With the joy of finally defeating Tears of the Kingdom’s final boss still throbbing in my mind, I boot up the A Link to the Past save file I was playing before the latest Hylia adventure took over my life. I decided to. After getting our bearings and navigating the next dungeon on our list (Skullwoods, if you’re curious), despite this increased difficulty, the modern Zelda bosses we’ve dealt with before I realized that it had nothing to do with what I was doing. .
Taking on Modular in this dungeon reminded me of how much the focus of Zelda boss fights has changed over the past 30 years. This isn’t a challenge to memorize your attack patterns, boost your health regularly, and chip away at enemies whenever you get the chance. Instead my tactic was something like this: Run, take a risk, swing, fail, repeat.
Mothra actually offers a very good point of comparison to the Lightning Temple boss, Queen Gibdo of Tears of the Kingdom. In fact, Zelda and her team love that terrifying moth creature. Taking on the gigantic winged creepy crawlies in Link’s latest adventure is no easy task, but after dying several times and respawning just outside the combat area, it’s all it takes to win confidently. I felt like I knew every beat. And i was right.
In A Link to the Past, on the other hand, I tried this mid-boss a few times, but it definitely felt like something was missing. Tears of the Kingdom taught us that if you’re struggling, run, make space, heal up, and go again, but that’s not available in Skull Woods on the SNES. You can either land all your attacks perfectly and avoid getting hit by fire, spiked walls, and moving quicksand, or die instantly and be tossed where you came from. the beginning of the temple.
And of course this has always been the case. I’ve spent hours defeating Phantom his Ganon in Ocarina of Time’s Forest Temple, but Minish his cap Varti still gives me nightmares. The less you say about Zelda II as a whole, the better.
The advantage of Tears of the Kingdom’s approach is that the game as a whole feels a little more accessible. After reaching Mordrum in A Link to the Past and being thrown off the roof of the Tower of Hera for the 304th time, many of you probably wanted to turn off the game and never touch it again. Modern Zelda bosses are relatively easy, which makes that even less likely, and I enjoy it.
I definitely don’t want to be asked to pour in the next Zelda game (whatever that is). hundreds of How many attempts to be a boss like Goma just to follow the punishing #gudgamer mentality. elden ring (Which is a coincidence, but I had a lot of fun with it.) And I’d be very happy if TOTK’s level of boss fight diversity is maintained going forward. But it’s always worth remembering how far we’ve come, isn’t it?
Sure, Tears of the Kingdom’s bosses may be a step up from what we’ve seen in Breath of the Wild before, but well, compared to what the series has thrown at us so far. Then we made it easy.
How do you think the TOTK bosses stack up to what we’ve seen so far? Are you a fan of this new style? Leave your thoughts in the comments.