The Most Challenging Boss Fights

Yeah, like I said, you can't beat him outside the pyramid. You gotta run to that pyramid, wait for the door to open, then go into it. Then(IIRC), you gotta use launcher things to go through electric rings to weaken Ugh-Zahn so you can damage him.

Ruby Weapon gets paralyzed by Hades (the summon that does all status ailments). Damn, that was a boring fight.

edited 2nd Dec '15 6:27:35 PM by Clarste

To be fair, let's not turn this into FAQ mode. Among other things, we don't want to belittle the efforts others went through just because we might have found a given boss easy. There's a reason the page for That One Boss has a note about individual play styles.

Seconding what Footsteps said.

I think I'll give a shout out to Nephilim, the superboss of Tales of the Abyss. I believe my strategy boiled down to "kite like there's no tomorrow while praying that my teammate AI doesn't decide to wander into her blast radius".

I don't remember how it was in the old games, but I will agree Whitney's Miltank is a bitch and a half to fight. Why is this stupid cow so hard to KO? And why don't I have anything to do substantial damage to it?

Medusa in the original Kid Icarus was a pain. Mostly due to the fact that you have to repeat the whole flight section if you die to her. And you likely will because you'll have taken a lot of damage early in the stage.

Second the motion on that Miltank. The first second third fourth time I went up there I had a mostly male party. I don't think I've ever hated the move Attract so much in my life...or Rollout for that matter.

Maybe I'm just bad at fighting games, but Marie at the end of Skullgirls is one of the hardest bosses I've ever faced in a game. I never play the single player modes just because I can never manage to beat her more then 3/4s of the time.

Sephiroth from the 1st Kingdom Hearts gets my vote too, I was never able to beat him. He's pretty nasty in the sequel too, but nowhere near as bad since the right keyblade (Oblivion due to it's long reach) and sufficient knowledge of his attack patterns can make him beatable.

Crawmerax from the 1st Borderlands is another good example. Yeah he's a bonus boss too, but the guy's just a massive damage sponge that quickly pins you and your team in a corner.

A third nomination from my experience would be Culex from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Even reading an online guide on how to beat the guy (or girl?) wasn't enough, since all they said was to attack the crystals floating around him if you wanted to cripple his nastier attacks - which often didn't work from my experience.

Finally... while they're definitely nowhere near as challenging as they used to be for me, most of the bosses from Metal Gear Solid 1 would make the list, especially a certain fourth-wall breaking psychic. For some baffling reason (possibly due to my dad coaching over my shoulder in a really crappy way and insisting that the Codec calls were useless)

I'll second Crawmerax from Borderlands. I was only able to beat it because I abused the hell out of an exploit that makes it not able to find you.

Dr. Fetus, the final boss of Super Meat Boy, is crazy hard, but that fits the rest of the game. It took me an hour or two for the regular version of the boss, I shudder to think how hard the dark world version is.

Death Egg Zone, the final stage/boss from Sonic 2, is disproportionately difficult. You need to fight two extra-tough bosses with no rings, meaning if you get hit once, you have to do both fights again. On top of that, the game doesn't have a save feature. If you get a game over and have no continues left, you back to the very start of the game. Never was able to beat it.

Duke Fishron from Terraria is ridiculously fast, absurdly powerful, and built like a tank. Even with an arena set up and the most powerful end-game gear available, it's still nearly impossible to solo. It does too much damage too fast. Never beat it either.

Been playing Bloodborne recently, and while I think the actual levels are much harder than the bosses, Rom the Vacuous Spider was a pretty damn challenging fight.

Right at the start of the boss, he summons a ton of spiders that can hit really hard, and have their faces completely armored. Your only saving grace is that Rom himself doesn't attack you, and the spiders themselves are surprisingly timid and won't gangbang you to death.

Of course then you attack Rom a few times until he teleports away, and summons MORE spiders.

and then he starts chucking meteors, causing rocks to shoot up from the ground, cast Wrath Of The Gods, and flail around like a kid having a tantrum

I'll second Culex from Super Mario RPG. There are basically 5 enemies attacking to your three...and most of those attacks are full party that more often than not can induce status effects. It was only after 1-2 crystals went down that the fight became a bit more manageable.

I'd also like to add Nightmare Mother from Mega Man X 6. Near impossible to dodge at the start of battle with her massive wide hitbox...it becomes downright insane once she speeds up to insane speeds on low health AND can change direction at the drop of the hat WITH NO WARNING. Coupled with limited space to work with and highly damaging attacks with a weakness that doesn't even do well on her plus a stage previously that almost requires a suit that prevents you from using said weakness and you got one terrible boss. To a lesser extent, Infinity Miijion from the same game, but only if you are doing a buster only run on him; with his weakness, he's only mildly annoying.

edited 3rd Dec '15 11:24:34 AM by Darkflamewolf

• N. Tropy from Crash Bandicoot 3 took me weeks to beat as a kid. I didn't realise at the time that there was a pattern to his lasers or that he would sometimes shoot his tracking energy balls at different heights, not to mention I kept panicking because of his attacks looking quite different and frightening in comparison to the other bosses and the lasers making a loud screeching noise when they moved.

• Chairman Drek from Ratchet And Clank was hard for me because he has very high defence (The Devastator is the only reasonable weapon you have that can put a dent in him and is actually practical to use) and thanks to Early-Installment Weirdness, weapons don't upgrade through use and you have much less health than in later games. If you die, you'll have to buy more ammo and put you at risk of having to leave to get more bolts if you run out, which takes a while in the first game. Of course, if you have the RYNO, he goes down in three or four shots, but at 150,000 bolts, it's by far the most expensive item in the game and very much a Bragging Rights Reward.

• The final boss from Jak2. I worried about running out of ammo against Drek. Here it actually happened. The arena only respawns ammo for your yellow weapon, so if you blow all your purple and blue ammo on your first go and die as I did, you'll have to make do with the basic pea shooter. It takes 90 yellow shots to kill him (I counted), but you'll have to juggle between avoiding his attacks, collecting ammo and killing the swarms of insects that bite you and flying enemies that shoot at you, which is a lot to do on only 3 or 4 hits. Jak 2 was hard.

• Last one for now, I second the Mysterious Figure. I was able to beat him with Ven and Aqua, but I've never done it with Terra. I don't think I will either, simply because I came this close to losing my sanity during one of my attempts with Ven, and beating with Terra is, by all accounts, even harder. He was at 1HP when he attacked me and got me down to 1HP. I wanted to be cautious and heal before the final blow, but he kept attacking me after I healed but before I could move again. Eventually, I healed and while I couldn't move, he used Doom - and because he'd used it twice already, the countdown was too fast for me to break out in time and I died. Cue big Rapid-Fire "No!" as if I'm a Bizarro Daniel Bryan, then the next attempt leading to delirious off-key singing of Escape from the City whenever I rolled, and there's a lot of rolling in that battle.

edited 3rd Dec '15 8:52:05 AM by GavsEvans123

But when you beat her, you get to say "Dishonor on you! Dishonor on your cow!" XD

Anyway, I'd say my most challenging boss fight was with Duriel.

How could I forget?! Wily Capsule in Mega Man 7! This is bar none, THE WORST/HARDEST boss in classic mega man series. Stays out of your range over half the battle, shoots multiple element shots that do additional damage after they hit you. Its bad when general strategy says 'get hit by the yellow orbs, they hurt less!' Furthermore, hitting him with anything will spawn a ground pulse that's quite fast and hard to avoid if you're not expecting it and/or trying to still dodge the homing orbs from his initial volley. The fact his weakness is so hard to hit him with it and everything else does either 0 or just 1 damage and you only have 4 tanks to finish him off with? You got a recipe for frustrating and challenging.

Oh, God, not the Wily Capsule in Mega Man 7. That awful fight single-handedly made me downgrade it on my personal list for the franchise. I bought Mega Man Complete Works Collection, flipped to the pages about that thing, and even Keiji Inafune admitted that nobody who worked on the game could beat that thing without blazing through energy tanks.

Not only a challenge, but probably one of my least favorite boss fights of all time because of just how unfair it was.

Two that haven't been mentioned yet.

One, the Red Optomon from The Guardian Legend. Made worse because they give you absolutely no clue as to what actually works against it. I died on that thing several dozen times until I chanced on the solution, and even then had problems with it.

Two, Queen Larsa in Mushihime Sama. I sometimes get asked as to how I got so good at dodging in video games. This. This is the answer.

I found Wily Capsule 7 pretty easy once I learned you could hold Up to make the Wild Coils go higher.

Black Bean in Gurumin. If I'm remembering it right, it had a bunch of undodgeable One-Hit Kill attacks you had to abuse i-frames in order to survive. Time it wrong, and you had to redo the fight

...I had another one in mind, but I can't remember it right now. I don't have a lot of examples to give, because I have a habit of not completing games. :x

edited 3rd Dec '15 9:01:55 PM by HanabiraKage

Red Optomon was easy for me since I had the l2-l3 fireball which destroys its tentacles. Blue Optomon on the other hand... you won't have anything to counter the tentacles. And Grimgrin is also a high-damage dealing Damage-Sponge Boss/Marathon Boss

I've played loads of shmups before and there are quite a few bosses who come in here. Especially when Dynamic Difficulty is turned up. Stuff like Titanic Lance and Fatty Glutton from Darius Gaiden are crazy.

As a kid, I also remember the Chapter 1 final boss of Tyrian a pretty tough customer. That is, until I took the Plasma Storm as left/right sidekicks to fry him in seconds.

edited 3rd Dec '15 9:08:32 PM by ironcommando

So I'm not the only one who found Wily Impossible to beat in Megaman 7, eh? Well that's kinda reassuring.

Another one from the Megaman X series: The 2nd fight against Serges in Sigma's fortress from Megaman X2. What made that sucker so hard was that you had a limited amount of time and space to manuever as his "wall tank" slowly moved foward, destroying the platforms you could safely stand on above the spikes. And the more damage he took, the faster he'd move and shoot from his pod, making it harder to finish him off before it was too late. I was never able to beat that guy either.

Freaking Gyorg from Majora's Mask. Hope you're good at Zora jumping and can get out quickly and/or have the defense upgrade. I heard they made him even worse in the 3ds version.

THREE Warden Eternals in Halo 5: Guardians. Insta-death sword, insta-death laser face, insta-death homing ball of death, tons of health, and your teammates take ages to revive you while he crushes them and spams the same "YOU DARE APPROACH" voice lines over and over again. No wonder most prefer to just skip it.

At least with the two Wardens boss fight they basically hand you two Legendary weapons and two tanks.

edited 3rd Dec '15 9:31:18 PM by Tuckerscreator

Demyx from KHII isn't the most difficult boss fight, but fuck is he annoying. He gave me my first game over and it took me a week to beat him (Maybe I just suck) His "DANCE WATER DANCE" doesn't help either.

Spike from Spyro 3 is a massive pain in the ass. Mainly because the one way to harm the guy can also be used by Spike to wipe you out. Repeatedly. It's been awhile since my last playthrough of Spyro 3 but I always remember having a miserable time fight Spike.

• Ballos from Cave Story. The first phase is at least somewhat manageable, but the second phase onward is pure bullshit. Still haven't beaten him to this day.

• Lady Comstock from Bioshock Infinite. What do you get when you combine a mook maker whose mooks don't drop resources and an arena that doesn't allow you to use the mechanics that made the other fights in the game fun? A pain in the ass, that's what. Don't even remember how I beat her, I just know I died many times in the process.

• The Halloween bosses from Team Fortress 2. First, they requires the entire server to work together to take them down, which is very unlikely as the teams can still kill each other. Second, they only stay around for 90 seconds at a time, making it a serious pain if you want their exclusive drops.

• Finally, The Imprisoned from Hyrule Warriors. You thought the Skyward Sword version was hard? Hyrule Warriors cranks the bullshit meter up to eleven. The only real effective strategy is to build up the special meter on mooks so you can use the special attack to destroy all of it's toes in one go, smack the thing on it's forehead until it wakes up, run like hell so it doesn't run you over, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately, there are some Adventure Mode maps that decided you should fight it one on one in a room barely twice as big as it. Good luck.