Why Bosses Are Bad | Darkest Dungeon 2

This video tackles the idea behind boss and difficult enemy design for both Darkest Dungeon 2 and 1. There is a specific trend that's far more frequent in DD2, and I support this idea with several examples. During the DD1 comparison there's something interesting to think about regarding why things were different back then.
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[@ShuffleFM]

Something I forgot to mention are the stakes of the fights as well. In DD2 if you didn't make the right team at crossroads, or have enough skills unlocked you will likely lose and that's 4 hours gone. In DD1 if a fight goes south you can retreat and at worse lose a hero or 2 (TPKs are the result of stubbornness lol).

[@henryjones3232]

I've heard from people that replacing heroes in dd1 takes hours (I don't have personal experience though)

[@destroyermaker]

I didn't mind this as I was having so much fun learning and unlocking as I went. Though I think they could solve it by mixing in enemies or minibosses that function like nerfed versions of the boss (e.g. you pick Resentment and fight a lung miniboss in The Sprawl).

[@ryanc9876]

True. I think one of my more disappointing runs was one that I was battling tooth and nail against RNG. Got hypochondriac on two heroes at the first region inn, after curing a disease from the first region. Made aside from the hypochondriac stuff, I managed to get 2 more diseases, while having Ounce+ on. Got to the act boss (act 2 btw), got hit by 2 nasty crits, in one turn--I had the weak token spamming disease on two heroes, and still low rolled to BARELY miss one of the tokens on a deep breath. My PD died since I only braved one Lair with the disease stricken team--and it was the minus-DBR trophy. Died to the burn on her following turn. Was a new file to have something work towards, but still sucked to get so close only to die rapidly like that after all those hours. I didn't think about it until now, but yeah--if a ran was starting to go south, diseases galore, you could just retreat and save your heroes. Stopping a run in DD2, you lose them. Not that I would've kept 3 diseased heroes anyway with how hard it can be to find a good time to cure them in this game lol. Especially with hypochondriac.

[@sailorraybloomdz]

A couple of points about DD1 stakes: 1. If you're a complete beginner and have no idea how anything works, you can still go bankrupt from retreating too much and getting party wiped from bosses you don't understand (the safest example would be pounder for getting your entire party into death's door and then cleaving you with a gun dude). In a lot of cases, nobody wants to do a dungeon run with 4 level 0s and no provisions, so they will just create a new save file, losing about the same if not more hours than a DD2 run. On the other hand... 2. On Stygian/Bloodmoon, if you've very close to the end and god forbid you lose too many heroes, you lose. That save file is gone for good. Did you have good time spending about 40 hours in a game? Now it's just gone.

[@ganescus]

I personally do not get this at all. In DD1 losing a level 5 hero can take upwards of 6 hours to level them back up. If you lose too many, that's a whole 80 hour campaign you just shoved down the toilet. Sure it's annoying losing to boss 3 and having to go through a 2 hour run, but it's nowhere near as annoying for a new player - especially since even a fun runs in a row in DD1 can get you in a shitty situation with low money, lots of stress and plenty of bad quirks and diseases weighing down your runs.

[@ExtremeMan10]

The biggest problem with the bosses is the cost vs risk reward. In DD1, if boss heavily damaged your party, you could then complete mission and heal all your heroes at hamlet for no problem. In DD2, if General heavily stresses you party, then you risk meltdown in next node.

[@owl4356]

Holy shit that's exactly what happened to me. I got through Leviathan but in the next fight (that I couldn't run away from) got my ass handed to me by mister Docker who got crit buffed by the captain 😂

[@bobjones7479]

That and random boss trinkets while in dd1 you knew which trinket the boss would give at the completion of the mission while in dd2 boss trinkets are random and not super strong

[@soapmcsoaperson]

Perhaps after boss encounters in DD2, the game could heal/remove some stress/even increase affinities between heroes. It would allow rebalancing them to be harsher and closer to DD1 bosses, and it wouldn't be out of place thematically (killing a creature this strong is bound to increase morale)

[@lajosszarka1707]

​@@bobjones7479 In DD2 you also know exactly what the loot is you are fightig for. It is presented for you before proceeding to the third fight.

[@Yondayme666]

​@@lajosszarka1707yes but you waste one encounter for that

[@Guille2033]

Tldr: bosses cleave too much and that's boring because it's their, majorly, main tactic. Also enemies only do damage or debuff you, but not themselves (as a way of giving you a chance to counteract them), which solidifies the "damage race" approach to gameplay. We need more variety

[@aegisScale]

At times it's comical how true that is, especially with things like old Fault. That thing was a story boss that was effectively the Super Sleeper, a boss in endless mode that most people didn't like made even harder and less fun to deal with, to the point where a perfectly prepared and conditioned party will still probably lose 2-3 characters before winning (or have everyone on Death's Door) . . . On top of the glitch that made healing hurt and possibly kill characters.

[@mr.d2190]

There are some enemies that buff themselves or their party such as the captain, the fishmonger or the swine skulker.

[@garrinvoss6769]

I think the Leviathan fight could be balanced around having 2 hands instead of infinite hands. So if you get through both hands it's just a slug-fest to take down the head before it wears your party down. Due to how many actions Leviathan gets even without the hands, I think this makes for a good compromise because it can still Tidal Surge and Eyes of the Storm.

[@kingodin8243]

That would actually work so well. I didnt even think about that

[@thefailbender]

Would that be too similar to Ch 2 boss though?

[@supersentaimexicano1967]

@@thefailbender Spoiler Alert. No, Ch 2 boss u don't have to kill the lungs in order to beat it, but You do with the hands. But yeah it would be kinda similar

[@videojamiemostlikely9282]

That, and maybe freeing a hero could stress heal the party for a tiny bit.

[@tatzooism]

I feel that the Leviathan should take some damage for each time you kill a hand. Why does the head just get to hang in the back, staring at our party like we owe him relics and swat away at us without feeling pain from the nth time we slash through his hand.

[@WeedgokuBonerhitler]

DD2's boss fights remind me a lot of DD1 mod content, where people would just shit out overtuned bosses and enemies that hit all your party, inflicted obscene bleed, toxin and stress and shuffled everyone around, then pat themselves on the shoulders congratulating themselves on the sick challenge they made.

[@karoschatz5558]

For the viscount, if you apply a dot to the bodies that he feeds on, it is actually transferred to the viscount. I love this little detail, it allows you to engage with the mechanic in a completely different was and potentially turns a threat into an opportunity.

[@THEREALSPARTAN]

Something to take in mind with Sleeper dishing out AOEs every turn is that: 1: Sleeper only gets 1 action per round, so while it is hitting all 4 of your units in 1 turn, you're getting 4 turns to hit it so it's equal in action economy. 2: Having heroes die in endless harvest doesn't matter since they still come back later on, so it's not a huge loss if sleeper manages to kill one of them.

[@aegisScale]

That and at least Sleeper (I'm 90% sure) doesn't have an AoE stun it can randomly (or even predictably) throw out to ruin your action economy.

[@uwufemboy5683]

@@aegisScaleit’s just got an AoE blight and an AoE horror, both of which hit fairly hard. The fight is honestly more of a check on whether you either saved enough resources for it or made it through the farmstead and phase 1 with a party designed to beat this specific boss.

[@heroesoftomorrow3488]

@@aegisScale Sleeper cannot, but its first form, Fracture, can stun the entire party through "Slow the Sands" Also, the pink Aberation has a kamikaze party stun

[@aegisScale]

@@uwufemboy5683 yeah Sleeper ain't a great boss, it's just less unfair and frustrating than the old eyeblob (the new eyeblob is probably as aggravating as Sleeper methinks, though it's been awhile since I challenged the latter).

[@heroesoftomorrow3488]

Funnily Enough, back when the pot was destructible, if you somehow defeated it, Hag would actually spam "Meat Tenderiser" every turn in place of "Into The Pot" and use another attack with her other action

[@ryanc9876]

AoE cleaving is a large reason why this game feels like just a dps race. I feel like the best option 9/10 times, no matter what boss/fight I take is "do damage" and if I want to heal, the best option is to use healing combat items. I've been enjoying DD2, but there is definitely a lack of combat nuance that the first game had. I don't want DD1 again in it's entirety, but all the cleave and the ease of enemy stuns, it does get frustrating. Best way to deal with that? Destroy the enemy. Another thing to add, is that some bosses just ignore dodge and blind tokens, further limiting your avenues of working around the problem.

[@ShuffleFM]

Good points!

[@jjChibi]

My personal tinfoil hat theory is down to a difference in philosophy between DD1 and DD2. DD1 had shorter runs, and the devs knew that if they blew up one of your party members, it's more or less a fail condition. It's why stress attacks prioritize high-stress enemies, or why the game can have the leniency of single-target attacks that can take you straight into Death's Door. It's more fair if it's single-target (And with knowledge, you can play around it). DD2 doesn't have the short-burst gameplay of DD1, it's much more of a marathon. And this time around, the devs don't want you to lose the entire run because of a single death, they want it to be more of a journey. So the way to endanger the player starts orienting itself much more around the idea that you don't have to just kill one member, you have to kill the entire group. Of course, with the devestating final Cultist nodes and the random new party members at the inn, this doesn't work out in practice. But I think said difference in philosophy in DD2 is why they decided to enable cleave attacks so much more than in DD1.

[@WiLDRAGE777]

My biggest issue with the bosses is that there are not multiple ways to approach them. You either have a team built that can beat them or you don't and no amount of skill will help you. It killed my entire motivation to replay this game. With the runs being as long as they are, the bosses are simply not fun enough to warrant doing any of the act bosses more than once.

[@thiagoleal5841]

Cowardice actually has the move "Spreading Stain" that the boss uses if it builds up enough worship. You'll never guess what it does, Shuff

[@aVeryAngryMoth]

Spoiler alert: it hits everyone

[@Korhi]

@@aVeryAngryMoth It also yoinks all your positive tokens!

[@vogunBurgundy]

See, that at least feels earned because it's the conditional, ultimate attack of the _final_ boss that you can very easily prevent and see coming. Like Sundering Exhalation, but even more so since Shred of Decency works on it if you brought that, as do DoTs and such.

[@ShuffleFM]

I don't mind that one as much. Final boss, it builds up, and I like the worship mechanic as a whole, so that one gets a pass :)

[@aegisScale]

​@@vogunBurgundy also, there's more time to do what you have to do to avoid getting cleaved, so it's feasible to simply never see that attack during that fight.

[@firebornliger]

Doesn't surprise me. After the nerfs they did in DD1, I can see their process being, "What did players hate in the first game? More of that."

[@heathlouis4529]

The main thing is that cleave attacks are another way of attacking your turn economy, as they force heals. Its just we really don't have interesting heals across either of the games. The most interesting it gets is Flag in DD2 I'd say. Across each game we have so little attacks that do healing + something else, and the ones that do something else are so often underwhelming. Cleaves being the default threatening mechanic should be something thats moved away from, definitely, but god it'd help if the cleaves actually forced us to interact with something dynamic and not just Press Button When Health Low.

[@raderelcaroman1403]

In DD1 aoes exist more as a punishement mechanic, while in DD2 they are an inevitability mechanic, that sometimes you can do nothing about because you have to go through blind and dodge ckecks which are IMO the worst part of DD2 and if you are unlucky or unperpared the fight is lost before it even begins

[@peco595]

Dodge is fine for the most part because that gets whittled away fast and has enough means to pierce through Blind though does suck a lot, at least for the big bosses. One bad blind on act 2 boss is all it takes to ruin the whole thing. Same goes for Leviathan.

[@ahben98]

I was hoping that as future updates, they could do like 3 acts of bosses for each region, like how in dd1 there were 3 levels of difficulty. But of course each one in dd2 would have more mechanics or different bosses. Would give more variety and reason to actually visit regions more than once and maybe add some depth to the game

[@destroyermaker]

As long as there are different levels of rewards

[@destinpatterson1644]

I really like this idea

[@peco595]

​@@destroyermakerAnd as long as you don't have to fight all 15 to finish the game, have the different versions as options

[@crabsmack_]

I think the clear way to do this is based on how many regions you've done. If you do General in your first zone he's the level 1 version, if you do him in your 3rd he's the level 3.

[@threebadgers1083]

Personally, my main issue with the DD2 bosses, at least the ones in the Lairs, is that they all feel so trial and error. Like in DD1 the mechanics of the bosses were much simpler to understand (don't hit the small pig, hit the pot when the Hag throws a hero in) meanwhile in DD2 there's the Dreaming General's whole Root system, Librarian with their book burning (which at first I thought acted like the pews from the Prophet). And since the more roguelike style was taken for 2, it means that those small mistakes of not fully understanding the mechanics probably means the end of a run. The Mountain bosses (I've only gone up against the first two) feel like a step in the right direction, with the locks' mechanic being simple enough and Resentment's mechanic being explained in the small 'buff' that the part gets. Now, obviously I'm not saying scrap the bosses and change it to something else, but I just wish there was a better way of knowing how to deal with some of the foes outside of just googling the answer

[@studentt6064]

Eh I don't think DD1 is that different though? I'm pretty sure plenty of people killed wilbur and saw the consequences, it's no different with librarian/baby. I'll give you that dreaming general is more involved though, but leviathan is basically no different from the hag mostly except that it has the move resist possibility. Also you already saw them experimenting with more involved boss movesets in the dlcs.

[@threebadgers1083]

@@studentt6064 true, but Wilbur also had the mechanic where if you hit him you’re instantly hit by the Swine King, which naturally dissuades you from hitting him further

[@TheBoxGhost_tm]

@@studentt6064 Hitting Wilbur once gave a warning in the form of a party cleave from the big swine and a unique bark from one of the party members insinuating not to hit the little one, so no I never killed Wilbur before the Swine God. I found out after the fact what would happen if you kill Wilbur from one guy using pre-nerf flagellant to illustrate how OP he was initially.

[@tigercrush2253]

I think the biggest difference is that DD1 gave you baby versions of the bosses to play against so you could learn their tricks at low stakes. If you mess up on the novice boss, you can usually just burn them down and even if you don't, losing a few fresh and zesty adventurers is a bummer but not really that big of a deal. They effectively gave you tutorial versions of each boss. In DD2, you are probably an hour+ deep on a run and popping in on a new boss basically guarantees you're going to throw that run away. And definitely does not guarantee you'll learn their gimmick while they cleave you to bits and drop weird tokens with vague descriptions like, "You are being watched."

[@jonathanrussell8998]

I would argue that the hag sucks because the boss design screams that you should hit the pot and free your ally but in practice the pot takes way too much damage and you’re usually better burning down the hag because she just puts someone else in right away anyway so all that damage you put in barely saves you any damage to your party. It legit feels like it’s better to leave them in until they come out naturally at death’s door and try to heal them before they get tapped. And then there’s Necromancer, summons enemies and moves itself back. Kill the minions and bring the boss up to beat on it, right? Nope, just ignore the skeletons and make sure you bring good rank 4 reach because the Necromancer re-summons them WAY too fast for it to be worth spending turns killing them. You’re barely even getting a break from the enemy DPS. Cannon has the issue too, you do have to take out the match man which is nice but you pretty much have 0 reason to attack the other brigands over the cannon. DD1 struggled hard in making minion-summon bosses good, and not all of the other gimmicks land either. I feel like the Drowned Crew made it work, the anchor guy feels killable enough to where the reward is worth the effort plus there’s a real reason to because he passes defenses over to the boss while he’s doing his gimmick so killing him can help you kill the boss. And then prophet works alright too, you destroy the pews to bring him forward if you can hit the closer ranks harder than the back ranks, each successive pew is harder and you get loot for it too.

[@marcinmichalik5040]

Now that you recall ale the intricate boss mechanics from dd1, it really stands out as a bit lazy / unfair to just put a cleave on almost all the dd2 bosses. Also I did not know you could f up the child just by immobilizing one unit in front, got to give it a try :)

[@TheAudioInjection]

I picked up DD2 again since the first month of early access and I instantly got stuck on the 2nd boss--the Lung guy. The breathe/exhale mechanic that hits your entire party and you have to burst damage the sides AND it has 200% DoT resistance is so infuriating. It feels like you need to make such a specific team to beat this boss. I hate it

[@Avocado_san]

yeah I hated it too, it took me 4 tries to beat it. but then I got to the 3d boss and I honestly want to delete the game xD 3d boss is the stupidest thing they created; you need to read an entire article just to understand how to beat it

[@spookydonkey42]

i have sadly been having a really bad time playing DD2 😕 I *want to experiment with team comps* but the bosses are hyper-specific-ability-puzzles that are so inflexible (with an insane time investment just to run headfirst into an almost predetermined loss based on comps) that is has truly made this an exhausting and unrewarding experience to play. i sincerely hope they rework this game down the line, even having to watch the carriage move now feels like purgatory to me. i recommend DD1 to almost everyone, but DD2 i simply cant (after 100 hours) recommend to just about anyone. 💔

[@animatorbug]

The bosses really do feel like something you need to google before fighting. That first fight is almost always a death because you don't have the right party comp with specific skills equipped. Looking back at DD1, fighting bosses could be done in a multitude of ways. Now it's "oh, can't hit the backline with more than one character? Enjoy dying relentlessly to the 2nd confession! Oh, you DID bring someone else to hit the backline? Better have someone to remove the blindness they're inflicted with!" Copy and paste this for almost every boss in the game.

[@DuckieMcduck]

@@animatorbug To be fair DD1 also messed you up if you went to a boss without knowing what they do. You couldn't always have your optimal "A-team" available, so they weren't necessarily tied to your entire playthrough. In DD2 you're quite literally railroaded to certain compositions because they're always free to choose, so why not always pick the A-Team?

[@OceanicManiac]

​@@animatorbugYou can beat the second confession without bothering to hit the lungs

[@animatorbug]

@@OceanicManiac Sure, you *can*. If you have a team who can tank through multiple full-party hits / death's door hits. Which, again, is going to be a very specific party comp built for doing specifically that. It's literally the exact same issue.

[@OceansideSpiderHouse]

My least favorite thing with the lair bosses is that it feels more like you’re incentivized to just fight the easiest one every time (i.e. librarian) and only bother with the others a handful of times. Aside from specific strats with the dreaming general item, I never felt that, outside my own amusement, there was ever any actual reason to fight Leviathan or Boss Baby, especially on a run where I’ve already killed a lair boss. Instead I can just take one point of mastery in tracking shot, dab on librarian, and pick the path of least resistance to the mountain every time. I don’t want to do that, but it’s effective enough that the game encourages it I’d say. I’d really like to see them incentivize doing more than one lair with a buff exclusive to doing just that, or at least give a better reason to alternate bosses or, hell, go to the shroud at all. Like with bounty hunter’s mechanics, I think the devs should take the achievement data into consideration to see what mechanics and regions people simply aren’t engaging with.

[@OceansideSpiderHouse]

For context, the achievement for hiring the Bounty Hunter *once* has a 14.3% unlock rate on steam at the time of writing this. Beating Ambition, the game's fourth of five chapters, has a 15.4% unlock rate.

[@tigercrush2253]

This is the intrinsic problem with DD2 as a game for me. I don't want to throw away a multi-hour run just to try something new, and because everything resets in between runs, there isn't much they can incentivize you with that is ACTUALLY worth the risk. Beat Shambler in DD1 and you might get the ancestor's map to use for the rest of the game. I'll take that gamble. In DD2, even a good trinket isn't worth the risk of losing the run because losing or winning the run is the only incentive.

[@squirrelfart275]

God, I wish Obsession wasn't so focused on fucking you over with cleaves (Limerence is dangerous because if it starts cleaving you will die, Suppress is absolute cancer), but worked more like Black Reliquary's Janissary (hard-focuses one character, locks them into a 1v1). Would be a lot more fun and thrilling.

[@clairelili873]

GOD YES. And it would fit thematically, because its obsessing over someone, and making someone focus on it.

[@lazerax9]

Personally I think they should soft-rework the lair bosses other than child and obsession mountain boss (3rd time's the charm!). Maybe ambition too. Honestly I'm fine with sigh being a huge cleaver if it's the only one. For dreaming general I would be interested in changing nightmare to target 1 random hero and just do an obscene amount of damage (like 80 or something) to just immediately drop them to death's door (then clear the vines as normal). Ghoul and skiver are too much fun to hate and should never be changed. Baneful Breath should require the special token like billious cannon but also do more damage.

[@inkromancer_studios]

Honestly I think the constant cleave attacks would bug me less if the bosses weren't hard codded to have 2 actions a round. I understand why a boss who is acting on his own like General or Librarian has 2 actions, but harvest child having two on top of his meat escorts having 1 each is just absurd. If you get a string of bad luck and end up killing one of the meat piles the entire fight instantly collapses. No amount of strategy helps anymore, because he's hitting you with Maw of Life every single round guaranteed. Even Burning Bright would be a survivable challenge if Librarian only had 1 action every round post ignite. Also something I noticed. Most of the DD1 cleave hits 3 people max, very few attacks actually hit your entire party. I wonder how the game would play if they kept 4-hit cleave exclusive to mountain bosses...

[@poggers4392]

Bro there are so many ways to mitigate harvest child. Just stack bleed resist for maw and hit the meat that hits front row gg ez. Or use knockbacks and pulls to move harvest child back or pull a meat forward pushing harvest child back.

[@tminusboom2140]

A design I've always thought would be cool in Darkest Dungeon is a boss that, rather than having Cleave or other massive inherent power buffs, it hits one guy for a regular amount of damage, but attacks an extra time on its next turn every time it takes damage. In addition, every time it takes a turn, it just flatly gives everyone some stress. Not a lot, but everyone every time. If you don't do any damage to it, it'll only hit for like 8 damage a turn, but the stress will build. If you can find a way to outheal that, great, but it breaks the normal flow of relying on breaking the turn economy or damage racing, which would likely require running a different comp than your typical clear one.

[@steubenbreunden]

Well said, I don't think I quite realized why the bosses felt so uninspired in DD2. I especially started to dislike the confession bosses because they wasted so much of my time. Let me spend candles to create a checkpoint at an inn. Let me respawn at the previous inn with some debuffs. Let me start an inn closer to the final region each time I reach the boss. Anything - I don't want to spend the next 2.5 hours going through the same regions with minimal challenge just to get bent over and have my entire party spanked by the Obsession boss for the 5th time. Candles and memories ain't doing it. DD1 arguably had a problem grinding heroes back up after a party wipe but it felt way less painful to me for some reason, maybe because you can at least retreat and cut your losses most times. (EDIT: Just saw your pinned comment. Lol)

[@DuckieMcduck]

DD1 was more of a management game so grinding a hero was effectively just playing the game, so it didn't feel grindy. The way it is designed also forces you to level up several characters at once (as you rotate due to stress/events). You could also place low level heroes in harder dungeons with higher level teammates + equip the ancestor's painting before exiting the dungeon to get them up the levels rather quick, shoots even quicker if someone in the team has the Never Again trait. There was just a lot of things you could try and do (including having lvl0 parties go on no-light runs exclusively to find gold) and it was all very entertaining. In DD2, well, you just start over with maybe a few extra buffs from candle upgrades then spin the wheel on loot drops (which can be useless and you can't sell/trade); so it feels like you are doing less every time.

[@lockthepope]

Speaking specifically about the cleaves for Act 2 and Act 4, I don't mind them too much because they feel thematically relevant. The fact that Seething Sigh switches from shallow to deep breath also helps switching the fight from a more methodical phase were you pick your attacks to a DPS race, which no other fight really does. I'd personally keep the seething sigh as is, but maybe make the Ravenous Reaches attack a reverse baron whip, where it deals increasing damage towards the back ranks.

[@ShuffleFM]

Sigh is in a great spot for sure

[@peco595]

​@@ShuffleFM Now I haven't fought the Sigh since back in the beta after it's release, but I never felt that fight was in a good spot. There just weren't that many good 4th rank damage dealers and it made the Hellion feel mandatory. If you have to expend 3 character's turns to knock down both lungs, then the Sigh will probably still have a block+ token to keep itself healthy. I think that was my primary issue with the thing. If they made it have a regular block token or no blocks gained, killing the lungs before the boss would feel a lot more reasonable. As is, they may as well not even have healthbars.

[@DesignFrameCaseStudies]

This kind of constructive criticism is extremely important and interesting. I would also suggest that they didn't learn how to use randomness to its greatest possible effect, despite using so much of it across two games now. The result of that makes sense now that I also see how they devolved in boss design as well. Thank you for bringing this to light!

[@ashesofaranea]

cleave in general does suck, it's just the kind of thing that makes you feel like there was nothing you could have done, unless the cleave more often that not misses chances are even if you get high dodge rates some people will always get hit, you're not gonna have insane dodge rates on all your heroes most of the time. Just frustrating really especially when you get crit multiple times in a row by it

[@bziebzie]

I think it's because it's easier to make a hard boss that hits everyone. Main problem is that in dd2 these AoE attacks are for bosses that have multiple actions in one round. Sleeper has huge AoE in dd1 but it has 1 action per round where you have 4 against it. Also I feel that dd1 bosses where made with the though of how to make them interesting and fit the environment. I'm not saying that dd2 doesn't have thematic bosses but dd1 had a buildup to them where in dd2 they are just randoms

[@benismann]

There's a simpler example of DD1 enemies debuffing themselves. Big bandit gets his speed lowered after point blank shot, and he's quite common

[@Fozzie1481]

In DD2, I really miss the aspect of picking and equipping a specific team for a specific task that was such a satisfying element in DD1. After unlocking the character relared stuff in DD2 I just lost interest in the game because it doesn't offer me any intrinsic motivation to keep playing, which is really sad. Especially considering how much fun I still have with starting new campaigns in DD1.

[@Eloxist]

Perhaps we judged Vestal too harshly as she gatekeeped boring boss design. This hits the nail on the head, one last thing I'd like to add is that nearly every boss in DD1 has different ways to be dealt with. You can bring direct damage, DoT, debuffs or a combination of those and still hold your ground really well, this is great for blind playthroughs or if you want to try out team building, even if you screwed up you can just retreat, tweak the party and try again. I haven't finished DD2 yet but I managed to beat act 1 first try with the Shuffle but when I played a DoT focused team for Act 2 I find out that I need direct damage and DoT does not work for the boss gimmick, meaning I have to build a SPECIFIC team to beat a boss after a 2-3 hour run in a game that is meant to be a rogue like with replayability. Also EVEN IF you assemble a team to deal with a specific boss gimmick one of those characters could die and you could get a new one that does not function in the fight. Ending a run with a Boss that is restrictive kills replayability as there is no replay value if you have to use the same strategy everytime.

[@tiagocosmos]

1. Bosses have way too many free actions 2. Resentment and Obsession bosses are horrible. 3. Certain trophies fucking suck.

[@EmptyTenementSpirit]

What's wrong with Resentment? It's easily one of the better Confession bosses.

[@ShuffleFM]

Yeah the best ones are resentment and cowardice lol

[@EmptyTenementSpirit]

@@ShuffleFM Resentment and Cowardice are easily the best of the ones I've fought, if I die or (much more likely) simply lose one char, it's typically because I fucked up somewhere. I like the high pressure feel of Denial, but if you don't get lucky with a ton of clarifying poultices, or just RNG your way through stun resists, it can be pretty bad, though even with that I basically never die to Denial anymore. Ambition just felt... way too weak? I first tried it, I took a lot of damage as it was my first time so I knew nothing about it, but I lost nobody to it. Obsession has been a pain point for pretty much everybody, I get the gimmick, it's cool in theory, but in practice has rarely felt fair. I appreciate that now you can basically taunt your way through it, but again, bad RNG means you just kind of get fucked by this boss, or even something as simple as taking too long in the first phase, I have no idea how you make this both an interesting puzzle and a fair challenge because currently it either feels like the challenge has to be too high because the puzzle is solveable with the right team, or the puzzle has to be infuriating to make the challenge feel, well, challenging.

[@tiagocosmos]

​@@EmptyTenementSpiritI fucking hate it.

[@alephnole7009]

Great video. Another thing to bring up is DD2 a lot of those Cleave & AOE attacks ALSO deal stress & or DOT. So you end up with 30+ damage, 2 stress, 3 bleed. All from one attack.

[@Psiclone]

I agree with a lot of this. My biggest gripe with the game is that to beat the bosses generally everything needs to go right from the start and on the final boss even with perfect strategy a couple misses can lead to an AOE party wipe. This doesn't feel like making the most of a bad situation.

[@puncherofbread]

My problem with the bosses illustrates my overall problem with why I don't play Darkest Dungeon 2 that much in that mainly the game is so damn time consuming for a rogue-lite that I often just don't have the patience or the time to just sit there for 3+ hours to do a run. In DD1 you just pick a dungeon and then boom in and out quick 30 minute adventure that can be longer if you want to do a longer one or shorter if you want to do a shorter one. Slay The Spire did DD2's run system perfectly. You have normal encounters, chance encounters, and mini-bosses on the path to a larger boss but it never takes me even close to 2 hours to finish a run in StS meanwhile I've never had a DD2 run that went under 2 hours.

[@RebelCM]

And in Act 4 your DBR are getting a 25 % debuff in the final boss battle i think. That's totally unfair tbh

[@vogunBurgundy]

I feel like I probably prefer the Act 4 and 5 Confession bosses in DD2 overall but, it feels nice to be reminded I am not alone in being a Baron enjoyer. Man's gets so much hate and I just don't feel it

[@drscFail]

I don't think it's the cleaves that upset me as much as the fact that a lot of them come 'with extras'. In my mind there is no reason on a move as powerful as hollow vessel to have crit chance, same with walking dead from general (best designed fight in the whole game imo, minus that). Moves having multiple of: DoT+nuke, cleave, crit chance should just be reworked to have less stuff on them. High % crit on a move is fine if thats its thing, having high damage on an ability is fine, having a cleave with 5% crit and high damage is basically reading: '5% of the time you restart the run'...

[@Thundawich]

Didn't they change the design philosophy because they changed hp to test attrition rather than spikes? Hp was short-term threat, stress was long-term threat. The balance between those two is what made encounters interesting, but changing hp to just be a second stress bar seems misguided.

[@ahben98]

Oh btw, i think shuff forgot to mention the thing from the stars which is unique cuz that thing has 1 cleave which really doesnt do much but is one of his most hated bosses

[@Korhi]

I think he's hated more for being a random encounter slugfest with 80 prot under half hp.

[@ahben98]

@@Korhi i agree about the slugfest part, but random encounter part not so much? The collector was one of the more liked bosses but that was a random encounter. I think its just more the mechanics that should be explored, cuz his main point in the video was the aoe nukes. Tldr, aoe nukes suck, but the thing’s mechanics suck too. What about the thing sucks so hard that it is hated despite not having aoe nukes?

[@user-cy9vd7rl4h]

​@@ahben98 That Thing hard counters everything except pierce. Thing clears DOTs, has 80% prot, has a high damage move that pierces your prot and ignores dodge, does high stress, crits often, has high blight damage, and to top it off gives some of the nastiest diseases in the game. People don't like Thing because it has "hostile GM" vibes and it's mechanics break the rules of the game that everyone else has to abide by.

[@ahben98]

@@user-cy9vd7rl4h But that's kinda the same reasoning for the AOE nukes, it breaks action economy and its just the hostile GM trying to nuke your party as hard as possible, as fast as possible. Essentially, the argument im trying to make is that hostile GM vibes are not exclusive to the AOE nukes, which Shuff i feel missed out in the video by not mentioning the Thing

[@Korhi]

@@ahben98 People liked Collector? I always saw him more as a minor annoyance at worst, and a free trapezohedron at best.

[@lukethebaron5408]

Honestly the bosses are a huge part of why I don't play dd2. In dd1 they were just more fun and satisfying to play against due to being able to face them whenever.

[@amoney1421]

I wish we could just not limit healing and leave it as a core mechanic of the game. The game is still challenging with or without healing, healing is a staple of RPG games, im not saying give every character a healing ability but; just let us have vestal healing how it was in dd1 to counteract the CONSTANT cleaves by nearly every enemy encounter.

[@Thegreengreensuff]

I think AoE damage is only one part of the problem. If it was the only issue, I would not really care (except perhaps the redondancy of gameplay) The other main issue imo, is the DD2 boss design tries so much to counterplay the counterplay. The obvious exemple was the act 3 boss. The basic during phase 2 was "I m gonna focus one guy and make it a dps race". The normal reaction would be to prepare for tanking. But the boss ignore dodge and reduce tanking limiting your options. And for the dps, it would randomly blind/stun. And this philosophy of double dipping counter play is in almost every boss fight. DPS race the librarian ? Let's shuffle and blind you while I get dodge. The leviathan ? Here is AoE blind to prevent from hitting the boss/hand. Act 2 lungs ? Here is damage down shuffle and blind. The general ? Hit roots, but if you do, you get punished by an AoE. It makes all the fights way less forward. As a whole, I'm kind of okay for lair's boss design. Child is the best design, general's is managable with combat items, and the librarian as low hp enough to not be a deal braker. But the rest of the bosses, I know I will never get a flawless fight because of the fight's design. And I think it is the main difference with DD1, no matter how much knowledge or team prep I prepare, the fight will go wrong

[@froggmoe68]

There is only one time I've seen an enemy debuff itself in DD2 and that was a Herald in chapter 3. It essentially used something called Inversion and stole all the debuff tokens from the other cultists. I had to double take to check the tool tips because it threw me off so much. I realised that if I didn't exploit those debuff tokens it just stole, it would turn them into their positive counterparts on its next turn. I would honestly like to see this concept expanded upon more in future enemies (maybe have a mini boss in an academic study where it can cause a a temporary distortion where any new token effects create while it's active will be reversed (might enourage you to miss with certain trinkets to debuff them or even encourage you to use certain debuff moves to buff yourself). It be annoying as heck to fight but overall a very interesting one to fight mechanically.

[@Warcrafter4]

I feel another part of the boss issue is enemy/boss Death's Door Resistance(DDR). DDR on bosses is high enough that it can and will outright end many runs simply because the bosses refused to die when they are killed. This also forces the damage race meta as you'd need as many damaging actions to break DDR or be killed by RNG as its entirely possible for the player to do more then 150% of a bosses max hp and lose solely because DDR said so. Once DDR is in play nothing matters other then attacking killing a lot of the nuance fights might have had.

[@spatz2219]

DDR can be kind of annoying sometimes, but 9 times out of 10 won’t tip the scales unless your team is on deaths door as well. In addition a boss dropping to deaths door gets two weaken tokens and loses speed, drastically reducing their threat level. DDR for enemies also drops by 10 every time it procs, so it is impossible for an enemy to survive indefinitely especially taking into account DOTs and moves that ignore some DDR like wicked slice. Thankfully most bosses also only have 25-33% DDR making it possible to blast them down in less than a round, even if you get unlucky.

[@Warcrafter4]

@@spatz2219 Then why does it exist other then to piss the player off by making them take extra damage/stress/meltdowns/Lose a low character for no reason? Its a bad mechanic that forces you to keep on damage racing the boss in a game that's already criticized for having too many damage races. The game probably would be better without it as it adds nothing but negative RNG for no reason. As losing a hero/getting meltdowns due to boss DDR RNG sucks and would be a quit moment for a lot of players..

[@DM-rb2qt]

I wouldnt mind losing heroes on a run so much, if I could choose their replacement at the next inn. I have yet to bother trying to continue after losing anyone, cause I always get someone who doesnt fit, in a game where your comp is way more important than DD1. When they random my replacement it makes me want to abandon run at the Inn.

[@drzero1131]

One of my biggest problems with the lair bosses in DD2 is that you're forced to kill one to get access to the final region, except for denial This by itself is fine, but it can force you to either face a boss when you're unprepared or a boss your team isn't built for At least in DD1 you could take your time to prepare the correct team for the specific boss (except on stygian/bloodmoon) and even wait until the trinket you wanted showed up (blasphemous vial my beloved) In DD2, you can be put into a situation where you're forced to fight a lair boss at a disadvantage or lose the run, which is a really bad thing. Plus you don't even get to choose which trophy you get, so you can get really bad ones that kill your stratergy for the mountain, like havibg a shuffle team for obsession but getting the general one that immobilises your team

[@daleodorito]

The true issue of darkest dungeon bosses is that whatever is the mechanic of the boss, is usually better just completely ignored and you just rush down the boss. Siren took your guy? Well, I guess I am hitting her really hard The necromancer summoned a bunch of guys? well, I guess I am hitting him really hard Death is marking me? Well, I guess I am hitting him really hard Like the only times this is not true is mostly cause the mechanic is really, really oppressive to the point you basically have to do it perfectly or just die like with seek tokens. This design is so cause whatever makes a boss special is something they can just spam, making it that actually dealing with it is basically losing turns cause they are going to do it again next turn anyways. And sometimes you heroes just fail doing the thing they are supposed to do, so even if you take it slowly and try to just go safe counteracting everything and doing little damage back, is just not going to work eventually and you will go down. Like usually the best strategy for most bosses is just to bring guys that can do a lot of damage to it (either by being good at dealing damage at that position/s or just do a status that they are weak to). I wish boss mechanics were actually more important in the sense of, they do it in a cooldown and you actually have to deal with them, but you have time to do it, and it not just like, aw, you were blinded, you missed, you lose. Like for example I like dreaming general cause actually dealing with the mechanic doesn't waste your turn completely you can hit the thing with cleave and stuff and still be working towards killing the boss; and is not like the boss is doing nothing meanwhile either, more bosses need to be like this one.

[@JeffDripstein]

it isn't very fun or engaging when your whole team gets put on deaths door from full or nearly full health in 1 move. Ravenous reach can just end up being a gamble fight, where you're supposed to attack him (while he has riposte) with characters on deaths door. Anyone who has played this game for any period of time knows that you RARELY can get a character to survive 2+ death blow checks, I've had like a dozen runs end due to a party member dying on the first death blow check of the entire run.

[@XIIIBobb]

Another thing to note about the Crew: a Virtuous character not only No Sells the Anchor, but in the process of doing so, the rest of your party recovers stress, as well. I use Virtue Abomination for that 😊

[@Hot_To_Trot]

I think taking your criticism to videos is honestly helpful to generate a discussion among people who watch them (and in the community as a whole) tbh.

[@Hot_To_Trot]

(I think criticism from public / authority figures within a group matters more and is important to see for anyone interested in the game)

[@SirZerous]

It's more than a little annoying that every single lair boss and almost every confession boss forces you to have someone that can hit rank 4. For more than a few fights, it feels like frontline specialists like Leper, Hellion, melee HWM, MAA, and to a lesser extent Flagellant are almost entirely useless. In fact a lot of the bosses make a lot of the character paths, which are supposed to be cool alterations to their base kits to make new, flexible, interesting teams, feel worthless. I love Rogue and Yellowhand HWM until I have to fight a lair boss with one. I think MAA's general flexibility is cool until the lair boss makes me take off everything but Retribution and Guard. I want to try out Surgeon PD but I FEEL the loss of DPS when the General or Librarian (or even just other backline threats like the Bishops and Skivers) pop up. I want to like the Leper, but the fact he only ever hits rank 1 and 2 enemies makes it difficult to justify boss hunting with him. The game could use some boss variety, specifically of the "rank 1 and 2 bosses" flavor. It could also stand to make a bunch of the bosses vulnerable to being moved. It could also use the Arbalest back so there's a character besides PD that can deal reasonable damage to rank 3 and 4 enemies, but that's just me.

[@SupremeDalek225]

I've recently gotten the game after seeing someone play it a bit and I took some time to farm up candles and reflections since I knew this was a 'get your ass beat but unlock different things to try again' kind of game. After a good amount of attempts to even get to the mountain it took me about 2-3 tries to beat the mountain boss. After I got to Act 2 I got the "you have to get an item from lairs if you want to fight the mountain" notification. I thought "well shit, that sucks, it'll take me a lot longer to get good runs to fight the mountain but it doesn't seem horrible."........Then I fought my first lair boss, it was Leviathan....I did not win, it wasn't even close. I then tried a lair in a different region, it was Dreaming General....I did not win, it wasn't even close. Then one or two runs later I was forced into a lair before I fought the last region battle anyway, it was Librarian....I did not win, it wasn't even close. Now something that I realized is in every single attempt I now HAVE to go into a triple battle with no recovery in between and at the end is a boss that will use a mechanic I have to either look up or die multiple times to figure out and even when I do know my whole team will be getting hit for 15+ damage, get DOTs applied, and get multiple debuffs applied (some straight up not letting me use the character anymore) just from one of their turns, let alone the 2+ turns bosses get anyway. I still love this game and I am willing to try and finish the game eventually, but jesus christ is this gonna be a pain in the ass for me. I already hated the fight you had to do just before the mountain boss because it felt a little cheap to me personally, but now to have it happen twice a run just sucks.

[@jody4210]

i had no idea that the dreaming generals gimmick was to attack the root so whenever i fought him i would lose like 1 to 3 heroes. i didnt figure it out until i brought pd and flagellant and happened to he multitargeting the boss and his root. they could have explained a little better what bosses do imo...i spent most of my act 1 throwing my teams into lairs to learn how to beat these bosses consistently, which was a lot of hours spent on repetitive boring gameplay

[@thefailbender]

“Oops, I messed up by killing the eyestalks towards the end of a round before my recovering-from-Encore!Jester went so the boss summoned in, oops after Jester went the boss got another turn and placed a Seen token immediately, oops MaA doesn’t go first so I couldn’t taunt so the boss placed another token before I could do anything about it, oops, I guess I should kill the first phase slower.”

[@ShuffleFM]

FF has a special case of making you possibly lose the fight just because an eye on turn 1 outsped you and hit your PD

[@thefailbender]

@@ShuffleFM I had a trinket for Dismas that gave him the chance of taking another action if he got a Deathblow. Removing one eye from a stalk apparently counts as a Deathblow, because he was able to Grapeshot *several* times in a row and the 1-2 clusters were dead before the end of the round. Didn’t matter 🙃 at least PD and MaA survived.

[@tolvajtamas8567]

Ive finally managed to beat the Obsession boss (the overbuffed version with the token copying), but only because Lady Fortune was smiling on me. From my Occultist-HWM-MAA-Hellion team, only Dismas survived, delivering the final 6 damage, despite having weakened and on death's door. Guy's got balls of steel, for sure. I hope the last two bosses arent that challenging. This took me 10+ tries. XD

[@aVeryAngryMoth]

The last two bosses are not that challenging compared to focused fault (even prepared you can easily lose and god help you if you don’t know the mechanics), I would recommend to bring a lot of damage over time (and MAA) to act 4’s boss and a lot of sustain (and MAA) to act 5’s boss

[@tolvajtamas8567]

@@aVeryAngryMoth Thank you for the tips! I really want to try a combo with Cause of Death. I just want to see a truly big number of damage for it. XD

[@TheBoxGhost_tm]

@@tolvajtamas8567 It's a legitimately good strategy for Act 5. I did something similar with mark + Scourge Sepsis to great effect.

[@omikamiz568]

Easy fix for Leviathan, Just remove that free grab from the hand. Allow Player to deal with it before it could grab any of your teammate could reduce a whole lot of frustration for player.

[@dukesilver2752]

I think it's because of the change to more of a rougue like structure. In DD1 they could have bosses that only targeted on character and kill them because that was a real loss. You spent hours grinding that character and even if you beat the boss it still feels bad to lose that character. In DD2 the only threat is if lose by everyone dying and so to really challenge you every boss needs to threaten that lose condition. So everything cleaves.

[@fuko4066]

I once f'ed around and found out what happens when you destroy all book stacks before librarian gets to them. Though he has to destroy them himself to be able to ignite. Well we know what happened after. Only good thing is, is that I ran Lepper with Ruin and Blood Leech so he died in 2 hits :)

[@jepasdenom7643]

Completly agree. Thanks for that. I hope red hook will also rework how path influence skills and how trinkets should be more balanced and maybe less inefficient/OP

[@sailorraybloomdz]

Poor Fanatic, he is hated so much, Shuff doesn't even cover him in this video XD If I have to speak for myself (DD1 player), my least favourite cleaves are from Countess and Sleeper. They do 3 things: damage, DOT and stress. I can deal with combinations of 2 of these, but all 3 of them has too much going on that you simply cannot keep up with. If those 3 weren't bad enough, Countess also stumbles you, so heavy position depended teams have really hard time dealing with this. Sleeper on the other hand does unusually high damage for a cleave which is hard to heal or prevent in the first place. And I know, they give very high rewards when you beat them (curable curse and memory), but still, Countess is fine without her cleave, Sleeper is just not a well designed boss.

[@bobjones7479]

I have no idea how to fight fanatic so and in blood moon I didn't find his rewards worth fighting him for when I can cure everyone by killing baron instead of fighting super hag so I can understand why he is hated but it's also a skill issue in my part.

[@glorytoarstotzka330]

it seems like red hook's designed philosophy shifted from "boss wears you down through this specific way, deal with it" and went towards "the boss has this specific minigame independent of the boss' and the punishment is always the same nearly for all bosses" imo I agree that AoE as a way for the boss to hurt the player should be way more rare. the game has quite an advanced combat system, it would be very cool if it would actually use it, instead of using "strong AoE" as one of the rigid pieces in their boss game design. also unrelated to bosses, something really cool that was said at the end of the video: In DD 1 supplicants can blight you while sycophants can accidentally transfer off the blight onto themselves when attacking you. It'd be super cool if DD 2 got some kind of enemies as well, where they also hurt themselves (something more than enemies hurting themselves to worship) what I would also think would greatly improve boss fight experience would be if there was an area in the game where it talks more about what the boss does. right now you have to look up a tutorial for a lot of things. I don't think people really want to trial and error when stakes are very high and it sometimes takes hours to get to the point where they are at. I am not saying the game should just give you a boss guide immediately when you find them. But it would be super cool if you had like a boss guide, and each time you fight a boss, you get 1 line unlocked in there to explain specific rules, so you are never ever forced to look into outside-of-the-game stuff to learn highly specifics of a boss fight. (this doesn't have to be applied to everything, even if it'd be nice)

[@lazerax9]

25:51 "Crit is harder to come by" *Take Aim+ spam imtensifies*

[@arcana5625]

Ok the one thing I dislike about the harvest child is that if hunger cleaves front row, you loose two turns guaranteed. It doesn’t feel like you can play around it and the harvest child just does so many DOT cleaves that your two back lines are stuck healing or curing dots so they dan DPS, and your frontlines are constantly pseudo-stunned if they don’t resist the debuff. It’s just a really annoying fight.

[@trapo5371]

I'm also not a fan of the antiquarian constant use of festering vapors, but maybe that's because I just lost a run because of loosing 2 heroes to blight at death's door

[@TuPtammi]

30:25 Agree! Need more that small mechanic so we can play around to reward us a little if we pay attention to take adventage of such mechanic.

[@CreaturaVioleta]

i would argue that in the case of the general, nightmare is necessary for the fight's main gimmick to function correctly. it only procs when every hero is ensnared, at which point they are completely immobilised and unable to perform any of their regular actions. since the only way to remove the vines is to attack the tap root, having the entire party ensared would guarantee a tpk without the boss itself having some method of freeing them, and given how avoiding that situation entirely is plenty doable with most team comps, id say a punishing aoe is justified in that instance

[@3DThird]

I agree with your thoughts, DD1 has better boss fights and mechanics. Yes we used to spam heals every single fight which is okay. Getting party destroyed because the boss "is tough" or you made a mistake isn't very true in many occasions in DD2, it's just how the boss was designed, as if you had ur Vestal from DD1 😅

[@NovaGirl8]

I never realized it but I did get yhe blight sucked out of one my guys in DD1. It qas a pretty bad one too so I was preparing myself to click the Antivenom asap and then it refused to work. I then wondered if I was crazy and just forgot that I healed the blight earlier. XD then I saw one of the enemies with blight when my party is a bleed party with no blight skill at all.

[@Khrene]

23:20 > New design philosophy coming from old threat escalation. Mmmm. Thats a good point.

[@Khrene]

Same goes for the concurring point on the vestal.

[@TheSilvercue]

I am pretty new to this, but already noticed that if I don’t have a team tailored specifically for certain boss scenarios, I have little to no chance from the start. This is unusual for most well tuned games, they usually have many ways to beat bosses with varied compositions. I am finding this annoying as I don’t want to look up how to kill bosses at first, I like to try and learn, but when the fight feels un-winnable with my team comp after an hour to get there….that is not fun.

[@Blastros01]

Did you do a formal review for the overall game yet or are you trying to get a more comprehensive idea of what systems? I have been waiting on my purchase to hear your thoughts and negative critics vs positives

[@Blastros01]

I plan to buy it but I depends on how soon I want to buy it for them to work on updates

[@ShuffleFM]

Haven't made one yet, but I'd like to soon. It's a bigger project so writing and editing need to be on point.

[@normanlabow7482]

What annoys me about a lot of bosses is how stupid their immunities are. Like, did anyone know that if you put the librarian in rank 1 without burning every book, he has to waste a turn moving backwards? You’d never figure this out without shoving the books around, because for some reason this asshole is IMMUNE to movement entirely. Or how Dreaming General being immune to stun completely fucks over any decent teams built around trying the stun/daze mechanic. Leper, MAA, and other characters who use stun could really benefit from the trinkets from this fight, but whoops! No fun allowed here. (call it a skill issue, I’m just pissed I can’t stop the general from using his attacks by stunning him. I want more counterplay.)

[@jody4210]

iirc the prophet in dd1 also is immune to move skills, which is understandable bc he's supposed to be hard to reach behind 3 stacks of planks and he stays there for the entire fight unless you destroy the planks which give you good money. i like bringing leper to the fight to chop down his planks and i also like to have leper in the librarian fight to tank attacks and purge his books lol

[@melodiousmacabre]

I just defeated the leviathan but my characters were all low asf with high stress. I ended up not being able to recover and I lost to the cultists right before the mountain

[@flipflippin335]

DD2 Generally has a massive issue with difficult healing. It's hard to come by, it's hard to apply. Big issue is also combo stuff and that it all takes way too long to basically make work which also wears your team down quite a bit, which I understand is part of the design but combined with AoE stuff it just kind of hurts the flow for me. IMO this stuff could be fixed with Preparation phase, like THAT one mod had.

[@Animefan1803]

Honestly i do not understand why they had to change the mechanics in DD2. There was no need for a carriage system. Just give me another upgrade-able city and a few dungeons that i can go through. There was honestly no need to change the main point of the game. That being dungeon crawling and building upgrading. Having to play like 20 minutes through multiple encounters just to grind for trinkets that you just got in DD, just to then try a boss that if he ends you, just forces you to go through another 20 minute travel is kinda annoying. And yes i am terrible at this game. Yes my comps are probably aweful and YES i did feel proud beating DD on radiant. But ffs atleast that felt somewhat reasonable in challenge. Ah well atleast i reached the first bloody boss for once. Took me a bit to realize that your comp comes back if you reach an Inn.

[@XperimentorEES]

As much as I thoroughly enjoy the first game and all it's singleplayer dlcs, I agree the final phase of the final boss in the farmstead was the only disappointing spot in all my playthroughts. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had several different attacks, or at least it's own unique mechanic to make the player think. While I love the series for being a lovecraftian rpg, the radically different direction they took the sequel in just crushed all the invested momentum the first one built up, and unfortunately makes me question which way the third entry will go if they even make another sequel.

[@ms.blackfire2927]

do you think they could fix some of the bosses? by making them only hit 3 of your units? instead of all four of them? and that way you get a chance to heal or blind or something the enemy like that?

[@JDoe-ox6ie]

People complained about Obsession when it tried to do something different from cleave spam.

[@AnUnusuallyFriendlyZombie]

Great video, Shuffle! I'm not sure if you or anyone else brought this up, but I'm surprised you never mentioned the Fanatic in DD1 with his fight mechanic, albeit it's a carbon copy of Hag and Swine Prince (when you destroy his Pyre, anyway). Never really liked the Fanatic due to the copying of other bosses. Hell, even Shrieker is another boss most players hate fighting. Then you have Vvulf who's easy if you know what you're doing and who you're aiming for, but overall he plays out like the Prophet.

[@Magonalgon999]

that and double action

[@manolgeorgiev9664]

I never knew about the enrage on the Swine King. I thought he was just a damage check boss, where you also have to get lucky to not get stunned. In each fight I killed Willbur the 1st or 2nd turn and when he's there I saw the King was doing more attacks per turn, so I assumed you got to hill him first.

[@scottiestewart2922]

PD/Jest/Hwy/Man act 2 boss strategy for dealing with the lungs while still doing enough damage to the boss?

[@Beton_Arme]

Bro forgot about cardinal’s aoes which is one of the reason it’s quite frustrating to fight it. It’s not a boss but i kinda feels like so sometimes ENTROPIC STAR ENTROPIC STAR ENTROPIC STAR ENTROPIC STAR ENTROPIC STAR

[@ilovecreamycheese]

try pulling it out of the back since it can only be used when it is taking up rank 4 xd

[@studentt6064]

I'd rather have entropic star than hollow vessel lol.

[@ShuffleFM]

Hollow Vessel is worse, so we ignore the other 2 lol

[@giandomenicomartorelli8069]

Totally agree, thank you for this. Bosses from the first DD are more interesting and balanced in comparison to DDII bosses that are just ignoring the rules of their own game.

[@theduhj]

I think the really frustrating part of lair bosses is that the aoes act as a timer for the fight. There is little way to counteract a boss cleaving your whole team, and typically you go into a lair boss after facing 2 rounds of fights. And if you didnt get fcked before the boss, you will be in bad shape after succeeding. And for me personally i only ever die to leviathan anymore (worst designed). For the others if i die, its typically the road fight immediately afterwards, and if it rolls collector i just abandon.

[@theduhj]

Also I think it also has to do with the fact that healers in this game are dog shit and only self healers are good. Heals without CDs tend to have limited charges and the ones with CDs have like a health gate you need to be at. I hate that mechanic. Vestal isn't shit because she is poorly designed. Vestal is shit because healing is in general is shit.

[@evansteinberg2337]

So one thing i woud say is that i dont want them to make the mistake dd1 did occasionally where one button/character trivializes the boss (thinking swine god/ pre buff siren)

[@vix3me]

You just explained why I was feeling like there was something wrong when I was playing the game but I wasn't able to figure it out

[@styfen]

I really hope you can get through to the devs on this subject because holy shit am I tired of how badly designed the bosses in this game are.

[@lazerax9]

Honestly forgot Dreaming General even had Nightmare lol, I only ever fight him if I know I can handle the roots easily

[@centurosproductions8827]

Honestly, it's a punishment for messing up, but what else would you do when the entire party can take no actions? They need to throw something at you as a trade off for letting you act again. That's one where I feel it's justified. Though I'm not sure 3 roots taking your action, stressing your entire party AND not being priority removed when you hit the taproot is entirely justified.

[@pimpsterpidgeon4502]

I personally disagree with the Harvest child, I think it is the second hardest boss comparatively to the Obsession boss if you were to fight it in the first two regions. Act bosses are not as bad cuz you have the whole run to prepare for them and you fight them fully upgraded for harvest child you might not have the right counters for it despite me having everything unlocked at this point. It might not hit the whole team in one move but both meats combined hit the whole team dealing damage, getting rid of tokens, giving massive debuffs, even affinity changes, and the boss itself does wild double cleave damage if the DOTS land. Personally lI ike dreaming general as it is mostly easy to deal with the tap root but my only issue with the boss is if Waking dead crits you then a low max hp hero is practically guarenteed to die since the crit damage does enough to put them on 0 hp and then bleed before someone can heal them. I also wish there to be another region cuz I personally am always going to tangle and sprawl as they are waaaay easier than the other areas. It would be also be really cool to see newer enemies as well with different mechanics.

[@davidbodor1762]

You forgott my favorite - The Collector. Awesome boss, creepy and well designed with the summons.

[@AirmanTerror180]

Honestly, I really enjoy the Act 2, 4, and 5 bosses, and the only lair boss I find fun is Leviathan. The librarian also feels fine, but I've personally had a few runs where I felt robbed out of a win

[@themobiusquadron]

I do think this leviathan boss is a bit broken (i haven't beaten the child though, so for me the child is the hardest cause I did beat this one. But is broken cause I had a taunt man at arms and it still targetted the non-taunt unit and still got grabbed down. Critical seems to be prety high.

[@Luminousplayer]

to me it also feels like the devs tried TOO hard at making the game "not have an always 100% good strategy" , some moves to me seem pretty useless because of the ridiculous debuffs they give you, like the man at arms attack that sacrifices defense tokens, sure the move gets +200% attack if you abandon your shield tokens which is good....but why does it also need to give you the vulnerable status effect? what nonsense is this? there are a lot of moves that are like this where they said "this move is too good, lets make it suck by adding this", and this applies to enemies as well, they said they heard the criticism of people not liking "missing" in the first game and took accuracy off as a stat, but whats the point when they gave bosses and other enemies the ability to spam you with blind tokens? if you dont have combat items to remove blind in some bosses you literally lose on the spot.

[@ZadenWoW]

Before i watch the video, my first thought is that the bosses are hard only if you go in blind and havent done it yet. Having things be confusing, dying and then easily kill the boss on your second attempt is just bad design imo. Also not knowing that the boss is immune to poison, or that you need Bellow or other specific abilities to make it significantly easier. Edit: The point about mass AOE attacks - Yes i completely agree, its why after chapter 2 i only ever took vestal with Divine comfort maxed at first inn it just makes the game so much easier when you can heal up to 12 damage every turn

[@vdogaymer]

As a game designer I appreciate the feedback you are giving the developers, it helps me with decisions on my upcoming game. Thanks Shuffle.

[@ShadowGeek12]

Leviathan is the one boss that no mather how many times or what point i fight him it never feels good, and i usualy loose against him ,the other boses i an aproximitely tell if i can win even if its 50/50 but with leviathan its never the case, hate him by design

[@hiltondamiao]

IMO the librarian and general hitting all 4 with some moves is okay. Those moves are avoidable or manageable through planning/preparation. However, leviathan definitely have to have those moves disabled AFTER undertow takes your party down to three. DD2 (and DD1) get exponentially harder when you are down a unit, meaning with only three units it's way harder, with two it's a disaster, with one it's game over.... So yeah, the leviathan boss sucks.