2156: Five Favourite Final Bosses

I beat Splatoon’s single player mode this evening, and was thoroughly impressed with the final boss battle — a thoroughly old-school and long fight that demanded you put into practice pretty much every skill the rest of the game had subtly taught you up until that point.

That got me thinking, then: what are some of my favourite final boss battles? I am, as I’ve previously mentioned on these very pages sometime in the dim and distant past, a real fan of a good finale to a game, since I’m one of those apparently rare breeds of gamer that actually likes to beat games. I love well-done final boss fights that go the whole hog, with impressive graphical effects, a stirring and unique soundtrack and a feeling of excitement and satisfaction unlike anything else in the rest of the game.

So here are five of my favourites. Not necessarily my absolute favourites, but five that spring immediately to mind, and in no particular order.

Final Fantasy VIII: Ultimecia

The easy choice would be Final Fantasy VII’s Sephiroth, of course, and to be sure the battles against Bizarro Sephiroth and Safer Sephiroth are indeed spectacular, particularly with the stirring tones of One Winged Angel accompanying the latter.

But I actually really appreciated Final Fantasy VIII’s final conflict, because it unfolded in a number of interesting and dramatic phases, each one raising the stakes significantly until the final final boss, which, by this point, you absolutely wanted to throw everything you had at.

The battle begins with the party attacking a regular-sized Ultimecia accompanied by the “sorceress battle” music that has marked major battles throughout the rest of the game. This is then followed by Ultimecia summoning Griever, an embodiment of the protagonist’s image of the “ultimate Guardian Force”. New music comes in here. After this, Ultimecia “junctions” herself to Griever, creating a monstrous entity, and fighting the party to the sounds of the famous battle theme Maybe I’m a Lion. And finally, the obligatory “fighting the true form of the final boss in something that looks like space” phase is accompanied by The Extreme, a high-intensity, pumping piece of music that gives this final phase of the battle a real sense of urgency.

Like most Final Fantasy games, Ultimecia was a bit of a pushover if you’d spent the time preparing properly, since final bosses are never the most powerful things in a Final Fantasy game; optional, so-called “superbosses” are, since their extreme difficulty would likely prevent more casual fans of the game from clearing the story. Make no mistake, though, she didn’t go down particularly easy — particularly compared to Sephiroth in VII — and the necessity of throwing your most powerful spells and Limit Breaks at her meant that the fight was consistently interesting and thrilling to watch.

Space Channel 5 Part 2: Purge

It’s kind of strange to think of a rhythm action game having a final boss, but Space Channel 5 was far from being a typical rhythm action game; the emphasis was very much on the “action” side of things, as between the two installments, it told an enjoyable — if utterly camp — story filled with dancing, singing and guitar battles.

The final battle in Part 2 felt surprisingly climactic and movie-like. It was also a textbook example of a “spirit bomb” battle, in which the protagonist looks like they’ve been completely defeated — indeed, some theories suggest that Ulala is outright killed by Purge’s initial assault — but is then given new-found strength and abilities by the power of friendship/love/belief/whatever. In the case of Space Channel 5, this is reflected in both the visuals — you see throngs of people dancing behind Ulala as the battle progresses — and the audio, which features a crowd of people shouting the directions as opposed to just Ulala as in the rest of the game.

This battle also does something I particularly love with its soundtrack: it provides a new twist on the game’s main theme, bringing a wonderful sense of closure to the whole experience.

Super Mario World: Bowser

I mention this one not because it’s a particularly amazing fight — compared to some other battles I could mention, it’s fairly unremarkable — but because, to the best of my recollection, Super Mario World was the first game I ever played to completion and saw the end credits of. Consequently, it was also the first time I had ever encountered a final boss battle, and I very much enjoyed how it was a slightly different setup to the rest of the game, that made you realise Shit Was Getting Real.

The usual status bar at the top of the screen was no longer there, it was a single-screen stage rather than a scrolling level, and it was accompanied by unique music and graphical effects — in this case a rather rudimentary but effective thunder and lightning effect.

This being the era long before GameFAQs use was widespread, I had to work out how to defeat Bowser myself. It took a good few attempts to determine what to do, and a good few more to actually correctly put it into execution. But my goodness when I finally achieved it for the first time it felt absolutely amazing. I probably cheered. Like, out loud. I forget. But, needless to say, it was a very exciting moment indeed.

Ace Combat 4: Megalith

I came to the Ace Combat series relatively recently and still haven’t played them all to completion, but I was thoroughly impressed with Ace Combat 4 from start to finish. It took air combat, something that could have easily been extremely dry and clinical — the old MicroProse sims of yore sprang to mind — and turned it into something cinematic and dramatic, with wonderful setpieces and incredible music.

The crowning glory of the game, though, was the final mission, which was set up and executed absolutely perfectly. The prior missions had set you up to expect something horrendous to fight against, and it’s finally revealed as “Megalith”, a superweapon that will, not to put too fine a point on it, wreck everyone’s shit if allowed to do its thing.

You know that things are getting real when the pre-mission briefing screen, which usually had some rather arcadey music accompanying it, was instead accompanied by near silence, with only a heartbeat-like throb in the background. And then once the mission begins, you hear this:

Incredible stuff. Particularly as, in appropriate action movie style, you wreck Megalith’s shit by flying inside it and dropping bombs in its most sensitive areas.

Splatoon: DJ Octavio

Finally, the reason I’m writing this at all: Splatoon’s final boss.

The battle against DJ Octavio is a textbook example of an old-school boss battle, particularly those favoured by Nintendo. It’s a lengthy affair that is far more than simple tank-and-spank: you need to make use of all your skills to beat it, and it’s not easy. It’s also quite unforgiving, giving you only three lives to play with (though you can replenish these by reaching checkpoints in the fight, which is one thing we didn’t used to get in the old days) and lots of opportunities to fall off into oblivion or be splattered by his many and varied attacks.

The cool thing about DJ Octavio is that it’s designed in the same way as the rest of Splatoon’s single-player mode: it’s made to encourage you to use various skills and techniques that will serve you well in competitive multiplayer, which is, after all, the meat of Splatoon. Multiplayer battles are chaotic, and the fight against DJ Octavio introduces you to this fact gradually over the course of the battle, beginning by simply throwing missiles and punches at you — the one constant throughout the fight is that you have to “reflect” his punch attacks back at him by shooting them before they strike you or the ground — and gradually, over time, stepping things up with more treacherous ground to fight on, additional enemies, powerful superweapons and more things happening at the same time.

By the end of the fight, you’re essentially handling the same mechanics, but at a much higher speed and with more distractions. Deal with that and you’re almost certainly ready for the unpredictability of human opponents.

For bonus points, the DJ Octavio fight also includes a lightweight spirit bomb in its final phases: the music changes from the dubstep-techno-type stuff Octavio has been playing at you throughout the fight to a song sung by Splatoon mascots Callie and Marie, who have been helping you out in not-very-good disguises throughout all of the single player mode. It’s a great way to close out the fight, with a real feeling that you’re being encouraged to do your best against seemingly impossible odds — and consequently finally getting everything right and clearing the game feels just as satisfying as that first time I beat Super Mario World all those years ago.

So good job, Nintendo; while many people may not think of you immediately when contemplating spectacular finales to games, it’s clear you know your shit when it comes to badass bosses.

Now to get destroyed in multiplayer, I guess…