I don't think I've seen anyone describe the penultimate boss's second half as fun.

[Own]

Thematically and mechanically it just has never clicked for me on any level. The concept of the boss fight on its own merits is enjoyable to the point where it would be okay enough if it didn't have a second phase.

But it does have a second phase. And that phase is inexplicably summoning two Tai Ming plants every 30 seconds, on top of having a huge defense boost to drag the fight out. Examining those...

Mechanically: Making a boss take less damage with nothing else relevant changing isn't so much a mechanic as it is battle padding. It makes the battle take a massive chunk of time further and makes every attack feel less satisfying as you watch mere pixels of healthbar go down with every attack. Tossing two Tai Ming mobs into the mix every now and then also doesn't contribute much beyond adding distractions away from the main focus, Dad, slowing your damage down even further. Since the consequence to not killing them is the room filling up with them, making avoiding damage impossible. They even make this battle a DPS check that makes all lower DPS builds end up in a snowball effect of dealing less and less damage because so much of your time ends up being spent damaging plants instead of Dad.

Thematically: This entire battle is framed as Dad's desperation, his willingness to do anything and everything to save his wife - even if it means killing his own child. So, how does that manifest narratively? He... turtles up with a giant defense boost. That doesn't speak desperation to me. Gaining more damage, more attack speed, losing defense as he goes all out trying to save his wife makes sense. Then there's the matter of the Tai Ming plants. Dad has never been to Tai Ming before, he has never seen a Plantae Hostilis. The fact that he's summoning plants from there is... confusing. Storywise he's the Science Lab leader, a guy who studies monsters and ancient tech.

Thematically it seems more appropriate for him to summon out mutated versions of monsters the science lab has been experimenting on, or summoning souped up mechanical enemies, if he does have to summon anything at all.

The first half is great and the second half has always felt a chore to get through due to the combination of Dad's defense boost and the plantae damage sponges.

 

[Literally Who]

I wish to mention that the plants aren't exactly exclusive to Tai Ming. You encounter them in the Evergrind barn too. Most likely just generic species of a plant monster, incidentally found in Tai Ming because it's an abandoned overgrown ghost town.

I don't see in what universe a man whose power is borrowed from the McGuffins he's holding should be summoning contraptions from his lab. Those plants aren't his, they're a gauntlet trick.

I'm personally indifferent to the defense suggestion. I'd describe the second phase as fine. I had a decent time doing it. I did manage to handle DPSing the plants on a def shadowclone build, which is downright abysmal damage, but I don't think the encounter would be necessarily ruined by the nerfed defense either. One thing I want to encourage the developers to do, however, is to be cautious of overindulging in minor tinkering. There is no end to what can be done in this game to make it "just right", but sometimes one might just be better off holding onto a resplendent gem with a few borderline imperceptible flaws rather than cutting and polishing it until it's reduced to a shiny speck of dust.