Criticizing the Final Boss of Brothership

I have mixed feelings on the final boss of this game, while it's a good fight, I actually found it underwhelming compared to both past final bosses, and this game's main bosses. I'll explain why.

This boss has a lot of phases, but I actually think it hurts him rather than helping him.

The Weeping Reclusa Phase is pretty good, there are 3 attacks the tree does and 2 attacks the minion plants do. I noticed though that before I even felt like I hadn'f gotten good at dodging him, there was a Luigi Logic that immediately takes you to the next phase, and you never fight it again. It felt too quick, with too little HP

Then is the Weeping Core, it has two basic attacks. It's just jumping over his limps and hitting a harder rolling attack. they aren't impressive for how late he is. He does make a shield if you use a Bros. Attack too much, and it also carries over forchis last phase

Reclusa himself seemed like he was supposed to be the Dark Star Core or Cackletta Soul, in that these are complete boss fights with a load of unique attacks, that stand on their own even ignoring the phase coming before them...

But he wasn't that, Reclusa goes down relatively quickly, and only has 3 attacks. I only experienced two of them during my fight, so it was worse for me. His statue attack is the best post-Tree attack, but the static TV energy ball one was really basic and the kind of thing Glohm Bowser and Pipegunk were already doing. The final phase was really basic, generic, and easy, and didn't have the gimmicks the other fights hand

He has a final phase with a stronger statue attack (where the boss music turns into its best part), but that's only when he's at low HP and he dies right after that.

Because the core and Reclusa himself are separated from the other phases, they end up being weaker boss fights that have less attacks and less interesting attacks then other bosses, like Weeping Reclusa himself, Glohm Bowser, or the Lighthouse bosses.

This boss fight felt like it was attempting to do to much and ended up falling flat. I didn't even mention the prelude fight where he only does one attack and you have to avoid the fireballs and iceballs, which was really boring, especially when Glohm Bowser had a whole space shooter sequence with a bunch of unique attacks. The second one entering the tree is a little better, but still not super interesting.

It reminds me of King Olly's fight from Origami King, that game had good bosses but they gave King Olly a bunch of phases that individually were all worse than the rest of the boss fights.

It's also a bit odd that the boss is structured like normal Reclusa > brand new Tree design that has the most attacks > Core which acts as a bridge between phases > normal Reclusa design with only a few attacks. It felt like the tree should have been the final phase, it's better in every way and the most unique boss here.

On that subject I dislike how Reclusa's attacks don't have anything to do with his powers or themes. He uses generic fire and ice magic a lot here, and when fighting his "true" self, he has the statue attack which is good, but then he has a random telegraph hammer attack, and apparently some other dark magic attack which looks cool but I never got.

There's nothing with him using his manipulation powers, after that Mushroom Kingdom sequence I was hoping that it would tie into Reclusa's boss fight, maybe he turns to field into the Mushroom Kingdom and starts using bosses from that world as a distraction, maybe he transforms the setting into the other Concordia Islands, but it never happens. It's a shame there's another reality bending villain who doesn't use their powers in their final boss, but at least he's not as much of a disappointment as him.

And then there's the music, which for most of the fight is really underwhelming. It starts to get better in his final phase, and the angry phase, but the latter is so short that he's already dead when he shows up. It also doesn't come to the level of previous final boss themes

The tree was the best phase, but the other phases all feel more boring and messy, and they lack creative attacks that bosses like Shiny RoboBowser or Dreamy Bowser had, having less attacks than most other bosses in this game.