Hardest video game Final Bosses you ever faced. *Spoilers*

[Dalph]

Title says it all. Share the toughest final boss battles you ever faced in videogames and possibly explain the reason of why the fights were so difficult. As for me, one of them is Ghaleon from Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, I believe they nerfed him a bit in the GBA and the PSP Remakes, but in the PS version he was an absolute beast.

Spoiler: Lunar Silver Star Story - Ghaleon

The final battle against him is awfully painful and lasts around 40-60 minutes, he always attacks twice per turn, deals a lot of damage and has a lot of Hp too.
Doesn't help that grinding in the game is pretty much useless, mainly because the bosses Hp is multiplied by the protagonist's level!
Of course I totally didn't know that the first time I played the game, and I kept levelling up my party without realizing that he was getting stronger too at the same time.

Another final boss I fought recently and found unbelievably hard to defeat is Delirium from The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+.

Spoiler: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ - Delirium

The monster is a shapeshifter creature that takes the form of all the bosses you encountered in your current playthrough and gives you a bad headache everytime you face it. The damn thing changes form constantly, shoots and teleports everywhere and is superfast and totally unpredictable. I managed to defeat it only once so far.

What about you guys? Feel free to share the hardest final bosses you ever faced in video games.

 

[The Stranger]

Mitsuhide Akechi in Demon Chaos for the Ps2. He turns into a huge demon and I simply don't know how to hurt him. I wouldn't really call him hard, just puzzling and frustrating. He made me so frustrated that I simply claimed I had completed the game without beating him. xD

I assume there is a way to hurt him, but I couldn't see it. Your attacks go right through him, and after wiping out everything else on the map, there's simply nothing left to destroy which would make him vulnerable. Oh! He also has no problem wiping out your entire army very quickly which causes you to lose; so he doesn't even have to defeat you.

Spoiler

Couldn't find footage of the boss itself, so here's a few minutes of the first stage.

The game is similar to the Dynasty Warrior series, only it involves an insane amount of ally and enemy troops on the battlefield at any given time - I'm talking thousands on the screen. You also play an "immortal" demi-god thing; the game claims he's immortal, but he can still die.

 

[bgillisp]

The final boss of Pools of Darkness. I still haven't beaten that one without cheating. In fact, I don't know anyone who can say they have beaten it without a cheat of some sorts.

Spoiler

The boss battle has three rounds. Round one you face eight Dracoliches, many Blue Bane Minions, many Bits of Mondar, and something else I forgot. But the eight Dracoliches were the worst. See, they could do a lightning breath attack that would hit for 80 HP to anyone in that line, and your mages had at most 95 HP (and that is at level 40, 18 Con, max on every level up). So if they breathed 2x on your Mage...bye bye.

You had two scrolls to make one party member each immune to the breath attack. But that was it. Everyone else in your party of 6 had to just endure it or pray you could kill them.

And that was round 1

Round 2 was eight beholders. I kid you not. They would spam disintergrate, flesh to stone, slay living, and slow all on their turns (that is, each beholder would hit one person with ALL of those listed). And yes, that meant you had to resist all of those attacks 8x each round. The slow one was the worst, as it meant that anyone but your fighters would end up attacking 1x every other round. Only way to prevent that was to have Globe of Invulnerbility (not sure how to spell that) up, and only a mage could cast it on themselves. So there was no way to protect a cleric, a thief, or a fighter unless they happened to have duel classed (forget multi-classing, this was when those games capped all multi-classes at level 11 or less unless you were a thief, so multi-classing was utterly useless in this game).

And if you were still alive...round 3. Round 3 would wipe out ALL of your spells, making your mages useless. If they were still alive that is. You also have to fight Blue Bane Minions, which had a Fire Shield up which did 2x the damage you did to them back to you for any melee attack. Plus, you still had to deal with the boss himself, which, thankfully, was low on HP (57 I think?), but it had a Vorpol Sword which meant anyone it hit had to save vs death or they died.

To make it worse, this was back when those games had it so that anyone who was KO'd was out for the entire battle (and all future rounds), as revival spells wouldn't bring them back while still in battle. So if you failed any of those KO attempts...you're down one party member for the rest of all three rounds.

Good luck. You'll need it.

 

[Traveling Bard]

First time I fought Gygas from Earthbound was tough. Didn't realize that I needed to do something like Pray until I eventually rain out of everything else. Turns out that was their game design plan... when all hope was lost and you ran out of items & MP... what do you have left to do but pray? (literally the most under-used ability in the game for me) The mechanic was that once you prayed enough the prayers of all those who you had helped along the way aided in defeating the ultimate evil. Very much like a spirit bomb If you didn't pray though, you would die b/c the last boss was designed to out-stamina you otherwise. Interesting choice for a final boss fight.

 

[Blackyu]

Ballos from Cave Story.
Ooooh boy, Ballos.
In order to even hear about the existence of Ballos, you have to unlock the good ending, which is already hard. If you do everything just right, you will unlock the Sacred Grounds/Hell, which is a super hard stage and you can only take so few damage. I mean, normally you should have an healing item that fully restores your life, but if you use it before the Ballos fight, you're DOOMED.
So, after hundreds of tries, if you manage to beat the Sacred Grounds without dying and without using your only Healing item, you will have to fight Ballos.
Ballos has 4 stages.
Yep. Apparently a boss with 4 stages was the best thing to put after an ultra-hard level with no healing and not even a single mistake is allowed.
First phase starts off fairly easy and you can beat it without taking damage if you're good with the boss pattern.
The rest is pure suffering. But enough talk, I'll just get you a nice video where you can see both the Sacred Grounds and the boss that comes with it.

Spoiler

 

[Tuomo L]

Chakan the forever man's Death. This video and the guy's reaction explains it all.


You get only one chance at beating this very difficult boss with really hard to learn pattern who requires at the minimum 18 perfectly landed strikes into very specific part in him. Failure to do so, causes game to hard reset and you have to play the entire (EXTREMELY HARD) game through again just to be able to try beating him again.

 

[onipunk]

Ballos from Cave Story.

Spoiler

Ooooh boy, Ballos.
In order to even hear about the existence of Ballos, you have to unlock the good ending, which is already hard. If you do everything just right, you will unlock the Sacred Grounds/Hell, which is a super hard stage and you can only take so few damage. I mean, normally you should have an healing item that fully restores your life, but if you use it before the Ballos fight, you're DOOMED.
So, after hundreds of tries, if you manage to beat the Sacred Grounds without dying and without using your only Healing item, you will have to fight Ballos.
Ballos has 4 stages.
Yep. Apparently a boss with 4 stages was the best thing to put after an ultra-hard level with no healing and not even a single mistake is allowed.
First phase starts off fairly easy and you can beat it without taking damage if you're good with the boss pattern.
The rest is pure suffering. But enough talk, I'll just get you a nice video where you can see both the Sacred Grounds and the boss that comes with it.

Spoiler

I was just about to mention Ballos, even getting to him is an absolute nightmare. I barely even felt accomplishment when it was over, I just felt drained and exhausted.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

Cloud of Darkness from FFIII DS though that may be because of unfair design.

Dark Souls 3 would be on here if the Souls final bosses were ever the toughest of the lot. (Darkeater Midir would be on here if he was the fb)

Dracula from Castlevania 3
again unfair design choices.

Daemon from Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen I remember being challenging and I was on my 7th or so NG+ at the point I fought him. (maybe I just suck at the game though)

probably imo the hardest final boss that is still fair that Ive ever fought would be Sigma from any of the Megaman X games.

 

[bgillisp]

Cloud of Darkness from FFIII DS though that may be because of unfair design.

That was probably my runner up, but I picked Pools of Darkness over it as I've yet to hear of any way to beat it without exploiting the game to death.

Though...if this thread was titled the most frustrating boss you've faced, then I'd have to say about any final boss of any AAA game as it seems every AAA dev thinks the final boss needs to have 10 gazillion forms and 99999999999 HP or it isn't *epic* enough.

 

[onipunk]

Cloud of Darkness from FFIII DS though that may be because of unfair design.

I can't believe I forgot about Cloud of Darkness, my god that was just a horrifically unbalanced game in general. Only game I've ever had a total party kill against a bloody rat, because you're forcibly afflicted with Mini and can't remove it, and at that point in the game you only have access to the most basic magic spells and you're too low-level to do any damage with them. Some absolutely awful design blunders all around in FF3.

 

[Blackyu]

@onipunk Personally I just had to cheat. I had lost too much health on the Doctor so I was unable to make enough progress through the Sacred Grounds (farthest I got was the Heavy Press miniboss). Good thing I know how to use Cheat Engine.

 

[onipunk]

@Blackyu I...did not even know there was a cheat engine until now! I had to slog it out the old fashioned way and learn the layout, enemies and patterns of every single part of it like I was playing a Megaman Classic game with endless retries. Two weeks later and I think it's pretty obvious why I just wanted to be done with the whole thing. I know it's optional, but I only wanted to do it to see if I could, and when it turned out I absolutely could not my stubbornness just wouldn't let me leave it unfinished. Since then I've become a lot less stubborn just so I don't have to go through something like that again.

 

[Mr. Detective]

Hm... I have encountered many difficult (final) bosses, some are legit challenges, and some are frustrating because of cheap game design. I might forget a few, but these are the ones that come to my mind right now:

1. Vergil from DMC 3: This guy is easy in the first fight, then the second fight gets more difficult, and then the last fight with him is 10 times harder than that. He's fast, hit hard, hard to predict if you aren't paying close attention to his animation, and can recover health in his devil state. And once his health goes down to 25%, he becomes twice faster, stronger, and has some new attacks that require really fast reaction. I am glad I beat him without using items, but I had to tank 80% of my health to do so. If it weren't for Trickster's handy dashing move, I probably would have even more difficult beating him. This is why it was harder for me to beat him when using Vergil himself.
2. Any form of Wily in any Mega Man games. XD
3. (Not final boss, though) Yellow Devil from MM1/Powered Up, or Black Devil from MMX5. I was never good at dodging those blob things. The one in MM8 was easier because you can cause more damage with the arrow/laser buster.
4. Akuma from TKxSF. But this guy is just freaking cheap.
6. Opponents in later stages in Arcana Hearts 3. Insanely fast attacks, high damage, healing abilities. Screw this game, though. The final boss is even cheaper and more frustrating.
7. That general or dictator guy in Hard Corps Uprising.
8. The aliens in Metal Slug.
9. Jinpachi Mishima in Tekken 5/DR.
10. ?

 

[Robin Hoot]

On RPGs has to be Lucifer from Shin Megami Nocturne. Other games in general... I can't remember!

 

[Matseb2611]

This mothertrucker was hard as hell because of how fast he moved and plain comboed your ass into oblivion. And then in the second half gets a dragon to aid him. Yeah, that's fair.

This is another one that was a tough sob from what I remember. It was difficult to lay a hit on him.

I'll try to remember some more.

 

[Mr. Detective]

I don't really want to add bosses from RPG games, simply because they can be overcome by grinding. The final boss of P3 was cake for me because I accidentally grinded quite a lot before facing him. Gaius from Xillia was considered one of the toughest boss in the franchise, but while I did struggled against him, I don't think he was too difficult. All thanks to my high level stats, because I enjoyed the fighting mechanics in that game too much. Xillia 2's bosses though, were plain cheap.

If I were to list bosses from RPG games... Let's see: There were Seymour and Jetch from FFX. I had to grind for days to be able to beat them. Jetch was really difficult to beat, especially because I got through the game with no guide whatsoever, using only normal weapons.

Caius from FF13-2 deserves a mention as well. The jerk gave me a headache the first few tries. Once, I came close to killing him, then he unleashed this ultra attack that wiped out my whole party. My TV and controller were still intact, but my shirt was ripped.

@Matseb2611 The toughest part of the fight is to avoid his attacks. Hitting him isn't a problem. I pray to Haruhi you're not the one playing in that vid. XD Dude keeps spamming the same attack over and over again, and doesn't know how to dodge. I'm surprised he was able to get to the end like that. Reminds me of my first time playing the first half of DMC4.

By the way, I just realized that if you use the b-tard word, it would be censored. Weird.

 

[Matseb2611]

@Mr. Detective: Lol, no, that's not me playing in the video. It's been ages since I played that game, but I recall it was difficult to get in a good combo into him, because he'd always block or dodge and start replenishing his HP. First two times you fight him are doable, but that last fight was hard as hell.

 

[bgillisp]

@Mr. Detective : I agree with you on Xilla 2. Those bosses were SO cheap. And major HP sponges too. I remember one boss (forgot the name) that I got to at level 27, was easily mopping up all the enemies I could face too. But the boss clobbered me like I was nothing. I had to go and grind to level 32 before I could win that fight, and when I did win I was down to one HP restorative left.

Cauis I took down with that one skill that reduces the opponents max HP. Enough applications of that and his healing didn't matter anymore. Just took forever. But that final round of the final boss of FFXIII-2...that one made me want to throw my controller across the room. I'm already completely battered from rounds 1 - 3, who's BRIGHT idea was it to put the hardest round here, on round 4?

 

[umbralshadows]

probably limiter off gabriel/indalecio from star ocean 2.. ... he was tuff. unless yer really over lvled or souped up equip. his earthquake spell is killer yo!!

 

[Amarok]

the real final bosses of both the original Drakengard and Nier: Automata, cant say more without spoiling how awesome/crazy the "fights" are.