VGCulture - Fighting Game Bosses

Since the purchase of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 last Saturday, I've been trying to get back into Fighting games as well as RPGs since I've been playing nothing but First-Person shooters in the past year and a half.  After playing versus mode for 2 hours, everything I loved about fighting games flooded back to me: distinct characters, flashy combat with crazy combos, amazing character theme music, fluid and fast-paced animations and graphics, ridiculous specials that's satisfying when it lands, intricate and convoluted storylines that draws the player in (except MvC3 doesn't have that), and exciting challenges from other players that are better than me.  After nearly a week of MvC3, I am reminded what I hated about single-player mode for fighting games so much: Boss Battles.  Since the early days of Street Fighter 2; where the retardly hard Sagat would spam his Tiger Punch, Tiger Uppercut, and Tiger Knee and M.Bison's Psycho-drill and long-ranged slide attack would counter every approach that the player made; I have hated Boss battles for fighting games.  The Boss characters are usually made to counter everything the player does in every position, which is mainly what fighting is usually about: distance, timing, and decisions.  So when the AI is set to counter rushes, ranged attacks, and jump attacks, it becomes very difficult to close in the distance without getting totally screwed.  As technology advances, the graphics, AI, and combat system get more complex in fighting games; however, what I hate more than anything about fighting these end game bosses is that they cannot be beat by conventional means.  Everything you know and excel in skill at will probably be useless in the boss fights because the developers already created a counter  to every move in the game within the AI to make it all the more difficult; therefore, I end up using a repeatable cheap move that the computer AI can't comprehend, to cause a sort of glitch if you will, to beat them.

Galactus - Marvel vs. Capcom 3
The first time I got to the final boss for MvC3, my first reaction was "what the heck, I have to fight a character known for eating planets?"

Source: Youtube Channel IGNentertainment

Well, you don't fight him right away.  Instead, he creates two metallic versions of characters in the game for you to fight...at the same exact time.  They're not too hard to defeat as long as you get one hit to start a combo.  If you're not hitting one of them, they'll probably be spamming their skills and juggling your character until it's down, block every attack you try to execute, and then pass you back and forth between the two characters in an infinite chain.  Good thing they share one life bar.  If you're lucky enough to defeat them without losing too much health, then you get the privilege to fight Galactus himself.  He's so big and mighty that you only fight the upper half of his body.  He doesn't get fazed by any of your attacks (until near the end) and a flick of his finger can cause serious damage to your characters as well as forcing them to switch out.  He slams his hand down which causes about 25% of your life bar to disappear, his lasers can put down one of your characters even when you're blocking, and his mighty slam pretty much kills your character in one hit if you don't interrupt it (which only happened once for me so far).  I'm not sure how hard he is in very hard difficult or very easy, I've been playing only normal up till now.  Fighting him and his minions is totally BS and will not help you get better in the game in any way, but at least it's a lot more fair than other fighting games I've played.

Cheap Move to use: Repeatable move or ranged ability with specials for the end!  So fighting the minions isn't exactly cheap, but just juggle them as much as possible and use a long lasting special that takes out their health as quick as possible.  Then when fighting Galactus, use any single hit move that will cause a good amount of damage such as a kick or skill and block when he strikes.  When he's down to half-health, block any attack (except for the mighty slam that one shots you, can't block that) that will hurt your character and shoot ranged attacks.  It's strange, but he will sometimes glitch and not do anything but sit there.  Ranged attacks will also reach him and do a good amount of damage.  If you have your hyper levels up, use them near the last 25% of his health and prevent him from using his mighty smash attack.  The first time I played, I used Chris with his sub-machine gun to kill him off and he just stood there.  Anything else I tried got me killed.  I really doubt I can beat players online by using ranged moves like Hadouken alone.

Azazel - Tekken 6
Having fought normal sized enemies in the Tekken series, I was very surprised to see such a large boss for 6.  Much like Jinpachi in Tekken 5, it can shoot a ranged attack that will kill off half of your health, block almost every attack and counter immediately, break through your own block to follow up with a devastating attack that will probably screw you over.  This boss is stupidly hard, but also stupidly easy.

Cheap Move to use: Jump-kick!  So my father played Tekken 5 a lot and had problems fighting Jinpachi.  I've beaten him before, but still had trouble doing so sometimes.  The AI in Tekken is pretty strange.  You could be playing normal mode and then all of a sudden one of the characters gets super pissed and turns into a nightmare with combos lasting up to 12 chains.  This one time, Jinpachi was like that and my father and I couldn't beat him with all the counters and ranged attacks he performed.

Source: Youtube Channel RoosterTeeth

My sister walked in and said she wanted to try and after the first round, she started to use only jump kicks.  Instead of blocking or countering the kicks, Jinpachi just took it over and over until he got KOed.  Keeping this in mind, we used this method for any Tekken game we played to beat the boss.  So when we got Tekken 6 and I couldn't beat it, I let my sister do her thing.  She kept jump kicking and *BAM* Azazel was dead.  Consider this, my sister rarely plays any fighting games whatsoever.  The only fighting game she played extensively was the Smash Bros. series, so for her to figure out how to beat stupidly hard bosses in Tekken is both amazing and lame at the same time.  It's lame because anything else you try would probably get you killed.  Freaking Azazel...

Seth - Street Fighter 4
I was so excited when Street Fighter 4 released and couldn't wait till it was out.  When I first got it, I really wanted to challenge myself and played on the hardest difficulty possible.  I used Ryu since I was so familiar with his move-sets by now.  It was so fun and challenging and I did have to continue a few times, but I accepted it.  When I got to Seth and started fighting him, I was thinking "wow, he's so easy.  He just takes it and gets smacked around."  And then the second round came along and I felt like I was fighting Daigo or something.  He starts teleporting around and then lands an unblockable kick, or grabs you from behind (and if you try to jump out of it, get ready for a shouryuuken), throws a sonic boom to get you either to jump, block or get closer to use his Dhalsim fist to smack you around before performing more Shenanigans.  After 30-50 minutes of losing to him, I caved in and started over on normal and got through everyone.  Again, he's stupid the first round and then suddenly on caffeine and crack teleporting everywhere and dishing out unblockable moves and specials.  I've never tried very easy, but one of my friends, whose skill in fighting games is comparable to tourney players, had more problems fighting Seth on very easy than he did on very hard.

Source: Youtube Channel Games

Cheap move to use:  Crotch shots!  I'm not sure why, but he gets confused with leg sweeps and crouched punches.  He'll counter intricate combos, specials, and grabs, but he gets confused when getting hit where it should hurt most.  Granted it will take some experimenting on exactly which move works with each character and when to attack, but I've been using this method to defeat him.  I freaking hate Seth, which is why I barely touch Street Fighter IV anymore.

Hazama - BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
I hate this man with a passion, and he's the most normal looking dude out of all the fighting game bosses listed today.  I started the game on normal with Noel not knowing how to play the game but hoped to learn along the way.  I was okay and didn't have much trouble, until I got to Hazama.  The boss form of Hazama grants him a green ring that recovers his health continuously while depleting the player's health when in it.  He has a chain-like skill that works like an anti-air, an unblockable special that eats up half your health, a special kick that works nearly instantaneously that wipes off over 30-40% of the player's health, and single strike attacks that deals a great amount of damage while pushing the player back.  He's very fast and incredibly difficult to beat.  I even switched over to beginner mode to try to beat him and did even worse with it.  Like SF4, I gave up and went down to the easiest difficult possible and got to Hazama again.  He was STILL hard as balls and was just as difficult as he was in normal difficulty.  I think I possibly hate him the most out of the bosses so far (with Seth being very close behind).
(SPOILER ALERT - VIDEO CONTAINS RAGNA'S ARCADE ENDING) - I didn't watch the ending.

Source: Youtube Channel tweakglitcher

Cheap move to use: Ranged or repeatable attack!  The guy in the video did a really good job of beating him three rounds in a row without having to result to being cheap.  Not so for my experience in fighting him.  So even at very easy using Noel, I had a lot of trouble fighting Hazama without being countered, hit with a special, or getting the life sucked out of me while he recovered in his green circle.  I ended up using only my gun shots from the far side of the stage to beat him without him touching me.  Last night when I played, for the first time in a long time, I had an aggravating fight with him using Taokaka.  It takes a lot of hits to deal a good amount of damage with Taokaka, and it makes it all the more difficult when he has a recovery ring around him that hurts my character when I get inside of it.  I tried my very best to play legitimately and bring his health down only to get hit by one of his specials which did the same amount of damage it took me 25-50 attacks to achieve.  I ended up going back to the dumb tactics and locked him in the corner with the continuous cat claw attack and watched him fall into my attack over and over.  Very easy shouldn't be so retardly difficult to beat.


So why do I play through single-player mode if I hate end-bosses so much?  I like the stories!  MvC3 doesn't have much, but each ending has a small bit of cameo from the Capcom or Marvel universe with references that fans may or may not get.  The stories to Street Fighter IV, Tekken 6, and BlazBlue Continuum Shift; however, are really in-depth with an overall story revolving around the characters with each set of characters having a story of their own with one another.  It's like a sample of existentialism (I liked learning the subject in school) within all the characters that I played through.  You see the same story through different perspectives and gives a sort of personality to the characters and the game.  Games with stories like these interest me since it goes further than just a bunch of people beating each other up.  I thoroughly enjoyed going through the characters of Tekken 4 to reveal all sides of the story and what-ifs between them all.  It made it more involving and gave purpose to follow the newer ones since it follows the overall story.  In Tekken 6, it reviews the entire Tekken saga in the beginning of the game before it starts the actual story to show how far back the lineage and characters go back and how they relate to one another.  I can go on and on about this, but the main reasons why I play single player mode is to try to get better on the particular character I chose while finding out their story and personalities.  But boss battles totally mess up the whole flow of the game and don't teach me anything useful in a real match since I end up using a cheap move anyways.  That's it for now.  I'm going to suck it up and try to play some more fighting games and get more endings.  Have a good weekend everyone!