Everyone is saying the Knight is the final boss of Chapter 3. While technically right, this ticks me off. Why? Because (in my humble opinion) the Knight is a terrible final boss. Dogwater actually. Seriously, on a practical scale, Tenna is light years better than the Knight in terms of being the final boss. And I’m gonna tell you why.
Build up
Before you even fight the final boss, there should at least be hints placed that you’re going to fight them.
Take King for example. Throughout Chapter One, there are multiple things telling you you’re going to fight him. Heck, it’s directly stated by Susie and Lancer. Two his, presence is made quite strong, not just through Lancer, but his subjects. Just talk to a few NPCs, and you’ll get the general gist of King. How you defeat him is also foreshadowed by Lancer. You either fight, or wait it out.
Next, Queen. She immediately makes her presence known, and both of her battles were foreshadowed early on. Her first one is through the Werewires, hinting at the fact they share a spare requirement with Berdly, whom she controls in her fight. The Giga Queen battle is next foreshadowed a bit later during the “Simple Diversion”, without a nigh identical battle format.
As for Tenna? He was foreshadowed since Chapter 2. Spamton mentions him in his shop dialogue, and the TV at the end of Chapter 2 quite laughs maliciously. In Chapter 3 alone, he’s with you for the large percentage of the game, and you even have mock battles with him during the Doom Board. This, combined with the multiple Physical Challenges you need to do throughout the game, also hints at how you'll win.
At the very least, the Titan had a prophecy in Chapter 4, and it's spawns chasing you throughout the game (though you wouldn't know this belongs to a Titan so I think this hurts it a bit). Jackenstein and the Sound of Justice also foreshadow the Titan's gimmick and method of defeating, so that does help a bit too.
The Knight? They get a single line of dialogue in Chapter 3 from Tenna. Yes, they’ve had other mentions, but none of them remotely imply “foe we’re gonna battle soon”, and they aren’t in Chapter 3. They literally just appear, smite Tenna, and show up as your “final boss encounter”. And tell me this: Name a SINGLE thing that even REMOTELY tells you what to do against the Knight. Seriously, tell me. If it's good, I'll give you a cookie, because I already can tell it's near abysmal.
Difficulty and Boss fight
The final boss, while more difficult than other enemies in the Chapter (with obvious exception of optional bosses) shouldn’t be such a high difficulty that any player who’s been playing the game normally can’t win.
For example, King, while easy, has reason to be. He’s the final boss of an already easy chapter. If the difficulty suddenly spiked at him, it might hardlock a lot of players. Plus, King is still more of a challenge than the other bosses in the game.
Queen, while not extremely difficult, is still a harder fight than previous bosses, and isn’t disproportional spike. And the player would be prepared for the Giga Queen fight thanks to the Boxing Game played earlier, so they’d be acquainted with the fighting style.
Same goes for Tenna. While his regular bullet patterns aren’t that varying or difficult, they’re balanced out by his minigames, which are often fast paced and come random and rapidly.
The Titan's bullets somewhat monotonous, but it is a very good difficulty for it's point in the game. And it does shake things up when you take down it's shield.
The Knight just throws extremely hard attacks at you without much warning, and can two shot you if you’re defense is low. You also do extremely little damage, which matters a lot as dealing damage is how you end the fight. “But if you get the Shadowmantle the becomes easier!” Ah yes, the secret item that you either don't know exists, don't know how to obtain, or get difficulty blocked from obtaining. And as said before, you aren't even given the slightest hint beforehand in the fight about what to do, or how you're gonna win so that doesn't help either.
Placement
This is the final part. A final boss should also fit in with the rest of the Chapter. It wouldn't make sense for the final boss of a lava level for example to be ice based. This is a pretty straightforward section so I'm going to make it quick.
King is a card. So are multiple other enemies in the game, and fits in with the secondary theme of non-digital entertainment.
Queen is computer. Lots of other enemies are also digital, or related to device hardware.
Tenna is TV. The majority of TV World is a giant TV Studio, with a lot of it's enemies related to TV channels, or entertainment.
With the Titan, it's more meta. Throughout Chapter 4, you constantly have the prophecy shoved in your face, about how it's inevitable, or how it must be followed without debate. Basically, just amplifying the first thing you're told about Deltarune: Your choices don't matter. Now think about the Titan. It's a giant imposing being with towering defense that you can barely touch. This alone is enough to make anyone feel some measure of powerless. Heck, you can only win it's fight one way too. You HAVE to fight. And when it looks like you ARE doing something? It heals. Everything you just did? Gone. Like it didn't even matter.
Now for the Knight. Tell me this, as an enemy, how does the Knight even REMOTELY fit into the vibes or general theme of TV World? Where does an eldritch abomination fit? HOW does it fit? And don't you dare even try to say "Horror movies? Duuhhhh." MY GOOD PAL WHERE WERE THERE HORROR MOVIES IN TV WORLD?!?! Don't event try for this one. You'll fail miserably.
Even SPAMTON does it better!
That's right, Spamton. Even on an optional route, Spamton NEO is a better final boss.
- He's foreshadowed by the fact he's the one to give you the ring, and helps you on the route by telling you how many enemies are, and selling you the Thornring. Not to mention the entirety of Queen's Mansion quite literally gets Spamton's imagery slathered all over it. His face on the paintings, enemies getting replaced with pipis, you can even talk to him behind the door to a room.
- Now difficulty is hard to say. Now, Spamton NEO is often agreed to be among the easiest of the Secret Bosses (second only to Mike), but his bullet patterns are still much more of a challenge than a lot of Chapter 2's other enemies. This is also being paired with the fact he gets a stat buff on this route, and you fight him solo. However, you yourself have been getting stronger on this route too, to the point where all of the game's regular bosses would be too easy. It's iffy at best, but I'm going to say Spamton's just BARELY fine in terms of difficulty.
- Spamton's a spam email in a digital environment. That is lightyears away from bad placement. Heck, it's AMAZING placement.
And with that, I've established why the Knight is a terrible final boss.
Why this works
Now for the long awaited section: Why the Knight being a final boss actually works. It's quite simple really. We weren't supposed to encounter them yet.
Tell me, who predicted that we'd be fighting the Roaring Knight in Chapter 3 of all Chapters? The soonest I've ever seen people guessing was Chapter 5, and that was because of Chess Theory.
And everything I've gone over before pretty much just sells it to you. Zero foreshadowing, disproportionately, doesn't with the chapter you fight it in, this isn't something you were supposed to fight. This is an enemy that you'd expect to fight, at soonest, Chapter 6, at latest Chapter 7. NOT Chapter 3. You're not even supposed to be able to win. In fact, from an in-universe standpoint, you CAN'T win. The fight ends with everyone downed or SWOONed no matter what.
Chapter 3 is the last Chapter before the big plot of Deltarune really starts coming at you (not completely humorless of course, but you get the picture), and what better way to tell the audience the game's getting more serious than to throw at them something that they'd expect to happen much later?
Anyways, thanks for listening to my little rant. Have a good day :)
