On the other hand, bosses' large size and predictable movements and behavior often mean that they have difficulty dodging attacks, and so powerful moves with long startups such as Falcon Punch can be highly effective. Bosses' immunity to knockback also means that the player's moveset will have to be used differently - for example, grabs and throws will nearly always be useless, and moves of high knockback but low damage are ineffective. These attacks tend to be telegraphed with long startups and end lag, making them more avoidable on the other hand, they generally deal higher damage and knockback should they connect. Compared to the playable cast, bosses usually have fewer attacks available. When a boss is defeated, the game usually freezes and sometimes zooms in with a special background visual, an effect Masahiro Sakurai officially refers to as ' Boss Stop,' followed by an animation of the boss being defeated.įighting bosses are an entirely different matter than normal fights.
series are usually significantly larger than playable characters, and are usually immune to knockback and flinching, meaning that instead of defeating them with an offstage KO, they must instead be defeated by reducing their HP to zero. A boss is a non-playable character that appears as a strong opponent in specific circumstances in one-player modes or on certain stages in multiplayer modes.