Game Killing Bosses

[Canadamus Prime]

Another one that broke me is that Dark Elf from Final Fantasy IV. He was already hammering me into the ground to the point where only Tellah was left standing and only had enough MP left for 1 casting of his most powerful spell so I said to myself "If this doesn't finish him, I'm screwed." Not only did it not finish him, he pulled the Dragon Ball Z "this isn't even my final form" thing and transformed into a serpent-y dragon type thing. At that point I just gave up.

I think that might be one of the few bosses that is vulnerable to death, or virus or weak. Some spell that doesn't work on any other bosses but it just murders him hard.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever get it in my head to try that game again.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Not so much the boss, but my own stupidity in not understanding a crucial game mechanic (though in my defense, it's never explained to you).

In Shining Force, you control a party of characters and participate in tactical turned based battles. These characters level up over time with a max level of 20. I reached a point in the game where all of my characters were level 20, so I figured it must almost be over. Then it wasn't.... and still wasn't. Gradually, my party became woefully underpowered. They'd do little dents of damage to enemies while getting 1-2 shot. I struggled through until I came across Chaos. He could OHKO anyone in my party and the damage I dealt to him was pitiful. If it was just him, I still don't think my party could have won, but he also has an army of minions, all of whom were stronger than anyone in my party. I tried many times, but ultimately decided that it was impossible.

Years later, I realized that there is a promotion system where after a character reaches level 10, you can promote them to a class that has much greater potential at the cost of a temporary stat decrease. Now it and its sequel are two of my favourite games.

Oh my God, this made me laugh!! It might cathartic for you to watch the Long Play of DaTruthDT playing Shining Force II; he waits to promote until level 40, so he's WAAAAY overpowered for basically the entire second half of the game, like 2-shotting bosses with +100 health OP'd; it's ridiculous.

I think I saw something like that. In the first game, late promotions lead to a really OP party if you're willing to grind out the levels, but they're nothing compared to the second game. Pretty sure the video I watched had Karna soloing the last boss.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Not so much the boss, but my own stupidity in not understanding a crucial game mechanic (though in my defense, it's never explained to you).

In Shining Force, you control a party of characters and participate in tactical turned based battles. These characters level up over time with a max level of 20. I reached a point in the game where all of my characters were level 20, so I figured it must almost be over. Then it wasn't.... and still wasn't. Gradually, my party became woefully underpowered. They'd do little dents of damage to enemies while getting 1-2 shot. I struggled through until I came across Chaos. He could OHKO anyone in my party and the damage I dealt to him was pitiful. If it was just him, I still don't think my party could have won, but he also has an army of minions, all of whom were stronger than anyone in my party. I tried many times, but ultimately decided that it was impossible.

Years later, I realized that there is a promotion system where after a character reaches level 10, you can promote them to a class that has much greater potential at the cost of a temporary stat decrease. Now it and its sequel are two of my favourite games.

Oh my God, this made me laugh!! It might cathartic for you to watch the Long Play of DaTruthDT playing Shining Force II; he waits to promote until level 40, so he's WAAAAY overpowered for basically the entire second half of the game, like 2-shotting bosses with +100 health OP'd; it's ridiculous.

I think I saw something like that. In the first game, late promotions lead to a really OP party if you're willing to grind out the levels, but they're nothing compared to the second game. Pretty sure the video I watched had Karna soloing the last boss.

Yeah, getting 25 EXP per casting of Aura nets her a level every four turns, so she doesn't see the same experience tapering as the combat-based roles that need higher-level monsters to getting good EXP; she gets stupid OP pretty quickly.

 

[FalloutJack]

...Nyx Avatar - Persona 3...

Really?

No no, this surprises me. I fought and beat him twice, once the OP way and once the legitimate way. The OP way was just essentially showing off, that I'd accumulated such power to kill things that once he reached Death Arcana form, he was blatently destroyed by a fusion attack. Second time around, I dealt with him normally, including waiting out his period of total invulnerability. The thing is, you probably just weren't up there in levels. Persona 3 gets grindy, but then all of Shin Megami Tensei is this.

 

[Pseudonym]

Another for Revengeance, but for me Sundowner.

Well, that's because he's FUCKING INVINCIBLE.

But seriously how are people having trouble with MGS: Rising. It's piss easy. I play the boss fights on that game as a way to feel awesome while putting in zero effort.

Is this just to deliberately annoy people by gloating at them for how bad they are? For me, it was my first (and last) platinum game and I never got much of a feel for any of the mechanics. Halfway through there was some bulldozer thingy that became a regular thing later. I stopped at that point and watched a friend play through the rest.

The final boss of guacamelee ruined that game for me. Up untill that point everything went pretty smoothly but that bossfight was just stupid. Half the mechanics didn't work on the boss, he was unstaggarable, unlike anything I had fought up until that point, and it became a reflex test on attacking him with the right colour really quickly fifty times in a row. Just, why?

There was also some boss thing in Dark souls 2 that was a firemetal apparatus with a flaming sword. It was resistant to my weapon of choice and just took forever to damage. I found a way around it and ignored the thing entirely.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

...Nyx Avatar - Persona 3...

Really?

No no, this surprises me. I fought and beat him twice, once the OP way and once the legitimate way. The OP way was just essentially showing off, that I'd accumulated such power to kill things that once he reached Death Arcana form, he was blatently destroyed by a fusion attack. Second time around, I dealt with him normally, including waiting out his period of total invulnerability. The thing is, you probably just weren't up there in levels. Persona 3 gets grindy, but then all of Shin Megami Tensei is this.

Yeah, people have told me that they've beaten him easily. I've been told that getting Lucifer makes battling him a breeze. I don't have the patience to try again.

 

[shrekfan246]

Majority of boss fights in Dragon's Dogma...ridiculous amount of mindless clicking in a typical target-that-glowing spot japanese action game design.
Plenty of bosses in Dark Souls were not difficult, but cheap( Kapri demon, in particular)...but at least they went down fairly quickly.

The beauty of Souls is that in the off chance a boss is cheap, there's usually a way to be cheap right back. For ol' Capri, I ran up the stairs in the back and stood on the back ledge lobbing firebombs and arrows until he had a sliver of health left, then jumped down and gave him his coupe de grace with a sword.

Or just stand outside his fog wall and lob them over the wall, I chose dung pies. I also cheesed stray demon and ceaseless discharge.

I found ceaseless Discharge surprisingly easy and beat him on the first try. I asked a friend if he's supposed to be a joke. Apparently he's a lot harder if you're not playing a strength build.

He hit me like a truck, so I ran around that big boulder and found a spot where I could fire arrows at his tentacles and he couldn't hit me. Took a long ass time though. Not as long as the stray demon though.

I don't know if you know this by now, but...

Spoiler

You can literally just make him follow you back to the fog door and he tries to jump off of the lava cliff to get you, which ends up with him just hanging on to the edge of the ridge you're on and leaves him completely helpless.

 

[omega 616]

Majority of boss fights in Dragon's Dogma...ridiculous amount of mindless clicking in a typical target-that-glowing spot japanese action game design.
Plenty of bosses in Dark Souls were not difficult, but cheap( Kapri demon, in particular)...but at least they went down fairly quickly.

The beauty of Souls is that in the off chance a boss is cheap, there's usually a way to be cheap right back. For ol' Capri, I ran up the stairs in the back and stood on the back ledge lobbing firebombs and arrows until he had a sliver of health left, then jumped down and gave him his coupe de grace with a sword.

Or just stand outside his fog wall and lob them over the wall, I chose dung pies. I also cheesed stray demon and ceaseless discharge.

I found ceaseless Discharge surprisingly easy and beat him on the first try. I asked a friend if he's supposed to be a joke. Apparently he's a lot harder if you're not playing a strength build.

He hit me like a truck, so I ran around that big boulder and found a spot where I could fire arrows at his tentacles and he couldn't hit me. Took a long ass time though. Not as long as the stray demon though.

I don't know if you know this by now, but...

Spoiler

You can literally just make him follow you back to the fog door and he tries to jump off of the lava cliff to get you, which ends up with him just hanging on to the edge of the ridge you're on and leaves him completely helpless.

Oh yeah, I knew but thanks anyway.

I watched a video of somebody doing it and was like, still seems like I'll die super quickly and my heart is always in my throat while playing it haha.

Like I got to just before the 4 kings fight and couldn't stand it any more and took a little brake ... of about 6 months now.

 

[shrekfan246]

Majority of boss fights in Dragon's Dogma...ridiculous amount of mindless clicking in a typical target-that-glowing spot japanese action game design.
Plenty of bosses in Dark Souls were not difficult, but cheap( Kapri demon, in particular)...but at least they went down fairly quickly.

The beauty of Souls is that in the off chance a boss is cheap, there's usually a way to be cheap right back. For ol' Capri, I ran up the stairs in the back and stood on the back ledge lobbing firebombs and arrows until he had a sliver of health left, then jumped down and gave him his coupe de grace with a sword.

Or just stand outside his fog wall and lob them over the wall, I chose dung pies. I also cheesed stray demon and ceaseless discharge.

I found ceaseless Discharge surprisingly easy and beat him on the first try. I asked a friend if he's supposed to be a joke. Apparently he's a lot harder if you're not playing a strength build.

He hit me like a truck, so I ran around that big boulder and found a spot where I could fire arrows at his tentacles and he couldn't hit me. Took a long ass time though. Not as long as the stray demon though.

I don't know if you know this by now, but...

Spoiler

You can literally just make him follow you back to the fog door and he tries to jump off of the lava cliff to get you, which ends up with him just hanging on to the edge of the ridge you're on and leaves him completely helpless.

Oh yeah, I knew but thanks anyway.

I watched a video of somebody doing it and was like, still seems like I'll die super quickly and my heart is always in my throat while playing it haha.

Like I got to just before the 4 kings fight and couldn't stand it any more and took a little brake ... of about 6 months now.

My strat for the Four Kings has just been to go full cheese every time; full Havel's set, poise your way through their attacks and just DPS 'em down.

I don't blame you, though. I took a break of about two years or so from the game when I got to the Crystal Cavern.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

I've never quit a game based off of a boss, but I've come close: Cynthia from Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl - mainly because of how out-of-nowhere her Amazingly Awesome team came from, and how they were such a stupidly high level compared to everything else you'd been fighting at the time. Because of the poor type distribution of the 4th Gen dex (pre-plat at least) all the other elite four were super easy to get through save the psychic guy, so I was able to hit Cynthia with a team of mid-50s - proceeded to get steamrolled something like 30 times because I didn't bring anything along that could take down a 68 Garchomp with perfect IVs, EVs and nature.

I managed to get her down eventually playing the 'Do I have more revives than you have PP' game and by getting so many levels steam-rolling the Elite Four just to get up to her, but fuck me I wouldn't be surprised if people just gave up fighting her. I know the Champion is supposed to be tough, but the difference in power between her and the Elite Four (and the entire game, even) was staggering. Much prefer her in Platinum, where her levels aren't as insanely high compared to when you finish the story so you're not stuck grinding for 6 hours just to have a chance against her.

After three months and 300+ pulls for Heroic Spine of Deathwing way back in WoW: Cataclysm, my guild fell apart. I also took my first "break" after that happened; I was sick of banging my head against that boss with a different healing partner every week.

After that, my tolerance for endgame raiding was never the same. When I came back, my guild stonewalled on Blackhand in WoD, and I just quit playing after about a month of wiping to this boss. Haven't been back since.

Something similar happened to my guild during Cataclysm too - didn't help that after Spine came Madness of Deathwing, which was just... god, so boring, Yet also insanely challenging, since if anyone died it was basically a wipe since you NEEDED so much dps and healing for that last 20%. Plus given it took 10-ish minutes just to get to that last phase... yeah, Dragon Soul can get fucked.

Personally I didn't end up taking a break until Siege of Orgrimmar in MoP and Hellfire Citadel in WoD - both of them really suffered from 'too god damn long' syndrome, which really wasn't helped by how there wasn't anything else to do besides them for over a year respectively. While some of the bosses had fairly interesting mechanics, the fact they took so long to get to and you had to fight through all the shitty 'murder all the add' fights just dragged things out far too long for my taste. Add in how you couldn't skip bosses reliably during SoO so you were forced to fight through the half-dozen boring-ass bosses so you could get to the interesting ones... yeah.

Worst part is after I took my break Blizzard made a big song and dance of how people who'd been playing for 10 years straight would get some awesome statue-thing - literally missed out on it by a couple months because I couldn't be bothered fighting Galakras for the hundredth time. Ah well.

 

[FalloutJack]

...Nyx Avatar - Persona 3...

Really?

No no, this surprises me. I fought and beat him twice, once the OP way and once the legitimate way. The OP way was just essentially showing off, that I'd accumulated such power to kill things that once he reached Death Arcana form, he was blatently destroyed by a fusion attack. Second time around, I dealt with him normally, including waiting out his period of total invulnerability. The thing is, you probably just weren't up there in levels. Persona 3 gets grindy, but then all of Shin Megami Tensei is this.

Yeah, people have told me that they've beaten him easily. I've been told that getting Lucifer makes battling him a breeze. I don't have the patience to try again.

This is understandable. These games require patience. I'm actually surprised I do well, in that regard, since patience is not my strongest virtue.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

...Nyx Avatar - Persona 3...

Really?

No no, this surprises me. I fought and beat him twice, once the OP way and once the legitimate way. The OP way was just essentially showing off, that I'd accumulated such power to kill things that once he reached Death Arcana form, he was blatently destroyed by a fusion attack. Second time around, I dealt with him normally, including waiting out his period of total invulnerability. The thing is, you probably just weren't up there in levels. Persona 3 gets grindy, but then all of Shin Megami Tensei is this.

Yeah, people have told me that they've beaten him easily. I've been told that getting Lucifer makes battling him a breeze. I don't have the patience to try again.

This is understandable. These games require patience. I'm actually surprised I do well, in that regard, since patience is not my strongest virtue.

It doesn't help that that fight is well over an hour long. Or at least it seemed like it was well over an hour long to me. And yeah, I don't have the patience for these things games that I used to.