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While passively watching a YouTube video today from Final Fantasy Union, I realized that every "final boss" since Shinryu, at least of the X.0 patch, has been a wall boss. Shinryu, Hades, Endsinger, Sphene... all of them are wall bosses, and while the X.3 patch bosses have been something of a mix, the X.0 wall boss trend has, in fact, become overly predictable.
Shinryu actually becomes not a wall boss in the extreme version. Not that it makes much difference, because its hitbox is massive. Super cool fight though.
Hades actually has a phase that is not a wall. The extreme version has even more of these non-wall phases.
What walls seem to allow is for them to animate the boss in a super cool way. I think the greatest examples of this are probably Titan Savage and Sephirot, but they do some cool things with Hades as well such as all those masks floating around. Knowing SE, they do it because they want their final boss to feel like one which they can achieve better with what is effectively a cutscene in front of you.
I think that they also want to make WoL out to be "David vs Goliath", to such a point that the boss wouldn't physically fit on the arena or would crumble it if they stood on it, so instead they bend over and look at WoL as if they're an ant.
Uhhh... Final Fantasy game... " final" bosses have a plethora of phases/forms...
Wall bosses aren't necessarily bad, they just need to be designed well.
Pandemonium (the boss) was actually one of the best ones in my opinion.
Valigarmanda, Zeromus, Diamond Weapon (technically not a wall, but still fixed in position for the main phase, so close enough), Zodiark....
Well, as long as they make good use of the battle arena through battle mechanics, I don't really care much about final bosses being a giant wall.
Valigarmanda EX is a wall boss and my favorite fight in the game. Neo Exdeath and Titan Savage were too, and are also great fights. Being a wall boss in and of itself means nothing for the quality of the fight.
Zodiark is a snorefest, for example.
The only problem I have with wall bosses is the camera movement necessary to do mechanics and the fact I often can't just retarget them because whatever part doesn't fit within the limited zoom range and then people wonder why the camera mod exists.
But if the boss could move around the tanks and melee DPS might have to move once in a while.
I feel like most bosses are just to huge to be a moving being in the arena too and not gonna lie where is my trial where we beat someone out size but destroy us! like I feel that last fight in 6.0 could have made a great trial not gonna lie haha but I also miss having a rival too.