1. Make every move dodgeable by a normal person:
This is hugely frustrating to see in game and is fairly common. I think the train of thought is "WE GOTTA MAKE THE BOSS FAST AND KEWLLL". No, you don't. You want to make him fun. You have to make sure EVERY SINGLE MOVE has some kind of warning queue, best if it has a visual and audio queue, and there's a good half second before the move actually goes off. As a rule of thumb every boss should be beatable without getting hit.
Case studies: Sephiroth(Kingdom Hearts 1/2), Vergil(Devil May Cry 3) etc. Actually pretty much EVERY BOSS in the devil may cry series does this.
These bosses are still bad ass as fuck too even though they are slow. This is seriously the MOST IMPORTANT THING! These two bosses actually fulfill EVERY requirement I'm gonna list.
2. Have moves that dodge/block differently:
If every move is avoided the same way and has the same timing, the boss is gonna get boring. This is pretty obvious. Bosses should be like little puzzles where you have to figure out when to attack, and when/how to dodge. One great way to mix it up is to have a move where they have to attack the boss before he finishes channeling it or it becomes very difficult or impossible to dodge. Sephiroth's Sin Harvest Angel is a perfect example of this. It keeps the player on their toes, they can't just jump every time they see the boss make a move in a easy nonthinking fashion, they have to be forced to be ever vigilant. Basically, you want to make it so if you avoid a move the way you would avoid one of the bosses other moves, you get hit; if you use the timing for Move A, when the boss is actually using Move B, you get hit. Generally every good boss needs at least 4 quite different moves and I imagine a boss could have TOO MANY moves, but I haven't ever seen it.
3. The boss should change over time:
This is also pretty obvious. Every boss should slightly change up their playstyle or start using some super crazy moves later on. This adds an emotional component to the boss, like oh man the boss REALLY IS dying, and hes REALLY giving it his all. This is amplified by in-battle-dialogue and shouts. A nice little "THIS ISN'T OVER YET!" shout before a super-move really adds some umpf to it. This is the part where you want to make the boss seem badass. Make him do something CRAZY, especially crazy compared to the rest of the game. You don't want crazy moves all the time because then they stop being crazy. Normal enemies, early boss fight you want your typical small little projectiles, and then BAM the boss near the end gets super pissed off and you see him do something like release 200 fireballs at once or something. Its the juxtaposition thats the key. Also making the boss get progressively faster is a nice touch. Vergil's super moves near the end are a good example, normally he does 3 of those black spheres of death maximum, then near the end bam THEY ARE EVERYWHERE. You would think this pattern of boss getting progressively harder as you do damage to it would get old, but it surprisingly doesn't. In fact it builds anticipation, because you KNOW the boss is going to go bat shit crazy later and it adds some nice fear to atmosphere. Still you could though mix it up and make bosses that are just crazy from the get go just saying surprisingly you don't have to. The crazy-from-the-get-go approach is also very nice when you want a feeling of urgency. Bomb about to go off? Well why the fuck is the boss starting out all slow if she knows this? But anyway, for any boss that's a decent length long, you want the flow to change otherwise it gets stale. You could also simply have sections like a "boss is gonna hang back and throw projectiles at you" vs "boss is gonna melee the hell outta you". Oh and if your going to do something like remove a boss's limb, MAKE SURE THE BOSS CHANGES HIS MOVESET IN SOME WAY. Otherwise it doesn't actually FEEL like you took the bosses arm off. If you take it off and wow now the boss is forced to just bite you all day, it feels much more badass.
And... that's pretty much it. Pretty simple right? Avoidable moves with good warnings, diversity, and some state changing for the boss.
Oh and really intense music and sound effects go a LONGGG WAY!
Things not to do:
1. Avoid extra long phases where the boss is completely undamageable. There is a sensitive balance for this as for most super-crazy moves I mentioned above the boss is probably gonna have to be nearly unhitable or it won't make sense. If you are going to do this, you better make sure the attack is SO CRAZY that you wouldn't be able to hit the boss while avoiding it anyway. This stimulates the player for the duration of the invulnerability phase. Otherwise the player is just easily and boringly avoiding a move just WAITING for the boss to finish compared to a "HOLY FUCK THIS MOVE IS SO INTENSE AND HARD TO DODGE OHHH MANNN" a player will feel when the move is so tough you wouldn't be able to attack anyway. Good example is Sephiroth's meteor.
2. Don't have the boss only vulnerable during one move. This is done in Zelda type games a lot, where you HAVE to attack at a certain time with a certain move and you can't really do anything else otherwise. It doesn't really work for action games though. Hell even if you are making a Zelda type game- DO NOT have the boss just KEEP DOING that move over and over. It makes the boss seem MENTALLY RETARDED. Here you have this mad world conquering genius and what, he can't figure out the pattern that HE ONLY GETS HURT when he fires this one fireball? It works if you only have to do it once, but any more than that and its just silly and makes the boss boring as hell too as your just doing the same thing over and over. Instead, have new vulnerable-moves the boss uses, make the boss go "Oh shit better not fireball again, let me try this other move now, OH SHIAT that didn't work either." Beating out MULTIPLE of the bosses moves is a much better feeling than using the same vulnerability over and over. One thing for Ocarina of Time does to compensate for this is that there are ways to beat the boss EXTREMELY QUICKLY. This provides some replay value as your not just beating the boss boringly waiting for a move like you did last time you played, your finding out NEW BETTER WAYS to beat the boss in SECONDS, which feels pretty badass.
3. Minions/Difficulty:
Now this isn't a hard rule, sometimes minions can be okay in boss fight, but MOST OF THE TIME, minions cheapen the fight. If the difference between normal and hard mode is that their are minions in the boss fight... well that's pretty lazy. The AI should be better, and their should be a move or two the boss only uses on the harder modes. This move shouldn't just be a normal move it should be a kind of enhancer move that changes how you dodge other moves. For example Vergil uses summon swords which are delayed projectiles and now you have to dodge them AND his normal attacks. He also uses them as a shield so you can't hit him out of moves safely anymore. You could also enhance the bosses hitboxes making every move have much higher reach.
4. Don't make the boss button-masher friendly (unless its meant to be super easy):
Basically, you shouldn't have many super easy bosses in a game anyway, maybe a few in the beginning but that's it. I've seen bosses over the years (sadly in shitty games I can't remember well), where you could just hit them out of most of their moves. The boss have this SUPER AWESOME MOVE? Too bad because you can just plow through it. This is also directly related to making the boss have high enough attack power that they are an actual threat. If a player can tank their hits and deal more damage than they are doing to them, well congratz you just made a pointless boss unless its an RPG where you want the grind-to-win option to be there.
Eh I guess that's it for now. I might make a sequel to this post if I find anything else people don't do right or is necessary for a good boss.
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