Action & Fighting Games · 19

Boss phases are difficulty punctuation. Changing behavior mid-fight forces the player to stop relying on a solved pattern without discarding everything already learned. The category's past supplies the companion fact: A hitbox describes where an attack can connect, while a hurtbox describes where a character can be hit; neither has to perfectly match the visible artwork. Bosses call it a second phase; players call it information that would have been useful earlier.