That darn boss.

[rosac]

It's that time of year again, when a thread gets made to ***** about really cheap bosses who are total horsesh*t

I'm talking the ones that are cheap and nasty, that wouldn't be half as difficult if it weren;t for some extraneous factor, ridiculously OP super move or just being ludicrously damage sponges for no reason.

My nomination: The worm, from the first dungeon in links awakening.

He's fast, takes up most of the platform you fight on, you take 1 heart of damage if you touch him (you have 3 hearts at the time) but the absolute killer is that if you get touched by him, you get sent flying. You fall into a pit surrounding the tiny platform, and you have to restart the fight from scratch. You don't take damage from the fall, but having all your effort (and presumably 1 or 2 hearts from the actual fight) wiped away is very very frustrating.

Also- Whitney from pokemon Gold/Heartgold. Rollout. All that needs to be said in my eyes.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Yeah I am just going to put up the obligatory but at the same time often all so appropriate general inclusive term that are fighting game bosses. For every one that is fun to play against it seems there are countless others who are nothing but an absolute annoyance at best and downright potentially controller throwingly annoying at worst.

I think its worse in fighters because of the natural repetitive nature of the game its like ok you beat that annoying as hell cheap ass boss now play them again in 5 minutes. Course you could just quit before you get to the boss but that often feels unsatisfying as well. Thankfully some fighters have locked off the boss behind a story mode or forgo one entirely now (good idea in both cases imo).

SNK bosses are some of the more famous ones for this ofc but plenty of fighters have annoying as hell bosses that have infuriated me more than even the most annoying bosses in other games over the years. Honestly besides M.Bison (Dictator) in SF2 and Tengu in DOA2 I cant think of a single fighting game boss I loved fighting.

 

[Kingjackl]

I'm gonna go with one from this year and say the Watchdog of the Old Lords from the Defiled Chalice dungeon in Bloodborne. There aren't many Souls bosses you can say have artificial difficulty, but this one of them. Basically, in the Defiled Chalice dungeon, your health is halved and so is the physical damage you receive. The Watchdog uses all fire attacks and hits like a truck, meaning that unless you've maxed vitality, virtually every hit is an instant kill. Combine that with NG+ level health and you have a fight that can take around 10 minutes to beat and has to be done perfectly. Otherwise, you die. And die. And die.

 

[Silvanus]

Has to be. Has to be, has to be, has to be.

No others even come close. He doesn't hurt you, he just knocks you off to the floor below, necessitating a trek back upstairs... and every time he does, his own health is replenished. He also moves far faster than you.

A Link Between Worlds is already a fantastic game, but it accomplished the impossible by making Moldorm fun to fight with a few tweaks.

 

[Barbas]

The Forest Zone Boss from Donkey Kong 64. So many trips into the lava below before I punched him right in his face and sent him crashing to an infernal end. That'll teach him. Dick.

 

[Slenn]

Boost Guardian. Metroid Prime 2. At the time of facing him, you can only retrieve 4 energy tanks, not giving you much health to work with. The entire battle is primarily focused on using your morph ball in a small circular arena while you dodge the Guardian and his charging ram attacks. He's unpredictable because he doesn't ricochet like a rigid object against a wall. This makes his strikes completely random every time he bounces off a wall. And he hits you for a huge chunk of each energy tank. The faster you can kill him, the better.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Has to be. Has to be, has to be, has to be.

No others even come close. He doesn't hurt you, he just knocks you off to the floor below, necessitating a trek back upstairs... and every time he does, his own health is replenished. He also moves far faster than you.

This guy...this guy right here...

I've got nothing else really...unless I were to just regurgitate complaints about Goro, Kintaro and, Shao Khan seemingly knowing your button-inputs as you...ya know, make those in-puts and hitting like a truck with each attack. Or the other complaints about needing to be 100% perfect if you want to beat the boss-races in games like F-Zero GX on the Gamecube.

 

[mysecondlife]

Centipede Demon from Dark Souls.

Actually, lets combine all the bosses from Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith into a one giant 'fuck this shit'. None of them were interesting to even speak of.

 

[Fractral]

Mot from Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne manages to stand out as a cheap boss in a game of cheap bosses. He has basically just 3 moves: a move which grants him two free moves, a move which increases his magic attack, and the most powerful multi target magic spell in the game. He uses them pretty much at random.
What ends up happening a lot, is that he'll use the move to give him more turns several times in a row. Then he'll use the buff and the spell until he runs out of turns/you die. Or he'll give himself more turns again, just to shake things up. Mot gets the first move, and is very capable of killing you without even giving you a chance to attack.

Spoiler

Some honorable mentions go to: Beelzebub, for having a move that instantly kills any party member not outright immune to it; Baal Avatar, for casting uncureable status ailments on anyone not immune to them; Trumpeter, for instant killing you even if you are immune to instant kill moves; and Dante, for having a more or less 100% critical hit rate.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Rafflesia from Final Fantasy XII after my recent 2nd playthrough.

Thanks to having prior game knowledge I was able to get some of the better treasures and Marks earlier and had a much stronger team overall... and he still wrecks you harder than any Esper not named Zodiark. Why? Because of the MP-draining field that will have your MP at 0 within the first 10 seconds of the battle. You need MP for spells, any useful techniques, Espers, AND Quickenings/Limit Breaks. Without it, you're stuck with normal attacks and items, against a boss who periodically summons Malboro Kings (anyone who has played a Final Fantasy knows why this is a problem) and he isn't shy about hitting you with confusion, sleep and poison himself while he's at it.

Elder Wyrm was annoying in that way too, but at least with him you can use Esuna to cure whatever he gets you with and he only uses Sporefall (all the status ailments in the world dumped on your head!) at predetermined times in the fight, never more than 4 times maximum. Also he's technically optional. Rafflesia isn't.

Seconding Mot from Nocturne.

For further examples that may jog your memory, check the TVTropes enty for Goddamned Boss.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

There have been a few bosses that I've wanted to throw the person out the window who created them, but two come to mind right off the bat.

1) Seth, Street Fighter IV. Screw you, Seth. Screw you and screw whoever said it was okay to program all your crap. I hate you. I hate you with a burning fire that I haven't felt in years. I never beat you, no matter how hard I tried, and no matter what setting the game was on. And so, I did something I hardly ever do--I shoved your game under my dresser so it would be too much trouble to get out once the, "Okay, ONE more try..." voice started talking to me, and then I trade you in. I hate you and I hate you.

2) The stupid space train thingy from Bayonetta. I wasn't great at that game, but I was getting through it. Bosses took me a few tries, but I soldiered on. Until I was climbing up into outer space, and a freaking train (or were there two trains?) started attacking me at range. And I couldn't figure out how to damage it in turn. I would shoot it, and I'd do a little bit of damage, but nowhere near enough to make it possible to survive the damage he dealt in return. I could have looked it up online, but by that point I was so frustrated with the game that that fight broke me. I gave up and traded the game in.


Honorable mention goes to Aeronite from Lightning Returns. Because adding a timer to a super hard boss fight where you need precision timing nearly on the level of arcade shooters is just a blast of fun.

 

[RedDeadFred]

For quite a while, the final boss from Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns had so many bugs that the fight was a nightmare to complete. It's a shame because it was mechanically, a very fun fight. You pretty much had to beat it in one attempt or not at all (and then restart the instance which wastes a good 20 minutes).

His bugs included:
Having the updrafts that were necessary for survival simply not work sometimes.

Having part of the platform not spawn on the second attempt (meaning if you fail once, you're guaranteed to fail at least twice, making your equipment more damaged).

Having his additional mechanics carry over from each failed attempts. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that a lot of these mechanics can interrupt a long channel ability, causing the fight to take significantly longer as you try to perfectly time the skill.

 

[KenAri]

Yunalesca, or whatever her name was, from FF10. Actually made me quit the game. There's an unskippable 10-minute cutscene right before the boss, and the boss is in no way fun to fight (Lots of cheesy status-effect mechanics, etc). Then when you think you've got her, bam! She casts Instakill-all and literally just gameovers you, unless you pre-emptively gave yourself prevention against that specific move. Which of course you won't have done unless you've read a walkthrough.

Trial-and-error mechanics really have no place in an RPG like this in my opinion. Especially when the fight takes ages and with cutscenes beforehand.


Special shout-out to my homies Ornstein and Smough; the only bosses that I've genuinely recognised myself become better as a gamer overall for having fought.

 

[stringtheory]

Centipede Demon from Dark Souls.

Actually, lets combine all the bosses from Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith into a one giant 'fuck this shit'. None of them were interesting to even speak of.

Ceaseless Discharge was easy, roll out the way of his crashing limbs, run in and slash, rinse and repeat until dead. Demon Firestarter was basically the asylum demon but this time with FIRE! Orange charred ring makes Centipede Demon beatable, good luck otherwise. Bed of Chaos is bullshit, at least your progress isn't wiped when you die. Yeah...none of them were particularly memorable. Especially since the only real new enemy in demon ruins are the statues, as fun as it is killing early bosses in a couple of hits, there were just too many of them.

 

[Fijiman]

The only one that comes to mind is the final boss in the Claptastic Voyage DLC for Borderlands the Pre-sequal. Now, I'll admit that my character might not have been maxed out or have all the absolute best stuff, but that is no excuse for me to spend close to an hour fighting that fuckers and only be halfway through the fight. I had to bring a friend in before I could beat him, and even that took half an hour.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A boring example somebody was going to bring up anyway: Sephiroth in the KH games. I'm not sure if he's more difficult in 1 or 2. I usually go with 2 because I fought him there first and the trauma was born there.

On the subject of Borderlands, DLC bosses like Crawmerax or whats-his-name from BL2 tend to be impossible unless you're ganging up with other players.

Firelurker and Maneater from Demon's Souls as well.

Also- Whitney from pokemon Gold/Heartgold. Rollout. All that needs to be said in my eyes.

Ugh, yes. The difficulty spikes up immensely (for the first and last time) once you bump into Whitney in Goldenrod.

 

[teqrevisited]

Spoiler: Streets of Rage

The Blaze clones. The fucking Blaze clones. As if one cheap boss wasn't enough they make you fight two of them at once. Twice. This year I got the game beaten on hardest and when I got to these two I died so many times to them that I finally figured out how to kick the shit out of them perfectly. 8 year old me and my friends would have loved to know what I know now.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Yeah I am just going to put up the obligatory but at the same time often all so appropriate general inclusive term that are fighting game bosses. For every one that is fun to play against it seems there are countless others who are nothing but an absolute annoyance at best and downright potentially controller throwingly annoying at worst.

I think its worse in fighters because of the natural repetitive nature of the game its like ok you beat that annoying as hell cheap ass boss now play them again in 5 minutes. Course you could just quit before you get to the boss but that often feels unsatisfying as well. Thankfully some fighters have locked off the boss behind a story mode or forgo one entirely now (good idea in both cases imo).

SNK bosses are some of the more famous ones for this ofc but plenty of fighters have annoying as hell bosses that have infuriated me more than even the most annoying bosses in other games over the years. Honestly besides M.Bison (Dictator) in SF2 and Tengu in DOA2 I cant think of a single fighting game boss I loved fighting.

Just gonna hijack this post to bring up the utter bullshit that is Unlimited Hazama in BlazBlue because SOMEONE has too and it might as well be me. I just bought CSEX again on PC and I am NOT looking forward to going through the story mode again only to hit the Unlimited Hazama wall. Also the final boss in DOA4 was ridiculous. Her base throw does like half of your HP, it's stupid.

I do sort of like Unlimited(?) Ramlethal in GG Xrd SIGN but I am incredibly biased because Rammy is 100% Based Girl and holy shit is her super bar passively recharging? She can cancel Dauro into itself 3 times? Her swords CHASE you?! Oh god and to top it off they copied UMVC3's "difficulty" where if she recognises you pressed a button she just instantly supers you through it. As someone who only plays Ramlethal, the first time I played against that I was just going "you can't do that! No those cancels don't exist!"

I enjoy Ram's design though. It's as if ArcSys recognised that Lambda-11 in BB, while very fun for the person playing her, was frustration incarnate for the other guy but they still like the idea of throwing swords around to create pressure. Also she wears a costume that looks suspiciously similar to my main girl Mu-12's pre-transformation costume, speaks kind of similarly to her and *also* declares war on the entire world (unlike Mu, she actually got some headway in that department and didn't get instagibbed the second she awakened.) Well played Arcsys.

Also Galactus was a terrible boss in UMVC3. He's not even hard or particularly fun, you just whail on him while he charges incredibly long charge time moves that get interrupted anyway if you do enough damage.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

If you're not expecting him, Beldr can be a huge pain in the ass in Devil Survivor. In short, there are a number of enemies on the map that can petrify you when you attack, every three turns or so, Beldr will use a move that absorbs health from every unit on the map (and then I think he respawns any defeated demons) and Beldr is only vulnerable to one attack. Yep, the only way to hurt Beldr is for the main character to punch him. With his phone strap. Because the only thing he's vulnerable to is mistletoe. Too bad if you were building your MC as a magic user, because this fight WILL suck hard.

 

[MysticSlayer]

The dragon at the end of The Witcher 2 is one fight I have no regrets lowering the difficulty on. The largest boss in the whole game is fought in one of the smallest arenas, the first of which she can slash across in a single attack. Combine that with broken hitboxes (seriously, I watched her claws go through me with no damage while also seeing them completely miss while taking heavy damage!), and it is a ridiculously frustrating boss. The half on top of the tower wasn't so bad, but the first half...That was the worst boss fight in a game which already had almost nothing but awful boss fights (the first Letho fight is the only one I really liked). And then to make matters even worse, the fight with Letho shortly after is in a large arena that would have made for a great dragon fight. But nooooooo, they had to stick it in that stupid tower!

Also, fuck all those bosses in Shin Megami Tensei IV that were resistant to (or would heal from) whatever the weakness of the previous boss was. They aren't tough. They're an unfair gotcha that wastes the player's time before they just grab a team that destroys them, which will never be the team from the first fight because that team was likely made up to take on the boss before.