I'm fascinated by the praise the pinball-styled bosses are getting, as those have always been some of my least favourites.
Well, the CNZ boss may not be the most enjoyable thing ever, but it's built under the same standards the rest of the level has, so it feels like playing Sonic. As a lot of people say, bosses in Sonic games are the things you have to play instead of the ones you want to play, the reason I want the Chaos Emeralds ASAP. The SCD one is not a good boss (it hardly fights even, it's more like a breakable wall in a tricky place), but it allows and even asks you to take the Sonic route to use the environment and the "physics" (if the term can be used with SCD pinball gimmicks) to overcome it as quick as you can get. If I enjoy them it's because I still feel I'm playing Sonic in those moments, not because I think they're the best it can get.
Visually speaking at least, Knuckles' Chaotix have some pretty sick bosses. I linda like some Sonic Advance bosses too.
Agreed 100%. The Collision Chaos bosshas always been real troublesome for me, especially in the Mobile port of CD. I still appreciate the designs of those pinball bosses though, as at least they weren't cheap as hell like pre-Plus OoZ Act 2.
For what it's worth, I do enjoy pretty much all of the Mania bosses - the only ones I don't like are the spider due to how fiddly it is, and the Oil Ocean 2 boss pre-nerf because it was insanely hard for no real reason. Luckily, that got fixed in Plus.
I'll post this video every time this comes up. The projectiles pre-patch were very easy to bait out. Nobody considered doing this and lived on assuming they were impossible to dodge. Now, post-patch, the projectiles barely aim for you at all, making that entire phase of the boss's pattern a joke.
I think a lot of the Mania bosses are a chore which is why I mostly replay the levels in Time Attack. But they aren't severely crippling or anything. I actually disagree with @Blue Blood on Heavy Shinobi. I want to like it, because I think it's aesthetically very cool, but I used to always dread going up against that boss. I find it really frustrating how the boss is designed, because when you go near him he hit freezes you and knocks you back. Not bad in its own right, but I'd often find him jumping in the air, throwing two shurikens out, and I'd be forced to stand near him to avoid damage and I'd get locked into a freeze cycle for a few turns. I also find it very frustrating jumping into him while also not getting hit by the shurikens he throws out and the shrapnel from past shrikens. Maybe I just suck
I think the problem with this kind of take is that: - The first time you fight the boss you aren't expecting projectiles (especially because the Sonic 2 boss it's based on didn't have them) - You have no idea what the projectile direction is going to be until you've fought it a few times - But crucially, the genuinely annoying part of the boss wasn't the projectiles but the fact your rings would almost immediately vanish into the lava when you were hit. Goddamnit I was thinking of another forum where posts auto-merge. Apologies for double post!
Wait, it was the projectiles people hated about OOZ2 boss? I had assumed it was the drag-you-to-hell glitch. What changed about them in Plus?
I'm saying it is much easier to avoid damage in that fight than anyone is willing to accept. Your first time, you get hit once, your rings are gone, and you know nothing about the bullet pattern, sure. Your third, fifth, tenth times, sure. When people who've gone up against this boss (again, pre-patch) time and time again still believe it's way too hard, I don't have any reason not to believe they aren't looking for solutions.
I just don't like the OOZ act 2 boss because it's just a conceptual mess. "Hey! Let's take the original boss, make it into an octopus now for some reason, and throw in the original LRZ Act 1 turrets and make the platforms collapse because why the hell not?" That boss more than any other in the game just screams "Let's throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks." So it's both lazy and annoying.
It was especially brutal with Knux though, as if you tried to collect your lost rings his gimpy jump height would leave you stranded until the platforms reset.
To be fair, the LRZ1 turrets make a lot more sense as octopus tentacles than paired with a giant hand.
I think Oil Ocean 2's boss is actually a really cool concept. Being based on the octopus enemy is a nice touch, and I like the turrets as tentacles. I wish the intermittent phase with the laser were a bit more exciting. The boss dies pretty fast for me when I can score five or six free hits in the opening phase of it.
I feel bad that the game had to tone down that boss's projectiles. While the pulling-down glitch removal is gladly appreciated, I feel like the game was chickening out by caving into these complaints.
I just don't like the fact that it took place in the oil. Just doesn't feel fun to move. Of course, that's the whole challenge/gimmick of it but, as opposed to the original OOZ2 boss where you could try to avoid the oil slowing you down and that was part of the challenge, the Mania boss just leaves you in the oil for basically the entire fight.
Your entire post boils down to "git gud". Maybe you're a really professional videogame player - but I will say, as someone who's been playing classic titles for nearly 30 years, that I found that boss the most difficult in the entire game, and I obviously wasn't alone because of the fact it got nerfed. I know more than one person IRL who gave up on Mania because of that boss, and only returned to it after I pointed out it had been changed.
I don't know whether I love or hate this discussion. But either way, it's nice knowing that there are other grown adults on the internet that care as much as I do about these kinda of silly details in Sonic games. The OOZ2 boss is nice enough, but pre-patch it was a total crapshoot. It took much more finesse than any other part of the game, and was harder than the final boss. This on top of the fact that you didn't bounce off him when jumping the same way that you did on literally every other boss and enemy. The patch was absolutely necessary. Conceptually the boss is an idea that I really like. Functionally it's just the original S2 OOZ boss with new bells and whistles that increases difficulty and changes what you do as the player. And I think that kind of thing works better here than it did in the final part of the HCZ2 boss. And speaking of the HCZ2 boss... Urgh. I love the act 1 boss, and the first half of the act 2 boss is great too. But the final phase is way less fun than the rest, it makes the fight drag on and it's no more creative than "the original act 1 boss but now it's bigger".
