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Phantom Blade Zero Fixes My Biggest Annoyance With Boss Fights
IGN opinion writer Travis Northup argues that “Scrub Tax” in difficult action games wastes players’ time after they die, through long walks back, unskippable cutscenes, loading screens or having to repeat boss phases. He says Phantom Blade Zero addresses his frustration with boss fights by challenging the assumption that every death should send players back to the start.
Northup describes repeatedly replaying an easy first phase to reach a difficult later one, recalling a Lies of P boss whose slow opening became tedious after dozens of attempts. He says he had grown so used to this design that he did not realise how much it bothered him until playing Phantom Blade Zero; the supplied article text ends before explaining the game’s specific approach.
In short
- The writer says boss retries often waste time.
- Repeating easier phases can overshadow the hard parts.
- Phantom Blade Zero prompted him to question that design.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Repeatedly replaying easy sections after a death can waste time without adding meaningful challenge, especially when a player is practising a later, difficult phase. Reducing that repetition respects players’ time and lets them focus on learning the parts of a fight that test them.
The case against
Repeating a boss from the start can make the whole encounter matter: players must perform consistently across every phase, and progress through a fight can feel earned rather than isolated to its hardest section. That pressure and the need to master the full sequence are deliberate parts of the challenge for some players.
Explained simply
“Scrub Tax” is a term for the time players spend repeating parts of a difficult game after dying: walking back to a boss, sitting through scenes or replaying sections they have already mastered. Some action games make players repeat an entire fight, including its easier opening stages, each time they fail later on.
Phantom Blade Zero is an upcoming action game, while Lies of P is another action game known for challenging boss fights. The issue matters because repeated early stages can add time to learning a boss’s harder moves, and players may differ on how much repetition makes a fight satisfying or frustrating.