Monday, May 21, 2007

Yet Another Zelda Boss Rant

It's things like the fight with Blind, boss of Level 4: Thieves' Town, that make me love A Link to the Past more than other Zelda games. Ocarina of Time was a great game to be sure, and Twilight Princess topped even that. The oft-overlooked Four Swords Adventures is a blast for both single and multiplayer. But A Link to the Past's bosses are truly amazing. You just don't get fights like this in newer Zelda games:

Blind has stood out as one of my favorite bosses in LttP for a long time. While it's not nearly the hardest in the game, simply because Blind doesn't do as much damage as later bosses, it's definitely the most frantic. In no other boss fight, not even Mothula (which I also have a recording of up on YouTube), is there as much stuff flying around the room as during the fight with Blind. It pushes your evasion skills to their limit, kills you a couple times, then pushes them farther until you can beat him.

As I said, you just don't see bosses like this in Zelda games anymore. Bosses that are straight up tests of your reflexes, skill at evading, and ability to find openings during which to attack. I harp on this a lot, I know, but it really does annoy me that most Zelda bosses have degenerated into the same old "stun with secondary item, damage with sword" pattern. Playing LttP again and making these recordings brought out that annoyance once more.

If there's one boss fight that sticks out as being especially guity of this, it's Fyrus, boss of the Goron Mines in Twilight Princess. This fight had so much potential for awesomeness, and I remember being incredibly excited seeing it in the trailers, yet it turned out to be the most boring fight in the entire game. Here's the setup: You've got a giant, fiery ogre-like thing with chains that it can swing around, it can emit flames from its body at you, and there are pillars around the room that would make for some delicious flying debris when destroyed. Sounds awesome, right? Wrong. Fyrus is incredibly slow, hardly ever attacks unless you're directly in front of it, and there's no flying debris from the pillars. And did I mention you can stun it from across the room, where you're entirely out of its range, using the bow? I know it's only the second boss in the game, but seriously, WTF?

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