Boss fights have been part of video games since the early days, and they serve a clear purpose: beating one marks a moment of real progress. A fight against a boss can be required to move the story forward, guard rare loot, or simply mark a peak of difficulty. Most of the time, winning a boss fight feels great. But some games take the fight further than that.
Some bosses transform into a second phase during the fight, and that second phase comes with its own set of attacks, animations, and a new health bar. The writer of the Polygon piece has a real problem with this design choice, and she explains why it frustrates her so much.
The Dancer in Control Resonant
The Dancer is the second or third boss in the action game Control Resonant. The writer describes it as not being a particularly difficult boss. She got through the first phase, which was already a pain, only to face a second, slightly tougher fight because she had beaten the boss in her mind. She had whittled its health down and expected it to be dead.
Instead, the boss healed during the mid-fight cutscene, and she was not given the same chance. That, she writes, took away from the feeling of achievement. It evoked nothing but frustration.
FromSoftware and the Souls Games
FromSoftware is the most notorious for this kind of multi-stage boss fight. Elden Ring is full of encounters where the boss pulls out a second phase, and the writer goes into every single one knowing the enemy has more tricks up their sleeve. The anticipation is baked in, and she finds that less frustrating than when the second phase shows up in a game that does not expect it.
In those games, the second phase is usually harder, and players need to study the boss’s moveset to win. But if the first stage is also difficult, the writer argues, it feels like an arbitrary barrier. You have to fight through everything before you can work on the second part of the fight.
Ganondorf’s Fight in Tears of the Kingdom
The writer points to the Ganondorf fight in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as an example of a two-stage boss fight done well. The first stage pits you against Demon King Ganondorf – The Menace Unleashed, who is basically just a bloke with no special moves and nothing particularly beefy about him.
Defeating that phase turns Ganondorf into Demon King Ganondorf – Master of the Secret Stone, and his health bar extends beyond the confines of the screen. It makes him look incredibly intimidating, and the writer calls it quite cheeky. Even in this stage, the fight is not particularly tough, but it is an iconic one that proves multi-stage boss fights can be done well.
Fixes That Would Work
The writer offers two fixes for games that abuse this mechanic. First, add a checkpoint between the stages so that even if the player falls during the second stage, they do not have to start the fight from the very beginning again. She argues that starting over from the beginning is part of the process that sucks all the enjoyment out of it.
After dying to The Dancer’s second stage for the first time, she slumped back, let out a big sigh, and picked up her phone for some doomscrolling instead. She did not have the energy to jump straight back into the fight, knowing she would have to fight through the first stage all over again.
Second, she suggests triggering the second phase when the boss’s health is depleted to the halfway point. That way, the fight would be absolutely no different, but she would not feel cheated because the enemy has not healed halfway through, while she manages the same health bar she started with.
The Verdict on Multi-Stage Boss Fights
The writer’s central complaint is that bosses healing between phases feels insulting. She wants developers to stop letting that happen, and in an ideal world, she wants a checkpoint after each stage. She admits that multi-stage boss fights are not broken in theory, but the way they are usually implemented makes them less fun and far more annoying.
Her argument is specific and grounded in personal experience. The Dancer fight in Control Resonant is the anchor, and the comparison to Ganondorf’s fight in Tears of the Kingdom shows that this design can work when executed carefully. The proposed fixes are simple and sensible.
The writer’s frustration is real, and it is easy to see why she feels this way. Starting a fight over from the beginning after dying to a second phase is a waste of time, especially when you have already depleted the boss’s health once.
Key Facts Box
– The Dancer is the second or third boss in Control Resonant
– Ganondorf’s fight in Tears of the Kingdom features two distinct phases
– The writer suggests a checkpoint between stages and triggering the second phase mid-health
– FromSoftware’s Souls games are the most notorious for multi-stage boss fights
What the Writer Cites as Examples of Multi-Stage Boss Fights
– The Dancer in Control Resonant
– Elden Ring bosses
– Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom
– Demon King Ganondorf – The Menace Unleashed
– Demon King Ganondorf – Master of the Secret Stone
Source material: “Multi-Stage Boss Fights Are the Worst Video Game Mechanic of All Time,” Polygon.
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