I'm not sure if those would all count as Bonus Bosses, but regardless, the key thing to keep in mind here is the expected difficulty of the boss. If you go out of your way to find an Optional Boss that's guarding some equipment that's really powerful for that point in the game, then you would naturally expect the boss to be more challenging than other bosses around that point in the game. That makes it difficult (if not impossible) to assess what such a boss's difficulty should be, which in turn means that we can't declare that it's much harder than it has any right to be (which is the definition of That One Boss).
My two-cent is if a boss is required to beat to get an ending, it's not a Bonus Boss.
Continue writing our story of peace.![]()
It think part of this is the gray area between skippable boss and bonus boss, but take Banjo Tooie for instance.
Out of 10-ish bosses only 3 must you absolutely fight (Klugo, King Coal, and final boss Gruntilda). So do all the remaining 7 not count? And are they considered skippable or bonus? Because the player is never forced to meet them, and they don't really guard anything important than a collectable in a collectathon game, but then again it's an exploration game so odds are the player would go seek them out.
I’m not familiar with the game, but I’d imagine the optional bosses in Banjo Twooie are not designed to fall outside of the difficulty curve. Actually, I think that’s probably a good criterium for optional vs bonus as a whole: Is the boss meant to be much harder than the required portion of the game up to and following that point?
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Oct 30th 2019 at 2:56:41 PM
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That's my point, because we don't have a trope on challenge boss and the wording for optional bosses (bonus, skippable, etc) is vague enough to me to not be strictly challenge bosses. And since optional boss is a table of contents and not it's own trope...
However, I can understand an administrative desire not to get into the messy decisions of "is meant as a challenge or not" on bonus bosses for That One Boss status.
Edited by Stage7-4 on Oct 30th 2019 at 12:03:29 PM
That's what I always thought the difference between a Bonus Boss and an Optional Boss is; an optional boss is simply a boss you don't have to beat to complete the game, while a bonus boss is meant to be tougher than any other challenge in the game (and possibly hidden out of the way).
So basically, it's like a square-and-rectangle thing; every Bonus Boss is an Optional Boss, but not every Optional Boss is a Bonus Boss.
Edited by dragonfire5000 on Oct 30th 2019 at 12:02:42 PM
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."ThatOneLevel.Super Smash Bros Ultimate has a lot more entries than last time I checked, and Pauline's has a Walkthrough Mode aside that makes the fight incredibly easy.
I'm not sure if Akira counts, but that may be because I was using Peach to counter his moves and in WOL you can have even more advantages with the skill tree.
Edited by lalalei2001 on Oct 31st 2019 at 11:21:46 AM
The Protomen enhanced my life.@lalalei: I say we cut the Spirit board exclusive spirits as they count as Bonus Boss and the DLC fights like Phantom Thieves, Dragon Quest and Gruntilda are optional as purchasing the DLC is not required. I'd love to give it another comb over but we may have to lock the page eventually.
Edited by Klavice on Nov 10th 2019 at 12:33:56 PM
We might need to include a small disclaimer somewhere regarding the distinction between Optional Boss and Bonus Boss, because that's been a recurring problem one too many times and it may have resulted in some unneeded cuts, both on the thread and off.
Aw gawd, we're back to the Smash Bros. page again. Okay, my thoughts:
1) The Spirit Board stuff does not count for Bonus Boss so that is definitely not reason to cut them.
2) Unlike something like Dark Souls, the DLC stuff is explicitly balanced in a similar way to the base game content and cannot be cut "just" for being DLC.
3) I would not mind a lock. This page is dumb and I am very tired of people re-adding stuff we've cut already, which, evidently, they have.
4) I've personally handled this page twice already and don't feel like going for round three. I stand by all the cuts and keeps I've gone over previously and will otherwise just stay out of any further discussion on it.
Edited by DocSharp on Nov 10th 2019 at 2:06:13 AM
On the subject of Mega Man, I'm guessing the lack of votes for or against Napalm Man are due to the obscurity of the Game Gear version in general. I'm not familiar with the game either, but based on what the few who have uploaded videos of it have said, I'm inclined to believe that Napalm Man isn't the only boss who was made harder in the porting process. For now, at least, I've gone ahead and cut him, along with everyone else in the crowner except Vega.
And with that, it's time to move on to the X series. Here's the next crowner
, covering X1 through Xtreme 2.
Notes:
The two versions of Sigma in the crowner are the final bosses of their respective games. As such, they should be held to a higher standard of difficulty.
Zero and Godkarmachine O Inary are skippable bosses. Since they're all fought by default, I doubt that this disqualifies them, but I thought I'd point it out just in case.
Edited by MrL1193 on Nov 12th 2019 at 8:50:59 AM
Another votes bump. If you're familiar with the first few games of the Mega Man X series, please vote here
if you haven't already done so. And don't be shy about downvoting bosses that you don't find to be overly difficult; the examples list is currently overloaded, so we're trying to get rid of some.
Edited by MrL1193 on Nov 21st 2019 at 7:36:47 AM
I downvoted Armored Armadillo. Fighting him with rapid fire buster isn't really hard, just very tedious.
Also downvoted Zero (the Awakened form in X5?). Armored X is beefy enough to survive his attacks.
Continue writing our story of peace.Decided to open a crowner
to clean up the SMT: Nocturne entries on ThatOneBoss.Atlus. (21 for one game. Too many)
Edited by Albert3105 on Nov 22nd 2019 at 2:02:13 PM
If it's X2 Zero, then I'd still downvote. The dude is fairly one-dimensional as far as bosses go.
Continue writing our story of peace.
Since this was brought to the appropriate place (the locked pages thread
), ThatOneLevel.Super Smash Bros Ultimate has been temporarily locked so clean-up can be made. Please come back to this thread once the clean-up is finished, as we do not have an intention of a permanent/indefinite lock at this time.
To be fair Gruntilda is fairly simple if you have a spirit that resists poison and there's plenty that do. So she can go even without being a Bonus Boss. I beat her on my first try, compared to Jiggy which took a few because I wasn't using a fast enough character.

Can't some bonus bosses apply? If they're pure challenge then I'd say that doesn't count, but some bonus bosses block optional content that most players are going to use (like secret characters, additional levels, power-ups, or to get the "true ending").