Awesome Bosses / Other Games N To Z

N - S

• Namco × Capcom has the battle with Druaga. Up to this point, Druaga's been one of the main antagonists on the villain side of things, and the heroes have finally begun storming his tower in the Infernal Realm. Druaga decides to replicate his strategy from his original battle with Gil and first divides his power into three avatars- the same ones he used in the arcade game- before finally coming out to fight himself. To keep with the references, too, the only other enemies encountered in the level are Druaga's monsters, including Quox.
• Mr. Big, the Big Bad and Final Boss of NARC. He appears in the form of a giant head that shoots fire from his eyes and can only be defeated if you attack him in the eyes. Knock his sunglasses off and hit him a few more times, his head explodes and you confront his true form, a skull that can only be destroyed by shooting at the vertebrae. This boss was so good that was even featured briefly at the Foot's arcade in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).
• From Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3:
  • The final boss battles with Madara Uchiha and Tobi. In the former, you take charge as Tsunade and fight off each of his attacks in different stages until, while flying on Gaara's sand, engaging him on literally the top of the world while he's in Susano'o which you have to smash and hammer to defeat him. Against the latter, you engage the Edo Jinchuriki Six Paths of Pain...then face them in their Biju Forms. Naruto then gains Biju Mode and kicks the asses of Six Biju at once (one more than in the manga) and finally fights Tobi one on one and manages to shatter his mask with a last-ditch punch while in base form.
  • The game opens with Hiruzen Sarutobi vs the Nine Tails itself. You end the fight by calling on every single ninja in the village as a support, to bombard the beast with a swarm of fireballs. And that's just the first boss! Things get even more awesome from there. From Natuto and Sasuke clashing again (you even get a choice of which prior fight to flash back to), Naruto taking on the Nine Tails himself in a Battle in the Center of the Mind aided by his mother to facing six of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist ALL AT ONCE, Darui soloing an entire battlefield by himself and Choji Taking A Level In Badass and fighting a giant demonic statue, cumulating in all five Kages vs Reanimated Madara Uchiha while Naruto fights all the tailed beasts and their hosts. This series is pretty much Awesome Bosses: The Game.
• NieR: Automata with Ko-Shi and Ro-Shi, a machine lifeform formed by combining two multi-legged, Goliath-class units; two bosses in one. Near the finale of the game, players switch between the two controlling characters, A2 and 9S, each facing off against one half of this boss duo. All the way to the top floor of the tower, culminating in a climax with the final confrontation between the protagonists.
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm:
  • You have Naruto vs Gamabunta, Naruto vs Gaara and Shukaku, and Tsunade vs Orochimaru and Manda. For the last one, as in the anime, all three Sannin have their bigass monsters summoned, and instead of characters for supports, like the rest of the game, your supports consist of GAMABUNTA AND KATSUYU. You throw Manda against a MOUNTAIN. And at the end, Orochimaru just kind of lies down somewhere in pain, looking absolutely hilarious.
  • The sequel, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 maintains its fair share as well, such as adding in a Naruto vs. Sasuke fight that was only a minor scuffle in the original manga, which calls back to the final battle in the first game while showing how much the two has diverged since then. There is a fast-paced dogfight through the streets of the Hidden Sand Village between Gaara and Deidara. Sasuke loses control of himself to Orochimaru, who takes on a battle-of-the-titans between an eight-headed serpent and Itachi's Susano'o in the stormy ruins of the Uchiha Hideout. We have Jiraiya taking on Animal Path Pain, then three Pain bodies, then all of them plus his animal summons. This is taken even further when Pain fights Naruto, with him using every trick he used against Jiraiya, plus standing on a boulder he's levitating with his gravity powers while raining 100-foot meteors down on Naruto. Every boss fight has acrobatics and devastating moves the anime's budget could not possibly have done, even with the movies.
• The remake of NBA Jam by EA Sports has the Magic Johnson boss battle. He's a literal one-man team.......because HE CAN TELEPORT! He'll lob the ball up and teleport to finish an alley-oop dunk, pass and teleport to where the ball is going, pump fake and teleport, and so on. What especially makes this so awesome is that the first time Magic pwns you, you'll be geeked out and amazed at how Magic effortlessly beat you. And you'll NEVER get frustrated. It takes time, but instead of thinking, "DAMMIT I LOST AGAIN" you think, "I'm getting there!"
• Two battles from The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge come to mind.
  • The first is the battle against Lock, Shock, and Barrel. Even though Oogie is the Big Bad, LS&B have been doing most of the work. They fight you when you're trying to reach plot points, they close off parts of town until you find keys, and generally share a role as The Dragon. You finally get to fight them in moonlight on the roof of the mayor's house. While they ride around in their mobile bathtub, charging into you, the background song is Jack berating them for refusing over and over again to stop causing chaos. They get a verbal comeuppance, they eventually fight you all at once, when previously only one was fought at a time, and you're on the roof of the mayor's house.
  • Then you have the final boss, Mega Oogie. Throughout continuity, Oogie Boogie has been a Dirty Coward. Even here, he's never fought you directly, only used his Living Shadow. Now he leads you into the twisted junkyard that comprises the space between Holiday Towns and commands his insects to bring him garbage. This is built up around him to form a gigantic body made of holiday memorabilia and filled with boxes and cans. This oversized Oogie (slightly taller than the highest point you can reach.) can only be defeated by attacking his feet without being stepped on or by shooting burning gas at him. Then, when you defeat him, you still have to do one of the dance battles you've been doing for the whole game, with the catch that all missed buttons come out of your health. Not bad for a licensed game, hmm?
• Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom had some people criticise the game's bosses for mostly being Elite Mooks who were not very special, just damage-rushes or bullfights. However, a few examples stand out:
  • Each of the Kingmakers. They all have very interesting music as well as a gimmick (that returns for the final boss) that rewards the players for looking for and aiming at their hidden weakspots. They're all frantic battles that keep you on your toes and force you to observe the battlefield since very few bosses actually take the environment into account.
  • The Imp Queen. Despite being an Elite Mook, she manages to make you play defensively due to her Area of Effect attacks, the flunkies she summons to distract you and protect her, and the fact that if you take too long, she starts healing herself.
  • From the same chapter, Mausinger. He's not an Elite Mook, or a simple "Get Back Here!" Boss. While the Imp Queen is far more chaotic and tests your blocking abilities, Mausinger is a test of the player's dodging abilities. Much like the Imp Queen, this is another boss you cannot beat by just flanking and then going Attack! Attack! Attack!.
• Nioh 2: The bosses in the first game were regarded as ranging from decent to bad, but this game's are FAR better by comparison.
  • The first boss, Mezuki, manages to be both an intimidating first boss without feeling too unfair, effectively teaching you the mechanics of all the Yokai bosses to come.
  • Enenra, a demonic sumo wrestler made from smoke capable of summoning fire pillars and tornadoes, as well as teleporting around and throwing himself at you in a tornado. Need we say more?
  • Yatsu-no-Kami manages to be a poison-using boss that doesn't rely on it to be a threat and has a number of very dangerous moves that need to be learned and properly responded to. Coming at the end of one of the better levels doesn't hurt.
  • Kamataichi, a giant weasel-cat-thing with blades on its arms and tail that jumps around the trees and forces you to constantly be on the move, lest you get comboed into oblivion.
  • Saito Yoshitatsu wields the two Guardian Spirits you didn't choose and can use their respective Yokai forms, switching between human and Yokai forms and all that entails.
  • Gyuki, a massive bull-spider beast with wings that, while relatively easy, is such an entertaining spectacle that it doesn't matter.
  • Azai Nagamasa fights with a mixture of air dives, projectiles and sword swings, all set to a tragic but intense battle theme. It's so awesome, there's a sub-mission dedicated entirely to a rematch with no strings attached!
  • Ryomen Sukuna combines a terrifyingly awesome appearance with a frantic boss battle. Wielding a fiery sword, an axe, and a water bow along with homing magic of both elements, making it dangerous at any range, it boasts a number of attacks that are difficult to dodge without being unfair.
  • Nightmare Bringer, the Final form of Otakemaru, is a fittingly monstrous True Final Boss for Nioh 2's DLC, and the Final boss of the series, a hulking monstrosity of a Centaur-esque demon that has all the powers of his original form and even more difficult tactics to fight against.
• The new Ninja Gaiden series has a few. Granted, the Ninja Gaiden series is infamous for being Nintendo Hard, but Fiend Genshin ranks as one of the most fun and challenging bosses ever, particularly on Master Ninja, where it's just you and the Worthy Opponent with a redonculously powerful set of moves in a nerve-wracking fight where a single mistake means your doom.
• Nocturne: Rebirth has the Superboss battle against Main, Tae, and Serena, who can use gimmicks such as Combination Attacks, a barrier that allows individual members to revive after a few turns, and the ability to hide the ATB gauges. The rematch against them is even harder and is balanced for a max level party, but the player no longer has to hold back their characters' growth now that they don't have to worry about Brave Clear levels.
• Noitu Love 2 has 2: The final boss, and 02-JOY, both due to music and innovative ways you take them down/expose them.
  • The level 3 boss fight against Rilo Doppelori also deserves mention. On normal difficulty level, it doesn't seem that hard, but she will kick your ass back and forth on the higher difficulty levels if you haven't brought up your game enough.
  • O2-JOY from the first Noitu Love. From his unreachable perch he's completely invincible, so how do you beat him? Bang keys at random on the piano until you piss him off enough that he drops his guard!
• Octopath Traveler: Simeon's battle is unique in that it's two fights. The first is a Battle in the Center of the Mind where Simeon tries to get Primrose to give up, questioning her motives, whether it made her happy, and why she came here. The second fight starts as a fairly standard boss, until he messes with the turn counter so you can only see when he gets to go, making it harder to strategize against him. This makes it a lot of fun because your crutch is gone and while Simeon can certainly defend his title as a final story boss, his attacks aren't as strong as the others', which makes his gimmick more fair while still mixing things up and creating a memorable boss. The music for both battles is also excellent.
• Octopath Traveler II: Each protagonist has at least one of these in their stories, and there are also some memorable side quest bosses:
  • The Darkling from Ochette's final chapter. On top of it being the Animal Companion you didn't choose after ten years of torture and suffering, Ochette's partner awakens to the Sacred Flame's power in order for the two to fight against it and save their home from the Calamity. The Darkling attacks other party members to gain different status buffs, much like the Hunter class's Cleaving Blow move, can reduce all party members down to 1 HP, and the fight is where Akalā/Mahina and Acta obtain their Super Modes, making for a challenging yet exciting Final Boss for the beastling.
  • Trousseau from Castti's final chapter is a fight with the Ogre Eagle's gimmick, but against an actually story-relevant foe, with Trousseau's mad laughter ringing out as he goes full-on supervillain, from his amused pose at the battle's start to his terrified, frustrated, crying rage when you break his mask. Combine that with the sheer number of status effects he throws, and the rain constantly adding pressure to finish the battle onto the player, and you have a magnificently frantic conclusion to the good doctor's storyline.
  • Throné's story:
    • Chapter 1: Pirro, on top of the gut-punch of fighting him at all, has several multi-hit attacks and a chance to stun Throné, making for a very effective boss in both gameplay and story.
    • Chapter 3: Both the fight against Mother and the fight against Father, for different reasons. On top of Throné needing to kill them to obtain her freedom, Mother is especially satisfying to fight and take down for her abusive nature towards Throné, Mira, and countless others. Father, on the other hand, has his Freudian Excuse revealed as a broken shell of a man desperate for Throné to kill him, with attacks that can one-shot unprepared party members yet are still telegraphed well enough to avoid being annoying.
    • Chapter 4: Claude, the biological father of all the Blacksnakes. After informing Throné of the Blacksnakes' true nature, he will occasionally taunt her / give her backhanded compliments during the fight, during which time he summons phantoms of Pirro, Mother, Father, Marietta, and Throné herself. It can take a long time to finish him off, but it's also an extremely cool gimmick that works well narratively.
  • Harvey from Osvald's final chapter. After everything Harvey put him through, Osvald's resolve to protect his daughter Elena allows him to unlock the One True Magic, harnessing The Power of Love against The Power of Hate Harvey wields. In gameplay, both can use the One True Magic against each other, with Osvald's being an EX skill and Harvey's his Limit Break, making for an incredibly fitting "last debate" between the two scholars.
  • Roque Brilliante from Partitio's final chapter. After Partitio's quest to obtain eighty-billion leaves to buy the steam engine, Roque brings out the Steam Tank Obsidian in a desperate attempt to keep the rights by force. Four different sections of the train can attack the party, with Roque able to repair three of them and restore them from destruction, requiring careful management of attacking their different weaknesses to break their Shield Points and destroy them all at once to make the main body vulnerable.
  • Dolcinaea from Agnea's final chapter. While the gameplay is still structured like a fight, story-wise it's a dual performance between the two dancers as they compete to be the bigger star. Dolcinea uses the audience members as well as Agnea's own teammates to fight with her, with the second phase receiving "Song Of Hope" as unique battle music compared to the other protagonists' final battles.
  • Captain Kaldena from Temenos' final chapter. On top of the personal stakes in her murdering Crick, Kaldena's second phase has her forcibly transformed by the Shadow, becoming a monster that can instantly kill anyone she blinds and reduces the power of healing items and abilities.
  • Hikari's story:
    • Chapter 2: The fight against Bandelam the Reaper. From a story perspective, Hikari and Kazan are toppling the arena fighting scheme and this fight comes right as Kazan's machinations pay off. Hikari and Bandelam share mutual respect after the first fight because Hikari is fighting him so well, then asking him what he fights for, only for Hikari to give an unwavering answer, for his comrades and his country. The ensuing fight is tough for a party at the recommended level. He constantly switches up his weaknesses and increases his Shield Points by 2 each time you break him, capping out at 10. His attacks are hard-hitting and can reduce an under-leveled party's numbers quickly. He also has quite a bit of HP. But he's not unfairly difficult and gives you more than a few chances to whale on him. And all of this while Critical Clash II is blasting in the background to amp you up.
    • Chapter 5: While he can be difficult even by final boss standards to an unprepared team, the fight against Mugen is also very cool. You first fight him normally, and then, after Hikari conquers his dark side, Mugen completely gives in to the curse and turns into The Enshrouded King. It's some great thematic contrast between the two brothers, and it makes it even more satisfying when Mugen finally goes down.
  • Karma is an interesting side quest boss too. First, in order to fight him, you have to bring only one traveler (guided/allured/befriended/hired NPCs cannot be used either), so you fight him one-on-one. During his fight, he mainly attacks with increasingly aggressive skills, and if not broken in time, he uses Killer Karma to instantly defeat your character (though you can get around it with auto-revive skills if you really can't break him in time). One of his stances includes a shield with no weaknesses so you'll have to rely on abilities like Temenos' Latent Power, Ochette's Beastly Howl, or Hikari's Vengeful Blade. Another stance has him being weak to every type of attack, but you'll need to break his 15 shields in 4 turns. It's a challenging boss that really puts your understanding of breaking to test.
  • Vide. Being the Final Boss and the God of Darkness, Vide delivers on all fronts. First, the music is absolutely incredible, hyping up the confrontation to truly epic proportions. Second, Vide's various tendrils and attacks will keep any party on their toes, especially his ability to dispel your buffs. Then, when he's half-way through his first phase, he sucks up your currently active party, forcing the other four characters to finish the first phase to break the others out. Then you get to his second phase, where you have all eight heroes fighting Vide simultaneously. No, this is not like how the original eight fought Galdera; this time, everyone is in play at the same time, and the voice lines accompanying the final fight show each is going to give everything they've got in putting Vide down once and for all.
• Odin Sphere's final book is basically a Boss Rush of awesomeness. Bonus points to Leventhan, who is his own stage, and Darkova, for being such a tearjerker. In terms of gameplay (in the remastered version), King Onyx stands above the rest. Unfortunately, not when you fight him as a character you should fight him with in the final book, but when facing him before, in Oswald's story, he's one of the most enjoyable bosses in the game - his pattern is hard to avoid even after you've learned it, and he doesn't rely on wearing the player out by being a damage sponge, and/or on summoning hordes difficult-to-neutralize mooks, like other hard bosses, like Gallon, The Cauldron and Wagner do.
• Ōkami:
  • Particularly amazing is the fight against Lechku and Nechku, enormous clockwork owls with top hats, canes, and monocles. In this fight, you're joined by SHIRANUI, Amaterasu's pre-incarnation from 100 years earlier, who's essentially Amaterasu amped up to 11 - you can in fact just sit back and let Shiranui take care of the boss herself the first time you fight them. The second time, Shiranui AND Oki fight alongside you, and in order to damage them, you have to stun them, then get Oki to FIRE AMATERASU LIKE AN ARROW at them. Oki and Shiranui also attack the bosses themselves. It's the boss fight that you don't fight on your own, and Oki and Shiranui are truly badass allies. Shiranui also has the Celestial Brush on her side. Think your Cherry Bombs are strong? Shiranui has a goddamn holy nuke. Galestorm, powerful? Shiranui doesn't even need the upgraded version to damage.
  • The Ninetails fight. A boss with similar moves to you! Ninetails's surprise ability to de-inkify you with its own brush if you're too slow to draw your attacks is just one of the many aspects of that fight that made it one of the game's most memorable. There's also the emotional lead-up to the battle: after Ammy finds Himiko dead, Rao reveals she's now just the vessel of evil bent on plunging the world in darkness, and mockingly thanks Ammy for foolishly handing over the Fox Rods she needed to unleash Yami and the wonderfully dark atmosphere of the stage itself. Just have a listen to Ninetails's awesome track. It's extremely satisfying when Ninetails almost haughtily raises its lightning sword high up in the air like it's invincible, and you know exactly what to do...
  • Yami. You have to use every single brush technique to fight him, including the ones perceived as useless. In the last round Ammy gets knocked out for the count and due to everyone's prayers gets restored her to her former glory. Cue howl, Intro music to one of the best boss tracks in this game. And the showdown with the final boss's final form.
• In One Piece Pirate Warriors, the final boss. After Ace gets downed by Akainu, instead of seeing Luffy break like he did in the original series, the player gets to MAKE LUFFY BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF AKAINU, with Ace's spirit aiding Luffy in a similar way to how Goku helps Gohan in the Cell Saga.
• Onimusha series:
  • Fortinbras, the final boss from the first game is a fantastic battle against a demonic god. If you were lucky enough to grab the Bishamon Sword beforehand, you're in for a real treat.
  • Following that, all three Gogandantess fights from the second game qualify but the third game is where the boss fights really shine. Not only do you finally get to fight Guildenstern, a bad guy who you've wanted to slice and dice for three games straight, but also Lord Nobunaga. Twice in a human(ish) form and once more in a "One Winged Demon" form. The only time you and he went head-to-head previously was in a single demon form in the previous game before you fought a giant golden statue that fired spiky masks at you.
  • The fourth game has its share of epic bosses, paired with Awesome Music. The very first boss battle consists of Soki curb-stomping a Giant Mecha Demon with Cannons in his chest and a Big Fucking Sword while Soki's epic Leitmotif plays. That's nothing when compared to what awaits you though. The fight against Hideyoshi close to the middle of the game is Climax Boss, fairly challenging yet not too much, and it's also the first time Soki awakes his Oni form. And all of that takes place under cherry trees. Shortly after you also get to fight Gargant. And at the end, Fortinbras the God of Light. You have to take down his gargantuan, White Serpent form first using the powers of the God of Darkness while flying in the air and slashing him with his sword. The following battle with his human avatar is probably the most difficult and awesome fight of the series.
• The final battle against Shriek in Ori and the Will of the Wisps makes sure that you've mastered every form of movement in the game, especially Bashing. You have to dodge Shriek's attacks while aiming for her head. She collapses the battlefield after taking enough damage, leading to a short but very intense chase sequence to a second battlefield. Eventually, she collapses this platform too, leaving you to launch yourself off the meteors raining from the sky just to survive during the last phase.
• Parasite Eve: Pick a fight with Eve. Any fight with Eve. But the two best have to be where you fight her while running from one side to the other on a flaming horse and buggy, and the final fight with her at the wrecked remains of the Statue of Liberty. Especially the second one, where you get a great Shut Up, Hannibal! moment against Eve and go on to what is easily the toughest boss battle in the game. And every fight with her is highlighted by the game's iconic operatic score.
• The final battle of Perfect Dark Zero. Facing off with the Graal-empowered Zhang Li in a floating coliseum, accompanied by equally Awesome Music.
• Perfect World: Tyrant Prince Mushi, final boss in Flowsilver Palace (barring Belle Leun, the Mad Princess, who appears exclusively in Judgment Mode), is a melee-oriented boss who will periodically fire off an area-of-effect attack that fills the Chi meter of all players to maximum. Unless you've been struck down because your Chi meter was already full when it happened, you're now at liberty to use all your strongest (Chi-costly) special skills. Especially awesome if you're playing a Blademaster, the class with the widest variety of such moves to choose from. (Just make sure that if you can't get out of the way when Mushi goes "berserk" at 20% health and hits a hell of a lot harder for about twelve seconds - or aren't a super-tanky Barbarian or a super-evasive Assassin or Duskblade - you can time your use of an invulnerability potion or Genie skill just right to safely ride it out.)
• Phantasy Star IV surely has the greatest bosses in the series. Including the new games.
  • Zio. Just... Zio. Smug, twisted, genuinely TERRIFYING once he cuts the cultist crap, and he can and WILL rip you to shreds... and oh yes, the first time you fight him, he will finish the battle by plot-killing Alys Freakin' Brangwin. Killing him is sweet revenge indeed.
  • Dark Force. Three times. The first time can count as a That One Boss if you haven't been paying attention, the second time is in a tower of meat, and the third time... well... let's just say Seth never saw it coming...
  • The Profound Darkness. Three forms, devastating attacks, and the ability to use The Strongest Spell Ever (before Online and Universe nerfed it anyway). Even using the almost cheatery fifth character doesn't even come close to giving you a definite win.
  • Re Faze's Alys. The most painful way to get a killer spell ever...
• Phantasy Star Online 2:
  • The game introduced one of the best boss fights in the series with the content update that added the mines exploration mission. The thing you are pitted against at the end of the mission, the Big Varder, is an enormous land battleship with turrets and missile launchers all over that constantly harass you to prevent you from climbing up to the deck. And when you're finally on the deck, the battleship's core turns into a Humongous Mecha with destructible parts that, unlike with other bosses, actually do something specific and hamper the boss' capability to fight when destroyed. And all this while Awesome Music is playing in the background to keep you pumped.
  • Dark Falz Elder. Imagine a planet-Sized, eight-armed Eldritch Abomination that sends massive amounts of its own hands at you while firing meteors and lasers at you from afar. After enough hands are destroyed, the (noticeably shrunken) Elder comes at you with everything a darkness-empowered tower of arms could have in its arsenal. All of this is done to Awesome Music.
  • Bar Lodos, the Coast boss, was well received by the playerbase, partly because it's similar to De Rol Le, partly because the fight itself is really damn fun, and partly because it's tied to a lucrative Daily Order that pays upwards 250,000 meseta.
  • Dark Falz Luther. In a stark contrast to Elder, who was eventually just plain outclassed by all the new player content, Loser was legitimately challenging with numerous and less predictable attack patterns, a massive HP pool with less weak points than his predecessor^note It was not uncommon for the fight to take ten minutes, as opposed to three for Elder, and he hits like a truck with several attacks able to kill you outright. Once again, this is done to Awesome Music, though this time it sounds less "heroic" and puts more emphasis on how screwed you are. He has also become popular in the North American version for his hammy voice lines.
  • A top contender for the throne is Magatsu, a massive Kuronian that looks like it could piggy-back on Big Varder if it felt so inclined. The battle itself is like something ripped straight out of Attack on Titan; players must slow down the gargantuan foe as it marches through a town, preventing it from breaking through walls as it advances towards its destination.
  • The Profound Darkness is so awesome that it requires not just your party of 12, but an army of ARKS just to fight him! You first fight Falz Gemini, after which the battlefield crumbles under you and you board an ARKS ship, which sends you into the Core of the Profound Darkness. Then you fight the cocoon form, which then unfurls into it's true form. Then, near the end of the fight, you end up fighting the Profound Darkness as a copy of yourself. The advanced version introduced in the Late June 2016 update takes it a step further by transforming it from an Anti-Climax Boss into That One Boss, granting it a resistance to Ice and nerfing its Light weakness, cranking its aggressiveness up to eleven, adding extremely powerful attacks that can hit for 1200+ damage (which will One-Hit Kill most players), and radically adjusting its pattern and strategy to reduce its vulnerabilities and make it a far more offensive threat.
  • The Phantom Battleship Yamato quickly proved popular with players. After fighting across a frozen ocean to destroy the turrets on the ship's deck, the Yamato takes flight, requiring players to continue the battle using the ARKS Interception Silhouettes.
  • Nemesangele, a super badass humanoid Humongous Mecha with Laser Blade arms that you challenge with a fleet of souped up Mini-Mecha while Autobots, Rock Out! blares in the background.
  • The True Final Boss of Episode 6, the Primordial Darkness. Not only is it a hectic pair of battle phases that echo the old Falz fights of Phantasy Star Online massively cranked up to eleven, but it culminates in a one-on-one duel to the death that ends with everything the whole story built up to coming together to top the game off. The raid version goes even further, having Matoi, Harriet and Hitsugi assist in the exclusive third form as the Primordial Darkness goes into full desperate Villainous Breakdown and throws whatever it has left at you.
• Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis: Dark Falz by its name alone has a high bar to clear. It does not disappoint. And for the first time, you're stepping into the fight knowing that you're not fighting to win, you're fighting to keep it at bay so Central Cannon has enough time to charge up and take it out. And it is basically Dark Falz Elder on steroids, moving around the arena and attacking far more aggressively than Elder ever did. And when you think you've depleted its health bar, it just regenerates its health and moves into its second phase, becoming more feral in a fury that screams Why Won't You Die? to the ARKS Defenders fighting it. Coupled with the fantastic theme tunes accompanying it, and you have a recipe for a fantastic boss fight.
• Even if Phantasy Star Universe isn't necessarily well-known for having awesome bosses, one has to admit that the battle against Dulk Fakis' second form is pretty awesome. The battle takes place on a glowing platform in space with a panoramic view of the entire Gurhal system. Some of the boss' strategies are a nice homage to Dark Falz and Olga Flow from Online. Oh, and the boss fires a giant meteor at the stage and blows up the entire arena.
• Pikmin:
  • Pikmin 2:
    • The battle against the final boss, the Titan Dweevil, which is pretty much a living tank that can shoot fire, water, electricity, and poison.
    • The Man-At-Legs is essentially a giant mechanical spider that attacks with a laser-guided Macross Missile Massacre system.
  • Pikmin 3 gives us the battle with the Quaggled Mireclops, which currently holds the title for biggest creature in the entire Pikmin series (and considering the game is set in a Lilliputians environment, this is saying a lot). It's essentially a giant sentient land mass on three legs and can create giant puddles of water just by moving around. Seriously, this thing's huge!◊ ^note Those blue Pikmin swarming all over it? They're only about an inch tall. Try to put that in perspective. Just the sheer size of it in relation to your tiny captains and Pikmin makes it epic, but for those of you wondering, yes, you can totally go Shadow of the Colossus on it and ride it around once it gets back up. (Although, nine times out of ten, it'll knock you off shortly after it gets back up.)
  • Pikmin 4: The Groovy Long Legs immediately captured everyone's attention due to playing dubstep/disco music during the fight and stomping in time to the beat, as well as blasting air horns whenever changing phase (as well as one more time upon its death).
• Pizza Tower: While the individual bosses of Pepperman, The Vigilante, The Noise, Fake Peppino, and Pizza Head are interesting, they're not terribly mechanically complex... and then you get to the obligatory Boss Rush. Peppino, stressed beyond all reason and patience, finally loses what little cool he has remaining and snaps like a twig. However, instead of reacting with his previous fear and slightly pathetic neuroticism, Peppino now responds with pure Italian rage, his grab attack becoming a vicious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as he maims his way through each of the bosses, four entire hit points (half their health meter!) at a time. What would be a ten-minute rematch in other games is instead reduced to a bare two minutes of violence at breakneck speed, and they are an amazing two minutes, since by now the player is probably just as sick of Pizza Head's antics as Peppino is. This extremely cathartic beatdown is backed by the excellent "Unexpectancy, Part 3" soundtrack.
• Portal: The fight (in a sense) with GLaDOS at the end of the game.
  • The dialogue in that fight's the icing on the you-know-what.
  • The fight with GLaDOS at the end of the Prelude mod is even more epic, spanning the entire building and not featuring one god damn Nintendo Hard fling puzzle (the same, sadly, could not be said of the rest of the mod).
• Portal 2:
  • The "fight" at the end of the game, which, if it doesn't top the original, at least is just as awesome. Especially the ending. Lunacy.
  • Concept versions of that fight were considerably more awesome. Wheatley had access to turrets. And mashy spike-plates. And flamethrowers.
• [PROTOTYPE] features a Mêlée à Trois between Alex Mercer, the infected (and their Mother, Elizabeth Greene), and the Marines and BlackWatch. In Times Square. And Elizabeth's One-Winged Angel form is practically a Kaiju. And Mercer gets to take her down. The final boss battle is slightly less epic, but a Melee with the closest thing to an Evil Counterpart the game throws at you, onboard an aircraft carrier, while a nuke is ticking away and the carrier's fighter wing is bombing the deck is definitely awesome.
• A possible Psychonauts Moment of Awesome (and Funny) Boss would be "Kochamara" from the Lungfishopolis level. He's not that hard to beat, but he manages to lampshade both a bunch of combat video game tropes and the entire giant-monsters-in-Tokyo type genre as well.
• Psychonauts 2: Truheltia Memonstria is a fight against a three-headed giant plant while sailing on a door in the middle of a raging storm. The gameplay is simple but fun, as you swap between "lanes" and attack with Telekinesis and Psi Blast, while helping Bob break out of the Moth's cocoon in between phases. In addition to being a great fight, there's also the Catharsis Factor of seeing Bob give the Moth a much-needed takedown after how unhelpful and condescending it's been throughout the level.
• Pulseman has the Mirror Match against The Rival Veil; you're tasked to fight against someone with your moves and your powers, but who is also invulnerable to your standard attacks, including your Slash Arrow. What do you do? Well, the two of you both have access to the Volteccer move, and you can bet that Veil will use it at the earliest opportunity. The solution is to also turn yourself into a hyperactive Bouncing Battler and fling yourself bodily at Veil while he tries to do the same to you. Eventually you two will collide, your identical inverse electrical energies will cancel each other out in a screen-shaking shock that actually lags the game into momentary slow-motion, and Veil will be stunned for a moment until he gets his feet under him again. In that small window, you have to get close to him while both of you are falling and slash him before he lands because that's the only time he's vulnerable. All the while, the BGM playing for this battle is with the fast-paced and awesome Metamorphoser track.
• Punch-Out!!:
  • The titular Final Boss of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!. Hits hard, especially at the very beginning where it's 90 seconds of nothing but One-Hit KO uppercuts. Beat him, and he congratulates you on your finger speed.
  • The Wii version's Superboss: Donkey. Freaking. Kong. What makes it even better is the sheer difficulty of this fight. He's constantly taunting you, he offers few opportunities to get stars, he hits hard, and his patterns are hard to predict. A truly epic battle from a character from the Mario universe, of all places.
  • Mr. Sandman in the Wii game's Title Defense mode makes for one heck of a Final Boss. He gains the ability to wink and QUICKLY follow it with an uppercut that can wipe out a third of your health bar, and he delivers increasingly long barrages of these at the start of each round and after each knockdown (yours OR his) before resuming his normal patterns. If you knock him down enough times, he'll fly into a rage where he'll do nothing BUT wink and uppercut for a whole minute! However, if you can survive the onslaught, Mr. Sandman tires out and leaves himself completely open; you can punch him freely for as long as you like, gaining a star with every third punch, before finally putting your accumulated Stars into one last Star Punch to finish him off! Epic off the charts with this fight.
  • The Club Nintendo Premium match against Doc Louis, mainly the "Sparring" difficulty, where you really see Doc is more than a fat guy who keeps taking your bike.
    Doc Louis: I INVENTED the Star Punch!
• The final boss of Purple gets irritated by his health display, so he throws his Ultra Frisbee at it, cracking it and rendering it useless. You go through the rest of the battle with no indication whatsoever of how much health he has left.
• Lord Bane of Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords: He will kick your ass fast. He will kick your ass hard, with 4 devastating spells, each requiring only 5 of one type of mana. So when you manage to return the favor, the sense of satisfaction is major. Particularly if you didn't take time out to load up on uber-spells like Berserk Rage, Stone Gaze, and/or Death Gaze.
• Pyre: All Liberation Rites are some of the most emotionally charged moments of the game, invariably ending in someone being freed. Furthermore, you have the melancholic and powerful "Never to Return" being sung by Tariq and Celeste. All of the bosses you previously faced will bring their A-Game to a Liberation Rite making up for an even better fight than when they were fought previously. Special mention goes to Oralech, the leader of the final triumvirate you'll face. The match is where the game just removes all the stops on the AI, causing them to go all out, playing ultra aggressively and using all the various tricks and fake outs the AI accumulates over the game. And then it starts raining meteors from the sky...
• Radiant Historia's Final Boss battle is incredibly epic and challenging, and one hell of a send off for an amazing game. It's a Marathon Boss with three phases (four if you count the previous battle against the Black Chronicle) with three different movesets for each one, and it becomes fiercer and fiercer while you fight it, meaning that you really have to go all-out in this battle. All of this is set in Historia, with "An Earnest Desire of Grey" blaring in the background. The game itself was already awesome, but this battle takes it to the fullest, and it's especially satisfying after the slog that is the last dungeon.
• Due to the fact that Radiant Silvergun has about two dozen of bosses (none of them which are recycled) witch almost every single one of them seems to determine to kill you using every trick in the book, you'll experience a Moment of Awesome very often (at least if you are a skilled player).
• Raiden:
  • The True Final Boss of IV, Horda Gestorada, also qualifies, being one of the only True Final Bosses in the Raiden series with the other one being from Raiden DX. The boss is only accessible on the second loop, and the boss consists of the Red Crystal being attached to a huge battleship, with three phases for the battle. The battle is even better if you don't use any bombs on the boss. Oh, yes, and just before the final battle with the boss, you hear an awesome remix of Raiden II's first stage theme leading up to this boss.
  • Divine Rampart from V took it up a notch. It deserves a Shout-Out to that Photoshop Flowey and Asriel Dreemurr combined. Or if you prefer, Dark Matter.
• Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal:
  • The battle with Courtney Gears. A firefight with an insane robotic pop star on an MTV-esque stage while a remix of said robot's hit single "Death to Squishies" blares in the background? Awesomeness.
  • The final boss fight against Dr. Nefarious is an awesome, intense fight. After the insanely difficult battle against Drek and the absolute pushover that was the Giant Protopet, Nefarious hits the sweet spot between the two, possessing attacks that force you to stay on your toes, and won't punish you overly if you mess up. It's nice in concept as well — Nefarious might be a bumbling fool while in cutscenes, but when he's forced to fight, he's very capable of holding his own.
• The battle with Dr. Nefarious in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. He's one of the few you can't RYNO spam to death and he shoots freakin' laser beams and does all sorts of crazy stuff.
  • And immediately following that is the climactic final boss fight against Azimuth. It's a tense one on one battle where you have to fight tooth and claw and use everything in your arsenal to bring him down, all while the Great Clock is falling apart around you. No gimmicks, no other enemies summoned, just pure teeth clenched combat as you fight to determine the fate of all existence. It's basically the "Anakin Vs. Obi Wan" moment of the entire franchise, and it's a truly challenging yet extremely fun fight.
• Rayman:
  • Reflux from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. The champion of a race of feared warriors, who you have to battle in an underground arena surrounded by lava. While the rest of his people watches the fight. Who keeps hurling fireballs at you and calls down flaming rocks. Epic.
  • The first boss fight against Hoodstomper. You have to activate switches to get a missile power-up to fire at him, while running around and avoiding his legs (It Makes Sense in Context), and making sure that he doesn't destroy the missile power-up before you can get to him. After you defeat him, YOU get his contraption, which you then use to annihilate waves of Hoodlums effortlessly, all while awesome music plays and hilarious commentary is played.
  • Strictly speaking, it's more of a complex level than a boss - but "My Heartburn's For You" in Rayman Origins is just as epic as its name is punny. Rayman plunges into a dragon's digestive system, dodges flames in his stomach, and makes his way back out!
• The Final Boss of Razing Storm. You encounter a huge freaking battleship and begin by dismantling the cannons and lasers on its underside with a rocket launcher. Then the rear hatch opens and you proceed to blow away troops firing down at you ("Have a nice flight, sucker!"). After more Beam Spam, the battle culminates with you facing off with the front of the battleship, which has A SKULL FACE WITH A Wave-Motion Gun ON IT. "Let's show them who the real soldiers are!"
• Resident Evil:
  • Resident Evil 3's Nemesis. As if the fact that his name's in the title doesn't hint that he's a tough bastard, he pretty much ruins your day constantly throughout the game. Near the end, where you're in the Dead Factory, he literally won't stop until you blast his limbs and head off. The fight where he mutates into a giant monstrosity's also memorable since you finally get to kill him. With a railgun the size of a truck.
  • He only got better in the remake! The first boss battle has him pull out a friggin' flamethrower, which he uses with frightening efficiency. His incredible agility and tentacle grabs ensure he will always have you in range of the flamethrower, making for a tense and desperate struggle. This time around, he also has a new form looking like a xenomorph, which trades away weapons for ferocious close-range attacks while still retaining his intelligence. As for the final battle, while the Railgun is a bit smaller this time around, you get to show it straight down his throat for the kill.
  • Also from Resident Evil 4, we have Jack Krauser: coming nearly immediately after another taxing boss fight, this epic three-parter boss fight is the one everyone remembers. Crazy ambushes? Check. Rambo-esque traps? Check. Crazy awesome quick time events? Oh yes. Your knife, normally a desperation weapon, doing as much damage as a magnum? Or how about his super-human abilities, the fact that his primary weapons are a knife an exploding bow, grenades, and a machine gun, or him entering his One-Winged Angel form as he sets up explosives, giving you a time limit that, while generous, truly kicks up the adrenaline. Combine this with over-the-top machismo and enough Foe Romance Subtext and two-way motivation rants with Leon, and it's enough to make any gamer squeal with delight.
  • The Ndesu fight from Resident Evil 5 definitely qualifies. Fanservice? Check. Satisfying weapon? Check. Unlimited ammo? Check. A sudden break away from the slightly repetitive third-person action? Check. Mass destruction? Check. Balance? Check. It. Is. Awesome.
  • Wesker. The QTE events, the smack talk between characters, the EPIC cutscene that takes place in the assault bomber? Also doubles up as a Funny Moment: succeed in counter-attacking certain boss abilities, and Chris will shake his fist around after nearly breaking it on the other guy's face.
  • The Wesker fight at the end of the Resident Evil 5 DLC Lost in Nightmares is a timed mission that is completely intense and frantic, causing you to be on your toes the entire fight.
  • The final fight with Simmons in the Leon campaign of Resident Evil 6. He takes on the form of a giant monster fly, with blades, absorbs zombies wandering around to heal (which double as a way to farm ammo if needed - and you'll probably need it.) Stabbing one of those zombies with a massive pole to use a lightning rod so when the boss tries to heal using that zombie, so it'll get a massive electric shock. Simmons being a Determinator from the point you do start fighting him, though, makes the final decisive rocket to his big fly face, massive drop, and impalement all the more satisfying.
  • From Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the first two fights with Jack Baker are some of the highlights of the game. The first one has you scampering around a garage collecting items and evading his attacks, ultimately starting up Ethan's car, resulting in one of two outcomes: you get it started fast enough to repeatedly run him over until he manages to get on the roof and wreck it, or you take too long and he rips you out of the car, gets in himself, and starts drifting and doing donuts around his garage, taunting you all the way as you attempt to shoot him. The second battle is the most ridiculous, yet terrifying close-quarters chainsaw duel ever, forcing you to duck and dodge around his gigantic chainsaw scissors and repeatedly saw his face open. Damn.
  • The fight with Jack's wife, Marguerite. You're locked in a dark, extremely ambient greenhouse, which consists of two floors of tight spaces and blind corners. Marguerite has mutated into a long-armed, bloated monstrosity that crawls around inside the walls and on the ceiling, and can thus pop out to attack from any angle with no warning. All you can do is pray you find her before she finds you. It's among the most terrifying fights in the whole series.
  • The Final Boss of the last Resident Evil 7 DLC, "End of Zoe". It's your final battle with a heavily mutated and degrading Jack Baker, which is already awesome, but this one is a straight-up fist fight in the foyer of the Baker house. You have a Power Fist, he has Combat Tentacles, and all you can do is brutally wail on each other while Joe reminisces about his and Jack's childhood together. It ends with you finally putting Jack down for good... by delivering a Megaton Punch so strong that it completely disintegrates his head and his entire upper body along with it.
  • Resident Evil Village ups the ante with the first major boss, Lady Alcina Dimitrescu. It was a case of I Knew It! as she not only goes into One-Winged Angel, but turns into what's essentially a FUCKING DRAGON! She forces Ethan to hide from her dive bombing at him, but sending swarms of insects at him while in full on Villainous Breakdown mode. The finale comes with her dragging him down in a Taking You with Me, but she ends up the one dead and he walks away.
  • The second boss, Lady Beneviento, has Ethan in a No-Gear Level and trapped in a house with creepy puppets while her main doll, Angie, stalks him. Ethan has to find and stab Angie out of all the many puppets in the house or it ends in a deadly Zerg Rush.
• Rez:
  • The final sequence (with the four minibosses and the big room). That's an experience that no game will ever recreate.
  • The Area 4 boss, where you chase a giant shapeshifting creature of cubes through corridors while the pounding rave tune "Rock is Sponge" plays.
• Ridge Racer brings us the duels against the 13th Racing, Lizard Nightmare, or its most used moniker - the Rivelta/Soldat Crinale. It's always the same: a dark supercar/sports prototype with devil imagery, a scorching top speed, and super-skilled AI. You have to be on your game to win against it, and it's a tense duel every time, and worth it when victory means parking it in your garage. Its counterpart, the Kamata Angelus (originally known as White Angel), counts as well, especially considering that it's usually even harder to beat than the Crinale. Of course, you also unlock it if you beat it.
• Rift: Akylios. When first introduced, it was apparently a guild-raid level challenge worthy of any WoW encounter, such that it was celebrated with a YouTube video commemorating its first defeat. Even watered down to casual level play as part of an "Intrepid Adventure", and presented in a format it's nigh impossible to ultimately lose to, he's still a hell of a cinematic set piece, and a meat grinder easily capable of killing inattentive party members repeatedly - at the end of a gauntlet that will test all your basic and core play skills.
• Ristar:
  • Adahan, another example of the sheer fun resulting from fighting in an endless vertical shaft, with the bonus of showing up early enough to take on before the game gets hard enough that you really wish you could save your game or earn a password...
  • How about Automaton's boss? It's against a large, brutish, ogre-like alien with cyber-armor. No strategies here, just headbutt! Occasionally, he faints, and you have to headbutt a CRANE ARM to cause damage to it. About halfway through the fight, it even shoots HADOUKENS at you!
  • Even better is the final boss, Kaiser Greedy, who throws bullet-shooting drones and red versions of the mushroom-like enemies seen throughout the game, black balls with eyes that can only be described as enemies' CORPSES, nigh-unavoidable lightning strikes, and even rips open one-hit kill black holes. And you can avoid being sucked into them. Did we mention that you're a cute little star with stretchy arms and sneakers? And you win?
• Rocket Knight Adventures:
  • The first fight against Axel Gear. You just spent the entire level being chased by Axel in a giant robot. At the very end of the level, you cross a series of platforms only to be confronted by another robot. Only this one is empty. At which point, It is officially On.
  • That pales in comparison to the last fight against Axel Gear. After an already epic one-on-one, he shatters the spaceship's hull, and you spend the next few minutes duking it out with him while clinging horizontally to a set of exposed plumbing with debris flying past you into vacuum. Your last hit detonates his jetpack, and the screen fades gray as he's flung, trailing fire, into open space in slow motion. It wasn't just an awesome boss, it was an Awesome Moment for the Sega Genesis itself.
  • Then there's the final boss battle against the pig supercomputer. He rolls out a pretty slow series of attacks for a while, with the music being a rather odd choice for a final battle. After a few hits, though, the supercomputer teleports to the top of the screen, a sped-up version of the normal boss music plays, and the boss starts firing out those slow attacks way faster. After defeating it, the player makes their way to a nearby escape pod out of the space station, and the player is treated to an end-game cutscene of the pod escaping just in time to escape the...wait, what's that behind Sparkster's pod? Oh, Crap!. Cue the core of the supercomputer chasing you through space itself, with you being defenseless inside your weaponless escape pod. How do you win this battle? The boss is so hell-bent on killing you that it chases you into the atmosphere, where it ''burns up and explodes due to the heat of re-entry. Yet another Awesome Moment for the Sega Genesis itself.
• RosenkreuzStilette:
  • Kahl Palesch only appears in Rosenkreuzstilette Weißsilber, taking Pamela's place in her own stage.
  • Freudia is awesome despite being That One Boss. Some good writing in Spiritia's pre-battle cutscene, a unique (and awesome) battle theme, a health bar that is always red in Desperation Mode throughout the fight, an original and completely different attack pattern from all other bosses and a massive jump in difficulty compared with the warmup fight in the prologue, and the challenge of avoiding the barrage of ice shards, snowflakes, and lasers make for one unforgettable boss, hard though she is.
  • Grolla's fight with Spiritia, replacing her own boss in her home stage now that she's a playable character. Not only does she avoid the usual reputation of these kinds of bosses, but she uses strategic fighting and won't hesitate to use moves your character was weak against as a boss, again with a unique battle theme. Lily will even give her a Cross Tank when her health goes down, making it genuinely feel like a battle against another player. It's a frantic and crazy fight that, although tough, is worth the effort that brings to mind the fight against Copy X.
• R-Type:
  • The third level, the trope codifier of Battleship Raid in video games. Yes, the whole level is the boss, and you spend your time flying around blowing bits off it.
  • R-Type was in love with that kind of fight. Stage 4 of Super R-Type is just your small craft flying in and around a giant ship, culminating with a fight against its power supply. R-Type Delta did this with a huge legged battleship walking across a frozen lake at night. R-Type FINAL had Stage 3.0, where you do the same as in the original R-Type, but in 3D (and with all the interesting quirks that that implies), plus this one has a city-destroying laser that sucks you in while it charges. (Of course, you can destroy the laser for some massive points, if you're feeling adventurous.) The boss is, again, the core of the ship, except this one has much more Bullet Hell going for it.
  • Of course, then there's level F-C of R-Type FINAL. It's the best-hidden ending, and...wait, it doesn't have a boss! No matter; what it has instead is the longest and hardest level in R-Type history. Heroic music blares throughout, the story implies you're traveling through time to stop the Bydo before they ever cause the universe any trouble, and your skills will be put to the ultimate test. The lack of a single large enemy might make this fit better under Best Level Ever, except you only get one life. The challenge is above and beyond anything a simple boss could ever provide, exemplified near the halfway point by a HUGE wave of the standard mook spacecraft. It sounds unimpressive, but in-game, it's completely overwhelming to be caught in a huge wave of starfighters for a full minute.
• Sa Ga Frontier - Metal Black 3. Especially if Red learned Al-Phoenix before fighting him, then after Metal Black 3 uses Dark Phoenix, when Red uses Al-Phoenix again it becomes an even stronger version of that attack called Rei-Al-Phoenix. Bonus Points if Metal Black 3 uses Dark Phoenix on Red, makes it seem more rewarding.
• In Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, pretty much every battle from the second battle against Ranmaru at the end of Chapter 6 up to the first battle with Nobunaga in chapter 8. The two battles that bookend this period are sheer awesome Marathon Bosses, but in between you also get some bitchin' awesome defense missions and a Puzzle Boss in the form of the third Ranmaru battle...oh, right, and Dark Shinjiro.
• Salt and Sanctuary, being a Souls-like game, is bound to have some highly memorable, enjoyable bosses.
  • The Sodden Knight, the first boss you are required to defeat to progress. While fairly simplistic compared to later bosses, his memorable design, ability to rapidly close the gap between you and him with a lightning attack, some devastating combos and fucking lightning powers make him a worthy introduction to the game.
  • The Kraekan Wyrm. A perfectly atmospheric Battle in the Rain against a pretty large dragon who is the first boss that makes it clear that the game does not fuck around. It hits hard, moves surprisingly quick at points, and hits you with devastating fire attacks that, without the 100% fire resisting shield found in the area, will absolutely shred you and, should you somehow survive, leave you with noticeably less max health for the rest of the fight. It's one hell of a Wake-Up Call Boss and leaves a lasting impression.
  • Another Kraekan boss is Murdiella Mal. While she is an optional boss that doesn't reward you with anything beyond a pittance of gold and a boss weapon crafting material, she's worth fighting just for how awesome she is. With a variety of high-damaging holy attacks (yes, a Kraekan of all things using holy attacks; wrap your brain around that), lore that depicts her as being otherworldly to a point where she walks on a line between the celestial and physical planes, and a design reminiscent of the Moonlight Butterfly, Murdiella Mal is a deadly opponent.
  • After the Breather Boss that is the Untouched Inquisitor, going up to the top of the area you fight him in will reveal the Third Lamb, a humongous griffin-like beast that has clearly seen better days. She is vicious and deadly, can spit lightning and does so with impunity, and is absolutely relentless, making her a much more satisfying battle than the one preceding her. Her tragic lore helps too, and you can have some pride in the fact you freed a once magnificent beast from a painful existence.
  • The Forgotten Three. A humongous reveal, especially if you're a follower of the Three, this triple threat of decrepit, maddened gods are fought at such a stage that you will be fully capable of running circles around them while you take them apart. Their actual patterns are simplistic, but it's an absolute blast to kite them around and seamlessly dodge their attacks and is an amazing example of just how badass you can be.
  • Kraekan Dragon Skourzh, one of the most impressive designs in the game, an excellent moveset, and a hugely atmospheric battle against the god-like creature that actually ha your ship sunk, and your mission ruined. Not too difficult, but definitely entertaining.
  • The Final Boss itself, The Nameless God. No weaknesses, no cheap shots, no cheese, no gimmicks. Just you and him in a battle of raw power and skill, to put an end to centuries of misery once and for all.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game:
  • Matthew Patel, the first boss of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. As soon as he jumps out of the background and your character deflects an attack from him, you know epic shit's about to go down. It also helps that his theme music is one of the best in the game.
  • From the same game, Nega Scott, who is a combination of this trope and That One Boss.
• Ugh-Zan III, the final boss of Serious Sam: The First Encounter. He's 330 feet tall and has rocket launchers and laser rifles the size of buildings! And the music is pretty epic too.
• Shadow Complex deserves a mention for its final boss. An entire lake drains away to reveal a huge gantry that has missile silos and launches an Airborne Aircraft Carrier. You can't attack it directly; your only option is to fight through the army of Spider Tank and Strider Robot enemies and respawning soldiers to use the base's own missile silos against the carrier. It's pretty awesome. And in order to get one of the achievements, you've got to forsake the powered armor and other upgrades in the game and do this armed only with a pistol, grenades, a foam gun and the clothes on your back.
• Shadow Hearts:
  • The final Duel Boss against Fox Face, helped a lot by the scene that comes before it. There's also Atman.
  • In Covenant, we have the battle with Astaroth. After a truly awesome Shut Up, Hannibal!, "Astaroth", the best song in the game, starts playing and the throwdown begins.
• Pretty much every one in Shadow of the Colossus. This is, after all, the game that named the Colossus Climb.
  • Nearly every colossus in the game was pants-wettingly awesome, particularly the battle with the 13th colossus. A simply gigantic flying serpent which soars over the desert, you have to puncture the three gas sacks on its underside with arrows to cause it to lose altitude until its fins are trailing along the ground. Then you have to chase it down on your horse until you're riding alongside one of its fins, leap from your speeding horse onto the fin and climb up the fin until the colossus returns to the sky again. Running along its massive back towards it vulnerable points as it soars hundred of meters in from the ground is an incredible thrill.
  • Phalanx, the 13th colossus (physically the largest Colossus, even including Malus◊ (the last one)), is also notable for how emotionally powerful the fight is. While all the other Colossus to some degree fought back and thus you could always see them as enemies, the 13th Colossus never fights back at all. He runs from you frantically the whole fight, trying to escape the desert bowl he seems to be trapped in, really hammering in the My God, What Have I Done? theme of killing the Colossi.
  • Search YouTube for Avion, otherwise known as Colossus #5, and you might find a particular stunt where the player hangs from one wing, waits for the colossus to bank sharply in one direction, then drops straight down and grabs hold of the other wing without even touching the main body. Also, it's relatively easy to leap from the body almost to the tip of the tail in one jump when the colossus is flying straight since you have strong air currents at your back.
  • The final colossus is a titanic and menacing colossus fought on a stormy night, which hurls devastating bolts of energy at you from range. You have dash from cover to cover and dive into trenches even to approach it, then you have to climb it. And while the entire game is about climbing colossi, this is almost unquestionably the greatest challenge in the game- it's not as much of a puzzle as some of the other colossi, it's simply hard- and unbelievably awesome. He also has some of the most epic music in the history of epic music in the entertainment industry. It's even more intense if you decide to ditch the whole cover thing and do this.
• Shantae (2002) has the Twinkle Palace boss. It's a freaking game of Joust!
• Silent Hill 2, Pyramid Head. Whether it's the Hopeless Boss Fight (in which he can't be damaged), whether it's when he becomes That One Boss (in which there's suddenly two of them), or whether it's simply fleeing from him in the Labyrinth, it's easy to see why this utterly terrifying monster (literally and figuratively) of an Implacable Man is one of the most iconic elements of the series.
• From Sin and Punishment: Successor to the Earth, while it's hard to pick just one, the fight against Fake Earth was suitably awesome. Let that sink in for a moment. You fight an entire planet.
  • Its sequel, Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, has a lot of fantastic boss fights as well. Just to name one, the Gryphon Keeper — it is two previous bosses of the stage combined Voltron style!
• Skylanders:
  • The first game has the final battle with Kaos and the Hydra. While you face a gauntlet of old bosses at first, the two monsters that destroyed the Core of Light fill the arena with harmful magic once they get serious.
  • Drill X from Skylanders: Giants, one of the few bosses who have a health gauge... and who announces every stance change with a sing-a-long.
  • Chompy Mage from Giants, whom you fight Ikaruga-style, by having to alter reality so you can turn his barrage of damaging bullets into healing ones several times.
  • Robo-Kaos, while he is very hammy and summons minions most of the time, is memorable because most of the time he trades blows with Ermit and his massive mech. Whenever Kaos has the upper hand, you have to save your friend so he can keep fighting. Eventually, Ermit will finally get the advantage, so you must exploit it.
  • The first major boss of Skylanders: SWAP Force, Evil Glumshanks, is a simple Bullfight Boss, but it manages to be quite fun, especially since playing as Stealth Elf or Stink Bomb and turning invisible means he can't see you, plus you finally see the most prominent minion of Kaos fight you for once.
  • Mesmeralda, for being a boss full of personality, making the fight a puppet show about herself and being frantic gameplay-wise.
  • Kaos's Mother from Swap Force just summons a bunch of Mooks to attack you... so it seems simple, right? Well, before you fight her, she speaks directly to the player, not the Skylander. She's using your own style of interacting with the world against you. In order to bring her back to the field, you have to take the Skylander off the portal (a mechanic not used anywhere else) since she is attempting to make her way to you. When she says "Prepare for a battle you will never forget", she was not kidding!
  • All the Doom Raiders from Skylanders: Trap Team are a blast to fight, but special mention to Wolfgang and the Golden Queen. Wolfgang pulls out all manner of music-themed attacks, from swinging his guitar to a power slide while rock music plays in the background and holographic versions of himself are singing. The Golden Queen starts out rather standard outside of exploiting gold to heal herself, then turns into a freaking giant! After fighting her for a bit like that, you have outrun her as she charges towards you before you finally get to bring a structure down on her.
  • Kaos from Trap Team might be his best fight in the series. After using the Golden Queen's weapon to power himself up, he turns into a monstrous form that only gets more monstrous as the battle goes on. From summoning swords to element bullets (which you can use to heal with), shockwaves, DoomSharks, and lasers that move all over the platform you are fighting on. Since he got his hands in Traptanium, he can break the fourth wall just like his mom, and tries to bring the fight straight to you twice. All set to an awesome music track. And the icing on the cake? Trapping Kaos himself at the end of the fight.
• The final battle with Mandler in Sol Cresta makes all the other battles against Mandler in the previous Terra Cresta games look tame by comparison. It starts with a rematch against Mandler in its first form from the first Terra Cresta game; it does its usual Kaizo Trap with the core ejecting the body and shooting bullets at you when you defeat it. Then Mandler reemerges as Sol Mandler, using an elemental barrier to defend itself until it eventually turns gold. It's even better in the Dramatic Mode, as it ups the ante by having you Hold the Line for a cutscene, until Yamato powers up to its 11th-Hour Superpower before finally finishing off Mandler for good.
• The boss fights from Soul Reaver (at least, most of them... oddly enough, the fights against Kain were the least interesting in a lot of ways) were all great because they all involve using the bosses' environment in some way against them, although the challenge pretty much goes out of all of them once you figure out how you're supposed to wipe them out. They also have awesome intro sequences...in one, the boss has turned into a giant immobile insect whose body is gradually engulfing the building and you walk into some weird organic-looking halls before actually getting to him. In another, you climb a spiral set of "steps" in the spectral realm to emerge above the water and go back into the real world, to find the water you were just in contains a giant shark-monster.
  • In Soul Reaver 1 you learn that Kain resurrected you and your vampire brethren from the souls of six Sarafan knights, warrior-priests dedicated to ridding Nosgoth of the vampire menace. At the end of Soul Reaver 2 you break into the Sarafan stronghold and kill those same knights, ending with a climactic duel against your mortal self. Incredibly. Awesome.
• Soul Calibur has the following:
  • The hidden fight against Night Terror, a winged version of Nightmare with WINGS and that enjoys shooting Frickin' Laser Beams at you. in Soul Calibur III.
  • Floor 60 ascending in Tower of Lost Souls in 4. You get three characters against a single Algol. And for good reason: he has 200 Health, Attack, and Defense, and uses some of the most epic combos in the series.
  • One of Algol's combos merits its own mention. Algol knocks you into the air, hits you a couple of times, and then uses his THRONE as a BASEBALL BAT!
• Space Channel 5 has amazing bosses in the series, but there are two that really stand out from the rest. The first is King Purge, a primate-like robot with speakers on its hands, and you have to use the power of Michael Jackson to beat it. The second is Great Purge, where you sing the main theme song with the final boss.
• Another one from Sierra. Space Quest 4's fight against Vohaul. Holy crap. The Master Computer is on a countdown to self-destruct and Vohaul has pulled a Grand Theft Me against Roger's Kid from the Future. Roger, who isn't the most athletic of guys, is fighting hand to hand with his hijacked kid, manages to knock him back, gets the disk, manages to swap his kid back into his body, and Vohaul to disk just as the counter runs down. Whew!
• Spider-Man: Miles Morales:
  • Prowler. Much like Taskmaster in the first game, his boss fight was praised for being an engaging Mirror Boss and having interesting personal stakes for Miles. Many fans would've preferred Prowler being the central antagonist of the game over Tinkerer.
  • Tinkerer is an intense, fast paced duel as you pit all your gadgets, powers and speed against the Tinkerer's vast array of weapons set to an emotional backdrop and Awesome Music almost as good as the first game's climax.
  • The chase/battle with Rhino at the beginning of the game is excellent on many levels: showing how out of his depth Miles is at first, establishing immediate action and tension, adding new facets to gameplay (venom power and Rhino wrangling), and a sly nod toward/subversion of Peter's tendency to die to set up Miles taking the mantle.
  • The boss at the end of the Holo-training missions is a neat surprise, and manages to be as fun and thrilling as the best bosses from the first game, especially once a second Holo-Vulture joins the fray.
• The Deadpool battle in Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. A chaotic confrontation against three Deadpools, none of whom stop talking, some great bits of comedy (such as 'Pool teleporting in with a card to announce the start of the next "round" or two Deadpools interviewing Spidey-as a grapple attack.A great score helps too.
• Splatterhouse: The new remake features Biggy Man, an enemy with CHAINSAWS FOR HANDS!!! The fight starts out with you blasting him with a shotgun before he disappears and drops you through the floor, separating you from your gun. Next, you have to duck and weave, avoiding his chainsaw attacks and hitting him between attacks. If he hits you with one of his attacks, he'll vanish and reappear, trying to cut you down from behind. During the final phase, you rip off one of his arms, then use his chainsaws against him, giving you a chance to pay him back for any difficulty this fight gave you, before finally going in for the big finish.
• Splatoon:
  • Splatoon's final boss, DJ Octavio, is an epic, five-stage Marathon Boss against a Humongous Mecha. The amount of destruction he'll be hurling towards you at any given time rapidly becomes just silly: swarms of homing missiles, grenade-hurling summoned enemies, and the Killer Wail, among other things. And you'll be dodging these salvos, trying to return what you can, while bouncing about on sometimes precariously small platforms which can rapidly become covered in hostile, damaging ink. And that's to say nothing of the music. DJ Octavio's theme song ("I Am Octavio"), which he composed himself and is blasting from his mech, is an absolute club banger, but then you get to the final phase of the fight. Your Mission Control hijacks the radio and delivers a Theme Music Powerup in the form of "Calamari Inkantation", an electro-pop melody that's so good, even Octavio can't help but dance to it. Finally, the American localization tops it all off with wonderfully insane Boss Banter.
  • Splatoon 2's final boss, for what it lacks in the difficulty of the previous game's, makes up for in pure spectacle. DJ Octavio is back, and he's brought a friend: Callie, Marie's missing cousin, brainwashed into playing for the Octarians. Cue a pitched battle against Octavio's new machine, with the same kind of wild diversity the first game had. Bomb Launchers, rocket punches, showers of ink, and even takoyaki grenades are hurled your way until Marie swoops in to snap Callie out of her mind control. Again, what really sells this as an amazing finale is the background music, featuring dramatic arrangements of Callie and Marie's theme songs performed by a full orchestra. This leads into the final phase of the fight, where a newly reunited Squid Sisters belt out a Triumphant Reprise of "Calamari Inkantation" as Sheldon lends you a modified Rainmaker (the Purposely Overpowered weapon from the game's multiplayer mode of the same name) for you to use as you ride grind rails high in the air like you're playing an early 2000s Sonic the Hedgehog game. And since you're using the Rainmaker, what better way to finish DJ Octavio off by slamming the weapon down hard on his head like he's a pedestal. To call it incredibly satisfying, especially after DJ Octavio's abuse of such a beloved character, is selling it so short it's almost a joke.
  • Octo Expansion delivers a twofer. After an extended escape sequence which feels like something out of Portal, you reach the final elevator and find yourself having to duel a Brainwashed and Crazy Agent 3, your character from the previous game. It's a no-frills marathon fight against a character who has become The Dreaded of the Octarian Army, and is trying to take you out using every special weapon in the book, all while an amazing breakcore remix of the series' main theme plays. But you pull it off, you escape to the surface, and get yourself ready to finally see the city of Inkopolis... when a giant human statue raises out of the bay and begins charging a death ray that will obliterate the city in question. Time for a Turf War! Objective: Ink to save the world! With the help of Marina's Hyperbombs, you must scale the statue and cover it in ink to prevent it from fully charging, with two of Off The Hook's best songs going in the background to keep you motivated. And when you're done, Pearl lets you know she'll take it from here and proceeds to use her powerful lungs to engage in a Beam-O-War struggle with the statue. The whole thing just devoutly follows the Rule of Cool to the letter from start to finish.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom's Final Boss is one of the most epic things in the Sponge Bob Squarepants franchise. Its battle is long and hard and has two forms. One is the Final Robot Boss Fight, which with every hit becomes increasingly difficult and fast-paced, as he adds new moves, as well as attacking faster and faster, to the point where you're gonna take a hit unless you're either extremely lucky or good at this boss. The second boss is a level. A freaking entire level where you have to destroy the generators inside Robo-Spongebob's head, destroying tons of robots and robot generators, all while using the many skills you learn in the game while dodging Robo-Plankton's onslaught of laser blasts. And the best part is it has the best music ever, which sounds like something out of Final Fantasy. Very memorable to any gamer who has played this game. Also the cutscenes are very amusing with a Ho Yay joke. The Movie's final boss can also be mentioned, and its music is also great.
• The final battle with Ripto in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!. The Ominous Latin Chorus, the orbs you've collected throughout the game can be used to unleash destructive power that both you AND the boss can use, and the finale where Ripto blasts the entire ground apart, converting it into a lava pool, forcing you and Ripto to use Golden Orb powerups to fly and shoot fireballs at each other.
• Many of the boss fights in Star Ocean: The Second Story. The final boss of the PSP remake Gabriel comes across as extremely badass when he states in prior to the battle that he didn't need anyone else and getting this far barely phases him. This along with her attacks and boss music fit the atmosphere of a Moment of Awesome perfectly.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time:
  • The battle against the Marquis of Dragons, Crosell. Battling a huge dragon while one of the game's best battle songs plays in the background? Amazing.
  • While many final bosses have some alternate form or transformation. Crosell just gets back up and stops fucking around.
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron:
  • The first time you get to go head-to-head against an insanely huge Star Destroyer in your dinky lil' B-Wing is... memorable to say the least.
  • It gets better. A later mission has you versing two Star Destroyers at the same time, with hordes of TIE fighters exploding everything around you (literally; you and possibly your two wingmates are the only Rebel fighters remaining at the end of the mission). A similar mission in Rogue Squadron III goes even further, tasking you with disabling three Star Destroyers only to launch an attack run against the freaking Executor, a ship at the very least eight times the size of a Star Destroyer, ending with you ramming into its command bridge, causing it to crash into the Death Star. Absolutely incredible.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed:
  • Even though the rest of the game was okay, the best part is the boss fight against an entire FRIGGIN' Star Destroyer.
  • The battle against the Star Destroyer is at least an awesome concept, if executed poorly. Darth Vader, on the other hand, pulled off both concept and execution.
  • Both the Emperor and Darth Vader; you fight the latter at the end, then for your final boss fight you choose between one of them by moving towards and attacking one or the other. Warning: if you choose Vader you not only get the Dark Side ending, but he's Nintendo Hard.
  • At the second mission to Raxus Prime, PROXY reveals that he's kept one of his forms hidden for years until just this moment — and he transforms into Darth Maul, as the Duel of the Fates theme starts blasting into your ears.
• Street Fighter: Any game where Akuma is a boss usually has a fun, albeit difficult fight with him. Akuma's AI is noted to be the one most similar to a real human player's, so the challenge comes from outfoxing him.
• Streets of Rage 2:
  • Shiva. An amazing example of a Duel Boss, which is powerful, can escape your grabs and grab you as well, and has a rush attack just like you. He returns in the third game as the Wake-Up Call Boss, and a third time in the bad ending where he is even stronger than in the second game.
  • Mr.X, the Final Boss. While many final bosses in beat'em ups bring a machine gun to a fistfight, few look as cool as him doing so, with his awesome music, his crazy look as he is shooting, his laugh and his fearsome gun butt strike making him very memorable.
  • A Dual Boss from the first game, Yasha and Onihime, gives people nightmares, and they re-appear in the third game with a new look and a new set of moves. They are ironically easier to beat, but it's much faster paced and more manic.
• Suikoden II:
  • The Climax Boss battle against Luca Blight, often voted as one of the most memorable boss battles in RPG history. Finally taking down this psycho is satisfying enough, but pelting him with countless arrows, battling him three times with three squads of your most powerful characters, pelting him with more arrows, and then defeating him in a one on one duel is just unbelievable.
  • There's also Lord Gorudo, late in the game. After the evil bastard hits Nanami with an arrow, possibly giving her a fatal injury, the hero and his former best friend Jowy, who were enemies but moments ago, are QUITE pissed, and team up to whip his ass to hell and back. Quite literally to hell and back, seeing as Jowy has several attacks that seem rather demonic, thanks to his Black Sword Rune. Attacks that stand out are one that heavily resembles a hellish version of Gilgamesh's Gate Of Babylon. The other attack seems to throw the victim so hard into the Void that Exdeath would be jealous.
• Super Robot Wars, being made of Epic and Awesome by its very nature, manages to deliver quite a few bossfights of this nature. Others verge on Nintendo Hard.
• Super Robot Wars: Original Generation: Come unprepared, and Dark Brain can be the most annoying boss, ever. But if you do get prepared, then get ready to face the hardest, best, and probably most epic boss battle in OG Gaiden. Dark Brain himself has tons of HP, regenerating greatly and has powerful attacks, and has TWO forms (both still have huge ass HPs). Taking both forms at one turn each does prove to be a challenge on your party formation (who support attacks who), what Seishin skill to use, etc etc. It even out-epics the final battle with Shu in Alpha Gaiden (and as a result, fighting against Shu after DB is beaten feels easier) And that's not even counting the fact that he has possibly the single most destructive attack animation of any game, ever. Super Nova? Puh-lease.
  • 2nd Original Generations is full of awesome bosses throughout the climax of the game, namely final bosses from several of the other games in the franchise, including AI-1, Perfectio, and Nashem Gan Eden. Then comes the True Final Boss, the Adamatron, piloted by Euzeth Gozzo, which is essentially a combination of the AI-1 and the Gan Eden. Also it has what is probably the longest attack in the franchise yet.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Melee introduced Crazy Hand, the destructive yang to Master Hand's creative yin. Even better, its appearance was at first a total surprise - you cruise along the Classic mode, fighting hard against an old, familiar foe as the final boss... then that cackle erupts, and Crazy makes its appearance. The rules had changed, and it was time to face up to the beatdown.
  • The final boss of Adventure Mode, meanwhile, is a giant Bowser. Nothing special, right? Well, get to him within 15 minutes on normal difficulty or higher, and you're in for a surprise once you beat him. Bowser's trophy rises back out from the abyss, and transforms into a more monstrous form. Say hello to Giga Bowser, who, if you haven't played the later games in which he's Bowser's Final Smash, is basically Bowser on fucking steroids and then some. If you beat him, give yourself a pat on the back - you just went up against a Final Smash, one-on-one, and you just kicked his ass. Just don't try and kill him with a Falcon Punch - the resulting explosion of kickass might kill you.
  • Tabuu, the final boss of the Subspace Emissary in SSBB. You're fighting basically a hologram humanoid—think Fighting Wire Frames from Melee but on MAJOR 'roids. He's spent much of the game manipulating The Ancient Minister, AKA the playable ROB, into sacrificing his robotic brethren so that Tabuu can invade from Subspace. He's mind-controlling Master Hand, which, in a case of Fridge Mind Screw, kind of implies he's the player (as Master Hand was in turn implied to be a child playing with his toys, which is effectively the player if usually minus the "child" part). At one point, he simultaneously one-shots the entire playable roster, resulting in terror when you go to save the game and all your character icons are gone. And that's just before you actually fight him, which involves instant teleport-explosions, throwing you with the chain he was using on Master Hand, various lasers (including one which involves him growing huge and his massive head approaching from the side of the stage), and, oh yeah, OFFWAVES. If you don't know how to spotdodge or roll with precise timing, or you're not playing a character that can stall offstage for a while, or you're on an Easy difficulty, it's an unavoidable kill. And with obligatory Awesome Music to boot. Surprisingly, he's not that hard until you get to upper difficulties, since he moves slowly on lower ones (and his every move isn't an OHKO). SSE had a couple other epic fights, such as Rayquaza, Duon, Galleom, and Meta Ridley.
  • 3DS/WiiU upped the ante with Master Core. If you're on a high enough difficulty, Master Hand and Crazy Hand go down early... then Master Hand's glove rips apart and a giant black swarm of stuff comes flying out— and it's gunning for you. What follows is a tense battle dealing with Master Core's multiple 'swarm' forms (from two up to four, depending on the intensity level). Each form has a different set of attacks; one will even lift Final Destination from time to time. Once you've knocked its entire mass away, Master Core reveals its final form: a dark smash ball that you can beat the stuffing out of before finishing it off with a smash attack. If you don't take too long, that is....
  • Out of all the bosses in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Marx, Dracula, Ganon and Rathalos are amongst the most revered due to their fights being both fun and faithful to the fights against them in their canon series.
  • The fights against Galeem and Dharkon are also noted as highlights of the mode thanks to their flashy attacks, amazing atmosphere, and the Awesome Music blaring in the background. The final battle that involves both of them at once is praised for the same reasons, along with being a very spectacular finale for the mode itself. Especially since, unlike several cases where you fight two bosses at once, the game makes clear they hate each other as much as they hate you, so it's better to switch targets often: if you stun one of them, the other will attack.
• In the Syndicate remake, enemy Agent Tatsuo makes for a hectic battle as you chase each other round the train station, trying to get behind him before he gets behind you while Tatsuo flash steps everywhere and deploys holographic duplicates to confuse you. When you finally manage to wear him down, you get to hack his hologram projector and blow it up in his face. Not to mention Skrillex's remix of the main theme playing in the background.

T - Z

• The The Tale of ALLTYNEX trilogy is a host to a number of wonderful boss battles.
  • KAMUI is the oldest game in the series, but still has a number of memorable encounters.
    • Stage 3 boss, Yellow Spider aka. Ougumo, is a real Wake-Up Call Boss. It uses both bullets and lasers to limit your movement and force you on the defensive and in the latter half of the encounter, you both fly up a disposal tunnel, with your craft constantly dodging laser beams, claw attacks, homing missiles, and homing explosives. It really does turn up the pace.
    • At the end of Stage 4 you face a wing of the mass production version of your Kamui craft. This fight alone is quite frantic, with the enemy fighters using the very same lock-on thunder your ship is equipped with (except there's a whole wing of them doing that), but when you manage to take them out, the real boss appears - Kamui Test Unit #0. This one is quite a formidable enemy, using lock-on projectiles, multiple laser beam drones, and a Wave-Motion Gun. And just when you deal enough damage, it spreads the Zodiac wings...
    • ALLTYNEX. A Master Computer that appears to also be a Reality Warper, as it teleports you to other arenas and summons lesser bosses to fight you before engaging you directly by creating colorful hexagons that fire various weapons at you. Plus the boss itself looks really cool and has Awesome Music playing in the background.
    • Finally, we have the second Final Boss itself, the Adjudicator. Which just so happens to contain the mind of the protagonist's father.
  • RefleX:
    • Your first introduction to awesomeness is the Stage 1-B boss, Virgo Type-Human. A huge birdlike craft that wrecked your carrier back at the start of the game, it attacks relentlessly with streams of bullets and a huge laser cannon that actually pushes your Phoenix all the way down when blocked. All to the tune of the Awesome Music "Crazy Goddess Virgo".
    • Eventually you get to the boss of 2-B, the iconic Scorpio making its comeback after KAMUI, this time as a fully-fledged boss. You both race at extremely high speeds along a gravity catapult leading into outer space while Scorpio uses its signature dual laser sweep, does bombing runs, and fires a whole goddamn lot of homing lasers, sometimes even attempting to suddenly smash your craft with its tail. Both the boss and the stage background are designed to give you a feeling of a frantic, ultra-fast duel.
    • After wrecking the Earth fleet along with its flagship, the Sagittarius, you encounter a new craft, Cancer. You first square off travelling through the hyperspace, eventually emerging at the Moon, where your duel takes up an entire stage. Here, the Cancer turns around and tries to smash you with its claw, all the while literally filling the entire screen with ungodly amounts of bullets and homing lasers. The duel could probably last even longer, if it wasn't for a blast from the back delivered by third party...
    • Stage 7 is basically one long boss fight against Raiwat Virgo (angelic Humongous Mecha), in which, partway through, the boss delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that even your reflection shield-equipped fighter cannot possibly withstand, causing you to die and your ship to be destroyed. Then your ship grows wings and becomes the ZODIAC Ophiuchus and it gains the ability to survive just about everything the increasingly-desperate Virgo throws at it, including the aforementioned beatdown, and Wave-Motion Gun blasts so huge that they cover the entire screen!
    • The final Area, set years after Area 7 and the ZODIAC Ophiuchus's destruction of ten other ZODIAC units (which we don't get to see), though at the expense of a huge majority of the Earth's population. It's a free-for-all deathmatch battle in Earth's orbit against the final ZODIAC, Libra, and two freaking Kamui fighters with all the artillery from the previous game, all the while a a rock-powered Dark Reprise of KAMUI's stage 1 theme plays. Late into the battle against ZODIAC Libra, it charges up a massive Wave-Motion Gun and fires it upward at you and any remaining Kamui units. The Kamui units explode spectacularly, but of course the Ophiuchus's infinite-use shield holds out against it. Libra tries it again and damages itself in the process! Finally, the penultimate phase of Libra consists of Attack Drones firing blue bullets at you. If you know of the Ophiuchus's special weapon, the Photon Blaster^*reflect bullets, but before they disappear, release the shield button, you can use the shots to kill Libra before it has a chance to go into its final (and exceptionally brutal) phase!
  • ALLTYNEX Second, the latest installment, also has a number of exciting enemy encounters, especially since the camera ofter pans and rotates to show them off during their introductions and subsequent phases and since the player craft has to come really close to them to use its blade and do any serious damage.
    • Area 2 is a variant of the Battleship Raid, where the player attacks an enemy space station in order to prevent it from wiping out the human fleet. After it is destroyed though, Adoni, the real boss, appears. Adoni is the first really challenging encounter in the game because it tends to move a lot in its first two phases and fire a whole lot of homing lasers. And when it loses its wings, it just grabs new ones from the station debris, first grabbing two long, straight pieces, then two curved pieces making a tight arena with Adoni's position looking awfully similar to Big Core MK-I Rev.2.
    • Continuing with the theme of starting every boss name with A, Area 4 boss is called Alacran. At first, neither the name of the boss nor its appearance will seem familiar, but mid-fight Alacran will transform into the iconic Scorpio form and do its signature laser sweep and homing laser barrage. The rematch (or the first match, since every game is a prequel) is just as frantic as the one in Reflex, especially since the arena is noticeably tighter than the last time. And if you're curious (or Spanish), you find out that in a flash of Bilingual Bonus, Alacran is Spanish for... Scorpio.
    • The penultimate boss, Alltynex, is quite memorable for the fact that, unless the player cuts down its cannons as fast as they appear, it manages to fill almost the entirety of the screen with Frickin' Laser Beams. Then it activates two rotating drones that do the same thing, forcing the player to move along with the safe space on the screen. Meanwhile, dealing actual damage to it requires coming extremely close to the core or spamming the buster rifle, which will drain the ship's power supply long before the fight is over. This version of Alltynex definitely puts up much more of a fight than the one in KAMUI.
• The Final battle of Tales of Monkey Island is also terrifying. In theory, you know you don't have a health meter of any kind, but the fantastic voice acting will make you feel like you really can't take another hit.
• The final boss of Tales from the Borderlands, The Traveler, is among the absolute best bosses Telltale Games have ever designed. Most climactic battles in their repertoire are simple Press X to Not Die sequences, and this one is no different (with the exception that you're controlling a giant robot instead of a normal-sized human)... at first. However, after a period of standard attacking and dodging sequences, your opponent is still standing and mostly unaffected. What do you do? Because the robot gains combat abilities by pulling techniques out of the pilot's mind, you pull your whole custom-selected Vault Team into the control room. Once this happens, the whole engagement turns from usual Telltale fare to a balls-to-the-wall Mortal Kombat-style fighting game, with you executing long strings of button combos to execute stunning moves based on the favored techniques of the people you chose to bring in. It's a long string of references, franchise nods, and unifying badassery designed to get the player hyped up, all culminating in a Shout-Out to Pacific Rim with the robot forming a massive sword out of nowhere and dicing the Traveler to bits. One couldn't ask for a better conclusion.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time:
  • The first Shredder fight in the Technodrome, for the SNES version. That highly amusing Camera Abuse mook toss? Actually has a use, and is the only way to defeat Shredder.
  • Super Shredder in the console ports^Noteincluding the Genesis Hyperstone Heist is difficult but entertaining. He's a teleporting magic ninja who requires a unique way to dodge (jump over the fire, stay on the ground when he shoots ice, avoid the green anti-mutagenic fireball), and he's only open to attack after launching one of his attacks. And he is fast. All those years of calling themselves Ninja Turtles finally comes to fruition, as the fight moves at blinding speed.
• Play Tekken 6. Arcade mode. Make it to Azazel. Beat him. CELEBRATE!
• Tenchu:
  • In the first game, the first fight against Onikage definitely counts; on top of a Shogun's palace, on a moonlit night, with Onikage's awesome Leit Motif. So epic.
  • In Tenchu 2 there is Ayame versus Tatsumaru. You just wanted so badly for it to happen, and it was very delivered.
• Terraria Calamity:
  • Cryogen is a fast boss that serves as the first entry into Hardmode, and a great one at that with relatively complex attack patterns coming from its total of six entire phases, each playing out differently than the last.
  • The Leviathan and Anahita are a great dual boss taking place underwater against a towering aquatic beast and its quick and nimble lure. The music is astounding for all three phases, the atmosphere is intense as hell, and you get some sweet rewards out of it. It helps that it is surprisingly fair for this point in the game. Well, unless you fight it at the start of the game.
  • The Plaguebringer Goliath is considered quite difficult, but her boss battle is a ton of fun, with the boss regularly summoning minions including miniboss versions of herself, deploying minefields of floating bombs, firing volumes of missiles, and repeatedly calling in airstrikes.
  • Providence serves as one hell of an introduction to Calamity's signature post-Moon Lord segment. She's a fast-paced boss packing high stats and an extremely wide variety of complex projectile attacks, ranging from massive fireballs, lingering flares, barrages of spears, gigantic lasers, and more. And while her fight is difficult, every single one of her attacks has at least one detectable way to work around it, and once you know what you're doing the fight is a ton of fun. This is taken up to eleven by the optional nighttime battle with Providence, which jacks up her power to an insane degree (making taking hits even more punishing), makes her attack patterns even more aggressive, and turns many of her attacks into full-on Bullet Hell - yet somehow rarely feeling unfair. This battle has further endeared the boss to the playerbase, and most players now consider Providence's night battle to be one of the most exciting and challenging experiences the mod has to offer.
  • The biggest qualifier would be The Devourer of of Gods, a giant all-powerful beast of a Climax Boss, possessing insane levels of difficulty, but equally insane levels of fun, helped by the awesome music. It's a colossal multi-phase Lightning Bruiser like no other, capable of taking nearly any hit for minimal damage while throwing out One-Hit KO attacks and flying around at insane speeds, with some hilarious banter coming from the worm.
• Tetris: The Grand Master 2 PLUS's "invisible roll" is one minute of playing TGM2 at instant-drop speed with the pieces turning invisible upon locking down. Achieving the conditions for this is a Moment of Awesome in itself, and then there's surviving it, which rewards you the titular Grand Master rank. You can watch someone complete it here (starting at 8:32).
• The Thunder Force series of Shoot Em Ups has plenty of awesome boss fights.
  • In V when you fight the Rynex ship you pilot in Thunder Force IV/Lightening Force, which docks into several giant mech armors during the course of the fight, all while the awesome intro theme from TFIV plays in the background. Also, the newest game in the series, Thunder Force VI, has giant versions of Thunder Force III, IV, and V's player ships as bosses.
  • Made even more awesome if you don't use Over Weapon or Syrinx's Wave shot to cheese through these bosses.
  • Segagaga for the Dreamcast parodies the TF bosses with a Shoot 'Em Up that ends with you fighting a Sega SG-1000...which then morphs into a Mark III (aka Master System)...then a Genesis (complete with Sega CD and 32X addons)...and finally a Saturn. All the boss forms except for the Saturn consist of the system shooting sprites from its various games (the Mark III fires off Fantasy Zone bosses for example). All this punctuated by truly epic boss music.
• Time Crisis:
  • Jack Mathers, the Stage 2 boss of Time Crisis 4. Captain Rush teams up with you and wrestles him throughout the battle. The final boss battle, which has you in a last-ditch effort to destroy the Big Bad on top of a human pyramid and stop squadrons of unmanned bombers from nuking major U.S. cities, would qualify too, if it weren't for the fact that the ending of this boss battle is Always Close. But it does make up for that with Ominous Latin Chanting.
  • The first boss, Marcus Black, is worthy of note: after pursuing him in the streets of a big city while he's on a truck, you're in a helicopter and the enemy's tanks try to stop you in all manners, you finally blow his truck's tires with a sniper rifle making it slip and fall down. No One Could Survive That!, right? WRONG: the boss literally blows his way out of the truck and says "You want it? Then come over here and... take it!" before starting to shoot you with AN ANTI-TANK RIFLE. ONE-HANDED. Cue guitar riffs, boss fight, and Stuff Blowing Up.
  • Every battle with Wild Dog is awesome, especially in 3, where Wild Dog and his partner, Wild Fang, fight you together in a 2-on-2 battle. And of course, Wild Dog never forgets his iconic Leitmotif.
  • In the fifth game, we have the sword fight between Keith and Robert. It's very much like the fight between Rush and Mathers in the fourth game, only this time, it's much more fun and more challenging. And more emotional, as the duelists were once close friends in the second game.
  • Also in the fifth game, there's the showdown with Wild Fang. When he's close to dying, he'll generate a huge attack to use against you and will kick your ass when it reaches 100% if you don't finish him quick enough.
  • And finally, there's the epic Final Battle with Robert Baxter. Holy crap. When you finally fight him, he summons this Humongous Mecha that looks like a cross between an ED-209 and either a Gundam or a Valkyrie, and he even attacks on a floating platform. After you defeat his soldiers, Robert will then pilot the robot personally and attack you with it, firing a series of lasers and missiles. And after destroying the robot, Cathy will attempt to ram her chopper into Robert to stall him and destroy the missile before it launches, which leaves you to finish off Robert in a cool quick time event, sending the traitor falling to his death and destroying Robert's aircraft.
• Tomb Raider's Bacon Lara/Doppelhoe. She's a Puzzle Boss who copies Lara's every move in a symmetrical room except for a small pit of lava she can fall into.
• Toontown Online had the epic CFO, CJ, and CEO.
  • CFO (Chief Financial Officer) has his boss battle located in a warehouse. To win, you have to drop a safe on him, by using one of the magnetic cranes hanging from the ceiling! This is the only time in the game where you can actually use those cranes!
  • CJ (Chief Justice) has his boss battle in a Cog Court of Law. It was metaphorically a great big case, where you would go to the witness' stand and take evidence. The evidence is literally a scroll, that you throw into a big scale in the center of the court where you are supposed to make your side of the scale go to the bottom, where you would win the case.
  • CEO (Chief Executive Officer) has his boss battle in a banquet hall where you are supposed to go on the tables and use seltzer bottles to try to squirt him into submission. You can also use the golf balls on the side of the stage to slow him down.
• Morganem or to be more precise, Uthurak Incarante, the Final Boss from the Warcraft III custom campaign "To the Bitter End". In a custom campaign that has a number of intense and very difficult boss battles, he really takes the cake. First, the player discovers that the enemy they've been trying to defeat the whole game has become the gateway for an Eldritch Abomination that wants to unmake the entire universe. Then, the entire last Chapter is dedicated to this one climactic battle. As well as being ungodly tough, the boss gets progressively harder and smarter throughout the fight. You only have a chance of winning because damaging him causes "Mana Splinters" to spawn in the area. By the end, the entire Boss Room is filled with enemies, earth-shaking spells get thrown back and forth, and Morganem even tries to usher in the Apocalypse and all the while wicked music plays in the background. If you survive against all the odds, you're rewarded with a suitably impressive end cinematic to round it all off.
• Titanfall 2 features battles against the Apex Predators, a cadre of ruthless mercenary thugs led by Kuben Blisk. While the boss fights with the various Apex Predators are usually something in the vein of with 'harder version of their normal Titan counterparts,' the fight against Viper is unique for quite a few reasons. For starters, he's demonstrably the most professional of the Apex Predators and as such he does not mess around. Furthermore, his custom Northstar zooms around with its infinite-flight engines, meaning you have to endure its constant bombing runs. He engages you on top of your own Drop Ship and so the battle is a nerve-wracking and therefore utterly exhilarating experience from start to finish.
• Transformers (2004):
  • The Armada-based game for the PS2 reminds you of just what "Robots in Disguise" really means in the Mid-Atlantic stage when the aircraft carrier you've infiltrated turns out to be Tidal Wave.
  • Starscream. You get to fight him twice, being kept on your toes a lot of the time by his dashing sword attack, almost unavoidable semi-Wave-Motion Gun laser cannon blasts, and his aerial missile barrages against which the only real defence was to transform to vehicle mode and drive like hell. The kick-ass battle music adds to the awesome. And in his first appearance, he unflinchingly walks out of an aircraft hangar that just blew up around him.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron:
  • The first boss fight against Trypticon. You're in jet mode, blasting him as he plummets from orbit to crash into Cybertron. In freefall. It was a thing of beauty.
  • Then comes the ACTUAL fight with Trypticon, which is just as awesome. And of course, five levels before in the Decepticon campaign, you have the fight between Megatron and the last line of Autobot defense, Omega Supreme...the game has other bosses besides those two, but they pale in comparison.
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron:
  • Its final battle is the one vs. one showdown with Optimus Prime and Megatron...and you get to play as either to determine the ending. Play "The Touch" during this fight and you've got your recipe for Awesome.
  • The last stage is full of awesome and has one heck of a boss for the Autobots. You must play as Jazz against the apparently unstoppable combiner Bruticus. You're a lone special operations head agent with a shotgun, and you have to face one of the most dedicated killing machines on Cybertron (and since in this segment, you were just playing as him, you know just how powerful he is). As might be expected, standard weapons...really don't amount to a lot, as even your best guns will just annoy him. You're not going to defeat a monster that size with just firepower—you're expected to bring Bruticus down with the same three tools Jazz always uses: mobility, cleverness, and style.
  • The fights against the three main Insecticons Kickback, Hardshell, and Sharpshot aren't necessarily the best mechanically, since they're, naturally, all manner of Flunky Bosses, summoning hordes of Insecticon drones to do their fighting for them. However, bashing the stuffing out of the Insecticons that have given Grimlock and his Dinobots so much grief is incredibly rewarding. Kickback simply sends in a swarm and attempts to flee for his life when he thinks he's cornered, only to have Slug politely drop a door on him with a humorous Call-Back to the original animated movie. Hardshell then tries to fight from a turret while sending more Decepticons to stop Grimlock, but the angry Dinobot just grabs Exploding Barrels and chucks them at Hardshell, then pulls the Insecticon from his destroyed turret afterwards and bashes his face against an optical security scanner—which lightens the mood by accepting that as a valid scan. Finally, Sharpshot gets it in his crazy head to torture one of Grimlock's Dinobots while deploying endless hordes of Insecticons to try and stop him. This is a horrible idea, since Grimlock's incredibly protective of his team, and when electrical feedback blows up Sharpshot's control console and knocks him down to Grimlock's level, we're given another brief Callback to the movie before Grimlock mauls the ever-loving scrap out of Sharpshot. Not stunningly inventive as boss fights go, but it definitely feels good to give the three psychotic, sadistic bugs a taste of their own medicine.
• Transformers: Devastation: The penultimate boss fight of the game starts out as a hectic free-for-all battle royale between the entire team of Autobots in the game and the Constructions. Defeat all six of them, and they merge into Devastator to continue the fight... and then when you get Devastator down to half his health, Menasor joins the rumble, meaning it's you and your team of CPU-controlled Autobots vs two giant, merged robots eight times your size. Incredibly tough? Definitely. Still ridiculously fun in spite of that? Hell Yes.
• Transistor: The fight against Royce is an excellent test of your tactics and skills. Royce also has the ability to utilize Turn(), meaning that while he is helpless against your Turn(), you are completely helpless against his. Him having one hell of a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner only highlights how brilliant this fight is.
• Destroying Savato in Trauma Center: Second Opinion. The level is hell in the DS version, but on the Wii, it's not only made easier (that is, beatable) but significantly more fun, and still presents a good challenge.
  • Similarly, Cardia from New Blood. Not particularly hard, but the fact that it transforms into a glowing jellyfish monster right on cue to the Ominous Latin Chanting just seals the deal. The boss is actually designed so that the player must use every tool with most of them being equally essential; most surgeries until now use multiple tools but rely heavily on one or two.
• TRON 2.0:
  • The Kernel. He's truly a Worthy Opponent, and you end up facing each other Deadly Disc against Deadly Disc. Fuse it with the fact Jet's trying to rescue his enemy and a side order of Escort Mission as Alan is trying to stay out of the way of the combat.
  • There's also the Final Boss - the digitized abomination that Crown, Popoff, and Baza became when they digitized themselves. You're battling them inside the transit beam going back to the analog world on a series of floating platforms. The artwork is beautiful.
• TRON: Evolution has Abraxas. Man, he is actually Darth Vader! Covered in Tron Lines!
• Turok: Thunder is a genetically engineered bio-mechanical Tyrannosaurus rex, armed with rocket launchers, flame breath, giant teeth and claws, shockwave stomp, and a freaking photon cannon on its head. That gets faster as you damage it. And can survive not one, not two, but all three shots from your fusion cannon.
• Since ULTRAKILL is an intense Stylish Action First-Person Shooter with emphasis on aggressive combat, dodging, and parrying, this game has some wicked boss battles.
  • You're not the only Killer Robot who's invading Hell. Swordsmachine is a rather aggressive opponent wielding a sword and a shotgun, the latter of which you can claim for yourself after beating the robot for the first time... or by defeating another Swordsmachine with both phases in the same room, while contending with a much smaller but more vertical room, which nets you the shotgun before you face him even once.
  • Cerberus is also pretty fun and lives up to its title of "Guardian of Hell" fairly competently. And in a move reminiscent of Dark Souls, once you knock the first one to half health, the second one gets up and joins the fight. You'll have to earn your way into Hell.
  • The final boss of ACT I, Gabriel, has a variety of brutal attacks, including a light spear you can parry right into his face for a good chunk of his health. Combine that with his relentless taunting and brutal difficulty and beating him becomes incredibly satisfying, especially with his Precision F-Strike punctuating the whole thing. That's right, you drove a loyal servant of God to curse you out with a shameful, whining tone, and it's every bit as awesome as it sounds. His rematch in ACT II keeps going with the trend. Enraged at his earlier loss, he yells about how much he'll enjoy brutally murdering you, pulls out the two swords at his side, and shows why they are his weapons of choice with a blistering assault. As the fight goes on, he gets calmer but even more dangerous as he weaves in teleporting. Once again, defeating him is cathartic as he truly begins to grow as The Rival and accepts V1 as a Worthy Opponent.
  • The first boss of the Prime Sanctums, Minos Prime. A Large Ham to beat out Gabriel? Check. Absolutely Nintendo Hard? Check. Ridiculously good Boss Remix? Check. Original and badass design with awesome moves? God save us all it's a check! Going through P-ranking every single level available at its release is worth it for a chance to fight him. The fact that he fights you for heroic reasons and is voiced by Stephan Weyte (who also played Caleb) are icings on the awesome cake.
  • V2 is already a vicious doppelganger of you from the get-go, but the rematch against them in the Greed layer kicks things up a notch. After reducing their first health bar to zero, they will once again attempt to flee - but this time, V1 gives chase, resulting in a high-speed shootout while the two of them slide down the side of an immense pyramid.
  • The boss of Wrath, The Leviathan, is a titanic Sea Serpent that takes everything good about The Corpse of King Minos and turns them up a notch, thanks to its surprisingly fast and intense attacks, lack of the black hole, and having a scary build-up in the abyssal depths of the Ocean Styx. In its second phase, it fights you with both its head and tail at the same time, requiring you to be aware of your surroundings while weaving through its attacks and dishing out damage in return. You can even ride on its back to attack its weak-point!
  • If fighting the Leviathan wasn't enough for you, then meet the 1000-THR "Earthmover", the Battleship Raid boss of Violence. You battle this colossal death machine by scaling its massive body with Whiplash beacons surrounding it while mowing down mooks on your way. Once you get to the back of this beast, you battle its security system before invading it from the inside out by climbing your way up to the robot's head to destroy its brain. Once you destroy it, you go through a thrilling escape sequence as the robot activates its self-destruct mechanism, but just as you're about to reach the exit, you deal with one more wave of mooks before finally escaping in one piece while The Earthmover explodes behind you.
• Any fight with a vehicle in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, these are definitely large parts of why the game rates so high.
  • The first vehicle is a helicopter that attacks you, destroys a sky bridge while you are in it, and chases you across rooftops and into a hotel, where it blows holes in the side of the building to get at you! The best part? It eventually gets fed up and blows up the building's foundations, causing it to collapse while you're inside of it! You're forced to jump out, then fight the copter with grenade launchers to send it down.
  • The second chopper fight is definitely more awesome. It's broken into two parts. The first, you have to flee from it while it blows cars off the train you are on. You escape (barely) by going into a tunnel, just as you were about to be crushed by a car flung about by missiles! When you see it next, it's still following the train, but this time you fight it by using an AA gun mounted on a tank that is strapped to the train. The resulting fight has you keeping missiles from hitting your tank as you try to gun the helicopter to the valley floor a thousand meters below, with snow swirling everywhere as the entire party careens along the side of the mountain. Just awesome.
• The final boss battle in the Bullet Hell Shoot 'Em Up Under Defeat. It's a big ass tank fortress with a BFG and with tons of guns. The more damage it takes, the more bullets the boss will unleash on your helicopter. And that BFG the boss has? When it fires, it sends you flying backwards, and unleashes bullets from behind you. Finally, upon defeating the boss, like all other bosses in Under Defeat, the entire boss explodes all over the screen until the screen goes off in a massive explosion. And the boss resembles the Chandelier from Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation...
• Viewtiful Joe:
  • The two second-to-last boss battles in the main series. In this first game, you (and your Dark Side-turned mentor) are piloting mechs that are large enough to circle the globe in about a dozen steps. It only gets bigger in the next game. In the second, Six Machine (said mech) turns into the head of a much larger giant robot. And this time, it can circle a star system in a few short seconds. And the boss mech is bigger than Jupiter. Both are then followed by mano a mano battles sans mecha.
  • The boss of Episode 5, Alastor the Stylish, is one big send-up to Viewtiful Joe's sister series, Devil May Cry. A personification of Dante's main weapon from DMC1, Alastor's fighting style is not unlike that of Dante himself in high-level play; using almost all of Dante's moves, fighting both on the ground and in the air, and taunting you constantly. You will need to switch up your own fighting style often in order to stand a chance, but you can also take a pragmatic approach and try to knock him into the lava or hit him with a zoomed-in Red Hot Kick, forcing him to teleport into a nearby well to put out the fire and temporarily stunning him. And after it's all said and done, Alastor is the one who inspires Joe to finally come up with a hero name.
    Alastor: You're pretty strong... and that move... the one you did back there... BEAUTIFUL! Tell me... what do they call you?
    Joe: Viewtiful? Well, yeah, that works. I'm Joe. Viewtiful Joe!
• Vindictus:
  • Most of the raid battles qualify to some extent or another, but the battle against Echulus is one that rivals the Elder Dragons from the Monster Hunter series. The target is a massive dragon with deadly wind and fire attacks, but what puts this battle on this list is the sheer scope of the battle. It's a 16-24 player fight, but often times most players won't be fighting directly, they'll be supporting each other with ALL the neat tricks available in that arena. The damage over time effect of Echulus's breath attacks doesn't expire on its own, it needs to be extinguished by dipping into water-filled trenches that need to be manually refilled, meaning some players will start a bucket train (like something out of an old-fashioned firefighter movie) just to keep the rest of the party alive. There are bunkers that provide cover from area of effect attacks, but they need to be built and manually repaired, and often look like military field hospitals as healers try to heal and resurrect their comrades while trying to keep the defenses up. There are large ballistas that can be manned to bring the dragon down to earth when it flies around dropping airstrike-like fireball attacks, but resources are few so when a crack shot manages to snipe him, it's cause for celebration. And to top it off, the fight takes place on some beautiful floating islands and has a beautifully orchestrated soundtrack. It's a wonderfully tense battle with lots of tactical options, and an absolute blast.
  • The battle against Shining Shakarr makes for a very enjoyable Duel Boss in its own right, but what catapults it onto this page is that the game locks you into your normally extremely limited Transformation for the entire fight. Under normal circumstances, a full-powered Paladin or Dark Knight Transformation only lasts for 70 seconds and can only be used once per real-world hour, but not here. This means the fight is a one-on-one duel, with you being able to cut loose and hold absolutely nothing back. Especially on higher difficulties, Shakarr's immense healthpool and potent attack power make him an opponent worthy of going all out. The fight even counts as a daily raid, with the rewards that entails.
• The final stage of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3's Story Mode pits you against the manga's two major characters on one long 25-something-kilometer stretch of the high-speed Wangan Line. By this point, your car is powerful enough to blast down the expressway at a constant 340 km/h (211 mph).
• Warframe:
  • The fight with Lephantis is pretty exciting. You start off in a giant room fighting this Infested monstrosity with 3 heads based off the games' main enemy factions, and each with different attacks. After taking down Lephantis' heads, the floor crumbles and drops you into another room where you fight his real form.
  • Vay Hek's fight has you chasing him through a jungle while he spawns enemies and is effectively screaming at you. He eventually leads you to a giant pit where he summons his Terra Frame and starts raining death from above. Not to mention, with how much of an ass this guy is it's wonderfully cathartic to fill his wrinkled, laughing face with lead.
  • Sargas Ruk may not be as "epic" as the previous two, but if you're going it alone he's an almost perfectly-balanced Wake-Up Call Boss. He trumps around the room with a gravelly voice and massive flamethrowers, dealing enough damage to keep you on your toes without coming across as unfair, with several moves that can knock you over and leave you vulnerable without being outright one-hit kills. The room he spawns in compliments his relationship with the player perfectly, boxing you in if you don't pay attention but giving you lots of escape options if you do.
  • The Exploiter Orb fight in Venus' Open World is a fight many fans love to death, partly due to it being an Author's Saving Throw from the much less-loved Profit-Taker fight in the same region and partly due to how it expands on the lore of the local syndicate, Solaris United. The first phase of the fight starts out in Deck 12, where you melt ice off of the Exploiter Orb that she uses to make her cooling vents Nigh-Invulnerable by throwing highly volatile material canisters at them, all the while avoiding the various Mite Raknoids she's spawning in a frenzied battle. The second phase in turn has you throwing those same canisters at the Exploiter Orb in order to cause her to overheat, all the while taking out any Coolant Raknoids that might try to get to her before you can. The biggest highlight of the fight is that as you overheat her, you can initiate scripted cutscenes where your Warframe leaps up on to the Orb itself and rips out pieces of its infrastructure in a sequence that wouldn't look out of place in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The final part of the fight is you scrambling to get away from Exploiter as it ruptures in a colossal explosion. Plus, it's a way to get a good, cathartic hit in on the Corpus' answer to Vay Hek, Corpus big-wig and Big Bad for the Vallis region Nef Anyo.
• Wario Land The Shake Dimension:
  • The second boss. Basically, Wario in a unicycle complete with spring-loaded boxing glove, in a high-speed battle against a race car going at jet speed down a long road. High-Speed Battle indeed. Neat music too.
  • The final boss. You can only wish Bowser would wisen up and use that many attacks in a future Mario game. Basically, four-stage battle with The Shake King, who physically fights like a stronger Wario, but also has a final form using multiple laser beam blasts, lightning attacks, and shooting fireballs around.
• WarioWare: The bosses of the final stages usually fit:
  • WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ has you play through a hilariously crappy adventure-style game that switches controls on the fly to things you may have played through on an earlier level. Touched also has a similar set-up for Wario-Man's boss stage and plays Final-Exam Boss a bit more straight. Get It Together also uses a variant for the fake final stage.
  • The first WarioWare has Orbulon's boss game, where you have to defeat a boss Dragon Quest-style by picking the correct spelling of the words, and Dribble & Spitz's boss stage, which is reminiscent of the shmup genre.
  • WarioWare: Twisted! has 9-Volt's boss stage, where you play through a level from Super Mario Bros. using the tilt controls. This returns as 18-Volt's boss stage in WarioWare Gold.
  • Tiny Wario's stage from WarioWare: Smooth Moves has Wario Dance Company, where you have to dance to the beat and strike poses every now and then.
  • Smooth Moves has Dribble & Spitz's boss stage, where your Mii goes through an obstacle course before taking down a giant nose, and 9-Volt's boss stage, where you play through a level from the SNES Star Fox (Corneria, Sector X and Titania on the respective difficulties) and have to take down R.O.B., who uses a Zapper.
  • Gold concludes pretty awesomely. After making it past the Ultimate League, you confront Wario, only to find he's gone mad with power and used all the prize money for himself, essentially turning into the Big Bad for the first time since Mario & Wario, complete with Slouch of Villainy. Using his self-entitled position and new crown (which is actually a potty), he faces off in the ultimate Microgame showdown, putting all of your skills thus far to the test. And when Wario starts messing with the player, new character Lulu jumps in to stop him so you can focus on the Microgames ahead. The boss minigame involves the return of Smooth Moves' Wario Dance Company, this time with a samba that acts as a Final-Exam Boss that utilizes all the tools on the 3DS. And throughout most of the fight, THIS MUSIC plays even as you go through the microgames. Bad. Ass.
  • Get It Together! has 9-Volt's boss stage, which has you go through a level based off of Super Mario World with one of the numerous crew members. Many consider this to be one of the closest things to a new Wario platformer.
  • The entire final boss of Get It Together! is a Boss-Only Level where all of the game's characters go up against the chocolate monster that's been antagonizing them throughout the post-Mega Bug content in a Final-Exam Boss, and ultimately ends with the monster's shell being broken and Wario taking on the one underneath, Pyoro, in a tense Rush Boss.
• Wild ARMs has Zed and Boomerang, mostly for theme music (in the remake, Wild Arms: Alter Code F, said themes were made worse and better, respectively). And in Zed's case, because the man sure knows how to make an entrance.
• The Final Boss, Lord Blazer, of Wild AR Ms 2, which combines Moment of Awesome, Awesome Music, The Power of Friendship, Combined Energy Attack, Duel Boss, and Climax Boss into one incredible experience.
• Nega Filgaia, the final boss in Wild ARMs 3. THIRTEEN consecutive forms each with their own ability, strengths, and weaknesses. Unless you have Violators, this is an epic battle that will test your endurance and skill to their very limits. Good luck - you will need it.
• The Witcher
  • The King of the Wild Hunt. He's been tailing, menacing, and even personally attacking Geralt throughout the game. When he makes his final appearance, he basically tells Geralt he's been his bitch the entire time. Fighting him is optional, but it gives Geralt the best lines, a thrilling fight, and the more awesome climax to the game.
  • Berengar is another that deserves mention, coming as it does shortly after being knighted by a Goddess and given an Infinity +1 Sword. This is a character Geralt has been chasing and hearing shady reports about, and when finally found has been brusque, evasive, then openly provocative, lying, and taunting. Also an optional fight; sparing him grants less satisfying lines and he goes on to die rather lamely and inevitably during another boss fight Geralt must finish himself unless you are really really lucky.
  • The fight with Zeugl is pretty awesome as well and it is not optional. You have to fight its tentacles and cut them off, and then its head comes out of the water and you have to hit it.
  • The second game gives us the Kayran, a gargantuan, magically mutated Aeschna that Geralt can impale on a special harpoon trap, then slice off its tentacles with his silver sword and ride one of them around the clearing until it brings the ruined bridge down on top of it before stuffing a Clock Punk device filled with Grapeshot bombs down its gullet and blowing it up from the inside out. Crazy-Prepared at its finest.
  • The final battle against Eredin in the third game. It's not only very satisfying to finally cleave the elf a new set of lungs for all he's done, but it's one of the rare cases of Anti-Climax Boss being somewhat of a good thing - it makes one feel the fight is not a titanic struggle against a martial equal, but an effortless display of power on your behalf, against a leader who is more Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy than a true badass, only kept alive in the interim against the beast that is Geralt due to Aen Elle armour superiority and his cheap navigator magic. Magic lights to the White Wolf.
  • The boss fight with Olgierd Von Everic in the Hearts of Stone expansion. The atmospheric setup: a duel in the middle of a thunderstorm, with the backdrop of a burning manor house and cheering mercenaries, and "You're... Immortal?" playing in the background. And the battle itself: a high-speed sword duel with an incredibly skilled and fast opponent. Olgierd doesn't use any fancy tricks or gimmicks like the Wild Hunt warriors do; instead he's just nightmarishly quick, using a sort of demonic Flash Step to get in close to Geralt, and attacks with unrelenting combos. The only way to beat him is just to be as quick and skilled as he is, dodging, parrying, and countering his attacks. It makes for one of the most spectacularly intense duels in the entire series.
  • The final battle with Dettlaf in the Blood and Wine expansion starts out pretty normal in the first phase, but when he goes into his next phase, he goes into a One-Winged Angel form, launching clouds of bats at you. The very last phase takes place in a Womb Level. It is an epic fight from start to finish.
• Wolfenstein 3-D had you fighting Adolf Hitler himself in a suit of mechanical power armor with four miniguns attached in the last level of Episode 3. Enough bullets would take his armor off, but he would still carry a minigun in each arm. Luckily, it didn't take much more after that to kill him and watch him melt into a puddle of gore, complete with replay!
  • General Fettgesicht from the last level of Episode 6 in the same game may have to qualify as well. While he isn't as memetically memorable as Hitler, he's just as awesome because of his chaingun and rocket launcher combo. What other boss can you think of is able to wield these two weapons at once and look badass while doing it?
  • In Wolfenstein (2009), we have the final battle with Hans Grosse. B.J. enters the Black Sun dimension and faces off against Hans and Deathshead and both B.J. and Hans have their very own Veil wielding powers. After such a long battle, you end up sacrificing all your veil powers to destroy Hans, first the Shield power, then the Mire power, and when you destroy the machine, you then destroy his Empower ability.
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order has the Prototype Robot and more importantly, the final showdown with Deathshead. When fighting Deathshead, he'll be piloting a giant robot that has a shield powered by the storm, forcing you to destroy the Zeppelins to destroy the shield. Then, when you fight him in the second phase, he'll also say, "Die, Allied schweinehund!"
• The Wonderful 101:
  • The Final Boss, Jergingha, will go down in history as one of the single most ridiculous, overblown boss battles ever conceived. Just about all three of his forms count to a degree, but none more so than his final Planet Destruction Form. While the setting on its own is awesome enough (fighting a Humongous Mecha half as big as Earth while battling in outer space), the fight itself is decently difficult, is set to a bombastic boss theme, and can take upwards of ten minutes to beat. Yet, none of that compares to the grand finale of the whole thing: after the characters unload all they have on him, Jergingha stops messing around and reveals his CHI-Q Marble Buster, a weapon guaranteed to wipe Earth out of existence. The Wonderful 101 respond by charging up a laser of their own using the combined cannons of the Virgin Victory, Vorkken's ship, and Immorta's ship. The resulting lasers from the Wonderful 101 and Jergingha clash in a glorious Beam-O-War, with the player being forced to mash the A button for roughly a full 30 seconds, with even the Wonderful 101 themselves joining them in the Button Mashing. When all is said and done, the laser transforms into a gigantic W, and proceeds to consume and destroy Jergingha for good, with the player surrounded with an air of simple satisfaction and joy.
  • The final battle with Prince Vorkken. After he disposes of the GEATHJERK's second officer offscreen, you once again battle on his ship the Meizerr. Like the last couple battles, he adds more moves to his arsenal. After draining his health, Red has a Pummel Duel with him to take the Meizerr out and prevent him from healing. Landing on the Virgin Victory, Vorkken decides to get serious and pulls out his own version of Unlimited Form, known as Teio Form. Adding even more moves, combined with the smaller roof of the Virgin Victory, this is the toughest battle with him by far. What also makes it notable is that it's the only major boss fight that does not play Tables Turn, as both sides are on equal ground.
• The World Ends with You:
  • Uzuki and Kariya. Their fighting style is similar to yours, right down to having a light puck and fusion, and the rock music in the background is excellent.
  • Draco Cantus is pretty awesome. It's the only one-player fight in the game, because your partners are part of it, and once you get its health down to zero, Neku and his partners do a four-way fusion, at which point he summons a giant Player Pin symbol and fires a Wave-Motion Gun from it. The aforementioned boss also fires so many fireballs that the DS literally lags a bit trying to keep up. You feel a bit badass just having beaten it... unless you eventually get frustrated enough to hit "retry on Easy" since switching to Normal would have meant fighting the two preceding boss fights again.
  • Higashizawa is also quite the fun boss, with his fight making for one hell of a Wake-Up Call Boss, what with his attacks making it so that you can’t just overwhelm him with brute force. Not only that, but it also takes place in a Battle in the Rain, with him flinging lightning bolts and orbs at you to boot.
  • Sho Minamimoto. Not only will he summon an onslaught of Taboo Noise to try and whittle down your health as well as rapidly teleport across both screens to keep you on your toes, but he will also rapidly transform into his Noise form Leo Cantus to rush at you multiple times. All the while Someday plays in the background.
  • The Giant Bat on Day 2 of Week 3. Mainly because of the hunter/hunted relationship it has with Neku when the bats on the top screen are covering up the stage lights, then the utter pwnage of pummeling it to death once the lights are on. A nice change of pace after getting That One Boss after That One Boss. This one also counts for another reason, since it's an upgrade of the first true 'boss' Noise you fought way back in early week 1. Back then, You had only half a clue what's going on, a few weak pins, no stat-ups, and you were still coming to terms with the combat system, creating a grueling fight out of something you know should be simple. When you see this thing again, you have a full suite of high-level abilities, stats that look much more impressive both on paper and in practice, and you've got combat down pat. Fighting this thing again on proper terms is very satisfying.
  • Megumi Kitaniji. He has one of the highest HP in the game, has several powerful attacks that will test your reflexes, and will even flat out stop time itself just to launch a volley of attacks at you. Not only that, but brainwashed Shiki will also make things incredibly challenging for you.
  • Panthera Cantus in Another Day. A very challenging fight and a test of your skill without being a Marathon Boss.
  • If you decided to fight it at the earliest opportunity, Progfox. It's the introduction to the Fox Noise, which change forms depending on the number of tails they have. They range from a defenseless mushroom to a masked Neku. The Progfox is the only one that can obtain nine tails. If it does, it does a Fusion Attack by itself.
• NEO: The World Ends with You:
  • Both of the fights with Mr. Mew dolls, both for their surprisingly relentless assaults and for hilariously cute gimmick of having to fight multiple Killer Teddy Bear at once. On top of that, as a fun Call-Back to the original game, their attacks incorporate multiple aspects of Shiki’s Fusions in different phases.
  • Motoi's boss fight has the Catharsis Factor of coming after he's revealed as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and the hilarious yet fun gimmick where he crowdfunds powerups for his team.
  • Tsugumi’s Grus Cantus form on Week 2 Day 7. On top of serving as an incredibly effective Plot Twist, it also has several powerful Beam Spam moves, can clone itself to barrage you with attacks, and even sends a storm of fireballs at you, making for an intense yet engaging boss fight. All the while "SCRAMBLE" blares in the background.
  • The boss fight on Week 3 Day 4 has the grand return of Minamimoto. After spending a week or so absent from the game, he returns to seize the power of the Dissonance Noise that's been building up throughout the game, only for it to take over his body and give the Wicked Twisters one hell of a boss fight in Leo Cantus Armo, complete with the NEO remix of Transformation playing. A powered up version of the boss also serves as the game's Superboss.
  • Shiba himself is often cited by players as one of the best bosses in the game, primarily because he's quite challenging without being a giant Damage-Sponge Boss. He goes down fairly quickly if you exploit his weakness to wind, but all the same, good luck actually hitting him. Between his speed, teleportation, and aggression, he forces players to be a bit more tactical on higher difficulties. Couple it with his incredibly badass boss theme, the fact that he Fights Like a Normal as opposed to going One-Winged Angel like every other Reaper, and that his Reality Warper powers twist and contort the Scramble Crossing into something that just outright looks cool as hell, and you have a proper winner in this category.
  • The Final Boss, Phoenix Cantus, is the culmination of everything that's been building up the entire game and it makes for one wicked finale for the Wicked Twisters. Made especially amazing by its rocking boss theme, "World is Yours", which is the full version of the intro theme. It's a multi phase boss fight typical for any JRPG, but the icing on the cake is that you can Soundsurf to dodge one of its attacks, and the finishing blow that the Wicked Twisters deal is similar to Neku's final Fusion from the first game where all of his partners power him up. Here, the Wicked Twisters all charge up for a Killer Remix, requiring you to hold all six inputs, and the Groove goes off the charts, reaching 999%.
• In the World of Mana series:
  • Legend of Mana gives us the battle with Irwin. World at stake? Check. Battle on top of the dragon he's trying awaken? Check. Epic music? Big Check.
  • One of the reasons Trials of Mana is brought up as one of the best games of its era is the awesome bosses, especially the Visual Effects of Awesome. For example, pick a Benevodon. Any Benevodon... except for maybe Xan Bie and Lightgazer (who fall into That One Boss and Goddamned Boss). They're all just plain awesome for whatever reason.. and they even shake things up by casting Saber spells on you.
    • Dangaard the Benevodon of Wind is an aerial battle... atop Flammie. The remake keeps this just as impressive making you run across Flammie's wings.
    • Dolan, the Benevodon of Moon. You get to the very top of the tower and hear music unique to this boss. The boss doesn't appear right away, so you have some time to apply stat-ups. Then the tower shakes and two big hairy arms rise up and the battle with this wolf-beast kaiju begins. As Game FA Qs' boss guide put it, "Now THIS is a God-Beast!"
    • Mispolm, benevodon of Wood. The dungeon itself is a mechanically unusual level, to some the Best Level Ever due to not being a "Forward running dungeon crawler" but a sideways dungeon. The battle is fought on a pseudo-sideways screen, something unfortunately lost on the remake
    • Zable Fahr, the unusual and thus highest health of the Benevodons (and always the last one fought) who attacks out of nowhere, trapping you in its own dimensional void where you must take out two heads just to make the main head appear. It's incredibly creepy in the SNES version since nothing moves and the music is overall silent.
    • The Penultimate bosses against the Big Bad's Dragon is awesome no matter the character. The remake manages to make them even more intense on higher difficulties since they constantly warp around and show you that just nowhere is safe from them.
    • The True Final Boss Anise in the remake. Unlike most of these types of bosses... you only need to go through a Marathon Level to reach them. When you do, all you need to do is know how to dodge attacks, keep an eye on your health, prevent and heal status ailments, heal your party, and deal with the blue targets when they charge up. They are far more aggressive than the other final bosses, yes, but after the amount of RPGs whose True Final Boss requires tactics and preparation that most players never find themselves doing during a standard playthrough, one that doesn't actually feels quite like a breath of fresh air that preparing for the True Final Boss isn't ungodly tedious.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
  • Finally completing the chapter-spanning, drug-busting sidequest that started all the way back in Satorl Marsh with 'Preventing Starvation', you at last get to fight the lynchpin behind all this: Bana the Betrayer, all the more surprising considering what the race is normally like. The battle isn't necessarily flashy or anything although Bana does fight you from the Bionis equivalent of a pterodactyl and hits hard. 'Tragic Decision' plays rather than the typical boss music, hitting home the entire tragic nature of this quest.
  • When the party reaches the control room of Mechonis, Egil reveals he is now controlling Mechonis and you must fight him and his mech Yaldaboath. When he takes a certain amount of damage, he activates three Energy Devices. If these aren't destroyed before the bar runs out in 2 minutes, the Mechonis will inflict infinite damage on the Bionis, killing everyone on there and resulting in a definite Game Over. You will be desperate to bring down your foe to save the entire world. The emotions in this is truly wonderful as at the end of the battle, Shulk and Egil are able to make peace and understand each other's point of view. Everything seems to work out at last. But then Shulk gets shot by Dickson...
  • After Dickson's betrayal in Mechonis core in order to realise Zanza, the battle with him on Prison Island in the endgame is a fair challenge to overcome, spanning two phases and plenty of hard-hitting attacks to keep you on your feet.
  • Zanza, the game's Final Boss, is an amazing climax to the game's story, fighting the god who made life hell on Bionis and Mechonis and constantly creating and destroying the world in an endless cycle to preserve his existence. Zanza is a three-phased boss fight with a great challenge, fantastic music, and a climactic end when he meets his maker at the receiving end of Shulk's own Monado.
  • Avalanche Abaasy is the most powerful enemy in the entire game. And it's a freaking dragon. The fight is extremely challenging and is also a Final-Exam Boss of sorts, requiring the party to have maxed-out Debuff Resistance to avoid its Instant Death spike while forcing well-timed uses of defensive techniques (Shulk's Monado Arts work best).
• Xenoblade Chronicles X:
  • The fight with Ga Jiarg and Ga Buidhe in the beautiful continent of Sylvalum Chapter 9. The first part takes place on the ground; once that's over, Ga Jiarg boards his own Skell and prompts you to do the same. The result is one of the best fights in the game.
  • While of questionable plot relevance, Chapter 10 is one big boss fight against the Zu Pharg, the largest boss in a game with a lot of large enemies already, and this isn't Cutscene Power to the Max either. Like the previous story boss fight with the Wrothians, it also takes place in Sylvalum, except this time, the whole continent is the battle arena. The first phase is against its flying-saucer form, which comes equipped with a contingent of Fal-Swos and Galdrs. Once that's over, it transforms and shows off how big it really is. It's a difficult battle even without the flight module (let alone Skells) but it can be done. For bonus points, this is the first story boss you can use the Skell flight module against, and the scale of the fight suggests it was designed with it in mind.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • All of the Jin and Malos fights count (if you aren't busy pulling your hair out), especially the last time you fight Jin as the penultimate boss of Chapter 9. Spending a chapter with him and learning his backstory adds a lot of emotional weight to the battle, helped by "The Power of Jin". The battle is followed up with one against Amalthus, after which Jin performs a Heroic Sacrifice to take down the misanthropic Praetor and completes his story.
  • The battles with (Giga) Rosa are absolutely hilarious thanks to the boss' design, the campy music, and (of course) Chairman Bana hamming it up to ridiculous levels during both fights. The boss herself also packs quite a punch, and has moves that can easily one-shot the party if not careful (but not to the point of imbalance).
  • Most of the over-level-100 Superbosses count, but possibly Artifice Ophion most of all due to its story importance. The fight is extremely challenging but ultimately fair, with devastating attacks that one must learn to work around. The always awesome "You Will Recall Our Names" helps too, or its replacements "You Will Know Our Names" and "Uncontrollable" if Shulk, Fiora and/or Elma is in the party.
  • The highest-leveled superboss Tyrannotitan Kurodil is difficult but fair and is basically Alrest's version of Godzilla.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Whenever a battle involves multiple heroes, either on your side or against you, you can count on it being a memorable fight.
  • The final battle against Z is a multi-stage setpiece. The first stage involves him sealing off the party's Ouroboros powers and throwing multiple obstacles in their way, showing them painful memories from throughout their adventure, until they can break free of their shackles and use multiple Ouroboros Order Chain Attacks against him. Afterwards, he warps into his One-Winged Angel form and assumes the forms of X's and Y's faces to take on the Kevesi and Agnian halves of the party, respectively, making the fight seem hopeless until Melia and Nia send some of the Heroes you met throughout your journey to each half of your party, each one with their own Pre Ass Kicking One Liner, all interlaced with cutscenes of both Queens turning their respective Castles into their Ferronis forms and attacking Origin. Finally, the party reunites and the Queens themselves warp in to help with new battle-ready outfits, using enhanced versions of their skills from their original appearances and giving you a preview of how they'll fight when recruited in the postgame.
  • The "Heroes' Frontline" Challenge Battle gives you a chance to take on most of the base game's Heroes in three waves, showing how powerful they can be when teamed up against you. Especially satisfying is if you can properly set up a Chain Attack to take out several of them at once.
• Fighting Victor Creed as Wolverine in the fairly decent game adaptation of X-Men Origins: Wolverine is incredibly brutal. Since both Wolverine and his half-brother Creed have a Healing Factor, they beat the everloving shit out of each other through various means. Since one of the game's main mechanics involves throwing enemies into dangerous objects, and the game refreshingly lacks Contractual Boss Immunity, there's plenty of things laying around that you can use to impale, bludgeon, crush, and otherwise horribly maim your dear brother. Of course, he can do all the same to you.
• Speaking of X-Men, the Sentinel Core from X-Men 2: Clone Wars on the Megadrive was one of several moments of awesome from the game - a tricky boss fight against a holographic nightmarish apparition of the Sentinel, armed with eyebeams and lightning bolts and one hell of an electronic wail. This finishes off with a Metroid style escape sequence where you must escape from the factory it is contained in, complete with alarms, earthquakes and explosions galore. Combine this with some pumping music, you have one of the most memorable sections of the game. The best part? It's the FIRST boss.
• The second X-Men Legends game has Apocalypse as the final boss. On his own, he's not a pushover, but depending on how powerful your team is, he's not too hard either. Then he summons his 4 Horsemen who you've beaten individually at the end of the previous 4 acts, turning it into a Battle Royale With Cheese. After one or two occasions of knocking his health down to zero, only for him to respawn almost instantly, do you realise that he's also a Puzzle Boss. After using his machine to power yourself up the same way he has, you have to tear through mooks to smash up generators for his machine (as well as Apocalypse himself who teleports to it in order to guard it). Only once the machine is destroyed is the boss fight over.
• Ys tends to have really fun bosses on the whole, but the battle with Jenocres in Ys Origin stands out. Between the boss shamelessly filling half the room with death and the rowdy jazz arrangement of series legacy theme Tension blasting trumpets all over the place, it's rather difficult to not start cackling like a madman.
• The Final Boss of Zombie Army 4: Dead War is the Hell Machine, an absolutely colossal Military Mashup Machine made out of flesh and metal, packing enough guns and firepower to lay siege to an entire city by itself. The fight against it is spectacular enough to warrant an entire level to itself, a multi-stage battle that has you destroy its massive turrets, sneak inside to shoot its beating hearts, face its deadly Uberwaffe and of course slaughter the hordes of zombies that defend it.
• Zone of the Enders has a few awesome boss fights to its name.
  • Nohman and Anubis from Zone of the Enders 1 and 2, mostly by benefit of his world class buildup. You first meet him at the end of the first game, and in a stunningly unexpected sequence he beats the hero. Soundly. He then appears right at the beginning of the second game to do the same to the new main character. As a result, you're really spoiling for battle by the time the final boss fight against him starts up... only to find out that said boss fight is really against your girlfriend in a remotely controlled Anubis mock-up. The real Anubis then appears behind you and instantly takes out the hero of the first game in a really cheap sneak attack before squaring off against the player in a final showdown... and he shoots you with an orbital cannon. What follows is undoubtedly the two most satisfying boss fights in gaming history, where you finally get to beat the crap out of the guy (in a heavily damaged mech no less).
  • Then you get an upgrade that essentially makes Jehuty the Humongous Mecha equivalent of a Physical God, after which you get a playable sequence in which waves of enemies that were previously a challenge (including multiple clones of a boss you had to fight three times to finally kill) come at you and you rip them apart like so much papier mache, and then fight Nohman, who got a similar upgrade, inside aumaan itself. ZOE2 ending, pretty much one long CMOA. Not to mention the fact that both of you are now capable of Teleport Spam, which makes the last fight one long frantic slugfest where you're both teleporting all over the place while you beat the crap out of him.
  • Halfway through the second Zone Of The Enders game, one enters a mech fight against Vic Viper. Yes, THAT Vic Viper.
  • Also worthy of mention are Inhert, where half of the fight is conducted in pitch darkness, and Zakat, the planetoid-sized genocidal superweapon.

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