Highlights
- Ghostrunner 2 introduces enhanced visuals, gameplay variety, and focus on storytelling, and reworks boss battles for more player freedom and strategy.
- The first game's boss battles were rigid and required memorization, while Ghostrunner 2's bosses have traditional health bars and adaptive AI, making them more engaging and challenging.
- Some fans may appreciate the new dynamic and unpredictable boss battles, while others may prefer the consistent set of variables in the first game, but overall the reworked battles offer deeper and more complex challenges.
One More Level's Ghostrunner 2, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2020's Ghostrunner has just been released, expanding upon the foundations laid by the first game. Ghostrunner 2's gameplay variety, enhanced visuals, and focus on storytelling help it stand out against its predecessor, but there is another significant element that has been reworked: boss battles.
Ghostrunner has something of a reputation as a challenging title. The game takes the demand for perfection that games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice exhibit and makes things even more unforgiving, forcing players to master the gameplay mechanics and learn enemy behaviors like the back of their hand, lest they fall prey to the universal one-hit-kill. Boss battles, though somewhat scarce compared to other games, are also challenging, though players aren't offered much freedom as far as strategy is concerned. This stands in contrast to the rest of the game, which allows players to make use of Ghostrunner's many techniques and tricks to carve their own path to their enemy hordes. Ghostrunner 2 attempts to translate some of this freedom into its boss encounters.
How Ghostrunner 2 Ramps Up Boss Battles
With Ghostrunner 2 expanding upon the offerings of the first game, it's not surprising that bosses have been reworked. However, the new approach to these encounters is a drastic change, which simultaneously allows for more player freedom and expression while making the fights considerably more challenging.
Boss Battles Are Not as Restrictive in Ghostrunner 2
Boss battles in the first Ghostrunner often consisted of deflecting a predetermined series of enemy attacks, which would ultimately lead to an opening for an attack. This rigidity is relaxed in the second game, which gives many bosses a traditional health bar and set of attacks, which the AI will adjust based on the actions of the player. This allows Ghostrunner 2 players to use strategy in boss battles, rather than being forced into deflecting or blocking a predetermined set of attacks, which can run the risk of making the experience feel on rails. The new approach makes boss battles more engaging, but can also result in a dramatic difficulty increase, in some ways.
Ghostrunner 2's Dynamic Fights Offer a New Challenge
Boss battles in Ghostrunner are certainly challenging, just like the rest of the package, but this difficulty comes with a caveat. Since there is little to no variation when it comes to boss attacks, fights can boil down to a practice in memorization. This can make the fights rote, simplistic, and easy to grasp after a few attempts, especially when fighting the bosses on subsequent playthroughs. Ghostrunner 2 bosses like Ahriman are, by comparison, much more dynamic, which makes fighting him more varied and unpredictable and therefore more challenging, even for veteran players. The demand for perfection is still there, but simple memorization is no longer enough to carry a player to victory.
It's up to individual players to decide whether this new take on boss battles is an overall improvement over the first game. At first glance, more dynamism and player freedom seem like additions that would be universally appreciated, but some fans may feel that it deviates from the formula of Ghostrunner; the first game was less about creativity and problem-solving and more about lightning-fast reflexes and the pursuit of perfection under a consistent set of variables.
Then again, most of the central mechanics of Ghostrunner are retained in the sequel, and it seems like the game is a fairly standard progression of the ideas that worked in its predecessor, so even Ghostrunner purists will likely find something to appreciate in these reworked boss battles. At the end of the day, there is certainly something to appreciate about the stringent rules of the first game's combat, but the adaptive AI and unpredictability of the fights in Ghostrunner 2 open the door to deeper and more complex challenges.
Ghostrunner2 is available to play on PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
