I've been thinking about Star Allies recently, so I thought I'd dump my feelings towards the final boss here. (Quick context, I was playing with my brother)

Spoilers For Star Allies Ahead (also some other Kirby games)

Despite my grievances, I did enjoy the game. It's a bit too easy, but it looks beautiful and has a heavy charm throughout. My biggest complaint is how the final boss plays out, yet I see a lot of praise for it from this sub. (And of course, if you do like it, that's fine. It's just my opinion.)

First, let's talk about the boss right before it, Lord Hyness. I love him. His music is creepy, both of his designs feel offputting but in an adorable way, and him bringing out his own Friend Wheel near the end of the battle is a fun reflection on the journey you just had. It's increadibly easy, but that's in line with all the other bosses, so it's not really his problem. Honestly, they could have brushed up the battle a tiny bit, then ended it there. Done. Nothing happens after.

But alright, it's a Kirby game. They love them some twist bosses. So Hyness throws himself into the dark heart (which is actually a pretty cool scene imo), and creates Void Termina. Positives out of the way first, I love it's design. It feels like a strange lovechild of Shadow of the Colossus and Majora's Mask. Whatever it is, it clashes wonderfully with Kirby. The fight itself, the fact that it's fought in a completely new gameplay style, is my main gripe.

In my opinion, the final boss of a game should be a test of, if not all the player's skills, then at least some of them. At the very least, it should still be in the same genre as the rest of the game. While this fight does use one of those "Friend _____" abilities that were used throughout the game, it uses a completely new one, so functionally it's just a new game. What bugs me even more is that it already looks like that sidescroller shooting one that I forgot the name of. Why didn't they just use that? Sure, it would've been a bit weird to use over the sidescrolling gameplay, but at least I have some experience in that mode. It at least follows the logic of a sidescrolling boss (you can move in a two-dimensional plane, the enemy is on that same plane). Void Termina's fight involves you moving left and right, and forwards and backwards, also the enemy's in the background and you're always facing it. I can't stress enough how completely random this boss feels.

Planet Robobot does something similar with it's final boss, which I also didn't like. It swaps out the climactic fight with Haltmann for a Star Fox fight with Star Dream. While the two move very similarly, they're still very different in gameplay. Mainly, I can tell what's going on in Star Dream's fight. The Halberd takes up very little space on the screen, and you can tell where everything is. Bullets and black holes are on the same flat plane as you, Star Dream and those other random objects are in the background. Meanwhile, in Void Termina's fight, Kirby and co. take up like a quarter of the screen, and due to the perspective the camera's in, I have a hard time gauging where it's attacks are relative to Kirby. Not to mention that the camera is positioned to look upward at Termina most of the time, so for way too long I didn't know the stage had limits. I ended up running into a wall and getting hit by one of those light rays that I swear move completely randomly.

On another note, the special attacks. In Star Dream's battle, when you shoot down stuff, they emit these obvious energy things that fly into you, filling a meter with the A button on the end of it. Pressing the A button when the meter is full enough releases a huge blast towards the enemy. The game shows you how to do it's special moves. In Void Termina's fight, one of two things will occasionally happen: You unleash this powerful laser against Termina, or time slows down to let you repeatedly attack it. Not only do these two moves basically achieve the same effect, but I have no idea how I activated them. Do I need to attack it enough times? Dodge a move a certain way? Did I accidently hit a button that does it? The game doesn't make this clear. While I didn't like Star Dream's fight on principle of it being a final boss taking place in a new genre, I can at least enjoy the fight in isolation. Termina's fight just isn't fun for me.

On a similar note to Void Termina and Star Dream are Nightmare from Adventure and that random purple star from Squeak Squad. Both those fights give Kirby a new ability, which might sound like it would have the same problems as VT and SD, but Kirby still moves like he did for the entire game. The abilities even function like sword/hammer, which the player would more than likely have used at least once. Say what you will about Purple Star's difficulty, but both those bosses are good in my opinion.

Speaking of abilities, Void Termina's fight just decides to get rid of yours. It's completely meaningless, as far as I can tell. And while it's at it, it basically gets rid of your friends too. Both my computer friends just sat at the back doing nothing. While my brother could still fire, it's the same generic shot that I had, and he couldn't even move the ship. He got to move his crosshair, but that doesn't really help him much considering mine auto-locks. There's only one thing to shoot! This is a game that's supposedly about the Friend system, and they took it away in the final boss!

But alright. After you whittle Termina's health down, you can jump inside it's face and fight some kind of Dark Matter thing. This fight is a normal Kirby boss. This was what I was looking for. I find it's design a bit boring, but it's a small price for an actually fun fight. Then you beat it and it revives in the first form again. Oh, but now it can fly. This doesn't actually affect my aim, just what moves it does. The second phase has this move where it summons lighting spears from the sky, which adjusts the camera to a bird's eye view of Kirby. The sudden new camera is a bit jarring, but it's not too bad, and it was what made me realise the stage didn't just go on infinitely.

This boss (kind of like this post) takes forever. Maybe it's just because we were down two players, but I swear both this boss' phases took about as long as all the other bosses combined. Out of all the bosses they decided to make last more than 12 seconds, they chose the only one I didn't like.

You beat it again, and go inside again and beat that thing again. Again, it's an acceptable final boss, but it feels redundant at this point. We just did this. Why didn't it cut off at that first round? But we beat it, and then we can finally leave and then Kirby summons all his possible friends and fires a giant laser at the Dark Matter guy. It would be cheesy yet charming if it played out as a cutscene, but it's a button mashing minigame. I don't find this part fun. Triple Deluxe did something similar with it's final boss, where Hypernova Kirby sucks up Sectoria's laser and fires it back at her. There, it at least made sense within the story: Sectoria can fire lasers, Hypernova Kirby can swallow things bigger than he normally could. The two elements combined to create a climactic moment. In Star Allies, the 'gimmick' is that Kirby can befriend enemies. At no point could Kirby summon their ghosts and fire massive lasers with their friendship. It feels random.

In conclusion, I didn't like Void Termina's boss fight. It looks cool, but it doesn't test the players' skills built up from the rest of the game in favour of a new gameplay mode entirely.