Gaming General Questions (New ones every few days)

We’re moving back to music people! Favorite boss theme, GO!

Heavy metal, GO!

Kirby is kinda nuts. You fight all kinds of eldritch abominations in such a happy and bubbly game. Everything is just so epic and awesome.

And then Super Star Ultra happened. And the above happened. You wouldn’t think that heavy metal fits in a game series like this. And yet somehow, Hal Laboratories managed the insane in the most awesome way possible.

I’m going to reiterate this. HEAVY METAL FOR THIS EPIC BATTLE OF EPICNESS. Galacta knight deserves this theme and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. Don’t test me on this one.

So bring it on. Show us the best themes you got!

This is where it ends, Gaius!

Dust: an Elysian Tail was one of my favorite games, and the soundtrack did not disappoint. This theme just booms with intensity and anxiety, and made the final fight more memorable.

When you hear this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybq_waDfyDI, you know what’s coming.
Same with this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waEFUEHjRqQ.
Skyrim has my favorite soundtrack of any game

Okay, this time I actually only have one choice for favorite boss song.

- YouTube (This is a metal song, I think.)

[quote=“Jhalem, post:44, topic:811”]Okay, this time I actually only have one choice for favorite boss song.

- YouTube (This is a metal song, I think.)[/quote]

I present to you my choice. Metal does nothing to bother me.

Also, excellent choice. I loved this game as a kid.

I may have already said this, but even though LISA is incredibly depressing, the music, as well as some other parts of the game are good, sometimes even funny. Anyways, LISA: The Painful, final boss theme, it’s… Odd really, starts off emotional, fitting the mood, changes to bizarre, then epic…

Under normal circumstances, I’d ask about your favorite final bosses at this point, but right now, I’m playing Kirby: Planet Robobot, and enjoying it IMMENSELY. So I need to ask something else.

This one is NOT limited to games. What is your favorite Fan-Fiction?

I think my favorite thing is when something starts simple and things escalate to…something extreme. Crack fics if you will, especiall well written ones.

Take Univited Guests for instance. A Bleach Fanfic that…is truely something.

It starts off pretty simple. Squad 11 burns down their barracks so they move into the Squad 10 barracks, with Hitsugaya trying to deal with the situation in a reasonable and mature manner. The universe stops him at every turn, but it is an extremely simple premise.

It somehow ends with Aizen stealing Ichigo’s Plot Armor. And it is actually called plot armor.

Clearly there are several steps missing, but me trying to list them all would take an entire night of typing and quite frankly, neither of us want that. Just know that things in the fic consistently get…stranger.

Alright, I’ve stalled long enough. Favorite Final Bosses.

WARNING: TO ANY FANS OF KIRBY, I WILL BE SPOILING PLANET ROBOBOT, SO BE WARNED RIGHT NOW.

With that out of the way…

I love this game. Planet Robobot is an awesome entry into the Kirby Series, building upon what Return to Dreamland and Triple Deluxe did. This game feature is the Robobot Armor, which has the power to go into different “modes” a la Kirby’s copy ability, and is used to solve small little puzzles to gain collectibles like Rare Stickers or Code Cubes. As usual, the first letter of each world is used to spell out a word, in this case P-R-O-G-R-A-M.

So, Return to Dreamland had Another Dimension.
Triple Deluxe had Eternal Dreamland.
Planet Robobot is [spoiler]Mind in a Program

The final boss opens up against Mecha Knight+, a Cyborg Enhanced Meta Knight with his original battle theme as the BGM. Never mind the fact he gets a giant hand tail in the second half of the fight, we’re only getting started.

The second part of this slows the finale down a bit, as it’s against the “Big Bad” President Max Profit Haltman. Haltman himself in reall nothing special, it probably would have been better if the music so so GOD DAMN BORING.

So, you beat this guy and he get’s ready to activate the mother computer, Star Dream. Stuff happens, Haltman’s soul is absorbed by Star Dream, giving it sentience and now it’s going to eradicate all organic life.

Wait, what was that last part?

So yes, the final boss of this game is Star Dream, a super computer that has gained sentience and is now going to eradicate all life in the universe, as opposed to most every Kirby villain that tries to take over the universe. So now the question, how do you fight said boss?

Kirby Scans the Halberd is how.

Star Dream is easily one of the most visually appealing final bosses in Kirby, with an equally impressive boss theme that has you controlling the Halberd and fighting against Star Dream. The fight is quite challenging, but then again I like battles that change up the usual play style of a game, and Star Dream does that perfectly. BTW, making a slight amend to my favorite Final Boss music. Mind in a Program has managed to trump The Lost Emotion as my favorite final boss theme. I’ll probably go into more detail on this later.

Getting through the first phase nets Star Dream merging with…basically all of area 6, Access Ark (The A in PROGRAM). The boss is HUGE, probably the size of a planet, and as such, the fight does slow down a bit, with a much more menacing theme to go with it. Those who are savvy will notice similarities between the Area Six boss of Star Fox 64 and this boss. The fight is still awesome, and as you damage Star Dream, parts of the Access Ark being to break off, slowly revealing something underneath.

This part is such a spoiler, that there is going a be a spoiler within a spoiler.

[spoiler]So, what’s underneath the shell? How many of you have play Kirby Super Star and/or Super Star Ultra? Do you remember Milk Way Wishes, with Marx and the Galactic Nova?

As it turns out, the Access Ark is a GALACTIC NOVA. A CLOCKWORK STAR.

This is a truely impressive callback to a previous game. Much how Masked Dedede was a call back to Revenge of the King in the same game (Super Star Ultra). And I love it. The whole battle goes nuts, and hell, even the the theme is a callback to Heart of Nova! The whole battle is an amazing callback and is just so much fun.

And I can’t do the ending justice. Just know that yours is the drill that will pierce the heavens![/spoiler] [/spoiler]

rant over, passes out in bliss

Looking back at the games I’ve played, really only two final bosses stand out in my memory. Those two being The Enchantress from Shovel Knight, and from LISA: The Painful, you have:Rando, AKA Dusty Armstrong

The Enchantress was really just a great finale to an already great game, and it involved you teaming up with an ‘old friend’ in the second phase, where you both work together to the fullest. My only complaint was how short the fight was, and how little you got to enjoy the teamwork.

Again with LISA: The Painful. As much as the game makes me feel depressed, I still can’t get over it!

As you near the end, everything is going wrong for you, and you’re forced to fight whoever was in your party before you left, as well as a small army. After beating all of them, you have to deal with Rando, who’s first main appearance involved him getting hit by a vehicle, and brushing it off like it was nothing. He’s powerful, and the whole fight is emotional, as Rando doesn’t want to do this, and to make matters worse, in LISA: The Joyful, and in the hardmode ending, you learn that Rando was once a student of yours, and was even your son! It’s a lasting moment that continues the bleak, hopeless feel the rest of the game has.

Well, I really liked the AEGIS fight from Portal stories: Mel, even if it was very difficult.

Also, Omega Flowey from Undertale was AMAZING. The genre and style shift made it very interesting.

My favorite final boss has to go to Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword. (They just called it Fire Emblem when it was localized.) I feel like I already posted that this was my favorite fight. Anyway, I consider every enemy in the last chapter of the game to be the final boss.[spoiler] The morphs were all super powerful and you had to absolutely go all out on them and also use your best strategies if you were playing the game for the first time. The chapter could basically cause your game to end because you were too weak to beat it, but it was a challenge that you feel compelled to replay through earlier saves, or the entire Eliwood route, again just to be able to prepare for. It was pretty hard to appreciate the rest of the levels the first time through, which made this boss capable of increasing my appreciation of the entire game. Also, you would most likely lose the battle if your strategies were poor. You would most likely require more than two units to defeat a morph and there were just as many morphs as your teammates and they were spaced out in a way that made them hard to approach.

After all of that, you fight the dragon. The dragon is both impressive and something I was not expecting to see in the game at all.[/spoiler]

I will comment on Omega Flowey: Flowey was a rather unfortunate boss fight. It was scary almost on the same level of Giygas. However, the healing scenes and weakening of Flowey, while making sense, was also rather weak. It kept up the tension in the gameplay and it was visually appealing, but even when reflecting on the fact that they symbolize Flowey’s childhood, (perhaps prompted by the influence of the other souls) it does not effectively add any kind of character development and mostly causes the fight to lose its impact by focusing on gameplay and music rather than what is actually going on.

As for that Kirby boss: It sounds one of the biggest boss fights ever and it sounds like it would be really fun and interesting if I knew more about the Kirby games (which the Kirby Collection exists for) and played the game you are talking about. It could maybe become my second-favorite fight if I played it.

I’m only going to talk more about this because I absolutely love this boss and game.

Yes, it is easily the most extensive Kirby boss in existence. Most of their Final bosses have one or two phases. [spoiler]Star Dream, and I’m including when you face it as Star Dream Soul OS in the True Arena, has a whopping four phases. Quite frankly, it’s one of the longest fights in the series. OF course, the True Arena is harder because you go through every boss battle with limited healing, but yes. It is one hell of a spectacle.

Plus, seeing Kirby do what amounts to a Giga Drill Break is truly something to behold.[/spoiler]

GIVE ME YOUR RAGE! What is a game that you absolutely hate?

I like Yoshi quite a bit. He’s a fun character that was gifted to us by Nintendo.

So why did Nintedo completely bastardize Yoshi’s New Island?

I hate this game. I really do. I don’t hate many games, but this one I HATE. At this point insert Kefka’s rant to describe my hatred for this game.

I have several issues with this game. Number one is it’s difficulty. It’s PISS EASY. The original Yoshi’s Island had good moments and a reasonable difficult curve. This is most apparent with the games bosses. They are stupidly simple. Granted, The original had some simple bosses, but New’s are…GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH.

But I could power through that. What made me throw m 3DS down in disgust was Adult Bowser appearing as the final boss by “Suddenly warping in through time and space.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

WHY? WHY IS THIS A THING?

I AM ANGER. I HAVE NO RATIONALITY.
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Ironically, Yoshi’s island DS is always what comes to my mind. I don’t know what happened, but I clearly remember losing 80+ lives on ONE level. It was an ice stage, and had a hellish jumping puzzle section that showed me no remorse. The rest of the game was okay as far as I remember; this just sticks out to me every time.

Not ashamed to say I played this game, but Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter, or whatever it was called.
It just didn’t have the same feel of the first game, it didn’t really feel as fun.

The first game was good, it was a world full of child-like wonder, but this one is just needlessly darker, characters trying to commit suicide, everything you worked for in the first game falling apart as soon as the game begins, and the humor that filled the original game is very scarce in this one.

And the ending… Huge twist, one that NOBODY WANTED…
SPOILER ALERT IF ANYONE CARES!

Turns out, everything in the game, the whole world, and all the enjoyable characters in there? They aren’t real, in fact, they never really existed, this was all just the dreaming of a comatose child, though, he does wake up due to your actions… Really though, this is the kind of bullshit you see in half-baked theories people make up about TV shows, BUT THEY ACTUALLY DECIDED ON DOING IT! From what I’ve heard however, the Wii version is much different, and has no mention of such a thing in it, so WHY WAS IT IN THE DS VERSION?

Metroid: Other M

I love Metroid. I have done speedruns, 100% runs, low item runs, just to keep the game fresh. But I cannot stand Other M. between Samus’s constant stating of the obvious, her poorly written backstory and personality that conflict with every other game in the series, her monotone and emotionless voice, the poor excuse of upgrades through weapon authorisation, an overall lackluster gameplay experience, and overall mediocrity, it is hands down my least favourite gamedespite coming from my favourite series.

I recall Other M’s launch; it really dropped the ball big time.

I thought of another game as well that I remember every once in a while - Takedown Red Sabre. I remember following some of the development, until it just sorta stopped. it was really a bummer to see such a great start for a tactical shooter just die so quickly; I played it a while back with a friend and it really is an atrocious mess.

@SizableSnivy - That is one of the craziest things I have ever heard about a video game. I can’t believe they would do something like that. Trying to outright commit suicide out of sadness is something not included in many games at all. The only game that I think of when it comes to suicide is Persona 3, and even that game, where people are pointing guns to their heads in order to use their powers and where a major plot point is revolving around people giving up on life completely as if it is a disease barely contains actual suicide attempts. Having the comatose thing be the plot twist is just awful. Drawn to Life seems like one of the last games I would want something like that to happen in.

Anyway, my pick for most hated game would be Final Fantasy VI. Yeah, Final Fantasy VI. I really do not like this game and the fact that people praise it so highly just upsets me. It makes me fear that people do not care about actual quality as long as there is amazing music. The story is presented very poorly, in my opinion. The pacing of gameplay just does not mesh well with the story and it feels like almost all of the game’s fantasy is out of place rather than being a unique element. Terra is basically a meaningless character and for some odd reason, nobody in the game really even cares about her. She is not even necessary for beating the game. Also, the game has 14 characters, which is ridiculous. The other games benefitted by having a tight cast of characters and despite being highly praised, Shadow, Locke, Edward, Celes and Sabin are possibly the only playable characters in this game could be described in more than one or two sentences. At the same time, those characters are not interesting even with all of their details put together. Kefka is a boring villain in my opinion. The general concept of Kefka is good, but actually watching the events of the story is mostly boring. You could even describe him in two sentences without missing much about who he is. The weapons in the game are terrible. The magic is also not very good. The summonings and the way that you learn from them are both annoying and boring. The Relic system was never really necessary and did not feel revolutionary at all. It just feels like a game filled with bad ideas that just happens to have great graphics (most of the time) and a soundtrack that is still amazingly good if you listen to the CDs.

Ultros had so many battles that were simply luck-based and painful to retry. Charon is possibly the worst enemy in any game. The second half of the game is open-ended in a way that made me want to stop playing the game even though it had started out with one of the most powerful scenes in video game history. Many of the sidequests just feel pointless and they can also be overly confusing and difficult. There is also so much combat thrown at you, but the combat system is just terrible for the enemies except for at the very beginning, the very middle and very end of the game. It feels way too limited to be fun and it can sometimes be unfair as well because most of the techniques are simple attacks or magic without MP costs and usually only help if you need to deal as much damage as possible before a counterattack. Sabin was basically the only cool character to use because he had such a unique technique, but the reliance on Sabin to do the same move or two for most of the game was really bland. Garr has an even more unique technique that is just worthless unless you get a rare enemy’s technique, but given his really bad art design and confusing learning mechanic, I doubt anyone cared much about them unless they were a completionist. On top of that, Relm’s Sketch ability just makes Garr’s ability redundant and then you can also get Gogo the Mime… The best character overall easily goes to Edward, but the game still is too unfocused to make me really care about him. Locke’s Mug technique was a great idea, but it just feels too small to make a big impression for anyone who is not a game designer.

All I can say is that I am glad that the games after Final Fantasy VI used all of its concepts in better ways. It was definitely more of an experiment than a gameplay engine.

Sorry about how long this was. I just want to come up with whatever I can think of because of how disappointing the game is to me.

Well actually, the ‘suicide attempt’ thing wasn’t even out of sadness, if I recall, it was simply someone trying to ‘pass the torch’ so to speak, giving their position to their child, and they are aware that doing this will kill them, it doesn’t work, but still…

I like the music Theme. So let’s go back to that. What is your favorite Character Theme?

This is a little odd. Some characters have themes that directly describe them, while others don’t. Fighting games are a good example of this.

Luckily I have my own series that has plenty of characters with plenty of themes. :3

“Oh the world of Dharma is filled with light!
Are you the one who liberated this world?”

I know I’m probably blasting you guys with Touhou overload at this point, what with Junko, Kokoro and Clownpiece being mentioned, but I have to talk about this.

Yes Byakuren is the final boss.
Yes she is from the hardest Touhou game excluding LoLK because what the fuck is that game’s difficulty?
No she is not my favorite FINAL BOSS theme from Touhou. That was…until recently anyways, Kokoro’s Lost Emotion.

But there is just something about Emotional Skyscraper ~ Cosmic Mind. It’s majestic! It’s filled with hope!
…It’s also filled with tragedy.

Again, context time. Byakuren Hijiri is the older sister of the Buddhist monk, Myoren Hijiri. She searched for her beloved brother for a time, and when she found him, was just so very happy.

Then he died of old age. Byakuren, now fearing death, turned to magic for a solution, specifically the magic of the Youkai. Pretending to exterminate them, Byakuren instead was helping them to learn their secrets of longevity, which eventually turned her into a Youkai herself. A Magician youkai to be exact. Byakuren was able to convince people she was still human, while advocating for equality between human’s and Youkai.

When she was found out, Byakuren was sealed in the Hokai, the deepest part of Makai - the demon realm.

I feel like when I listen to her theme, I can see Byakuren’s whole story. That it’s being told as the music is being played. And that’s something that really gets to me and makes me really like this theme.

I’m pretty sure however, what really sealed the deal for me on this theme was this remix of Cosmic Mind.

I don’t have words to describe it. I don’t think anything I say could do it justice.
Just know that any world can be filled with light.