i don't suppose "skip boss battles" option is planned?

[rumpelstiltskin]

while the rest of the game is moderately entertaining, i just don't see why i have to waste my time replaying those dull, unimaginative, and entirely reflex-based things over and over. yes they are "easy", on paper, but it's also easy to make a mistake and have to start over. also, looks like each boss has more stages ("hitpoints") than the last, so i just don't want to continue at this stage.

[Selenium]

The hardest boss is one of the first ones; the one where you control yourself and some little spinning thing at the same time, although the spinning thing is using reversed controls. It's way downhill after that point.

[rumpelstiltskin]

yeah, in the end i persevered and finished the game by now. but boy, those things weren't fun at all. also, i suspect it was designed to be played with a controller (which i never do).

[SpaceFractal]

im hated those bosstoo, caused me to uninstall the game. Im tried the game via gameboss. Im so much hate, one hit you die battles. That sad as rest was awesome, if its was not those annoying bosses and loved the puzzles, and then suddently those damn reflekt battle.

Im cant review the game as im was played on xbox. Its a no from me.

[rhywun]

Same. I was thoroughly enjoying what I thought was going to be a relaxing, interesting game then bam! Annoying AF boss battle. Tried 10 times, gave up.

It's a refund for me, I can't stand that.

[aoanla]

Yeah, chiming in here: none of the boss battles has been particularly enjoyable (and they're all at odds tonally with the rest of the game), but the fact that they get more and more stages as you go through the game means they get increasingly irritating. (Apparently the "hexagony" boss with the teleport mechanic needs... many stages to progress past, which I'm rapidly stopping caring about.
And it's a shame, because the rest of the game is relatively *easy* and relaxing...

[aoanla]

(Adding; I did eventually make it past the hexagony boss to the gliding pads and golden crystal stuff boss, for which the controls seem so poor - on keyboard - that I've only ever managed to make it past stage 1 once, amid a host of fighting with things. This is made worse by the fact that if you quit out and come back you have to sit through not just the "show you understand the mechanic" bit before the boss fight starts but *also* a long animation getting you to the arena!
This is bafflingly anti-player in a way that the rest of the game just isn't...)

[B O R G]

git cud lmao

[Malidictus]

I'm genuinely not sure why the game even has boss fights at all. It's not an action game and the vast majority of the rest of it is pretty laid back. It does have a few timed puzzles, but they're pretty simple to pull off once the player knows what they're doing. The boss fights, on the other hand... yeah, no - they're not fun.

And before someone accuses me of "git gud" as well - I beat the bosses. Twice so far, across two playthroughs (with no deaths the second time around). They're not THAT hard now that I know how they work, but they add nothing to the experience. "Oh, but they're puzzle bosses". Sure... except they're not. They don't use puzzle mechanics from anywhere else in the game, but instead use their own separate ruleset. And even then, the majority of the encounters come down to "move to avoid death".

This game has a bad habit of introducing mechanics, playing around with them, then completely forgetting they exist. Take the purple sphere, for instance. Its unique ability is used for a short amount of time before the player loses all spheres, then never again - even after regaining them. It would be nice if I got to use any of the boss mechanics in regular play, but they exist purely for those encounters.

This is a spurious unresearched hypothesis on my part, but it feels like the boss fights were farmed out to some outside entity from the rest of the game's development, which is why they work like nothing else.

[qtWHL]

dunno guys, boss fights are fun and clever, no issues at all

[Clead HeavenHell]

Would say they are a bit slow on animations and presentationes, but overall OK (the clone mechanic was a bit confusing due to the inverted controls on the clone). But I can see how people that don't enjoy action games are not happy having to "git gud" for small segments of the game.

Some people simply don't enjoy timed challenges and much. My partner for example, is not a game fun, but she enjoys puzzles, if I ever convince her to play, I'll probably have to do the bosses for her.

[rhywun]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

I'm genuinely not sure why the game even has boss fights at all. It's not an action game and the vast majority of the rest of it is pretty laid back.

I feel the same about many games - only here it seems worse than usual.

So many developers throw boss battles in for the "git gud" crowd and to punish the rest of us, I guess. They act as road-blocks to anyone who doesn't actually enjoy them.

BTW I did beat the first boss after a few more tries - and then stopped playing. I know they will get less enjoyable as the game goes on, so why bother. I chose not to refund the game - maybe a youngster will come over and play them for me.

[uKER]

I did like the boss battles.
Just found the purple sphere's boss disproportionately harder than anything else in the game.

[admiral1018]

Originally posted by rhywun:

Originally posted by Malidictus:

I'm genuinely not sure why the game even has boss fights at all. It's not an action game and the vast majority of the rest of it is pretty laid back.

I feel the same about many games - only here it seems worse than usual.

So many developers throw boss battles in for the "git gud" crowd and to punish the rest of us, I guess. They act as road-blocks to anyone who doesn't actually enjoy them.

BTW I did beat the first boss after a few more tries - and then stopped playing. I know they will get less enjoyable as the game goes on, so why bother. I chose not to refund the game - maybe a youngster will come over and play them for me.

I'm genuinely shocked to see posts like this. This game's boss battles are about as easy as I've ever seen in a game, to the point where I wouldn't even classify them as combat; they're just a different type of puzzle. This isn't even a "git gud" instance, as these battles are designed for young kids to beat. This game uses the analog stick and a single button for action, so it's impossible that it's an issue of needing fast reflexes or complex combos. The fights all occur in a completely predictable pattern, so just be patient and think about what to do next.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by admiral1018:

I'm genuinely shocked to see posts like this. This game's boss battles are about as easy as I've ever seen in a game, to the point where I wouldn't even classify them as combat; they're just a different type of puzzle.

No, they very much are boss fights. They're entirely dependent on player positioning, with a failure condition not present anywhere else in the game. The boss fights require both fast reflexes and problem-solving under pressure, which is out-of-scope with any puzzle in Cocoon. Sure, there are some time-sensitive puzzles. However, those involve reacting to anything. Their timing is tuned such that the player simply needs to move in straight lines to succeed.

The exact same discussion happened in Portal 2. The reveal trailer for the Co-op Initiative showed the two bots dodging spike traps, dynamically portalling mid-jump and essentially playing an action platformer. The response to this was fairly negative. When the game actually launched, these kinds of platforming sections were almost entirely absent.

Speaking purely for myself - I don't believe that time-sensitive interactions have any place in puzzle games at all. A good puzzle should be trivial to complete once the player has actually found the solution.

[uKER]

Originally posted by admiral1018:

This game's boss battles are about as easy as I've ever seen in a game, to the point where I wouldn't even classify them as combat; they're just a different type of puzzle.

You need to dodge attacks and projectiles.
How is that not combat?