That One Boss / Devil May Cry

• The first Devil May Cry offers a few headaches that will lay demonic beatdowns on your ass, especially in Dante Must Die mode.
  • The aptly named Nightmare, an amorphous blob that you can't even damage unless you hit the blue dials scattered around its stage, which will solidify it and allow it to be damaged. It will also attack you with rapid fire projectiles regardless of what state he is in, which makes him difficult to counter. To make matters worse, in his blob form it is also capable of swallowing you whole to send you into another dimension; where you fight degraded versions of any of the previous bosses (Phantom, Griffon, or even Nelo Angelo). This process will take a large chunk off your health and Devil Trigger bar, and if you allow it to happen more than once, Nightmare might even enter Devil Trigger to increase its strength and regenerate for a short while. On the other hand, breaking out of the dimension does give a lot to your Devil Trigger bar and deal a large chunk of damage to the boss. And just to make it all the more tedious, you encounter this boss three times across the game, all toward the endgame.
  • Nelo Angelo (a.k.a. Vergil) is already a Wake-Up Call Boss when you meet him and the second time you face him is no pushover, but his final fight is a pain. Not only does he grow to about 1.5 times his normal size, his moveset (which mirrors yours, plus some) becomes stronger and faster. And if that isn't enough, he sometimes teleports outside of your reach and attacks you with Summoned Swords, which can rain down Death from Above on you or attack you like a Reverse Shrapnel from an angle. He can also summon it to spin around him to serve as a makeshift defense against your guns and damage you continuously until the swords break if you are too close to him. Have fun, Dante certainly doesn't after finding out Nelo's true identity.
• While Devil May Cry 2 is in general not so hard, some of the boss fights on Dante/Lucia Must Die can be very difficult.
  • Bolverk is fast, hits hard, can block bullets and is assisted by his wolves Freki and Geri, who are both very hard to hit. Thankfully, Lucia never has to fight him outside of Secret Rooms.
  • Tateobesu is fairly easy on lower difficulties, but he is a nightmare on Lucia Must Die. The boss spends the entire fight invisible, which means no lock-on during an underwater battle. Your best bet is to spam Cranky Bombs, and pray it swims into them. This boss holds the award of being the only boss that is actually harder to beat with Trish than it is with Lucia.
  • Trismagia. Melee weapons are completely useless in this fight, making for a massive disadvantage for players who didn't upgrade the guns. The boss splits into three heads, of which only one is vulnerable at a time, and even then it only takes half damage. Both this gimmick and the ice pillars the boss periodically summons screw the lock-on mechanic, which can cause you to lose sight of which head is vulnerable. The only times the boss combines is when he is about to perform his ultimate attack, which covers pretty much the entirety of the small platform Dante/Lucia are confined to. And if you deplete his health when the heads are split, he still does the ultimate attack, and the battle doesn't end until it's finished.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening has several, befitting the Nintendo Hard difficulty of the game.
  • Cerberus, who was a major cause of returns, resales, and complaints of the difficulty of the game, followed by Agni and Rudra. Cerberus was the boss at the end of the third level (meaning if you died, you probably didn't have enough continue items and had to play the level over) and Agni and Rudra were the end of the fifth, mostly because of your lack of Devil Trigger as well as your low stats and lack of powerful moveset.
  • The first battle against Vergil is tough due to the lack of Devil Trigger, coupled with Vergil's insane speed and his signature Judgment Cut, orbs of space that can cut you up regardless of your distance.
  • Nevan, which is annoyingly persistent. She has electrical attacks that cause huge amounts of damage if not avoided, an attack that drains a massive amount of your health to regenerate hers, and has a regenerating bat shield, which absorbs damage separately from her health bar, meaning she can only be damaged for a certain amount of time before the shields regenerate.
  • The second battle against Vergil is a lot harder, because he will start using Devil Trigger whenever he can, which increases his attack, defense, speed and heals him continuously for the duration, just like yours. To make matters worse, he also uses the Beowulf gauntlets and greaves, which, while somewhat slow, is used in conjunction with his teleportation abilities to deal large amounts of damage.
  • Sparda-powered Arkham, whose One-Winged Angel form is a blob with very accurate tentacle attacks and projectiles. In addition, he could submerge into the demonic waters of the stage, protecting himself from attacks and summon annoying demonic dolphins. The second phase of the fight also prevents you from using Devil Trigger and Style moves (greatly limiting your move list), while the boss will fire the aforementioned projectiles even faster, forcing a painfully slow long-range fight. It's tough, even though Vergil does help you as an ally.
• In Devil May Cry 4, the rematch with Dante is way harder than any of the other bosses. Dante's pattern is to wait until you attempt an attack, then dodge with computerized precision and counter with an impossible-to-avoid attack. You can't even effectively use ranged attacks because he will deflect your bullets by shooting them out of the air. On unlockable difficulties, he adds weapons to his move-set that he chronologically gets later on in the story. So he's NG+ just like you.
• Devil May Cry 5 provides a couple of challenging yet satisfying boss fights.
  • Urizen has an arsenal of tricks he unleashes in every one of his boss fights.
    • While he sits on the throne, he bombards the player with fireballs, diving energy projectiles, erupting geysers and laser beams while also sending out time bombs which greatly slow down movements if they connect, which exposes the player to even more assault. And don't think just because you got close to him, you can pound on his shield non-stop. Urizen can push you away and force you to repeat the cycle, and the crystal itself grows spikes to hit the player.
    • After getting up, he retains most of his abilities while also gaining new ones. Urizen now utilizes tendrils attached to his body, sending them after the player and damaging them severely if they get caught; this move is very difficult to dodge. Also he spins around and pounds the ground with his fist, making tendrils cover a large area in front of him. And, yet again, his shield must be broken to deal any damage to Urizen and regenerates in a few seconds, giving you a short window to hit him with your hardest-hitting attacks.
    • In Mission 17, Urizen becomes much more mobile, zipping around the battlefield while still employing his projectile barrage and pummelling you with his fists and legs. As he loses more health, he starts shooting time-slowing spheres and summoning blades that quickly home in on you. During the final stretch of the fight, Urizen pulls out his most dangeroud move: he charges up and makes spikes erupt from the ground, following it up with a brutal uppercut.
  • King Cerberus, true to his name, plays like the DMC3 boss on steroids. This time, the three-headed hound is much more mobile, lunging at the player with fury and not letting them take a break from the pummelling. Also this time the boss has access to three elements, Fire, Ice, Lightning, with three separate behaviors: the fire head likes to get close and personal, swiping with his claws and summoning geysers from the ground, the ice head likes to drop icicles from above that can easily bring down an inattentive player and breathes freezing waves from its mouth while the lightning head is a Long-Range Fighter, pelting the player with projectiles and ground waves. Also, be wary of being to close to the boss while he changes elements, or otherwise you'll be blown away by a powerful explosion.
  • Vergil in Mission 19 provides an amazing challenge by being brutally fast and unrelenting. He fights almost like a player-controlled character, pelting his opponent with a barrage of attacks that can easily knock their health bar down. But once you get him to 50% health, he starts pulling out new tricks, like Devil Trigger and Judgment Cut End, keeping you on your toes. If you cut the boss' health even lower, he starts summoning a phantom doppelganger that doesn't have much in the terms of health, but can make some serious damage. In the next mission he becomes a bit easier to fight, but still challenging.
  • The release of the Special Edition brings us none other than Dante himself who is so ridiculously powerful missions 19 and 20 are treated as a single fight with him. And boy he's gonna make you earn that win. He has full access to all his weapons and styles which he will happily use on the player, his Royalguard in particular, can now be used on your projectiles. So if your dodging is not impeccable, be prepared to lose a huge chunk of life from what you thought was a safe distance. On top of that he gains super armor on many of his moves, allowing him to ignore your attacks and unleash his more powerful techniques with impunity. And to top it all off during the second round he can shift into Sin Devil Trigger instantly, with every single devastating move it grants at his disposal, to the point some of them are nerfed to give the player a fighting chance. Needless to say, this is not a fight for the unprepared.