Now, if you consider yourself a gamer of any credence, chances are you've played Ocarina of Time. Hopefully you have finished said game, in which case you've experienced the epic final showdown with Ganon. So far, nothing has come close to topping that as far as boss battles in Zelda games are concerned. However, if you consider all of the bosses throughout the game as a whole, I think you'd have to give the nod to Twilight Princess as tops among Zeldas. I mean, OoT is an amazing game certainly, but do you remember the water temple boss? The development team must have phoned it in the day they came up with that thing...
But, what I want to talk about here is Twilight Princess' bosses. They're easy to dispatch once you figure out their patterns/weakness, yes, but they are well-designed and make for some memorable moments. So with that said, let's take a look at some of those big bads:
Forest Temple - Diababa
To start things off, the first boss you encounter is this giant plant thing (technical term). It's pretty a decent take on the plant-type creatures that show up throughout Zelda games, though not exactly awe-inspiring as an ultimate embodiment of evil among floral folk. For a first boss, though, it wasn't bad at all. Use the gale boomerang to carry bombs over to it and wham-bam-boom, it's dead. Solid design, first dungeon, pretty good.
Goron Mines - Fyrus
First made famous for his appearances in E3 trailers and demos, this big burning dude is the next foe. For you Lord of the Rings fans out there, he's essentially a Balrog. Arrow to the face, drag his chains while weighted down with the iron boots, and he's a goner. Simple, easy, but the scale of this boss lends a certain level of epicness (another technical term) to the game that will build up as you progress.
Lakebed Temple - Morpheel
OK, now we're talking. This is where I think the quality in the boss designs starts to really pick up. It first appears to be some kind of lame squid thing, but after a couple of eye pokes, it busts out from under the sand and OH SHI-. There's definitely some inspiration taken from Majoras Mask's water dungeon boss, but this one dwarfs it in scale and impact. Swim around, clawshot onto its back, and take that sucker down. I think you'd have to consider this one of if not the best boss of a water dungeon in Zelda history. But the hits just keep coming, because next up...
Arbiter's Grounds - Stallord
... you come face to face with this dude. Seriously, this thing is huge. In an inspired use of the spinner gameplay mechanic, you ride around on the spinner until you get behind Stallord, then you launch yourself at its spine and knock it down a peg. After a couple of strikes, it crumbles and a giant pillar emerges from the ground. You head over to the, uhh, head, only to have it come back to life. This is where this boss gets even more awesome; you engage the skull in a high-speed chase while on the spinner, jumping from wall to wall as it tries to hit you with its fireballs. Really fantastic sense of scale with some great action to boot.
Snowpeak Mansion - Blizzeta
In this case, it's not the boss itself that makes this great; it's the means by which you take it down. With the floor covered in ice, you look at the reflection on the ice of Blizzeta to determine where she will strike. It also didn't hurt that you used the game's most awesome item, the ball and chain, to defeat it.
Temple of Time - Armogohma
For the boss of the famed Temple of Time, one of the most sacred and important places in all of Zeldadom, the boss is... a giant freaking spider! Somehow I was expecting more than a giant spider for the Temple of Time. What was it even doing in there to begin with? Well, I guess as far as giant spiders go, this was a pretty good one. It was bigger and badder than the one in OoT, and to boot, you use the dominion rod to have giant statues to crush it. Thumbs up for that.
City in the Sky - Argorok
Now, you knew who the boss here was the moment you launced up to the City when Ooccoo pointed out, you know, the immense dragon terroizing the rest of the Oocca, but that didn't detract from the battle. In fact, it actually built up a little bit of suspense and dread. Once you finally get up to the top of the structure, it's go time. In order to take him out, you have to double-clawshot your way up two of four skycraper-sized chain towers, then clawshot onto it and put on the iron boots to pull it down and break its armor. After that, floating plants will rise up and circle the middle of the airspace. Using those to Spiderman your way around the dragon (while he's shooting fireballs at you, BTW), you take him out in the same fashion as before. Best boss fight in the game, I'd have to say. Such an epic scale for a dungeon boss.
Palace of Twilight - Zant
Zant! The mighty Zant, the boss of bosses in Twilight Princess. Well, it's not quite the Zant we all came to know and loathe. Prior to your confrontation, he goes a little bit insane. It kind of makes the boss fight itself rather pitiful in a way that almost makes you sorry for the guy. There's some great irony in him being built up as such an ultimate badass, only for him to reveal that he's just a power-hungry average joe who was being used by Ganondorf in order to make his evil return. Still, it would have been cool to actually have a new villain in the Zelda series to save us from Ganon fatigue. Oh well...
I think I'm going to stop there for now, lest I get into too deep of spoilers for some of you out there. I know it's an almost four year old game now, but I've made my point by now, right? Twilight Princess bosses... good. Now, I do know that there's a bit of a controversy about the final boss fight, Ganondorf, and how it failed to live up to the expectations of some. So, possible material for a future blog post? Perhaps...
