Best set ups for a boss fight

[Turbo Kid]

I'm talking about anything that gets you excited for an upcoming boss fight, or maybe makes you tense and actually dreading it. It could just be a cool setting, tone, sequence of events, or atmosphere that the game creates to really make you feel a certain way just before you go "Why do I hear boss music?".

Resident Evil Requiem - This whole sequence is one of the high lights of the game and leads up to one of the very few legit good boss battles as most of the other ones suck in this game

Spoiler: gameplay

I love the cutscene before Zero's final battle in Rockman X4

Spoiler: cutscene

The Pathless is a great example. In fact, bosses will actively stalk you before you even have a chance to fight them

 

[Isegrim]

Castlevania's obligatory staircase scene just before you fight the big bad vampire. There was a staircase in Ocarina of Time as well and I really liked how Ganon's theme gets louder and louder as you go up to face him.

 

[Ikagura]

When there's a room before the boss with its own custom music.

 

[Rocket2049]

castlevania is iconic with this

 

[HydraSavior]

I feel like there should always be some kind of "build up" to a major boss. To use an example, Metroid Fusion's "Nightmare." You get told how dangerous this thing is, that it could destroy the space station you're on, and while you're heading to the boss room you see a shadow of it and the destruction it has caused while you were away. Then the actual boss happens and you are PUMPED UP.

I never got to the end of FF9 (I have some kind of problem with "finishing" Final Fantasy games, always feeling like I should level up more before the final dungeon), but I hear the "real" final boss just kinda...comes outta nowhere, when they *had* a powerful villain that had been built up throughout the game. I woulda been disappointed with that, for sure.

I also enjoyed Lavos from Chrono Trigger. There's a few different ways of fighting him, and I always felt like having those options just made him a lot cooler. You can go through the Black Omen to get to him, you can use the bucket at the End of Time, you can use the Epoch to bash through the *entire first phase*, you can (theoretically) beat him when he's a You're Supposed To Lose To This boss, and then there's the New Game Plus secret method. Having all those methods of confronting Lavos just...makes him feel bigger, somehow. Like "all roads lead to Lavos."

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

Mega Man 1 and 2 also create the ambient pretry well with eerie music