 

I remember not one boss that you don´t have a good chance of just missing your attacks against. Which sucks in the early game, because guess what, scrub squads suck and few of them deal relevant damage and even fewer of them don´t just keel over from retaliation. And it sucks in the lategame because crit rates, Miracle, restoring monster barriers for less damage, 1-more-turn reinforcements, massive AoE damage skills, etc. pp.

Another nice thing of course is how these bosses invalidate 2-x range. TH gets moderate praise for 1-3 range Archer; 1-3 range Magic and who knows what else. But it seems to me, the skill Distant Counter is all too easily forgotten, which is just a solid “fuck you” to every Mage and early on Archers too. I mean look at the Death Knight when you first encounter him. The dude’s stats are so damn high, you should consider yourself lucky if Archers and Mages even inflict damage, but hey, how about a casual retaliation for 30x2 with a 25% crit chance to really, really get the point across? Hell, the only viable 2-range option is Lysithea who just so happens to have a spell in her kit that deals effective damage to ponies with a Mage stat to actually use it. Cool, one unit in one path nice

And then of course the bosses that just stand on any form of tiles that slow down your Mov, deal damage to your units or are plain posted on an Avoid tile for maximum rewinding time maximum enjoyment.

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Nope. Barely comparable to FE4 Eldigan-Arvis-Julius, FE5 Gomez-Reinhardt, FE9 Ashnard, FE10 Dheginsea-Ashera or even Conquest Takumi. Especially with the case of Reinhardt, who I think is the best boss in the game since he'll have the player do cheesy stuff because he's too damn dangerous to fight head-on.

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1 hour ago, Florete said:

Who said anything about FE bosses being challenging?

Challenging = Good when in context of FE being a strategy game. Does anyone praise Kostas for being a great boss?

This is a strategy series, despite IS wanting it to be a Waifu simulator. Why do people like Strategy? Because of the tactical challenge.

If you play FE for all the 'good stories', or for the pretty Waifus and handsome Husbandos, then more power to you. For me, strategy is strategy. That's the point of this game. You want to gut the bad guys? Go play a RPG or Fighting game.  You want romance your favorite girl or boy? Play a damned Dating Sim. That's their purpose. Just like FE's purpose is strategy.

None of this is to say I dislike good stories or character. Oh Lord no. I appreciate those aspects of games. But that isn't the main draw. You could play the entirety of any FE without reading or listening to a single bit of story. You could not read supports, and thus not know the characters for who they are. But the gameplay is the meat and bones of FE.

 

... Wow, I just did a mini-rant over one single sentence. And one that's only mildly related to the topic at hand. I ready need to stop trying to get a point across when I'm half asleep.

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I'm undecided on which game has the best bosses... but I'll never be able to take either AM or VW's final bosses seriously, because I have never seen a final boss deal out a no damage before.... even if with Nemesis I specifically planned the whole (admittedly NG+) run to get enough defense on Raphael just for that.

Spoiler

 

 

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17 minutes ago, L3xandr3 said:

This is a strategy series, despite IS wanting it to be a Waifu simulator. Why do people like Strategy? Because of the tactical challenge.

this is too good to be true for a sarcasm. that gives me a good laugh.

------------------------------

not gonna say it the best or the worst. but im of opinion they actually improve or at least expand the boss mechanism. in that sense, 3H boss have more variety, and unique (people tend to get triggered by this word) different than the standard "ass glued to the throne" boss.

we got big boss that  you really have to gang up for once because they take too much space. Boss that will take no joke to ranged attack. dynamic/changing skill based on health, you named it.

in short, they are in good direction for sure. since past FE boss all comes down to their stat, and their bonuses to stat

Edited by joevar
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At least some of Three Houses Bosses are better designed than the DS remake of the first one. Like for example if you were playing on Hard 5, Gomer can solo any of your characters since he frequently doubles and has an hand axe to boot. Limited heaing, your HP and Defense isn't high enough to even tank these hits. Not to mention that he is the chapter 2 boss.

Point is that at least Three Houses even on maddening mode has methods to taking down bosses whether it's normally or if you're doing a LTC run. Shadow Dragon just has plain old dumb luck.

One of the better bosses for example in Three Houses would probably be Pallardo. The one before the timeskip (or Crimson Flower route). Sure his reinforcements are annoying but the map you fight him on at least has a wide open area where you can figure out your own path to get to him.

Plus there are gambits that allow you to either push him away from the bushes or in the case of maddening, if you send someone towards him with no one else coming for you and you have swordbreaker equipped, then he's at least manageable. I'm not sure if he qualifies that way or not but at least I'd rather deal with him on that map than the one on Hunting by Daybreak.

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11 minutes ago, Barren said:

At least some of Three Houses Bosses are better designed than the DS remake of the first one. Like for example if you were playing on Hard 5, Gomer can solo any of your characters since he frequently doubles and has an hand axe to boot. Limited heaing, your HP and Defense isn't high enough to even tank these hits. Not to mention that he is the chapter 2 boss.

Point is that at least Three Houses even on maddening mode has methods to taking down bosses whether it's normally or if you're doing a LTC run. Shadow Dragon just has plain old dumb luck.

One of the better bosses for example in Three Houses would probably be Pallardo. The one before the timeskip (or Crimson Flower route). Sure his reinforcements are annoying but the map you fight him on at least has a wide open area where you can figure out your own path to get to him.

Plus there are gambits that allow you to either push him away from the bushes or in the case of maddening, if you send someone towards him with no one else coming for you and you have swordbreaker equipped, then he's at least manageable. I'm not sure if he qualifies that way or not but at least I'd rather deal with him on that map than the one on Hunting by Daybreak.

Are you talking about the Anna's paralogue boss? I think you are, but the way you phrased it is kind of weird, especially when that would be a much easier way of saying it.

6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

3H has the best bosses in the series fairly easily, I think. Most other bosses in the series are just some immobile enemy who maybe can threaten a few people with crit and is maybe annoying to kill due to decent evade (though often not even that). I really liked the monster bosses in 3H... the extra abilities they gain as they lose HP bars, the use of the tactical grid system in how you destroy pieces of their barriers, the decision of when to break them. Indech, Macuil, and the final bosses are all pretty cool.

The human bosses are also fine for what they are; usually at least offensively threatening on Maddening (and often mobile), though very easy to kill in one or two attacks. They feel like elite enemies and serve their purpose fine, although they aren't the highlights the best monster bosses are.

I only played Cindered Shadows once, so I don't know if this always happens... but for me when he used his staggering blow he stunned himself and became unable to counter for an entire round, turning him into a complete sitting duck and I promptly killed him easily. Very anticlimactic!

Though coming to think of it, there aren't actually that many monster enemies that are legitimate bosses. There's Miklan, and 3/4 of the end game bosses and then the optional Saints bosses and that's sort of it. They throw giant monster enemies at you throughout the game, but they tend to be more tanky enemies than chapter goals. Even when it's a character we see transform into the boss like Dedue or Monica's Father, the subsequent enemy is pretty much just a regular giant boss (they don't even retain the name). Aside from Miklan who brings introduces the concept. But even with him introducing the concept, his threat level, or at the very least how he's positioned in the level, does make him feel more like a boss. I guess in Sothis's paralogue the big chameleon looking monster would quality pretty easily as a boss given killing it ends the level and it is (I think?) a unique enemy. But by and large the game doesn't really use many of it's giant enemies as bosses. Now, that's not actually necessarily a bad thing tbf. If they were kept exclusively as bosses and no normal enemies then that would definitely suck more. And I get how in game given how they're mindless monsters it's a bit hard to unify it with the plot to have a boss like that. I guess I would have liked if the Wind Caller and the Immovable weren't optional and were worked into the plot more naturally and if Thales hopped in a mech or something (and if Dedue got a sick ass monster design instead of being a generic).

 

Edited by Jotari
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14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Though coming to think of it, there aren't actually that many monster enemies that are legitimate bosses.

thats a good thing. if theres too many / too often it would be problematic and annoying too.. or something along those lines. something new that appear too often usually becomes a minus point in many review somehow

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Only played a bit, Kostas was fine but Miklan was a complete joke, he got exactly one hit in, on Byleth, because I intentionally baited him into moving towards me by leaving her in his range.

He spent the rest of the fight stun-locked via Batallions/sword of the creator, never getting a single hit in and when he wasn't stunned, his 1-2 attacks he got off had a low chance to hit compared to any other enemy in the stage and he missed.

The two BS reinforcement spawn dudes from the nearly-invisible doors were a bigger threat than he was and so was Kostas.

 

Edited by Samz707
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There were some bosses I liked (Randolph, for example) and others I didn't (Death Knight, if only because he goes from being OP to a pushover in the course of a few chapters). Like any FE game, it has its high and low moments with the bosses. Some were cheesable (Miklan), some were flat-out disappointing (Solon). A mixed bag overall, I'd say.

I like all the new mechanics 3H introduced that could make boss fights better, but I don't think they were used nearly as much or to the fullest extent that they could've been.

6 hours ago, Florete said:

Best final boss in the series still goes to Radiant Dawn, though.

Agreed. Absolutely.

Edited by twilitfalchion
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5 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

I'm undecided on which game has the best bosses... but I'll never be able to take either AM or VW's final bosses seriously, because I have never seen a final boss deal out a no damage before.... even if with Nemesis I specifically planned the whole (admittedly NG+) run to get enough defense on Raphael just for that.

I've defeated all the GBA final bosses without them dealing damage, either due to one-hit killing them or just dodging everything they do. And then there are others like NM Ashnard who will deal damage but never have the slightest chance of killing anyone.

At least on the higher difficulties the fact that you can take no damage from the FE3H final bosses is more of a testament to the crazy builds players can pull off. I'm fine with that. My reaction to your post is "wow, nice work" instead of "yep, Fomortiis sure is a scrub".

IMO only Ashera is actually an interesting final boss in the series before FE3H. Otherwise there have been interesting final battles to be sure but rarely bosses. (e.g. in Conquest, getting to the boss is super-interesting, but the boss itself dies in one or two combats).

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I’d say Monsters start off interesting and quickly become tiring and formulaic by the end of the game because they run the concept into the ground (barring Crimson Flower which takes a break from them until the last 2 maps)

The late late Maddening monsters are basically garbage because they’re so uninteresting to fight and generally have pure asinine latent skills such as 

-51% miracle proc SS final boss on 4 hp bars (also has vantage)

 -Wrath Vantage AM final boss asking you to just heavily out stat it. Who also can attack twice on player phase with quite large crit rate

By lategame maddening they have multiple HUNDREDS of Health Points bars and its just.... who thought this would be fun...

Edited by SubwayBossEmmett
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