History ThatOneBoss / TalesSeries

* Tyson and Nan. They're the first bosses whom you'll fight who introduce Mystic Artes proper, at a point where ''you can't use your own yet''. Tyson is a horrendous nightmare who can zoom around the field and even strike Estelle or Rita from afar to interrupt their casting. Nan takes the cake, though, as she can use her boomerang blade to disrupt your party from any range, and she can heal for a bit. You'll think ShootTheMedicFirst, right? Well, that is risky. Her Mystic Arte has the potential of taking down more than one target if she initiates it when standing too close to many.

** Any FlunkyBoss, but especially Kurt. Kurt attacks a lot, hits hard, and has a wide range of attack. He also delights in [[ShootTheMedicFirst ignoring the person dealing damage to him and picking on Cheria and Sophie]], while ignoring Hubert unless he starts healing. To make matters worse, he ''summons mooks'' into the battle. If you try to just pick on Kurt to burn him down, the adds will surround and kill you faster than Sophie and Cheria can heal. Stop and beat up the adds so they can't get you? Kurt will run over and pick on Cheria and Sophie.

* Medissa, the Snake Queen. She's a FlunkyBoss who constantly summons snakes to help her fight. The snakes themselves can Poison you and prevent you from healing, and they force you to take your attention away from Medissa herself, who's a real monster. She can Petrify your party members with Gorgon's Eye, which you have no way to prevent or cure outside of single-use Panacea Bottles at the time. And Medissa's Break Soul is so strong, it can easily one-shot your close-range fighters like Velvet and Rokurou. Plus, even for when she's encountered, her HP is almost absurdly high. All of this means spending several seconds recovering, only to be surrounded by snakes and go right back down again, making it very hard to build up any kind of offensive momentum.
* The second, and final fight against [[spoiler: Failured]] Oscar is one of the hardest fights in the game. For starters, you literally just get done fighting Teresa, so unless you had food set to auto-cook, you're going into battle with the same health as before. [[spoiler:Oscar also uses Armatization now and, using a wind Malak, has powerful attacks that hit a wide arc, and now has high mobility meaning unless you manage to get a small combo going, he'll be running through the arena attacking everyone he sees. His mystic arte hurts but his strongest attack is Cloudburst, which will kill anyone in its way, and like his normal attacks, hits a large arc.]] This boss fight exists to show you how tough the game's final fights with the Exorcists truly are.
* The game's second-to-last battle, against [[spoiler: Artorius and Innominat]], primarily due to the latter. So, you know Laphicet's final spell, Insubstantiality? The one that blankets basically the entire battlefield for a ton of damage, balanced somewhat by the rather long casting time? Well, [[spoiler: Innominat]] can cast it too, in about half the time Laphicet needs to get it out, and his passive ability grants him immunity to staggering for up to 15 hits while he's casting, making it almost impossible to knock him out of his chant and cancel the spell (especially if the other opponent is hacking away at your backside while you're trying to hit the first bastard). It's basically worth half your team's HP (or more) with no reliable way to prevent it. And he spams the HELL out of it. Have fun! Oh, and don't forget about [[spoiler: Artorius, either!]] He doesn't hit nearly as hard, but if he catches you and starts comboing you, you'll be a sitting duck for Insubstantiality!

* 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 [[SmallNameBigEgo 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. Hence his nickname, "the Noob Killer".
** Interestingly, it's rumored that he's only this difficult due to a programming oversight; The developers intended for him to be this difficult for the demo (so as to entice players to buy the full game and grind properly to have a better chance), but forgot to nerf him for the actual release.

** Fortunately, this is [[AuthorsSavingThrow alleviated]] in the PS3 and definitive edition - in which the party has Flynn and Patty with them. This means you have four characters with healing artes (Yuri, Karol, Flynn, and Patty)

** The Wind Spirit in Asgard is surprisingly tough, especially as it's often too early for Raine to know Photon.

** The fight against the summon spirit [[MakingASplash Undine.]] Her strategy is to back the party into a corner, and beam-spam the water spell [[ThatOneAttack Spread]], which hits every party member in a four-foot radius five times each. She also has a whopping [[DamageSponge 36,000 HP]], and a brutally fast 5 second cooldown after casting spells. Thankfully, all the other summon spirits are pretty easy to deal with, with the one exception being [[BonusBoss Origin.]]

* [[spoiler: Volt]] is a '''very''' annoying/trick boss to defeat in this story (He was quite manageable with enough preparation before, [[spoiler: unlike this variant of him]]) if you haven't grinded up your party's skills in advance, as he can easily mop the floor with you if you don't learn the new Power Hits mechanics to take him down quickly enough. He '''loves''' to jump around, making moderate-sized electrical shockwaves around your party, weakening/KOing them with ease most of the time as well as firing a full 360 electrical laser that spans the entire battle area. Hope you unlocked Ludger/Alvin's "Bullet Fiesta" linked arte as it REALLY can save your ass in this fight '''big time''' when used effectively on him since, unlike the other [[BonusBoss optional bosses]], this one is '''directly''' tied to story progression, so... good luck.

* [[spoiler: Volt]] is a '''very''' annoying/trick boss to defeat in this story (He was quite manageable with enough preparation before, [[spoiler: unlike this variant of him]]) if you haven't grinded up your party's skills in advance, as he can easily mop the floor with you if you don't learn the new Power Hits mechanics to take him down quickly enough. He '''loves''' to jump around, making moderate-sized electrical shockwaves around your party, weakening/KOing them with ease most of the time as well as firing a full 360 electrical laser that spans the entire battle area. Hope you unlocked Ludger/Alvin's "Bullet Fiesta" combo art as it REALLY can save your ass in this fight '''big time''' when used effectively on him since, unlike the other [[BonusBoss optional bosses]], this one is '''directly''' tied to story progression, so... good luck.

* [[spoiler: Volt]] is a '''very''' annoying/trick boss to defeat in this story (He was quite manageable with enough preparation before, [[spoiler: unlike this variant of him]]) if you haven't grinded up your party's skills in advance, as he can easily mop the floor with you if you don't learn the new Power Hits mechanics to take him down quickly enough. He '''loves''' to jump around, making moderate-sized electrical shockwaves around your party, weakening/KOing them with ease most of the time as well as firing a full 360 electrical laser that spans the entire battle area. Hope you unlocked Ludger/Alvin's "Bullet Fiesta" combo art as it REALLY can save your ass in this fight '''big time''' when used effectively on him since, unlike the other [[BonusBoss optional bosses]], this one is '''directly''' tied to story progression, good luck.

* [[spoiler: Volt]] is a '''very''' annoying/trick boss to defeat in this story (He was quite manageable with enough preparation before, [[spoiler: unlike this variant of him]]) if you haven't grinded up your party's skills in advance, as he can easily mop the floor with you if you don't learn the new Chain combo mechanics to take him down quickly enough. He '''loves''' to jump around, making moderate-sized electrical shockwaves around your party, weakening/KOing them with ease most of the time as well as firing a full 360 electrical laser that spans the entire battle area. Hope you unlocked Ludger/Alvin's "Bullet Fiesta" combo art as it REALLY can save your ass in this fight '''big time''' when used effectively on him since, unlike the other [[BonusBoss optional bosses]], this one is '''directly''' tied to story progression, good luck.

* [[spoiler: Volt]] is a '''very''' annoying/trick boss to defeat in this story (He was quite manageable with enough preparation, [[spoiler: unlike this variant of him]]) if you haven't grinded up your party's skills in advance, as he can easily mop the floor with you if you don't learn the new Chain combo mechanics to take him down quickly enough. He '''loves''' to jump around, making moderate-sized electrical shockwaves around your party, weakening/KOing them with ease most of the time. Hope you unlocked Ludger/Alvin's "Bullet Fiesta" combo art as it REALLY saves your ass in this fight '''big time.''' since, unlike the other [[BonusBoss optional bosses]], this one is '''directly''' tied to story progression, good luck.

* [[spoiler: Volt]] is a '''very''' annoying/trick boss to defeat in this story (He was quite manageable with enough preparation, [[spoiler: unlike this variant of him]]) if you haven't grinded up your party's skills in advance, as he can easily mop the floor with you if you don't learn TOX2's Chain combo mechanics to take him down quickly enough. He '''loves''' to jump around, making moderate-sized electrical shockwaves around your party, weakening/KOing them with ease most of the time. Hope you unlocked Ludger/Alvin's "Bullet Fiesta" combo art as it REALLY saves your ass in this fight '''big time.''' since, unlike the other [[BonusBoss optional bosses]], this one is '''directly''' tied to story progression, good luck.

* [[spoiler:Victor is a close second. Not only does he have ALL of Ludger's artes, he also has Chromatus, meaning he has two mystic artes he can hit you with. To add to that, he loves inflicting status effects with his guns. Oh, and he starts the boss fight in Chromatis form, meaning there's a huge chance he'll use his Mystic Arte and nearly wipe out your entire group...simply because they were close enough together. Similar to the above, you have no real healer save Jude]].

* Exoplasma might very well be the most difficult Monster Hunt. To start with, the game flat out tells you it can't be hurt by anything, and that the only way to do so, is to strike at his replications. The problem is that its defense is super high, so you have to block and use Power Charge 3 to break it, or trigger Chromatus. However, the time it takes to do that and correctly guess when it'll use its replica ability, is a split second. The clones can be killed easily, but they often gang up and doing a very powerful spinning attack that takes a clean chunk of HP. To make the matter worse, they can hide underground and strike up at you, which makes comboing them even harder. They can even hide while in the Chromatus! They also inflict nasty status debuffs like Fire.

** Eleanor's final fight, mostly because if you slip up she can combo you into oblivion and not even give you a chance to recover.
** Kamoana. By that point, the bosses have been relatively easy aside from a few. Kamoana, on the other hand, can be a real trip-up to players who aren't on Normal or easy. She resists just about everything you got, does constant wind elemental damage, and can constantly push you into a corner - ''out'' of Magilou's healing circle. When she pushes you into the wall like this you also are staggered unless you guarded at the right time - and you're staggered for ''awhile''. Basically by that point, you have to really know the intricacies of this battle system.
** Medissa, the Snake Queen. She's a FlunkyBoss who constantly summons snakes to help her fight. The snakes themselves can Poison you and prevent you from healing, and they force you to take your attention away from Medissa herself, who's a real monster. She can Petrify your party members with Gorgon's Eye, which you have no way to prevent or cure outside of single-use Panacea Bottles at the time. And Medissa's Break Soul is so strong, it can easily one-shot your close-range fighters like Velvet and Rokurou. Plus, even for when she's encountered, her HP is almost absurdly high. All of this means spending several seconds recovering, only to be surrounded by snakes and go right back down again, making it very hard to build up any kind of offensive momentum.
** The second, and final fight against [[spoiler: Failured]] Oscar is one of the hardest fights in the game. For starters, you literally just get done fighting Teresa, so unless you had food set to auto-cook, you're going into battle with the same health as before. [[spoiler:Oscar also uses Armatization now and, using a wind Malak, has powerful attacks that hit a wide arc, and now has high mobility meaning unless you manage to get a small combo going, he'll be running through the arena attacking everyone he sees. His mystic arte hurts but his strongest attack is Cloudburst, which will kill anyone in its way, and like his normal attacks, hits a large arc.]] This boss fight exists to show you how tough the game's final fights with the Exorcists truly are.

* [[spoiler:Alexei]], because aside from being really strong, he'll spam his Brilliant Cataclysm Mystic Arte which he can literally pull out of ANYWHERE. In the middle of comboing him? Bam, Brilliant Cataclysm. He can even use it when he's not in Hypermode (which is '''the''' requirement for Mystic Arte usage) and the move is completely undodgeable and hits like a truck. In fact, it's so powerful that it can one-shot your entire party on hard if you're not overleveled or packed to the gills with defensive skills and buffs. In addition, he has two high-tier spells named Tidal Wave and Holy Rain, which are dangerous and capable of inflicting a TotalPartyKill just as much as his Mystic Arte. And to top it all off, he can heal himself for a lot with Guardian Frost, a fast attack that also does damage in a small area around him (making it much more difficult to interrupt with melee attacks), and which he happens to love spamming while in overlimit.

* [[spoiler:Alexei]], because aside from being really strong, he'll spam his Brilliant Cataclysm Mystic Arte which he can literally pull out of ANYWHERE. In the middle of comboing him? Bam, Brilliant Cataclysm. He can even use it when he's not in Hypermode (which is '''the''' requirement for Mystic Arte usage) and the move is completely undodgeable and hits like a truck. In addition, he has two high-tier spells named Tidal Wave and Holy Rain, which are dangerous and capable of inflicting a TotalPartyKill just as much as his Mystic Arte.

* The [[strike:Light-Frog]] Nasdroviae. Get it down to less than a quarter health and it will automatically perform two healing spells to bring itself right back to 50% health. Plus it's guarding while it's doing all this, so unless you pull off a REALLY well-coordinated combo (or have a high dex stat on a character/monster, ie guard-break) you're not going to stop it once it starts. It's no pushover in combat, either, and your only chance is to whittle it's health down just above 1/4 health and then break out the best combo you can manage, ending it in a Unison Attack, and hope it's enough to kill it in one go.

* The Gigantess Omega. Its kicks, dashes and shots deal insane damage to the party, but to make things worse, its tornado is pretty much guaranteed to KO anyone near him who weren't quick enough to guard or move out of the way. Oh, but that's not even it's trump card: it has an energy surge attack that knocks down and away anyone near it (i.e:the melee fighters, who are the #1 powerhouses) while dealing nigh-OHKO damage at the same time. And it uses it without any warning. Did we mention that it's constantly on the move, rarely touches the ground and never stays in one spot for more than a few seconds?

* Evil Plantasm. For starters the boss has insane range and deals high physical damage at what is only a quarter of the way through the game. It has two attacks that are frustrating to deal with; a one-two punch that deals massive damage, and a spinning attack that deals more then one hit and deals massive damage. It also randomly ignores attacks sometimes, meaning it'll likely one-shot a character for no reason. When it's health gets low it gets Zooming Punch which can and will one-shot someone who is guarding. Making this fight worse is the little plant enemies, which are boosted thanks to a brand new, never shown trait that makes enemies of the same type linked together and have increased stats. If you focus on the little ones, you'll have the boss ripping you apart but if you focus on the boss the little plants will swarm your team. It's a pretty unfair boss at this early in the game.

** The second, and final fight against [[spoiler: Failured]] Oscar is one of the hardest fights in the game. For starters, you literally just get done fighting Teresa, so unless you had food set to auto-cook, you're going into battle with the same health as before. [[spoiler:Oscar also uses Armatization now and, using a wind Malak, has powerful attacks that hit a wide arc, and now has high mobility meaning unless you manage to get a small combo going, he'll be running through the arena attacking everyone he sees. His mystic arte hurts but his strongest attack is Cloudburst, which will kill anyone in it's way, and like his normal attacks, hits a large arc.]] This boss fight exists to show you how tough the game's final fights with the Exorcists truly are.

* Alexei, because aside from being really strong, he'll spam his Brilliant Cataclysm Mystic Arte which he can literally pull out of ANYWHERE. In the middle of comboing him? Bam, Brilliant Cataclysm. He can even use it when he's not in Hypermode (which is '''the''' requirement for Mystic Arte usage) and the move is completely undodgeable and hits like a truck. In addition, he has two high-tier spells named Tidal Wave and Holy Rain, which are dangerous and capable of inflicting a TotalPartyKill just as much as his Mystic Arte.

* Clint has an amazing [[LimitBreak Mystic Arte]] which is a Fatal Strike. That's it. He Fatal Strikes anyone who has the symbol on them. Whole party has it? Gameover.

* In the [=PS3=] version, to some extent, [[spoiler: Duke]]'s second form and his third form. Unlike the Xbox 360 version, Big Bang can kill, instead of leaving everyone with 1 HP. Since it deals thousands of damage on all difficulties, you're basically looking at an easy [[TotalPartyKill one-hit KO ]] on everyone. Better pack Rebirth Dolls and have that Ressurect skill ready.

* 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 message boards, videos, and other American fan works 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.

* Alexei, because aside from being really strong, he'll spam his Brilliant Cataclysm Mystic Arte which he can literally pull out of ANYWHERE. In the middle of comboing him? Bam, Brilliant Cataclysm. He can even use it when he's not in Hypermode (which is '''the''' requirement for Mystic Arte usage) and the move is completely undodgeable and hits like a truck.

* Tyson and Nan. They're the first bosses whom you'll fight who introduce Mystic Artes proper, at a point where ''you can't use your own yet''. Tyson is a horrendous nightmare who can zoom around the field and even strike Estelle or Rita from afar to interrupt their casting. Nan takes the cake, though, as she can use her boomerang blade to disrupt your party from any range, and she can heal for a bit. You'll think ShootTheMedic, right? Well, that is risky. Her Mystic Arte has the potential of taking down more than one target if she initiates it when standing too close to many.

* The battle against Alice and Decus near the end of the game. You're fighting both of them at the same time, they both have [[LimitBreak Mystic Artes]], Alice can heal for about half of their substantial health [[ShootTheMedic unless you target her first]], they have a lot of stun resistance (needing high dex to break through quickly), and you don't have any GuestStarPartyMember at the time, so if you've been neglecting Monster raising you're in for trouble. Unless you [[GameBreaker forged the Echo Tracer/acquired the Neither Traitor]], of course.

** Elraine is also quite nasty, because she spams status effects, is very hard to stun, and has a [[AntiMagic 100% deflect ability]]. Like Barbatos, you have to fight her twice, and both times are brutal.
** '''Barbatos''', the second and third time you fight him. He's very fast, hits hard, poisons you, and will instantly cast spells (while invincible) specifically to counter your characters' healing spells or items. He also has a tendency to go into overlimit a lot more than you ever will, sometimes up to 4 times in a single battle.
** [[spoiler:Fortuna]] could also be considered this, simply because her fight [[MarathonBoss takes so long.]]

!!VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia

!!VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny2

!!VideoGame/TalesOfEternia

!!VideoGame/TalesOfRebirth

!!VideoGame/TalesOfLegendia

!!VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss

!!VideoGame/TalesOfTheTempest

!!VideoGame/TalesOfInnocence

!!VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia

!!VideoGame/TalesOfHearts

!!VideoGame/TalesOfGraces

!!VideoGame/TalesOfZestiria

!!VideoGame/TalesOfBerseria

* And Emeraude. The only way to really fight her is make a full team of ranged attackers, because she has an aura active at almost all times that damages and staggers everyone in melee range every second or so. The only time this is not active is when she is attacking, during which she has Iron Stance active, which means that she can pull NoSell on ALL of your attacks. That, and she has ludicrously powerful attacks that often hit half the battlefield. Killer Field is particularly bad, as it hits the ENTIRE field for massive damage AND pulls your characters towards the center, where they are easy pickings for Emeraude's other area attacks. What makes this attack worse is it ''can'' be simply guarded, [[ArtificialStupidity but your AI partners are too stupid to do so.]]

* Medissa, the Snake Queen. She's a FlunkyBoss who constantly summons snakes to help her fight. The snakes themselves can Poison you prevent you from healing, and they force you to take your attention away from Medissa herself, who's a real monster. She can Petrify your party members with Gorgon's Eye, which you have no way to prevent or cure outside of single-use Panacea Bottles at the time. And Medissa's Break Soul is so strong, it can easily one-shot your close-range like Velvet and Rokurou. Plus, even for when she's encountered, her HP is almost absurdly high. All of this means spending several seconds recovering, only to be surrounded by snakes and go right back down again, making it very hard to build up any kind of offensive momentum.

* Evil Plantasm. For starters, the boss has insane range and deals high physical damage at what is only a quarter of the way through the game. It has two attacks that are frustrating to deal with; a one-two punch that deals massive damage, and a spinning attack that deals more then one hit and deals massive damage. It also randomly ignores attacks sometimes, meaning it'll likely one-shot a character for no reason. When it's health gets low it gets Zooming Punch which can and will one-shot someone who is guarding. Making this fight worse is the little plant enemies, which are boosted thanks to a brand new, never shown trait that makes enemies of the same type linked together and have increased stats. If you focus on the little ones, you'll have the boss ripping you apart but if you focus on the boss the little plants will swarm your team. It's a pretty unfair boss at this early in the game.
* Even if you've had little trouble with previous bosses you may have difficulty with [[spoiler: Maltran]] due to her high speed, longer reach and tendency to chain her attacks together, leaving you little room to counter.