Skyward Sword Human Size Bosses. Spoilers

[tenkashixd]

I'll start by saying while I do not hate skyward sword. I would not replay it. Its a good game but not an ideal zelda game in my opinion. I wish there was more to do in the sky and exploring. Moving on.

Now I couldnt help but feel that due to the wii motion controls each human size boss was nothing more than a glorified tutorial. Fighting ghirahim each time he walked slowly towards you. Demise walked slowly towards you. Its like after all that they still dont take you seriously. And while the bosses are challenging it didnt seem like they went all out. The final ghirahim fight was pretty good. But here is what I disliked about it and sort of broke the game for me. Go to the fight and close you eyes while holding down the target button. Everytime you hear ghirahim grunt shake yout nunchuck. It is a guaranteed perfect block. It feels like a motion control test instead of a fight to the death.

I wish the fights had a mixture of dodging and guarding and then instead of spamming a direction you would need to hit a certain spot to open up more ways to fight.

Eg. How about have ghirahim launch a succession of brutal assaults and instead of having him stop for a good while to gloat or whatever. You have to strike and exact spot. That then transitions into more attacks from him and eventually somewhat of a sword struggle. From the first fight till demise i felt that every fight was mimicing the ganondorf fight from twilight princess. But instead of being able to use hidden techniques to try and chip away at his hp. You are staring at demise waiting for him to attack.

At times it did feel cool because in reality most sword fights come down to watching your enemy closely but all of them were like this. Its also pretty evident in the final rush towards zelda where you have to anti climactically stop and fan away pig monsters. Despite ghirahim ordering them to destroy you with a level of threat i can respect. They still stare and taunt and laugh at you like the first time you saw them. This seemed kinda lazy to me. You lost hp because you got swarmed by them. Its either that or you have trouble facing them from the start to the finish. The only unique thing about these guys were the ones that would run away. And the electricity. It was pretty much another test imo.

The demise fight phase two where things pick up. I feel instead of whacking his sword around three times like no demon king should. He needed more onslaughts of attacks. How am I suppose to feel like a hero if he underestimated me start to finish. At the start its acceptable because thats what bad guys do. But near the end he should have made sure i utilized all of my swordmans ship to win. Instead I shook the nunchuck three times in rythem. And attacked. Over and over until I won.

Twilight princess' ganondorf to say the least started to render my rolling back slash useless after a few attempts. Sometimes just one attempt then it became obsolete and I had to restrategize. It wasnt difficult but it mixed things up.

Something I just thought of that would have been nice to see is. Those dark floating spikes ghirahim likes to use. What if he had attacked close range with those. Forcing you to block then swipe at him in a certain direction shortly after. But instead of turning it into a slash fest you had to control yourself and do it similar to the broadsword phase of hhis final form.
If you screwed up it wouldnt punish your hearts but simply give him a chance to attack you again before you could begin your attack. It would feel more like a clash instead of a rock paper scissors slash slash slash type battle.

Also the mobile version of this site lacks the ability to add prefixes.

 

[JuicieJ]

I don't think you understand the concept of gameplay mechanics. Not everything has to be all in-your-face in order to provide a quality fight, even when it's a sword duel, and Ghirahim is pretty much the perfect example of this. He always mixes up his attacks in a random pattern (or, at least, as close to random as AI can get) and generally doesn't let up. Even when he does pause, it's never for more than a couple seconds max, and that's pretty rare. Besides, he DOES charge at you frequently in his first fight, and he dive-bombs you in his second. And, of course, he pulls out the huge-*** sword in the third.

I don't see how you could call it a "glorified tutorial", especially when, in all reality, his fights are literally designed to be the opposite of that: a test of what you've learned.

 

[JuicieJ]

This was unnecessary, and pretty rude.

Yeeeeeeeeah, no, you're just way too sensitive. That was absolutely not an insult or jab at the OP, just an observant statement. Get over yourself.

 

[tenkashixd]

I don't think you understand the concept of gameplay mechanics. Not everything has to be all in-your-face in order to provide a quality fight, even when it's a sword duel, and Ghirahim is pretty much the perfect example of this. He always mixes up his attacks in a random pattern (or, at least, as close to random as AI can get) and generally doesn't let up. Even when he does pause, it's never for more than a couple seconds max, and that's pretty rare. Besides, he DOES charge at you frequently in his first fight, and he dive-bombs you in his second. And, of course, he pulls out the huge-*** sword in the third.

I don't see how you could call it a "glorified tutorial", especially when, in all reality, his fights are literally designed to be the opposite of that: a test of what you've learned.

Assuming I dont understand the mechanics. Assuming i want everything to be in your face. Most of his attacks are waiting and see. Much like when he is walking around waiting to catch your sword. Im saying that i felt something was missing or that they could have added something but ghirahim didnt feel much different than the bokloblims or whatever they are called. The only time the shield felt effective was when i blocked demise' three major attacks. How about a perfect guard + slash + perfect guard + slash sequence to add a little depth to your so called test. It really is waiting out another electo pig monster and retaliating afterwards.


He did rush at you but that was it. You did get a thrill from attacking him or blocking it. But then he backs off and its back to the waiting game. He should of in my opinion kept attacking. And for his projectile moves. It just drags the fight on yeah it forces the player to do certain motions to block the attacks but even so. It is padding imo it adds nothing to the fight and while it is technically and attack that can take off hearts. You lose hearts from the wiimote not responding correctly.

Yeeeeeeeeah, no, you're just way too sensitive. That was absolutely not an insult or jab at the OP, just an observant statement. Get over yourself.

Woah dude. No one is forcing you to agree with me and noone is asking for your personal opinions on other users. Lets discuss how the bosses could have been more interesting or how they couldnt be more perfect.

 

[Ventus]

Needless to say, I completely agree with every single point you presented. SS' bosses were too forgiving. Too forgiving to the point where things felt clearly scripted in Link's favor 100% of the time. Some suggestions I can think of:

- Make it so that boss attacks do not always deal knockback. Ghirahim doing a running dash is meaningless if he just deals a heart and puts me on the ground, giving me invincibility frames. Rather, bosses that are quick should be able to deal quick, successive damage without pause. Ghirahim obviously had the skill - and the anger - to do so at least by his final appearance, so why didn't this happen?

- Demise should've been skinnier. A lot of his mobility seemed hampered by his size; he was like a Rock Titan in a lot of ways.

- Link should've had to break through many defenses.

- Foes should've stopped "underestimating" Link by the time of Lanayru Mining Facility's end. Not a single enemy - from Bokoblin all the way to Demise - seemed to go all out. Everyone looked down on Link as that lazy boy who was practically good for nothing. The enemies that did attack attacked in such a way that seemed far too slow for a midgame-to-endgame foe. If they were quicker, had varied attacks both in strength and range, then I think I may have been satisfied.

- Foes should not have been repeats of the last. I'm not talking specifically about Bokoblins here. Even Ghirahim is guilty of this; his second appearance is virtually identical to his first. Oh, and DEMISE feels very similar to Ghirahim. The battle styles should not be the same. Bosses should not always be tests, sometimes they can invent totally new things.

 

[tenkashixd]

I just thought of something else that might have been fun. Sacrifice mobility for a short time in order to block rapid succesions of attacks queued by the same sound effect of the counter in winder waker. The arrows pop up on screen and its your job to guard them in order in a timely fashion. Maybe even holding the wiimote and nunchuck together with both hands like a baseball bat( biggorron sword cough)
Essentially guarding in the same fashion as the enemies in SS

I can see the flaws. But itd be fun if they could have pulled it off.

 

[Random Person]

And this in lies one huge flaw in SS. Whereas some prefer SS's fighting because it increases difficulty, I prefer TP's because it encourages creativity. No matter how difficult an enemy is, which SS's enemies aren't really that difficult even for Zelda's standards, if all it is is rinse and repeat it can get pretty boring. The exception to this rule is if what you're doing makes the player feel epic in doing so (which most Zelda games provide), but even still that doesn't completely make up for what variety can provide.

Demise is probably the worst offender in SS. Defeating him isn't a matter of strategy, its a matter of whether or not you're good with motion controls because in the end that's all you're doing. Not to say he's incredibly easy, but it's boring. I applaud the lightning shaking things up, but that was all we had.

I think the final Ghirahim fight is forgivable in that it really does make the player feel epic. I actually think of it as one of the better boss fights. Still, that doesn't mean it couldn't be better and doing what the OP suggested could definitely help in this area. I also believe if they increased Ghirahim's Skyward Strikes and made them only blockable by your own (as in, you can't dodge them), that would give the player a huge adrenaline rush. Also, because the rest of the game is also motion controls, just going less quickly, you're still not getting as big of a thrill as you could.

While this is mainly a problem for SS's combat, it effects the game as a whole. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the game feels like they took motion controls and tried to place a "Legend of Zelda" title on it. Just about everything in SS makes you feel that Nintendo is trying to show off the WM+, which is unnecessary. Nintendo is infamously known for how gimicky it can get, particularly with the Zelda series, but I think this took it too far as it is blatantly in the player's face like never before.

 

[Zurriel]

Wow, I like a lot of your ideas, especially the Ghirahim one, that would have been epic!

I think that was the only battle based mechanic in SS that I didn't like. Enemy's and bosses were way to defensive. The 3rd fight with Ghirahim almost fixed this, because the battle was faster paced. But I could just stand there and he would do nothing. He is the 2nd to last boss, I SHOULD BE FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE HERE! But it wasn't just with him, almost all the monsters in the game would just stand there and not attack, one time I counted to 10, still nothing, the ting just stood there laughing. I was thinking the whole time I fought someone "Why aren't you attacking, are you ready for a counterattack or something, is something about to hit me from behind?"

After halfway though the game, or even earlier, bosses (and Enemy's!) should stop staring at you and Attack! It may or may not make the game harder but at lest it would feel as if you are a treat, being the Hero after all. Just imagine when Ghirahim sends those swarms on you and some of the swung there blade within the first 2 seconds of reaching you, I would have a harder time with that battle. Grated the first time I was still mad he took Zelda, so I just killed what ever got in my way, kinda blinded by rage... come to think of it, maybe I was a little to wrapped up in the game...

Btw I'm confused, are we talking about the flaw of bosses just staring at you, or how to make them better. Because a Block-Slash-Block-Slash would have been awesome in the Ghirahim fights!!

 

[Vanessa28]

No more insults. If you can't discuss in a civil and nice way without throwing insults there is no need for this topic to be open so please play it nice. Thanks

 

[Justac00lguy]

Would be a yes from me.

I don't believe that a boss had to be big to be considered a "boss", but that seems to be the trend to create more, visually, threatening appearances. However, that doesn't always have to be the case, a lot of villains have shown that they can stand out even being human sized (somewhat) eg. Zant, Ghirahim, Ganondorf etc. Although, I guess we're not talking main or sub villains, but instead, actual dungeon bosses.

Well I think we could use some variety in boss designs, yes the typical boss is usually an oversized gigantic figure of sorts and I think bosses, most of the time, should follow that trend. However, it would be great to have some smaller scale bosses that act like Link's rivals, so to say. If the game gives them dialogue then it could make said boss battle feel more personal. Sometimes when you're taking part in a boss battle you feel disconnected from the boss itself and I think more emphasis should be made on making that boss actually significant rather than just being an obstacle - smaller scale, human-like bosses could do this more effectively.