Zelda Bosses too short and easy?

Remeber how the LttP bosses were still able to hit you back when you were attacking them? 3D games need that.

I usually find the hand held bosses more difficult then the console bosses when it comes to Zelda. TMC had some tough bosses. At least for me. I'll agree the TP Ganondorf was a breeze.

I don't think the Bosses are neccesarily getting easier, it's just that we're all seasoned Zelda players and we know what to do. I gave PH to a friend for christmas and she's having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to kill Blaaz, even though it only took me a couple of minutes.

Being seasoned gives us a clear idea of how to fight, so in the puzzle aspect you're right. But the new bosses are physically weaker; their attacks do less damage, their HP is lower, and they all have the same stun, smack, repeat patterns.
Older games' bosses don't have a stunned state, they just keep coming at you and you keep fighting them off.

I want the Blind from Alttp and Iron Helm from AoL boss concepts to return.
Chop of the bosses head = Win? Nope, it starts flying around shooting LAZERS or fireballs at you, now THAT'S a boss battle

Originally Posted by Mandrag

Being seasoned gives us a clear idea of how to fight, so in the puzzle aspect you're right. But the new bosses are physically weaker; their attacks do less damage, their HP is lower, and they all have the same stun, smack, repeat patterns.
Older games' bosses don't have a stunned state, they just keep coming at you and you keep fighting them off.

you're right there, boss battles do need to be a bit longer, and the strategy should get mixed up from time to time.

Originally Posted by Navi says Hey!

I want the Blind from Alttp and Iron Helm from AoL boss concepts to return.
Chop of the bosses head = Win? Nope, it starts flying around shooting LAZERS or fireballs at you, now THAT'S a boss battle

No joke! that was the Zelda formula for a boss fight in the first three games! Gleeok, Jermafenser, Blind. Its like they ditched that idea which many of us old timers found to be a standard! DAMMIT! Thanks for reminding me of an old anger i long forgotten!

Originally Posted by Mandrag

Remeber how the LttP bosses were still able to hit you back when you were attacking them? 3D games need that.

YES

I'm not kidding when I say that what they really need is just to have the boss be able to attack you in more than one way, at least one of which is constant, no matter if you're attacking it or not. I actually thought Dongorongo was a pretty good boss in this way: There were always enemies who attacked you, regardless of what was going on with the boss itself. Granted, it was still very easy, but it was a nice change of pace...

No kidding. I was just playing WW through the Wind Temple. The room where you had to get the boss key was more difficult than the boss fight. When three different Darknuts are attacking you all at the same time, it is very hard to make it out alive. But when a giant sandworm comes to attack, it just sits in one spot waiting for you to attack it.

Very easy to fight. I think the hardest in that game was Puppet Ganon while the easiest to me was Ganon.

Originally Posted by Chari

No kidding. I was just playing WW through the Wind Temple. The room where you had to get the boss key was more difficult than the boss fight. When three different Darknuts are attacking you all at the same time, it is very hard to make it out alive. But when a giant sandworm comes to attack, it just sits in one spot waiting for you to attack it.

Very easy to fight. I think the hardest in that game was Puppet Ganon while the easiest to me was Ganon.

Oh god, puppet Ganon was a nightmare, the first two forms weren't that bad but that damn snake form just sucks all of the fun out of the fight.

Originally Posted by Mandrag

Being seasoned gives us a clear idea of how to fight, so in the puzzle aspect you're right. But the new bosses are physically weaker; their attacks do less damage, their HP is lower, and they all have the same stun, smack, repeat patterns.
Older games' bosses don't have a stunned state, they just keep coming at you and you keep fighting them off.

Nintendo's trying to reach a wider audience with the games, which means making them more accessible, which means making them easier. And they're obnoxiously avoiding giving us difficulty settings, so yes, the games are getting a lot easier for us.

Because of this, I've decided to do three heart runs my first time playing new Zelda games. I did this with Phantom Hourglass and found that I actually kind of enjoyed the difficulty level. That sense of desperation and running out of health was there.

Boss battles seem to be the most thrilling when I'm clinging to life, losing health but recovering health just enough to balance the loss. What's not thrilling is having 15 or more hearts, and every time the boss deals 1/2 heart damage, 3 recovery hearts appear to offset the insignificant loss. When that's the case, I'm emotionally disengaged from the fight, even if the mechanics are fun. When I'm actively fighting to stay alive and remain in the fight, it gets emotionally engaging.

When you play Spirit Tracks, I strongly recommend playing through the game with 3 hearts the first time through. Most of you should be experienced enough as Zelda players that if you play it through with a larger health meter, you won't be as engaged and will feel underwhelmed after the battles. And playing through it once and then doing a 3 heart run the second time through isn't the same, because then you've already learned what you need to know to get through the game.

very few of the 3d zelda bosses are hard. i'll list the hard 3d ones i can think of:
OOThantom Ganon, that's it in oot really
MM: the stone tower boss and majora(just because of that damn throwing attack majoras wrath has, killed me because it kept throwing me and i couldn't get away)
TWW: can't think of any...
TP:the one in the sky temple was awesome, don't remember if it was hard though.

3d zelda bosses are nothing compared to ALLTP and metroid prime bosses

I guess you're right, Hylian Dan, but I just can't help but feel it's so cheap that we have to artificially increase the difficulty outselves. If there was an actual difficulty option, at least I wouldn't feel nearly as cheated on. Just something to, say, make the enemies hurt me more or make them more aggressive. Just artificially lowering your health just doesn't feel fulfilling in the least.

I agree. Most of them you mostly use whatever item you got in the temple, theres a way to hurt them that easy to figure out and then in the middle they switch to another level where it gets slightly harder and before you know it, they're dead.

Originally Posted by ginger17

I agree. Most of them you mostly use whatever item you got in the temple, theres a way to hurt them that easy to figure out and then in the middle they switch to another level where it gets slightly harder and before you know it, they're dead.

Well Nintendo does want to make their games for everyone. And I mean people who are very new to the franchise and such. They don't want to make their games too difficult, and not that easy that it is aimed at the younger audience.

But it does annoy us Zelda freaks. :3

Originally Posted by Aeralfos

Not all TP bosses were easy. Most of them were intimadating though. I reckon Stallord and argorok were pretty hard.

Argorok was the hardest. And that isn't saying much

Originally Posted by True Sorrow

I guess you're right, Hylian Dan, but I just can't help but feel it's so cheap that we have to artificially increase the difficulty outselves. If there was an actual difficulty option, at least I wouldn't feel nearly as cheated on. Just something to, say, make the enemies hurt me more or make them more aggressive. Just artificially lowering your health just doesn't feel fulfilling in the least.

You're right, it is artificial and cheap, and Nintendo is obnoxious for not bothering to include different difficulty modes. There was even a point in PH where I didn't pick up the heart container on the ghost ship, so the game mailed that heart container to me. I didn't accept it, and the game was like, "Wait, are you sure? Really? You won't be able to get this again later. Are you sure you don't want it? Really?"

But I stubbornly rejected it. As a result, the game's final battle was legitimately thrilling and difficult, because I was learning the trick to beating the boss as I was on the verge of dying. That sort of experience was worth the artificial manipulation of the game I had to stomach to get there.


On a different note, Nintendo ought to try some different approaches to the bosses themselves. The formula in place now is predictable and boring.

One big problem is that the bosses are nothing more than cool-looking monsters. There's no emotion attached to the monsters, no storytelling that enhances the battles. Two exceptions to this are OoT's Twinrova and TP's Blizzeta. Or remember the battle in Oracle of Ages that had you fighting possessed Nayru, trying to force Veran out of her body? Imagine if half of a Zelda game's boss battles had that kind of significance attached to them, instead of just being monsters.

Another big thing that could help is having the player fight one of the main villains of the game relatively early on, before the player feels prepared to confront them. Like fighting the Helmaroc King in TWW maybe, or battling Zant immediately after Lakebed Temple. They don't necessarily need to be killed/removed from the plot at such early points, but just facing them that early could feel more intense than facing them at the end of the game, when you want a big scary challenge and they might not deliver.

Another idea I have is not limiting a boss monster to one chamber. So, say you're in a dungeon with the atmosphere of OoT's well, and the boss monster is a giant spider. But the spider isn't waiting in one room - it's wandering about the dungeon freely. Until you find a certain item or achieve a certain goal, it overpowers you every time you run into it.

Or, in TP's City in the Sky, Argorok attacks the player periodically. Perhaps he's even the miniboss as well as the dungeon boss. You can't actually defeat him as he's flying around trying to attack - you just want to avoid him. Eventually you realize that you can use the arena with the big pillars to your advantage, so then there's a chase sequence that involves you luring Argorok to that area, using yourself as bait.

I recently beat OOT again and I definitely agree. That was the first time I beat the game in about 3 years and all the bosses I remembered being hard (Bongo Bongo, Twinrova, Ganon, Dark Link, Iron Knuckle,) were all very easy and very short. I beat Bongo Bongo and Twinrova in about 4 minutes no joke. I beat Ganon(human and beast form)in about 10 minutes. When I fought the 2 iron knuckles in Ganon's castle, they both went down in about a minute. Dark Link was just a matter of hitting him with your megaton hammer(he may have been the easiest boss in the game for me).

Now I started playing WW and I'm wondering if it's going to be any harder.

Well, I'd say the boses in WW are even easier than the ones in OoT. When you get in the big group fight when the enemies come back alive in Hyrule Castle they even slash in on eachother as you're fighting them. The battle programmers must have realised this because this is no longer the case in TP.
If you want a tough enemie, try fighting 2 or 3 new type darknuts in that game.

Originally Posted by Eternal Legend

Well Nintendo does want to make their games for everyone. And I mean people who are very new to the franchise and such. They don't want to make their games too difficult, and not that easy that it is aimed at the younger audience.

But it does annoy us Zelda freaks. :3

True, true.

Haha, yes. Poor us.