Asgore Dreemurr: The Second-Saddest Bossfight I've Ever Encountered

[Major, unmarked Undertale and Hollow Knight spoilers in this post, if you care about those.]

Of all the bossfights I've ever done, Asgore Dreemurr (the final and/or penultimate boss of Toby Fox's 2015 game Undertale) is the second-saddest. And by "sad" I don't mean "a disappointing pushover"; by "sad" I mean more of a sense of melancholy.

Asgore Dreemurr.

He, like his estranged wife Toriel (the first boss of the game), doesn't seem to actually want to kill you. He feels that he has to, and he's going to give it his best shot, but if it were up to him he'd really rather just adopt you. The entire fight carries a sense of "this is an inevitable confrontation that neither party really wants."

And like almost every other boss in the game, it's possible to get past him without killing him. Except then, just when you two are having a tearful reconciliation, he's murdered out of nowhere by a homicidal flower who takes his place as final boss.

So if Asgore Dreemurr is the second-saddest bossfight I've ever encountered, what's the saddest?

That honor goes to the Hollow Knight, the final and/or penultimate boss of Team Cherry's 2017 game Hollow Knight.

 

The Hollow Knight.

The Hollow Knight is the main character's sibling (their species, Vessels, are canonically genderless). By the time you meet it, it's been chained inside a dark, sealed temple for a very long time, probably decades or centuries. Its only companion is the angry moth goddess stuck inside it trying to get out. It, finally, encounters a friendly face (your character the Knight, and possibly your mutual half-sister Hornet), only for said friendly face(s) to try to murder it.

Oh, and possibly the worst bit? Each boss in Hollow Knight has a distinct "feel" to its bossfight. For example, the Gruz Mother fights like an herbivore, the Traitor Lord relies on overwhelming brute force, the False Knight is kind of flailing around, and Hornet (who is not a hornet) is testing you. But the Hollow Knight? It fights like it's in pain.

As the fight wears on, the Hollow Knight seems to be increasingly unable to contain the angry moth goddess it's supposed to be sealing away. There are also semi-frequent moments where it stabs itself, and I'm not exactly sure why it's doing that; my three theories are that A) the moth goddess is making it stab itself so she can escape; B) the moth goddess is the source of its pain and is mostly contained in its chest, and it thinks that stabbing itself in the chest might hit her; or C) all this has driven it to try to kill itself.

I just can't help feeling bad for the poor thing. None of this is its fault, it never really had a choice, and it's been stuck for who knows how long with only an angry goddess for company.

 

So... yeah. Second-saddest bossfight, Asgore Dreemurr. Saddest bossfight, the Hollow Knight.

 

(Endnote: I made myself sad by writing this. In hindsight, I should have realized that was going to happen.)