According to some journalist who wrote an interesting article about Boss Battles in video games, he is basically saying they are just an old relict from 80s arcade-machine-times.
Guess he is meaning that these days we don´t really need them boss battles in absolutely every game while of course they are the main essence of games like DARK SOULS and other similiar titles.
Thinking about this article, i often got the idea devs think, they under any circumstances absolutely must include boss battles, even when it´s all being made somehow "half-assed" so that you already get the feeling some boss-battle is only there because they obviously thought there absolutely must be one becaues it is a video-game and "video-games all have boss-battles!" after all.
As to the question of whether or not vide-games these days really need boss-battles, let´s start with the positives those boss battles can bring:
.) They can be a good challenge...if done right.
.) They can require certain tactics while even puzzle-fans might have their good share of fun while trying to figure out how to beat the fu**er
.) They can give this great feeling of revenge and redemption, causing a great overall feeling of satisfaction.
.) They can give gamers a reason to brag about, once they finally made it to kill Elden Ring´s Margit, Ninja Gaiden´s Nuclear Armadillo or Phantom in Devil May Cry, the latter one made me break numerous pads, several windows and once i was close to strangling my stupid neighbour because he dared to knock at my door while just being close to kill that motherfu**ing lava spider....
...so here i come to the negatives:
.) They can really break the flow of a game while being stuck for hours, days or even weeks at the same bastard, depending if you have other things to do in life besides killing stupid level-bosses in videogames.
.) They can be downright "dumb", meaning that there is neither any strategy nor "smart" way of killing one off. You in fact just have to shooting-button mash, jumping-button mash, dodging-button mash and hacking-button mash while to all that mashing you as well need some luck in order to drain that last fu**ing inch of his constantly self healing life bar...and when that unfriendly entity is probably changing its shape too, then you have even more than just one self healing life bar to drain....needing an additional portion of luck and probably more endurance in your mash-fingers.
.) Some of them can really make you stop playing a game and in some cases for once and for all.
.) It can happen devs are putting a little too much effort into making certain bosses "hard" while they aren´t really THAT hard while gamers just need to find the right strategy, tactic or weak spot, which at times could make the whole battle along with what-the-hell-is-actually-to-do? a rather troublesome experience full of trial and error, starting to be a real pain after a while.
.) From time to time i get the idea devs have made certain boss-battles rather unbalanced compared to the rest of the game or how come the entire game feels like a walk in the park, except a few minor boss-battles are actually taking more hours to win than the actual game itself.
My personal opinion would be boss-battles still being a must-be for certain titles but i don´t really need them everywhere...especially when devs obviously have no clue how to make them interesting.
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