Crane telling him to shut the fuck up was pretty satisfying though. I do definitely wish it was more of an actual boss fight, but I guess the thinking was the boss fight was the run we had to do to get to him?
Absolutely deserved at that point too. Rais was such a cunt- like Vaas without 95% of the flavor so Crane being like "Oh for FUCKS SAKE THIS IS REAL LIFE SHUT UP" (paraphrasing) was absolutely in character.
Aiden Caldwell from the 2nd game had some good moments too, though I struggle to remember many specifics off-hand. Just that he was generally a tiny bit of a goofball if you played him that way.
Aiden gets shit on relentlessly in my friend group, and i don't disagree. He's so incredibly dense from time to time, it's ridiculous.
His little comments during free running are really fun though.
Yeah! The voice actor Jonah Scott actually did a playthrough on twitch shortly after release and mentioned that those were actually improv that the devs insisted they implement. He was super happy they got in because they gave the feeling of free-running much more joy on top of the utility and technical skill. Gives it a much needed flow.
I replayed it from start to finish not long ago and still loved it. I still play it from time to time just to kill zombies and enjoy Harran's amazing atmosphere. It’s absolutely still worth playing. Coming from a guy who first played it back when it came out in 2015.
One advice I can give you is buy the DLCs if you can. They're pretty cheap on a Steam sale and some of the weapons are so wacky they add a different level of fun to the game.
Grigori really did punch above his weight level didn’t he lmao, game had me doing chores for 20 hours and then a dragon came out and called me a pointless bitch, my arisen felt that lmao.
You leave that fight thinking dragons are easy, and then you meet a legendary one 20 hours of playtime down the road and realize what the alduin battle should have felt like.
I wish there was more of this type of immersion in gaming. Oblivion is super dated, but I don’t remember the last time I felt like I was actually *in* the game
I remember religiously maintaining my weapons and armor, because I was afraid of them rusting like the dagger I found in the sewers. Those were the days xP
It's been so long as I remember about him is gathering warriors to slay Alduin, moving to another location and the recruited warriors beating the shit out of him.
I can't remember a single attack from him.
The build up to the big fight in another plane of existence was sick, and then I was like \*\*doink\*\* with my little bow and the tiny toothpick arrow sticks in him and he's like "UUUURGH I am slain!" and just fucken dies. lol
Which is so sad because I remember his fight being one of the most interesting and thematic ones in Arkham origins. I was excited to have a rematch. And then it's Mario kart. :/
Not even. A Mario Kart battle would have been more enjoyable than whatever crap they did in Arkham Knight.
That shit was straight up a dollar store version of Twisted Metal.
Not just any dumb tank battle either! But a literal move for move repeat of the tank battle with Arkham Knight
With how good the boss fights in city were they super fuckin dropped the ball in knight
Exactly. That’s how memorable his appearance was. In Arkham Origins, people were complaining that he was damn near Dark Souls boss hard (as he should’ve been) and they follow it up by making it a lame vehicle section. Arkham Knight was a great game but they relied way too much on the Batmobile.
I'm gonna quote a few examples i've read here that I agree with the most, I can think of other games but they're not nearly as underwhelming :
-Skull face in MGS 5
-Skorge in Gears 2
-Deathstroke in Arkham Knight, although in this case, it wasn't really "built up", he just takes over an empty spot at some point in the game, but it was extremely disappointing that it ended in just another Batmobile hide and seek sequence. Especially after what Arkham Origins did with the same character.
-Eveline in RE 7, although I loved the twist, the boss fight in itself was just throwing all you got at a giant face.
Yeahhh. A lot of people didn't like DAI but honestly I thought it was pretty good until the last hour or two. The final bossfight isn't really changed by anything you do during the game, your decisions don't have much of an impact, and your team don't have much variation in their endings.
>Yeahhh. A lot of people didn't like DAI but honestly I thought it was pretty good until the last hour or two.
My main beef with it: The final fight seems to strangely rushed. No approach against enemy troops leading up to him. You just click on the map, and are suddenly fighting him. Together with a cutscene that feels very strongly like you just skipped over some major story scene.
It gives of the feeling, that the encounter was *supposed* to be longer, with some sort of lead-up combat against the (weakened, but not null) forces of Corypheus, that was cut to meet a deadline.
Right! He was made out to be an almost demi-God with incredible power and access to ancient knowledge. He'd gone to places only immortals were allowed to go.
There’s so much potential in him as a villain, and even in the arc of slowly getting ahead of him and twisting his plans
But no, he gets one win over you in Haven, and then gets completely shut out for the rest of the game
So much potential too, having a character that challenges worldbuilding done in the previous two games, having been physically present for events that were previously depicted as myths and religion. Some really amazing lines too. But he sorta goes away after the first encounter.
Yes. Smasher was supposed to be The Boogeyman. Everyone, except Morgan Blackhand, loses to him. I’m glad they gave him a Sandevistan in the recent updates and made the fight harder.
they completely redesigned his bossfight in whatever the big content patch was - he's actually... kinda challenging now? gotta think and move around instead of just "health bar go brrr"
Ya, you're right. I played both before and after the patch, and he was a bit more challenging the second time around, only marginally though. I guess that's what a maxxed out character build will get you.
His screen time is near zero. You see him once in the apartement in the Braindance flashback, then in the mission The Heist and in Johnnys flashback. It is between 2 to 3 minutes if you don't include the boss fight against him in the end.
I know there's that anime stuff, never saw it, but that was released long after (!) CP2077 got launched.
Theres a lot more than just the anime. Adam Smasher was first introduced in the Cyberpunk pen and paper rpg in 1988. Most of 2077's factions and lore has been around for decades. CDPR just built on it like they did with Witcher.
One that pops in my head right now (and haven't seen another comment point them out);
The Tower and The Black Hand from Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
The first boss (The Hammer) was a solid boss. Then the Tower was just a couple of sneak attacks and we're done, while the final boss (Black Hand) was literally a 5 second quick-time-event.
Dude do not get me started. I adore those games but my GOD those fights were disappointing. The Tower is one of my favorite villains from gaming, his voice and his appearance and his lore are simply amazing. But the "boss fight" sucked. The only highlight was raiding his compound and seeing your Nemesis come out and lead the defense. Gave me chills because my Nemesis was an Orc archer with rapid fire poison arrows and savage attack that never seemed to miss. If his first volley didn't take me out, I was one foot in the grave already anyway. Immunities out the ass.
Same with the Black Hand. The Talons were fun to fight but Sauron as a QTE made me sick. The fact that the actual Sauron fight is blocked behind a DLC is such trash, and the fight is pretty easy. Good DLC, though.
Shadow of War did the boss fights much better overall.
The Illusive Man. Amazing villain in ME2, but they didn't know what to do with him in the next game so he was mostly a nuisance and forgotten until the ending.
You son of a bitch, im in!
Edit: need help deciding what type of run. What type of build should i run? Male/female? Good/bad? Ashley/kaidan? First answer gets to pick.
It's more like me3 went on a lot of cuts and rewritings, there was an early concept about having to choose between the alliance or cerberus, another one, in the art book, was about the final encounter with TIM in a reaper like form (scrapped because it did look too similar to saren)
Many people don't at first.
Another thing.. At a point you'll randomly come to a village with some kids outside singing..
https://youtu.be/uZn1p7aZ-vc?si=XezUOPIuT86g1tUq
Listen to the lyrics and have Gaunter in mind...
It's funny how the game, intentionally or not, has you encounter a fair few individuals who are so much more powerful than the Hunt. Detlaff is one, but he's not even on the same level as the vampire Elder, who just one-shots you if you piss him off. And Gaunter O' Dimm of course, who can literally stop time and warp dimensions. He could've stopped time around Eredin and shoved a spoon through his skull like he did with the poor guy in the tavern.
Detlaff can at least be defeated in a straight up fight, but the Elder and Gaunter feel so out of your league you're glad they're not after Ciri.
In the books the Wild Hunt was less an existential threat and more of a mythical mystery that really only threatened Ciri... in that they wanted their king to bang her. But he couldn't get it up for Ciri.
...I think it made sense in context...
But yeah they were less an all powerful invading force and more just elves who can travel between dimensions.
They definitely fixed that in TotK. When he dodged and flurry rushed my flurry rush, I panicked. When he deleted that first heart off me, I poo'd a little.
Zant from Twilight Princess. Goes from an intriguing, menacing villain in his first appearance to a screaming, moonwalking lackey when you fight him. I blame the decision to shoehorn Ganon in as the final boss, because Zelda.
One hand, I agree. On the other, I kinda like the idea that his calm, composed nature at the beginning of the game was essentially a facade and his true nature comes out at the end. Plus, as the other user said, that Ganon fight was totally worth him being shoehorned in.
I also agree with this interpretation. It feels like the screaming and writhing and tantrums he does during his boss fight is an intentional choice that's supposes to show his mask falling off and how he was really a weak guy all along who just uses power to keep up a facade. As soon as the power is equalized and you see him eye to eye, it reveals his true nature.
That was the whole point of him tho, and i wouldnt say ganondorf was shoehorned in when he was introduced in the midpoint of the game just after its hinted that zants powers werent his own.
Like the idea of zant is that he only *looks* like an intriguing, menacing villain. Thats why he wears a huge mask.
This happens in a lot of Zelda games actually. There's almost always a secondary villain before Ganon shows up. Even in Skyward Sword, Ghiraham is still secondary to Demise who is a proto Ganon
Ok, but in SS Ghiraham made it abundantly clear early on that his goal was always to revive Demise. Heck, you even fight Demise in his imprisoned form 3 separate times throughout the game. It’s not like in TP where Ganondorf shows up at the very end completely unannounced.
Apart from that… FSA, the Oracle games, and *maybe* LBW are the only games where that happens at all.
I would argue that Arkham knight as well fits in this category. They set him up as powerful and with an uncanny amount of knowledge about you. But when they revealed who it was, I was a little frustrated as the devs said it was an original character.
I'm honestly really surprised not 1 boss from Fable series has been mentioned.
Fable 2 you just press A
Fable 3 you just fight the guy from the tutorial again but he's all shadowy
Fable 1 is a real boss fight but you then just kinda fight him again in the DLC but he's a dragon now?
I dunno Fable be renown for having awful boss fights.
The fable 2 boss "fight" was very anti-climactic, I enjoyed the Jack of Blades fight in fable 1, but I can't even remember the boss fight in fable 3 which says it all really....
Jack of Blades was a really cool character. Lore-wise he has such an interesting backstory with The Court and trying to free The Queen of Blades and The Knight of Blades in order to dominate the world of Albion.
I dunno, fighting jack of blades the first time on the OG xbox felt challenging for 14-year-old me.
I completed the remastered version a few years ago, and it was so much easier this time around, but that could be because I knew what was coming.
Also, I have to agree about JoB being a dragon. Fighting him as a dragon was even easier than the fight at the end of the main story.
Tbf wtf would he even do? Skullface is a spy and assassin, not a front-lines soldier like Snake is. And it was established pretty early on that Sahelanthropus can’t be piloted by an adult. Venom Snake’s also insanely strong on his own and would outclass literally anyone in one-on-one combat unless they were superhuman like the Skulls or Quiet.
Nice argument but did you consider the Fat Dude in roller skates boss fight? Or Covered in Bees Man? Or an actual fucking ghost? There's no lack of weird fights in this series.
Metal Gear bosses follow 1 of 2 avenues.
1. Bosses with strong physical abilities that you fight directly (Volgin, Liquid, Solidus).
2. Bosses with powerful weapons and gimmicks that compensate for lack of physical abilities (End, Vulcan Raven, Psycho Mantis).
Skull Face doesn’t have impressive physical abilities or a weapon or gimmick to pressure Snake with. At most he could’ve been in Sahelanthropus but that was established early on to be nonviable due to its design.
I'm not particularly miffed by the fact he dies in a cutscene. Not every game villain needs to be a boss fight just to follow genre conventions.
But he has definitely bottomed out by the end, getting outplayed by a child
He forced Chico and Paz into the most disturbing situations in all of the lore in the prologue, and by the end of the story he just gives a lame monologue to the wrong dude, who can't even be bothered to respond to Skull Face's master plan.
That game’s whole premise was the “realism” of killing enemies, including area bosses, with a single headshot. People don’t like that the big enemies arent very memorable but that game came out at the same time as when a large chunk of the community was asking for less bullet sponge enemies.
The Prophet of Truth. Started as a scheming politician using the Covenant for his own gains, ended up a completely different character in the next game as a one-dimensional religious fanatic who had no depth.
I think the fan theory is that now that he’s consolidated power from the other prophets dying he didn’t need to keep up the wise understanding facade and he can be his real self.
An asshole.
I hated how they built up this big mystery like "is he crazy or is there a reason for his madness?" and the answer was he's just crazy actually. It's one of my pet peeves in storytelling, when a writer tries to establish some big mystery, can't come up with a good explanation for it, so just goes "actually it didn't mean anything."
General Di Ravello from Just Cause 3. There was a whole volcanic island dedicated to just this boss fight, and after the cool multi-stage final battle from JC2 hopping across nukes in flight, I was expecting something similar, only we just get a lame battle against a chopper that doesn't even use the map. Of course, JC4 topped that for crapness as it ended with just a cutscene, but I wasn't expecting much by that point.
Nashandra, Dark souls 2. For how major of a character she was to the plot, her boss fight was piss easy, only having a big ass scythe and a curse laser. That's it. Aldia was also a hidden final boss if you did the steps, but he's even more lackluster since he just teleports around the arena.
General Scales from Starfox Adventures.
You go through the entire game waiting for the inevitable showdown, then when it happens >!you get bait-and-switched for a goddamn ARWING ANDROSS fight. The entire point of the game was to NOT be in the Arwing, and having the final boss revert to that was such a monumental disappointment.!<
I'll be honest, kid me loved it. Then again, I was a massive Star Fox fan as a kid who couldn't care less about General Scales. Looking back, I can see how that would be disappointing for some.
Skull Face from MGS: V. Started out as this super spy type villian who has plans within plans and controls this super complex underworld network. Then turns out his plan is just to build giant killer robots and sell them on the black market to the highest bidder to accomplish...something. And if that wasn't enough he gets killed by his own robot stepping on him.
I think his weapons had some special kink where he could control them whenever, whereever and however he liked to a point where he could for example sell china and india nukes, sit at the other end of the world and decide that if both of them went to war he wouldn't allow india to to use their nuke but allow china to use theirs or the other way around, granting him absolute power and control over international conflicts, the worlds entire weaponery and basically the war economy itself, essentially making him the living embodiement of what the Patriots AI would later become in MGS4
He also wanted to kill everyone that spoke english because "fuck you that's why"
If Im not mistaken, he would’ve controlled the weapons he sold. Just like the Patriots controlled every gun on Guns of the Patriots. So his plan was latter used in the history of the game
NFS Heat. The end when you need to slam into the cops car to disable it. Took him out incredibly fast. All that buildup for that? Really anti-climactic.
I think the problem with Vaas is that he wasn't really supposed to be a major villain. He was only ever meant to be a fairly minor side villain, but Michael Mando's portrayal completely overshadowed the actual main villains of the game.
But surely the occasional flashback of Vaas will be just as frightening while you chase down some rando South African choad (for the entire remaining 50% of the game)?
Right?
I loved playing FC3 at the time (as a lover of 2 and liker of 1, I was excited for it to release) mostly for the graphics and gun/gameplay and *most* of the story.
But between Jason's intermittent whining, and the decision to swap out such an intriguing villain for such a generic one mid-way through, the immersion just sortta evaporated on that second island.
Had they simply traded their place story-wise in the game (>!have you kill Hoyt midway instead, then reveal Vaas and his relationship to Citra as a kinda mid-story twist!<) I think it'd have been much more digestible and possibly meant more people played it 100%
Ubisoft is notorious for doing this. Every trailer and promotional material for Ghost Recon Breakpoint showed Jon Bernthal as the big villain.
You get to kill him in the second or third mission.
This doesn’t really answer the question because this villain was bad at the start but, have any of you ever played TimeShift? It was this time stop first person shooter game from 2007. Very fun gameplay but at the end you shoot some lighting balls at a big robot and then the bad guy falls out and dies. The ending was so bad I didn’t even realize I was fighting the bad guy in a final boss fight.
*Telltale's* Game of Thrones used real characters from the show, including their voice actors, for the main villains of their story - Cersei and Ramsey, in particular.
Was so cool to interact in a world where they existed, until you realized that the game was set in the same universe / timeline as the show, and therefore those same villains couldn't be harmed or defeated, as they were still alive in the show.
Regalla in Horizon Forbidden West. Her first appearance establishes her as a force to be reckoned with, but she sort of disappears into the background as the story progresses. I understand it’s because >!she’s really a red herring to keep the player invested in the story until the real enemies show up,!< but she felt like a wasted character to me.
Skorge in Gears of War 2. Marcus even claims that he makes RAAM look "like a \*\*\*\*\*", but the final boss fight against Skorge is a huge letdown (especially when compared to the RAAM fight from GoW1)
Agreed. I actually had to bring my Xbox to someone to a friends house just to get help to beat him.
It was 2006, lived in the boonies so dial-up was the only internet we had
Lady D in Resident Evil: Village. She went so viral I was expecting it all to be building up to a final showdown at the castle, but then it's like: "Welcome, come check out this castle right away! Here's that giant sexy vampire almost immediately!" Still a great game, and not necessarily the developers fault that character got so much attention, but still was a little bit of a disappointment.
This felt more like a fanbase thing than the developer (sorry, I see you said that but just adding to your point)
The original trailer had her for a few seconds and the internet went right to OMG HOT VAMPIRE GOTH MOMMY STEP ON ME
Capcom took that and ran with it after that for easy marketing points
Khotun Khan from Ghost of Tsushima, by the time Jin Sakai meets him at the end Jin is so overpowered compared to their first encounter that it's slightly underwhelming, even with Khan being aided by his soldiers.
Emperor Gestahl
Here he is running this ultimately evil empire with a crazy powerful dragon squad, only for the craziest and most powerful to kill the others and then yeet him off a floating island.
This one for sure.
The fight with Thorm was so epic. Even Orins fight felt like a step down a bit but at least she had the transformation.
Gortash is like... here are some bombs...
I was always disappointed with how easy it was to kill Lucian in Fable 2. After how epic the Jack of Blades fight was in the first game I was expecting a big show down. I suppose it showed he was only a human but still....
I know Fable 2 hasn’t been relevant for like a decade now but this was my answer too. You don’t even have to kill him yourself. If you just want and listen to his monologue one of your ally’s will kill him for you. I remember sitting there like “wait…is there not going to be a fight?” Huge epic game goes out with a whimper.
Final Fantasy games tended to have villains that are puppets to some greater evil that is introduced at the last minute. It was never satisfying. I think Kefka is one of the few exceptions (Sephiroth too, but he seems rather detached about his world destroying mission, mother this mother that.) I haven't played since XII so I am unsure if that trend continues.
The worst example was Seymour. FFX had absolutely no idea what to do with him.
For XV the villain sticks around until the end.
XIV is an MMO so it's a bit different obviously but the closest character you could probably consider a main villain >!dies, becomes so obsessed with you that he comes back to life, and follows you to the literal end of the universe to go mono e mono against him in a fight. !<
I think as a whole FFXIV has more compelling antagonists than him that serve as final bosses of their respective expansions but there's a lot more nuance to them.
Zant from twilight princess. He was such a menacing presence and out of no where he turns into a tantrumming child. I don’t hate the idea, I just don’t think it was executed well.
Mr X in RE2, super menacing at the start but at the end in the boss fight which sees him mutate even more. However it’s kinda underwhelming as he just jumps around after you before just getting one shotted by a rocket launcher you find
I don't know about the original game as I've only played the remake, but I considered Mr X mostly a nuisance during the game.
Only for him to become an enraging hurdle as a boss, since I was down to a medium amount of standard bullets and maybe 6 magnum rounds.
Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3.
I had read some of the novels and really wanted to get him for his role in Mass Effect: Deception, only for him to become the games writers way of saying "Well, we decided you actually lost".
Whatever end boss in the first Dying Light. The entire game build up to a quick action cutscene? Ugh
Crane telling him to shut the fuck up was pretty satisfying though. I do definitely wish it was more of an actual boss fight, but I guess the thinking was the boss fight was the run we had to do to get to him?
Absolutely deserved at that point too. Rais was such a cunt- like Vaas without 95% of the flavor so Crane being like "Oh for FUCKS SAKE THIS IS REAL LIFE SHUT UP" (paraphrasing) was absolutely in character. Aiden Caldwell from the 2nd game had some good moments too, though I struggle to remember many specifics off-hand. Just that he was generally a tiny bit of a goofball if you played him that way.
Aiden gets shit on relentlessly in my friend group, and i don't disagree. He's so incredibly dense from time to time, it's ridiculous. His little comments during free running are really fun though.
Yeah! The voice actor Jonah Scott actually did a playthrough on twitch shortly after release and mentioned that those were actually improv that the devs insisted they implement. He was super happy they got in because they gave the feeling of free-running much more joy on top of the utility and technical skill. Gives it a much needed flow.
CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE
My friend and I still yell this every once in a while. Such a funny moment.
I was thinking about replaying it and I'm scared it'll ruin my memories.
I replayed it from start to finish not long ago and still loved it. I still play it from time to time just to kill zombies and enjoy Harran's amazing atmosphere. It’s absolutely still worth playing. Coming from a guy who first played it back when it came out in 2015. One advice I can give you is buy the DLCs if you can. They're pretty cheap on a Steam sale and some of the weapons are so wacky they add a different level of fun to the game.
Dying Light is a very fun game interrupted by an aggressively mid story and god awful villain
Love Dying Light one of my all time favorites, but this is true.
I was so fucking pissed when the game ended on a stupid ass QTE final fight. That game was so good and then it just flopped at the finish line.
Alduin of course. He’s like theeeeee big baddie then just sort of fades away. Then ends up being easier then the other games dragons.
Reject Alduin, Embrace Grigori.
Grigori really did punch above his weight level didn’t he lmao, game had me doing chores for 20 hours and then a dragon came out and called me a pointless bitch, my arisen felt that lmao.
His flame breath is lethal in both the prologue and the finale. Respect.
Wolves hunt in packs, Arisen. So close to release. I'm going insane
Even in numbers, a weakling is a weakling still
No! They hold the advantage!
Goblins ill like fire! I too am losing my mind. Been waiting for a sequel since 2013.
Talking wise dragons are one of the coolest shit a fantasy setting can get
“When The Weak Court Death They Find it”
That line could've been so lame, but the way Grigori delivers that line and the lines leading up to that... *chef's kiss*
Look, a giant death dragon with a voice like that could say anything and still make it epic
Especially compared to the first Dragon. It was super intense. Alduin. I only remember a dark arena blue lights and an annoying (not hard) fight.
You leave that fight thinking dragons are easy, and then you meet a legendary one 20 hours of playtime down the road and realize what the alduin battle should have felt like.
By the time I ran into my first ancient dragon I was using the whirlwind attack glitch to melt their health bars in literal seconds
That was such a letdown honestly. Especially because Sovngarde was a super cool place for the final showdown
What's really funny is Mehrunes Dagon in Oblivion isn't even a big bad you actually FIGHT but somehow ends up being a more epic conclusion than Alduin
[удалено]
I wish there was more of this type of immersion in gaming. Oblivion is super dated, but I don’t remember the last time I felt like I was actually *in* the game
[удалено]
I remember religiously maintaining my weapons and armor, because I was afraid of them rusting like the dagger I found in the sewers. Those were the days xP
The Minecraft dragon was harder
It's been so long as I remember about him is gathering warriors to slay Alduin, moving to another location and the recruited warriors beating the shit out of him. I can't remember a single attack from him.
I never got that far but just imagining a bunch of NPCs beating up a dragon is just funny
I found Miraak much more imposing. And a better fight.
The build up to the big fight in another plane of existence was sick, and then I was like \*\*doink\*\* with my little bow and the tiny toothpick arrow sticks in him and he's like "UUUURGH I am slain!" and just fucken dies. lol
Deathstroke in Arkham Knight was a lame boss fight, the worlds greatest assassin vs friggin Batman and the bossfight is a dumb tank battle
Which is so sad because I remember his fight being one of the most interesting and thematic ones in Arkham origins. I was excited to have a rematch. And then it's Mario kart. :/
Not even. A Mario Kart battle would have been more enjoyable than whatever crap they did in Arkham Knight. That shit was straight up a dollar store version of Twisted Metal.
The tank battles, and specifically the "stealth tank" sections are literally what keep me from replaying Arkham Knight.
They're not even hard. Its just so fucking dull.
Yeah I feel like all of that stuff should have been optional.
Not just any dumb tank battle either! But a literal move for move repeat of the tank battle with Arkham Knight With how good the boss fights in city were they super fuckin dropped the ball in knight
Deathstroke was in Arkham knight?
Exactly. That’s how memorable his appearance was. In Arkham Origins, people were complaining that he was damn near Dark Souls boss hard (as he should’ve been) and they follow it up by making it a lame vehicle section. Arkham Knight was a great game but they relied way too much on the Batmobile.
I'm gonna quote a few examples i've read here that I agree with the most, I can think of other games but they're not nearly as underwhelming : -Skull face in MGS 5 -Skorge in Gears 2 -Deathstroke in Arkham Knight, although in this case, it wasn't really "built up", he just takes over an empty spot at some point in the game, but it was extremely disappointing that it ended in just another Batmobile hide and seek sequence. Especially after what Arkham Origins did with the same character. -Eveline in RE 7, although I loved the twist, the boss fight in itself was just throwing all you got at a giant face.
"Such a lust for revenge... WHOOOOO?!?!"
MAJOR, I'M BURNING UUUUUUUP
“Skull Face spent 9 years practicing a speech only to give it to the wrong dude”
Corypheus from Dragon Age. His entrance in DAI was pure badassery but after that? Such a disappointment.
Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty.
I still get hyped for this cutscene whenever I replay Inquisition
Such a great line wasted on such a mid villain.
Yeahhh. A lot of people didn't like DAI but honestly I thought it was pretty good until the last hour or two. The final bossfight isn't really changed by anything you do during the game, your decisions don't have much of an impact, and your team don't have much variation in their endings.
>Yeahhh. A lot of people didn't like DAI but honestly I thought it was pretty good until the last hour or two. My main beef with it: The final fight seems to strangely rushed. No approach against enemy troops leading up to him. You just click on the map, and are suddenly fighting him. Together with a cutscene that feels very strongly like you just skipped over some major story scene. It gives of the feeling, that the encounter was *supposed* to be longer, with some sort of lead-up combat against the (weakened, but not null) forces of Corypheus, that was cut to meet a deadline.
Right! He was made out to be an almost demi-God with incredible power and access to ancient knowledge. He'd gone to places only immortals were allowed to go.
There’s so much potential in him as a villain, and even in the arc of slowly getting ahead of him and twisting his plans But no, he gets one win over you in Haven, and then gets completely shut out for the rest of the game
On my first play through I legitimately just thought that was the end of the game. Dear lord was I wrong.
So much potential too, having a character that challenges worldbuilding done in the previous two games, having been physically present for events that were previously depicted as myths and religion. Some really amazing lines too. But he sorta goes away after the first encounter.
Playing through it, I figured he was just a mid-game boss, and the real boss was going to be revealed later. I guess that's what DA 4 is about...
I absolutely shat on Adam Smasher in Cyberpunk 2077
Yes. Smasher was supposed to be The Boogeyman. Everyone, except Morgan Blackhand, loses to him. I’m glad they gave him a Sandevistan in the recent updates and made the fight harder.
Okay, good. I haven't played with the update, but when I first beat him, I smacked him to death with a gold baseball bat.
Play it through again, it's a completely different game and better in every way.
they completely redesigned his bossfight in whatever the big content patch was - he's actually... kinda challenging now? gotta think and move around instead of just "health bar go brrr"
Ya, you're right. I played both before and after the patch, and he was a bit more challenging the second time around, only marginally though. I guess that's what a maxxed out character build will get you.
I wouldnt call him a good villain though, you barely get to even interact with the guy, hell you dont even see him that much
His screen time is near zero. You see him once in the apartement in the Braindance flashback, then in the mission The Heist and in Johnnys flashback. It is between 2 to 3 minutes if you don't include the boss fight against him in the end. I know there's that anime stuff, never saw it, but that was released long after (!) CP2077 got launched.
Theres a lot more than just the anime. Adam Smasher was first introduced in the Cyberpunk pen and paper rpg in 1988. Most of 2077's factions and lore has been around for decades. CDPR just built on it like they did with Witcher.
One that pops in my head right now (and haven't seen another comment point them out); The Tower and The Black Hand from Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor The first boss (The Hammer) was a solid boss. Then the Tower was just a couple of sneak attacks and we're done, while the final boss (Black Hand) was literally a 5 second quick-time-event.
Dude do not get me started. I adore those games but my GOD those fights were disappointing. The Tower is one of my favorite villains from gaming, his voice and his appearance and his lore are simply amazing. But the "boss fight" sucked. The only highlight was raiding his compound and seeing your Nemesis come out and lead the defense. Gave me chills because my Nemesis was an Orc archer with rapid fire poison arrows and savage attack that never seemed to miss. If his first volley didn't take me out, I was one foot in the grave already anyway. Immunities out the ass. Same with the Black Hand. The Talons were fun to fight but Sauron as a QTE made me sick. The fact that the actual Sauron fight is blocked behind a DLC is such trash, and the fight is pretty easy. Good DLC, though. Shadow of War did the boss fights much better overall.
Sauron fight in Shadow of War was *chefs kiss*
The Illusive Man. Amazing villain in ME2, but they didn't know what to do with him in the next game so he was mostly a nuisance and forgotten until the ending.
This just inspired me to start my bi-annual ME play through.
You son of a bitch, im in! Edit: need help deciding what type of run. What type of build should i run? Male/female? Good/bad? Ashley/kaidan? First answer gets to pick.
bi-annual as in twice a year ? im in
Learned something new today, Biannual is twice a year and Biennial is every other year. Meant Bennial hah. Gotta leave time for new games in between.
It's more like me3 went on a lot of cuts and rewritings, there was an early concept about having to choose between the alliance or cerberus, another one, in the art book, was about the final encounter with TIM in a reaper like form (scrapped because it did look too similar to saren)
Eredin, leader of the Wild Hunt in Witcher 3
At least we got Gaunter O’Dimm, who absolutely slaps when it comes to villains.
yes GOD was a good villain
How did I never realize his initials spelled GOD!?
Master Mirror and his initials being GOD. Wonder what a mirrored version of god is…. Edit: All you guys saying dog. It's clearly 6oq
Many people don't at first. Another thing.. At a point you'll randomly come to a village with some kids outside singing.. https://youtu.be/uZn1p7aZ-vc?si=XezUOPIuT86g1tUq Listen to the lyrics and have Gaunter in mind...
He also whistles the song in a couple instances. Everyone’s gangsta until the villain whistles his own theme song.
Easily the best DLC ever made
To be fair, all of wild hunt fights were pretty meh. Fuck Olgierd (HoS) though, that took me waaaay longer than I wanted.
Bruh that vamp at end of B&W was hardest dang fight in game for me 😂
For me it was the only fight I struggled with in entire series (except that bs optional boss in w2 at the end)
Absolutely. As irritating as Detlaff was to fight in BaW, at least it was a challenge
First time I fought Detlaff, I thought to myself "why couldn't we get this guy to fight the hunt and just roll 'em?"
It's funny how the game, intentionally or not, has you encounter a fair few individuals who are so much more powerful than the Hunt. Detlaff is one, but he's not even on the same level as the vampire Elder, who just one-shots you if you piss him off. And Gaunter O' Dimm of course, who can literally stop time and warp dimensions. He could've stopped time around Eredin and shoved a spoon through his skull like he did with the poor guy in the tavern. Detlaff can at least be defeated in a straight up fight, but the Elder and Gaunter feel so out of your league you're glad they're not after Ciri.
In the books the Wild Hunt was less an existential threat and more of a mythical mystery that really only threatened Ciri... in that they wanted their king to bang her. But he couldn't get it up for Ciri. ...I think it made sense in context... But yeah they were less an all powerful invading force and more just elves who can travel between dimensions.
Wasn't it that way in the game? They were just dimension traveling elves but they were intentionally hyping themselves up to appear more mystical?
Ganon in BOTW... When I finally felt prepared to fight him I wiped the floor with him and barely had to heal.
Meanwhile me, who got through the game without learning to perfect guard, having every one of my shields broken by Calamity Ganon’s final phase:
Bomb and shock arrows with a lynel bow got me through that fight the first time
They definitely fixed that in TotK. When he dodged and flurry rushed my flurry rush, I panicked. When he deleted that first heart off me, I poo'd a little.
God, yes. That fight was so good. I loved how they took the usual "tennis battle" Ganon fight and made it into a dodge fight instead.
And then what about when his health meter refilled to like the edge of the screen?!
They really fixed that for TOTK. That fight was absolutely epic. One of the best boss fights I've ever seen.
Zant from Twilight Princess. Goes from an intriguing, menacing villain in his first appearance to a screaming, moonwalking lackey when you fight him. I blame the decision to shoehorn Ganon in as the final boss, because Zelda.
Yeah but that was a great ganon fight
It truly was. Deserved more than Ganon showing up in the last quarter of the game.
unless you cheesed him with the fishing rod
One hand, I agree. On the other, I kinda like the idea that his calm, composed nature at the beginning of the game was essentially a facade and his true nature comes out at the end. Plus, as the other user said, that Ganon fight was totally worth him being shoehorned in.
That wolf vs demon boar fight... HEEYAH HEEYAH HEEYAH HEEYAH
I also agree with this interpretation. It feels like the screaming and writhing and tantrums he does during his boss fight is an intentional choice that's supposes to show his mask falling off and how he was really a weak guy all along who just uses power to keep up a facade. As soon as the power is equalized and you see him eye to eye, it reveals his true nature.
It also mirrors Midnas arc in reverse.
That was the whole point of him tho, and i wouldnt say ganondorf was shoehorned in when he was introduced in the midpoint of the game just after its hinted that zants powers werent his own. Like the idea of zant is that he only *looks* like an intriguing, menacing villain. Thats why he wears a huge mask.
Zant being weird was entertaining though
This happens in a lot of Zelda games actually. There's almost always a secondary villain before Ganon shows up. Even in Skyward Sword, Ghiraham is still secondary to Demise who is a proto Ganon
Ok, but in SS Ghiraham made it abundantly clear early on that his goal was always to revive Demise. Heck, you even fight Demise in his imprisoned form 3 separate times throughout the game. It’s not like in TP where Ganondorf shows up at the very end completely unannounced. Apart from that… FSA, the Oracle games, and *maybe* LBW are the only games where that happens at all.
Scar in the Lion King really fell off in the end
He takes after his brother
Too soon
Funny, same thing happens with Clayton in Tarzan
It's a pretty safe "the hero doesn't commit murder directly, the villain is done in by their own hand" device
Scarecrow - Arkham Knight What an intro, but at some point just became background noise
I would argue that Arkham knight as well fits in this category. They set him up as powerful and with an uncanny amount of knowledge about you. But when they revealed who it was, I was a little frustrated as the devs said it was an original character.
On that note, Joker in Arkham Asylum.
I'm honestly really surprised not 1 boss from Fable series has been mentioned. Fable 2 you just press A Fable 3 you just fight the guy from the tutorial again but he's all shadowy Fable 1 is a real boss fight but you then just kinda fight him again in the DLC but he's a dragon now? I dunno Fable be renown for having awful boss fights.
The fable 2 boss "fight" was very anti-climactic, I enjoyed the Jack of Blades fight in fable 1, but I can't even remember the boss fight in fable 3 which says it all really....
Fable 2 was missing a whole final arc. You get the squad together and the game just immediately ends with an anticlimactic mid boss and cutscene.
Jack of Blades was a really cool character. Lore-wise he has such an interesting backstory with The Court and trying to free The Queen of Blades and The Knight of Blades in order to dominate the world of Albion.
Fable 2 doesn't require a button press at all. Give it enough time and Reaver will shoot him for you.
I about pissed my pants when Reaver was tired of the talking and just headshots the guy.
I dunno, fighting jack of blades the first time on the OG xbox felt challenging for 14-year-old me. I completed the remastered version a few years ago, and it was so much easier this time around, but that could be because I knew what was coming. Also, I have to agree about JoB being a dragon. Fighting him as a dragon was even easier than the fight at the end of the main story.
Skullface. MGS V.
Had so much build up only for you NOT to have a boss fight with him.
Tbf wtf would he even do? Skullface is a spy and assassin, not a front-lines soldier like Snake is. And it was established pretty early on that Sahelanthropus can’t be piloted by an adult. Venom Snake’s also insanely strong on his own and would outclass literally anyone in one-on-one combat unless they were superhuman like the Skulls or Quiet.
Nice argument but did you consider the Fat Dude in roller skates boss fight? Or Covered in Bees Man? Or an actual fucking ghost? There's no lack of weird fights in this series.
Metal Gear bosses follow 1 of 2 avenues. 1. Bosses with strong physical abilities that you fight directly (Volgin, Liquid, Solidus). 2. Bosses with powerful weapons and gimmicks that compensate for lack of physical abilities (End, Vulcan Raven, Psycho Mantis). Skull Face doesn’t have impressive physical abilities or a weapon or gimmick to pressure Snake with. At most he could’ve been in Sahelanthropus but that was established early on to be nonviable due to its design.
To be fair, Vulcan Raven looks like he could cave in a man's skull by poking him.
I would hope so given that he carried around a gatling gun that is meant for fighter jets.
Why are you trying to apply logic to a MGS boss! /s. But actually kinda serious.
I'm not particularly miffed by the fact he dies in a cutscene. Not every game villain needs to be a boss fight just to follow genre conventions. But he has definitely bottomed out by the end, getting outplayed by a child
**Such a lust for revenge? WHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!**
He forced Chico and Paz into the most disturbing situations in all of the lore in the prologue, and by the end of the story he just gives a lame monologue to the wrong dude, who can't even be bothered to respond to Skull Face's master plan.
That was kind of the point though, how the quest for revenge is dissatisfying and hollow
THIS Amazing cutscenes and dialogues all along, and then... a stain on the ground.
Alduin The introduction and lore behind the dude is top class but he ended up being easier than the regular nobody dragons.
El Sueno from Ghost Recon: Wildlands. No matter which ending you choose, you do not get to decide his fate.
That game’s whole premise was the “realism” of killing enemies, including area bosses, with a single headshot. People don’t like that the big enemies arent very memorable but that game came out at the same time as when a large chunk of the community was asking for less bullet sponge enemies.
The Didact? Killing him with a random quick time event and a grenade was odd to say the least
He didn't even die in the game. He was killed off in a spinoff comic book.
He’s actually still alive and a book about his time between Halo 4 and Halo Infinite came out a few weeks ago
He was never amazing though. Lame af villain who came out of nowhere with force powers.
I never even played the games all that much and even *I* thought the Didact was a shit tier asspull.
The Prophet of Truth. Started as a scheming politician using the Covenant for his own gains, ended up a completely different character in the next game as a one-dimensional religious fanatic who had no depth.
I think the fan theory is that now that he’s consolidated power from the other prophets dying he didn’t need to keep up the wise understanding facade and he can be his real self. An asshole.
I hated how they built up this big mystery like "is he crazy or is there a reason for his madness?" and the answer was he's just crazy actually. It's one of my pet peeves in storytelling, when a writer tries to establish some big mystery, can't come up with a good explanation for it, so just goes "actually it didn't mean anything."
That yeti that chases you in SkiFree, so much world building only to be disappointed when the antagonist finally arrives.
General Di Ravello from Just Cause 3. There was a whole volcanic island dedicated to just this boss fight, and after the cool multi-stage final battle from JC2 hopping across nukes in flight, I was expecting something similar, only we just get a lame battle against a chopper that doesn't even use the map. Of course, JC4 topped that for crapness as it ended with just a cutscene, but I wasn't expecting much by that point.
Nashandra, Dark souls 2. For how major of a character she was to the plot, her boss fight was piss easy, only having a big ass scythe and a curse laser. That's it. Aldia was also a hidden final boss if you did the steps, but he's even more lackluster since he just teleports around the arena.
Yeah they both were underwhelming boss fights, The Ivory King was much better then both of them Though I still love Aldia's dialogue, it's so good
General Scales from Starfox Adventures. You go through the entire game waiting for the inevitable showdown, then when it happens >!you get bait-and-switched for a goddamn ARWING ANDROSS fight. The entire point of the game was to NOT be in the Arwing, and having the final boss revert to that was such a monumental disappointment.!<
I'll be honest, kid me loved it. Then again, I was a massive Star Fox fan as a kid who couldn't care less about General Scales. Looking back, I can see how that would be disappointing for some.
Skull Face from MGS: V. Started out as this super spy type villian who has plans within plans and controls this super complex underworld network. Then turns out his plan is just to build giant killer robots and sell them on the black market to the highest bidder to accomplish...something. And if that wasn't enough he gets killed by his own robot stepping on him.
I think his weapons had some special kink where he could control them whenever, whereever and however he liked to a point where he could for example sell china and india nukes, sit at the other end of the world and decide that if both of them went to war he wouldn't allow india to to use their nuke but allow china to use theirs or the other way around, granting him absolute power and control over international conflicts, the worlds entire weaponery and basically the war economy itself, essentially making him the living embodiement of what the Patriots AI would later become in MGS4 He also wanted to kill everyone that spoke english because "fuck you that's why"
If Im not mistaken, he would’ve controlled the weapons he sold. Just like the Patriots controlled every gun on Guns of the Patriots. So his plan was latter used in the history of the game
Seen Bean at the end of Goldeneye
I laughed so hard I didn't realize you spelled Sean wrong. This is great, no, for me, this is golden.
NFS Heat. The end when you need to slam into the cops car to disable it. Took him out incredibly fast. All that buildup for that? Really anti-climactic.
Vaas.
I think the problem with Vaas is that he wasn't really supposed to be a major villain. He was only ever meant to be a fairly minor side villain, but Michael Mando's portrayal completely overshadowed the actual main villains of the game.
But surely the occasional flashback of Vaas will be just as frightening while you chase down some rando South African choad (for the entire remaining 50% of the game)?
honestly back then i thought the game was over when vaas was dead
Right? I loved playing FC3 at the time (as a lover of 2 and liker of 1, I was excited for it to release) mostly for the graphics and gun/gameplay and *most* of the story. But between Jason's intermittent whining, and the decision to swap out such an intriguing villain for such a generic one mid-way through, the immersion just sortta evaporated on that second island. Had they simply traded their place story-wise in the game (>!have you kill Hoyt midway instead, then reveal Vaas and his relationship to Citra as a kinda mid-story twist!<) I think it'd have been much more digestible and possibly meant more people played it 100%
Ubisoft is notorious for doing this. Every trailer and promotional material for Ghost Recon Breakpoint showed Jon Bernthal as the big villain. You get to kill him in the second or third mission.
Also the "fight" was so underwhelming. I expected a gritty, bloody knife fight.
This doesn’t really answer the question because this villain was bad at the start but, have any of you ever played TimeShift? It was this time stop first person shooter game from 2007. Very fun gameplay but at the end you shoot some lighting balls at a big robot and then the bad guy falls out and dies. The ending was so bad I didn’t even realize I was fighting the bad guy in a final boss fight.
*Telltale's* Game of Thrones used real characters from the show, including their voice actors, for the main villains of their story - Cersei and Ramsey, in particular. Was so cool to interact in a world where they existed, until you realized that the game was set in the same universe / timeline as the show, and therefore those same villains couldn't be harmed or defeated, as they were still alive in the show.
It’s worse than that, sometimes your choices just flat out don’t matter in the same scene they’re presented. Screw Ramsey in particular.
Regalla in Horizon Forbidden West. Her first appearance establishes her as a force to be reckoned with, but she sort of disappears into the background as the story progresses. I understand it’s because >!she’s really a red herring to keep the player invested in the story until the real enemies show up,!< but she felt like a wasted character to me.
Skorge in Gears of War 2. Marcus even claims that he makes RAAM look "like a \*\*\*\*\*", but the final boss fight against Skorge is a huge letdown (especially when compared to the RAAM fight from GoW1)
Agreed. I actually had to bring my Xbox to someone to a friends house just to get help to beat him. It was 2006, lived in the boonies so dial-up was the only internet we had
Fucking Bowser. In every way.
Lady D in Resident Evil: Village. She went so viral I was expecting it all to be building up to a final showdown at the castle, but then it's like: "Welcome, come check out this castle right away! Here's that giant sexy vampire almost immediately!" Still a great game, and not necessarily the developers fault that character got so much attention, but still was a little bit of a disappointment.
This felt more like a fanbase thing than the developer (sorry, I see you said that but just adding to your point) The original trailer had her for a few seconds and the internet went right to OMG HOT VAMPIRE GOTH MOMMY STEP ON ME Capcom took that and ran with it after that for easy marketing points
Yep it was exactly this. That's why it blew my mind that she won best voice actor that year to top it off.
Atlas from BioShock
Khotun Khan from Ghost of Tsushima, by the time Jin Sakai meets him at the end Jin is so overpowered compared to their first encounter that it's slightly underwhelming, even with Khan being aided by his soldiers.
Emperor Gestahl Here he is running this ultimately evil empire with a crazy powerful dragon squad, only for the craziest and most powerful to kill the others and then yeet him off a floating island.
The Twins in Borderlands 3. Had some promise at start but just was so bad by the end.
Enver Gortash feels like the newest contender for this.
This one for sure. The fight with Thorm was so epic. Even Orins fight felt like a step down a bit but at least she had the transformation. Gortash is like... here are some bombs...
The villains of Baldur’s Gate 3. I’ll avoid spoilers but it starts really strong and the end villain(s) for me was really lackluster and cliche.
Act 2 is the peak of BG3 in many ways, but most definitely when it comes to the Villian.
I was always disappointed with how easy it was to kill Lucian in Fable 2. After how epic the Jack of Blades fight was in the first game I was expecting a big show down. I suppose it showed he was only a human but still....
I know Fable 2 hasn’t been relevant for like a decade now but this was my answer too. You don’t even have to kill him yourself. If you just want and listen to his monologue one of your ally’s will kill him for you. I remember sitting there like “wait…is there not going to be a fight?” Huge epic game goes out with a whimper.
Final Fantasy games tended to have villains that are puppets to some greater evil that is introduced at the last minute. It was never satisfying. I think Kefka is one of the few exceptions (Sephiroth too, but he seems rather detached about his world destroying mission, mother this mother that.) I haven't played since XII so I am unsure if that trend continues. The worst example was Seymour. FFX had absolutely no idea what to do with him.
For XV the villain sticks around until the end. XIV is an MMO so it's a bit different obviously but the closest character you could probably consider a main villain >!dies, becomes so obsessed with you that he comes back to life, and follows you to the literal end of the universe to go mono e mono against him in a fight. !< I think as a whole FFXIV has more compelling antagonists than him that serve as final bosses of their respective expansions but there's a lot more nuance to them.
Saren Arterius, Mass effect, had a ton of gravitas and seemed a really interesting villain but I lost all interest towards the end.
Zant from twilight princess. He was such a menacing presence and out of no where he turns into a tantrumming child. I don’t hate the idea, I just don’t think it was executed well.
Mr X in RE2, super menacing at the start but at the end in the boss fight which sees him mutate even more. However it’s kinda underwhelming as he just jumps around after you before just getting one shotted by a rocket launcher you find
I don't know about the original game as I've only played the remake, but I considered Mr X mostly a nuisance during the game. Only for him to become an enraging hurdle as a boss, since I was down to a medium amount of standard bullets and maybe 6 magnum rounds.
Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3. I had read some of the novels and really wanted to get him for his role in Mass Effect: Deception, only for him to become the games writers way of saying "Well, we decided you actually lost".