as opposed to ultra necrozma, who has terrible music.
(in case you cant tell, this is sarcastic. ultra necrozma has the best theme in the entire series.)
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The Best and Worst Boss Fights in Pokemon
- Thread starter Yung Dramps
- Start date
(in case you cant tell, this is sarcastic. ultra necrozma has the best theme in the entire series.)
Eh, even discounting spinoff games I think Eternatus Phase 3 is way better.
I didn't think of it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. It shows how knowing the "proper" order to challenge the Gyms can cloud our judgement, while a casual player would likely by guided by their own sense of curiosity.
Even though I'd prefer a more tightly designed difficulty curve, it shows how the open world setting can make each player's adventure unique
Y'all don't know a lick about map and level design and it shows.
It's a pain in the ass to get to Glaseado AND it's a massive red flag, especially for veterans, that it's the only major ice-themed area in the game. There are several indicators that this is in fact a very late-game area.
Naturally, you can mess around and find out, but the game hardly makes an effort to even have a consistent level curve in the same area (See Ryme's levels), let alone something so subtle as having Grusha be this embodiment of the real limits of open-world or whatever.
It's just another late-game Ice boss with a haphazardly built team.
Also, Grusha is a dude.
I mean, different tastes for different people. I don't get absurdly hyped like in a shonen battle hearing Ultra Necrozma but I do with something as dumb as the two wolves literally flying and saving you. The whole howl motiv of their three themes is awesome. And I don't even find them to be the best of the series.
Gamefreak when they stuff the ice gym leader full of worthless slow shitmons instead of a hail team with actually threatening pokemon. (it is funnier the nth time)
Perhaps this would be a good replacement for Grusha's team.
Snow Warning
Ice Spinner
Earthquake
Aurora Veil
Snowscape
Ice Body
Avalanche
Waterfall
Snowscape
Curse
Slush Rush
Icicle Crash
Ice Shard
Earthquake
Play Rough
And I suppose if you want to keep Altaria as the ace you can leave her as is.
Snow Warning
Ice Spinner
Earthquake
Aurora Veil
Snowscape
Ice Body
Avalanche
Waterfall
Snowscape
Curse
Slush Rush
Icicle Crash
Ice Shard
Earthquake
Play Rough
And I suppose if you want to keep Altaria as the ace you can leave her as is.
Perhaps this would be a good replacement for Grusha's team.
Snow Warning
Ice Spinner
Earthquake
Aurora Veil
Snowscape
Ice Body
Avalanche
Waterfall
Snowscape
Curse
Slush Rush
Icicle Crash
Ice Shard
Earthquake
Play Rough
And I suppose if you want to keep Altaria as the ace you can leave her as is.
Walrein isn't actually in SV, ooops
Maybe Glaceon or Avalugg could work there as an Ice Body mon?
Alternatively, here's my Grusha rework if we wanna make him focus on Slush Rush:
Lv 47 - Snow Warning
Ice Spinner
Wood Hammer
Ice Shard
Aurora Veil
Lv 47 - Slush Rush
Icicle Crash/Ice Punch
Earthquake
Aqua Jet
Slash
Lv 48 - Slush Rush
Ice Spinner
Liquidation
Ice Shard
Bounce/Play Rough/Heavy Slam/whatever
Lv 48 - Swift Swim
Ice Spinner
Liquidation
Crunch
Bulk Up
(I basically just chose Floatzel to keep it in the theme of speedy sweepers)
Lv 47 - Snow Warning
Ice Spinner
Wood Hammer
Ice Shard
Aurora Veil
Lv 47 - Slush Rush
Icicle Crash/Ice Punch
Earthquake
Aqua Jet
Slash
Lv 48 - Slush Rush
Ice Spinner
Liquidation
Ice Shard
Bounce/Play Rough/Heavy Slam/whatever
Lv 48 - Swift Swim
Ice Spinner
Liquidation
Crunch
Bulk Up
(I basically just chose Floatzel to keep it in the theme of speedy sweepers)
i dont agree with this take at all
For one, I think the music is far better for Ultra Necrozma (top 3 legendary themes), secondly the fight is boring BECAUSE it's a scripted fight.
I'm not doing shit, I'm clicking buttons until Hop and the dogs (Pokemon of which I do not care about because the game never gave me a reason to) do their flashy cutscene attacks.
If you want to point to a scripted cutscene fight as being good, do Koraidon/Miraidon at the end of Scarlet and Violet. That takes the concept of the shonen turn based cutscene fight and does it actually well, turning game mechanics into narrative moments. Not being able to switch your Pokemon through the UI being part of the scripted sequence, the Terastilization working, the music, etc. It's something that indie games have proven to be the best at in the last decade, but it's something I've rarely seen done as well as SV in non-indie titles.
That is a cutscene fight done well. SWSH's Eternatus is not bad but it's just ok, I am not that engaged while it's happening and I'm kinda just waiting for half of it.
Ultra Necrozma is my favorite fight even still because I can actually feel its power through the fact it will wipe the fuck out of my team if I am not extremely careful. Nothing is more obviously powerful than something that gets me to soft reset a few times before I find a way. I think being stacked against the odds, not just in story but also in gameplay, is an extremely fun aspect of it. I wanna get my ass kicked in videogames, I don't want to feel like it's just a power fantasy, I want to feel like I struggled when I fought a God, even if due to shonen I win in the end.
This is a playstyle thing.
USUM literally, deliberately, more than any other game in the series does The Power of Friendship in its gameplay mechanics. Not just through affection, though they encourage you to get your entire team to Level 5 affection pretty easily with the fact Rainbow beans exist, but also through Rotom who also has affection, allowing it to give you a SECOND Z move in the middle of battle.
If you use the tools the game gives you, the fight is not actually that hard, it is the players who decided that things like affection is "cheese" when the game is actively encouraging it by prompting you after many battles in the game to go to Pokemon Refresh, the beans existing, and more.
USUM is THE Power of Friendship game in the series, because it encourages you in several ways to literally use The Power of Friendship, and Ultra Necrozma will 100% be countered through it considering it's a 1v6 fight. And trust me, no, getting affection does not make USUM easy.
I think it's so much better that the player can make the decision to use these things and no, you do not have to grind levels. I beat Ultra Necrozma blind with no item use when I was like Level 40 all-around for my team, which was underleveled in general, not just for that fight.
I did use affection and stuff though, and I don't find those cheese so much as how youre meant to play the game, but i still found the fight unfair in a rather boring, uninteresting way. I am also biased to seeing this fight as negative though because ultra necrozma is one of my least favorite alolan designs and designs overall so everytlgime i have to fight im like not this bozo again lmfao
I mean idk I guess it's just gonna be an agree to disagree thing then, I find it to be something really fun and impactful, and if we're both playing that way then I suppose it's really not a playstyle thing and really just personal taste
In terms of the mon itself, I also I think Ultra Necrozma is like Top 3 legendaries in general (my top in any order is like Dialga, Latias, Rayquaza, Ultra Necrozma, Lunala), so you can argue if the chicken vs the egg on that one
yeah its probably just different expectations/approach to a fight. I think ultra necrozma is like the antithesis of my taste, which is fine, that's gonna happen regardless, but i really like base necrozma and the other forms a lot so i felt betrayed by the pixels!!!
Honestly, if I want a legitimately hard mainline Pokemon boss, Volo is INFINITELY better than Ultra Necrozma ever was. I just hope if Z-A has a difficult battle it'll be more like Volo. Ultra Necrozma feels more like a Kingdom Hearts superboss. Actually, scratch that, with the exception of Young Xehanort, most of the KH3 Data battles, and Yozora none of those guys can even touch him.
idk Volo is weird
Volo is kinda carried by Legends Arceus being a game where trainer battles are 90% of the time a trade back and forth, and the fact that he basically cheats so that he has a higher number advantage to try to force the player to get 2+ positive trades
like it isnt an easy fight but like i think its more the mechanics of the game making it harder for legends specifically, any trainer battle with like 6 mons in that game will get rough in terms of player pokemon faints just because of the order mechanics and how pokemon do more damage in general
Volo is kinda carried by Legends Arceus being a game where trainer battles are 90% of the time a trade back and forth, and the fact that he basically cheats so that he has a higher number advantage to try to force the player to get 2+ positive trades
like it isnt an easy fight but like i think its more the mechanics of the game making it harder for legends specifically, any trainer battle with like 6 mons in that game will get rough in terms of player pokemon faints just because of the order mechanics and how pokemon do more damage in general
Volo was incredible.
Now that's a case to be studied. It's a battle with so many layers on it that it's insane. Having a remix of the piano itself be the main theme was...
Game Freak cooked up a storm on that one.
I don't think we even agree on what a "shonen" moment is then tbh. Trough I do agree the SV moment is better, the Eternatus cutscene makes the wolves feel poweful and fit how they appear literally flying to fight something you can't touch while there is howling music. I don't care about them sure, but they feel poweful which is the point of it. I don't care about Necrozma or Eternatus either, the only of these examples where the player would have any good enough connection is to the Raidon in SV.
Struggling against a hard opponent is not "shonen" to me. I beat it using strategy as you say yourself. There was no sudden emotional moment that tipped the scales, I just knew how to play the game well enough to defeat the enemy.
Mind you I'm not saying the Eternatus fight is better than Necrozma, but for a moment where as you said you just take your brain off and enjoy the moment? You do that much better with Eternatus.
As someone who played Ultra Sun just to throw hands with Ultra Necc, I couldn't possibly have it on my Top 10.
I see the appeal, but as a force of nature, Groudon/Kyogre did it better, and as a fused mon boss, Kyurem did it better. Granted, I'm nowhere close to a fan of any of the fused legendaries tbh.
I guess Emerald being the most prominent Hoenn game, and Legendaries being kind of easy to pack up make it hard to remember how impactful Groudon and Kyogre were as legendary battles. Especially since they were the first of that kind. The atmosphere was just something else.
Ultra Necrozma comes outta nowhere with a steel chair and a bunch of bs. I couldn't possibly be less impressed by it.
While I do agree part of the appeal is the difficulty, it's also hard to overstate how much the Giratina fake out does it for me, specially after seeing someone else play and not expect anything like it. It's all I ever wanted the Kyurem-Ghetchis fight to be, which back in the day disappointed me because well sure, Kyurem has 700 BST, but without any special boosts like future fights in the series would have, it's realistically very hard for it to be a legimate threat no matter how hard the music tries (specially because by that time the player can have catched the Musketeers and just Sacred Sword it to infinity). And after it, Ghetchis just feels anticlimatic. They really should have switched the order, maybe fight him before he infamously tries to use Kyurem to kill the player, then N arrives and all other stuff, but you don't heal.
Volo's greatest strength is that it propertly takes advantage of being an unfair fight like most of these superbosses post Gen 6, and goes to the extreme with it. You are not supposed to beat it the first time even if you somehow have perfect counter to his many types, you are supposed to freak out and how unfair it keeps getting. That's a surprising archievement in a moment of the game where you literally have all the Sinnoh Legendaries except Giratina itself and doesn't need to have inflated levels like Red.
The music and battles alone are probably the reason I love Volo so much even if objectively I know he isn't that great of a villain-but then again since I was always spoiled about his role I will never be able to propertly judge it. I have seen someone feel betrayed, and other person feel validated because he always thought he was suspicious. Honestly, while I would love a similar battle in ZA to happen, I don't think you can repeat it: even with perfect music, villain and all (and even assuming they keep the Styles which is what also makes Volo threatening), the moment someone uses a legendary with forms I will always expect more to appear. I guess one way to avoid it would be to use brand new forms that don't exist yet? I dunno. It depends on many things. If ZA is really more about trainer battles (and it will probably be given yoy know, Megas) maybe they can do something better.
(I always end up writing way too much, but you probably get the point. I loved the Volo fight, I never thought LA of all things would have the hardest *trainer* battle. After it, fighting Arceus was kind of underwhelming and I wish they also gave phases to that fight. Like, I guess it is the hardest of the "roll and throw" bosses but it just wasn't enough imho)
Exactly, if we're being honest, we can count the battles that are actually tough in-game on a single hand. Difficulty was never really this franchise's thing and it kinda shouldn't be.
The atmosphere and twists though? Lawd have mercy, they really went out of their way to give Origin Giratina a different animation for Shadow Force just to drive it in.
Definitely a top 5 battle imo.
I prefer Ultra Necrozma's fight because there's a lot more variety and strategy that can be used to overcome it, as opposed to Volo, who truly forces you to only run specific Pokémon (bulky ones with recovery / ones who are ground or fairy-type) and/or just a lot of recovery items or full on cheese. Having to deal with the equivalent of 8 Pokémon is certainly a lot more restrictive in the long-run. Legends Arceus also does not have much to work with in terms of battling due to its battle mechanics. Ultra Necrozma's fight is unfair but at the same time there's a lot of ways you can think of as far as how you beat it, especially with the move tutors and items accessible by that point. Just being one Pokémon itself makes it possible to overcome it without strategy being thrown out the window. You can cheese it and you can change your Pokémon for strict counters, but you never actually need to. With Volo you do unless you are mad overleveled and it kinda loses its appeal at some point imo.
Edit: This also reminds me, there are two types of people who play Legends Arceus. People who prioritize on the story and people who prioritize on the star ranks. Volo's fight comes in an incredibly weird point in the game and where he cannot possibly be overleveled and anyone prioritizing on the star ranks would be easily able to clear him. It's often less favored by those people because of this.
Also Necrozma is insanely well built up into the story if you've read it. It also defines the game's worldbuilding more heavily than any other Pokémon in a Pokémon game has within its own story. It doesn't just come out of nowhere.
Edit: This also reminds me, there are two types of people who play Legends Arceus. People who prioritize on the story and people who prioritize on the star ranks. Volo's fight comes in an incredibly weird point in the game and where he cannot possibly be overleveled and anyone prioritizing on the star ranks would be easily able to clear him. It's often less favored by those people because of this.
Also Necrozma is insanely well built up into the story if you've read it. It also defines the game's worldbuilding more heavily than any other Pokémon in a Pokémon game has within its own story. It doesn't just come out of nowhere.
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When I say a "shonen moment" I mean an event that is mainly there to feel cool, make the audience feel cool, and not much else; often in line with very tropey shonen fiction.
The most lesson you get is maybe "the power of friendship is cool", but ultimately beyond the feelings of hype and amazement, these are vapid experiences. Ultra Necrozma is a fight I've defended this entire time, but as a plotpoint it replaced a storybeat that isn't vapid at all, and that is actually pretty cringe to be honest.
Ultra Necrozma is a "shonen moment" because its entire purpose is just to feel cool. There is nothing else of depth here. There is no lesson, no allegory, no anything; it is a very powerful light dragon God, you have to defeat it in battle to save the world, you do it and that's it the end let's go home. This isn't to say the stories that these events are in can't have actual substance, but that these individual moments don't.
I also love Ultra Large Lightbulb's lore. I think it's really fucking cool.
That is literally the most shonen thing. Most classic vapid shonen is just power scaling = storytelling. What is the story of all of these fights? You beat the giant powerscaled monster threat that's supposed to be able to destroy the world, congratulations, the end. The power of the scene is taken from the power of the monsters as we're shown (by how the characters react to them, descriptions, and gameplay elements), then you defeat them and restore status quo.
My point with Ultra Necrozma was that, for my tastes, I felt like it was way more powerful because I was on the receiving end of that power- for me Eternatus went too far in the end of "We're just gonna give it a bajillion stat points and now you're gonna let the boxart guys do the work", and while I don't think it's a bad scene I feel like it's just okay.
Scarlet/Violet IMO do the more interesting thing of, instead of forcing basically "You can't win" with the sheer stats, just turning off your Pokeballs is honestly a pretty clever solution that only really works in the context of the game where the Legendary is next to you the entire game, and that is nice because well... you know the Pokemon you're working with. I think if Zacian and Zamazenta were more involved in that game's plot I'd like them coming in to fuck up Eternatus more; as is, you kinda just know they exist and then they show up and then they fuck up Eternatus. Gun to my head Right Now and I still do not know what makes them special outside of they were in mythology and have powerful stats.
I know this is a long and seriously written post (I was just taking a break from creative writing right now, then decided to write a reply to this so I'm warmed up), but, just wanna make sure it's clear that I respect your opinion on this because ultimately we're really splitting hairs, and if you don't care for my definition of a "Shonen Momento" it's fine lol.
