This came up because I watched a video on the final bosses of Like a Dragon games and the guy deftly pointed out that in the first Judgement game, the final boss is framed like a horror game.
Tak is a clever usually-one-step ahead detective who is also a master martial artist. He's not Kazuma Kiryu levels of literally perfect but he's far from the regular joe on the street.
This man is a professional assassin who revels in the violence and power it brings him, and is also a master martial artist, one who is out to fucking kill people for profit and because it's something he almost gets a sexual charge out of.
For the Mole, killing Tak is both a matter of professional pride and also just something that's gonna make not just day, but probably his year, and Tak's smart enough to get that. Their dynamic intro and every QTE you get is our boy realizing he's probably going to have to kill this man to make him stop and if he doesn't he's dead.
And unlike mister Kazuma "Never killed a man a day in his life" Kiryu it's been fairly well established that Tak has been doing a pretty good job of making sure that the guys he's been beating the fuck out of are in fact just bludgeoned into unconsciousness.
連続犬
Yeah! It's in the research hospital in the first phase and that shit is ruined, and then it moves out for the next phases to the reception area and by the end of it that's destroyed and most the big plate glass windows are shattered by either furniture or gunfire.
It starts when you go to the hospital. In a nice touch even though the lab the first phase happens in has no windows except the one in the door, you can actually see the storm getting worse in the QTEs/cutscenes that happen in the fight when the lobby can be seen through the door window.
But yeah, when I say this game just reverts to horror movie framing for a moment, it does something the RGG games don't do a ton of mechanically - it fakes you out.
You deplete this motherfucker's health bar, kick him through a broken out window to presumably fall to his death, and you get both the music going dramatic for a moment like the fight is over and some denouement shots of Tak sitting, catching his breath and other characters (trying to avoid spoilers here) looking out of another room to see if it's over.
Like the only weird thing is that his health bar hasn't shattered like it does at the end of every fight in the series... And this fucker pulls himself back into the room, through the broken glass and the rain and the lightning, and jabs an adrenaline syringe into his heart to refill the bar. Round two motherfucker.
Mechanically he doesn't get any tougher because he's already one of the hardest fights in the game, there's just more of his bullshit, and he just also starts spamming his Fatal damage moves showing ludonarratively that this man is absolutely going to kill Tak if it's the last thing he does.
Judgement tonally swerves so fucking hard toward the end of the game that it's almost offputting but I think it sticks it and I think story-wise it's stronger than its sequel for it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum of "main character is outmatched" is one of my favorite video games of all time, Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, and the way it manages to sell Julius Belmont to you.
Julius Belmont has spent the better part of 2 decades trapped in a magical castle in an eclipse, alone, his memories shattered, barely surviving. He's in his 50s, he's past his prime as a vampire hunter.
The boss theme is his theme, because he's the Belmont and they're the main characters of this franchise, you're the dude who's supposed to go down here. About the time you presume you've finally whittled his health down he blows up most the screen and you along with it if you're not fast and becomes harder.
Chances are if you've done your exploration thoroughly, you've surgically fused yourself to the Claimh Solais, which in 99% of cases is an absolute holy-element shitkicker of a weapon that juices your everything into the stratosphere
And then when you do finally mechanically win that fight Soma manages to basically yell time out and get Julius to admit he's not actually trying because if he was Soma would be dead instantly and Julius would be back to playing House Flipper: Lunar Eclipse Edition for another 20 years or so.
I cannot stress that Aria has the brass balls to make this the hardest fight in the game and then tag on "actually if this guy was like 10 years younger or not convinced you were actually a good person this would have been a cutscene."
I remember the last time I played it, and yeah. It's desperate as hell. He will end you in a few good hits and i'm doing shit like backdash-cancelling Balmung strikes to try and get in cheap shots on him
You also forgot to mention that the phase change move is, if you've been a longtime Castlevania die-hard, one of the strongest moves of previous Belmonts.
and i wish more games did this properly, cause a lot of them are just like "eh, curbstomp boss, you get 10% of the hp down and you get one shot into a cutscene"
tales of's Indignation chant