History Main / GoddamnedBoss

[[folder:Platform Games]]
* ''VideoGame/DukeNukemManhattanProject'' has the BonusBoss Wozma. It's an immobile green sphere with about ten times the health of any other boss in the game and takes a good half-hour of repeatedly jumping up and firing off rockets at it before you finally do enough damage to kill it. What do you get for your trouble? [[CosmeticAward An icon on your saved game]]. That's it.
* VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog:
** The boss of Carnival Night Act 2 in ''[[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles Sonic 3 & Knuckles]]'' is this unless you exploit Sonic's insta-shield move. Before you can attack, you have to wait for him to circle after you, drop a big ball, charge up his tractor beam, outrun said beam, and then, finally, you can hit him once or twice while he retrieves the ball. Then the whole sequence repeats while your timer ticks ever closer to the deadly [[TimedMission 10 minute mark]] since you're at the end of [[MarathonLevel a very long level]].
** ''VideoGame/{{Sonic Rush|Series}}'''s bosses are often like this, taking their sweet time doing nothing but you can't hit them, or giving you very little room to hit them without being stupid hard, and most of them give you an even shorter window of opportunity when they go into TurnsRed mode. ''Sonic Rush Adventure'' completely averts this -- the bosses take millions of hits, but you can hit them often and they are usually quite short. Even the one that takes just four hits as you have to navigate an obstacle course. At least you're doing something. The Huge Crisis boss in the first game is probably the worst offender: it's basically just like the first boss, only it likes to waste tons of time launching volleys of easily dodged missiles at you.
** Chaos 4 in ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure''. He's fought in that waterfall lake in the Mystic Ruins, where he swims around underwater, knocking down lily pads and attacking with energy waves, and is only vulnerable to attack when he pokes his head above the water. When he's down to his last hit point, he seems to spend ages meandering around out of reach, much longer than earlier in the fight, and it can wear on your patience waiting for the opportunity for that final hit. It's worse that you have to fight him in ''three different characters' stories.''
** The second [[MirrorMatch Sonic vs. Shadow fight]] in ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' is ridiculously easy to not die on, but ''actually doing damage'' can be difficult, as Sonic/Shadow is almost always capable of making himself immune to your attacks (and has excellent reflexes).[[note]]Until you notice that he leaves himself completely open to attack for a few seconds after using his special attack. Dodge it, then homing attack or spin-dash quickly to win![[/note]]
*** On the other hand, because of that, this boss makes great life grinding material due to the umpteen rings on the track.
** Metropolis Zone in ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2''. In a game where most bosses can be hit several times in a row (and some can be hit the required eight times before it's finished its first attack), it takes an age to beat. It's surrounded by seven flying canisters, which rotate around the boss, meaning you can't just strike at will like most other bosses without risking damage. Doesn't help that it darts along the floor both ways, so you have to jump over it (a full jump as Sonic and Tails, hope and pray your jump is timed so the balls are lower as Knuckles, or you will get hit). It then centers itself, expels the canisters round itself, before pulling them back in horizontally, which is when you attack. After a successful hit, it releases a canister, it opening to reveal a balloon Eggman. Bursting this gets it to start all over. Once you're rid of all the canisters, it tries to fire a laser at you, which is very quickly destroyed in comparison of all the waiting for an opening you would've just endured on the previous seven hits. This was made so much easier in Sonic & Knuckles, where a change in jump physics meant you could get all the hits in after Metal Sonic had gone through that pattern once, unless you were dumb enough to grab the fire shield, which would mean you'd have to do it the long way.
** & The new boss created for the [[DummiedOut restored]] Hidden Palace Zone in the [[PolishedPort mobile remaster]] is a standout example. Whereas most bosses in the rest of the game have broad hitboxes and could be easily approached for landing hits; the boss for this stage has a smaller, stricter hitbox and constantly floats out of the player's reach. Compounding things was that the only way to land hits on this boss was for the machine to be soaked by its own timed bomb water explosions, resulting the fight also doubling as a MarathonBoss thanks to how lengthy its boss patterns are. The result is a boss that offers only one tedious, very specific way for players to attack. Anyone going into this boss expecting it to be similar to the others is in for [[DamnYouMuscleMemory a bad surprise]].
** Sonic's fight with Iblis in [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006 Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)]] just might be the king of this in Sonic games, if only because of how boring and drawn out it is. Unless you have the Purple Gem (which at this point in the story, you won't) you'll spend about a minute and a half between each attack just standing there waiting for Iblis to expose himself. God help you if you miss an opportunity to attack him. By the way, Shadow has to fight this boss too, and he never gets a purple gem to abuse.
*** Also, Silver's boss fight from the same game. Whenever you get close to him while he isn't jumping, he grabs you telekinetically and throws you into the wall. Not only can he get you in infinite teleport lock if you're up against the wall and keeping collecting the rings you drop, but due to the game's glitchy nature he can ''throw you out of bounds''. At best this means you can explore a completely empty version of the hub while Silver is trapped within the bounds of the area you're meant to be in. At worst it means you ''don't hit anything and fly through space infinitely''.
** Egg Emperor in ''VideoGame/SonicHeroes'' is just plain obnoxious. He spends most of his time [[GetBackHereBoss backing away from you]] just fast enough to be hard to hit, and it has HP in the hundreds, when the most damage you can do in one hit is around four. Of course, to do that much damage, you'll have to find "power cores" that are hidden in various parts of the arena, most of which are risky to try to get to for one reason or another. His attacks are easily dodged, but just disruptive enough to get in your way when you're trying to attack ''him''. He isn't even particularly ''difficult'' -- he just takes so long to beat that you're practically guaranteed to slip up eventually.
** The Time Eater from ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations''. Not only is it the glitchiest part of the game, the other characters never shut up.
* All four of the bosses in ''VideoGame/SonicSpinball'' are Goddamned ones to an extent. While their arenas aren't particularly deadly and the bosses themselves can't kill you, all of them can knock you ''out of their arena and back to the level'' (though fortunately they don't heal when they do this), and they all take quite a few hits to kill, which can take forever without some practice. Oh, and most of them can summon flunkies.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManClassic'':
** From ''VideoGame/MegaMan1'', Fire Man. It's not that he's terribly difficult to beat, but that it's nearly impossible to avoid getting hit a few times in the process, unlike the other Robot Masters. The reason for this is his inconsistent firing pattern which makes it very challenging to time jumps to avoid them, and in some cases makes it quite literally impossible to avoid. He also creates small flames near or even underneath where you're standing or jumping, which can force you to land in a spot where you won't be able to dodge an oncoming shot. Even with hitting him with his weakness, the player is likely to suffer a couple of hits -- not so bad when he's the last boss of a stage, but can be absolutely ''infuriating'' during the end-game BossRush, the only one in the whole series that gives you NO health bonuses after defeating the bosses and forces you to start from the first boss all over if you die during any of them. Of course, if you know a rather cheap strategy of how to beat him, he'll be much easier.
** Bright Man from ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'' also counts, as he has an ability to stop time and then body slam you while vulnerable. It hurts a ''lot''. Bright Man is the bane of anyone trying a no damage run.
** Big Pets, the first Wily boss from ''VideoGame/MegaMan5'', which if you don't want to waste weapon energy for the Crystal Eye, can often involve switching weapons mid-pattern. It also doesn't help that the pattern to beating it gives you a small window to hit its weak spot, during which it's entirely likely one of its attacks will intercept yours, forcing you to do the entire thing over.
** The Atetemino from ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' frequently disappears into the ceiling, and is also hard to hit with its weakness, the Mega Ball.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManX'':
** Wheel Gator, Magna Centipede, Bubble Crab, Serges, and to a lesser extent Crystal Snail from ''VideoGame/MegaManX2''. They follow a common trait in that they they tend to be hiding for the most of the battle, whether it's under sludge, seemingly nowhere, in a bubble, behind a barrier, or in a shell. In the SNES version (as compared to the X Collection verison), Serges' main attack also lags the game, which doesn't do much but slow things down and make it take longer. Wheel Gator is probably the worst, though, since using his weakness against him causes him to dive immediately if you don't know how to chain him properly. None of them are excessively difficult, but they fights can feel like they're dragging on.
** ''VideoGame/MegaManX6''
*** High Ma has a gimmick in that only special weapons hurt him. The game's lack of playtesting can mean that you can run into him in an optional boss room...and be completely shit out of luck as you can't hit him. When you do have everything (such as the final fight with him), you figure out his pattern and know what to do but it can take some time for you to even get that opening necessary. Even at that, few of the weapons you have can reliably hit him aside from Mijinion's weapon.
*** The Nightmare Snake from Blaze Heatnix's stage, often begrudgingly referred to as "that stupid doughnut thing again" since it will ''not'' leave you alone and you have to fight it a minimum of five times just to get through the stage. It's not overly hard and is fairly susceptible Infinity Mijinion and Metal Shark Player's weapons, but it's annoying to fight and likes to saturate the battlefield with projectiles on higher difficulties which make it tricky to hit so you will '''''hate''''' this thing by the time you've gone through that stage. Its overall goofy appearance that looks like the love child of a [[Franchise/PowerRangers Megazord]] and a bagel, not to mention its utterly boring and lackluster fight which just consists of it lazily floating around don't win it any popularity contests, nor does the branching path in the level which means you must transverse this stage at least twice and will have to fight this stupid thing ''ten times at minimum'' (more if you fail against the notoriously difficult Blaze Heatnix) to get OneHundredPercentCompletion.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends'' has two bosses, one right after another (which can be fought in either order) in the second and third sub-cities. Pity the fool who completes the first (and very easy) sub-city and challenges the next one [[DifficultySpike without bothering to save and heal]]:
** Guynie Toren of sub-city 2, a massive and heavily armored train-like reaverbot. He can only be damaged when he opens his hatch to [[MookMaker unleash Hokkoro and Sharukurusu]], leaving a small window to damage him, ''and'' he's also a DamageSponge. The problem here is he gives you little to no reaction time before opening his hatch again, and you'll be too busy dealing with the Sharukurusus, which are among the [[DemonicSpiders deadliest enemies in the game]] (the tactic with dealing with them in ruins is typically to stay out of their reach and run like a little baby). The only thing stopping Guynie Toren from becoming ThatOneBoss is most savvy players will eventually figure out the tactic[[note]]Let him flood one half of the huge battle arena with enemies until he's not releasing anymore. Then let him head to the other end and destroy one from a distance. He'll only release one at a time now which can easily be dispatched between attacks on him[[/note]] which makes him much easier.
** Bruno who guards the entrance to sub-city 3. Another DamageSponge who has a very small hitbox (his abdomen), spams the annoying [[ThatOneAttack shield-breaking-homing-orb]], and can destroy the buildings you use as cover or to stand on to hit his weak spot easier. You can only land hits on his weak spot with a tricky jumping shot, making the fight just drag on and on while your health slowly drains from his attack spam, and more often than not when dodging an attack you'll get blocked by a building or debris and get hit. Tron refers to Bruno as her masterpiece and destroying it [[VillainRespect makes Tiesel admit defeat and praise Mega Man]], and with very good reason: it does ''not'' go down without a hell of a fight.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends 2's'' train boss. Good God, ''the train boss''. It's actually a very easy fight with very easy to dodge repetitive attacks, but the train has [[DamageSpongeBoss so much health]] that the fight will easily take more than an hour to complete. The battle's last portion, where you're trying to shoot out the engine, is quite literally twenty straight minutes of standing there not moving (except to ''occasionally'' dodge an attack) and just holding the fire button down.
* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'':
** Kingfin isn't difficult, he's just ''insanely'' annoying. After you get the first hit on him, he'll surround himself with several torpedo fish which have a nagging tendency to [[TakingTheBullet get in the way of your attacks]] against Kingfin, no matter how perfectly you've lined up your shot. The fight essentially just devolves into a pattern of find a shell, swim around a while looking for Kingfin, find him, line up your shot, watch it hit one of the torpedo fish instead of Kingfin, curse your bad luck, and then start the pattern all over again. This fight can take a while.
** Also Bouldergeist in a standard playthrough (on the Daredevil run, he's an outright ThatOneBoss). On this difficulty, the fight consists almost entirely of running around and grabbing rocks to hit him with. It's pretty easy, it just takes a little while.
** Bugaboom is an odd case. While his first two hits are easy, and you're not likely to be killed by him, you will likely spend several minutes trying to land the third hit. It's so difficult because he flies very quickly, and frequently flies horizontally, making that final Ground Pound a matter of perfect aim and timing.
* ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DWorld'' has the Hisstocrat battle. Not the first one in World 3, with just Hisstocrat himself, or the second in World 8, with his queen. The third battle (found in [[spoiler:the third bonus world]]) has [[DualBoss both King and Queen Hisstocrat fighting you simultaneously]], which means the battle takes twice as long and you have twice as many things to keep track of. And you don't have time to be patient with the battle, because the stage in which this boss appears is a boss rush, where you have to fight six of the game's bosses with no breaks, and you have only 500 seconds to defeat all of them. Most of the others can be defeated relatively quickly, but the Hisstocrats take forever to bring down, and if you take too long on them, you're likely to run out of time later in the level.
* The Koopa Clown Car in ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy''. It has three forms. The first two are really easy, but involve sitting through around two minutes worth of animations every single time. And you'll be doing this numerous times, because the third form really is hard. If you die in the room right after the boss fight, you have to do the entire boss battle over again. Hell, even if you ''do'' remember to go back, the entrance to the previous room isn't level with the ground, so you'll try to go back and find that you apparently can't.
* The battle with Mr. Patch in ''[[VideoGame/BanjoKazooie Banjo-Tooie]]'', in which the player has to aim at randomly appearing weak spots while struggling with clunky flying controls and trying not to get clobbered by [[ItMakesSenseInContext exploding beach balls]].
* Trouble Bruin in the tower level of ''VideoGame/DynamiteHeaddy''. You climb a tower with little platforms on it, forced-scrolling up. He uses a tool to remove sections from it, so you have to keep moving up. Keeping pace is very easy. Sometimes he will [[TacticalSuicideBoss decide to move in]] (the only way you can get hurt besides falling, which is not instant death in this game), and that's when you can hurt him. It's [[LuckBasedMission random]] whether he moves in or just keeps taking chunks out of the tower, and you can be there for quite a while. Most players good enough to get here could last all day, but it's still easy to get yourself killed out of impatience. The game even gives you a secret bonus point for taking a long time on this boss, as if to say "here's a consolation since the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] is being so damn mean to you". This, combined with the game's [[DifficultySpike split difficulty]], hurts the game's {{Speedrun}} appeal significantly.
* [[RecurringBoss Lord Vorselon]] in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankFutureACrackInTime''. His attacks aren't particularly hard to avoid, but they are annoying (mostly being variants of BeamSpam), [[BossBanter he loves to hear himself talk]], he can be quite a DamageSpongeBoss depending on difficulty (made worse in the first fight with him by your limited weaponry), and he has this nasty habit of turning invisible, during which time he is invulnerable, but can still attack ''you''. Oh, and sometimes he reappears [[CameraScrew off-camera]]. The fight with him can degenerate into "Vorselon appears, attacks you while you chip a small sliver off his health bar, then disappears" ad nauseum.
** The final battle against the [[RecurringBoss Thugs-4-Less leader]] in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankGoingCommando'' is a very long tedious fight where you have to shoot at his [[HumongousMecha giant robot]] via some automated turrets on the roof of buildings. Mostly, you're up in a turret the boss is throwing homing missiles at you which you constantly have to shoot out of the sky to avoid taking heavy damage. These missiles tend to alternate sides, so rather than constantly firing at the boss, you're constantly shooting out the missiles, hoping that in your movement a few shots hit the boss. After a few rounds of missiles the boss will decide to come over to smash the turret with a very telegraphed attack that's easy to dodge. This of course means you have to find another turret to keep doing damage. So long as you keep moving, and can hit the homing missiles you should never take damage, but the high health of this boss means it can take at least ten minutes to do this [[note]]if you manage to chip the very last points of his HP off with a normal weapon that needs levelling up, that weapon will gain TONS of Exp for the "kill"; very good for a one-shot Exp boost on otherwise-difficult weapons[[/note]].
*** This is made worse by the fact that if you attempt to use a regular weapon on the boss, the game will lock onto the space ''between his feet''. And no, even though there's a target there, it won't register as a hit. So if you want to throw some Mini-Nuke or RYNO II shots at him to chip off health and break the monotony, you've got to actively fight with the mechanics to get your shots to even connect.
* The Khrome Keeper in ''VideoGame/PacManWorld'' is very little of a threat, as all he can do is kick crates at you. The biggest, most annoying threat of the fight? The magnets. To damage the Krome Keeper, you have to hit some switches that are superheated, requiring you to use the [[ChromeChampion Chrome Ball]] that drops from the crates he kicks to avoid being damaged. This, however, makes you affected by the electromagnets that move around above said switches. Run under one and it'll pick you up, leaving you helpless until Chrome Pac-Man mode wears off or (more likely) drops you in a damaging acid pool, which you can't escape while in Chrome Pac-Man mode and can only escape once it wears off (and you better quickly get out while your temporary invincibility lasts). Now add on the fact that this is all timed, and the switches are randomized and all around the place...
* Master Kaag, the ''first'' boss in ''VideoGame/Rayman3HoodlumHavoc'' has only one attack, which is crushing you, but it's a very debilitating one that takes you several seconds to recover from. To damage him, you have to press the buttons on the field 3 times to summon the Shock Rocket powerup then shoot him with it 3 times, but once the powerup is on the field he can simply walk over to it and stomp the center to cancel it out, forcing you to start the process over again. Even if you get the powerup, he can still crush you and it will wear off rendering your efforts fruitless, or the powerup can wear off while the Shock Rocket is in mid-flight. Adding insult to injury, he's a BrokenRecord that spams the same line ad nauseum.
* ''VideoGame/AlisiaDragoon'''s Stage 7 boss: a DamageSponge of a MarathonBoss with a very repetitive attack pattern and short vulnerability window.
* Kroctopus in the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance version of ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry3DixieKongsDoubleTrouble''. It takes 9 hits to defeat (which is a lot for this series, excepting ''[[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountryTropicalFreeze Tropical Freeze]]''), and dodging its attacks usually consists of either waiting on the platform for it to repeatedly extend and retract its tentacles slowly in a different direction or reacting quickly and jumping out of the way as it actually aims them at you, without much in between. It probably doesn't help that it's significantly easier to fight with Dixie and her [[GameBreaker helicopter spin]] than Kiddy.
* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'':
** '''Fatty Whale''': This boss's attack pattern is randomized slightly, making him pretty unpredictable, and his attacks are pretty hard to dodge too! When he gets the palette swap in Milky Way Wishes, he gets even worse, using a few new attacks, including attacks where he jumps across the arena! He's actually much slower in ''Ultra'' compared to how he was in the original, but he's still a pain to take out even in that version.
** Pyribbit in ''VideoGame/KirbyTripleDeluxe''. While he can be rather dangerous at first, it becomes clear that a lot of his attacks are very telegraphed and follow a clear pattern. But no matter how good you get at the fight, there's nothing that can stop from jumping into the background, and absolutely every opportunity to attack him when he comes down is incredibly short. Can be extra frustrating in [[spoiler:Dedede Tour]] where you not only have to deal with the harder (DX) form, but you're trying to be quick about it, too! This actually applies to most bosses in ''Triple Deluxe'', since this game introduced the mechanic of 3D background layers and every single boss (even minibosses) uses it to some extent, dragging the fights out. That said, none of the others are anywhere near as bad about it as Pyribbit.
** ''[[VideoGame/KirbyPlanetRobobot Robobot's]]'' Holo Defense API on its last hit: It zips around the room and does not even attack, but it is so difficult to hit that it can take more time to land that hit than the entire first phase of the boss.
* ''Every'' boss in ''VideoGame/RaymanOrigins'' qualifies due to basically being a memory test. They follow the exact same scripted attack pattern every single time, but give little to no warning or time to react with each of their attacks. Every single boss fight goes "Get hit with attack one and die. Dodge attack one, get hit by attack two. Dodge attack one and two, get hit by attack three. Lather, rinse, repeat." The battles are quite easy: the game isn't challenging you to be good at it so much as it's challenging you to either be clairvoyant, have good memory, or be [[GuideDangIt following a walkthrough]].
* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioOdyssey'':
** Hariet of the Broodals. Even if you don't find her difficult she may still give you your run of money in terms of frustration. First off, of all the four she's the only one who using Cappy is a must, that is, while the others can be fought with techniques to work around with, the only way to knock off her metal bonnet is to use Cappy to throw her bombs back at her. To top if off, her bombs leave lava spots when exploding which all the player can do is either go around/jump over or wait for to disappear. This can be more frustrating as she leaves trails of bombs retreating into her helmet from being stomped unless a bomb is thrown at her bonnet before doing so. Also, once her helmet's off, she'll run in panic making it difficult for the player to stomp her and if not in time, she'll then reset, and start her tactics all ''over again.''
[[/folder]]

* ''GoddamnedBoss/TheBindingOfIsaac''

* [[DamageSpongeBoss Incredibly high]] HitPoints. Bonus points if it ''[[HealingFactor regenerates]]'' its incredibly high hit points. Extra bonus points if it heals at a rate ''just under'' how fast you can damage it.

[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
* In ''VideoGame/MagiaRecordPuellaMagiMadokaMagicaSideStory'', Challenge Tower Floor 34 of the timed event "Spurred to Separation" ([[DubNameChange "Breakpoint" in North America]]) has you fighting 9 Madoka-senpais. They don't have much HP and don't hit particularly hard (with the exception of her Magia which can one hit kill Dark Magical Girls), but there's 9 of them and all of them cast Taunt every turn, making your attacks go everywhere. If you don't blast them with Magia immediately, prepare to fight a long annoying battle against all of them.
* Tortigar in ''VideoGame/SkiesOfArcadia''. He only has two attacks, a normal attack and a hit-all attack, neither of which are particularly damaging. However, he has [[DamageSpongeBoss rather high health]], tends to spend every other turn [[ThatOneAttack making himself invincible]], and has the ability to ''[[HealingFactor fully heal all of his health]]'' and WILL do so at least once every time you fight him. The main strategies for beating him are either spamming Spirit moves and hoping he isn't invincible/healing himself on that turn, or saving up your Spirit bar to its maximum, using one of your LimitBreak techniques that make your enemy skip a turn, and hope he doesn't heal himself during the two or three turns you're recharging.
* Bosses in ''VideoGame/MarvelUltimateAlliance'' games aren't particularly hard in and of themselves. Unfortunately, these bosses do nothing but spam attacks that knock your heroes all around the room and interrupt your attacks. Plus, while they can knock you all over the place, they themselves are [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard completely immune to Trip, Stun, Popup, and Grappling.]] This reaches head against wall levels when you find that a party full of [[MightyGlacier Mighty Glaciers]] and [[FlyingBrick Flying Bricks]] can be kicked around by minor villains whom they should realistically be able to one-shot. Basically, every boss fight slaps your entire team of superheroes with TheWorfEffect. This was slightly improved in the second game, which gave larger characters like the Thing and the Hulk "knockback resistance," so they could no longer be PunchedAcrosstheRoom.
** A particular example, the Mandarin, requires the player to guide an exploding spider robot into a very specific location to make the boss temporarily vulnerable. You're more likely to die from the spiders exploding before you get them to the spot than you are from anything the boss can throw at you.
* Lavos' Outer Shell, in ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger''. It's a BossRush against... well, ''every boss in the game'' (skipping a handful of sub-bosses like the R-67s and Beast Keeper). But their stats have not changed in the slightest, so you'll be one-shotting a great deal of them, meaning about 90% of the battle is waiting for Lavos to announce its next form, killing it, and waiting for the game to catch up. (The other 10% are Black Tyranno and Giga Gaia, which are still kind of tricky.) Some of his forms will also ManaDrain you upon death. You have a breather to drink some Ethers (and probably have quite a few to drink), so it's not really dangerous so much as the giant space bug giving you a big ole middle finger for no real reason other than sheer spite. Fortunately, if you choose to [[RammingAlwaysWorks slam the Epoch into it, you skip this part.]]
** Special mention must be made of when Lavos imitates [[spoiler: Nizbel]], as he's an enemy whose defense has to be lowered via [[spoiler: lightning spells]]; otherwise, the party is lucky to be doing even double digits of damage, even with their most high-end attacks and spells. When you fight the actual boss during the game it's not a problem, as [[spoiler: Crono, who has lightning magic, is a permanent party member until his death/resurrection, which occurs after that fight]], but if you forget to bring [[spoiler: either him or Magus]] along to this part of Lavos's final boss rush, you're stuck either [[DeathOfAThousandCuts slowly whittling down his health]] for half an hour, or resetting the game (or dying).
** The Son of Sun may be this depending on your set-up. You can't attack it directly, instead you have to pick one of five targets that orbit the darned thing to damage it. Pick correctly and you inflict a set quantity of damage; pick wrong and it counter-attacks. It's completely [[LuckBasedMission Luck-Based]] which one is the right choice, and he shuffles them around regularly with no hope in hell of keeping your eye on the right choice. The intended solution is to have a fire-immune party member use a screen-filling attack to quickly figure out which one doesn't counter (and is therefore the target). Of course, if this is your first go at the fight or you don't have the equipment, it's going to take a while.
* ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'' has a Goddamned BossRush: the elemental robot-things in Terra Tower. They have quite a few hit points (and tend to spam healing elements at the worst times). They also love to spam status buffs and debuffs to turn the entire field to their elemental color, which sends the power of their elements through the roof. Combine this with ''Cross''' already severe EndingFatigue and you have a recipe for maximum annoyance.
* Many of the bosses in ''VideoGame/StarWarsTheForceUnleashed'' can be these if you're having an off day. They end with mandatory ActionCommand challenges, and if you keep screwing them up, you'll wish you could just give 'em a basic slash and call it a day. Same deal with ''VideoGame/SpiderManWebOfShadows.'' The Gorog in the sequel to the Force Unleashed can be a MarathonBoss with repetitive mechanics.
* ''VideoGame/PaperMario64'':
** [[RecurringBoss Jr. Troopa]]. He has higher defense than most enemies to begin with, and gains a new immunity with each battle. And this being a game where you only have three or four modes of attack, that's a big deal. Your only options are to spam certain partners' attacks - and the more effective ones tend to cost a ton of [[{{Mana}} Flower Points]] - or to come into the fights (which are all totally unannounced) specially equipped.
** Big Lantern Ghost. You fight it in a dark room, where you can't target any enemy unless you can see it; the only enemy you can see is its lantern, which you must hit at least twice so that you can attack the Ghost in the first place. Except that it blows out the lantern on a regular basis, forcing you to keep. doing. this. Making matters worse is that one of its attacks hits your partner (which forces you to miss their turn for multiple turns at a time) and is nigh-impossible to guard against with your ActionCommands except by pure dumb luck. And speaking of ActionCommands and pure dumb luck, the battle routinely lags if you're playing the UsefulNotes/VirtualConsole release of the game, making even basic timed hits obnoxiously difficult and the battle much harder than it needs to be.
* ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'':
** Francis attacks by hiding with his ChameleonCamouflage and summoning {{Action Bomb}}s, which aren't too threatening on their own. But Francis is only vulnerable for the short window of time he reveals himself, and while you can see his shadow by flipping into 3D, 3D mode locks your camera to face right, meaning you can't see if he's behind you.
** King Croacus is guarded most of the time by his armor, has spinning flower petal blades the size of Bowser cycling (albeit rather slowly) through the arena, and is somewhat difficult to hit. He's not hard, he has relatively low HP, and is easier once you figure out that you can grab the giant spinning blades and throw them at him (which is a little unintuitive, since that's the sort of thing you tend to ''avoid'' in games).
** Mimi is relatively easy to defeat, the problem is that to beat her, you have to hit her with the jewels she throws at you, knocking her partially off the ceiling, and unfortunately, it's pretty easy to misjudge the jump to GoombaStomp her, and end up crashing into her, hurting you instead.
* The bosses in the ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi'' series for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS are juuust beatable with normal attacks to qualify as this, instead of {{Puzzle Boss}}es. Most bosses had high HP, a weak point, regenerative abilities, and even flunkies. Sometimes a boss fight done wrong could take an hour, literally. Remember the rock monster slash tree thing outside the Toad village in Superstar Saga? Yeah, like that.
** ''Partners in Time'''s final boss marathon. The final boss alone has two phases, obscene health, heals every few turns, has a weak point that can only be attacked after destroying two other weak points, and they regenerate too, it attacks multiple times per turn and deals high damage: a true evening-filling final boss. These bosses are the reason the GameBreaker Ulti-Free Badge is worth getting: unlimited Bros. Attacks for one Bro is the only way to make relatively quick work of them.
** The Elite Trio in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam''. Why? Because you have to take them all down in one attack, otherwise the ones left standing revive their fallen comrades. Or in other words, you basically have to win with either Luiginary Ball, Luiginary Wall or Luiginary Typhoon (or maybe a certain badge effect), since anything else won't hit a wide enough area to take down all three simultaneously.
** Additionally, some of the Hooraws fought in Dreamy Wakeport before Big Massif are this, since they're not hard in the traditional sense or have particularly powerful attacks, they just have a battle 'rule' that makes it annoying. Like the one you have to defeat in three turns (and all his minions are the same time), which is rather annoying since you don't have any more powerful Luiginary attacks than Luiginary Ball and Luiginary Stack.
* The final boss of the official ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' plug-in ''Siege at Firemoth'' (Grum) has 2000 hp with a [[HealingFactor regeneration effect]]. For comparison, the final boss of the first expansion pack (''Tribunal'') is a legitimate PhysicalGod with 3000 HP and the second expansion's (''Bloodmoon'') is an aspect of a god with 2000 HP, and neither possesses regeneration. Grum's attacks aren't anything special, and if you have decent [[AntiMagic Resist Shock]] effects, he is almost incapable of harming you. That said, he still [[MarathonBoss takes forever to kill]].
* ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'': [[spoiler:The Crystallization Cauldron.]] It's a massive DamageSpongeBoss that requires you to take out the eye first in order to expose its weak point. You have a limited amount of time to throw as much damage as you can on said weak point before it retracts, and every time it appears, mooks are spawned that you'll have to take out as well if you don't want to get shot to death or stunned while wailing on the weak point. That and a recurring attack that requires you to stop what you're doing, hop off, and wait for it to finish means this is a boss that takes a ''long'' time to kill. [[spoiler:And in order to get the best ending of the game, you have to fight it with Velvet, who's the TierInducedScrappy in the original game, and whose talents in the remake aren't really useful against it.]]
* ''[[VideoGame/Persona2 Persona 2: Eternal Punishment]]'' has Captain Shimazu. Shimazu and his flunkies aren't too tough aside from the insta-kill Aimed-shot with all of their damage-dealing attacks being single-target, the problem comes with dealing damage as they will constantly spam Hypnotic wave, a party-spanning sleep-inducing spell ad nauseam, ruining your Fusion-spells.
* ''VideoGame/Persona3'' has a few bosses that fall under this. In particular, most of the Full Moon bosses aren't particularly difficult ([[AntiFrustrationFeatures to make up for you not being able to save before then]]), but some have a few annoying moves.
** Chariot and Justice have that oh-so-annoying DualBoss staple: if they aren't both killed in the same turn, one will revive the other with full HP. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for [[ManualLeaderAIParty your party members being AI controlled]], so its hard to stop them accidentally triggering the revival.
** Strength and Fortune have the Wheel of Fortune mechanic, which can result in your party taking damage or suffering status effects if you can't work out how to stop it on the right spot.
** The Fanatic Tower, a Tartarus boss, isn't particularly threatening, but it has no weaknesses and is immune to all attacks except Strike and Wind. And even those two aren't fully effective: it's packing Dodge Strike to make your Strike attacks unreliable, and has Zio skills to hit your main Wind user's weakness.
* Shadow Mitsuo of ''VideoGame/Persona4'' takes forever to kill, constantly giving himself a 1400 HP buffer that's basically unstoppable. Beyond his [[AIRoulette AI randomly getting lucky]] and using both of his actions to attack the hero ([[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou instant game over if he dies]]) he poses no threat but is a war of attrition.
* ''VideoGame/RogueGalaxy'' has this boss battle around chapter 6: first you must get into a mine and fight a drilling-mining-robot-thing, which is painstakingly slow to defeat since you have to finish off each arm first. After that, he just keeps running around and hitting you with a drill that comes straight out of his...[[AssPull well, you get it]]. After a very LONG battle, you find out that it was not the end and you still have to fight [[ThatOneBoss the guy controlling it]]. With the newest member of your party alone (whom, of course you're barely accustomed to play). To make it even worse, said [[ThatOneBoss enemy]] can kill you in a few shots and moves way faster than you can, and the only real way to kill him is to keep blocking until he reloads, making the battle take a long time even when you know what you're supposed to do. Since blocking isn't that useful for most of the game, there are high chances you will lose; fortunately, there's the possibility to [[SaveScumming save your game before]] but, guess what? ''There is NO SAVING POINT between the previous battle and this one'' so if you happen to lose (which is most probable) you'll have to deal with the drilling-ass robot ''[[BigNo again]]''. Alluring, isn't it?
* ''[[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories]]'':
** The final boss of Reverse/Rebirth mode, Ansem, is like this. The entire fight basically consists of using card break duels, and he has maximum HP. Very tedious.
** The final boss of the main story mode in ''Chain of Memories'' also counts, thanks to having a set pattern of very easily-avoided attacks, and giving you plenty of time to heal if you do get hit, but only being vulnerable at one small time window during that pattern (and having the maximum amount of health possible in the game).
** Ruler of the Sky from ''358/2'' Days isn't particularly difficult. Its pattern is pretty basic, and its attacks don't hit that hard. However it has ''high'' life and the entire battle is spent in the air where it will outrun you. This all adds up to a VERY long boss battle.
** Zip Slasher in particular is like this, but because of the inferior AI and battle system, lots of the enemies in this game qualify. Devastating attacks, but just falls to the same pattern spammed over and over again, but you have to keep doing it and if you mess up, you do it all over again.
** Ursula's first form is probably the first game's standout example. She constantly guards, is aided by her eels (who constantly declare "No escape!"), and can only be attacked by overflowing her cauldron with magic--but the game doesn’t do a good job at explaining exactly how that works.
* One of the BonusBoss in ''VideoGame/WildArms3'' is Arioch, [[BossSubtitles The Duke of Vengeance]]. True to the name, he's very easy to beat when you encounter him the first time, but afterward, he will, emphasis on ''will'', stalk you. Meaning that every random encounter will have a chance of you encountering Arioch. The mechanics is that Arioch starts as a level 1 boss. His level goes up every time an encounter happens. So, assuming the player's level is constant and is around lvl 70 when he/she triggers Arioch, about first 30-40 encounters will be cakewalk, the rest to 70th medium, and in the last 10 encounters: painful.
* Beldr in ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor'', particularly on a NewGamePlus. Even if you have level 99 demons armed with Megidolaon and Deathbound, you, the main character, ''still'' have to [[spoiler:beat [[NighInvulnerable him]] to death with Devil's Fuge]], which means the battle still takes many turns. Damn you Myth/NorseMythology! While he can be quickly killed with the proper demons alongside you, his properties means you can't just one-shot him like every other early-game boss.
* ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor2'':
** Megrez, the fourth day boss of the Septentrione Arc. It is a TimedMission, as three separate parties are fighting three Megrez pieces, but there is more than enough time to fight your piece of Megrez. Problem with this boss is, he is a scene-mandated boss, which makes this a very frustratingly stupid battle in NewGamePlus. Even if the party is strong enough to defeat Megrez during one skirmish, Megrez will still retain the gameplay-mandated scenes of moving to another section of the map, heal itself half-way and needs to be fought again. And it needs to be defeated a total of ''four times'' for it to properly stick. No breezing through this battle.
** Mizar in the Septentrione Arc is this, solely because of the premise of the battle. Mizar is about to be swallowed by the Dragon Stream, but clings with its two arms to the side of a building and the party needs to smack the arms enough, so Mizar will let go. Ignoring the factor of hitting Mizar's arms resulting in its arm spitting up two copies each time, Mizar keeps gripping onto the building and each arm needs to be defeated three times, before it will finally go down. Oh, and this is a TimedMission, too.
** Benetnasch from the same Arc as Mizar. Benetnasch has an ability called 'Pacify Human', which means that any human party member cannot damage him, so all damage comes from the summoned demons. That is, whether fortunately or unfortunately, his most annoying ability. The problem comes from bringing Benetnasch down to red HP, at which point the second phase of the battle begins and it has split itself into four, each modeled after one of the previous Septentriones the party has already defeated days before, all with their own weaknesses. The battle isn't necessarily difficult, but is unnecessarily dragged out by this. Made even more annoying by the fact that during the battle you have to [[EscortMission protect the Trumpeter]] from the Megrez buds' thunder skills (Trumpeter is unaffected by their earthquake field attacks) and cannot swap your demons.
** Spica in ''[[UpdatedRerelease Record Breaker]]'' has an AdaptiveAbility, and becomes immune to any element used to destroy one of its pieces. As you will almost certainly find out during NewGamePlus, this includes [[InfinityPlusOneElement Almighty]].
** In the Triangulum Arc, the battle against Arcturus. Smilar to the Beldr battle in the [[VideoGame/DevilSurvivor previous game]], Arcuturus can only be damaged through the normal attack of one character. Said character's attack does such pitiful damage, though, and several rounds go by, until another character arrives and assists. Arcuturus also has the ability to make everyone in your party weak to four Elements, but that can be countered by the protagonist using 'Soul Bind', to take the other party members' damage onto him. And the protagonist may not die during that battle, so keeping him safe is also a priority.
* Shot Mothers in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarZero''. They appear randomly every 10 floors in a bonus dungeon with 101 floors, and you cant leave to tower for more items. She isn't strong by any means, but her annoying attack pattern of gliding across the room coupled with the lack of items makes her a very annoying fight.
* ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'' gives you [[TheDragon Death's Hand]]. Despite being implied to be the BigBad for a good half of the game, the fight against him consists almost entirely of hammering him with repeated blows, then dodging his massive but cripplingly slow attacks. He was immune to stun and most status effects, so all you could really do was wait for his HP (or your sanity) to run out.
* The ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series has a few examples:
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', but mainly in the 2D versions:
*** Dark Bahamut is probably the most sadistic boss of the game. First of all, he starts with a Megaflare and you can't prevent it, it's too fast. Then he casts Reflect on himself...and then he spams Flare. It's not even a joke. He ''constantly casts Flare on himself''. And Slow does very little...because Flare is ''instantaneous''. And don't summon or he'll cast another Megaflare. And like the cherry on the cake, he sometimes heal 6000 HP. Have fun!
*** Plague Horror's only attack is to cast Doom on the party, which can be annoying. By no means he's actually hard; he can very well be the easiest boss of the game. What's annoying is killing the characters and revive them. If you're fast enough, you can cast Reflect before he casts Doom and then you're set; he doesn't attack. I'll tell you something. He'll cast Haste on the characters, but it doesn't affect the timer.
*** Zeromus is perfectly manageable, but even veterans will find him spamming Black Hole, Big Bang, and sometimes Bio in the first phases of the battle ''very'' annoying. You will be glad when he'll start casting Meteor, because it hurts ''less'' and is prone to missing.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears'':
*** [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII FF3]] Ahriman is exactly like Plague Horror in the prequel. Only this time...Haste ''does'' affect the timer. ThisIsGonnaSuck ''hard''.
*** Remember, Dark Bahamut, who constantly spams Flare? Atomos constantly spams '''Meteor'''. But unlike the dragon, this bastard casts '''only''' Meteor...aaaaaand Firaga and Earthquake if you're lucky. And I mean it.
*** Deathgaze can be encountered only as a random encounter. Once you find him, he'll casts Death on the entire party, then goes physical, uses Blizzaga, Thundaga or Death again, then retreats, but his HP will remain the same (unless you leave the floor). He's not that hard actually. It's more a battle of patience and it can run thin.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'':
*** Tunnel Armor, an early-game boss. You fight it with [[LovableRogue Locke]] and [[MagicKnight Celes]] in your party, but the fight requires you to constantly use Celes' [[PowerNullifier Runic]] ability, to stop the boss' devastating magic attacks. If Celes skips a turn of Runic to attack, then the boss' magical abilities can easily knock them both down. This leaves it up to Locke to slowly chip down the thing's HP, stopping periodically to throw Tonics at Celes and chug some himself. Becomes much easier if you use a [[DualWielding Genji Glove]] to double Locke's offense, but getting one that early requires a bit of a GuideDangIt. Additionally, if you [[GuideDangIt left a certain chest unopened in your first run through the area and opened it when you're going through at this point,]] it will contain a Thunder Rod, which you can use as an item on the Tunnel Armor to use Thundara, which ends up killing it instantly.
*** Doom/Death Gaze. Let's see, he tries to pull a TotalPartyKill a la Level 5 Doom Spell the moment the battle begins, occasionally cuts off shit-tons of health with Aero or Blizzaraga, can randomly cast Level 1 Doom Spell to kill one of your party members, and hightails it after less than 5 turns. Oh, and he can appear the moment you take flight in [[spoiler:Daryl's]] airship, where he's likely twice your level and can kick your ass faster than you can say "what the hell was that thing?!". Oh, and when you ''do'' plan on fighting him and he flees, it can take ''forever'' to find him again. And don't think he'll just decide to stick around the second time around. Or the third. Or the fourth.
*** To clarify how hard it is to find him when you're deliberately looking, every time you use the airship he will randomly pick one pixel of the map to hide, and will attack you if you cross that particular pixel. Online recommendations to finding him usually involve having your airship pointed towards due North, and then very slightly turning left or right by about 1°, then doing nothing but heading forward. The very slight angle will eventually have you cross every part of the map. It typically takes about 10-20 minutes of doing nothing but pushing the forward button to find him this way, and you'll likely have to find him multiple times.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'':
*** "Bizarro Sephiroth" is fought in a unique multi-party battle and will constantly heal himself unless you figure out how to stop it, which requires using the secondary parties. It's easy enough if you know what you're doing, but if you don't you could end up there all day. And just setting up for the battle is a nuisance as you suddenly need to spread your equipment round all 6-8 characters not just three. Alternatively if you have LastDiscMagic such as Knights of the Round, Omnislash, or even 2xCut and W-Magic, you could just hit it faster than it can heal.
*** [[FinalBoss Safer Sephiroth]], if you are leveled up thoroughly from sidequesting and have access to high-end Materia and weapons, is not a particularly hard boss. But in the North American version, Supernova has a [[OverlyLongFightingAnimation hideously long attack animation]] that takes over ''two minutes'' to complete and cannot be skipped.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'':
*** The FinalBoss, Ultimecia, at least if you're underprepared. Granted, this is supposed to be the last battle you EVER fight, but consider the setup for all this frustration. It starts as a straight fight, you VS the sorceress. After that, however, she summons a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere that was apparently [[spoiler: living in one of Squall's personal items and innocently referenced during the Garden civil war]] to give you the beating of a lifetime. After you kill the creature, Ultimecia decides to merge with that Guardian Force (although they should both be too weak for combat at this point for having their asses handed to them) to create a hybrid creature. Finally, having defeated THAT, Ultimecia is back AGAIN, because getting thrashed and exploding wasn't enough, so now there's a faceless sorceress with even more power than ever for no apparent reason. This may be the last part of the last boss, but consider what you had to go through to get here and how long you had to go through the same battle cycles because the boss has WAY too many hit points and forms. Couple this against the game's system where you can't get a level advantage on any boss EVER and presto!
*** Ultimecia qualifies as one on several counts. Firstly, she randomly chooses three party members to fight her. During battle, if a character is KOed for too long they will be "absorbed into time" and replaced by one the remaining characters. So your options are to spread your resources thin around all six characters, to stall (preferably against the first form) so characters get absorbed until you have the three you want, or to reload the save until you get lucky. This also means if you're down to the last three and someone gets absorbed, you're stuck with a short-handed party for the rest of the battle.
*** Secondly, this is a game where stacks of magic spells are used to boost your stats. Some of Ultimecia's forms have the ability to instantly remove all of a randomly chosen spell from a character. So this adds another RNG factor, depending on chance she might remove something unimportant, or she could take away a spell you like to cast, or she could in an instant nerf someone's max HP, physical strength, or any other stat. And there's no way to fix that during the battle.
*** Thirdly, FFVIII offers unlimited free summons, with just a short countdown. Except Ultimecia can instantly kill the summon during that countdown. If you've been heavily relying on this, you're in for a rude awakening.
*** This same game also has Jumbo Cactuar and the Tonberry King. The first one is a veritable damage sponge that takes an hour to bring into low HP, and after that, it fucking escapes if you do not give him a very powerful finishing blow. If the bastard escapes, you have to start over. The Tonberry King by himself isn't very annoying, but you have to fight twenty normal Tonberries to initiate a fight with him. Tonberries are powerful and high-HP enemies, so twenty battles with them are basically guaranteed to be repetitively unleashing your most powerful [=GFs=] and Limit Breaks on them. Sitting and watching the animation. MANY.TIMES.OVER.
*** With these two the player is actually ''punished'' for leveling up. Both bosses gain huge quantities of hitpoints for every extra level of the player party, far outstripping the increase in your damage-dealing potential.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'':
*** A large number of bosses in this game can fit this trope simply due to the large amount of unskippable dialogue in this game. FFX is very story-driven, but no allowances are made for retries. No cutscenes can be skipped, EVER. The impact of this can range from minimal to "go get yourself a sandwich and watch an episode of The Sopranos until you can fight [[spoiler: Yunalesca]] again".
*** One of the last bosses , [[spoiler:Jecht]], will, at the appropriate level, take ages due to the very long healing animation of the two columns supporting the boss throughout the fight. The heals are not that big, but the columns can't be taken out of commission permanently, respawning three rounds later with double health if they are killed, and there is no way to speed up the animation. This can be somewhat alleviated by casting Zombie-status on him, since he's not immune and will thus take damage from the heals. The slightly annoying thing is that the heal does take off the status effect, but still damages him before it's cleared, so it's not so bad.
*** [[spoiler: Yunalesca]] is often considered ThatOneBoss because of her multiple forms and her confusing Hellbiter-Megadeath combo, which gives you the Zombie status effect and then eventually [[OneHitKill insta-kills]] you if you remove it. If you do figure out her relatively simple attack pattern, however, she is simply ''frustrating.'' The Zombie status effect means characters are damaged by both regular attacks ''and'' healing, so there's no way to cure damage, and since she often casts Regen or Full Life, many of your characters will spend the majority of the battle dead or slowly dying. Sometimes it's better if a character does die so that all status effects go away when you revive them. Basically, you have to have a pattern where you switch out party members such that at you have at least one Zombie (or Deathproof) member when she casts Megadeath, and can revive the others before she kills them again. What makes her a true [[TitleDrop Goddamned Boss]] is that she has more than 10 minutes of cutscene crap. It is actually quite good the first time you see it (as most cutscenes in this game are), but you will hate it more every time she kills you and you can't skip it.
*** Greater Sphere and Earth Eater become this if you are leveled up high enough to tackle them. The former counters every normal attack with Ultima, a spell that has the longest animation, guaranteeing that either you have watch that or overdrives and their animation ad nauseam, which on other hand are countered with Hydraulic Press, which is thankfully shorter but takes a percentage of character's maximum HP. Earth Eater on the other hand counters everything with Megaton Punch, an attack that inflicts instant death, so you have to witness that ''and'' an animation of Auto-Phoenix kicking in (which you most likely have if you bother with it) unless you use Deathproof armor on your characters. When on back, it counters everything with Flare that it bounces of its unremovable Reflect, so you have to watch the animation of the spell reflecting and spell itself. Both also must be vanquished multiple times if you want to maximize your luck (the only reason to bother with these two besides defeating each of them once for Monster Arena Quest completion), so have fun.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'':
*** The Warmech you fight at Chapter 12's beginning. Initially, it's an easy fight, but if you take too long to kill it, it'll put up an unbreakable force field. Getting rid of the force field requires you to stagger it, which can take up to fifteen minutes. Unless one knows a [[GuideDangIt fast]] way to kill it.
*** The second fight with the ''Proudclad''. It's a boss with 3.5 million HP, it's immune to all status ailments, and it can reset its stagger meter by changing form, which it can do whenever it feels like. And, once you get it down to about one million HP, it ''heals to full'', gets perma-Brave, Faith, and Vigilance, and breaks out some new attacks (thankfully, it Deshells and Deprotects itself too). It's not powerful enough to really be a threat if you keep up with your healing, but it takes so long to fight that it's just a massive pain.
*** Most of the Eidolon battles. Theoretically they shouldn't be too difficult because you win just by using certain abilities until a gauge is filled (like using Sentinel abilities during the fight with the Shiva sisters), but you only have one or two party members who are inflicted with Doom, giving you a time limit, and while the Eidolons aren't defeated like normal bosses ''you'' can still be killed. This is especially a problem when [[SquishyWizard Hope]] faces off solo against the Eidolon Alexander.
*** The final form of the final boss, [[spoiler:Orphan]]. It's immune to all forms of attack until it's staggered, and it inflicts Doom on your party leader, leaving you with seven minutes to cut down its 3.3 million HP. It would be reasonable, except that it can use Temporal Hollow to reset the chain gauge basically whenever it feels like it.
*** The BonusBoss Vercingetorix, and by extension the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' version, Yomi. If you come prepared with high levels and know the trick to beating them, then they aren't too hard. However, they spend the first half or so of the fight repeatedly using Impenetrable Aura, which renders them invulnerable to all damage, removes all status ailments and debuffs, and heals them. Meanwhile, all you can do is heal and prepare to reapply Poison as soon as they pop out again. After they lose about half of their HP, they [[TurnsRed get angry]] and start using their more powerful attacks. Since Yomi only has 1.2 million HP, you can rush his HP down once he stops using Impenetrable Aura, but Vercingetorix has ''15.8 million HP'', so all you can do is keep tanking and wait for Poison to wear him down.
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' also has the Paradox Scope fights with Caius, all of which are time-consuming and easy to mess up. In the Oerba 200 AF fight, he has almost half a million HP, and casts Regen on himself halfway through that HP. If you don't know the trick to nullify Regen, you can end up not being able to outdamage the regeneration. In The Void Beyond, you have to fight him with only Serah and your monster ally, meaning all it takes is one slip-up to end the fight. In A Dying World, you fight him with ''only Noel'', which complicates things further. And in all of them, once he goes down, ''he gets back up'' and you have to fight him again.
** The third Weigraf fight in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' is often viewed as ThatOneBoss. At least until you learn the secret to beating him, at which point the fight becomes absurdly trivial. The fight is a one on one fight between Ramza and Weigraf, and the trick is to obtain the self-healing reaction ability (which isn't that hard, and is a pretty strong ability anyway, so the player may already have it) and give Ramza a job with high speed, and then spam Ramza's stat boosting abilities so that you can instantly crush Weigraf, and the even nastier Velius battle that follows (these are treated as the same battle, so the stat boosts carry over and it's often possible to kill Velius before it even moves). However, this can take a long time, as you spend time running away from Weigraf while constantly using your stat boosting abilities. The Weigraf / Velius fight thus ends up being ThatOneBoss or a [[TitleDrop Goddamned Boss]], depending on how you tackle it.
** The Adamantoise superboss in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' is an absolutely enormous [[BonusBoss optional]] DamageSpongeBoss that hits very hard, but it's also a StationaryBoss without any real ranged attacks. You can avoid all damage just by camping at the edge of the combat area where its [=AoE=] melee strikes can't touch your party. From there you can whittle it down with magic, your own ranged attacks and Noctis' Warp Strike, but the beast's ridiculous health pool means this can take up to an hour per run, if not longer. However, the Adamantoise is susceptible to the various [[OneHitKill death spells]] provided by Noctis' ring, which can potentially end the battle in ten seconds flat if you're lucky, or at least cut it down to 5-10 minutes on average.
* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' has the Thresher Maw. It only has one attack- firing blasts of acid at you, and there are no other enemies to fight, but the battle can be very frustrating because A) it has a ton of health, B) the Thresher can destroy some of the cover around you and frequently shifts position on the battlefield forcing you to constantly be on the move, C) it uses its acid blast attack frequently and said attack rips through your shields like a knife through butter, and D) you're on a 5 minute time limit the whole fight. However, despite the fact that running out of time doesn't cause you to lose, if you don't beat the Thresher by then you won't get the best reward, not to mention that destroying it is an InUniverse SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome.
* ''VideoGame/LiveALive'' has Voice Heart. The boss is overall not all that difficult, but has an annoying attack called Sweet Whisper, which a [[ThatOneBoss previous]] boss had, and send the character to sleep. Aside from that attack, though, it's a pretty standard [[AttackAttackAttack hit-it-a-lot]] boss, but becomes obnoxious, as he has to be fought ''repeatedly'' in the dungeon it appears in.
* Cornix Canor in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou''. A [[GetBackHereBoss Get Back Here]] FlunkyBoss who picks up battlefield obstacles, screwing with your psychokinesis (and sometimes your shockwave, depending on the angle). Its flunkies are seemingly only there to give Neku something to do, while blocking Shiki's attempts to actually hit the boss itself. It's rather fitting that this boss is the one chosen to, in-universe, waste Neku's time.
* Every boss from the ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' games with some kind of Djinn screw either counts as ThatOneBoss or this. Notable are the bosses capable of using Crucible, which unleash a Summon using ''your own standby Djinni'', meaning you lose both the Djinn stat boost, the chance to use that summon AND take a ton of damage. Fortunately the most glaring example (BonusBoss Dullahan) has a fixed pattern with its attacks, so much that with some planning he will use a level 1 Summon and deal almost no damage.
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'':
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'':
*** [[BigBad Hargon]] likes to use Healall, which predictably makes the fight rather annoying.
*** There's also sub-boss Atlas in Hargon's castle. No frills, he just hits one party member twice per turn and hits HARD. Unless you're overleveled, getting through the fight without at least one casualty is nigh-impossible without a lucky critical hit.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'': None of the bosses are very hard (in the sense of needing clever strategy) but some of them can be a long slog to beat. The Final Boss can take up to half an hour of hit the boss, hit by the boss, heal party, over and over again. With no health bar.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'': [[BonusBoss Shogum]] does on occasion summon King Cureslimes, which if you don't kill them quickly, will cast Omniheal, restoring ''all'' HP to Shogum (and the King Cureslime).
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestXI'': In the Tentacular boss fight, as with its tentacles intact, it can strike up to four times. Lord have mercy if you're playing with Stronger Monsters on.
* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'' has several examples:
** Mara. Once you hit him, he'll use Diarahan EVERY SINGLE TURN unless you can kill him before he uses it. That means you have to burn through his 2300 HP in one turn. Hope you have [[GameBreaker Bright Might]] or can [[ManaDrain steal Mara's MP because]] unlike most [=RPG=]s, bosses in this game don't [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard have infinite MP]]!
** Mada in the Diet Building. Mada ''absorbs physical attacks'', is not weak to ice (though his appearance suggests otherwise), is easily able to inflict panic on everyone with his Intoxicate skill, and can summon two Pazuzu demons who heal him. His main attack also deals huge physical damage to the party and he can lower your party's combat performance with Debilitate.
** If you prepare for the fight, Noah becomes this. He's a BarrierChangeBoss that changes what element will affect him every turn (Not his weakness, ''which element doesn't get nullified''), followed by a high damage elemental attack (One enemy at a time for the first phase, full party spells during the second phase). And you can't get around this by using [[NonElemental Almighty]] spells, as he's one of two bosses in the game that resists it. If you have all the elemental spells, the battle merely becomes a test of endurance and how much MP you can conserve. If you don't have all the elemental spells, [[ThatOneBoss well...]]
*** Should you decide to complete the [[BonusLevelOfHell Labyrinth of Amala]] before entering [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the Tower of Kagutsuchi]], you are locked into the True Demon Ending but you can get [[GameBreaker Pierce]] on the Main Character. Freikugel is a [[NonElemental Physical-based Almighty attack]] that can benefit from Pierce's passive effect of going through resist, Null, and Drain physical like it's non-existent. Combine the two and you have an attack and passive skill combination that Noah cannot defend himself against.
** The ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry''/''[[VideoGame/RaidouKuzunohaVsTheSoullessArmy Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha]]'' cameo battles, both times (International versions of the game get Dante while the [[NoExportForYou Japanese Special Edition]] has Raidou Kuzunoha). The first battle with either cameo is mandatory regardless of which ending you're going for and the cameos love using a Physical skill that ''not only has an insanely high crit rate, but is also impossible to dodge!''
* [[spoiler:Captain Jack]] in ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney''. If you can't deal damage fast enough between his rounds of healing roughly 1,000 HP, you might as well reset and either rearrange your demons or go grinding.
* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' has the optional Fiends, which require nothing short of sheer determination to summon. Even if you know where they appear, they still have a measly 1/256 chance of appearing every time you enter the area they're in. It can take hundreds of attempts over hours or even ''days'' just to get a particular Fiend to show up. Additionally, Fiends are absolutely brutal bosses, and if you get clobbered, you have to either pay Charon to revive you on the spot (which guarantees their reappearance), or if you can't afford that, have to slog through the process of summoning them all over again.
* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse'':
** The BonusBoss Izanami. She isn't particularly hard to defend against even if you immediately go after her as soon as her respective sidequest opens up; as long as you have a good demon composition and use your secondary partner Hiroshi's abilities strategically (his attack can ''remove Smirk''), she's not terribly hard to defend against. The main issue is that she has Diarahan, a fully-healing spell; if you can't damage her fast enough, she will eventually use it and undo all of your efforts.
** In the main storyline, Azrael. Not too terrible a boss on his own, but simply getting to him is a pain. After the last point where you can save before him, you have to watch a four scene long cutscene. After that, there's a two part Horde fight. Only after beating the second Horde can you fight Azrael, who has two phases, gives no Assist Gauge for your party for plot reasons, and switches between reflecting physical and magic each turn, and not following his pattern can easily cost you a set of turns. If you do lose, you start over at the cutscenes and Hordes.
** Some of [[BonusBoss the Fiends]] try to stall the fight so they can kick you out after ten turns, forcing you to got through their sections of Twisted Tokyo again. Three take the cake:
*** David, the first Fiend. In his second phase, he keeps using Makarakarn each turn, covering his weakness. Couple that with his unique debuff Haunting Rhapsody, and it might take numerous trips to beat him.
*** Black Rider, the fifth Fiend. His unique Stance move takes off two Press Turns instead of one, and he comes with Calibrate, which buffs hit/evade rate by three, and Dekaja, removing all buffs. If you let him Smirk, he uses Antichthon, dealing heavy damage and debuffing your party.
*** The DLC Fiend: [[spoiler:En no Ozuno. Unlike the rest of the Fiends, En no Ozuno is a Puzzle Boss that remains annoying each fight. He hits hard and can counter attacks with Peacock Incantation. Also, in his second phase, fully buff his defense and hit/evade rate with Goki's Water Wall. Finally, he has Dekaja. He's weak to Physical, but countering his buffs and resetting your own buffs will waste your turns, forcing you to trek through the longest part of Twisted Tokyo numerous times]].
* [[FinalBoss Hari-Hara]] from ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'' isn't too bad in the first form, but the second form is made ridiculous by [[FlunkyBoss the numerous floating cores that accompany it.]] Each core absorbs its respective element (making group attacks out of the question), and gets a turn of its own and will deal a single target, high level attack - so pray to Vishnu it doesn't hit a certain member's weakness if you haven't excessively prepared for this battle. Thankfully, all but one of the cores are weak to the opposing element, but if you defeat a core Hari-Hara will regenerate it or another fallen one the next turn. Oh and Hari-Hara itself likes to dish out random status ailments with Vanity, making it harder if you thought you could get lucky with Cielo in your team. Hari-Hara can also trip you up by using Hunger Wave, which can inflict the Hunger status on everyone.
** One way of preparing for the first game's ultimate boss involves soloing most of the game as Serph. Not terrible for the most part provided you grinded to get the various Null abilities and Ragnarok, but the final fight with Bat/Camazotz is an utter pain no matter what you do. His gimmick is that he can turn you into a bat, who has reduced stats and minimal strength. And he does this frequently. Because you only have one character, you become virtually ineffective. What's worse is that the Bat status, due to being exclusive to this battle, isn't covered by Null Ailment, and to add insult to injury, the move heals Camazotz.
** Ananta and [[BonusBoss Orochi]] aren't too terrible boss fights if you come prepared. The catch is that the former has seven turns and the latter has eight turns, and each attack has its own animation. While there are ways to get around this, if you don't know them, the battles will go on for a while.
* The boss on the DLC of ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'', Killalon, is incredibly irritating. For starters you have to run down 25 floors of dungeon before you can fight him, with no save points. Although he doesn't have that much HP, the fact that he regens it a lot makes him hard to kill, and as you near-constantly have to protect your characters from his moves any damage you do will likely be recovered. Even with 5 level 99 characters and the best skills in the game, defeating this boss is somewhat reliant on what moves he actually decides to cast.
* ''Franchise/TouhouProject Pocket EVO+'' "story fights" generally consist of one of your characters against a single opposing character. Sometimes this is otherwise a perfectly normal fight. Sometimes the opposing character has a Defense-increasing or healing spell card and ''will not stop spamming it''. That is mainly because healing spells in this game heal a set percentage of max HP. Given bosses' sick amounts of health, even one usage of it can remedy whatever you did during the last five turns. And thanks to the game's spellcard system (using a spellcard disables it until you decide to use your turn to restore it), they can use it ''every second turn''. EVO+'s UFO system makes it ''even worse'' - if the enemy gets a green UFO, you have to take it out with a successful attack - if you don't, she regains 20% of her HP at the end of current turn. So if the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] is [[MarathonBoss not on your side...]]
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** Trying to catch practically any Legendary Pokémon will make them this. Knocking out a Legendary is easy, catching one is an exercise in frustration as they all have the lowest catch rate possible and you have to sustain continued attack from their moves while trying to catch them. It is not unusual to go through up to 30 Ultra Balls and Timer Balls or cause the Legendary to run out of PP causing them to faint from Struggle as the RandomNumberGod proceeds to not let you catch them. The only real exceptions are Legendaries that are plot mandatory to catch plus the Gen VII Mascots in ''Ultra Sun And Ultra Moon''. Of special note is Giratina in ''Platinum'', which has a measly total of ''30 PP'' across its entire moveset because it has three moves with only 5 PP. This means that after it moves 30 times, it will basically immediately Struggle itself to death. If it's at 1 HP exactly, you have a 3% of catching it per Dusk Ball. Good luck.
** Erika from ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' can qualify as this, with two of her three Pokemon knowing the Wrap/Bind moves (which, back in the day, did continuous but light damage over the course of 2 to 5 turns) and two of them using [[StatusEffects the status-inflicting Poisonpowder and Sleep Powder]]. Wrap/Bind was obnoxious because it prevented switching and forced the player's Pokemon to stay in for however many turns it lasted for, all just to do a pittance of damage. And while Poison and Sleep are easily cured with Antidotes and Awakenings, it forced the player to waste a turn dealing with the status. This could make Erika very annoying if the player's Pokemon were unable to take hers out in one shot.
** Among the [[OlympusMons legendary]] catchable Pokémon from the same game we have Moltres. It only has two attacking moves, Peck and Fire Spin. Fire Spin not only does continuous damage each turn but it prevents the Pokémon affected from switching out and in Gen I attacking.
** Falkner from the original ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' can be this, due to both of his Pokémon knowing Mud-Slap, an accuracy-lowering move. And said move is super-effective against Geodude and Onix, who otherwise have a type advantage against Falkner's Pokémon. (Not to mention that Geodude and Onix are generally slower and acts after Falkner's Pokémon.)
** There's also Pre Gym Leader Justy from ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'', who uses a combination of Double Team, Sand Veil and Dig to keep you from hitting him. This leads to a tedious battle of spamming Faint Attack with Umbreon (if you taught it that; the Bite it comes with is usually more preferable) or Swift with Espeon (which no one does since it comes with Return).
** Juan from ''Emerald'' isn't too bad until his ace Kingdra. He's only weak to Dragon, but unless you have a Kingdra of your own (which can only be acquired from trade) all possible Dragons are vulnerable to a 4x effective Ice Beam. However, this Kingdra in particular comes with the infuriating combo of Double Team and Rest. He'll start setting up Double Team and if you get hits in, heal himself up with Rest, which will also remove any status afflicted on it. If you're particularly unlucky, you'll be dealing with all your attacks unable to land on a sleeping Pokemon and he'll wake up to attack, raise evasion, and heal. This can rectified with any moves that bypass accuracy checks like Aerial Ace, though.
** Candice in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Platinum]]'', specifically. Her Froslass has the ability Snow Cloak, which ups her evasion by 20% in hailstorms. Candice's Abomasnow will also cause hail to be permanently in play. Froslass will follow up by using Double Team numerous times to increase her evasion even more. The only saving grace is that she'll likely go down in one or two super-effective hits if they connect.
** In the remakes, Flint's Drifblim knows Minimize and ''Baton Pass.'' Meaning once he maxes out on evasion, he'll then pass the boosts to [[SignatureMon Infernape]] and be incredibly frustrating. He also knows Will-o-Wisp and Strength Sap for both crippling your team and maintaining longevity. Thankfully, the move Taunt will render him useless. However, he can be a difficult curveball for the unprepared player, especially one who doesn't have knowledge of competitive play.
** Grimsley's rematch team in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'', mainly for Liepard. She's already fast enough, but she has the Unburden ability too. She'll always start with Fake Out, which will consume the Normal Gem it holds and makes her go even ''faster'' and causes you to lose a turn due to your mon flinching (unless they have Inner Focus). Then she'll screw with you more because she knows Attract, which causes a status effect that wastes a turn half the time- and since this Liepard is female, and many species of mon have skewed gender ratios in favor of males (especially the starters)... you can expect to not be able to fight half the time. She also knows Sucker Punch to go first if you're using a move (given that there's a good chance that you'll be unable to attack), just to make things more annoying. And this is his first mon.
** In ''Black 2'' and ''White 2'' in the Pokemon World Tournament: Winona, specifically her Altaria. While most of the gym leaders will either give you an even battle or [[ThatOneBoss or just murder you outright]], Winona's Altaria seems designed specifically to cause hair pulling. Of it's four moves, only ''one'' is damaging (Dream Eater) and it only works when your mon is sleeping. The others put your Pokemon to sleep, preventing them from attacking and making them vulnerable to Dream Eater (Sing), recover health (Roost, and also Dream Eater if it works), or boost Altaria's defense (Cotton Guard). So a typical battle has her put your mon to sleep with Sing, heal any damage you may have done with Roost, and then bulk up with Cotton Guard and proceed to use Dream Eater until your Pokemon wakes up, in which case you had better hope you get a Super Effective Critical Hit before you get put to sleep again. It's not quite ThatOneBoss, because unless your mon is extremely vulnerable to Dream Eater, Altaria can't cause much damage, but its moveset seems basically designed to drag the match out as long as possible and make you waste all your good moves trying to KO Altaria before it can heal itself.
** Deoxys in ''Omega Ruby'' and ''Alpha Sapphire''. Before you can even encounter it, you have to go through capturing Rayquaza, battling [[spoiler:Zinnia]] (who can be defeated in two minutes), and sitting through several minutes of cutscenes, all without saving. Once you finally get to Deoxys, it's a pain if you're trying to capture it. Deoxys is so strong that it can easily obliterate your Mega Rayquaza in one hit with Psycho Boost, and Hyper Beam can deal some serious damage atoo. Then it starts spamming Cosmic Power to buff its defenses and Recover to heal any damage you can deal to it. And if that's not all, it also has an abysmally low capture rate and just will not let itself be captured. If you didn't use your Master Ball, there are two options: KO it and return later[[note]][[GuideDangIt there's no indication]] it won't be lost if you knock it out, and trying again requires you to re-enter the Hall of Fame and return to Sky Pillar[[/note]], or despair endlessly trying to capture it the first time around. Remember: you have to sit through ten minutes of battles and cutscenes before you can fight Deoxys.
** Primal Groudon from ''Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire'' is not especially hard to defeat, but catching it is extremely difficult. Fire-Ground, as a type combination, has precisely two weaknesses out of seventeen types. One of those is Water, which is cancelled by Groudon's ability and, if you have means to subvert that ability, would likely kill it dead instead of weakening it appropriately. And when you do weaken it... It knows Rest. Which restores all HP. So basically, if you want to catch it, you have to weaken it about ten times over. And unless you have a Ground type on hand (and Primal Groudon has a ''very'' high Defence stat, which most Ground moves would go up against), you're going to be doing normal damage to it at best. As said, making P. Groudon weak is doable. ''Keeping'' it weak is a headache. Like any Rest-abuser, moves like Worry Seed and Heal Block will stop it being able to heal... but those are moves with very specific applications, and even if you have a Pokemon that can learn them there's a very reasonable chance you simply don't have them learned right that moment.
** Any and all roaming Pokémon, no matter the game. For starters, [[GetBackHereBoss they run at the first chance they get to a random spot on the map]], which changes when you go to a different route or town/city. Next, they're all [[OlympusMons Legendary Pokémon]], meaning that you only get one chance per match to catch a Pokémon with the lowest possible catch rate. Thirdly, [[YouWillNotEvadeMe trapping moves like Mean Look]] only work so long as the user remains in battle (outside of using Baton Pass), and trapping abilities only work if the Pokémon was sent out at the start of the fight. Finally, if you want a certain kind of Nature and/or Hidden Power type on them (such as a Timid Raikou with an Ice-type Hidden Power), [[SarcasmMode you'll be pleased to know]] that their Natures, [=IVs=] etc. are all decided not when you first battle them, but as soon as they start running around the map, and the only way to reset them afterwards (from ''Platinum'' onwards) is to KO them and beat the Elite Four again to make them respawn, hoping above hope that the next spread is what you're after. Thankfully, statuses and damage inflicted remains when you run into them again, and the Master Ball makes catching them after you hunt them down easier, but [[TooAwesomeToUse there's often only one per game, and there are more than one of these arseholes]].
*** Raikou and Entei are perhaps the worst roaming legendaries. Along with all the abovementioned points, they also know Roar -- meaning that if you manage to stop them from fleeing, they'll try to make ''you'' run away instead. Even worse, if they pulled this off in ''[=FireRed=] and [=LeafGreen=]'', [[PermanentlyMissableContent they would disappear entirely, preventing you from ever catching them]]. Oh, and while roamers are entirely optional, if you want Ho-Oh in ''Pokémon Crystal'', you need all the beasts; these two included.
*** The legendary Kanto birds in ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' are a new breed of roamers -- this time, they'll split before you're even allowed to send out your Pokémon. You need to hunt them down around ''ten times'' before they finally settle down for good in Sea Spirit's Den, where they can be fought without running away.
** Tapu Fini in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' will test your patience to the extreme. Firstly, its ability automatically summons Misty Terrain, meaning you won't be able to inflict status on it for five turns. It has Aqua Ring to regenerate the damage you do to it, along with having very good defenses and a strong defensive typing making wearing it down harder. It also has Muddy Water to wear you down and lower your accuracy, and Hydro Pump if it feels like just killing you instead. Park a Grass/Dragon/Water-type in front of it to resist the hits? It has Nature's Madness, which halves your HP and puts you in danger of being knocked out even with the type resist. The only thing keeping it from being ThatOneBoss is the fact that it doesn't hit as hard as the other Tapus, the Ultra Beasts, or the cover legendaries, making it merely annoying instead. Expect to sink a while into catching it, and god help you if you're resetting for natures and whatnot.
** About the only thing keeping the Gigantamax forms of Pikachu and Eevee from being ThatOneBoss is that, not being fully evolved, their defenses are paper-thin. However, they both tend to run essentially the same strategy of trying to stop the player's side from getting to attack at all. G-Max Pikachu's signature move, G-Max Volt Crash, paralyzes the entire party, including Ground-types that the attack itself can't even hit, and then spams Double Team to try and make sure any Pokemon that do get to move will miss anyway. G-Max Eevee manages to be just as annoying; its signature move, G-Max Cuddle inflicts infatuation on any opposing Pokemon of the opposite gender from Eevee itself, forcing them to stand by and do nothing 50% of the time, and as salt in the wound, Eevee also comes knowing Sand-Attack to lower the player's accuracy even further and ''Endure'', a move that guarantees itself a LastChanceHitPoint for a full turn, dragging the fight out even more.
** Out of all the potential Max Raid bosses, the title of most tedious to fight has to go to Cotton Down Eldegoss. While Eldegoss isn't strong enough to be that dangerous offensively, or quite durable enough to stall out the 10-turn limit like other defensive nightmares like Obstagoon and Shuckle, Eldegoss manages to make itself a total pest on a meta level with its Cotton Down ability. Cotton Down is an ability that activates every time Eldegoss is hit by a damaging move, which gives off cotton spores and lowers the Speed of everything except itself, the goal being to drag everyone else down to its molasses-like Speed tier. This by itself is just mildly annoying and not that bad, but seeing this in action is when the math of it being on a Max Raid boss really hits you: Its ability activates ''every'' time it gets hit, it gives a speed debuff to ''everyone'' else, and there are four Pokémon attacking it in one turn, meaning you'll be stuck sitting through as many as '''16''' unskippable "X's Speed fell!" text boxes per turn, four times each on all four raid members, and that's assuming you weren't unlucky enough to get stuck with AI Jolteon or Maractus[[note]]Jolteon knows Double Kick, which will activate it for both hits if it uses it, and Maractus knows Pin Missile, which can activate it up to ''5'' times, adding up to '''20''' of these text boxes by itself[[/note]]. You ''will'' want to bring in as many Pokémon immune to Cotton Down as you can, because the alternative is signing yourself up for the ''Pokémon'' equivalent of (quite literally) watching grass grow.
* Most bosses in ''VideoGame/EndlessFrontier''. '''All''' of them (And there are a ''crapton'') has lots of team-hitting attacks, [[ScrappyMechanic Forced Evasion]], Some really tough flunkies and enough HP to eclipse Bill Gate's total income four times over. Granted, So do normal enemies, but not to the ferocity bosses do. Expect to spend a solid half-hour fighting a boss.
* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitosOrigins'':
** The afterling under the Celestial Tree in . You have to cut its roots before [[DarkActionGirl Valara]] can kill it. This is easier said than done. For one thing, the afterling inexplicably attacks Sagi's party, as opposed to the person who's trying to kill it. Also, it'll occasionally shift its posture so that your party can't hit it without killing it; with the way the game's targeting system works, however, it's possible for the thing to shift ''just'' as you attack, resulting in you unleashing an EX Combo against it and killing it. Finally, when you do cut it loose? Valara kills it in the following cutscene. This fight doesn't compare to the pain the [[ThatOneBoss Holoholobird]] put you through, but it's frustrating and the solution is counterintuitive.
** The Hearteater you fight in the Matar Highlands. It has quite a bit of HP and hits fairly hard, but the real problem is its special, Ovulate. This infests a character with the thing's eggs, and puts a timer on them. When the timer runs out, the eggs hatch and devour the party member (read: OneHitKill). Basically, you can either burn up your MP using the Chalice of Freedom, or you can just revive whenever someone goes down (nigh-constantly).
** [[HumanoidAbomination Wiseman]]. His regular attacks drain both your health ''and'' your MP. Meanwhile, one of his specials, Cast Away Your Carnal Robes, knocks your whole party down, removes any magnus you've equipped, and breaks your combos. Therefore, you're gonna spend most of the fight trying to keep his HP down and struggling to assemble a decent combo, while he uses your stolen MP to hit you with special after special. Adding to the pain, he comes immediately after the brutal showdown with the Black Dragon. Thankfully, most of his attacks are fairly weak; his strongest attack, Illusory Chaos, does maybe half your health in damage, which is easy to recover from.
* From ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' we got Lost Izalith's boss: The Bed of Chaos. You don't get to fight it directly, instead you got to rush through the arena in order to destroy 3 weak points that go down in one hit. However, as the fight progresses, the floor will crumble and the boss will start spamming hard-hitting and night-unavoidable attacks that can easily knock you down into the freshly opened BottomlessPits. Fortunately, every time you destroy a weak point, it stays destroyed even if you die or [[EscapeRope warp back to a bonfire]], which is actually a more viable strategy than trying to destroy the 3 targets in one go.
** The Stray Demon, a PaletteSwap of the [[WarmUpBoss Asylum Demon]] found in the revisited Undead Asylum. Like the Asylum Demon, his attacks are powerful, but cripplingly slow; however, unlike the Asylum Demon, many of his attacks trigger a massive magical explosion that will wreck you if you get caught in it. However, if you get the pattern down, then it just takes forever to chip down his mountain of HP.
** The Iron Golem isn't terribly hard, but you fight him in a small arena near the top of Sen's Fortress. The biggest hazard of the fight isn't the Iron Golem's attacks, but rather the BottomlessPit surrounding the arena. It's way too easy to fall off the edge, and while getting back to the fight isn't hard if you found the bonfire at the top of Sen's Fortress, it makes it one of the game's cheaper fights...Unless you bring in [[MemeticBadass Iron TARKUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSS]]!!!!
** The Capra Demon in the lower Undead Burg. His attacks with his [[DualWielding Dual-Wielded machetes]] are very telegraphed and especially easy to dodge. However the boss is in a small, enclosed arena, making it hard to dodge without hitting a wall. Furthermore, he has two [[FlunkyBoss dogs]] with him, which are ''very'' fast and aggressive, cause bleed buildup, and can block you into a corner, making it ''even harder'' to dodge. The only saving grace is that there is a CheeseStrategy that allows you to kill him without entering the arena; but without that, be prepared for pain.
* The Covetous Demon from ''VideoGame/DarkSoulsII'' is slow as is most of its attacks, has a pretty big blindspot where you'll be safe from him for the most part, is susceptible to long-distance attacks, and even has Hollows trapped inside the arena that you can free and use as bait to make him vulnerable for a short period. However, what potentially makes him count is that one of his attacks deals huge damage ''and'' unequips all your equipment except items. Enjoy eluding him while simultaneously trying to rearm yourself in the menu screen.
* Both of the truly [[BonusBoss optional bosses]] in VideoGame/{{Wasteland}} - the Scorpitron and the Nightmare. Since the Scorpitron is available for you to fight basically from game's beginning, he doubles as ThatOneBoss for most players because he's a big challenge even for a party that just finished the game (but didn't spend much time on leveling up). The Nightmare, however, resides in an [[BonusDungeon optional dungeon]], and you don't have to fight him to complete it. He isn't particularly dangerous, he just has the highest HP in the entire game and you can only have one party member enter the dungeon to begin with, which makes his fight long and tedious (if not for macros and the fast-forward button). This can also lead to CantCatchUp, since he also gives the highest XP in the game for killing him (and double that if the final blow is done via melee) which can easily earn your solo character a level or three.
* Silver Horn in ''VideoGame/MegaManXCommandMission''. Originally, the fight isn't too bad, and Horn has an exploitable weakness to electric attacks. But when he's at half health, he uses Liquid Coating, which raises his defenses exponentially, even to his weakness, making the fight ''incredibly'' tedious.
* ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'': Common features of this trope among bosses include hiding out in the back row, having plenty of moments where they cannot be damaged (barring an ArmorPiercingAttack), and having movment patterns that make them hard to hit.
** [=ToadMan=] in the second game is made difficult through his incredibly obnoxious attack pattern. You will constantly have to dodge the tadpole torpedoes fired by his lily pads, often dodging the paralyzing song note that Toad will fire at you (which can shift rows to home in on you), and if [=ToadMan=] catches you in his row, he'll spring over to his other lily pad, two rows above or below him, requiring you to chase him.
** [=SnakeMan=] (also in the second game) ''loves'' to hide in his pot if anyone ever enters his row, defending himself from damage and wasting everybody's time, and he moves so fast that any non-instantaneous attacks would just be wasted. That he hangs out in the back row behind a column of holes is icing on the cake.
** [[DirtyCoward BubbleMan]] from 3 constantly hides from your attacks behind a rock and a constant stream of bubble traps. When he falls to low HP and goes on the actual offensive, he also protects himself with a fragile but regenerating bubble barrier. Oh, and his Beta random encounter will only appear when you're at critical health.
** [=DrillMan=] of the third game is lacking in HP, but makes up for it by being extremely hard to hit. He constantly dives across the battlefield, accompanied by drills on the rows he's not flying down, so it's often a guessing game as to which row he will be on next. He himself is also attached to the drill he's propelling, which blocks all frontal attacks.
** [=GutsMan=] may have been a WarmupBoss in the previous 2 games, but in Battle Network 3 he [[TookALevelInBadass becomes a fair bit more challenging]] past his first fight. He moves a little more erratically, starts carrying Area Grabs to regain ground, gains [[ImmuneToFlinching Super Armor]], and his Beta version holds a ''Program Advance'' as a DesperationAttack if not defeated quickly enough. If you see that last attack, kiss your S-rank goodbye as it lasts several seconds and you cannot damage him in the meantime.
** [=DarkMan=] in the third game deploys a series of bats through Mega's field that require constant dodging back and forth to avoid damage. These are a distraction from his ElementalRockPaperScissors nightmare -- he has 3 out of 4 elements under his control, and an attack (usually an area-consuming one, like the Killer's Eye ray or the two-row snowflake) will trigger every time you cross his path, which is what the BATS are for.
** [=SparkMan=] of the fourth game constantly blips in and out of the battlefield, and for the brief moments when he does show up, he may lauch a bomb forward that also intercepts frontal attacks. If he's lined up as an opponent in your first playthrough where your collection is not well-developed, he can become an exercise in frustration.
** [=ShadeMan=] always has some obnoxious damage-mitigating trick in the fourth game. In his first two plot-based fights, he [[PlotArmor can't take any damage at all]] without Dark Chips, but special consideration must go to his Omega version random-encounter, after the Boktai sidequest. He ''can'' take damage, but if you hit him ''too hard'', he'll split into four red bats that slowly retreat from the field, three of which are illusory. If you want to beat him quickly, you must figure out which one of the bats is really him and continue to pile on the attacks (and his HP counter disappears during this too)...but it's only ''safe'' to hit him while he's in the lowest row of the field, since you want to protect the Green Mystery Data[[note]]There's a version-specific Giga Chip inside, and the only other way to find it is by picking a fight with [=LaserMan=] Omega[[/note]] in the upper corner of his field (which the [=ShadeMan=]-bat will destroy if he connects with it). ''Have fun''.
** [=DiveMan=] in the sixth game spends the majority of time under the battlefield, where he can only be hit by Cursor chips or panel-affecting attacks. While he's under"water", he spawns missiles in two rows at a time, and only resurfaces either to immediately dip down again, or to launch an attack. While his strongest attack doesn't hit the back row, he also can launch bombs and the aforementioned missiles at you to get you into range of it. It's a drawn-out fight, regardless of his version.
* Ness's Nightmare from ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' is a grueling MirrorBoss fought only with the main character, who knows all of said character's techniques, including one that has an off-chance of scoring a OneHitKill against any enemy. Which, in this case, is an immediate Game Over and a ticket back to the start of a dungeon full of awful DemonicSpiders. Given his significant amount of hit points and tendency to buff his defenses, his chances of triggering the OHKO only go up and up the longer the fight drags. Now, this will not be an issue if you equipped gear that blocks PK Flash attacks [[GuideDangIt (assuming you knew this already)]], but this still leaves you with a highly resilient boss whose PSI attacks hit like a truck. The only solution that guarantees victory is, simply, [[BoringButPractical to outlast him until he finally runs out of PP]]. It'll take a while.
* Dopplegangers in the VideoGame/DotHackGUGames spawn if the player stands still for too long in a field and will begin slowly chasing the player, even being capable of breaking into the battle fence of another encounter. The Doppleganger's abilities are identical to Haseo, but eight levels stronger. Because of the game's damage scaling, this means that attacks will do chip damage unless you use [[SuperMode Beast Awakening]], which negates the scaling while active but only lasts for a short time, meaning the player must recharge the gauge using Favorite Actions to damage the Doppleganger again before it can regenerate. [[GuideDangIt Or reach the level cap before you fight it, because it's affected by it just like you are.]] Defeating the Doppleganger once in the first volume, twice in the second, and once again in the postgame of the third will reward the player with GameBreaker equipment for the second and third volumes.
** The Sealed Beasts in the second and third volumes only have a tiny number of attacks, but large amounts of HP, and upon falling below around 1000 HP they will spam Ma Repth until over about 2000. Defeating them requires bringing them down to just above the threshold at which they heal and then finishing them off in one shot with [[LimitBreak Divine Awakening]].
* The higher difficulty levels in ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'' turn every boss into these because of HP bloat (enemy HP on hard is 250% of its value on easy, and enemies take about a third less damage too, while only dealing about 50% more), but the two bosses who can heal, Agria and [[FinalBoss Gaius/Muzet]] really take the cake. Their healing powers increase proportional to their health, not their attack power, meaning that Agria can instantaneously recover 15,000 HP at a point in the game when your strongest [[LimitBreak mystic arte]] can do maybe half that. And they can spam these moves an unlimited number of times, and quickly enough that if the AI decides to be mean it can recover from critical to full in 5-10 seconds while still attacking occasionally. This can render these fights nearly unwinnable even for a player with enough levels, equipment, and gaming skill to render their offense trivial. Better hope you brought a *lot* of hourglasses.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia2'': Muzét [[spoiler: (Fractured)]] about halfway through the game. She has some pretty tough spells and she is the first boss to actually use a [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]] on regular difficulty. Aside from having some annoying spells like Air Pressure or Flame Ring, Muzét ''loves'' to teleport around the field. If she's cornered, she teleports away and blasts you with more spells. Fortunately, the player did get Milla into their party shortly before and her Link Ability is to bind an enemy, which can keep Muzét in place for a bit.
* One optional boss in ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' [[spoiler: Red Mage De Rosa.]] His actual moveset isn't too hard to deal with - a one-target physical move, Thundara to everyone, and casting Charm and Dread occasionally. What sends him into this trope is the Red Mage's signature ability, Revenge, which has a chance to give whoever has it an extra BP (basically, an extra turn) when they take damage. This is useful for you when it happens, but considering you'll probably only have one, maybe two Red Mages out at one time, it won't activate that often. But you can probably guess what happens when you give that ability to a boss you'll be attacking multiple times a turn. He'll use the extra move that gives him to immediately cast Cura, which means you have to attack him more to undo that healing, which gives him more chances to activate Revenge and do it ''again''. If it activates enough in one turn he can tear your party apart even if everyone's at full health, which might shoot him up into ThatOneBoss if you're particularly unlucky.
* ''VideoGame/JojosBizarreAdventureThe7thStandUser'' has any boss that can change their distance to ?. This can make otherwise easy bosses like Forever and High Priestess (or an already hard boss like Chaka) take quite a while, because they take 1 point of damage ''if you're lucky'' from any attack at this distance, and usually "rest out of sight" to regain HP. They can stay at this distance for [[AIRoulette as long as the AI feels like]], and the fight is basically at a standstill until they return to their regular distance.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky FC'' has the second fight with [[spoiler:Lorence]], who has lower damage output than before but makes up for it with more defensive tactics. Thanks to his insane SPD, he can easily spam Tearal and Earth Guard EX to keep himself alive and save up enough CP for his S-Craft, ad nauseam. His skillset also covers at least three status effects, which means anyone who doesn't have Grail Locket will be vulnerable to at least one effect. This makes for a tedious and somewhat luck-based battle, especially on Nightmare difficulty.
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'': The fight with the Phantasms in chapter 7 isn't particularly dangerous; a properly leveled party won't really be in any danger of dying. The problem is that there are a ''lot'' of phantasms, and each one is capable of summoning another phantasm when low on health, which in turn can summon ''another'' phantasm, meaning that the battle is going to drag out for a ''long'' time unless you manage to wipe them all out simultaneously. Unfortunately, doing so is nigh-impossible because [[GeoEffects the fight occurs in a dungeon that prevents you from using your most powerful attacks]]. Eventually they stop respawning, but you'll spend loads of time killing them before you reach that point. It doesn't help they often spam the same two attacks ad nauseam.
* ''VideoGame/CthulhuSavesTheWorld'': Optional boss fight against Fallen Angel is not that hard to be outstanding. However, she has a nasty [[HealThyself Heal All]] spell, which makes her regenerate 5000 HP, and due to the nature of the game, the amount of health healed increases by 500 with each turn. Therefore, her fight becomes extremely annoying and tedious, especially if you don't have any good combo finisher attacks. And don't think about [[DrivenToMadness driving her insane]], because she'll trade her Heal All spell for Hurt All, which will more than likely insta-kill your party due to how far the difficulty had increased.
* ''VideoGame/AtelierAyesha:'' Here's how to defeat the final boss: stock up with items and grind it down. The battle isn't hard enough for people who enjoy a challenge, and isn't quick and easy enough for people who just want to finish the game.
* ''VideoGame/OctopathTraveler'': [[spoiler:Simeon]], Primrose's Final Boss doesn't hit as hard as other bosses. The main difficulty of the fight is the fact that the boss has the extremely annoying habit of constantly using an area attack that causes silence, crippling your party unless you have accessories that protect you from it. Also, he will obscure the turn interface towards the middle of the fight, so you will not know when your characters will act. Overall, it is a boss that is way more annoying than hard.
[[/folder]]

* [[spoiler:Grandfather / Lord Burroughs]] from ''VideoGame/ClockTower3'', while not ''difficult'' per se, is simply beyond annoying to face. His basic attack tethers you on the spot like your own bind move and, sure enough, if he lands three it's an instant loss ([[HaveANiceDeath though one hell of a death scene]]). He also has about [[DamageSpongeBoss three olympic swimming pools worth of HP]], gains access to a ''second'' binding move at 3/4 health, and if he gets close can grab you to drain HP and [[TurnsRed Turn Red]] for a while, making his already annoying attacks even worse. All the difficulty from what would otherwise be an easy fight comes from how long it drags and that the slightest slip-up practically guarantees an instant death.

[[folder:[=MMORPGs=]]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Everquest}}'': The Fabled Trakanon takes this to the point of FakeDifficulty [[note]] for those who've never played, fabled bosses are harder versions of old-school bosses in the game that only show up on the anniversary [[/note]] as he has an unresistable spell that teleports the player to the zone's beginning, and effectively reloads the zone for said player, meaning Trakanon will have completely regained his health by the time they get back unless other people are engaging him, making him almost impossible to solo even if you're 30+ levels above him, as he can use this ability at any time. The regular Trakanon also has a banish ability, but it just teleports you to a dangerous part of the zone without reloading you, meaning you can just run back.
* Monk bosses in ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' have an unfortunate tendency to be able to heal themselves very quickly, making it difficult to do enough damage to kill them. And Dwayna help you if there's another monk enemy in the boss's spawn. One of the worst is a mission where there is a Monk boss and a Mesmer boss (crowd control and interrupts) together. Neither does a large amount of damage, but one makes it hard to attack properly while the other heals what attacks do get through.
* ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' has Jade Maw and Cairn the Indomitable.
** Jade Maw is an obnoxious pseudo-Lovecraftian squid that can only be hurt by hucking charged crystals at it - crystals that can only be obtained by killing its GoddamnedBats flunkies and charged by using them to soak up a massively telegraphed OneHitKill move. Not hard, just a tedious, annoying fight.
** Cairn The Indomitable is GoddamnedBats, the Raid Encounter. He throws the raid team all over the place. Throughout the fight you get a stacking debuff that makes you slower, he tosses you into the air inflicting more stacks of the debuff, shoots projectiles that knock you all over the place, teleports you all over the field and swings around a giant crystal club that launches you off the platform. Just when you get used to all that, he starts in with a shockwave of crystal that - if you couldn't guess by now - launches you all over the place. Oh, and if that weren't enough, all these attacks interrupt your moves, and with the projectiles, the recovery time is just barely shorter than the interval between them (so you don't suffer StunLock, but come so close you go insane.) Despite all these absolutely infuriating mechanics, he's regarded as probably the easiest real raid boss (after [=McLeod=] the Silent who's basically an overgrown EliteMook).
* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', Reichsman has 225,000 hit points. A team without regeneration and/or resistance debuffs is in for a loooong fight.
** Actually, he does not regenerate his health. However in the villain version of his task force, he has a phase-shift power that makes him impossible to damage and he cycles in and out of phase. If you didn't bring a Mastermind class on your team (or lost the Mastermind player for any reason), you cannot get the temporary power that neutralizes this ability.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'':
** Mr. Smite, the Prophet Tharon'ja, King Ymiron, and other bosses who pause the action before changing their attack pattern. Very frustrating the first time around if you just blew your cooldowns, with better gear merely annoying to wait most of the fight on the pauses because the boss just loses HP that quickly. Ymiron has ''four'' pauses like that.
** You can wipe on Heroic Pit of Saron on Garfrost because you did too much damage for him to throw the saronite you hide behind. In Lich King anyways.
** Razorgore in Blackwing Lair has become this now that players are high enough level that he's no longer a threat. You have to force him to destroy the eggs before you can kill him, so while his HP is insignificant by Cataclysm standards, you have to sit through a fairly long and tedious process if you're not the controller, killing adds that require hardly any effort if you're past their level range.
** Asira Dawnslayer in Hour of Twilight is not particularly difficult, but periodically throws down smoke bombs that make it impossible to attack her while she and/or you are in the smoke, and if you're a caster, casting a spell will result in her throwing a knife to silence you.
** Echo of Kros is the easiest of the summonable Champion bosses on the Isle of Thunder, but it can summon spirit raptors that can silence you, can do a roar that fears players, and can summon an add that will heal it if it reaches the add.
** Progress on raid bosses in general tends to include a certain number of wipes, some more than others (and generally speaking more wipes the further you get into the raid), in order for the group to learn how to properly handle mechanics. Every once in a while, however, you will run into a long endurance boss where most of the challenge is back-loaded to the final portion of the fight. This means you can get the first 7 minutes of the fight down in only a few tries and then spend the rest of the night repeating that portion effortlessly only to wipe at 10%, qualifying the boss in question as this trope. Some of the more infamous cases of this are Sindragosa in Icecrown and the multi boss fight Iron Maidens in Blackrock Foundry. The latter in particular, where ''three'' new mechanics activated whenever one of them falls below 20% health and gaining a damage buff for the rest of the fight that stacks up over time, eventually overwhelming you if too many damage dealers get caught out by one of the numerous danger zones.
* ''VideoGame/PerfectWorld'' has Kun Kun, a boss who is a [[DirtyCoward huge coward]] and so [[AntiClimaxBoss doesn't attack at all]], [[GetBackHereBoss only running away]]. He also has [[AntiMagic full spell immunity]] and absurdly high physical defense. He really isn't a problem for most classes (Melee classes and Archers just smack/shoot him to death, Venomancers sic their pets on him, Clerics use Plume Shot and their other physical attacks), but Wizards and Psychics have to run up and physically smack him with their wands/soulspheres for 3-4 damage per hit. Another complaint is that he tends to run straight into groups of aggressive mobs. This is obviously another problem for [[SquishyWizard Wizards and Psychics]], but also for melee classes because most of the mobs in Kun Kun's area are casters and heavy armor does not protect very well against magic, sacrificing magic defense for physical defense.
* ''VideoGame/DCUniverseOnline'' has Harley Quinn, Complete with two different mallet attacks that will knock you across the room for massive damages, stun and ground attacks that cripple most ways of dodging her, even better she can't be harmed DURING the mallet attacks that are annoyingly long with annoyingly short periods between them to actually hit her! Once you figure out the cues to her attacks you can stay out of the way then rush in to hit her before running off again, but it's still a long fight. BONUS, she comes in two modes, normal and Challenge once you hit Level Cap...have fun!
* End-game bosses in ''VideoGame/{{Aion}}'' tend to have the Recovery ability, which is an uninterruptable attack that restores usually about 1/6th to 1/5th of their HP. Because they can use it without fail, and thanks to AIRoulette, they can use it back-to-back, a party that's capable of beating the boss normally will quickly find their patience running out when the boss heals almost back to full while they can do nothing about it, even if the boss is in the same situation (i.e. unable to kill the party). The accepted and understood method of killing these bosses is just to do damage fast enough that Recovery just drags the fight out, as opposed to making it unwinnable.
* In ''VideoGame/ChampionsOnline'', there's Viperia in the Serpent Lantern missions. Literally invulnerable after the first few hits, you have to defeat her by basically blocking and relying on your defenses for long, boring stretches, then run around and place crystals to imprison her. Rinse, repeat, etcetera no less than five times.
* The Crystalline Entity in ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline.'' The famous Crystalline Entity from ''The Next Generation'' requires an entire fleet of ships to kill, and it requires that EVERYONE learn a very specific set of tactics. The Entity itself is not terribly powerful. It will directly attack whatever ship currently has the most aggro, but a cruiser who specifies in healing and aggro control can take care of it without any hassle. The entity sends out little shards from its body to chase after the ships. Also not a problem if you put enough power into your engines to outrun them. If you get hit by them, two things happen: You will instantly die or come dangerously close to dying, and the entity itself will heal a huge portion of its life. The entity has an insane amount of hitpoints, so instantly healing itself by 7% will just add another 10 minutes to the fight. There are certain crystals which players are allowed to kill, and others which will also heal the Entity if they are destroyed. Once it gets knocked below 30%, it switches up tactics a little, but is still not too difficult to handle as long as everyone knows what they're doing. All it takes is one player to completely mess up and ruin the entire fight for EVERYONE, resulting in the Entity healing itself back to full health in a few seconds. The encounter itself has rarely ever been defeated save for fleets who specifically organize just to take it down. It became so much of a hassle that the developers eventually decided to just remove the encounter altogether. Now, nobody can fight it.
* In ''VideoGame/RuneScape'', during the BossRush at the end of [[WhamEpisode The World Wakes]], the last boss you fight is [[ClingyJealousGirl Enahkra]]. Enahkra has a ton of HP and can leech your HP to heal hers. And she does so ''constantly''. The more HP you have, the more she heals from her leeching attacks. Even worse, as the fight drags on, she eventually graduates to pinning you down and sucking your HP away until you can break her grab. The only way to really reduce the amount she heals by is to keep your health as low as possible - a risky proposition, considering she also has reasonably powerful magic attacks.
* In ''VideoGame/LordOfTheRingsOnline'', the final fight of Fil Gashan against General Talug can be this, especially if your group doesn't communicate/coordinate well. The orc boss is wearing significant armor, and the only way to damage him in the first part of the fight is to lure him into one of the traps his minion keeps lying around (without setting it off yourself). In the second part of the fight, you have to kill one of his other minions right next to him so it will splash oil on him, and ''then'' lure him into one of the traps. The final part of the fight is a much more standard tank and spank fight that will kill him quickly. Although the damage isn't horrific, people will tend to find their patience tested as inevitably one of their Fellowship members will accidentally step into a trap meant for the General, will kill the Firefist too far away from him, or will grab his aggro and deter him away from the trap in time.
* Various bosses in ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' have skills called Weapon Cancel and Magic Cancel, in which your attacks (weapon or magic, depends on your job) all deal 1 damage for a short period of time, with a tiny chance of breaking through. Another form of this is Damage Reflect, in which you deal 1 damage and receive a certain amount of damage back, depending on the boss. In many cases, this is a 1hko.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''
** The second boss of the Hullbreaker Isle dungeon doesn't hit particularly hard, doesn't have much HP, and its special attacks are laughably easy to dodge. However, it spends half the goddamn fight underground, untargetable, from which it launches its irrelevant special attacks. The diving mechanic doesn't make the fight any harder, it just makes it a lot longer than it ever had to be because, for half of the fight, you can't damage it. You're stuck waiting with your thumb up your ass until it surfaces so you can wail on it for all of 15 seconds before it dives again.
** Leviathan and Ramuh, in their Extreme mode fights, are noted for giving ''unsynced'' parties trouble due to unskippable mechanics that, if done wrong, result in a TotalPartyKill. Ramuh's ultimate outright {{One Hit Kill}}s the whole party if you DPS too quickly, and no shield or Vitality-focused [[SocketedEquipment melds]] will ever survive it. Leviathan, on the other hand, has a "fair" ultimate that can be mitigated through normal means along with the [[AppliedPhlebotinum elemental converter]], occasionally allowing one or two quick-thinking players to salvage a screwup -- but that fight ''also'' has a mechanic that knocks players off the arena, preventing their resurrection, so it's a toss-up as to which one is worse overall. Ironically, both of these fights are made significantly easier by just not bringing as many players.
** The Labrynth of the Ancients alliance raid is by no means tough, but it has two sticking points that can really annoy players:
*** After beating the first boss, there's a mini-boss in the form of three Atomos that each party must taackle. The first bit of annoyance comes from the fact that if someone starts the fight, everyone has 15 seconds to get into their appropriate lane. Anyone who misses this gets teleported to Alliance A's lane by default, regardless of which alliance they're in. If there's not enough people to do the main mechanic proper, a super-powered Iron Giant will spawn to wipe everyone to prevent an unwinnable situation. As for the mechanic proper, the Atomoses are invincible until a pad in each lane has four people on it. Each pad makes one of the other Atomoses vulnerable. Queue not enough people not standing in the pad and the alliance chat filled with yelling to have people stand on the pads.
*** The final boss of The Labrynth of the Ancients has an alliance-wipe attack where the players must step on three platforms to protect themselves from it. It's not particularly hard, but the annoying factor comes when the second round comes: whether to wail on the boss and defeat it before it goes off or head back and step on the platforms. If the alliance is not in unison of what to do, chances are, a wipe will happen. Less patient players tend to vocalize their frustrations soon after.
[[/folder]]

* ''GoddamnedBoss/MonsterHunter''
* ''GoddamnedBoss/TheBindingOfIsaac''

[[folder:Action-Adventure]]
* In ''VideoGame/AxiomVerge'', Gir-Tab, the giant scorpion boss in Kur, starts as a pretty easy fight. You just have to damage its underside and its projectiles are trivially easy to dodge. Then it lays flat on its underside. Its attacks become more difficult to avoid and it's basically invulnerable. Then you realize it can do this whenever it wants.
* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse'' has two rather nasty instances of this:
** The Cyclops, whose for some reason can only be damaged by hitting its eye. It walks left and right, forcing you to constantly outrun it across the screen repeatedly until you get that split second of time in which to AttackItsWeakPoint. What makes it especially frustrating is that if you don't keep just the right amount of distance, it will sprint towards you, closing in on you and forcing you to waste even more time running away. Luckily, there are a few items and spells that make the Cyclops a bit less of a chore to deal with, such as the [[NotCompletelyUseless Knife]], [[AnAxeToGrind Axe]], and [[GameBreaker Sypha's Lightning]].
** The Water Dragons from [[ThatOneLevel Level 6]] are a combination of this and ThatOneBoss. Thanks to the BottomlessPit [[SuperDrowningSkills river]] making their fire breath {{knockback}} a guaranteed OneHitKO, the player is forced to stand on the middle platform and very carefully move to the left and right edges and crouch accordingly. In order to defeat the dragons in a way in which you'll actually survive, you have to patiently wait for one of the dragon's heads to be at a position where you can hit it with the Axe, or repeatedly turbo-fire your whip in the hopes it'll make contact with one on its way down. And of course, each hit only deals 1/16 of the boss' life bar in traditional ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' fashion. It's one of the rare cases where even the [[TimedMission timer]] can kill you in a ''Castlevania'' game.
* Elizabeth Bartley of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines'' starts out fighting you in a Medusa guise, which is fairly fun if a bit repetitive. Beat that, though, and she shifts back into human form while relying on conjuring up magical attacks while teleporting around the arena. Hitting her only removes the components of her magic one by one; dispelling all of them finally damages her at a fixed rate. It's slow, tedious, not particularly difficult, and just feels like a huge time waster, especially when she gets her LastChanceHitPoint when she should have been killed in an even four cycles.
* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'' on a NewGamePlus has Brachyura. Unlike other bosses, who you can simply rip to shreds with your carried-over glyphs, Brachyura is invincible for the entirety of the fixed-pace tower climb, only killed when it and Shanoa reach the top. At best, he drags on compared to the other bosses. At worst, getting his [[FlawlessVictory medal]] is a test of patience that will most likely dwindle with each re-attempt, but while knowing his routine makes getting the Medal trivial even on your first run of a Hard Mode, the poor decision that was Brachyura truly rears its head in the [[BossRush Boss Rush Mode]]. While with the right equipment and tweaked out Attributes it's possible to [[OneHitKill oneshot]] every other boss in Boss Rush A, Brachyura will defiantly stick to the script, no matter how much damage you deal even though it's completely possible to deal over 10,000 in two hits. The end result of this is that Boss Rush A will take over two minutes to complete (which adds up when you need to clear it several times in order to get all the unique prizes). By comparison, Boss Rush B can be cleared in a matter of '''about twenty seconds''', making the giant enemy crab's presence over the Giant Skeleton, who adheres to no such script, completely unacceptable.
* In ''VideoGame/CaveStory'', the game's True Final Boss, [[spoiler:Ballos]]. He's definitely hard, and interesting, but not hard enough to count as ThatOneBoss (as in, not hard enough by TrueFinalBoss standards). No, he's a Goddamned Boss because to get to him, you have to go through the long BonusLevelOfHell, which is hard enough by itself, and fight ANOTHER challenging boss immediately before it '''without''' saving or using the full-heal boxes. To quote [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]], it's like eating an entire bucket of corn on the cob without getting a kernel stuck in your teeth.
* The Mother Monster from ''VideoGame/CrusaderOfCenty'' just sits there without doing anything whatsoever. It is easy to kill if you know which of the (couple of dozen) weapons you're supposed to be using, but of course [[GuideDangIt there's no hint]] as to what that might be. Use anything else, and you can just whack at her for half an hour without accomplishing much.
* Cro-Maine, one of the later bosses in ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'', is the bane of anyone who plays this game. Not only does his attack do high damage ''and'' has a huge swing radius, but one hit sends you clear out of the boss arena and forces you to start all over. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Note that his health is fully restored but yours isn't.]] Unlike every other boss in the game, where there is always an evolution to give you an edge, your only hope against Cro-Maine is to carefully time your attacks so you can dodge his club and chip away at his health, and one slip up sends you all the way back to the start of the fight.
* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'':
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast A Link to the Past]]'':
*** Moldorm from the Tower of Hera, the third dungeon. It fights you on top of a platform with open edges and a hole in the middle, and while its attacks don't do a dangerous amount of damage, they ''do'' cause KnockBack that can send you plummeting down a floor (two floors if you fall down the hole in the middle). After a tedious climb back up and recollecting hearts, any damage you've done to him is reset and you must start the fight all over. Once it reaches its last hit point, it gets faster and more likely that it will knock you off and you'll lose more progress. There's a reason why speedrunners call him Trolldorm.
*** The first Agahnim fight isn't too difficult. However, he can be a bane for speedrunners. He can only be harmed by magic that he launches, including an unblockable lightning attack every fifth attack pattern. Sometimes, he has a habit of launching nothing but smaller blue projectiles when he's close to being defeated, instead of the red energy ball that can be reflected to him.
** The Moldorm is the first boss of ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening Link's Awakening]]'' and has basically the same schtick, but the frustration is slightly mitigated by the fact that you can now jump over it to keep from getting trapped near a ledge. The seventh boss is an evil eagle who likes to blow you off the tower and will also instantly regenerate if you fall off; this too can be mitigated if you [[spoiler:sequence break and get the Magic Rod from Turtle Rock before completing the 7th dungeon. It takes out the boss in 3 hits]].
** The third form of Puppet Ganon in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker Wind Waker]]'' is basically Moldorm except that, instead of the pits, it has a very specific weak point that you need to hit with a light arrow. Simple, right? Only, it moves around the ground ''very'' fast, so that you'll have a hard time hitting it. It doesn't pose much of a threat to you, but it's still pretty damned annoying. There is a redeeming factor to this fight, however: the music. And the fact that [[spoiler:[[WeaksauceWeakness he's weak to bait]]]].
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks Spirit Tracks]]'':
*** Fraaz, especially in the final stretch. He switches between [[BarrierChangeBoss fire and ice]] attacks, and while charging up one, he is weak to the other, which can be exploited by using the boomerang to pick up the fire/ice left over from his previous attack and hit him with it. The thing is, this has to be done several times repeatedly in the last stretch, and if you're not quick enough or get hit with even one attack, you have to start the whole time-consuming process over again. To clarify, in order to complete the [[BossRush Take 'Em All On]] challenge and fight [[spoiler:[[BonusBoss Dark Link]]]], he has to be fought two extra times.
*** Malladus and Cole teaming up is annoying as hell. The damage you receive is minimal, but it's not a traditional boss fight like you'd expect. It's more an exercise in avoiding all of Cole's attacks as you steer Zelda up to where Malladus is using the stylus. While you're trying to do two things simultaneously, Cole is throwing ghost mice at you that can stun you and take control of Zelda away from you, making you lose progress. And even more than that, the platforms start shifting as you get closer to the end, which can ''really'' throw you off.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'':
*** The [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere Twilit Bloat]] that is the last Tear of Light. First of all, it's electrified — imagine the unholy union of Barinade from ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'' and a gigantic tick. He flies, naturally. You're on this floating wooden platform in the middle of Lake Hylia, that ''of course'' tilts with your weight, and he can swim under it and knock you off. The only time you can attack him is after he tries to attack you (for a FULL HEART of damage — and you only have five at this point), assuming you managed to both dodge him and are still close enough to reach him. And if you've managed to do this three times, you have to leap on top of him and attack his little tick legs all simultaneously.
*** [[spoiler:Ganon's Puppet: Zelda]] is an interesting idea for a boss, but cannot be attacked in any way... She's a TennisBoss and, damaging her is entirely dependent on when the game decides "now's a good time to throw another energy ball that can be hit back".
** The Imprisoned in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword Skyward Sword]]''. It's basically a giant mouth and pair of legs covered in black scales, with its toes as its weakpoints. Your job is to stop it from walking up a spiral trail to the temple above by destroying all its toes and driving the seal back into its head [[SequentialBoss three times]]. Not only do you have to keep up with its pace, but every time it takes a step that foot sends out a harmful shockwave from the feet you're supposed to be attacking. As if that's not bad enough, you have to fight the Imprisoned ''three times'' throughout the game.
** ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Breath of the Wild]]'':
*** Thunderblight Ganon. Overall not a difficult boss, but his many little mechanics make it infuriating to fight him. Thunderblight is [[LightningBruiser infuriatingly fast]], making it difficult to get Perfect Dodges or even Shield Parries, and — as the name implies — can use electricity. Getting hit by electricity in this game means that Link drops his weapon (except the Master Sword). All of this gets worse when it gets to lower HP and not only electrifies its sword and shield, but also begins to drop metal rods around Link and have them act as lightning rods.
*** There's also Waterblight Ganon, who the first time isn't particularly difficult, but the Champions' Ballad DLC sets up a rematch with each of the Blights with only the tools provided. For Waterblight, this is just a few spears and ten arrows with a fairly weak bow. This becomes frustrating in the second phase when Waterblight takes to the sky and can only be knocked down with arrows. Once you run out, the only way to damage is by getting close enough to use bombs or Urbosa's Fury if you have enough charges.
* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'':
** Depending on your weapons, the [[InvisibleMonsters Cloaked Drone]] in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' can be either a piece of cake or an aggravating encounter. If you took a detour and found the Wavebuster: congratulations! The Wavebuster automatically latches onto the Cloaked Drone and destroys it in three seconds flat. If you didn't, however, prepare for pain. It can't be locked onto, and the Thermal Visor doesn't help. It's very possible for first-time players to waste time trying to scan it to no avail and take more damage than necessary. With no way to lock on, trying to shoot it becomes frustrating because you can't manually aim and run around at the same time, or you have to lock your view to one specific point and try to meet the Cloaked Drone with your shots. [[note]]''Metroid Prime Trilogy's'' aiming scheme alleviates this issue.[[/note]] In the meanwhile, it's constantly peppering you with powerful shots and just ''won't stay still.'' To top it all off, the Cloaked Drone is at the end of a [[MarathonLevel very long]] run through the Phazon Mines and is guarding [[CheckpointStarvation the one save room you've been trying to find for the past hour]]. Dying to it makes it even more aggravating.
*** The eponymous creature's 2nd form is this. It's completely immune to everything except the Phazon Beam, which can only be used if you stand in a pool of liquid phazon. Where are these pools? Prime excretes them occasionally. Prime's phazon excretion is completely random, though, meaning you may end up jumping over shockwaves for way longer than is reasonable before you can finally hurt her. Oh, and each Phazon Beam shot only lowers her HP by 1/8.
*** The first form of Prime is just as annoying. It's only vulnerable to certain beam weapons at a time, which is fine. The problem is that in the last quarter of the fight, it changes its vulnerability very quickly, and some of your beam weapons are ''not'' fast-moving. By the time your Ice or Wave Beam has reached Prime to hit, it could've changed its vulnerability one or two times, making the shot ineffective. Combined with the Plasma Beam's relatively short range, the only weapon that can do consistent damage is the Power Beam, and even then, you'll be lucky if you can hit it more than a few times before it changes vulnerability again. How serious is this problem? On harder difficulties, you'll see it change vulnerabilities nine times in as many seconds. Combined with the fact that in this phase it gains no new attacks, it just drags the fight out much longer than is reasonable. It also starts spamming its ramming attack, which is just a giant pain in the ass.
*** Meta Ridley, the penultimate boss of the first game, usually doesn't strike many people as intensely annoying simply because of how ''fun'' he is — however, he does dip into this a bit. Every so often, he starts flying outside of your shooting range for a while, and when he lands on the temple, produces a shockwave that is barely visible and is for some reason very difficult to dodge. At 1/5 health is where things get dicey: he lands, loses his wings, and starts ''utterly spamming'' his ridiculously damaging, accurate, and hard to dodge ram attack. On higher difficulties, this can shift to ThatOneBoss instead of this trope, as the annoying factors are less visible past the overall difficulty.
** The last Dark Samus battle in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' is a giant exercise in frustration not because she's difficult, but because there's a seven minute time limit and the damage calculators are set so that she takes very little damage on the rare chances you have of hitting her. So for most of that seven minutes, you're just helplessly staring at her cheap invincibility waiting for her to take her sweet time to give you a chance to hit her. Incidentally, this is only on hard mode. The damage calculators on normal mode are such that beating her is much less of a chore.
*** Despite being much easier, the first Dark Samus battle is a pain near the end. Dark Samus starts shielding near the end, making it impossible to hit her while she's using one of her attacks. However, when she's not attacking, she's zipping around the room so fast you can't keep a lock on her. So basically, the only way to do it is to just spray the room with Power Beam shots and hope they hit her. While she only has about a quarter of her health left when she does this, it's a pain because the fight just drags on and on.
*** The Grapple Guardian also has the potential to be a major pain in the ass, just because it's so hard to effectively stun him to get good hits. Before this thing even becomes vulnerable you have to scan it with your scan visor. Expect to either spam your basic power beam until your finger hurts or waste your precious light/dark ammo, however. Once you hit it enough, the Grapple Guardian fires the eponymous Grapple Beam at you. If you get hit, you'll take damage as you get closer and closer to it. If it misses completely, you're soon back to the eye phase, during which it takes no "real" HP damage. The trick is to stand behind one of the electrified pillars in the room and let the boss stun itself by grappling it. Once it does you can hit its back, but by the time you've run/jumped behind it you only have a second to act. Firing a Super Missile (as you will want to do) takes almost precisely this amount of time. A 5-shot spread missile is a bit faster, but takes time to lock on instead. Charged beam shots also work, but either drain loads of ammo or leave you with very little damage dealt. The boss actually gets ''easier'' when it TurnsRed later, since the process for hurting it becomes a lot quicker.
** The second phase of the final battle in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' takes a really long time, about twice the other two phases put together, but is substantially more mechanical and less fun. You're most likely to screw it up because you get impatient with how it's taking forever.
*** Mogenar from takes almost an hour to beat on Hyper difficulty. His only weaknesses {orbs on his shoulders, stomach, and back) are shielded 75% of the time, and heal over time. Then if you do wind up destroying one, he stops and grabs another one to heal himself. The fight itself isn't that challenging, just long and stupidly annoying. It doesn't help that you only have the Power Beam in this fight and it's early in the game so you're low on health anyway. The kicker is, that to actually cause real damage to it, you have to jump into Hypermode once the orb is white, shoot it with the Hyper Beam (which saps your health), and use it ''really quickly'' so it doesn't go for the recovery orbs.
*** ''Prime 3'' also has the Korakk Beast, a miniboss that takes an absurd amount of time to defeat. The pattern to defeating it includes shooting its tongue when it shoots it out, rolling into the Morph Ball, rolling under it, and planting a bomb under its stomach, then rolling out and shooting it in the stomach during the short window you have to do so. It takes a fair amount of damage, but also deals a fair amount as well, and moves around at a quick enough pace.
*** The Metroid Hatcher. It's really hard to hit because it not only moves quickly, but it has to be shot in the tips of its quickly-moving tentacles to make it vulnerable. It also has a hard-to-dodge spinning attack, and if you don't attack it when all its tentacles have been shot, it'll spawn Metroids. These Metroids make the fight much more difficult. If you don't attack the Hatcher quickly enough when it's vulnerable, it'll draw out the tentacles and you have to start all over. (At least when a tentacle is torn off, it means one less tentacle in the process.) Fortunately, you only have to fight one the hard way. The other two can be easily handled with the [[AttackItsWeakPoint X-Ray Visor]] and [[OneHitKill Nova Beam]].
** Slench 3 in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeHunters''. Oh my, where do I begin talking about it?
*** Its main attack is the [[InterfaceScrew Volt Driver]].
*** [[FlunkyBoss Has "Turrets" that it can control]] while attached to the wall, and those flunkies uses his same main attack. There are three of those.
*** Comes after a true and long PlatformHell which, as you guessed, you will have to do on the way back.
*** [[ShieldedCoreBoss Cannot be hurt]] while docked or preparing to tackle Samus.
*** [[FakeLongevity Docks every time it loses a third of its health.]]
*** The [[AttackItsWeakPoint small weak spot]] is only fully exposed when not docked.
*** [[CowardlyBoss Moves around a lot]] when not docked and, as expected, only stops to ram into Samus. And of course cannot be hurt while preparing to or ramming.
*** Although this doesn't account to 'Goddamned Boss', he can only be hurt by the [[GrenadeLauncher Battlehammer]].
* In ''VideoGame/ShadowOfTheColossus'', several of the Colossi may fit this role:
** Phaedra is extremely slow and not that interesting to look at, but is very quick to fall once you've managed to climb onto it, and the method by which you do this can be executed very quickly: all you have to do is run down one of the tunnels in its arena to trick it into looking inside, then emerge on the other end and climb up the oblivious creature's tail. The problem is that Phaedra's [[ArtificialStupidity finicky AI]] turns this into a LuckBasedMission; sometimes it can fall within minutes, otherwise it can take ''much longer'' just to get the stupid thing into position.
** Avion. To defeat it, you first have to get on top of it, which requires you to wait around until it gets near you and then execute a perfectly aimed and timed jump when it does. You lose your grip (and the ability to attack) whenever Avion makes a mid-air turn, which it spends most of the battle doing. If you fall (and you will), you have to swim all the way back across the huge lake-arena via a lazy breast stroke, which is frustratingly slow and takes an enormous amount of time.
** Basaran, if only because getting it to stand over a geyser — and have it ''centered'' so it actually hits it — can be a pain to accomplish.
** Pelagia is incredibly tedious to fight. The idea is to use Pelagia's lip to jump up to the top of a small building so it will put its forefeet on the roof, exposing the weak point. Everything from getting its attention close enough to the building to jump to it, succeeding in jumping to its lip, succeeding in jumping to the ''building'', and making the jump to its weak point is absolutely ''obnoxious''.
* ''VideoGame/LaMulana'':
** [[FlunkyBoss Baphomet]] could definitely qualify for one. While he doesn't have all that much health, and bombs (his primary weakness) do damage even if his wings are closed, the [[GoddamnedBats witches]] are what make this battle infuriating. There are about 4 witches on the screen at a time, and they vary from white (lightning bolts if you're in their field of vision), green (shoots fireball that goes through walls), light red (fast, shoot a large energy ball), and the most infuriating, gray. They're slow, but they fire a projectile that goes through walls and stuns you after the knockback (even in midair), which have a nasty tendency to hit you while you're trying to jump onto the main platform. Those gray witches will make you wish you were able to [[BurnTheWitch burn them]]. Also, he has a few attacks that are hard to dodge.
** Bahamut is even more annoying. You fight him in a tiny-ass boat that drifts back and forth across the screen. You can't control it, only being able to influence its speed. Bahamut, meanwhile, will pop out of the water on the left and right sides and either charge you, breathe fire, or spit projectiles. If the boat drifts over him, you're going in the water, which hurts you even if you have the Scalesphere, and God help you if you get stuck under the boat.
** Tiamat, oh boy. Her room has four infinity symbols that can be destroyed, and it's highly recommended that you do. If you don't, she attacks with her hair in 8 fixed directions (and they're in an awkward offset) making it almost impossible to get close to her for a respectable amount of time to hit her. Not only that, she spawns GoddamnBats which increase in number over time.
** All of those pale in comparison to Ba, a miniboss in the Confusion Gate. Ba is essentially [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast Moldorm]] from hell. You fight him in a room lined with spikes and filled with very tiny platforms. Being a giant bat, all Ba does is fly around randomly and occasionally spit a single projectile at you. However, the knockback from any hit will send you flying off the platform and down one screen, refilling Ba's health. Unlike Moldorm, however, getting back to Ba is not as easy as just climbing back up. There's a few ways, but if you don't know how to do it, you may well be climbing ''all the way back up the Tower of the Goddess''. It's one of the few puzzles in the game where the [[AwesomeButImpractical pistol]] would come in handy...except it's a puzzle you have to solve to open the door to where the pistol is hidden. Blargh. If you use a combination of Shuriken and the [[spoiler:Lamp of Time]], however, he becomes really easy.
* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle'':
** One particularly annoying boss is [[spoiler:New Destroyman]]. The fight consists entirely of the red one fighting you up front and the blue one standing on the catwalks above shooting at you. You're supposed to position yourself so the blue one's attacks hit the red one, but occasionally, the attack will outright go around the red one to make sure it hits you. Once you kill the red one, it then degrades to grave-camping, as you basically just wait for the blue one to come revive him, the only opportunity you'll have to hit him.
** The other Shinobu boss, Million Gunman, is pretty frustrating. He's a GetBackHereBoss who will [[UnnecessaryCombatRoll dodge roll]] out of any attempt to directly attack him, moves around a multi-tiered stage really fast at random, forcing the player to rely on [[ScrappyMechanic Shinobu's jumping mechanics]] to even get close to him. He's also somewhat of a MarathonBoss, as he takes a very small number of hits before taking off again, and can knock back the player with his fairly powerful projectile attack. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And he doesn't]] shut the hell up.
** Hell, ANY Shinobu fight can become this due to her overly annoying habit of stopping to taunt after every single combo, meaning she's about half the speed of Travis or [[spoiler:Sir Henry]], which makes her the worst character to play as. Of course that's provided you don't mitigate this by never actually finishing a single combo, since both available can link into each other pretty gracefully.
* The Spore Spawn in ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' is an elaborate test of patience and jarringly slow paced compared to the other fights. Most of the fight is spent dodging falling pollen and its body just waiting for it to open up and show its weak point (there's a strategy to easily dodge this, [[GuideDangIt but still]]. Luckily, you can completely skip it with a little SequenceBreaking, even in a HundredPercentCompletion run.
* The BonusBoss of VideoGame/{{Poacher}}. His first form is a DamageSpongeBoss that likes to [[BulletHell fill the screen with bullets]], but that's only the beginning — both of his other two forms are fought while jumping across small platforms above the only BottomlessPit in the game. Any and all damage you take causes knockback and locks up your controls until you hit solid ground. All three forms have to be defeated without saving, and even after that, there's a good stretch of rooms covered in spikes between you and the next save point. Do the math.
* ''VideoGame/NiGHTSJourneyOfDreams'': Bomamba is a PuzzleBoss with an immediately obvious solution, yet still manages to be absolutely infuriating. What you need to do is grab onto the pegs and tilt the board to roll her [[FlunkyBoss little cat flunkies]] into the holes, but the controls for tilting the board are ''atrocious'', and in order to dodge her otherwise slow and heavily telegraphed attacks you need to move to a different peg and then resume the puzzle from a different perspective. This would be annoying enough on its own, but this in this game, [[TimedBoss your time is your health]], meaning each time you take a hit, you have less time to complete the puzzle, and as you waste more time on the puzzle, you can't afford to take as many hits.
* Venom from ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2000'' will ''really'' get on the nerves of players, particularly those on a first-time playthrough who haven't mastered the decent but often dodgy controls. You first have to chase him across the city and battle him in an alley, with his favorite attacks being [[TeleportSpam vanishing and teleporting]] and a difficult to avoid attack that amounts to just grabbing and immobilizing you for five straight annoying seconds. Then you get to do the same chase through the sewers, and ''then'' the same battle except with [[DamselInDistress Mary Jane]] dangling in a tank with a "fill" switch that Venom keeps flipping on. It doesn't help either that Venom [[BossBanter never once shuts up]] throughout the entire 45 minute or so segment.
* Hyper-Electro from ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2EnterElectro'' isn't anything special until you fight him on Hard Mode thanks to one little change. Normally you can just whale on him when you trick him into temporarily changing back to normal; but on Hard Mode, Spidey will get electrocuted for attacking him physically. Your only method of attack is to use impact webbing which immediately makes him escape after one hit and litter electric mines around the area. This little change means you'll be fighting the boss for at least ten minutes at best.
* ''VideoGame/UltimateSpiderMan'' has many challenging bosses, but they're mostly [[ThatOneBoss hard in a good way]]. Then there's the second Silver Sable fight. Firstly, Sable only gets hurt from the first couple of hits each time, then she just starts auto-blocking and you have to move away and wait until she's vulnerable again, which results in the battle getting very monotonous. To make things harder, she constantly leaps around the area, all the while you're robbed of your webshooters and can only run and jump. Not to mention Sable attacks in combos only, and [[FlunkyBoss has her troops constantly distract and annoy you further]]. The redeeming factor is that the fight is fairly short and ends once you bring Sable's health down to a certain point.
* Judge Doom, the FinalBoss of ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'', is easily hit and can't really hit you effectively, but his stamina is far beyond absurd. Worse, when he's been knocked down and you have a chance to finish him off with a can of Dip, Judge Doom inexplicably gains the ability to kill you with ''one hit!''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Action Games]]

Sometimes overlaps with the MarathonBoss.

If this annoying yet easy boss occurs at a particularly plot-significant point, it may be seen as an AntiClimaxBoss. For bosses that are really frickin' hard ''beyond'' an annoyance factor, see ThatOneBoss.

!!Examples:

!!!Own Pages

** Ursula's first form is probably the first game's standout example. She constantly guards, is aided by her eels (who constantly declare "No escape!"), and can only be attacked by overflowing her cauldron with magic--but the game never explains exactly how that works.

*** In the remakes, Flint's Drifblim knows Minimize and ''Baton Pass.'' Meaning once it maxes out on evasion, it will then pass the boosts to [[SignatureMon Infernape]] and be incredibly frustrating. It also knows Will-o-Wisp and Strength Sap for both crippling your team and maintaining longevity. Thankfully, the move Taunt will render it useless, but it can be a difficult curveball for the unprepared player, especially one who doesn't have knowledge of competitive play.

* Judge Doom, the FinalBoss of ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'', is easily hit and can't really hit you effectively, but his stamina is far beyond absurd. Worse, when he's been knocked down and you have a chance to finish him off with a can of Dip, Judge Doom inexplicably gains the ability to kill you with ''one hit!''
* The Mother Monster from ''VideoGame/CrusaderOfCenty'' just sits there without doing anything whatsoever. It is easy to kill if you know which of the (couple of dozen) weapons you're supposed to be using, but of course [[GuideDangIt there's no hint]] as to what that might be. Use anything else, and you can just whack at her for half an hour without accomplishing much.
* In ''VideoGame/CaveStory'', the game's True Final Boss, [[spoiler:Ballos]]. He's definitely hard, and interesting, but not hard enough to count as ThatOneBoss (as in, not hard enough by TrueFinalBoss standards). No, he's a GoddamnedBoss because to get to him, you have to go through the long BonusLevelOfHell, which is hard enough by itself, and fight ANOTHER challenging boss immediately before it '''without''' saving or using the full-heal boxes. To quote [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]], it's like eating an entire bucket of corn on the cob without getting a kernel stuck in your teeth.

** Pelagia is incredibly tedious to fight. The idea is to use Pelagia's lip to jump up to the top of a small building so it will put its forefeet on the roof, exposing the weak point. Everything from getting its attention close enough to the building to jump to it, succeeding in jumping to its lip, succeeding in jumping to the ''building'', and making the jump to its weak point is absolutely ''maddening''.

* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse'' has two rather nasty instances of this:
** The Cyclops, whose for some reason can only be damaged by hitting its eye. It walks left and right, forcing you to constantly outrun it across the screen repeatedly until you get that split second of time in which to AttackItsWeakPoint. What makes it especially frustrating is that if you don't keep just the right amount of distance, it will sprint towards you, closing in on you and forcing you to waste even more time running away. Luckily, there are a few items and spells that make the Cyclops a bit less of a chore to deal with, such as the [[NotCompletelyUseless Knife]], [[AnAxeToGrind Axe]], and [[GameBreaker Sypha's Lightning]].
** The Water Dragons from [[ThatOneLevel Level 6]] are a combination of this and ThatOneBoss. Thanks to the BottomlessPit [[SuperDrowningSkills river]] making their fire breath {{knockback}} a guaranteed OneHitKO, the player is forced to stand on the middle platform and very carefully move to the left and right edges and crouch accordingly. In order to defeat the dragons in a way in which you'll actually survive, you have to patiently wait for one of the dragon's heads to be at a position where you can hit it with the Axe, or repeatedly turbo-fire your whip in the hopes it'll make contact with one on its way down. And of course, each hit only deals 1/16 of the boss' life bar in traditional ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' fashion. It's one of the rare cases where even the [[TimedMission timer]] can kill you in a ''Castlevania'' game.
* Elizabeth Bartley of ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaBloodlines'' starts out fighting you in a Medusa guise, which is fairly fun if a bit repetitive. Beat that, though, and she shifts back into human form while relying on conjuring up magical attacks while teleporting around the arena. Hitting her only removes the components of her magic one by one; dispelling all of them finally damages her at a fixed rate. It's slow, tedious, not particularly difficult, and just feels like a huge time waster, especially when she gets her LastChanceHitPoint when she should have been killed in an even four cycles.
* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'' on a NewGamePlus has Brachyura. Unlike other bosses, who you can simply rip to shreds with your carried-over glyphs, Brachyura is invincible for the entirety of the fixed-pace tower climb, only killed when it and Shanoa reach the top. At best, he drags on compared to the other bosses. At worst, getting his [[FlawlessVictory medal]] is a test of patience that will most likely dwindle with each re-attempt, but while knowing his routine makes getting the Medal trivial even on your first run of a Hard Mode, the poor decision that was Brachyura truly rears its head in the [[BossRush Boss Rush Mode]]. While with the right equipment and tweaked out Attributes it's possible to [[OneHitKill oneshot]] every other boss in Boss Rush A, Brachyura will defiantly stick to the script, no matter how much damage you deal even though it's completely possible to deal over 10,000 in two hits. The end result of this is that Boss Rush A will take over two minutes to complete (which adds up when you need to clear it several times in order to get all the unique prizes). By comparison, Boss Rush B can be cleared in a matter of '''about twenty seconds''', making the giant enemy crab's presence over the Giant Skeleton, who adheres to no such script, completely unacceptable.
* Cro-Maine, one of the later bosses in ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'', is the bane of anyone who plays this game. Not only does his attack do high damage ''and'' has a huge swing radius, but one hit sends you clear out of the boss arena and forces you to start all over. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Note that his health is fully restored but yours isn't.]] Unlike every other boss in the game, where there is always an evolution to give you an edge, your only hope against Cro-Maine is to carefully time your attacks so you can dodge his club and chip away at his health, and one slip up sends you all the way back to the start of the fight.

* In ''VideoGame/AxiomVerge'', Gir-Tab, the giant scorpion boss in Kur, starts as a pretty easy fight. You just have to damage its underside and its projectiles are trivially easy to dodge. Then it lays flat on its underside. Its attacks become more difficult to avoid and it's basically invulnerable. Then you realize it can do this whenever it wants.
* Hyper-Electro from ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2EnterElectro'' isn't anything special until you fight him on Hard Mode thanks to one little change. Normally you can just whale on him when you trick him into temporarily changing back to normal; but on Hard Mode, Spidey will get electrocuted for attacking him physically. Your only method of attack is to use impact webbing which immediately makes him escape after one hit and litter electric mines around the area. This little change means you'll be fighting the boss for at least ten minutes at best.

* ''Franchise/TouhouProject 13: [[VideoGame/TouhouShinreibyouTenDesires Ten Desires]]'' has the Stage 3 boss, Miyako Yoshika; her spellcards are in no way considered hard, but for her final spellcard, she surrounds herself with knifes and heals herself. Since the pathway to get around the knives is just as long as dodging them and going to stop Yoshika healing, fighting the battle either way is irritatingly long.
* Glorious Symbol from ''VideoGame/{{Hellsinker}}'' serves as the Segment 2 Behind boss and while he isn't particularly difficult by the standards of the game, he takes a somewhat long time to defeat, no thanks in part to the fact it likes to repeatedly move to the bottom of the screen. While the other bosses of Segments 1 through 3 can be killed quickly just by hitting their central components until they explode, Glorious Symbol requires you to repeatedly destroy its 4 cores multiple times until it finally explodes, something that can easily take over two minutes. Worse yet, you can't just skip him by playing Segment 2 Lead to fight Scarlet Queen on your first playthrough; to earn the privilege of playing the Lead stages, you have to complete Segments 1 through 4 on your first credit.

These bosses are not particularly difficult or dangerous, but an absolute pain in the neck to fight (one of the proposed titles for this trope was "Pain In The Boss", for this reason). Sure, your character may be able to last all day against this boss's attacks, but your patience certainly cannot. Frustration leading to mistakes is the most common way that players end up getting killed by these bosses.

In short, this Goddamned Boss is the boss equivalent of GoddamnedBats, while ThatOneBoss is the boss equivalent of DemonicSpiders. Or phrased another way, it is actually not that difficult to beat once you've seen through the annoyance factor, deciphered its attack pattern and come up with an effective counter-strategy.

Common traits of the Goddamned Boss include:

* Frequently [[CowardlyBoss runs]] or [[TeleportSpam teleports]] [[GetBackHereBoss out of attack range]].

* [[TheComputerShallTauntYou Taunts the player]] [[BossBanter constantly]].

*** Moldorm from the Tower of Hera, the third dungeon. It fights you on top of a platform with open edges and a hole in the middle, and while its attacks don't do a dangerous amount of damage, they ''do'' cause KnockBack that can send you plummeting down a floor (two floors if you fall down the hole in the middle). After a tedious climb back up and recollecting hearts, any damage you've done to him is reset and you must start the fight over from the beginning. Once it reaches its last hit point, it gets faster and more likely that it will knock you off and you'll lose more progress. There's a reason why speedrunners call him Trolldorm.

** The Moldorm is the first boss of ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening Link's Awakening]]'' and has pretty much the same schtick, but the frustration is slightly mitigated by the fact that you can now jump over it to keep from getting trapped near a ledge. The seventh boss is an evil eagle who likes to blow you off the tower and will also instantly regenerate if you fall off; this too can be mitigated if you [[spoiler:sequence break and get the Magic Rod from Turtle Rock before completing the 7th dungeon. It takes out the boss in 3 hits]].

*** Malladus and Cole teaming up is annoying as hell. The damage you receive is minimal, but it's not a traditional boss fight like you'd expect. It's more an exercise in avoiding all of Cole's attacks as you steer Zelda up to where Malladus is using the stylus. While you're trying to do two things at once, Cole is throwing ghost mice at you that can stun you and take control of Zelda away from you, making you lose progress. And even more than that, the platforms start shifting as you get closer to the end, which can ''really'' throw you off.

*** The [[GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere Twilit Bloat]] that is the last Tear of Light. First of all, it's electrified — imagine the unholy union of Barinade from ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'' and a gigantic tick. He flies, naturally. You're on this floating wooden platform in the middle of Lake Hylia, that ''of course'' tilts with your weight, and he can swim under it and knock you off. The only time you can attack him is after he tries to attack you (for a FULL HEART of damage — and you only have five at this point), assuming you managed to both dodge him and are still close enough to reach him. And if you've managed to do this three times, you have to leap on top of him and attack his little tick legs all at once.
*** [[spoiler:Ganon's Puppet: Zelda]] is an interesting idea for a boss, but cannot be attacked in any way... It's a TennisBoss and, damaging her is entirely dependent on when the game decides "now's a good time to throw another energy ball that can be hit back".

*** The Grapple Guardian also has the potential to be a major pain in the ass, just because it's so hard to effectively stun him to get good hits. Before this thing even becomes vulnerable you have to scan it with your scan visor. Expect to either spam your basic power beam until your finger hurts or waste your precious light/dark ammo, however. Once you hit it enough, the Grapple Guardian fires the eponymous Grapple Beam at you. If you get hit, you'll take damage as you get closer and closer to it. If it misses completely, you're soon back to the eye phase, during which it takes no "real" HP damage. The trick is to stand behind one of the electrified pillars in the room and let the boss stun itself by grappling it. Once it does you can hit its back, but by the time you've run/jumped behind it you only have a second to act. Firing a Super Missile (as you will want to do) takes almost precisely this amount of time. A 5-shot spread missile is a bit faster, but takes time to lock on instead. Charged beam shots also work, but either drain a lot of ammo or leave you with very little damage dealt. The boss actually gets ''easier'' when it TurnsRed later, since the process for hurting it becomes a lot quicker.

** Avion also comes to mind. To defeat it, you first have to get on top of it, which requires you to wait around until it gets near you and then execute a perfectly aimed and timed jump when it does. You lose your grip (and the ability to attack) whenever Avion makes a mid-air turn, which it spends most of the battle doing. If you fall (and you will), you have to swim all the way back across the huge lake-arena via a lazy breast stroke, which is frustratingly slow and takes an enormous amount of time.
** Basaran, if only because getting it to stand over a geyser — and have it ''centered'' so that it actually hits it — can be a pain to accomplish.

** [[FlunkyBoss Baphomet]] could definitely qualify for a Goddamned Boss. While he doesn't have all that much health, and bombs (his primary weakness) do damage even if his wings are closed, the [[GoddamnedBats witches]] are what make this battle infuriating. There are about 4 witches on the screen at a time, and they vary from white (lightning bolts if you're in their field of vision), green (shoots fireball that goes through walls), light red (fast, shoot a large energy ball), and the most infuriating, gray. They're slow, but they fire a projectile that goes through walls and stuns you after the knockback (even in midair), which have a nasty tendency to hit you while you're trying to jump onto the main platform. Those gray witches will make you wish you were able to [[BurnTheWitch burn them]]. Also, he has a few attacks that are hard to dodge.

** The other Shinobu boss, Million Gunman, is pretty frustrating as well. He's a GetBackHereBoss who will [[UnnecessaryCombatRoll dodge roll]] out of any attempt to directly attack him, moves around a multi-tiered stage really fast at random, forcing the player to rely on [[ScrappyMechanic Shinobu's jumping mechanics]] to even get close to him. He's also somewhat of a MarathonBoss, as he takes a very small number of hits before taking off again, and can knock back the player with his fairly powerful projectile attack. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And he doesn't]] shut the hell up.

* Cro-Maine, one of the later bosses in ''VideoGame/EVOSearchForEden'', is the bane of anyone who plays this game. Not only does his attack do a lot of damage ''and'' has a huge swing radius, but one hit sends you clear out of the boss arena and forces you to start from the beginning. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard Note that his health is fully restored but yours isn't.]] Unlike every other boss in the game, where there is always an evolution to give you an edge, your only hope against Cro-Maine is to carefully time your attacks so you can dodge his club and chip away at his health, and one slip up sends you all the way back to the start of the fight.

* ''VideoGame/UltimateSpiderMan'' has a lot of challenging boss battles, but they're mostly [[ThatOneBoss hard in a good way]]. Then there's the second Silver Sable fight. First of all, Sable only gets hurt from the first couple of hits each time, then she just starts auto-blocking and you have to move away and wait until she's vulnerable again, which results in the battle getting very monotonous. To make things harder, she constantly leaps around the area, all the while you're robbed of your webshooters and can only run and jump. Not to mention Sable attacks in combos only, and [[FlunkyBoss has her troops constantly distract and annoy you further]]. The redeeming factor is that the fight is fairly short and ends once you bring Sable's health down to a certain point.

** [[Film/FrankensteinConquersTheWorld Baragon]] has the annoying trait of "often not possible to hit". You need to get in close and kick it in the face when it is on all fours, and when it stands on its hind legs to fire at you you can't hit it at all. [[ScrappyMechanic It stands often]]. Even your beam won't touch it most of the time, with most of it going over Baragon's head on all fours, and it inexplicably missing when Baragon stands on its hind legs. Worse is that Baragon (along with Varan) is one of two worst offenders of "[[VillainExitStageLeft retreat to the next field]]" tactic when the timer runs out, which can deprive you of leveling up and a much-deserved victory after duking it out with this annoying little bugger.

* ''VideoGame/StreetsOfRage 3'', the end boss of Stage 4: the mysterious samurai ninja robot(?) named Yamato. He splits into three separate entities (of which, chivalrously, only one will face you at a time), with ''four life bars each.'' His default behavior is to keep his distance and wait for the player to make a move (or throw flaming shuriken at a passive opponent). When you get too close, he'll either immediately make a flying leap to the other side of the arena or run you through with a lightning-fast sword dash. If you back him into a corner, he'll either FlashStep right behind you for another slash-dash or turn briefly invincible and run over anything between him and the opposing corner of the arena. He has some other tactics too, such as turning briefly invisible and throwing shuriken in triples or splitting into two unhittable mirror images that symmetrically dash through everything in the upper and lower edges of the area. However, with a lot of practice, finding weaknesses, and goading him into doing just those things that leave openings for attack, he gets simple and he turns into a slightly more arduous MarathonBoss.

* Wilhelm in ''VideoGame/Borderlands2'' is this for many players. A giant robot with many hard to avoid attacks and can summon lesser robots to either annoy and distract you or to get his shield recharged unless you [[ShootTheMedicFirst blast them quickly]]. Even with a strong corrosive weapon, Wilhelm has a ton of health. Don't let the boss catch you near the arena's cliff edge because he can push you over it and instantly kill you, causing his health and shield to be ''fully restored'' because you died. The only way to avoid that is to play with other people, since boss characters cannot regain health unless the entire group is taken out in one swoop.
** Saturn manages to be even worse, being encountered in an area where pools of slag will make you vulnerable to damage if you step on them (and is very easy to do on accident) and while cover is available, he's so tall he can shoot over most of it anyway. It does get easier once you shoot out his many turrets, but then it just becomes an attrition fight of finding cover from his missile attack, dealing as much damage as possible, and dive back in.
** An optional [[BonusBoss Raid Boss]], called "Terramorphous the Invincible" can be fought initially as a side mission after the end of the original campaign. As a Raid Boss, he is not that difficult if you are a few levels above him. However, he is made to be fought first in [[NewGamePlus True Vault Hunter Mode]] with ''four'' level 50 characters at the same time. On top of that he has a slapping attack which, if standing in the wrong place, can toss you out of the arena into a deep chasm. However, there is an area in the arena where most of his attacks can't reach. If the player can find that spot, the fight should be much easier.

** Blood Raven, who [[GetBackHereBoss constantly runs around]] [[SuperSpeed at breakneck speed]] while [[MookMaker summoning tons of zombies]] [[GoddamnedBats that get in your way]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Everquest}}'': The Fabled Trakanon takes this to the point of FakeDifficulty [[note]] for those who've never played, fabled bosses are harder versions of old-school bosses in the game that only show up on the anniversary [[/note]] as he has an unresistable spell that teleports the player to the beginning of the zone, and effectively reloads the zone for said player, meaning Trakanon will have completely regained his health by the time they get back unless other people are engaging him, making him almost impossible to solo even if you're 30+ levels above him, as he can use this ability at any time. The regular Trakanon also has a banish ability, but it just teleports you to a dangerous part of the zone without reloading you, meaning you can just run back.

** Progress on raid bosses in general tends to include a certain number of wipes, some more than others (and generally speaking more wipes the further you get into the raid), in order for the group to learn how to properly handle mechanics. Every once in a while, however, you will run into a long endurance boss where most of the challenge is back-loaded to the final portion of the fight. This means you can get the first 7 minutes of the fight down in only a few tries and then spend the rest of the night repeating that portion effortlessly only to wipe at 10%, qualifying the boss in question as this trope. Some of the more infamous cases of this are Sindragosa in Icecrown and the multi boss fight Iron Maidens in Blackrock Foundry. The latter in particular, where ''three'' new mechanics activated whenever one of them falls below 20% health along with gaining a damage buff for the rest of the fight that stacks up over time, eventually overwhelming you if too many damage dealers get caught out by one of the numerous danger zones.

** The second boss of the Hullbreaker Isle dungeon doesn't hit particularly hard, doesn't have a lot of HP, and its special attacks are laughably easy to dodge. However, it spends half the goddamn fight underground, untargetable, from which it launches its irrelevant special attacks. The diving mechanic doesn't make the fight any harder, it just makes it a lot longer than it ever had to be because, for half of the fight, you can't damage it. You're stuck waiting with your thumb up your ass until it surfaces so you can wail on it for all of 15 seconds before it dives again.
** Leviathan and Ramuh, in their Extreme mode fights, are noted for giving ''unsynced'' parties trouble due to unskippable mechanics that, if done wrong, result in a TotalPartyKill. Ramuh's ultimate outright {{One Hit Kill}}s the whole party if you DPS too quickly, and no shield or Vitality-focused [[SocketedEquipment melds]] will ever survive it. Leviathan, on the other hand, has a "fair" ultimate that can be mitigated through normal means in addition to the [[AppliedPhlebotinum elemental converter]], occasionally allowing one or two quick-thinking players to salvage a screwup -- but that fight ''also'' has a mechanic that knocks players off the arena, preventing their resurrection, so it's a toss-up as to which one is worse overall. Ironically, both of these fights are made significantly easier by just not bringing as many players.

** ''VideoGame/{{Sonic Rush|Series}}'''s bosses are often like this, taking their sweet time doing nothing but you can't hit them, or giving you very little room to hit them without being stupid hard, and most of them give you an even shorter window of opportunity when they go into TurnsRed mode. ''Sonic Rush Adventure'' completely averts this -- the bosses take millions of hits, but you can hit them often and they are usually quite short. Even the one that takes just four hits as you have to navigate an obstacle course. At least you're doing something. The Huge Crisis boss in the first game is probably the worst offender: it's basically just like the first boss, only it likes to waste a lot of time launching volleys of easily dodged missiles at you.

* ''VideoGame/MegaManLegends 2's'' train boss. Good God, ''the train boss''. It's actually a very easy fight with very easy to dodge repetitive attacks, but the train has [[DamageSpongeBoss so much health]] that the fight will easily take more than an hour to complete. The last portion of the battle, where you're trying to shoot out the engine, is quite literally twenty straight minutes of standing there not moving (except to ''occasionally'' dodge an attack) and just holding the fire button down.

* The Koopa Clown Car in ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy''. It has three forms. The first two are really easy, but involve sitting through around two minutes worth of animations every single time. And you'll be doing this a lot of times, because the third form really is hard. If you die in the room right after the boss fight, you have to do the entire boss battle over again. Hell, even if you ''do'' remember to go back, the entrance to the previous room isn't level with the ground, so you'll try to go back and find that you apparently can't.

** The final battle against the [[RecurringBoss Thugs-4-Less leader]] in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankGoingCommando'' is a very long tedious fight where you have to shoot at his [[HumongousMecha giant robot]] via some automated turrets on the roof of buildings. for a lot of time you're up in a turret the boss is throwing homing missiles at you which you constantly have to shoot out of the sky to avoid taking heavy damage. These missiles tend to alternate sides, so rather than constantly firing at the boss, you're constantly shooting out the missiles, hoping that in your movement a few shots hit the boss. After a few rounds of missiles the boss will decide to come over to smash the turret with a very telegraphed attack that's easy to dodge. This of course means you have to find another turret to keep doing damage. So long as you keep moving, and can hit the homing missiles you should never take damage, but the high health of this boss means it can take at least ten minutes to do this [[note]]if you manage to chip the very last points of his HP off with a normal weapon that needs levelling up, that weapon will gain a LOT of Exp for the "kill"; very good for a one-shot Exp boost on otherwise-difficult weapons[[/note]].

* The Khrome Keeper in ''VideoGame/PacManWorld'' is very little of a threat, as all he can do is kick crates at you. The biggest, most annoying threat of the fight? The magnets. To damage the Krome Keeper, you have to hit some switches that are superheated, requiring you to use the [[ChromeChampion Chrome]] [[InvincibilityPowerup Ball]] that drops from the crates he kicks to avoid being damaged. This, however, makes you affected by the electromagnets that move around above said switches. Run under one and it'll pick you up, leaving you helpless until Chrome Pac-Man mode wears off or (more likely) drops you in a damaging acid pool, which you can't escape while in Chrome Pac-Man mode and can only escape once it wears off (and you better quickly get out while your temporary invincibility lasts). Now add on the fact that this is all timed, and the switches are randomized and all around the place...

** '''Fatty Whale''': This boss's attack pattern is randomized slightly, making him pretty unpredictable, and his attacks are pretty hard to dodge as well! When he gets the palette swap in Milky Way Wishes, he gets even worse, using a few new attacks, including attacks where he jumps across the arena! He's actually much slower in ''Ultra'' compared to how he was in the original, but he's still a pain to take out even in that version.
** Pyribbit in ''VideoGame/KirbyTripleDeluxe''. While he can be rather dangerous at first, it becomes clear that a lot of his attacks are very telegraphed and follow a clear pattern. But no matter how good you get at the fight, there's nothing that can stop from jumping into the background, and absolutely every opportunity to attack him when he comes down is incredibly short. Can be extra frustrating in [[spoiler:Dedede Tour]] where you not only have to deal with the harder (DX) form, but you're trying to be quick about it, as well! This actually applies to most bosses in ''Triple Deluxe'', since this game introduced the mechanic of 3D background layers and every single boss (even minibosses) uses it to some extent, dragging the fights out. That said, none of the others are anywhere near as bad about it as Pyribbit.
** Speaking of Kirby, ''[[VideoGame/KirbyPlanetRobobot Robobot's]]'' Holo Defense API on its last hit: It zips around the room and does not even attack, but it is so difficult to hit that it can take more time to land that hit than the entire first phase of the boss.

** Hariet of the Broodals. Even if you don't find her difficult she may still give you your run of money in terms of frustration. First off, of all the four she's the only one who using Cappy is a must, that is, while the others can be fought with techniques to work around with, the only way to knock off her metal bonnet is to use Cappy to throw her bombs back at her. To top if off, her bombs leave lava spots when exploding which all the player can do is either go around/jump over or wait for to disappear. This can be more frustrating as she leaves trails of bombs retreating into her helmet from being stomped unless a bomb is thrown at her bonnet before doing so. In addition, once her helmet's off, she'll run in panic making it difficult for the player to stomp her and if not in time, she'll then reset, and start her tactics all ''over again.''

** The second sequel, Retribution, gave us a more straight example in Mad Meks, who you fight in the first Ork mission on the Space Hulk. He's armed with a [[FunetikAksent Rokkit Launcher]] that will blow the crap out of vehicles but do pretty piss poor damage against heavily armored heroes, doubtlessly not enough to ever overwhelm the healing you can do with liberal applications of the items/abilities you have at your disposal. However, his armor has a chance to teleport anyone who melees a reasonable distance away from him. Thus, the majority of the fight will be spent telling your own units to run up and hit him in the face over and over again without ever being in any real danger of losing. The fact that he can immobilize everyone temporarily or take damage to his energy bar rather than his health doesn't help either...

** [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Smeagol]]. His attacks deal negligible damage, but he has a lot of health, moves quickly, and can steal your money whenever he hits you. Even worse, he teleports whenever he steals from you and you couldn't get your money back until a recent update. Also, he's invisible (though warm-blooded, so you can see him with infravision if you're the right race and he's near) at a point when you usually can't yet See Invisible. At least he usually drops great items when killed (not anymore -- over the last several versions, the chance that he'll drop a pittance of copper pieces has been steadily rising). It's a bit better if you have some manner of generating bright light, as he'll run away from it. Of course, this means you'll have to chase him around the level.

** The Elite Trio in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam''. Why? Because you have to take them all down in one attack, otherwise the ones left standing revive their fallen comrades. Or in other words, you pretty much have to win with either Luiginary Ball, Luiginary Wall or Luiginary Typhoon (or maybe a certain badge effect), since anything else won't hit a wide enough area to take down all three at once.
** Additionally, some of the Hooraws fought in Dreamy Wakeport before Big Massif are this, since they're not hard in the traditional sense or have particularly powerful attacks, they just have a battle 'rule' that makes it annoying. Like the one you have to defeat in three turns (along with all his minions are the same time), which is rather annoying since you don't have any more powerful Luiginary attacks than Luiginary Ball and Luiginary Stack.

* ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'': [[spoiler:The Crystallization Cauldron.]] It's a massive DamageSpongeBoss that requires you to take out the eye first in order to expose its weak point. You have a limited amount of time to throw as much damage as you can on said weak point before it retracts, and every time it appears, mooks are spawned that you'll have to take out as well if you don't want to get shot to death or stunned while wailing on the weak point. That on top of a recurring attack that requires you to stop what you're doing, hop off, and wait for it to finish means this is a boss that takes a ''long'' time to kill. [[spoiler:And in order to get the best ending of the game, you have to fight it with Velvet, who's the TierInducedScrappy in the original game, and whose talents in the remake aren't really useful against it.]]
* ''[[VideoGame/Persona2 Persona 2: Eternal Punishment]]'' has Captain Shimazu. Shimazu and his flunkies aren't too tough aside from the insta-kill Aimed-shot with all of their damage-dealing attacks being single-target, the problem comes with dealing damage as they will constantly spam Hypnotic wave, a party-spanning sleep-inducing spell over and over, screwing up your Fusion-spells.

* Shadow Mitsuo of ''VideoGame/Persona4'' takes forever to kill, constantly giving himself a 1400 HP buffer that is pretty much impossible to stop. Beyond his [[AIRoulette AI randomly getting lucky]] and using both of his actions to attack the hero ([[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou instant game over if he dies]]) he poses no threat but is a war of attrition.

** Ruler of the Sky from ''358/2'' Days isn't particularly difficult. Its pattern is pretty basic, and its attacks don't hit that hard. However it has a LOT of life and the entire battle is spent in the air where it will outrun you. This all adds up to a VERY long boss battle.

*** The FinalBoss, Ultimecia. Granted, this is supposed to be the last battle you EVER fight, but consider the setup for all this frustration. It starts as a straight fight, you VS the sorceress. After that, however, she summons a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere that was apparently [[spoiler: living in one of Squall's personal items and innocently referenced during the Garden civil war]] to give you the beating of a lifetime. After you kill the creature, Ultimecia decides to merge with that Guardian Force (although they should both be too weak for combat at this point for having their asses handed to them) to create a hybrid creature. Finally, having defeated THAT, Ultimecia is back AGAIN, because getting thrashed and exploding wasn't enough, so now there's a faceless sorceress with even more power than ever for no apparent reason. This may be the last part of the last boss, but consider what you had to go through to get here and how long you had to go through the same battle cycles because the boss has WAY too many hit points and forms. Couple this against the game's system where you can't get a level advantage on any boss EVER and presto!
*** She's only tedious if you're underprepared. With proper junctions, you can defeat each of her forms in one or two Limit Breaks.
*** Ultimecia qualifies as a Goddamned Boss on several counts. Firstly, she randomly chooses three party members to fight her. During battle, if a character is KOed for too long they will be "absorbed into time" and replaced by one the remaining characters. So your options are to spread your resources thin around all six characters, to stall (preferably against the first form) so characters get absorbed until you have the three you want, or to reload the save until you get lucky. This also means if you're down to the last three and someone gets absorbed, you're stuck with a short-handed party for the rest of the battle.

*** This same game also has Jumbo Cactuar and the Tonberry King. The first one is a veritable damage sponge that takes an hour to bring into low HP, and after that, it fucking escapes if you do not give him a very powerful finishing blow. If the bastard escapes, you have to start over. The Tonberry King by himself isn't very annoying, but you have to fight twenty normal Tonberries to initiate a fight with him. Tonberries are powerful and high-HP enemies, so twenty battles with them are pretty much guaranteed to be repetitively unleashing your most powerful [=GFs=] and Limit Breaks on them. Sitting and watching the animation. MANY.TIMES.OVER.

*** [[spoiler: Yunalesca]] is often considered ThatOneBoss because of her multiple forms and her confusing Hellbiter-Megadeath combo, which gives you the Zombie status effect and then eventually [[OneHitKill insta-kills]] you if you remove it. If you do figure out her relatively simple attack pattern, however, she is simply ''frustrating.'' The Zombie status effect means characters are damaged by both regular attacks ''and'' healing, so there's no way to cure damage, and since she often casts Regen or Full Life, many of your characters will spend the majority of the battle dead or slowly dying. Sometimes it's better if a character does die so that all status effects go away when you revive them. Basically, you have to have a pattern where you switch out party members such that at you have at least one Zombie (or Deathproof) member when she casts Megadeath, and can revive the others before she kills them again. What makes her a true Goddamned boss is that she has more than 10 minutes of cutscene crap. It is actually quite good the first time you see it (as most cutscenes in this game are), but you will hate it more every time she kills you and you can't skip it.
*** Greater Sphere and Earth Eater become this if you are leveled up high enough to tackle them. The former counters every normal attack with Ultima, a spell that has the longest animation, guaranteeing that either you have watch that or overdrives and their animation over and over, which on other hand are countered with Hydraulic Press, which is thankfully shorter but takes a percentage of character's maximum HP. Earth Eater on the other hand counters everything with Megaton Punch, an attack that inflicts instant death, so you have to witness that ''and'' an animation of Auto-Phoenix kicking in (which you most likely have if you bother with it) unless you use Deathproof armor on your characters. When on back, it counters everything with Flare that it bounces of its unremovable Reflect, so you have to watch the animation of the spell reflecting and spell itself. Both also must be vanquished multiple times if you want to maximize your luck (the only reason to bother with these two besides defeating each of them once for Monster Arena Quest completion), so have fun.

*** The Warmech you fight at the beginning of Chapter 12. At first, it's an easy fight, but if you take too long to kill it, it'll put up an unbreakable force field. Getting rid of the force field requires you to stagger it, which can take up to fifteen minutes. Unless one knows a [[GuideDangIt fast]] way to kill it.
*** The second fight with the ''Proudclad''. It's a boss with 3.5 million HP, it's immune to all status ailments, and it can reset its stagger meter by changing form, which it can do whenever it feels like. And, once you get it down to about one million HP, it ''heals to full'', gets perma-Brave, Faith, and Vigilance, and breaks out some new attacks (thankfully, it Deshells and Deprotects itself as well). It's not powerful enough to really be a threat if you keep up with your healing, but it takes so long to fight that it's just a massive pain.
*** Pretty much any of the Eidolon battles. Theoretically they shouldn't be too difficult because you win just by using certain abilities until a gauge is filled (like using Sentinel abilities during the fight with the Shiva sisters), but you only have one or two party members who are inflicted with Doom, giving you a time limit, and while the Eidolons aren't defeated like normal bosses ''you'' can still be killed. This is especially a problem when [[SquishyWizard Hope]] faces off solo against the Eidolon Alexander.
*** The final form of the final boss, [[spoiler:Orphan]]. It's immune to all forms of attack until it's staggered, and it inflicts Doom on your party leader, leaving you with seven minutes to cut down its 3.3 million HP. It would be reasonable, except that it can use Temporal Hollow to reset the chain gauge pretty much whenever it feels like it.

** The third Weigraf fight in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' is often viewed as ThatOneBoss. At least until you learn the secret to beating him, at which point the fight becomes absurdly trivial. The fight is a one on one fight between Ramza and Weigraf, and the trick is to obtain the self-healing reaction ability (which isn't that hard, and is a pretty strong ability anyway, so the player may already have it) and give Ramza a job with high speed, and then spam Ramza's stat boosting abilities so that you can instantly crush Weigraf, and the even nastier Velius battle that follows (these are treated as the same battle, so the stat boosts carry over and it's often possible to kill Velius before it even moves). However, this can take a long time, as you spend time running away from Weigraf while constantly using your stat boosting abilities. The Weigraf / Velius fight thus ends up being ThatOneBoss or a Goddamned Boss, depending on how you tackle it.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' has the optional Fiends, which require nothing short of sheer determination to summon. Even if you know where they appear, they still have a measly 1/256 chance of appearing every time you enter the area they're in. It can take hundreds of attempts over hours or even ''days'' just to get a particular Fiend to show up. On top of that, Fiends are absolutely brutal bosses, and if you get clobbered, you have to either pay Charon to revive you on the spot (which guarantees their reappearance), or if you can't afford that, have to slog through the process of summoning them all over again.

*** The DLC Fiend: [[spoiler:En no Ozuno. Unlike the rest of the Fiends, En no Ozuno is a Puzzle Boss that remains annoying each fight. In addition to hitting hard, he can counter attacks with Peacock Incantation and, in his second phase, fully buff his defense and hit/evade rate with Goki's Water Wall. Finally, he has Dekaja. He's weak to Physical, but countering his buffs and resetting your own buffs will waste your turns, forcing you to trek through the longest part of Twisted Tokyo numerous times]].

* ''Franchise/TouhouProject Pocket EVO+'' "story fights" generally consist of one of your characters against a single opposing character. Sometimes this is otherwise a perfectly normal fight. Sometimes the opposing character has a Defense-increasing or healing spell card and ''will not stop spamming it''. That is mainly because healing spells in this game heal a set percentage of max HP. Given bosses' sick amounts of health, even one usage of it can remedy whatever you did during the last five turns. And thanks to the game's spellcard system (using a spellcard disables it until you decide to use your turn to restore it), they can use it ''every second turn''. EVO+'s UFO system makes it ''even worse'' - if the enemy gets a green UFO, you have to take it out with a successful attack - if you don't, she regains 20% of her HP at the end of current turn. So if the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] [[MarathonBoss isn't on your side...]]

** Trying to catch practically any Legendary Pokémon will make them this. Knocking out a Legendary is easy, catching one is an exercise in frustration as they all have the lowest catch rate possible and you have to sustain continued attack from their moves while trying to catch them. It is not unusual to go through up to 30 Ultra Balls and Timer Balls or cause the Legendary to run out of PP causing them to faint from Struggle as the RandomNumberGod proceeds to not let you catch them. The only real exceptions are Legendaries that are plot mandatory to catch plus the Gen VII Mascots in ''Ultra Sun And Ultra Moon''.
*** Of special note is Giratina in ''Platinum'', which has a measly total of ''30 PP'' across its entire moveset because it has three moves with only 5 PP. This means that after it moves 30 times, it will pretty much immediately Struggle itself to death. If it's at 1 HP exactly, you have a 3% of catching it per Dusk Ball. Good luck.

** Among the [[OlympusMons legendary]] catchable pokemons from the same game we have Moltres. It only has two attacking moves, Peck and Fire Spin. Fire Spin not only does continuous damage each turn but it prevents the Pokémon affected from switching out and in Gen I attacking.
** Falkner from the original ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' can also be this, due to both of his Pokémon knowing Mud-Slap, an accuracy-lowering move. And said move is super-effective against Geodude and Onix, who otherwise have a type advantage against Falkner's Pokémon. (Not to mention that Geodude and Onix are generally slower and acts after Falkner's Pokémon.)

** Juan from ''Emerald'' isn't too bad until his ace Kingdra. It's only weak to Dragon, but unless you have a Kingdra of your own (which can only be aquired from trade) all possible Dragons are vulnerable to a 4x effective Ice Beam. However, this Kingdra in particular comes with the infuriating combo of Double Team and Rest. It'll start setting up Double Team and if you get hits in, heal itself up with Rest, which will also remove any status afflicted on it. If you're particularly unlucky, you'll be dealing with all your attacks unable to land on a sleeping Pokemon and it'll wake up to attack, raise evasion, and heal. This can rectified with any moves that bypass accuracy checks like Aerial Ace.
** Candice in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Platinum]]'', specifically. Her Froslass has the ability Snow Cloak, which ups its evasion by 20% in hailstorms, which her Abomasnow will cause hail to be permanently in play. Froslass will follow up by using Double Team numerous times to increase its evasion even more. The only saving grace is that she'll likely go down in one or two super-effective hits if they connect.
** Grimsley's rematch team in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'', mainly for Liepard. It's already fast enough, but it has the Unburden ability on top of that. It'll always start with Fake Out, which will consume the Normal Gem it holds and makes it go even ''faster'', as well as wasting a turn by flinch (unless your mon has Inner Focus). Then it'll screw with you more because it knows Attract, which causes a status effect that wastes a turn half the time- and since this Liepard is female, and many species of mon have skewed gender ratios in favor of males (especially the starters)... you can expect to not be able to fight half the time. And it also knows Sucker Punch to go first if you're using a move (given that there's a good chance that you'll be unable to attack), just to make things more annoying. And this is his first mon.
** Also in ''Black 2'' and ''White 2'' in the Pokemon World Tournament: Winona, specifically her Altaria. While most of the gym leaders will either give you an even battle or [[ThatOneBoss or just murder you outright]], Winona's Altaria seems designed specifically to cause hair pulling. Of it's four moves, only ''one'' is damaging (Dream Eater) and it only works when your mon is sleeping. The others put your Pokemon to sleep, preventing them from attacking and making them vulnerable to Dream Eater (Sing), recover health (Roost, and also Dream Eater if it works), or boost Altaria's defense (Cotton Guard). So a typical battle has her put your mon to sleep with Sing, heal any damage you may have done with Roost, and then bulk up with Cotton Guard and proceed to use Dream Eater until your Pokemon wakes up, in which case you had better hope you get a Super Effective Critical Hit before you get put to sleep again. It's not quite ThatOneBoss, because unless your mon is extremely vulnerable to Dream Eater, Altaria can't cause much damage, but its moveset seems basically designed to drag the match out as long as possible and make you waste all your good moves trying to KO Altaria before it can heal itself.
** Deoxys in ''Omega Ruby'' and ''Alpha Sapphire''. Before you can even encounter it, you have to go through capturing Rayquaza, battling [[spoiler:Zinnia]] (who can be defeated in two minutes), and sitting through several minutes of cutscenes, all without saving. Once you finally get to Deoxys, it's a pain if you're trying to capture it. Deoxys is so strong that it can easily obliterate your Mega Rayquaza in one hit with Psycho Boost, and Hyper Beam can deal some serious damage as well. Then it starts spamming Cosmic Power to buff its defenses and Recover to heal any damage you can deal to it. And if that's not all, it also has an abysmally low capture rate and just will not let itself be captured. If you didn't use your Master Ball, there are two options: KO it and come back later [[note]][[GuideDangIt there's no indication]] it won't be lost if you knock it out, and trying again requires you to re-enter the Hall of Fame and return to Sky Pillar[[/note]], or despair endlessly trying to capture it the first time around. Remember: you have to sit through ten minutes of battles and cutscenes before you can fight Deoxys.

*** Raikou and Entei are perhaps the worst roaming legendaries. In addition to all the points listed above, they also know Roar -- meaning that if you manage to stop them from fleeing, they'll try to make ''you'' run away instead. Even worse, if they pulled this off in ''[=FireRed=] and [=LeafGreen=]'', [[PermanentlyMissableContent they would disappear entirely, preventing you from ever catching them]]. Oh, and while roamers are entirely optional, if you want Ho-Oh in ''Pokémon Crystal'', you need all the beasts; these two included.

** Tapu Fini in ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' will test your patience to the extreme. First off, its ability automatically summons Misty Terrain, meaning you won't be able to inflict status on it for five turns. It has Aqua Ring to regenerate the damage you do to it, on top of having very good defenses and a strong defensive typing making wearing it down harder. It also has Muddy Water to wear you down and lower your accuracy, and Hydro Pump if it feels like just killing you instead. Park a Grass/Dragon/Water-type in front of it to resist the hits? It has Nature's Madness, which halves your HP and puts you in danger of being knocked out even with the type resist. The only thing keeping it from being ThatOneBoss is the fact that it doesn't hit as hard as the other Tapus, the Ultra Beasts, or the cover legendaries, making it merely annoying instead. Expect to sink a while into catching it, and god help you if you're resetting for natures and whatnot.
** About the only thing keeping the Gigantamax forms of Pikachu and Eevee from being ThatOneBoss is the fact that, not being fully evolved, their defenses are paper-thin. To make up for this, they both tend to run essentially the same strategy of trying to stop the player's side from getting to attack at all. G-Max Pikachu's signature move, G-Max Volt Crash, paralyzes the entire party, including Ground-types that the attack itself can't even hit, and then spams Double Team to try and make sure any Pokemon that do get to move will miss anyway. G-Max Eevee manages to be just as annoying; its signature move, G-Max Cuddle inflicts infatuation on any opposing Pokemon of the opposite gender from Eevee itself, forcing them to stand by and do nothing 50% of the time, and as salt in the wound, Eevee also comes knowing Sand-Attack to lower the player's accuracy even further and ''Endure'', a move that guarantees itself a LastChanceHitPoint for a full turn, dragging the fight out even more.

* Pretty much every boss in ''VideoGame/EndlessFrontier''. Each and every one of them (And there are a ''crapton'') has lots of team-hitting attacks, [[ScrappyMechanic Forced Evasion]], Some really tough flunkies and enough HP to eclipse Bill Gate's total income four times over. Granted, So do normal enemies, but not to the ferocity bosses do. Expect to spend a solid half-hour fighting a boss.

** The Hearteater you fight in the Matar Highlands. It has quite a bit of HP and hits fairly hard, but the real problem is its special, Ovulate. This infests a character with the thing's eggs, and puts a timer on them. When the timer runs out, the eggs hatch and devour the party member (read: OneHitKill). Basically, you can either burn up your MP using the Chalice of Freedom, or you can just revive whenever someone goes down (pretty much constantly).
** [[HumanoidAbomination Wiseman]]. His regular attacks drain both your health ''and'' your MP. Meanwhile, one of his specials, Cast Away Your Carnal Robes, knocks your whole party down, removes any magnus you've equipped, and breaks your combos. As a result, you're gonna spend most of the fight trying to keep his HP down and struggling to assemble a decent combo, while he uses your stolen MP to hit you with special after special. Adding to the pain, he comes immediately after the brutal showdown with the Black Dragon. Thankfully, most of his attacks are fairly weak; his strongest attack, Illusory Chaos, does maybe half your health in damage, which is easy to recover from.

** The Iron Golem isn't terribly hard, but you fight him in a small arena near the top of Sen's Fortress. The biggest hazard of the fight isn't the Iron Golem's attacks, but rather the BottomlessPit surrounding the arena. It's way too easy to fall off the edge, and while getting back to the fight isn't hard if you found the bonfire at the top of Sen's Fortress, it makes it one of the game's cheaper fights.
*** ...Unless you bring in [[MemeticBadass Iron TARKUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSS!!!!]]

* Both of the truly [[BonusBoss optional bosses]] in VideoGame/{{Wasteland}} - the Scorpitron and the Nightmare. Since the Scorpitron is available for you to fight pretty much from the beginning of the game, he doubles as ThatOneBoss for most players because he's a big challenge even for a party that just finished the game (but didn't spend much time on leveling up). The Nightmare, however, resides in an [[BonusDungeon optional dungeon]], and you don't have to fight him to complete it. He isn't particularly dangerous, he just has the highest HP in the entire game and you can only have one party member enter the dungeon to begin with, which makes his fight long and tedious (if not for macros and the fast-forward button). This can also lead to CantCatchUp, since he also gives the highest XP in the game for killing him (and double that if the final blow is done via melee) which can easily earn your solo character a level or three.
* Silver Horn in ''VideoGame/MegaManXCommandMission''. At first, the fight isn't too bad, and Horn has an exploitable weakness to electric attacks. But when he's at half health, he uses Liquid Coating, which raises his defenses exponentially, even to his weakness, making the fight ''incredibly'' tedious.

* The higher difficulty levels in ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'' turn every boss into these because of HP bloat (enemy HP on hard is 250% of its value on easy, and enemies take about a third less damage as well, while only dealing about 50% more), but the two bosses who can heal, Agria and [[FinalBoss Gaius/Muzet]] really take the cake. Their healing powers increase proportional to their health, not their attack power, meaning that Agria can instantaneously recover 15,000 HP at a point in the game when your strongest [[LimitBreak mystic arte]] can do maybe half that. And they can spam these moves an unlimited number of times, and quickly enough that if the AI decides to be mean it can recover from critical to full in 5-10 seconds while still attacking occasionally. This can render these fights nearly unwinnable even for a player with enough levels, equipment, and gaming skill to render their offense trivial. Better hope you brought a *lot* of hourglasses.

* ''VideoGame/JojosBizarreAdventureThe7thStandUser'' has any boss that can change their distance to ?. This can make otherwise easy bosses like Forever and High Priestess (or an already hard boss like Chaka) take quite a while, because they take 1 point of damage ''if you're lucky'' from any attack at this distance, and usually "rest out of sight" to regain HP. They can stay at this distance for [[AIRoulette as long as the AI feels like]], and the fight is pretty much at a standstill until they come back to their regular distance.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsInTheSky FC'' has the second fight with [[spoiler:Lorence]], who has lower damage output than before but makes up for it with more defensive tactics. Thanks to his insane SPD, he can easily spam Tearal and Earth Guard EX to keep himself alive and save up enough CP for his S-Craft, over and over again. His skillset also covers at least three status effects, which means anyone who doesn't have Grail Locket will be vulnerable to at least one effect. This makes for a tedious and somewhat luck-based battle, especially on Nightmare difficulty.
* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'': The fight with the Phantasms in chapter 7 isn't particularly dangerous; a properly leveled party won't really be in any danger of dying. The problem is that there are a ''lot'' of phantasms, and each one is capable of summoning another phantasm when low on health, which in turn can summon ''another'' phantasm, meaning that the battle is going to drag out for a ''long'' time unless you manage to wipe them all out at once. Unfortunately, doing so is nigh impossible because [[GeoEffects the fight occurs in a dungeon that prevents you from using your most powerful attacks]]. Eventually they stop respawning, but you'll spend quite a lot of time killing them before you reach that point. It doesn't help that they tend to spam the same two attacks over and over.
* ''VideoGame/CthulhuSavesTheWorld'': Optional boss fight against Fallen Angel is not that hard to be outstanding. However, she has a nasty [[HealThyself Heal All]] spell, which makes her regenerate 5000 HP, and due to the nature of the game, the amount of health healed increases by 500 with each turn. As a result, her fight becomes extremely annoying and tedious, especially if you don't have any good combo finisher attacks. And don't think about [[DrivenToMadness driving her insane]], because she'll trade her Heal All spell for Hurt All, which will more than likely insta-kill your party due to how far the difficulty had increased.

* In ''VideoGame/NatsukiChronicles'', there's Alex and Margaret in Stage 7. You have to fight them in a large and extremely clumsy-to-control heavy assault ship, the same one that you fight in ''VideoGame/GingaForce'' (as this game is a POVSequel, and this stage is [[PerspectiveFlip her perspective of her boss fight in Chapter 7 of that game]]), and you pretty much get pelted with their attacks the whole time as a result as you try to capture their ship with your special weapon. This would be ThatOneBoss if not for the fact that [[HopelessBossFight Natsuki will lose the fight regardless]] and you have a lot of health with which to [[HoldTheLine survive until the fight ends on its own]], but you still have to inflict as much capture damage on them and reduce damage to yourself as much as possible to get a good grade on the stage. Thankfully you're not expected to [[NoDamageRun no-damage]] it since you can take a few dozen hits and still get an S++, and this stage is excluded from Arcade Mode.

* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3SnakeEater'' has two as well:

* ''VideoGame/RuleOfRose'' has the Mermaid boss, which isn't necessarily ''difficult'', but the fight can get so drawn-out and monotonous that you mess up out of frustration. Come to think of it, boss fights in general aren't the game's strongest suit....
* ''VideoGame/HauntingGround'': The final fight against Lorenzo isn't all that hard (especially if one saved a lot of Magnesia), but Lorenzo's annoying tendency to suddenly stop and gloat, then proceed to troll Fiona by blowing up the floor at her heels to send her flying becomes plain annoying after the twentieth time it happens. His high health (which is invisible to the player, by the way), tendency to turn on Hewie, teleport ''on top'' of Fiona to push her into panic, the small size of the arena and his ability to one-hit Fiona at the most random times (panic mode or not, he doesn't care!) only makes it more frustrating. And God help you if you don't have any Health, Panic or Dog items left.

** Since the final boss [[spoiler:Derek Simmons]] of the Leon / Helena chapter feeds on the constant stream of respawning C-Virus Zombies to regenerate, you instead need to impale a zombie with a lightning rod, damage him, let him absorb the zombie, and wait for lightning to strike him to inflict lasting damage. Ironically it's probably the [[SolveTheSoupCans most Resident Evilish boss ever]], but it also means a lot of the battle consists of first figuring out that's what you're supposed to do, and then waiting patiently for him to grab the lightning rod. It's largely random which zombie he grabs, and lugging the rod around leaves you slow and vulnerable, meaning this fight can drag on for a ''very'' long frustrating time if the RandomNumberGod decides he's not going to grab the zombie you want him to.

* [[spoiler:Grandfather / Lord Burroughs]] from ''VideoGame/ClockTower3'', while not ''difficult'' per se, is simply beyond annoying to face. His basic attack tethers you on the spot like your own bind move and, sure enough, if he lands three it's an instant loss ([[HaveANiceDeath though one hell of a death scene]]). He also has about [[DamageSpongeBoss three olympic swimming pools worth of HP]], gains access to a ''second'' binding move at 3/4 health, and if he gets close can grab you to drain HP and [[TurnsRed Turn Red]] for a while, making his already annoying attacks even worse. All the difficulty from what would otherwise be an easy fight comes from how long it drags and that the slightest slip-up practically guarantees an instant death.

* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar 3'' has the Lambent Zerker. She's actually a pretty climactic battle in campaign, where she shows up only once at the end of a frantic defense of fortress at Anvil Gate. Her appearance in Horde Mode is another matter entirely. She has the opportunity to show up every tenth wave, and is one option of five that can be selected at random (the others being a [[BullfightBoss regular Berserker or two]], a [[FlyingMook squad of]] [[MadeOfExplodium Reavers]], four or five [[BodyHorror Gunkers]], a squad of Savage Corpsers, or a lone [[KingMook Brumak]]). The Lambent Zerker is easily the worst of the lot because of her staying power--she is vulnerable only when she opens her chest plate (which, if the mood strikes her, may be once every 60 seconds or more), and even then is a DamageSponge of mythic proportions. She also has the tendency to charge willy-nilly around the map, casually smashing the fortifications you've spent the past nine waves saving up for. The worst part is that Gunkers and Brumaks are tougher enemies, while a regular Berzerker is a more strategic fight--the Lambent Zerker isn't very hard, just annoyingly durable.
* The original ''[[VideoGame/StarFox1 Star Fox]]'' has its alternate final boss, [[spoiler: the Slot Machine.]] This box is a mixture of this, PuzzleBoss, MarathonBoss, and LuckBasedMission. This boss does not have a health bar and is pretty much one hit killed. But... it's HOW you do it. [[spoiler: You need to get Triple Sevens. This is EXTREMELY annoying to do, as the game DOES NOT SHOW ANY MERCY WITH THE REELS. You CAN heal if you get Cherries, but you get attacked if you get an Andross. And Andross overrides Cherry. Oh, and the ending you get? Yeah, you can only get out of it by resetting or dying to the enemies that come. And if you die? You do the level ALL OVER AGAIN, INCLUDING THE SLOT MACHINE.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'':
** Alad V could certainly count. Interface screw? Check. Weak point that's hard to hit? A dog robot that leaps around acrobatically counts. Frequently runs out of range? See the aforementioned dog robot. Incredibly high HP? Check. Taunts the player? Yes. Repetitive mechanics? You bet your ass. Not to mention that he is the ONLY remotely reliable way to farm Neural Sensors, a resource needed to craft three especially important and valuable items (Catalysts, Forma, and certain helmets) that you will probably need several dozen of.
** His [[TheCorruption Mutalist form]] manages to be even more annoying. In this case, he is only vulnerable when he uses his collar to control one of the other Tenno in your group, which he rarely does. At this point, while you're trying to damage him, you also have to avoid another Tenno trying to kill you, which depending on the Tenno being controlled can be really difficult.
** Tyl Regor isn't much better. All of his melee attacks have a high chance of [[CycleOfHurting stunlocking]], and his shields recharge almost instantly. This wouldn't be a problem if he didn't have FlashStep TeleportSpam. He's no match for PurposefullyOverpowered weapons, but if you don't have any prepare for a grueling fight.

* The Super Bean from ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombiesGardenWarfare 2''. It's a ShieldedCoreBoss who has a forcefield that must be taken down in order to damage it, and it regenerates it after enough time passes. ''Also'', it will liberally use TeleportSpam and FlashStep in order to avoid damage making it a pain to whittle its health. Super Bean's attacks are no slouch either, annoying hitscan EyeBeams, a cape spin, and a big, damaging laser it will use when near death. The good news is that you have four Super Brains assisting you in this fight, the bad news is that it can appear as a DegradedBoss in the Endless Flag mode.

** The ''Octo Expansion'' DLC has the rematch with the Octo Samurai. He isn't particularly dangerous as long as you keep your distance, but he only way to damage him is to get in close and detonate the Baller, which does surprisingly little damage. As a result, the battle has a tendency to drag out as you repeatedly have to charge him to get in one or two hits only to run away before he can knock you out of the arena.

* In Chapter 23 (the Lloyd version) of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'', Lloyd Reed goes from a borderline AntiClimaxBoss in Eliwood's path to this kind in Hector's. If you don't find out beforehand that [[spoiler:not only has he moved to the middle of the map amongst hordes of other mooks, but that '''he also moves when approached''']], you're very likely to pay for it with a dead ally. And the chapter objective is to defeat Lloyd, so if this happens too soon, it's either restart or miss out on the rest of the goodies in the chapter. Oh, and all this occurs in FogOfWar. '''''Fun.'''''
** Kishuna the Magic Seal from the same game. He's incapable of harming anyone, but he has an absurdly high evasion rate so beating him is mostly a matter of luck, and if you don't defeat him in one turn, he warps away. Defeating him in his first appearance is required to unlock a Sidequest chapter on Hector's route that's [[WhamEpisode full of massive plot reveals]], but you'll probably need a lot of resets to do it.

* The General from ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'' is very much a Goddamned Boss. More so then Maero or Kazuo-Maero just had a huge truck and Kazuo had an easy to figure out gimmick (although, considering the timing you had to pull off, Kazuo could count too). The General is worse because he drives around a mall in a huge SUV while an army of Samedi gangsters attack you. While his fleeing never results in a game over, and his SUV can be taken out quickly if you were smart enough to bring an RPG, you may at first be left with no option then to attack him with a dinky SMG on a dinkier ATV while being bombarded with enemy gunfire.

* Glorious Symbol from ''VideoGame/{{Hellsinker}}'' serves as the Segment 2 Behind boss and while he isn't particularly difficult by the standards of the game, he takes a somewhat long time to defeat. While the other bosses of Segments 1 through 3 can be killed quickly just by hitting their central components until they explode, Glorious Symbol requires you to repeatedly destroy its 4 cores until it finally explodes, something that can easily take over two minutes. Worse yet, you can't just skip him by playing Segment 2 Lead to fight Scarlet Queen on your first playthrough; to earn the privilege of playing the Lead stages, you have to complete Segments 1 through 4 on your first credit.

* Employs numerous StandardStatusEffects, especially ones such as Sleep or Confuse that impede your ability to control your character.

** Erika from ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'' can qualify as this, with two of her three Pokemon knowing the Wrap/Bind moves (which, back in the day, did continuous but light damage over the course of 2 to 5 turns) and two of them using [[StandardStatusEffects the status-inflicting Poisonpowder and Sleep Powder]]. Wrap/Bind was obnoxious because it prevented switching and forced the player's Pokemon to stay in for however many turns it lasted for, all just to do a pittance of damage. And while Poison and Sleep are easily cured with Antidotes and Awakenings, it forced the player to waste a turn dealing with the status. This could make Erika very annoying if the player's Pokemon were unable to take hers out in one shot.

* The first true "boss" in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil1'', the giant snake known as Yawn, pops up early enough in the game when you're likely to not entirely have a good grip on the tank-like controls, and in a small room where you can very easily get trapped by his long body. Making matters worse is that you don't actually have to fight him but simply make a break for the crest in the corner, but just getting there and out in one piece is easier said than done. The UsefulNotes/GameCube Remake made it possible to have Richard help you out which was even more of a double-edged sword: you were forced to take down the snake or else you'd miss out on the single most useful weapon in the game: the ''assault shotgun''. This only applies to Jill's game, however; since Richard doesn't show up to assist in Chris' game, he can safely just grab the crest and book it.
* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilCodeVeronica'' has Alexia in her final form. It's not a hard fight, as all you have to do is hit her once with the linear launcher, but you only have minutes to do so, as wasting too much time results in the Antarctic base to blow up, and she flits around like a fly, spewing ichor at you which causes Chris to drop his aim. Add in the slow moving aiming and the only real way to hit her is to wait for her to cross the middle of the screen and shoot, or pray you saved enough ammo from the DamageSponge form before it to riddle her with bullets and slow her down.

[[folder:Action Game]]

[[folder:Fighting Game]]

* ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy'':
** Depending on your weapons, the [[InvisibleMonsters Cloaked Drone]] in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' can be either a piece of cake or an aggravating encounter. If you took a detour and found the Wavebuster: congratulations! The Wavebuster automatically latches onto the Cloaked Drone and destroys it in three seconds flat. If you didn't, however, prepare for pain. It can't be locked onto, and the Thermal Visor doesn't help. It's very possible for first-time players to waste time trying to scan it to no avail and take more damage than necessary. With no way to lock on, trying to shoot it becomes frustrating because you can't manually aim and run around at the same time, or you have to lock your view to one specific point and try to meet the Cloaked Drone with your shots. [[note]]''Metroid Prime Trilogy's'' aiming scheme alleviates this issue.[[/note]] In the meanwhile, it's constantly peppering you with powerful shots and just ''won't stay still.'' To top it all off, the Cloaked Drone is at the end of a [[MarathonLevel very long]] run through the Phazon Mines and is guarding [[CheckpointStarvation the one save room you've been trying to find for the past hour]]. Dying to it makes it even more aggravating.
*** The eponymous creature's 2nd form is this. It's completely immune to everything except the Phazon Beam, which can only be used if you stand in a pool of liquid phazon. Where are these pools? Prime excretes them occasionally. Prime's phazon excretion is completely random, though, meaning you may end up jumping over shockwaves for way longer than is reasonable before you can finally hurt her. Oh, and each Phazon Beam shot only lowers her HP by 1/8.
*** The first form of Prime is just as annoying. It's only vulnerable to certain beam weapons at a time, which is fine. The problem is that in the last quarter of the fight, it changes its vulnerability very quickly, and some of your beam weapons are ''not'' fast-moving. By the time your Ice or Wave Beam has reached Prime to hit, it could've changed its vulnerability one or two times, making the shot ineffective. Combined with the Plasma Beam's relatively short range, the only weapon that can do consistent damage is the Power Beam, and even then, you'll be lucky if you can hit it more than a few times before it changes vulnerability again. How serious is this problem? On harder difficulties, you'll see it change vulnerabilities nine times in as many seconds. Combined with the fact that in this phase it gains no new attacks, it just drags the fight out much longer than is reasonable. It also starts spamming its ramming attack, which is just a giant pain in the ass.
*** Meta Ridley, the penultimate boss of the first game, usually doesn't strike many people as intensely annoying simply because of how ''fun'' he is — however, he does dip into this a bit. Every so often, he starts flying outside of your shooting range for a while, and when he lands on the temple, produces a shockwave that is barely visible and is for some reason very difficult to dodge. At 1/5 health is where things get dicey: he lands, loses his wings, and starts ''utterly spamming'' his ridiculously damaging, accurate, and hard to dodge ram attack. On higher difficulties, this can shift to ThatOneBoss instead of this trope, as the annoying factors are less visible past the overall difficulty.
** The last Dark Samus battle in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' is a giant exercise in frustration not because she's difficult, but because there's a seven minute time limit and the damage calculators are set so that she takes very little damage on the rare chances you have of hitting her. So for most of that seven minutes, you're just helplessly staring at her cheap invincibility waiting for her to take her sweet time to give you a chance to hit her. Incidentally, this is only on hard mode. The damage calculators on normal mode are such that beating her is much less of a chore.
*** Despite being much easier, the first Dark Samus battle is a pain near the end. Dark Samus starts shielding near the end, making it impossible to hit her while she's using one of her attacks. However, when she's not attacking, she's zipping around the room so fast you can't keep a lock on her. So basically, the only way to do it is to just spray the room with Power Beam shots and hope they hit her. While she only has about a quarter of her health left when she does this, it's a pain because the fight just drags on and on.
*** The Grapple Guardian also has the potential to be a major pain in the ass, just because it's so hard to effectively stun him to get good hits. Before this thing even becomes vulnerable you have to scan it with your scan visor. Expect to either spam your basic power beam until your finger hurts or waste your precious light/dark ammo, however. Once you hit it enough, the Grapple Guardian fires the eponymous Grapple Beam at you. If you get hit, you'll take damage as you get closer and closer to it. If it misses completely, you're soon back to the eye phase, during which it takes no "real" HP damage. The trick is to stand behind one of the electrified pillars in the room and let the boss stun itself by grappling it. Once it does you can hit its back, but by the time you've run/jumped behind it you only have a second to act. Firing a Super Missile (as you will want to do) takes almost precisely this amount of time. A 5-shot spread missile is a bit faster, but takes time to lock on instead. Charged beam shots also work, but either drain a lot of ammo or leave you with very little damage dealt. The boss actually gets ''easier'' when it TurnsRed later, since the process for hurting it becomes a lot quicker.
** The second phase of the final battle in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'' takes a really long time, about twice the other two phases put together, but is substantially more mechanical and less fun. You're most likely to screw it up because you get impatient with how it's taking forever.
*** Mogenar from takes almost an hour to beat on Hyper difficulty. His only weaknesses {orbs on his shoulders, stomach, and back) are shielded 75% of the time, and heal over time. Then if you do wind up destroying one, he stops and grabs another one to heal himself. The fight itself isn't that challenging, just long and stupidly annoying. It doesn't help that you only have the Power Beam in this fight and it's early in the game so you're low on health anyway. The kicker is, that to actually cause real damage to it, you have to jump into Hypermode once the orb is white, shoot it with the Hyper Beam (which saps your health), and use it ''really quickly'' so it doesn't go for the recovery orbs.
*** ''Prime 3'' also has the Korakk Beast, a miniboss that takes an absurd amount of time to defeat. The pattern to defeating it includes shooting its tongue when it shoots it out, rolling into the Morph Ball, rolling under it, and planting a bomb under its stomach, then rolling out and shooting it in the stomach during the short window you have to do so. It takes a fair amount of damage, but also deals a fair amount as well, and moves around at a quick enough pace.
*** The Metroid Hatcher. It's really hard to hit because it not only moves quickly, but it has to be shot in the tips of its quickly-moving tentacles to make it vulnerable. It also has a hard-to-dodge spinning attack, and if you don't attack it when all its tentacles have been shot, it'll spawn Metroids. These Metroids make the fight much more difficult. If you don't attack the Hatcher quickly enough when it's vulnerable, it'll draw out the tentacles and you have to start all over. (At least when a tentacle is torn off, it means one less tentacle in the process.) Fortunately, you only have to fight one the hard way. The other two can be easily handled with the [[AttackItsWeakPoint X-Ray Visor]] and [[OneHitKill Nova Beam]].
** Slench 3 in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeHunters''. Oh my, where do I begin talking about it?
*** Its main attack is the [[InterfaceScrew Volt Driver]].
*** [[FlunkyBoss Has "Turrets" that it can control]] while attached to the wall, and those flunkies uses his same main attack. There are three of those.
*** Comes after a true and long PlatformHell which, as you guessed, you will have to do on the way back.
*** [[ShieldedCoreBoss Cannot be hurt]] while docked or preparing to tackle Samus.
*** [[FakeLongevity Docks every time it loses a third of its health.]]
*** The [[AttackItsWeakPoint small weak spot]] is only fully exposed when not docked.
*** [[CowardlyBoss Moves around a lot]] when not docked and, as expected, only stops to ram into Samus. And of course cannot be hurt while preparing to or ramming.
*** Although this doesn't account to 'Goddamned Boss', he can only be hurt by the [[GrenadeLauncher Battlehammer]].

[[folder:MMORPG]]

[[folder:Platform Game]]

[[folder:Role-Playing Game]]

[[folder:Shooter/Shoot 'em Up]]

[[folder:Simulation Game]]

[[folder:Stealth-Based Game]]

** The Atetemino from ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' counts. It's hard to hit with its weakness, the Mega Ball.

** Wheel Gator, Magna Centipede, Bubble Crab, Serges, and to a lesser extent Crystal Snail from VideoGame/MegaManX2. They follow a common trait in that they they tend to be hiding for the most of the battle, whether it's under sludge, seemingly nowhere, in a bubble, behind a barrier, or in a shell. In the SNES version (as compared to the X Collection verison), Serges' main attack also lags the game, which doesn't do much but slow things down and make it take longer. Wheel Gator is probably the worst, though, since using his weakness against him causes him to dive immediately if you don't know how to chain him properly. None of them are excessively difficult, but they fights can feel like they're dragging on.
** High Max from X6 has a gimmick in that only special weapons hurt him. The game's lack of playtesting can mean that you can run into him in an optional boss room...and be completely shit out of luck as you can't hit him. When you do have everything (such as the final fight with him), you figure out his pattern and know what to do but it can take some time for you to even get that opening necessary. Even at that, few of the weapons you have can reliably hit him aside from Mijinion's weapon.
** Also from X6 is the Nightmare Snake from Blaze Heatnix's stage, often begrudgingly referred to as "that stupid doughnut thing again" since it will ''not'' leave you alone and you have to fight it a minimum of five times just to get through the stage. It's not overly hard and is fairly susceptible Infinity Mijinion and Metal Shark Player's weapons, but it's annoying to fight and likes to saturate the battlefield with projectiles on higher difficulties which make it tricky to hit so you will '''''hate''''' this thing by the time you've gone through that stage. Its overall goofy appearance that looks like the love child of a [[Franchise/PowerRangers Megazord]] and a bagel, not to mention its utterly boring and lackluster fight which just consists of it lazily floating around don't win it any popularity contests, nor does the branching path in the level which means you must transverse this stage at least twice and will have to fight this stupid thing ''ten times at minimum'' (more if you fail against the notoriously difficult Blaze Heatnix) to get OneHundredPercentCompletion.

[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]

* In ''VideoGame/NatsukiChronicles'', there's Alex and Margaret Stage 7. You have to fight them in a large and extremely clumsy-to-control heavy assault ship, the same one that you fight in ''VideoGame/GingaForce'' (as this game is a POVSequel, and this stage is [[PerspectiveFlip her perspective of her boss fight in Chapter 7 of that game]]), and you pretty much get pelted with their attacks the whole time as a result as you try to capture their ship with your special weapon. This would be ThatOneBoss if not for the fact that [[HopelessBossFight Natsuki will lose the fight regardless]] and you have a lot of health with which to [[HoldTheLine survive until the fight ends on its own]], but you still have to inflict as much capture damage on them and reduce damage to yourself as much as possible to get a good grade on the stage. Thankfully you're not expected to [[NoDamageRun no-damage]] it since you can take a few dozen hits and still get an S++, and this stage is excluded from Arcade Mode.

* In ''VideoGame/NatsukiChronicles'', there's Alex and Margaret Stage 7. You have to fight them in a large and extremely clumsy-to-control heavy assault ship, the same one that you fight in ''VideoGame/GingaForce'' (as this game is a POVSequel, with Natsuki being the Chapter 7 boss of that game), and you pretty much get pelted with their attacks the whole time as a result as you try to capture their ship with your special weapon. This would be ThatOneBoss if not for the fact that [[HopelessBossFight Natsuki will lose the fight regardless]] and you have a lot of health with which to [[HoldTheLine survive until the fight ends on its own]], but you still have to inflict as much capture damage on them and reduce damage to yourself as much as possible to get a good grade on the stage. Thankfully you're not expected to [[NoDamageRun no-damage]] it since you can take a few dozen hits and still get an S++, and this stage is excluded from Arcade Mode.

* In ''VideoGame/NatsukiChronicles'', there's :Alex and Margaret Stage 7. You have to fight them in a large and extremely clumsy-to-control heavy assault ship, the same one that you fight in ''VideoGame/GingaForce'' (as this game is a POVSequel, with Natsuki being the Chapter 7 boss of that game), and you pretty much get pelted with their attacks the whole time as a result as you try to capture their ship with your special weapon. This would be ThatOneBoss if not for the fact that [[HopelessBossFight Natsuki will lose the fight regardless]] and you have a lot of health with which to [[HoldTheLine survive until the fight ends on its own]], but you still have to inflict as much capture damage on them and reduce damage to yourself as much as possible to get a good grade on the stage. Thankfully you're not expected to [[NoDamageRun no-damage]] it since you can take a few dozen hits and still get an S++, and this stage is excluded from Arcade Mode.