Every Crash Bandicoot Boss Ranked

boss battles they're Staple in almost all video games and the Crash Bandicoot franchise is no exception there's been a lot of boss fights throughout the series long history with plenty of great ones and plenty of not so great ones which of these fights Stand Tall Above the Rest and which ones wallow among the worst that's what I want to find out today by ranking every boss fight in the series well almost every boss fight I chosen to leave bosses from spin-off titles out of the mix so no BOSS races from Crash team racing or crash Nitro cart and no boss battles from crash bash or crash purple I think the way these bosses work is different enough from bosses in the main Series where it's simply not fair to compare them I suppose I could have left bash and purple in the mix since some bosses from those games do function similarly to the main series bosses but there were also some that didn't follow the same structure and it kind of just felt weird to include a spin-off game anyway so I felt like it was better just leave them out entirely I'm also not going to include any bosses from Crash of the Titans or minor review well these technically are main Series games they're so far removed from the rest of the series in terms of gameplay and design and this includes the way Bostons were approached but it still didn't feel like a fair comparison so as much as I'd love to dunk on Titan's Uka and how much of a dog water fight that is those games fights will not be ranked either and finally I'll be training the boss fights in the insane Trilogy as the same thing as their PS1 counterparts while they aren't strictly identical they are similar enough to the point that I don't really feel like they need separate rankings I don't have any rigid methodology as to how I'm tackling my opinion in each fight although things I'm keeping in mind are General challenge in relation to where in the game the fight takes place overall design and whether or not the fight is interesting and fair as well as general tone and atmosphere set by the fight but I wouldn't expect 100 consistency in these thoughts it's a complicated topic I'm also not going to factor in any cheese strats as points for or against the fight's quality because those aren't symptoms of game design rather oversights that the developers clearly didn't intend with me and those must always be stated this is simply my opinion and should not be taken as fact feel free to disagree with anything I say in this video but for everyone Sam you try not to take it personally and with that we have 45 boss fights across 8 games to rank let's start off with the worst of the bunch there's my ride there's bad final boss fights in video games and then there's cortex and crash too I feel like this transcends simply being the worst fight in the entire crash Series this has to be one of the war's boss fights of all time can we even call it a fight because no fighting actually occurs all cortex does is look straight at you and fly away when you get close after taking three spin attacks that's it the fight and by extension the game is just over you can genuinely beat this boss fight in less than 25 seconds I'm not even kidding the average split time for this fight in the crash 2 Speed Run is 40 seconds and 18 of that is the time it takes entering the fight and what makes it even worse is that this is the final boss it would be laughably pathetic as the first boss in the game but as the final boss I don't pretend to be a master historian on the entire medium of video games but the only other final boss I can think of that's as quick and effortless as cortex in this game is Ganon in the Zelda CDI games yeah there was no question here crash 2's cortex flight was easily going to bottom out this list but the good news is that it can only go up from here right if there's any recurring villain in the Crashers that consistently has amazing boss fights It's gotta be Engine with that said whenever I get to his boss fight in Twin sanity I have to ask myself what the hell happened here this fight is so far removed from every other fight with engine to ever exist there's no gigantic Mech that you have to destroy all while dodging an endless barrage of missiles and lasers no all you do is run around this floating ring in the sky I guess all while engine stands in the center launching missiles and throwing TNTs at you and the way you win this fight is by baiting him to throw a TNT at the three support beam so he destroys them yeah this fight lacks any of the depths and franticness that is omnipresent in every other fight with him in the series instead we're treated to a very bog standard Dodge the attacks and hit the boss three times fight that the crash series is a bit too overzealous and using in my opinion I suppose this fight gets some bonus points for not technically being one where you wait for an opening and strike engine while he's down and it does have elements of baiting your enemy that some of the better fights in the series have but the reason I have this fight solo is that I just expect so much more from a boss fight with engine this one is just so drab in comparison with even the song not really playing up the grandiose that I've come to associate with an engine boss fight the fight itself is extremely random too not random in the sense that it's RNG but random in the sense that it happens right in the middle of one of the longest levels in the entire game I also feel like this boss fight in the one immediately after it are a pretty noticeable drop in quality compared to the three fights in Twinsanity that preceded which also doesn't know favors speaking of which poor frogs I find it oddly amusing that despite Docker entropy often being portrayed as by far the most competent of the evil scientists and one of crash's most dangerous foes it's track record in terms of quality boss fights is honestly less than Stellar his joint boss fight alongside embryo and Twinsanity is no different and in my opinion it's his worst outing in the series much like the engine boss fight immediately preceding it the fight just happens completely out of nowhere except in the case of entropy and Brio it makes even less sense because at least engine was the owner of the battleship he just raided these two guys are literally just here demanding you've given the evil twins treasure that they just magically happened to know about I realized that there was a deleted cutscene that would have explained how entropy knew about the treasure but the fact that matter is that within the game itself there is simply no context to this the fight itself is also extremely mediocre consisting of a phase where embryo takes the form of a giant frog monster you simply have to dodge him trying to jump on you like it's an addition for WWE once that's over entropy drops down for the heavens and a t-pose in order to assert his dominance puts up a shield and proceeds to smack the ice with his tuning fork this dude straight up has the ability to create fireballs and lasers that literally disintegrate crash on contact but instead he resorts to playing the worst game of whack-a-mole I've ever seen and I played Spyro 3. this fight just reeks of being rushed and thrown together at the last second which is honestly just a recurring story for both Twinsanity and entropy boss fights I'm not entirely sure why I have this one spot over engine since contextually the former makes far more sense but I suppose that although this boss fight is also pathetically easy there is the possibility of messing up your movement on the syncing platforms and dying whereas with engine there's no genuine thread even if you have to redo certain phases if you miss destroying one of the support beams none of his attacks are actually scary enough where you should ever realistically die to them honestly these fights could share a spot and be tied since they're so close together in game that I almost forget that the two separate fights like actually when I was making this list I got to the end and had 44 fights and was thinking to myself that's not right I know there's 45 only to realize that I had forgotten to put an engine on the list which I guess makes it the more forgettable to do I try not to be too harsh on first bosses when making this list since they're supposed to be easy but I do still think it's important for a boss fight to not be boring and ripparoo in Crash 2 is unfortunately quite boring I obviously don't really expect this fight to be hard but at the same time it's absolutely devoid of any real challenge riparu doing the exact same thing every time in terms of the patterns in which he sets up the TNTs and Nitros I could see this fight potentially tripping up a newcomer who's unaware of what exactly each pattern looks like but once you've cleared that one instance of the unknown I truly don't expect anybody to have difficulty with this fight whatsoever unless they're under the age of five or their name is xqc this is especially compounded by the fact that there's no way to speed this fight up which is like whatever a lot of the boss fights in the series are Auto scrollers but even the ones that are usually require some form of committed action to not get killed with this fight you can literally stand in one spot put the controller down and wait for Rue to finish this round of hopscotch and you'll be in no danger whatsoever again I tried to be soft on this fight because it is the first fight in the game but even with that in mind I don't think it's particularly Stellar almost every other game in the series proves they can be a lot more creative than their first boss fights while still being easy and riparoo just doesn't do that [Music] I'm gonna be honest I don't think a huge amount of fights in Crash are genuinely bad and the ones that I think are I've already gotten out of the way but there are a large number that are just strictly okay these are mostly the ones that all follow a similar structure of Dodge attacks while you wait for an opening strike the opponent at that moment rinse and repeat two more times it's not a bad formula but it's a very uninteresting one that the series uses a lot and it's kind of hard to rank a lot in the middle of this list as a result because I end up having to weigh heavily on other factors of the fights themselves mostly coming down to minor nitpicks I chose to explain this here because it's really not a lot to say about evil crunch from entrance he has to be one of the least impressive fights that uses this formula and a lot of my grievances with Ripper Roo and crash 2 also kind of apply here namely the fact that you really don't have to do anything outside of blindly mash the shoot button to not only clear any Nitro in your path but also to hit grunge for the sake of brevity I won't go into more detail this is another example of a first boss fight that could have been much more creative than it was and it's wet too wet I know I thought I'd try to be softer on first bosses and then proceeded to list three of them near the bottom all in a row but I swear there are others that I generally find good and placed way higher on my list you can go down the huge Adventure is not one of those fights though the standard formula is kind of mixed up here since the flight is underwater making it kind of awkward it Dodge the Torpedoes falling stalactites and mechanical sharks but otherwise this fight really doesn't have a lot going for it the choice of Locale for this fight is so weird though like who if vicarious Visions looked at dingodile the pyromaniac who tried blasting you with a flamethrower in his last outing as a boss and decided yeah let's put this guy underwater that makes sense at least a swim trunks are snazzy why is everything all tiny I really don't have a lot to say about huge Adventure tiny it's a watered down version of its crash 3 fight and that's about it really there's nothing inherently bad about it but I kind of just had to throw it somewhere so here you go it's probably odd to some people that I have Papu Papu rank so high especially because he's so laughably easy that both the Japanese version of Crash 1 and the insane Trilogy buffed his health to five hit points instead of remember how I said I wanted to be softer towards the first bosses in each game but Papu Papu is the first boss fight in the entire series and why by no means think that he's a challenging boss fight whatsoever I do think he does a very solid job but introducing the player to how boss fights generally are the way he only takes damage from jumping on him shows how most bosses have a specific way they need to be attacked the flashing effect was invincible establishes how you'll usually need to find a specific opening in which to strike I also really like that the window to attack Papu is very generous you can choose to play it completely safe and wait for him to swing his staff and leave himself vulnerable or you can try and strike him in the middle of a spinning sweep you want to opt for a riskier but quicker course of action I also think the general setup and story based reason for this fight are uniquely Charming every other boss in the original trilogy has some mutated animal or evil scientist that has a bone to pick with crash Babu isn't even associated with Vortex he's just mad because he ransacked his village and committed breaking and entering in the middle of his beauty sleep I can Vibe with that honestly I'd be mad too if I was sleeping in some orange rash showed up in my Hut and proceeded to jump on my head so yeah papa isn't the spectacular boss fighter overall hence why he's still rather low on this list but I can respect that he doesn't solve job of setting the president for future fights while still failing a fair bit unique no lizards the Komodo Bros are a step up from riparoo I realize that's about as low as a bar as if yes Flat Stanley to play limbo but I can respect this fight adding a bit more to the standard pattern than other bosses namely the fact that Komodo Joe doesn't follow the exact same trajectory every time and actually moves depending on where he initially stopped and from what direction you hit him into Komodo Mo I also like the most natar throwing attack becomes longer in the second phase and in the third phase he literally throws them while Joe is spinning still not a particularly large amount to write home about and the fight is still very basic but hey they tried also for some reason Naughty Dog thought that this fight was challenging enough that not only is it the only fight in the PS1 version of Crash 2 where you can bring akuaku into it you're actually given a mask at the start vicarious Visions didn't feel the same way and somebody told us all to be better I'd say that there are worse Final Bosses than crunch time and Wrath of Cortex but that's an even lower bar than the last one this fight isn't nearly as anticlimactic as cortex is and crash 2 but considering how much of a threat crunch is set up to be I kind of expect more out of the final showdown with him then crunch steps on some buttons and you have to dodge the attacks and then shoot him with your bazooka by the way they don't even tell you that you have to use the Bazooka you have to figure that part out on your own the fight is actually pretty hard but I don't think it's in a way that's particularly Fair the sheer amount of attacks you have to dodge along with the awful depth perception means you oftentimes will just get blindsided by a stray meteor or Frozen by an ice cube only then gets struck by one of the other attacks that at that point you can do nothing about I do think it's neat that they Implement all four of the elemental masks into this fight but they don't really do more than pop in and do a little dance and then disappear nor do they really explain how they're showing up after you spend the whole game sealing them away I kind of just expect more out of a final boss than this one delivers but at least crunch isn't flying away from you on a jet pack am I right speaking of underwhelming Final Bosses entropy and entrance is just his crash 3 fight but worse it follows the same basic structure of the former but with two key differences to make it far more annoying the first is just how long the fight is initially it looks like he's gonna go down in a very quick and easy three hits but once you land that last one he regenerates his health and takes you to a new location where you have to hit him three more times and he does this twice you have to hit this blue bastard nine times across three phases with each phase being longer than the previous one and if you die at any point in this fight you have to start the whole thing over which brings me into the other issue I have with this fight the pattern in which entropy fires his shots is consistent in the first two phases but in the third phase it's random I don't think RNG is inherently bad from a design perspective but when you're in a final boss where you have to incredibly scarce room to work with and a single error can result in a death that takes you to the beginning of the fight it becomes a massive issue I do think there's a bigger feeling of finality to this fight than crunch time mainly just with the general atmosphere and structure of the fight I do really like that he takes you to the three separate locales that the platforming levels of the game take place in but from a gameplay perspective this fight can become very frustrating very fast Jafar and on that note entropy's original fighting crash 3 is equally underwhelming but at the very least he's not the final boss and it doesn't take you three phases to actually finish him off there's actually a fair bit about this fight that I enjoy the changing of the environment after each hit starting what seems to be the core of the time twister itself and then transitioning into various time periods is a nice reflection of entropy himself as the master of time I like that they mixed some platforming into the formula as well but making you run to entropy when he's vulnerable even having different floor layouts while doing so even with all that though I think this fight is a bit too formulaic especially since the other fights in Christ 3 I felt did a solid job of trying to mix things up a bit more which we'll get to later down the list it also doesn't have the entropy as as previously stated played out to be a pretty massive threat and yet this is all we really see of them and thus his legacy of Simply being average at Best in terms of boss fights began when making this list I had a particularly hard time figuring out how I felt about the fight with cortex and huge Adventure as a final boss fight I do find it to be relatively underwhelming but in general I don't think it's outright bad or subpar in the same way I feel about Crash 2 cortex crunch time or entrance entropy there's a lot about this fight that doesn't really make sense like how has crash managed to unshrink himself but at the same time there's a lot about the huge Adventure as a whole that just doesn't make sense so whatever I guess as an actual fight while it does follow the standard dodgedly attacks three times formula it does mix things up and that you aren't actually hitting cortex yourself rather you're Banning him into damaging his own planetary minimizer by tricking him into hitting the machines colored gems all right then I can appreciate the bait and punish element of this fight even if it's not entirely original or a standout for his neutral special he wields a gun I actually really like the dynamic of Pinstripes fight and crash one I like the fact that they give you the ability to hide behind the furniture to not get shot by a shockingly realistic gun and I also like that in the first three hits there isn't a blatantly defined opening on when you're supposed to strike him you could Leroy Jenkins this fight if you really wanted to and I think that's pretty cool and then the second half of the fight happens once you Whittle pinstripe down to his last three hit points the fight transforms into the standard waiting game as you're no longer able to freely hit him whenever you want you have to wait for his gun to jump before he actually becomes vulnerable and I get that they probably did that so you can't just wail on him endlessly but it ends up just making this one of the long lists of distinctly average fights in the series but I will commend him on being smart enough to bring a gun to a spinning rodent fight what sorry but we don't serve miners [Music] mixes up the formula by having four hit points instead of three in all seriousness though there are a few things in this fight that I do think at a small degree of depth to it pong's random attack timing at the end of each phase means you can't just know when specifically he's going to throw the last piece of coal at you the Minecart's acting as Shield's room also means you can't just blindly spin the cold back at him without properly timing it the TNTs in the first two phases are trivial but once you get into the second half of the fight and they start dropping through the ceiling during the portion where com throws the last piece will call you it can become a bit more of a headache having to contend with the TNT the impending giant rock headed your way and finding an opening to hit the whole back at him while trying to be not too fast so you hit a minecart instead but also not so slow that you lose your opening it's just little things like that you know not Kong though he's not a little thing it burns we're reaching the end of the wave of waited out and hit them three times boss fights and while there are still some later down the list I think they have enough pauses going for them that they avoid being lumped among the boss fights that are just really average in the case of crashes to ashes I think it's cool that you have to actually Chase corns down when he becomes vulnerable instead of Simply standing in place to be hit I also like how you can't just blindly hold the attack button down when trying to hit him since using the hose actually slows you down so you have to time your attack properly I do have some grievances with this fight namely that the trajectory of the fire rocks he throws at you whether or not they break in the third phase and the way the ones he drops move in the third phase are all random and can sometimes move in patterns that make him extremely obnoxious to avoid but other than that this is a pretty serviceable fight with enough of a shake up to the basic formula to make it stand out at least a little bit Squidward I use your clarinet to unclog my toilet there's a very funny passage on TV Tropes that describes drain damage as insanely hard and while I do think that's hyperbolic to say the least I'd be lying if I said it didn't give me a fair bit of grief as a kid the hitboxes and crunch's discount entropy lasers are definitely misleading as hell death perception is not the kindest in this fight but I feel like it's overall pretty manageable especially when slide jumping is brought into the mix I'm not even sure what this bubble earthquake attack is supposed to do I'm convinced that's never killing anyone ever and I'm chalking up anyone sitting otherwise to the Mandela effect from perspective I actually think drain damage is pretty cool it's the first fight in the series to make heavy use of point A to point B platforming it basically takes what entropy and three did and makes it the whole fight I think having to weave through boss attacks to reach them is a lot more interesting than simply weighing their attacks out so this gives the fight a lot of points in my eyes the troubling depth perception and misleading hitboxes on the attacks are detrimental though even if I think how hard the fight actually is is blown way out of proportion I don't know whether to have sex with you or kill you in Twinsanity feels like one of those fights that's just kind of there I do think it's odd that he even felt the need to create an ice body when simply staying in his mask form would have made him a pain in the ass to head but this is a running trend for his solo boss fight so maybe he needs to channel his energy through a makeshift body to be effective or he's an idiot in regards to the fight itself I do like that much like drain image it has you weaves through and avoid his attacks instead of doing the standard waiting for an opening though it doesn't go about it in the same way you make the opening yourself by having cortex activate switches that open up flame man's melt uku with I think it's a really good use of the team of mechanic in Twinsanity while also being an engaging fight where you're trying to avoid getting hit while also not just waiting to fight out I don't really have too much else to say about this fight it's simple but effective as far as first bosses go The Joint fight between cortex and the mecca Bandicoot and insanity is a pretty solid one even if it's not an absolute standout much of this fight is very reminiscent of previous fights in the series but I think one of twinsanities more unspoken charms is the ability to pay homage to the past while still feeling fresh and I think this fight does that pretty well the cortex section is very reminiscent of his fight and crash one the mecca Bandicoot is somewhat reminiscent of a fight with engine but both still manage to feel distinct enough that they don't feel tired or boring another point I'd like to make is that it's kind of cool to have cortex be the first boss fight in the game but in other games he's almost always the final boss that on top of this fight happening in the first level and the game heavily advertising the fact that you team up with them all I think helped Lay It heavily into the surprise Factor this fight held the first time I ran into it nothing to write home about but I like it all I said was there's evil up foot evil Coco from entrance follow the standard boss formula yes she probably rang too high yes do I really like this fight anyway yes I think it's really just the atmosphere that makes it stand out for me background music really plays into the Frantic feeling sense unlike the very similarly structured dingodile fight from the huge Adventure Coco is constantly barraging you with attacks and the cram space can make dodging everything she throws at you somewhat of a challenge this fight is pretty standard overall but the chaotic feeling makes me like it a bit more than normal and keeps it from being boring also I love this boss icon I hope I ever made this Sprite got a raise [Music] there's an alternate universe where I got off my ass and started making this video when I first thought of it months ago in some ways though I'm glad I didn't because if I had made this any sooner Rumble and the Rocks would be near the bottom for those unsavvy with the talk speedrunning experience this fight is quite notorious for being a very easy place to lose a lot of time compounded with childhood memories of this being a very difficult boss the first time I played it I had very little positive things to say about it once I took a step back and really examined this fight more however I realized that there's actually quite a lot about it that I think is pretty neat as I've stated from any fights in this video I massively respect that it assures the standard formula in favor of something different having a boss fight in the atlosphere where you and crunch are both rolling around competing with each other to successfully control every Rock in the arena is honestly a really cool concept for a fight when you think about it where this flight really Falls flat is in its execution prior to this the only experience you have with the atmosphere up to this point is in the level Bamboozled so you'll likely find controlling it to be a very awkward at this point in the game additionally much like drain damage death perception is not on your side here I also think the fight is a bit too difficult for a first boss the aforementioned issues on top of Prince's AI being able to control his own ball with pinpoint Precision make this fight far more challenging than any early game Boss really should be and for all the wrong reasons too overall this fight is a wonderful idea that honestly just needs more polish Rock polish if you will God I'm sorry that was so horrible how can one even evaluate a boss fight as idiosyncratic as a hole in space so brilliant and yet so unfulfilling I think the fact that this is the first crash 4 boss fight I'm talking about and it's this high up speaks volumes is just how much toys for about really raise the bar in terms of quality fights I also think that the fact that this is the highest ranking entry boss fight speaks box is just how underwhelming his battles consistently are honestly this was a really hard fight to rank hell it barely qualifies as a fight considering you only spend about the last 10 percent of it actually fighting anyone but the previous 90 traveling to your destination and also observing the devs magnificently effective use of a horrendously overused meme I really don't know what else I can say we all know this fight builds up to something huge and then ends up being a pretty big letdown it's one of the most common criticisms I see about Crash 4. I feel like it's blatantly obvious that this was supposed to be much longer and epic maybe even with the sections where you play as the other characters besides crash and Coco but for whatever reason we were left with a long Trek to a two-hit boss fight that's over as soon as it begins so with all that in mind why is this in the middle of the list and not near the bottom well in spite of all of its weaknesses a hole in space absolutely nails something that many of the fights are ranking below it were lacking in and that something is presentation this fight knocks it out of the park in terms of spectacle with the initial rail running through the distorted space-time Continuum followed by the huge Trek to reach the entropies I also really love how the fight makes use of all four quantum masks and in the order that you get them no less starting with Lonnie Lawley on the rail grind traversing the moving platforms with akano and kapunawa and then finally fighting the entropies themselves of the ikaika this fight really has all the makings of a fantastic final boss even though it doesn't live up to it and it's not the final boss but they sure do a good job of tricking you into thinking it might be as a penultimate boss fight Brielle and crash one manages to shake up the formula set by the previous four fights pretty well first off look at that health bar it's huge I do think it's interesting how for the first part of this fight you aren't even fighting Brio himself but rather these weird balls of goopy sends after you so I am glad that in the unsane trilogy version they establish that destroying them splashes their residue back at him didn't really make sense why that did damage to him in the original I guess destroying his little blob monsters just really hurt his feelings or something the real crazy part of this fight is when you finally get him down to his last three health bars and you're just sitting there like okay he's just gonna send out a few more blobs I guess what what why is he drinking it that can't be healthy oh my goodness this was the first boss fight that had a transition in the middle of the fight a concept that they didn't really utilize again until two games later with engine this fight is the perfect balance of Challenge and uniqueness on top of pulling off a really creepy atmosphere they're the same trouble Brewing from Crash 4 is extremely derivative of the Brio fight and crash one that I just talked about right down to having literally the exact same structure the two flights Miz will be tied because I think they both excel in one field and falter in the other crash one Brio definitely wins in the presentation department but I think in terms of actual gameplay I slightly prefer trouble Brewing the implementation of akano in this fight is really cool it starts to be more effective than simply giving the dude a migraine by digging your foot into his Cranium really though the biggest sin this fight is guilty of is that once you finish it Brio uses his cloaca to create the single worst part of Crash 4 inverted levels automatically worse than crash 2 cortex negative 5 out of 10. Ripper room being absolutely insane is a perfect reflection of how insane naughty dog had to be to think the difficulties by going to this fight from Papu Papu was reasonable there is a lot more timing involved not just compared to Papu but also to every other boss fight in the game namely with having to have Ripper's hopping pattern line up with the way the big TNT's are moving quick side note is anyone else sad that this is the only time that we ever see big TNTs I do like that this fight takes a lot more effort than many others in the series but for how early in the game it is I could see this potentially being a big roadblock for newer players still I do think it's a standout among most of the other fights in Crash one almost exactly as if they're alive the tollum gotten Twinsanity or Tiki Manas he is apparently named is definitely a fight that gets carried by spectacle more so than the fight itself from a gameplay's perspective I do think that it's cool that it makes use of the t-bomb mechanic being the first fighter crashing cortex work together outside of that though it's pretty bland but what really makes me love this fight is not the quality of the gameplay itself but like I said the spectacle in the atmosphere this is again the first time that crashing cortex came to take down the boss fight very much takes advantage of that I also love how tikkimon isn't some evolved animal or evil scientist he's one of the various totem God statues littered across Insanity Island brought to life by The Game's real antagonists the evil twins at this point we were seven games into the series if counting only Platformers and the last time we fought a boss who wasn't part of one of the two aforementioned categories was Papu Papu all the way back in Crash one it's that kind of similar yet distinct feeling that I mentioned before that gives Twinsanity a lot of its charm background song just adds to the atmosphere and helps create what is in my opinion a pretty solid second boss fight in the game it's just a damn shame that in the speed run we do this instead of fighting him thank you at a glance there's not really that much the Chinese boss fight in Crash 3 and maybe because of that it could strike one as an odd pick for the top 20. however there's a lot about this fight I like Beyond just the spectacle let's get that out of the way first being said in the Gladiator arena with lions and a cheering crowd is just a perfect fit for tiny the music does a lot for adding the appeal to this fight I also think that as a first boss fight this is a rather significant Step Up in quality compared to both of its predecessors whereas Papu Papu was painfully easy even as the first fight in the series The River was just incredibly boring and effortless tiny actually manages to provide a decent challenge especially during the part between phases where he sends hordes of lines at you this can be very tricky if you're not comfortable with not only weaving through obstacles but also with how the timer on the spin mechanic works it's not so easy that you can just stroll through it but also not so hard that it can't be properly learned with just a little bit of experience it strikes a good balance for how early it is and I think that's worth putting a lot of value into the highest ranking rather cortex fight on the list atmospheric pressure is one of the two fights I like to call Discount crash free engine because that's what this fight is it's extremely similar in structure with you attacking certain parts of crunch's body as he attacks you with each attack gradually disappearing the further along the fight gets hell it's even the fourth boss fight in the game all this doesn't make the fight bad on its own but it does reek of being extremely derivative of a prior game which is really just an issue with to walk as a whole my only real criticism with the fight is that at least from my own experience it's not really that clear as to where you're supposed to attack you're meant to hit the part of the body that he's using at that moment and that's signified by akuaku surrounding that area but I don't know it always seemed a bit cryptic to me if not for that I'd maybe put this a bit higher but either way it's just outside of the boss fights that I consider it'll be a bit more exceptional and just before we get into that group of more exceptional bosses let's briefly talk about the other discount crash 3 engine I give this one more of a pass because it actually is engine and huge Adventure as a game is Just intentionally cut and paste for the most part anyway this fight also has a bit more of a frantic pacing to it compared to the slower pace of atmospheric pressure and that I think makes it feel a bit more exciting however I do think some of his attacks as well as the movement of engine himself are a bit too fast fast and make it hard not only to avoid the hits but also to hit him back it's abnormally difficult for the second boss in the game but overall not too offensive and definitely one of the less infuriating parts of the huge Adventure funnily enough so I initially ranked four times a charm the first fight with cortex and crash four very high on this list then as I was writing out this script I looked it over again and tried thinking why exactly I did that I mean it's a neat fight for sure I think it's cool that cortex is the midpoint fight of the game at this point in the game has you believing that'd be the only time you fight him but I'm not really sure what else made me have it so high at first design wise I think it's a cool use of kapunawa where you're faced with such an onslaught of attacks that you just have to slow down time to survive usually I don't really think that's enough to put it above so many of the other fights I have yet to talk about I'm really stumped on this one by no means this is a bad fight it's actually quite great and I'm really at a loss as to why I initially rated it so much higher still just outside of the top 15 isn't anything stop that number 15. I feel like boss fights and crash too kind of get a bad rap and that's not totally unfounded but I do think one fight definitely doesn't get the appreciation it deserves and that's tiny every boss and crash up to this point is one that even if they're big has some physical weakness and I think that's what I like about this fight there is no way for you to directly damage tiny there's no waiting for an opening just a game of cat and mouse so you trick him into falling so hard that his teeth retract I don't think there's anything too amazing about this fight but I do think it's cool that tiny is a boss that's so physically imposing that you can't overpower him and your only choices that was smart granted that's not the hardest thing in the world but it's a neat Dynamic that hadn't really been seen in a boss fight up to this point so we're finally at the boss fights that I think have something about them that really stick out boss fights that I'd say are definitely pretty great but why is entrance all the way up here well if this fight was only the first part it would be much lower the first half of the end trans boss fight is yet another boss fight that follows the formula of Dodge's attacks wait for him to become vulnerable and hit him not terrible but pretty played out by now and pretty disappointing for what's set up to be the final boss no what really makes entrance Stand Out is the second half of this fight we finally take out his last Health Point and instead of just falling over defeated this dude just turns into Modoc and we transition to a second phase and holy hell this phase is sick there's no set patterns to dodge until there's an opening this is free movement with a copter pack while you try to force entrance into the lava pit below fake crash so you can Reign molten hot magma down on top of him can we talk about that for a second one thing that goes on for the entirety of this game is that every time you free someone from entrance's hypnotic spell they proceed to help you for the rest of the game with Crunch and Coco it's simple enough they've become playable characters for their own sets of levels but even fake crash helps you out by being the person who actually damages the entrance in this phase of the fight I love that small little detail the fact that fake crash also allies with you and helps you take the bad guys down even if it's just one small part that's such a neat thing that really makes me love this fight even more that aside I also love how entrance has a huge plethora of different attacks to throw you this is a genuinely damaging attack where you throw SpaghettiOs at you but also too slow moving orbs that have one of two disorienting effects either your screen is filled with copies of yourself making it hard to tell where you are or your controls get flipped I also like how entrance doesn't have a set pattern which he launches these attacks at you you'll always retaliate after getting hit but if you take too long to hit him again he'll attack you again anyway and the time it takes varies it punishes you for dawdling but also isn't something that could be easily predicted it keeps you on your toes and I really like that about this fight the first half of this fight isn't anything special but the second half more than makes up for it it definitely earns its spot within the top 15 and is one of the many things that makes me feel like entrance is an absurdly underappreciated gaming series let's stop it for another video holy crap is this one a hot take I feel like this one's gonna be a hot take but uh yeah I actually really like the mini boss fight with Louise at the end of Jeff or Jenny and crash four and yes a mini boss still counts as a boss I actually didn't like this fight when the game first came out I found it to be very annoying because I didn't really understand how the jump were controlled and even though I understand it now it's still a bit awkward to how small the arena is but after I thought about it more I actually think there's a lot about this fight that's pretty cool the concept of a mini boss at the end of a level is something that had never been used at any point before this and I kind of wish crash 4 used it a bit more because it's actually really awesome I think it would have been interesting at the last levels in the hugs between boss fights had mini bosses like this instead of it just being a one-time thing Beyond just that though I really like the way that this boss fight is even approached with how you have to position yourself in a way that base the pirate rats Pirates into crashing into luis's tentacles kind of similar to the cat and mouse style of Tiny's crash 2 fight but you aren't really baiting Luis herself more so her flunkies into hitting her by mistake the fight is definitely not perfect like I said the arena is pretty claustrophobic and the jetboard in this game has such a wide turning Arc that can make this fight pretty difficult to actually get a feel for but I do really like what they went for here it's a cool concept I'm still really glad we found a skip forward in the speed run though this time I shall rain triumphant I'm gonna be honest 99 of the reason this fight is so high up is the atmosphere design wise the final boss with cortex and crash one is all right nothing really to write home about though I guess having to reflective green shots back at him is pretty neat but what really sells this fight for me is just everything else the tone the ominous music the Burning Castle in the background it really feels like a last Showdown with the dude you've been traveling across multiple Islands to confront and is just set up so perfectly as a finale for The Game it really dips super hard into that darker more ambient tone that crash one has compared to its sequels and honestly I'm completely about it I don't really have too much to say about the fight otherwise funnily enough despite how high I have it ranked it's really just the atmosphere and that tone is a final boss for the game that sells it hard I have no idea what you just said we want to talk about atmosphere though I don't think any fight in the series nails that to the same degree that dingodile and Twinsanity does the song here especially is the perfect fit for a battle taking place in the deepest hottest part of the Boiler Room of the Academy of evil and really feeds into the dingo's pyromaniac personality as well it really helps to elevate the boss fight to be incredible when otherwise I just think it's pretty great as far as design goes I do think it's a step up from others of its sort yes there's a lot of waiting on attacks and finding an opening but it also has elements of baiting dingo into set opening by dragging him into a revealing a button that puts out the fire shield around him that on top of the Boss by being genuinely challenging is enough that I'd still have this fight in the upper half regardless but the tone the music sets is just so perfect and so fitting that it elevates it into nearly top 10 status I know a lot of people will rate this fight even higher and I can't even blame them there's just a few other fights that stick out a bit more to me and you're wearing a mask the past on masses for all intents and purposes crunch time from Wrath of Cortex but done well it has the same basic premise where the enemy in question is using all four of the game's master steel but unlike Wrath of Cortex where all crunch does is press buttons that cause each Mass to somehow be free from the imprisonment you lock them back in by this point crashboard is a lot more clever about it unlike the Elementals the quantum masks are your allies in this game which means at the beginning of this fight cortex takes them from you and uses the powers you've been using throughout the entire game against you I like how this is a shake-up of not just previous games or the previous levels in this game where you use the masks but also the previous boss fights every fight in Crash 4 up to this point had to be using one of the quantum masks to take them down including the previous boss fight where you used all four the passed on Mast is a fantastic contrast to this since now you're powerless with none of the master at your disposal you have to take cortex down solely with the skills crashing Coco have by themselves I also think the use of each Quantum mask's power is pretty well done Lonnie Lawley and ikaika in particular are great and wakapunawa and akano are a bit less though I think there's only so much you can do with their powers and I think the devs were as creative as they could be all in all a wonderful final boss and a wonderful start to our top 10. I wasn't even sure if I should have counted this as a boss fight but Megamix might be the only thing about the huge Adventure that I think is genuinely awesome so I felt like I just had to mention them here this might seem like an extremely odd choice for a top 10 slot but stay with me for a second first off I think every boss in the game accidentally fusing into this giant freakish monster which the game actually just calls monster is pretty cool let's go back to something I said about Crash 2 tiny how I thought it was awesome that there was a boss that you couldn't really beat with brute force and you had to outwit him in order to win the fight that's taken to the extreme with mega mix this is a boss so huge so imposing so menacing that you cannot win this fight there is no Victory to be had your only hope for survival is to run like hell and hope it doesn't catch you and you know that's just kind of rad every other boss in the series has some weakness something exploitable about them there's no weakness to exploit on Megamix you really just have to escape with your life it's just so far removed from anything else in the series that I can't help but love it you don't want to consider this a boss fight I don't blame you it's really more of a glorified Chase sequence but it is the final challenge of the game and it has the feel of a boss fight even though it isn't actually a fight so I thought it deserves to mentioned introductory boss fight in Crash 3 might not have the same amount of atmosphere and spectacle that his Twinsanity fight has but it still does quite well in that department and more than makes up for anything it lacks by being one of the absolute best design fights in the entire Series going past the first half of each phase where you just have to dodge the Fireballs he launches into the air the second part is the absolute Pinnacle of bait and punished style crash bosses you don't wait for an opening in this fight you make the opening by tricking dingodile into destroying the crystal Shield surrounding him that is so awesome and a major improvement from every boss fight the proceeds into the trilogy I feel like while tiny was definitely a better first Boston either of his predecessors Dingle down is the fight where you realize just how much naughty dog stepped up their game with bosses on in Crash 3 compared to crash one and two this fight is just such a massive jump in quality that I really feel like it's one of the Pinnacles of the series as a whole it's just that good to me you'll always be a little verb a lot of boss fights in Crash managed to hit all the right story beats and a lot of other fights are really well done from a design perspective but ma'am Amberly manages to accomplish both even in the extremely limited time twin sanity has to do so the Academy of evil is set out to be cortex's origins of sorts it's where he learned how to be an evil doctor from the very first moments Madame Amberly is on screen the two's relationship is established you can see the absolute Terror in cortex's face the way his voice pitches up tremendously just trying to stand up for himself he is terrified of this woman and that makes it all the more cathartic when you actually take her down in the fight it's a very subtle piece of cortex's character art throughout the entire game but I love it all the same as an actual boss battle the fight is pretty awesome the way you move is extremely important as you're trying to not get trapped between two of the organ fights she opens up and I really like that it's challenging honestly even difficult fight the only thing that sucks about it is how far back you get sent if you do die in it the fact that you're forced to watch the cutscene before it again it's not unfair it does require a good bit of effort on the players part and is rewarding to boot quick side note can we talk about how he literally just kill this woman at the end of the fight like I'm pretty sure cortex just straight up murdered her [Applause] play time is over as a resident dude that's completely obsessed with Twinsanity you'd think I have nothing but endless praise for this boss fight I see so many people prop up as perfect and it is clocking and just outside the top five on this list but you may be shocked to hear that I've actually gone back and forth on how good of a final boss fight I think the evil twins actually are with time though my opinion has definitely shifted to be more overwhelmingly positive than negative and my criticisms of the flight are few and far between as a kid I used to hate the fact that you don't actually play as crash on foot in this fight it seems like such an odd choice for a Crash Bandicoot game of all things but eventually came to really appreciate that decision for a number of reasons for one the entire final level before this and Agony is a solo crash level and it's a long one so I think it was fair for him to not take the spotlight in The Showdown when he had the entire last level all to himself second this boss fight together with the preceding level is a great culmination of everything you've seen in the game up to this point you open the fight with Nina in the first phase and then transition the cortex into second phase on that note I want to really talk about cortex both in the fight itself and in the cutscene that plays right before it for the entire game up to this point Vortex has been the punching bag The Butt Monkey he's been used and abused in more ways than can ever be counted and you really get a glimpse at how sensitive he really is but right here when all bets are off cortex puts his foot down and stands up for himself you see it in the final moments of the cutscene and you see it in the transition to his part of the fight where he cowering in fear realizes that he can fight back puts himself between the Twins and Nina it's such a perfect culmination in cortex's character growth throughout the game and it's such a good snapshot of what makes Twinsanity as a whole so good and what makes its version of Cortex and Lex Lang's portrayal of him the best that has ever been done and if that wasn't enough the cherry on top of this fight is the Final Phase when crash finally swoops in after running off at the start piloting the mecca Bandicoot it's such a phenomenal bookend to the beginning of the game being able to control the first boss to take down the final boss and oh God it's all so good man I really should make a video on why Twinsanity is such a beautiful flawed masterpiece put that on the list Crash Bandicoot for the last time give the crystals to me there are plenty of great Final Bosses in the series but out of all of them I still think cortex's fight at the end of Crash 3 stands out the most everything about this fight screens finale you can tell that naughty dog went in knowing that this was the end of at the very least their run with the series and they pulled out all stops in the presentation the setup of a dual final showdown between not only crashing cortex but also akuaku and uku it's so fantastic and the perfect payoff to what the game had been building up to for its entirety even better is that the fight takes place in what appears to be the central core of the time twister machine the music only adds to the appeal being a much more epic version of cortex's theme from the previous two games the fight just truly feels like the end of a saga and it shows even though the crash series would go on for many years to come for better or worse it could have ended right here and it would have been a satisfying conclusion as far as it goes as an actual fight it's pretty standard fair I do like the dynamic of having to stay out of the crossfire of akuaku and uku while simultaneously dodging cortex's attacks But ultimately it's the presentation of the fight that carries it into the top five although the fight itself certainly isn't bad way back at the beginning of this list I mentioned how I felt like engine was the boss who consistently had the most amazing battles across the series his debut fight in Crash 2 is one such example it's the biggest standoff fight in Crash 2 and in my opinion it said the bar for what a good boss fight in the series should be this was the first fight that completely issued the standard formula there's no specific attack pattern that you have to wait out before you can attack sure there are patterns but it's all for the most part an open canvas you can attack at virtually any point at how often the engine makes itself vulnerable there are attacks to dodge but you can even strike them while set attacks are happening if you're particularly fast enough and smart with your timing you can even get two hit points off him at once in a series that overall has very simple straightforward boss fights engine is a fight with an incredible amount of depth while at the same time not being too complicated it really is the poster child example what I think every crash boss should describes to be I sung a lot of Praises for various Final Bosses across the series but first bosses tend to range from okay to rather unimpressive voice for Bob really needed way to show just how much they ran things up with crash for and I think they more than delivered with Stage dive I don't think it's unfair at all to say that this fight is by far the most grandiose first boss in the entire series if not one of the most grandiose boss fights overall the spectacle was up to 11. the guitar heroesque Vibe established was just so perfect for a character like engine who by the way is just raking in the W's by having two fights back to back in this top five as far as the fight itself goes it's way crazier than any other first boss sure It ultimately boils down to the same Dodge and weight style but there's so much going on that it keeps the fight from being boring and provides a very strong challenge for the early game while not being too unfair this fight really set the stage for just how Grand and scale everything in Crash 4 was compared to all previous games in the series they really knew what would set apart a good first boss from a fantastic first boss and that was presentation yeah you're copying me be completely honest on a list of the best fights in the series you did not in a million years expect a fight from one of the GBA games to take the runner-up spot and yet fake Crash from entrance is one of the best fights to ever grease this series it's certainly the most unique and honestly I would argue you can make a genuine case for this actually being number one there was frankly no better thing they could have done for a fight against crash's doppelganger a fight where he mirrors every single move you make and you have to trick him into hurting himself while you avoid that same damage it's absolutely genius I did say dingo dial in Crash 3 as the ultimate bait and punish fight and I stand by that because I don't really think I'd consider this a bait and punish fight it's not like her guiding him into mistakenly attacking something or creating an opening you are literally controlling every move this boss makes and it's just so so clever it's so creative it's so insane that one of the best plays to come out of this series is from the very often overlooked GBA titles but really there isn't any other fight quite like fake crash it's so perfect and yet I still think one other fight just barely edges it out yeah there are a lot of great boss fights across the entire crash series but I don't think there's any fight more incredible than engine in Crash 3. this fight is unparalleled on every front it's an even grander version of his fight from Crash 2 which was already in the top five of this list the setup of being in a dogfight in space is just incredible there's no downtime no part where things feel boring it's just constantly frantic with you completely Welling on it with an endless barrage of attacks all while engine does the same to you there's missiles everywhere and extremely damaging laser attack that you need to be very careful to avoid the works the fact that this is the one boss fight where Coco takes Center Stage just makes it all the more epic and I'm totally not biased and if that wasn't enough when you take down his first robot engine has a second one prepared this phase of the fight is even more frantic with an even bigger onslaught of weapons as well as Engine moving much more quickly from side to side but I think the biggest standout in this section is the fact that Pura comes in to Aid kogo with some extra Firepower it's such a nice little added detail that just elevates this to even higher highs than it was already at and come on this little scene they included in the unsane trilogy version of the fight is just adorable I think it says enough that engine occupies three of the top five spots on this list his fights really are the Pinnacle of the series and his fight in Crash 3 is both him and the series bosses as a whole at their absolute best take clears in every possible way and I Have No Reservations calling it my favorite fight in the entire crash series [Music] foreign [Music] boss fight from the crash Platformers range from my least favorite to favorite thank you all so much for watching this video was a very long time coming and I'm glad I was finally able to finish it and get it out of my brand and out there for the internet to see if you like the video or you want to disagree with me and tell me how wrong I am feel free to leave a comment below I'm in no way saying that what I think is Gospel and I'm more than happy to see how other people feel about these boss fights if you want to see more videos like this please consider subscribing to the channel I really want to do more scripted content like this in the future and I have a lot of ideas to work with if you want to support me please consider joining my patreon you got a lot of cool perks and updates and I do this full time so any support you provide goes a long way in helping me pursue this passion I have for the Craft series and for Content creation as a whole I'll leave the link in the description down below and finally if you really like listening to me and you want to watch me live I do stream almost every day over on Twitch I mainly do speed runs of many games in the Crash Bandicoot Series so if that piques your interest be sure to stop by I'll leave the link to that in the description below as well otherwise I really hope you enjoyed the video thank you all again for watching and I'll see you next time foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Riko_KSB

Views: 69,558

Keywords: crash bandicoot, playstation 5, speedrun, speed run, riko, riko ksb

Id: U9Q3yOTDZ0s

Length: 47min 9sec (2829 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023