Games with Awesome Boss Battles

[shimyia]

Devil May Cry 4 has some really nice bossbattles - esspecially with Nero which has the fatality (the demonic arm) makes some really nice and cinematic scenes.

Half-life 1 mostly has good bossbattles except the last.

Prince of Persia The Two Thrones has really good ones.

Prototype last bossbattle was godlike for me... it was such a close defeat.

Max Payne 2's was legendary.

Portal has Half-lifey bb (which are unorthodoxly good)

Psychonauts bossbattles were mostly good except the last.

Metal Slug (on PS1) was epic.

American McGgee?s Alice

Chtulu saves the World loved the bossbattles (were mostly playing the game for them and the humour)


etc.

 

[MammothBlade]

Metal Gear Solid 3, especially, The Fear, The End, and towering above all, The Ladder.

Spoiler: Final Fantasy X has same damn good boss battles too.

Seymour, Yunalesca, the Sky Guardian... all of them presented a great challenge which kept me on edge throughout the game. Just a shame that the final boss was a cakewalk in more ways than one.

Resident Evil 4 had several - including trolls, lake monsters, and slimy tentacle freaks, but the final boss was similarly a letdown.

 

[LilithSlave]

They're not really that difficult. Most just require planning and preparation.

A lot of planning and preparation, though.

To face the Wall of Flesh Solo, you'll just about want to make wooden platforms across the underworld, flood the underworld even though it evaporates, just so a layer will of lava will turn to Obsidian and not be a danger to you. Get a pair of Rocket boots and Cloud in a Bottle, invest in buying a Minishark, invest in turning a Minishark into a Star Cannon, a Demon Scythe spellbook, hundreds of ammunition for your Minishark or Star Cannon(or hopefully both), all the hellforge items(that includes a boomerang), loads of restoration potions, max health and mp, an ironskin potion, a magic potion, and an Obsidian Skin potion, just in case you didn't build enough bridge.

And it's STILL possible to die. Especially if you don't manage to multitasking keeping both your HP up and keeping distance from the Wall of Flesh at the same time. (You get cornered, you get lots of damage, it's best to keep no pillars hung up high in the sky. Take those Obsidian bricks and add them to your home, and take those hellforges and put them in your home once you get the Molten Hamaxe. You don't have to worry about them being melted in the lava if you make a mistake, and you don't have to worry about those towers jutting into the sky getting in your way)

And all of this preparation takes loads of hours to accomplish.

Personally, I recommend a sandgun. Because sand is the easiest ammunition to get a hold of. But that costs a lot of money to make. If one actually cares to earn it, the quickest way I've found is to face loads and loads of earth eaters and sell their remains. About 20 worm foods should be plenty prepared to have a boss rush and afford the illegal gun parts.

 

[Andy Shandy]

I'm going to go with what pretty much everyone else is saying and will say and the Metal Gear Solid series with The End probably just about being the best.

Another particular favourite is the last fight in MGS4 against Liquid.

Metal Gear Solid 3, especially, The Fear, The End, and towering above all, The Ladder.

I can't believe I nearly forgot about The Ladder. Man, that was one battle of attrition.

 

[albinoterrorist]

Hehe, reminds me of this.

Man, Ryoji's such a troll.

"You can kill me now, but it won't stop the end of the world!"

Heh.
That video (and hiimdaisy's P4 work) was actually what first got me interested in the Persona series.

Gotta love that Ryoji.
"Your girlfriend just died to give you enough lifeforce to live?
TOO BAD! The world ends in 2 months anyway!"

 

[Yureina]

Multiplayer... there can be no doubt that WoW had some pretty awesome boss fights. Nefarian, Four Horsemen, Archimonde, and Kil'Jaeden were pretty yummy. Alas, everything in Wrath and beyond just... didn't do it for me. Probably because they were usually really easy, or just re-used old mechanics. x_x

I also liked the bosses in FFX, which was probably the last "proper" game I played with bosses. That tripe in Human Revolution doesn't count.

 

[Terminate421]

Skyrims dragon fights are always hairy, that's because I refuse to sit in cover for now than 2 breath attacks

 

[II Scarecrow II]

Not many of the games I play nowadays have boss fights in the traditional sense, but waaaaay back on the N64, Lylat Wars, Banjo Kazooie and Mischief Makers all had pretty hardcore bosses.

Unfortunately in my experience, most boss battles nowadays boil down to "shoot/stab/blow up the glowing bit." I don't know if that is different in any of the games listed above, but it kinda takes some of the challenge out of it.

NOTE: Portal/Portal to excpeted from the previous paragraph. That game had a very interesting boss battle Nothing like a TIMED PHYSICS PUZZLE to get the adrenaline pumping!! I'm a sad person aren't I....

 

[The Wykydtron]

Dark Souls? They are quite well designed... And difficult don't forget that.

Except the Gaping Dragon for some reason, fucking easiest boss in the game. Piss easy charge attack, obvious tail whip, high damage i assume. If it ever got close enough to smack me with it's ribcage teeth things. It's like they forgot to make the impressive looking wtf is that dragon thing actually live up to it's awesome appearance. When you're running around in full heavy armour and you're trolololing around the boss... I don't know, maybe it's pentance for the Bell Gargoyles?

Then there be Blighttown... Fuck you! You piece of shit! x1000000 and that's all I have to say on the matter.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call had some great ones: the fiends, the Moirae Sisters, the guardians of the three temples, every boss in the final area...

Also, the original Spyro The Dragon trilogy. Sure, maybe they weren't all that epic and grand, but I still find bosses like Toasty, Ripto and "The Monster To End All Monsters" to be pretty awesome.

 

[dimensional]

Theres a few that always spring to mind most notably

Orochi in Okami as mentioned a few times already even if it is repeated a few times to many

FFVII especially emerald and ruby weapon truly epic fights when you first face them.

Dizzy Devil in Buster busts loose - Probably one of my favourite boss fights, I would play the game just for this fight you have to feed him until he falls asleep sounds boring but was great unfortunately most of the other bosses in it were rubbish.

First flying colossi in shadow of the colossus - easily my favourite fight in the game but the whole game is just awesome boss battles.

Metal Slug series has always provided brilliant boss battles (although I havent played them all)

Devil may cry - the original game had the best bosses in the series made even greater by Dantes stupid quotes.

Gunstar heroes again the game just had fantastic and imaginative boss fights throughout.

Rez these boss fights were something to behold absolutely beautiful and very different its just a shame I was never good enough to finish the last stage.

The demo for Asuras Wrath made it look like that may join my list of games with awesome boss fights if they can keep up the fun but ridiculous fights already shown.

 

[teknoarcanist]

The MGS series has always had fantastic fucking boss battles. Almost every one is the kind of thing where you want to hold it up to other designers like "THIS IS HOW YOU FUCKING DO THIS."

They're rich, they're multi-layered, there are eight different ways you can do every one -- rather than shoehorn you through a specific scripted experience, it's like Kojima went, "Okay. This is this boss character. These are his objectives. This is how he acts. This is how he responds to X, Y, and Z. Here's the environment; here's how it helps you achieve your objective, here's how it deters you. Here's some interesting environmental doohickies that do neat things if you do X to them."

The Fury in MGS3 is one of the better boss battles I've ever played, period.

 

[Legomaniac91_v1legacy]

The fight against Stalord in Twilight Princess was a pretty fun fight. There are a couple of bosses in the Golden Sun series that are pretty cool. I also enjoyed the fight with Ninetails from Okami. Awesome music, a dark atmosphere, and the fact that Ninetails was essentially a twisted mockery of Amaterasu and the brush gods added a degree of unease to the battle.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Third person hack-n-slash type games. Zelda, God of War, Bayonetta, Shadow of the Colossus and other such games.

terraria, have you seen the shit they throw at you?

I have to agree based almost entirely on the Wall of Flesh. That thing is goddamned huge and unnerving.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Zelda games - accept no substitutes. Other than that, Super Metroid had some pretty memorable ones, as did Witcher 2. Unlike Zelda, those games don't fuck around boss-wise - if you miss a shot on Crocomire, he's going to gain an absurd amount of ground on you, if you get hit by Letho's Aard spell, he's going to spam firebombs while you're getting up, and so on.

 

[TheOneBearded]

The ones from Batman:Arkham City. The battle with Grundy was amazing and the one with Freeze was extremely tense, but my favorite has to be the one with Ra's al Ghul.

My least favorite boss battle is the one with Fontaine from Bioshock - the sheer personification of a useless addition to a game (which is why the sequel went with waves of tough enemies in the end instead of one main bad guy).

 

[Zen Toombs]

Well, the Greene boss fight looked like it would be awesome.

An hour or two later, it was... less so.

 

[Frozengale]

JRPGs in general have the best boss battles. They are epic, long, and the bosses are huge.

All three of these do not a good boss battle make.
They can be parts of good boss battles, but none of these are required for a good boss battle.

Long is the first one that makes me cringe. Why does a good boss battle have to be long? Some of the most exhilarating moments in a game can happen in the space of a couple minutes. Long to me means tedious and boring, drawn out. Yes a good boss battle can be long, but due to the restraints in games long will more than likely result in tedious and repetitive.

Huge... why huge... whenever I played the Megaman games I always feared the small bosses. They were fast, agile, and usually could pull of some devastating move that could take away half your half. It always seemed the smaller the opponent the harder it was to deal with. Less telegraphing, faster moves, harder to hit. In some of the games you actually started off killing Giant 10 Story tall robots, and they were piss easy, and not all that fun. Huge doesn't mean good.

And finally epic... I think the blatant mis-usage of this word has become a big problem, people don't know what it really means anymore. Sure the definition of the word could be evolving but I think if that is the case then it is in some sort of limbo where no one knows what it really means. I will use the original definition.
1.
noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style: Homer's Iliad is an epic poem.
2.
resembling or suggesting such poetry: an epic novel on the founding of the country.
3.
heroic; majestic; impressively great: the epic events of the war.
4.
of unusually great size or extent: a crime wave of epic proportions.

A boss battle does not have to be heroic or majestic to be good. It can be down right ugly and depressing. I can't think of a good example right now, but I know they exist.

 

[OpiateChicken]

Golden Sun 1 & 2
Halo 2 (Brute Chieftan)
Super Mario World (Bowser in his little floating thing)
Pokemon: Blue Version
Ocarina of Time (Ganondorf/Ganon was much more badass than Majora)
that being said, Majora's Mask (the twin bosses in Ikana Canyon)
Mass Effect 1
Super Smash Bros. (Master Hand)
NHL Hitz 2002 (the last team you have to play to win the Midway Cup is hard as fuck)