Current Events > LucasArts has the most incompetent boss fights I've ever seen.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Shadows of the Empire: Fuck strategy. They're going to shoot you. Load up on extra lives and trade shots with them until they die.

Super Return of the Jedi: Block the rancor's attacks with your lightsaber and sneak in the occasional slash for 10 minutes. No, seriously. We literally mean 10 minutes.


It's like there's some asshole who looked at the rancor fight and said, "Yeah, this is nice. But it would be better if that part where Luke hides under a stone and hits the rancor's claw with a rock went on for 20 minutes."

I never beat shadows of the empire because the timing to hit the slave 1 was annoyingly tricky. If in a modern console it might be reasonable but on n64, it presented so many issues from a mechanical standpoint.

Didn't help that SotE controlled like ass on the N64.

__aCEr__ posted...

Didn't help that SotE controlled like ass on the N64.

...you don't like ass?
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__aCEr__ posted...

Didn't help that SotE controlled like ass on the N64.

Wampa Stompa and just have the Wampa go around killing dudes. Or, better yet do the code to control the Storm troopers. Comedy gold.

That game was fun and annoying as hell.
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Western devs are generally really bad at boss fights.
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Stallion_Prime posted...

Western devs are generally really bad at boss fights.

"Hey what if they fight like everyone else but have more hp and more damage, maybe spam freeze too."

Skyrim in a nutshell.

The boss fights in Shadows of the Empire are just bad. There's nothing really positive I can say about them. The bosses look cool. The environments are nice. But you're either running around shooting an enemy in its heels or you're just getting straight up mauled because there's no way to defend against adversaries.

The Super Star Wars fights are manageable if you have the right character, but they don't coincide with the appropriate scenes. If you want Luke to beat the rancor or Leia to beat Jabba the Hutt, you're gonna be in for a long night.

Yeah in Shadows of the Empire you really are just trying to blast them as much as you can until you die and then just do it again. I guess they figured they'd just make it so the boss health doesn't reset and that makes up for how terrible the fights are.

I've never played the game on Jedi (beyond the first level). I bet it's a nightmare.

Fuck man that fucking sewer boss or whatever in SotE is one of the all time worst fights

KoToR boss fights were great

if you optimized youd blow them away immediately

but malak fucks up poorly made characters
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__aCEr__ posted...

Yeah in Shadows of the Empire you really are just trying to blast them as much as you can until you die and then just do it again. I guess they figured they'd just make it so the boss health doesn't reset and that makes up for how terrible the fights are.

I think you're right. That's bullshit though.

You don't just program bosses that are gonna win and give the player extra lives to compensate.

SotE bosses were hit or miss.

2nd level had you against an AT-ST while boots on ground. You had to stay tucked under the legs and aim up.

4th level had IG-88, he was pretty good. Scared me shitless as a kid.

5th level had another AT-ST, Boba Fett (also a good fight) but then the Slave I bullet sponge came after.

7th level had some giant cargo bot. Don't remember much.

8th level had the badass underwater tentacle monsters.

9th level had the bullshit Gladiator droid.
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Lightsaber fights with bosses were cool in Jedi Outcast.

Though that was Raven Software

After three and a half hours, I can safely conclude that it is not possible to defeat Jabba the Hutt with Princess Leia. None of the walk-throughs offer any advice on how to beat Jabba using Leia. They simply advise against using her. All of the videos feature cheat codes in effect or have the player switch over from Leia to Han Solo.

The makers of the game took care to make sure that Leia's ass cheek was visible whenever she did a twirl in her slave outfit, but they didn't insure that it was possible for her to defeat her most famous adversary.

Jabba's pet appears during the fight and throws rocks at the player. He can catch the player as they are jumping to avoid Jabba. And after he is chased away, he can reappear and drop down on the player in ambush. So, the strategy for getting rid of him is to walk down the final hallway and chase him away 10 times. After that, he won't reappear or interfere in the boss fight.

However, Jabba's patterns are too irregular to be consistently avoided when all you have is a striking weapon like Leia's chain. You can get into a rhythm at the start of the fight, but Jabba's tail will eventually start darting out seemingly at random. That makes it impossible to measure when it's safe to sneak in and get a hit. After three and a half hours of being unable to inflict even a quart of damage against Jabba, I've concluded that the fight is simply not possible when using Leia without cheat codes.


It's one thing for a game to be more difficult when playing with certain characters over others, but the programmers need to make sure that it's possible for each character to win. The strategy should never be "pick the other guy." It's unforgivable that players would be expected to defeat the rancor and Jabba with Han Solo when those fights should rightfully belong to Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa respectively.

So, I did what anyone else would've done two hours sooner. I popped in a cheat code and had Leia shove a bunch of detonators up Jabba's slug hole.


Screw switching to Han or Chewie. That slimy bastard's carcass belongs to Leia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLI1F1iaUPg
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WalkingLobsters posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLI1F1iaUPg

That's with a cheat code. Leia doesn't have a blue wave attack under normal circumstances. And no attack in the game would take away three of the boss's hit circles with one shot. Even a detonator will take away one and a half at the most.

Leia has a spin attack that she can do briefly. Afterward, her meter has to recharge. During a spin, she's invincible against most enemies. But there's no such immunity against Jabba.

Had the programmers made it so that her spin attack worked against Jabba without her being hurt, the fight would have been passable. Because the spin attack has to recharge, that would have left an opening where Jabba could have still potentially hit her with his tail or with the frogs he spits out. It might have made the boss fight competitive. It might have made it a little easier than it should have been. Either way, it would have been possible to dethrone Jabba using Leia. You know, like in the movie.


Instead, choosing the wrong character for a stage can make passing a stage insanely difficult or potentially impossible. And the "wrong character" is often thematically the right character. Boss fights usually range from 2 to 4 minutes and Luke defeating the rancor was 10 minutes of defense and some very calculated counter attacks when the monster got close. As long as you could switch over to the other character and shoot the monster from a distance, the programmers didn't care.