The amount of bosses with 2 phases is overkill

[TheRaienryuu]

I really enjoy the game, great take on the souls-like genre. But the amount of boss fights that are basically 2 fights in one are just overkill in this game. So many times I'm glad I took down the boss, only for cutscene to start and here I am with 1 or 2 Pulse Cells up against yet ANOTHER max HP boss.

Doing it sometimes to shake things up, sure I love to see it. But now it feels like almost every fight will be a back to back with me drained of resources and a full HP new moveset boss.

[awanderingswordsman]

I'm not sure what difference having another bar is. It's the same as them having one longer health bar with a cutscene during phase transition.

[Anatolius]

Actually now that i thought about From games - Friede might as well be the most ridiculous example - 3 health bars on a single entitity. At least most other bosses made sense to have additional HP bar to various extent. LoP seem to do it for no good reason with every boss except King of Puppets.

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I'm not sure what difference having another bar is. It's the same as them having one longer health bar with a cutscene during phase transition.

Because it wouldn't look good seeing your ultra greatbonk chip 1mm out of a 20+cm long HP bar :D

[Toxi]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I'm not sure what difference having another bar is. It's the same as them having one longer health bar with a cutscene during phase transition.

I think it's a problem of deceiving the player and creating mistrust but you know what I think it does worst though? it creates a sense of apathy. Take Sekiro for example, if the developer is constantly lying to you about the health bars it presents, then it adds 1 more, and then it adds Another one after that and maybe the developer thinks to add Yet Another one after that? then why should you even care anymore how long a boss fight is supposed to be? For a developer, I don't think there's anything worse they can do than make a player not care at all anymore.

This is something that works kind of like a way to trick the player and that's why I think it has to be used sparsely and very carefully, so it doesn't become predictable and derivative, because this works really well when used right like the Guardian Ape from Sekiro being a perfect example of that, but if you keep using this over and over again you're just ruining the mechanic for yourself as a designer and for the player too.
In short, this is only a problem for people who care about the quality of the fights.

[Lucifer_]

maybe but also phase one is usually very squishy and easy. I beat phase one of most bosses in first try. the challenge is mastering phase one so you can get through it with minimal heals used and do the real fight - phase 2.

[Sonnenbank]

Its completely artificial to be upset about that.....

if you have 2 seperate health bars and 4 minute fights
or a big health bar and 4 minute fights......

who cares

[zab]

Originally posted by Big Bottom Frag:

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

And no in lies of P you dont have to get good
you can summon spectre and combine it with throwables and every boss is a cakewalk

Spectres can definitely make the fights much easier but they can't solo the boss for you, neither can consumables. At some point you have to engage in melee and that requires gitting gud.
Not to mention that there are bosses (2 which come to mind) which don't allow you to summon to beat them and are mandatory in order to pass the game.

"At some point you have to hit the boss at least a couple of times"
so much skill

[Bottom Frag]

Originally posted by zab:

"At some point you have to hit the boss at least a couple of times"
so much skill

In a parry focused game uhhhhh yeah

[Sonnenbank]

Originally posted by Big Bottom Frag:

Originally posted by zab:

"At some point you have to hit the boss at least a couple of times"
so much skill

In a parry focused game uhhhhh yeah

people way overvalue the worth of parries in lies of p
yes you can parry
and yes its one of the main mechanics you can use.

However you can finish the whole game without using parry a single time.
In bossfights parry is only one of 3 options you have available for dealing with attacks
outside of bossfights the best strategy is to never parry but always evade+counterattack or outspace + counterattack

Lies of P is a souls game
its not a parry game

[SadPlatty©]

Ehh - if you want 40 boss encounters vs 20 2-phase encounters, that is a viable opinion, yeah.

But think about how much of the over-world would need to change in order to accommodate 2x the boss count. Or would it be more desirable if there where numerous "Black Rabbit" or "Godskin Duo" style encounters in soulslikes to give the excess bosses a home?

Otherwise - if they just, say, had us fight phase 2 of every boss as the only phase, these games would honestly show how short they are much faster, as much fewer people would have problems with the fights (as most of those issues are likely resource related, and are another artificial difficulty that devs can add to bosses).

Like if they just ripped phase 2s out - this game would probably average to taking at least 10 fewer hours to beat across players.

[awanderingswordsman]

Originally posted by Toxi:

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I'm not sure what difference having another bar is. It's the same as them having one longer health bar with a cutscene during phase transition.

I think it's a problem of deceiving the player and creating mistrust but you know what I think it does worst though? it creates a sense of apathy. Take Sekiro for example, if the developer is constantly lying to you about the health bars it presents, then it adds 1 more, and then it adds Another one after that and maybe the developer thinks to add Yet Another one after that? then why should you even care anymore how long a boss fight is supposed to be? For a developer, I don't think there's anything worse they can do than make a player not care at all anymore.

This is something that works kind of like a way to trick the player and that's why I think it has to be used sparsely and very carefully, so it doesn't become predictable and derivative, because this works really well when used right like the Guardian Ape from Sekiro being a perfect example of that, but if you keep using this over and over again you're just ruining the mechanic for yourself as a designer and for the player too.
In short, this is only a problem for people who care about the quality of the fights.

You've completely lost me here. I don't understand why having the bosses health be split into two bars or one would make me apathetic and implying I don't care about the quality of the fight is ridiculous.

I don't think the second health bar is supposed to be this gotcha moment that you seem to think it is, like with guardian ape. It's just a visual clarity design choice so we can see the larger bar actually take a solid chunk of damage.

[Terron]

I dont mind it i must say. If they DO only have one phase then they gotta make that phase harder, give the boss more moves for different stages of the fight and more hp to balance the fact its only one phase. Either way works for me.

[Netsa]

Yeah, I also hate multi-phase boss fights, but I'm going to be perfectly honest. There's no ethical or design issues with it, it's literally just...

Originally posted by Big Bottom Frag:

Nah the difference is you can summon people in DS3 and ER to beat the boss for you, in Lies of P you actually have to git gud

I don't want to git gud. I want to beat the boss and move on.

This isn't unique to Soulslikes, either. I think the first time I encountered this was actually in Kingdom Hearts 3D, where the ending had I think 2 separate difficult bosses in a row with no checkpoint. Or the first time was Chain of Memories, since I could swear it did the same thing but I don't remember.

I enjoy multi-phase fights in turn-based RPGs, but every time I see one in an action RPG I just think "ah ♥♥♥♥, here we go again." Maybe it's because action RPGs are, by nature, a lot faster, so it bothers me more to get hung up on one guy for longer than let's say 15 minutes.

[Bottom Frag]

Originally posted by Netsa:

I don't want to git gud. I want to beat the boss and move on.

You problem, if you want to beat the boss and move on you will need to git gud.

[Netsa]

Originally posted by Big Bottom Frag:

Originally posted by Netsa:

I don't want to git gud. I want to beat the boss and move on.

You problem, if you want to beat the boss and move on you will need to git gud.

I did git gud, but I didn't enjoy it.

[Toxi]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

You've completely lost me here. I don't understand why having the bosses health be split into two bars or one would make me apathetic and implying I don't care about the quality of the fight is ridiculous.

I don't think the second health bar is supposed to be this gotcha moment that you seem to think it is, like with guardian ape. It's just a visual clarity design choice so we can see the larger bar actually take a solid chunk of damage.

it's not about the 2 health bars just existing, I was talking about having too many bosses have that second health bar to the point of the idea becoming predictable and derivative. The other thing I said was more of an extreme example, the apathy isn't over the entire game, I meant that only towards the progress they make in said boss fight.

I think there's an issue there, Lies of P bosses don't pull their punches, they're hard and they're all beefy in all their phases, so when you don't feel that satisfaction after beating a hard boss's first health bar there's likely a problem there and that problem is, it's not a boss health pool divided into 2, 1 health bar of a boss in Lies of P looks like a full boss fight in any other soulslike, so when you get the second health bar it feels more like that boss health bar was multiplied by 2.