Some visual novels still have video game elements (time management, puzzles, leveling up stats etc), but that comment was more meant for adventure games, that consist of puzzle solving and item collecting, and generally have you moving around the game world, interacting with objects etc. There is gameplay and a heavy emphasis on narrative, but no boss battles.KDub wrote: I said rely heavily on narrative. Bioshock still relies heavily on a narrative but is an action game and benefits from having a boss fight. That is where that context thing comes into play.
A visual novel is not an action game and some would argue not even really a game at all.
How did Bioshock benefit from that boss fight?
Yeah, boss battles give you a reason to use those items you've been saving up for 5 hours and those spells that cost lot of mana that you generally don't use in normal fights because they're over too quickly. Though many JRPGs dont do boss fights correctly, too often they're just normal enemies with larger health pools. Shin Megami Tensei series games have great boss battles, because they're tactical and you really have to think how to use your turns.ZenErik wrote:Depends on the game. But as a JRPG fan, I love boss battles. At the same time, I agree that they would not really fit in well with a game like The Last of Us. And fittingly, TLoU has no boss battles.
Out of recent RPGs, Shadowrun Returns had a quite decent final boss in my opinion. The boss itself was a regular human enemy (although she did have more hp than normal enemies, and you couldn't use action point reducing abilities on her), but what made the encounter challenging was the fact that there were pillars around the room that you had to destroy, and the further you used your turns, the more enemy bugs would spawn in the room. And if you kill one of the bugs, they spawn a spirit which must be killed within one round, or they'll revive back to 100% hp, which can only be done using a special weapon that can be fire twice and then reloaded, which you have 2 in use. So getting overwhelmed by the enemy is easy if you don't plan your strategy and movement well.
The problem is that boss fights as a concept don't fight some games. If a game is set in a realistic environment and have you fighting regular human beings, the idea of a boss is ridiculous. Sure the boss guy might be 210cm instead of 180-190cm and carry a .500 S&W instead of a .45, but the power difference is far from justifying the boss status. And if you turn the boss into a legit threat, you'll ruin all immersion by killing realism.ZeoDefender wrote:If a game has terrible boss fights then the problem is that the game's boss fights are terrible. The boss fights should have been improved, not discarded.
