What Makes A Great First Boss?

Final bosses get all the glory, but first bosses are where the magic happens. A well-designed first boss kicks a game into second gear and sets the trajectory for how the rest of the game will go, no matter if the boss is story-focused, a mechanical challenge, or the ever-elusive ‘both’. Let’s talk about how to make a video game's first boss an effective showcase for where a game plans to go next.

Featuring:
Hollow Knight
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Mega Man Network Transmission
Persona 5
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney the second one
Undertale

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[Dharengo]

The real beauty in Toriel’s boss design is how likely the player is to first kill her, reset and then spare her, and then be confronted by the game itself about the fact that it knows what you did.

[kyuboxincubox]

A lot of people don't seem to know that Toriel CAN kill you, but you have to trick her into it. She clearly didn't mean to do it since she has a shocked and horrified expression on her face. Toriel's attacks will start dodging you if you have low HP on her turn. If you use healing items right, you can give yourself just enough HP that she'll attack you... and then you deliberately start rubbing your face in multiple bullets and die before her turn ends.

It's like the reverse of an unbeatable first boss in a JRPG. A boss you're not supposed to lose against but still can if you know what you're doing.

[codyallen]

You should do a design doc on "unbeatable" bosses

[NemoNobodySMT]

"He's trying to speedrun his way to jail"
I laughed my ass off 10 minutes

[jomogaming]

"Toriel appears right in the beginning to save you from a flower"
Trust me, it makes a lot more sense with context.

[cosmicspacething]

I also like the small detail in Toriel’s boss fight when you actually die (which you have to go out of your way to do) she briefly has a terrified expression before your soul shatters.

[PineappleLiar]

Just wanna mention that the Toriel fight in Undertale is also a good lesson in learning just how meta the game can get later down the line. If you go into the fight blind, the option to continually spare your opponent may not be an obvious one, and repeatedly acting instead doesn’t help end the fight. A player might try fighting instead, on the idea that maybe lowering her health is key to getting her to stop, which is where the damage mechanics come into play and make you deal a killing blow when Toriel is only at half health.

So you kill Toriel, but you didn’t mean to, and you know you can go through this game without killing, as that’s the whole conceit of the fighting! So you don’t save and retry the fight, either figuring it out yourself or looking online to learn how to save her. You do and it’s all hunky dory! But as you leave the tutorial area, Flowey comes up and reveals that he’s aware you killed her, and then went back in time to fix your mistake. At that point it’s clear that a reset is not at all enough to keep the game from learning about your mistakes.

[appelofdoom]

I feel like you left two things out of the false knight explanation.

1. unlike most other enemies the boss initially doesn't give you soul when you hit him. This means that if you are to reckless you might run out of soul pretty quickly especially since getting interrupted right after or partway during a heal wastes soul. However hitting the maggot piloting the armor does give you soul back and you can only hit the maggot after dealing enough damage to knock the false knight down. This is the game telling you that being observant and finding the opportunity to both heal and safely hit your opponent are key to victory.

2. You can leave the false knight boss fight halfway through. You can see at 3:56 that the wall above the gate gets cracked after the false knights first temper tantrum. You can actually break it open and escape. Letting you move on with the game without ever beating him. this is not only useful in speedruns but it also tells you that there are a lot of unconventional shortcuts you can take if you look around hard enough.

[benjamator]

I'm glad you talked about False Knight and Ghirahim. False Knight was incredibly scary to me on my first time playing Hollow Knight. I sucked and didn't want to approach. He beat me multiple times and I didn't even knock him down once. Then my brother told me this. "He is more scared of you than you are of him". So I stuck close and kept pestering him until I knocked him down. That's when I realised that he really was more scared of me. I beat the fight on my first try after that. Ghirahim also taught me to strategize as well. I didn't have my brothers to help me so I kept mashing and swinging and he kept beating me. Then I decided to wait and see what he would do. He didn't attack all and only sometimes threw those shadow daggers at me. I learned that I needed to bait him out and it worked. He got beat really quick and I did the same strategy on the second phase but more defensive and reactive. It also worked. These 2 fights gave me the most satisfaction from a game for a while.

[louis]

Father Gascoigne from Bloodborne is amazing mechanically. He's a huge gate to progression until you start to understand the type of combat the game wants you to engage in. Dodging away and playing defensively will almost always get you killed very quickly, but being aggressive and dodging into his attacks makes the fight a lot easier than most new players assume at first.

[OrigamiAhsoka]

Ghirahim has cemented himself as one of my favorite first bosses because of how unique he was to fight. I was expecting the traditional “ooh big scary monster that conveniently has a giant eye that’s its weak spot”

[durpify]

I love when the first boss returns as a common enemy after you get more powerful. Really gives you a sense of progression

[dachking]

My favorite first boss is the starting cliff in Breath of the Wild. As a long-time Zelda player, I jumped off of it expecting to lose a single heart and then to be able to explore the forest below, and was surprised when the force of the impact shattered Link’s bones and killed him instantly. This really set the tone for the game, as it essentially said that this game isn’t your dad’s Zelda, and that it would not pull any punches or hold your hand.




In all seriousness my favorite is Kamoshida.

[parsuli.]

A good, weirdly fitting first boss is Badeline from Celeste. She chases you through a whole section which introduces time pressure to show off the mechanics you just learned in the past chapter and a half, but because she literally mirrors you, she's only as skilled as you are. At the same time, the boss is also a story driven boss because she introduces you to the theme of running away from the darker part of yourself.

[cprc]

I feel like Metal Face from Xenoblade Chronicles makes for one of the best first bosses.

Mechanically it shows off not all mechon can be hurt by the Monado which is also story important. While also showing not all enemies can be Break/Toppled normally, you need a chain attack. And of course the story relevancy in the scene between fights and the call to action the follows it. Just an all around amazing boss to kick of the adventure

[ShadowMasterT]

An unconventional bad “First Boss” would be the opening mission to the game “Driver” (PC). You have to pull off a literal checklist of stunts in a very tight and unforgiving time limit that leaves little room to error.
For the child me, it effectively blocked me out of the actual game. I doubt even the “experienced gamer”™ me of today, around 20 years later, could pull it off.
And I heard nothing in that game comes even close to requiring such skills, so it’s not even an effective “you’ll need these skills to progress through the game” checkpoint.

[hydrasent]

A cool thing about false knight and lots of the other bosses is that the stronger enemies in the area are similar to the main boss of that area to prepare you for the fight and teach you mechanics.
Examples:
Husk guard : false knight
Traitor mantis : traitor lord
Soul twister : soul master

[UltimateStarky]

Didn't expect some Ace Attorney analysis here, but certainly not complaining.

[pedroscoponi]

The Toriel fight also encourages you away from sparing without solving a monster's puzzle (which you can do by leaving them injured) by having her take an unexpected _chunk_ of damage once her health is below 40%-ish.

[CyanWyrmie]

The main impact from Toriel boss fight actually comes if you screw it up and kill her:
The game hints at monsters being more likely to surrender on mercy if their health is low, so a new player might fall to the trap of thinking that is the correct way spare Toriel.
Her health bar decreasing faster when she's low causing player to accidentally deal the fatal blow due to thinking she can tank a few more hits, which makes her dying even more shocking.
The player remembers Undertale advertised as the rpg where no one has to die, which gives them determination to try to find the trick to sparing her, and doing the age old videogame trick of quitting without saving and fighting Toriel again.
After sparing Toriel, player meets Flowey again, who makes a comment on that very quitting without saving you just pulled off, revealing Undertale's signature 4th wall breaking gimmick and wowing the new player for good