Least favorite boss fights

[Armagon]

There was a favorite boss fights topic made not too long ago so i decided to bring balance to the universe and create a topic for least favorite boss fights. There's a lot of things that can contribute to being someone's least favorite boss fight, such as the difficulty (too hard or too easy), the tedium of said fight or just simply not liking the boss fight. Here's some of mine.

Lorithia (Xenoblade Chronicles): Everyone's who's played Xenoblade Chronicles and gotten up to this point knows how bad this fight is. What you're fighting is a Telethia-type monster so using Shulk's Monado Purge is needed. The real issue is the fact that you're surrounded by pools of acid and your party members will find themselves there a lot, both because the party AI in Xenoblade 1 can be brain dead at times and because Lorithia is huge and ends up pushing either you or your party members into the pools of acid. As if that wasn't enough, Lorithia has four ether cloud enemies surrounding her which grant her buffs so you have to take those out first before you can really do any notable damage to Lorithia, as well as preventing her from taking you out quickly. I don't remember if those clouds respawn. What i do remember is the fight is a pain in the ass and you have to be like six levels higher than the boss so that you don't get driven insane.

Luciola and the Fog Monsters of Doom (Trails in the Sky SC): Ok so Fog Monsters of Doom isn't what they're actually called but they might as well be. You fight these Fog Monsters three times over the course of the game but the latter two fights also involve Luciola. Luciola herself isn't too bad to handle, the real problem is the Fog Monsters. There are two big ones which can infinitely summon small ones. One of the big ones is immune to physical attacks while the other is immune to Arts. The small Fog Monsters can neutralize your Arts the moment you decide to use them. To make matters worse, all of the Fog Monsters are practically impossible to hit with physical attacks. Do you see the problem here? To make matters worse, the two big ones can continuously put you to sleep. You can use sleep resistant items but someone playing through the game for the first time isn't going to know that. The Fog Monsters ended up returning in Ao no Kiseki but heavily nerfed.

Twinmold (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask): Everyone knows Moldorm. The classic 2D Zelda boss with no real pattern and more often than not, pushes you into the room below where you have to climb up and restart the fight. And so Nintendo had the brilliant idea of "hey, what if, in our 3D Zelda game, we put not one but two Moldorms in the room? And they're giant so you have to use the Giant's Mask which drains you of your magic unless you drink the Romani Milk. Fun, right?". And so one of the worst Zelda bosses in the series was created and placed in what i consider to be the series' best dungeon. The fight is literally just a Moldorm fight but there's two of them and you have to manage your magic if you didn't drink the Romani Milk beforehand. The 3DS remake actually reworked the whole fight while keeping the whole giant theme so the fight was actually made fun and that's another reason why the 3DS remake is much better than the original version.

Valkyria Chronicles Ch.7: Being an SRPG, Valkyria Chronicles doesn't have boss fights in the traditional sense but i'm still gonna talk about it. If you've played Valkyria Chronicles, you probably know the rage inducing chapter that is Ch.7. The goal of the chapter is to take out the oversized tank by baiting out it's cannon fire so that the radiators are exposed so you can chuck grenades into them. It sounds simple and it is until you take out the second radiator in which case Selvaria will show up and proceed to almost instantly wipe out anyone within her range, which is essentially the whole map. Trying to blow up that last radiator was hell because there was virtually no safe zone once Selvaria shows up. I did eventually figure out that she will always go down a set path and stop at a certain point so if i hide near some ruins on the bottom side of the map, she'll never get me there, but it took me like 15 tries to realize that.

Phantasms (Xenoblade Chronicles 2): This fight isn't really hard or tedious, it's just annoying. The Phantasms are pretty weak but they multiply like crazy. The less of them present, the higher a chance to multiply. The catch is that the fight takes place in the Spirit Crucible Elpys, where every Blade except Poppi (and Shulk, Fiora, Elma and Poppibuster if you got the DLC) is weakened and can't use any Blade Specials higher than Lv.1. The only way to win the fight is to weaken every Phantasm currently present then use a Chain Attack to wipe them all out. Again, the fight isn't terrible, just annoying.

Hypnos (7th Dragon III: Code VFD): Gonna be honest, it's been so long since i've played this game so i don't actually remember how the fight goes for the most part. All i know is two things: it had amazing music and it was also status effect hell. The thing with 7th Dragon III is that you could never fully resist something with just one piece of equipment. If you wanted to fully resist something, you'd need two 50% resistant equipment, which by the way, you could only wear two pieces of status resistant items. And Hypnos has a lot of status effects to through at you. So here you are, only being able to at most, fully resist one status effect out of like, six. And unlike in most JRPGs, these status effects don't wear off over time. You'd either have to resist it or cure it with an item and you can only hold 15 of every item for some reason. As a result, the fight goes on for way longer than it needs to. At least the music is badass.

There are more fights i wanna add but it's getting pretty late where i am so i'll call it a day here and add some more at a later time.

 

Edited May 1, 2019 by Armagon

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Lorithia (Xenoblade Chronicles): Everyone's who's played Xenoblade Chronicles and gotten up to this point knows how bad this fight is. What you're fighting is a Telethia-type monster so using Shulk's Monado Purge is needed. The real issue is the fact that you're surrounded by pools of acid and your party members will find themselves there a lot, both because the party AI in Xenoblade 1 can be brain dead at times and because Lorithia is huge and ends up pushing either you or your party members into the pools of acid. As if that wasn't enough, Lorithia has four ether cloud enemies surrounding her which grant her buffs so you have to take those out first before you can really do any notable damage to Lorithia, as well as preventing her from taking you out quickly. I don't remember if those clouds respawn. What i do remember is the fight is a pain in the ass and you have to be like six levels higher than the boss so that you don't get driven insane.

It should be noted that the Nebulae sacrifice themselves to attack you if you're too slow to kill them, and that could be a real possibility depending on your team makeup. And this sucks because you have to kill them to even lower her defence to the point where you can do anything resembling respectable damage.

Anyway...

Lorithia, for reasons stated already.

Gattuso (Tales of Vesperia) - The short version is that this damn thing is a wtfmassive difficulty spike for that early point in the game (to put things in perspective, it's only the third boss, and the first two are kinda sorta pushovers. The boss right after that isn't that challenging either. Nor is the boss after that one. And neither is the boss after THAT). The long version... Hoo boy. First off, it's the first boss that comes with adds. Second, it's blindingly fast. Third, it can poison you. Fourth, it's the first boss that regularly uses Over Limit; Over Limit in this game allows you to attack continuously while it's active, among other benefits (including not staggering when attacked, but the player doesn't get this until level 4, which is a ways away).

Stella and Loretta (Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin) - Sanctuary (which you need to hit them with to win) takes F.O.R.E.V.E.R. to charge. Enough said. And there's very little you can do to ensure Charlotte doesn't get hit out of it.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Quote

Gattuso (Tales of Vesperia) - The short version is that this damn thing is a wtfmassive difficulty spike for that early point in the game (to put things in perspective, it's only the third boss, and the first two are kinda sorta pushovers. The boss right after that isn't that challenging either. Nor is the boss after that one. And neither is the boss after THAT). The long version... Hoo boy. First off, it's the first boss that comes with adds. Second, it's blindingly fast. Third, it can poison you. Fourth, it's the first boss that regularly uses Over Limit; Over Limit in this game allows you to attack continuously while it's active, among other benefits (including not staggering when attacked, but the player doesn't get this until level 4, which is a ways away).

I have literally nothing to add.

This boss is legendary in terms of absurd difficulty for the Tales series.

 

There was an early game boss in Final Fantasy 6 which me made quitting this series because I did not understand its gimmick, but forgot its name. I only know that the theme was remixed in the Fire Emblem romhack Midnight Sun in the stealth chapter.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Rosalina

[Acacia Sgt]

Lord Geperuniti (Super Robot Wars D): If you know Macross 7 you know who this guy is, though that may still not explain just how a pain he can be as a boss in this game. For me, it's not that he's hard to beat. It's just very very tedious. Like every other Protodeviln character, any attack against him is halved. Unless it's from Fire Bomber's songs. Of all kinds of damage reducing or negating stuff the game can throw at you, this is about the only one you can't do anything to bypass it. Sure, you can power up your own attacks; but they'd still get their damage input halved. That is, if you can still power them up, since Geperuniti isn't the only enemy to fight; and that includes two other boss-like units. So either get too conservative before going all out or the battle may last even longer. Then, since he's a late-game boss, his HP is already among the highest of the game, which once it gets around down to half... he recovers back to full. Oh, and he also has passive HP recovery every turn if I recall correctly, which can prolong things even further.

There are some saving graces to this, at least. One, the Protodeviln's damage reduction is treated as a skill that can be deactivated with the right set-up. The other is that he's only fought on a route split, so last ditch measure... just not choose his route. On the other hand, the other route's big main boss is Godmars' Emperor Zuul. I've never gone that route so I can't personally vouch for it; but just looking at his stage and at him he may be as, if not more, tedious to fight than against Geperuniti.

In any case, I certainly don't like to fight against that guy. If I recall correctly, Macross 7 shows up again for Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, though I don't know how things go there to know if he was made any easier to deal with... if he's still fightable, that is.

[BrightBow]

Marluxia's second phase - Kingdom Hears: Chain of Memories (GBA)

This boss is just a massive pain. Way, way, waaaay too much HP for the little time he is vulnerable. And his attacks are weak too. So it just ends up being a massive slog.

 

New Destroyman - No more Heroes: Desperate Struggle

Considering how rushed Shinobu's gameplay feels, I suppose it makes sense that her bosses would be of similar quality. You have to fight the two Destroymen at the same time. One keeps blasting you from a distance while one stays close and personal. The second Destroyman attacks way to fast, so the only thing you can really do is to get behind cover and fight the first Destroyman in an awkwardly enclosed space. You could try chasing after the second Destroyman in theory, but this requires using Shinobu's jumping ability and ...yeah. Also, even if you do reach him, you will barely be able to tickle him before he flies off. So once you downed the first Destroyman, the good part of the fight ends.
Thing is, the Destroymen will revive each other. And they will be able to get each other to 100% health and quickly. The second Destroymen will still hold his distance but will occasionally come down to revive his partner. You will have to attack him when he tries that. But he will just fly away after a few hits, so taking him out this way takes ages. And if you try to chase him down, he will be able to revive his partner to 100%. You have to camp.

 

Shadow Devil - Mega Man X5

After making your way past a worse remake of Quickman's stage, this asshole makes for the cherry on top of the shitcake. Same thing as the above ones: He takes way, way too long thanks to his very limited window of vulnerability. Except he also hits hard and well, seeing how he is a cousin of the Yellow Devil and has access to his infamous attack. And the damage he deals is just obscene. So what are you gonna do? Probably hug the way, waiting for his rare windows of vulnerability. Hope your thumb doesn't get tired.

 

Nightmare Mother - Mega Man X6

The unholy big sibling of Blaze Heatnix' donuts of hell. Too big, too fast, too hard to hit it were it's vulnerable. Gahhh!

 

Boost Guardian - Metroid Prime Echoes

For the simple fact that it's boost charge is too fast to be dodged. Hits like a truck too. You just have to get lucky with this guy.

[Sub Zero]

Human Reaper - Mass Effect 2

God what a disappointment, the thing looks cool, but it was too easy to take down. Literally shoot the canisters holding him up..that's it. Even the second phase of the fight sucked. You needed to shoot the gigantic eyes...it was easy as pie. Disappointing..

Edited May 1, 2019 by ~ Yuri ~

[Reality]

Every Boss in a Diablo-style game. These things fight my natural urge to play RPGs underleveld and "punch up"... Granted charather level doesn't matter too much but gear level Definitely, definitely, matters, even for some of the new game bosses (later playthroughs magnify this). I don't even like Hybrid diablo's bosses (eg borderlands) for this reason.

Fount of Wizardry - Heros of Might and Magic 2 - I think the consensus with Heroes 2 vs Heroes 3 is that H3 wins for human multiplayer, but for singleplayyer, the H2 AI is more fun to beat up (putting aside artstyle arguments either way)  I personally feel this holds true for the main campaigns and the Skirmish map. However for the bundled expansion campaigns we have a mixed bag. A lot of these are fun and intense if you do everything EXCEPT fight the final boss. None is worse in this regard than Isle of Wizardry, which has an non-moving boss with a stack of 100 black dragons. Pretty much requires

Fadlan - Heroes of mIght and Magic 2 -  The boss of Voyage Home expansion campaign. He running around with a Bone dragon stack (honestly even larger than Fount of Wizardry's Black Dragons) AND HE MOVES. personally I think Descendants and Price of Loyalty are the only expansion campaigns worth playing to the end, the others you should stop on the second last map to avoid the 40 turn idle after you've already won just building up a super force to attack the stationary (or trapped) super stack... a mechanic not present in the main campaigns.

Mr. Big - I find N.A.R.C. to be lots of fun to play co-op on a weekend. However, we rarely every finish... the Final boss for some resign requires yout to hit height based target zones with awful hitboxes in a game that is other wise all about action rather than precision. Sometimes he'll even kill you during his ridiculously long death animation which can allow him to reset the fight even against active Credit spamming.

Rahu 3 - Custom Robo GCN - Their are other Bosses with Super Armor in the series, but Rahu 3 is far and away the most over the top. He's set up as a 1v3, but is still the most absurd fight of the game. His most ridiculous feature is his 78% damage reduction. All Robots have 1000 displayed health, but because of his damage reduction he "effectively" has ~4500 health. The next most armored robot Only has 1200 effective health! He also has an expanding gun that doesn't really need to be aimed... not the most powerful of the illegal class weapons In the game, but probably the easiest for the AI to use.

BFB - MDK2.. This is supposed to be an "electric jump rope" boss. Unfortunately the hitboxes of the electricity have a very unintuitive property. You can only get over them with a "neutral" jump... if you jump while moving towards them, you will actually take damage. He also has a homing attack that requires twitchy movement to shake off. He's the only disappointing boss in a game that otherwise does big setpieces really well.

[Von Ithipathachai]

I'll toss the Twelve Generals from Shin Megami Tensei II into this pile.

These guys are SO lame.  You have to fight them all one at a time as you slog through Fort Geburah (I don't remember how Liberation Dx2 spells "Geburah").  They're all too easy and say the exact same things when you meet them and when you defeat them.  Their main gimmick is that they're all supposed to have unique weaknesses, but it falls completely on its face because (1) they do NOT actually have unique weaknesses; some weakness sets are reused between them, and (2) offensive magic, which the majority of them are weak to, is garbage in SMT2; it's dreadfully underpowered (even the Almighty spells!) to the point where you're going to be relying on physical attacks for about 90% of the game.  In fact, so horribly skewed is SMT2's balancing towards physical attacks that the traditionally Phys-reflecting enemies like Girimehkala and Rangda are probably far more annoying to deal with in this game than any other.  But I digress.

Perhaps they would be more interesting if you fought them two at a time like Uriel and Raphael, but that would be too good, it seems.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Von Ithipathachai

[vanguard333]

Here's Mine:

Metal Face (Sword Valley; Xenoblade Chronicles): This should've been a great boss fight, as it's the last fight between you and Metal Face; a truly great villain. But it was so disappointing for one big reason: the camera. Cameras in 3rd-person 3D games have always had issues, and my rule usually is that if it isn't as bad as the camera in Super Mario Sunshine, then it isn't bad. But, for this fight, everyone is standing on a small circular platform, and because the boss is big, the camera decides to go low and look up, which means that you can't see anything! It's rather hard to play a game where positioning is important in a fight if I can't see what Shulk's position is relative to the enemy because the camera's showing me nothing but the underside of the platform!

Calamity Ganon (Breath of the Wild): The Ganon boss fights are usually among the highlights of the Zelda series, and, given everything that there was in Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon just felt... underwhelming. Not bad; just underwhelming. For one thing, it's surprising how little you actually need to use the runes in the fight. I just feel like there should've been just a little more to it. 

[Armagon]

8 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

It should be noted that the Nebulae sacrifice themselves to attack you if you're too slow to kill them, and that could be a real possibility depending on your team makeup. And this sucks because you have to kill them to even lower her defence to the point where you can do anything resembling respectable damage.

Oh that's right, they do do that. Aside from Shulk, you really do need an Ether-based party for this fight. But Sharla loses a lot of usefulness after the Ether Mine so you're left with either Melia or Riki. By which i mean you have to control Melia because the AI doesn't know how. There's just so much pain going into this fight that i dread it every time i play through the game.

41 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Calamity Ganon (Breath of the Wild): The Ganon boss fights are usually among the highlights of the Zelda series, and, given everything that there was in Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon just felt... underwhelming. Not bad; just underwhelming. For one thing, it's surprising how little you actually need to use the runes in the fight. I just feel like there should've been just a little more to it. 

Thing with Calamity Ganon is, unless you purposely chose not to, by the time you get to him, you have all the best equipment and have freed the Divine Guardians. So already, Calamity Ganon's HP is reduced by exactly half. Unless you go in unprepared (that is, not having good equipment and not freeing the Divine Guardians), the fight's pretty underwhelming.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Anyway, here's some more that i wanted to add

Thunderblight Ganon (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild): This one's another annoying boss fight. It's really fast so hitting it is a pain in the ass and it uses lightning attacks and guess what all the best equipment is made of: metal. It also doesn't help that the room you fight him in isn't that great (iirc, it's constantly rotating).

Gunvolt (Azure Striker Gunvolt 2): The final boss of the Copen campaign, Gunvolt is actually pretty underwhelming. Like the Copen final boss fight in the Gunvolt campaign, you have amazing music playing. Unlike the Copen fight though, Gunvolt doesn't really give you much of a challenge. His Prevasion ability (nullifies all damage as long as he has EP) can instantly be negated by Copen's Hydro Lasers. So this essentially ends up being a final boss you can easily cheese through. That said, compared to everything else i've listed, this one is probably the least offensive one.

Deus Stage 1 (Xenogears): When i mean "Deus Stage 1", i'm referring to the old, decaying form of Deus you fight in the Mahanon and not the final form you fight in the transformed Merkava. The thing with Deus Stage 1 is that it isn't really a boss fight but rather, a waiting game. If you attack Deus at any point, it'll automatically retaliate after you're done attacking it and potentially one-shot who ever attacked it. If you don't attack it, it.....doesn't do anything. Except for one thing. Eventually, Deus will use an attack that cuts both it and your party's current HP by exactly half. You have to keep waiting until Deus does this and gets at a low enough HP to where you can take him out with one character's turn. It's probably the most boring boss fight in the game.

 

[Ertrick36]

Moldrom (Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past): This weird ball worm bastard sucks so much to fight.  I feel like most people here probably know this one, and the OP mentioned it, but I'll recap for those unfamiliar.  Basically, you are in this tower, right?  It's something like 8-9 stories tall (above ground, anyway, there's also one or two basement levels), and overall is a bit of a trek to play through all the way.  Throughout this tower, there are parts in the floor where you can fall down one level.  Because of limited hardware, when you go to different floors, most things reset.  That means enemies will reappear, basically.  And that goes for the boss in this tower.  The boss, Moldrom, is in a pit surrounded by a hole that drops you down a level, and the bastard can push you down those holes.  Not only is it annoying to get back up, but I'm pretty sure his health resets, which means all the progress you made in killing it is canceled out if you fall down, which is really goddamn awful and annoying.

Spoiler

As you can see, there's little room to maneuver if you don't want to fall down, down, DOWN...

Every Boss That Has Super Armor (Dragon Ball: Xenoverse): Those who've played this game know exactly what I'm talking about.  Most enemies will "flinch" when they get hit - basic stuff for fighting games.  However, when the developer decides that simply fighting the enemy isn't difficult enough, they'll throw super armor in the mix.  What that means is the enemies with super armor will not flinch when they're hit, so they can immediately counter you and can't get locked into your combos.  The only way to break super armor is to deplete the enemy's stamina, which you do by attacking them.  However, as you can imagine, it's really effin' difficult to do that because super armor makes them dangerous to approach.  Super armor was pretty much the worst aspect of this game, followed shortly by stacked layers of RNG item drops.

Spoiler

The Test with Whis and Beerus was likely one of the most egregious examples in the game, as you were pitted against two enemies with super armor who also just so happened to be ridiculously strong.  Oh, and Trunks is absolutely worthless in this fight, only good for distracting one of them so that you aren't overwhelmed.

Spoiler End Boss (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2): Listen, I know it's a fairly old game, but I don't think the plot twists in this or its predecessor should be ruined for those that might be interested.  That said, you'd think that a Star Wars game would have good, memorable boss fights - I mean shit, you're basically a swordsman with special powers in most of them, and you have things like giant camel-like tanks and speeding space combat vehicles, there's plenty of inspiration to draw from.  But this one at the very end of the game... it's just the boss throwing... sentient lightsabers at you???  It's really lame, especially considering the cataclysmic nature of not only the place the fight takes in but the powers that both you and this enemy are revealed to have and the motivations they have with those powers.  Hell, the game's mechanics are based on DnD (4th Edition), and you might have raised some of your ability scores to 30, which is ten more than the usual maximum (it's absolutely insane); with this level of ridiculous power, you'd expect a challenge of equal worth, but nah.  I was fonder of the fight with Legate Lanius in Fallout: New Vegas than I was of this disappointment.

Spoiler

Why couldn't this have had... I dunno, other characters involved, or some earth-splitting, end-of-the-world hazards to deal with?  Or maybe even just made Traya more of an actual threat?  Nah, just fight a bunch of stupid floating lightsabers, asshole.

Maximilian (Valkyria Chronicles): Speaking of lame borefests, this one takes the cake in fluff that can be easily cheesed.  With most "boss" fights in this game, you're either fighting gigantic monster tanks or running from a ridiculously overpowered woman with a lance.  This fight was basically them saying "let's make you actually fight that overpowered woman, but it's actually a man that barely gets much characterization until the very end, and he has a major crutch".  Essentially, it's a gimmick boss fight; shoot the electric rods to weaken the dude, then pounce on him.  Thing is, almost nothing in this game accounts for the fact that somewhere around the halfway point you get access to vision-obscuring smoke mortars that negate an enemy's ability to target your units.  So the strategy revolves around first plopping that smoke over him, sniping the towers, and then bum-rushing the bastard with a couple of shocktroopers and your light tank to take him out in, like, two turns.  And this came not long after two other boss fights that were a lot more memorable (Selvaria and Jaeger).  Other issue with this is that unlike every single other map, there's only one enemy, which is the boss, so they're the only threat you have to worry about.  That never works for strategy games.

Spoiler

At least I get to kill this bastard child of the Imperial royal family with Team Darcsen.  Plus Edy, because why not?

Every Boss in Bethesda Games: This comes down mostly to the fact that the combat system in Bethesda games just always suck.  Every boss, no matter how powerful, always boils down to shooting or slashing at the enemy until it's dead.  Fallout 3 has a Behemoth that you just shoot a Fat Man with a couple times and a relatively unarmored Colonel Autumn with a pistol flanked by two regular-ass Enclave soldiers.  Oblivion has you slashing Mankar Cameron and his family into ribbons.  Fallout 4... also has Behemoths, I guess. Skyrim has Alduinn, who is basically just like every other dragon but tougher.  Fallout: New Vegas is probably the only game that makes bosses in any way interesting, as Legate Lanius will regenerate health mid-fight and will usually send you flying with his giant-ass sword, forcing you to find a different method of killing him besides just unloading a barrage of murder upon him.  I guess the difference is that the creative director of that game actually played DnD and learned game design that way, while Todd Howard was crying about people making fun of him for playing Chess.  Who's laughing now?!

Spoiler

Every time I think about this fight, I start thinking about how I'd rather play Dragon's Dogma.  Did you know there's a game out there that let's you climb on giant mosters and hack at their stupid faces?

The Fury (Metal Gear Solid 3): Now, I only do this because I love this series so much, but imma list two bosses.  And keep in mind that my judgments are based off of attempts to score the highest ranks in these games.  First is The Fury.  Compared to the fun war of attrition meets hide-and-seek that was The End, The Fury is frustrating to fight on Extreme.  Two hits and you're dead with this guy.  And with the game's relatively clunky controls, you might have trouble keeping up with him because he has a jetpack which he frequently uses to zip around.  Oh, and if he either passes you on his jetpack or spots you in any of the corridors, expect to take one of those two hits.  Very frustrating to fight, I'll at least say "The Fury" is an apt name for him.

Spoiler

Oh, I'm feeling a burning rage alright, fucker.  Look at Snake's health bar compared to his, it's stupid.

Screaming Mantis (Metal Gear Solid 4): I really, really, REALLY would like to somehow list that fucking atrocious bike chase here, but I couldn't count that as a boss fight.  So instead, I'll channel that anger towards something else I dislike in this game; Screaming Mantis.  Psycho Mantis was a cool and interesting concept, basically screwing with the meta by forcing you to switch controller ports to fight him.  Screaming Mantis, on the other hand, will just throw a bunch of enemies with guns at you, occasionally throw hard-to-dodge knives at you, and can only be hurt if you hit the small floating dolls next to her down and use the lethal one to kill her (basically make her ragdoll hilariously while her health drops dramatically fast).  I'll say the only joy I had with this fight was the catharsis I had from watching her flop about stupidly when I finally acquired her stupid dolls.

Spoiler

You have to snipe these little dolls - two of them - about three-four times each, and throughout it all you're being assailed by a cacophony of nonsense.

Lava Beast Jawenko (Super Star Wars): I always hated this battle as a kid.  It's only the second boss in the game, but it pulls some real BS on you.  Firstly, it's practically impossible to beat without blaster upgrades, which you lose if you die.  Secondly, lava kills you instantly, and there's a lot of it all around in this level.  Thirdly, all the maneuvering room you have is a small, probably five-foot wide platform surrounded by lava.  Fourthly, the boss is only, like, ten feet away from said platform, and all of its attacks knock you back about two feet-or-so.  So all in all, you're on a small platform that you'll instantly die if you fall off of it and a monster who you only have split seconds to react to or else you'll get knocked off.  It really, really sucks, and it's why I and probably thousands of other kids never played through Super Star Wars the whole way through.  Special mention: the other two Super Star Wars games also have absolute BS bosses, and for that reason not many have beaten these games.

Spoiler

And you thought Mother Brain from Metroid was a pain in the ass to fight.

 

[Shadow Mir]

11 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

Moldrom (Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past): This weird ball worm bastard sucks so much to fight.  I feel like most people here probably know this one, and the OP mentioned it, but I'll recap for those unfamiliar.  Basically, you are in this tower, right?  It's something like 8-9 stories tall (above ground, anyway, there's also one or two basement levels), and overall is a bit of a trek to play through all the way.  Throughout this tower, there are parts in the floor where you can fall down one level.  Because of limited hardware, when you go to different floors, most things reset.  That means enemies will reappear, basically.  And that goes for the boss in this tower.  The boss, Moldrom, is in a pit surrounded by a hole that drops you down a level, and the bastard can push you down those holes.  Not only is it annoying to get back up, but I'm pretty sure his health resets, which means all the progress you made in killing it is canceled out if you fall down, which is really goddamn awful and annoying.

Doesn't this apply to Moldorm in most other Zelda games as well (or at least Link's Awakening, where the damn thing is the first boss, and A Link Between Worlds)? Though I do agree it sucks to have all your hard work be for nothing because of a mistimed sword swing sending you into the pit, making you have to go back.

15 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

Every Boss That Has Super Armor (Dragon Ball: Xenoverse): Those who've played this game know exactly what I'm talking about.  Most enemies will "flinch" when they get hit - basic stuff for fighting games.  However, when the developer decides that simply fighting the enemy isn't difficult enough, they'll throw super armor in the mix.  What that means is the enemies with super armor will not flinch when they're hit, so they can immediately counter you and can't get locked into your combos.  The only way to break super armor is to deplete the enemy's stamina, which you do by attacking them.  However, as you can imagine, it's really effin' difficult to do that because super armor makes them dangerous to approach.  Super armor was pretty much the worst aspect of this game, followed shortly by stacked layers of RNG item drops.

Speaking of super armor.... I'm not sure if Spirit battles in Smash Ultimate are acceptable, but...

Dark Emperor (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) - Giant Ridley + Super Armor = Not a fun time. Odds are you'll die before you can even get his damage high enough to launch him off stage, and if you somehow manage to last that long, Ridley's Final Smash WILL do you in (it instantly KOs you if you're at 100%+, and between being giant and being a Legend tier spirit, you'll be at that damage range in a hurry).

[Ertrick36]

4 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Doesn't this apply to Moldorm in most other Zelda games as well

I'll let you in on a little secret...

A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds are the only 2D Zelda games I've played.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Thing with Calamity Ganon is, unless you purposely chose not to, by the time you get to him, you have all the best equipment and have freed the Divine Guardians. So already, Calamity Ganon's HP is reduced by exactly half. Unless you go in unprepared (that is, not having good equipment and not freeing the Divine Guardians), the fight's pretty underwhelming.

That's what I mean; there should've been more to the fight even if you have freed all the divine guardians. For example, there should've been moments where you have to use the runes to damage him or at least make him vulnerable. 

Woah; I just felt deja vu.

 

11 hours ago, Armagon said:

Lorithia (Xenoblade Chronicles): Everyone's who's played Xenoblade Chronicles and gotten up to this point knows how bad this fight is.

I have played Xenoblade Chronicles, but I haven't gotten to this fight yet (I'm at the Fallen Arm). Thanks for the heads-up. 

[BrightBow]

Xenoverse 2 had the good sense to put away with Super Armor. But when they brought in Expert Broly, oh boy.

Expert Broly has not only a crapton of Super Armor but all of his attacks drain a heavy amount of stamina. It's an effect that applies every time any of his moves hit, doesn't matter if it's blocked or not. As a result, once he charges you, it won't take long until you are incapable of blocking or evasive moves. And with his absurd attacking power, he will only need a few pokes to down you.

And of course he has access to Expert Mode boss moves. He frequently uses Peeler Storm. A bullshit move that makes the user completely intangible, attacks every opponent on the map at once and can be used to break out of combos. That's not the bad part. As established, his attacks drain stamina. Peeler Storm creates a massive amount of projectiles on your position, so dodging it is practically impossible. You most certainly can't do it reliably. But you can't block it either because his stamina drain will break your block in just a few frames and the remaining damage will be more then enough to down any character. The move Super Guard is an absolute requirement. But even then, it barely covers enough time to endure the whole barrage.

To top it all off, if his health gets low, Broly will fire a Gigantic KI Blast, which will instant kill everyone, no questions asked. No invulnerability frames will help.

 

They had the good sense to make this Broly weaker when playing offline.But it seems like they just reduced his HP a little. It does in no way make up for the AI allies' complete inability to survive Peeler Storm. They even suck blocking the move normally, let alone now that a stamina drain makes that impossible. You just gotta hope they use their evasives. If all of your allies are down, you are screwed. Broly won't let you revive them and you can't take him on alone. Even if you could, without allies you do not have enough firepower to reflect the Gigantic Ki Blast at the end.

Edited May 1, 2019 by BrightBow

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Donkey Kong Country Returns - Mole Miner: I recently went through the game on Mirror Mode as a challenge and this guy is ridiculous. Most of the level is taking on his mooks, a process that takes very long until you make use of an exploit where roll jumping at the right moment lets you board the train early. Even then, each attempt will run you at least a solid 5 minutes depending how far you get, and it was exhausting. The boss himself is totally random in where he appears and that's a problem. Mirror Mode means no Diddy Kong and one hit kills you. He can appear in one of five carts, and if he appears in the one you're standing on, that's it for you. You have to be in the air when he appears. Assuming you did time your jump well, that's not the end of it. Because odds are good he's a variable distance in front of you, about to throw an axe at ground level, which is timed quickly enough to hit you as you're landing. I got past this guy through sheer luck. He either appeared under me as I was in the air so I hit him immediately, or I landed just soon enough to dodge the axe with another jump. So stressful. Even outside of mirror mode, I bet a lot of players playing casually have horror stories of trying to beat this long, random boss.

Devil May Cry 3 - Cerberus: First boss of the game and wow is he obnoxious. You won't have devil trigger or many helpful upgrades by chapter 3. His attacks are very tight to avoid, don't have good tells on his claw swipes or full body lunges, and he has a lot of health that you can't meaningfully decrease until you take out the ice on his face which he can repeatedly re-establish whenever he feels like it. There's definitely tricks to fighting this guy, but I know a lot of players entered this series at 3, since it's such a quintessential part of the franchise, and it's just unfair you have to take this guy on so early.

Kingdom Hearts 1 - Every boss fight before you get the Cure spell: The Wonderland and Deep Jungle boss fights are extremely difficult, and most players probably left Traverse Town without farming Munny to buy potions. Even with potions they're just not fun fights and it's a bummer for any Proud Mode replay of the game. The Wonderland boss also gets powered up by your fire spell which would otherwise be your best use of mana in leue of not having cure.

Legend of Dragoon - Lenus: Lenus' stats seemingly double if somebody in your party enters dragoon form and she's just unstoppable. There's a few bosses in the game who enter a more powerful state in response to you using Dragoon Forms, but the degree to which she powers up feels like some kind of bug, and the game doesn't tell you she's more powerful, so the player is going to think "wow she's tough, I'll have everybody enter Dragoon Form immediately to counter her" and it's the worst choice you could make.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Ertrick36 said:

I'll let you in on a little secret...

A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds are the only 2D Zelda games I've played.

Okay then. I just happen to think as far as 2D Zelda bosses go, Moldorm is consistent about being a pain in the ass, whether it's because of the chance of falling into pits forcing you to start over (Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Link Between Worlds) or because of some other gimmick (Tri Force Heroes, Four Swords Adventures).

Anyway... 

Grand Jewel (Legend of Dragoon) - Spams magic, meaning that magically vulnerable characters are going to have a bad time, and lowers your levels. Also, it's a battle where using Dragoon form, which you might be tempted to do because the thing's so annoying and hard to damage, is the worst thing you could do - if you do, it'll use the Dragon Block Staff to weaken you to a point where you can barely do anything to it and die easily. As if all this weren't awful enough, it can heal itself when it's close to dying.

18 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Legend of Dragoon - Lenus: Lenus' stats seemingly double if somebody in your party enters dragoon form and she's just unstoppable. There's a few bosses in the game who enter a more powerful state in response to you using Dragoon Forms, but the degree to which she powers up feels like some kind of bug, and the game doesn't tell you she's more powerful, so the player is going to think "wow she's tough, I'll have everybody enter Dragoon Form immediately to counter her" and it's the worst choice you could make.

Let's not forget the part where she's prone to use water spells... and the main hero happens to be a fire character, which takes more damage from water attacks (due to Mutual Weakness, this goes both ways, but...). Also, she's rather fast and can get multiple turns in a row if you're unlucky.

Bolded: I know that using Dragoon form is not good against some bosses, but the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the aforementioned Grand Jewel, the Divine Dragon, and Lloyd (who uses the Dragon Buster, which as Lavitz learned the hard way, is every bit as lethal to Dragoons as it is to Dragons).

Edited May 1, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Von Ithipathachai]

3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Grand Jewel (Legend of Dragoon) - Spams magic, meaning that magically vulnerable characters are going to have a bad time, and lowers your levels.

*uncomfortable flashbacks to Energy Drain in Megami Tensei I + II intensify*

[Zapp Branniglenn]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Anyway... 

Grand Jewel (Legend of Dragoon) - Spams magic, meaning that magically vulnerable characters are going to have a bad time, and lowers your levels. Also, it's a battle where using Dragoon form, which you might be tempted to do because the thing's so annoying and hard to damage, is the worst thing you could do - if you do, it'll use the Dragon Block Staff to weaken you to a point where you can barely do anything to it and die easily. As if all this weren't awful enough, it can heal itself when it's close to dying.

Let's not forget the part where she's prone to use water spells... and the main hero happens to be a fire character, which takes more damage from water attacks (due to Mutual Weakness, this goes both ways, but...). Also, she's rather fast and can get multiple turns in a row if you're unlucky.

Nice to see another savant of this game! Yes, part of what bugs me about the design of dragoon forms and how boss designs try to counter it is how the developers seem to have vastly over-estimated how powerful it is, despite the inability to guard, use an item to heal, or revert to human form early to do any of these things. Not only can you get through the game without ever using a dragoon form, it almost feels like the ideal way to play since you have more options and can progress your character by working on combat additions and SP gain.

[Sasori]

3 bosses come to mind right about now.

The fire brigade team of Qada/Ominas/Spoiler/Mephillia. Bosses can be a little cheap, but most bosses don't do the absurd amount of full party damage every single turn.

'YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR INSOLENCE' from Xenoblade Chronicles. A annoying boss that isn't helped by your allies getting constantly stuck in the lava

And finally there's some filler machine boss in the ds version of ff4. I don't remember its name, but it was in the tower of Babil. Like all bosses it got a big power increase, but the game also lies about how to deal with it. So you follow the game's instruction and you are immediately killed by a team killing counterattack. The proper way to beat it is also no fun.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Whenever someone asks me my least favorite boss fights, the one that always comes to mind IMMEDIATELY is...

That STUPID "secret" boss you unlock in Rayman Origins after getting all the red crystal things. Screw that gross sack of crap. It's the most poorly-designed, unfair, worthless sack of CRAP I can think of in any video game. Screw the level leading up to it, and screw it itself.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Sasori said:

The fire brigade team of Qada/Ominas/Spoiler/Mephillia. Bosses can be a little cheap, but most bosses don't do the absurd amount of full party damage every single turn.

Ugh, that brought back some painful memories of losing no matter what I tried... It's the only team that could consistently defeat me, since there's no glaring weaknesses to exploit unlike is the case with some of the others (e.g.: the first wave of Jackal, Einheria, and Profiteur, where dropping the latter first means the former two end up leaving themselves open for multiple turns at a time).

Also, Chaugmar. Energy Burst is a bitch, and it's hard to deal any real damage without abusing attack items.

Asmodeus (Bravely Second) - Has a tendency to use Lust to cause party-wide Charm, as well as Thundaja for major lightning damage, but that's not the problem. What IS is Call of the Infernal, which takes a character out of battle. And unlike was the case in Default, it can do this to multiple characters at a time... The kicker? This is the boss you must fell for level 1 Diabolism, and almost none of the other sin beasts have gimmicks that are anywhere near as infuriating as Asmodeus.

Geist (Bravely Second) - Uses Undo HP to undo any healing or revivals you do; he can also use it on himself to undo damage he incurs if you hit him for particuarly big damage. The fact that he's accompanied by snipers that can reduce your HP to 1 DOES NOT HELP. Nor does it that if you think to defeat his adds, he'll just call more.

Edited May 1, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[DragonFlames]

As far as least favourite bosses go, my take is that anything with insta-kill moves that you can't guard against certainly qualifies. Here's a list of some of my least favourite bosses:

Dark Aeons and Penance (Final Fantasy X) - Besides falling under the above category of having insta-kill moves you can't guard against (at least some of them do), these fights are just boring. Really, really boring. What it basically boils down to is grinding your stats to max, grind the right equipment, then Quick Hit until everything is dead. Yeah, great "strategy" right there. The worst offender by far is Penance, though. The thing is just a giant damage sponge and the only real "strategy" here is to prevent both of his arms from being on the field at any time. Even putting aside the fact that grinding for the stats and equipment needed to even stand a CHANCE against the Dark Aeons and Penance is an unfun chore, the Penance fight itself is just a long, boring slog of doing the same attack patterns over and over again, with the only real challenge being to staying focused for almost two hours and not fall asleep out of sheer boredom. I felt exactly zero accomplishment after beating them. Honestly speaking, no one should feel ashamed of just Zanmato'ing their asses. You're not missing much by doing that.

The Hell Wyrm from FFXII was a damage sponge, too, but at least he required you to think on your feet and adjust your strategy to his attack patterns, so you had actual involvement in the fight. Here? None of that.

Zeromus (Final Fantasy XII) - Sticking with Final Fantasy on this one. Really, any of the bonus Espers in this game count as all their fights are riddled with some atrocious gimmick and/or BS instakill moves, but I remember this guy being the most annoying and one of the definitive "Bullshit/Fake Difficulty Bosses" the Final Fantasy franchise seems all too content to have (see above). He bans all Magick at the beginning of the fight and summons an endless supply of Skeletons that will quickly whittle down your health into dangerous numbers with A.O.E. spells. Dafuq? Wasn't Magick supposed to be banned, Mister Zeromus?
Doesn't sound so bad, you say? Well, healing items in this game SUCK. And Zeromus himself hits like a freaking truck and uses a plethora of Gravity-based attacks (that cut your HP for a fixed percentage), leaving you open for the Skeletons to prey on your sorry butts. Oh, and they also throw a wide variety of status effects at you. Fun, right?
The only thing you can do is unleash a Quickening Chain (basically your super moves in this game) and HOPE that you can make the chain long enough to kill Zeromus and his lackeys outright. If you fail, then... it was nice knowing you, I guess.
Adding insult to injury, summoning is next to worthless in FFXII and the fact that the battles to get most of the Espers are really, REALLY hard makes this fact all the more infuriating.

32 minutes ago, Sasori said:

The fire brigade team of Qada/Ominas/Spoiler/Mephillia. Bosses can be a little cheap, but most bosses don't do the absurd amount of full party damage every single turn.

Going to echo this one. Literally the only boss fight in Bravely Default I cannot stand.

12 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Gattuso (Tales of Vesperia) - The short version is that this damn thing is a wtfmassive difficulty spike for that early point in the game (to put things in perspective, it's only the third boss, and the first two are kinda sorta pushovers. The boss right after that isn't that challenging either. Nor is the boss after that one. And neither is the boss after THAT). The long version... Hoo boy. First off, it's the first boss that comes with adds. Second, it's blindingly fast. Third, it can poison you. Fourth, it's the first boss that regularly uses Over Limit; Over Limit in this game allows you to attack continuously while it's active, among other benefits (including not staggering when attacked, but the player doesn't get this until level 4, which is a ways away).

Aaand this one. With a burning passion, in fact.

I would also add the Imperialdramon Paladin Mode fight from Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth to this list, since he starts spamming his special move Omega Blade (I REFUSE to call it Omni Sword, because that sounds stupid) at a certain point during the fight and does so for a certain time without giving you any opening. The Omega Blade packs even more of a whallop than Omnimon's (or Omegamon's, if you will) Grey Sword and it WILL kill any Digimon, even ones it isn't effective against. Ironically, Omnimon is part of Imperialdramon Paladin Mode; it's actually his sword, hence "Omega(mon) Blade"/"Omni(mon) Sword".
If you don't have Jesmon with enough SP to use his Weltgeist attack that cancels and counters every attack that hits him until his next turn, you're basically screwed. But I can't exactly be mad at a fight that has such an easy workaround and is accompanied by this music.

These last two are final bosses of Shin Megami Tensei games, Strange Journex Redux and IV: Apocalypse, respectively. Reveal spoiler at your own risk!

 

Shekinah (Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey: Redux) - This boss heals itself to full halfway through the fight. I repeat: This boss. Heals itself. To full. Halfway through the fight. Worst part is, to get it to the point where it can heal itself, you'll have burned through most of your MP pool and MP healing items. It also gains random immunities at random intervals, making some of your attacks essentially worthless. Worst part about that? Well, the immunity is actually a reflect effect, meaning the damage gets thrown back at you. Strange Journey Redux already had its fair share of fake/bullshit difficulty (mostly pertaining to its atrocious idea of what dungeon design is), but this fight absolutely takes the cake and eats it, too. Holy hell, what were you thinking when you designed this, Atlus?

YHVH Phase 2 (Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse) - (Yes, this is freaking GOD HIMSELF!!!) A damage sponge boss that doesn't really do anything besides eating a lot of hits, meaning it's more of an endurance test and a race against time and your dwindling MP pool? Check. At least he doesn't have an instakill move, I guess. Not helping this is the fact that He comes at the end of an overly long, overly boring, overly confusing dungeon that overstays its welcome the moment you reach the second area. I honestly expected more out of a boss fight where I get to beat up freaking GOD HIMSELF!!!

Edited May 1, 2019 by DragonFlames

[Fabulously Olivier]

The King of Nights (Ninety Nine Nights)

Okay, so first off, this final/secret boss requires you to use Imphy. Want to use any of the other characters? You're out of luck. Second, he spams attacks which have huge hitboxes and take massive chunks of your health. Third, he's surrounded by adds, and they are the strongest enemy type in the game. Fourth, and most egregiously, the only way to realistically beat him is to obtain a gear piece that has a low chance to drop, and is ONLY available from enemies in his mission. If you do not get said gear piece, you may as well restart the mission.

 

Guys, Dynasty Warriors style games are supposed to be easy....

Edited May 1, 2019 by Etheus

[Flere210]

Most fire emblem Bosses. They are just red units with a litle more stats, but usually not even enought  to not get oneshotted. I understand that having a Zalbard in a game with permadeath is just unfair, but they can surely do better, as Deghinsea proves.

 

For the same reason, i hate bosses that fight exactly like normal enemies just with higher numbers.