That One Boss 3.0 (or 4.0?)

[fengaridotdll]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatOneBoss

This is where you post/rant about that one boss you're stuck on and absolutely hate.

For me, it's Minotaur in Shin Megami Tensei IV. Quite possibly the most brutal first boss ever, and that's even on the easiest difficulty. Betweeen hitting hard, potentially being stuck with the guy that spams magic he absorbs, and being stuck trying to get demons with magic he's weak to, it can be a really painful experience.

[Zera]

I'm starting to get fatigued with all these "That One Boss" topics. They're not even named correctly. Since everyone has their own boss, it should be called "That One Bosses".

King Dedede from Kirby's Dreamland 2 was seriously hard, and not just hard by Kirby standards. Took me at least 5 or more tries to beat him.

[Shin]

[spoiler=Massive Undertale spoilers]

sans. It was incredible but also so painful.

[Sasori]

Many bosses in the ds version of final fantasy 4 with two special mentions. The first one is the annoying demon wall and the second one is a machine boss who's hard, but becomes harder because the game advices you to fight him in a way that results in him wiping out the entire party in one attack.

[BrightBow]

The Lass in the Pika Cup of Pokemon Stadium. The Pika Cup features Pokemon between the levels 15-20 and the Lass packs a lv20 Tentacruel. It will slowly and agonizingly wittle your Pokemon's HP down with Wrap (which in the first generation prevented Pokemon from moving altogether, so if a faster Pokemon used it, you could only pray that it would eventually miss) until your Pokemon is weakened enough to be finished off with Surf. It's telling that her lv20 Gyrados with Dragon Rage is the lesser evil.

The Fisher from the same cup is not too hard as long as you can deal with his lv. 18 Dragonir with Wrap and Dragon Rage. But on Round 2, when he brings an lv. 20 Alakazam, shit gets real.

What makes these two so infuriating compared to other hard trainers in the game, is that the Pika Cup is supposedly meant to be for beginners. And a lot of the early trainers are embarrassingly weak, allowing you to get a lot of Continues with barely any effort. But at the end, the whole thing just turns into Munchkin Cup, as you face tons of barely legal or downright illegal Pokemon using utterly brutal tactics.

Edited December 27, 2015 by BrightBow

[Zera]

Many bosses in the ds version of final fantasy 4 with two special mentions. The first one is the annoying demon wall and the second one is a machine boss who's hard, but becomes harder because the game advises you to fight him in a way that results in him wiping out the entire party in one attack.

Sounds less like That One Boss and more like FF4 is just a poorly designed game.

[Shadow Mir]

The boss of the second overhead stage in Contra 3. You know something ain't right when the best strategy to kill a boss involves suiciding. It starts off tame enough, but after the boss takes enough damage things go to hell - the worm that popped its head out of the holes starts to chase you, the sand rotates, making it hard to get a bead on the eye, and the holes spew flames.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Levant Colthearts

[BlueLeafeon]

I'm starting to get fatigued with all these "That One Boss" topics. They're not even named correctly. Since everyone has their own boss, it should be called "That One Bosses".

King Dedede from Kirby's Dreamland 2 was seriously hard, and not just hard by Kirby standards. Took me at least 5 or more tries to beat him.

Maybe the title should be "Your That One Boss." 'That One Bosses' really presses my grammar trigger.

Mine... Uh... ......

If a specific form counts, Master Core's Sword form. I am not sure why but I have a better time with its other forms than Sword.

If specific forms do not count, I'm going to say "Any battle with Metal Face in Xenoblade Chronicles"

Specifically, though, the one in Galahad Fortress. IIRC, he has a bunch of mooks running around at the same time.

[Life]

Sounds less like That One Boss and more like FF4 is just a poorly designed game.

FF4 is poorly designed in general. This isn't a secret.

I've got a list ready to go. And there will be spoilers.

- The Baten Kaitos series is notorious for having retardedly hard bosses that test your mastery of the game. In the first game, you've got the Giacomo trio (three times including a back-to-back fight), Fadroh (who is one of those "how the fuck is this guy so strong" kind of battles) and Kalas (who will kick your ass over time). But this isn't including the Origins bosses who will make you cry. Lord of the Lava Caves, Holoholo Bird (also known that "that fucking bird"), Giacomo (hits harder than he deserves to), the Nasca/Valara/Hughes trio and other goodies.

But then you have Guillo. And the only way to describe Guillo is "WHAT THE FUCK". He's got defense to hell (enjoy doing 200 damage a turn on a guy with over 4000 HP), FLY FLAIL AND SLAUGHTER (that's Fellstar Gleam and it'll pretty much kill a character after a combo) and Heavenlapse. Heavenlapse will probably do about 75% of your entire party's max HP to all of them. But to make it even more fun, the damage is randomized between your party members so Sagi can take like a good 1400 or so (and get OHKO'd) as an example. Oh and the only real good way to damage Guillo is to use Blackest Yang... which you don't actually know that it exists on your first run of the game. Weak Attack B, Medium Attack, Strong Attack, Ghostarrow, Wickedwing Revels and Shadowflame Engine.

Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that. Fuck you, Guillo.

- Tales of Vesperia isn't exactly a hard game but Gattuso does hit like a truck and comes out of nowhere. Considering that he's fought early in the game, your party is kind of on the weak side and Estelle is your only healer. Rita's basically useless while Repede and Karol won't have vital skills yet. Have fun dying.

- I think BNK-3R deserves a shoutout for Borderlands 2. He flies around, has about a million and a half HP (AKA just won't fucking die) and you also have to deal with a lot of Auto Cannons all over the place while hoping that you don't run out of rockets (because let's face it, a corrosive pistol ain't gonna do anything to him). He's not difficult per say, just tedious. It really does take a long time to beat him.

- Sharkman from Megaman Battle Network can go suck a dick. He's one of those "I'm underwater and only electric attacks can hit me" (like Toadman or Diveman from 5 and 6) but then you throw in the fact that he's also got two decoys. So... fuck him. Luckily, he's completely optional.

- A lot of people would say Eidolon Odin from Final Fantasy XIII but he's never actually been difficult for me. And I've seen a Youtube video that claims that Barthandelus v1.0 is retarded (uh... no, learn how to play the game). But let's go deeper into the series and you'll come across... Caius Ballad from 13-3. And holy fuck.

When you play 13-3 on a difficulty above Easy, this game gets difficult. There's no real healing aside from a maximum of like 6 items you can hold (and you kinda want 2 of those slots always holding Phoenix Downs) and Mediguard (which keeps you from actually doing damage). And Caius loves to pound on the damage. Honestly, I still don't know how I beat him.

- The other Final Fantasy boss that really deserves a mention would probably be Seymour Flux from Final Fantasy X. Because why pound on the damage when you can just Zombie away and then auto-kill with Full-Life? The lategame bosses in that game were basically a "grinding is stupid and fuck you" message to all players.

- Demyx from Kingdom Hearts 2. No explanation needed. If you've played that game, you know what I'm talking about.

That's what I got so far.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Jim Moriarty

[Azz]

FF4 is poorly designed in general. This isn't a secret.

I've got a list ready to go. And there will be spoilers.

- The Baten Kaitos series is notorious for having retardedly hard bosses that test your mastery of the game. In the first game, you've got the Giacomo trio (three times including a back-to-back fight), Fadroh (who is one of those "how the fuck is this guy so strong" kind of battles) and Kalas (who will kick your ass over time). But this isn't including the Origins bosses who will make you cry. Lord of the Lava Caves, Holoholo Bird (also known that "that fucking bird"), Giacomo (hits harder than he deserves to), the Nasca/Valara/Hughes trio and other goodies.

But then you have Guillo. And the only way to describe Guillo is "WHAT THE FUCK". He's got defense to hell (enjoy doing 200 damage a turn on a guy with over 4000 HP), FLY FLAIL AND SLAUGHTER (that's Fellstar Gleam and it'll pretty much kill a character after a combo) and Heavenlapse. Heavenlapse will probably do about 75% of your entire party's max HP to all of them. But to make it even more fun, the damage is randomized between your party members so Sagi can take like a good 1400 or so (and get OHKO'd) as an example. Oh and the only real good way to damage Guillo is to use Blackest Yang... which you don't actually know that it exists on your first run of the game. Weak Attack B, Medium Attack, Strong Attack, Ghostarrow, Wickedwing Revels and Shadowflame Engine.

Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that. Fuck you, Guillo.

- Tales of Vesperia isn't exactly a hard game but Gattuso does hit like a truck and comes out of nowhere. Considering that he's fought early in the game, your party is kind of on the weak side and Estelle is your only healer. Rita's basically useless while Repede and Karol won't have vital skills yet. Have fun dying.

- I think BNK-3R deserves a shoutout for Borderlands 2. He flies around, has about a million and a half HP (AKA just won't fucking die) and you also have to deal with a lot of Auto Cannons all over the place while hoping that you don't run out of rockets (because let's face it, a corrosive pistol ain't gonna do anything to him). He's not difficult per say, just tedious. It really does take a long time to beat him.

- Sharkman from Megaman Battle Network can go suck a dick. He's one of those "I'm underwater and only electric attacks can hit me" (like Toadman or Diveman from 5 and 6) but then you throw in the fact that he's also got two decoys. So... fuck him. Luckily, he's completely optional.

- A lot of people would say Eidolon Odin from Final Fantasy XIII but he's never actually been difficult for me. And I've seen a Youtube video that claims that Barthandelus v1.0 is retarded (uh... no, learn how to play the game). But let's go deeper into the series and you'll come across... Caius Ballad from 13-3. And holy fuck.

When you play 13-3 on a difficulty above Easy, this game gets difficult. There's no real healing aside from a maximum of like 6 items you can hold (and you kinda want 2 of those slots always holding Phoenix Downs) and Mediguard (which keeps you from actually doing damage). And Caius loves to pound on the damage. Honestly, I still don't know how I beat him.

- The other Final Fantasy boss that really deserves a mention would probably be Seymour Flux from Final Fantasy X. Because why pound on the damage when you can just Zombie away and then auto-kill with Full-Life? The lategame bosses in that game were basically a "grinding is stupid and fuck you" message to all players.

- Demyx from Kingdom Hearts 2. No explanation needed. If you've played that game, you know what I'm talking about.

That's what I got so far.

This.

And then along side the likes of Seymour, you have Penance, which requires you to grind for hours, just to spend another on the boss itself.

[Tamanoir]

I'll mention two bosses from Dungeon Travelers 2

-First, Royal Guard in the Rousset Garden.
Royal Guard have tons of HP, high def, and High Physical Resistance.

Besides that, she have the abilty to raise her Def/Magic Def, and Elemental Resistance, making her incredibly harder to kill.
And she also hits like a truck. She have a skill that hits on a piercing formation that will destroy your weaker fighter.

And she comes with two units with her.

What makes her such a surprise is that she's a simple subboss. And she's technically stronger as the Dungeon Booss (Grimekhala) who was considered a goddess. (She had similar method of attacking too.)

-The other is the Demo God, the story part boss.
It may seems wierd to consider a Final Boss that way, but due to how large the Postgame is, it deserves mention.
First of all, it's the first two part battle, so you have to be sure to finish the first battle, without suffering too much damage (which, if your level is too low, its not that sure,). She have virtually no weaknesses, and she reduces your stats if you attack her with physical attack. She have the ever annoying Karma spell (massive damage, and dispel alll positive bonus), and she can petrify you.

It was the first time I had to do some massive grinding to get through it...

[Fateborn]

- Tales of Vesperia isn't exactly a hard game but Gattuso does hit like a truck and comes out of nowhere. Considering that he's fought early in the game, your party is kind of on the weak side and Estelle is your only healer. Rita's basically useless while Repede and Karol won't have vital skills yet. Have fun dying.

I beat him on my first try on my first run.

Then when I unlocked NG+ Unknown...

Oh sweet fucking caramel jesus, fuck that boss on Unknown. He's biggest FU possible any Tales could have.

I had 500+ HP, skills 1 point each, all artes/weapons/skills kept, and spamming with Rita's Meteor WAS NOT ENOUGH.

He would overlimit spam and ignores Meteor's stuns.

The only way I actually won was to cheese Estelle's Force Field... I was NOT proud.

Speaking of which, that was from my latest vesperia run. I played Unknown before this too but I restarted because I forgot where to go on my previous Unknown, but I do know I beat Gattuso on first try in that Unknown run, and I have no idea how after experiencing him. I think I probably used Yuri's cheese...

I should continue that playthrough soon. But I ended up dying to the red eyes that appears in the town after Gattuso. -Forgot to save after :C- RIP

My THAT ONE BOSS would have to be... the tutorial boss in Dark Soul. I gave up and returned the copy to Gamestop for another game. lol. I was only 19/20, so obviously I had reaction skills from earlier gaming of similar genres, but noooo you'd think I would be at least adept at dodging considering I was pretty bloody good at countering in these games. (ESPECIALLY IN MMORPG)

[Shin]

The Lass in the Pika Cup of Pokemon Stadium. The Pika Cup features Pokemon between the levels 15-20 and the Lass packs a lv20 Tentacruel. It will slowly and agonizingly wittle your Pokemon's HP down with Wrap (which in the first generation prevented Pokemon from moving altogether, so if a faster Pokemon used it, you could only pray that it would eventually miss) until your Pokemon is weakened enough to be finished off with Surf. It's telling that her lv20 Gyrados with Dragon Rage is the lesser evil.

The Fisher from the same cup is not too hard as long as you can deal with his lv. 18 Dragonir with Wrap and Dragon Rage. But on Round 2, when he brings an lv. 20 Alakazam, shit gets real.

I remember the Dragonair. For the longest time I'd get to it and then wipe. It then occured to me that I could teach one of my water types Ice Beam.

[OakTree]

[spoiler=Massive Undertale spoilers]

sans. It was incredible but also so painful.

They're not difficult, just tricky, you just memorize more and more of their attacks until you're done.

[Masked And Dangerous]

For me, it's Minotaur in Shin Megami Tensei IV. Quite possibly the most brutal first boss ever, and that's even on the easiest difficulty. Betweeen hitting hard, potentially being stuck with the guy that spams magic he absorbs, and being stuck trying to get demons with magic he's weak to, it can be a really painful experience.

The area before the minotaur is full of demons that have Ice affinities. Pick a team of them up, train 'em for a level, and kick that man bull's ass.

And then keep them around for Medusa, she's got the same weaknesses.

[Saphy]

Dhoulmagus, from Dragon Quest VIII.

He's the first real climax and boy is he a doozy. He can act twice in one turn, has all-party attacks and spells, and is the first boss that begans the every so enfuriating "Wave of Ice" attack, say good-bye to all your buffs and tension! AND HE HAS A SECOND FORM. It's basically boils down to "Did you cheese the casino" or "Has Angelo learned Multiheal yet?"

[Shadow Mir]

Dhoulmagus, from Dragon Quest VIII.

He's the first real climax and boy is he a doozy. He can act twice in one turn, has all-party attacks and spells, and is the first boss that begans the every so enfuriating "Wave of Ice" attack, say good-bye to all your buffs and tension! AND HE HAS A SECOND FORM. It's basically boils down to "Did you cheese the casino" or "Has Angelo learned Multiheal yet?"

Seconding this. Also, Empyrea from the same game, I can't remember much else, but she can act twice per turn, her normal attack hits like a Mack truck (say goodbye to Angelo or Jessica if she targets them twice), and she has the aforementioned Wave of Ice. Ugh.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Levant Colthearts

[solrocknroll]

That One Boss from Xenoblade. It's a spoiler, so all I'll say is: "You will pay for your insolence!"

Spectre Knight from Shovel Knight for me. I didn't know about Relics when I fought him, and I struggled. A lot.

Time Eater from Sonic Generations. The gameplay made barely any sense.

While it's a That One Level, Land of the Livid Dead from Rayman Origins is harder than any boss I've ever faced. That part where you run up the stone caskets *shutters*

I just do really poorly at platformers, so I could be here all day listing bosses from platformers.

[Shadow Mir]

Seconding "You'll pay for your insolence!". Also, Jade Face. Two words: Laser Bullet.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Levant Colthearts

[solrocknroll]

Seconding "You'll pay for your insolence!". Also, Jade Face. Two words: Laser Bullet.

omg jade face

Xenoblade has a lot of hard bosses honestly. Compare that to TLS, where bosses were relatively easy.

[Saphy]

In non-RPGs, Metroid Prime's Hive Boss- little platform surrounded in poisonous water that slows you down with ramhappy hornets, you have your blaster and that's it.

RPGs

Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne: Hell Rider- In a game where covering your weaknesses in important, the only attacks that are dangerous is his Fire and Wind attacks, guess what the fire-blocking or the wind-blocking magatamas are weak to?

[Mackc2]

Dragon Quest IX the stupid leviathan (the one after you beat corvus not the early game one. Actually they both suck) that guy is like crit central and unless your in defensive stances his crit will kill. That along with the worst revival spell ever (zing) made me wonder for hours just why exactly the RNG gods hated me.

Dragon Age 2 has the arishok who I could not beat in the normal fight so I accepted the duel and spent the next hour running around pillars and very slowly draining his health needless to say it was still incredibly annoying.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Mackc2

[OakTree]

Recently, after remembering one of my favorites Freeware games (Tower of Heaven) and having a nostalgia blast replaying it, i discovered that the creators had also made some other games.

...

By the time i finished Pause Ahead, nearly 50% of the death count (91 deaths) was on the Boss Fight.

[spoiler=Pause Ahead]

The Architect, seriously, they start by creating a doppelgänger of the main character that imitates all of your moves, and if you touch him, you die, the first phase of the fight is pretty simple and can be completed within seconds, you just have to dodge some vine attacks and use the Pause button (The game's main gimmick) to get both you and the doppelgänger to step on two switches at the same time, during the second phase, they throw some very fast fireballs at you that most of the time, you have to rely on Pause to dodge, and this is probably the biggest moment in the game where you really don't want to rely on Pause, anyway, after dodging both the fireballs and the doppelgänger and getting the fireballs to hit some candles, you hit the third phase, an endurance test, you just have to survive dodging a bunch of fire pillars that appear extremely fast and barely giving you time to react and even if you do manage to abuse the Pause button to a point where you can dodge consistently there's a big chance the doppelgänger will suddenly ruin everything.

Edited January 2, 2016 by OakTree

[Life]

OH! I got it!

Bubblewonder Abyss! Especially on Oh So Hard and above.

That place ruins perfect Zoombini runs so easily. It hurts. I consider it a boss because fuck that place so much.

[ClevelandSteve]

FF4 is poorly designed in general. This isn't a secret.

I've got a list ready to go. And there will be spoilers.

- The Baten Kaitos series is notorious for having retardedly hard bosses that test your mastery of the game. In the first game, you've got the Giacomo trio (three times including a back-to-back fight), Fadroh (who is one of those "how the fuck is this guy so strong" kind of battles) and Kalas (who will kick your ass over time). But this isn't including the Origins bosses who will make you cry. Lord of the Lava Caves, Holoholo Bird (also known that "that fucking bird"), Giacomo (hits harder than he deserves to), the Nasca/Valara/Hughes trio and other goodies.

But then you have Guillo. And the only way to describe Guillo is "WHAT THE FUCK". He's got defense to hell (enjoy doing 200 damage a turn on a guy with over 4000 HP), FLY FLAIL AND SLAUGHTER (that's Fellstar Gleam and it'll pretty much kill a character after a combo) and Heavenlapse. Heavenlapse will probably do about 75% of your entire party's max HP to all of them. But to make it even more fun, the damage is randomized between your party members so Sagi can take like a good 1400 or so (and get OHKO'd) as an example. Oh and the only real good way to damage Guillo is to use Blackest Yang... which you don't actually know that it exists on your first run of the game. Weak Attack B, Medium Attack, Strong Attack, Ghostarrow, Wickedwing Revels and Shadowflame Engine.

Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed that. Fuck you, Guillo.

Nice to see someone else who played the Baten Kaitos series. I agree on all these points. I'd like to elaborate on the Holoholobird fight by adding that it was the battle that taught me the importance of using multiple save files (for those of you who don't know, the fight takes place right at the start of the second disc of the game. So, if you're too underleveled to beat that fucking bird, there's no opportunity to go back and grind unless you have an older save to reload from. I had to start my first playthrough of Origins over from the beginning because of that thing). That bird combines three of the worst possible abilities for a boss to have: the ability to spawn minions that can ruin your day about as well as the boss itself can, the ability to heal itself for far more damage than you can do to it (actually, the chicks it spawns do the healing to the mother bird, which makes it even worse because then the big bird doesn't have to use it's own turn), and the ability to take away a turn or more from you whenever it feels like (getting knocked over in BKO is the worst, and the Holoholobird can do that to your whole party, massively damaging you and making you wait a few turns before you can stand back up and heal the damage while it and its up to two chicks continue to wail on you).

I'd also like to agree on the second Jade Face fight from Xenoblade that others pointed out. In my most recent Xenoblade playthrough, it was the only boss I died on (granted, I was overleveled as fuck for the "insolence" fight, having done almost all of the optional sidequests that I could before then. Though I do agree that that fight is also genuinely brutal if your level is in the seventies like it's supposed to be rather than the mid-nineties). And I did so multiple times.

It's worth noting that both the Baten Kaitos series and the Xeno series are made by Monolith Soft.

Edited January 2, 2016 by ClevelandSteve