The Problem With Bosses in Fire Emblem
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- Bosses are a near ubiquitous part of Fire Emblem maps, but they aren't always the most interesting. I talk about why I don't love a lot FE bosses, how the series has done bosses well in some instances, and why I think it's ok that Fire Emblem bosses aren't always the most exciting.
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Sally Forth - roanch
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Footage used
-Chapter 13 from @akirasou Oops All Archers LTC
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the Zephia one is especially good, because the mechanic is something you're intimately familiar with long before the map, because it was stolen from YOU
Honestly best way to have bosses is to implement them into story.
A necromancer on field getting defeated should erase his summons if he's boss or not.
Defeating the commander early should drop the moral of the army. 3 houses almost got this right with the class battles. But it should be taking out edegard demitri or reverse bow man gives your army up to aol stats and their army a drop
A mercenary army attacking you from behind should flee when the enemy leader that paid for their swords is slain meaning they won't get paid as mercs won't waste time on a fight for nothing
Things like this would go a long way to make fire emblem more engaging
@@ivanbluecool don't know if youtube deleted my comment or not, but Vestaria Saga does this quite often with Chapter 11 of the 1st game and Chapter 17 of the 2nd game having like...5+ of these type of minibosses that can be removed with other map events.
All of these are great suggestions! What’s so funny is that the closest we get to this in FE are through the FE Warriors games, lol. “Morale” affects each army’s effectiveness/resilience and is directly tied to in-battle events. It’s only scratching the surface of your comment - but funny that it’s at least been a little explored in the series through a side game. (I’ll note that it’s much easier to implement it there compared to base FE, though).
@@JoeSmith-db4rq There's a romhack called Nameless Heroes iirc that has a map where enemies get buffed after the boss gives a speech and they receive +10 atk/def (or something like that).
Even back in FE4 and FE5 you could kill certain (mini)bosses to disable their leadership stars or make certain enemies leave the map.
3H did something similar where killing Myson in AM endgame made the Agarthans flee while defeating a certain Agarthan in VW endgame made demonic beast stop spawning.
Vestaria Saga (made by FEs original creator in his spare time) is pretty much nothing but this. From realistic (defeat a gold envoy to make the mercenaries leave since their pay is ruined, capture a foodhouse to stop nonstop reinforcements) to fantastic (kill this demon who is buffing the army).
@@ivanbluecool ... say that again
_Gaiden_ and _Echoes_ also do the first point you mention with their Cantors; if you kill them, all the monsters they spawned die with them.
Morale has also been implemented in a sort of way with the Authority stat in some games. In FE4, FE5, and FE10, some bosses (and even some non-boss generic Commanders in FE4) have Authority, which buffs the Hit and Avo rates of all other enemies around them in FE4, or all enemies period in FE5 and FE10. FE5 is particularly nasty with one of its mini-bosses, Saias, who has a whopping 10 Authority stars, giving every enemy +30 to both rates as long as he's present. He's nutty.
Miklan from 3 houses is one of my favorites. He introduces monster mechanics which are fun(before they get spammed to death) and new. If you have homeboy Sylvain in the party its pretty impactful on an emotional level since you are literally here to kill a student's brother. His transformation itself is a major story moment both for what it means about the church and for setting up later transformations.
Also shoutout for the death knight. He was challenging enough statwise to be a fun optional boss. The extra seals are a good reward for winning but not to good to pass up on.
I'm shocked by the lack of sacred stones in this video. One of the reasons it's my favorite FE is that a lot of bosses in it have much more characterization than the usual for the series. I don't see myself forgetting Valter or Orson anytime soon...
Well there are two Sacred Stones bosses in the video haha. But yeah, there are a ton of bosses I could have picked as examples of bosses made interesting by characterization/narrative. Caellach is another great one from fe8.
particularly if you give joshua a strike at him@@actuallizard
Boss conversations are a great way for characterization and Tellius is really good at it with some I remember being Homasa having dialogue with not just Ike, but Zihark and Stefan too since they're all sword infantry. Numida also has battle convos with everyone from Daein since he occupied their country.
I remember my first time playing FE6 and being surprised that Bors had a conversation with Debias and Leygance (with Barth and Wendy also having dialogue with the latter).
An otherwise boring boss can be made engaging with battle conversations and I like that ROMhacks have been doing a good job with this. DLATMOL and Shackled Power are two romhacks that have a large amount for your side characters
Orson being a turncoat was interesting
The dark twist when they make U realize Monica was basically a corspe used as a puppet to satisfy his madness was creepy but great
Also Valter and Caellach where great
Only thing is that I wish they had given Morva some more background with Myrrh
@@A_Person_64 witch hack is DLATMOL?
I think the Death Knight works for me purely through raw presence. The first time he shows up you see that there's a guy called capital D capital K Death Knight and he looks like THAT. & then he fully just ignores his orders to go attack you and just stands there extremely menacingly in the middle of the map. And then he wrecks your entire shit from any given range if you actually try to fight him
did he never talk about Death Knight? I thought for sure D.K. was gonna make the cut, because of that presence; because of fighting him was optional; because you can get his rewards in other ways, giving the player a choice
The music really ties the Death Knight together. With divine pulse you're likely to at least try to fight him, and The Verge of Death spinning up fits perfectly for how bad an idea that is. It's like the game's going "Oh god, oh GOD, I hope you know what you're doing!!"
lmao can't believe you made the Spongebob reference work
Except that its actually pretty easy to beat him on his first map, which is kind of the issue. Cause if you beat him once he immediately loses all the threat he formerly head. He's a Wish Black Knight.
@@Shazam1998 Maybe I just suck at the game but that is just not true whatsoever, especially on first playthrough
Chapter concept: player’s army is marching on the enemy. Enemy boss (let’s say the lord of a city) requests reinforcements, but they’re only given new, untrained recruits. While the boss’ main army is still on guard, we see dialogue for the boss telling the young recruits to guard certain areas that are out of the path of the player’s main objective of seizing the throne (such as defending villages off the main path). If you get to the boss without killing those low level enemies, he thanks you and may even surrender without fighting. If you do attack them though (like almost any blind player would), then he goes into a frenzy and becomes very difficult to take down. This can be balanced as well by putting the new enemy recruits by villages with important items - are you willing to kill them to get those rewards if it means fighting a much more difficult boss?
Very weird to not see the fates siblings+dragon veins in this video, ch 10 Takumi in conquest and Camilla in birthright are perfect examples of a lot of the points you make here
Genealogy frequently employed the multiple-bosses approach, with one moving and the other staying back to guard the objective, and those are some of the most memorable encounters in the game. Eldigan in Chapter 3, Travant in chapter 9, Ishtar and the pegasus trio in the finale...
Really wish we got more staff-centered bosses in FE. Iago from Conquest’s 26 was really memorable, trying to time my movements to his staff cycles
Fully agree, he was interesting. Saias in Thracia Chapter 17A is the only similar one, and there isn't much you can do about his Sleep without a Restore staff due to infinite range.
There's a boss from a romhack named Shackled Power that does something similar.
Every turn he will use two staves (iirc his range isnt big) and before you fight him, you have to defeat his commanders around the map (and also a bandit miniboss for a weapon/item).
However, once you engage him proper, you want to kill him fast because his tome halves damage taken
Having two bosses, one who moves and one who guards the throne on a larger map, is also a great way to get around the 'seize' problem. I think FE5 chapter 22, the Reinhardt map, is a great example of this. Leadership stars are also a great mechanic. The enemy's morale drops once you defeat the boss in that case.
I’d like to see expansion on this mechanic. Reinforcements on a map where the boss moves can be unlimited but once you beat the boss, no more reinforcements. I’ve seen some route enemy chapters where enemies just spawn uncontrollably and it’s just not fun. Mostly looking at the child recruitment maps on fates for example.
One of Engage's greatest successes is certainly how it made bosses engaging to fight
Having a high-stat, Emblem wielding, aggressive boss with multiple health bars is a lot more interesting than yet another paladin / general on a throne
was that pun intentional or
@@waitingfortheequinnox it was :p
Engage ch 17 is one of the greatest in all of FE.
@@matex2207 Unironically Engage has most of my favourite chapters in the series now. Chapter 11 too.
I really liked Takumi in Fire Emblem Conquest. As an archer he does all sorts of grand attacks that force you to really think about how you position yourself to survive them while also dealing with the monsters closing in on your army. It makes it very satisfying when you can finally close in on him with melee units.
Takumi works not just for presentation, but for how the field attacks and the suicide bomb zombies make it feel like you're engaged with him for the entire map. He's not just sitting there waiting for you to actually get to him to start the actual boss fight, he's attacking you right from the start.
I think I've got an idea for the "make Camus leave the size point" have him lock the space with some sortbof physical or magic lock which's key is droppable in his inventory. It effectively makes it a kill/recruit boss chapter while still somewhat hiding the fact that he can't be recruited.
22:08 Honestly, the only complaint I have about the Black knight fight is that you can't save or change your skills before fighting him.
If chapter 27 was divided in two parts, like Daybreak, or at least they allowed you to apply the Resolve you just got on that map, this fight would not have received nearly as much criticism as it does.
But I remember one UA-camr that put the calculations into a spreadsheet and basically proved the fight is 100% winnable with Mist and you only lose without her if you really screw up (like ending your turn without healing Ike, as you did in the video above).
Another thing I’m not a fan of is that you’re on a turn limit and it’s luck base. Trying to get Ike to proc Aether is frustrating. And if you’re not fast enough Nasir kills steal The Black Knight which makes the whole story of Ike getting vengeance anticlimactic.
Luckily Radiant Dawn redeems it and made it far better.
@@jasonthai1005I found the video I was talking about! The title is "Black Knight Fight Skills Guide! - (Part 1)"
The sequel where he goes into more details is "MORE Black Knight Fight Skills Guide! - (Part 2)"
The guy uses spread sheets to calculate success rates against the Black Knight. But if you have Mist, just top Ike off every turn and you can't lose.
I always have Mist in the fight with magical swords, she can fend off for herself and easily dispatch the enemy reinforcements by herself and barely get hit.
I think there was only one playthrough where I did not manage to kill the BK in time because I got really RNG screwed during that playthrough, but 9 times out of 10, I manage to beat the guy.
@@TwilightWolf032 I wouldn't say it is ever 100%. even with the healing and max stats, the BK can kill you in 2 attacks if Luna is involved, so you can't attack with every possible opportunity each turn and be safe, since you either need to heal before ike attacks which means he gets hit twice in a row for BK turn, or after he attacks which means he gets hit twice in a row from previous BK turn.
@@mistriousfrog You can attack from afar during your turn, so there's no reason to fear 2 Lunas in a row. As long as Ike has 1 HP above the damage Luna can deal, you're golden. If Mist is healing him every turn, you win.
Now, if you want to be extra careful you can just give Ike a Nihil scroll, this is the only fight in the entire game where it's useful, and then you can give him Aether afterwards (or Resolve + Wrath for Ashnard).
You can just eliminated the RNG from this fight with mist.
The black knight fight being the way it is is absolutely perfect in my opinion exactly because it is a matter of luck to kill him, and you don’t have any preparation before hand.
It would be intensely less cool if any player who played through PoR could always rig up a way to beat the black knight instead of most of them not being able to within the time limit.
It gives him greater presence, and a more mythical status, especially since he has possessed both in the game up to this point
The various proposed map conditions reminded me of an idea I had inspired by Undertale of all things.
"Break the army's Morale to rout them!"
You could do this by taking out their commander, or inflicting massive unit losses. You could also do this by certain actions, like maybe cutting off an escape route or revealing their leader's treachery. On the other hand, the enmy's morale would increase as the map went on, potentially leading to them holding strong even after their commander's death. The commander would also have abilities to bolster their army's morale which might have ways to be countered - for instance, a greedy dragon might offer gold to their lackeys; maybe you offer more gold, or steal gold from the dragon.
I like the idea of break bars in the later game but wish it was a bit more tuned down. Especially if you do over the damage amount the next bar should be half as they just took a big blow.
Game can show the bosses who are more wild charge at you while the coward ones hide and form up their army. It would allow for more dynamic play of enemies and actually paying attention to the story and seeing if they will fight you or not
Example. Two enemy armies. Left side the leader and his group are brigands and will rush you immediately. Right side are knights who will wait for you to attack instead and hold position. This can give players who pay attention more knowledge while those who don't and attack the knights get rushed by both armies. Engage and fates have this in early game where some enemies hold the line and others rush you without remorse and I'd love to see more of it.
Or mini fetch quests if you get to the leader and pay them off to stop fighting you if you saved money to make maps easier. Add extra value in saving gold
Yeah, it really pisses me off when a coward bypasses the entire frontlines to attack you, then triggers a dialogue where they lament they have to fight and wish they could just run away.
The coward boss should be the last to move, while the bloodthirsty one should be the first.
@@TwilightWolf032 it would add a lot of character to the enemies without needing much dialogue
Iago hans and Zola for example. Hans is crazy. He'll rush us. Iago is smart. He'll summon and summon while debuffing us. Zola would hide or run while he calls forces.
@@ivanbluecool Izuka does this in FE10.
He's a summoner and a coward who sees himself above all of humanity for his "genius," so his fighting style is just teleporting around the arena and summoning all the Laguz he distorted with his drugs to do the dirty work for him.
It's pretty in character for him, and I love finally putting an end to his arrogance with Elincia, the exact opposite of his character!
Plus, this map is great for getting Lucia to catch up to speed if you're planning to bring her to the tower, the Laguz give a crapton of EXP and you can bank on her support with Elincia and the bushes to dodge everything.
@@TwilightWolf032 that and more area traps or buffs like trees and such so harder modes can use them to their benefit. Like a secret patch hidden by the camera that can help you be a dodge king.
That and skipping enemy spawn if the leader gets taken out
100% agree with personality integration -
The one thing I’ll say is that the multiple health bars in 3H/Engage is definitely purposeful. With your proposal, what’s the different with a boss having 2 health bars of 40HP or 1 bar with 80HP? Breaking it into separate health bars prevents you from just sweeping with 1 broken unit - you have to have additional strong units if you want to take them out in a single player phase. It also forces you to commit more resources to handling them which forces you to have better resource management. I think from a gameplay perspective it works exactly as intended - but I agree that the story integration for that gameplay isn’t great
I agree with all your points here. For some additional points, I like how Thracia handles bosses not just for Leadership Stars (which gives incentive to taking out commanders even in forced timer maps, and adds to the lore), but also the capture system. Many FE games have sympathetic bosses but Thracia is the only one where they can be taken alive instead of killed, combining gameplay challenge with story satisfaction. Capturing Gomez makes an already horrifying fight even worse (he has 19 Con, you need to get a lot of Con levels to do it) but it rewards you with a less bittersweet resolution to the chapter's plot. I'd imagine nearly everyone would try to capture Mustafa in Awakening if that was an option.
Boss conversations are fun, but it sucks when characters you expect to have dialogue don't. I will never stop being mad at the Nohrian Royals not having boss dialogue with Garon in Fates Conquest.
I still think Abyme is a cool boss from a lore stand point, and looking at info from the manga. Girl survives a literal fatal encounter, ditches her armor, goes full offense, and attempts to fight again on Engage's boat map. She survived a Loadstar Rush in the manga, and it barely did anything to her. Purely from that alone, I think she's cool lol
She's very cool in the manga for sure. I like her well enough in the game too, at the least her design is pretty cool!
It's a shame that a lot of people assume she died in Chapter 3 and forget about her, and don't realize the Berserker boss in Chapter 18 is the same character.
@@BigKlingy Absolutely true. Atleast my playable bosses mod rectifies this in a way lol
Often times the biggest challenge of a boss is ‘how do I give a full level of EXP to a unit who’s falling behind and wants a boost, but has no business beating this dude by themself?’
Fire Emblem has defnitely gotten better about bosses, arguably since FE12. There's still the occasional pain in the ass, but the days of "Spend 5 turns attacking a dude in a throne hoping they don't crit you" from FE5 and 6 are thankfully gone. The addition of multiple health bars in 3H and especially Engage also helps.
It's been a recent discovery, but Lunatic Nealucci in Engage has been a big part of why I've enjoyed replaying that game.
Nearly INSTANTLY you're asked to deal with a nontraditional threat that really shapes the ending of that map.
As someone who played a lot of 3H maddening when it was new, it's night and day how much I enjoy these two early games.
!FE:TMGC is a fan game I've sunk my teeth into and I think its approach to introducing sub/main bosses after certain conditions (ex: a boss that appears after crossing the map for a talk convo) has been delightfully creative.
Nelucce you mean?
I was wondering when and why the old man raven from FE10 got added to Engage via DLC.
I was actually thinking bosses fill out the lore in Fire Emblem the same way items do for Elden Ring. Sure not every boss is a lore dump just like not every item, but there are such key ones that reveal things about the world, like the Bandits in PoR. Of course the key bosses like Valter in SS and Lekain in RD you want to fight with as many people as possible to see the lore.
I feel like you miss the point if you are looking for the challenge of Elden Ring bosses from FE Bosses rather than the world building which is were they truly compare.
Insys uses a very transparent dialectic in their game development.
You bring a solid point. Most bosses are not memorable and that is not a bad thing. The only exception is when the boss has some importance to the story. Here are some ideas for interesting boss fights for gba era.
1. A noble paladin or great knight sitting on the castle. He has a Boots which he will immediately consume. When the player comes within a certain tile range. The boss will attack the player, and use Canto to come back to the castle. This will force the player to approach the castle carefully or bait the boss out and kill him outside the castle.
2. A cunning summoner boss sitting on the throne. He has the ability to summon three phantoms every turn. The summoner will summon the phantoms during enemy phase. Players will have to bring additional units to kill the phantoms.
3. A proud general standing his ground on the plains in the early game. He has a Spear and multiple elixirs. The player must either use their thief to steal the elixirs or bring him to low health multiple times to kill him. Of course, bringing a mage works to which is why I recommend giving the general some extra resistance.
4. Two beautiful Valkyrie sisters of nobility charging the player with their paladins. The sisters are covered from the front and sides by paladins. One sister has healing staves(preferably Fortify). The other has staves that inflict status conditions. The player will have to either attack from the rear or focus on one side and break through to the sisters.
5. A cowardly bishop that relies on his followers for battle. This battle will take place on the shore. There will be islands that only have forts on it. These forts will spawn fighters and mercenaries. The Bishop will be equipped with a standard light tome, but will have a rescue staff with infinite uses. Each turn the bishop will bring one fighter or merc to him. The player must either get to him as quickly as possible or use their flyers to sit on the fort so that no more reinforcements will spawn.
Berwick Saga has a lot of maps structured like "complete the objectives, then retreat". You can stick around longer to get more loot but if you exceed the time limit "overwhelming enemy reinforcements show up" and you fail. This is a good place to stick optional bosses near the dwindling turn limit. They also do the Black Knight thing a lot where boss is obstacle not enemy.
S/O to the chapter 9 black knights for being the scariest enemies in the game
Bosses are a victim of permadeath.
You just can't have a SF2 zalbard that effectively move twice per turn and wither attaxk for so much damage it oneshot 80% of your army, or cast a massive aoe spell in fire emblem. It would kneecap your army for the rest of the playtrough.
Turn based games with a grid need bosses that you just can't "manage" in order to work, otherwise they just become either a minor bump or a chore.
100% this. Shining Force combat isn't that much more complicated than FE, but bosses are allowed to do cool shit and break the rules because it's not just a reset fiesta when they do so.
Almost every boss in the SMT Devil Survivor games breaks the rules of the game in crazy ways. Sure, they can feel frustrating at times, but it allows for victories where you barely make it by the skin of your teeth... Where in FE that means you've just ended your run because you lost half your army. Oops.
One of my favorite bosses is actually ike in 3-13 you will basically never beat him especially on a first playthrough but that also means that you have to actually play the defense map. The map is also really good at encouraging you to push forward to take out the laguz before they overwhelm you so the sudden movement of ike and the greil mercanries a genuine terror especially on first playthroughs. In general I also really like the idea of having multiple factions you play as almost discouraging you from snowballing one side since if the fight against it becomes very difficult if you do so.
Been a hot minute since I have played, but I LOVED some of the fog maps of three houses. In particular, I liked the Leonie paralogue where you get the inexhaustible, and I like the Marianne paralogue. The dog adds a lot to the atmosphere and makes the battle a lot more methodical. You can’t just rush into the bosses because you don’t know what’s going on ahead
I love ALL ActualLizard videos!!!! ❤
For me, there are two kinds of Good Bosses in Fire Emblem. The first kind is the Death Knight, FE1/3 Camus, most of the Holy Weapon Bosses in FE4, and similarly super powerful bosses that you need to be careful in how you approach since there's a very extant chance your units just outright die trying to fight them. The second, and what I think is the much more consistently achievable version, is treating the entire Map as a Boss Fight. Some fantastic examples of this are Verdant Wind Endgame, FE7 Endgame, FE4 Endgame, Engage Ch17, and there's plenty of others but I don't want to make the list too long. Fire Emblem, as said in the video, is made interesting by enemy formations and groupings, which I think lends itself perfectly to these Boss-Rush Style Maps where you have several super strong enemies scattered among other high quality normal enemies. Even a real, proper boss rush like FE7 Endgame is quite fun to play.
If you've ever played SMT Devil Survivor, the bosses are really interesting. Hegimone Edelgard really feels like a boss from there, and I would love to see more interesting boss challenges like that
13:11 Funnily enough, FE3 already does this with its endgame; the throne is always present, but you're not allowed to seize it until you've killed Medeus first. I can't recall any other time FE has done this, though.
As far as I remember, in fe5 you need to seize the throne too after you defeat the boss in endgame.
Another really well done analysis. I always love these since they're a nice level headed look at these games mechanics. Also absolutely love the wee lizard drawings like the one at 1:15, they're so adorable!
I really like Narcian in FE6. He's well built up since you fight him in chapter 16 but see him multiple times before that, he's in a bulky class and in a throne so you need multiple rounds of combat to kill him. He has a runesword so can heal from combat, and has a delphi shield to prevent arrows from doing effective damage (until you steal it)
I really like the ballista bosses from FE3(FE12).
They had the range advantage, so it was fun figuring out ways to safely close the distance.
I also thought the enemies were smart because they had armor knights blocking the bridge, buying time for the ballistae.
Nice video! One thing I thought of while watching is that imo Takumi and Ryoma in Conquest chapters 10 and 12 do a good job of fixing the main problem with stationary bosses (the problem where you can just take an unlimited amount of time to kill them.) For Takumi, you have a time limit on beating him before he activates the dragon vein, and for Ryoma, you have a time limit on the entire map.
Id love to see more boss fights with gotcha! moments (foreshadowed by cutscenes so its not totally unfair). Like maybe killing an unlikable leader actually raises enemy morale instead of lowering it, and they start fighting harder for a few rounds.
My favorite stationary boss in FE is Djur from Radiant Dawn 1-7, the prison chapter. He is the sole reason I was able to make Fiona a viable unit solely bcuz bro can be boss abused for hours with little to no risk thanks to his heal tile and high HP stat
Generally, the final bosses range from Ok to great, but i found Sombron’s fight uninteresting, and the Dark Emblems were just disappointing. Engage’s last chapter is very lackluster.
Interesting, I actually thought Sombron was one of the series better final bosses. Usually I feel like they just sort of feel like normal enemies (though the rest of their map can still make them fun in those cases), or go down really easily despite being built up to be a big threat (fire dragon, fomortiis). I enjoyed the barrier breaking for Sombron. Phase 1 was pretty lame though.
@@actuallizard in his Dragon form, he’s definitely better than the generic mage he was, but I’d rather have a larger map and more unique enemies to get through in order to break his barrier, similar to having to split up to get rid of the 10 elites before Nemesis. The platform is effectively pretty small, since Sombron takes up so much of it. If they really wanted to go crazy, let him corrupt fallen units after a few turns on classic mode.
Sombron is just a worse Nemesis
I think fell nil is the better sombron
@@paladinslash4721 he even brings Nemesis with him, but worse in every way. The Dark emblems not having unique models is bad enough, but no engage weapons for the corrupted using them sucks. Nemesis as an emblem should give his corrupted the Dark creator sword and the dark Aegis shield or Rafail gem if Byleth gets relics he doesn’t own.
I’m shocked none of the genealogy bosses showed up here, almost all of them have story significance, and even the ones that don’t also end up being pretty tough to one round, throttling your turn count in return.
My personal favorite boss in the series has to be Alvis in chapter 10-there’s something so satisfying about him standing on the throne where you started the game and from a narrative perspective it represents Seliph retaking Chalphy which was really heartwarming to see considering there’s an event that foreshadowed it beforehand
Also makes a lot of sense to have him just camping on a throne; at this point he's basically resigned himself to defeat at Seliph's hands, realising he was always just a pawn for greater powers and the empire he schemed and backstabbed for is an empty reward. He won't die without a fight but he's not going to run at Seliph to aggressively defeat him.
Commenting before the video because you gotta get your opinion out there)
The most memorable bosses in earlier games to me are the bosses that actually move. They are a much more interesting threat, if not necessarily a FAIR threat in FOW maps, but you have to actually consider the boss for the whole map instead of the boss being a separate challenge tacked on after everything else is done.
Anyway, 3H monsters and Engage are such a huge improvement in not being able to solo most bosses, it's surprising that it took so long for the games to have multiple health bars as a common occurrence.
In FE it's fine for bosses to be relatively boring when viewed on their own. In general, most units aren't that interesting on their own. Similar to how say, chess or checkers, don't really have "interesting" pieces. The individual units are all relativly straightforward, it's only when combined with other units/objectives, that they really become interesting.
If you try to make individual units interesting you just get overdesigned nonsense. For example; half the engage bosses boil down to "jump the boss with half your army so you can melt through his 10 health bars, otherwise he will kill something."
Ending turn against Ashnard in PoR, and just watching as he flies over to a weak unit and demolishes them is one of the most memorable boss interactions for me
Love the Engage segment! It does have lots of cheesable bosses but there’s a lot of potential that I hope gets realized in future installments
Demonic beast and engage bosses felt fun for me due to moving/lifebars and in 3H's case the barriers and gambits. One thing I wish they'd do is that as you lower their lifebars, they get weaker instead of stronger (lose stats, lose skills, lose staggering blow/engage attacks, etc).
Berwick Saga also has some good boss fights due to the way how ranges and combat flow work there. Deathmatch (which is just a reworked charge from the jugdral games) makes boss fights feel like arena matches.
Also feel like bosses and minibosses should be used to tell a story about the world/location. I read an essay about FE4 CH2 (Augstria) and how every boss on that map represents something. Elliot and Bordeaux hate Eldigan/Lachesis and only fight you because you're in the area while Philip the miniboss refuses to engage because he believes Augstrians shouldnt fight each other and holds a defensive position. Meanwhile Macbeth decides to steal from the villages and Chagall chews him out for being greedy and not fighting sigurd. His forces are small because everyone in his city hates him so he hires mercenaries instead (Voltz whose a realist and Beowulf whose more idealist). Clement holds a neutral position at the start of the map and only decides to hold a defensive position once he realizes he's next. His forces are less knightly compared to the other two (a few ballista, but mostly infantry units) so Chagall sends his own forces (Zyne) and Erinys who was looking for Lewyn and Chagall took her in. This chapter is pretty controversial even for FE4 fans, but the way it tells its story through gameplay is really good.
The last stage of FE7 is still one of my favorites, it hits thematically and each of the first turns brings a new Situation(TM) to deal with despite there being a stationary boss
I'm quite new to FE. 3H was my first game in the series, BL was my first route (and the only one I've finished so far). The last chapter was really memorable for me, because of Edelgard's absurd range. Her presence would be felt during the entire map, and no one would be 100% safe. It also put a time pressure on me because she was slowly but surely hurting my units. I found it really cool and intimidating and it made the chapter memorable.
1 of my favorite bosses is Sigune from Binding Blade. As much as I hate the game, Sigune feels like one of the rare times where the game feels compelled to actually payoff world building. In the supports with Noah, Trec and Zealot they make mention of how the nature of Illlian mercenary work means they may very well kill friends or family and that's just how it is. When it came to Thea, you were able to recruit her with Klein's orders, but that's not the case with Sigune. There's no hiring her by proxy. At that point in the game, you don't have Juno, her best friend, and Shanna or Thea clearly can't talk her down. It's honestly tragic seeing her dialogue with Thea and Shanna. She makes it clear she's sticking by Illian code, but doesn't enjoy the fact she's fighting against them. It makes you wonder if Juno were in the ranks by then, if she could've talked her down, as a thematic parallel to how she had met Zealot. For some reason, Juno's only support that makes mention of Sigune's death is with Noah and not Thea or Shanna. Sigune is the only thing I will give Binding Blade props for.
Her death quote is pretty tragic
"...Dear me... I didn't anticipate perishing here... But perhaps...I was already dead... Perhaps I died..a long...time ago..."
I'm surprised bosses like Kishuna wasn't mentioned. Even if they were optional, it's always fun strategizing/building a team that can defeat the 'unkillable' boss, that adds a layer to your map-to-map battlefield tactics. On your first playthrough, you learn of the optional challenge but weren't equipped with the foresight to overcome it, which introduces a fun challenge every subsequent playthrough.
Aside from that, I wish there was a boss where the goal is to seize throne, and the boss leaves the throne to chase you down, so you have to outmaneuver them, maybe even offering a bait as sacrifice.
The only problem I have with a boss with a siege weapon is that they can use it up and all the threat is gone. Selena uses all 5 Boltings trying to hit the Colm I put in the woods and that's that. But if a boss had a supply line where after 2 turns she gets another tome that would fix the problem. Naturally this supply line would be something you can block by attacking it. Another idea is a castle with Ballista outside that when they run out of bolts they would leave the Ballista, and enter the castle then return with a new set of bolts taking a total of 3 turns. Naturally this can be worked around by approaching so that all of them run out of ammo at the same time. But, Fuck it, we ball is also works.
I feel one way to make bosses more interesting is if you didn’t have to kill them to end the map. Like multiple ways to non violently deal with them.
One example I made up is one boss is a mercenary named Velvet who fights you and is with the enemy because she thinks you killed her sister.
But you recruited her older sister Celica two maps ago and she was nearly killed by the people Velvet works for. So if you reach Velvet with her sister, they can talk and Velvet joins you and the map ends.
So if you kept Celica alive, not only are you rewarded by getting a new unit, you beat the boss without fighting them. But if she died, then you are forced to kill Velvet.
Or have a side objective that forces the boss to leave, saving you the trouble of fighting them.
Like burning a forest near the boss and his troops, forcing the boss to flee. Or pushing a boulder that prevents the boss from entering in the first place.
With dialogue showing what you can do to get rid of them.
My favourite boss is the final boss from Radiant Dawn. Despite playing the game years after its release, I went in blind, and on 'Normal' difficulty.
That meant that I didn't know the trick required to win, so I had to deplete that health bar 10 or so times, using pretty much every single resource to ensure the win. Tactically placing units to make sure they could get their damage in, and minimal damage was wasted. I was shouting "Why won't you die?" at the TV.
It was tense, scary, and an actual, genuine final challenge. Plus the fact that the boss used AOE attacks on their turn meant you could never really be complacent.
Hi Lizard!
I love the idea of maps being designed around bosses in order to make them as mechanically interesting as possible, but I acknowledge that that kind of gameplay would get exhausting after a while. The advantage of having easy, unimportant bosses from time to time is that -- like with any boss -- it forces you to make the nifty tactical shift of switching from dealing with many easy enemies to dealing with one tough enemy, but there's no additional pressure.
I feel like just the act of *being* a stationary boss hurts a lot of FE bosses specifically because of that control and solveability you mentioned. The moment that a boss is actually mobile, those higher stats mean your entire roster has to pay attention to them, because they're typically a high risk threat. Ashnard for instance has always stuck out as one of the best 'simple' FE final bosses because his huge flying movement range means that the moment he starts moving, your entire game plan warps around his presence.
My favorite is Desaix act 1 from Shadows of Valentia.
The mission is to kill boss, but you have 2 bosses on the map. Desaix on the throne, and the corrupt knight (can’t remember his name atm) gunning straight towards you once you cross the threshold.
Desaix is holding a dracoshield, taking minimal damage from any of your units, and has a beefy attack stat that is nicely counterbalanced by his effective zero speed.
So what do? You have to proc the corrupt paladin’s AI to go into heal mode (which finds the quickest unobstructed path to a heal tile. By moving a unit in and out of the ideal path every other turn or so you force the ai to go back and forth.
Desaix instead takes up the bulk of your army, needing to be boxed in by durable units that can take a stray hit, get healed, and also heal another unit.
It’s a little tedious but it’s just so much fun to get right!
I always appreciate love for Camus and Engage. As for generic but still memorable bosses, I think Echoes pulled this off well with the Merc in early Part 1. He's not just stronger than the rest, but the characters build him up a little by pointing out his leather shield and how his Zofian soldier uniform is distinct from the brigands.
One of my favorite encounters has always been Naesala, in Chapter 19 of Path of Radiance.
He's not a traditional boss in that the game expects you to pacify him, but getting the units in there without drawing his aggression and avoiding ballistas is tricky.
But I decided to challenge myself once by trying to kill Naesala, and that might have been the absolute hardest thing I did in that game. Dude was a nightmare, but it was very satisfying to pull off.
"The Gym leaders, Elite 4 and Rival battles"
*shows a champion*
What I'm getting from this is that Echoes Cantor Boss Map's Boss is a good boss.
It's certainly memorable. That's for sure.
I think shura is another great example of a really engaging boss as one part of a whole map. on your first playthrough of conquest you will probably be really low on gold bc you dont know the items you get in maps etc so youre inclined to rush and try to get to shura as fast as possible in order to get the most gold, whereas in later playthroughs on higher difficulty you may prioritise exp gain as there are a bunch of promoted enemies that are valuable sources of levels as you start to enter the stage of the playthrough where higher level skills become the target of your investment. also shura as a boss can be quite challenging as he is pretty strong into all of the royals except xander, who cant double him, which means you cant just send xander to the archer side and rely on him to juggernaut through and earn the most amount of money possible, which is something i tried on my first playthrough of lunatic then promptly failed at
I feel like a boss being fairly trivial once their army is dealt with can be not only okay, but an outright good thing, with the right narrative.
I feel like Daeran is a good case study here. Nothing in the story sells him as a credible personal threat. He's a pawn, who abandons his own son and nation, after a basic betrayal goes poorly. So it fits that he isn't all that threatening, when you finally get to him. He is a noble trained in arms, with good kit, so you have to take a little care, and doesn't leave the end of the chapter a complete anticlimax, but as long as you aren't face-rolling the controller, you can deal with him, and that feels right.
I appreciate that newer entries in the series are trying harder to do something with bosses- Engage especially felt like bosses provided a meaningful challenge. Looking at the history of Fire Emblem, I think the maps themselves serve as the challenge a boss might provide in other games. I’m sure the average person who played FE7 can remember Victory or Death, but might not remember Limstella (same for Dragons Gate and Darin).
The fe Rom hack “Castles and Thrones” has some bosses you have to kill before seizing, and it works to interesting effect. The biggest downside is that they can become incredibly annoying to kill in defensive terrain, especially in something like a forrest where both you and the boss have crap hit rates.
Still, it mostly works as intended, especially if bosses normally have throne bonuses anyway
bro literally everything you said about the camus chapter is what I ended up doing in my archanea remake hack lol Once you pass a certain threshold, Camus starts moving. And it is also a Kill Boss Then Seize objective. Lorenz sits on the castle gate and you can't recruit him until Camus is defeated, and if you kill Lorenz to get to the gate, it won't let you seize it until you defeat Camus.
The thing with most SRPG bosses is that (most) of them have to follow the same rules as normal units. They don't get things like more hit points to take several attacks a round for five or more rounds, or immunity to instant death. They are just regular guys like you, just with more experience and standing on an area that gives them semi-plot armor. Yes, even the big bad four generals are just normal guys, even the magical ones are just normal guys. Because being a normal guy and making it to high level is enough in Fire Emblem to put your ass on the badass list.
The thing about that pokemon example is that you aren't really fighting the "boss", you're fighting a series of mini-bosses in place of one, not that different from fire emblem.
I think what makes pokemon bosses so memorable (beyond iconography) is that the best ones don't just put focus into one boss-like mon. Sure, norman's slacking is strong, but he's also easily beaten if you know what you're doing. That's why in emerald, there's a spinda who can confuse you out of protect, and a belly drum linoone who can cause havok if you play too safe. Even more so with someone like cynthia: opening with an unknown monster with no weakness, as well as employing both fast killers and powerful tanks, and that's on top of the garchomp cynthia is most known for. Compare this to a fight like ultra necrozma, which falls into the same issues stationary FE bosses face despte being really cool. It's memorable, sure, but moreso for how many times it wallops your team rather than how interesting the fight actually is.
Bosses that move while there are no indicators to differentiate them from bosses that don't have a special place in hell.
He's not an important boss, but Homasa from PoR is a boss I really like. He may be stationary, but he's the last challenge at the end of a map you most likely will be playing differently due to Naesala also being around, but Homasa being a Swordmaster with 1-2 range and a lot of unique dialogue with quite a few character's is just fun to me, really.
Embrace of the Fog mentioned! I have a character in that game (it’s Freya)!
What (I think) was not mentioned in this video were bosses like Ryoma in conquest, chapter... the one were you had to flee. He just stands there menacingly. And you CAN beat him, if you have a very strong unit. But realistically, he just is a red herring and you gotta judge between fleeing from the strong reinforcements approaching or take one more turn to try to take him down with all your units. Its a very nice design imo.
Another one is Berkut and Rhenea from Echoes. I think the fact they have support bonuses for each other making them incredibly threatening is such a nice gameplay story integration. Really great.
Also that one lone cantor from echoes in Celicas route. The first one you encounter. Very good atmosphere. One unit on the whole map, but man he is hard to deal with. Really feels like a boss, a one man army. Every other cantor in the game however... fuck them. All of them.
Also Walhart. Such a cool boss. Has his unique class, multiple maps involving him, but not like the Clown Knight, but rather it feels like a strenuous war of conquest against the conqueror.
I think the best bosses are the ones that are hyped up in the story and have a lot of dialogue. It makes the battles more intense. Some examples are fe6 zephil fe7 nino related bosses fe8 desert map awakenings chrom and robin map. 3H first death knight map.
14:40 Ursula I think is the one of the most memorable siege tome boss from FE simply because she comes out of the darkness like an assassin should and is completely unexpected to the first time FE player who likely got sniped out of nowhere. She’s not super powerful since FE7 bosses kinda get goobed, but I think even if I had played FE before then, she’d be an example of a boss being memorable gameplay-wise and thematic since she is an assassin.
Well I think in terms of Fire Emblem it really depends what a boss is meant to be. We have the push-over bosses, also seen a minor antagonists, that mainly have the task to be a harder enemy on a map, but not really anything to do with bringing the story further, less than the map and the happenings around it or possible recruitable characters do… or you are just on a filler chapter/map anyway.
Then we have the major antagonists that are meant to be a trivial to important part of the games story, that you fight once later in the game with them still being part of the whole thing from the beginning or you even have to face or fight them multiple times on the battlefield. They are of course more in-dept and als memorable.
And then we have the main antagonists, that either are present the whole time, or secretly spun the web that brings all together from a place in the shadow until a certain point.
And I think this is their general approach with FE. Of course some are stronger, some are weaker, some are more, some are less memorable and some antagonists probably even become your allies later in the game or in a different game of the series. Also some are more memorable for story reasons, other for difficult fights, others for their very special appearance and also some for your wish to not killing them and side with you instead (the tragic ones).
Overall I think the developers doesn’t do the worst job with bosses that are meant to stick in your head. More so I think the modern games, despite not always being better for reasons, at least give them more possibilities to design bosses more differently and I also think they use it. I think - despite not everyone likes it - even Fates with its bad writing, 3H with its not so great map design and Engage with a not so beloved story DLC gave some very new insights into bosses or especially „enemies“ and that even the seemingly „good“ ones can become an enemy and being the bad guys depending on the point of view the story is told, which at the same time give certain bosses, that might even be your friends and comrades in another timeline way more depth than expected. Earlier game approaches of this could be seen in characters that are part of different stories and games like Camus/Sirius/Zeke and Hardin or the Black Knight/Zelgius.
Bosses are REALLY difficult to make cool, you need a lot of thought put into them to make it work. Engage probably handled bosses the best, but even so they're still not perfect. I hope IntSys and romhack/fangame creators continue to try innovate in that direction, because bosses totally have the potential to be the highlight of SRPGs in the same way they do in other genres
Thinking about it, I believe FE's issues with bosses boils down to 2 points
-Lack of effective tools to isolate and/or control enemy's movement.
-Permadeath
For the first point, Fire Emblem doesn't have many options that isn't geared towards combat. Like, in most of the games, there isn't any way to manipulate the map to your advantage. That, combined with lack of range options outside of Canto and the bows from Echoes, and you'll end up with stationary bosses or bosses that aren't that much of an issue to deal with if they're roving. That's because if you make a boss that is both powerful and roving, then they're not really a boss, they're a stage hazard. Not to mention any potential escort the Boss might be rocking could prove difficult to deal with.
And the other point is that Permadeath is punishing. Losing a unit means loosing the EXP gained on them and possible the items on them as well. And, even if you're ironmanning, can lead to spirals, where like the next couple of map get's harder due to gaps in your capabilities, which means more chances to lose, or that unit's death opens up a gap in your line which leads to several other units dying, and the point is, if you give a roving boss too much stats, it can lead to situations where you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and you have to let the boss kill someone, which can feel unfair even if it's a problem of their own making.
So anyways, my solutions
First is more ways to manipulate the map and units. Things like making barricades or barriers to limit enemy movement, turning terrain into mud, raising the cost of movement through those tiles, smoke bombs that decrease unit accuracy or increase unit evasion while in it, either or works. Or like, have shoving make it's way back into the game, or letting you deploy your own ballista/siege weapons to augment your army's capabilities. The player having more tools to ease the pressure means more room for Developers to amp the pressure on the player like having the boss approach the player. Maps like 3-13 in Radian Dawn can be made more to have Ike approach your base and have double the spawns if the players were given more tools to block, impede, or otherwise slow down Ike and his army from overrunning your position.
Now, I do know, that while these tools might make FE a more strategically or tactically interesting game, it might not be what people want out of FE, fiddling round with all these items and figuring out where to put them to use. Especially not with the inventory and weapons system FE uses, either everyone has really big backpacks or access to a global storage pool, or you're going to be doing a lot of time in menus, shifting things around making sure everyone has the right things stored. It's a good idea, but maybe save it for another game, perhaps a spin-off FE game, kind of like what Pokemon Arceus did for Pokemon.
So that leaves us with Permadeath. Now I'm certain that any new FE game will still have the "0HP=death" system because that's the status quo. I wouldn't blame them, people don't like change, and it's just works. It encourages people to be careful else someone dies, and when the player is willing to let the dead rest, it promotes on the fly thinking and improvisation to keep the run going, and makes victory just that much more sweeter and memorable when you manages to pull through and see the end credits even when, say, half your army is dead.
However, as it turns out, people don't like it when they lose, or when they perceived they've lost, which usually amounts to someone dying. Even if the player doesn't care about the character, it's the principle of "someone died under my command." and they can't accept that so they reset. So roaming bosses needs to be kept "weak" or slow or in some ways, underwhelming so that when they slam into one of your units and delete them, or even get close to your units in the first place. And IS attempt to "fix" this is to turn Permadeath into a binary option. It's either on or off. Which works, but not really interesting, nor does it encourage players to step outside their comfort zone.
So what if we were to combine the two together. Have it so that 0HP=/=death, but they can still die if certain conditions meet. And I have 3 different ideas on this system.
1) There's the Darkest Dungeon's Death's Door System, where when a unit's HP hits 0 they don't die, but are on "Death's Door", which means one more hit and they're actually dead. If we were to put this in FE, there needs to be some system in place to stop players from keeping units just shy above 1HP and have them enter DD over and over again, but otherwise it's simple and effective.
2) There's the system that Tactics Ogre where player units get's downed when they hit 0HP and starts a timer that, if nothings done in time, results in the unit bleeding out. This leads to a race to quickly picking them back up so they can continue fighting, or to finish the map quickly before counter hits 0. Now in TO units have 3 lives, which means you can have a unit bleed out 2 times and still have them around. Obviously, if this was added to FE, everyone would have only 1 life, so when that counter hits 0, no more Jagen, no more second chances.
3) And finally the Overkill system in Gungnir, which is this weird little Strategy RPG game on the PSP that I played. In Gungnir, when a unit hits 0HP, said unit retreats from the battle and drops one of their items that anyone can pick. Let's not worry about the item dropping, and instead focuses on the two exceptions to this rule. If they're the Leader Character, 0HP is instant death, and thus, a Game Over, the other is that if a unit take damage above a certain amount of their HP, then they get Overkilled, in which they just drop dead, right then and there. Basically everyone have an additional HP bar below their actual HP that determines if they're gonna die or not, or from another perspective, everyone has more HP than they show, say 50% more HP, and when they reach below a third, below 33% HP, they book it and retreat, thus "loosing" you a unit for the map but not the rest of the game. This is, I feel, the best compromise for Permadeath, as it let's small mistakes slide, like your myrmidon getting hit one too many times, but you're still capable of losing units, like a Jagen to a 1% crit for example. And Lords still need to be protected, as they don't get the luxury of running away from battle.
And lest I forgot, even though units retreat when they hit 0HP, doesn't mean you shouldn't care for their health, as they'll receive an injury if their HP reached 0 in the last battle, debilitating them, and can stack if they keep getting defeated and forced to retreat, only going away if they don't get defeated again in the next map. In Gungnir, this is a simple -10% to their HP, which wouldn't be that big of a deal in FE, so for FE we can change it to say, a -2 to all stats. This means that, yes, the risk of death to one of your units is a lot smaller, you still shouldn't let them hit 0HP as it'll mess them up for the next chapter, leaving them potentially unstable for the next chapter, which might be when you need them the most. That, or just do make them unusable in the next chapter if they force retreated.
And all this is in service to making bosses feel more like bosses than some fancy bench sitters or roadbumps for players to surround and blast with 10 different people.
And while I'm still here, IS should put less focus on having every map have a Boss and start putting in more Elite units instead, and have Bosses be reserved for notable characters or for the very specific "Kill Boss" objectives. Like, Elite Units can have portraits and Lines to say, and are notably stronger than those around them. They might even have their own elite squad around them like Camus, but they aren't bosses, nor do their death really affect the story, if at all. And there should also be Commander, or Leader units that, aren't always the Boss, and they buff units around them, like the Leadership Stars system from FE4 and 5, and actually "commands" units around them, and by that I mean they follow each other. And what I want with having Elite Units/Squads and Commander in FE is to make battles feel more like you're up against an actual army, like if 5 Wyvern Knight spawns in behind you, it's not the game trying to screw you over, it's the Elite unit "Fangs of Vlad" lead by "Stabby Ben" and they're gonna flank you. Or have a Wall of Armor Knights with a nameless, faceless Leader unit behind them making it hard to push through the front and encourage using items like the Warp Staff to assassinate the Leader in the back so can more comfortably slam into The Wall. Just small things like that to make battles feel more like an organize foe and not just 50 dudes spread out all over the room, and can lead to a smoother escalation in the story. You start off fighting random bandits and monsters, and as you go through the story, your foes starts getting more and more well organize, well equipped, well trained and disciplined, which'll culminate into fighting the most Battle Harden and Loyal Zealots to whatever God you're fighting this time.
Anyways, if you made it this far, thank you for putting up with my yapping. This took me like, 4 hours to write. I won't take anymore of your time. And I really should take this passion into making videos someday.
also the thing is with fire emblem bosses leaving their area.
once you beat them the match is done. their the general. once the general gos the army scaters. so having them not move prevents them from just bum rushing you and getting slaughtered ending the match much early then supposed to
My first playthrough of engage the bosses felt like they were walking a tightrope between being fun and frustrating, the fights especially with multiple health bars and typically moving meant the bosses lasted a while and felt impactful, but some of the emblem mechanics felt really annoying for me to deal with as someone who isn't great at these games. A bunch of the mid-lategame bosses being able to jumpscare you with insane movement capabilities then do a guilty gear instant kill on a unit I thought was safe, even in a game with turn rewind, left a frustrating feeling that just made mw ant to put the game down.
That said, I am a big fan of modern games having boss music keep playing on the map outside of when combat animations against the boss are playing, feels very good for these multi health bar bosses as well as siege tome bosses, where it feels like the generics are really collaborating with the boss. I know he's kinda ameme for his "I've been defeated, but I can't fall here, I must make my retreat" but hubert is good at this in fe3h, especially in the paralogue with petra and bernadetta, having paths that will never cross blaring as you try to find a way to maneuver past all the streams of generics to get to hubert and take him out is a really satisfying and exciting part of the game for me.
I typically like bosses where both the story and gameplay complement each other. It can make some of the encounters with say an enemy general or even normal boss a bit more meaningful. Maybe the way a boss fights can reflect a bit about their character. Say a bolting boss that's said to be a coward and is super overconfident but once they run out of boltings or when you get in range, tries to run away from you. It doesn't need to be for every generic boss, but doing it for a few of them could make the encounters feel a bit more unique when pairing to each other maybe even some clever strategies to counter how some of the boss behave. I do think bosses that I generally don't enjoy either come down to the Hit or Miss fests of low accuracy bosses, or the Black Knight in Path of Radiance, where I think a boss that requires so many luck dependent elements from skill activation to your luck with Ike's growths, are one's that take my enjoyment away no matter how good the story for the fight it.
I really liked the Garon fight in Conquest, I thought it was really fun and stressful when your units got randomly scattered at the start of the map, basically forcing whichever units got taken away to try and 2v1 two fairly strong generics, though the generics have pretty low Mov, so you have at least two turns to get an actual combat unit to the room assuming you dont move the unit he sealed away, in the case that he picked a non-combat unit
My main issue is that a lot of bosses are either characters that show up as a boss 17 times in the same game or one off random meathead brigands named something stupid like Bone or Bug or Batta.
I feel like FIre Emblem uses different versions of bosses;
The commander/leader is just there to lead the current enemies, and maybe have a small story. Later games tend to use this way less.
The generals are there to lead the current enemies, but show up more in the story, like Darin. Later games use this more in the form of the general retreating over and over again.
The real bosses, who are mostly there to be a challenge, like The final boss most time.
Mustafa from Awakening... He wasn't important but the setting just makes him unforgettable.
He's there on orders that he doesn't want to be there for. He's begging you to spare his men and only kill him. Everyone on that map heard Emmeryn speak and are questioning why they're fighting. The game is playing "Don't Speak Her Name" and the rain effect on the map, all of Archanea is crying. Ylisse is crying. Chrom and Lissa are crying. Mustafa's family's going to be crying. The map is when you realize this war is fucking ugly and no one's winning anything
I have an idea, and while I don't think that it's necessarily the correct answer, I think it is an interesting option.
I was thinking: what if they made the boss of each area similar to something like a Final Fantasy boss or an Octopath boss, gjving it that turn based battle where you have an SP gage for your magic and all that.
I'm not 100% certain on all the details, but it sounds like an interesting idea that could make the fights themselves more memorable and unique.
If we're going for a boss being more memorable as a whole, then integrating them into the story in a meaningful way makes more sense.
Before watching the whole video, allow me to throw my two cents:
I think FE got how to do bosses with the addition of multiple health bars. However, they feel a bit lackluster. Except for the Purple Crystal Health Bars, they retain all of their stats mostly unchanged through multiple healthbars. In the end, rather than being an imposing threat, they feel most like a pinata.
Which begs the question: What should we do, then?
For that, I want to point to Gensou Shoujo Taisen/Fantasy Maiden Wars. That's a fangame crossover of Touhou Project (characters and story) and Super Robot Wars (gameplay and mechanics).
In that game, most stages have a Boss Battle (with some having more than one) and pretty much all of them have multiple health bars (2 at the start and 8/9 at the end of the game).
What do they do for the bosses to feel different? They change throughout the battle and introduce different mechanics to the map.
With each new healthbar, each boss:
- Has a different amount of HP (some stats can even change further)
- Unlocks a new attack/weapon and has an AI to use it with priority (think of them having Emblem Leif's ability to choose how to counterattack, on all units)
- Places new Tiles on the Map (as Emblem Corrin's Dragon Veins) that can alter combat performance (as terrain bonuses do, but are terrain penalties) *and* introduce a new and unique mechanic.
Some of these mechanics include:
- Always Counterattack first
- Doubles Weapon Usage
- Units outside a certain area can't hit
- At the start of the turn, heals 10% HP per hit received.
- Ignores 4 first hits each round
- +1 Turn per hit received
Sure, some effects are devastating but, they have some ways to counter these:
- A map-by-map resource to destroy said special tiles
- All these Health Bars are timed. If you don't kill the boss in time, you lose rewards and move on
- These games don't have permadeath (although, with Time Crystals, Turnwheels and whatnot, I don't think this is an issue)
In short: Make bosses evolve mid battle! Have someone fucking promote after a health bar, ffs!
I really dislike kill boss maps. They are too easy too cheese. I wish more maps would have different win conditions entirely. Like escape or "burn all supplies". Im really shocked there arent morr maps with more creativity. Like chapter 6 of lyn with the switches. Three houses is my least favorite game being too easy too cheese
I quite dislike Engage's boss mechanics on regular mooks, but that game does have another extremely good boss fight: the last one. It's too much to ask for every boss to have that sort of sweeping effect on the battlefield, but Sombron is what a Fire Emblem final boss should look like.
I like past alear in fe engage as it was my first game and that map was my first turn limit map. idk something about engage's writing makes the character in the past more interesting than the character in the present.
I don't even think of them as bosses. If anything certain stages themself are the bosses.
For repeat bosses/ “mini bosses” like the fates retainers, I would love to see fewer scripted retreats. If I go out of my way to take one down, I think they should be replaced by a slightly weaker generic in the next chapter they appear in. I think that would make the player’s decisions feel a lot more meaningful narratively. From a gameplay perspective, it would force players to weigh the potential benefits of taking a unit out now against the risks of attacking them
EMBRACE OF THE FOG MENTION LFG!!!
I'd say this is even more of a problem for final bosses, and I'm kinda floored that not a single one of them made this list as either a disappointment or a positive example. I guess you may not have wanted to have spoilers, but a lot of them are serious disappointments, while others... well, look at Radiant Dawn's final boss: Ashera. The auras, the map attacks, the spirits, the boss theme being the music for the entire map... I'd only make one change to her fight: make her always revive the first time you take her down, and the second, regardless of who actually struck the final blow, have the final strike cutscene trigger afterwards for Ike to bring her down.
I also think there's gameplay reasons for bosses to be kinda meh much of the time. If people are going to reset to avoid permadeath (which they are), clearing a map then getting screwed at the last step sucks. So having most maps be 'about the map' with the boss being a formality is a good thing from that design perspective.
Too many bosses is a surefire way of lessening the impact of any individual boss imo.
That said, the way recent FEs do it, meeting the same boss multiple times is probably worse. I didn't care about Hubert or the Death Knight the 5th time around, and even the Hounds' last stand in Engage didn't feel that special because I'd faced them so many times. The now usual "I must retreat" is a stain every time it happens.
Back in Fe7, meeting Ursula in battle meant having to kill Ursula. Of course, it's the same for Linus and Lloyd, and all 3 are memorable bosses. When they do come back for the final chapter, it's a legit surprise and shock because you did kill them, and you even get the additional surprise of getting acquainted with Brendan, and with either of Jerme and Kenneth (depending on which map you went to).
In conclusion, if a boss shows up multiple times, they better be damn near immortal the first time around (Uber Vaida), or have an extremely compelling narrative reason for why they didn't get slaughtered the first time around.
FE needs more boss maps. Maps fully designed for the boss, maps where the boss' presence impacts how it plays, and/or maps where the boss and it's close guard are the only ennemies.
I find the change of pace within a map when it switches to "boss mode" extremely offfputting.
If you want to play strategy rpgs with really memorable hard boss fights I’d recommend final fantasy tactics war of the lions, and shin megami tensei Devil survivor.
dragonquest mentioned good
Nemesis was pretty cool.
I second the idea that strong narrative is important to fire emblem bosses.
Really… fire emblem has always seemed hit and miss on its storytelling. But the entries that nail storytelling always seem to do fairly well.
World building and storytelling are as much of what makes a fire emblem game as its gameplay these days.
Hey, at least its not like the Ogre Battle game
I dont even know if there even a boss unit
A good fire emblem boss needs to survive at least 2 player phases by the time your unit gets there
Personally, I'm less concerned about the number of player phases vs how interesting those player phases are. If a boss can be killed in one player phase, but that player phase requires some interesting strategy or forethought, that's great! I prefer that to someone like FE8 Carlyle who can take a lot of player phases, but those player phases aren't that interesting.
Or if the boss isn't an important part of the map, like Gazak in FE1 or 3, I think it's fine if he dies in 1 or 2 player phases.
I find it funny that you praise Pokemon bosses and say FE bosses are bad when to me they both have the same problem. Just stronger normal guys.
True. Pokemon "bosses" are some of the weakest compare to any rpg, including fire emblem.
And the one he brings up is Not-Emerald Norman, who is one of the exceptions that proves the rule when it comes to Gym Leaders.
@@artofthepossible7329 I haven't played a pokeman since stadium, so my knowledge is low.
@artofthepossible7329 Need i inform you of Witney? Most of Colloseum and XD Gale of Darkness' bosses