What Makes A Great First Boss? 

On Twilight Princess, one of the first mechanics shown are used for fight Ganondorf, the last boss fight. The mechanic is presented by a goat fleeing and you have to throw it a side.

what the dog doin

ocarina of time was the first-ever boss I fought and won in a game it's really easy now that I know the game better but still interesting mechanics to me at least

No, the Undertale Toriel boss SUCKED at introducing me to the spare mechanics, I had no idea i COULD spare her

Your words were hard too follow

I'm so bad at dodging I managed to die to Toriel by accident on my first try. :(

Or if you’re DRIFTING I Mean PANIK XD

It's a neat easter egg. Her horrified expression flashes for like a couple frames at most

@@derinedala5032.

@@nicocchi One single frame i think.

I laughed until I remembered that he would never have gone to jail or been punished at all if you hadn't stolen his heart. He would have just kept on going with the same crimes and being protected by the school.

53rd'd.

It would be great. I feel so many games don't do these well, it would be good to see more exemples of well done unbeatables than Tales of Berseria.

As in bosses the game doesn't let you beat? Like how xenoblade's first metal face encounter doesn't let you beat him

100th like

The best "unbeatable" bosses are those you can beat and something different actually happens in the story! (In my opinion)

…I was bad enough that I died to her on accident

Which is kinda ironic since that's also what your reaction would be when you accidentally kill her. It's so good

Fun fact: if you have done a geno run, that stops happening

How do you die, I tried it’s hard

@@woodykrska9947 I think you move to one side, and then quickly go to the other side as the flames come closer to the center?

W brother 😎😎😎

I love how tips like that can completely turn the tides. I had a similar experience with Nosk, where I had to calm myself down to win.

Yeah!

I never understood ghiraham. I just flailed until I got a single hit off him and every fight with him took at least an hour. I beat the game but I don't get what his fingers mean. When I slowed down and tried I just gave him my blade more than just try every direction in flailing motion.

@@J.R.Unbound Yeah, I had a similar experience. At first I used my usual strat towards bosses of finish it quickly and only heal occasionally, but I easily died using that strategy. Then I started being more defensive, which is what the devs intended you to do. Nosk is the predator, and you are the prey. Slowly chip it down until you win while using those safe spots.

I thought that too

A lot of Undertale could be described that way. You get chased by a 7ft piranha chick with an eye-patch and hefty armor because she wants your soul to give to the king, but there is a good reason in the lore for that.

And at the end, the flower absorbs every soul in the underground and becomes a demonic goat fursona.

I guess I'll have to play this undertale game.

In deltarune, you meet a guy wearing a spade outfit who rides a flaming bicycle, only to attack a green goat prince, resulting in an explosion. He then proceeds to start conflict with you, a blueberry, as well as your associate, Barney the dinosaur. Eventually spade man but with marker-pliers mustache appears and you must create a machine to deliberately fulfill your masochistic desires. Eventually you fight a dancing red circle you seduces you. Eventually people start simping on spade man and Barney and they get air-blown by green-slabs. Eventually Barney fights spade thing and they have an epic showdown where the spade guy gets filled with the power of AMOGUS T SHIRT and uses his pumpkin-powers to make Barney be his friend (did I assume a gender?). Later you proceed to fight and insane demon jester. He wields the epic power of creating a face that makes you comment “Sauce Pls”. Eventually you beat up some guy with 2 mouths and tongues. There’s also this one blue guy with a cool hair-do who likes eating worms. After that you rip your soul out of your body only to chuck it into a black and white water fountain and then play musics. Then the crack wears off and you wake up in some classroom which had somebody hire a toddler janitor in order to clean up. Thank you for listening to my tale

did that on my first playthrough and i was so surprised

I tried so hard, it was an accident ok I thought the game wanted me to just lower her health first. Stupid flower.

@@iaxacs3801 Toriel's fight is designed to kill her by accident. Previous fights show you lowering health allows you to spare. But for Toriel, once you lower her health you do her more damage, making it easier for you to kill her. This allows the player to kill her by accident, incentivicing the use of the reset mechanic.

​@@zuzucha5881 To be honest I've never understood why people think the Toriel boss is good game design. I also accidentally killed Toriel, and that flower called me an idiot when I restarted the game. But, how am I the idiot? The game just changed it's battle mechanics on the fly without any indication, and made me feel like garbage for it. After that boss, I became super paranoid about my in-game decisions. I quickly got tired of feeling like that and just stopped playing after a few more hours. I think Undertale is the only game I've played in which the first boss actually ruined the rest of the game for me.

@@VenatorRobotics I agree. The Toriel fight cheats, which makes it the worst fight in the entire game. First, a lot of players who end up killing her don't make the decision to not spare her, but rather they don't notice that the game is actually progressing when you continue to pick "spare" so they only end up killing her out of frustration against the game not letting them do what they actually want. Second, the game changes the game mechanics to kill her when she's no where near low health. That's straight up the game killing her, not the player. It's not an accident by the player. Worst of all, regardless of what actually happened, the game treats killing Toriel as a moral decision made by the player. Which is one of the worst parts of the already flawed morality of Undertale.

He is the perfect first boss for bloodborne cause even if you have played all other dark souls games Gascoigne makes sure you can’t maintain the usual souls play style. You have to adapt to bloodborne’s hectic, fast paced, aggressive combat if you want to succeed

Gascoigne was a freaking hard first Boss. He fucked me Up atleast 10 Times before i even got to Phase 2 (i have to say that im a filthy Casual tho)

Talking about FromSoftware, I think the first one in DS3 is a good re introduction boss. He is not a pushover as the Asylum demon, but it's not that impossible either.

He teaches you the ancient art of not letting your enemy move

Gascoigne feels like a boss designed to kill Dark Souls players, where cleric beast butchered ppl new to the franchise, souls vets handled the big beastie withease. Gascoigne was the inverse, easy for newcomers but a terribly large hurdle for soul vets. THats my and my friends experience at least, and it made Cosplaying him in game a TREAT when invading~~~

And the big scary monster with a conveniently placed eye went on to be almost everyone other boss in the game

​@@Simply_resharkablewow, literally every other boss in Skyward Sword that isn't Ghirahim or Demise/The Imprisoned has a convenient eyeball weak point except for Koloktos. I never realized that. No wonder Koloktos is considered the best boss in that game.

i also love how the final boss fight of skyward sword Demise is essentially an upgraded harder version of ghirahim in his 1st phase he anticipates and blocks all your attacks so you have to hit through his guard much like ghirahim's 1st phase and then in his second phase he introduces the lightning mechanics where now challenging his guard damages you so you have to wait for him to get rid of his lightning defense and you're able to attack him again

I honestly can't think of anybody who didn't die their first time trying to climb down the first tower. All of my friends died, every playthrough I saw died, I died, I refuse to believe that anyone survived that first tower.

@@Tom-vx7qh I did. I didn't even know that dying on that tower was a thing!

@@Tom-vx7qh there's water near by, I just did what a normal person would do and tested to see if I could land in it. The idea of trying to climb or jump down onto land never occured to me.

I mean you laugh but the first goomba in SMB has a higher kill count than any other enemy in the game

So I survived the tower then went back up it then died

Mike rented Driver as a kid and couldn't get past that checklist. Just repeated failing at stunt driving for the entire rental period. Absolutely brutal first 'boss'. Years later he got through it, but the last level in the game is also ridiculous.

I remember having this game. But all I remember is that parking garage. I never got past it lol

Wtf is slalom

same. I hated the stunt driving so bad. pretty much ruined the game for me.

@@DesignDoc last couple of levels actually are BRUTAL

Other bosses like this include: Uumuu to the jellyfish and Charged Lumaflies Mantis Lords to the…. Well…. Mantises. Massive Moss Charger to the smaller Moss Chargers Vengefly King and Gruz Mother to Vengefliee and Gruzzere Grimm and NKG to the Grimmkin

Dark souls 3 does the same thing! Little mage dudes before the crystal sage Crystal lizard dudes before vordt Darkwraiths infighting before the abyss watchers DARK SOULS 1 PVP before soul of cinder Pontiff knights before sulyvahn

@@captainblue5096 I don’t think dream fights count. TMG is the same guy as NKG.

@@mayonnaise2396 according to the lore. no, they're not the same

came here to say this exact thing. when I fought false knight, the game had already given me some practice with their mechanics, so it was just a matter of honing the timing

That's pretty much what made me never want to play the game at all. Tricking the player into doing one thing, and then giving a different result from doing that than anywhere else in the game isn't teaching the player anything other than being very, very careful, because the game can't be trusted.

@@AnotherDuck This is the reason the game frustrates me. As much as I love it, the combination of massive fanbase pushing me to play it and terrible first boss almost made me hate it, though when I reached Papyrus, it was all worth it. Papyrus seems a lot better as a first boss than Toriel, as others have mentioned.

@@iranoutofideasforausernam1703 Yeah, the game does have a lot of good things going for it. The Toriel fight and the way it handles morality aren't it. If those were reworked, it could've been a great game.

this game is WAYYY to inconsistent. Like I got that creepy flowey boss ending. but for some fucking reason I can't do passifest because of my "past actions" like dude, I bought the fucking game, let me experience everything.

@@do0nv Well, if you want to experience everything you need to play it through at least once for every ending. Or at least once from the last point where you can change it.

at the same time it perfectly shows the new mecanic of plunge attacks that ends up quickly forgotten.

Okumara has some bopping tunes in his factory at least.

Kaneshiro was the most underwhelming Palace Ruler to me, honestly. At least Madarame and Okumura have personal connections to the party members to motivate you. They could've tied Kaneshiro into Makoto's story by having him be the one that called the hit on her dad, but they didn't. It's really weird, actually - literally all of the other major antagonist characters have directly impacted at least one of the Thieves.

@@stock_img I somehow misread that. Rereading, agreed

Kaneshiro’s dungeon is a bop but god does he suck story-wise. I kinda agree that Kamoshida is way too good at his job that it makes the others less impactful, but Madarame still committed murder with extra steps, and Okumura’s arc would’ve sucked regardless, so I don’t hold it against them

thats the same way i feel about metal gear re-vengeance. The first metal gear fight was so cool I just quit playing the game and ive never gone further than one or two bosses more because I feel like I've already beat the coolest boss.

Agreed

*proceeds to surprise kill her*

I had the game spoiled for me so I didn’t kill her, which I deeply regret

I had a similar experience where I decided to play the Danganronpa games out of order and started with 3. (I, thankfully, had seen some youtube clips of the game before without majorly spoiling the story and knew how to play. Otherwise I would have been overwhelmed.)

I agree, now, tell me.. what pantheon are you on? I myself are on p3.

@@justarandomguy983 And now, where are you? I've done p5 with charm binding a couple months ago.

@@legrandliseurtri7495 I literally said in my comment, but I'm. currently around the mushroom place in Steelsoul

@@justarandomguy983 It's been 2 months since you made that comment...I assumed you made some progress in the pantheons.

@@legrandliseurtri7495 well I couldn't play hk for a while due to family issues.

Yo holy shit I just realized after all these years that you play as the first boss (Bowser) to beat the final boss (dark bowser)

Furthermore, the actual first boss (Sea Pipe Statue) is also a neat introduction as to how battles could go, going in between Bowser and Mario and Luigi and is weirdly cooperative between both which is not used again until the last boss. And then there is the first boss of the Giant battles, Bowser’s Castle.

I don't know Kiwami's moves until the Coliseum. But the Hardest Part of Yakuza Kiwami (Was My Firts Yakuza) is Majima fight on Batting Centter and The Katana Guy with Katana Thugs

I feel Yakuza games have this weird middle ground between being accessible and being inaccessible. They have lots of super simple mechanics such as the combat system being more than functional without its nuances, as I managed to get halfway through 0 before actually doing heat actions or advanced moves (I skipped tutorials like a dumbass). Thus a lot of bosses also do a good job of testing your skills and being possible to beat at lower skill levels (albeit with more challenge as is expected), and characters that introduce themes, story elements, and character traits in very intuitive ways that allow players to learn and become interested even without context. On the other hand a lot of points also rely on already being familiar with the franchise. Shimano there is a great example as you can at least argue seasoned players are more likely to use the skill tree efficiently and get kiwami moves. Similarily boss fights like Jingu or Y4's most infamous boss (no spoilers, a smaller portion of the fandom has reached that game) are challenging and annoying even for veteran players. Newer players will be under geared or under prepared by a wide margin and I've known people who quit the games/series over these bosses. It's especially frustrating when the best idea to beat Y4's boss is to equip a specific piece of armor you can only equip on one of the 4 protags, and it's not Kiryu but the most technical character with the highest skill ceiling. Meaning you can be punished for putting on the main character of the series, the easier characters, or your favorite/best to play as, and few new players will ever think to put it on the right one because his difficulty turns them away. Not to mention the lack of context on all prior events and almost never recapping, only the vaugest of references. It makes people going to 0 confused at the references to the later games and players who started with the other games confused as to what characters are talking about. This is especially bad in Kiwami as 1 had very little context to begin with aside from the main elements of the story, which was rectified but still has some traces left. First bosses like Kuze are amazing and show the welcoming side of the series, others... not so much.

Also your partner (which is random) means that you can soemtimes get fucked by luck alone since Walter can randomly use spells that the minotaur is immune to (which can make him smirk and kill you)

Actually I think Minotaur is an awful example. It is a case of the game starving you for resources and being heavily reliant on luck to beat. Forneus from Nocturne would be a better example of a good early boss, of course later followed by the infamous roadblock that is Matador.

Ill end it thus!

@@matteste The Matador isn't that bad. The game offers you exactly the magatama you need to defeat him right before the fight.

Lol, all you need to do is spam bufu and sukus. Then the rest of the game is a snoozefest. What useful thing does he teach you? Nothing that Naraku random encounters already didn’t tell you. He’s a horrible first boss. Even the meme Matador could’ve been a better example

glad someone mentioned octopath! it’s not perfect, but i think they did a good job with the bosses

Of these eight first bosses, I feel that Helgenish is the strongest, at least when it comes to the story. Easily the most cathartic to take down, and a pretty symbolic way to free Primrose from the shackles of her current lifestyle so she can finally set out on her journey. On the gameplay side, it would probably be a tie between the Guardian of the First Flame for its "trial" mechanic (although it's not as interesting if Ophilia isn't alone), or the Blotted Viper for demanding that you make good use of Alfyn's Rehabilitate and Concoct abilities, lest you find yourself unable to keep up with the constant poisoning of your entire party.

Gameplay-wise, all of those first chapter bosses also teaches you how you can increase the damage done by breaking them, and how breaking a boss can let you avoid powerful attacks that they're preparing to do, which are two central mechanics to the game's enemies.

@@Folutu also the fact many of them utilize your given starting characters abilities to teach you how they work. -aflyn's boss teaches you more about his apothecary skills than just healing -olberic's boss teaches you about his level slash since there are two enemies behind the boss -cyrus and ophelia's bosses require you to use their magic, since the minions are resistant to weapons.

And to faciliate that, they are weak against at least one of the weaknesses that the character associated with them has access to.

" If they end up killing her and then learn sparing would work but they had to be patient, they'll might feel frustrated with the whole mechanic. Comparing to Papyrus" - I had this exact reaction. Papyrus was literally the only boss I spared on my first run. I tried to spare Toriel and it seemed like I wasn't making progress, so I quit. She also...died unexpectedly quickly.

I think a chunk of players ARE supposed to kill Toriel the first time through. But the dialogue changes could be a little faster, I agree

@@MartinPurathur This is actually the exact point that made me fall in love with the game. SPOILERS When I fought Toriel, the first approach I took was trying to talk with her. It became clear very quickly that this wasn't going anywhere, so I tried something else. The game calls out early on that getting a monster to low HP can let you spare them, so I tried weakening her... with predictable results. That "victory" felt absolutely like a failure, so I immediately closed the game and reloaded my last save. This time, I just stubbornly spammed the Spare button, and got my good ending. And then Flowey called me out for save scumming. It's a little detail that a good percentage of the players will never see, but it really drove home the point that this is not your average RPG.

I agree; I tried following what the game hinted at in my first run but didn't think sparing was having an effect. I ended up killing her and thinking the spare ideas was more of a gimmick than actually important since the first boss still needed killing. When I realized how wrong I was, I went through the 5 stages of grief for tutorial and felt very very frustrated at the game for telling me more clearly I could spare her just like you suggested! Haha! So I agree it could be frustrating for players and could be improved but its also made my following runs much more special knowing as I know more about how to solve each encounter and I think helped with my love of the game once I got over that initial frustration.

I think that's kind of the point. Undertale doesn't sugarcoat nonviolence. It teaches you through your own regret that nonviolence is difficult and requires radical belief and creative problem solving, and even goes out of its way to make you realise you can't take back your mistakes.

Yeah, a couple of Cyan Lasers to the eye and it's DOWN.

I always felt kind of opposite with Matador - it COULD be a good wake-up boss for beginners, but since the game doesn't showcase nor demand buff/debuff mechanics up to that point, it comes off more as a brick wall with an unintuitive solution for players not familiar with the franchise. I'd argue that more people learned about stat boosting from memes and frustrated internet threads than they did from fighting this boss blind.

I tried playing Nocturne when the remake came out (I never played an SMT game before). I like to go into games blind and try to look up as little as possible and honestly the boss was just infuriating. It genuinely felt like no matter what I did I would just lose because up until that point random encounters were fair or easy if I knew the enemy's weaknesses, only struggling a bit when fighting the manta-rays in the sewers because I had a bit of a fire heavy party at that moment. Then that boss comes out and wipes my party within a few moves, forcing me to lose the 30 minutes it took to get to him. My next thought was just "Okay, I need to get better demons so my weaknesses aren't just constantly exploited" but the problem in doing that was as a new player.. idk the weaknesses of things off the top of my head so it quickly became "trial and error". With the Save/Load system of the game (being unable to save anywhere) it made it even more frustrating with the fact that I'd have to grind, spend 5-10 minutes to go to a save point while hoping that the things I'm fighting along the way don't kill me, just to spend another 5-10 minutes to get back to that boss fight. If I was able to save/load to right before the fight to "trial and error" my way with weaknesses it would've alleviated the frustration a lot since I wouldn't have lost tons of progress constantly (like any exp I gained on my way to the boss fight or any extra things I missed on my first trek to that area). It eventually culminated in me just... giving up on the game. That fight was too difficult for how little was actually being explained in the game and it was only made worse by the archaic save system the game used. The opening sequence in Nocturne was great and it made me hooked on it and made me want to explore heavily and see every detail of the world but that single boss fight made me want to not play the game which is a shame. "DPS Checks" are fine but if they're made too difficult without really giving the player the proper tools to deal with it, it becomes a nuisance.

Hoy

Mechanically it's pretty boring tho

Oh yeah I remember that! I wish they would make a modern gen way of the samurai game and localize it for the us

Also required since voodoo demons will not spawn unless you beat EOC

Oh, thank goodness. It's not just me. This is the biggest reason I get stuck waggling even when I try to do deliberate strokes.

@@BonaparteBardithion Same... give me a boss that have you use the Beetle, and have Ghirahim appear a bit later in between the 1st and 2nd dungeons.

his freaking tongue tho..

@@chickennugget6684 Sometimes I think about how, at some point, on the offices of Nintendo, several people, possibly in suits, sat around and one of them said something along the lines of "so what if, when he's talking to link, he just suddenly vigorously, and sensually, licks the fuck out of his face, with a freakishly long and narrow tongue" and everyone else was just like, fuck yes, this is a perfect thing to have in this game for all ages, let's fuckin goooo" But, in Japanese of course.

the will wall the hell of you is just every enemy in yakuza 3 lmao, whether or not you *have* learned them

Well, Zelda games aren't balanced for the experienced gamers until you get to the extra modes. They're more designed to be fun to play rather than challenging. And I think they succeed at that. Except 2. That's also challenging.

@@AnotherDuck I was talking less difficulty, more Nintendo designs games for people, not "gamers" so because I knew the language and logic of video games my mind never ventured to what if this, only stayed in line of this is the correct thing to do, no matter what button I do or not push

@@DanielisAwesome52 That is difficulty, just a different level of it.

@@AnotherDuck I don't think that's difficulty. there's no scale there. Pressing A to interact is not harder then pressing Triangle or X. The only part that was different in this scenario (to me) was moving my arm as opposed to pushing a button. My point is that because the action in and of itself was so simple, my video game trained brain was able to translate it directly and rigidly to a button press, ergo I never ventured outside of what was "supposed" to happen to win. Yes swinging my arm up as opposed to down, and figuring out when is difficulty just like flicking a control stick in that direction or holding Z and pressing B for a vertical, pressing Z and forward B for a thrust, or not touching Z and pressing B for horizontal in Ocarina of Time would be difficulty. But the part I "got hung up on" had nothing to do with that, merely the rigidity of what I was doing not how I was doing it. To continuing overexplaining. Yes the action was easy to me because I played games, but it being easy wasn't why I never figured out Ghirahim could take the sword, To me you could only hit or not hit, like every other Zelda game because to me swinging the sword in a direction never mattered, I was just swinging as if I hit a button. So I never had to think "What if I don't break out of him grabbing my sword" it was only 'That Sword hit failed, swing again"

@@DanielisAwesome52 Difficulty isn't really inherent in a game. Difficulty is about a player meeting something that takes them effort to solve or get past. That can be both mechanical challenges to do something quickly and/or precisely, and mental challenges to figure out what to do in the first place.

As FF9 was one of my first JRPGs I always thought stealing was rewarding in games, turns out its mostly only in FF 9 ;)

@@orbmac FFX did a decent job making Steal relevant, but mostly because they turned it into the Machina 1-hit KO.

I'd argue the first boss of Red/Blue is actually the first gym leader, Brock, assuming you are leveling up steadily enough, your starter should have learned their special moves, something that's effective against the literal rock walls here, even moreso if you get in with Charmander as you learn that your starter can do super effective in the forest and that YOU can get done in by a super effective move here, plus even if stuff aren't super effective, they might do different amounts of damage depending on stats

I always steal in all games where it's an option that isn't a moral choice, especially RPGs with a steal move in combat. FFIX was good with that, but I think most FF games are at least decent, with hidden stealable equipment here and there.

Deal most of the damage OR cleverly use a certain item to end it right away. The game just asks that you pay attention to the story and what the npcs tell you. God, i love DQ7.

Does Genichiro (Sekiro) count? I mean you figth him thrice, or just twice if you are _the worst_ .

@@Karak-_- If Girahim from Skyward Sword counts, any boss with multiple fights is fair game long as one of those is first.

Glass joe as well. He gets a head cushion so head punches won't work on him unless he's stunned, in a game where going for the head is the main way of stunning. What's especially great is that it still works as a first boss since every boss gets a rematch and is drastically different from the original.

Actually, I think he is one of the worst first bosses imaginable. He is heavily luck based and the player is also severely starved for resources leading up to the fight. Even if you know he is coming there is little you can actually do to prepare as he can screw over novices and veterans alike. Forneus would be a better example of a first boss while Matador is a better example of actually teaching the mechanics. Forneus for instance is meet very early and is weak to your first demon and some of the other demons you can find. Matador meanwhile has a buff as central to his kit and uses elemental magic teaching the importance of both while also being designed in such a way that he cannot screw you over in a single move, he has to set up for that to happen. And the resources needed to beat him are all around you, you just need to grab them. Minotaur meanwhile has no counter-play. As he uses physical as his main element, there is no resistance for you to take advantage of, buffs and debuffs are rare and costly, meaning even if you have them, you will be limited in how many you can actually get off. And then there is the fact that he has 3 turn icons as well as the smirk system being a thing. A single crit and he can turn you into paste and there will be nothing you can do about it, not helped by his high crit rate. Add in the utterly random and hard hitting Labrys Strike and the fact that you can get Walter as a partner who uses an element that Minotaur nulls, and you will pretty much be screwed before the fight even starts.

@@matteste that was just coming from my own personal experience with the boss, I've always beaten him first try, with little difficulty, generally I was underleveled for him as well (this most recent playthrough I even got Walter as my partner, he only used Agi once, and the minotaur didn't smirk)

The first Zero game, at least in my experience, is by far the hardest. I dunno if beating other Megaman games would make it easier, but I definitely _played_ some of the X series before and still had trouble with him.

Yeah. Falcon just kinda cranked things up to eleven, when you might not even have your full attack chain even unlocked. Which is kind of worse because it makes you want to grind up your saber skills right out of the gate, which makes the leveling mechanic a non-factor for the remainder of the game.

@@pedroscoponi4905 I personally always found Mega Man Zero 2 the hardest. The stages have way too many insta-kill spike traps for my liking lol.

@@CronoEpsilon I'd rather have a ton of spike traps than a bunch of screen-crunch induced deaths. Leaps of faith are frustratingly common in Zero 1. That said, I grew up with Zero 2, so rose-tinted glasses, I guess.

I legit beat The Radiance before finding Failed Champion’s area