That One Boss and That One Level cleanup.

From That One Boss: NOTE: Final Boss and Wake-Up Call Boss cannot be That One Boss without being overly hard by their standards. An Early Bird Boss will almost always qualify as That One Boss as well, but for reasons of the player's weakness rather than the boss's strength.

Any reason why Sword Saint Isshin is hard even by Final Boss standards?

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Jun 4th 2019 at 11:07:19 AM

He's a massive spike over everything else in the game. Just in the first phase alone he tends to mix up his attacks more than other bosses and has an attack that can punish parries, most of the problems though come from the second phase. With every other boss you can beat them by mainly memorizing their attacks and then swapping between aggressively attacking them and going on the defensive and parrying all of their attacks, but Isshin makes that as hard as can be. He has this love for mixing up attacks and uses insanely long combos that even if you parry through will destroy your posture gauge. His attack range is massive which makes dodging his attacks a crap shoot most of the time. Attacking him can be very risky since he can just break out of your combo and immediately counter. There's nothing really worth mentioning for phase 3 though since you can cheese it with lightning reversals. Overall he less puts your skills to the test to see if you've mastered the game and more pushes things to the extreme.

That's a decent explanation, though add that he is difficult even by Final Boss standards.

Sorry to bump, but could I get verification for Sword Saint Isshin?

Also, while Owl is a legit example of That One Boss, his Hirata Estate counterpart is clearly optional and out of the way.

ThatOneBoss.Mega Man has folders for Fan Games and ROM Hacks. Is that allowed?

Shouldn't fangames and romhacks have their own section?

The whole Mega Man page in general could use some cleanup. A lot of the individual games have an overabundance of examples, and there's a good bit of natter, too.

I've played a decent amount of the Mega Man games, so I'll lend a hand here. Firstly, since it hasn't been properly answered yet, the ROM hacks and fangames should be moved to the main Action page. Give them their own folder, plonk them in random spots, do whatever, but they can't stay here. I'll only go over the games I've played personally, or at least have enough understand of how players feel about certain bosses:

• X:
  • X1: Bospider and Wolf Sigma are the game's most infamous bosses by a country mile - cut everything else for failing to measure up.
  • X5: Keep Shadow Devil, zap the rest for being par for the course for the game's difficulty.
  • X6: Haven't played this one, but I know Gate is fairly infamous, so he's safe. Dunno about the rest.
  • X7: Oh jeez, I don't have good memories of any of these ones, if only because the game itself was shit. Flame Hyenard, if nothing else, has a really poorly written example, so I'd be inclined to cut him on that principal alone.
• Legends 1: TBH these all seem fair enough to keep, if only because I don't remember the game being particularly hard, so it's easier for something to stand out. Maybe merge that third sub-bullet in the vehicle boss section with the one above it.
• ZX Advent: Okay, this game is absolutely mental in terms of difficulty so I'm impressed with the restraint people have shown with this section. That said, cut everything except for Chronoforce - Spidrill is "biznizz as usual" for the game, the Boss Rush falls under a different trope entirely (That One Sidequest, perhaps?), and Aeolus fits better under That One Attack.
• Star Force:
  • 1: Cut all of it. Gemini and the Jammers are mild difficulty spikes but aren't particularly overbearing, while Dragon Sky EP is plainly a Bonus Boss. The entry even admits it and tries justifying it by saying "even for BB, it's busted". Like, no. Dude. dude. plz.
  • 3: Once more, cut all of it. Acid Ace has really poor context, Apollo Flame and the Noise Wizards are Biznizz™, and Crimson Dragon's entry outright admits it's kind of easy.

For X6, Nightmare Mother can be kept. Its movement pattern and hitbox make it very difficult to beat.

Gate is a weird example. He is not too hard if you have the right weapon set up. The problem is you can encounter him by accident before you can get that weapon set up, in which case he is unbeatable.

I've played the entire Classic series, X5, Zero 4, ZXA, and the first three BN games, and Concrete Man was so hard for me to beat he consistently screwed up the boss rush, while the Spidrill required a lot of restarts and Kraft from Zero 4 forced me to completely restart the game to be better-prepared.

I think Elec from 1 can be kept too since he can three-shot you, and is super fast and his weapon hitbox is huge, unlike Ice Man's.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Aug 22nd 2019 at 4:03:19 AM

MM1: Fire Man definitely shouldn't be there. Ice Man probably doesn't need to be there either. Really, the most deserving of a spot is Elec Man, in my opinion, but if most people insist on the Yellow Devil, I'll defer to them.

MM2: Quick Man and the Boobeam trap belong for sure. I suspect Wood Man is there partly due to memes, much like Air Man; he doesn't really stand out on his own merits. Mecha Dragon is only a threat because of the risk of falling; I never had issues with it myself. Wily Machine 2 is not actually the final boss, so I could see the hitbox shenanigans being enough to earn it a spot. The Alien is far too simplistic to qualify, and it doesn't deserve to be shoehorned into the Wily Machine 2 example either.

MM3: Doc Quick and Doc Wood are head and shoulders above almost everything else in terms of difficulty. Doc Quick retains all the speed and randomness of the original Quick Man but also deals massive contact damage and takes less damage from the Buster than the original Quick Man. Doc Wood has a very high damage output in general, and his attacks, while completely predictable, require extreme precision to dodge. Shadow Man can stay; he's fairly tough in his own right and his weakness is awkward to use (you have to take damage yourself in order to hit him with it, and trying to take advantage of Mercy Invincibility is what can cause you to waste all your weapon energy). Needle Man might have had a case in another game, but he's simply outclassed here. Yellow Devil MKII and the other Doc Robots can also go.

MM4: Seven out of eight of the Robot Masters in this game deal 8 contact damage, so that's not a valid reason for nominating Dive Man and Ring Man. Neither of them really stand out to me; Dive Man has an awkward weakness that arguably makes the battle harder, but he's easy enough to take down with just the Buster (and he even has a secondary weakness to the Dust Crusher, which has a slow rate of fire but is nowhere near as awkward as the Skull Barrier). Wily Machine 4 is mainly a Guide Dang It! moment (the game itself doesn't explain that you can detonate Drill Bombs early); I don't really know how to feel about it.

MM5: I'm gonna say no to Gravity Man here; it's a gimmicky fight, but Gravity Man himself follows a strict pattern, and his damage output isn't anything to write home about. Honestly, I'm not sure any of the bosses in this game really stand out from the rest.

MM6: Again, I'm not really convinced that any one boss stands out from the rest in this game. Mechazaurus's gimmick can be annoying, but not overly so compared to the other fortress bosses, in my opinion.

MM7: I'm also leaning toward keeping Slash Man. The Wily Capsule is a definite keeper; it's a perfect example of a Final Boss that's so difficult that it still qualifies for this trope.

MM8: Astro Man and the 8-bit version of Sword Man don't belong. I'm not familiar enough with the Wily 1 fortress boss to judge it.

MM9: Cut Concrete Man, Tornado Man, and especially the elephants. Wily is the Final Boss, and his capsule form is toned down from the MM7 version, so I'm not entirely sure he should stay, but it's definitely true that he's the hardest boss in the game. The Twin Devils, like most other Devil bosses, just strike me as tedious rather than overly difficult, but I'll defer to others if they want to keep it.

MM10: None of the Robot Masters really fit, in my opinion. Strike Man and Chill Man are just par for the course, and Blade Man, while difficult for new players, becomes the easiest Robot Master in the game once you learn his pattern. As always, I'll defer to others if they want to keep the Block Devil, though I don't think it's a great example myself. Enker is the boss of a bonus stage, so I'm pretty sure he's disqualified on that basis alone.

MM11: Cut Blast Man and Impact Man. I don't remember having trouble with Fuse Man, but maybe someone else should chime in on him first. Torch Man is probably fine. I could go either way on Block Man. Yellow Devil, as usual, is something that I don't consider overly difficult myself.

MM&B: Keep Dynamo Man and Burner Man; cut Astro Man. Tengu Man is indeed nasty for Mega Man, but not for Bass; I'm leaning toward cutting him, given the high overall difficulty of the game. I don't know the King fight well enough to say either way.

Edited by MrL1193 on Aug 22nd 2019 at 4:33:39 AM

For MM&B, Tengu Man is an easy cut. If you're playing by Roahm Mythril rules (Buster-only and Megaman) then he's hard, but if you actually use his weakness (Ground Drill) Tengu Man gets locked into a pattern of getting hit, falling to the ground, trying to rise back up, then getting hit again.

I definitely want to keep Yellow Devil Mark 1. Part of That One Boss is reputation, and the strongest argument for keeping Yellow Devil around is that he is so notorious that both Capcom and fan games keep specifically bringing back variations of him to kick gamers asses.

I made a post about this page a while back in the thread here, with the caveat that I tried to make comments about every game, even some I haven't played.

That said, I stand by my comments in that post for Megaman Zero 1 and Battle Network 3, neither of which have been talked about yet.

We should also take a look at the Make a Good Megaman Level page as well; those are long fan games (Make a Good Megaman Level 2 has 100 something levels, when your typical Megaman game has about 12), so I'm a bit more generous on keeping bosses, but there's still a lot of examples there.

Should we add "That One Achievement" to the contender of this topic too?

Has That One Achievement had misuse in general? If so, sure. Kill three birds with one stone.

So on the subject of Mega Man, are the ROM hack examples definitely going to be moved to another page? There's currently an Image Pickin' thread for the image on that page; I proposed this one◊, but if the example belongs on another page, then the image would too.

I thought they'd be on the regular fanworks or something like that page? It was mentioned some posts ago.

Oh, it was "Action Page", so the idea is it doesn't get its own entire page. Maybe the image is good for the Action page. It's worth noting in the IP thread once we get the changes done.

Edited by Irene on Aug 23rd 2019 at 8:31:03 AM

I wonder if the "That One X" section of the YMMV.PAYDAY2 might need a bit of cleanup.

It doesn't look like we're making much progress on the Mega Man page... Perhaps a crowner (or a series of them) would help us arrive at a consensus?

Well, any fangames naturally have their own section.

But otherwise, clearly way too many bosses are listed. Like, I don't remember if we have a "bare minimum" requirement, though it can also depend on context(like for instance, it should be based upon a character arc of sorts. If you play as different characters, obviously they can each have their own That One Boss. But if you only play as 1 character, the options should be severely limited as is. Like up to 2 or 3. And that's questionable, considering the actual trope name in itself. Though how literal it needs to be is questionable. But yeah).

On YMMV.Bloons Tower Defense, some advanced daily challenges are listed as That One Level for Bloons TD 6. I think that they shouldn't count, since they're optional challenges that are, as of this writing, only available for one day before being gone forever.

I have a question about this entry from Fire Emblem: Three Houses:

Does That One Boss require that the boss be a mandatory fight? This entry seems to be mostly referring to his first two appearances, where he's supposed to be much tougher than your own units and the game discourages you from actually engaging him.

I don't think it counts because it sounds like a pseudo-Hopeless Boss Fight. It seems like the "intended" challenge is to avoid the Death Knight, which, from what I can tell, isn't very hard. Actually fighting him and beating him, which is apparently acknowledged with a rare item, is optional. It sounds like it would be better at home under Self-Imposed Challenge or something similar.

Is Death Knight hard to beat in Mercedes' and Caspar's Paralogue? Not counting using a decked out Lysithea.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Aug 28th 2019 at 3:27:51 AM

Not particularly. He's still optional, but nowhere near as high a wall as he is when you first meet him.

Then cut Death Knight.

Edited by RAlexa21th on Aug 28th 2019 at 3:35:35 AM