Ranking of Bosses

[Mythos Wyrm]

I find the big issue with this game is that most of the bosses weren't well designed for what the game's core mechanics are, which is a huge problem when the game is nothing but bosses. It's because the bosses are poorly designed that the irritating walk to them became a core part of the game as otherwise it would be better to just kill yourself when you screw up when fighting most of them. With that being said, some of the bosses were well designed, so they deserve being praised. As such, I decided to rank all the bosses, and give an explanation for while I placed them where I did. With discussion the post is too long, so I'll just include the ranking in the main post. Spoilers ahead.

1. Sludge Heart
2. Vinethesis
3. Truth
4. Brain Freeze
5. Mol-Qayin
6. Stratus
7. Gol-Hevel
8. Gol-Qayin
9. Eye Cube
10. Gol-Set
11. Gol-Iath
12. The Elder
13. Onyxia
14. Obello
15. Knight Elhanan
16. Yeti
17. Avarice
18. Rol-Qayin
19. The Soul

[Mythos Wyrm]

1. Sludge Heart

Sludge Heart is just your typical asteroids boss, but the format works remarkable well for this game. First off, it takes fives hits to kill the boss, so there is actually progression to be made in the fight rather than it just being one-shot all-or-nothing so it's still worth continuing even if you miss-shot, but it's done in such a way that it still feels like it's keeping to the one-hit theme. The fact each hit creates smaller and faster blobs also means the it's naturally balanced to get more difficult as the boss nears death. What really really makes this boss shine though is the fact you need to retrieve your arrow after each shot, which is where the real challenge begins. You need to either navigate through the gradually expanding maze of slimes, or risk creating even more slimes as you pull the arrow back. Unfortunately nowhere else in the game demonstrates this level of complexity to navigate, not even the final boss, so it's kinda disappointing that the best boss is also the first boss.

2. Vinethesis

Vinethesis is notable as being one of two bosses who swallow your arrow and your then need to use the pull-back mechanic to expose it's weak point. I think the way Mol-Qayin took advantage of it is more interesting, but they are different enough that there is room in the game for both bosses. The reason I'm putting Vinethesis above is because of it's vines. They are a challenge to evade, but the player can cut them off to make the fight easier. This is one of the few cases in the game where the player can make a trade off between time and difficulty, but it's not like it's trivial to take them out either, meaning the player needs to decide when they've taken enough risk dealing with the vines and don't want to loose that progress, and are ready to go in for the kill. Even up here though there is some design flaws. The vines are designed so that you can pass under them if you time it right, but you can also just avoid them by staying towards the edges of the arena, which is sufficient for killing the boss without even cutting any of the vines, so the vine cutting mechanic isn't taken advantage of as well as it could have.

3. Truth

Truth is the true final boss, and notably has three forms. The fact that he alone has three forms makes him stand out as the true final boss, but it also just makes the fight more interesting. On their own each of his forms aren't particularly interesting, but they aren't bad either. The third form is the only one that approaches a level of complexity akin to when you've split Sludge Heart into many pieces, and the first form is a good little maneuver test. The fact they are put together is what makes the fight interesting, though on the flip-side it does mean that you'll have to drag through the first couple forms that you've already mastered before you figure out how to take out the final form. While he is one of the more interesting bosses, overall I think it's just not worth it to slough for every other boss in order to reach him. I think it would have been better if they got rid of The Soul entirely and had him be the final boss instead, and if they need a super boss have one with like,I dunno, five forms or something at the end.

4. Brain Freeze

The fact you use fire arrows to defeat his first form is cool, and while his second form doesn't do much other than keep you on your toes, it's still a nice touch. Not much else to say about this boss.

5. Mol-Qayin

Mol-Qayin is a cool puzzle boss. You force him an arrow, drag him into his own bomb, and then need to quickly take out his core after retrieving his arrow. The problem with this boss is that despite needing to go through all of these steps, no permanent progress can be made and he's still just a memorize-the-pattern-and-kill-him-as-quickly-as-possible boss. Each step is harder than the last, and if you fail to shoot him after you explode him you might as well just die as it's going to be much harder to shoot the arrow into him then than it was at the beginning of the fight, where you can just shoot forward twice without moving at all before he can even use his fire attack. They could have made it so you at least have incremental progress while dragging him with the arrow, but no, they have it so that it just gets exploded by his fire attack or he jumps away if you don't just drag him into it as soon as possible, again before even does his fire attack. The worst part is that dodging the fire attack is actually an interesting mechanic as it's based around positioning yourself so that when he inhales they around you, which being in place that you can see where all the fire globs landed, but taking the boss out easily means not even seeing the attack.

6. Stratus

He's got one attack, which is pretty easy to dodge, but keeps on your toes. What makes him interesting is that you need to knock his teeth out to expose his weak point, giving the opportunity for incremental progress where you knock out more of his teeth of his teeth and over time it becomes easier to deal the killing blow. Once again this mechanic is pretty much wasted though, as there isn't really any reason to knock any addition teeth as the change that occurs once one of his teeth makes it harder to hit ANY of his teeth, not any SPECIFIC tooth. It's best to still just aim for the same hole as before, it's just a matter of getting the timing right as well.

7. Gol-Hevel

This is a straight puzzle boss, you use pull-back to hit him from behind and that's it. It's a nice simple puzzle that makes for an interesting change compared to other bosses, but as he only has one attack and just circles around the arena it's not a particularly interesting fight once you figure out what to do.

8. Gol-Qayin

It's a pretty stock sort of boss fight where it's all about maneuvering behind the boss so you can hit it, except it only has one hit. It works, it's a competently designed boss fight of this variety, it just doesn't take any particular advantage of the game mechanics.

9. Eye Cube

Eye Cube is all about maneuvering around the boss and timing it right so that he'll bring his eye into the path of your arrow. It's a neat puzzle that requires skill to pull off as well. Main reason he isn't higher is just because his offensive ability is a bit lacking, he can roll on top of you and shoot lasers at you, but if you're doing it right you should hit him in the eye before he actually has a chance to shoot his laser.


10. Gol-Set

Gol-Set is a boss that is very much about perfectly executing a sequence of moves to take him down as quickly as possible, but what makes Gol-Set a good boss is that learning this sequence is an actual puzzle and in fact the puzzle that must be gone through, and not just a hackish way to make the boss take less time to defeat AND be easier to take out. You have to go through the sequence of tricking him activating his central laser, all while learning to evade his attacks. It's a challenging fight, and was well placed as the final challenge before the final boss. I think the other bosses above him are more interesting as he's a bit of a rehash, but it's a good fight.

11. Gol-Iath

Gol-Iath is the first major boss, and he's a fine boss, but Gol-Set makes him almost obsolete. There is a one aspect to him that makes him worthy of being called a fine boss, and that's that there is a little puzzle to him in figuring out how he uses his hands, and it's by taking advantage of that you can find an open when he switches hands and kill him. That's pretty much all there is to him. The problem with the fight though is that it's far harder than it should be as a result of poor controls. Arguably he's even harder than Gol-Set once you figure out how you're supposed to fight him as Gol-Iath requires a diagonal hit to take out, while Gol-Set does not. Unfortunately making diagonal hits is unreasonably hard to the fact that many keyboards do not recognize the key combination required to pull it off without easing your way into by walking before and then quickly shooting. The other thing to note about Gol-Iath is that there is an alternative way to defeat him, which is a puzzle for an achievement. Once you figure this out it's much easier to take him out this way than it is to do it the normal way as you don't need to do any diagonal shots, and you can't position yourself so he can't actually hit you.

12. The Elder

The Elder is not actually a boss. He talks, you climb, you shoot him, he's dead. The whole thing feels like a homage to Shadow of the Colossus, but it doesn't actually go anywhere. It's something different from other fights, which is nice, but otherwise doesn't have much appeal. After this point, it's no longer of an issue that the bosses just could have been better, they are actually bad, and it's a slough to get through them with them either being unreasonably hard or so easy that tracking them down was waste of time.

13. Onyxia

Onyxia is at the top of the these bosses as there is sort-of a puzzle to beating her, it's all about taking advantage of the geometry of the arena so you take a shot from one iceberg to another and hit her in the tail when she destroys one of them, but the arena is regularly shaped so it isn't much of a puzzle. The main issue with her is just that she pretty much lacks any offensive ability. She occasionally electrifies the water, but it's so rare that it shouldn't be an issue, so the fight is pretty much just swimming around between icebergs and waiting until you good shot at her tail. It's also important to note that getting to her requires a diagonal shot with a fire arrow, so getting to the fight is harder than the fight itself.

14. Obello

Obello was designed to be a good boss. The idea of the fight is that you're supposed to wait until you get high, at which point he becomes slow enough to land a hit on. The problem is that it's much easier to just kill him in less than a second by shooting the arrow from the proper position so that it ends up behind his weak spot and pulling it backwards, so the entire boss design doesn't even matter. You could argue I'm making the boss suck more than it's supposed to by taking advantage of an exploit, but the other issue is that he has a ridiculously long walk to get to him and can kill you within seconds of awakening, so I don't find it worth it to fight the boss as intended. At least on hard mode his weak point is only exposed when you're high, though that's a much more contrived way of encouraging the player to take advantage of the effect.

15. Knight Elhanan

Knight Elhanan is like you, except bigger and better. He has a magic soul arrow like you do, but he also has lots of additional arrows, and he can tear the arena with his arrows. Like with most the bosses, the fact he can shoot additional arrows may or may not actually matter as it all comes down to if you kill him before he can actually do much of anything. By the time you reach Knight Elhanan, you should have fought enough bosses that you should notice a pattern across them that gives the key for figuring out how to defeat him, namely that you should pay attention to what happens when you shoot the boss for the first time as it has the same effect as when you shoot them in battle, and that his pink part is his weak point. From this a player can glean they are supposed to hit the arrow to take away his armor, and then are supposed to hit is unarmored body. This is much harder to do than it sounds though, and unless you memorize a tight sequence it pretty much boils down to luck when you'll be able to retrieve your arrow and then hit Elhanan after hitting his arrow, which is what makes the fight unreasonably hard.

16. Yeti

Yeti is known for using a bunch of BS attacks which you may or may not see, and then you kinda have to shoot him in the butt when the opportunity arises. Yeti is the epitome of what I find to be bosses that would be fine in a normal game, but just really don't work well for this game's mechanics. It was with Yeti that I realized it's actually easier to kill the bosses quickly than it is to take the time to learn to understand them, as I accidentally got the speed run achievement for him when that was really just what it took for me to defeat him at all. The only reason Yeti isn't even lower is because there is sort of a puzzle to learning that he flashes his butt at you after he rebounds off of the wall, and the other bosses don't even have that much.

17. Avarice

Avarice is just a boring boss. He has a bunch of attacks, but none of them matter except when he falls forward and exposes his mouth, which is obviously when you're supposed to kill him. The one attack he has that's supposed to make the fight interesting is that he litters the arena with coins, but you should kill him before he even gets the opportunity to do that. If there wasn't an achievement to specifically force the player to draw the fight out until he floods the arena there wouldn't be anything to him.


18. Rol-Qayin

Rol-Qayin reminds me of Eye Cube, only in a continuous rather that discrete space. Either way it's just a boss that rolls around and you got to hit them in the eye. The effect of making it continuous though is that it takes all the puzzle elements out and leaves it just with the timing. I guess that would be okay if it wasn't for the fact you can kill him immediately after he spawns, and you're specifically encouraged to do that by an achievement. It's not like it's hard to get the achievement either, might as well perfect the timing in the opening bit instead of wasting time dodging his first attack and then having to work out if you have enough space for him to roll his eye to the front in addition to getting the timing right. Any boss that can be killed in a second is joke, and there isn't even any interesting mechanics to go after if you choose to pursue them like Obello has.

19. The Soul

The Soul is also a copy of you, except better in every way. There was no reason to have this boss as Knight Elhanan already filled the same niche, but they decided to make another of these bosses, only worse, and make the inferior version be required to beat to complete the game. The Soul is by far the hardest boss in the game, notably harder than The Truth, but the difficulty is entirely due to pseudo-random BS. At least when you're fighting Knight Elhanan you can connect you hitting his arrow with him becoming vulnerable, but The Soul just pseudo-randomly jumps out with no discernible pattern, and that's when you're supposed to get him. Because it is pseudo-random you can memorize exact sequences of moves and then get him when you know he's going to do it, but there is no fun to that. Now, you can force him out by shooting at him and I've heard it's possible to get him then, but I've never seen anyone actually do such as the window you're given is ridiculously small, and I've only ever seen people take advantage of the times he jumps on his own. The fight has a bunch of mechanics revolving around how your arrows and powers interact with each other, but none of that actually matters as there is no reason to fire your arrow before the killing shot (unless you're trying to pull off a specific exploit while speed running, in which everything still doesn't matter), and if you miss you might as well just die instead of retrieving your arrow as it's faster than waiting for him to jump again. For awhile I was thinking you were supposed to somehow take advantage of one of these mechanics to hurt him somehow, but no, it really is just that you're supposed to hit his pink shadow that you can see at the beginning of the fight when he does some BS jump. Only reason to shoot his arrow is for the achievement, as it's easier just to dodge it by keeping your distance, and you'll keep your arrow in case he jumps. The Soul could have been the better mirror boss if they actually bothered to take advantage of those mechanics, but no. It's not like you even get a good ending for beating him, it's just absorbing more souls. Lame.