15 replies to this topic

[Dave Wallace]

What's the toughest Boss Battle that you've ever encountered in a videogame? The kind of tear-your-hair-out, what-the-hell-do-I-do-here, stay-up-until-2am-just-to-get-the-pleasure-of-beating-him end-of-level encounter that's both supremely frustrating to come up against, and supremely satisfying to master?

For me, my introduction to truly terrifying bosses came with Revenge of Shinobi on the megadrive. After fighting through the whole game (which was fairly tough), the final boss with his flying beard and terrifying laugh is nigh-impossible to beat - the only way I managed it was to make it through with as many lives as possible, and keep on using the magic that blows you up and loses you a life (but does a fair bit of damage on the way). And even then I couldn't kill him quickly enough to save my girlfriend, so was stuck with getting the ending where she dies.

More recently, the Minotaur in God of War was pretty tough until I figured out the knack of beating him. I put a good couple of hours into that one.

Other nominations? I still think Revenge of Shinobi is going to take some beating...

[brucegray666]

Shao Khan in the last couple of Mortal Kombat games has kicked my arse. Not because he's good but because he's terribly cheap and overpowered. Totally goes against the curve of the rest of the games.

Most disappointing boss of recent memory had to be the one from the (Gears of) Warhammer game. The whole last third of the game talks up how bad ass he is I scrimped and saved all my special weapon ammo only for the final conflict to be a bloody QTE.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

Power Strike was insane at times, best I ever did was get to level 6, once and once only, this guy makes it look easy:



And here's Dave's nemesis:

[Dave Wallace]

Shao Khan in the last couple of Mortal Kombat games has kicked my arse. Not because he's good but because he's terribly cheap and overpowered. Totally goes against the curve of the rest of the games.

Oh yeah, I had a similar problem with the final boss on Street Fighter IV.

[Peter Singer]

Almost every single boss in DMC4 ripped me a new one.
but after one playthrough you started to know how they could be beat.
Exception: Dante. Up to date the worst boss ever I've had to fight and not because he was cheap but because he always seemed just a little bit better than you....

[Martin Smith]

Seth in SF4 and Shao Kahn in MK8 were annoying for how cheap they are, but not desperately tough. Certainly not to the same level as earlier MK bosses like Motaro in MK3 and Shao Kahn in MK2.

The boss in Kingdom Hearts 1 was really annoying as well. Not because he's especially tough, but because it's so damn long and tedious. He has about five stages, all spaced out with really lame enemy onslaught sections (after a whole game of having to continuously clear every room of about three waves of enemies) and it's rarely an interesting battle. I'm really glad I only failed once and wasn't stuck continuously having to redo it.

I always had trouble with King K Rool in Donkey Kong Country 1. Could never get the timing right for dodging his cannonballs.

[craggy]

was watching youtube videos of this very thing last night. I'm calling mind-taking on this one.

Seth in SFIV was quite annoying, to say the least. I often find bosses, and normal opponents, and sometimes very easy training challenges quite difficult in beat-em-ups these days. I blame the control pads and their dodgy d-pads, because there's no way I could be so rubbish.

[Carlos Mancilla II]

Still to this day, I have never beat Mike Tyson on Punch-Out!!!

[Martin Smith]

was watching youtube videos of this very thing last night. I'm calling mind-taking on this one.

Seth in SFIV was quite annoying, to say the least. I often find bosses, and normal opponents, and sometimes very easy training challenges quite difficult in beat-em-ups these days. I blame the control pads and their dodgy d-pads, because there's no way I could be so rubbish.

The Xbox's d-pad is certainly awful. I'm really glad I got a Madcatz Fightpad, which has a large 'floating' d-pad, as I wouldn't have been able to play Mortal Kombat without it (I got it after I'd finished with SF4).

[jamon g]

oh yeah mike tyson is tough.
you suck dave, other shinobi bosses were harder than beardy.
M bison was always a fucker.
The mirror guy on virtua fighter one was way tough.
The end giant head on starfox super nes was really hard.

[Robert B]

As I get older I have much less patience for boss fights. In fact I just quit a game (Muramasa: The Demon Blade) because I got to one boss I couldn't beat after a couple of tries.


My answer for this would probably be from one of the early Final Fantasy games but I can no longer think of specifics.

[Ogul]

In recent memory, one of the worst was the OMAC Duo mid-boss in DCUO, where you have to use these junk pieces to disable his shielding. It's just poorly constructed because unless you have a healer around it's really hard to not take lethal amounts of damage through the fight.

ME 3 also had some difficult boss fights, but more frustrating when a mistake instakills you than being overly complex, and if you lost it would just reset you to the beginning of the fight or even the previous stage of the fight, so it was much less frustrating than in games where you need to redo a ton of stuff after each death.

[craggy]

The Xbox's d-pad is certainly awful. I'm really glad I got a Madcatz Fightpad, which has a large 'floating' d-pad, as I wouldn't have been able to play Mortal Kombat without it (I got it after I'd finished with SF4).

my mate has a couple of those for when we're playing fighters. certainly a bit better.

edit: he's also got an arcade stick, but we've only played single player on that, cause in a vs situation, it's never a good idea to have people playing against other people with different controllers.

[Dave Wallace]

you suck dave, other shinobi bosses were harder than beardy.

Oddly enough, I never found the other bosses in the game that difficult. Certainly not a patch on the final boss.

M bison was always a fucker.

See, it was always Balrog and Sagat that used to stop me in my tracks. If I could get past them, I knew I wouldn't have much trouble with Bison.

[RossS]

Penance in Final Fantasy X was pretty tough, not only because it took so long, but because the lengths you had to go to to get your characters in a position to even fight it was fairly impressive.

[Adam Wednesdays]

I don't think I ever managed to beat Goro in the original "Mortal Kombat," let alone get around to Beardie McBigbossington.

I remember being absolutely decimated trying to play later levels of the Warcraft II Expansion pack (not really a boss, but same concept).



And on an exactly opposite note, I don't know if anyone else ever played the old NES game "Crystalis," but after what seems like it will be the last boss (your standard "you managed beat me once, but now I've changed into a dragon HA HA!" pain-in-the-ass you got in games like that) came one last boss fight... but it was so pointless and stupidly easy that it was absolutely pointless. Real let down after going through all the crap you had to do to get there.