Spencer's Day

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Saturday, May 14, 2016

Top ten. Boss fights. In gaming. EVER. (IMO)

Warning: This blog post has my personal opinion written all over it. If you do not like my opinion, turn away now.

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So I was thinking about a Top Ten list and I toyed around with a few ideas before settling on my personal top ten boss fights OF ALL TIME. As stated above, this my personal opinion. But before we begin here are some rules.

  1. Only one boss per game. I am not allowed to include multiple bosses from the same video game.
  2. Only bosses I have managed to defeat. I can only put bosses that I defeated. Example I cannot put the final boss of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate here nor can I put Telethia the Endbringer from Xenoblade Chronicles X here. But I can put something like Rathalos or Ga Jiarg on this list because I have defeated those bosses myself.
  3. Only bosses from games I own/have played. Self explanatory.

Oh and one last thing. I will include Final Bosses on this list so...

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I will also assume you have at least heard of all the games on this list, though if there are some you haven't heard of, that's fine, I always had a soft spot for slightly obscure games. Also, keep in mind this was a very tough decision for me. I've played and beaten DOZENS of games in my lifetime. So narrowing down dozens of possible candidates to a measly top 10 is surprisingly difficult.

#10!!

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Zinogre from Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (Wii U, 3DS). This is my personal favorite Monster from that series and during my 3 Ultimate play-through (which is in hiatus at the moment) I even considered making full Zinogre armor when it came time to update my gear. However, I decided for the sake of versatility, that Brachydios gear is slightly better. Also, bonus points for being a electric werewolf.
Overall, he is my personal favorite Monster in all of Monster Hunter, and I will always love fighting him. Oh, and here's a link to his theme music. It's surprisingly catchy! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auE4CYwszco 

Have fun! Oh and this is as good a time as any to say that in order for the links to work you have to copy/paste it into the Google search bar. Not sure why I never explained that lol.

#9!

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The 5th Colossus from Shadow of the Colossus (PS2, PS3). In case you never heard of that game, it's the PS2 masterpiece that nobody's heard of. The game was so good it got a HD remake for the PS3. But anyways, the 5th Colossus is the 5th boss of the game (obviously). It's worth noting that the Shadow of the Colossus fandom nicknamed him Avion. Because he spends the entire fight up in the air. And he looks like a bird. 
Overall, the 5th is one of the most memorable boss of Shadow of the Colossus. You know, I should probably try out Hard Mode for once.

#8!

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King Pumpkin from The Munchables (Wii). I understand if you never heard of Munchables, it's a obscure Wii game about cute little monsters eating food themed enemies to get bigger and stronger. And for the King Pumpkin fight, your character has literally eaten so much food that THEY ARE THE SIZE OF A ISLAND!!! King Pumpkin is a mecha piloted by the villain of the game, Don Onion. Random fun fact! The Munchables was one of my childhood favorites but sadly, I no longer own a copy of the game. And considering the game out many years ago consider yourself lucky to have a copy of this game. So chances are, I'm blinded by nostalgia for this one.
Before you ask, I COULD look up a video of the King Pumpkin boss fight to refresh my memory, but I choose not to.

#7!

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The Taken King from Destiny: The Taken King (PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One). You remember Destiny right? The FPS game with amazing gameplay but a bare bones story. The Taken King fixes all of the original's problems and introduces a new villain. So what is so menacing about this guy? Well he can steal (or "Take" as it is called in-game) and brainwash the soldiers of other enemy factions, letting him build his own little army. And then there's his flagship, which is the size of a SMALL PLANET!!! And finally, he himself is a surprisingly strong boss. He warps dimensions, sends ghostly clones of himself to distract you, and he flies around. A LOT.

#6!

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Megatron/Optimus Prime from Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (PS3, Xbox 360). Before you ask, this is not a tie. The game literally lets you CHOOSE who the final boss is. But as a Transformers fan, I only have one thing to say.

"On this day, One shall stand. The other shall fall!" -Optimus Prime, 1986

Anyways, this fight is really cool. Why? Optimus and Megatron are in a sword duel, on the hull of the Ark (a spaceship designed to be a mass evacuation vessel and nothing more) while it spirals into a glitched up Space Bridge. Which is as awesome as it sounds. The only downside of the sword-play is that the game is a Third Person Shooter first and foremost and there was literally a grand total of three instances where the player had to rely on melee combat (the Bruticus segments, the second half of the Star Scream level, and finally, the Grimlock level). So the game changing the combat takes a tiny bit of getting used to. But overall, it was a awesome boss fight.

#5!

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Megatron from Transformers: Devastation (PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One). Now I know what you are thinking. "But Spencer, Megatron is already on your list! Hurr de Durr!" But my self imposed rules state only one boss per game. It never said per franchise. So, by my rules, I can put a Transformer on this list twice in a row.

The actual fight is really cool and is in two stages. In the first stage, You fight Megatron on Earth with any Autobot of your choice. And the cool thing is, he summons lava geyser things to attack you. But in the second stage, control switches to Optimus Prime (for OBVIOUS reasons) and you fight Megatron in OUTER SPACE!!! What makes this fight all the more epic is that Optimus ends the fight by comboing a headbutt into a double-hand slam.

#4!

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Moon Bear King from Puppeteer (PS3). So who exactly is the Moon Bear King? He's the primary villain of a game that's made to look and sound like a puppet show, complete with "live" audience reactions (gasping in shock when the player takes damage, cheering when a boss has been defeated, etc). In the story, Moon Bear King took over the Earth's moon, stole a magic pair of scissors (yes, scissors), and built a army of puppets powered by the SOULS of children (if you know what my favorite video game is, you'll realize why I all-capped the word "soul" :] ) that he abducted every night.

He sends his twelve generals one after another in an attempt to kill the hero, a headless puppet named Kutaro, and when all twelve of theme are defeated, he decides to fight you directly. And in addition to borrowing at LEAST one attack from each of the generals, He also uses black magic to turn himself into a giant. And once you actually beat him, it turns out he was just a scared kid who went completely power-crazy. So sad :(  Still, it was a awesome battle and a nice touch is you windup having to use every move at your disposal to take him down.

#3!

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Wheatley from Portal 2 (PS3, Xbox 360). Okay, so Wheatley is a strange case. He is the first boss of Portal 2, and the final boss of Portal 2. Why is this? Because Wheatley is the ONLY boss in the entire game. And Wheatley makes a nod to the final boss of the original Portal by saying he actually watched video recordings of the final boss battle of the first game and designed his OWN boss fight to cover the weaknesses that were exploited against *GLaDOS.

To actually beat him you need to attach corrupted cores to his body so that the Aperture Science AI registers Wheatley as a corrupted control core. When that happens you have to push a button to eject Wheatley from his body. And when all is said and done, Wheatley is stranded in outer space. With Space Core to keep him company.

#2!

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The Zu Pharg from Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U). You know, that one game I reviewed and NOBODY read said review? This is a boss from that game. The Zu Pharg is a giant mecha piloted by really mean aliens. (UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE CENTURY)

Now there is a lot of things I love about this and one thing I hate. Because Skells are pretty much mandatory for this fight, the Zu Pharg can only be beaten once, unlike the other bosses which are re playable. Now to the good stuff. The reason I love this fight is because it subtly teaches the advanced bits of combat, such as targeting a specific body part, and exploiting status conditions. This fight is, sadly, completely impossible if your Skell gets destroyed, however. Not because you won't last long enough, but because this thing is airborne during the entire battle, with means that ground attacks, funnily enough, won't reach it at all. And the final thing I will say about this thing is a nice little detail is after you defeat the Zu Pharg, you can find it's burnt, partly exploded remains exactly where you fought it. Just a nice detail I appreciate.

Before I unveil my number one personal favorite blog post I have some things I would like to say. First of all, considering how much influence this ONE game had on this very blog, you should have expected it. And don't call me biased since this boss comes from the ONE video game I have sung nothing but praise for. This is, after all, an opinion-based list.

Secondly, While I already planned for this particular boss at the number one spot, I had to think long and hard about the other nine. And while doing so I considered this to be a "In no order" kind of list, even though it's not.

And Last, but not least, This fight is technically the easiest fight out of all of these battles combined since you technically cannot die during the fight for plot reasons, so if we were ranking the bosses on difficulty this would be much lower. This is just boss fights that I, as a gamer, enjoy. Also, I do not care that the boss in question had a trillion popular anime tropes (This isn't even my final form, rainbow all the things, etc), because this game made anime real lol.

So without further adieu, let's unveil my personal favorite boss fight in gaming ever.

Number One!!

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You probably saw this coming, but it's Asriel Dreemurr from Undertale. I remember saying in my Top Five Undertale Characters list how Asgore is my favorite Undertale Boss, but since then the Asriel fight started growing on me.

Also am I the only who thinks this guy is even more obnoxiously smug than Sans during a Genocide Run? Seriously look at him! Most nonchalant shrug ever (wait, is he winking!? :O ). Oh, and...

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Kid Asriel is so cute!!! Look at this thing! Kid Asriel is too adorable to exist. That's why the humans killed him when he crossed the barrier. Not because of racial hostility and wars, but because the humans were like "OMG look at the cute little goat/dog/rabbit thing! Aww he's so CUTE!! *busts out slasher smile* LET'S KILL THE GOAT!!!". And sadly there are idiots out there that kill animals for no reason other than blood-sport. It's disgusting.

Back on track, Asriel has some insane attacks. And as mentioned above, yet another anime trope is that Asriel named his attacks (Star Blazing, Chaos Buster, Hyper Goner, etc). Then comes the moment when you realize that Asriel is a kid (goat pun completely intended!) so he is probably mimicking a cartoon he saw when you fight him. A kid with the powers of a deity. Imagine that!

Also...

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At the end... When the game lets you hug Asriel to comfort him... Oh my gosh... THE FEELS!!! I wasn't ready for this amount of emotion!! And then comes the moment that Asriel is the one character who doesn't get a happy ending (he spends the rest of eternity trapped in a flower)... SO SAD!!! WHY TOBY FOX!? Why did you hit the entire Internet so hard in the feels!? (NOTE: Believe it or not I was the ONE person in the universe who did NOT cry like a seagull at the end of the battle. Doesn't mean I wasn't feeling sad though lol)

And his theme music is the definition of awesome. And boy oh boy, there is a lot of music made for Asriel. Let's see his theme music. Hopes & Dreams, Burn in Despair!, SAVE the World, and His Theme/Memory.

Personally I like Hopes & Dreams and His Theme/Memory best. I like Hopes & Dreams because it's a awesome theme that screams kick-butt final boss...ness. And I like Memory because 1; I'm a sucker for piano music (it really is the greatest instrument ever made!) and 2; it hits you in the feels. In case you want to hear these yourself, here are some links!

Hopes & Dreams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz82xbLvK_k

His Theme/Memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkOK8tdEsFY

Have fun!

So what did you think of my Top ten Boss Fights in Gaming EVER list? Fell free to agree or disagree in the comments below!

*-GLaDOS. The main villain of Portal. A self aware artificial intelligence that runs a laboratory called Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Random Fun Fact! GLaDOS is an acronym that stands for Genetic Life-form and Disk Operations System.

P.S. I was going to make a goat pun, but I realized that nobody GOAT time for puns.

P.P.S I was also going to make a pun involving my own name. But sadly, I couldn't think of any punchlines that made any SPENCE!!!

1 comment:

  1. Since I consider Asriel Dreemurr the best boss in gaming ever, I guess you could say that he is ASRIEL as it gets! :^)

    ReplyDelete