Regarding the boss battles~

Definitely keep it varied. Have some bosses use unique attacks,while some of the just be tanks for possibly earlier areas. Also, unrelated to both ideas, but it'd be cool if we finished off a boss but it came back. For example:

We finish off a boss, it "dies", it comes back maybe in the next room, causing us to become nervous but maybe it'll go down in a hit or two (or it just dies off finally on it's own). Or maybe it goes into a second phase.I remember fighting that particular boss in Super Metroid, and although the fight itself wasn't anything special, the fact that it's physically destroyed, it tried to come after us anyway, left me being more cautious of bosses after that, wondering if they would pull something similar.

Regarding bosses. Please don't place every boss at the very end of every new area. Part of what made SOTN great was it didn't feel so gamey in that sense. It didn't feel Stagey, sometimes a boss was placed somewhere near the end of a new area but a lot of times it was somewhere near by, it makes it feel more believable. It's a castle not a staged based game

I really like this idea ^_^ 

I love bosses with unique mechanics. I don't know how many of you guys fought the giant brain boss from unepic but things like that are just so memorable. It gives them something to really stick out from your average cannon fodder.

I do a little amateur game design in my free time (nothing published, just word documents and maps in notebooks), but the one I'm working on has a powerful necromancer as a recurring enemy.  The game map has a little bit of forced backtracking (there are warp points so it isn't really a pain in the butt) and level design bottlenecks at boss rooms.  They aren't always at the end of the area, but most of the bosses are mandatory, so the player winds up in the room during progression, and due to intentional design, passes through a few of them again during backtracking.  Boss corpses remain in the rooms, partially because I want players to look at them and feel a sense of accomplishment, and partially because I'm a dirty little trickster.

Most necromancers I see in games don't really raise corpses, they actually just kind of summon zombies and skeletons and stuff out of the ground, whether it's plausible for them to be there or not, and you usually don't see the bodies beforehand.  Manzazuu, on the other hand, does both.  When you enter a certain boss room, Manzazuu appears, rezzes the boss and quickexits stage left, leaving the player locked in a room with this giant, rotting, vengeful creature.  I think it's hilarious, and if it ever gets published, hopefully players will too.

I think it's to emphasize that instead of wanting particular features he just wants to be surprised or let the developers try to come up with their own stuff. As the poll stands now, it's either "I want this or that" and there's no way to express to anyone reading that there could be a divide in the audience that is impartial.

I agree it sounds a bit negative and someone would naturally come to that conclusion, and maybe he did mean it that way. But that's just my logical positive spin to it.

I agree with the mix of both, trying to melt their flesh after you activated or destroyed something.

It'd be nice to have a few bosses that have a unique mechanic that we "steal" from them afterwards. I remember Metroid Fusion specifically used this as a way to gain upgrades. An example of what I mean: In the game there is a boss named Serris, a giant aquatic serpent that attacks by going at super speeds. You defeat the boss, and absorb the "X-parasite" leftover from the fight to grant you the "Speed Booster" ability. 

I guess this wouldn't too different from Aria of Sorrow, except that with that game the soul drops were randomized and weren't necessary to proceed if I remember correctly. I like to imagine the fear in our foes when we use their former masters' abilities against them.