That one boss/area that makes you think twice before replaying a game

[D-Class 198482]

Recently, I decided to pop Prototype 1 in again to replay it. I got the amazing pleasure of re-encountering THIS boss:

This is MOTHER, the third or fourth boss of the game. And she's horrible. She's constantly attacking, one way or another -- if you get too close to her weak points, she'll hit you with them. If you aren't constantly moving, you be hit with a barrage of rocks. If you ARE constantly moving, you'll be hit with homing stun-lock bullet things. And we're not even mentioning her scream attack, that covers a wide distance and can either kill you in one hit if you get stuck on a building or if the head motion she does beforehand wasn't something you could differentiate from the other head motions. There are plenty of fleshy civilians around to heal you, yeah, except the Hunters that spawn 24/7 can stop you from eating them while you're doing the animation, and if that doesn't work, one of her several attacks will stop you.
After I beat the game, I went back to my NG+ in Bloodborne. And then I got to Yahar'gul again, which was a location that has been nagging at my memories for the whole of NG+ up till that point. Constantly respawning, strong enemies for the first bit, then a huge, sprawling area that's hard to navigate even if you use the shortcut, leading into the fight with the One Reborn, who is absolutely atrocious in the same way MOTHER is -- constantly attacking, all the time.
What experiences do you have like that? What boss/area in a game makes you look at the New Game button and go "I really don't want to go through that again"?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Any game with a timed section or an escort section. I tend to remember those bits the worst.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Whenever I play Dark Forces I always use the level skip code to bypass "Anoat Sewers" thanks to its trademark enemy:

Call me a wuss if you like, but these motherfuckers scared the living shit out of me as a kid. They sneak up on you and strike at the most inopportune moments, bursting up suddenly RIGHT in your face or when your back is turned. Their attacks HURT too, completely bypassing your shields and taking away a sizeable chunk of health.

I have to take frequent breaks anyway, as these old DOOM-style shooters give me motion sickness if I play them for more than half an hour.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

The 'Tokay trading sequence' before the 3rd dungeon in Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. Most of the time I consider it to be far superior to its companion game Oracle of Seasons, but...

To begin with, you need to track down several items in various places in both time periods before you can even set out on the open seas on your raft. Once there, it isn't long before a storm destroys the raft you worked so long to build and strands you on Crescent Island where the native creatures, the Tokay, proceed to make off with all of your items. Getting each one usually requires a trek back through the entirety of the island, sometimes both past and present, including a difficult minigame. Until near the end, you're forced to choose between having the Shovel, Roc's Feather or Power Bracelet without any idea of which one you'll need when. Also you won't be able to get your Shield back until past the 7th dungeon (granted it gets upgraded as a result but still), so you'll need to go back to Lynna City and buy a new one.

It's the worst slog in a portable Zelda game (except possibly Phantom Hourglass which I haven't played). At least the dungeon that follows it is pretty fun once you have all your stuff back.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

That quick-timing ***** Cleopatra from Dante's Inferno!

And I was all cool with her up until the end. Shoot out sex monsters through bloody daemon vaginas? Sure.
Damned baby souls with spikes instead of limbs clawing their way out of her nipples? Great!
Her jealous boyfriend being a fuck-me huge juggernaut? Can do!

But the end of the fight mercilessly quick QTEs when she's trying to seduce you were just so damned hard. I remember being stuck on her for a while, which was probably only like...60mins or so, but that's a long time to replay the same 4sec long QTE sequence, especially since it was the final part of the fight.


EDIT: Oh! And as much as I love the game, every single boss fight in FF6 after the world is destroyed. Manly because there's no real trick or weakness to them. They just have stupid amounts of health. Like you cast your super Esper and rock a giant electro-walrus' world, dealing -5600 damage! Huzzah!
Except he has 100,000HP. Boo!

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Areas:

1) The ending section in Advance Warfare where you're on the floor and all you have is a pistol and you can't even aim down the sights. Even on Regular, I died there so many times because I couldn't hit the enemies.

2) Mass Effect 3's entire ending section. Yes, I'm one of those people. I still have fond memories of the series and sometimes want to fire it up again, but then I think about how it all ends and the urge just...dies.

3) Dragon Age: Origins' Mage Tower section. Anyone who has played that area understands.


Bosses:

Er...nothing. I can't really think of a boss that's ever made me go, "You know, I really don't want to put myself through that again." Weird.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Belial and all bosses after him in Devil Survivor, but fuck Babel especially, dear god.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Remembering Unlimited Hazama in BlazBlue CSEX almost makes me want to not replay the story mode of the game in the PC release. Almost. I'm still going to because the joke endings are hilarious all the way through and Based Girl Makoto had a pretty good route, at least until her bad ending.

Hazama can be beaten, he can be killed... Kind of. You finally beat his bullshit but he's like "yo good job fuckboy, my power level in the canon is ridiculously above the entire rest of the cast so you get to eat shit" but in gameplay he's fair enough. Unlike that Unlimited Ramlethal crap in Guilty Gear Xrd where I just do not want to do Arcade Mode with a character i'm not 100% comfortable playing because she fucking CHEATS.

Such terrible irony that Terumi is the worst character in Chrono Phantasma... What is with the canonically most powerful person in the cast being awful in gameplay? They did this with Elizabeth in Persona 4 Arena too and that game was really well balanced.

 

[Trunkage]

Dark souls and the Four Kings. Maybe its just the way I play, but this is by far the hardest.

Smough and Ornstein are a distant second. For me they were only hard on my first run because I didn't know that you could upgrade your weapons and armour...

 

[Saltyk]

Breath of Fire III.
The Desert of Death.

That doesn't sound so bad? You poor deluded fool...

Spoiler: Welcome to Hell

Say hello to the next several hours to days of your time playing Breath of Fire III. There are no landmarks, just expansive desert and the stars. You can use the stars to navigate, but only until the sun rises. Then, it's time to camp. You have to drink water every so often and you can only carry about 16 servings. You'll go through about 3 serving every two nights. If you don't drink water, your Max HP will be reduced until you leave the desert.

The game will randomly throw you into a random encounter location to fight enemies to boot. Not too much of a threat, but as soon as you come out, you will be facing some random direction and you need to get your bearings again. And you better make sure you find the right star since there is a fake star to trick you.

But it's not all bad. The guide that leads you to the desert tells you how to get to the Oasis. The directions are even written down on a sheet of paper in your tent. WHICH ARE COPIED DOWN WRONG AND I ONLY RECENTLY REALIZED THAT FACT! I seriously never even noticed that until I was playing the game a couple years ago. And even then, only after a few failures (it's literally only one word that is wrong, so it is easy to miss).

Add it all up and this one location completely halted my ability to beat this game several times over. Maybe I wouldn't have had the problem if I had noticed the directions in the tent were wrong. At the end of the day, I would get to the Desert of Death, try to navigate my way through it, run out of water, and have to return to base camp and start again. This would go on until I got tired of making no progress and started another game.

The only reason I got through it in the past was that someone I knew had a magazine that told you how to get through the Desert.

I hate this area so much that a while back I got Breath of Fire IV off PSN and got to a very similar area after a while. I immediately looked up how to get through there as fast as possible. I did not wish a repeat of the Desert of Death.

At least there are some really good Rare weapons and armor that can be found in the Desert. I guess that is a small consolation.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

3) Dragon Age: Origins' Mage Tower section. Anyone who has played that area understands.

Oh...You want me to go into The Fade? OK, what if I can maybe...NOT do that? I seriously hated going into The Fade in Origins...it doesn't matter what the context I just hated those sections of Origins.

---

Whenever I try to get back into Majora's Mask, I wind up stopping after Snowhead Temple. This is because Great Bay Temple is my most hated Dungeon in the Zelda series. In both the N64 and 3DS version, this Dungeon just wasn't ever fun; I felt like it took the worst ideas from the Water Temple of Ocarina and cracked the problems up to 11. Of course that could have just been the awful water physics and the fact that the ice arrows are never properly explained...then there's the 3D version that makes the ice arrows contextual outside of combat, only working on very specific patches of water. Coupled with a redone Zora's Mask you end up with a version of The Great Bay Temple that's far inferior to the already abysmal original.

As for a game that I actually like, I never really liked the section of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic whereon you begin training as a Jedi. I think the planet was Dantooine but while I enjoy the setting and the quests, I found that when I got there I was generally at an awkward middle level. There was a really good chance that a RGN would cause my attacks to miss or for those attacks to barely do any damage. The fights during this point of the game were just a bit tedious since I didn't feel as powerful as I should have felt even if I wasn't as weak as I knew I used to be.

 

[RisenStorm]

Misago, the fourth boss of Ikaruga. On what's already by far the most frustrating level, we have my least favorite boss. Unlike almost every boss/miniboss in the game, you have next to no room to move in this boss fight. Basically, if one twitch of your thumb or finger is even slightly off, you die. Combined with the fact its design is just bland (It's a core with several barriers and a bunch of guns), it's just not a fun experience. Sure, the final bosses are far harder, but they're also far more interesting.

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy gives us the fire pentagram puzzle. For those who don't know, at the end of a Mummy section (which is essentially a series of puzzles you solve by inflicting severe and amusing harm on the aforementioned mummy), there is a massive sarcophagus. Sarcophagi is this universe are capable of speaking, and this particular sarcophagus says that it will not give you what's inside it unless you light all five torches. surrounding it, in the shape of a pentagram. The trouble here is that when a torch is lit (basically you need the mummy to touch it while ablaze), it lights the two across from it, connected by lines, or extinguishes them if it was already lit. Words really do not do this level, which is already one of the trickier puzzle sections in the game, justice. Playing it is really the only way to understand how incredibly frustrating and tedious it can be.

Pikmin 2 has the Submerged Castle. This level, for those who don't know, is effectively timed, with the dungeon's boss able to show up on any floor. It's a roller-riding ghost that can instantly flatten any Pikmin it runs over, and it can't be killed until the fifth floor, where Purple Pikmin can be acquired. You can't take any Pikmin in except Blues. It is chock full of every hazard the game has to offer a player. The boss can show up on any floor. Blues are only immune to water. You do the math. The one consolation is that you can find Bulbmin (immune to all non-explosive hazards), but only if you have less than 100 Pikmin. Hope you only brought 50-60.

Bayonetta's Isla Del Sol. This game is supposed to be about slicing up angels with a variety of weapons in cool combos, so why am I being judged on my skills at a cut-price Space Harrier? It also ends with the worst boss in the entire game, that being the fourth battle against Jeanne.

Rollercoaster Tycoon's Corkscrew Follies (that's Added Attractions for those not in the U.S.) has Harmonic Hills, which is the 18th scenario. It's basically Rainbow Valley (the second-to-last) scenario in the base game, only with a new twist: Not only can you not modify *any* scenery, you're also not allowed to build above tree height. Oh, and this scenario has no way to build below ground and abysmal ride selection. It took me ten years to finally beat this level.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

Hazama can be beaten, he can be killed... Kind of. You finally beat his bullshit but he's like "yo good job fuckboy, my power level in the canon is ridiculously above the entire rest of the cast so you get to eat shit" but in gameplay he's fair enough. Unlike that Unlimited Ramlethal crap in Guilty Gear Xrd where I just do not want to do Arcade Mode with a character i'm not 100% comfortable playing because she fucking CHEATS.

I almost never play Arcade mode in any Guilty Gear because of how broken the final boss for any character will inevitably be. I'd rather just actually play the game against other people and actually learn something than get frustrated trying to beat something that isn't consistent in any other part of the game. So agreed.

I do find BlazBlue to be pretty toned down in the "bullshit bosses" category though, so that's something.

You'd think I'd have problems with something like the Souls games or Bloodborne maybe, but nothing really stops me in any of them. Probably because I make a point to run through the really annoying bits as fast as possible and I'm not terrible at it. So I guess I'd go with...I dunno. Matador from SMT Nocturne or something. Also the prison section in Digital Devil Saga 2. Yes, it is really early in the game. Yes, for some reason I do not ever want to finish it, as much as I want to finish the DDS series.

 

[lechat]

max payne 3 unskippable cutscenes.
probably enough said but when my monster rig tells me the game is still loading after 5 minuets I'm just gonna assume the game is forcing me o watch another overly drawn out melodramatic scene.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

3) Dragon Age: Origins' Mage Tower section. Anyone who has played that area understands.

The deep roads segment was worse.

OT: The second form of the final Boss from Kingdom Hearts.

Dodge, Dodge and hope you get lucky.

It's weird, because his 3rd and 3.5 (I guess) form(s) are such cakewalks.

 

[Drakmorg]

Guess I'll be the person to mention Manaan from Knights of the Old Republic, since that shit is mandatory for discussions like these.

For those who don't happen to know what I'm talking about, first of all, shame upon you and your house for not playing the best Star Wars game. Second of all, imagine a lengthy section of gameplay where 75% is taken up by walking at a speed that would lose a footrace to a man with no legs. That's it, just walking really slowly. Occasional battle here, one or two puzzles, sprinkled in between long, slow strolls in boring-to-look-at scenery. No massive, nigh-insurmountable challenge, the enemies and puzzles are both fairly easy, just lots of wasting your time.

 

[MysticSlayer]

The Legend of Zleda: Twilight Princess
There's a point where you have to defend a wagon while bombs are dropped from the sky to make it go off course and it is being chased by guys with flaming arrows. If the wagon is hit with a flaming arrow, you have to use the boomerang to put the fire out. You also have to take out the "birds" dropping the bombs and deal with the guys trying to set the wagon on fire. The whole thing takes place on your horse, and there's constant switching between the bow and boomerang to have the right weapon for the moment. Oh yeah, and the camera and lock-on for that game on horseback were in no way designed to handle how much you have to do in that section.

And to say that the whole section is annoying would be an understatement.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm almost finished with my first and last playthrough of Final Fantasy X.

Aside from the fact it doesn't feel like a FF game(unlike IX, which I adored), this game has one of both.

Boss: Seymour. Fucking Seymour. He's a smug creep from the get go and then you get to kill him. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop him and he keeps coming back over and over again. So not only will the man not stay dead but he's more annoying each time you face him. My reaction to seeing him inside sin was "God, not this jerk again".

Yunalesca was painful but even though her boss fight was long and annoying, least when it was over it was over. Seymour keeps coming back because Yuna never gets the chance to do a 30 second sending to get rid of him(or she just isn't trying hard enough. She really flubbed her shot In bellvue...both times).

Sin: Both a boss and an area. The monsters are annoying as hell and at this point I don't need to fight them except to charge my summons to overdrive, it's not very interesting to look at and it really feels like they kind of ran out of Ideas(IX did the "weird space final dungeon" far better and more interesting). And then there's the fact there's so many damn bosses to fight through, including 4 different parts of Sin's outside.

Okay, I get he's a giant lovecraftian monster and thus won't/shouldn't go down easily and while I appreciate the novelty of using the airship as part of the battle, the first two phases of the battle are tedious as hell. Not very hard, but I'm pretty sure it took me an hour from the point I engaged to the point I could save again. And that's before the infamous timed battle, where if you don't kill Sin(again) within 18 or so turns, you're dead.

I've played this series. I know it's big on weird final dungeons and giant multi-stage final bosses but you need to make them fun and interesting. Sin was neither and there's still another hour or so of game to go AFTER you actually kill his face before the time limit.

So yeah, I found two things more annoying to me in FFX then most of what Tidus says.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Well, considering I haven't continued my second playthrough of FFX since arriving at Bahamut's Temple, I can assuredly say it's one of those. It's the least fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Dark Souls is a fantastic game, but the Bed of Chaos, and most of Demon Ruins and Izalith in general, are so weak that it's a chore to try to get through them. Mainly because you're almost guaranteed to die a few times in BoC, and then it's a run of a couple of minutes back to the boss, and if you miss that one narrow ledge you're supposed to land on, it's instant death and back to the bonfire. That's the reason I was grateful for the bonfires close to boss fights in DSII, and even more grateful for the better shortcuts in Bloodborne.

Speaking of DSII, most of the game's quite alright, but every time I play it, I dread Shrine of Amana. You know what I'm talking about.