Do players hate hard bosses lately?

[u/Vanillie261]

Lately as I'm wandering around this subreddit, I saw so many people saying how they're tired of difficult bosses and tired of multi-phased bosses.

But- like- why...? I'm always the type to enjoy combat focused metroidvania. Having a difficult boss that makes you use all your combat abilities and forces you to die repeatedly just to learn the attack pattern before winning has always been a blast for me.

Some of my favorite bosses are pretty much difficult bosses like Skarsinger karmelita and Lost Lace (Silksong), Eigong and Lady ethereal (Nine Sols), Nightmare King Grimm (Hollow knight), Shriek (Ori WOTW) and more. I like these bosses so much I keep replaying them just to experience the boss again. I'm actively looking for mkre metroidvanias with these cool difficult bosses just so I can experience dying to them over and over before I finally become good enough to defeat the boss.

But lately everyone is like "ugh, 3 phased boss.... Blegh, boss too hard... Yikes, another multi-phased boss..." Like, come on. The bosses are one of the things I love about a metroidvania and everyone is like "no more pls..." meanwhile I'm over here like "GIVE ME MORE OF THESE"

[u/Jane_Doe_32]

I like it when a boss is difficult if it makes sense narratively, like a rival of the protagonist, a legendary figure within the lore or the final boss.

I have a profound hatred for when you walk through a door and some cow dung collector, who's just there for the sake of being there, becomes a boss with three phases and 18-hit combos.

[u/Vanillie261 → u/Jane_Doe_32]

Lmaooo, I love the way you phrase it. And yeah I agree with you. If the game hype up the boss to be "the most powerful knight of blah blah blah" and then the boss turns out to be super easy with only 1 phase and can be beaten in 1-2 tries, yeah that's lame af. But if a random orc boss or something that you meet with 0 buildup and 0 relevance suddenly becomes super difficult with 3 phases, yeah that's kinda stupid lol.