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[shig]

The CD-i Zelda games. All of them.

Although they don't really count since the only reason you'd play any of these games would be because they suck so much.

[inkBot]

General RAAM from the first Gears of War was a kind of let down for me and my friend. First he kicked our asses (mostly due to the presence of Kryll) but on our third or fourth try RAAM got stuck in the geometry and couldn't do anything. I just had to chuck grenades at him 'til he went down.

[Lime]

The CD-i Zelda games. All of them.

Although they don't really count since the only reason you'd play any of these games would be because they suck so much.

[SirNiko]

I think FFX was the first game I played where the final boss really, really disappointed me. Not so much for the challenge, really, as most FF games are easy by that point if you do the sidequests, but because the MUSIC was terrible. Even FF9, which had a random non-sequitur final boss at least had some epic music.

The best final bosses, in my opinion, need to feel like a climactic fight. Tales of Syphonia tried to drum this up by having the heroes and villains verbally clash while you were doing combo attacks and the such. Kingdom Hearts 1 was drawn out as you fought the huge-ass spaceship thing at the end, and I felt suitably impressed by the length of the fight, if not the challenge. Pretty much every metroid game is awesome because the getoutfast sequence at the end is just ALWAYS awesome because the threat of impending, instant death is right behind you (Which is way Metroid Prime 1 was anti-climatic, no escape sequence!).

RPGs have a serious problem because the player can power-level until the last fight is a joke. I felt like the Megaman Battle Network games managed to counter this by making all the meta-gamey sidequests take place after the final battle, so story-minded players could fight the boss and go to the next game, and meta-gamer completionists could explore the ultimate dungeon, collect all the secret chips, then fight the Omega-X version of the boss that was designed for a player who had every item and skill in the game.

Rocket Knight Adventures had a fantastic final sequence. First, you fight the dark knight in a space station.... then he blows open the wall, and you fight while trying not to be sucked out into the vacuum of space. Then you fight the giant pig robot and then, just to make sure you get proper closure, you have to evade the pig robot's head while riding in a weaponless escape pod, until the robot explodes when you re-enter the atmosphere. Such a fantastic final battle.

I think I'm gonna play that again now, in fact.

-SirNiko

[s0]

I just finished the first Assassin's Creed (to "prepare" myself for the second), and boy was the final boss lame. Granted all the "boss" fights in this game pretty much amount to fighting a bunch of generic soldiers, but I expected some at least a little more interesting for the final dude than a generic soldier with the ability to TELEPORT!!!!111

[Ego_Shiner]

one thing z2 completely destroyed z1 in was the special weapon and the ex skills/forms. those kicked ass

[Melly]

I just finished the first Assassin's Creed (to "prepare" myself for the second), and boy was the final boss lame. Granted all the "boss" fights in this game pretty much amount to fighting a bunch of generic soldiers, but I expected some at least a little more interesting for the final dude than a generic soldier with the ability to TELEPORT!!!!111

I personally thought the build-up and atmosphere of that fight was pretty awesome. Also, it seems the final one of 2 is much worse. Or so I heard.

[Teddy]

Zelda Spirit Tracks. (SPOILERS, btw)

If you've beaten twilight princess, you know how it was kind of neat the way they sort of "trained you" for the boss throughout the whole game with the sumo wrestling, goat catching, etc.  And of course the horse-riding boss and sword fight.  All of that was pretty cool, even though I wasn't a fan of Pig ganon's design in that game.

In Spirit Tracks, they do this pretty well at first with _{a train boss, and then a boss that uses Link and Zelda like in the whole Spirit Tower.  But then you have another boss afterwards which you literally CANNOT DIE FIGHTING, because his attacks give you hearts, even when they hit you.  And the whole battle feels like a minigame, unrelated to the rest of the game.  It's like they tried to make it a throwback to the old ganondorf battles where you're bouncing back attacks with your sword, except you're not bouncing the attacks back at them, so it doesn't really work out.  You're just kind of hitting them.  You barely have to move the entire battle.  And if one of the attacks gets past you (and hits Zelda, who you're defending), he just starts the pattern again, with no game over or anything.  Of course, once that phase is over, you move on to a slightly more traditional final battle.  Except that your sword attacks do nothing, really.  All you do is slash at him to get him to turn around so Zelda can hit him in the back.  Would have been okay if they'd gone the windwaker route and made you actually FIGHTING him to distract him but he literally just sits there doing nothing the entire battle.  Until Zelda stuns him anyway, and once she does it only takes a couple hits for him to die for good.  A much better boss IMO would have been one with multiple phases in which you need to use all of the items from the dungeons (or at least ONE of them.  Come on.) and in which you can actually die.}

[hatu]

Now that I think about it, I don't usually play most games up to the end.

Half-Life 2 (the original) - Come on, it's just two of the flying ships that I've killed tens of before.

Dragon Age - Well it's a huge archdemon dragon this time, but I found the battle to be pretty boring. At that point I was kind of bored with the whole game but still it was much less interesting than the city fights before it and many other big battles.

[konjak]

In reply to Teddy,

SPOILAGE:
_{I hated it whenever TP on Wii or either of the two DS games required you to swing your sword with correct timing, it JUST DOESN'T WORK well when the input primarily works by detecting what motion you did after you performed it. You don't die, but it frustrates you to hell because it makes battles go on much longer than they should.}

[Tanner]

and that's why windwaker is the second best 3d zelda. the swordplay.













(the first is majoras mask)

[s0]

I personally thought the build-up and atmosphere of that fight was pretty awesome. Also, it seems the final one of 2 is much worse. Or so I heard.

Really? Gameplay-wise, the build-up was just fighting several groups of generic soldiers, basically. I agree about the atmosphere, but I was disappointed that it wasn't reflected in the actual gameplay at all.

[cynical duck, the]

Maybe somebody already mentioned this, and I just missed it, but the final boss fight in uncharted: Drakes Fortune really fell flat for me, which is a shame, because it is one of the best games I've played yet .  What the boss did, was that he had a laser-scoped shotgun, which led to instant death if you were out of cover, unless he was reloading (every 3 shots), and there were a bunch of crates, which were destroyed after 4 shots, so what you had to do was jump from one set of boxes to another while he was reloading, until you got up to him, at which point there was a quicktime event (which I swear I got wrong with every single button and still won) which if won, won the game.  What made this really disappointing was that the level leading up to the boss included him (the boss), shot gun and all, as well as a bunch of other soldiers, and was really fun.  My guess about what went wrong was that the final sequence was just too 'mechanical', and didn't really fit in with the rest of the game.

(Is it just me, or do all the really great games have bad final bosses? Ideas? How do you avoid making a bad boss?)   

[Tanner]

can't go wrong with emulating serious sam's final boss...

[MaloEspada]

Spirit tracks spoiler:
Aside from the train battle and the VERY FINAL malladus battle, it was ok. The only retarded part was Malladus throwing rocks at you. That was tooo much annoying.

Also, they did it and PUT THE DAMN FLUTE THING ON THE LAST FINAL BATTLE ON ST.
It took me a while to get it right.

[moonmagic]

can't go wrong with emulating serious sam's final boss...

+1

[powly]

I played Total Overdose yesterday and it's final boss was kind of disappointing - there's a train with a turret in its back, you have to shoot that turret for a while to destroy it (which is way too easy because both sides of the track are filled with HP powerups) and then drive past the train where the game enters a cutscene where the bad guy drops into a canyon. I would've wanted to shoot the guy, he was very annoying :<

TOD also has a few smaller bosses which are hilarious, the game has a power move where the character gets two machinegun-guitarcases and is invincible, all you have to do is aim at the guy.

Also, I think

is disappointing. (My friend was developing that and I promised him to mention it in this tread ) And in case you didn't understand the joke, yes, I don't think it's disappointing at all :D

[gimymblert]

Any next gen or wii sonic final boss they're so bad!

Metroid prime 3... what a useless grind fest (as many boss in that game)

Smash bros tabuu on extrem, but not really, i just hate his "cheap 3 whole screen whore circle of instant death time dodge only" that kills me whenever is bar is nearly empty 
(by the way, most people didn't like the single player mode of this game, i have find the control perfect and solid to escape all situation, especially because i played the mode only in the highest difficulty setting)

[SirNiko]

I thought Metroid Prime 3 had a pretty fun final boss. The way the life gauge works differently in that fight ensures it's not terribly one-sided, and gives you a feeling of incoming doom, which is appropriate for the scene.

I agree, most of the final bosses in Prime games were more about endurance than anything else, but that was only on hard difficulty or higher. I'd have been more disappointed if the final battle was much too quick and easy.

The final battle (Complete with countdown timer) in Prime 2 was very fitting and fun. It was difficult on high difficulties, but it was short enough to not be aggravating (The time limit ensured this). Plus, if you died, you got to start again right at the start of that fight, so no repeating the previous boss.

-SirNiko

[X3N]

Bad Final Boss: System Shock 2.  Yeah, that ending was pretty stupid too.

GREAT Final Boss:  I know this is gonna seem weird...but the final boss to Mass Effect was *amazing* if you were full Paragon.  You could actually talk the final boss out of destroying everything, rack him up with incredible guilt, and he will KILL HIMSELF WITH HIS OWN GUN.

You can talk the final boss into suicide.  *That* was a complete surprise.  (of course you still have a fight on your hands later, so maybe not quite the final boss.)

That's cool. In the Fallout games you could convince the final bosses to let you pass / give you the items you need, I don't remember any suicides though.