That One Boss and That One Level cleanup.

The difficulty of the Mega Man games differ by a good margin even on the NES era. From what I've seen here and there and from personnal experience, the II is average hard, and the III and V ramps up the difficulty.

edited 15th Jul '17 6:48:01 AM by Yumil

There's little to no chance that Yellow Devil Mark 1 is getting removed. Yes, he can be made easier by memorizing his attack pattern, but his attack pattern is much longer than a typical boss, and you still need to execute surviving the pattern.

Additionally, the Yellow Devil Mark I is iconic enough as That One Boss that people keep making new versions of him that are also That One Boss. That by itself says something about how much of a reputation for difficulty the Yellow Devil Mark 1 has.

I'm going to need some assistance with the Tales Series page please? I've only played Tales of Symphonia and its sequel, Tales of the Abyss, and Tales of Berseria, so the other titles are beyond my knowledge and experience.

First, for the titles I know.

Tales of Symphonia

• The first fight with Kratos: Cut. Technically, he's a Bonus Boss because you're not actually required to beat him to progress, and managing to beat him only nets you extra experience points and gald. Plus, he comes after Remiel, so obviously your party would be worn out by that point. The only real challenge is managing to fight him while recovering from Remiel, not with the boss himself.
• Ktugach: Cut. It's a Wake-Up Call Boss because it's the first major Flunky Boss you fight in the game, so of course it'll provide a challenge if you're unprepared, but it's not overly hard. It's automatically excluded.
• Yuan and Botta: Keep. From my experience, these two are the only bosses besides the Final Boss to give me trouble. Both have access to high-damaging spells like Indignation, and they have pretty clever AIs that allow them to target your healers frequently.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

• The final battle with Alice and Decus: Not Sure. It's been a long while since I've played this game but I don't recall them being difficult as far as I know. Maybe it was perhaps I was overleveled by that point and had access to good gear.
• The Lookins: Keep. For a pack of caterpillar things, they're surprisingly tough Lightning Bruisers with a high-damaging Rolling Attack. Managed to spend quite a lot of life bottles in this fight.

Tales of the Abyss

• The first fight with Van: Not Sure. I didn't find him that difficult compared to his Final Boss encounter near the end of the game, even with his Mystic Arte.
• The first fight with Arietta: Cut. She's the first God General and Flunky Boss you fight in the game, so naturally, a Wake-Up Call Boss. She's not that difficult here compared to her later encounters.
• The first fight with Legretta: Keep. She's pretty tough and quick by that point in the game, and has an advantage over long-range with her guns and Fonic Artes.
• Sync: Not Sure. In all my encounters with him, I never found him that difficult. I'd say he qualify more as a Goddamned Boss because his first encounter is with Largo, and his second and third encounters are after very lengthy cutscenes with no save points in-between.

Tales of Berseria

• Medissa: Keep. She's the only boss in the game besides Bonus Boss Phoenix to give me trouble, because she's a Flunky Boss who summons snakes throughout the fight that can poison you (which prevents you from healing), and has a very dangerous Break Soul attack.

edited 15th Jul '17 1:26:14 PM by DivineFlame100

Sadly I never played other Tales of games beyond the two Symphonia ones.

I agree with keeping both Yellow Devils, though.

I don't think the final boss of Persona 5 is hard enough to qualify for That One Boss status. In fact, I remember having a pretty easy time against him. Sure, I was spamming Hassou Tobi all day, but shouldn't the fact that such a Game-Breaker is available at this point count against his difficulty?

Also, this is not completely related, but is it necessary to spoiler-tag the name of every single boss in Persona 4? The fact that most of the game's bosses are your future party members' shadows is a major plot element that's presented right at the start of the game.

Persona 5's final boss difficulty depends on if you maxed the strength social link or not. Very easy if you do, kinda difficult if you dont. It is not really much more difficult than the rest of the bosses in the game as well.

I would say remove it.

For Persona 3 IMO remove every entry but Sleeping Table. Especially the piss easy Final Boss needs to go.

For Persona 4, keep Shadow Yukiko who notably got nerfed HARD in the rerelease, Shadow Teddie the first boss that emotes and specifically targets weaknesses, and Shadow Mitsuo for Ghastly Wail combo. Everything else should go.

For Persona 4, I'd say that Shadow Kanji is also notoriously difficult. I've seen plenty of people ask for help on how to beat him on GameFAQs, and he also got re-balanced for Golden.

He was difficult for the same reasons Shadow Yukiko was difficult, it was early in the game and you didnt have many options available. However he was still a ton easier than Shadow Yukiko because you had more options and could easily be immune to electricity unlike attempting to become immune to fire for Yukiko.

Each boss on the list has to be a different reason and actually be really damn hard.

Shadow Yukiko, Shadow Teddie and Shadow Mitsuo are the only ones that really qualify and have the reputation for being so in a game that is actually pretty decently hard on its own.

edited 16th Jul '17 12:52:12 PM by Memers

Okay, since nobody contested it, I cleaned up the Fire Emblem section. The page might still need some tweaking though. Conquest still have 4 bosses listed, and i'm not sure which one to take out first. Some games still have 3 bosses too.

edited 16th Jul '17 12:51:17 PM by Yumil

Yeah, that's a lot of spoiler tags. Let's just put a spoiler warning up top for the Persona page in question. Far easier and makes it look neater.

• That One Boss: Sun and Moon have plenty of tough-as-nails bosses, especially compared to previous games, especially Totem Pokémon, given that you're usually outnumbered two to one, with one Pokémon in that pair being particularly tough.
  • Totem Wishiwashi. It has great bulk and high offensive stats, and will summon Pokémon that have Helping Hand to further augment its offensive attacks. One such Pokémon would be Alomomola, which can also use Heal Pulse to heal the Wishiwashi. The rain is also up for an infinite amount of time and coming from 140 base special attack at this point a Water Gun can OHKO almost everything in the game while you're not likely to 2HKO it.
  • Totem Salazzle. It's fast and hits hard with Special moves, and its aura improves its Special Defense, giving it some extra bulk against the Water-types you probably brought to deal with it. Once you get its health down enough, it'll eat its Petaya Berry to boost its Special Attack even further. Don't think its movepool is any more forgiving: it's got Torment to keep you from spamming your best move, Venom Drench to lower both of your offensive stats and your Speed, the relatively-powerful Flame Burst for direct damage, and Toxic. Why is Toxic so bad? Well, Salazzle's unique Ability, Corrosion, lets it poison anything, regardless of type, which means there's no way to protect yourself from ongoing damage that doubles each turn. And woe betide you if it summoned a Salandit to help, because the Salandit will follow up with Venoshock, an attack that doubles in power if the target has been poisoned; the Salandit can also use Taunt to keep you from using any status moves, which is just icing on the cake. Even worse is the fact that Salazzle will summon infinite reinforcements of Salandit as one gets defeated, forcing you to focus your attacks on Salazzle and getting hammered by Salandit's Venoshock if they're left unchecked. Sure, you can try to take it out using Ground moves, but this early in the game, you won't be able to find very many in Alola.
  • Totem Lurantis. It starts off with heightened Speed, allowing it to likely outspeed most Pokémon. It has some really hard hitting moves like Solar Blade (a physical equivalent to Solar Beam, except it has 125 Power) and the decently powered X-Scissor. If you don't bring it to below 1/3 health before the end of the first turn, it'll summon a Trumbeak which can wear your Pokémon down with Supersonic and Screech, as well as Pluck to steal any held berries and Rock Blast to prey on the Fire, Bug, and Flying Pokémon that would target Lurantis. However, if you do manage to weaken it that much that fast, it'll summon a Castform instead, which can make the fight a lot more hellish. It has Headbutt, which can do decent damage and can flinch. It has Water Gun which can hurt Fire-type Pokémon. But the kicker is that it can use Sunny Day, thus activating harsh sunlight and its Forecast ability, while also giving it a Fire-type Weather Ball to hit even harder and further punish Bug types. In addition, Totem Lurantis can receive tons of benefit from harsh sunlight, as it will activate its Leaf Guard ability, which prevent status, heals more HP with Synthesis and Solar Blade doesn't require charging. To top this off, regardless of who it summons first, if it's still alive when the first ally faints, it'll immediately call the other one. And Totem Lurantis happens to hold a Power Herb, allowing it to bypass a charge turn for Solar Blade once. Heck, many fans in fact compare Lurantis with Whitney's Miltank, of all things!
  • Totem Mimikyu. Its Disguise ability allows it to survive at least one hit and will guarantee that it'll call in an ally Pokémon. Every ally it calls has Hypnosis. Its Totem Aura boosts all of its stats, so it'll be difficult to outspeed and overpower it. Thanks to these boosts, odds are it will survive to call another ally if you KO the first ally first. While having Disguise doesn't save it from getting status effect such as Poison or Burn, it holds a Lum Berry to assure you had just wasted a turn attempting to bypass the loophole.
  • The story battle against Ilima early on can be this for the unprepared. His Yungoos obviously won't prove that much of a threat, but his Smeargle can easily wipe your party if you're underleveled. It has a move that counters your own starter Pokémon, is pretty fast for that early in the game, and has Quick Attack to get off a free hit anyway. It doesn't help that Yungoos loves spamming Leer, which will make your Pokémon even more vulnerable to those Quick Attacks. And Tapu Koko help you if you chose Popplio, as Leafage is a physical move—after a few Leers, Baby-Doll Eyes won't save it. Just ask several Nuzlocke trainers who ended the battle with a Total Party Kill.
  • The battle against Hau counts as this after the first visit to the Aether Paradise. His first Pokémon is an Alolan Raichu — a powerful and fast Pokémon that has access to Thunderbolt and Psychic, making it difficult to survive if your team doesn't resist either. His second Pokémon is the Eeveelution that is strong against your starter- so woe betide anyone who picked Litten and found themselves against the Mighty Glacier Vaporeon. Finally, his last Pokémon is his starter, which carries the Z-Crystal of its relevant type. The only saving grace is that this battle does not need to be won to proceed with the game—though this isn't much reassurance if you're doing a Nuzlocke Run; if you don't have a fast Dark type, the Raichu alone could easily cause your Game Over.
  • Any of the Guzma fights can be surprisingly difficult for many, mainly because of his Golisopod. It packs First Impression (a powerful Bug-type priority move that only works when used as the first attack) which, if not resisted, will likely KO your Pokémon (even Pokémon that are at a much higher level than Golisopod) this is especially true if one tries to use Alolan Raichu against this thing thinking it might outspeed. It will follow it up with a Swords Dance and spam +2 boosted Razor Shells (a Water-type move with the chance of lowering your Pokémon's Defence stat) thereafter. On top of that, it's incredibly bulky for the points where you fight him so chances are big that you not only won't ko it in one round, but that you also won't be activating it's Emergency Exit ability in one round either. And Arceus help you if the Ariados he switches into manages to faint one of your pokemon with Fell Stinger... It will immediately begin spamming +3 ATK Shadow Sneaks and you'll be lucky to even score another hit on the thing. At Aether Paradise, he has two more Pokémon, Masquerain and Pinsir. Masquerain is regarded as a lost potential Pokémon that's another Bug/Flying type, but it will spam Air Slash, which will most likely make you flinch. Good luck trying to hit it, even if you have a Rock type. Speaking of said Emergency Exit ability, it lets it use First Impression once more to likely hand out another KO if your Pokémon does not resist Bug.
  • Lusamine is generally considered to be one of, if not the, hardest fight in the main story. Despite her favoring cute looking Pokémon, her team is full of Mighty Glacier such as Clefable, Milotic, and Bewear. In addition, she is the first trainer in the game to use five Pokémon. And that is not even getting to her Motherbeast rematch where she uses Ultra Beast powers to buff up her Pokémon even further (as in, her Pokémon have one of their stats boosted), while also now having full movesets.
  • The Final Boss, Professor Kukui. He leads with his Lycanroc and uses Stealth Rock, which damages Pokémon upon switching in, and then uses Braviary with Whirlwind to do Stealth Rock damage to you. Braviary also has high Attack and a high BP Brave Bird to use it with. His Pokémon are all EV trained with good movesets. His strongest Pokémon is the final form of the starter you and Hau didn't choose, so it'll absolutely beat your starter, especially since it's equipped with a Z-Crystal matching its type. His Ninetales has Safeguard to protect the team from status effects. He's also got a bulky Snorlax which can tank a lot of hits that aren't Fighting type attacks, and has a high chance of paralyzing with Body Slam as well as High Horsepower for any potential Steel types trying to tank its blows. His Magnezone is also powerful and has Sturdy so one Ground or Fire type move won't be enough to take it down. He also carries 4 Full Restores and 1 Full Heal to use so that Snorlax can easily heal to full health again and can stop status effects.
  • Out of all the Ultra Beasts, Xurkitree is probably the most likely to cause headaches. It starts the encounter with a Totem Aura that doubles its already sky-high Special Attack, allowing it to maul just about anything that's not Ground-type with Discharge, at which point Beast Boost kicks in and raises its Special Attack even further. You could switch in a Ground-type to No-Sell Discharge, except that will likely be answered by a super-effective Power Whip to the face which will still leave a painful mark even with its attack being less than half of its base special attack. To top it off, its Electric typing makes it immune to paralysis, and it comes with Electric Terrain to block sleep (and it will use this if you attempt to use Yawn or are outsped by it while trying to use another sleep-inflicting move on it), making it much harder to catch and boosting the power of Discharge even further. And you have to deal with two of them.
  • Guzzlord is an absolute nightmare to catch. It's level 70, which if you're doing the post-game content immediately after the story is likely to be higher than anything you have on you. Even worse, it's a Damage-Sponge Boss that will take quite some doing to get down to a catchable level of health. While you're whittling down its health, its Beast Boost ability boosts its Attack since it can't boost its max HP, meaning it will very likely slaughter almost anything you throw out against it in one or two hits. On top of everything, it knows Thrash, which will confuse it, and if it hits itself in confusion with its Beast Boosted attack stat, it's almost certain to kill itself if you've been weakening it, and the fact that it has a catch rate of just 15 means that it will get plenty of opportunity to do this and force you to start the fight over again from square one. If only it was as powerful in competitive as it was when you were trying to catch it.
  • Dexio isn't as bad as many of the other examples listed, but he can still be quite a tough trainer. If you don't have a fast Dark-type or Sucker Punch, then you're out of luck. His first Pokémon aren't too bad, but then you get to his Metagross and Alakazam. The former is ridiculously powerful and bulky, and also packs Brick Break to crush almost any Dark- or Steel-types you may have brought. The latter can mega evolve, and as such is disgustingly fast and powerful. The new mega mechanics don't help either, since the increase in Speed activates the turn Alakazam mega evolves. He also packs Focus Blast, which, since The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard is in play, will pretty much always hit for Dexio. In other words, say goodbye to any Dark- or Steel-types you had remaining. And, by extension, your entire party. Oh yeah, you have to beat him in order to use mega evolutions. Oh. My favorite.

First of all, there can't be this many bosses that count in a Pokemon game, even if the game is the hardest in the franchise besides from the spin offs. Second of all, the last ones are all a case of being a Bonus Boss and all have been cut. They're difficult but you fight them in the aftergame. They're meant to be difficult. Other than that most of these you'll have difficulty depending on what starter you have, so this one is going to be fun.

I personally believe Hau, Lusamine, the Totems (Especially Lurantis), the Champion battle and maybe Guzma qualify.

edited 13th Aug '17 7:41:35 AM by ReynTime250

Haven't beaten Pokémon Sun and Moon yet, but definite keeps for me would be Totem Lurantis and Hau, since those were the ones I found the most challenging. Ilima is also pretty difficult for an early game boss, but he can probably go under Wake-Up Call Boss.

For what it's worth, I recall that there was a clean-up project for Pokémon a while back to clean up examples before locking the page. Under the Sun and Moon section, the ones that were determined to count were Wishiwashi, Mimikyu, and Lurantis. So they can probably stay.

edited 13th Aug '17 9:19:18 AM by chasemaddigan

As the person behind that Clean-Up thread, I'm in agreement with the 3 Sun and Moon bosses listed for keeps, while I would cut the rest.

Huh, I'm surprised that this discussion has been bumped back to life. Since there was no activity for roughly a month, I thought this discussion was dead, so I was about to restore some examples that were cleaned up in the mentioned pages.

Cleanup threads don't really die. Sometimes people take a break or it's inactive. If a cleanup thread is actually dead, that means it would be locked and no longer needed.

That's not the case here. I assume you meant put cleaned-up examples into the wiki pages? Or am I misreading your message wrong?

By that, I mean, because there was no activity, I thought this discussion reached a dead end, so I was about to restore all cut examples mentioned in this discussion thinking that it doesn't matter now, and That One Boss and That One Level are better left alone as they are.

So now I know it was only a temporary hiatus, that means we can still proceed with the clean-up process.

I don't think you should re-induce examples cut for being bad even if the thread died after they were cut, since they were cut for being bad, or being misuse, or something like that.

That's... definitely not how we do things, man. If they're cut for being bad, that means they're still bad unless discussion changes their mind.

You don't restore bad examples. That's counterproductive. If you had already, please re-delete them and note you simply misunderstood how we do things, and it'll be chalked up as a simple error in judgment. Things should be fine from there.

At any rate, I'm leaving myself out of this discussion since I don't have any experience with major clean-up projects in general (I only know how to simply add and edit examples), so I'm not really the best person to offer assistance here. Feel free to continue the clean-up as you please. It's not like I'm expected to be the one leading the clean-up anyway.

edited 17th Aug '17 10:13:51 PM by DivineFlame100

I can help on some of the Tales effort:

Tales of Destiny

• Any time you have to fight Barbatos after the first time in Tales of Destiny 2. He's very fast, hits hard, poisons you, and will instantly cast spells (while invincible) specifically to counter your characters' healing spells or items. He also has a tendency to go into overlimit a lot more than you ever will, sometimes up to 4 times in a single battle.
• Elraine is also quite nasty, because she spams status effects, is very hard to stun, and has a 100% physical deflect ability, meaning you cannot hit her with physical attacks. Like Barbatos, you have to fight her twice, and both times are brutal.

I think these are good. Especially Barbatos, his difficulty is a meme in the fandom.

Tales of Eternia

• Many summons are like this, but Undine and Celsius stick out in particular. Undine casts "Spear of Baptism", a move that pierces across the entire battlefield. It has to charge for a couple of seconds, which would be great—except that Undine is also untouchable while charging, which neatly nixes any attack chain you have going. Celsius, meanwhile, is extremely agile, can inflict Freeze with a touch, likes to sidestep physical attacks, and will cast Blizzard, one of the most powerful Ice spells in the game, twice in rapid succession, which can easily kill an otherwise appropriately leveled party with no room for argument. Oh and let's not forget Sekundes who can cast Maxwell Extensions. Consecutively.

I'd say Undine and Celcius examples are good, though since Undine is the first real boss of the game she might be more of a Wake-Up Call Boss. Sekundes doesn't count, he's a Bonus Boss. A boss called Volt should probably be added too (you're down 2 party members and one party member starts at 1 hp at the beginning of the fight and there's a Game-Breaking Bug in certain copies of the game that has the potential to brick your save after fighting him).

Tales of the Tempest

• The final boss, King Aurella, actually puts up a fight: he hits hard, teleports around the battlefield, and attacks with several status ailments. This can take some players by surprise, because up until that point, every single battle could be easily won by mashing the A button. He's still not quite tough enough to be considered hard (especially because by the time you get there, you should have a lot of healing items), but compared to the rest of the game it's a huge difficulty spike.

Normally a Final Boss doesn't count but Aurella might still be an example because he's such a massive Difficulty Spike (ie the only fight in the game that's actually a challenge because of his flunkies and Teleport Spam). That description needs cleanup though.

Tales of Vesperia

• Gattuso in the Ehmead Hills. Unlike the previous bosses, Gattuso is much higher level, has much more HP, more attack power, is much faster, and can poison you with its melee attacks. To rub it in your face, immediately afterwards the party talks about how easy the fight was (or at least Karol does), and the next boss is a freaking cakewalk. While it's not necessarily the hardest boss fight in the game, it just comes way too early for most players and gives them the real first taste of the boss brutality to come. Hence his nickname, "the Noob Killer".
  • Interestingly, it's rumored that he's only this difficult due to a programming oversight; The developers intended for him to be this difficult for the demo (so as to entice players to buy the full game and grind properly to have a better chance), but forgot to nerf him for the actual release.
• Captain Schwann. Your party is missing its two primary healers: Estelle (who's being held captive by Alexei) and Raven (who is the boss you're fighting), and he will take full advantage of that with devastating strike artes and a hard-hitting Mystic Arte that's likely following the killer combo he just pulled on your party since he was in Over Limit.
• Khroma has an incredibly damaging tail attack she just pulls out of nowhere, and can fly around the battlefield, forcing you to chase her down. The worst part about Khroma is definitely that attack when she sends multiple homing fireballs at you. It's nigh unavoidable and sometimes causes Sealed Artes.
• Alexei, because aside from being really strong, he'll spam his Brilliant Cataclysm Mystic Arte which he can literally pull out of ANYWHERE. In the middle of comboing him? Bam, Brilliant Cataclysm. He can even use it when he's not in Hypermode (which is the requirement for Mystic Arte usage) and the move is completely undodgeable and hits like a truck.
• Clint has an amazing Mystic Arte which is a Fatal Strike. That's it. He Fatal Strikes anyone who has the symbol on them. Whole party has it? Gameover.
• In the PS3 version, to some extent, Duke's second form and his third form. Unlike the Xbox 360 version, Big Bang can kill, instead of leaving everyone with 1 HP. Since it deals thousands of damage on all difficulties, you're basically looking at an easy one-hit KO on everyone. Better pack Rebirth Dolls and have that Ressurect skill ready.

Cut Khroma, I don't remember her being difficult at all. I also don't remember Schwann being that hard but you are down most of your healers. Duke is both the Final Boss and those forms are bonus forms so they don't count. I don't remember Gattuso but it's possible he was hard, I played Vesperia quite some time ago.

Tales of Graces

• The Slime Queen. The queen itself is not that hard, but the slime enemies she summons can poison your characters and easily gang up on you if you're not prepared. Since a lot of the boss fights in this game are Flunky Bosses that can inflict Standard Status Effects, the Slime Queen also serves as a Wake-Up Call Boss.
• Richard's first fight. He is the first boss to possess a Nova aura and you're down several party members for the fight. To make matters worse, he goes after your healer first.
• Kurt. Oh Kurt, you have tens of thousands of health and constantly summon more mooks, It doesn't help that Kurt has a VERY large range of attack and will go right for Cheria and Sophie (unless Malik is in the fight, in which Kurt will focus on him). And let's not forget that he can guard so quickly that your attacks will almost never deal full damage, while he throws around guard-breaking attacks like it's going out of style.
  • One of the problems with the Flunky Boss is that the AI instinctively will Gang Up on the Human, and the AI in Tales Of Graces F happens to have Artificial Brilliance on its side. While the boss picks on your character, the flunkies focus on one of your party members. (Usually Cheria or Sophie) So you stop to take down the mooks? Now the boss will decide to focus on the others.
• In Tales Of Graces F (the PS3 port) there is a boss that you fight in the events of the game's story after the ending of the Wii version. This boss is Little Queen. Or rather, it's your party against a total of TWELVE Little Queens. They aren't all out on the screen at once, probably only because the game would experience slow down. Small comfort that is. The problem with this fight and said problem escalates in the second battle against her the boss can do your characters in in one hit(combo in the case of the physical attacking one, there are two other versions, one with nothing but projectiles and another with magic.), two to three if you're lucky and have amazing equips on Evil or Chaos difficulty. God help you if you bought DMG x5 or x10 in the grade shop. The insanity of this fight escalates the second time you fight said boss, because in the previous one, when you kill one, another takes its place until you beat all twelve. The second time? You kill one, TWO appear to take its place. This just leads to the fight being seemingly impossible due to not even being able to attack, because if you do, 2 or 3 of them will just RIP AND TEAR you from the side or behind; and in the second round, they have Blast Calibers too. Also they can seemingly ignore Cheria stopping time — at least their bullets, spells, and Blast Calibers love to. Also, if you're unlucky enough to kill two or three of them at a time... let's just say it won't be pretty.

Can confirm Slime Queen is awful. The first Richard fight also gave me a lot of pain. Kurt is a Bonus Boss though (I think) so he doesn't count. I haven't gotten to the Little Queen fight yet so I don't know about it yet.

Tales of Xillia

• Jiao in the Sapstrath Deepwoods. He's the first boss you encounter after getting a proper healer onto your team and you'll need her. Jiao is very bulky to begin with, with a lot of HP to whittle down and he's difficult to stagger. In turn, he can easily combo you and because he's The Big Guy and uses a hammer he can, and will, cause a lot of damage to you. Elize will have her hands full healing your party. Jiao also likes to call some underlings - Wolves or Birds, which aren't tough in the general sense, but more minor annoyances because they like to trip your party up when you're trying to focus on Jiao. And defeating the underlings first merely results in Jiao calling more. It's not uncommon for first-time players to need to retry this battle at least once.
• Nameless Anomaly is an immense pain in the ass for a huge numbers of reasons. First of all, it's a flying enemy, and will spend the large majority of the battle well above your party's reach, forcing you to rely on what precious few aerial attacks you have in order to do any sort of damage. Second, the thing is massive, so its attacks have an incredible reach and do lots of damage. Third, but most certainly not least, it loves to spam all sorts of status ailments, using artes that can poison and seal your own artes, as if you didn't already have limited enough options to hit this thing. And its physical attacks? They're so strong that they'll stun you more than half the time. It may be a Wind elemental, and thus weak to Earth, but although you have two characters who can use Rock Trine, it will almost always miss due to it constantly flying around all over the place. Splash is actually a much more effective spell to use as it is more accurate and, since it strikes from above, can also ground it in place and make it easier for you to hit.
• The Duel Boss fight against Muzét. She can hit you with pretty much every status effect in the game, and you don't have a healer to save your ass in this fight. Equip an Amulet to guard against the status effects? Her Artes can still burn (constant damage over time) and slow you down, on top of dealing a ton of damage... which just means that she can continue spamming her Artes on you to wipe the floor with you. Managed to dodge it? She has a really fast attack that strikes in all directions and knocks you down. Blocking constantly? She has an unblockable attack that can easily take off a third of your total health. Let her get in a hit, and she can hit you with an unescapable combo. She also has high-tier spells of pretty much every single element, has a crapton of HP and has such a high defense stat that you will only deal damage in the 3-digits, even with high-powered Devil's Arms.

The Muzet fight is known for being unreasonably hard, but I don't remember the others being particularly difficult.

edited 18th Aug '17 1:35:19 AM by PhiSat

Little Queen isn't really hard so much as it is long, she is the Final Boss of the bonus arc but she is much easier than the final boss of the main game. I would disagree with her being an example.

Also the example is written as if you are on the Harder Than Hard difficulty and the one Beyond Harder Than Hard difficulty... yeah no.

edited 18th Aug '17 8:40:57 AM by Memers

In Xillia, Jiao isn't that hard. And some people failing once to a boss after introducing a new and necessary mechanic is far from enough.

Nameless Anomaly I don't recall having any problems with. You can basically just spam it to death. Pretty much everything described is massively overstated. It's not particularly fast, strong, or even large.

Last one is an example.

edited 18th Aug '17 4:12:33 AM by AnotherDuck

Looking at the Clint example under the Vesperia section, right now it just reads like That One Attack rather than That One Boss.

I'd also add the Duel Boss against Estelle as an example (no healer, has unusually large HP, can easily stun and combo lock you in seconds), but maybe that was just me sucking.

edited 18th Aug '17 9:13:13 PM by PhiSat

Alright guys, since while we're at cleaning up That One Boss, I actually have an example from Megadimension Neptunia VII I would like to add, since this particular boss fight gave me a lot of trouble.

• The fight against the brainwashed CPUs. It's a 4 vs 4 fight, however, your opponents have all the advantages as expected from CPUs, including increased attack, defense, and access to skills and EXE Drives, which they can spam without the EXE Gauge limit. Blanc and Vert in particular are the most dangerous since their EXE Drives can target multiple party members at once. They hit hard, even if your party members are properly even-leveled by that point. And to top it off, the CPU Candidates and Gold Third members start off in their base forms, which makes them more vulnerable until you can fill the EXE Gauge to one bar for them to be able to transform. With more time spent on healing and reviving fallen party members, it is very difficult to gain any offensive momentum on them, and that depends if you're lucky enough to avoid a Total Party Kill.

So, what do you guys think? I think this is a perfect chance to post new examples to await approval in order to avoid misuse.

EDIT: Revised description.

edited 28th Aug '17 8:23:50 PM by DivineFlame100

the Fire Emblem Heroes was getting ridiculous, with nearly everything introduced after the game's launch being listed save for the bonus chapters.

• Chapter 9, the last chapter, is full of 5-man enemy teams, mostly consisting of armored knights, strong ranged support, and the occasional Cleric/Troubadour.
  • 9-4 has the Mysterious Man employing a "Get Back Here!" Boss strategy, requiring you to bring strong units to oneshot him before he can retreat.
  • 9-5 has Veronica herself, with her nasty tome Élivágar capable of inflicting Panic (turns buffs into debuffs) and Savage Blow 3 (7 damage to all allies within 2 tiles of the victim). Xander is also back, and has averted Villain Forgot to Level Grind, with his Siegfried having built-in Distant Counter.
• Chapter 10 comes as quite a Difficulty Spike compared to the earlier main story chapters, introducing defend maps where the enemy gets endless reinforcements and invincible bosses. The first isn't so bad since Ike won't attack if you stay out of his range, but the third and fourth have invincible bosses charging right at you, and the final map flips things on its head and gives you a 6-turn time limit to win or it's an automatic Game Over.
• Chapter 11 isn't any better, as it only builds off of what Chapter 10 threw at players. But with the addition of defense tiles, players can find it difficult to defeat enemies quick enough, risking the loss of a unit (especially if they must fulfill a No Casualties Run).
  • 11-3 is particularly notorious as it splits the player's team into two, separated by a mountain, with a swarm of enemies of all kinds of weapon types chasing the player down. The only saving grace is that the player's units start near some defensive tiles, which are practically necessary to survive, but it can still be overwhelming.
  • 11-5 is another 6-turn time limit fight. The player faces off against Celica's team of mages who are all standing on four defensive tiles, while Bruno is nearby to gun the player down. While Bruno is easy enough to take down, trying to defeat the mages within the time limit will prove to be quite difficult. The four not only stand on defensive tiles, but they have all sorts of buffs like Boey and Mae's -Owl tomes boosting their stats greatly, Celica's Distant Def deterring ranged attackers, and both Celica and Boey boosting their allies Def with their C skills. Genny augments her team's offense, can heal her team up, and can also pack a punch thanks to her Wrathful Staff skill. These mages are surprisingly sturdy and are quite powerful. It will take a lot of doing to either bait them out of their formation or outright defeat them while they're on the defensive tiles.
• The Grand Hero Battles. These are maps where player faces off against a boss character from the main series, and they have a squad of enemies that have specific skillsets to ruin the player's day. To finish the map and acquire the unit, the player must keep all of their units alive. The maps started out with only a Normal and Hard difficulty, but eventually dropped the Normal difficulty and gained a Lunatic difficulty, which was then pushed even further with an Infernal difficulty. With the inability to use Light's Blessings, the challenge of keeping every unit alive, and some enemies having Specials charged immediately, these maps are a true test of the player's skills.
  • Narcian's map was the first of these maps, and when it was released simply a week after the game's launch, early players may have struggled unless they got lucky with summoning some really great units right away. Narcian is an axe flier who completely demolishes any Lance user with the combination of his Emerald Axe+ and Lancebreaker. He's surrounded by mountains which he can freely fly over, and the only chokepoint is a single space to the left, which will get cramped pretty quickly, especially with two horse mounted mages and a strong archer that can attack from across the mountain.
  • Female Robin was next after Narcian. As befitting of a woman with a reputation as a master tactician, her map forces the player into a chokepoint where at least three of her five man team will assault whichever unit the player sends over. They will not move until the player sends a unit to bait them out, so the only way for the player to be victorious would be to send a unit that's tanky enough to withstand multiple attacks at once.
  • Ursula's map began to up the ante considerably, as her map removed the Normal difficulty and introduced the Lunatic difficulty instead. The player starts off in a very cramped section to the left, and will have to bait out one of the enemies for them to move. The problem is, two of the enemies are Thieves with the Poison Dagger+, which would badly injure if not outright kill the player's infantry units. Should the player's units weaken an enemy and not outright kill them, the player may be in for a nasty surprise. The armoured unit has Wings of Mercy, allowing it to warp across the map, bypassing their low Mov, over to their injured ally and they might get the jump on the player. There's also a sword cavalry unit whose Draw Back can keep an enemy out of the player's range. Finally, there's Ursula herself, whose Death Blow would ensure that she can pack a punch, and her Blarwolf+ tome would let her destroy any of the player's cavalry units. There's a lot to worry about on this map, and to make matters worse, the armoured unit and the sword cavalry have Aegis charged immediately, which would mitigate any ranged attacks that the player would use. Despite the heightened difficulty, the rewards were also heightened to match, as Ursula was rewarded at either 3* or 4*, abandoning the precedent of 2* or 3* rewards that Narcian and female Robin offered.
  • Legion's map brought a few new things to the table. The first was the Infernal difficulty, which is even harder then Lunatic. The second was adding reinforcements to the map. True to his appearance in New Mystery, there are multiple Legions to face in the map, and more will pop up throughout the map, sometimes being accompanied by other enemy units. The last trend Legion brings with him is that he does away with the Battling GHB banners that the past ones had. These were banners that featured units that would give the player an upper hand in whatever Grand Hero Battle was available at the time. Since Legion's release however, they have done away with this, meaning the player has to clear the map using whatever they have or whatever the other banners have to offer. On to the map itself, the map is the first to have defensive tiles, which the player could use to their advantage, but the enemies can do the same. Legion himself has massive HP and is both very fast and powerful, so dispatching him in a single round would basically require Axebreaker. His axe turns the foe's buffs into debuffs, which would dissuade the player from using their own buffs. One of the Legions comes with Panic Ploy which has the same effect but can work at a longer range. The other enemies are no slouches either, with one archer boasting a Brave Bow+ and Death Blow to abuse it with, and an immediately charged Moonbow, while various mages and cavalry with a -Breaker skill to help them combat against specific unit types. The map will truly test the player's skills, but an Infernal clear yields an extra 4* and a bunch of Feathers, making it a pretty good reward.
  • Berkut's map is the first map to split the player's team up, with two at the bottom and two in the top right corner. It's also one of the only ones where the enemies aggro immediately, so the player would not have time to regroup their team. Berkut's forces are full of cavalry, and on higher difficulties, they have the appropriate cavalry buffs to make them even more powerful. They also have just the right weapons and skills to screw the player over, as the archer cavalry has a Firesweep Bow+ to prevent counterattacks, the red mage cavalry has a -Wolf tome to thwart players with their own horse teams, and a green mage has a -Raven tome to deter any colourless units the player has. The map has some defensive tiles, which may be the only saving grace. In any case, Berkut's team will not let up and will not offer the player any breathing room. Continuing the trend started by Legion, there is no specific "Battling GHB" Focus either, so the player has to make do with whatever they have.
  • Valter's map forgoes tactics and simply has up to 14 enemy units mercilessly rushing the player down in a dogpile of death, as reinforcements spawn each turn. The map is incredibly cramped for any unit who isn't a flier, making the rush extremely difficult to handle, especially because most of the enemies are fliers themselves, making the aforementioned cramped map a nonissue for them. Bring a Brave Bow(+) and a Dancer or die.
• The Bridge Map in Arena. The Bridge Map consists of two narrow bridges with a narrow island in the center. Players without any flying units will not much have breathing room, as units will have to try and cross the bridges and meet the opposing team head on. If the opponent has their own fliers or a powerful ranged unit, it may be a bit difficult to try and avoid their line of fire.
• The Tempest Trials. It is a gauntlet of several maps where your units retain their HP and Special charge throughout each map, and when they die, they are unusuable for the rest of the round. The Awakening Tempest Trials are especially notorious, as the design of the maps do not lend themselves well to a player aiming for a good time score. The final map is a battle against Veronica, who on higher difficulties, would have incredibly inflated stats, while the player also has to face off against a mage cavalry unit (who could very well be the feared Reinhardt or his sister Olwen) and a beefy armoured unit (who could be the threatening Hector).
• The Squad Assault mode. It combines aspects of both the Tempest Trials and Grand Hero Battles, wherein the player has to do a round of five maps in a row, but will lose if a single unit falls. However, after each map, the player has to switch to a different team. Any units and duplicates of those units that were used in the first map become unavailable for the rest of the round. Every map requires a new team, so the player needs at least twenty unique units that can hold their own in this mode. If even a single unit falls in battle, the player has to start from the beginning. What makes matters worse is the incredibly high stat inflation that the enemies have, and the only saving grace is that the enemies lack skills.

I nuked the whole section save for 3 cases that were the hardest of the lot each for different reasons: 11-3 for being a Hold the Line map where your team is split in half, 11-5 for putting you in the opposite situation (you haveto clear the map under a certain amount of turns while fighting a synerging team with very favorable layout for them) et the valter GHB for being that f*king hard with his seemingly endless reinforcements.