Let's be honest, the bosses aren't fun.

[Rickle Pick]

I really hate to say it because the game has lots of potential and I absolutely love the combat mechanics, but almost all of the bosses past the third boss (the angry cow or whatever) are hella boring and miserable, "wait for the annoying timing" kinda bosses. Just not enough action. If it was more action-packed like Sekiro, GoW or even Nine Sols the game would be 9/10 for me. But Khazan is very very mid 5-6 / 10

P.S it's not about the game being hard/easy. I beat it, game is not that hard. It's about annoying design choices

[sgrey]

Origineel geplaatst door Rickle Pick:

Origineel geplaatst door sgrey:

If you ask me if Maluca is well-designed, I would agree that he is not. But the whole point of the fight is to have unintuitive timings so that you will learn them. If it were intuitive, that would not be a boss fight and would end in 30 seconds. It's pretty quick as it is.

But since you brought up Sekiro, I don't think that Maluca is worse than Lady Batterfly and maybe even better. He is definitely better than the headless ape. You liked that one? That's so weird.

If they did not make me go through Maluca's first phase every time before the real fight I would try to actually learn and properly fight that boss but since he pretty much one shots you if you make a mistake and then you have to go though all the fing boring process again, I just did it the safe way. Taking all together Maluca def has a potential to be a great boss but the way it is now it just sucks IMO

His first phase only lasts 15-20 seconds, though :D You can also fight Gwydo, who is basically Maluca's second phase.
And in Maluca's fight, if you dodge more, you can prolong the fight to see more of his moves. You can pretty much always engage more, be more aggressive, attack more, dodge more, punish more.

[sgrey]

Origineel geplaatst door ZexxCrine:

I just beat Volbaino on ng+ I would hardly call that close. I’m not required to play Khazan continuously until I beat ng++

Ah, ok. I just assumed you continued playing since you seem to enjoy the game a lot

[Mike]

I played the game 3 times through NG++ and the bosses are some of the highlights easily, and their movesets fit perfectly with the players toolset.

- bosses have very open windows for reflects which completely turn the tide of the battle in the player favor, so your not stuck perfect parrying moves, and you can use skill to circumvent bosses movesets.
- bosses can be engaged with using BOTH brink block and bring dodge, with the ability to interchange them as you please. Also with the right build you can actually make a tank build that soaks up damage to deal more.
- bosses have excellent movesets which are very flashy, very layered and at the same time have good tells for the player to make a mental note of. I have killed each boss 3 times and many of them were still fun to fight on the 3rd time through because they movesets were so layered.
- Also outside of monster bosses (purple stamina bar) bosses are on the same playing field as the player as when they use moves they use up stamina, which the player can play around to catch them before it regens. So unlike your average souls game where the boss just infinity does their best moves, in this game they are limited by there stamina just like you, and you can use that to your advantage.

I would even go as far as saying the later bosses were some of the best action RPG bosses I have faced in recent memory both in terms of mechanics, music, and pure spectacle.

Lastly this game is so much more action packed then the games you listed.
- Sekiro is a one note type of game, where you mash light attack and master the parry. Sure its flashy, but its BASIC as ever and the only skill you need is reactions and patter recognition.
- GoW (I;m assuming your talking about modern GoW) is not even close to this game let alone the original GoW games which were more mechanically deep then 2018 and Rag.
- Nine Souls is basically a 2D sekiro-like so its 99% about parry.

The combat/combo system ALONE adds more mechanical depth then any of the games you listed and the only action RPGs that are better in terms of action combat is Team Ninja games.

[Rickle Pick]

Origineel geplaatst door sgrey:

Origineel geplaatst door Rickle Pick:

If they did not make me go through Maluca's first phase every time before the real fight I would try to actually learn and properly fight that boss but since he pretty much one shots you if you make a mistake and then you have to go though all the fing boring process again, I just did it the safe way. Taking all together Maluca def has a potential to be a great boss but the way it is now it just sucks IMO

His first phase only lasts 15-20 seconds, though :D You can also fight Gwydo, who is basically Maluca's second phase.
And in Maluca's fight, if you dodge more, you can prolong the fight to see more of his moves. You can pretty much always engage more, be more aggressive, attack more, dodge more, punish more.

15-20 seconds is a lot in this context. Gwydo is def better, but still... he for example sometimes goes into wait and block mode and you can't do ♥♥♥♥ about it as far as my experience was

[Rickle Pick]

Origineel geplaatst door Mike:

I played the game 3 times through NG++ and the bosses are some of the highlights easily, and their movesets fit perfectly with the players toolset.

- bosses have very open windows for reflects which completely turn the tide of the battle in the player favor, so your not stuck perfect parrying moves, and you can use skill to circumvent bosses movesets.
- bosses can be engaged with using BOTH brink block and bring dodge, with the ability to interchange them as you please. Also with the right build you can actually make a tank build that soaks up damage to deal more.
- bosses have excellent movesets which are very flashy, very layered and at the same time have good tells for the player to make a mental note of. I have killed each boss 3 times and many of them were still fun to fight on the 3rd time through because they movesets were so layered.
- Also outside of monster bosses (purple stamina bar) bosses are on the same playing field as the player as when they use moves they use up stamina, which the player can play around to catch them before it regens. So unlike your average souls game where the boss just infinity does their best moves, in this game they are limited by there stamina just like you, and you can use that to your advantage.

I would even go as far as saying the later bosses were some of the best action RPG bosses I have faced in recent memory both in terms of mechanics, music, and pure spectacle.

Lastly this game is so much more action packed then the games you listed.
- Sekiro is a one note type of game, where you mash light attack and master the parry. Sure its flashy, but its BASIC as ever and the only skill you need is reactions and patter recognition.
- GoW (I;m assuming your talking about modern GoW) is not even close to this game let alone the original GoW games which were more mechanically deep then 2018 and Rag.
- Nine Souls is basically a 2D sekiro-like so its 99% about parry.

The combat/combo system ALONE adds more mechanical depth then any of the games you listed and the only action RPGs that are better in terms of action combat is Team Ninja games.

OMG. Yes, the combat system is amazing I mentioned it in the original post. Yes it is fing incredible. But not the bosses. They just SUCK D big time

[ZexxCrine]

Origineel geplaatst door sgrey:

Origineel geplaatst door ZexxCrine:

I just beat Volbaino on ng+ I would hardly call that close. I’m not required to play Khazan continuously until I beat ng++

Ah, ok. I just assumed you continued playing since you seem to enjoy the game a lot

Believe me, I would like to.

[Mike]

Origineel geplaatst door Rickle Pick:

OMG. Yes, the combat system is amazing I mentioned it in the original post. Yes it is fing incredible. But not the bosses. They just SUCK D big time

The bosses is where the combat shines! normal enemies especially in early game died too fast to even be able to properly utilize the players full moveset, but the bosses allowed the player to use them as combo dummies and led to the best fighting in the game.

You know once you master the combat system bosses can be comboed like they are normal enemies right?

Are you tired of a bosses cheap move that is hard to avoid? Well learn to reflect and you can literally make bosses play around YOU and not the other way around. There are so many tools the player has to steal turns from the bosses that its insane.

[Rickle Pick]

Origineel geplaatst door Mike:

Origineel geplaatst door Rickle Pick:

OMG. Yes, the combat system is amazing I mentioned it in the original post. Yes it is fing incredible. But not the bosses. They just SUCK D big time

You know once you master the combat system bosses can be comboed like they are normal enemies right?

Yes exactly and where is fun in that? Learn the gimmick - ez game. But is it = fun game?

[Mike]

Origineel geplaatst door Rickle Pick:

Origineel geplaatst door Mike:

You know once you master the combat system bosses can be comboed like they are normal enemies right?

Yes exactly and where is fun in that? Learn the gimmick - ez game. But is it = fun game?

Its not a gimmick through, its layers upon layers that the player must learn/master to even get close to make the game feel easy.

The player and bosses are given tons and tools/moves and its up to the player to master them to get the upper hand over their opponent and that is where the fun is.

Also the game was not easy at all. Early game NG is still cuasing players issues and filtering players (after the nerfs) and NG++ later game was probably a harder challenge then the original NG playthrough due to how much more heath bosses/enemies have.

Its like the Nioh games where the game is as hard as your skill as a player allows it to be. If you understand the systems, have you combos/moves down, have decent reactions, know bosses movesets,...etc of course the game will be easier but its still super fun and it allows way more player freedom in combat them most action RPGs in the market.

I will take good combat, player freedom when using said combat, and mechanical depth over the average souls like experience any day of the week.

[ATPWolf]

on NG++ now still enjoy fighting the bosses at this point... on first playthrough a lot of them really took hours of attempts per and now its usually first try... feels good. Will say tho as mentioned before sometimes you can chain attacks for a long time into spirit moves back to chain attacks into spirit moves and they stay staggered the whole time sometimes get 50-70% there hp from it seems kinda cheezy. But rerolling to greatsword/spear to change it up it will probably be much harder similar to starting out new but with gear since not used either the entire 3 playthroughs. Would be cool if this game ever gets a DLC they could improve NG+ with new boss/monster/level variants / moves and put some more stuff in the crevice cuz it feels like somethings missing there

[Mike]

Origineel geplaatst door ATPWolf:

on NG++ now still enjoy fighting the bosses at this point... on first playthrough a lot of them really took hours of attempts per and now its usually first try... feels good. Will say tho as mentioned before sometimes you can chain attacks for a long time into spirit moves back to chain attacks into spirit moves and they stay staggered the whole time sometimes get 50-70% there hp from it seems kinda cheezy. But rerolling to greatsword/spear to change it up it will probably be much harder similar to starting out new but with gear since not used either the entire 3 playthroughs. Would be cool if this game ever gets a DLC they could improve NG+ with new boss/monster/level variants / moves and put some more stuff in the crevice cuz it feels like somethings missing there

I personally like the combo chaining as its what separates thsi combat from your average souls game that focus more on player defense then offense. I also like the player power fantasy this game gives when you get a powerful build going.

I don't know how powerful the other weapons are but my fire Great sword build on NG++ still took a while to take down bosses and that was with min-maxed charge attack damage stats on every piece of gear I had.

I have seen some crazy powerful endgame build though so maybe mine was not as good as I thought, but it was fun!

[Rickle Pick]

Origineel geplaatst door Mike:

Origineel geplaatst door Rickle Pick:

Yes exactly and where is fun in that? Learn the gimmick - ez game. But is it = fun game?

Its not a gimmick through, its layers upon layers that the player must learn/master to even get close to make the game feel easy.

The player and bosses are given tons and tools/moves and its up to the player to master them to get the upper hand over their opponent and that is where the fun is.

Also the game was not easy at all. Early game NG is still cuasing players issues and filtering players (after the nerfs) and NG++ later game was probably a harder challenge then the original NG playthrough due to how much more heath bosses/enemies have.

Its like the Nioh games where the game is as hard as your skill as a player allows it to be. If you understand the systems, have you combos/moves down, have decent reactions, know bosses movesets,...etc of course the game will be easier but its still super fun and it allows way more player freedom in combat them most action RPGs in the market.

I will take good combat, player freedom when using said combat, and mechanical depth over the average souls like experience any day of the week.

It is a gimmick. Game is not hard

[Sersa]

I think there are some gameplay decisions that suck, for example counter being punished a lot with elemental dmg and status effects that chip through even perfect blocking, human stamina sucking ass, being able to regen even while you are actively hitting the enemy or some bosses that just move away from you all the time (looking at Ozma's first phase, flying away while freely regenerating stamina just makes my eyes roll) BUT, I think the game is good nonetheless. Liked Reese combat a lot for example, and if Ozma's battle would have been only 2nd and 3rd phase with more HP instead of the annoying and boring 1st phase, it would have been my fav boss of the game.

[Rickle Pick]

Origineel geplaatst door Sersa:

I think there are some gameplay decisions that suck, for example counter being punished a lot with elemental dmg and status effects that chip through even perfect blocking, human stamina sucking ass, being able to regen even while you are actively hitting the enemy or some bosses that just move away from you all the time (looking at Ozma's first phase, flying away while freely regenerating stamina just makes my eyes roll) BUT, I think the game is good nonetheless. Liked Reese combat a lot for example, and if Ozma's battle would have been only 2nd and 3rd phase with more HP instead of the annoying and boring 1st phase, it would have been my fav boss of the game.

Totally agree. It's a good game. But could've been easily so much better

I feel like they tried to make it extra hard and instead of making it extra hard they made it extra annoying. I mean more annoying than it shoud've been

[I_come_in_peace]

The bosses are the best thing about this game. I'm having a blast!