When people talk about modern RPGs, they either mention about games from Bethesda or BIOWARE, and neither of developpers' RPGs have satisfied me in terms of boss fights. DA:O is satisfactory for this matter, and it has a few memorable major enemy encounters so this game is an exception. I haven't played every single RPGs from these companies, but I doubt rest of them are any better (I heard that . Here is the list of Bethesda and BIOWARE RPGs I played:
Bethesda-Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3
BIOWARE-Mass Effect 2,Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 (I can't say much about DA2 since I was never compelled to finish it)
I am going to ramble a bit here. This is aggravating to mention, because the game I'm about to mention is the best RPG I've ever played. The name of the game is The Witcher 2. The game has involving storyline and inspiring role playing scenarios unlike any other RPGs.The only contender I can imagine is Planescape Torment, and I'm not sure which one is better. But here is the thing. While some boss fights like the Kingslayer and few major fights with mages are interesting, all of giant bosses need to be spiced up. Their AIs are basically following attack patterns. While this kind of AI format is fine, if the patterns don't look and feel interesting, they all become bland. In case of TW2 giant bosses, they fit into the bland side. They are no better than giant bosses from any of the games above. Kayran is even worse than any of them. But strangely, I don't hate any of them. Probably because of their background and how they are implemented into the scenario. To rap this up, I'm basically saying that the boss fights are more about contextual quality and less about substantial combat.
I talked about The Witcher 2's bosses because similar things are going on with the other RPGs. For instance, Oblivion is vividly formulaic in the way I described. All of it's bosses are clones of NPCs and regular monsters with stat boost. None of them have special moves or unique look on them. To make the matter worse, they aren't even challenging. If the devs have made them a little overpowered, they could've been fun to deal with. Ramping up the difficulty level isn't helpful since it increases their HP and attack strength, which makes the enemies tedious to defeat. But they often times followed by captivating narrations and settings. You can say the exact same thing for Morrowind and Fallout 3 for obvious reason. In case of ME2, the final boss is the best example for this topic. The game does a great job of introducing the boss. Its grand music and sense of size is top notch. But when the fight begins, its just another "pls-hit-my-f***-me-light-to-win" boss. You just have to shove your laser into his holes. To its credit, his animations are fun to watch. You should be starting to see the pattern by now; An epic scene, followed by half-cooked combat. An epic cinematic exists in every games, but RPG dev teams are putting too much effort into making epic scenes and don't spend much time on the combat itself. Now, I'm not saying these games are terrible. They are all fun to play, but boss fights aren't. At least they aren't anything special.
On the other hand, fighting a group of enemies is really fun for all of the games I mentioned. Probably because programmers don't want to put complex AIs, and they like to spend more time on level designs instead. AIs aren't getting any better since the NES era despite of increasing production value and technology, and this is a little sad to realize.
Mod Note: Censor bypass removed.
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