History ThatOneBoss / KingdomHEARTS

* Despite how Demyx appears to be the QuirkyBard slacker who really doesn't care about ''anything'' except playing sitar, [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass you'd be surprised how many people think he fits this trope]]. He seems harmless at first, but then the timer starts. He creates a batch of water clones, which while harmless on their own, you have to kill within a time limit or lose instantly. This happens multiple times during his fight, and the final round requires you to defeat 10 clones in ''10 seconds''. [[LuckBasedMission Pray they all spawn close to one another.]] The ''Final Mix'' version, mercifully, changes the time limit to 15 seconds. Even without the clone attack, Demyx attacks weakly but rapidly and can quickly set up massive combos on Sora, draining your health quickly. His attacks are also rather erratic and very hard to predict and even blocking will only get you so far with the water walls he can summon.

* [[WesternAnimation/PeterPan Captain Hook]]. His GeoEffects screw up your summon cards, his dodge rate is insane, he can throw bombs seemingly without end, and his sword attack is extremely difficult to dodge. Better bring your zeroes and your cures -- you're gonna ''need'' it all. The [=PS2=] remake, on the other hand, made him somewhat easier because the fight is done in a 3D space instead of a 2.5D one.

* Hades is one of two Disney bosses (Hook being the other one) that uses Sleights and loves making your life a living [[{{Pun}} hell]] with them. Not only do they hit like a truck, his Enemy Cards either boost his fire damage or his overall damage as he loses health. He also has a fairly high amount of speed to chase you around if you try to dodge, and some of his attacks, like Firagaball, will trigger twice in a row.

* Hades is one of two Disney bosses (Hook being the other one) that uses Sleights and loves making your life a living [[{{Pun}} hell]] with them. Not only do they hit like a truck, his Enemy Card boosts his damage as he loses health. He also has a fairly high amount of speed to chase you around if you try to dodge, and some of his attacks, like Firagaball, will trigger twice in a row.

* Hades is one of the only Disney bosses (Hook above being the other one) that uses Sleights and loves making your life a living [[{{Pun}} hell]] with them, which hit like a truck.

* Xaldin combines high damage, teleporting, impressive reach and the fiendishly hard to avoid [[ThatOneAttack Wind Dragon]] attack. You'd better pray that Mickey shows up to save you if you're killed. Thankfully his Achilles Heel is quite simple; blocking any of his attacks. This boss is a primary roadblock for the X mashers out there and serves as a good lesson in how to deal with the upcoming challenges.
* Roxas (only fought in [[UpdatedRerelease Final Mix]]) is fast, unpredictable and hits hard, which only makes sense [[MirrorBoss since he's Sora]]. It's actually recommended by most players to just ''avoid'' him when he tries to initiate Duel. Sure, getting to use his Keyblades against him is cool and all, but that doesn't really make up for the fact that now his telegraphed and easily-blocked attacks have been replaced with spamming light beams.

* Remember Xigbar? Meet his original self, [[spoiler:Braig]]. He's basically everything you hated about Xigbar, but even worse.

* Dragon Maleficent is fought as part of a sidescrolling segment, so you don't have any of your regular commands, including healing. Her attacks are surprisingly difficult to avoid as well.

* [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} Cerberus]], if you choose to fight him at the point the game recommends, serves as a major WakeUpCallBoss. He hits hard, you have to hit his mouth directly which just so happens to be exactly where he’s constantly spamming the bite attacks that will kill you in 2-3 hits, he spams hard-hitting dark portal attacks if you try to run from him, and worst of all, you won’t have cure yet since that’s your reward for beating the ''next'' level, [[WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}} Deep Jungle]]. Meaning that you have to depend on a limited supply of potions and Donald’s healing to survive. Which as most players know, [[ThisIsGonnaSuck is more or less a death sentence]] [[ScrappyMechanic due to how bad Donald is at knowing when to heal you.]] Thankfully, if you choose to RageQuit the boss, you aren’t required to beat him to progress the game, though you do miss out on getting the Inferno Band accessory.

* To make up for his second form being an AntiClimaxBoss, Marluxia's third form in the remake uses almost ''nothing but'' rapid-fire Sleights, making it much harder to interrupt him. He can hit you from almost anywhere on the stage (especially with the aptly-named Omni Laser), [[BlownAcrossTheRoom blow you out of striking range]], [[ManaBurn wipe out your deck]] with Whirlwind to the Void and then render the lost cards unrecoverable with Circle Reject. And to top it off, he can hit you with [[TimeDelayedDeath Doom]], which locks you in place and instantly kills you if you can't break six of his cards in six seconds. If the rest of the game hasn't taught you how to use 0s, Marluxia's final form ''will'' make you regret it.

** Keep in mind; both these fights are underwater meaning having to not only deal with slower and more awkward controls, you completely lose your ability to dodge AND block, which only serves to increase the difficulty of both of Ursala's forms dramatically. And no, the game does not loosen her up much to compensate for your lack of these abilities.

* The fight with the Parasite Cage is similar to it’s second fight in the last game with hard hitting attacks and an acidic floor that can drain your health, but now the only safe ground for most of the fight are four small platforms that rotate constantly, making it hard to land hits on the thing without taking some damage, provided it doesn’t break your cards first. Pray that you can get a Gimmick Card to temporarily lower the stomach acids down.

* [[spoiler:Young Xehanort.]] Being the penultimate boss and the true form of the [[BonusBoss Mysterious Figure,]] he's not easy to begin with, but the real punishment comes when you deplete his first batch of life bars. Fail to pull off a Reality Shift in a tiny window, and he partially revives himself, forcing you to fight him down once more. Succeed and the fight continues, but now he's surrounded by clones which attack almost without pause, using his old moves from when he was the Mysterious Figure. He {{Teleport Spam}}s, he's open for only a fraction of a second before attacking, and his attacks are blistering fast. That's not all: you now have a time limit to defeat him... or rewind back to phase 1. The TrueFinalBoss is actually easier.

'''NOTE''': A {{Superboss}} is ''supposed'' to be overpowering, as well as optional, so they don't belong here. The same applies to Olympus Coliseum cups and Mirage Arenas. ThatOneBoss only applies to ''storyline'' bosses who are abnormally difficult.

* Wargoyle when fought as Sora. He moves all over the place, hits like a truck and he has an annoying habit of using his attacks in rapid succession making it very easy to get stun locked. And as he gets less HP, how long he chains his attacks together gets ridiculous. Not helped by [[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame La Cité des Cloches]], the world where it's fought, being the second world in the game by recommended order, meaning you more than likely don't have access to some of the better tools in your arsenal just yet.

* The Parasite Cage is similar to the second boss fight in the last game with hard hitting attacks and an acidic floor that can drain your health, but now the only safe ground for most of the fight are four small platforms that rotate constantly, making it hard to land hits on the thing provided it doesn’t break your cards first. Pray that you can get a Gimmick Card to temporarily lower the stomach acids down.

* [[BigBad Final Xemnas]] in ''Kingdom Hearts 2.5'' used to suffer from a [[GameBreakingBug glitch where his reaction commands don't always appear]], making a normally decent challenge a cheap death montage. Playing this boss on Critical mode requires either excessive Reflega spamming or limit abuse, otherwise just let [[LuckBasedMission Jesus take the wheel and hope for the best that the command won't be missed]].

* The first "fight" (That is, [[AttackAttackRetreatRetreat performing a hasty retreat after Sora realizes it's an unwinnable fight]]) with [[WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}} Hades]] has one of the biggest jumps in difficulty change when playing in Critical Mode; getting hit even once during this fight results in a near immediate death and with various enemies all over the place and Hades firing unpredictably; it can be a frustrating slog. The only saving grace is its briefness. Among [[HarderThanHard critical mode speedrunners]] "Hades' Chase" is an incredibly notorious and difficult section due to the sheer random death chance.

->''"There's no fun in this."''

* Despite how Demyx appears to be the QuirkyBard slacker who really doesn't care about ''anything'' except playing sitar, you'd be surprised how many people think he fits the description for ThatOneBoss. He seems harmless at first, but then the timer starts. He creates a batch of water clones, which while harmless on their own, you have to kill within a time limit or lose instantly. This happens multiple times during his fight, and the final round requires you to defeat 10 clones in ''10 seconds''. [[LuckBasedMission Pray they all spawn close to one another.]] The ''Final Mix'' version, mercifully, changes the time limit to 15 seconds. Even without the clone attack, Demyx attacks weakly but rapidly and can quickly set up massive combos on Sora, draining your health quickly. His attacks are also rather erratic and very hard to predict and even blocking will only get you so far with the water walls he can summon.

** First, Dragon Maleficent. She has a massive amount of health, hits hard, and the location of her one weak point frequently forces you to stand right in her line of fire. Since she takes up so much of the room, there's also a lack of places to dodge and/or hide.

* The first fight with Ursula has a gimmick where you must throw magic at her cauldron to stun her in order to win. Unfortunately, all the game does to explain that gimmick is have Triton warn you about it before you head off, leaving players to [[{{Pun}} flounder]] around wondering why they can't beat her. Flotsam and Jetsam don't help by getting in the way of your targeting, although they do help replenish your MP by hitting them with standard attacks.

* For an early boss, Clayton is an absolute nightmare. This is a two-phase fight, the first has Clayton alongside a group of Powerwilds, the second has Clayton riding the giant and ''invisible'' Stealth Sneak. Clayton's attacks are fast, heavy hitting and unpredictable, and he can also heal himself. The Stealth Sneak [[VisibleInvisibility isn't entirely invisible]], but good luck predicting its attacks. There's no healing in between the two phases, and you only get Cure ''right after'' beating this boss. Thankfully, you only need to beat Clayton to win (though beating Stealth Sneak first nets you additional experience).
* The second fight against the Parasite Cage can be the absolute pits if you're not prepared for it. The room you fight it in is surrounded by stomach acids (you know, since you're [[WombLevel inside a whale's stomach]]), meaning if you step in, you're taking a bit of damage. On top of that, the only way to attack this thing is up front, where it can spew its poisonous breath at you. And even if you stand on the nearby platforms, you're not safe from its CombatTentacles, which have an incredible range and can hit like a truck if you don't block them. And much like [[spoiler:Ansem!]]Riku after it, the [=PS2=] version of the game forces you to watch an incredibly long cutscene before the fight even starts.

* Trickmaster in ''Reverse/Rebirth''. Riku's deck in Wonderland is not good, having only 9 cards with nothing with a value higher than 5. This also makes it very difficult to break anything Trickmaster throws at you without stocking cards.

* Captain Hook. His GeoEffects screw up your summon cards, his dodge rate is insane, he can throw bombs seemingly without end, and his sword attack is extremely difficult to dodge. Better bring your zeroes and your cures -- you're gonna ''need'' it all. The [=PS2=] remake, on the other hand, made him somewhat easier because the fight is done in a 3D space instead of a 2.5D one.

* The first "fight" (That is, [[AttackAttackRetreatRetreat performing a hasty retreat after Sora realizes it's an unwinnable fight]]) with Hades has one of the biggest jumps in difficulty change when playing in Critical Mode; getting hit even once during this fight results in a near immediate death and with various enemies all over the place and Hades firing unpredictably; it can be a frustrating slog. The only saving grace is its briefness. Among [[HarderThanHard critical mode speedrunners]] "Hades' Chase" is an incredibly notorious and difficult section due to the sheer random death chance.

* Wargoyle when fought as Sora. He moves all over the place, hits like a truck and he has an annoying habit of using his attacks in rapid succession making it very easy to get stun locked. And as he gets less HP, how long he chains his attacks together gets ridiculous.

* Rinzler can be a nasty surprise to anyone who expected a regular Disney villain fight and not a [[FanNickname cyber ninja]]. He's fast, he hits hard both up close and at a distance with [[ConfusionFu a hard-to-predict attack style,]] and when he flips gravity, [[InterfaceScrew the camera doesn't follow suit.]]
* Spellican. The first part of the fight locks you into Flowmotion, meaning ''no Cures or healing items''. Later on you have to do the Flowmotion segment again, almost certainly with less HP to work with. While outside of Flowmotion, he has a variety of painful attacks and a habit of teleporting to hard-to-reach locations and [[MookMaker spawning brooms for backup.]]

* Luxord in The Caribbean. First, instead of actually fighting him, you must race him to Port Royal, and he throws everything he can at the ''Leviathan'' to slow the party down. Upon reaching the harbor, Luxord will send countless Heartless ships, and the objective is to sink his ship. The battle requires a lot of timing in defense and a command bar that is filed from sinking enemies. What makes it worse is that it's impossible to heal during the battle, and the ''Leviathan'' cannot be upgraded just yet. The last stage, fortunately, returns direct control to the player party and is a standard battle.
* [[spoiler:[[EvilTwin Dark Baymax]]]], the final boss of San Fransokyo. The fight begins with a [[UnexpectedGameplayChange rail shooter-esque flying portion with you shooting at the boss, while dodging attacks and sending certain attacks back at them, which can throw people off of they completely weren't expecting it.]] Then the real fight begins, which takes in its entirety in Baymax's ''"Interceptor Wing"'' team attack, which is awkward to control and has strange combose with drawn out animations that leave you open. While still pretty awesome, it unfortunately also [[NoItemUseForYou completely locks you out of using your items]], meaning that Baymax's ''"Care Spray"'' ability is your ''only'' means of healing yourself, which has a long cooldown. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck All of this against a boss that is incredibly aggressive, leaves you barely any room to breath, attacks faster than you can, loves leaving area-denying, damaging objects behind it, of which running into them can easily trap you into taking tons of damage due to the stun of getting his.]] Better hope that you've gotten [[LastChanceHitPoint Withstand Combo]] by this point, because otherwise some of the "combos" it has are a death sentence if you get caught.

*** Fortunately, Maleficent can be cheesed through a combination of Stop and Gravity, the former locking her HP in place and allowing the latter to strike for full damage. Granted, the fact that players prefer to use cheese rather than simply fighting the boss is itself a testament to the spike in difficulty.

*** Thankfully, ''Final Mix'' added Leaf Bracer, allowing you to gain invincibility frames while casting Cure on yourself. But if you chose the Dream Sword at the Dive to the Heart first, you don't learn it until the later levels, so if you fight Ursula's second form without it, pray for mercy.

* Despite how Demyx appears to be the QuirkyBard slacker who really doesn't care about ''anything'' except playing sitar, you'd be surprised how many people think he fits the description for ThatOneBoss. He seems harmless at first, but then the timer starts. He creates a batch of water clones, which while harmless on their own, you have to kill within a time limit or lose instantly. This happens multiple times during his fight, and the final round requires you to defeat 10 clones in ''10 seconds''. [[LuckBasedMission Pray they all spawn close to one another.]] The ''Final Mix'' version, mercifully, changes the time limit to 15 seconds.
** Even without the clone attack Demyx attacks weakly but rapidly and can quickly setup massive combos on Sora draining your health quickly. His attacks are also rather erratic and very hard to predict and even blocking will only get you so far with the water walls he can summon.
** Want to know what the worst part is? If you happen to die or suffer a power failure in the next section before you reach the area with a save point, you're forced to fight Demyx ''again''.
* Xigbar is most players' biggest challenge in the World that Never Was, as he's capable of sniping you from a distance, [[TeleportSpam frequently teleports out of your line of fire,]] and has a nasty DesperationAttack which he uses with increasing frequency as he takes more damage. In fact when his health gets to the last bar he will use start to use it at the end of ''every single combo he does'' often leaving players literally [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable no way to damage him if they don't know how to reach him in time]].
** True; his attacks deal little damage but they can combo and rack up hits ''fast'', furthermore Xigbar does not stagger unless reloading ([[LogicalWeakness R FOR RELOAD]]) thus he can counter you easily. If a player isn't making good use of Reflega; they are going to struggle hard. The final note is that he has a unique mechanic of defying gravity and standing upside down; thus any attack is an air combo making the normally overpowered Decisive Pumpkin useless here and if the player doesn't normally use or have abilities for air combos their damage will be lacking; not to mention it makes Donald and Goofy even ''more useless'' at dealing damage.
* Xaldin combines high damage, teleporting, impressive reach and the fiendishly hard to avoid [[ThatOneAttack Wind Dragon]] attack. You'd better pray that Mickey shows up to save you if you're killed. Thankfully his Achilles Heel is quite simple; blocking any of his attacks. This boss is a primary roadblock for the X mashers out there and serves as a good lesson in how to deal with the upcoming challenges.
** The biggest fault of Xaldin's boss fight is II's lack of evasion abilities. In the original game, Dodge Roll provided invincibility frames; its replacement, Quick Run, does ''not''. When Limit Form brought back Dodge Roll in the Final Mix, Xaldin became much, much easier.

* [[BigBad Final Xemnas]] in Kingdom Hearts 2.5 suffers from a [[GameBreakingBug glitch where his reaction commands don't always appear making a normally decent challenge a cheap death montage]]. Playing this boss on Critical mode requires either excessive Reflega spamming or limit abuse, otherwise just let [[LuckBasedMission Jesus take the wheel and hope for the best that the command won't be missed]]. A patch for the [=PS4=] version in June 2017 finally fixed this, along with other issues.
** [[https://youtu.be/1zC_HMTRWFU?t=345 This section of this video]] shows the bug in more clarity.

** Said final boss is recycled as the first phase of the boss of the final battle. It is next-to-impossible to land a hit on him under normal circumstances, and in this fight especially he tends to spam his charge move to nullify ranged damage via invincibility frames. So have fun unleashing your perfectly executed shotlock command and then watching it do little or no damage. In fact, there is only one easy way to win the fight, and it takes forever, even if you are at the right level. Combine that with playing as [[SquishyWizard Aqua]], and ONLY Aqua - though she fares much better because of her Cartwheel's invincibility frames and her Barrier being a more effective guard than Terra's Block.

* Vanitas. JUST VANITAS. This son of a bitch keeps [[TeleportSpam teleporting out of everything you throw at him]]. He has a LOT of counters: hurling three fireballs at you, a repetitive dodging attack, and ESPECIALLY his bullshit diving attack. No wonder his battle quotes are so sadistic: he's hard, and he wants you to know it.
** His final battle with Ventus is somewhat hard, but the final phase is worse, not necessarily because of the difficulty level--though it can be quite difficult--but because of the ridiculously frustrating way that it's set up. During the battle, you're forced into a D-Link with Vanitas, which leaves you unable to access any of your commands, meaning that it’s impossible to recoup your health with potions or Cure. And for the whole duration, Vanitas' health stays permanently at critical levels, but [[HopelessBossFight it's impossible to drain his last little bit of health no matter how much you beat him up]]. The only way to finish him off is with your finishing move "Last Word", and the only way to do ''that'' is by building up a meter by beating him in a series of BeamOWar confrontations by using "Dark Link" or "Dark Spiral" at exactly the right moment. But if you don't land your attacks in quick enough succession, the meter goes right back down to zero, and you have to start all over again while just trying to stay alive. Does the game explain any of this to you? '''''Hell no!'''''[[labelnote:*]]Well, it does tell you to use his attacks against him, but who's going to pay attention to that blurb in the top right corner that [[StopHelpingMe never says anything besides "Defeat your enemy"]]?[[/labelnote]] And while that would ordinarily just be a mild annoyance, it's made excruciating by the fact that you get sent right back to the previous stage of the battle if you die, where you then have to defeat Vanitas all over again before you can even get another shot at finishing him off.

* [[spoiler: Young Xehanort.]] Being the penultimate boss and the true form of the [[BonusBoss Mysterious Figure,]] he's not easy to begin with, but the real punishment comes when you deplete his first batch of life bars. Fail to pull off a Reality Shift in a tiny window, and he partially revives himself, forcing you to fight him down once more. Succeed and the fight continues, but now he's surrounded by clones which attack almost without pause, using his old moves from when he was the Mysterious Figure. He {{Teleport Spam}}s, he's open for only a fraction of a second before attacking, and his attacks are blistering fast. That's not all: you now have a time limit to defeat him... or rewind back to phase 1. The TrueFinalBoss is actually easier.
** Although there is a saving grace if you manage to make it to the second phase, namely that not only will any damage done to it remain if you can't kill it in one go, any damage done to it reduces the first form's recovered health, making the repeat somewhat more tolerable. Still, this ''is'' a former bonus boss...

* You know who's a fun boss? Spellican. The first part of the fight locks you into Flowmotion, meaning ''no Cures or healing items''. Later on you have to do the Flowmotion segment again, almost certainly with less HP to work with. While outside of Flowmotion, he has a variety of painful attacks and a habit of teleporting to hard-to-reach locations and [[MookMaker spawning brooms for backup.]]

* Quest 660 gives us the Goddamned Mean Maiden; on top of that name being one of the biggest descriptive understaments ever, this Heartless takes no prisoners. She is yet another enemy with the damned counter over her head; Seven hits and she attacks. She'll conjure a cage to fall on you and when it breaks, it does two hits that can easily take out half your health without any defense skills on you medals, cause paralyze AND poison, on top of her regular attack that does two more hits that most like will kill you. And that's just HER. She's back up by two cats, the concept is neat, it's Lady Tremaine and her Daughter, cool, it's symbolic, it's cool. But these two cats are more evil then Lucifer, the actual cat! So these bastards had hit counts as well, but they are the ones that go down PER hit, as apposed to just having a move done on them. So if you use say, Master form Sora which does 15 hits, that will bring the counter from 35 to 25, where as the Mean Maiden herself would just go from 7 to 6. When the cat on the left hits zero, he buffs the enemy teams damage, not too bad, but the cat on the left restores the enemies health. TWENTY BARS of Mean Maidens SIXTY SOME HEALTH BARS. And they attack you as well. Twice each. So seven hits of ball breaking damage, a huge amount of HP from a none raid boss, this is the text book example of a wake up boss. If you've been playing the game super casual and been missing out on medals and power ups or just stopped for a while then got here, this boss is gonna seem impossible, one of the few levels in this game to require actual grinding and some meticulous strategy.

[[folder: Kingdom Hearts]]

[[folder: Kingdom Hearts: [=358/2=] Days]]

->''"Where's the fun in this?"''

'''NOTE''': A BonusBoss is ''supposed'' to be overpowering, as well as optional, so they don't belong here. The same applies to Olympus Coliseum cups and Mirage Arenas. ThatOneBoss only applies to ''storyline'' bosses who are abnormally difficult.