Boss Rush: Asura’s Wrath Shot for the Moon in its Best Battle
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Frequently, at the end of a videogame level, there’s a big dude who really wants to kill you. Boss Rush is a column about the most memorable examples of these, whether they challenged us with tough-as-nails attack patterns, introduced visually unforgettable sequences, or because they delivered monologues that left a mark. Sometimes, we’ll even discuss more abstract examples, like a rhetorical throwdown or a tricky final puzzle or all those damn guitar solos in “Green Grass and High Tides.”
It’s always nice when a work just fully goes for it, leaning so wholly into its own bonkers internal logic that you have little choice but to marvel at its commitment to the bit. Asura’s Wrath, a cult-classic action game from 2012, is a perfect example of this, an escalating spectacle with sequences so grandiose that they still haven’t faded from memory more than a decade later. It delivered larger-than-life struggles by combining interactive action segments, well-choreographed cutscenes, and a sci-fi backdrop inspired by Hindu and Buddhist iconography. And of its many battles, none hit as hard as when our protagonist trades blows with Augus, his older mentor, in a fight that managed to eclipse the rest of this tale’s cosmic scope.
Let’s set the stage a bit: Asura is a perpetually angry cybernetic demigod who is betrayed by the other members of his techno pantheon. They kill him and his wife so they can steal their daughter Mithra, a priestess who is able to efficiently channel the energy source Mantra, which the other demigods believe will allow them to triumph over their eternal foe, the Gohma. But of course, even death isn’t enough to quell Asura’s rage, and after a 12,000-year sleep, he awakens to free his daughter. Along the way, he battles and kills his old allies, culminating in a fight with his former teacher, Augus, who is arguably the strongest of the Seven Deities.
Augus is a caricature of hypermasculinity who embodies the Deadly Sin of Greed (yes, I know I said this story is based on Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, but the Deadly Sins are here too), and of all the earthly pleasures, the one he enjoys most is combat. After Asura reminisces with his old master in a misguided scene in a hot spring, the two finally cross fists.
Aside from the heavy dosages of techno-religiosity, you’ll be forgiven if some of the previous details sound a little overly familiar, particularly the fridge-stuffing—after all, revenge stories about angry men with murdered wives and/or kidnapped daughters aren’t exactly hard to find. However, what is novel is how far Asura’s Wrath’s presentation goes in selling each of these beats. Instead of delivering events through the lens of a traditional action game, this is an interactive movie that punctuates its frenzied fight sequences with just enough player input to drive home these absurd turns. The Asura and Augus fight is just one example of how the game successfully melds these mediums.
As we cut to Chapter 11, we see Earth from space, the camera slowly panning out to reveal these two have somehow ended up on the surface of the Moon. It sets the stage for a battle so large we literally had to leave our planet, lest it be destroyed in the resulting struggle. The shot continues to widen, and just before Asura and Augus enter the frame, the first strings from Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 begin to play. The piece serenades the rest of the fight, creating an incredible contrast between this esteemed, sweeping work of classical music and these buff anime robot men beating the absolute crap out of each other. And despite this melding of supposed “high” and “low” art, or whatever, these two halves complement each other beautifully, the grandeur of the New World Symphony matching and elevating the battle shonen intensity of the brawl.
As these former allies trade blows, the game cycles through each of its modes as interactivity is gradually introduced: we go from the previously described cutscene, to quick time events where Asura wallops his old mentor, and then finally fully playable action sequence. Here, you have to doge Augus’ strikes and chain together combos as you build up your burst gauge to kick off the next leg of the fight. While the game’s combat isn’t particularly complicated, it is quite flashy, with abundant hit stop, crunchy sound effects, and air juggling shenanigans that don’t look too different from the cutscenes if played well. The one-on-one nature of this specific struggle makes it feel even more like a cinematic duel, and after filling up your meter, things smoothly transition into another volley of quick time events (QTEs).
While QTEs, sequences where the player reacts to on-screen button prompts, are frequently maligned as gimmicky and uninteresting, Asura’s Wrath shows that as long as they correspond with the coolest things you’ve ever seen, you can very much get away with them. As these two duke it out at close range, the button prompts from the quick time events neatly align up with the actions of the characters as you cue up strikes like a rhythm game, twist the stick to contort Asura’s torso for uppercuts, and mash in time with an extended flurry-of-punches (that are a JoJo reference), making it feel as if you’re orchestrating the violence. On some level, this is essentially how every implementation of QTEs is supposed to work, but the differentiating factor is execution. The feedback here is tangible, from how each strike carries a hefty impact to the sound of these blows landing.
