Boss Fight is Awesome(ly Bad)

[Singletree]

Of course there's the issue of whether a boss fight even belongs in a Thief game. I don't want to get into that. It's there, so I thought I'd go into it with an open mind. But oh my God. It is just me, or is that the worst boss fight in the history of gaming. I think I have my options set to no damage, so combat really isn't an option, but I gave it a try anyway. So I end up doing this werid waltz where I bash him in the head over and and over again while dancing around him. Of course, he doesn't go down after several dozen hits and I die. Whatever, I expected as much. The point is that the combat is so ridiculously clunky that it is comical. I literally burst out laughing for a good five or ten minutes it is so bad. Hey, at least it's entertaining. But seriously, how could something like that ever make it into a high budget game? Because they quite honestly could have out-sourced it to chimps without opposable thumbs and gotten better results. If you are teaching a game design class and need a good bad example, then there it is.

So anyway, I took the stealth approach next and it's not much better. The first wheel is easy enough to turn since its in the shadows. Even though Thiefmaster is randomly balsting away and may happen to kill with a lucky shot, even if you are hiding behind cover. Fortunately, the AI is about half as smart as Forrest Gump on a bad day, so it's manageble. Until you get to the second wheel, which is myteriously always in bright light regardless of which wheel you go after first. And here I am fresh out of water arrows. I suppose I may be able to swoop in and out of cover and get lucky enough to open the gate the rest of the way. But why. I've wasted enough of my life with this trainwreck of a game and this boss fight sealed it. It just baffles me how something this bad doesn't get axed from the game prior to release. Did no one on the development team have the authority to say, "This is completely ♥♥♥♥ing lame and we did get rid of it. Try again". I guess I'll have to add Square Enix to the list of day one buy boycotts, alongside Ubisoft and EA.

[Draig]

I totally agree on a few points - the Boss fights are badly done, and stealthing past him is quite difficult, more so with no damage. I'm also pretty dubious about having boss fights in a Thief game - but if they were done well, it might be alright.

Don't agree with killing him though, that's pretty easy. A couple of arrows to his head and he drops like a rock.

[Panic Fire]

I found him to be quite easy to stealth around. I didn't even have water arrows going into the fight.

[Deathfromace]

I killed that guy...messing with me the entire game.

[baalthazaar]

Originally posted by Singletree:

Even though Thiefmaster is randomly balsting away and may happen to kill with a lucky shot, even if you are hiding behind cover. Fortunately, the AI is about half as smart as Forrest Gump on a bad day, so it's manageble. Until you get to the second wheel, which is myteriously always in bright light regardless of which wheel you go after first. And here I am fresh out of water arrows. I suppose I may be able to swoop in and out of cover and get lucky enough to open the gate the rest of the way.

Just fire a blunt arrow at the pillar he's standing closest to and he'll waste enough time shooting arrows at it for you to open the door. The Thieftaker fight wasn't too bad really, it was more about making the decision to kill him or not. Now the final boss - that was a bad fight because it's easier to just cheese it and run from point to point while chomping on health food rather than try to actually avoid any damage.

[Puppy Cat Underfoot]

The second "fight" is hard not to take damage in. Specifically because of the use of Mirror Image. Yes, I just used the name of a D&D spell.

[Singletree]

So I made to the second boss fight and it's even worse. I'm playing Master difficulty with custom options. So slow-movement, no focus, no healing... all assists are off. The boss fight designers obviously never intended it to be played with this mix of options. With slow movement, I have to swoop when Erin isn't looking or I'm exposed too long and she blasts me. I can make to the first piece where she splits into mirror images and it becomes virtually impossible. Nothing works. Whatever I do she eventually spawns right next to me and I die. Game breaking bugs are one thing, but game breaking design... how does that happen? It would be nice if I could at least change the options to get past the fight. Why lock them in at the beginning of the game? Another baffling design decision. Guess I'll just watch the rest of the fight on Youtube. I assume that it's pretty much the end of the game.

[AngelOfMayhem]

I haven't played the other Thief games, but I think boss fights are totally unnecessary for a game like this. Better to tie it all together with a good story. It's still about the journey.
The fight with the entity Erin was WAY worse though than the Baron fight. The last fight was just silly. Not difficult, though. However I don't think you should ever play with slowed movement. The game is slow enough, for starters. But often you need to be able to move fast and in the last fight it would be good to be able to move twice as fast. But there are ways to evade her attacks. Just hide temporarily. They could as well have made that fight a lot easier, because it seems it was only symbolic to add to the story.
But the story of this game was just dreadful. If you even could say there was a story. I never actually cared. And if I wanted to care, the audio issues prevented me from listening to what everyone said.
PS. If the main boss isn't called the Baron, I blame the story for messing that up for me. I never figured out who was who and often if they were good or bad.

[Singletree]

I realized slow movement was a mistake a couple chapters in but had no way to turn it off without starting over. Not knowing exeactly what it did going in, I thought it would make movment more like the old Thief games, but it is actually much slower. Anway I finally did defeat the final boss using a lot of trial and error. Swoop swoop swoop to a particular piller, wait until she's done blasting, swoop to another specific spot, then swoop again at the exact moment... The entire thing was quite silly. It was like a kid running around playing super hero and pretending he can fly but never leaves the ground. This game had so much potential, but failed to deliver in so many ways. They should have just called it Early Access and kept working on it. It could be decent game after another year or two of development.

[WhiteDynamite]

I stealthed him from 15th try or smth, cos i wanted to get A Moral Victory achievement(Finished the game without a single kill or knockout) which I got, I assume if I killed him I wouldn't have gotten it.