LogFAQs > #948803886

Lokarin posted...

ok, i'll offer y'alls a question:

Why do main bosses in ARPGs (diablo-likes) suck?

I don't mean monster champions... those are usually good, I mean the main bosses.

I don't usually find that they typically suck, but they do often require different skill sets and emphasize different builds than you use for mobbing, which is what a lot of people like to build for because that makes up the majority of the game. They also often fall into the same trap as platformer bosses in that they spend most of the fight being invulnerable (whether mechanically or because the player's too busy dodging the ouch to realistically damage them), which means that once the player becomes skilled enough that dodging the ouch is easy, they effectively spend most of the fight waiting for openings while they go through the motions.

Back when Mario Odyssey first came out, I saw a couple people praising the fact that it managed to subvert that trap, which is commonly a real annoyance for speedrunners. Nearly every boss in that game has something you can do to interrupt their attack phases almost immediately if you're skilled enough, meaning the skill ceiling for speedrunning those bosses is vastly higher than it would otherwise be (which also gives non-speedrun players something to do during the attack phases).

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