History ThatOneBoss / TalesSeries

This page is about bosses in the TalesSeries that give away grief like it's candy. We need no advice for defeating these monstrosities- that defeats the purpose!

** Gattuso in the Ehmead Hills. Unlike the previous bosses, Gattuso is much higher level, has much more HP, more attack power, is much faster, and can poison you with its melee attacks. To rub it in your face, immediately afterwards the party ''talks about how easy the fight was'' (or at least [[TedBaxter Karol]] does), and the next boss is a freaking cakewalk. While it's not necessarily the hardest boss fight in the game, it just comes way too early for most players and gives them the real first taste of the boss brutality to come.

** Another incredibly difficult boss--although more due to circumstances--comes in the form of Captain Schwann. The main reason he's incredibly difficult is that your party is missing its two primary healers: Estelle [[spoiler:(who's [[DistressedDamsel being held captive]] by [[CompleteMonster Alexei]])]] and Raven [[spoiler:(who is ''the boss you're fighting'')]], and he will take full advantage of that fact to rip your party a new one with devastating strike artes and a hard-hitting [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]] that's likely following the killer combo he just pulled on your party since he was in [[TurnsRed Over Limit]].
** Ooooooh man, what about, say, [[spoiler:Khroma dragon]]? This troper has a ''lot'' to say at her, that ''stupid'' tail attack she just pulls out of ''nowhere'', and when she flies...PAIN. IN. THE. ASS!!! It's a good thing he had Judith in that battle, she was a ''lifesaver'' against flying enemies.
*** The worst part about [[spoiler:Khroma]] is ''definitely'' that attack when she sends multiple homing fireballs at you. It's nigh unavoidable and sometimes causes Sealed Artes.

** Anyone who has gone through unknown mode will remember Zagi's Blastia Field on unknown. It rains red bombs and on unknown even at max level it does 5K each. 2 hits you die, and it covers the entire field making it undodgable. It is essentially luck whether you live or not. He is included in the optional dungeon you cannot save in and can spend hours going through before you get to the end. Nothing like running into him while in there and losing hours of work due to blastia field.
** In the PS3 version, there are MANY instances where you can shoot yourself in the foot in the arena if you are just casually going through the game on Hard or Above (this troper cannot speak for the following situation on Normal mode as the scenario happened on Hard and Unknown modes) and not going out of your way to get amazing skills,artes or equipment.Or grinding for that matter. The first three waves of enemies in "team mode" in the arena are just generic enemies. But then.....:
** You fight the two bumbling knights and Leblanc together for round four. They aren't the problem.....but for anyone who doesn't use Raven [[spoiler:Schwan gets thrown in as an added bonus due to being captain of the Schwan brigade, and Raven is Schawn.]] After this, you fight the hunting blades. ALL OF THEM. This includes [[spoiler:Karol if he is not in your battle party]]. Eating his new [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]] really, really, REALLY sucks.
** Speaking of the hunting blades! CLINT. CLINT CLINT CLINT! His amazing [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]], is a Fatal Strike. Thats it. He fatal strikes anyone who has the symbol on them. Whole party has it? Gameover.
** After the hunting blades you'll fight the cameo bosses you take on in the solo arena from various tales games. But THEN, the shining moment of this entire battle. (Depending on your party set up, this may not be as gruesome as it can be) To shoot yourself in the foot so horribly that the bullet then shoots back into the barrel of your gun and then it explodes in your hand and its shards impale you in the face, you need to do but one thing. Dont use Rita. Why? Because in the final round of the arena, you're pitted against the five characters who you are NOT using! [[ItJustGotWorse They have everything you've given them too.]] It would be nice to just go for rita but theres four other people there too, and chances are they're just as capable as Rita in the havoc wreaking department. Bonus misery points if her four partners are Estelle,Patty,Flynn and Raven. Healing all around! If Rita uses [[LimitBreak Ancient Catastrophe or Indignation]], well, it was fun while it lasted? On the bright side, turning your characters into such vicious bosses could give you a [[BraggingRightsReward]]

** Kornerupine the mad scientist and Incarose-ILL. All that needs be said about Cornelpin is that, until names began catching on, he was known on virtually all MessageBoards, videos, and other American fan work as "that fat bastard with the spin attack". The latter is a retread of a previous HopelessBossFight with more defense, more combos, bigger spells, a Hi-Ougi, and in general roughly as much power relative to the player owing to sheer annoyingness. And you're supposed to win.

** In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is [[spoiler: Little Queen]]. I don't know if they were trying to try something new with this, or if they were in the most malicious mood of their lives, because this boss fight, reeks of [[FakeDifficulty fake difficulty.]]Its your party against a total of TWELVE [[spoiler:Little Queens]]. Though they all aren't out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down, im sure if the producers could have made it happen they would have. The problem with this fight [[spoiler: and said problem escalates in the second battle against her]]the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought Dmgx5 or 10 in the grade shop. [[spoiler:The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss]], because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The [[spoiler:second time]]? About 30% through it, [[ItJustGotWorse you kill one, TWO appear.]] This just leads to the fight being [[NintendoHard seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack]], because if you do,2 or 3 of them will just rape you from the side or behind, and in the [[spoiler:second round]], they have [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] too. Fun. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time. At least their bullets, spells and [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] love to. Also, if you're unlucky enough to kill two or three of them at a time..... [[ZergRush well..........]]

** No mention of Nebilim yet? She can use all the Mystic Arts if your characters and those of the God Generals too, plus a few extra. If you're not paying attention, these can easily wipe out most if not your entire party if you're not paying attention or if you're not at a high enough level. Upping the difficulty makes this worse. She's also insanely fast and WILL go after your casters if there isn't a melee character to distract her; the problem with that is that fonic artes do a better damage count against her then melee attacks and you're offensive frontline fighter is going to be taking one hell of a beating.
*** Nebilim is a BonusBoss. She's SUPPOSED to be maddeningly hard. Final and Bonus Bosses normally don't qualify for ThatOneBoss unless they are difficult even by their standards in the genre.

** The ostensible FinalBoss that resides in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the (supposedly) Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]: [[spoiler:"Master" Van]]. It was a [[ClimaxBoss climactic point]] in the story and was built up to be the final confrontation before the NotSoFastBucko, yes, but the battle is still far and away the most difficult you've had so far--none of the other bosses up to this point even came close. Over 100,000 HP, throwing out high-level Arcane Artes like breadcrumbs, and only the second boss so far to use [[LimitBreak a Mystic Arte]] that can, and ''will'', instantly kill anyone who's caught in the blast radius early enough in the attack.

** You fight the two bumbling knights and Leblanc together for round four. They aren't the problem.....but for anyone who doesn't use Raven [[spoiler:Schwan gets thrown in as an added bonus due to being captain of the Schwan brigade, and Raven is Schawn.]]
-After this, you fight the hunting blades. ALL OF THEM. This includes [[spoiler:Karol if he is not in your battle party]]. Eating his new [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]] really, really, REALLY sucks.

** In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is [[spoiler: Little Queen]]. I don't know if they were trying to try something new with this, or if they were in the most malicious mood of their lives, because this boss fight, reeks of fake difficulty.Its your party against a total of TWELVE [[spoiler:Little Queens]]. Though they all aren't out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down, im sure if the producers could have made it happen they would have. The problem with this fight [[spoiler: and said problem escalates in the second battle against her]]the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought Dmgx5 or 10 in the grade shop. [[spoiler:The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss]], because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The [[spoiler:second time]]? About 30% through it, [[ItJustGotWorse you kill one, TWO appear.]] This just leads to the fight being [[NintendoHard seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack]], because if you do,2 or 3 of them will just rape you from the side or behind, and in the [[spoiler:second round]], they have [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] too. Fun. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time. At least their bullets, spells and [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] love to. Also, if you're unlucky enough to kill two or three of them at a time..... [[ZergRush well..........]]

** In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is [[spoiler: Little Queen]]. I don't know if they were trying to try something new with this, or if they were in the most malicious mood of their lives, because this boss fight, reeks of fake difficulty.Its your party against a total of TWELVE [[spoiler:Little Queens]]. Though they all aren't out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down, im sure if the producers could have made it happen they would have. The problem with this fight [[spoiler: and said problem escalates in the second battle against her]]the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought Dmgx5 or 10 in the grade shop. [[spoiler:The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss]], because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The second time? About 30% through it, [[ItJustGotWorse you kill one, TWO appear.]] This just leads to the fight being [[NintendoHard seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack]], because if you do,2 or 3 of them will just rape you from the side or behind, and in the second round, they have [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] too. Fun. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time. At least their bullets, spells and [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] love to. Also, if you're unlucky enough to kill two or three of them at a time..... [[ZergRush well..........]]

** In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is [[spoiler: Little Queen]]. I don't know if they were trying to try something new with this, or if they were in the most malicious mood of their lives, because this boss fight, reeks of fake difficulty.Its your party against a total of TWELVE [[spoiler:Little Queens]]. Though they all aren't out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down, im sure if the producers could have made it happen they would have. The problem with this fight [[spoiler: and said problem escalates in the second battle against her]]the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought Dmgx5 or 10 in the grade shop. The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss, because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The second time? About 30% through it, [[ItJustGotWorse you kill one, TWO appear.]] This just leads to the fight being [[NintendoHard seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack]], because if you do,2 or 3 of them will just rape you from the side or behind, and in the second round, they have [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] too. Fun. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time. At least their bullets, spells and [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] love to. Also, if you're unlucky enough to kill two or three of them at a time..... [[ZergRush well..........]]

** In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is [[spoiler: Little Queen]]. I don't know if they were trying to try something new with this, or if they were in the most malicious mood of their lives, because this boss fight, reeks of fake difficulty.Its your party against a total of TWELVE [[spoiler:Little Queens]]. Though they all aren't out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down, im sure if the producers could have made it happen they would have. The problem with this fight [spoiler: and said problem escalates in the second battle against her]]the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought Dmgx5 or 10 in the grade shop. The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss, because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The second time? About 30% through it, [[ItJustGotWorse you kill one, TWO appear.]] This just leads to the fight being [[NintendoHard seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack]], because if you do,2 or 3 of them will just rape you from the side or behind, and in the second round, they have [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] too. Fun. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time. At least their bullets, spells and [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] love to. Also, if you're unlucky enough to kill two or three of them at a time..... [[ZergRush well..........]]

** In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is [[spoiler: Little Queen]]. I don't know if they were trying to try something new with this, or if they were in the most malicious mood of their lives, because this boss fight, reeks of fake difficulty.Its your party against a total of TWELVE [[spoiler:Little Queens]]. Though they all aren't out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down, im sure if the producers could have made it happen they would have. The problem with this fight [spoiler: and said problem escalates in the second battle against her]]the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought Dmgx5 or 10 in the grade shop. The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss, because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The second time? About 30% through it, [[ItJustGotWorse you kill one, TWO appear.]] This just leads to the fight being [[NintendoHard seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack]], because if you do,2 or 3 of them will just rape you from the side or behind, and in the second round, they have [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] too. Fun. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time. At least their bullets, spells and [[LimitBreak Blast Calibers]] love to.

** [[spoiler: Emeraude]]. On other difficulties, she's relatively easy, but on Chaos mode, she can be a beast. First, she often uses little force field that makes it difficult for close-range fighters like Asbel to get near her. Second, one of her spells (which, by the way, are so quickly casted in Chaos mode) damages the ENTIRE battle field, forcing party members to take painful damage and be sucked up close to one another. [[ItGotWorse The worse thing is?]] She loves to use this move when she's in her Arles Break (a mode that already makes it impossible to interrupt spells), which means afterward, she WILL almost always use her [[LimitBreak Blast Caliber]] next, and since everyone is so neatly close to one another thanks to that last spell, you're pretty much guaranteed a Party Wipe. It is possible to avoid damage with the arena spell if you carefully dodge in time, but your friends might be screwed. The only real method for an easy battle is to corner her and go all-out, which can be difficult with your party members' AI. To top it all off, she is fought directly after [[spoiler: Lambda-Richard]] (who, fortunately, is easier than her but is still no mere cakewalk), with no time to save and no full-heal. Fortunately, you are given time to use items/refill your Arles Pot/change strategies/switch members, and you can retry the fight without re-watching cutscenes or fighting the previous boss again.

** Kornerupine the mad scientist and Incarose-ILL. All that needs be said about Cornelpin is that, until names began catching on, he was known on virtually all MessageBoards, videos, and other American fan work as "that fat bastard with the spin attack". The latter is a retread of a previous HopelessBossFight with more defense, more combos, bigger spells, a Hi-Ougi, and in general roughly as much power relative to the player owing to sheer annoyingness. And you're supposed to win.

** On hardcore they're even more extreme. Sylph's Cyclone is an instant kill, Efreet can chain cast Explosions and a Maxwell Extension resulting in death to anyone not with heavily stacked fire resistance, Celsius can now extend Ice Raid/Chi into Maximum Burst, which just flat out kills anyone it touches without two Flare Capes (and you want to rune bottle those Flare Capes to Aqua Capes for the fight, to protect against everything that isn't maximum burst), Volt can just pulls Indignation instantly whenever it wants, Maxwell instantly kills you with Maxwell Minimus, Valkyrie starts to use Valkyrie Protectors in rows (I've seen her do four in a row once) plus chaincast Ray at the end of each one, and the final boss cast Fear Flare multiple times in a row leaving you to be able to do nothing except heal with items -> run out of items -> die.

* ''TalesOfPhantasia''
** Fang Wolf. He uses repeated combo attacks that can instantly floor even the MeatShield.
** Undine from ''Tales of Phantasia''. She wouldn't have been so challenging if it wasn't for her wave attack. Her wave attack would run from right to left across the screen and would hit every one of your party members and had a very small charge time. The wave would hit for somewhere in between 600 and 700 damage to your entire party when, at that point in the game, you'll be lucky if anyone other than Cless has over 1300 HP. What really seals the deal for being absurd is that Undine ''is capable of spamming her wave attack''. If she starts spamming it, then there's nothing you can do to survive. It also doesn't help that she usually casts Delay on Cless so it becomes even harder for you to interrupt her.
* ''TalesOfEternia''
** Many summons are like this, but Undine and Celsius stick out in particular. Undine casts "Spear of Baptism", a move that pierces across the entire battlefield. It has to charge for a couple of seconds, which would be great--except that Undine is also untouchable while charging, which neatly nixes any attack chain you have going. Celsius, meanwhile, is extremely agile, can inflict Freeze with a touch, likes to sidestep physical attacks, and will cast Blizzard, one of the most powerful Ice spells in the game, twice in rapid succession, which can easily kill an otherwise appropriately leveled party with no room for argument. Oh and let's not forget Sekundes who can cast Maxwell Extensions. Consecutively.
** On hardcore they're even more extreme. Sylph's Cyclone is an instant kill, Efreet can chain cast Explosions and a Maxwell Extension resulting in death to anyone not with heavily stacked fire resistance, Celsius can now extend Ice Raid/Chi into Maximum Burst, which just flat out kills anyone it touches without two Flare Capes (and you want to rune bottle those Flare Capes to Aqua Capes for the fight, to protect against everything that isn't maximum burst), Volt can just pulls Indignation instantly whenever it wants, Maxwell instantly kills you with Maxwell Minimus, Valkyrie starts to use Valkyrie Protectors in rows (I've seen her do four in a row once) plus chaincast Ray at the end of each one, and the final boss cast Fear Flare multiple times in a row leaving you to be able to do nothing except heal with items -> run out of items -> die.
* ''TalesOfTheAbyss''- the ostensible FinalBoss that resides in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the (supposedly) Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]: [[spoiler:"Master" Van]]. It was a [[ClimaxBoss climactic point]] in the story and was built up to be the final confrontation before the NotSoFastBucko, yes, but the battle is still far and away the most difficult you've had so far--none of the other bosses up to this point even came close. Over 100,000 HP, throwing out high-level Arcane Artes like breadcrumbs, and only the second boss so far to use [[LimitBreak a Mystic Arte]] that can, and ''will'', instantly kill anyone who's caught in the blast radius early enough in the attack.

* Kornerupine the mad scientist and Incarose-ILL from ''TalesOfHearts''. All that needs be said about Cornelpin is that, until names began catching on, he was known on virtually all MessageBoards, videos, and other American fan work as "that fat bastard with the spin attack". The latter is a retread of a previous HopelessBossFight with more defense, more combos, bigger spells, a Hi-Ougi, and in general roughly as much power relative to the player owing to sheer annoyingness. And you're supposed to win.

* ''TalesOfLegendia''
** Stingle. Crazy attack power, high HP, really long reach and (get this): he can enter stances that if you attack him, he'll counter-attack. This will hit everyone in range. ONE OF THESE IS AN INSTANT-DEATH SKILL. Which means that if you're not paying attention you can have three quarters of your party dead in an instant and not know why. Luckily the preceding boss drops an anti-One hit KO item, but if you didn't know this beforehand, you're dead. Shadow Chloe and bonus boss Mimi can kick your ass too, as well as the final boss in both halves, one due to a quick, high range knock-down and the ability to rapid-fire spells while invincible, and the other final final boss, who can pull off crazy combos and some nasty spells, and one good-range, fairly fast (if telegraphed) special that will leave your asshole in ruins.
** [[DualBoss Dark Senel and Dark Shirley]] deserve a few mentions. The former distracts you while the latter casts her un-dodgeable Blizzard spell, which can kill the entire party.
* ''TalesOfInnocence''
** Cerberus. He's got several attacks that almost always miss, but he also frequently does a diving kick that chains into Grave/Stalagmite, which is very, very hard to dodge if it's aimed at you. However, he comes with a pair of dogs that, while they don't have any techniques at all, are very fast, have combos that will always interrupt your attacks and send you flying on a low enough trajectory to make it very, very unlikely that you'll pull off an aerial recovery, and have only ''slightly'' less HP than Dog Boy himself. Oh, and it's almost impossible to stagger them, in a game that pretty much requires staggering to pull off any kind of damaging combo and/or stop your enemies from wiping the floor with you. The only good thing to come out of this fight is that your last party member joins right after it, and their fighting style is pretty much exactly the same as Cerberus', albeit with the expected basic-techniques-only moveset.
* ''TalesOfTheTempest''
** The final boss, [[spoiler:King Aurella]], actually puts up a fight: he hits hard, teleports around the battlefield, and attacks with several status ailments. This can take some players by surprise, because up until that point, every single battle could be easily won by mashing the A button. He's still not quite tough enough to be considered hard (especially because by the time you get there, you should have a lot of healing items), but compared to the rest of the game it's a huge difficulty spike.

** The battle against Alice and Decus near the end of the game is a massive brick wall in nearly any standard playthrough of the game. First of all, due to a plot event all of the original Symphonia characters can't help you - it's just Emil, Marta, and your mons, which if you haven't been raising worthwhile mons (which you likely haven't been if this is your first run) effectively means you're two characters short in this battle. But that's just the start of it. Decus will constantly go after Marta with his BFS, making it just about impossible for her to do anything without Emil defending her...except that this means Alice gets her spells off, either healing Decus for ridiculous amounts or dealing ridiculous amounts of damage to your characters. You can't just go after Alice, as she has amazing defense for a spellcaster, and Emil going after Alice means Marta will die in seconds. And both of them have an attack that instantly reduces the HP of your entire party to 1, is unblockable, and is impossible to move away from once it starts from completely out of nowhere...very often resulting in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgogElp4XYk#t=0m09s this]]. Cue SkywardScream.
** There's also the Lookins. The fact that their role in the story is as packhorses for the Vanguard that you've been beating senseless throughout the whole game does not help. These things have an extremely fast rolling attack - fast enough to cross the entire battlefield in half a second. And they will be all too happy to spam this, as it's the ''only attack in their arsenal''. You can't combo them as they'll wind up rolling toward another party member, and since in this game getting hit while free running is a guaranteed critical, their attacks will be very damaging. And there's [[FourIsDeath FOUR]] of them.

* The three dragons in the middle of ''TalesOfSymphonia'' right after Botta and Yuan do a ridiculous amount of damage, basically threatening to kill your entire party within 5 seconds. On top of that, it's almost impossible to stop them from interrupting your healer and mages so you'll have an almost impossible time using any of your powerful healing or magic spells. Finally, the camera system is so confusing you won't be able to keep track of where the damage is coming from. I personally think that that particular battle is the most difficult in the game, though Botta, Yuan, Kvar, and Magnius are all very hard. Interestingly enough, like most Tales battles, once you kill a single dragon the battle becomes a cakewalk.
* Most boss battles with multiple strong enemies in ''TalesOfSymphonia'' are this. Kvar, Sylph, Yuan/Botta, Dragons, Bonus Team Battle in Colosseum...
* ''TalesOfSymphoniaDawnOfTheNewWorld'' is generally much better about {{Wolfpack Boss}}es than its predecessor (largely thanks to free run), but there are still a couple of these that merit mentioning here:

* Most boss battles with multiple strong enemies in ''TalesOfSymphonia'' are this. Kvar, Sylph, Yuan/Botta, Dragons, Bonus Team Battle in Colloseum...

** Cerberus. He's got several attacks that almost always miss, but he also frequently does a diving kick that chains into Grave/Stalagmite, which is very, very hard to dodge if it's aimed at you. However, he comes with a pair of dogs that, while they don't have any techniques at all, are very fast, have combos that will always interrupt your attacks and send you flying on a low enough trajectory to make it very, very unlikely that you'll pull off an aerial recovery, and have only ''slightly'' less HP than Dog Boy himself. Oh, and it's almost impossible to stagger them, in a game that pretty much requires staggering to pull off any kind of damaging combo and/or stop your enemies from wiping the floor with you. The only good thing to come out of this fight is that your last party member joins right after it, and their fighting style is pretty much exactly the same as Cerberus', albeit with the expected basic-techniques-only moveset.

** Oh... I found that really easy, actually. I just used a move of Senel's where he'd kick Dark Shirley a bunch and knock her to the ground, then I'd go and use the move where you throw the enemy away. Almost every time, she'd hit Dark Senel as he came rushing at me, which made the battle actually very hilarious.

* ''TalesOfTheAbyss''- the ostensible FinalBoss that resides in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon the (supposedly) Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]: [[spoiler:"Master" Van]]. It was a [[ClimaxBoss climactic point]] in the story and was built up to be the final confrontation before the NotSoFastBucko, yes, but the battle is still far and away the most difficult you've had so far--none of the other bosses up to this point even came close. Over 100,000 HP, throwing out high-level Arcane Artes like breadcrumbs, and only the second boss so far to use [[LimitBreak a Mystic Arte]] that can, and ''will'', instantly kill anyone who's caught in the blast radius early enough in the attack. This troper actually had horrible flashbacks to [[BonusBoss Abyssion]] from ''TalesOfSymphonia'' upon finally reaching the victory screen.

** Gattuso in the Ehmead Hills. Unlike the previous bosses, Gattuso is much higher level, has much more HP, more attack power, is much faster, and can poison you with its melee attacks. To rub it in your face, immediately afterwards the party ''talks about how easy the fight was'', and the next boss is a freaking cakewalk. While it's not necessarily the hardest boss fight in the game, it just comes way too early for most players and gives them the real first taste of the boss brutality to come.

** Gattuso in the Ehmead Hills. Unlike the previous bosses, Gattuso is much higher level, has much more HP, more attack power, is much faster, and can poison you with its melee attacks. What makes this worse is that there is no way to fully refresh your health and energy before the fight nor can you buy items, meaning you have to fight Gattuso with whatever you happen to be carrying. To rub it in your face, immediately afterwards the party ''talks about how easy the fight was'', and the next boss is a freaking cakewalk. While it's not necessarily the hardest boss fight in the game, it just comes way too early for most players and gives them the real first taste of the boss brutality to come.

** [[DualBoss Dark Senel and Dark Shirley]] deserve a few mentions. The former distracts you while the latter casts her un-dodgeable Blizzard spell, which can kill the entire party.

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