This thread topic came to mind while I've been making my way through Ys: Oath in Felghana over the last few days. The Ys game that I played before it (Origin), had a pretty smooth difficulty curve over the course of its short runtime and featured bosses that offered a decent challenge without ever feeling too daunting or requiring endless retries. So going into Oath as my second foray into the Ys series, I wasn't really expecting anything different in terms of overall difficulty.
Normal levels are a walk in the park, rarely posing much of a challenge unless you're being wreckless
And you know what? It is about the same when it comes to fighting your way through the actual levels and mowing through hordes of standard enemies like butter. The Ys games are known for their fluid, offense-oriented combat systems, and it feels great to slice through a level while maintaining a constant stat boost from enemy drops. But then you get to some of the boss encounters, and it feels almost like a different game entirely.
Now, listen. I'm not saying that they're poorly designed or unfair in any way, but god damn. They are easily 10-20x more difficult than the standard level progression segments of the game, some particular ones that come to mind especially. Bosses are of course meant to serve as skill checks for players in any game, but here I feel like the jump in difficulty for boss battles is notable compared to the many other games I've played in my lifetime. It's not a bad thing, per se. I just find it interesting to see such a disparity in a game.
Then you encounter bosses like these who are happy to curb stomp you into oblivion (Chester and Death Faleon, respectively)
When you think of boss battles being difficulty, you might think of stuff like Soulsborne games. But those are games where bosses and normal enemy areas can oftentimes be pretty similarly difficult in terms of avoiding death. This thread isn't about that kind of difficulty design. I wanna know what other games treat their boss battles like big, hulking road blocks that are meant to kick players' teeth into their skulls after lulling them into complacency with relatively easy levels between them.
Normal levels are a walk in the park, rarely posing much of a challenge unless you're being wreckless
And you know what? It is about the same when it comes to fighting your way through the actual levels and mowing through hordes of standard enemies like butter. The Ys games are known for their fluid, offense-oriented combat systems, and it feels great to slice through a level while maintaining a constant stat boost from enemy drops. But then you get to some of the boss encounters, and it feels almost like a different game entirely.
Now, listen. I'm not saying that they're poorly designed or unfair in any way, but god damn. They are easily 10-20x more difficult than the standard level progression segments of the game, some particular ones that come to mind especially. Bosses are of course meant to serve as skill checks for players in any game, but here I feel like the jump in difficulty for boss battles is notable compared to the many other games I've played in my lifetime. It's not a bad thing, per se. I just find it interesting to see such a disparity in a game.
Then you encounter bosses like these who are happy to curb stomp you into oblivion (Chester and Death Faleon, respectively)
When you think of boss battles being difficulty, you might think of stuff like Soulsborne games. But those are games where bosses and normal enemy areas can oftentimes be pretty similarly difficult in terms of avoiding death. This thread isn't about that kind of difficulty design. I wanna know what other games treat their boss battles like big, hulking road blocks that are meant to kick players' teeth into their skulls after lulling them into complacency with relatively easy levels between them.
