Our first mini-assignment for our Boss Battle project is to analyze a boss battle we like. For mine, I picked the Ninetails fight from Okami.
This fight is the culmination of a long arc in the game, You the player are first introduced to Ninetails via Rao, a priestess you befriend, who seeks to keep the demon's weapon away from him. After exploring a sunken ship and discovering the "Fox Rods," Rao convinces you to give them to her...only to reveal just a little while later, in the midst of killing the queen of the land, that the real Rao has been dead a long time, impersonated by the demonic Ninetails itself. To avenge your friend and the queen, Amaterasu and Issun scale Ninetails' fortress called Oni Island to take out its leader.
The new mechanic introduced during the fight is the lightning ability. Much like other powers in the game, it's based on drawing a line in your Brush menu from a power source to a target. It's not a particularly revolutionary bit, but it's still fun to shoot lightning around everywhere.
What makes this fight so interesting isn't the difficulty--Okami's bosses are not known for their difficulty--but the way it twists the main mechanics. Up until this point, you are the only character known who can stop time to draw with your "Celestial Brush", influencing the world around you. The Ninetails fight subverts this--not only can Ninetails use a corrupted version of the Brush, but it can cancel out your attacks in red ink if you don't move fast enough. It's an interesting god vs. devil fight, as Ninetails' mask at the beginning is considered a mockery of Amaterasu's divine power, and so is its power with the brush.
Brush, Interrupted
Another interesting subversion is how the fight starts. When you arrive at the stage, Ninetails is nowhere to be found. To begin the battle, the player has to fill in a constellation much like the ones that give you brush powers. However, this particular constellation turns out to be the boss in disguise.
The Constellation
There are two phases to the fight. You start off in an environment that's like a knock off of the heavenly places you've been before, visiting the other gods. In the first phase, Ninetails attacks you with a flurry of headbutts, stabs from its sword, toxic liquids, and uses its tail to attack from underground. Its attacks generally mirror Amaterasu's. Every now and then, however, it will raise its sword to gather dark energy. If the player summons lightning from the various bolts around to strike the sword, Ninetails' 9 spirits separate and run around in a physical form. For a limited time, Amaterasu can strike and kill those spirits, until the main one reunites them again, and the process restarts (with less tails)
This person is terrible but OK here's an example of Ninetails breaking up
Once all those spirits have been defeated, Ninetails' true form as an old fox is revealed, and its attacks get more desperate. The atmosphere changes with it, breaking the heavenly feel for the cold, dark reality of Oni Island. It will get faster, mostly using its charge attack, but still gives a few openings to strike with lightning.
Old Fox
Defeating Ninetails gives you the Blade of Kusanagi, which is just a nice sword, nothing too special. But the satisfaction of revenge is another great reward.
