Something I noticed in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood boss fights is that there are times in a boss fight where it is impossible or nearly impossible to avoid an attack. Of course this doesn’t tell the full story. The truth is I wasn’t proactive enough earlier in the fight. My earlier actions screwed me over. If you're not aggressive enough, certain bosses like Death or Dullahan will keep advancing on you and literally back you into a corner. The boss is a constant threat that you need to play footsies with. In general, the bosses in this game have less obvious tells and may appear to act sporadically at first glance so your positioning is important. It’s not necessarily bad design for a boss to have a quick melee attack that’s barely telegraphed. You would just need to bob and weave in and out the range of that attack.
Meanwhile in hollow knight, there are bosses like the three mantis lords. This boss frequently resets to a neutral state after attack patterns and doesn’t feel like a constant presence. The boss feels more like a discrete set of challenges. The clear telegraphs remind me of a rhythm game. You receive a signal and then you simply execute the appropriate response for that signal. The Mantis Lords are less immersive and do less to try and hide the fact that it's just a predetermined set of behaviors. I find it more engaging if positioning and spacing are taken into consideration instead of just reaction and execution.
However, I don’t think either way of making a boss is bad. I would like to see both kinds used in modern games. It may be seen as obtuse and frustrating to have less obvious boss tells and to have to play “footsies” with a boss but I would argue that the more generous checkpoints of today lend themselves well to slightly less transparent boss design. It can be fun to try and figure out how a boss works if it's done well.
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