What makes a good "boss"

[Meiscool]

So, I'm at the point in my game where I'm creating my first boss fight, and I'm wondering... what makes a god boss fight? Difficulty, plot significance, cinematic style, stages, etc. What do you like to see? What fights really make you go "WOW" in games that you have played.

First that comes to my mind is the Hydra boss at the beginning of God Of War. It was such a change in boss fights I've experienced. Very unique at the time. This was more of a cinematic feel that anything else, seeing as it had no plot significance and not very high difficulty. It combined a lot of different elements (platforming, hack and slash, etc) into one amazing fight.
Another that comes to mind is the giant red spider (first boss) from secret of evermore. I felt this boss was unique because it spawned creatures, had a global attack that caused little damage but high recoil, and had a specific pattern to defeating it involving whacking at its hard when the ribs moved out of the way.
Mother Brain from Super Metroid comes to mind as a plot significant, emotional boss fight. It has several stages, the last of which is pretty epic. MGS4 is also very emotional and plot significant.
Never played SotC, but I'm sure some bosses were pretty epic.

So, post your favorite boss fights, why, and what you feel makes em goooood.

[daoman89]

Before I mention one.  I'd say a boss where you need to think of how to beat it and get those situations where you're gonna start panicking.  Not overly panicking, but enough for you to be like "oh crap, what can I do!?"  Oh and don't make it easy haha.

I wouldn't consider this first one really a "Boss" fight, but hunting Alatreon in Monster Hunter Tri.  That mofo gets your heart pumping and keeps you on your toes.  Plus you fear for your other fellow hunters.

I think we can all agree that, if you've played Zelda: Skyward Sword, [spoiler]Girahim 3rd fight[/spoiler] was great.  Plus it had major plot significance.

[drenrin2120]

I personally loved Thardus from Metroid Prime 1. It was just so unexpected. Every boss fight up to him had been challenging and exciting, but I'd beaten them all in one go. Thardus was the first boss in that game that took me a few times dying. And he was terrifying as well. I thought my heart was gonna fall out of my chest when I first saw him. Most importantly though, I felt like I deserved to lose when I died. That's key, it's easy to make a boss fight difficult, but to make the player feel okay with losing a few times is hard to achieve.

That tension and panic, for me, makes a great boss fight. Forcing the player to rethink their strategy.

I think a game needs a combination of everything you mentioned for good varied boss fights. Some more plot significant than difficult, some both, etc. The first boss fight in a game though is very important. Some first boss fights are used to wean characters into different battle strategies. I'm thinking of Whelk from ff6. Not very difficult but right off the bat you're shown that enemies in this game are going to have all kinds of different abilities. Not only does it change its form, which was a surprise to me, but it could absorb damage and recoil it. But it's plot significance was null.

You should maybe consider how frequent you want boss fights to occur.

[Prpl_Mage]

Well there are different types of bosses. Some you simply fight, some are there for a reason. Some boss fights you just long for since the moment you saw that a-hole kill your village mascot.
When it comes to being original and entertaining I believe that the people behind WoW gets the prize, they have made a lot of great fights over the years now. They always manage to surprise you with new stuff. But y'know, MMORPGs kinda depend on party members and we all know how frustrating it is it rely on AIs.

So let's just throw in some of my favourite ones.

The Jhen Mohran hunt in monster hunter tri. Not really a boss but I still count it as one since you don't fight it like everything else in the game. You are stuck on a (sand)boat and sailing alongside this huge dragon of which you only see the back and partly the head.
Jhen Mohran will tackle your ship which you can stop by timing a strike at a huge gong(which emits a sound that interrupts it), it will also launch rocks from its' back at you. To damage it you can use one of the ballistas on the boat, or grab a cannonball and dump it into one of the cannons.
You can also attack it normally when it gets close enough to the ship and if you use the harpoon shot with the ballista you can reel him in enough for the party to get on top of its' back and start doing damage to it. Great fight, second phase is less interesting though since jhen mohran starts in the distance and moves towards you and you need to bring him down before he reaches the ship.

Lolipop chainsaw against Lewis Legend, guy goes through so many phases and you continue to beat him up in every new stage, great music and just feels so good to so narrowly vault out of a rain of missiles. I just love hack and slash games that gives you the movability to beat a boss even when your odds are low.

Devil may cry 3, a mix of both awesome battle and important moment. You face Virgil on top of the tower, starting and ending with an awesome cutscene. You fight an enemy that have the same flexibility as you have for the first time and he even blocks all your bullets, hurts like hell and gets all cross on your hiney.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, the Lich battle in Rebena Te Ra. The boss is pretty much invulnerable until you break two nodes at each end of the room, he will spawn two skeleton minions with hammers which flinches you when struck and the Lich electrifies 80% of the arena occasionally.
Great battle, especially when you haven't grinded enough to make most of the attacks pitiful.

Kingdom Hearts 2, final battle. You finally get to beat this guy and you got your buddy with you much like the final boss in Devil May Cry 3, only that this one isn't a big blob. Everything about this is great, the build up before the battle and the different stages. There isn't just some "save point just before a huge door" and then a battle when you skip the cutscene.
Tons of things happen that are very cinematic (like jumping and/or cutting flying buildings). And the final phase of the boss is just awesome with the whole action command input towards the end and resolution.

Kingdom hearts 1, Sephiroth arena battle. Partly because it is Sephiroth but mostly because it's so friggin hard. He deals a ton of damage, got several tricks up his sleeve like the heartless angel. Great battle, great moment. Great atmosphere, additional points for the one winged angel theme.

Tales of symphonia, Abyssion. Once again an optional battle. Really tough guy with a lot of moves to pull off, add the whole overlimit function of the game and throw in some random meteor swarms and other high level magic. Such an awesome battle. Also the all the quests you need to do in order to finally reach it. Great

FFIX, although followed by one of the most random moments - final battle against Kuja. Dude is throwing spells around him, gone completely mad (FF villain style) and you are fighting for the fate of your world, although probably the most common ending to an rpg this probably felt more important to me because I liked the game so much. Big flashy magic animations additionally adds to the feeling of the battle.
Also followed by a great boss battle, but it's just epic and makes little sense.

I could go on forever... Boss battles are mostly the highlight of the game. Some bosses are just needed to be there for the challenge, like more or less all minibosses in the metroid prime series and Zelda. They really have no purpose for the story or character development.

[Meiscool]

I swear oooog just made a giant post :?

Any 2d game bosses you guys can think of? Preferably not final bosses.

EDIT: Love the ff6 reference dren. Brings up a very good point about first boss fights.

[oooog]

Previous post misread the title and discussed final bosses.  I was just excited because I had just had a discussion regarding that and was still all amped up.  My bad.

Regular boss fights are a little less complicated as you are simply wrapping up a dungeon or chapter.  It largely depends on the genre of the game, but for the most part every boss is intended for the player to demonstrate their mastering of a new skill or item.  For instance, in Zelda, the boss fights largely revolved around the utilization of your new tool.  In Persona 4, the boss revolved around the latest case.  In the case of the regular boss, if you can utilize a theme for the dungeon or arc, so much the better, but the most important part of a regular boss fight as far as I'm concerned is difficulty to test your skills.

EDITED:
2D Bosses, let's look at my favorite Zelda, Oracle of Ages.  Ramrock was a boss fairly late in the game that demonstrated a good boss battle.  Figuring out what to do didn't really require much effort, but executing the action took effort and skill.

Zelda Oracle of Ages - Boss 9 : Ramrock

[Felix-0]

A good boss doesn't set himself up for failure. A good boos is one that requires you to make an advantage for yourself. One that doesn't leave themselves open for attack, but you force them open. One that's full of challenging mechanics that make you feel good when you complete them, but isn't repetitive and overdrawn out.

Many of the Kingdom Hearts DDD bosses were amazing

Many of the bosses in Terranigma were amazing.

Skyward Sword had a few bosses that you took control off, you made the advantage for yourself.

Borderlands 2 has some bosses that make me go wow, for a shooter it has some good stuff.

[Moosetroop11]

Oh mam fighting yourself in the first megaman was awesome. Whatever weapon you equipped, they also equipped, so it was about working out which weapon the enemy would be least able with. I ended up doing a bomb battle with it which was incredibly tense.

[Prpl_Mage]

If we are talking 2d as in platformer then all my thoughts go back to the classics like Contra and such, super mario land,  maybe throw in a little mortal kombat. God I hate Shao Kahn.

Otherwise I loved pretty much all the bosses in the crystal chronicle games for the ds. Well maybe they aren't really 2d because they are graphics and isometric but you know. Maybe just not have the weakspot being a big shiny crystal(first game).

Otherwise - the mana games and zelda pretty much, Always did it right.

[Archem]

Quite simply, any boss that is simply Do Massive Damage>Take Massive Damage is boring. Any boss that forces you to chip away at a health bar so long it can encircle the Earth is no fun, especially if their combat variety is as simple as repeatedly casting a super-powered attack that hits everything. It's boring if you can reliably withstand or avoid the damage, and frustrating if you can't. A boss in which you have to consider your options and formulate some semblance of a strategy is a lot more fun, especially if their design and attacks are cool.

[Meiscool]

Would you guys say a boss that you die to once or twice but then beat because you have the pattern/attacks kinda learned is a good approach? IE, something that is hard and unpredictable, but easy once you know what you are doing.

[daoman89]

Depends.  If it's an action game, I'd want it to still be hard to dodge and block.

[Archem]

Fairness is key. Make sure that the boss has a decent variety of slow and fast attacks, all with a tell that gives them away to the attentive player. If at all possible, try to find a way to communicate the strongest attack before the fight begins. Maybe have the boss destroy something nearby, thus presenting the attack and showing the windup. Speed changed, movement patterns, unique animations, and the good old glowing foe are all great ways to show that **** is about to get real.

[Prpl_Mage]

Maybe have the boss destroy something nearby, thus presenting the attack and showing the windup.

This is always a good idea, especially if we are talking about an attack that could end your life as we know it.

Would you guys say a boss that you die to once or twice but then beat because you have the pattern/attacks kinda learned is a good approach? IE, something that is hard and unpredictable, but easy once you know what you are doing.

Pretty much, although it depends on the game. I like to think that a hard boss is one that I waste a lot of healing items on because he makes it hard to stay alive. When it comes to action games it's all about learning the moveset of the boss, and if that means that I will die once or twice - so be it.
Kinda like Zed in lolipop chainsaw, he got his pattern that he follows, and there is this one attack that I always have a hard time dodging. He makes a jump slash and then some seconds later he does a backsflip. I always approach him directly after the first attack and get hit by the second because it looks like an opening. And getting hit by that one chops away a heft bit of your hp.

Also, I like the handheld Crystal chronicles because you could deal damage anywhere on the boss, but hitting that weakspot made a whole lot of difference, and most of the time you had to work to get that weak spot exposed. But it was worth it because of the damage boost.

Also, pretty much all the hunts in Monster hunter tri, sure they aren't bosses but they are the only reason you play it pretty much. Each monster have its' moveset, you can dodge roll out of the way or block the attacks, different skills and items work on different bosses to make it easier. But sometimes they simply have too much hp. Amazing that you can spend like 40 minutes fighting the same enemy and not get bored.

[Felix-0]

Final Fantasy CC: Echoes of Time and Ring of Fates had amazing boss fights.

They had decent health, steady Damage output, an attack pattern, a weak point, and some way to overcome all this.

You didn't have to die once to learn the patterns, if you kept your wits and kept moving.

Same with the KH series.

Sure, you can die and learn the pattern that way.
But if you've grinded your character and stats up to a point that you can take the occasional beating while playing the waiting and dodging game to learn your bosses pattern.

Being able to overcome a challenge is always fun. Bosses who become instantly easy because of a memorized pattern can be kind of dull, they need a pattern, just not a fixed pattern. Some bosses in skyward sword suffer from this, some don't.

On my old RPG Maker 2k3 project. My first boss had a decent amount of health, spawned mini slimes, had a barrier that fell once all the slimes were low, and once it fell below 50% it had a chance to release a full field shockwave.

It was a simple pattern of dodge slimes, kill slimes, hack at mother slime, jump onto a platform to avoid lighting, lather rinse and repeat.

But simply knowing this pattern didn't make the boss fight easy. Since the slimes were unpredictable in nature.
So long as a boss fight has unpredictable natures on top of a predictable pattern, they have a lower chance of presenting themselves as stale. 

The first MAJOR plot boss, I have a video for that.
SevenSkies Boss Battle & Gameover Preview

This boss had no pattern of attacks. Used a variable random attack system that picked different attacks. His Daggerfall slam move didn't even fall in the same pattern. But his attacks were kinda slow and gave room to dodge so long as you kept your wits.

I'll admit this boss was hellafun to make.