History ThatOneBoss / FireEmblem

** Reinhardt. Not only does he appear in a chapter with Saias and his absurd Leadership boost (though he leaves eventually), he's got his own Leadership stars, he's on a horse, carries two different weapons that attack twice consecutively, and also has Big Shield so he has a 20% chance to make your attack a NoSell. [[SerialEscalation Furthermore]], he also has Vantage, so he always attacks first even if you initiate combat regardless (which in ''Thracia 776'' allows the user to ''always'' attack first). He also has a whopping ''five movement stars'' so he's got a rather high chance to ''move and attack twice in one turn''.

** In the final chapter, the three hardest bosses, surprisingly, aren't any of the castle bosses, the holy weapon-users, or even the FinalBoss: instead, its Maybell, Meng, and Bleg, a trio of Falcon Knights who show up alongside Ishtar. At first, you'd think they're just {{Elite Mook}}s, but then you check their stats and realize just how loaded they are: the three of them all have high stats all-around, including capped Speed, Luck, Defense, and Resistance, four skills (Critical, Follow-Up, Adept, Nihil), and an Earth Sword and a Leg Ring. They're incredibly dodgy and accurate, which is furthered by Meng's four Leadership stars giving 20% hit and avoid, and their multitude of offensive skills let them deal explosive amounts of damage. Being fliers, they can cover ground fast and retreat after attacking, which synergizes perfectly with their Leg Ring-boosted 11 Movement to let them prey on squishier units. The Earth Sword gives them 1-2 range with either physical or magic damage and LifeDrain, and is light enough to leave them still fast, and their Nihil skill means that your own skills don't work against them and they aren't weak to bows. While there are characters that can duel them, their mobility means that they're very able to choose their own targets, their spawn position means they're very likely to hit your back line first, and given that there's three of them, even your strongest and scariest units are going to have a miserable time. Getting the strongest 1-2 range-user you have and planting them on Dozel Castle while everyone else is a safe distance away is probably your best bet.

** When it comes to ridiculous ''Fire Emblem'' bosses, Ishtar might as well take the cake. Not merely content with being ThatOneBoss, she insists on being a RecurringBoss as well! Not only are her stats absurdly high in each appearance, but she always wields the Mjolnir tome, which has an insane 30 might, +20 skill, and +10 speed. Combined with her maxed out magic and speed stats, Ishtar is able to 1-shot most of your characters with perfect accuracy at 1-2 range and her Adept skill gives her another '''50% chance''' to Mjolnir them ''again'' if they survived (and only a high level Seliph or Ares with their MageKiller Holy weapons stand any real chance of taking one than one hit from her). Unlike other bosses sporting legendary weapons, Ishtar has free range of movement every time she appears. Her first appearance is in chapter 8, before most of your units are even promoted; good luck landing a critical hit with a holy weapon (preferably Forseti, which might not be around then)), or you'll be losing some characters. [[note]]Though if you can avoid her for a couple of turns, Julius will show up to take her away with him without you having to fight her.[[/note]] For her second appearance in chapter 10, she's backed up by [[spoiler:Julius (who's nearly impossible to kill at this stage of the game)]], and she won't leave until she is defeated or one of your units is dead (though it is possible to go around and kill the actual boss and seize the castle, which will also cause them to go away). She returns one last time on the final chapter, flanked by three other difficult bosses and the [[DemonicSpiders strongest generic units you will ever see]]. Hope you got Ced to 28+ Magic and gave him the Magic bracelet so he can use the Silence or Sleep staff on her, because the skill boost from Mjolnir and her leadership bonuses give her a real chance to kill even the Forseti user in one round if Adept activates!

** Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. Its flame breath is a FixedDamageAttack that ignores defense, so any unit that doesn't have high HP is immediately out. The fight swings wildly between no challenge at all and ''flat-out impossible'', depending on whether you have at least one unit capable of dealing damage, surviving the counter hit, and healing back up. It's especially bad on Hector's hard mode, which gives randomized stat boosts to enemies - this may buff the dragon's attack to 40 damage, enough to one-shot [[CrutchCharacter Athos]], the unit who was meant to give struggling players a chance in this fight. The only other units who can consistently damage the dragon are the Lords, but they can easily not have enough HP either, or be too slow because the superweapons they need to use weigh them down immensely, which causes the dragon to double attack them, a guaranteed death. ''Any other character'' being able to do damage comes down to either pure luck or tons of advance preparation.

** Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. Its flame breath is a FixedDamageAttack that ignores defense, so any unit that doesn't have high HP is immediately out. The fight swings wildly between no challenge at all and ''flat-out impossible'', depending on whether you have at least one unit capable of dealing damage, surviving the counter hit, and healing back up. It's especially bad on Hector's hard mode, which gives randomized stat boosts to enemies - this may buff the dragon's attack to 40 damage, enough to one-shot [[CrutchCharacter Athos]], the unit who was meant to give struggling players a chance in this fight. The only other units who can consistently damage the dragon are the Lords, but they can easily not have 40 HP either, or be too slow because the superweapons they need to use weigh them down immensely, which causes the dragon to double attack them, a guaranteed death. ''Any other character'' being able to do damage comes down to either pure luck or tons of advance preparation.

** Maxime, the mid-boss in the already horrifying "Battle Before Dawn". He's a Paladin with ridiculous stats for someone who's not even a chapter boss (the boss of the chapter being Ursula). He's also hidden in a room on the left side of the map, so you have a good chance of being surprised (especially on Hector Hard Mode, where there's FogOfWar). Most players will go down the left side in order to protect [[GameBreaker Jaffar]], leaving them to be jumped by this bastard. At least you can avoid him by going down the right side (which also lets you rescue Nino, who you need to ''recruit'' Jaffar for the Gaiden chapter).
*** While there's FogOfWar on all versions of the map, the fact that Maxime starts in a different place on [=HHM=] means that it's ''far'' easier for him to get the jump on you. Starting closer to your units means that he's much less likely to go after [[GameBreaker Jaffar]], so now you've got to deal with him... and the ''utterly terrifying'' stat bonuses that [=HHM=] gave him. Most enemies get a slight boost to their stats in Hard Mode, but Maxime is functionally a whole new unit in [=HHM=] than he was on previous difficulties.
*** Funnily enough, the reason Maxime has the stupidly high stat bonuses he has is because of a developer oversight. Maxime was erroneously assigned hard mode bonuses of an unpromoted unit, but since a level 1 prepromote counts as a level 21 unpromote, Maxime effectively gets 20 extra levels of stats. Had the devs not made such a mistake, Maxime would've been much more manageable.

** Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. Its Flametongue [[FixedDamageAttack hits for exactly 37 damage,]] ignoring defense and resistance, easily killing your toughest unit in two hits, on top of very rarely missing! If you didn't stock up on Elixirs and level up your Lords like a fiend, you are in for an absolute nightmare of a fight.
*** On hard mode, the randomized stat boosts given to enemies can sometimes buff the dragon's attack to 40 damage - enough to one-shot Athos, the unit that was meant to give struggling players a chance in this fight. It's also possible that none of your Lords will be fast enough to fight it without getting doubled and killed, either, because Hector is always slow and the other two get weighed down immensely by their superweapons. If all these units turn out useless, there are few things left that can do any more than chip the boss.

** Takumi, in any chapter he's fought in. He's the boss of [[ThatOneLevel Chapter 10]], and while he does not move, he still screws the player over through the use of his Dragon Vein, making it easier for the enemies to advance towards the defend point. Should he be fought however, he will have the Point Blank skill. This skill will allow him to counterattack at a range, which bows and yumis normally cannot do. On harder difficulties, he'll have Wary Fighter, which prevents the user and the foe from performing follow up attacks, making it even harder to dispatch him in a single round. Takumi shows up again in Chapter 13, and he's already promoted to the Sniper class. He will chase the player down immediately, and his yumi's effect allows him to ignore movement terrain costs. On higher difficulties, he also has Pass, letting him move through the player's units. In Chapter 23, Takumi shows up yet again, and he has the Vengeance skill, and on higher difficulties, Rend Heaven. They have high activation rates thanks to his high Skill, making him a very dangerous opponent to face.

** The [[spoiler:Umbral Beast]] in Cindered Shadows' DLC can be an absolute ''nightmare'' to deal with if you don't use your resources carefully. Like any beast final bosses, it has three life bars, and will frequently summon [[spoiler:Aelfric Illusions]] to fight your units. However any clones not killed will have their life drained by the monster. It will also has an attack that rearranges its position, causing you to be separated from your other units. It can also damage any unlucky character in its path doing this. Good luck defeating it when your units are around level 30 range.

** Lets just start with the Four Hounds in general...
*** Marni in chapters 17 and 19. In your previous two encounters with her, you were running, and she didn't have anything special respectively. In 17 and 19 however, you have to defeat her, and she is packing [[spoiler:Emblem Roy]] as added heat. Not only does this mean you're fighting a general with extra lives (by now revival stones are standard on bosses), but you're fighting a general who has [[spoiler:a skill that lets her shrug off lethal hits if she was above dire health at the start of combat]], as well as a super attack skill. Said super attack can also be performed with a Wyrmslayer, which means putting Alear anywhere near her can be... [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou very]] [[GameOver disasterous]]. In chapter 19 its even worse: Kill her first life and she powers up, which causes her to [[spoiler:gain the ability to spam that super attack... ''with The Binding Blade.'' Said weapon also gives her ranged attacks.]]

*** And of course, Griss. In both Chapter 17 and Chapter 20, he's armed with [[spoiler:Emblem Celica]]... Whom has a teleportation attack that will rend low-res units asunder. Thankfully he IS a sage, and so he takes heavy damage from physical weapons, but of course, revival stones patch that one, and in Chapter 20, he's got two of 'em. Naturally, killing him once in Chapter 20 makes him power up... after which point, all non-corrupted units (read: your entire team) will take 50% of the damage they deal to him as recoil damage to themselves unless its a lethal blow on Griss. This makes it entirely possible for nuke-type units to kill themselves trying to take him down.

** [[spoiler:Arvis]] is arguably even worse. He has an absolutely ludicrous attack power of ''70'', meaning that he will one-shot a lot of your units. His holy weapon grants him ''ridiculous'' defence boosts (as in +10 defense and resistance, when both were ''capped'' to begin with.) Making this even worse is the fact that he's a level 30 unit with pavise, which equates to a 30% chance to NoSell '''ANYTHING''' you throw at him. You'll need holy weapons if you want to give him anything worse than a scratch. Oh, he also has perfect leadership bonuses and is guarding a castle, which makes his '''evasion''' skyrocket as well. To add insult to injury, he also has the Nihil skill, which cancels out any chance of a critical hit on your side. If you don't have units with legendary weapons, high resistance, enough strength to actually dent him, and a shitload of healers... godspeed, soldier.

** Haitaka, a Hoshidan [[BladeOnAStick Spear Fighter]]. He serves as the boss of Chapter 9, and is considered a WakeUpCallBoss. He has a weapon that has 1-2 range with very minor drawbacks, and on harder difficulties, he has skills like Strong Riposte which boosts the damage of his counterattacks, and Seal Def, which would deter the player from trying to tank his attacks. Something notable is that he can come in handy for [[ThatOneLevel the next chapter]], as he can be captured by Niles. However, given how fragile Niles is and how tough Haitaka is, this may prove to be quite a task.

*** Zephia in previous chapters is already annoying due to being a powerful flying mage with [[MultipleLifeBars multiple Revival Crystals]], but Zephia in Chapter 17 armed with ''Emblem Sigurd'' is several magnitudes worse. If you've been leery of giving Sigurd's ring to mages or fliers, Zephia's performance here might change your mind: with ''8'' movement she almost gets the full boost from Momentum without even needing to Engage, Magic-damage Override with Momentum will rip through your army if you lined your units up, she primarily attacks from a distance, and she has Canter to hit-and-run. And as a flier, she will often Canter over tiles inaccessible to land-based units, meaning blitzing her down in one turn probably won't be an option. It doesn't help that she's at the end of a BossBonanza, supplanting [[spoiler:Veyle]] as the real boss of the map unlike what you'd expect.

** Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. It's Flametongue [[FixedDamageAttack hits for exactly 37 damage,]] ignoring defense and resistance, easily killing your toughest unit in two hits, on top of very rarely missing! If you didn't stock up on Elixirs and level up your Lords like a fiend, you are in for an absolute nightmare of a fight.

** Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. It's Flametongue [[FixedDamageAttack hits for exactly 37 damage,]] ignoring defense and resistance, easily killing your toughest unit in two hits, on top of very rarely missing! If you didn't stock up on Elixirs and level up your Lords like a fiend, you are in for an absolute nightmare of a fight. To make matters worse, in the American and European versions, the decision to reduce effective weaponry down to 2x came with an unintended side effect of making the already durable Fire Dragon even more bulky!

** Reinhardt. Not only does he appear in a chapter with Saias and his absurd Leadership boost (though he leaves eventually), he's got his own Leadership stars, he's on a horse, carries two different weapons that attack twice consecutively in ''both'' phases while most weapons of that sort only works at the user's phase, and also has Big Shield so he has a 20% chance to make your attack a NoSell. [[SerialEscalation Furthermore]], he also has Vantage, so he always attacks first even if you initiate combat regardless (which in ''Thracia 776'' allows the user to ''always'' attack first). He also has a whopping ''five movement stars'' so he's got a rather high chance to ''move and attack twice in one turn''.

*** He is so [[SNKBoss outrageously cheap]] that using staves, which would normally be frowned upon as a GameBreaker in this installment, are [[PuzzleBoss practically necessary]] [[OutsideTheBoxTactic to win this battle]]. A village in the this chapter gives you a Warp staff, which can be taken as unsubtle nod from the developers that you're better off ''not'' fighting him and taking a shortcut to beat the chapter. Players can also cast Berserk on him [[HoistByHisOwnPetard and use his fighting prowess against the enemy army]], then cast Sleep to incapacitate him and even make him vulnerable to capture.

** On the DS remake's hardest difficulty, several bosses are ridiculously overbuffed thanks to a blatant lack of testing. Medeus is so fast that Marth WILL get doubled and killed, due to his low speed cap - yes, the main character cannot survive a single round of combat against the final boss, even in the most ideal situation. A preferred strategy is to instead kamikaze into him with a heavy hitter like Tiki - when she inevitably dies, spend your one-use resurrection staff to bring her back and whack him again.

** In the original ''Fire Emblem'', you have Camus, the boss of Chapter 20. He wields the Gradvius lance (essentially, an empowered Javelin with more might and 100% accuracy), and he is the first boss where Marth can't trivialize the boss fight by himself. Couple in his well rounded stats along with the deadly spear, and you have the hardest boss fight in the original game.

** Iago, the boss of Chapter 26. Iago sits in the center of the map, and is able to use staffs, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard despite the Sorcerer class being unable to]]. Making matters worse is that he has the enemy only skill Staff Savant, allowing him to use his staffs for as long as he likes. He can assail the player's units with status effects such as Freeze (immobilzing a unit) or Enfeeble (reducing all stats by -4), and on Lunatic, he adds a Hexing Rod to his roster, which can halve a unit's HP. With his massive, central staff range, he can easily debilitate any of the player's units. This is on top of what is already a hard level, reaching incredibly frustrating levels on Lunatic (as the other staff users also get Staff Savant). Finally, fighting Iago himself may prove to be a bit dangerous, given his high stats and his weapon's high Crit rate.

** Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. It's Flametongue [[FixedDamageAttack hits for exactly 37 damage,]] ignoring defense and resistance, easily killing your toughest unit in two hits, on top of very rarely missing! If you didn't stock up on Elixirs and level up your Lords like a fiend, you are in for an absolute nightmare of a fight. To make matters worse, in the American and European versions, the decision to reduce effective weaponry down to 2x came with an unintended side effect of making the already durable Fire Dragon even more bulkier!

'''Note''': {{Final Boss}}es and {{Wake Up Call Boss}}es are not to be added unless they're overly difficult by their standards. {{Bonus Boss}}es are not allowed; they're optional and have no standards for difficulty.