What Makes A Terrible Gimmick Boss?

Everyone loves a good boss fight gimmick. Not all games are so lucky, though. Terrible boss gimmicks can bring a game to a screeching halt. No two are designed the same, but when a boss gimmick falls flat, it often falls into one of a few categories. Let's go through some of them and look out for some of the game design pitfalls to avoid.

Featuring:
Super Mario Sunshine
Crash Bandicoot 2
Trauma Center
Dark Souls
Megaman 2
NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams
Neon White

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#crashbandicoot #supermariosunshine #darksouls

[michaelgum]

7:08 I have to point out that Cortex had a laser gun in the original version of the game that he never once use.

[invisi-bullexploration]

Probably one of the most common mechanics for me.

*Boss spends large portions of the phase flying or being out of reach.*

*Boss flips over on the ground after being struck but sustains no damage. Player now must button mash the 'exposed weak point' given enough time to land two or three hits.*

*Boss flips back over.*

*Boss spends large portions of the phase flying or being out of reach.*

Congratulations, developers! You just took all the fun of doing my taxes and made it into a boss.

[typemasters]

A good Gimmick Boss would be Mysterio from Spiderman 2 (2004), he has multiple encounters but his most rememberable would be where you face him face to face, multiple health bars start loading, only for all those health bars to deplete instantly the moment you land an attack

[grfrjiglstan]

I really hate when turn-based JRPGs slap a big real-time timer on the top of the screen and say “get moving, people, this place charges by the hour!” If you want me to beat the boss strategically and intelligently, give me a turn limit. If you just want me to spam Zettaflare, by all means use a timer.

[Kouhiko]

This one boss I faced fired me for coming to work late. And I was never able to defeat him

[ftninja]

Bed of Chaos reminds me of a Caddicarus quote regarding Crash 4 It's About Time.
_"If you expect perfection from me then I expect perfect from you"._

[asierx]

A good exception to "Don't use the gimmick boss as the final boss" is Giga Queen from Deltarune's second chapter. You've already fought her in a battle that plays like the previous chapter, so the Punch-out segment is nothing more than a cherry on top and a nice callback.

[davidbrickey]

My least favorite category of boss is "This game doesn't have combat mechanics, so please just memorize this handful of attacks and dodge them with 0 mistakes for 2-3 minutes until it exposes its weakpoint". Which is frustratingly common in 2d platformers.

The one that'll always stick out to me as the worst offender is the Meat Golem from Super Meat Boy. Its attacks are pure memorization and require no skill if you know where they're going, they always occur in the same order, it's too long, and you don't even attack it at all (it just knocks itself out after headbutting the ground a few times).

[metarcee]

I'm embarrassed to admit how long it took me to realize that you need to throw Chile peppers at King Boo in Mario Sunshine.

[MageKirby]

For RPGs, the types of gimmick bosses that forces you to pause progression to grind because you weren't born with clairvoyance to know that using a very specific character (that you haven't used until now) was the answer the devs built the fight around.

Or even worse, a party based RPG suddenly puts one of your character to do a solo run. If you didn't know that was going to happen and didn't train that character, its time to do a bit of grinding.

[TheOrian]

Speaking of terrible gimmick bosses, always be very very careful when making regenerating bosses. The wither in minecraft can be incredibly obnoxious because it tends to fly around and be a pain, but it also just regains health easily so you're pressured while dealing with the janky barrage of attacks.

[superdoombro]

Starscourge Radahn was a great gimmick boss.

In a game where you usually summon one npc to help, summoning an army to fight one big bad felt like an epic raid boss and a great change of pace.

[FishdipDeen]

I would argue that all of Paper Mario: Sticker Star's bosses are Gimmick fights. They all are weak to 1 (or 2) specific Thing sticker, which doesn't sound bad on paper. The issue is that you have to find the Things in the overworld, turn them into stickers (which takes up your limited inventory), and hope you brought the right one because there's very little telegraphing before the fight. Oh did I say they're weak to them? I meant that they are REQUIRED.

The worst is by far the Bowser final boss, which requires a near-perfect inventory management to actually beat him. How do you know which stickers to bring? Start the fight, progress a bit, then get frustrated because you didn't bring the correct set. Lose, FIND THOSE THINGS AGAIN, and repeat.

[coreymyers]

The worst boss gimmick is length. Take a boring/infuriating boss and make it 15-30 minutes, and it feels like forever.

[RKIOrbMage]

The best gimmick boss I have ever played is the last boss of Kirby star allies. It does sacrifice a bit of normal gameplay, but the experience is unforgettable, expecially in local multiplayer

[engineergaming]

I alvays hate it when you either have to wait an hour for the boss to finally be attackable over and over again or when they just become invincible and spawn a bunch of enemies you need to kill it just extends the fight and makes it a chore to get through

[GamingReinvented]

One of the worst examples of a gimmick boss not working properly is probably the Zeekeeper fight in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. Up until that point, motion controls were mostly optional. You could use them for some special attacks, and the finishing move for the prior giant bosses used them, but the former could be ignored entirely and the latter was impossible to fail.

Then this boss came in, and half the battle revolved around using those gyro controls to move Luigi, dodge attacks and attack back in kind. Unfortunately, the gyro functionality in this game was... unreliable to say the least, and had a tendency to glitch out. Cue an unavoidable death or three as Luigi got stuck in place and pummelled into oblivion.

Unfortunately, the next giant boss also used gyro controls for two major sections of the fight, and those were equally prone to breaking. Yay...

I guess the ice boss from Luigi's Mansion 2 would be another good example of a terrible gimmick boss, simply because the main mechanic in question was used maybe twice before that battle, and never in the context of an actual fight. Add this to a bunch of additional features (the vehicle you're riding overheating and giving you an instant game over, the boss regenerating health, etc) and you had one frustrating battle.

[playerzking]

The first gimmicky boss fight I've stuck on wasn't really a boss fight... It was making perfectly grilled meat in Monster Hunter portable, took me an hour😂

[illdoittomorrow]

Delirium from the binding of isaac has to be the biggest mess of a fight ever. The idea is really cool, but that thing just goes way too fast and telefrags you 10 times per minute.

[NRDICSTRM]

Uumuu from Hollow Knight is such a weird outlier of a boss, especially considering Hollow Knight's other boss fights. It feels like a violation, having these fair but challenging boss fights like Mantis Lords and Grimm, and then having this one boss that you are only allowed to attack at random intervals.