Is it just me or do raggy bosses not play in on what makes the regular enemy encounters so engaging? This isn’t to stay they are bad,they have well designed attack patterns that reward SOME experimentation and skill if the mechanics and do have a decent chunk of depth and are epic. They also have good fight choreography especially thor 2. But something I feel like and I hear this is also a problem zone of the Enders 2 has with its bosses too is that they can at times feel like a dps race due to the fact they don’t have much hit reactions compared to the regular enemy’s. Let’s use a draugurs as a example here,you can launch them,grip them,freeze them with the axe and kick them to other enemy’s for more frost and to turn them backwards for extra stun as well as to kick them to a wall for more damage or keep them there and more,pin them to a wall or to a group of enemy’s(you can do this with serpent snare as well),you can turn them backwards with a decent chunk of attacks,you can ring them out with a variety of ways,they have weakpoints,you can Hyperion pull them and use the combat grapple,you can knock them to walls for more stun,etc. The point is there is a lot of variety with their reactions which makes you not just want to dps them. Then we get to the bosses which can: be staggered,get stunned(which is pretty fucking rare unless a berserker or has daze and is just a glorified stagger),you can slow them down with freeze but not actually freeze them(which just gives you a dps boost for blades and the opposite is true with burn but you do much more damage with the former so freezing them to switch to blades is pretty dumb in my book atleast could be wrong),you can well interior some if their attacks aka gna has a feather attack that can applie status effects to her if you use it on time with a axe throw but that really only applies to her,and that’s kind of it. This in my opinion kind of hurts the replay value for the bosses since there really isn’t much experimentation to be had with them compared to regular enemy encounters. This is why I like the hateful. The hateful is a shitty boss due to having alot of tracking and not great telegraphs time say the least but the thing is,you can atleast launch him which opens up just WAY more possibility’s during combat. You can ring him out,pin him and some more. This adds that much more replay value and I don’t get that from the other bosses and mini bosses. I don’t mind the mini bosses however since they tend to be accompanied by enemy’s which makes them way more engaging since they have that multi tasking and prioritize mindset back and they tend to have really cool arenas you fight them in. Can’t say the same for the main bosses or mini bosses by themselves. I feel like this makes them at times just feel like a dps race rather than actual multi tasking and decision making. This isn’t to say there isn’t I multi tasking there is some. With hirst and most you can punish either of them when they grab atreus for some extra damage,odin has balls you need to destroy(don’t take this out of context please),and that’s pretty much kind of it I think. The only bosses I can see myself replaying are vanadis,thor 1(and maybe 2),odin and that’s pretty much it. I dunno I still have yet to develop my full feelings and want to hear your guys take on this. This is why I think gow 2 has the best bosses in the series.
NOTE: you can combat grapple bosses in raggy but it is more or less something you have to go out of your way to do and I mean, why would you ever do that? You can use it freely on mini bosses though. But can’t pull them in.