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I think particularly successful Boss Battles are the ones that really tune into the sense of desperation. For the most part, the Collossi in SotC do this very well. Each time you are climbing it feels like "this will never work oh god oh god"
But the absolute best I've experienced this is Giygas.
Yeah okay, I'm a Mother/Earthbound nut, but hear me out.
(Preface: this ENTIRE, well-scripted event is completely devalued if you know what to do ahead of time, whether through looking it up or through hearing about it. The game IS 17 years old, and all. But for the first time player who has no idea, it is remarkable.)
Consider first, that once you break past Pokey and he shuts off the Devil Machine and fight Giygas directly, the fight and aesthetic is more surreal than any encounter before. There is no Giygas sprite, there is no real background, there is only the shifting form of Giygas taking up your entire field of view. The music is deranged, but strangely calm. Then he calls to Ness and...
"You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas' attack."
...'the hell!? And BAM, your whole party is hit by an attack ranging in effect from a slight scratch, to volatile status effects, to incredible damage, to instantaneous death. You were told, but perhaps you did not believe it, Giygas is an entity of pure, incomprehensible, chaotic evil. You resort to your two most trustworthy trump card attacks, Jeff's Multi-Bottle Rocket and Ness' PSI Rockin' Omega.
And neither work.
To tell the truth, PSI Rockin' sometimes works, but sometimes it doesn't, and it has NEVER been ineffective before. You can understand such a mundane attack like a bottle rocket failing, maybe, but this is your signature move, THE thing that has distinguished Ness as special, even among other psychics. And it might not even WORK!? Oh.
Shit.
But it's okay. You can fight, you have plenty of other effective attacks and ways to heal yourself and pick up fallen allies. It's not totally hopeless. So you struggle and (as far as you can tell) you're doing alright. Maybe you're stressed, maybe your confident when Pokey comes in to taunt you. Maybe he makes it worse, or maybe you blow off the fat kid's jeering as a load of hot air, doesn't really matter. What matters is that from that point onward, you have NO idea how much more you have to fight until the end.
You fight. And you fight. And you fight some more. For a long time you can feel confident, but eventually you will start running out of Cups o' Lifenoodles and PP restoring items. Soon enough, you're running out of fuel and Giygas is still alive, still hammering you, and still behaving exactly the same. Whether you like it or not, the prospect of losing this battle starts to become a very real idea. You thought you were prepared, nay, OVERprepared. You got the Sword of Kings, you have the Gutsy Bat and you are approaching, if not at, max level. You can eat Bionic Kraken and Atomic Power Robots for breakfast. And for all that, you are utterly incapable of dealing any appreciable damage to Giygas. You know you can't lose, you know you'll never be stronger than this, you know that there has to be some way to defeat him, but HOW!?
So you get desperate.
Jeff is down for the count and Poo is diamondized. Ness and Paula are pretty badly wounded and have critically low PP. You select "Bash" for Ness, and move on to choosing Paula's attack. You weigh your options, unleash another PSI Freeze or Thunder? Maybe use what's left of your PP to cure Poo or pick up Jeff. Either way, after this turn, you've got nothing left.
And then you happen to notice the one command you have probably ignored for the entire game. The hit-or-miss, random effect, usually-doesn't-work-at-all, Pray. You might know that sometimes Pray can fully heal you, but maybe you don't. Even if you do, you're hoping against the odds that (if Pray even works) THAT effect is chosen among all possibilities. Either way, you are praying for a miracle. So you pray.
You withstand another incomprehensible attack. Ness attacks and deals (what you used to think was) a considerable amount of damage, and then pray triggers. What follows is something you didn't expect. Paula speaks, desperately begging anybody for help, and across time and space we see your team of supporters sense her and pray for you.
"Giygas' defenses became unstable!"
...Holy Shit.
It was not until that final act of near hopeless desperation that the battle even really began. Mechanically, yes, Giygas is invincible in this phase and unbeatable, but you have nothing telling you that aside from Pokey, and OF COURSE he'd want to believe that Giygas is unstoppable. It took exhausting every resource at your disposal until you resorted to a command you had long ago dismissed as all but useless, because you were that desperate.
And the designers knew that.
Everything about playing videogames teaches us to forgo weak techniques for better alternatives. We also know that sometimes there are abilities in games that just inherently suck whether they're supposed to or not. Often these abilities are just fluff, or a cool concept that never got fleshed out right. NOBODY in their right mind would use Pray on a regular basis. Aside from having a high chance of doing nothing and wasting a turn, half the effects negatively impact YOUR team too. The payoff is absolutely not worth it, so it's not a surprise that a player would ignore it. It's now that I can appreciate that very deliberate design. You are given the God-ending power early in the game, and it is useless. It's so useless that in the moment you need it most, you would not even think to use it. The time when you most desperately want to throw your strongest attacks at the enemy, your only effective attack is the pointless command you never use. I'm sure the designers knew that it would take trying absolutely every other option you had (even the equally useless Mirror technique) before using Pray, because they wanted you to feel as desperate as Paula does when she prays.
Mission god damned Accomplished.
So the fight changes to outlasting Giygas' tortured/ecstatic cries while Paula prays for support with everything she has. THIS is doable. You can last this long, just survive, see where this takes you, you'll be fine now. Each prayer reaches a new set of loved ones and friends who's support for the team weakens Giygas, dealing ever increasing damage. This is good, this can be done! So you Pray, and soon enough Giygas becaomes "fatally wounded". The image of Giygas splits into distortion. Staticy, numerous, frantic faces quite clearly writhing in pain. You've done it, you've won. Your sense of accomplishment and relief is palpable. And yet... the fight keeps going?
Strange. Okay, well, I suppose they just want you to finish him off. You assuredly Pray this one last turn.
"Paula's call is absorbed by the darkness."
...What.
WHAT!?
You mean NOW, after all that, having very literally NOTHING left to throw at Giygas is when you have to beat him the conventional way? There's no way, you're out of PP, out of items, out of time, out of everything! You've got to be kidding, you're still going to lose!? But... alskjdfnlkjsljkbhlajsfhkdj!!1!1
Suddenly, after you were lifted up into the confidence of a sure victory, you are tossed back down to where you were a few minutes ago, desperation. Again, you don't know what to do but hope for the best and pray.
So you pray again, because you're at that point where you'll even try things that have failed before. And just as quickly as you were smacked back down into desperation, hope shoots back up as a mystery identity wishes for the safety of the party, dealing increasingly PREPOSTEROUS amounts of damage to Giygas. In a few turns, you realize that identity is you. The name of you, the player, who was so randomly asked through the 4th wall half a game ago. YOU desperately wanted Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo to win.
So they did.
The game made you as a person fervently hope for the victory of the characters and in the end, it was YOUR genuine hope for their safety that saved them.
What you experienced was just a video game. A simple SNES cartridge of cartoony sprites and kooky bad guys. But in it's simplicity, it still has the power to invoke that emotion in you, and then USE it as the very key to winning the final battle.
And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I will always hold the battle against Giygas to be the greatest Boss Battle any video game has ever presented.
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