30 | Game Designer(?) | Arcade Lover | KOF Hippie™ | Ascended & Unhinged Sonic Fan | Sudden Onset Touhou Fan (it's terminal)


beatmania Song Of The Day
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So last night on stream I stayed up past 3AM fighting this freaky possessed doll on Critical Mode (hardest difficulty) with all Pro Codes (extra modifiers that greatly limit your stats and block access to many powerful tools), and it turns out this fight is actually a masterclass on why boss fights with dynamic elements like additional enemies, large arenas, and varied terrain are so cool in action games.


So like, Angelic Amber herself only has three moves. There's a pirouette melee attack, a ground pound that can track you to some extent as she goes into the air for it, and a spinning tackle that goes really far and can turn at weird angles. But the fight's huge arena has:

  • a bunch of shelves (context: you are toy-sized, so they are large cliffs)
  • several locations where enemies spawn, including Marionettes which can possess plushes and turn them into tougher enemies, as well as flying enemies with ranged attacks

Many of the enemies, especially the ranged attackers, are perfectly willing and able to attack you even if they're off camera, so you always need to be aware of their locations. Furthermore, Amber's fast and erratic movements will lead you into more enemy spawn locations if you chase her around.
With Pro Codes limiting your stats and options, fighting the normal enemies is a real time commitment, which becomes incredibly risky, as Amber will definitely perform her long-range tackle attack from anywhere if you ignore her for long enough. (Perhaps she's the jealous type.) So what's a Keyblade wielder to do?
Well, I ended up focusing on using Sora's Airstep ability to chase Amber down and focus on attacking her, largely leaving the enemies alive - which meant I had to constantly balance attacking Amber, blocking her attacks, and dodging the adds. Occasionally I would get a chance to swing at the flying ranged attackers - but even there there's a wrinkle! While one type is pretty much always vulnerable to melee combos, the other can counterattack with deadly melee attacks if their weapon is up. Much to keep in mind!
So after a good 3+ hours of managing every single thing in this giant crazy cocktail of a battle I finally managed to put it all together and put her to bed and it felt fucking GOOD.
Furthermore, a friend of mine approached the challenge in a completely different manner by taking out the enemies near the starting area of the fight and then remaining in that area and waiting for Amber to approach, which prevented more enemies from spawning. There's lots of tactical choices to make!

Honestly, the fact that there became a stigma against additional enemies during boss fights somehow is really lame to me. You can build really exciting and dynamic challenges by making use of so many different aspects of the game, and it's good to step out of the flows of "react to each attack cue properly until it dies" and "hit the glowing weak point until it dies" fights.


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