Final bosses which absolutely body you (spoilers)

[danzibr]

There's another thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?610492-The-Easiest-Final-Boss-Ever) going on here about final bosses that are pushovers (whether they're just easy, or just a final boss for plot reasons, like in FFX after Braska's Final Aeon). That got me thinking on final bosses, which got me thinking about how I've gotten dominated by plenty of bosses in my day. Sometimes just me being a noob, sometimes they're just really friggin' hard. I got a few.

Before that, I think it's worth mentioning sometimes RPG bosses are a bit on the easy side because I horde my good consumables for like the entire game. Sometimes easy because you overlevel. Sometimes hard because you underlevel. This thread is probably better suited for not RPGs, but I have way more experience with RPGs.

The Radiance of Hollow Knight. I died on this dude (?) so many times, finally looked up charm suggestions online. Made it... easier.

The Profound Darkness of Phantasy Star IV. First encountered this when I was a kid, got owned. Your choice of 5th member makes a big difference, can make your life a lot easier. Ya know, I'm not quite sure this should be on the list, but I struggled with it.

Quite a few of the Final Fantasies have bosses I struggled with. Chaos of I, have to dish out enough damage before he heals. Kefka of VI, Sephiroth of VII, got a gauntlet first. BFA of X, that dude's epic if you run straight through with no grinding. Same for Bhunivelze of XIII-3. I don't recall the others (II, III, IV, V, VIII, IX, XII, XIV, XV) being challenging.

Fou-Lu of Breath of Fire IV. May be a case of underleveling, or poor party choice, but he owned me a couple times.

[PopeLinus1]

I posted on the other thread about Alduin from Skyrim, but it is worth noting that in addition to the two dlc bosses, Karstagg and the Ebony Warrior are both post-endgame bosses that are much more tricky.

[Zevox]

Vergil, from Devil May Cry 3 and 5. One of the best boss fights in action game history, in both games, and he will make you work for your win. Do not expect to beat him on the first try, unless maybe you're on the easy difficulty. In DMC5 on Dante Must Die, the game's highest non-gimmicky difficulty, he's so powerful that you actually can't use your super mode (Sin Devil Trigger) to try and wrack up a ton of damage on him (a legitimate strategy on lower difficulties), because even though you can armor through his attacks in that mode, he will just kill you with a few moves if you try - because your armor in that form ignores hitstun, but not damage, and he does just that much damage. I am legitimately surprised and proud to have beaten him on that difficulty.

On a similar note, while she's an optional bonus boss rather than the final boss, I feel like I should mention Sigrun/the Valkyrie Queen from God of War '18 anyway. She has all of the abilities of the other Valkyrie and then some, and those were already not easy fights unless you over-leveled. Took me literal hours of retries to beat her (I believe on hard difficulty, though I'm not 100% sure).

Oh geez, thinking of other action games: Senator Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Even facing him the first time on normal difficulty it took a few tries to beat him. Facing him on Very Hard, the game's second-highest difficulty, was tough enough that I never actually played through the game on Revengeance (the hardest difficulty) - decided that beating Very Hard was accomplishment enough.

While (like in any RPG) it's dependent on how much you leveled, I recall the final boss of Persona 3 being particularly difficult the first time I faced it as well (not naming because I refuse to spoil a Persona game, even if it is 14 years old). That one took hours just because the fight can take that long, IIRC.

[Lord Raziere]

Isshin the Saint from Sekiro. I mean really? four phases? in a game so difficult that it trips up dark souls players? thats insane, I still have not beaten him. Genichiro beat me a lot to, and I considered that the fight of my life.

took me no small amount of tries to beat the Abyss Watchers in Dark Souls 3.

from a much easier game: for some reason, in Paper Mario I think I've only ever beaten the master toad fighter at the dojo once, and never beaten the anti guys, or kent C. koopa. those three optional bosses and the amayzee dayzees are straight up the hardest enemies to fight in Paper Mario.

[Knaight]

The final ship in FTL habitually murders me, especially the advanced version - including when I'm flying around in a ship that can beat the snot out of basically everything else. It's never been anything other than nasty even when I won.


The Radiance of Hollow Knight. I died on this dude (?) so many times, finally looked up charm suggestions online. Made it... easier.
If you count optional bosses there's also Nightmare King Grimm (the dream nail version, not the normal version) which makes The Radiance look like a sluggish chump. Then there's the postgame really optional bosses, which just get out of hand, leading to yet another version of The Radiance which is far nastier.

[danzibr]

If you count optional bosses there's also Nightmare King Grimm (the dream nail version, not the normal version) which makes The Radiance look like a sluggish chump. Then there's the postgame really optional bosses, which just get out of hand, leading to yet another version of The Radiance which is far nastier.

Oh gosh. I tried NKG several times. Never beat him.

And a version of The Radiance which is far nastier... *cries*

[Anteros]

Isshin the Saint from Sekiro. I mean really? four phases? in a game so difficult that it trips up dark souls players? thats insane, I still have not beaten him. Genichiro beat me a lot to, and I considered that the fight of my life.

took me no small amount of tries to beat the Abyss Watchers in Dark Souls 3.

from a much easier game: for some reason, in Paper Mario I think I've only ever beaten the master toad fighter at the dojo once, and never beaten the anti guys, or kent C. koopa. those three optional bosses and the amayzee dayzees are straight up the hardest enemies to fight in Paper Mario.

Isshin the Gun Saint was also my pick. Sekiro is brutally hard, but you progress your skills over the course of the game until you finally think you're good. Then Isshin laughs at you, kicks you in the teeth, and makes you actually get good.

[DataNinja]

The final ship in FTL habitually murders me, especially the advanced version - including when I'm flying around in a ship that can beat the snot out of basically everything else. It's never been anything other than nasty even when I won.

Yeah, the advanced final boss in FTL is something that bodies me super-hard. I've never really properly been able to juggle mentally everything the advanced stuff throws at you, even in the body of the game. Let alone compounded with everything else the boss has. I guess the hacking and mind control just punish my preferred tactics of slow, methodical destruction. The standard one (when not on hard - never been able to pull that off) is... doable, though one slip up usually signals death to me. I wouldn't have it any other way, though. Because, man, does it never feel unearned, or like there's a lack of tension.

[Cespenar]

Isshin the Saint from Sekiro. I mean really? four phases? in a game so difficult that it trips up dark souls players? thats insane, I still have not beaten him. Genichiro beat me a lot to, and I considered that the fight of my life.

I personally think the ape and the big demon were a bit harder than good old Isshin, which felt only "reasonably" hard to me, but these things are often different for everyone else anyway.

Still, compared to Dark Souls, Sekiro actually puts their save points really close to the bosses, so that was something to be immensely grateful for.


The final ship in FTL habitually murders me, especially the advanced version - including when I'm flying around in a ship that can beat the snot out of basically everything else. It's never been anything other than nasty even when I won.

Yeah, and it's especially exacerbated by the fact that it's a roguelike and you'd have to grind another hour-and-a-half (and that if everything else goes well) just to have another go at it. I always found Stealth and Teleporter to work well at it, though.

***

My contender would be the Nuclear Throne, from Nuclear Throne, honestly. There are times that I cruised up to the final level, no problems, only to die in the first five seconds to it.

[Dienekes]

Isshin may be my favorite boss to fight in all of FromSoft and he’s awesome. But I’d give Demon of Hatred the most difficult boss in the game title. And if we’re including subbosses the 7 Spears and general wrecked me. So sad there was no dlc for Sekiro.

Anyway, most difficult final bosses I remember getting repeatedly killed by Tabuu in SSBB. Don’t know if that holds up, since I haven’t played brawl in a long time.

[Velaryon]

Going old school here but the Dragonlord from Dragon Warrior, a.k.a. Dragon Quest on the NES. The little walkthrough booklet that came with the game recommended fighting him at level 20, but even at 3-4 levels higher than that I needed several tries and good RNG on the damage numbers to beat him. And slogging through his castle to even get to the fight is a huge drain on resources as well.

[DataNinja]

Oh, a more recent one... the final boss of Radiant Historia. All the bosses in that game have... issues (generally with being hard-hitting damage-sponges that ignore all the tactics you've been taught to use throughout the game), but the final boss is... brutal. To me at least - I might just be severely underlevelled, because the feedback in that game is harsh (some enemies go down in one hit, and others in the same area basically one-to-two shot you).

You start out with a battle against a different foe, who requires a completely different set of tactics. And then can't swap out your party. First phase isn't bad. Just tedious. Second phase... it has an attack that puts your full party to sleep. And then an attack that, unlike every other attack in the game, doesn't wake sleeping targets. And you only wake up if damaged or have a status cure spell/item used on you. So, if you don't have an item to resist it, you die.
And then the third phase has a full-party attack that dealt more damage to each of my party members than they had max HP.

But, the worst part is... if you lose... you have to do the whole thing again. Including the pre-final boss. Which takes a bout a half hour to get through to get to the third phase, because everything is so hp-sponge, and so damage that you have to spend half the time healing, and making sure to MP regen. And if you use the "retry a battle" mechanic resource that they've given you... psyche, it sends you back to the save point before the penultimate boss, only you're able to skip the cutscene when you retry because you've already "seen it". Which no other battle does. It's frustrating, and, to this day, I have never beat it because it's just so annoying to try and figure out what I've been doing wrong.

[Squark]

Do bonus bosses count? Because Darkeater Midir brought my Dark Souls 3 playthrough to a screeching halt because I didn't want to lose the titanite slab and covenant I'd get if I beat him before the penultimate boss of the DLC. I just could not figure him out- He triggered a frustration that his fellow true Dragons Kalameet and Sinh didn't. Kalameet was tough but fair, and Sinh was annoying (too much flying around out of reach), but neither shut me down the way Midir did.

[Anteros]

Isshin may be my favorite boss to fight in all of FromSoft and he’s awesome. But I’d give Demon of Hatred the most difficult boss in the game title. And if we’re including subbosses the 7 Spears and general wrecked me. So sad there was no dlc for Sekiro.

Anyway, most difficult final bosses I remember getting repeatedly killed by Tabuu in SSBB. Don’t know if that holds up, since I haven’t played brawl in a long time.

I think I honestly died more to the stupid raging bull than anything else on my first run. It does chip damage even if you parry, at a time in the game when you likely have almost no life bar and only 2 heals.

[Rodin]

Do bonus bosses count? Because Darkeater Midir brought my Dark Souls 3 playthrough to a screeching halt because I didn't want to lose the titanite slab and covenant I'd get if I beat him before the penultimate boss of the DLC. I just could not figure him out- He triggered a frustration that his fellow true Dragons Kalameet and Sinh didn't. Kalameet was tough but fair, and Sinh was annoying (too much flying around out of reach), but neither shut me down the way Midir did.

Midir remains the only Souls boss that I have never beaten. His boss run is too frustrating, you die too quickly to him, and the fight goes on too long. He's just not fun to fight against.

[Kitten Champion]

In terms of bonus/Ultimate bosses, my experience with SMT games are the most soul-destroying. Be it God, The Reaper, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or the Velvet Room attendants -- they're never fights you can win just through high stats or equipment as they already work on the assumption that you're New Game+.

Have OP spells for the main game? They'll either resist or be completely immune to them. Want to use elemental and physical immune skills to cheese them yourself? They'll immediately punish you with a one-hit-kill for trying. You actually have to do the battle repeatedly and map out everything you need to do on each individual turn relative to their AI to get anywhere. and even then get some luck with the RNG mechanics.

[Amechra]

The back-to-back-to-back boss fights at the end of Cave Story are something I've never been able to beat. Granted, that might have just been the game outstripping my skill level by that point.

[Eldan]

The Radiance from Hollow Knight, certainly. Nightmare King Grimm is even worse, I didn't even try that one much. I only managed normal Grimm after tons and tons and tons of attempts, NKG just tables me in, I don't know, two minutes?

I also remember the last fight in Bioshock: Infinite, in which you took on some kind of giant robot bird, assisted by airship raiding-parties and some kind of artillery firing at you as well? I remember it being absolutely frantic and actually kind of fun after most of the game was pretty easy, but that one made me turn down the difficulty and finally give up and just watch the ending on youtube after a few evenings of dying over and over.

[KatsOfLoathing]

The Radiance from Hollow Knight, certainly. Nightmare King Grimm is even worse, I didn't even try that one much. I only managed normal Grimm after tons and tons and tons of attempts, NKG just tables me in, I don't know, two minutes?

Another person who never managed to beat NKG here. Regular Grimm is tough but manageable for me. Once you recognize his telegraphs, they're easy enough to dodge and counter, but if you mess up or lose focus for even a second, he'll punish it. NKG takes that and just cranks it up to eleven. There are no breaks, keep moving or you die, forget healing unless you can stun him. It's more mentally exhausting for me than anything else.

[Spacewolf]

I beat NKG after quite abit of effort but did enjoy it since it was a short run back, but sod the Patheons. I don't want to have to spend 30+ mins fighting perfectly to fight one boss again. I dunno why they didn't make the benches checkpoints so you could grind you way through if you needed to.

[Anonymouswizard]

In terms of bonus/Ultimate bosses, my experience with SMT games are the most soul-destroying. Be it God, The Reaper, Lucifer, Beelzebub, or the Velvet Room attendants -- they're never fights you can win just through high stats or equipment as they already work on the assumption that you're New Game+.

Have OP spells for the main game? They'll either resist or be completely immune to them. Want to use elemental and physical immune skills to cheese them yourself? They'll immediately punish you with a one-hit-kill for trying. You actually have to do the battle repeatedly and map out everything you need to do on each individual turn relative to their AI to get anywhere. and even then get some luck with the RNG mechanics.

To be fair, in MegaTen and it's subseries, in my rather limited experience, the final bosses tend to be tough but fair. Two hour long battles that will throw around OP spells like they're going out of fashion, spamming Almighty and instant kills like there's no tomorrow, but they're not going to their a 9999 Almighty hit all attack at you for having covered your weaknesses.

Yeah, if you think you're beating these bosses at level 60 with a rendition set of demons think again. You'll want to be in your late 70s at least, go to the boss, die at least once, reload, make your way back to the Cathedral of Shadows, fuse a team specifically to counter that boss's strategy, hike your arse back to the boss, die for a different reason, return to step 4.

The bonus bosses are exactly as you described though. While the main games might throw at you anything up to and including 'if you have any weaknesses in your party the event will spam them for as many extra turns as they can, and use multihit skills for it if none of your team null, absorb, or reflect the element' the Bonus bosses take the cake in getting off in your tears. You'll breast the final boss in the 70s or 80s, the bonus bosses tend to assume you'll be level 99 and require you to file a specific strategy (although now Atlas has released bonus bosses that expect you to be much higher). I've never come close to beating one.

Actually, on that note, all MegaTen bosses will destroy you if you don't follow the correct strategy anyway, they'll just do it shortly slower. Yes Matador,I did bring my own Hit/Evade boosting skills this time.

[danzibr]

The Radiance from Hollow Knight, certainly. Nightmare King Grimm is even worse, I didn't even try that one much. I only managed normal Grimm after tons and tons and tons of attempts, NKG just tables me in, I don't know, two minutes?

Seconded.

Another person who never managed to beat NKG here. Regular Grimm is tough but manageable for me. Once you recognize his telegraphs, they're easy enough to dodge and counter, but if you mess up or lose focus for even a second, he'll punish it. NKG takes that and just cranks it up to eleven. There are no breaks, keep moving or you die, forget healing unless you can stun him. It's more mentally exhausting for me than anything else.
Seconded.

I beat NKG after quite abit of effort but did enjoy it since it was a short run back, but sod the Patheons. I don't want to have to spend 30+ mins fighting perfectly to fight one boss again. I dunno why they didn't make the benches checkpoints so you could grind you way through if you needed to.
Seconded.

In particular I have the same issue with the Pantheons. Instead of focusing on getting better on a single boss, you have to run through the whole dang thing over and over. For this reason I'll never 100% (or 112%, whatever it is) Hollow Knight.

[Eldan]

Yeah... I stopped playing Hollow Knight before the Pantheons came out and they didn't really make me want to go back. I just watched some videos of the new bosses. Some look quite neat.

[Psyren]

Jublieus from Bayonetta

Kronika from MK11 story mode

G4 and Super-Tyrant from RE2 Remake

Nightmare from Remnant: From The Ashes

The High Dragun from Enter the Gungeon

Pretty much any final boss in a WoW raid on Heroic+

[GloatingSwine]

Jubileus isn't that hard. As long as you recognise and get away from the vortex move she only uses in the final phase (just beast within out of the ring of hair wotsits as soon as they drop) you're fine against her. None of her attacks are dangerous or all that difficult to avoid and they come in ponderously slowly giving you loads of time to relax in between, and there are pretty generous checkpoints in the fight. Even on NSIC the only problem is that your damage output drops because she doesn't stay available to hit.

Jeanne is much much harder, especially on NSIC. She's also way harder than Balder (who has less health and more checkpoints in his fight, is slower and less aggressive, and gives witch time off all his attacks with perfect parries from Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa).

Also, the relatively standard Gracious/Glorious enemies that start appearing on Hard/NSIC are harder than all the bosses except Jeanne, and you regularly have to fight three at once.

[darkdragoon]

Both the final boss and the extra boss of Demon's Crest.

Dracula X Chronicles- has another form compared to classic RoB with some really annoying attacks at that.

[Velaryon]

The final boss of Arc the Lad 2 (I think it was called the Dark One or something like that, but I haven't played the game in more than 15 years so I don't really remember anymore) was pretty ridiculous.

My team was massively overpowered and over-leveled because I went and played through the Monster Arena disc before finishing Arc the Lad 2, and I discovered how to clone items including the most OP equipment and the items that would just level up your characters, using save data manipulation if I remember right. And even doing all that, it still took me two hours to beat the final boss.

[Spacewolf]

Jubileus isn't that hard. As long as you recognise and get away from the vortex move she only uses in the final phase (just beast within out of the ring of hair wotsits as soon as they drop) you're fine against her. None of her attacks are dangerous or all that difficult to avoid and they come in ponderously slowly giving you loads of time to relax in between, and there are pretty generous checkpoints in the fight. Even on NSIC the only problem is that your damage output drops because she doesn't stay available to hit.

Jeanne is much much harder, especially on NSIC. She's also way harder than Balder (who has less health and more checkpoints in his fight, is slower and less aggressive, and gives witch time off all his attacks with perfect parries from Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa).

Also, the relatively standard Gracious/Glorious enemies that start appearing on Hard/NSIC are harder than all the bosses except Jeanne, and you regularly have to fight three at once.

Only boss I've really heard of from Bayonetta is Rodin. So I'd guess he has a pretty large reputation.

[GloatingSwine]

Only boss I've really heard of from Bayonetta is Rodin. So I'd guess he has a pretty large reputation.

Rodin is the optional superboss (and shopkeeper).

[Psyren]

Jubileus isn't bad once the pattern is down, but I'd comfortably wager she "bodied" everybody when they got there the first time. (In before "not me!")

I'm not sure Rodin counts for the thread, being optional/secret, but yes he's pretty hard.

[Random Sanity]

Bit of a niche example here - Yu-Gi-Oh: Reshef of Destruction.

A bit of explanation for those who haven't seen it: YGORoD uses a deckbuilding system where every card has a point value, and the total value of your deck cannot go above a maximum that you can raise by winning duels. (You also have to earn the cards themselves the same way.) In order to progress anywhere in the story, you WILL have to grind like crazy to boost your deck limit higher than a cheat code can get it, just so you can stand up to the monsters played by your AI opponents.

The final boss fight is a back-to-back pair of duels versus main antagonist Sol Chevalsky followed by the titular Reshef. You start with the standard 8000 Life Points and don't get to heal between them. Sol has 20000 LP (not a typo) and his deck has multiple ways to either one-shot you or put you in an unwinnable situation. Reshef has 40000 LP (also not a typo) and his deck is even MORE powerful. No matter how much you grind, no matter how much you cheat, only luck will get you to the end screen. No, really - bring a stack of Action Replay codes to this fight and watch yourself lose the minute your opponent topdecks any of their "I win" buttons.

Easily the cheapest RPG boss I've ever faced.

[Man_Over_Game]

Erishkegal, Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns.

I decided to play the game on Hard, which worked out perfectly for most of it. Then I encounter Squid-Face, and...well, there's a number of things working against you:

He has 3 phases, and any failure to breach through one phase will result in him reverting to his first phase. Even if he keeps the missing HP, it's basically impossible to defeat him unless you do it in one continuous run. The damage and chaos he causes, as well as the damage he takes, increases with each phase, but you will burn out of resources unless you can burst him during his final phase, and that requires a lot of resource management.
You'll generally need some of the best gear in the game in order to have a chance to beat him.
Specific moves are needed in order to fight him during some of his phases, since you'll need to find a way to keep Lightning from touching the floor, otherwise you'll basically die. You can stay off the floor by spamming a melee attack, but spamming a melee move will usually make you run out of energy, so you have to find some way of staying airborne without burning out, whether that means sucking up the resource loss by spamming your melee attack as slowly as you can afford (too slow and you'll fall), or by tediously cycling between different movesets to cast a spell -> Moveswap -> Melee -> Moveswap -> Cast a Spell, Repeat.
FFXIIILR is on a long-term timer (think Majora's Mask, but harder), and you're usually out of time when you reach him, so you can't go back and find better gear or moves to take him on with. You gotta work with what you have at the time of the fight.


My strategy was basically abuse of on-hit elemental potions that did a flat amount of damage while spamming a low-cost, low-damage melee attack while stopping time as often as possible to try and breach past one phase to get to the next. I spent about 6 hours fighting this f***er straight, spent in 5-15 minute intervals of true suffering and frustration. It was my first experience of wanting to throw my controller across the room after playing video games for nearly 15 years (I've only shared this experience with the optional endgame challenges in Guacamelee 1+2).

I would not be surprised if there wasn't a harder boss in the world than Erishkigal on Hard Mode, at least in how demanding he is for the combination of strategy and skill.

[AlanBruce]

A couple of "final" bosses within the same. Going with Bloodborne's DLC The Old Hunters.

The Orphan of Kos: People say Isshin is the hardest FromSoftware boss. They used this guy as a metric. This guy will break you in every which way and is genuinely terrifying once phase two comes along. Intelligent Aggression is needed if you have a prayer of a chance to defeat him.


Laurence, The First Vicar: An optional boss in the DLC, but considered by many to be the secret final boss. This cheap bastard will test your patience and compassion towards your controller. He can be taken on with straight up melee, but you better be incredibly good at dodging and reading his movements.

Those who have Simon's Bowblade, a solid gun and high Bloodtinge should be able to handle his second phase relatively unharmed. And even then...

[KillianHawkeye]

I vaguely remember being unable to beat the final fight against High Max in Mega Man X6. He was the main henchman of the villain, Gate, and you fight him a few times throughout the game, but he has a lot of new abilities when you face him in the final dungeons.

The villain of MMX6 designed his final dungeon the way I would if I was a Mega Man villain: pretty much covered in spikes of instant death. So even getting to him was quite difficult without the spike resistant armor, and I recall an insane jump over a deadly pit immediately before the boss room that required either flight, a mid-air dash, or Zero's double jump to pass. The whole stage was annoying with tough jumps IIRC, but imagine a jump over a bottomless death pit that has a wall coming down from the ceiling forcing you to jump low and somehow alter your trajectory after passing under it to catch on to the other side.

For these reasons, getting there in X's default armor was impossible for me (even though it would have probably been the best option for the fight); in the other two armors I couldn't find a good way of dealing damage (High Max's whole thing is being nigh invulnerable). As for Zero, he doesn't have the damage reducing effects of X's armor, so while he could do damage more easily, he was just too fragile.

Out of all the Mega Man X games that I played (I skipped the last one after the underwhelming X7, and I didn't really hear much about its release at the time), X6 remains the only one I've never beaten.

[danzibr]

Erishkegal, Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns.

I decided to play the game on Hard, which worked out perfectly for most of it. Then I encounter Squid-Face, and...well, there's a number of things working against you:

He has 3 phases, and any failure to breach through one phase will result in him reverting to his first phase. Even if he keeps the missing HP, it's basically impossible to defeat him unless you do it in one continuous run. The damage and chaos he causes, as well as the damage he takes, increases with each phase, but you will burn out of resources unless you can burst him during his final phase, and that requires a lot of resource management.
You'll generally need some of the best gear in the game in order to have a chance to beat him.
Specific moves are needed in order to fight him during some of his phases, since you'll need to find a way to keep Lightning from touching the floor, otherwise you'll basically die. You can stay off the floor by spamming a melee attack, but spamming a melee move will usually make you run out of energy, so you have to find some way of staying airborne without burning out, whether that means sucking up the resource loss by spamming your melee attack as slowly as you can afford (too slow and you'll fall), or by tediously cycling between different movesets to cast a spell -> Moveswap -> Melee -> Moveswap -> Cast a Spell, Repeat.
FFXIIILR is on a long-term timer (think Majora's Mask, but harder), and you're usually out of time when you reach him, so you can't go back and find better gear or moves to take him on with. You gotta work with what you have at the time of the fight.


My strategy was basically abuse of on-hit elemental potions that did a flat amount of damage while spamming a low-cost, low-damage melee attack while stopping time as often as possible to try and breach past one phase to get to the next. I spent about 6 hours fighting this f***er straight, spent in 5-15 minute intervals of true suffering and frustration. It was my first experience of wanting to throw my controller across the room after playing video games for nearly 15 years (I've only shared this experience with the optional endgame challenges in Guacamelee 1+2).

I would not be surprised if there wasn't a harder boss in the world than Erishkigal on Hard Mode, at least in how demanding he is for the combination of strategy and skill.
Hats off to you.

I played the game on normal and remember that boss being rather unpleasant.

I vaguely remember being unable to beat the final fight against High Max in Mega Man X6. He was the main henchman of the villain, Gate, and you fight him a few times throughout the game, but he has a lot of new abilities when you face him in the final dungeons.

The villain of MMX6 designed his final dungeon the way I would if I was a Mega Man villain: pretty much covered in spikes of instant death. So even getting to him was quite difficult without the spike resistant armor, and I recall an insane jump over a deadly pit immediately before the boss room that required either flight, a mid-air dash, or Zero's double jump to pass. The whole stage was annoying with tough jumps IIRC, but imagine a jump over a bottomless death pit that has a wall coming down from the ceiling forcing you to jump low and somehow alter your trajectory after passing under it to catch on to the other side.

For these reasons, getting there in X's default armor was impossible for me (even though it would have probably been the best option for the fight); in the other two armors I couldn't find a good way of dealing damage (High Max's whole thing is being nigh invulnerable). As for Zero, he doesn't have the damage reducing effects of X's armor, so while he could do damage more easily, he was just too fragile.

Out of all the Mega Man X games that I played (I skipped the last one after the underwhelming X7, and I didn't really hear much about its release at the time), X6 remains the only one I've never beaten.
Huh. I remember playing X6 back in the day. Don’t remember this. Need to replay it.

[DeTess]

One boss that I've never faced myself, but that I know off by reputation is the final boss of Drakengard 3's D branch. That boss is pretty much just a rythm game that you need to do perfectly, but the last two 'notes' occur after the screen blacks out and the narration for the final cutscene begins, with the only indication that you're not done being the chime that plays whenever the boss makes an attack that you need to counter (and that's not even talking about the camera deciding it doesn't feel like looking at the boss anymore halfway through).

See it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49gLC9yiGOg

Also, don't know if this counts, but I'd also like to give a shout-out to the trench-runs in the last or second-to-last levels of many ace combat games. I've left quite a few planes scraped against the sides of the canyons or tunnels of those levels.

[Wookieetank]

The final boss of Arc the Lad 2 (I think it was called the Dark One or something like that, but I haven't played the game in more than 15 years so I don't really remember anymore) was pretty ridiculous.

My team was massively overpowered and over-leveled because I went and played through the Monster Arena disc before finishing Arc the Lad 2, and I discovered how to clone items including the most OP equipment and the items that would just level up your characters, using save data manipulation if I remember right. And even doing all that, it still took me two hours to beat the final boss.

I'll second this. My main party was all 120+ in levels and the old guy caster (forget his name), I think ran him up to 210 or something ridiculous just for kicks, and even then just scraped by finishing the final boss with most of the party dead/near death. AtL2 is my favorite in the series, but I'm not going back thanks to that final boss.

[Velaryon]

I'll second this. My main party was all 120+ in levels and the old guy caster (forget his name), I think ran him up to 210 or something ridiculous just for kicks, and even then just scraped by finishing the final boss with most of the party dead/near death. AtL2 is my favorite in the series, but I'm not going back thanks to that final boss.

Sounds like Gogen, I think?

Anyway, I agree 2 is the best of the series. The first game is way too short (seriously, a JRPG that you can complete in 8 hours? Ridiculous!) and honestly feels like just an extended prologue for the second game. Arc 3 has fun characters and snappy dialogue, but feels scaled back in gameplay and story from the 2nd game in many ways. Arc 2 has been on my "I should replay this game someday" list for 15 years now, but I just can't forget how absurd that final boss fight was.

Also while we're on the subject, can we talk about Choko's dungeon in Arc the Lad 1? I know this topic is final bosses and Choko is the "hidden boss who's way harder than the final boss" but that fight was insane. Just getting to her is a marathon since she's at the bottom of a 50-floor dungeon, then she's insanely strong and difficult to fight if you're not super prepared, and then you have to successfully escape the dungeon! It was insane and one of the most harrowing gaming experiences I've ever had.

[Rodin]

Two bosses gave me absolute nightmares as a kid, and they're both from SaGa 2 (a.k.a. Final Fantasy Legend 2).

Apollo is an absolute nightmare to fight if you have an unoptimized party, and playing as a kid this was pretty much always the case. He has sky high defense and once he transforms he AoEs your entire party for over half their health every other turn. His follow-up Masamune attack is guaranteed to kill anybody who didn't heal, and turn order is semi-random such that he can quite possibly kill a character with no chance to react. This is really bad, as there are no Phoenix Downs or equivalent items in this game - a character down in battle is out for the count except for a single use of the Heart MAGI. If the person who dropped was the one holding the Heart Magi...

The easiest way to win (without having a brokenly powerful party going into the fight) is actually to DPS race him, but that requires learning what penetrates his Aegis shield and defense. It took me ages to finally beat him...and then he exploded in my face and TPK'd the party because Dad had already fallen to the Flare/Masamune combo.

Apollo is just the Big Bad though. The true final boss is Arsenal, everybody's favorite robot with no connection to the rest of the plot. He starts out easy enough, but his final phase is pure RNG. He attacks the entire party for a RANDOM amount of damage every turn....and can do it back to back. If you roll poorly on initiative and damage it's entirely possible that he deals over 1000 damage to the entire party with no chance to respond. The max health in the game is 999.

[DataNinja]

Oh, Mega Man Star Force 3 had two that body me. They're not the final boss of the game, or even the final boss of the postgame... but the bonus versions of the two unique bosses in the postgame. Apollo Flame and Sirius in their first versions are fine. Doable. But after you beat them, they can randomly appear as "V3" versions. And those are brutal.

Apollo Flame has a constantly regenerating barrier of health that will just absorb damage that doesn't carry over - and since you have a limited deck, it's super easy to waste some of your 30 cards on that stuff. Same with his invincible fire tornadoes that come down the entire battlefield - you have to carefully dodge into the lane of the barely faster one before it goes back. And that's just his passives. He has shield-breaking attacks, attacks that cover the whole battlefield, and flame jets that randomly leap around. Plenty of health, and a lot of damage.

But even he's nothing compared to Sirius. While Apollo at least had a water weakness, Sirius has none. And his basic attacks hit every weakness - elemental beams that he shoots, and shield-breaking swords he launches at you. And if you're hit by your weakness, you not only take double damage, but lose all your elemental boosts you've built up over time. These attacks come super quick, and in randomly changing patterns, so if you don't have lightning quick reflexes you will get hit and will get combed. He also has a constantly regenerating ice wall in front of him that takes any attack for him, so you have to time attacks to not hit that, either. And his big attack breaks the entire field, so unless you have an ability that lets you ignore holes, you will no longer be able to dodge or melee attack him - and because he has shield-breaking attacks, you can't even block.

I have never, to this day, been able to beat either of those versions of them. And there are Omega versions of each that you can unlock that have more health, do more damage, and attack even quicker...

[Blackhawk748]

Bit of a niche example here - Yu-Gi-Oh: Reshef of Destruction.

A bit of explanation for those who haven't seen it: YGORoD uses a deckbuilding system where every card has a point value, and the total value of your deck cannot go above a maximum that you can raise by winning duels. (You also have to earn the cards themselves the same way.) In order to progress anywhere in the story, you WILL have to grind like crazy to boost your deck limit higher than a cheat code can get it, just so you can stand up to the monsters played by your AI opponents.

The final boss fight is a back-to-back pair of duels versus main antagonist Sol Chevalsky followed by the titular Reshef. You start with the standard 8000 Life Points and don't get to heal between them. Sol has 20000 LP (not a typo) and his deck has multiple ways to either one-shot you or put you in an unwinnable situation. Reshef has 40000 LP (also not a typo) and his deck is even MORE powerful. No matter how much you grind, no matter how much you cheat, only luck will get you to the end screen. No, really - bring a stack of Action Replay codes to this fight and watch yourself lose the minute your opponent topdecks any of their "I win" buttons.

Easily the cheapest RPG boss I've ever faced.

Oh my god yes, he's awful. In a similar vain, but one that's actually FAIR is Yu-Gi-Oh the Dark Duels. It's got the same deck building mechanic, but the end Duelists are less insane. Still requires truly silly amounts of grinding to make a deck that can contain all the heavy hitters they have, but it's actually fair in that vein.

[Wookieetank]

Sounds like Gogen, I think?

Anyway, I agree 2 is the best of the series. The first game is way too short (seriously, a JRPG that you can complete in 8 hours? Ridiculous!) and honestly feels like just an extended prologue for the second game. Arc 3 has fun characters and snappy dialogue, but feels scaled back in gameplay and story from the 2nd game in many ways. Arc 2 has been on my "I should replay this game someday" list for 15 years now, but I just can't forget how absurd that final boss fight was.

Also while we're on the subject, can we talk about Choko's dungeon in Arc the Lad 1? I know this topic is final bosses and Choko is the "hidden boss who's way harder than the final boss" but that fight was insane. Just getting to her is a marathon since she's at the bottom of a 50-floor dungeon, then she's insanely strong and difficult to fight if you're not super prepared, and then you have to successfully escape the dungeon! It was insane and one of the most harrowing gaming experiences I've ever had.


Gogen sounds familiar, we'll go with that.

Never did clear Choko's dungeon, farthest I ever made it was floor 25 or so I think. Watched a friend clear it though, and after watching him almost snuff it on the way out after fighting Choko, decided to move on to better things in life, which happened to be Arc 2 at that time :smallbiggrin:

[Velaryon]

Gogen sounds familiar, we'll go with that.

Never did clear Choko's dungeon, farthest I ever made it was floor 25 or so I think. Watched a friend clear it though, and after watching him almost snuff it on the way out after fighting Choko, decided to move on to better things in life, which happened to be Arc 2 at that time :smallbiggrin:

I can understand, though the rewards are worth it... eventually. In Arc 1, what you get for clearing the dungeon is Choko as an extremely powerful summon for Chongara... except that you can't use her against the final boss so there's really no reason to worry about it. Where it becomes worthwhile is in Arc 2, where she becomes a fully playable character who is absurdly strong.

[Wookieetank]

Star Ocean 2, full stop. My brother and I were both playing through the game at the same time using different recruitable characters so we'd see what the differences were story wise. He got to the final boss first and made easy work of it. I finally got to the final boss and got creamed. Neither I nor my brother could beat it with my team. Turns out its possible to make the final boss harder d/t certain events which I apparently had stumbled into. Even after making it to lvl 150 or so still couldn't beat him.

[JeenLeen]

Disegaia. I reached the final boss without doing a lot of the Item World stuff that can get you really overpowered, but was still fairly strong. None of the battles beforehand gave me any real trouble, but the final boss floored me so badly I thought it must be a scripted battle you were meant to lose. I was really surprised when it gave a real Game Over screen.
I honestly forget if I really trained and beat him myself, or just watched my friend (who did massive Item World and other stuff) wipe him out in a few hits.

Final Fantasy... I forget the number, but one of the early ones, where you boosted your stats based on what you did in combat and could gain a lot of HP by attacking yourself.
I was doing the Playstation (or Playstation II) version of it. There's a massive dungeon with few save points before him, and I forgot the Playstation version had quick saves. I was doing well going through the dungeon, so I wasn't worried, and just fought him. Died pretty quickly.
I gave up because it wasn't worth the time to explore the final dungeon again.
Apparently there's a pretty trash weapon, the Blood Sword or something like that, which is incredibly effective against him. But I sold it due to limited inventory space

Some of the final bosses of SaGa Frontier seemed a lot harder than the previous things, which was doubly bad with the final dungeons often being a point-of-no-return. But they weren't so terrible as long as you prepared and had a good strategy, and kinda new what to expect (and thus grinded for stats, equipment, and combos before the point of no return).

[Wraith]

Eternal Champions on the SNES/SEGA Genesis was a pretty hard 2D fighter, similar to Street Fighter 2 but difficult because of how crude it was.
There were no counters or air juggles, and combos were just along the lines of "hit your opponent twice and they stagger out of reach, leaving you completely exposed for a counter-attack".
It was also slightly bull**** because the AI had a habit of having infinite special moves (yours had to charge up over time) and could instantly transition from one blocked attack into another that couldn't be dodged simply because your own character physically can't play action frames that fast.

The final boss of the game, the Eternal Champion himself, is horrible. He transitions between the fighting styles of all the other fighters in the game meaning he has no direct counter, he takes less damage when you hit him, he deals more damage when he hits you, and you have to defeat him in 3 different matches - each one best of 3 - to finish the game. If you lose any match, you go back to the previous round and have to win that, then re-fight the Eternal Champion three times all over again.

That game was horrible back when I played it aged 12, and I only managed to beat it as an adult by save-scumming every single round with an emulator, and it still took HOURS.

[danzibr]

Star Ocean 2, full stop. My brother and I were both playing through the game at the same time using different recruitable characters so we'd see what the differences were story wise. He got to the final boss first and made easy work of it. I finally got to the final boss and got creamed. Neither I nor my brother could beat it with my team. Turns out its possible to make the final boss harder d/t certain events which I apparently had stumbled into. Even after making it to lvl 150 or so still couldn't beat him.
Oohhh that’s unfortunate. Yeah, I don’t think people are supposed to fight the limiters off version on their first playthrough. Bummer.

Disegaia. I reached the final boss without doing a lot of the Item World stuff that can get you really overpowered, but was still fairly strong. None of the battles beforehand gave me any real trouble, but the final boss floored me so badly I thought it must be a scripted battle you were meant to lose. I was really surprised when it gave a real Game Over screen.
I honestly forget if I really trained and beat him myself, or just watched my friend (who did massive Item World and other stuff) wipe him out in a few hits.

Final Fantasy... I forget the number, but one of the early ones, where you boosted your stats based on what you did in combat and could gain a lot of HP by attacking yourself.
I was doing the Playstation (or Playstation II) version of it. There's a massive dungeon with few save points before him, and I forgot the Playstation version had quick saves. I was doing well going through the dungeon, so I wasn't worried, and just fought him. Died pretty quickly.
I gave up because it wasn't worth the time to explore the final dungeon again.
Apparently there's a pretty trash weapon, the Blood Sword or something like that, which is incredibly effective against him. But I sold it due to limited inventory space

Some of the final bosses of SaGa Frontier seemed a lot harder than the previous things, which was doubly bad with the final dungeons often being a point-of-no-return. But they weren't so terrible as long as you prepared and had a good strategy, and kinda new what to expect (and thus grinded for stats, equipment, and combos before the point of no return).
Oooh. All good.

Disgaea, yeah if you totally skip the optional stuff you can get owned pretty hard.

I found Emperor not too bad... but I played the iOS version, may have been easier.

SaGa Frontier. Ugh. I love that game, but some of the scenarios felt super rushed, had to do a bunch of grinding to stand a chance against the boss because the story didn’t have enough content to get you up to snuff.

[Velaryon]

Eternal Champions on the SNES/SEGA Genesis was a pretty hard 2D fighter, similar to Street Fighter 2 but difficult because of how crude it was.

I wasn't even thinking fighting games, but that opens up a LOT of possibilities. However, I cannot think of a more appropriate one than Eternal Champions.

You touched on this, but I want to expand on it for others who haven't played the game. EC limits special move abuse by giving you a pretty small meter that drains when you use certain moves. You also have a taunt move that drains your opponent's meter... except that as Wraith said, the meter is meaningless for AI players. They still have it, but draining it to zero does nothing because they will still continue to spam special moves til the cows come home. The game reaches stupid hard levels of difficulty well before you ever even get to the boss, not the least because of the uneven playing field. I didn't even know you had to fight the final boss 3 times because he's nearly impossible to beat once. I've owned the game for at least 26 years at this point, and I have never beaten it once even though I was a pretty serious fighting game enthusiast back in the day.

Several Tekken games have final bosses that are complete BS, but none of them hold a candle to the Eternal Champion in terms of sheer absurd difficulty.

[SerTabris]

Disegaia. I reached the final boss without doing a lot of the Item World stuff that can get you really overpowered, but was still fairly strong. None of the battles beforehand gave me any real trouble, but the final boss floored me so badly I thought it must be a scripted battle you were meant to lose. I was really surprised when it gave a real Game Over screen.
I honestly forget if I really trained and beat him myself, or just watched my friend (who did massive Item World and other stuff) wipe him out in a few hits.

Final Fantasy... I forget the number, but one of the early ones, where you boosted your stats based on what you did in combat and could gain a lot of HP by attacking yourself.
I was doing the Playstation (or Playstation II) version of it. There's a massive dungeon with few save points before him, and I forgot the Playstation version had quick saves. I was doing well going through the dungeon, so I wasn't worried, and just fought him. Died pretty quickly.
I gave up because it wasn't worth the time to explore the final dungeon again.
Apparently there's a pretty trash weapon, the Blood Sword or something like that, which is incredibly effective against him. But I sold it due to limited inventory space

Some of the final bosses of SaGa Frontier seemed a lot harder than the previous things, which was doubly bad with the final dungeons often being a point-of-no-return. But they weren't so terrible as long as you prepared and had a good strategy, and kinda new what to expect (and thus grinded for stats, equipment, and combos before the point of no return).

I had a somewhat different problem with Disgaea 1's final boss.
I think my party would probably have been fine and done pretty well overall. But my highest-level character with all of the good magic and such was Flonne, so not being able to use her was a bit of a problem.

[Greg_S]

I vaguely remember being unable to beat the final fight against High Max in Mega Man X6. He was the main henchman of the villain, Gate, and you fight him a few times throughout the game, but he has a lot of new abilities when you face him in the final dungeons.

The villain of MMX6 designed his final dungeon the way I would if I was a Mega Man villain: pretty much covered in spikes of instant death. So even getting to him was quite difficult without the spike resistant armor, and I recall an insane jump over a deadly pit immediately before the boss room that required either flight, a mid-air dash, or Zero's double jump to pass. The whole stage was annoying with tough jumps IIRC, but imagine a jump over a bottomless death pit that has a wall coming down from the ceiling forcing you to jump low and somehow alter your trajectory after passing under it to catch on to the other side.

For these reasons, getting there in X's default armor was impossible for me (even though it would have probably been the best option for the fight); in the other two armors I couldn't find a good way of dealing damage (High Max's whole thing is being nigh invulnerable). As for Zero, he doesn't have the damage reducing effects of X's armor, so while he could do damage more easily, he was just too fragile.

Out of all the Mega Man X games that I played (I skipped the last one after the underwhelming X7, and I didn't really hear much about its release at the time), X6 remains the only one I've never beaten.

Shadow Armor was the least-cruel way of getting through the lab I found, although it's impossible to make that jump you mentioned with Shadow Armor unless you had the jumper part... which can be lost forever if a nightmare infects the reploid carrying it. Once you get to High Max, you can use Giga Attacks to cut off about 1/4 of his life. The Shadow Armor's charged sword attack is also just large enough to cut through his shield and stun him as well.

Now Gate, boss of the next stage? He's evidence that the designers of X6 were cruel and malicious. You fight him over a bottomless pit. There are small platforms, about 1.25x your character width, irregularly spaced throughout the room. Gate can fly. He is also immune to all of your weapons. The only way to damage him is to destroy the (HP sponge) projectiles he fires. One specific color will make a short-range explosion that will harm him. That's one projectile, out of ~5 he can fire. You still want to destroy those other colors, because some slow you down, some fire shots at you, another one pulls you toward it and into the pit, and one even summons nightmares, because X6 hates you. Meanwhile, he's hovering around the room, crashing into you, sometimes destroying those small platforms temporarily.

The final boss doesn't get invincibility frames so one giga attack knocks off about half of its life bar.

The last boss of Final Fantasy Legend 1, Creator, got mentioned in the easy bosses thread because you can kill him with a chainsaw due to a bug. But if you try to fight him without that, it's brutal. He's immune to elemental attacks, status attacks, and takes half damage from physical attacks. That leaves about 4 or 5 things you can deal real damage with. He also blasts your party with AoE attacks, and there's no AoE healing in this game. One reason the saw bug is so infamous is because it's the only way 90% of people can win the fight.

[Squire Doodad]

Neo Exdeath from FFV, for the sole reason of "I have done too many SCCs where I just don't have DPS enough to beat him before I die from having no AoE heals". Rest in peace, Summoners with a bunch of Air Knives.

Cackletta's Soul (M&L Superstar Saga) was also a remarkably difficult boss when I first tried my hand it at because she seems to have endless amounts of health, requires you to go through Bowletta first, and has lots of attacks with various pieces of timing. It escalates when you effectively need to not let her attack while someone is dead, because the game makes your dodging abilities much, much heavier. You will screw up if this happens.
I mean, she also has a Kefka-esque "you start the battle with 1 HP" scenario, but any reasonable scenario should let you drop a Nut and heal both of the bros.

[Rynjin]

Do bonus bosses count? Because Darkeater Midir brought my Dark Souls 3 playthrough to a screeching halt because I didn't want to lose the titanite slab and covenant I'd get if I beat him before the penultimate boss of the DLC. I just could not figure him out- He triggered a frustration that his fellow true Dragons Kalameet and Sinh didn't. Kalameet was tough but fair, and Sinh was annoying (too much flying around out of reach), but neither shut me down the way Midir did.


Midir remains the only Souls boss that I have never beaten. His boss run is too frustrating, you die too quickly to him, and the fight goes on too long. He's just not fun to fight against.

Yeah, the issue with Midir is there is no "trick" to "figure out". He's a wall of pure meat that has resistances to every type of damage in the game, including the one that's supposed to be the weakness of all dragons.

Midir is the most un-Souls-like boss in the entire extended Souls franchise because even when you "git gud" he's a boring slog to fight against since all he brings to the table in terms of mechanics (if you can even call them that) is a dickload of HP and damage reduction. Pretty much nothing you can do will save time against him.

I'll nominate Remnant: From the Ashes final boss, Dreamer/Nightmare. A 2 phase boss fight where each stage is frustrating in its own way. The first stage is fairly easy, just annoying; Dreamer can only be damaged by head shots, and his head is TINY, and moves erratically.

Nightmare is hot trash, with a gimmick mechanic you can only figure out by complete accident (by design). He's effectively invincible (damageable, but with HP measured in what I think is the billions) until he gives you the mechanic at random intervals (very far apart if you're playing co-op as well, since he only does it to one person at a time).

It's the worst kind of difficult boss; impossible until you figure out the gimmick, and then just slow and grindy, but trivial.

[KillianHawkeye]

Shadow Armor was the least-cruel way of getting through the lab I found, although it's impossible to make that jump you mentioned with Shadow Armor unless you had the jumper part... which can be lost forever if a nightmare infects the reploid carrying it. Once you get to High Max, you can use Giga Attacks to cut off about 1/4 of his life. The Shadow Armor's charged sword attack is also just large enough to cut through his shield and stun him as well.

Yeah, I'm going to guess I didn't have that part, because I could not get to High Max in the Shadow Armor. Was it something you got for rescuing friendly reploids or something? That was a thing in that game, right?


Now Gate, boss of the next stage? He's evidence that the designers of X6 were cruel and malicious. You fight him over a bottomless pit. There are small platforms, about 1.25x your character width, irregularly spaced throughout the room. Gate can fly. He is also immune to all of your weapons. The only way to damage him is to destroy the (HP sponge) projectiles he fires. One specific color will make a short-range explosion that will harm him. That's one projectile, out of ~5 he can fire. You still want to destroy those other colors, because some slow you down, some fire shots at you, another one pulls you toward it and into the pit, and one even summons nightmares, because X6 hates you. Meanwhile, he's hovering around the room, crashing into you, sometimes destroying those small platforms temporarily.

The final boss doesn't get invincibility frames so one giga attack knocks off about half of its life bar.

But you know, I'm suddenly much happier that I quit the game when I did. Saved me from having to go through THAT BS right there. :smalleek:

[Spacewolf]

Yeah, the issue with Midir is there is no "trick" to "figure out". He's a wall of pure meat that has resistances to every type of damage in the game, including the one that's supposed to be the weakness of all dragons.

Midir is the most un-Souls-like boss in the entire extended Souls franchise because even when you "git gud" he's a boring slog to fight against since all he brings to the table in terms of mechanics (if you can even call them that) is a dickload of HP and damage reduction. Pretty much nothing you can do will save time against him.

I'll nominate Remnant: From the Ashes final boss, Dreamer/Nightmare. A 2 phase boss fight where each stage is frustrating in its own way. The first stage is fairly easy, just annoying; Dreamer can only be damaged by head shots, and his head is TINY, and moves erratically.

Nightmare is hot trash, with a gimmick mechanic you can only figure out by complete accident (by design). He's effectively invincible (damageable, but with HP measured in what I think is the billions) until he gives you the mechanic at random intervals (very far apart if you're playing co-op as well, since he only does it to one person at a time).

It's the worst kind of difficult boss; impossible until you figure out the gimmick, and then just slow and grindy, but trivial.

Honestly I'd say Midir is easier than Gael even if not as fun. Just smack the face for massive damage, you don't even need to do full damage just get him to about 20% then get a free kill.

[Greg_S]

Yeah, I'm going to guess I didn't have that part, because I could not get to High Max in the Shadow Armor. Was it something you got for rescuing friendly reploids or something? That was a thing in that game, right?

If I remember correctly, you could get jumper if you:


Went to Blizzard Wolfang's stage
With Blaze Heatnix's nightmare effect active
Dodged the flaming meteorites falling from the sky
Found the extra path opened up by the falling firey rocks
Were in the blade or shadow armors, or (I think) Zero
jumped/flew up a particular shaft to rescue a reploid
before the nightmare infected it, which could happen offscreen if you walked too far and got knocked back, for example by a falling meteorite.


If you fail to do those things, then the only ways to make that jump as X are using the blade armor, or using Blaze Heatnix's weapon to hang in midair because it's slightly glitched. X6 is special.

Maybe this is due to mechanics more than anything else, but Dragon Warrior 4's Necrosaro was lethal. In that game, you have 4 AoE healing options: Sage's stone heals 40-60 HP, the Healus spell heals 70-90, the Healusall spell heals everyone to full, and the Dew of World Tree is a one-use Healusall item. In the 7th and final phase of his fight, you're being battered by his gleaming, icy gust of wind breath, which hits your whole party for 90-120 damage. He gets two turns per round, and will frequently dispel your buffs.

Ok, you say, it's a damage race, we can also re-apply our buffs and consistently use Healus to top off. But in DW4, you only controlled the hero character in the final chapter. Other characters were AI-controlled. While impressive for the NES, it made this fight specifically infamous. Your main healer, Cristo, didn't like using Healus much. No, he would spend his turns and MP casting instant death spells. Every one would fail. It's so bad that the speedrun of the game specifically plans a part of the final fight around this AI quirk- you make the boss immune to all spells so that Cristo won't cast spells on him.

When Cristo appeared in the musou-style Dragon Quest Heroes game later, his ultimate attack referenced this by having him repeatedly cast failed instant death spells.

[Random Sanity]

If we're listing fighting game bosses, Arcana Heart 3: Love Max has a couple doozies.

Main boss of the story mode is Ragnarok, which is a platformer boss you have to fight with fighting game controls. Same time limit as regular matches, no continues. It's generally the time limit that'll do you in, because one of the targets you have to smash is waaaaay up at the top of the screen and just one hit from his MANY projectiles can easily send you back to the bottom.

Then there's the bonus boss, Parace L'Sia. Parace ticks pretty much every box on the "SNK boss" checklist, and could body a lot of SNK's own bosses. Teleport spam, absolute attack priority, high damage output (big combos and supers that take most or all your health), constant rapid health regeneration, auto-charging super meter, input reading, a cocoon move which fully restores her health and meter if you don't beat down its independant crapton of health ... oy. Just oy. You're not going to beat Parace unless she lets you, full stop.

[OracleofWuffing]

Mega Man 7's Dr. Wily Capsule.

Random positioning that may leave him out of reach of most of your attacks, fast-moving homing shots that combine with the prior aspect to make "React to take damage from the thing that will hurt your the least" scenarios, and a misleading weakness to the weapon that's probably hardest to hit him with. Yes, he's a much more reasonable final boss once you know which of his homing shots hurts your strategy least, that there's a weapon that doesn't do extra damage to him but is easy to hit him with, and that there's a way to interrupt his homing shot attack, but you're not going into the fight knowing all of that unless you spoiled yourself ahead of time. The team was given orders to "make the very last fight insanely hard," and, well, there's a reason it's an assist trophy in Smash Bros.

[Psyren]

Mega Man 7's Dr. Wily Capsule.

Random positioning that may leave him out of reach of most of your attacks, fast-moving homing shots that combine with the prior aspect to make "React to take damage from the thing that will hurt your the least" scenarios, and a misleading weakness to the weapon that's probably hardest to hit him with. Yes, he's a much more reasonable final boss once you know which of his homing shots hurts your strategy least, that there's a weapon that doesn't do extra damage to him but is easy to hit him with, and that there's a way to interrupt his homing shot attack, but you're not going into the fight knowing all of that unless you spoiled yourself ahead of time. The team was given orders to "make the very last fight insanely hard," and, well, there's a reason it's an assist trophy in Smash Bros.

Agreed, but you've got to admit that music is pretty baller :smallbiggrin:

[Amechra]

Cackletta's Soul (M&L Superstar Saga) was also a remarkably difficult boss when I first tried my hand it at because she seems to have endless amounts of health, requires you to go through Bowletta first, and has lots of attacks with various pieces of timing. It escalates when you effectively need to not let her attack while someone is dead, because the game makes your dodging abilities much, much heavier. You will screw up if this happens.
I mean, she also has a Kefka-esque "you start the battle with 1 HP" scenario, but any reasonable scenario should let you drop a Nut and heal both of the bros.

I remember her not being that difficult... but I was also abusing the Mush Badge on both Mario and Luigi, so I was wiping out most fights with a single Advanced Cyclone Bros. :smallbiggrin:

[Sloanzilla]

Technically, the boss at the end of Darkest Dungeon. Even if you win, you don't win.

[AlanBruce]

I'll list Norman, the Ultimate Abyss from Resident Evil Revelations.

This guy looks like the many superhuman tyrant models faced in previous games: humanoid size and shape- albeit taller than any human, tremendous strength, an oversized claw and can take several clips from any gun before it gets mildly inconvenienced. This, of course, is par for the course in Resident Evil bosses.

What makes the Ultimate Abyss a nightmare to fight is that it teleports around the room, can blind you momentarily, can create an illusory duplicate of himself to fool you into shooting the figment as the real deal punishes you for your mistake, has an AoE ground slam that covers a large area and can knock you prone. And when in its final throes, it will bum rush you, possibly one shotting you... while having an illusory double to make things tougher, since you don't know which to dodge before the inevitable happens.

You do have back up in this fight- Chris Redfield. But he might as well be eye candy at this point as all he does is shoot from his 9mm, barely even tickling the boss as it focuses entirely on Jill, the protagonist.

[Anteros]

Technically, the boss at the end of Darkest Dungeon. Even if you win, you don't win.

I hated that about that game. Plus the enforced character loss. I get that it fits the theme of the game, but it still annoys me.

[danzibr]

I'll list Norman, the Ultimate Abyss from Resident Evil Revelations.

This guy looks like the many superhuman tyrant models faced in previous games: humanoid size and shape- albeit taller than any human, tremendous strength, an oversized claw and can take several clips from any gun before it gets mildly inconvenienced. This, of course, is par for the course in Resident Evil bosses.

What makes the Ultimate Abyss a nightmare to fight is that it teleports around the room, can blind you momentarily, can create an illusory duplicate of himself to fool you into shooting the figment as the real deal punishes you for your mistake, has an AoE ground slam that covers a large area and can knock you prone. And when in its final throes, it will bum rush you, possibly one shotting you... while having an illusory double to make things tougher, since you don't know which to dodge before the inevitable happens.

You do have back up in this fight- Chris Redfield. But he might as well be eye candy at this point as all he does is shoot from his 9mm, barely even tickling the boss as it focuses entirely on Jill, the protagonist.
Wuuuuuuut teleport?

So I’ve played a lot of REs, not not Revelations. Is there any lore for this?

[AlanBruce]

Wuuuuuuut teleport?

So I’ve played a lot of REs, not not Revelations. Is there any lore for this?

The game is very good and delves into the new virus - T Abyss - altering sea life and turning those infected into a new variant of “zombie” called the Ooze.

There is, sadly, no lore behind why this specific boss can teleport, other than that the antagonist, Norman, takes a highly concentrated dose of the virus, likely giving him a stronger mutation than any previous infected in the game.

You can watch videos of the final boss on You Tube and judge for yourself how hard he is. This is a game where invisible Hunters were introduced, after all.

[Rynjin]

The game is very good and delves into the new virus - T Abyss - altering sea life and turning those infected into a new variant of “zombie” called the Ooze.

There is, sadly, no lore behind why this specific boss can teleport, other than that the antagonist, Norman, takes a highly concentrated dose of the virus, likely giving him a stronger mutation than any previous infected in the game.

You can watch videos of the final boss on You Tube and judge for yourself how hard he is. This is a game where invisible Hunters were introduced, after all.

Based on a quick wiki walk, while there's no specific lore on why he teleports, there is a description that suggests he may not actually be teleporting.


"The mutated form of Norman, leader of the international terrorist organization Veltro, following self-administration of the t-Abyss virus. His actions can fog the mind, and he cannot be defeated unless one sees through his illusions."

It may be that he's using some kind of mental manipulation ability to SEEM like he's teleporting, especially since from a look at the boss fight he can also make illusory duplicates of himself and such.

[AlanBruce]

Based on a quick wiki walk, while there's no specific lore on why he teleports, there is a description that suggests he may not actually be teleporting.



It may be that he's using some kind of mental manipulation ability to SEEM like he's teleporting, especially since from a look at the boss fight he can also make illusory duplicates of himself and such.

That would make sense. In the game, he will expel a bright light and seemingly disappear, only to attempt to sidestep Jill. In fact, Chris, while pea shooting Norman, remarks that “It’s like a disco ball in my face!”, which may allude at the boss using these newfound powers to disorient, but never actually teleport.

Still, one of the hardest bosses in the franchise by far, provided you don’t use any cheese strategy.