That One Boss and That One Level cleanup.

ThatOneLevel.Super Smash Bros Ultimate has, at the very least, a natter problem, though just from reading the examples I'm not sure if Ana, The Power Star, Rover, Kapp'n, Giga Mac, The Chorus Kids, and Rayman count. (I'm also not sure if Pauline counts since the entry says she wasn't meant to be as frustrating as she is.)

Edited by lalalei2001 on Dec 19th 2018 at 1:19:38 AM

I'd like to comment on the Metroid Prime entries on ThatOneBoss.Metroid, as I am familiar with them, though it's been a while.

Metroid Prime 1

Thardus can probably be cut, as he's actually kinda fun (and I remember receiving comments that agreed with that when I mentioned him on a metroid forum). He's pretty easy once you understand his pattern (and the dodge jumping), and the fog isn't as bad as claimed (though it is annoying). I remember his fight being the one I always looked forward to.

Omega Pirate should definitely be kept. A nasty fight, through and through, and probably the hardest in the whole game. Not fun.

Hive Totem admits that it's split between this and Warmup Boss. For that reason I lean towards cut.

Metroid Prime 2

Boost Guardian and Spider Guardian I lean towards keep, if only because they were made easier in the rerelease due to their infamy (Speaking personally, I didn't find the boost guardian to be bad, but the spider guardian sucked to fight).

Power Bomb Guardian I lean towards keep as well. It's a nasty little fight, though most morph ball fights tend to be.

Emperor Ing always seemed less hard and more infuriatingly long to me, but I really can't say whether to keep or delete.

Amorbis isn't bad enough to be that one boss, IMO. It's all about paying attention and staying on the move IIRC. It's more wake-up call IMO. Cut

Chykka is more a Goddamned Boss than that one boss as I recall. A pain in the ass, sure, but not ridiculously difficult, just really, really annoying. Cut

Alpha Blogg is a definite keeper IMO. I loathe that bastard with my entire essence because the fight is exceedingly difficult and a damn fine example of the difficulty of Torvus Bog's underwater sections.

The Grapple Guardian isn't an example by its own description. If it's not hard but is extremely annoying, then it's a Goddamned Boss, not this. Cut with extreme prejudice.

Metroid Prime 3

Gandraya and Rundas I don't remember enough about to comment

Mogenar is just a really annoying and painfully long Marathon Boss, not That One Boss material on any difficulty. Cut

As to Dark Samus, yeah she is definitely That One Boss due to the difficult fight and tight time limit the mechanics force on you. Keep

As to That One Level entries from the Prime subseries (listed under action/adventure), the only one listed that I think should be cut is the pirate frigate. It even notes that it's tedious, not hard (unless you're dumb enough to go there without the gravity suit). The others could use a bit of trimming perhaps (does the scenery and music really matter in describing That One Level?)

Edited by Acebrock on Dec 19th 2018 at 3:14:44 AM

"Cracks knuckles" Been wanting to tidy that one up for a while now. Right away, I'd say to keep 9-Volt & 18-Volt, Dr. Wily, Jeff, Geno, Great Fairy, Sukapon, and Akira without discussion - these are all incredibly challenging fights that have caused mountains of salt. As for the rest:

• The Boss: This is a tricky one. Boss is insanely difficult in a "fair" fight where you try to whittle down her HP to zero - but this is not a fair fight, this is Smash Bros., and it's pretty easy to cheese her by simply picking Kirby/Ridley/Chrom and sending her plummeting to her inevitable doom. Thing is, most people don't have that mindset and will try fighting her head on, and I've seen countless threads on forums chatting about how brutal she is. I think this comes down to how much weight we want to put on such tactics, so I'll let someone answer that for me, but personally it feels wrong not to list her because she accomplishes what this trope wants - a difficult level that everybody rages about.
• Ana: Aside from the healing factor, there's not much that makes Ana that much harder than simply fighting 2 opponents at once - a scenario which is very common in Spirit battles. Cut it.
• Hal Emmerich: I'm kinda half and half on this one. The R.O.B. in this fight is actually pretty brutal even with max stats, but I never see complaints about it and his power is moot if you simply chase Dr. Mario. Sack it, I guess.
• Pauline: I have heard countless horror stories of people who have spent like an hour on this fight, and not without reason - it's both very difficult and very obnoxious. Keep it, and rewrite the entry to make a point that, yes, it is genuinely challenging.
• Donkey Kong and Lady: Ehhhh it's just a typical "BIG MAN BIG DAMAGE" fight that's not much harder than the rest of its weight class.
• Power Star: Move it to Goddamned Boss. That's a better home for it.
• Rover: Cut. This is not even close to as difficult to some of the Spirit challenges that aren't listed.
• M. Bison: Similar to the Boss, it's a fair fight. Unlike the Boss, it's Ganondorf, and he suffers from very laggy and punishable attacks. He's tough, but not overwhelmingly so. Cut.
• Kapp'n: What even is this entry? The logic for why it's difficult boils down to "If you don't use the right Spirits, you're fuuuuuucked", as if this wasn't true for the countless other spirits in the game. Kill it harshly and spit on the remains.
• Giga Mac: Hmm. Not sure what to make of this one, especially because of how short and weak this entry is and my own hazy memory of the fight, but I've failed to see too much moaning about it. Cut, I guess?
• Rayman: A toughy, because I do see a decent amount of "help plz" comments for Rayman, but the fight shouldn't be that hard once you find him in World of Light. Kinda want a second opinion on this one.
• Omega Ridley: I'd be wholly on board with this one if wasn't for how goddamn dumb Ridley's AI is, often killing himself by accident. It's hard as hell otherwise - again, kinda need a second opinion.
• Chorus Kids: Sack it. It's not much harder than the average Spirit battle, just kinda gimmicky and annoying.
• Latias & Latios: See Chorus Kids. This entry also fails to mention that the Charizards aren't very heavy and die easily.
• Paula: A very bare-bones, not overwhelmingly difficult fight. The only problem is PK Starstorm, the power of which is exaggerated within the entry.
• Super Sonic: Not much harder than the other Legend ranked Spirits. Also, the entry fails to mention that Sonic's Final Smash is literally hot garbage - even in this fight, it does next to no damage, doesn't have any kill power, and is basically fluff.
• Baby Bowser: Keeeeeep. There's not many complaints about it but only because it's a pretty rare fight - the people who've found it have found it monstrously challenging.
• Black Shadow: Again, not any harder than the rest of his weight class.

So discounting Rayman and Omega Ridley, this is what we've got left:

• 9-Volt & 18-Volt
• The Boss
• Dr. Wily
• Jeff
• Geno
• Great Fairy
• Pauline
• Sukapon
• Akira
• Baby Bowser

That's about 10 fights in a game with over 1000, which I think is fine.

Edited by DocSharp on Dec 19th 2018 at 3:09:05 AM

Rayman and Omega Ridley are battles where you have to know what to do going into it. If you go in blind and fight them on normal terms, they will annihilate you, which I'm guessing is the reason behind the large number of complaints about these two. For Rayman, it's key that you target Sukapon, who has low HP and never goes away, and you fight Sonic only after you knock out Sukapon. With Assist Killer on, Sukapon falls after two smash attacks. For Omega Ridley, you need to go in with a Franklin Badge equipped or someone with a Counter-type move to deal with the perpetual Curry (and the game will even recommend a Spirit with the Franklin Badge equipped if you have a Primary with at least 2 slots).

Not to say that they won't put up a fight otherwise, but approaching the battles in those manners reduces the fights from "insane" to "manageable." They reward observing what's going on and planning ahead accordingly. (Of course, they did teach me some bad habits, which is why I struggled way more in the Tiki fight than I should have, as I was deliberately targeting the Tiki Assist Trophy and wondering why she never got knocked out until I realized she has high HP and she heals all of her HP each time she finishes and returns.)

I was the one who put up the Latias & Latios fight, by the way. I think I was stuck for a good 90 minutes on that one, and half the time, the initial spawn of Latias & Latios finished me off. The rest of the time, I had sustained enough damage that the Charizards juggled me into a loss. That being said, I was using Bowser for this one, which I'm guessing in hindsight is not the best choice.

Thank you very much for the input, friend. In that case, Rayman and Omega Ridley feel kinda similar to the Boss where the required mindset is more than uncommon. I'm cool with them sticking around with that knowledge.

And thank you for elaborating on your reasoning for Latias & Latios. I still don't believe they should be listed, but the additional insight helps me make more sense of them and the other stuff that I cut. This is YMMV, after all - I was mainly focusing on the stuff almost everybody was having trouble with, not just one or two people.

... Unless I'm a dumby-pants and I failed to notice that they had more than a couple threads losing their minds over them. I'd bite the bullet and let them up if that's the case.

Fair enough! I probably have a pretty unusual play style, as I seem to be very vulnerable to when they throw multiple opponents at me.

What about Hinawa? I don't think I've heard much about that battle, but I did notice that in order to win this one, I had to control the match from beginning to end. The moment I got hit, due to the easy-launches condition, Zelda and the two Lucases would toss me around like a ragdoll until I was KOed, which could happen around 55% even using heavyweights.

Edited by ZombieAladdin on Dec 19th 2018 at 10:56:00 AM

Hinawa is brutal, I do admit, but the key thing is that Legend Spirits tend to be difficult by default, and obviously we can't list all of them, otherwise it stops being That One Level. So when compared to her fellow Legends, I feel she falls off the radar because the playing field is equalized: all fighters suffer the same defense penalty and there's no real gimmicks outside of that (no Assist Trophy nonsense, no stage hazards, no "THE FLOOR IS MADE OF BROKEN DREAMS"). It's a straightforward fight against 3 aggressive AI enemies, which isn't uncommon (even Classic Mode has a couple of fights like that). Contrast Dr. Wily, Jeff, Pauline, and Geno, where the deck is stacked in their favor. It's hard, you'll absolutely die quite a bit, but no more than you would expect to on a 4-star challenge.

For Latios and Latias, this trope is YMMV for a reason. For example, I personally don't find Demyx from KH 2 to be the least bit challenging, but I have seen "help plz" threads for that fight. I had some trouble myself. Would "difficult for newcomers" rather than "difficult for everyone" count. Because Demyx falls into the first category, when not in his Data form.

I'm not the best at smash so I had trouble with the majority of those, but I would axe Latios and Latias because I didn't find them that challenging. Difficult if you're using the joycons and new to their controls, but once you get used to it, they're pretty easy. And this is assuming you are playing on Normal. Hard makes, well, everyone difficult.

That's fine. Go ahead and axe it if it hasn't been already. There was likely something about the Latias & Latios fight I was not getting, as I failed more times against them than I did against some of the entries chosen to keep for this game (I can think of Rayman, Omega Ridley, 9-Volt & 18-Volt, Akira, and the Great Fairy). Either that, or the way I play clashes with the optimal way to play that spirit battle. Or Bowser was a very bad matchup for that one. I'm guessing with so many spirits in the game, everybody has one that they struggled against that others consider easy though. Mine just happens to be Latias & Latios.

I've played with the Joy-Cons since the Switch's launch, by the way, and I've played Smash Bros. since the first game (though Melee was the first one I actually owned).

Demyx is actually hard outside of his water clones. He's a major Difficulty Spike with unpredictable attacks that are difficult to dodge, and many bosses that follow are easier.

This is coming from someone who is comfortable playing on Critical, by the way.

Edited by Karxrida on Dec 24th 2018 at 5:15:42 AM

So your experience is pretty much the same as mine. Well the best way to deal with the Latis is to focus on one and ring them out.

Marth is a good choice for this if you know the trick with the tip of his sword. That One Boss and That One Level examples should be based on "no matter what you do, this boss is still incredibly hard". Like Xaldin from KH 2 for example. Like Demyx, he's hard for newcomers, but provided you don't know how to use Reflect, he's a difficult boss. Demyx is easy if you are careful and don't go in guns blazing. Or if you spam limits. Latias and Latios should probably be Goddamned Boss if anything.

Edited by Klavice on Dec 24th 2018 at 5:21:36 AM

I actually think Xaldin is easier because you can abuse Jump for free I-frames, plus his most deadly attack isn't actually that hard to dodge. He only gave me major trouble when I was younger, and any trouble I've had with him since is due to being purposefully underleveled for the fight.

Reflect only does so much for Demyx because MP is an extremely limited resource until lategame.

Yeah, but this trope isn't for bosses experts think are easy, but for a boss the general public or casual fan would have a hard time with.

If you're going in with a Self-Imposed Challenge like Kingdom Key only, Lv 1, Critical, No abilities, then just about any boss can be difficult, unless you have their entire attack pattern memorized, and that's not something a 10 year old kid is going to know, nor a regular casual player.

For instance, a Melee pro might find all of those bosses listed on the page easy, but to a casual player, yeah... We've got to think of someone NOT using a GCN controller, and NOT being a pro. I think this trope gets misused by people who think bosses on the highest difficulty with like several handicaps on you are difficult. We are going for the "Normal" difficulty setting, after all.

Heh, upon looking at my archives (I recorded every minute of World of Light I played to check later), I found out why I was struggling against Latias & Latios so much: The game recommended me a Spirit with a power of 1609, so I was severely underleveled for it. So yeah, I don't see any reason it'd be on the That One Boss list anymore.

To anybody: What are your thoughts on the list in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon? I saw there was a cleanup on regular Sun and Moon earlier; the list for this one, despite being an Enhanced Remake (in a loose sense), is almost as long. The only Totem Pokémon not listed here is the one in Ilima's trial. As for the non-Totem battles, none of the Kahunas are listed, there is a single battle with your rival Hau, and of the villains, it's just Guzma, with a couple of post-game bosses. There's also Blacephalon, which probably more belongs in Goddamned Boss as it more describes how annoying it is to fight Blacephalon than how difficult it is to capture it.

Personally, the ones I had the most trouble against were Lurantis (like in the first Sun and Moon), Mimikyu, Ultra Necrozma, and Ribombee. (I was the one who put up Ribombee.) Among the ones not listed here, I had more trouble against the first encounter with Plumeria than I had expected, but I don't really remember why.

Edited by ZombieAladdin on Dec 28th 2018 at 9:17:37 AM

ThatOneBoss.Fighting has even more Smash examples, a lot of which are nattery/complainy.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Dec 28th 2018 at 9:42:37 AM

Yeah, ''Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon" do list a lot of examples. I'm still playing through the game right now (just beaten Totem Mimikyu). So far, Totem Marowak gave me the most trouble, as the others I was able to beat in at least a couple of tries.

So far, the only one listed on the That One Boss page for Pokémon is Ultra Necrozma, who I hear is incredibly difficult to defeat. Personally, I feel we can update Lurantis and Mimikyu's entries for their changed tactics in USUM. I'm inclined to add Marowak, since it has incredibly high attack stats and good coverage. Then again, my team may have just had bad type coverage at the time. It'd be good to get some more opinions here.

jesus christ how horrifying. Alright lemme give 'er a go...

• Tabuu: Not sure. The Off Waves are the only hard part, but what a hard part it is. Maybe leave him alone.
• Porky: I don't think I've ever seen much complaining about this one. He's not much harder than Galleom or Ridley honestly. Zap it.
• Rayquaza: See Porky.
• Giant Angry Evil Diddy Kong: Oh FUCK I forgot about this one. Easy keeper, but definitely trim all the excess details/borderline whining.
• Duon: Keep. He's generally agreed upon to be the most difficult Subspace boss.
• Meta Ridley: Riddles is piss easy. No clue why he's here. The bit about making him a trophy is legitimately nuts, but that falls under That One Sidequest. Delete everything here.
• Ness: I mean... it's not like there's anything special here - his AI is just bumped up a bit. Cut.
• Showdown (Melee): Mmmmmm. It's tough but it's not like it's overwhelmingly hard, especially because of how slow the opponents are. Cut.
• Showdown (Brawl): Similar boat to the above. Cut.
• The Hands:
  • Brawl: Keep. Toughest fight in the game.
  • Melee: The Classic mode fight actually isn't too bad, because Crazy Hand does not show up until halfway into the fight. The Event 50 match is a much better display of their difficulty - here's their entry from YMMV.Super Smash Bros Melee. Replace it with this one.
    • The Event 50 battle with Master Hand and Crazy Hand in Melee. In Classic Mode, Master Hand initially shows up alone, and Crazy Hand only appears when he is brought down to half health on at least Normal. This isn't the case with Event 50, where you fight both of them from max health right off the bat, with both of them at their most aggressive. Last but not least, you only get one stock, compared to Classic Mode where you could have up to five.
  • Master Core: The actual fight is a keeper, but good god this is entry is a lengthy, insufferable mess. Trim what you can - if it ends up being un-salvageable, I'll try and whip up a new entry altogether.
• Metal Mario: Oh man, this one was nasty as hell. Yeah, sure, keep it.
• Pauline: I have heard countless horror stories of people who have spent - wait a minute. We've already got her on That One Level, no use in double dipping. EDIT: Apparently the guy who plopped her there had a moment of realization and deleted her. More power to him, takes a rare person to notice and correct their mistakes.

Here's my personal recommendation for the new layout of the tree:

• Super Smash Bros.:
  • The recurring duo Master Hand and Crazy Hand have more than once proved themselves capable of manhandling Nintendo's all-stars:
    • Melee: Event 50
    • Brawl: Classic Mode
    • For Wii U and 3DS: Master Core
  • 64: Metal Mario
  • Brawl:
    • Giant Angry Evil Diddy Kong
    • Duon
    • Tabuu

Also, Ultimate has two fights (the Hands and Dracula) and maybe a third (Ganon) that are more than worthy of addition. YMMV.Super Smash Bros Ultimate already has entries, if you'd like to copy-paste them over.

Edited by DocSharp on Dec 28th 2018 at 10:55:44 AM

I never found Master and Crazy hard even on the highest difficulty. And I'm not good at Smash. Dracula maybe, but all of their attacks can be sidestepped just like Tabuu. Metal Mario in the original isn't that hard, just keep piling on damage then Smash attack him. As for Diddy, are we talking the hardest difficulty? Because on Normal and Hard I had no issue with him. You just got to be fast and take advantage of the characters you are using.

Keep the others especially master core, although I think he's less That One Boss and more SNK Boss, meaning he was meant to be extremely hard. Not sure if that overlaps with TOB.

Edited by Klavice on Dec 29th 2018 at 9:21:06 AM

Giant Diddy is hard regardless of difficulty because he's way stronger and far more resistant to knockback. I think he should be kept.

I have mixed feelings about the Hands in Ultimate. While I die to them fairly consistently, it never comes across as too unfair.

Leaning towards keeping Drac because the fight feels unfair by design — he's invincible half the time and it's hard to get hits in. The second phase doesn't help even if it's easier since you're beaten down by that point.

Ganon's probably the single most garbage boss in the series so I'd keep him.

Edited by Karxrida on Dec 29th 2018 at 6:53:40 AM

Metal Mario... I'll concede, that was mainly me talking from when I fought him when I was like 6 years old lmao. Diddy and Dracula I should mention have oodles of moaning surrounding them, which makes them fair game. As for the Hands, you might be right about Event 50 and Brawl Classic at the very least (I was going off of nostalgia for the former and an "I'll take their word for it" attitude for the latter), but I know for a fact that the Ultimate Hands are considered utterly filthy. Thinking about it, Tabuu can probably just stay under That One Attack and should be zapped from this trope. Master Core should be fine under this trope's rules because he's not a Bonus Boss - he's just a different Final Boss altogether. And it doesn't seem like anybody objects to Ganon (although I personally had no trouble with him) so I'll add him to the pot.

With all that outta the way, this is our current tree:

• Super Smash Bros.
  • Brawl:
    • Giant Angry Evil Diddy Kong
    • Duon
  • For Wii U & 3DS: Master Core
  • Ultimate:
    • Master Hand & Crazy Hand
    • Dracula
    • Ganon

Edited by DocSharp on Dec 29th 2018 at 7:11:30 AM

Actually thinking about it, I do object to Ganon. The fight is more or less a recreation of the Oo T fight only with Ganon moving slower. Sure, he can combo you if he gets going similar to Giga Bowser but if you're fast on your feet and block a lot he's really no issue. I play with almost no usage of shield so fights that are normally easy are kind of hard. It's a sort of Self-Imposed Challenge I'm trying to do. Until I get my Game Cube controller adapter and can beat these fights more effectively. Saying Ganon is the hardest boss when Master Fortress exists is a little misleading.

Since it's very easy to die for the AI on 75mm I think Pauline might need a removal too, given she's easy if you trick Mario and DK into falling into a pit.

Edited by Klavice on Dec 29th 2018 at 9:32:22 AM

Mmmmm. Ganon is definitely the problem child here, then. I had no issue with him, and neither did you. If anybody's got some kind of source on lots of people struggling with Ganon, I'd appreciate it. If nothing else, from what I've seen Dracula and the Hands have attracted much more salt.

BTW, regarding Pauline, mind that this YMMV. We are not everyone. Searching through forums, she's definitely killed enough people to keep her spot.

Apparently Pauline is more That One Level.

Somehow I don't think the LOZ page has had the once over, so let's give it a shot.

• The Legend Of Zelda has Gleeok, a hydra monster found in three dungeons. He has multiple heads that can shoot fireballs from multiple angles, and when each head takes enough damage, it starts flying around the room to become an Invincible Minor Minion, which can continue to spit fire from even more angles while also causing Collision Damage. The other bosses are pushovers, but all you can do against Gleeok is stand your ground and hope you have a potion left.

Bombs kill Gleeok fairly fast, and are pivotal to a Swordless gameplay, but other than that it looks like a pretty good keep.

• Dark Link takes the cake in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. He will block nearly every single one of your attacks, and manage to punish every single mistake you make. Not only that, he likes to jump on you and do Collision Damage even though you can't do the same to him. It also does not help that he's directly after another boss that requires you to use half your magic at best to even hurt it. Finally, lose all your lives, and it's back to the beginning of the Great Palace. The fight can be rendered a non-issue by exploiting his AI, but good luck figuring that out as a kid in the 80s.

Keep. Dark Link is insanely hard for first time players, much more than the average AOL Boss which usually takes a few tries once you learn their pattern and don't get hit too often.

• And before him comes the Thunderbird. First, you have to use the Thunder spell to make him vulnerable at all (and one use of it will nearly empty your magic meter.) Then, you have to hit the small, exposed face of a giant bird-thing that will be spitting fireballs at you machine-gun style. Good luck, you'll need it!

Thunderbird isn't too bad, I can see some first timers having an issue with it, but for the most part it's no more harder than the standard boss fight in this game. I say cut.

• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past:
  • Mothula holds the title in this game. Erratic movement, randomly-changing conveyor floor, randomly moving blade traps, and a three-beam attack that's hard to avoid if you're trying hard to avoid all the other perils. Worse still, a bug in the original SNES versions made him invulnerable to certain attacks of the level 3 sword and almost all attacks of the level 4 sword (The weak poke is all that works). Using the dungeon's item, the Fire Rod, works well so long as one doesn't run of of magic power.
  "Mothula? More like 'Bullshitterfly.'"

This boss is probably the worst 2D Zelda boss. If you don't have fairies, he quickly depletes your health through knocking you into spikes, using beams, etcetera. And the bug in the SNES version makes him nigh unbeatable if you chose to upgrade your sword. Easy keep.

• Trinexx. You have to use magic attacks to defeat him, which is made a little more merciful by the fact that magic potions are generated in the battle, but still very hard. The worst part, however, is the freaking middle head that bobs out at you fairly often. This will be your downfall in the fight. He gives warning as to when he's going to do it, but even so, it's very difficult to dodge. And if you forgot to pick up the Ice Rod (the location of which which is hinted at by Sahasrahla, but it's found outside of a dungeon and it's in an out-of-the-way area so if you don't pay attention to his hint, you'll miss it), you can't beat his first form, making him unkillable. To add insult to injury, the Ice Rod's projectile moves very slowly, meaning Trinexx'll dodge your shot if given half the chance.

This is more Guide Dang It! than actual difficulty and the entry even states you should have the Ice Rod at that point in the game, out of the way or not. I say cut.

• Helmasaur King, the first boss of the Dark World. He takes 25 (or if you use bombs during his first phase, which is more effective but much, much more difficult and slow, 13) hits to defeat. Meanwhile, even if you get as many heart pieces as you can in that point in the game, he can kill you in just 5 hits. If you don't take the time to get the maximum amount of Heart Containers, he can kill you in just three to four hits...assuming you don't take any damage on the path to him, which is filled with tough enemies.

Bombs make this guy a joke if you can lure him in, and he has a fairly easy to predict pattern. Burn it.

• Kholdstare, the boss of the Ice Palace. Although his second stage isn't particularly difficult, his first stage can only be hurt by the Fire Rod (a magic item), and if you haven't upgraded your magic meter it takes all of your magic to melt the ice. The Bombos Medallion – an optional item that usually doesn't work on bosses – will end the first phase in a single shot, but still requires 25% of a standard magic meter. He doesn't drop any magic jars, so if you don't have the right item(s) and enough magic, you'll have to Magic Mirror out, refill your magic, fight your way through the whole dungeon again, and then try the fight again. Also, the Ice Palace itself relies on the Fire Rod very heavily, so the magic upgrade is basically a must-get before entering.

Ooh, this is a toughie. I do agree using the fire rod can be difficult for newcomers, but compared to Mothula there is a lot less to avoid. I'm not sure on this, might need a second opinion.

• Moldorm. Every hit you do and every contact you make with him has knockback, and while it isn't a bottomless pit, it does knock you down to the floor below, where you climb back up and start the fight all over again. It's even worse in Link's Awakening, as the available space is smaller, and the area where you drop has no heart recovery. For all of this reasons, many people refer to it as Trolldorm.

This boss should be moved to Goddamned Boss because he's pretty easy, just extremely tedious to have to keep fighting. And in the original game, the game encourages you to make use of those pots after you get knocked off. As for the Link's Awakening variant, if you stay near the door, he can't do much to you. I'd say cut and move to Goddamned Boss.

• Blaino from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, for a single charged punch from him will punch you back to the dungeon entrance. He's also almost impossible to hit except when he's preparing that charged punch (which only takes a couple of seconds to charge); if you don't stand in quite the right place while attacking him, he'll hit you and start the battle over. And he has a quicker punch that stuns you, allowing him to land his dungeon-exit punch on you all the more easily. And this guy is the miniboss.

Blaino sounds more like That One Attack similar to Tabuu above, as he's pretty easy if you can avoid said attack, or kill him before he uses it.

• The final boss, Nightmare, is also incredibly difficult. This guy has a whopping six phases, including a difficult game of Dead Man's Volley, an extremely fast version of Lanmola, a fight with Ganon, and a rematch with Moldorm of all people! The hardest part, however, is the last phase where you fight Dethl. This guy swings his long arms around, making it extremely tough to land a hit on his small eye. Even worse is the fact that his eye opens and closes every few seconds, forcing you to have near perfect timing. If you die, you have to start all the way back at the beginning.

Another toughie. This is the final boss so it's meant to be challenging, but given that the boomerang one shots Dethl and the hints for beating the other forms are scattered around Koholint, I'm not sure. I want to say keep because yes, Dethl is hard if you don't exploit the boomerang, but by that point you should have it.

• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time:
  • Dark Link is particularly frustrating because he's only a miniboss. This is even worse considering that the actual boss of that level (That One Level through and through) can be much easier by comparison. And if you were hoping to use the Megaton Hammer or Din's Fire on him, they fixed that in Master Quest. You more or less have to beat him in a straight swordfight. A difficult duel could be fun, if there was some technique to it. But your quick-stab is useless (Dark Link jumps on top of your sword, then hits you), your jump attack is useless (Dark Link jumps to the side, then jump-attacks you), and he seems to dodge the spin attack, which leaves madly mashing the standard attack, which Dark link seems to do endlessly with the same speed while locked on, so the blows deflect each other. About the only way to beat him in a sword fight is to either use a non-standard weapon, like the Broken Giant's Knife or Biggoron's Sword, or go against every instinct the game has ingrained into you and turn off Z-targeting, which makes it harder for him to read your moves. Moreso, his HP depends on how many maximum hearts you have, so building up your health just makes the struggle worse. It does unintentionally make the boss much easier on three-heart runs, though.

Pretty simple cut, I would say. If you don't Z Target, this boss goes down really fast and thanks to the multiple ways of beating him, which are practically everywhere since everyone and their grandmother has played Oo T and gotten the Biggoron's Sword or at the very least, Megaton Hammer or Din's Fire.

• Bongo Bongo. Firstly, he's invisible, meaning that you must use the magic-draining Lens of Truth to see him. Secondly, he constantly slams the arena with his palms, which causes you to bounce around, messing up your coordination. You can avoid most of the bouncing by wearing the Hover Boots, but those reduce your traction and practically turn the floor into butter, or the Iron Boots, which slow you down and make you a sitting duck for his punches and grabs. To defeat him, you must hit both of his hands in enough time, which is especially hard to do when you have three targets to deal with: his hands and his eye. When one hand is stunned, he'll attack you with the other, and you only have a short window of time to act before he grabs you and tosses you into the distance, giving his other hand time to recover. (By the way, did we mention that the floor around the arena is made of health-sapping poison?) If you DO stun both of his hands, his weak point, the eye, will open, and you have to react quickly again and hit his eye to incapacitate him before he charges you off the arena. Which can catch many players by surprise way too often. Finally, he has far more health than any other boss in the game, with around SIXTY HP. Hope you brought your optional and tricky-to-get Biggoron Sword!

Bongo would be a pretty solid keep due to the fact you have to keep an eye (no pun intended) on him the whole fight and if you get distracted for even a second, you're dead. The problem? This boss comes at a time where you should have at least 15 heart containers making most of his one heart attacks, pretty moot. The player would likely bring fairies to mitigate the accidental deaths. Unless we're talking the horrible aiming controls of the N64, this really isn't a hard boss. And even then, the sweet spot is pretty generous.

• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask:
  • This game has the hardest boss in Great Bay Temple (Gyorg). The reason is because it has a tendency to swallow the player right after he or she manages to hurt it, which requires the player to dive into the water, and it can only be avoided by reacting very quickly and returning to the surface. The remake changes it by having Gyorg float to the surface and expose its weak spot when it's stunned, allowing players to attack it from dry land. Gyorg also doesn't swallow players during its normal attacks. However, the remake adds a phase where Gyorg destroys the platform you're on, forcing the rest of the fight to take place underwater. Low on health? Hope the clusters of fish will give up one measly heart, because all of the pots that spawn in the arena only yield magic refills or arrows. The worst part is that you probably have wasted too much time trying to navigate the Great Bay Temple, so you'll most likely have a limited amount of time to fight him.

Gyorg is a solid keeper. Especially the 3DS version where he can eat you easier.

• Great Bay Temple also has the most difficult miniboss in Wart, a giant moving eyeball that has over 40 bubbles surrounding it to shield it. Those spheres take two hits (one hit with the Gilded Sword) to destroy and after the first, they bounce around making the hookshot useless. And if you ignore the small balls, after enough hits on Wart itself they all fall off and start bouncing around everywhere, making the fight near impossible unless you take the time to focus on destroying the balls first, which takes ages.

Spin attacks mitigate the difficulty, but I guess that's a Guide Dang It!. Even so, if you keep an eye on his location at all times, you can literally make him run into your Gilded Sword.

• Fighting Goht, which is a combination of Chasing Your Tail and as many hazards as possible, can get annoying. Goht is also annoying in that you need to defeat him more times than the other bosses for the 100% Completion.

Move to Goddamned Boss. Goht is hardly difficult if you know what to do, and the controls for the Goron are pretty basic, so yeah. It doesn't even say he's hard, just annoying.

• Garo Master, one of the minibosses of the Stone Tower Temple. He's fast, hits hard, takes a surprising amount of punishment, and is nigh-impossible to hit in return. Unlike the normal Garos, trying to take him out by blocking his jumping attack and knocking his swords away won't work because he'll just bounce off your shield. Arrows won't work either. Even if you thought you could just back up, he swipes out with his swords when he attacks, which will hit you in front and to the side. Every time you're hit, you go flying back. When you manage to hit him, he'll follow up very quickly with a counterattack. His swords are covered in fire, so if for some reason you try to fight him as Deku or Zora Link, a single hit will force you to restart the entire battle. Sometimes he'll jump up and try to hit you from above (which is an easier way to hurt him than normally). You have to be really quick to get behind him before he gets back up. Also, in the Secret Shrine and the Moon rematches, his death animation can theoretically kill you if your life energy is too low.

I could see a solid keep for this.

• In the Majora's Mask 3DS remake, all of the bosses had their mechanics changed. Twinmold became significantly harder: whereas, in the original, one could kill both the worms by hacking and slashing away at them with the Giant's Mask, the Giant's Mask here is unavailable until the first worm is defeated. You also don't get to use your sword with the Giant's Mask in the remake, meaning you have to kill the other worm by punching and slamming it... and all while your magic meter slowly drains. The red Twinmold specifically is what makes the 3DS version of the fight so difficult. The blue one isn't terribly challenging, but you're constantly being blindsided by the red one's fireballs while trying to take out the blue one with Light Arrows. Once you've donned the Giant's Mask, you have to first stun the red Twinmold by pummeling it with your bare hands; stunning it takes a good 15 or so hits, and the hit counter to stun Twinmold resets if it goes underground, a task made even harder by the fact that just about every one of his attacks knocks you down and forces you to wait for Link to stand back up after a few seconds. The arena does have three boulders that you can pick up and throw to instantly stun Twinmold, but Twinmold requires four stun-and-damage cycles to kill, meaning you're going to have to successfully stun him with punches at least once.

Played the heck out of the 3DS Version to 100% it twice, and yes, I completely agree. Maybe trim it a little to remove the whining.

• Gleeok returns in Oracle of Seasons, as do a bunch of other bosses from the original, but in OoS, he isn't the only boss that can try your patience, especially if you have the Biggoron Sword (which makes Gleeok's first phase drastically easier). Digdogger is especially annoying because you can only hurt it by using the Magnetic Gloves to pull a spiked ball into it—and towards you, and yes, it will hurt you if you don't let go in time—and Manhandla, a four-headed Piranha Plant that you have to fight with the Magic Boomerang, the most frustrating item ever implemented in the series.

Gleeok is fairly simple given you have the Roc's cape to dodge his attacks, a luxury you didn't have in the original game. Digdogger is again, Goddamned Boss and Manhandala could be a keeper given it's in a room where he can easily run into you.

• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:
  • Molgera. You have to get up really close to grab his tongue with the hookshot, but get even an inch closer than you need to and he'll eat you. It's nearly impossible to L-target the tongue after the first time, because mini-Molgeras spawn and get in the way, and it's even harder to target it manually because they'll hit you and interrupt your careful hookshot maneuvering.

Keep.

• Puppet Ganon, since you have to fight him 3 times, with him changing his pattern each time! Especially with the fast third form, an expy of Moldorm from A Link to the Past, where you have to hit it's tail with magic-depleting Light Arrows without the luxury of L-targeting. And especially the third form. Shoot a Light Arrow at the blue ball? Fine. Shoot a Light Arrow at the blue ball on the tail of a fast-moving snake that goes all over the place and never holds still? Better to shoot the guy who designed that phase. Performing an attack at Puppet Ganon's head immobilizes it, but you'll need quick fingers to exploit the narrow gap of opportunity. Those who are patient can jam themselves onto a ledge in the room where the Snake often can't touch Link. The trade-off is the tail becomes more difficult to hit.

I hated this boss. The first two forms? No problem. That snake form though? It can rot in Evil Boss hell. It's almost as if this boss was intended to be as obnoxious as possible. Keep.

• The second battle with Phantom Ganon can last forever if the player doesn't figure out the riddle that holds the key to his defeat. Even finding the boss can be a bit tricky, since it requires the player to do something that completely defies previous game logic - yes, you have to jump off the ledge into that gaping, dark abyss, Hero.

Meh, he wasn't too bad. I say cut.

• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap has the Giant Octorock. The main method of defeating it is to light its tail on fire with courtesy of the light coming from your lamp, but despite the thing's size it's incredibly fast and will often pull a 180 on you before you can completely get behind it. It doesn't help that you spend much of the fight on an icy floor, which means it's nearly impossible to go the right way you want to half the time. And finally you need to stay close by the thing if you want to properly hit it, but this also gives it an easier chance of using its primary attack of sucking you up into its mouth on you. Even if it isn't using the suck attack you'll still automatically be swallowed if you're remotely near it, which can lead to your health being depleted very quickly.

Damn this boss. This boss mixes hard to avoid attacks with ice physics and you must keep the lamp out at all times. If you avoid its attacks, it will take forever so you HAVE to be in close proximity. Keep, a thousand times over.

• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. You can fight through the game and only have problems with two bosses, which are revealed to be minibosses:
  • Twilit Bloat, aka the Giant Lightning Bug From Nowhere. You have to fight it on a ring of small platforms, it has a charge attack, and you have to jump on it and bite it to death. If you miss, it gets a free hit. Also, you're essentially helpless in the water, and when it does its rampage attack, the only way to be safe is if you have the agility of a cat on speed. The boss is especially hard if you don't realize you have to use the force field to target and hit all the legs at once.

Bloat is hard for first timers, I'll give it that. And it's difficult to avoid it's attacks, but most of them leave it open to biting from Wolf Link.

• The second difficult miniboss is the Darkhammer from the Snowpeak Ruins. He wields the Ball and Chain (which is the item you get for defeating him) and is fought in a narrow hallway which makes it very difficult to avoid. He is also only possible to harm from behind, meaning you have to wait for him to attack, clawshot your way across the room so that you are behind him, and then drop and hammer him before he turns around. That said, he is also the only boss or mini-boss in the game to lack Contractual Boss Immunity to the Mortal Draw. Seriously.

• Fighting the Darknut for the first time can be this for those who aren't that great at the combat.

Cut. By the Temple of Time, you should be used to how combat works in Twilight Princess.

• Argorok isn't particularly hard, but he's painfully slow to fight, especially in its second phase. If you fall, you have to spend at least fifteen seconds trying to climb back up to him. And you will definitely fall, especially when he starts randomly changing the direction of his fire breath.

Pretty basic boss. Again, move to Goddamned Boss due to being able to fall, but it's not a hard one.

• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks:
  • The Roktites. A Giant Enemy Crab that waits on the roof of a tunnel and chases you through the mountain while you shoot its eye. After a while its eye only opens if you shoot an Explosive Barrel next to it, and finally it sends jumping minions after you as well. And it runs faster than your train, accompained by the nightmarish music that crescendoes as it gets closer.
  • Fraaz from the Blizzard temple for various reasons. His attacks are fairly tricky to avoid, and the ice/fire they leave behind then immediately have to be used against him with the boomerang once he switches elements. For extra fun, later on in the fight the boomerang needs to hit him multiple times before he launches the next attack. You have to do this with a measly four, maybe five hearts.
  • Phytops from the Marine Temple is no joke either. Every time he recovers from a stun, he attacks with two tentacles in a rapid succession that is hard to dodge. In the second half, he also strikes with them during his normal attack pattern in a left-right-both combo that is equally hard to dodge and can easily throw you off the cliff, resulting in another half heart loss.
  • Skeldritch, the Sand Temple boss, can be a pain, especially due to the sheer longevity of his battle. The first phase consists of catching the boulders he shoots from his spine with the Sand Wand and manoeuvreing them onto catapults before launching them back. Sounds easy enough, but his last few vertebrae are only vulnerable from certain angles, and he continually escalates the speed and intensity of his attacks as the battle progresses. By the time you've reached the last two vertebrae, you'll constantly being floored by his rapid-fire boulder barrage before you can do anything useful, and if you do succeed in catching one, it would be crushed in short order by Skeldritch's next shot.
  • The final form of Malladus can be a royal pain in the ass if you haven't gotten the upgraded Spin Attack. Trying to defend Zelda and having one fireball hit her and then having her start the whole pattern over again can be rather annoying.

I actually have never played Spirit Tracks, so if someone wants to give me some insight as to whether or not these bosses are keepers, feel free to.

• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:
  • The first couple of fights against Demon Lord Ghirahim are really frustrating, because he can catch your sword strikes with near-perfect accuracy. He's supposed to be a Wakeup Call Boss that shows you that you can't just swing the sword around randomly and hope to win, but even when concentrating and misdirecting him, it's hard to land any hits at all. The fact that he does all this with one hand, lazily catching your sword between two fingers, just makes it more aggravating, as it's clear he's just toying with you.

Keep. Given that Ghirahim is the first boss and he's considerably harder than most Zelda first bosses, I'd say he deserves a spot.

• The second battle against the Imprisoned. The difficulty in this battle is upped considerably from the first fight, as the Imprisoned creates shockwaves with every stomp of its massive feet, making it impossible to come near it and Attack Its Weak Point unless you get really lucky with shield bashes. For people who simply jumped on his head he'll also throw you off after about a second. You're supposed to wait until Groose loads his catapult and stun the Imprisoned with that, but the downside is that this is a Timed Mission; you have to stop the Imprisoned from reaching the temple at the top of the map. In this battle, the boss can grab hold of a ledge and pull itself up, skipping a considerable portion of the map. You can slash his fingers when he's holding on but if you're way out of position you're stuck using the Groosenator. Which takes him roughly a minute to load after each use. It's not uncommon for a player to stun the Imprisoned with the catapult to land a few hits in, and while Groose is reloading have the boss pull itself higher. And if you save Groose for the times when the Imprisoned pulls itself up? Yeah, good luck approaching the boss with those shockwaves everywhere.

I hate The Imprisoned. Keep.

• The third fight the Imprisoned is more of the same, up until the spike is driven in. From there on out, it's all the player's aiming skill with the Groosenator, and you can't afford to miss. The first time, it's not so bad, as it's a bomb and those can hit anywhere (but if you miss, consider reloading your save file - the Imprisoned is flying). It's the final shot that's the clincher - you have to aim at the narrow traversable ground on the Imprisoned's head, especially near the spike, and that leaves little room for error. If you aim too low, Link falls, and with the geyser it's not going to be enough time before the rails are crushed and the Imprisoned begins its attack on the Sealed Temple. If you aim too high or too far to the side, it will be almost impossible to make it back in time (there's the central geyser that hops Link back to top, but the time window to use it allows no mistakes at all).

This is even harder than the previous Imprisoned fight. If you aren't good at the motion controls involving the Groosenator, this boss is extremely difficult. I hate this boss so much I would say keep even if everyone else says cut.

• When exploring Skyview Temple for the second time, players will encounter three Stalfos in what was previously the boss room. Later in the game this encounter would be child's play, but this is the first time the game throws so many enemies that require dextrous swordplay at the same time. Considering this is after the third dungeon, when there are still many Heart Containers to be collected, and that Stalfos can knock off multiple hearts with one swing, it's not a pretty fight.

Pretty easy if you block, and dodge, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's difficult for a first timer.

• And in the "Ancient Cistern", you'll have to fight Stalmaster, who's essentially one huge Stalfos with four arms, four swords, and a ton of health. You have to pretty much be a swordplay god at this point in the game.

I could be wrong, but I believe bombs make this fight considerably easier.

• In the last dungeon, you'll have to take on a trio of Stalfos again while a dozen Bokoblins on nearby ledges turn you into a flaming pincushion with their fire arrows. And right before that, you must somehow get past two giant Moblins on a narrow walkway. Both Moblins have unbreakable shields that are as wide as the walkway; hitting the Moblins with your sword is nearly impossible. You could use arrows to kill them, but this only works if you have lots of arrows (you can't leave the room to go get some), and afterward you won't have anything with which to shoot down those archer Bokoblins in the next room. And even if you survive all of this, A Stalmaster (formerly the miniboss of the Ancient Cistern) will await you at the end.

This is an enemy gauntlet, not a boss. Cut.

• Scervo, the ridiculously frustrating miniboss of the Sandship. No Ring-Out Boss should ever have that much knockback. The fight takes place in a narrow, fenced-in "plank", so there's only one direction you can drive him out. And he's fast. He will hit you. A lot. It takes a second or two for Link to recover from the force and run back in, giving Scervo the chance to close the distance. And it's not enough when you finally manage to get him to the edge; you have to do it three times.

This is like the King Bulbin fight. Hard at first, easy every other time. Using your shield is a must here.

• The final fight with Demise is exceptionally annoying. First, you have to hit him endless times avoiding his quick attacks, and if you get too far from him he just runs towards you, slashing you with his sword. Once you finally manage to make him fall to the ground, he gets up again, summons a STORM and charges his sword with lightning. Now you'll have to avoid both his skyward strikes and his regular attacks, exposing yourself every time you charge your own skyward strike, which is the only effective way you can stun him. Once you have managed to make him fall once again, you'll have to repeat the same process at least once more, and finally deliver the final blow. Oh, and make sure you're quick enough, because he'll get up right at the last moment. Have fun.

I didn't think Demise was too difficult for a final Zelda boss.

• The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds:
  • Zaganaga, the boss of the Desert Palace, is a tremendous pain. The arena is one big quicksand trap with small pillars that you can stand on dotted throughout it; the boss pops out of these pillars at random, and you have to use the Sand Rod to raise temporary platforms so you can get close enough to hurt him. Thing is, the temporary nature of said platforms means you may or may not have enough time to run all the way up to Zaganaga and slash him, and the whole time he spits out dozens of Peahats that fly into you and knock you into the quicksand. Making matters worse are the long-range beam attack he gains after he Turns Red, and the fact that he seems to have a lot more health than other bosses. At least the Sand Rod can be upgraded to the Nice Sand Rod so that the platforms it creates don't disappear, but it's not going to help too much with the Peahats and beam attack if you're not fast enough.

I remember hating this boss. Not as much as Mothula or The Imprisoned, but still he took me a few tries. But you should hopefully have upgraded the sand rod to mitigate the difficulty, but I can see him staying if you don't.

• Knucklemaster replaces Mothula as the boss of Skull Woods, and it's no less aggravating. Its punch attack is very difficult to dodge, and requires quickly merging into a wall to avoid so it can crash into a wall and be vulnerable. Damage it more, and it gains a slamming attack that's also difficult to dodge, and destroys the ground you fight on, making it even harder to avoid its attacks. When it Turns Red, things go downhill fast. Its slams are faster, most of the walking space will be destroyed at this point, and every time it's left vulnerable, you'll get maybe three hits in before it starts attacking again. It can be skipped, but unless you've got a specific item to dodge its attacks, good luck.

Knucklemaster. Hoo boy, there's a legitimately challenging boss. I think he might be the boss in ALBW that took me the most attempts, so keep.

• Dharkstare, the boss of the Ice Ruins, is also a pain. First off, the arena is an icy surface, which means you'll slip all over the place, and is surrounded by a Bottomless Pit, and there's also a pit in the middle as well. Dharkstare never holds still, making it extremely difficult to melt its ice shield off with the Fire Rod, and it attacks by sending three energy balls out around your position in a triangular shape which after a few seconds freezes the area inside it. Unless you're already moving when it sends the triangle out, good luck not getting frozen. Oh, and when it Turns Red, it starts sending out a second triangle.

Ice physics alone make this a keeper.

• The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is designed around three individual Links sharing the board. Henceforth, levels and especially bosses often require very efficient co-operation between players (which is difficult online due to lack of voice chat and emotes not being able to communicate certain actions), or in single-player careful placement of Doppels and switching control between them on the fly. To be specific:
  • Vulture Vizier is only a miniboss, but his battle is a nightmare. The arena is a large balancing platform with no guard rails, with the boss sitting on a perch off to the side. The idea is for one or two Links to stand on one side of the balancing platform, giving the third Link just enough elevation to attack the boss' face. The slightest off-balance nudge sends all three Links tumbling into a bottomless pit, resulting in three hearts lost with nothing you can do to prevent it. It's even more fun when the boss' attacks include pecking the platform to violently shake it, blowing gusts of air to blow the Links around and dropping statues to weigh the platform down.
  • Moldorm is back, and in single-player he's more annoying than ever. Moldorm homes in and chases the Link you're currently controlling, and he's pretty fast, very accurate and has a very big hurtbox (and, as usual, high knockback on an arena with no guard rails). You must carefully place a Doppel and lure Moldorm close to it, then very quickly switch control to attack Moldorm's tail. When you switch control to a Doppel, Moldorm changes his target very quickly, so you only have less than a second to attack. What's more, although Moldorm can't hurt inert Doppels, he can push them over the edge, so you have to keep them all near the center.

Haven't played, cannot comment.

• Hyrule Warriors:
  • The Imprisoned is back with a vengeance. He has most of his abilities from Skyward Sword plus a few new ones, and is just as much of a pain to deal with here. His toes are still his weak point, so you have to be constantly putting yourself in range of his stomp shockwaves to hit him, the size and damage of which can get ridiculous when he's low on health. On harder maps he can deal huge amounts of damage, screwing the player out of an A-Rank with only two or three hits. His sheer size combined with the game's tendency to put him in small arenas makes him difficult to maneuver around, and he's been known to stand in doorways and block off entire portions of the map. He also automatically stands up when his weakness gauge depletes by half, preventing the player from breaking it in a single round (he's the only boss in the game who does this) and will immediately follow it up with his belly slide attack which renders him completely invincible until it's over, causing fights with him to take much longer than the other bosses. And a few sadistic maps will making you fight multiple Imprisoneds at once. One of the reasons the "Defeat 1000 enemies in 10 minutes" mission is so difficult is that it throws four of these guys at you at once, with no time to kill them, forcing the player to try and grab kills while running for their life from a bunch of hungry, angry Imprisoneds. Legends makes him easier to deal with by negating his automatic getup, and rendering him vulnerable to Focus Spirit Knockdowns.
  • The fight against Gohma in the Faron Woods level of story mode has the potential to be a pain. Gohma itself is actually not that difficult, as its only really notable attribute is that it's invincible most of the time and only opens up its weak point, its eye, after using its eye laser, which is pretty easy to dodge roll away from anyway. The problem comes from the fact that Gohma is primarily fought inside the Deku Tree base; your home base for the level, which will cause a game over if you lose control of it. Even this isn't so bad; where the problem really comes in is actually your allies for the mission. Gohma is shielded most of the time and can only be stunned and made vulnerable by shooting it in the eye with an arrow; your allies do not realize this and will simply crowd around Gohma and allow it to beat them to death without contributing anything else to the fight. This makes the fight a race against time to bring Gohma down before it kills enough of your soldiers to constitute losing control of the base.
  • Manhandla is also very annoying to fight. It's a simple process: stun all four heads with the boomerang (though the game may let you away with three or two stunned heads), and whale on the crystal in it's body. The issue here is that one of Manhandla's attacks is to rain hell on you. It's multi-hit, and if you aren't blocking, it will stunlock you, reducing a full life meter to zero in seconds. The worst part is that it looks similar to another one of it's attacks, namely, the one where it opens itself up for an easy quadruple stun. So more often than not, you may throw your boomerang, and leave yourself open to the seedling gun attack.
  • The final fight against Volga, as he's been powered up by Cia to tremendous degrees, meaning he can kill you very quickly if you're not careful. You aren't actually supposed to fight him in this state, instead waiting for Zelda (or Ruto if you're playing as Zelda) to talk him into rejecting Cia's power before you can take him down, but this takes about a minute to complete, which is more than enough time for him to finish you off.
  • Volga in every instance is a brutal struggle, considering that he's the Zelda version of Lu Bu. He's fast, hits very hard with combos that are hard to break out of if he traps you in them, can turn into an invincible dragon for good measure, his weakness gauge pops up for about half a second at a time and it only appears after attacks that are difficult to dodge whilst still being close enough to attack afterwards, hardly uses the attacks that do cause the weakness gauge to appear, and he takes an absolute ton of hits to defeat.^note One saving grace, however, is that when Volga is hit while his Weak Point Gauge is up, it won't disappear for a few seconds, giving you enough time to drain it.
  • The fight against Cia is also a pain. The first portion of it is very easy, as she's just a regular humanoid enemy and can be knocked around accordingly, plus most of her attacks are very slow and require her to charge up power before she can even use them, which you can easily interrupt. The problem comes in the second portion, where she splits herself into four, and all four of them will often be on different places in her attack pattern, meaning you don't have time to stop all of their charge-up attacks. They also have a tendency of clustering together, meaning it's very difficult to get to one of the clones' whose weak point is showing without getting hit by the AOE attack of one of the others.
  • Phantom Ganon, introduced in Legends, can be an absolute nightmare. The first phase of Tennis Boss is fairly tolerable, but it's his second phase that makes the difficulty skyrocket: he pulls out a second sword, and foregoes the Tennis Boss pattern to ravaging your warriors with hard strikes that can break your block and send you flying. Plus, he doesn't appear to have any surefire way to expose his Weak Point Gauge, so all you can do is try everything until something works.^note The secret is actually to wail on him from behind until he staggers, but this is in no way obvious. But it's almost certain to deplete a considerable portion of your character's HP before then.

Haven't played, cannot comment.

• Woe betide any fool who thinks Breath of the Wild is going to be an easy ride. If the Decayed Guardians and Guardian Stalkers that can sprinkle Link across the Hyrulean landscape with their lasers, and the Lynels that know no shortage of ways to butcher the Champion of Hyrule, do not drive this point home, then count on these bosses to etch the point into your flesh.
  • Thunderblight Ganon, the boss assigned to Divine Beast Vah Naboris, is the boss that fights most like Link, and thus the boss that will make his life most miserable. Phase 1 has it throwing balls like it has a Thunderbolt Rod when it's not flash-stepping into Link's face to carve him up, leaving you a scant second to react for a Flurry; the boss' shield will chew at any small arms' durability, making a heavy weapon ideal... but only for so long. Phase 2 has it bring out the lightning, dropping rods that attract thunderbolts to fry Link if he's in range, and its sword and shield are now electrified, meaning Link will drop all metallic equipment he's holding when contact is made. Take this boss lightly, and Urbosa will be waiting for you...
  • Aonuma said that you can face Calamity Ganon pretty much right away, but there is a vast difference between when you can face the beast and when you should. This thing has a wide variety of attacks, from Fireblight Ganon's blazing sword to Windblight Ganon's wind cannon to Waterblight Ganon's lance launcher, this thing copies a number of attacks, but its two unique abilities are what set it apart. First is its repulsor field; while this does no damage, if you're targeting the boss when it hits you, you lose a charge of Daruk's Protection, something this move appears made to do, and those charges are better used covering for you against an actual attack. Second, and more troublesome, is when it literally Turns Red via protective forcefield; this barrier protects it from all of your attacks, and only drops during its own attacks, leaving almost no blind spot. If you cannot Perfect Dodge, parry shots with your shield, or have Urbosa's Fury and/or Daruk's Protection as trump cards, this battle is unwinnable. Oh, and Calamity Ganon is preceded by every Blight Ganon you did not kill, including the aforementioned Thunderblight Ganon, meaning you've got a gauntlet from hell to go through if you choose to fight this thing straight away. Charging Ganon with the four Divine Beasts on the loose is a masochist's delight. You Have Been Warned.
    • And if all that wasn't bad enough, Master Mode adds one additional level of hellishness to the fight; Much like every other enemy in the game, his health regenerates. Not so much a problem in the first phase, but after he Turns Red, this leaves the rest of the battle an excercise in mind-boggling frustration as he becomes impervious to damage most of the time and all you can do is hope that he'll use the right attacks to allow you to counterattack before he's regained all the HP you knocked off him the last time you got to attack.
  • The illusionary realm rematches introduced in The Champion's Ballad generally keeps the difficulty of the Blight Ganons the same as they were the first time they are fought apart from reducing the inventory to some early healing items, the Champions weapons and a few backups; the exception is Waterblight Ganon. The battle only gives you ten arrows, which is not enough to kill him in the second phase where arrows are the best form of offence. This reduces the battle to using bombs (which requires getting close enough that there is little to no time to stop Waterblight Ganon's Cryonis attack and do Scratch Damage anyway), using Stasis to knock an ice block back at him (which costs durability in a battle with limited weapons) or good use of Perfect Guard, Daruk's Protection and Urbosa's Fury.

I haven't gotten very far in this game to really comment.

I've heard a lot of people say Thunderblight Ganon is the hardest. I don't know about it either cause I also haven't gotten that far XD