Castle Quest Released

[Crono]

Originally Posted by ffcmike

In the scene that occurs before the fight begins, the boss is shown to be slashed and hurt, which can suggest the need to slash it, and the baddy is shown to be slammed into the wall.
I suppose I could make one rock fall down at this point in order to hint at that part.

Zeldaisque games always educate the player through first-hand experience. A lot of the time the mini-bosses serve as a warmup and hint at a possible mechanic you need to consider for the end boss. Throughout the dungeon you used bombs to knock the soldiers off the guns, so I'd think a smart player would have assumed bombs were to way to go at the end, only to find out the moles don't drop them. A player's first reaction is to try slashing, but once you see the troll blocks it you want to quickly move from fear of a counter-attack. Not only is that common behaviour in these types of games vs NPCs, but vs players aswell.

If this was the case I'm sure there'd be complaints about the solution being over-done and predictable.
Nevertheless the solution to the boss does require the throwing of an object similarly to the miniboss, just using the tool that was obtained after defeating the miniboss, which seems like decent design and progression to me.

The thing is, throwing the rock at the boss is incredibly simple. The boss moves so slowly that you're under no pressure to move or dodge anything. Once you figured out that you needed to spam on the boss against a wall, it became way too easy and a disappointing end to what seemed like a pretty decent Graal quest.

Keep in mind that my train of thought while doing these quests is from the perspective of the casual player. I can settle for trial and error, as that's how it usually ends up going on any Graal server, but I actually want Classic to come out with SOME level of quality. There's too many counter-intuitive designs all over the quest, which may work for the average player, but is not a good thing to have. A good example is the bit where you need to step off the platform and into the pit...RIGHT after you dodge cannon balls in an attempt NOT to fall in the pit. Getting hit on purpose by the boss...when the entire PvE experience was doing anything you can to dodge and not get hit. These are small points that are very easy to fix and go a long way.