Best Final Boss (in terms of gameplay) (end game spoilers for all routes including DLC)

[Jotari]

Has this thread been made before? I feel it should have been, well it hasn't been made recently so I'm making it now. And I'm sure if it was made before it would have been before we got an extra boss to compare in the form of Cindered Shadows (that one seems to be quite polarizing actually).

[Francis]

Silver Snow Rhea and Aelfric are really hard.
But I think Rhea is really a beast in that chapter, so I'll vote for her. Plus, in the DLC you do not even have the stress of permadeath, even if you want to save all of your units.

[Dark Holy Elf]

When talking about final bosses, there's a question as to whether you just consider the boss itself or the entire battle. I'm mostly just gonna talk about the bosses here, and assume the player has otherwise controlled the battle before engaging them (which is always an option, one particular 30 range move aside).

CF Rhea: Reasonably solid monster final boss, but nothing super-special. The most dangerous thing she has is Wrath so she encourages you to break her late in the fight to not see that. Her adaptive damage is a neat reference to the dragons of Heroes and makes her a bit harder to facetank. That said, I tend to think that if a player can overcome Indech (an optional boss, and easier to miss on this route than others due to his interaction with the player's actions in Chapter 15), they can handle her, which is a bit of an odd feeling.

SS Rhea: Most likely the most challenging of the final bosses and a good capstone to the game as a gameplay experience. I don't really like the weird fakeout but otherwise it's neat, and her having the ability to staggering blow every turn is a neat unique mechanic (and those staggering blows certainly hurt, being defence-ignoring). Her latent abilities aren't as potent as most other major bosses (no Wrath or Quick Riposte), but Miracle certainly should give the player a bit of pause.

Nemesis: Totally different from the others, which I can appreciate, even though he's not super-difficult as a result. Nemesis is more of a "final exam human boss" being more about the ability to have generally good stats + crit which makes finding people who can survive his counter a bit trickier. Of course the game gives you a bunch of ways to do just that (Rafail Gem, Fallen Star, Blessing, etc.) and he's got such poor HP that you can take him out pretty fast, as in "a very vanilla Lysithea requiring no particular mechanical mastery of the game can take off half his HP by herself" fast. I like how he moves once you engage with him.

Hegemon Edelgard: The ability to attack during the entire rest of the fight is certainly a neat twist. As a boss she can be very imposing because of her powerful regeneration, barrier which restores every turn, Vantage to get in extra hits and Wrath on her final health bar (and there's no armour break to get around that). That staggering blow is also extremely dangerous and means low-HP units just need to keep their distance. That said it's also entirely possible to make a good enough statball, especially with good evasion, that she struggles to hit them and she then becomes much easier. With two such statballs she's particularly easy to blitz because she'll provoke two counters on turns she doesn't use her staggering blow. Interesting for sure, though.

Aelfric: I dunno, I found him pretty trivial. He uses his staggering blow then he stuns himself and explodes horribly unless he gets really lucky on sending all of your units far away (which is just weird RNG design). In addition to that you can stun him yourself just like the other pure monster bosses.

[L3xandr3]

Either SS or VW. The Lions are the (arguably) strongest house, and Felix can easily dodge-tank if you made him a Dancer/War Monk. CS is barely a route, in my opinion, and Aelfric/Umbral Beast isn't very bad. In fact, the Ubral Beast isn't hard: you can 2 turn the fight.

Not even counting the hell hole of a map, SS's boss is a problem, because she can devastate most of your units in one turn. Easiest way to get past that is to have a ~70-80 Hp unit with Healing Focus and a Rusted weapon (to drop avoid so she'll target the HF unit) and just bait her staggering blows. Problem is that she'll go for kills if she sees them.

And VW's map is an extension of its' boss. Nemesis isn't a problem without the Elites backing him up. Yeah, he's strong, but not strong enough to fight your entire army. Counting the map with Nemesis is the only way he's a threat.

My vote's on SS, for what it's worth.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

In terms of gameplay, Rhea on Silver Snow is probably the best final boss. In my opinion, anyway. Story-wise, though, Edelgard.

[eclipse]

Went with Nemesis.  Was the most satisfying battle to me.  Though I wish we'd had a chance to fight him on SS as well, since IMO he goes well with the whole "opposition of the church" deal.

[lenticular]

For me, Nemesis. I'm just not a fan of big single target bosses in Fire Emblem. I don't think that the mechanics of the series really lend themselves well to that sort of fight being satisfying. Army vs army fights are more interesting and more satisfying, and that's pretty much what Nemesis is. Aelfric is my least favourite because he's the furthest away from the army vs army paradigm, with his entire map just being him. I found him very easy to kill but also incredibly slow and tedious, to the point where he's not just my least favourite Three Houses end boss, but up there as one of my top three least favourite levels in all of Fire Emblem (the other two being The Feral Frontier and Winds of Change).

[Jotari]

Personally Silver Snow Rhea is my least favourite of the bunch. She's just so incredibly bulky and the design of the rest of the map means you need to take down the other threats before you start engaging her (or at least the White Beasts). And since she's immobile this basically just means you pound her for ages with pretty reliable hit and run or baiting tactics. Once you take control of the fight she really stands no chance at beating you, but still takes ages to go down. And the map design pushes you to do exactly that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

7 hours ago, lenticular said:

I'm just not a fan of big single target bosses in Fire Emblem. I don't think that the mechanics of the series really lend themselves well to that sort of fight being satisfying. Army vs army fights are more interesting and more satisfying, and that's pretty much what Nemesis is.

To a certain extent I agree with you, but I'd say they're definitely all army vs army fights (except Aelfric), before ending in a boss fight.

Although I do rather like the boss fights themselves, since it really does feel like your entire army chips in on them in one way or another - one of the things Three Houses does better than other games in the series IMO.

 

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

And since she's immobile this basically just means you pound her for ages with pretty reliable hit and run or baiting tactics. Once you take control of the fight she really stands no chance at beating you, but still takes ages to go down. And the map design pushes you to do exactly that.

I ended up casting a vote for Hegemon Edelgard partly because of this: I appreciate you still have that endless wave of war masters and dark knights to contend with if you plan to fight her via a slow method. While the others are pretty helpless if you kill absolutely every one of their allies first. (Although for me, personally, I always have some enemies left undealt with on the final maps, and the ones on CF and SS at least will push towards you as you fight the boss.)

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I said Rhea on Silver Snow, but they all do pretty interesting stuff.

Aelfric (the Umbral Beast) - his staggering blow forces your army to adapt, and makes full use of the setting. And his ability to eat his own clones (pressing you to kill them) is really neat, and reminiscent of Medeus in New Mystery. Plus, the structure of Cindered Shadows give your team members different, but relatively defined roles.

Hegemon Edelgard - one of the most interesting bosses. Being the only 1 x 1 monster limits the spaces you can target. And her "Twin Crests" power, including the ability to hit at long range, makes her a threat from turn 1. The whole map is a challenge, too - enemies like the Fire Orb mages can't be trivialized by Retribution (Myson can, though).

Nemesis can be trivialized, sure, with Luna or Impregnable Wall Poison Strike tactics. But played straight, having to face all the Elites, with their legendary weapons, is a really neat challenge. And even with them defeated, he's still an offensive threat.

Crimson Flower's Immaculate One might be the most "normal" one here, not too different than the other 3 x 3 monsters, like the Wind Caller. There's some interplay with the Golems that show up - she boosts their stats after several turns, I think? It's a very good map, but the boss herself isn't super interesting or challenging. 

Silver Snow's Immaculate One is a huge shift, though, with the presence of the White Beasts. You can try to take her out ASAP, but she'll use the Beasts to heal herself. So kind of like Aelfric, the more secure way to win is to take out the Beasts - essentially doing a "walkabout" of the map. With her north-central location, and long attack range, this Immaculate One really constrains your movement. And when the time to defeat her is at hand, her high Charm makes shield-shattering with gambits a struggle - while her high-damage attacks mean you need to be careful who's left in her range. I found defeating her to be a seriously rewarding accomplishment, and a great cap-off to an otherwise unimpressive route.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Typo.

[Sooks]

I’m torn between Aelfric and Nemesis, I like Aelfric more so because the fight is the map and sometimes huge endgames aren’t the most fun but when it was basically just me v boss that was cool. FE should try that again, as it’s the one time a big super demonic beast worked imo. The way he shuffled around your units is nice because it’s RNG that never felt like it could quite screw your over but still made you have to adapt. Nemesis is nice for not being a demonic beast as those are super tedious to deal with since they’re just big sponges imo. He also makes you practically have to face the map in order to beat him and in a good way, where I feel like SS Rhea doesn’t do this well because the things keeping her alive are white beasts that are still HP sponges and have reinforcements, and taking them out in maddening will aggro the entire map so you just have to deal with it. I have no strong feelings on CF Rhea or of Hegemon Edelgard.

I’ll give my vote to Aelfric. And apparently I’m the only one who did so.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Sooks
I’m right and everyone else is wrong. /s

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

To a certain extent I agree with you, but I'd say they're definitely all army vs army fights (except Aelfric), before ending in a boss fight.

Although I do rather like the boss fights themselves, since it really does feel like your entire army chips in on them in one way or another - one of the things Three Houses does better than other games in the series IMO.

It's more of a sliding scale than a binary yes/no sort of situation. The level with Nemesis is almost entirely about the level itself and the army vs army combat, with Nemesis himself being almost an afterthought. Provided you're not trying to low turn/cheese/flex and are killing the elites first, once you reach Nemesis the level is basically over. I wouldn't quite go so far as to say that he's trivial. He's a little bit dangerous, but not really. Not to anyone who's managed to get that far. On the other end of the spectrum there's Aelfric, where he is the entire level. Getting to him is, obviously, entirely trivial. The other three lie somewhere in the middle.

On the scale going from "the map is the boss" to "the boss is the map", I'd order the bosses as follows: Nemesis, Edelgard, Rhea (CF), Rhea (SS), Aelfric. Not coincidentally, that is also my order of preference from most to least favourite. I just don't enjoy the big single target piles of HP.

[Dark Holy Elf]

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

On the scale going from "the map is the boss" to "the boss is the map", I'd order the bosses as follows: Nemesis, Edelgard, Rhea (CF), Rhea (SS), Aelfric. Not coincidentally, that is also my order of preference from most to least favourite. I just don't enjoy the big single target piles of HP.

That definitely makes sense.