Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
pretty, pretty. DEADLY DEADLY!
"Since you have traveled so very far, be my guest and let me ENTERTAIN YOU!"
NOTE: Bonus Boss, Final Boss and Wake Up Call Boss cannot be That One Boss. Please do not add them as examples.
- Fatty Glutton in the Darius Gaiden game. Made even worse in the first game because if you've done well, you may have powered up to the laser, which you need to do to get the Wave later on, but which is worse than your starting weapon.
- Fatty Glutton, however, is nothing compared to the Battleship Raid boss that is Titanic Lance. When the normally 2 minutes long stage is now only 30 seconds just to accommodate the boss is saying something. Furthermore, not even the final boss is larger than this guy...which is so large it is basically a Sequential Boss as well. By the way, this is boss #4 out of 7 bosses you will take (meaning it's nowhere near the final boss). Good luck.
- Most danmaku shoot'em up games have difficult bosses (and stages) in general, but the Final Boss of Mushihime-sama Futari is in a class of its own
 . Yes, those are all bullets, and you die in one hit. Good thing that in Bullet Hell shmup games, the player ship has a very small hit-box. Most successful runs against this boss end with the first lifebar, but as seen in the clip above, if you can take the boss down with one credit on Ultra Mode, you then have to face two more lifebars of the Perfect Run Final Boss. Crazy.
- Not helped by the fact that if you use a bomb for any reason, whether to nullify bullets or attempt to speed up the boss's destruction, said boss raises an invincibility shield, which lasts until a few seconds after the bomb's animation stops.
- And you thought it couldn't get worse: Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu's true final boss. The bullet waves appear to be undodgeable at points. The second form's bullets are so fast they're nearly a blur.
- Think they couldn't make it any harder? GUESS AGAIN. There's also Death Label versions of Mushihimesama Futari and Do Don Pachi Dai Ou Jou which, for the former, feature a new difficulty God Mode and new last bosses. Mushihime and DUAL Hibachi.
- If you want a challenge, try fighting Flandre Scarlet...
- Normal Flandre is still too tame for some. Try Flandre at max rank. What was that about fast danmaku again?
- And now, fight her with higher than max rank... Yes. There are people who cheat to make games more difficult...
- Indeed, Flandre is outclassed even by some of the later Touhou bosses — for instance, Yukari Yakumo and her infamous "Boundary of Life and Death" card (there's a reason The Other Wiki cites it as a striking example of Bullet Hell!) as well as Rin Kaenbyou, generally agreed in fandom to be Subterranean Animism's hardest boss.
- To put Yukari into perspective: Beating her (including getting through the stage) takes almost half the time it takes to get through the entire game.
- Heck, we might as well make a list of the more annoying/dangerous bosses aside from the ones listed above in the Touhou Series...
- In the fourth game in the PC-98, Yuka has the "original" Master Spark. Even if you're expecting it, there's a high chance you're going to get hit anyway.
- Phantasmagoria of Flower View, a game that plays similar to Twinkle Star Sprites, has over a dozen Touhou girls duking it out using danmaku. Among the hardest to beat are Shikeki, Komachi, Aya and Reimu (in Extra Mode) because of their fast and often dense attacks. Look at this video of this guy beating Extra with Marisa to get an idea of Extra mode (it's basically a shitstorm of projectiles, both players start with a full spell bar but only one life). He makes it look easy. IT'S NOT.
- While on the subject of Aya, in Mountain of Faith she becomes even MORE annoying with the addition of fast AND dense attacks. The final boss Kanako also has a bunch of cards that can give players fits, especially her last one.
- Especially since Mountain of Faith (Kanako's last card) is immune to bombing, and unlike, say, Hourai Elixir in Imperishable Night, isn't a bonus card.
- Either of the Stage 4 bosses, Reimu or Marisa, in Imperishable Night can be tricky. Your Mileage May Vary as to which one is worse.
- Embodiment of Scarlet Devil also has Sakuya's "Misdirection" spellcard. Good luck getting the Spell Card Bonus on this one!
- Simple. The bullets home in on you. Just like a lot of the other ones in that stage.
- The Level 4 boss in the original R-Type. This particular boss would split into three parts, revealing its weak spot in the process. After moving round the screen for a few seconds, the three parts would join back together. The sequence would repeat, eventually ending (in this Troper's experience), with your ship being surrounded by all three parts of the boss, which would then re-merge with you in the middle (with fatal consequences).
- That boss is very easy to beat with the red laser at maximum level. You can destroy the bottom part before it even finishes maneuvering
- This boss is merely a Wake Up Call to proper force usage. Place force on rear. as boss flies on from left side, jam force (while still attached to your rear) inside the top of the bottom section of the boss and follow it while mashing the fire button. With proper positioning, you will destroy the bottom section before it even separates. You can then easily take the left section out from below while the boss is splitting with blue lasers or the upper bit+red laser if you still have it. Finally move to the left, swap the force back around and destroy the right part.
- This troper found that boss hilarious because you can simply place a fully powered Force in the middle of the screen and sit in a corner until it dies. On the other hand, Fine Motion from R-Type Final... *shudder* Hate reflecting laser beams, hate reflecting laser beams!
- The Magician in House Of The Dead is so very much this, as he's got a scant few difficult-to-hit weak points for you to aim at, has a screen-filling fireball attack that's almost guaranteed to hit, and has a rushing attack that can only be stopped by hitting one of the aforementioned weak points. This troper was actually disappointed when his second game incarnation was easier than his first game incarnation (the first time around, his final attack forces you to look away from him to shoot down fireballs raining down on your head; the second time, he just stands in the air and throws fireballs at you, making him a sitting duck).
- Some say his HOTD 2 final attack is harder, since the fireballs are more spread out, and it's impossible to hit them all, although not all of them will hit you.
- Also, in this troper's opinion, the Hermit boss of Chapter 3(the Scrappy Level) of HOTD 1 is just as cheap. A giant (literal) Demonic Spider with a very small weak point, that starts out just inches from your face, if you miss here, loss of health is inevitable. This phase has prematurely ended many games. Then it retreats further down the tunnel, becoming even harder to hit, and after being hit it turns its weak point away from you to shoot volleys of web balls at you. The longer you take, the more projectiles will be fired per volley. In the final phase, it guards its weak point until it gets up close and personal, again you have only a split second to hit it before it hits you.
- The Heirophant and Sand Area Tower bosses are just as bad; the former has a weak point that's only open for a few seconds, and a diving attack that will always hit if you don't hit its weak point, while the latter hides itself in the sand, only coming up for an attack (and, hence, is the only time you can attack it). Hell, come to think of it, most bosses in House of the Dead can fit into this category, to some extent.
- The Fool in House of the Dead III. You need to shoot one of his limbs (marked with a green targeting sight) in order to stop its advance. This is easy enough with his first limb, but his next two limbs tend to get obstructed by the stairs, and his fourth one is used to swing around making it hard to hit. And then his last phase consists of jumping at you to attack, with the only way to stop him being to shoot 6 bullets (12 if you're playing with another player) while it's in the air. Also, taking down first 3 limbs require you to deplete its attack gauge 3 times. If you did it too slow in 1st or 2nd (or both), it's guarantee that the boss will hit you.
- And the reload is so slow on the PC version that it's actually physically impossible to stop yourself being hit.
- Strength in House of the Dead 2, who on top of brandishing his chainsaw wildly, making his head difficult to shoot, will sometimes jump down from above and immediately take a life off (which caught this troper, who is used to the similarly-attacking Death from HotD3 jumping down, then attacking, by surprise).
- Did you enjoy The Magician? Then you'll love The Star, the boss of Chapter 5 of The House of the Dead 4. He bears many similarities to The Magician; he's a humanoid zombie who flies around the arena, fires dozens of energy-based projectiles that need to be shot down lest you lose a life and has two charge attacks, one of which involves GOING OFF THE SCREEN for a moment in a completely dick move that will almost guarantee a life lost. Many players find him to be more difficult than The World, the boss of the next (and last) chapter.
- Vampire Night, another light gun game by the same House of the Dead team, features a winged boss that has attacks that are basically a hybrid of Hot D 1's Hangedman and Magician, but who stays faaaaar in the background most of the time. You have to be a crack shot to hurt him any substantial amount before he switches phases and starts circling the player and carving away with a laser.
- The final bosses in the Silent Scope games are really irritating, considering you have only one shot to pull it off, and a ridiculously small target to hit.
- The penultimate bosses, such as Monica, Sho & Kane, and Phantom, are even worse.
- But Cobra in Silent Scope 2 takes the cake as possibly the most unfair boss of the series. He hides behind a hanging hostage most of the time, the plane is constantly moving from left to right, and he occasionally THROWS hostages at you, in which situation loss of health is unavoidable unless you make him drop the hostage(better to get hit than to shoot the hostage and lose a full health segment). Konami just said "fuck you" to players here.
- Fox, when playing as Falcon solo. You're much farther away than Jackal, then after a few seconds, a blizzard obscures your view, forcing you to use the crappy thermal vision.
- The entire fourth stage in Ikaruga is fought against the level boss, a floating fortress that spends ten minutes hurling ridiculous amounts of enemies and spirograph-patterns of alternating dots at you. Casual players will most likely lack the coordination to switch their ship's polarity in tune with the incoming fire, the return fire from destroyed enemies, and the few enemies who fire on their own to boot. The actual "boss fight" at the end of the level places the player in a tiny space filled with beam weapons that alternate color while firing, and the boss itself is only vulnerable at three (moving) points, all of which have three doors that must be shot through first.
- And then there's Tageri's third form in Chapter 5, who fires homing lasers (not unlike yours) at you, alternates polarity, and repeats this process, at an increasingly faster pace. It doesn't help that you whittle his health down, he starts to fire waves of bullets that also alternate in polarity.
- Its spiritual predessor, Radiant Silvergun, also features a stage (5A) that is ten minutes against a gigantic flying fortress. Whose walls close in on you while girders scroll down and lasers surround you and enemies come from all sides.
- In Radiant Silvergun, there aren't "That one boss". In Radiant Silvergun there are "Those several bosses" starting from third one.
- One of the worst bosses was Ohtrigen the phoenix which throws an insane amount of fast projectiles at player.
- The first half of mission 11 in Project Sylpheed. The difficulty REALLY spikes here, as the Acropolis' armour might as well be paper here, even on easy: first you have to defend against waves of fighters and bombers, and BOTH types can attack the Acropolis. Then, halfway through, the Guilty Roses show up and they're pretty deadly against ANYONE (though if you can pull it off, a well aimed XGS Grav Cannon shot can take all 4 of them out in one shot... but thats only in a second playthrough or later).
- The second mission, especially on normal (for This Troper), is a sudden, jarring difficulty hike. Rather than the previous easy mook mashing, you're thrown into a hectic fight with vague orders to shoot things and protect the bigger ships. After about 5 minutes of this, you're required to protect the flagship as the Admiral panics and flees, but as you do, you get calls from other battleships to help. The catch? In this troper's experience, no amount of effort he's put in can prevent the Caliban's destruction, due to the arbitary nature of where the enemies come from and the "realistic" nature of the controls andth randomness of the targeting system. He got past it once, but didn't save.
- Sherudo Garo, the Stage 2 boss and Fake Boss of Time Crisis. He hits quickly with his throwing knives, which have a 100% chance of taking off a life. On top of that, he pops out only momentarily to do this.
- Thought that was bad? Try Wild Dog, where in the first part of the fight, he sometimes scores a hit the instnt he pops up, making this a Luck Based Mission. In the final part, he sets all the hedges on fire, making it hard to see him, and he throws flash grenades which temporarily blind you(even if you shoot them out of the air), followed by a charging melee attack.
- The Dual Boss Tiger and Edgey in the spinoff Crisis Zone. Tiger throws heavy objects and can take a ton of damage, although slow. Edgey, on the other hand, is extremely fast, making him hard to hit before he claws you, and he also throws volleys of knives at you(unlike Sherudo, these can be shot out of the air).
- In fact any ninja or Demonic Spiders type boss in a lightgun shoot-em-up is probably that one boss.
- The One Winged Angel of The Great Commander in Star Fox/Starwing. Argh, I can't even remember how I beat him.
- To elaborate: you fight him at the end of the Hard path version of Venom, which is filled with Everything Trying To Kill You, so there's a chance your Shield is low by the time you get to the end. He doesn't even appear at first - instead, he flies in from BEHIND, and you have to get to the bottom of the screen to avoid him smashing into you as he flies by. After a few seconds he stops, turns around, and the boss lifebar appears... and then he transforms into a mech, with his middle portion growing taller and gaining cannons for arms. What does he fire, you may ask? Big, iron balls of death: you can't reflect them, they do a lot of damage, and they BOUNCE upon hitting the ground. This isn't so bad in and of itself, as he normally only fires them one at a time. Normally is the keyword here, as one thing he loves doing is having his midsection spin around as he fires the iron balls at a rapid pace, making it hard to determine in what direction they'll fly. As you lower his health, though, the Great Commander seems to fire at a faster pace. Speaking of lowering his health, you can only HARM the Great Commander by firing into a tiny node on his base, which, by the way, is always rotating, and is shielded by a door that is also constantly opening and closing. If you actually manage to drop his HP to zero, the Great Commander's base explodes, but his midsection and head separate, and the fight continues with the midsection spinning around like a top, trying to ram into you, and occasionally dropping mines. But these mines actually make a huge leap toward you instead of exploding, while the head is flying around trying to ram into you as well. To hurt the Great Commander now, you have to shoot the head, which is constantly flying around the aforementioned midsection, using it as a shield. If this is your first time through the game, you WILL die at least once to this monster, and, if you DO die, you have to start over at the midpoint again. Have fun!
- Dis-Human and Infinity, the final bosses of Ray Crisis, which are a major Difficulty Spike up from the previously easy levels of the game. Black hole generator, homing missiles(made harder to dodge by the aformentioned black hole), Bullet Hell, moving laser grids, etc.
- In The Guardian Legend, both Grimgrins as well as the final boss are cheating bastards. They bombard you with various projectiles, increasing the frequency and density as you damage them until they are practically impossible to avoid. Pretty much the only way to win is to have a ton of Enemy Erasers on hand.
- Bah. Fire Repeller a few inches in from one side of the screen. move to edge and stay between your repeller shot and the boss. collect powerups as they appear. You will hardly get hit, and will be able to recover your chips and health. Now Blue Optomon, that's another story... Absurdly powerful and long blue tentacles that are very hard to dodge, and you will go down in the hits, and you aren't gonna get any powerups during the battle.
- Gradius III Arcade usually has easy bosses at the end of its Nintendo Hard levels, but not the bosses of stages 3 and 5. Stage 3's boss, Big Core Mk III, has much faster bouncing lasers than in the SNES version, and once its first two cores are destroyed, it starts spamming you with walls of Frickin Laser Beams which you can just barely ease your ship through the gaps of. Stage 5's boss is six Moai heads, which are very hard to maneuver your options around to destroy, and addition spit out Mini-Moais that float around inflate as they are shot until they explode, restricting your maneuvering space. In other words, a boss that has nearly impossible to hit weak points and attacks by spawning Demonic Spiders.
- Gradius V has a return appearance of Beacon, a boss from Gradius III SNES, as a Mini Boss, but in this case it happens to be That One Mini Boss, said by some to be the hardest enemy in the game(the Keeper's Core or Gun Wall midboss is considered by others to be harder) It now spams randomly directed bouncing blue laser beams, in addition to having a containment laser like Big Core Mk III, and on higher difficulties it has two sets of containment lasers, making it nigh-impossible to dodge the blue bouncing beams, unless you know a certain trick. It also fires bullet spams and drops fire bombs, in addition to the tunnel narrowing at points.
- Three words: Blaster Cannon Core.
- If you can survive 1 8/9 loops of Gradius Gaiden, you have a nasty surprise waiting for you on Stage 8: Heaven's Gate. It fires waves of lasers that put Big Core Mk III to shame, possesses thin green containment lasers (two of which are located dead center, by the way), and its deadliest attack fires an assload of these lasers. Finally, once you defeat this boss it, like most other bosses on this loop, fires suicide bullets in a last-ditch effort to kill you (and make you fight it again).
- The final boss of Salamander 2. One of the very, very rare instances in which a Gradius Final Boss actually puts up a fight.
- Steel Empire has the Final Boss which is... a satellite. Considering this is back in the days of genuinely Nintendo Hard games and this was a SEGA game, this boss is extremely hard to defeat if you didn't know what you were doing. Oh, and some attacks will hit you repeatedly before you figure out how to avoid them, so good luck there.
- Star Fox 64: Mechbeth. Perhaps the only time it has ever actually been easier to complete the special mission to go on the more difficult route (by shooting the eight switches to reroute the train into the weapons factory) than to not complete the special mission (forcing you to fight this ridiculous boss). Once you know where all of the switches are, this becomes easy, but if you miss one, prepare for a really challenging boss fight.
- Said boss fight also comes slapped in with a nice time limit on it... that doesn't display. Take took long and the guy in the train says "It's time to finish this!" and then smacks the boss into you for an instant kill.
- Sarumarine kind of counts, too. A boss that actually forces you to use bombs. But carefully, because you don't really want to blow one of the cannon pontoons off while the exhaust pipes are still there. Oh, and if you're low on power (or playing on Expert, where your wings break at the slightest impact), remember to dodge to the side of the screen at the end, or else you'll get hit by the shrapnel from dealing the final blow. This troper was actually killed after knocking it out once and had to redo the second half of the level again.
- The Bolse core, too. You wouldn't think destroying a satellite would be annoying, would you? It starts shooting back. Add to that the fact that the core rotates, and near the end, you could end up approaching the core only to find that the remaining targets are on the far side and you're getting nothing but a face full of lasers. Also, Star Wolf shows up on this level if you either didn't beat them all on Fortuna or came from a different route. Yay...
- The boss of GHOST Squad 's third mission, Dingo, starts off guarding himself with an extremely durable shield that takes minimal damage from bullets, thus requiring you to shoot grenades at it. Well here's the problem: while your bullets have a straight trajectory, your grenades fire in an arc, forcing you to adjust your aim accordingly, and your grenades have to take a few seconds to reload. On top of that, your boat and his boat move sideways constantly, and Dingo himself sidesteps as well, making him a hard target. And all of this is without taking into consideration the time limit. Finally, once you break his shield, he gains a new attack: throwing clusters of grenades. You have to shoot these down to avoid taking damage (not that anyone credit-feeding the game really cares), AND finish him off in the time limit.
- Sigma Star Saga (a hybrid RPG/shmup) features the Chapter 5 boss, The Ghost of Iot. Although touching him will not damage you (unlike every other enemy in the game... he is a ghost after all), he has a very small hitbox, tons of health, and his attacks come at you from the background. From. The. Background. The most frustrating part is that he knows how to lead his shots, meaning that you have to be constantly weaving around in bizarre patterns to avoid getting killed. The only mercy in this fight is that, unlike most shmups, you are not a One Hit Point Wonder, and can take a few hits before dying.
- Gaiares (for the sega genesis) has a lot of annoying bosses, but the final boss takes the cake for having two TOZs (the device you use to copy enemy weapons) and a regular habit of launching them at you to copy whatever weapon you have. oh, and the weapon you get from the boss is completely random. The only weapon the boss can't copy are the Super Weapons, such as the T-Braster, which are completely random and virtually impossible to get when you want them.
- Solar Striker starts off as a pretty easy shooter until you get to the fourth boss, which is probably the closest the Game Boy has ever gotten to Bullet Hell. Be prepared to dodge like crazy as it constantly fires out of the sixteen turrets that surround it (half of them are uncomfortably close to you). There is a safe spot◊, but you're dead if you're even one pixel off.
- In Einhander, almost every boss can be That One Boss if you don't know what you're doing, but even experienced players have trouble with Schwarzgeist and Hyperion.
- Battle Garegga's penultimate boss, Black Heart Mark II. Harder and denser patterns than the last boss and a small hittable area unless you're using a certain ship that fires broadswords. It's only fitting that the best scoring trick in the game involves jacking up its aggressiveness and health to insane levels and dumping nearly all your remaining lives and bombs on it.
- Raiden Fighters Jet's penultimate boss, a large hovertank, is a prime example of this sort of boss in a non-danmaku game that uses only bullets for enemy attacks. Every form has absurd amounts of health, it has an attack that leaves very slow bullets on the screen to trap you, and it spews undodgeable (unless you choose a certain tiny ship) attacks should you destroy forms at the wrong time.
- Sin & Punishment's Birth Model. A gross name for a gross enemy. It's basically an enormous pile of eggs, which can shoot at you. Specifically, every individual egg can shoot at you. Good luck!
- In Parodius Da!, stage nine (the zombie level) has a mid-boss that IS impossible without powerups. The boss is a series of umbrellas that circle the screen once, before homing it on you. The health they have makes an unpowered shot kill each enemy closer to you than the previous one was, up until one gets you.
|
|
