I can't defeat Air Man. No matter how I try to dodge his tornadoes, he just kills me again. And even though I can get behind him It's no use, I try to fight, but get blown away in the end. I shoot as fast as I can, But when I had to go against Air Man's tornado I was helpless again I'll try again, of course, but this is my plan: I'll keep my E-Tank in reserve just as long as I can!
There are many different categories of bosses, some more memorable than others. There's the
Giant Space Flea from Nowhere, there's the
Climax Boss, the
Final Boss...
And then, there's
That One Boss, the boss that falls victim to poor playtesting. You're levelling up normally, plowing through every battle, until you reach this particular battle and suddenly meet a plethora of
Game Over screens. Eventually, you
Rage Quit, or you go on the Internet looking for assistance. In the event that you stop by the game's message board, lo and behold, everyone else is having the exact same problem, with entire topics asking "how do I beat
That One Boss?". Walkthroughs usually list the worst offenders as "
the hardest boss in the game", and eventually, such a beast receives a reputation for being just that freaking hard.
Certain types of boss are not usually included in this consideration right off the bat: The
Final Boss,
Wake Up Call Boss, and
Bonus Boss. People expect the
Final Boss to be tough (
usually), and the
Bonus Boss is usually included solely to be difficult. Players will prepare for the Bonus Boss by overleveling, but for maximum frustration, That One Boss needs only to
just show up out of nowhere, preferably having no place in the storyline beforehand.
They usually show up in RPGs, though they're not exclusive to them. Game designers will sometimes go out of their way to put them in,
serving as a bottleneck to make sure you spend a couple hours
Level Grinding before you go on to the next area.
Occasionally, the identity of That One Boss varies depending on an individual's playing style - bosses are often designed to have issues with one particular strategy, so one that requires another strategy can seriously hinder a gamer if they're not prepared to switch up their tactics. However, any easy tactics like
Outside The Box Tactic disqualify a boss from being
That One Boss... unless the 'tactic' itself is
impossible to find.
They are sometimes called the "brick wall boss", for obvious reasons.
Compare
Demonic Spiders, which is more of a That One
Random Encounter, as well as the
Boss in Mook Clothing (we'll leave it up to you to decide which is worse). Most likely to be the one to use
That One Attack. See also
That One Sidequest and
That One Level. Contrast
Anti-Climax Boss, where the boss is underpowered/easy for story reasons (or despite them), and
Breather Boss, where the boss is just pathetically easy unintentionally. For bosses that are not technically difficult, but are downright frustrating, see
Goddamned Boss. For bosses that are deliberately impossible to beat, see
Hopeless Boss Fight. If you're looking to read up on unfair bosses that the game seems to
deliberately give every known advantage to, requiring you to either get by on
luck or
cheap gameplay, head on over to
SNK Boss.
To sum it up. If the boss is difficult when you first get to him, but when you get enough skill (or understanding of the needed mechanics), it is easy on further playthroughs, it is merely a
Wake Up Call Boss. If it requires a very unusual tactic to win, but dies easily to it, that is
Outside The Box Tactic. It has to be much harder than expected for that point in the game, and remain that way every time you replay the game to qualify as
That One Boss. In other words, this is the boss whose battle will haunt your nightmares every time you see their image or hear their name.
It is useful to note that, as its name implies, most videogames only have
one That One Boss. If a game appears to have several candidates for the title — especially if
every boss battle feels this way — you are probably looking at
Easy Levels, Hard Bosses, or a game that is just plain
Nintendo Hard.
NOTE: Final Boss and
Wake Up Call Boss cannot be
That One Boss without being overly hard by
their standards. Please do not add them as examples. An
Early Bird Boss will almost always qualify as
That One Boss as well, but for reasons of the player's weakness rather than the boss's strength, so those bosses are better placed in the
Early Bird Boss article.
Bonus Boss is completely banned from this page (though Rhythm Games are handled differently; see its section for why), as they are optional and they have to be overpowered. There is no measure for them.
See also:
That One Level
Because there are so many examples of this trope, they have been categorized by genre for your viewing convenience.
Miscellaneous Examples
- The Chaos-Master from the 11th book in the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks. It's a hideously hard fight if you don't bring the Sommerswerd along. If you do? Chances are you will die horribly. There's a particularly infamous Let's Play of Book 11 that had the players redo the Chaos-Master fight twenty-seven times before they finally won. It's that hard.
- So hard that pretty much everyone forgot about the series' FIRST killer enemy, the Gnaag Helghast. If you have a decent base Combat Skill, the Sommerswerd, and Psi-screen, it's a fairly challenging fight.
- If you don't have a decent basic Combat Skill...well, it's immune to Mindblast, so you're looking at a Combat Ratio of +1 under the best of circumstances.
- If you don't have the Sommerswerd, you can't do double damage.
- If you don't have Psi-screen you lose 2 Combat Skill points every round.
- The Vordak fight on the skyship deserves special mention. If you don't have the Sommerswerd, you have a grand total of four rounds to win two fights; fail, and the skyship explodes and you're toast. If your starting Combat Skill is too low, it is IMPOSSIBLE to win this fight. It was so bad that Joe Dever gracious extended the time limit to six rounds in the Mongoose Publishing re-release.
- Bested the Gnaag Helghast and those annoying Vordaks? Well done, now get ready for Zakhan Kimah! If you have the Dagger of Vashna, you can settle this with a single do-or-die throw. Otherwise, prepare for a combat ratio of at best -3, and he has 40 Endurance. Oh, and if you have the Sommerswerd, he's also immune to psychic attacks.
- Then there's Darklord Kraagenskul. Have the DoV and a reasonable number of Combat Skill boosts? Somewhat tough, but managable. Don't have it? Prepare to fight crypt spawn, then make a do-or-die lunge for his sword (although if you're successful, Kraagenskul isn't extremely tough). Have the Sommerswerd? You have a time limit to beat the crypt spawn and then have to make a do-or-die sword throw, otherwise you'll get killed even if you defeat Kraagenskul.
- And then there's Ixiataaga, who comes at you with a Combat Skill of 60, and also at the tail end of a number of challenging battles, including Tagazin.
- Not actually a game example, but in the manga The World God Only Knows, Keima Katsuragi can capture any girl... any girl... with the exception of Yui Goido. He himself notes she is a serious player, introducing a new meaning to Player vs Player. He eventually wins... by playing the Distressed Damsel.
- Ashley's boss microgame from WarioWare Touched features borderline Bullet Hell patterns of projectiles to dodge and an end boss that has three separate pieces shooting things at you.
- in Warioware Twisted, all you need to know are these six words to know you're in trouble: "Ladies and gentlemen: Wario de Mambo!"
- While the final bosses of the Ace Attorney series usually take longer to break than other culprits, the final showdown in Investigations gets special notice for being so long and difficult that there's a save point in the middle of the fight.
- The Massively Multiplayer Online game SD Gundam Capsule Fighter has three of them.
- The first is the Psyco Gundam in the "Kill Three Psyco Gundam" mission, due to the fact that, at harder levels, it has infinite special attacks and, thus, it will gladly go into its Beam Spam special to prevent being killed. Even more frustrating when it does so at its last sliver of life with only 10 seconds left in the match.
- The second is the Apsalus II from the "Destroy the Apsalus II" mission. Not only does it have a stun beam weapon and an ability that reverses your controls temporarily, it's flanked by two Acguy Repairs meaning that if you don't kill them off ASAP, it'll just keep regenerating its HP while it keeps hitting you with beam weaponry.
- What makes the Acguy Repairs even more of a pain is that they're one of the few units with Auto Lock-On Jammer (which disables Auto Lock-On when the unit reaches 30%), thus you're resorting to the old Eyeball Mk I to shoot these guys down!
- The third is the Aile Strike Gundam from the "Test Factory" mission. It spends 9/10ths of its time boosting around the boss room in the air and, as you're trying to shoot him down, you're attacked by Balls, Hizacks and Astrays, as well as missiles that will outright stun you in your tracks.
- Exalted: second edition Deathlords are hugely overstatted and obnoxiously powerful, to the point where people can wonder in all seriousness why they haven't destroyed the world yet. They were nerfed multiple times, most notably when their wtfhax perfect defense that didn't count as a Charm activation was clarified to only work a handful of times before having to be reactivated, but they remained ridiculously powerful.
- In Minecraft, the Enderdragon falls into this category, especially notable in that it was the only boss before version 1.4 was released. It flies out of sword range, likes to knock the player off of things, usually into the void, and regenerates health whenever it goes near an undestroyed health crystal.
- The Wither is an even worse offender, it is capable of killing you and all your friends and allies before the fight even begins.
- Nintendo Land's Pikmin Adventure attraction has mostly average boss difficulty... except for the Emperor Pinchipede. For his first phase, he has about 7-9 weak points (this troper forgets exactly how many), some big and some small. When you take out a small weak point, it disappears. But when you take out a big one, it stays on the field, acting as a spinning disc of doom that wanders about and damages you if you touch it (but not the boss). You must take out all weak points to move to the next phase, and it moves too fast to be able to reliably aim at any specific weak point, so you'll most likely hit the big ones and have 4 spinning doom discs on the battlefield while you continue to toss pikmin at the small weak points. For the sake of saving space, I won't go into the other phases, but know that they are both worse.
- Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby has a bunch of these.
- Kanga and Roo start to bounce the balls, which can be frustrating when you're used to the ball coming straight at you.
- Rabbit throws the ball really slowly, and then the ball comes REALLY fast at you. If you're playing against him the first time, you'll freak out.
- Owl zigzags the ball and the ball comes in really fast. The zigzagging ball makes it easy to score a bunch of Foul Balls and unless you've upgraded the Power Stat, successful hits will often stay in the park because of the wonky ball momentum.
- TIGGER. He will throw the ball at you normally, but then IT BECOMES INVISIBLE. Yes, the ball is invisible. And you have to successfully score 28 homeruns out of 40 balls. That means you can only miss, hit, or foul 12 balls.
- Christopher. Freaking. Robin. You have to hit FORTY HOMERUNS out of FIFTY balls. Christopher Robin can use a combination of ALL of the strategies of the other characters, and will usually use Kanga and Roo's or Owl's technique. And he's capable of using invisible balls too. Oh he can throw balls normally too, but they're usually too fast for you to hit.
- Technically not a video game example, but Dino Attack RPG had a few infamous bosses that would certainly qualify:
- Cam O'Cozy- oh boy. Where to start here. The guy must have been defeated at least five or six times before he was finally killed off just because of how much he frustrated everyone. First he apparently fell to his death by riding a bomb, then he returned as a Big Bad plotting to murder anyone with the slightest idealistic beliefs. He was arrested by the cops but (without his creator's permission or involvement) he came back yet again on Adventurers' Island, and was finally given a Robotic Reveal that served to both get rid of him for good and justify his presence in the RPG to begin with.
- Duke, just Duke. Basically he was practically The Dragon to Cam O'Cozy, and just as bad (if not worse). If not for popular demand he would have very easily escaped from a maximum security prison with relative ease.
- The Brickspiderbot: Simply fighting this thing practically took up an entire story arc (funnily the same arc with Cam O'Cozy and Duke).
