I am having major issues with this boss fight. Overall the concept is very simple but his attacks are not telegraphed very well. In my opinion, I much rathered it be a cutscene and not this rather clunky sword fight.

I get the overall theme of Nate and Rafe playing pyrates, but to me it's putting a huge blemish on a very well executed (well save for the rather trash combat system) game.

I personally really enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of MGS 2 final fight which used a wholly new mechanic as at such a pivitol point in the story. This created a real uncertainty in the out come for me and as a result really drew in my attention. I will admit that some of the tells where hard to interpret, but man when you got to bust on him it felt great.

Another Uncharted game with a shitty end boss? What a surprise...

I think this is the best final boss fight of the whole series, and a perfect sendoff to the pirate-ness of the overarching story.

And while I had no problems with it, I can definitely see the frustrations one could have with how it plays.

I've not played it yet but all the melee looks like hot garbage so the fact that the final boss is more melee mixed with some QTE's is pretty sickening. I'm still baffled that developers are putting in final bosses when a game simply doesn't need one, and then because they don't have a good combat system to manage boss fights they just slap in some QTE's.

Create a new fucking scenario where there doesn't need to be some over drawn out fight. You can make just as much of an impact with a single shot from a gun.

It went on way too goddamn long.

Best final boss in the series - I wasn't great at it, but realised that if you backed the hell off you can take your time with most of it. I really loved the spectacle of it and when I executed a full string of parries I felt like a boss.

It has issues, but I loved it.

I would have been just fine if it was a cutscene but I can see ND way of thinking that people will bitch about having done it themselves.

@mordukai: Yea but that's still a cop out. Why not just do an Indiana Jones scenario where the final boss comes at you with a sword and you just shoot him with 1 bullet and he dies. It'd be funny, less annoying and more memorable.

@baronsamedi: I think after you've played it you'll understand why they wanted it in. Still doesn't make this any better.

I loved Rafe's facial expression and especially how his hair flicked as he swung at you. Gameplay wise, I thought it was fun enough. Very simple but they made it feel good. I kinda ruined the pacing of the moment trying to get the trophy there 'cause it's pretty hard to perfect on moderate.

@baronsamedi: you should play it before dismissing it so strongly. the final boss isn't a qte.

@liquiddragon: I've seen it, it's not entirely a QTE but it does have it in there and the part that isn't a QTE I can tell without even playing it that it's a shitty melee system. I'm not dismissing the game as I do intend to get it and I do enjoy UC games. I've just never been that amazed by UC games that I want to pay full price for them. With Doom out I just can't fathom playing a game with mediocre shooting and abysmal climbing but amazing set pieces verses amazing shooting, fun climbing and cool level design.

I thought it was good. Definitely better than that terrible Lazaravich fight in Uncharted 2.

I didn't have any trouble reading his moves, it's just simple left or right swings you have to read. I thought the mechanics of the fight added enough to make it worth being a boss fight instead of a cutscene, and visually it was pretty great.

Like many aspects of Uncharted 4, I felt this was a case of them refining and improving upon something that was a misstep in previous games (in this case a final boss).

I thought it was pretty rad. The parrying was responsive and the checkpoints were good. It almost made me wish there was more sword fighting in the game.

As many have said one of the best boss fight in the series...which isn't saying much but still. The diagloue, the tension were great, but the camera can easily scew you over. I only failed once because of it. Rafe telegraphed move was clear as day, but he does romp in speed half way thru. Again one of the better boss fight but not without issues.

I died a handful of times, which was kind of a bummer, but it looked so good, that I kinda accepted it.

I hated it, but it looked nice and while it went on for too long, it didn't sully (whoops) anything for me. It was mostly my fault, I'm sure. I just could not get my brain to stop hitting square for left attacks instead of triangle, and even when I could remember, I had a hell of a time with the telegraphs. I also just don't like QT events of any fashion, anymore. Anyway, LOVED the story of the game and especially the overall ending. Honestly found myself having the same gameplay issues with it as I have all of them, but the story and characters were just so well done I didn't really care this time around.

I find it interesting that you had the same gameplay issues with Uncharted 4 that you did with the previous games, because I thought they made some major improvements.

I've been a pretty big critic of the series since I played the first game around the time it came out. I straight up didn't like that game at all, and while I did enjoy both 2 and 3 a great deal more than the first, I still had major issues with them and have never considered Uncharted among my favorite game series.

With that said, I though Uncharted 4 improved upon pretty much everything I didn't like about the previous games. They showed much more restraint with the amount of combat encounters they throw at you. I never felt that combat fatigue that was all too prevalent in the previous games that had seemingly unending stretches of combat with little respite between encounters.

I also thought the design of the combat encounters was much better this time around. They once again showed restraint, greatly limiting the number heavily armored guys that would just eat endless barrages of bullets. When they do show up they're always in small numbers and it feels like meaningful escalation rather than arbitrary roadblocks. The open design of the combat environments also allows for much more freedom and experimentation compared to previous games.

For the first time in the series I felt aspects of the gameplay came fairly close to achieving the level of quality found in the storytelling, character development, and cinematic moments.

@ll_exile_ll: It was definitely improved, and I'm probably being too hard on it considering it has been quite a while since I played another Naughty Dog game. In fact, there were probably huge stretches where nothing bad happened that reminded me too much of previous problems I had with the games. But when it happened, it felt like it had been happening constantly, if only because it was a concept I was all too familiar with in the games (if that makes sense). Around chapter 18 or so, if I had to guess, there were points that were just not fun because I had to do them sometimes 3 times...and once you have to do it more than once, it feels kind of like it lost it, to me.

Again, probably being too hard on it simply because it is the 5th of these style of games I've played by Naughty Dog, but it just felt like when it did happen it just really put me off, and it felt like it happened a bunch toward the end. In fairness, I think it I had played this one first, it would be the best playing ND game...but I can't unplay the ones that I played before it and thus for whatever reason despite it being structurally better than those that came before, when the flaws popped up for me they felt glaring.

Edit -- I hope I don't sound too down on it...I really, REALLY enjoyed it (13 hours in 3 days says enough...with a stretch in there of like 8 at one time).

Playing on hard I died several times, but every time I died I was very aware of what I did wrong, and never fell for it again. I probably died there more times than any other spot in the game, but my final run was nearly perfect, and very satisfying. From a "use everything you have learned to this point" standpoint it definitely falls short, and sort of comes out of left field, but from a pure enjoyment standpoint I really liked it which is fitting since that is what the series is really all about.

im biased towards liking it alot, because im a huge uncharted fan. personally, i love their approach to alot of things in this game. the end boss could have been a simple quicktime button mash, but instead they made the contxtual button prompts matter by having you telegraph the boss's attacks and press the correct button at the right moment. it gives more weight to actually beating him, where a simple button prompt would have been lame.

@ll_exile_ll: i think also the combat scenarios were better because if you went stealth it wouldnt auto fail you for getting caught. enemies could lose your line of sight and go back to patrolling, whereas the other games all hell broke loose when you got caught and you had no choice but to fight it out.

I loved it but I'm a sucker for big climactic duels

It also left me with a net positive opinion on Rafe as an antagonist which until this point was a very well acted piece of shit but not very compelling as a villain.

I actually really liked that fight. Didn't have too much trouble with it.

I thought it was awesome. Felt like the climactic ending of a movie and the animation was excellent. He got a couple hits on me but I never died. Guess all my Street Fighter experience paid off?

Loved it.

I found it to be a little fun moment, but a bad boss fight. When I think about Metal Gear Solid 2 to 4, the final boss fights in those games are thematically appropriate. 2 has Raiden fight as a new person with his own combat mechanics and not a simulation of Snake, 3 has Naked Snake fight The Boss with everything he knew, and 4 has Solid Snake fight Ocelot in phases to evoke the feeling of the previous games.

The fight with Rafe just seems pointless. It looks climactic but feels kind of anti-climactic. No one even cares about him anymore at that point, and it's weird to think that this is the ending to the whole Uncharted series. It kinda seems to unintentionally fit with the theme of obsession, because it feels like the game itself is still obsessed with the idea of him being the bad guy of the story and to have a climactic pirate adventure fight.

Speaking of fistfights, the Nadine fights also feel out of place. I don't understand how they just take away the ability to roll that they teach in the prison fight. It made sense in the first fistfight tutorial because it was a tutorial, but why regress the combat system then?

Introducing completely new mechanics for a final fight is one of those things that sounds really cool in theory but almost always comes off as being kind of hokey to me.

It often comes with a new perspective and controls, which makes the whole thing feel very "mini-game"'ish to me, depriving it of some of the impact. I think Metal Gear Solid 2 did it very well because all it did was introduce a new weapon, without changing what was already established. With Metal Gear Solid 4 and to an extent Uncharted 4 it comes off as being a little perplexing because suddenly it has changed how the whole game plays, leaving the player a bit flabbergasted instead of amazed.

It was utter and complete fucking garbage. A hot mess through and through.

I still cannot believe how much praise Naughty Dog gets for their downright shitty game design.

Heck, it wasn't even the boss fight that sucked major cock. The whole game has god-awful controls, terrible shooting mechanics, awfully-linear and unsatisfying platforming, and just plain mind-numbing and boring gameplay.

I really liked it. Maybe a better way of controlling it would be to use R1/L1 for right/left defenses instead of square/triangle, but it wasn't hard for me to tell which way he was coming from.

Reminded me a bit of MGS4's ending.

It's a little bit like a bad Punchout. That whole last third needed to be refined a bit – it seems pretty rough comparatively. The boss fight was just a capper on a third act that needed the red pen treatment.

It was alright but as others have said I found some of the tells deceitful. I just finished it and there are two in particular, one of them the one where he does a spin and the other I can't really describe, where it looks like he's coming from the right but they consider it a swing you need to block from the left. Maybe it was coming from the left and looked like the right, I guess I already don't remember it that well. Either way, during the second phase of the fight I died about eight times thanks to those swings and that really sucked the momentum out of things.

It did look nice, though. I think they should have bit the bullet and just put the button prompts on the screen, however. Doing so didn't sap any of the tension from the QTE fight in Resident Evil 4, for example.

To be honest I felt all of the forced hand-to-hand sequences (off the top of my head, the Panamanian prisoner, Nadine in the study and Rafe at the end) were easily the weak points of the game. The former two for being heavily scripted button mash sequences with no real strategy and the latter for the confusing tells sapping momentum from an otherwise very cool final sequence.

It was neat and fun enough besides the camera. Better than the Nadine fights which were kind of dumb because you were just sort supposed to lose.

I liked the look and drama of it, but it was a bit of a pain. It wasn't nearly as bad as Lazarevic though, that was purely frustrating and much too long. I think 3 struck the best balance but I'd be lying if I said that was great, even. Uncharted games always have really week final chapters when it comes to gameplay, but nail the atmosphere and drama around it.

The button mapping could have been why I found it difficult. I won't be surprised if they discussed it at one point but decided against it as to avoid the Dark Souls association.

Didn't have an issue with it at all. Surprised myself getting through it on the first try but the telegraphs are pretty long. Overall I thought it was the best final boss battle in the uncharted series. Granted that doesn't say much cause everyone previous to this was hot garbage but I still found it fulfilling.

The button mapping made no sense and made the fight way harder then it should have been.

It should have just been push the stick left or right and hit circle. What the fuck is this triangle bullshit.

Just did it. It was annoyingly tedious, that's about it. Definitely not fun or enjoyable by any stretch. They should have tightened up the entire thing imo, instead of making you counter the same attack animations over and over again. Then again annoyingly tedious is a pretty apropos way to end a game series like Uncharted.

Seemed fine just took forever (I didn't die personally so that probably helped my impression, no idea if there's checkpoints or not).

It was not great, but I thought it was a better final encounter than in 1-3.

Also, just to note as I remember it. Did you try to time your parries? Because I was just mashing whichever button I should have instead of timing it and had no problem getting through it. I don't know if holding it would do the same thing.

I was definitely trying to time it as that's what I thought the game tried conveying to me. I just generally think that the idea might have come off well on paper but to me, ND executed it and communicated it rather poorly. I won't be too surprised if it's one of those things that got rushed since the game went through several delays.

I thought it was pretty good, the tells and timing took some getting used to but once that was down it was a pretty satisfying experience. I wish the game had nuanced the forced hand to hand sequences though. Given you more options than to punch, move and "I guess I'm reversing now?". I get that Nadine should be hard/impossible to beat when you fight her but I never felt like they gave you enough control to ever feel like you were doing anything other than hoping to press the right button.

its fucking awesome.

I would have been a happy camper with Nate, Sam, Elena, and Sully walking away deciding it wasn't worth all that (I legitimately thought that moment was going to end it). Rafe would have burned alone inside the treasure hold after setting off Avery's traps. But Nate was dragged yet again into another end-game spectacle.

The fight was thematically appropriate for the quest for pyrate booty, but kind of stuck out awkwardly against all the other kind of fighting that the game is full of, and could have used some contextual melee moves that the series is known to have at times (fish slapping). I felt like it took something away from the hard choice and self-reflection -moment that had just happened a chapter before. It's like ND wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

It was fantastic! Thematically cool, very tense, and different enough from the fist fights to be challenging. I think they were smart to keep the tutorial prompts up for as long as they did, it eased you into the mechanics real well.

Dan and Brad were expressing their disgust with Rafe through out the Quick Look. After finishing the game a few hours ago, I just didn't see it. Yea, he did some shitty things to the Drakes and Nadine but he was the bad guy, that was expected. Besides, the end fight was just bad. I went back and watched the previous boss fights and this definitely ranks last.

Not the greatest moment in an otherwise stellar game, but I will take twenty pseudo-QTE battles as the climax over the (minor spoilers) bullshit supernatural element introductions of the other games in the series. I really enjoyed that this game avoided shoehorning in said supernatural elements, because they weren't needed. The Straley and Druckmann team has proven with this game that The Last of Us wasn't a fluke. They're really good at writing and pacing games, shifting from bleak post-apocalyptic survival to Indiana-Jones-style adventure.

You... You think Mario Kart with an angry Russian man screaming DRRRRRRRRRRRAKE is better?!

I'm all for opinions but... man, U2's final boss left a really bad taste in my mouth.

For what it's worth, I think this pyrate fight easily blows the previous games' finales out of the water (and as people have said, it didn't have much to compare to anyway...)