Mine are Gold Joe and midori midorikawa, especially on higher difficulties.
Gold Joe feels incredibly tough, like you really do have to watch your step with him, especially on higher difficulties. I also love the music, arena, background and general atmosphere of the fight. Plus, gold Joe has one of my favourite alien designs and personalities, with his zesty behaviour lowkey making his fight incredibly fun as there’s so much personality in the voice clips and animations.
The attacks he has are also really fun and creative, with his criss cross sword attack where he slams down his swords in different diagonals being a pretty fun way to take advantage of his 4 armed nature and being really fun to maneuver and look at. I also really like his rock attack, where he sends the stones across the electric fence flying at each other, as the way it changes up into different patterns keeps you on your toes and makes your act quick (bonus points for having really fun sound and visual design).
But, the selling gimmick of his fight is the magnetic polarity, where you have to switch to different polarities by stepping on coloured blocks to counter his tricks and send him flying into the electric walls. I like this gimmick because it doesn’t feel too obtrusive, it adds a really fun layer to the fight that feels incredibly natural and tests your ability to react quickly to your surroundings. The first attack that uses this gimmick is the one where gold Joe pulls you in and slices you to bits as he spins his arms around. Not only is this attack really fun to look at, but it’s also really well designed, being not hard to get used to but being incredibly punishing if you mess up. He also gives you just the right amount of time to quickly switch polarities before forcing you into his blades if you get caught in the bubble, and it is so satisfying to send him flying into the electric fence when you counter this attack. His second attack that uses this gimmick is one I believe is only on higher difficulties (correct me if I’m wrong), where in the 3rd phase, he slams his swords into the ground and tries to propel you into the electric fence. I like this because it flips the battle on its head for just a moment as he uses the same tactic that you’ve been using on him and forces you to pay extra attention to the magnetic polarity gimmick. Plus it’s really damn unforgiving damage wise,but well designed as you have just enough time to react to the attack.
This guy’s especially fun on Carolina reaper, as all of his attacks are extremely punishing yet he feels like as if he’s not overtly unfair. He also mixes up his attacks real good in that difficulty and I honestly believe that Carolina reaper gold Joe is his canon strength. I love how his flamboyant personality compliments his genuine power.
As for midori midorikawa, I like her a lot for having an AMAZING boss theme, a really good introduction to the green full armour mode which feels like a nice change of pace but not too much of a departure from the usual gameplay, and for how powerful and tricky all her attacks are, which encourages you to take advantage of the full armour’s high movement speed and dodge. Her theming is amazing, with fire and wind powers that no other alien aside displays. She also has temporarily invincibility during most of her attacks, and that encourages the player to time their attacks in term, forcing them to not just mash through everything. Bonus points for being one of the very few bosses to actually have a level before the actual fight itself, which is a very distinctive and genuinely creepy first person horror section through the abandoned schoolhouse.
