It’s all about cueing the player’s expectations, then flipping them with rhythm and line. If the theme music swells in sync with a narrative twist, the boss feels less like a test and more like a chapter. Voice lines that reveal a character’s motive right when you’re pulling a back‑up move turn a simple hitbox into a conversation. The stage design and enemy patterns should echo the story’s stakes—so every phase feels like a sentence, not just a stat line. If the music, dialogue, and layout all line up, the fight reads like a mini‑novel rather than a grinding puzzle.