Have you ever been playing a game where a boss suddenly shows up and just kicks your ass? I'm not talking final bosses, just bosses that you run into in the middle of a game and they just own you. Repeatedly.
I am playing Dark Souls. I was bopping and and having fun. Then I ran into the Orstein and Smough boss fight. They began destroying me. No build up to them, they just show up and start beating me down. I've died against them more times than any other boss combined. And I feel that that isn't going to change anytime soon.
Discussion: Do you have a personal That One Boss? Any painful stories to share?
TV Tropes page coining the phrase:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatOneBoss
I played Ragnarok Online for a short while a few years ago. I played on the free server and random bosses that were impossible for even a mid level player to kill showed up quite often.
I remember playing Ninja Gaiden 2 and flying through the game with ease and when I would reach a boss fight I would rage and not be able to get past them on my first ten tries. Some of the bosses of Dark Souls had been kicking my ass. The church tower gargoyles is one that comes to mind.
There was an encounter in Vanquish. I played the game once, and it was on Hard (I didn't know the game was that difficult). I died a lot throughout the game, honestly. And it took me about two hours to beat the final boss(es). But about two-thirds of the way through the game, you have to fight a couple of those Bia mechs (the ones that switch between a tiger-like form and an two-legged Axe-wielding form). That part took me almost as long as the final boss. They just stay right on top of you the whole time and have so many ways to hurt you (pouncing, slashing with the tail, launching multiple hovering turrets, axe attacks).
Carrion Claw from Ninja Blade is a pretty annoying bastard as he just spams massive amounts of lightning orbs and if even one hits you it guarantees all the others will as well (they freeze you on hit)
His enhanced version later on is even worse because he trades in the lightning orbs for non-blockable lightning BEAMS, which require an absolutely ludicrous amount of precision to maneuver through and come so fast that getting hit once means you'll be stunlocked to death.
I was playing Dragon Quest 8, but I ran into this Empyrea bird that just kicks my ass up and down, 6 ways to Sunday. I don't want to say that I have given up on the title, but I haven't played in over a month.
Caesar's Tent, Very Hard in New Vegas. Fight guys with high DT Armor, Ballistic Fists, all within an extremely confined space that also makes VATS freezing very frequent.
Dark Link was quite annoying the fist time you verse him. Although he's a mini-boss...
I don't really remember bosses from games too much... Umm... Ah! Those freaking rail shooter where like, the boss jumps out from a tree or something. They are designed to kill you and steal all your money. And they do.
The Clock from Super Mario RPG, several Pokemon rivals... Uhh...
My most recent "that one boss" was just a few hours ago. Octaking in Duke Nukem Forever. Maybe if that fucker would stop constantly respawning regular Octabrains constantly, I could make some progress. But nope. Keeps kicking my ass. I turned the game off for now, I was getting to annoyed to keep trying.
I'd like you to visualise something for me. The specific genre this boss is found in is '2D shooter', but apply the following scene to pretty much any action-oriented game you want:
So you've just gone through a marathon level with a boss that was harder than you'd expect, not least because three of them all ganged up on you. Your resources, like your life, are running low, and there aren't many easy ways to get them back. The enemies in this area aren't as tough as that boss, though, and you start to get back into a groove.
Then the music slows down a little. A girl comes out from behind something, and she doesn't look happy, which can be guessed both from her expression and her unsheathed swords. She starts attacking, and for a while she isn't much tougher than anything that came before. Then... before you know it... IT happens.
Hello. This is the part where I kill you.
A cut-in and some text appear, clearly signalling a much more powerful attack. Everything in the game slows down to a crawl, and the graphics turn to grayscale, except for you and her. All of a sudden, she's not in your range any more. It doesn't take a forensics expert to tell where she went: she left a line behind her.
And bullets are coming out of it, very quickly.
While trying to get back to where you can hit her, and trying to dodge the bullets, she begins charging again - without the cut-in - and the bullet-time kicks in again. You use it to dodge the bullets near you, and all your efforts are in vain as she moves somewhere else again, leaving another bullet-spewing streak. Eventually, assuming you survived the long (or long-feeling) onslaught, she drops a health item and runs off, leaving you with another few waves to overcome.
Then you remember: each stage in this game has a mid-boss, and a boss. That was just the mid-boss. And that girl comes back as the boss, with several more attacks, each somehow more sadistic than the last...
Welcome to hell. Your entertainer for this evening: Youmu Konpaku.
~~~~~~
What I just described is my usual experience with stage five of Perfect Cherry Blossom, a game which everyone who knows the series will attest to its having a bite far worse than its bark. Although the slow-motion thing seems like a way to make this boss less difficult, the implication is hard to ignore: this boss is so hard, you can't beat her at the regular game speed. What also makes it annoying is that she Won't. Stand. Still. like most of the others, which in turn means you take longer to drain her health, which means you spend more time trying to dodge her ridiculous attacks...
...Yeah. That's my two cents, anyway. I'm sure there are much harder bosses in the Touhou series, but Youmu has a special place in my mind. Filed under 'DO NOT F*** WITH'.
Hades in God of War III on Chaos Mode. I still have nightmares about that...And you wanna know something funny? No one of the bosses gave me as much trouble as him.
The most recent one I can remember was a few years back, when I played Heavenly Sword. That final boss... oh God, so much rage...
As for regular bosses sometime midgame... hmm, that one's even further back. Remember Devil May Cry 3? The very first boss you encounter is Cerberus, that three-legged bastard dog with the ice attacks. That guy nearly drove me up the wall.
I'd like you to visualise something for me. The specific genre this boss is found in is '2D shooter', but apply the following scene to pretty much any action-oriented game you want:
So you've just gone through a marathon level with a boss that was harder than you'd expect, not least because three of them all ganged up on you. Your resources, like your life, are running low, and there aren't many easy ways to get them back. The enemies in this area aren't as tough as that boss, though, and you start to get back into a groove.
Then the music slows down a little. A girl comes out from behind something, and she doesn't look happy, which can be guessed both from her expression and her unsheathed swords. She starts attacking, and for a while she isn't much tougher than anything that came before. Then... before you know it... IT happens.
Hello. This is the part where I kill you.
A cut-in and some text appear, clearly signalling a much more powerful attack. Everything in the game slows down to a crawl, and the graphics turn to grayscale, except for you and her. All of a sudden, she's not in your range any more. It doesn't take a forensics expert to tell where she went: she left a line behind her.
And bullets are coming out of it, very quickly.
While trying to get back to where you can hit her, and trying to dodge the bullets, she begins charging again - without the cut-in - and the bullet-time kicks in again. You use it to dodge the bullets near you, and all your efforts are in vain as she moves somewhere else again, leaving another bullet-spewing streak. Eventually, assuming you survived the long (or long-feeling) onslaught, she drops a health item and runs off, leaving you with another few waves to overcome.
Then you remember: each stage in this game has a mid-boss, and a boss. That was just the mid-boss. And that girl comes back as the boss, with several more attacks, each somehow more sadistic than the last...
Welcome to hell. Your entertainer for this evening: Youmu Konpaku.
~~~~~~
What I just described is my usual experience with stage five of Perfect Cherry Blossom, a game which everyone who knows the series will attest to its having a bite far worse than its bark. Although the slow-motion thing seems like a way to make this boss less difficult, the implication is hard to ignore: this boss is so hard, you can't beat her at the regular game speed. What also makes it annoying is that she Won't. Stand. Still. like most of the others, which in turn means you take longer to drain her health, which means you spend more time trying to dodge her ridiculous attacks...
...Yeah. That's my two cents, anyway. I'm sure there are much harder bosses in the Touhou series, but Youmu has a special place in my mind. Filed under 'DO NOT F*** WITH'.
Oh god, I remember that fight. He has some serious nukes if I remember correctly. I had to let him slaughter my party to build up SP and then I went all out in one turn. That was about the only way that I could beat him.
Seriously, that bugger took over 70 tries over the span of two weeks or so. But we finally did beat him and I even got a video of it to Youtube. With A LOT of excess footage filling my hard drive.
One that sticks out in my mind is Seymour's third stage boss fight in FFX. While his first two forms are reasonably challenging for where you should be at those points, the game just cranks the ass-kicking dial way past 11 for that one fight, just thinking about it gets me pissed...
s69-5 said:
... the Kratos clone fight in GoW1 on God Mode is nigh impossible... but GoW3 was an easy plat.
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