| 1 | This page is about the hardest and most powerful bosses in the [[RageQuit controller-tossingly]] [[RunningGag popular]] ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series. Hope you have enough Phoenix Downs. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | '''Note''': {{Final Boss}}es and {{Wake Up Call Boss}}es are not allowed unless they're overly difficult by their standards. {{Superboss}}es are not allowed; they're optional and have no standards for difficulty. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Works with individual pages: |
| 6 | * ThatOneBoss/FinalFantasyXIV |
| 7 | ---- |
| 8 | !Examples: |
| 9 | |
| 10 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 11 | |
| 12 | ! Mainline games |
| 13 | [[folder:Final Fantasy I]] |
| 14 | * The Marsh Cave has a WolfpackBoss consisting of [=WIZARDs=] (Piscodemons) which guard [[PlotCoupon Astos' crown]]. This boss fight cannot be run from, but the random number generator will determine whether you have to fight 2, 3, or 4 of them. Despite being called [=WIZARDs=], they don't have magic power - just brutally powerful physical attacks combined with high magic resistance. Any of these guys can one-shot anyone except for a fighter. |
| 15 | * The boss of Northwest Castle is Astos. Granted, he doesn't cast his RUB (Death) spell that will instantly kill a party member all the time, but gamers should be expected to assume that he will cast it on anyone immediately, even in a situation where you get through the fight without anyone instantly being killed (which is possible). What's worse, Astos can expect to use RUB on as many as '''three''' of your party members. To make matters worse, on the earlier versions, your only hope of reviving the party member who is killed is to wait until after the battle and head back to the nearest sanctuary, which is a very long walk away in Elfheim, and you don't have access to Life spells until after you defeat That One Boss or Phoenix Downs that can revive a fallen member which are obtainable in the GBA and PSP versions. |
| 16 | * The EYE (Beholder) of the Ice Cave can be a relatively easy boss with great EXP rewards, but only if you have the proper equipment. However, the first time you traverse this cave, you have no death-saving equipment and must bear a lot of DemonicSpiders with instant-death effects. The final showdown with this boss will likely be with a barely-living party, but he will show no mercy. Instant death spells are his specialty. Even if you do arrive with full health, his spells will wipe you out one-by-one unless you can score an amazing physical critical attack. |
| 17 | * The rematch against Lich in the Chaos Shrine gives him a spell no enemy should ever have: NUKE (Flare). If you don't kill him on your first turn, he can smite your party for such horrible unblockable damage that even if you win, you can't possibly be in good enough shape to [[spoiler:tackle all the rest of the fiends and Chaos]]. |
| 18 | [[/folder]] |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[folder:Final Fantasy II]] |
| 21 | * The Lamia Queen. Most of the theoretically difficult bosses in this game can be killed in just one or two turns once you get your hands on insta-death spells and/or the Blood Sword, but the Lamia Queen shows up before you can get any of these. Moreover, it'd be a horribly annoying boss even if you ''did'' have them, because it has powerful attacks that also make your characters go to sleep, can charm your party members and make them attack each other, and is nearly invulnerable to physical attacks. If you're one of those players who chose to make a party focused purely around physical attacks due to the game's rather esoteric magic system, then you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. |
| 22 | * To a lesser extent, the Behemoth, who also appears before you can get your hands on any boss-smiting items. This one doesn't have any nasty tricks like the Lamia Queen... just high defense stats, tons of HP, and brutally powerful attacks. Making matters worse, while you faced the Lamia Queen with the fairly competent Leila as your fourth party member, you end up having Gordon in that slot during the fight with the Behemoth. Being that Gordon starts the game as the ''weakest'' PC, guest or non, and players can choose to just fight with him dead in the earlier segment where he's available if they don't want the hassle of dealing with him...it can effectively mean that unwise ([[TrialAndErrorGameplay or just inexperienced]]) players are a man down in this battle. |
| 23 | * Even these two bosses can be one-shotted with Teleport (which you can get at Salamand before the FIRST boss), but before them you have to fight a Red Soul at Kashuan Keep. Red Soul absorbs all black magic, including Teleport (making it the only boss Teleport doesn't work on, other than the Emperor, who can still be easily beaten if you got the Blood Sword on your only opportunity - which is well after Red Soul). Thus, you have to rely on your regular attacks against it, and just about all bosses except Borghen have very high defense for the point in which they are first encountered in the game. Furthermore, as with Behemoth, your fourth party member is Gordon, who, unless you've been level grinding him for a while, might not even be able to damage it. It may not be particularly hard when it gets down to it (once it runs out of MP and is reduced to weak attacks), if your weapons and strength are a high enough level to inflict some damage, but can still be an annoyance. |
| 24 | [[/folder]] |
| 25 | |
| 26 | [[folder:FinalFantasyIII]] |
| 27 | * Garuda. He's weak to Dragoon abilities, but you've just gotten access to dragoon gear, so there's a lot of level-grinding involved. He has the Lightning attack; a ridiculously strong attack that hits your entire party for high damage. When you fight him, it's very much a luck based fight; even if you come prepared, he might still just go first and wipe your party with Lightning. The only real strategy is just trying to rush down his health with jump attacks before he kills someone. The DS version gives him a moderately powerful physical attack, meaning you might get some respite as he only attacks one party member... but the same version also makes him attack twice per turn, meaning that he might well fire off two lightning attacks right as the battle begins, obliterating your entire party before they can move a muscle. There is a trick to make him a cakewalk, but [[GuideDangIt it requires an understanding of job abilities and a certain item]][[note]]Garuda is weak to Wind. Raven's Yawn casts Aeroga. [[ItemCaddy Scholar]] has an inate ability to double the effectiveness of attack items.[[/note]] |
| 28 | * There is also [[spoiler:Doga and Unei]], who are faced in immediate succession, and [[spoiler:Doga]] likes using hard-hitting elemental spells while [[spoiler:Unei]] can turn you to stone, requiring the party to be quite strong to last long enough to defeat both of them. |
| 29 | ** For added fun, the latter can also hit the whole party with the Tornado spell, which has a chance of dropping each party member's HP to single digits. If the boss does this to your healer and then chooses to attack said healer...well, sucks to be you. |
| 30 | * The fight against Salamander comes right before getting the second jobs, just when your first jobs are obsolete; and he's happy to remind you ''why'' they're obsolete, particularly when he spams a party-wide fire breath attack that'll knock every character down nearly half their HP. He also comes after a brutal dungeon requiring you to wade through lava, which chops off huge amounts of health. |
| 31 | * [[BarrierChangeBoss Hein]], who comes after getting the second jobs. For starters, Hein requires you to have a [[SpoonyBard Scholar]] in your party to scan for his weakness; without a Scholar, you'll just be chipping away. Entering Hein's Castle locks you in until he's been defeated, so you can't do any grinding. Working your way through will quickly cut down your supplies. There ''is'' a trick that makes Hein easy, but it's a hell of a GuideDangIt. The Scholar class can use items for double effectiveness; this includes attack items. However, this little tidbit is only mentioned by the old NPC in the inns, who you'll probably talk to once and then never go near again. It's also in the manual, but if you've lost your copy... ''or'', if you have a Geomancer or two (and they have been a Geomancer since you got the job), you don't really need to bring a Scholar at all. Possibly only in the DS version, but a good Geomancer can do quite a bit of damage to him. |
| 32 | * Any boss requiring you to be miniaturized. Physical attacks hit you for ridiculously high damage, and your physical attacks do single points of damage. Again, this reduces strategy to just trying to rush down the boss' health before he kills anyone. The most notable example is Giant Rat; he may not be difficult if you put Red or Black Mages in your party and equip them with magic spells (which will affect enemies even when you are small) but first time players might be entering this dungeon not expecting a boss, and you cannot run away from this battle. |
| 33 | * 2 Head D/Two-Headed Dragon has one strategy, and that one strategy is using physical attacks. Problem? They're the strongest physical attacks in the game. Even with crystal equipment and a shield, he can usually end up hitting about seven times for a thousand damage. Anything less, and he'll probably be hitting twenty times for 9999 damage. Unlike most monsters, he doesn't waste turns; all he does is hit you as hard as he can, usually taking down or crippling one party member every turn. Spamming Protect can save party members from him, but if he tries attacking a character who doesn't have Protect or heavy armor up? That character probably just died, and even if they didn't, they're gonna need healing. There simply isn't a strategy for killing him that doesn't ultimately come down to outlasting him, and he hits a ''lot'' harder than you do. The remake at least introduces [[DrawAggro Provoke]], which makes the fight less of a LuckBasedMission by letting a Viking draw his attacks and withstand them somewhat with [[StoneWall dual shields.]] Don't have a good Viking, or playing the NES version? Good luck. Even in the Steam version, which considerably toned down the difficulty from previous versions, he can still potentially one-shot your characters (though at least Phoenix Downs are easier to get) and is more difficult than the final boss. |
| 34 | * Zande/Xande in the NES version. While he wastes his odd-numbered turns by using Libra on your party, on his ''even''-numbered turns he'll unleash stupendously powerful spells such as Meteo and Quake on you. If you show up to the battle under-levelled, you'll likely only get as far as your second turn before getting obliterated by Meteo, and even on higher levels, you won't get more than six, maybe eight turns before dying. Largely averted in the DS version, where he focuses mainly on physical attacks and moderately powerful spells, though he'll still blast you with Meteo every now and again. |
| 35 | * The final boss, Cloud of Darkness, in the NES version. Her main attack, [[ThatOneAttack Flarewave/Particle Beam]], hits the entire party for a ton of damage on nearly every turn. On rare occasions, she will throw out a physical attack that almost always hits for [[OneHitKill 9999 damage]]. Plus, she will be drastically stronger to the point of being nigh-unbeatable if you haven't freed the four Warriors of Darkness beforehand. Doing so involves defeating a series of brutal optional bosses, including the aforementioned Two-Headed Dragon. What truly makes her ThatOneBoss however is that to reach her, you must travel through [[MarathonLevel two dungeons back-to-back]] with [[CheckpointStarvation no opportunities to save]], the latter of which is [[ThatOneLevel the hardest dungeon in the game]] and sits beyond a PointOfNoReturn, and she is ''even stronger'' than anything you've faced thus far. It's very easy for an unprepared player who didn't know to [[ForcedLevelGrinding grind several levels beforehand]] to get to the Cloud of Darkness, promptly die, and lose ''hours'' of progress. The Pixel Remaster alleviates this by allowing you to quick save anywhere, but you still need to grind a lot before you can even fight her. |
| 36 | [[/folder]] |
| 37 | |
| 38 | [[folder:Final Fantasy IV and The After Years]] |
| 39 | * The DS version of the battle with Golbez in the Dwarven Castle; at first it's a HopelessBossFight, and one by one he picks off your party members, leaving only Cecil. Then, after a cutscene leaves you with two people, one of whom is a SquishyWizard, he starts throwing every unfair trick in the book at you: shifting his elemental weakness constantly, becoming immune to everything else, cramming third-level magic down your throat with a status effect chaser... And if Cecil is still dead after exorcising the dolls from hell, you only have a brief moment to throw a Phoenix Down at him before Hold Gas (Freezing Cold in the DS version) guarantees a TotalPartyKill. While most of this was also true for the SNES version, at least there Golbez would run away after you hit him with a couple of strong spells from Rydia. Here, Golbez has even more HP than the preceding boss, Calcabrina (itself much harder in this version due to its habit of countering every single attack with an attack powerful enough to OneHitKO everyone except Cecil and Yang). |
| 40 | * The Demon Wall ([=EvilWall=]). Capping the irritating [[ThatOneLevel Sealed Cave]], it has no tricks. While already being an AdvancingBossOfDoom, it simply pummels you into the floor, then begins to nail you with Crush (an unavoidable OneHitKill attack) once enough time has passed. It's a massive stumbling block in ''normal'' gameplay; many a SoloCharacterRun has come to an untimely end on meeting the Wall. In the DS version, he has much more HP than the other versions, a whopping 99,999. |
| 41 | * The Boss fight against the CPU in the DS version. The Attack Node spams Laser Barrage, which causes a lot of damage to all your party members. If you don't do the ''opposite'' of the thing that Fusoya said to you (attacking the Attack Node instead of the Defense Node), then he will kill you quickly, by spamming said move. Note that the Attack Node only needs to use Laser Barrage ''twice'' to kill off ''80%'' of the party, and a third casting will handily remove the remaining [[StoneWall straggler]]. And that's ''with'' overleveling. But if you can survive that, you then have to not do the ''logical'' thing and kill the other small node that heals the big node. If you do that, said big node will start nailing you with [[OneHitKill One Hit Kills]]...and if you somehow survive ''that'', it resurrects the Attack and Defense nodes, essentially restarting the fight. |
| 42 | * The DS version makes Scarmiglione one. During the second battle he uses a Gas counter attack that causes several status effects, his attack takes a considerable amount of HP and his other counter slows you down, making it harder to defeat him. Not to mention that three out of four members of your team have rather low HP and Cecil, the only member of your team that can take more hits, can't do him much damage since he is strong against dark attacks. |
| 43 | * Also in the DS version, Dr. Lugae got some new tricks. Specifically, Reversal Gas. It's pretty simple, yet brutal - damage heals, healing damages. Considering he's got both powerful healing and attacking abilities, this may seem bad. Now, remember that every action in FF IV takes a while and Lugae can get a turn JUST before you finish your spell casting. ...Yeah, you can end up literally killing your team or healing Lugae to full HP. Sure, there are [[ReviveKillsZombie some ways]] to help you, though it can easily backfire with another use of Reversal Gas. |
| 44 | * From ''Final Fantasy IV: The After Years'', there's the Mysterious Girl and [[spoiler: Asura]]. Notable in that this is one of the ''only'' fights with the Mysterious Girl that ''must'' be won, as most others are [[HopelessBossFight Hopeless Boss Fights]]. In this fight, the Girl stays in the back row and blasts the party with -aga magic while [[spoiler: Asura]] heals and buffs her as well as attacking you. So take out [[spoiler: Asura]] first, right? Nope, [[spoiler: Asura]] can't be damaged or debuffed, including the normally-useful Slow spell which drastically weakens every other boss. So instead your party has to focus on the Girl, whose position in the back row means physical attacks will barely scratch her, and who is constantly being healed and Shelled by [[spoiler: Asura]] all the while. And your party is made up of just two members, one of which is a SquishyWizard and both of which have a limited MP pool. It's highly likely that your party will run out of MP and MP-restoring items before they can stop the Girl, at which point you may as well reset. |
| 45 | * Also in ''The After Years'', Cagnazzo fits the bill. In the original, Cagnazzo is more or less a joke that can be brought down with two Blizzaga from Tellah (except in the DS version, that while he's harder, he's not at That One Boss levels). Here though, he's much more annoying. Apart that he counter attacks with Hold, he has a lot of HP, so much that only Blizzaga and possibly Thundaga can truly damage him, and at that point only Golbez and two trained Rydia and Palom knows those spells. It doesn't look too bad though...until he starts '''healing'''. If you don't defeat him fast enough, he'll retreat into his shell (physical attacks will basically become useless) and heal massive amounts of HP. And he'll continue. Until you ran out of MP. So bring whatever Ether and Dry Ether you have, any White Mage that knows Haste, Black Mages that knows the aforementioned spells...and start praying you'll defeat him before he retreats into his shell. |
| 46 | [[/folder]] |
| 47 | |
| 48 | [[folder: Final Fantasy V]] |
| 49 | * Archaeoaevis, who has multiple forms, each with various resistances to the elements (the only notable weakness is Aero, which you can get from the local wildlife if you choose). Despite its relatively low HP at that point, its high defenses make attacks mostly futile; [[GuideDangIt however]], [[UselessUsefulSpell Lv5 Death]] works on him: the problem is ''learning'' the skill. |
| 50 | * Far worse than Archaeoaevis is Atomos. If all of your party members are alive, he ''spams'' the defense-ignoring, high-damage Comet spell until someone is dead, then gradually sucks all your dead allies into his mouth. Anyone sucked in is ''removed from the party'' for the rest of the battle. He also has permanent Haste, and periodically casts Graviga and Slowga on your party, and applys the Old status effect, further crippling your damage. Beating him is pretty much a race against time with the deck stacked ''thoroughly'' against you. [[GuideDangIt Unless, of course,]] you have a Blue Mage cast [[UselessUsefulSpell Dark Spark]] to halve his level, followed by the aforementioned Lv5 Death. |
| 51 | * The unnamed crystals in the Great Forest of Moore. They have two attacks that will damage your party for nasty amounts of damage; Aqua Breath and Earth Shaker. While Earth Shaker can be avoided using Float, Aqua Breath can’t. [[GuideDangIt However]], they aren’t immune to death, so inflicting ''some'' sort of move with the status alignment can help. |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder:Final Fantasy VI]] |
| 55 | * World of Balance: |
| 56 | ** For those unprepared, [=Tunnel Armor=], otherwise a GoddamnedBoss, can be a hell of a boss, since you have to use Celes’ mostly useless Runic ability to absorb the machine’s attack, requiring you to balance between attacking the thing and defending against it, and if Celes slips up, it’ll use a very strong poison attack to both of them. |
| 57 | ** Number 128 at the end of the [[spoiler:Magitek Research Facility]] due to his placement. He immediately follows five waves of forced encounters between which you cannot heal, you have to fight him with 3 characters because you just lost your fourth, and while the preceding events gave you a lot of new Magicite, you don't have time to learn their spells because you're locked in an area with no enemies beyond the five forced encounters, which don't give enough AP to teach anything worthwhile. On top of all of that, he's a difficult boss in his own right, with three parts that attack independently while also carrying the Tempest, an extremely powerful weapon for Cyan at this point that may take many tries to successfully steal, prolonging the battle. |
| 58 | ** [=AtmaWeapon=] / Ultima Weapon on [[DiscOneFinalDungeon the Floating Continent]] is usually very challenging for first-time players. The boss uses a myriad of powerful magic, whether it be offensive (Flare Star/Quake/Meteor) or defensive (Protect/Shell/Haste) that can deal significant damage to the entire party and nerf their damage output. It likes to follow this up by finishing off a weakened target with Flare for 700 (when generally most people won't break over 1300 by this time). |
| 59 | * World of Ruin: |
| 60 | ** The Tentacles in Figaro Castle, also a GoddamnedBoss, simply from one single attack: [[ThatOneAttack Grab]]. If Grab is used on a character afflicted with Slow, the character is grabbed by the monster and loses their turn while suffering a continuous LifeDrain effect that also heals the Tentacle. To make it worse, the Tentacles can Poison you, which will continue to sap your health while Grabbed. This is also at a point in the game where you only have three characters, two if you missed the optional Sabin encounter, and it's a pincer attack so one of those characters is on the other side of the field keeping you from healing everyone at once. There's a trick to make Sabin and Celes immune to Grab[[note]]Running Shoes gives Auto-Haste, granting immunity to Slow[[/note]], but nothing will save Edgar, who is also the mentioned odd-person out and thus will probably spend the fight face-down in the stone while Celes and Sabin do all the work. |
| 61 | ** From the original, there's the Storm Dragon in Mt. Zozo. He has over 40,000 HP, a brutal physical, and spells that both hit the entire party and are of the hard-to-defend-against Wind element, such as Aero, Cylonic, and Wind Slash. Because of in-game nudging, you're most likely going to be hitting up his dungeon right near the beginning of the World of Ruin. |
| 62 | ** Wrexsoul, the boss of Cyan's Soul/The Dreamscape, for being a GuideDangIt PuzzleBoss. [[spoiler:During most of the fight, Wrexsoul will "possess" one of your party members. To make him reveal himself so you can damage him, you have to ''kill your own party members'' (or cast Break on them) until you happen to kill the one he's hiding in.]] You can technically end the fight without killing him by casting X-Zone/Banish on his minions (which doesn't work on Pixel Remaster), but then you don't get the [[DisadvantageousDisintegration Memento Ring]][[note]]protects against all OneHitKill status ailments[[/note]] he gives, which is rather nice. |
| 63 | ** The [=MagiMaster=]/Magic Master atop the [[ThatOneLevel Fanatics'/Cultists' Tower]]. He constantly nails your party with powerful spells and swaps his elemental weaknesses around every couple of turns. He also casts Ultima when he dies, which is a guaranteed TotalPartyKill. Casting Berserk on him stops his normal magic, but Ultima is still coming at the end. Your only options to survive are to either learn [[AutoRevive Life 3/Reraise]], which will take some level grinding[[note]]Only one Esper teaches it, and at a x1 rate[[/note]], use the Palidor/Quetzalli Esper to force your entire party to Jump at the same time and hope he's down to 0 HP before the last party member lands so they avoid it or [[ManaBurn Rasp]] away all his MP, and he has 50,000 MP so have fun with that. |
| 64 | ** Chadarnook, the demon in Owzer's house in Jidoor. Aside from his 30,000-some HP and powerful lightning attacks, he also has one nasty gimmick up his sleeve; he can tag out with the woman in the picture he's possessing. The woman cannot be killed, will use nasty status ailments to cripple your party, and also has Phantasm, inflicting a continuous HP drain on the party that cannot be healed. Finally, with how the mechanics for their changing work, it's likely the goddess will spend most of the time out and the demon will come out for one turn, if that, before hiding again. The fight boils down to enduring the woman's status attacks while waiting for the demon to come out long enough to take a swing at him, then going back to waiting for him to come back out when he hides again. |
| 65 | ** Doomgaze / Deathgaze. The thing about Deathgaze is that he's the one and only enemy that attacks you while you're in your airship. And although he's not overpowered for his level, he's level 55, and you get your airship in the World of Ruin about level 25-30. So if you have the bad luck to run into him early on, he can wipe the floor with you in seconds. He opens every battle with Level 5 Death, having the potential to deal a TotalPartyKill out the gate, then he spams Doom/Death, Ice 3/Blizzaga, and Aero for a couple turns before running away on his third turn. All in all by the time you're probably just getting everyone healed up and ready for the fight, he ends it. Then you have to hunt him down and do it all over again. The console versions of Pixel Remaster alleviate the hunting aspect by signifying him as a large purple orb in the sky, but it's still a chore to find out exactly where he might be hiding from. |
| 66 | ** In the Pixel Remaster version, Ice Dragon and Fiend both become this due to the enemy AI script being thrown away, meaning they can cast [[ThatOneAttack Northern Cross]] at any time they want, which afflicts Frozen to your entire party, meaning they cannot do anything. The only way to undo it is to cast fire magic on the frozen party member, best done with the Fire spell. Or wait for it to expire, but they can get quite a bit of damage in by then. However, on the console versions of the Pixel Remaster, Fiend does not often do this, if at all. |
| 67 | ** Goddess, one of the three Warring Triad members that make up the BossBonanza near the end of [[VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Kefka's Tower]]. Not only can Goddess use decently powerful spells, she has one particularly dangerous attack that is nigh impossible to block called Overcast / Cloudy Heaven. What it does is it sets a Doom timer on the whole party, but instead of killing afflicted characters, it turns them into Zombies. If an afflicted character dies by any other means, they still become a Zombie. The worst part is that thanks to a glitch with how the game treats status ailments, not only does Overcast ignore any Relics you may use to make the party immune to Zombie, but once it hits Zombie is incurable, effectively removing that character from the battle permanently. |
| 68 | [[/folder]] |
| 69 | |
| 70 | [[folder:Final Fantasy VII]] |
| 71 | * For first-time players, the WarmUpBoss, the Guard Scorpion, thanks to a BlindIdiotTranslation. When it raises its tail, it will counter attacks with Tail Laser, so you should not do that. The catch is that the way Cloud's warning is translated, it sounds like he's saying you ''should'' attack when it raises its tail to ''avoid'' its blast. Following his advice as given results in a faceful of laser. |
| 72 | * For first-time players, the fight with Jenova*BIRTH on the Junon cargo ship can be a nasty surprise. It has a lot more HP than the last boss, hits rather hard for that point of the game and can spam its lasers two or three times. Tail Laser is especially dangerous, as it hits all the team, and since Jenova always uses it twice in a row, it will deplete between one third and half of the health of your characters. Unless you level-grind a little in the boat or managed to snag [[DiskOneNuke Beta]] from the Zolom, it's a tough fight. It can also temporarily incapacitate a character with its Stop spell, crippling you considerably while using the previously-mentioned attacks. |
| 73 | * Materia Keeper on Mt. Nibel is infuriating to defeat with conventional means - it absorbs Fire (the element of Beta, the most powerful spell that it is possible for you to have access to at that point, and the element of the spells cast by your most recently-recruited character's [[TheBerserker Berserk]] Limit Break form, which many players would most likely want to test out, only for them to realize the hard way about the aforementioned element said ability has), has ridiculous stats, likes to heal itself for thousands of points of damage, and can cast a powerful all-targeting lightning spell. The game leaves two gimmicky weapons in the area (Tifa's Powersoul and Vincent's Sniper CR) which are major {{Game Breaker}}s when set up correctly and will make the battle short, but both are non-obvious, advanced-level techniques. |
| 74 | * Rapps in Wutai, because of the fact that the party has no access to Materia, thanks to Yuffie stealing them all. In addition, he'll be able to use [[ThatOneAttack Aeroga (Aero3)]], a OneHitKill if you're not prepared. [[GuideDangIt The game never says this outright]], but you'll have to use your character's limit breaks to defeat him, such as Aeris' extremely helpful Seal Evil which can stop him from moving, or Barret's Mindblow that'll remove all of his MP. |
| 75 | * Demons Gate, from the Temple of the Ancients. It has some powerful magic (Cave In deals ice-based damage to all party members) and some nasty status effects (Petrif-Eye inflicts Slow-numb), along with staggering magical defense and a mountain of health. This wouldn't be a problem, but you have to bring [[SquishyWizard Aerith]] along to this dungeon, whose primary role is to use support magic most of the time. |
| 76 | * Schizo at Gaea's Cliff. It has two heads that you need to attack separately, and when you kill one, it will unleash a nasty attack that can wipe out your entire party if you're behind with your healing. It gets even worse if you kill both of the heads at the same time. |
| 77 | * Carry Armor. Not only is [[ThatOneAttack Lapis Laser]] ''horrifyingly'' powerful (to the extent of taking off half your normally-leveled party's health per cast), but his arms can Grab party members and remove them from combat, smashing them against the floor and only returning them once they're dead. And as you wear Carry Armor down, he uses Lapis Laser more and more, often using Arm Grab to kill off two members and Lapis Laser-ing the last one. In addition, the game counts it as a loss if you have all your living party members Arm Grabbed. This occurs even if you roll Cait Sith's Transform spell on his slots, which causes him to grow giant in return for becoming your sole party member. He can be made a lot easier, though, if the player has the Enemy Skill "Magic Hammer", which will deplete his MP in two hits, and make him lose access to Lapis Laser. |
| 78 | [[/folder]] |
| 79 | |
| 80 | [[folder:Final Fantasy VIII]] |
| 81 | * Oil Boyles, two slug like bosses fought in Balamb Garden. You can spam fire attacks to kill them quickly, but their high power attacks can also take you out quickly as well. They will do their damage no matter how you tackle the battle. |
| 82 | * Adel. She has a lot of HP, and uses nothing but non-elemental spells like Meteor and they are all fairly high-damaging. Your attack options get limited because you can't use attacks that damage all enemies, because Adel's holding Rinoa hostage and occasionally drains Rinoa's health to restore herself. If Rinoa's HP reaches zero, it's an instant game over. To top it all off, unless you took the time to steal from the boss, defeating her yields no after-battle spoils. ''Not even AP.'' |
| 83 | [[/folder]] |
| 84 | |
| 85 | [[folder:Final Fantasy IX]] |
| 86 | * The battle against Black Waltz #1 and the Sealion, because Zidane has to fight them alone. The Black Waltz goes down pretty easy, but the Sealion has a ton of HP, hits hard, and uses stronger attacks the less HP he has. The Black Waltz can also heal the Sealion, and if you somehow manage to defeat the Sealion before the Black Waltz, he'll just summon another one. Also take into account that you need to waste turns healing yourself with your ever-dwindling supply of Potions-- turns which could've been spent dealing damage. This is also not taking into account all the good items you'll want to Steal from them, wasting more turns. The best part? This is the second boss battle in the game. |
| 87 | * The second-to-last boss of the first disc, Gizmaluke. He has a Water spell that can hit for huge damage, and an attack that can hit the entire party for equally large amounts of pain. To make matters worse, the boss will also constantly inflict Vivi, your only damage dealing magic user, with Silence, preventing him from using magic at all. The worst bit is that due to Gizmaluke having great items to steal (Elixir, Magus Hat and Ice Staff), you have to keep the whole party alive while trying to steal it all. |
| 88 | * Ark is a major pain in the ass, especially because you're stuck with the party you selected with entering [[ThatOneLevel its dungeon]] to battle it. It loves to spam all-party targeting Confusion and has an attack that brings a character down to 1 HP, making it the sort of cheapness you would expect in a dungeon where you [[AntiMagic can't use magic.]] |
| 89 | * If you don't know what you're getting into and aren't well-equipped for the fight, the Earth Guardian can be one hell of a boss. You're stuck with a character most people haven't really worked with (because said character has been gone for about 70% of the story up to this point), and while it's possible to win the fight with Zidane alone, it makes for a long and difficult fight if you can't snag a [[LimitBreak Trance]] in a pinch. |
| 90 | * Nearing the end of the game, the party has to fight [[SequentialBoss three bosses in a row]], each one harder than the last-- Silver Dragon, Garland, and Kuja. Two of those are also the game's main antagonists by the way. Anyway, all of them can do huge damage, and Garland can cast "Stop", which renders an ally motionless, unable to attack, and is basically counted as KO'd (meaning that if they're the last one alive or un-Stopped, you still get a game over). But what makes this battle (or series of battles) so difficult is that you can't even heal in-between them, it's just one right after the other. Throwing salt into the wound, right before you beat him, the now [[SuperMode Trance'd]] Kuja decides to reduce the party's HP to 1 with Ultima and stop the battle. |
| 91 | * If you're not prepared for the battle, Nova Dragon can be a pain in the ass to deal with. It has party-damaging attacks that could be very deadly for the party, and might kill you if you’re not sufficiently leveled up. |
| 92 | * Deathguise is much less of a boss and much more of a ''race for your life!!'' Remember [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Deathgaze]]? Remember how overwhelming he can be? Well, we're gonna do that all over again!! His physical attacks are already terrible enough, what with the fact that they can do between 1000-2500 or more points of damage, but his magic attacks are worse. He opens with Meteor, which can potentially cause ''4900'' points of damage to each party members. He does ''lightning quick'' damage to the party members, as he attacks with Level 5 Death, Twister, and Death, and can kill those if not prepared. Auto-Potion and Auto-Regen is ''essential'' for this boss, as well as Shell and Return Magic (the former helps downplays magic damage, the latter can help the party member cast the same attack the enemy gives). |
| 93 | [[/folder]] |
| 94 | |
| 95 | [[folder:Final Fantasy X and X-2]] |
| 96 | !!Final Fantasy X: |
| 97 | * If you became too dependent on magic and aeons, the Al Bhed weapon Crawler fought at Lake Macalania will tear you apart. It has a nasty flying flunkie called Negator, which emits an AntiMagic field that will keep you from using any. Crawler itself can hit quite harder than anything you're used to by that point and slaughter the party if they're too weak. And if you decide to take out the Negator (already hard since it's out of reach of melee attacks), Crawler will charge up and then hit the whole party with Mana Beam, a massive WaveMotionGun that deals quadruple digit damage and will most likely vaporize everyone. |
| 98 | * Evrae, the guardian wyrm of Bevelle. The gimmick of this boss is that you fight it from the top of your GlobalAirship, and can control whether you want to tackle it as a CloseRangeCombatant or a LongRangeFighter. If you are close to it, you can use your physical party members to damage it, but this also allows Evrae to use its stronger attacks - most notably Stone Breath and the multi-target Poison Breath, the latter of which is almost guaranteed to be an instant-kill. (That one at least has a wind-up, allowing you to swerve the ''Fahrenheit'' to one side and cause the attack to fizzle.) That said, being at range isn't much better. Unless you've engaged in some ''massive'' LevelGrinding and are something like twice the level you're supposed to be, you only have three characters in your party who have ranged attacks at all: Kimahri's [[CherryTapping Lancet]], Wakka's blitzball and Lulu's spells... and Evrae takes ''half damage'' from those. Since you don't have Yuna for this fight, that means no aeons, and you'll have to rely on Rikku's stock of Al Bhed Potions for healing. And, just to add to the fun, the boss casts Haste on itself once its HP drops below 10,667, and will use Swooping Scythe - another multi-target move - if you are battling from a distance, which causes Evrae to ''close'' the distance. It goes without saying that the battle can get stressful fast and requires a lot of careful maneuvering. |
| 99 | * Seymour Flux. He usually starts by using Lance of Atrophy to put a party character in Zombie status. Then the thing Seymour is on, called Mortiorchis, will use [[ReviveKillsZombie Full Life]] on that character (if the character is in Zombie status, it acts as a 100% chance Death attack). After a few turns Mortiorchis will use Cross Cleave, dealing about 2,000 damage to the whole party, while Seymour will cast Protect and Shell on himself to halve the damage you do. Eventually, Seymour will cast Reflect and then Flare on himself to make the spell be reflected onto you (though this can lead to a funny UI message if you Dispel Reflect, causing him to blast himself with his own magic). As if that's not enough, if you delay a bit in killing him, he'll start charging Total Annihilation, [[https://clips.twitch.tv/FaintPunchyFiddleheadsShazBotstix which will kill you unless your party is properly buffed and at full HP.]] Did we mention that he also Dispels any summon after a turn, making them almost useless outside of blowing their overdrive and tanking a single Total Annihilation? And that he likes to Dispel the party's buffs ''before'' he attacks?? He's not difficult. He's '''cheap'''. There's a reason some people started dropping the L out of "flux." |
| 100 | ** The ''first'' time fighting him isn't particularly easy either. He's flanked by two guards that can confuse your party members and possess an infinite amount of potions. Once you get rid of them, he'll summon Anima; unless you summon [[spoiler:Shiva]] or another aeon at this point, you'll be in for a terrible time. However, the worst has to be when you fight Seymour again after defeating her. Not only does he have an increased stat rate, he'll also attack multiple party members ''in one move'' with high-level spells, resulting in a potential game over if you're not properly protected. |
| 101 | ** The second time fighting him, as Seymour Natus, is this unless you have managed to Stoneproof your entire party. Not only can he cast powerful elemental spells multiple times in one turn, but once he has taken enough damage, he can [[TakenForGranite turn a party member to stone]] and, before you get the chance to un-petrify them, have his Mortibody [[LiterallyShatteredLives shatter them to pieces]], permanently removing them from battle, unable to be revived with Phoenix Downs or switched out with other party members. He can also turn two party members to stone in a row, so if he shatters one and then petrifies the other two, it's instant game over. |
| 102 | * The Sanctuary Keeper that guards the entrance to Zanarkand definitely counts. It has powerful physical and magical attacks as well as a huge amount of HP, and access to pretty much every status condition in the game. If you thought you could win just by using your overdrives in the beginning of the battle, think again, because it can use the Curse status affect to prevent you from using them (aeons are not immune to curse as they are to most status conditions), which makes the fight a lot longer. It can also heal itself if you damage it enough (and is smart enough to reflect healing spells off of your team if you try to use reflect on it). The fight serves was a WakeUpCallBoss for the end of the game, that at this point spamming Overdrives and normal attacks will not be enough to win. |
| 103 | * The Spectral Keeper is fought on six floating platforms surrounding it. It has a powerful counterattack which it will use against any party members in front of it, and the fact that one of its attacks will inflict Berserk doesn't help matters. You need to use a Trigger Command to keep moving around and avoid taking counterattack damage, which will slow you down. It also has glyph mines which it may use to instantly kill any party member who is standing on the right platform, and these mines will also instantly kill any summon ''after only one turn.'' Fortunately, there is an upside to this: since the Keeper is vulnerable to Provoke, it is possible to have one character tank the boss while the others deal damage and defend the tank, or have the tanking character deal all the damage while the other units heal. Both of these run afoul of the Keeper's tendency to place a mine, then do multiple high damage attacks and send your strategy to hell. |
| 104 | * Yunalesca. She has three phases to get through, and the first one isn't even remotely forgiving. In phase one, she counters physical attacks with a Blinding spell, special abilities (i.e. Steal and Lancet) makes her put the offending party member to Sleep, and black magic gets repaid with a Silence effect. In her second phase she gets a new ability called Hellbiter, which Zombifies the entire party unless someone has Zombieproof. She then proceeds to cast Cura and Regen on you, and fires off another Hellbiter every 3-4 turns. In phase three she casts Mega-Death, a spell that kills everyone in the party who's not a Zombie, and will use [[ReviveKillsZombie Curaga]] on any Zombified characters. Thus the player is stuck between being a Zombie, making them immune to healing magic until cured, or being hit with Instant Death. Trying to balance the two is not easy, and if you try to be clever by summoning an aeon, Yunalesca will Mind Blast it to oblivion. And by the by, because of the choice between [[MortonsFork tanking the curative magic as zombies or reflecting it back to her]], it is entirely possible for her to recover more damage than you can dish out, all while she whittles your party down to nothing. |
| 105 | * Overdrive Sin. You only have 16 turns to defeat Sin before he uses his LimitBreak Giga-Graviton, which destroys the airship for an instant Game Over. The fact that he has 140,000 HP doesn't help at all. Plus, you initially have to use magic - only Wakka can hit it with melee until Sin finishes drawing the airship to him. This unfortunately can leave you in an unwinnable situation if you haven't trained Lulu or Wakka, as Kimahri, Tidus, Auron, and even Yuna don't come in very handy here. Sin will also counterattack when hurt, and he inflicts status ailments. |
| 106 | Notice that this is pretty much ''every boss'' after you reach [[DifficultySpike Mt Gagazet]]? Good luck. You'll need it. |
| 107 | |
| 108 | !!Final Fantasy X-2: |
| 109 | * Azi Dahaka, which is a powerful optional boss that only appears if you try to pass through the barrier rings in [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon The Farplane]] without hitting the right notes on the various pianos interspersed throughout the final stretch of it all. When you get to the end of the Farplane, it's difficult to stay away from an encounter as there is no piano for the notes. Instead, you have to climb on certain platforms in the right order, and the game does NOT make it easy, although you can reset the sequence at any time. He boasts the most HP of any boss in the main storyline (146,200), his normal attack drains the same amount of damage from your own HP (if it does 3000 damage, he's healed by that), he'll cast Curaga on himself occasionally and has a high damage attack called Bated Breath. But the most annoying thing is an attack called Damocles Photon which hits all the characters and knocks 50% off their HP. That's '''max''' HP, not current, meaning if the characters are below half their HP then it's bye bye. This boss has a tendency to recover its HP faster than you can damage it. |
| 110 | ** Should you be able to defeat the Azi Dahaka, you can also encounter it in the [[BonusDungeon Via Infinito]], as a [[DegradedBoss random encounter]]. Sadly, he's still quite dangerous, even for a party that can manage to make it down to floors 70-74, where he appears. |
| 111 | ** Fittingly enough, it's [[MeaningfulName named after the mythical dragon king]] from Persian mythology. |
| 112 | * Angra Mainyu, an optional boss in Chapter 5 which has over 333,000 HP. It is flanked by two mooks, one immune to physical damage and the other to magic damage. The attack Perdition's Flame hits everyone and is not very nice if your levels are low. It also inflicts a lot of status effects and casts spells that lower your characters' stats. It can literally take hours to beat if you come unprepared. Fortunately, there are a few tricks to defeating it, such as draining all of its MP or careful application of a pair of Dark Knights using Darkness. It prioritizes using Full-Life to revive its mooks above any other action, so if you kill the mooks and/or wipe out its MP supply, it's basically helpless. |
| 113 | * The Dark Magus Sisters, the second-to-last set of aeons the player has to fight. You, of course, have to fight them all together and put up with Cindy casting buffing spells to give her sisters positive status effects. Mindy may have the least HP, but her Passado attack is a real pain since she can hit all characters with it and it hits about twelve times, which means plenty of chain damage. Not even mentioning that they're so fast that an average-leveled party will get about one turn to their five million. Their Delta Attack takes the cake by reducing everyone's HP to 1 and their MP to 0. The good news is that they can only do it if they're all alive. |
| 114 | * The Guardian Beast in Chapter 1 can either be this or a nasty wake up call for a party without a Black Mage that knows at least one -ra or -ga spell. He has the highest HP of any enemy in the game at that point, and his defense is also pretty high. So high that you'll barely be chipping away his HP if you aren't of an adequate level or have a black mage with higher tier spells. He also possesses an attack that not only deals heavy damage, but also inflicts Curse. This means you can't change job classes. Didn't stock up on Holy Waters? Sucks to be you. Fittingly enough, the Azi Dahaka above is a PaletteSwap of this boss. |
| 115 | [[/folder]] |
| 116 | |
| 117 | [[folder:Final Fantasy XI]] |
| 118 | * Three dungeons in the expansion called Promyvion have bosses that like to use all the worst status ailments such as sleep, curse or just plain high damage are required to even start that particular storyline. While, with the right party set-up, strategy and preparation, all three can be beaten in one evening, assembling a party willing and able to follow a strategy is a feat in itself, especially if everyone in your linkshell has already beaten the story and is too lazy to help out and you are dependant on pick-up parties more often than not consisting of people who just started playing. |
| 119 | * The four magic pots right before the final battle of the main storyline. |
| 120 | [[/folder]] |
| 121 | |
| 122 | [[folder:Final Fantasy XII]] |
| 123 | * Never a stranger to this list, the two Demon Walls can spell trouble for players. They can inflict Blind, Silence, Sleep, use Annul to drain MP to zero, and worst of all, Telega, removing a character from the battle until Demon Wall is defeated. And to top that all off, both Demon Walls have a lot of HP without level grinding, and both of them are a timed fight that ends with a NonStandardGameOver if you don't beat them fast enough.[[note]]There is an exploit to make this easier. Raising battle speed increases the rate at which your party and enemies (including the Demon Wall) act, but movement speed is unaffected, making it easier to win before the Demon Wall crushes you.[[/note]] At least the first Demon Wall (also the tougher of the two) is optional... |
| 124 | * Tiamat is considerably more powerful than the last boss that the party fought, making her very difficult for a normally-leveled party. Tiamat's big gimmick is Disablega, which is frustrating but avoidable if you spread your characters out enough. Once hit with Disable, the characters ''cannot take any action''. Just let them die so you can bring in someone fresh to heal the rest. |
| 125 | * The Elder Wyrm has Sporefall, which inflicts a multitude of status effects on all characters in range. They can get Poisoned, Sapped, and Confused in one turn, meaning they'll happily kill off other party members while slowly dying themselves. Sure, all of these effects are curable with Esuna -- provided one of your characters survived Sporefall without Confuse -- all of them except Oil, that is, which will allow the Elder Wyrm to one-hit kill you with Fireball. It can cast a few other status effects, hits pretty hard, comes flanked by two Treant lackies and has about one and a half times more HP than Tiamat who directly preceded it. Some walkthroughs actually advise players divert south through the Feywood to skip the Wyrm; sure, the Feywood enemies are at least ten levels stronger than you, but they may be easier to deal with then the Elder Wyrm. And yeah, there's traps all over the entrance, but casting Float (in the [=PS2=] version) or using a Float Mote (in the ''Zodiac'' version) before entering will give you enough time to rush through. |
| 126 | * Not quite to the extent of the bosses above, but the mandragoras in Sochen Cave Palace are pretty obnoxious. There's five of them. They can run faster than your characters. Most of them can cast annoying status effects, and two of them can cure the others. It becomes a game of keeping track of the damn things, chasing them down and beating them about the head a few times before they hit you with status effects, heal and run away. You're not likely to lose this fight unless you royally screw up - and unlike the above fights, you have no Larsa or Vossler to help you - but you ''will'' be controller-chewingly frustrated the first time you face them. (And that's ''nothing'' compared to the second group of mandragoras that you can encounter in the Feywood, which double their level multiple times and hit VERY hard. Thankfully, you can easily avoid those ones, since the method of spawning them requires killing every enemy in the rather large zone.) |
| 127 | * Rafflesia in the Feywoods is also a massive pain. For starters, your MP is being drained at an incredible rate for the entire battle. That means all healing will be limited to potions, but Hi-Potions will be wearing out their usefulness by now and X-Potions are pretty expensive. It also loves inflicting multiple status conditions on you, such as Sap, Sleep, Confuse, Disable, and Poison. If all that wasn't enough, it'll also start summoning Malboros once it loses enough HP, who will all spam Bad Breath to really stack up the status conditions on you. Killing them isn't worth it, because it will always summon more to replace fallen ones (though this can be prevented by casting Silence on Rafflesia). If you weren't carrying enough Remedies on you to counter the statuses, it's a long road back to town to get more. |
| 128 | * ''Any'' Esper that is not mandatory is a pain to deal with, regardless of your level. |
| 129 | ** Adrammelech is a flying enemy, meaning that only ranged attacks can hit him, his Thundaja can one-shot your characters and at one point, if he doesn't kill you, he will cast Perfect Defence, meaning... invulnerable to anything for two minutes! Ironically, the real problem is not the boss himself but his allies. There will always be at least four Shambling Corpses aiding the Esper with [=AoE=] magicks and status-inflicting attacks. And they spawn endlessly. |
| 130 | ** Zalera spams Kill (a one-shot attack), various ailments that leave your highly vulnerable (such as Sleep and Disable), his Prime Lv. Death can one-shot your entire party ([[GuideDangIt unless your characters' levels aren't prime numbers]]), at the very beginning of the battle he becomes pretty much invulnerable to physical attacks for a certain amount of time, and he's immune to all elements. Ah, and his battle must be won under five minutes or you have to try again. Lovely. |
| 131 | ** Cúchulainn's area will inflict a permanent Sap status to your characters that can't be removed and is much faster that normal. Also, he will inflict/spam Disable, Immobilize and Slow to your characters and has at least four Foobars helping him and they will respawn indefinitely, but luckily they take a longer time to respawn the more you kill. His worst attack though is without a doubt Invert, which inverts MP and HP, and can easily defeat a character either with his next attack or by the Sap status. Lastly, once his health is halved, he will raise his attack and reduce the damage received. Unless you have Black Belts equipped, which prevents Disable and Immobilize, well, you lose the second you step into his arena, and even then you have to take care of everything that comes later. |
| 132 | ** Exodus, who is perhaps the easiest optional Esper, is no slouch either. While very slow, he can easily compensate by being able to use Scathe and Flare, the strongest black magicks of the game, which can easily one-shot your characters. And once he's weak enough, he will raise his attack, defence and speed. One last thing. You can't use items during the whole battle. Did you obtain Raise by any chance? Because it's your only way to revive defeated characters. |
| 133 | ** Zeromus can inflict Slow and, god-forbid, Stop. He also uses Piercing Graviga (which ignores Reflect) and is constantly aided by, at least, ''ten'' Dark Lords which respawn indefinitely. And Magicks are disabled. That means that your only way of healing is to use items. How many X-Potions and Remedy Lore do you have? You will need them. There's a reason the zodiac sign that represents this guy is the Cancer. |
| 134 | ** Chaos disables the freaking '''Attack''' command. And is immune to every element (with him absorbing Wind)... except Earth. Which isn't an avaiable Magick unless you obtain Hashmal! Only five weapons can inflict Earth damage, with two of them being crappy and other two being easily missable. Non-elemental Magicks are good though but unfortunately he won't be much damaged by them. It's better to find certain offensive Technicks, such as Gil Toss, before fighting this guy since he can also wipe out a character's MP with Fearga. One last thing, half-trivial half-important, is that he's aided by four elements but they don't otherwise cause too many problems. Of course, depending on how you have played, they can also be your worst nightmare. |
| 135 | [[/folder]] |
| 136 | |
| 137 | [[folder:Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy]] |
| 138 | !!Final Fantasy XIII: |
| 139 | * Almost every Eidolon fight. The battle begins with the Eidolon casting Doom on the party member they're associated with (always rotated into the role of leader), giving you three minutes to fill the Gestalt meter or else you die, resulting in an instant Game Over. The meter is filled by utilizing attacks from the character's main Paradigm roles. Don't take too long to remind yourself which ones they are, or you'll be retrying the fight a lot. For individual Eidolons: |
| 140 | ** The Shiva Sisters by virtue of being fought with a party of ''only'' Snow, and since they're the first Eidolon you face, you're probably not going to know the way these fights work yet. |
| 141 | ** Odin serves the purpose of making sure the mechanics of Eidolon battles have been thoroughly hammered into your head. For starters, your party at this point consists of only Lightning and Hope, and [[ShootTheMedicFirst Odin attacks Hope exclusively]]. Keep in mind that Hope has the lowest max HP and some seriously weak defense at this stage in the game, which means it'll be all you can do just to keep him alive. If you Libra Odin, it'll reveal that he "yields to those who amass chain bonuses" and "those who heal the wounded." Okay, so you just heal Hope the entire battle and ride it out, right? Guess again; doing this alone doesn't raise the Gestalt meter quickly enough to outpace the Doom countdown. This means that you have to be able to switch quickly between going on the offensive and healing Hope in order to have any chance, and if you still haven't figured out how to raise the meter quickly and keep it raised, prepare to die over and over and over again. |
| 142 | ** Brynhildr's attacks aren't powerful enough to one-shot you, but they can be incredibly annoying, as they take off a good chunk of your health. Your party, as with the Odin fight, has only two people. This fight hammers home the importance of those buff and debuff spells that you've largely ignored up to this point, since without your party being appropriately buffed and Brynhildr being weakened sufficiently, you simply can't deal enough damage to make any progress. If Brynhildr doesn't finish you off, the Doom countdown is almost certain to. |
| 143 | ** Bahamut has has a three-hit combo of doom, which knocks whoever it hits into the air, making them unable to act for the entire duration of the combo. The combo can hit everyone in its radius, and if it hits Fang twice in a row before you can heal (which is very possible if your healers get flung skyward from the first attack), you're ''dead''. |
| 144 | ** The very next boss fight is Alexander. Your party consists of Hope, Lightning and Fang. Hope's HP is the lowest of the three. Alexander's first attack has a wide enough radius that it will probably hit all three of your party members, knocking them down in the process. His second attack comes fast enough that your party will barely be standing up again, meaning you haven't had a chance to heal, so it will very likely kill Hope. Recover the instant this attack is done, or you will ''sorely'' regret it. |
| 145 | ** Finally, there's Hecatoncheir, who not only hits crazily hard, but has a very difficult-to-fill gauge, almost requiring Haste to be able to get enough attacks in. However, neither Fang nor Vanille will have access to Haste at this point without an absolutely ridiculous amount of CP grinding, meaning if you don't get lucky enough to make do without it, you'll have to rely on the extremely rare Fortisol. Having to fight him with only two party members way after the point when the game lets you pick your own party doesn't help. If you haven't gotten used to Vanille much after all this time, prepare to be creamed. |
| 146 | * [[spoiler:Cid Raines]] teaches you that bosses can Paradigm Shift the same as you, and will do so to great effect. Cid will almost always match your Paradigm with a strategy perfectly tailored to counter it, which means either your attacks will barely scratch him, or he'll be kicking your ass while you're buffing and healing. Even worse, once his HP gets below half, he'll whip out Seraphic Ray, which hits your entire party for around half their max HP and erases any active buffs, meaning that once you recover, you'll be pretty much defenseless for the remaining ass-kicking. You got full control over your party's formation and Paradigm roles at the start of [[spoiler:the Ark]], and you damn well better make use of it. |
| 147 | * Dahaka. At first, he doesn't seem so bad, but then he breaks out his powerful elemental attacks, which will absolutely trash you if you're a bit underleveled. If you can tank through these, then eventually he breaks out the big guns in the form of Aeroga and Diluvian Plague. Aeroga hurts like hell, and Diluvian Plague dispels all your buffs and inflicts every status ailment on your party. |
| 148 | * [[DualBoss Enlil and Enki]]. You fight them with only Sazh and Vanille in your party. One at a time, they wouldn't be bad at all, but together, they're infuriating. |
| 149 | * The second form of Barthandelus. He has a grand total of three attacks: first is the laser attack, which has a chance of inflicting Fog or Pain (disabling magical and physical abilities respectively) that he spams CONSTANTLY. There is no point during the battle where he isn't spamming that attack unless he's using one of the others. Next is Apoptosis, which does a fair amount of damage to everyone, removes all your buffs and all his debuffs. Then there's Thanatosian Laughter, which hits the entire party for MASSIVE DAMAGE. Did we mention he has around 3.3 million HP? Good luck five-starring that, even with Level 8 Crystarium maxed out for all party members. And finally, if you take too long in beating him, he casts something nasty (read Doom, AKA instant, unavoidable death once the time counter that appears runs out) on your party leader. |
| 150 | * Showing up around a third of the way into the game, Aster Protoflorian will find out if you've ''really'' got this game's battle system figured out. He finds out by wrecking you if you haven't. His regular attacks are powerful enough, then he starts [[BarrierChangeBoss swapping out his elemental weakness]] and following up with Efforescence, which will most likely hit both your party members with a powerful physical attack. Oh, and your party members for this fight are [[GlassCannon Lightning]] and [[SquishyWizard Hope]], the two characters with the lowest max HP in the game. Have fun trying to juggle healing, buffing, and attacking between two characters. |
| 151 | ** Lampshaded in ''[[VideoGame/LightningReturnsFinalFantasyXIII Lightning Returns]]''; when asked to deal with a "Protoflorian" in a sidequest, Lightning recalls the fight from XIII. |
| 152 | ---->'''Lightning''': I knew it as the Aster Protoflorian. It was one of the toughest battles Hope and I fought. |
| 153 | * Many of the above aren't that tough if you know what to do and have a maxed Crystarium. But the second Proudclad fight makes them all look easier. In one form, it spams Muon Blaster, forcing you to heal constantly and not have time to attack. In another form it uses Retaliatory Strike with 12 conesecutive attacks. And when it fully charges, it uses Limiters Deactivated, healing all of its HP. Which takes forever to reduce to zero anyway even with your party fully buffed and it fully debuffed (exceeding Barthandelus at 3.5 million). |
| 154 | * Bandersnatch and Jabberwocky. It's not so much that they're a threat, but rather being difficult to actually take out. Both heal each other for a tremendous amount of HP. Reducing either of their HP to zero is extremely difficult even with all the buffs. A Saboteur can cast Fog on them, though it can take a while for a successful Fog. |
| 155 | |
| 156 | !!Final Fantasy XIII-2: |
| 157 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2'' has its share of really annoying and difficult bosses, most of them named [[RecurringBoss Caius]]. In his first fight in Oerba 200 AF he's not too bad at first, but if you can't take him down during his first stagger period, then he'll inevitably cast Brave, Faith, and Regen on himself. Brave and Faith can be dispelled, but Regen ''can't'', and if you're underleveled, you won't be able to out-damage the health regeneration. [[spoiler:And you probably won't know that Poison overrides Regen, either]]. |
| 158 | * Zenobia is the point where your Paradigm Pack and proper Paradigm Tunes will make or break you. She starts off the battle by sticking her fingers in the ground, getting surrounded by tendrils, and summoning in several more to throw Ruinga at the group. The Vaballathus tend to spawn too far apart to hit reliably with -ga magic and are too durable to take them out with an untuned Cerberus. And once they go down, if you can't take out Zenobia in a given time frame, she'll ''bring the Vaballathus back''. The Tonberry who stole your kill in ''XIII'' just got that much more badass. |
| 159 | * ''[[Music/{{Eminem}} Guess who's back]] / Back again / [[OhCrap Odin's back]] / Tell a friend''. Save for the Gestalt gauge being replaced by a proper HP gauge, Twilight Odin brings all of Odin's old cruel tricks to the field; targeting the weakest member of your party (hope none of your Paradigm Pack Medics are {{Squishy Wizard}}s), and wide-hitting attacks that can deal damage to most of your party at once. Plus, that proper HP gauge needs to be depleted, and he'll be [[ArtificialBrilliance casting Thundara on himself]] to take advantage of his elemental absorption. Oh, but you can switch party leader, so Doom won't be a problem! Except he doesn't use Doom; he uses a [[TotalPartyKill Zantetsuken]], which ''doesn't give you a countdown''. Well, ''XIII-2'' introduced Wound damage, let's just batter him down with that! Except that Odin doesn't just absorb Lightning-elemental damage, he ''[[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard restores with]]'' it; Wounding him will only speed up his recovery rate so he can undo the Wounds. And he shows up ''twice'', with an added pain in the ass during the second round: Thunder is constantly striking across the battlefield, alternating between Serah, Noel, your Paradigm Pack, and Odin (who is still restoring with lightning). The only saving grace is the reward for this second round - [[spoiler:Twilight Odin as a 100% join to your Paradigm Pack, still brandishing Zantetsuken as the only non-DLC Feral Link with a max sync rate of 999%.]] |
| 160 | |
| 161 | !!Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: |
| 162 | * ''Lightning Returns'' also sees the return of Caius, and he’s probably the most soul-crushingly difficult boss in the entire game. His attacks are fiendishly powerful and relentless, plus the camera tends to focus on him, making them very hard to block. Caius can also restore a huge chunk of his HP and is incredibly difficult to stagger. It probably says something that he's the only storyline boss that doesn't get stronger if fought later. |
| 163 | [[/folder]] |
| 164 | |
| 165 | [[folder:Final Fantasy XV]] |
| 166 | * Ravus Nox Fleuret [[spoiler: after he [[CameBackWrong is resurrected by Ardyn as a daemon]]]] is one of the most challenging fights in the entire game. His attacks are incredibly powerful, including AOE's that can put the entire party into critical health in one hit, lightning-fast charge attacks and the abilty to inflict the stop status effect. Add in his [[MarathonBoss truly colossal health pool,]] his high magic-resistance and [[NoSell inability to be staggered,]] and you've got a contender for toughest main storyline foe in the entire series. |
| 167 | * [[spoiler:Despite his flamboyant appearance and lack of a OneWingedAngel form, [[BigBad Ardyn]] as the FinalBoss]] can be a surprising spike in difficulty if you haven't been leveling up or don't have as many healing items. First off, [[InTheEndYouAreOnYourOwn this is]] [[SoloSequence another moment where Noctis]] [[DuelBoss must fight on his own,]] which can be very jarring considering how many aspects of the gameplay come from working with your team. But what really makes this fight a tough one is [[AxCrazy the wild and unpredictable]] movements [[spoiler:Ardyn]] utilizes throughout the fight, being able to [[spoiler:[[TeleportSpam Warpstrike]] just like you]], and he will [[InterfaceScrew gladly screw up your camera and targeting]] by spamming it repeatedly to zoom across the area and smack you before you have time to react, and he [[LightningBruiser actually hits very hard and very fast]], forcing you to rely on dodging and waiting for an opening, and also paying enough attention to avoid his own combos and stronger attacks. [[spoiler:Once the two of you activate your [[SuperMode Armiger Arsenals]] and take to the skies of Insomnia, the fight is actually ''more'' difficult, as Ardyn will now attack at harder to determine intervals, hits harder and faster, and finally, unlike [[ForegoneVictory Leviathan]], Ardyn will gladly remind you that yes, ''you can actually lose when your SuperMode is permanent''.]] Thankfully, the final phase is the easiest... at least gameplay-wise. [[TearJerker Emotionally, however...]] |
| 168 | [[/folder]] |
| 169 | |
| 170 | ! Spin-off series: |
| 171 | |
| 172 | [[folder:Final Fantasy Tactics]] |
| 173 | * The whole sequence in Riovannes Castle. Even the battle at the gates, despite not being a boss fight, is a tough fight. Then the game, instead of returning you to the outside world, prompts you to save... |
| 174 | ** The second part starts with a ''solo'' fight between Wiegraf and Ramza - and it's a great way to force you to restart the entire game if you have no backup save. Wiegraf's got an at-will blast attack that deals just under half your HP if you're a tank class, the ability to heal, height advantage, and the "generosity" to fight you in a small, cramped arena where you can't run from him to heal up and swing back. Autopotion is simply necessary for this fight, and if you don't have it, you can't get it. And no, you can't go back and grind or even ''shop'' because you're locked into the sequence. If you do win, though... |
| 175 | ** Velius is fast and can cast the summon Cyclops, one of the most powerful summons in the game, that can destroy your whole party in one fell swoop. If that isn't bad enough, he can also choose to inflict nasty status effects like petrify and confuse. Not to mention that he's backed by 3 Ultima Demons who'll hammer the party with Dark Holy and powerful physical attacks. It's essential to get some of the Demons down ''fast'' before the attrition gets out of control. |
| 176 | ** And to conclude things, the battle against Marquis Elmdor and the Assassins (read: [[LightningBruiser Ninja class]] on steroids) on top of Riovanes Castle is an exercise in restraining the urge to snap the controller in two. First, Rafa has a tendency to blindly charge into the Assassins' range and get herself instantly killed by Stop Breath -- which has an [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard abnormally high accuracy rate for a no-cost, no-strings-attached ability that causes instant DEATH.]] But it's Rafa - who cares? Well, the game does; and if she goes down on this particular level (not as in crystal, as in HP reaching 0), then it's '''[[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou GAME OVER.]]''' And there are TWO assassins - both of whom are ungodly fast and will likely move before anyone in your party. Their abilities: the aforementioned Stop Breath, a spell that can inflict Charm, Shadowbind (which causes your character to be unable to move, attack, or defend, and is nearly 100% accurate), and ''Ultima''. You put this battle anywhere in the story, and it's a challenge. But this fight is the last of a series of three with only save points in between (which you will do in a separate slot if you're smart), and directly after -- you guessed it -- the infamous Wiegraf, thereby turning Riovanes Castle into FFT's ThatOneLevel. The one saving grace is that the battle ends as soon as either Elmdor or one of the two assassins reaches low health. So if you just dogpile one of the assassins, you can end the fight fast enough, since they are pretty squishy. |
| 177 | * The fight at the Golgollada Gallows fits here nicely as well. You get to fight Gaffgarion, tough by himself as he damages you and gets HP back with his signature attack that doesn't cost any MP, and other enemies, specifically two Time Mages which will happily status effect your people. You also start out divided into two groups, the second group popping up right in range of said Time Mages. At least there is one (''one'') random encounter map open because that fight blocks your access to the rest of Ivalice. If you are not prepared, be ready to get to know that map very well. |
| 178 | * The subsequent battle with Gaffgarion is no fun either because it can quickly turn into a ''DuelBoss'' situation. The enemy on the outside isn't that strong, but because of that annoying HP-absorbing ability, you'd need quite a bit of luck to win going one-on-one against Gaffgarion with just the main character. This is worsened by the fact that, if the hero dies in the wrong place, it's very tough to try to revive him, which leads to him turning into a crystal and then game over. |
| 179 | * The second battle against Barich isn't quite Wiegraf, but it still really SUCKS. Why? Because some of your staple melee tank classes are almost useless due in large part to the gargantuan chasm that's right in the middle of the stage. He, on the other hand, has a gun and plenty of status-inflicting abilities with which to make use of it, not to mention dragons and other terrible beasties, all of which can hand your ass to you from right where they're standing. A certain monster good at transporting can save you some trouble, but due to their overall lack of abilities, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman most players don't think to have one in the party.]] |
| 180 | * Given a basic grasp of game mechanics and making things easier on yourself with certain choices [[spoiler:like prioritizing beating the Corpse Brigade in the level where Argath shows up]], the first few fights shouldn't give you that much trouble. But if you know what's good for you, you'll swallow your pride and do some LevelGrinding before setting foot in Dorter. This level pops up very early on (it's the fourth storyline battle), and it's the first map that you deal with enemy Archers and Black Mages. There are a couple of each, all conveniently placed just far enough away for it to take more than one turn for you to reach them, but just close enough for them to move forward and attack you. The worst are the two archers sniping your party from the tallest building on the map. You have a couple of guest characters that usually default to going up there and taking care of them first, but the building's tiles are laid out so that they take about 2-3 turns to navigate into attack range, during which the Black Mages and Archers can riddle them (and the rest of your hapless party) full of holes. And to add to the whole mess, there's a well-outfitted Knight guarding the Black Mages, and he will slap the ever-loving shit out of any unit that tries to beat up the Mages in melee. This battle is VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics' way of telling you it won't pull any punches; not now, not ever. |
| 181 | * Taking on Marquis Elmdore inside Limberry Castle isn't much fun, either. You don't have the ridiculous conditions of the last battle, but Celia and Lettie are still... well, Celia and Lettie, except at a higher level. Not to mention Elmdore himself, who's still basically a Samurai on steroids that makes use of Master Teleportation - basically, the Teleport skill that may or may not be available to some of your characters at this point - minus any sort of failure rate. [[note]]the normal 'Teleport' skill theoretically allows a character to traverse the entire map. Except that the farther you try to move said character, the higher the chance of the ability not working.[[/note]] OhCrap. If there's an upside to this battle, it's the fact that: '''1:''' You only have to bring him down to 20% to win the battle, and '''2:''' he's got a full set of really badass armor that you can rip from him - provided you've got a skilled pilferer and the [[UnusualEuphemism Zodiac Stones]] to try it.[[note]]And as if to slap the player in the face, the PSP UpdatedRerelease removes that second upside by making his equipment unstealable.[[/note]] |
| 182 | ** On a parenthetical note, the Marquis and his two assassins go OneWingedAngel after this fight. |
| 183 | ** The funny part is the OneWingedAngel stage is MUCH easier than this one. |
| 184 | * The fight against [[spoiler:a revived and vampirized Zalbaag]] can be utterly infuriating due to the unique status effect he has. If he bites any of your allies, they get turned into vampires too and you lose control of them. And they will try to bite other party members. If you have some 108 Gems in your inventory to equip, then the fight becomes much simpler, but without them, it can become quickly infuriating. |
| 185 | * Less dramatic, but the Balias Tor battle from chapter 2 is no fun at all, and that's mainly because of the two summoners that are off the edge of the hill (and yet still horizontally close enough to cast spells at your own team, who are more than likely still bunched together. It's a good thing [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic the BGM for this level]] is pretty good; you may be hearing it more than once. |
| 186 | [[/folder]] |
| 187 | |
| 188 | [[folder:Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced series]] |
| 189 | !!Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: |
| 190 | * Adrammelech has a powerful attack that hits anything in a line between him and the edge of the arena, which is especially bad given that the arena is a long, narrow one, with your party and his group on opposite ends. He also comes with three dragons who are quite powerful, and it's difficult to kill him without killing them first. A few levels, the right Law card, the right party setup, and a moogle with full JP will take this fight from "outright impossible" to "ludicrously hard". However, the big problem is finding out how to block that line attack, and to learn that spells that are one square attacks elsewhere are multiple square attacks there. |
| 191 | * Fighting Llednar the second time you meet him. His fight comes after a somewhat tough fight inside the Bervenia Palace and is made worse due to the fact that it is a DuelBoss fight between himself and Marche. Unless Marche was raised as a melee fighter for high HP and Defense (and assuming you are not purposely using one of the many game breakers the game has) the fight will become a nightmare. You cannot damage him at all due to plot reasons and you have to stall for several turns until another character shows up to end the fight. Llednar has one ability that can put you under Doom status, inflicting KO on Marche in a few turns. Another ability can damage and Poison you so you get worn down. Llednar's signature move, Omega, can instantly defeat you with its massive damage unless you seriously level grinded. If you lose this fight, you'll have to do the previous battle again just to get back to this part. |
| 192 | * For levity's sake, here's SdrawkcabName having his paycheck stolen: http://lparchive.org/Final-Fantasy-Tactics-Advance/Update%2034/ |
| 193 | |
| 194 | !!Final Fantasy Tactics A2: |
| 195 | * Flowsand Lord: It shows up early in the game out of the blue- the mission you take to fight it is about ''foraging for pearls'', for goodness' sake- and will completely pulverize anyone who hasn't level grinded. First is its ludicrous stats- low speed and low magic, and an inability to move, but these don't matter at all because it has no magic attacks and has ''nearly 800 HP with the offense and defense of something double your level''. It has 3 attacks straight off the bat- Gravity Flux, which deals roughly 75% of your current HP to all your party members, Stun Crush, which heavily damages all units next to it and inflicts Immobilize (and without being adjacent to it your melee attackers can't do anything) and, in an ultimate show of AI cheapness, [[ThatOneAttack Consume]], which has a range of 10 tiles (read: most of the arena), deals damage enough to push you into HP Critical, moves you right next to it for a Stun Crush finisher, and ''restores its HP by the amount it deals'', leaving one round's permanent damage at about 40 HP. The arena itself is inverse conical, meaning some routes are inaccessible to units with low Jump stats, and at that point in the game you can't camp in the corner and spam illusion spells because you don't have the Illusionist class yet. The Law itself is a nightmare, forbidding special actions by Nou Mu- your main damage dealers and spell casters- and while it would seem that you could just ignore it and spam the odd level 2 spell, the {{Squishy Wizard}}s will get hammered by Consume, and, as the Law is invalidated, you ''can't resurrect your dead''. ''Even worse'', the boss has two tough Antlion lackeys that infinitely spawn, and, because you'll be facing the Lord, can spam paralytic attacks on your back for massive damage and debuffs. '''And the worst bit?''' After defeating it, you don't get any special rewards like you would from [[spoiler:the optional bosses like Cerayn and Magick Weapon [=Mk2=]]], and you ''have to beat it'' as it is a story mission. On another note, as a story mission you ''cannot quit it once you start it'', and when you lose (which you will) you get a game over instead of a simple "oh well, try again". Flowsand Lord's only weakness is to Air spells, but at this point in the game the only access to an Air attack is a Bishop with Aero. Given that Bangaa have pretty low magic and the Bishop is a Bangaa only class, it's not even strikingly effective. It also casts 14 MP, so unless you manage to boost your Bishop's MP before his turn, you get to cast it once every 2 or 3 turns, thanks to the MP system of the game. |
| 196 | |
| 197 | [[/folder]] |
| 198 | |
| 199 | [[folder:Dissidia Final Fantasy]] |
| 200 | * [[spoiler:Possessed Terra]] in Onion Knight's story, and in ''duodecim'', Vaan's as well. She'll spend the entire fight in EX Mode getting Regen and a boost to critical hit rate, and she spams dual-cast Tornados, annoying to avoid and very painful if you don't, ''and'' Tornado blocks all counter attacks. The fights boil down to baiting her into a Tornado, hitting her as she recovers, and then hoping Regen doesn't heal her back up before you land the next hit. |
| 201 | * Jecht pretty much any time he's fought as a boss. The AI of course has no problem with this DifficultButAwesome fighter, his combos will be timed perfectly, probably charged up for extra pain, and he'll NoSell anything you throw at him with Jecht Block. |
| 202 | * Either of the two occasions when you have to fight the Emperor in Pandaemonium. The stage is perfect for him, with its narrow corridors limiting movements making it easy to run into his attacks since his style is all about limiting the opponents movement. |
| 203 | * Ultimecia in Firion's story in ''duodecim''. She's level 20, and you must adjust your level to 8 or lower or the game actively punishes you. She happens to be the floatiest character in the game, and likes staying away from you while flying around bombarding you with magical projectiles. The big problem is you're playing as Firion -- Ultimecia likes to fly staying at range, Firion is the ground-based melee fighter with absolutely terrible ranged attacks. Thus most of the fight will be spent trying to pin her down to get a hit in while avoiding the constant rain of aerial fire she brings down. |
| 204 | * In Confessions of the Creator, the Level 95 Feral Chaos. The Level 130 version is the Bonus Boss, this guy is ''supposed'' to be the warm-up. The reason he's actually just as difficult if not more is that you don't have access to the northern gateways, so you can't farm the Lufenian equipment or top-level trade accessories (thus your equipment probably sucks), he has a unique Booster that gives him a 90x multiplier after 60 seconds, boosting his Attack and Defense by 450%, and unlike the Level 130 Feral Chaos who uses Level 1 equipment, the Level 95 one uses Level 90 equipment, including the Ogrenix and the Maxmillian for further boosts to his Attack and Defense. While the Level 130 Feral Chaos likes Vicious and Destroy for his basic Bravery attacks, the Level 95 one uses Brute Force, which executes pretty much as fast as Destroy and is as difficult to anticipate, but unlike Destroy, Brute Force can't be blocked. Even if you have equipment appropriate for the fight, you've only got 60 seconds to fight before that Booster triggers, at which point you'll be pretty much unable to damage him and he'll Break you in one hit. Your only choice for survival is grinding it out with HP attacks and hope he doesn't Break you until the fight ends. |
| 205 | [[/folder]] |
| 206 | |
| 207 | [[folder:Final Fantasy Record Keeper]] |
| 208 | * You might want to see [[ThatOneBoss/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper its own page by yourself]]. Yeah, that's a ''long'' list. |
| 209 | [[/folder]] |
| 210 | |
| 211 | ! Other games in the series: |
| 212 | * Sephiroth in ''VideoGame/CrisisCore: Final Fantasy VII'' is a monster, especially in Hard mode. He summons four crystals which bombard you with magic and take dozens of hits to take down. Each of them absorb a different magical element so carelessly using spells may heal them. Sephiroth also has his Fallen Angel attack which brings you down to 1 HP and his draw slash which two-shots you at best. It's even worse in hard mode where practically every attack is a OHKO and he has more than three times the health as normal. |
| 213 | ** Genesis Avatar, the final boss, is fairly easy in Normal but an actual nightmare in Hard. With 650,000 health in Hard Mode he is a ridiculous damage sponge boss. He also summons minions, both melee and magic to help him, which are extremely easy to kill in Normal but have 30,000+ health each in Hard. Since he summons them in waves you'll most likely fail to kill them all before the next wave comes and may have up to 10+ enemies cluttering up your screen each dealing about 30-50% your health every hit. Without Costly Punch, which lets you hit damage cap, this fight is near impossible |
| 214 | * The most absurd fights in the UsefulNotes/GameBoy game ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyLegendII'', are with the "Tian Lung" and "Fenrir" mini-bosses you encounter in the dungeon between Apollo and Arsenal. Winning either of these fights is essentially a LuckBasedMission, because depending on the whim of the RandomNumberGod, the battle may be against as many as eight copies of the monster. They almost always act before your characters, and their "Tornado" attack hits every member of your party for more than 600 damage in a game where the Max HP cap is 999. An encounter with two or more is basically impossible to win. |
| 215 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyLegendIII'' is possibly even '''more''' brutal with its content than its predecessor's sudden difficulty spikes. Agron takes the role of That One Boss fair and square. You think several other bosses like Chaos and Ashura are rather large difficulty spikes? Agron not only comes very late in the game, but for the past five or so hours of the game (Depending on how much you spent leveling in the Purelands), you had a GuestStarPartyMember with you, either Faye or Dion. Without powerleveling, this boss turns into a luck-based battle. He begins with an "Unexpected Attack" (??) which is basically "Agron casts White" (around 600 damage, or 2/3rds your health) followed up (in his next turn) with a non-elemental hit-all that does even MORE damage. Or he'll just Petrify one of your characters and make you waste a turn healing them instead of healing your party or attacking him. |
| 216 | * ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyMysticQuest'': |
| 217 | ** Medusa can paralyze and petrify the party. Now, there is an item that cures all status ailments... but this is counterbalanced by how your party is ''two people''. If she's faster than you are and hits you with petrification, you're done. |
| 218 | ** Gidrah comes with two minions that can confuse you, and he himself can use Stone. With ailments that can incapacitate or effectively kill you, he's a rather frustrating battle. |
| 219 | ** Pazuzu can uses Psychshield to reflect magic. If he goes first after you order a spell, or if you just plain [[GuideDangIt don't know what it does yet]], Psychshield will reflect the spell. And odds are you're casting Aero to hit his weakness, so the reflected attack will do over 1000 damage to you resulting in an instant kill. A small mercy is that he can occasionally attack with the Psychshield, removing it from himself. Later on Pazuzu's reincarnation, Zuh, also has Psychshield, along with an Instant Death attack. Goodie. |
| 220 | ** The very first Behemoth can kill you if one of your attacks misses, or one of its attacks critically hit. Keep in mind that this is the ''first fight of the game''. |
| 221 | * Being a GenreThrowback, ''most'' of the bosses ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyThe4HeroesOfLight''. |
| 222 | ** Admittedly, this has a lot to do with the fact that many enemies ''in general'' in 4HoL are rather gimmicky, and bosses often require a very specific set of skills or equipments that are completely not obvious at all until you're wiped out, forcing you to claw your way back through an entire dungeon (which gets ''very frustrating'' later in the game) after grabbing the ''one thing'' that you needed to take out the boss efficiently. This happens a lot outside of battle as well.... |
| 223 | ** Doppelganger. An evil version of your party, except they get twice as many turns as you, have between two to four times the max hp of your tankiest character, and are in a 2 rank formation, so you can't kill the casters easily. Oh, and they heal. Frequently. And that [[DiscOneNuke properly equipped black mage]] you've been using to obliterate every boss in the way? Now his Doppelganger turns that power on you. Cue {{Angrish}} in response to (multiple) {{Total Party Kill}}s. Hope you weren't planning on using those gems to upgrade any crowns that might have helped you beat the boss. |
| 224 | ** Asmodeus inflicts widespread status effects. You could have 4 ribbons by this point, but probably won't. Added annoyance is that the game's auto-target system doesn't prioritize petrified or paralyzed characters over less debilitating status effects such as poison. You lose to auto-target as often as you lose to him, unless you invest in certain classes or spells which can remove ailments from everyone. |
| 225 | *** To elaborate further, Asmodeus has four main attacks, and can use two in each round. Firaga hits everyone, but it's Fire-element and it's not hard at that stage to have fire resistance shields. His basic attacks are low-damage Earth-element, and earth-resistant cloaks aren't too hard to get. That's the good part. As for the bad: the big one would be Sidewinder, which inflicts virtually every status effect in the game except Petrify. Confusion? Sleep? Poison? Blindness? Yes to all of the above. And it hits everyone for quite substantial amounts of damage. Oh, and it's spammable. And the fourth? Break. Which inflicts, you guessed it, Petrify. It's somehow appropriate that he's named after a demon, given the extended list of profanities and shouts of "Jesus Christ ''stop using Sidewinder twice a round''" he induces. |
| 226 | ** Belphegor is a rather difficult fight, given his annoying ability to continually change elemental resistances. Oh you thought his weakness was water? Now its wind. Or is it fire? Guess wrong and you'll end up healing him. Not to mention, unlike other bosses, he has three cronies to back him up, each of which shares his resistances and can all pack quite a punch. Hope you brought an Elementalist. |
| 227 | *** [[spoiler: When you challenge him again in the star chamber, he's significantly easier though, since you now possess the Desolater spell (and if you still use the Black Mage, Magic Might as well) which is a powerful non-elemental spell that'll bust through him and his cubes in no time. You'll still need that Elementalist though.]] |
| 228 | *** Heck, most of the bosses in the second half of the game could potentially qualify. |
| 229 | * The first fight with the Coelacanth in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChroniclesRingOfFates''. To start with, most of the stage is underwater and everyone has SuperDrowningSkills. The only places to stand are a narrow ledge that only covers two walls and some platforms that the fishy can dunk while you're standing on them. For the ledge, it can use vacuum breath to drag you into the water, which deals damage. When it's out of the water, it has its pick of a tracking bubble attack (damages and stuns, immobilizing your character for a few critical seconds), a wide-range breath attack, or a very powerful energy blast. Otherwise, it's underwater and out of reach. Its AchillesHeel is positioned so that it's very hard to reach when emerged, and of course since it's at the edge of the water, it's easy to fall in by mistake. And since this is theoretically supposed to be Meeth's battle, the game gives you some element vents on the ledges--you know, in case you want to [[SchmuckBait take an extended break to mix up some magicite while the fishy is doing any of the above things to everyone]]. |
| 230 | * The final boss of the first DLC of ''VideoGame/StrangerOfParadiseFinalFantasyOrigin'' is a major step up in difficulty from bosses fought before this point: [[spoiler:the Warrior of Light]] is fought solo, so you can't count on having teammates draw their aggro while you catch your breath. The first half of the fight is fairly manageable, since they can easily be staggered with Soul Shield. Once the second phase kicks in, however, they become a lot harder to stagger, and a lot more aggressive in their attacks. The timing to try and hit them after a barrage of attacks is small, and they always block your first attack and counter with either a wide-ranged melee attack that you have to block again with Soul Shield, or an unblockable ranged attack that you must dodge. At such close range, and with such a small window of time to react, you'll have to be either extremely dexterous or extremely lucky to survive this assault. |
| 231 |
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