what's with the lack of epic boss battle's these days?

[Salnax]

pokoko said:

I'm down with that. The overwhelming majority of boss battles throughout gaming history have been lame. How many of them break down to "find the weak spot and attack"? I'm honestly and truly over that. Even with RPGs, there is usually some trick you have to figure out or they use the tried and true method of just giving the boss a million hit points.

I think developers have realized that boss battles are usually the weakest part of their game and are looking for ways around that. Personally, I want the "last dungeon", so to speak, to be extra hard but I can do without an End Boss.

If you take out every enemy in video games that can be defeated by finding their weakness and attacking appropriately, you end up with a lot of walking simulators.

The trouble with completely forging a boss fight, even towards the very end of the game, is that games involve the player as a contributor towards events. Even if the final scenes include a climax for the story, there needs to be something similar for the players themselves.

Oddly enough, I think New Super Mario Bros Wii and Super Mario 3D World might good role models in this regard. Bosses have often been the worst part of Super Mario games (NSMB on the DS had a particularly lame ending), so these two games didn't have standard boss fights. They were just final levels based around Bowser relentlessly hunting down Mario, thus requiring platforming skills to survive. This basically combines the Final Dungeon with the main antagonist, creating a situation that works for both the story and gameplay.