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Did you find something to kill? -Yes-> Is it Sigmund? -Yes-> Haha, you're fucked. —"A Foolproof Plan For Winning At Dungeon Crawl" flowchart

This page is about bosses in RPGs that give away grief like it's candy.

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City of Heroes

• City of Heroes has a few Archvillains and Elite Bosses who give players fits, depending on what powers the players or team have. Defeating them often requires copious amounts of skill and luck, or at least more skill and luck than the game normally needs.
  • Frostfire is probably the first Elite Boss newbie heroes run up against, making him a sudden brick wall in what was previously a very soloable game.
  • Nosferatu has an auto-hit Negative Energy aura that drastically reduces your to-hit chances, which stacks with his own attacks that do the same. Oh, and he can heal himself too.
  • For villainside, Positron can hit through high defenses with Energy damage, slow your attacks tremendously, and is loaded with plenty of area-of-effect attacks.
  • The Statesman Task Force version of Captain Mako and Ghost Widow are often complained about. Apart from being artificially toughened via level differences, Captain Mako has a Limit Break that makes him nigh-unhittable (without Status Buffs), while Ghost Widow can heal herself based on the number of players in melee, and break through just about any status protection available.
  • The Carnival archvillain Madame of Mystery is not fun either. She's heavily resistant to most kinds of damage, requiring the use of a temporary power to defeat; on top of that, she can quickly floor your endurance, leaving you helpless.
  • Also, Kadabra Kill. Multiple mezzes, a healing aura, and a pet.
  • The Reichsman, the final boss of the Issue 15 task forces. He is literally in a class of his own, "Reichsman", requires a very specific strategy to take down, you'll have to fight four other Archvillains either right before or as you're fighting him, he has some of the most powerful resistances in the game, and the battle can, depending on the team makeup, take anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours, because he has one of the highest HP totals in the game: 200,000+ , over ten times the amount of normal Archvillains. Alternatively, if you're a villain, you won't have to face four adds of Archvillains, one at a time- instead, waves and waves of minions, spawning immediately after each other, will rush the players, causing them to have to fight an average of four groups of normal enemies at once, as well as Reichsman. Did we mention that every minute, Reichsman lets loose a stun attacking your entire party that will temporarily knock out anyone, no matter how protected, that it hits?
  • But hey, maybe being a villain is for you. In that case, in the release-date final showdown for villains, the Lord Recluse Strike Force, is going to be Fun. Rather than fighting five Archvillains (now relabeled Heroes) at once, with the Archvillains entering the fight one at a time as Reichsman's HP lowers and he summons them as reinforcements, you get to fight eight Heroes at once, who are all three levels higher than the Archvillains in the Reichsman Task Force. Not only that, these eight Heroes have special code that causes them to stick together, stymieing any attempt at separating them so they can be defeated one at a time. Furthermore, four of those heroes are ostensibly Defenders, meaning that they either layer buffs on their already insanely powerful allies, or debuffs on the overmatched players. Finally, the leader of them, Statesman, will, when critically injured, render himself either completely or 97% immune to non-psychic forms of damage, and attack the entire party near him with a devastating blow that would kill weaker archetypes outright if not for the recently-added code causing attacks that would be one-hit kills to leave the player with one HP every eight seconds. Even with upgrades in power for characters since the LRSF came out, it's still an incredible challenge, and not something that can be cleared by most teams that don't prepare an exploit allowing them to fight the Heroes sequentially rather than in parallel.
  • And for those of you who are still gluttons for punishment, there's the endgame, containing Director 11. Director 11 isn't that hard- he's only a level 54 (meaning that level 50 characters, at the cap, will deal 44% as much damage/debuffs/stun duration/whatnot to him as they would to an even level enemy, and he'll deal 144% damage/debuffs/stun duration to you) Archvillain, normally a tough fight but easily doable. Unfortunately, thirty seconds after you fight him, he creates invisible, intangible, untargetable pets who drop stealthed (visible with perception powers) Proximity Mines all over the warehouse where you fight him. Three seconds after someone stands near a Proximity Mine, it detonates, dealing roughly 20% of a Tanker's maximum HP. And he creates more of these invisible pets as the fight goes on, more every thirty seconds, so that it's easily the case that if you let the fight last long enough, you will be unable to stand in any part of the warehouse without triggering at least three proximity mines. Oh, and there's a badge for defeating him without getting hit by any of his Proximity Mines. Not killed. Hit.
  • Battle Maiden is no slouch either. A level 54 Archvillain on her own, her signature ability causes patches of blue fire to erupt from the ground, one-shotting anyone who stands on them. These patches can spawn in midair, but are easily avoidable. ...Except for the fact that you can't move while using most powers. These patches spawn constantly during the fight, and are hard to see with low graphics. At least the badge is easy to get...
  • Primal Col. Duray is like a lower level version of Battle Maiden. You fight him in a Dual Boss fight with his Praetorian Counterpart. While Praetorian Col. Duray is tougher, and hits harder, Primal Duray is just annoying. He periodically calls in Air Support (killing anyone standing on one of the mercifully small patches for too long), and has a tendency to teleport all over the multilayered battle field while his counterpart is alive, making it insanely difficult to keep up with him.

Earthbound/Mother

• The Dragon in Earthbound Zero is a real pain, even with Ninten at level 25. Sure, a PSI-Block from Ana will make things easier, but what if the Dragon manages to kill her? You're pretty much screwed because she is the only one who knows SuperHealing at a low level.
• Clumsy Robot from EarthBound. Fighting him is very much a Luck-Based Mission; most of the time, he'll spend tripping over his own feet, but rarely he'll throw a missile at you. Said missile hits both party members for a staggering amount of HP; often more than Jeff even has at this point. The fight boils down to just smacking it over and over, and hoping Jeff and Ness can get through its sizeable HP before it hits you with the missile attack. It doesn't help that PSI is completely ineffective against it.
  • Ness's Nightmare from the same game is a huge pain in the ass to deal with -- first, because you're forced to go at it alone (unless you're lucky enough to keep a Flying Man alive up to that point, which is hard enough in itself), and second, because it tends to constantly use Lifeup and power shields on itself before whaling on you with high-level PSI attacks. It is possible to at least grab a special pendant that nullifies the effect of its "glorious light" attack, but waiting for it to completely drain its PP so it can be rendered useless is a big hassle. (The power boost received at the end is a sweet consolation prize, though.)
  • Even if you're not trying to go Off the Rails, the Kraken is a tough boss. All three of his attacks will hit the whole party, and while you can reflect the lightning attack with the Franklin Badge and block most of the fire attack with a Flame Pendant, chances are you'll only have one of each by the time you get to him. Also, his tornado attack can't be blocked in any way, and it does much more damage than the other two. Finally, your nonoffensive PSI won't save you, as his fourth attack dispels any buffs, debuffs, and status effects you might have cast.
  • Let's not forget Shrooom!. He packs a fairly high amount of HP for the time being, but that's not the issue. What is the issue is the fact that he tends to scatter his spores on your party, which potentially sets the Mushroomization status on your team. It works sort of like Confusion, but you can still input your party's commands (they just might hit each other instead). So you can get your party ready to attack with their best moves, get Mushroomized, and watch as your party rips themselves to shreds.
  • Carbon Dog's second form, Diamond Dog, can also be an incredibly hard boss. First of all, he has a tremendous amount of HP, the highest in the game in fact. He also has an attack that can diamondize (basically instant death) one party member, and the 'glorious light' attack, which is basically PSI Flash Omega and WILL paralyze or kill anyone without the right equipment. Giygas help you if you missed the Sea Pendant in the Lost Underworld. Finally, if you kill Carbon Dog with a Multibottle Rocket, say goodbye to Jeff; Diamond Dog starts out with a power shield, which will reflect the attack that finished off Carbon.
• The Steel Mechorilla from Mother 3. Nothing gimmick-y about him-- he's just very, VERY powerful, powerful enough to beat up all your characters without the slightest difficulty. And he has a ton of HP. And he powers himself up if you cast PSI Thunder more than twice, becoming even tougher. It is not unheard of for a player to load all four characters' inventories with healing items... and end up using almost every single one.
  • The Barrier Trio, later in the game, are also a pain. They're a group of three stone guardians who completely negate all offensive PSI, and have devastating PSI of their own. Just for the final touch, when you're about to finish them, they throw the all-powerful PK Starstorm at you.
  • The fight with the Masked Man at the temple of the sixth Needle. You have to fight him after going through tougher Pork Troopers and he can consecutively attack, destroy your shields, and use high-level PSI. It doesn't help that the only remotely close place to heal before going into the two-part battle is fairly easy to miss. You have to make do with whatever you've got left after struggling through the area, which is rare for this game, as bosses tend to be tough enough at full strength.
  • New Fassad utterly decimates a good portion of players on their first time through, probably because his attacks hit everybody at once, and he can barrage you with status effects: fleas, forgetfulness, and uncontrollable crying, among others. And just when you think you're making a considerable hole in his HP...Fassad ate a Miracle Banana! and he gets back about 500 health points. He's sort of like the Clumsy Robot to players who are just picking up on the series, but sadly, his healing is no fakeout.
    • Miracle Fassad is much worse. He's even more fond of status effects, and has moves like PK Starstorm, which do obscene damage, affect everyone, and can prevent a character from attacking. He also has some 5000 HP, and can use Luxury Bananas ON TOP OF an attack, so you'll get scenes like Fassad used PK Starstorm >> Fassad ate a Luxury Banana >> Fassad restored 587 HP!
  • Mr. Passion is a nasty "Wake-Up Call" Boss. Aside from dealing a lot of damage normally, once you get him down to about 1/3 health, he Turns Red and gets a massive attack power boost. Without making the most of Duster's special moves, you're going down. Level Grinding and Thunder Bombs will only get you so far here.
  • The Pork Tank is bad enough on regular difficulty, with the nearly useless Salsa, the Squishy Wizard Kumatora, and the powerful but uncontrollable Wess fighting it. It has a powerful cannon that takes off 40 HP a shot even if you decrease its offense (both characters have about 100 HP at this point), an attack that damages both Kumatora and Salsa, and an attack that makes both your characters cry. On Hard Mode, where the HP of all enemies is doubled, it becomes an unholy killing machine with 3400+ HP. Here, it's a guarantee that Kumatora will run out of PP less than halfway through the fight. It really comes down to Wess being useful with his attacks, which he usually isn't. Salsa, however, can actually imitate that tank pretty darn well with his overlooked Monkey Mimic, which is actually more like Poo's "Mirror" from EarthBound. Of course, you don't really think to make Salsa shoot cannonballs from nowhere right away.
  • The Jealous Bass, fought in the Titiboo Attic. It comes with two flunkies, and combos with them to hit Lucas and Boney several times with each attack. If you take out the mooks, the Bass gets angrier and powers up, getting even stronger. Just to add to that, Lucas' PSI is very limited, consisting of weak healing and one offensive attack.

Mario RPG's

• Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars
  • The most notable one is Bundt, a cake that comes to life and attacks you for no reason. It straddles the line between either ridiculously easy or extraordinarily hard to kill, with almost no space in between, depending on your characters' level (and more specifically, their defensive stat). Unlike all other bosses, Bundt has no HP - you have to knock out all of its 5 candles and then hit it once. One attack from you knocks out one candle regardless of attack power, one attack from Bundt restores one candle. You have three characters, the cake has two parts and thus regenerates two candles per turn. If you can manage having everyone in your party attack each round, the fight will be over in 4 rounds (well, the first part of the fight, but after that the more conventional second part is a pushover). Of course, that means you have to be able to tank 4 consecutive rounds of pretty hefty magic without healing once, so...
  • If you haven't leveled up enough during the first part, Croco can really drive you mad, especially since he can heal himself. And he's the second mini-boss in the game, not counting Bowser.
  • Bowyer, the second boss, mainly because he can shut off one of your attack, magic, or item commands for several turns. First, he'll shut of your attack ability forcing you drain your limited magic points to zero, while he continues to attack you with powerful magic that hits your entire party and keeping your attack ability locked, leaving you helpless. Then, when you're low in health and magic points and need to use your items to recover, he'll switch on your attack ability and seal your item ability, which prevents you from healing, and forces you to continue fighting him while you're exhausted. Finally, if you're still alive after all of this, he'll repeat his pattern until you eventually win or lose the battle.
  • Yaridovich completely counts for this, as right after you get the star from Star Hill and return to Seaside Town, he takes it and you have to beat him to get it back. So how tough is he? His health and attack are both extremely high for that point in the game, he has powerful magic attacks that like Water Blast which hit your entire party For Massive Damage, and he can also put negative statuses on your characters for good measure. If that's not enough, he can also duplicate and use his moves twice in a row, and only the real Yaridovich takes actual damage until he decides to heal himself. When the duplicate is eventually destroyed, he can bring it back and make the fun start all over again. This is a sign that the game isn't messing around anymore, and that constantly attacking over and over again isn't going to win every battle.
  • The Axem Rangers are plenty tough, considering there are five of them, and each one has a different variety of attacks, including Axem Pink's number of healing spells; not attacking her first is insanity. And even after beating all of them, they "combine" with their Zord/warship thing for one more go, using the insanely powerful Breaker Beam attack, which will lay waste to all members of your party not wearing the Lazy Shell, though fortunately it takes a turn to recharge before firing again.
  • She may look and act the part of a stereotypical Rich Bitch Smug Snake, but you better not underestimate Valentina because she's a powerful mage who's backed up by some truly unfair gimmicks. Remember how terrifying Yaridovich's Water Blast was? She has it too, along with other scary spells such as the sleep-inducing Aurora Flash and Petal Blast to turn all your party members into helpless mushrooms. Her flunky Dodo will also kidnap the party member you have standing in the middle and force them into a one-on-one battle against him that's easy to lose because of his strength and bulk. And if you lose that fight? Game over. Even though you have two party members that are still standing. And when you beat him, it takes a while for the kidnapped party member to return to the group, meaning that you spend a few turns fighting Valentina with only two party members instead of the usual three.
• The Huff 'N Puff fight from Paper Mario. Huff 'N Puff is a giant cloud, and every time you hurt him, tiny little cloud baddies pop out of him. If you don't get rid of the tiny clouds by his next turn, he swallows them up and heals himself. And because the most optimal way to fight him is to use party-hitting moves like Mario's Multibounce and Lakilester's Spiny Surge, he always has a group of Tuff Puffs on standby for some easy healing. Also, he has a devastating electric attack, and often charges himself up so it will shock you if you jump on him. Truly one of the more irritating bosses in the game.
  • The Crystal King is no slouch. He doesn't really rely on one gimmick, either; he has a powerful healing move that can undo multiple turns worth of damage (which he can spam), he can split into copies, and his attacks really hurt (one can even freeze, taking Mario out for 2 turns at a time).
  • The Lava Piranha is guaranteed to take multiple tries to beat. His first form can hit reliably hard, and takes a while to kill. One you kill him, the battle seemingly ends until the thing bursts out of the floor again. Now, he's gotten a significant power boost, even more HP, and is on fire, making contact attacks impossible.
  • Jr. Troopa can get quite tough in later fights, mostly by changing his attack styles radically. Some of his forms include growing bat wings and a spike on his head, making him immune to conventional hammer and jump attacks, and getting a magic wand, which lets him hit tremendously hard.
  • Despite being black and grey Palette Swaps of bog-standard Shy Guys, Anti Guys are scary. Their attacks deal 10 damage at the weakest and 12 at the strongest, which is a ton in a game where your HP maxes out at 50. And because they have 50 HP, they can take a lot of punishment before dying. The first one you can fight is encountered in Chapter 4 (where your health is around 20, maybe 30 at the highest) but can thankfully be skipped if you bribe him with some Lemon Candy or ignore him if you don't care about the badge he's guarding. But if you mess up on the second quiz in Bowser's Castle (or lose on purpose to see what happens), you're forced to fight three at the same time. That's 150 total HP, and you taking 30 damage per turn at the minimum. If you somehow beat them, then Bowser will most certainly feel like a joke in comparison.
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has the Bowser and Kammy fight, which can be ridiculous if you are unprepared for it. Basically you have to go through Grodus (a normally tough fight on his own), followed immediately after--with no gameplay break and no chance to heal or save--by Bowser and Kammy, who can each hit hard and thanks to Kammy's presence heal. Have your Star Points in or around the 90s so that when you beat Grodus, the Level Up makes sure you're in tip-top shape for the next battle.
  • Cortez is often considered one of the harder bosses. His health seems low at first... until you realize that he has three forms AND gets a free health refill in the third form, meaning you have to deplete his health bar four times over. His first form is easy, but his second form has a nasty charged attack that can take out large chunks of valuable health. This pales in comparison to his last, and longest, form where he hides behind his four floating swords which all attack you at once, meaning he can land five attacks in one turn if you aren't careful.
    • By the way, the floating weapons all count as spiked enemies AND flying enemies. This means none of your partners can deal damage to them without special moves, and only three of them can damage Cortez while the weapons remain (Mario's hammer doesn't work either). So you had better pray to God that you have Spike Guard (allows Mario to jump on Spiked enemies) equipped or you're screwed. Oh, and one of the weapons can poison you and almost all of them have fairly tricky timing for their attacks that makes dodging and preventing against that poisoning difficult (due to the relatively low amount of HP you get in this game, poisoning is a very serious problem).
    • Your best bet against Cortez is Vivian and her Fiery Jinx move, which can disable all of his final form's weapons at once. The only downside to this is Fiery Jinx eats up lots of Flower Points very quickly...
  • Gloomtail in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon is a real nasty thing that you'd only know about in passing if you bothered to listen to the storyteller, as otherwise the encounter with this beast is a shocker. This battle doesn't have any special gimmick to it, he just hits real hard. This guy has a lot of HP, has several, very powerful attacks and good defensive power. Several of his attacks (particularly his earthquake), are very difficult to dodge, and Goombella outright tells you to use Vivian's Veil to completely avoid his MegaBreath, which is extremely powerful. Your HP will constantly plummet troughout the fight, so players shouldn't be shocked if they end up using half their inventory healing all the damage this guy does.
  • The Final Boss, the Shadow Queen, is also particularly nasty. Excluding the Bonus Boss, she has the highest HP count of the game (150. For the record, neither of the previous bosses ever broke 80 HP), she has flunkies in the form of her hands, which possess an extremely annoying and difficult to guard attack that drains your HP for the boss, she can inflict various status effects (including poison and infatuation), she can boost herself for a while and can get as many as 3 attacks in per turn because of her hands. The hands themselves have low HP, but they'll just keep reviving every turn if you keep killing them, which is practically mandatory as the boss hits hard enough on her own. This results in a long and arduous fight in which you play the role of the healer that occasionally pitches in while you support a Partner with multi-targeting attacks (preferably Vivian for her Fiery Jinx).
• Although most of the bosses of Super Paper Mario are relative pushovers (especially when compared to some other examples in the RPG predecessors of the series), Mimi can give people a major headache the second time you fight her in Sammer's Kingdom. She's even worse the third time you fight her. First, she crawls on the ceiling and spits out Rupees. You need to pick one up and hit her with it from below, then jump on her. Easy enough, right? Well, this process has to be repeated eight times. You have a very small frame of time in which you can jump on her, and if you don't do it in time, then she starts throwing the Rupees, which are much harder to dodge. Though you can hit her while she's doing this, it's a lot tougher to do, and defending will be your highest priority. Each gem does 4 damage per hit, which really adds up. Even if you're good at avoiding damage, it's a very time-consuming fight that will likely leave you wondering just when the hell she's gonna die.
• Every boss in Paper Mario Sticker Star could potentially qualify if you fight them without using the appropriate Thing sticker. But these few put up a hell of a fight, even with their weakness in play.
  • Tower Power Pokey is a nasty piece of work, and a jarring leap in difficulty after Megasparkle Goomba. Megasparkle was a formidable foe due to having 90 HP, so TPP ups the ante by having 300 HP. That's a daunting number already, and since he quarters all damage dealt to him, the overgrown cactus laughs off even your strongest attacks unless you've figured out his weakness (the Bat). He can also heal himself periodically, and just in case that wasn't annoying enough? Once he starts rising from the ground, most of your hammer stickers (basically half your offensive options) become useless against him. And keep in mind that these are just his defensive capabilities: his spinning attack is hard to block, and his body slam can crumple you for a few turns. And if you're crumpled, you may as well turn off the 3DS because you've already lost: it's basically a paralysis effect commonplace in most RPG's, but with the oh-so-delightful bonus of all attacks hitting you much harder than normal on top of not being able to do anything.
  • The Big Cheep Cheep fought at Surfshine Harbor is surprisingly tough for a miniboss. It's because it's one of few bosses that are genuinely impossible to beat without their Thing weaknesses. After taking a set amount of damage, it hides underwater to recover its health and snipes you with jets of water from afar. Its weakness, the Fishhook is notorious for being difficult to find, as it's hidden behind a specific Secret Door, and is the only mandatory Thing to be hidden in such a manner. And even if you bring its weakness and yank it back ashore, you're not out of the woods yet: Big Cheep Cheep will inflate itself for three turns before exploding and instantly killing you. Now the fight becomes a race against time as you desperately try to kill an 88 HP suicide bomber before it kills itself and takes you with it.
  • This game's Bowser battle sucks. It's one thing for a final boss fight to be a genuinely challenging ordeal that tests all the skills you've honed over the course of your adventure. But it's an entirely different thing for it to be an obtuse, unbalanced slog of a Puzzle Boss. There's a lot to cover here, so strap yourself in.
    • Bowser's health pool is insane. None of the bosses before him had HP higher than 400. But Bowser? He's got nearly 1000, spread over two massive health bars covering his first four phases, and then the last. And like the other non-Megasparkle Goomba bosses, he quarters all damage dealt to him.
    • He's spiked, meaning you can't jump on him unless you're using Metal Boots. And if you're expecting a warning beforehand, don't. The game never tells you that half your attacks will be useless against him. This is especially frustrating because Bowser wasn't spiked in past games, which can catch series veterans off guard.
    • His first phase has him hiding behind three randomly selected enemies. Not only are they an annoying source of extra damage, but you'll be wasting stickers better used against Bowser on them since you can't specifically target him until they're all dead. Killing them all at once is nearly impossible since he's almost guaranteed to have a flying enemy among his guards, and he'll replace any you defeat. If you don't know to use Tape or the Stapler to lock the doors the enemies come from, you won't even see the next four phases.
    • For his second, he hides behind a Whomp that cuts all damage he takes down to 1. Not an overly hard phase, but the fact that you need a specific type of standard sticker to knock over the Whomp is annoying.
    • The third phase has a swarm of Podoboos helping Bowser, and when they attack you'll take a ton of damage, even if you're blocking! Their weakness being frozen with the Fridge or Shaved Ice won't actually remove them from the fight, meaning that you need to deal over a hundred damage over a small amount of turns before they jump back into the fray and burn you to cinders.
    • Phase 4 is the easiest since you can end it in one turn, but the solution using the Tail sticker to knock the Chain Chomp into Bowser isn't immediately obvious, forcing you to deal with an invincible minion guarding Bowser while you try to figure out just what the hell you need to do.
    • Finally, Phase 5 starts as a Hopeless Boss Fight before Kersti evens the odds with her sacrifice. But even with her help, Bowser goes from "impossible" to "just BARELY possible". He's got 500 HP. His attacks can burn several stickers to ash or crumple you if you fail to guard. You've likely used up half your sticker album just getting here. Good luck.
• The Ice Vellumental and Tape in Paper Mario: The Origami King are both very irritating for their ability to restrict Mario's actions drastically: the Ice Vellumental's last phase uses Ice Maze that forces a single valid path to attack it, failing to find the correct path with ring rotations meaning wasting your turn, and Tape's Roll Out can be even worse depending on how much the Random Number God hates you, sometimes blocking the access to the Fire Vellumental magic circle (thus leaving no way to remove all the duct tape) and even locking the entire ring in place in a few cases and leaving Mario with no option at all, until it decides to re-absord the duct tape and heal all the self-inflicted damage from Roll Out.
  • Scissors. Why, you may ask? Well, his fighting style is the logical conclusion that comes from being a giant, living pair of scissors in a world of paper characters: every attack of his is a One-Hit Kill. They come out fast, but you don't want to rely entirely on quick reflexes because he'll occasionally throw in a delayed attack to trip you up. Your options for fighting him are also limited exclusively to hammers, because jump attacks will lead to Mario being snipped apart by his blades. The one silver lining is that the fight doesn't start this way, since the battle begins with his blades in a sheath. But once it comes off, playtime is over.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has Mom Piranha, who is not only tough herself, but spawns two smaller Piranha Plants. Which wouldn't be so bad, except the only way to win the battle is to attack Mom directly, whereupon the two smaller plants both spit fire/lightning at both Mario and Luigi. There's no real way to predict which brother is going to be attacked by which plant, unlike every other enemy in the game up to that point, and the attacks seem to vary timing to make them hard to dodge. Meanwhile, Mom regenerates health constantly, creates new Piranhas any time the old ones die, and has a powerful vine sweep attack that will trip the brothers if they're hit and open them up to even more damage.
  • Actually the Piranha Plant underlings tilt their head towards their target (i.e. up for Mario, left for Luigi), but the spastic barrage of attacks you'll face while battling their Mom could still foul your timing.
  • Trunkle. The thing has crazy defense, so that your moves which do twenty to thirty damage to normal enemies does... 3 damage, maybe 6 if you get a Lucky shot, on him. Plus every other turn, he'll inhale enemies to heal himself, and do damage to you if you don't jump properly. Eventually he breaks apart, but that's not the end of it - he's now four tiny Trunkles, and if you don't guess which one is the real Trunkle and defeat it first, he reforms and you have to start all over again! Attacking the tree on top of his head does shorten the battle, but it causes Trunkle's defense to skyrocket.
  • The Piranha Bean. It has a very low HP count for a boss, but it more than makes up for it by the fact that it has insanely high defense (like plenty of bosses do in the late game). This is because you're facing it on solo with Luigi, who is the slower and offensively weaker of the two bros. Trying to take it out with anything other than Thunder is suicidal. Getting hit once by this guy probably means you'll have to waster your precious turn to heal, and unless you smart up and spot the differences between the two versions of his attack, you'll probably get hit again and have to waste another turn to heal. This fight can feel like a Marathon Boss simply becaue of how slow progress is made, and it doesn't help the fight comes out of nowhere.
• Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time has Elder Princess Shroob, who's an incredibly difficult final boss for several reasons: A) she is Nightmare Fuel incarnate for Mario's target audience; B) she is comprised of seven different targets--though thankfully you only need to attack three of them; C) she, unfortunately, has incredibly high defense for those three targets you need to hit; D) those three targets need to be attacked in order, otherwise you won't make any progress; E) only the final target's HP counts, the previous two need to be disabled just to expose the weak point, and they can and probably will revive; F) she has incredibly difficult-to-dodge and powerful attacks that can take down one pair of Mario Bros. with ease; and G) she comes after two other bosses, who--thanks to their high HP and powerful attack--can easily make you use up a lot of your healing and Bros. items. An even-leveled player can easily spend upwards of twenty minutes to half an hour on this final battle. An underleveled player... well, let's just say it balloons into full-blown Marathon Boss territory.
  • And of course those bosses had their HP lowered in the Japanese release.
• Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story continues the trend with the final boss, Dark Bowser and Dark Fawful Bug. Now, neither is difficult to dodge attack wise, not particularly hard to damage, but they take forever to kill. First it's Bowser vs Dark Bowser, then at 1000 damage he heals, throws a whole bunch of enemies, you have to dodge pretty much all of them and said boss himself to reach him, then hit his stomach, then suck up the Fawful Bug... and Mario and Luigi THEN get their turn. The bug thing himself has three legs, two glasses and the Dark Star as targets, so Mario and Luigi have to destroy all the legs and the glasses to reach the star... get about two turns of attacks against him, then it repeats from the first Bowser phase.
  • One of the toughest bosses for Mario and Luigi is midway through the game when you reach Bowser's brain and fight copies of yourselves called Memory M and Memory L and yes, they are hard. Remember in the old days how cool it felt to grow to Super Mario or Luigi, or to get a Super Star and become invincible and run through your enemies for massive damage? Well that's about to bite you in the rear pretty hard when these guys do it to you constantly through the fight, which means if you're not good at perfectly dodging or countering attacks at this point, you're pretty much screwed. Also for more fun, their stats are similar to yours, meaning that Memory M is offensive with more speed and Memory L is defensive with more health. Memory L also doubles as the medic, so if you knock out Memory M, he will just revive his fallen brother. Naturally, you would think to defeat Memory L first to prevent him from recovering his brother, but that's easier said than done since he's based off of Luigi, who hates to fight, he will often run off of the screen until his brother faints and remaining completely invulnerable until he returns to the battle. This fight is usually the most remembered in the entire game, not just because of a nostalgia factor, but also because of how difficult it is.
  • Junker. It seems like a standard Flunky Boss, but then he sucks Luigi up and sticks him inside one of the Junker Cans. While Luigi is in the can, you have to keep track of which can holds him and destroy it. All the while, the Junker and the cans are hitting you with powerful attacks, as well as the cans frequently swapping Luigi around. Also, the cans have at least three turns worth of HP, and if Mario goes down, the battle ends. Also, by the time you finally get Luigi out, he's almost guaranteed to do it again. Did I mention that's one of the few attacks in the game that's completely unavoidable?
  • The Fawful Express. It's only attackable with the flame attack, has a semi turn timer you need to defeat it in, the mountain halfway through also becomes a giant mech and there are at least four different attacks to dodge. Since the flame attack is controlled by the DS microphone, it can be difficult to get full damage on your attacks, and the train likes to heal while it's in the mecha. Also, since the flame attack involves blowing into the microphone as hard as possible, you're going to end up pretty darn lightheaded which makes focusing harder.
  • Every boss can feel like this (some more than others), along with Marathon Boss, if you're going for a Challenge Medal run. The Challenge Medal is an optional equipment piece that highly increases every enemy's stats, but increases the coin prize at the end of each battle by 1.5. Combined with a low-level run (in order to get the Easter Egg at the end for doing so), this can take already hard bosses' difficulty to ridiculous levels, also making Gauntlet battles outright Unwinnable because of their turn limit. Note that the Medal also affects Bowser, who has it worse because he's on his own. Using the Medal, unless you're an expert at dodging/blocking everything (and really, you should be since you're the one who decided to go full-game with it), then you're in for quite a few moments of frustration. Enjoy the Junker.

World of Mana

• Spiky Tiger in Secret of Mana, particularly notorious because he's the third boss in the game. (Of course, part of the reason he's so tough is because magic is overpowered, and he's the strongest boss in the game before magic is available to the player.) He jumps around the arena, with each jump knocking off huge amounts of HP and being extremely difficult to avoid. Occasionally, he'll roll into a ball and ricochet around the room or chew on one of your party members for a while, both of which do unreasonable amounts of damage. Every now and then, when he feels like adding in an extra bit of suffering, he'll jump onto a ledge in the room and attack with fire spells, which paralyze and damage whoever they hit. Just to add to it, if you haven't leveled up the bow or boomerang any, you won't be able to damage him when he's on the ledges.
  • Biting Lizard, which is right after Spiky Tiger, is a deceptively long boss. Most guides will tell you it has about 300HP. Except it heals itself three times to almost full HP. And it has a habit of chewing on one of your characters for a decent amount of damage for a while.
  • The Fire Gygas right after Spikey Tiger is this too for a player who hasn't learned to magic spam. All gygases count if you don't use magic. They very frequently change into an unhittable vapor, often magic spamming the player instead.
  • Boreal Face, the souped up Palette Swap of Tropicallo, has an enormously high magic defense. Up until this point the player was probably relying on magic for quick boss fights. Boreal Face actually will still have more than half its HP left by the time you unloaded Popi's MP (included using Faerie Walnuts).
  • Magic is so overpowered in Secret Of Mana that one of the hardest bosses in the game was the vampire, purely because the mechanics of the fight made spamming his magical weakness difficult. This guy can kill a full HP party member with a single spell, sometimes 2 members if you are a bit underleveled.
  • The Snap Dragon has the ability to eat players, which not only almost certainly kills them, but restores its health in the process. To make matters worse, if you don't walk out the front door of the Grand Palace and save, you will end up doing it all over again if you lose.
• The sequel, Seiken Densetsu 3, has one of these for each character path:
  • Duran/Angela: The Darkshine Knight. Being a super-powered version of Duran's class, he also has 2 of Duran's strongest techs: Vacuum Sword and Eruption Sword. Both can peg your whole party for 300-600 HP, which will kill you if you're not at or near full HP. Actually beating him basically comes down to him not using his Techs twice in a row, because if he does, you die, no ifs ands or buts.
  • Hawk/Lise: Bigieu. She transforms into a cat-like creature right when the fight starts, giving her some nasty physical attacks including Rose Highclaw; it's not really a One-Hit Kill, but it does so much damage so quickly that it might as well be. Add that to the fact that she can heal herself and drain HP with Moon Saber, and you've got yourself That One Boss.
  • Kevin/Carlie: Fallen Cleric Heath. Not as powerful as the other two, per se, but he's notable for simply being so tough to kill. He has no elemental weakness, is immune or resistant to almost all magic, and he can use several summons from both Carlie's and Lise's movesets, including Marduk (which causes silence in addition to doing multi-target damage). It also seems that some developer added an extra 0 to his HP, as his fight seems to take longer than any other fight in the game, including the final bosses.
  • The Kevin/Carlie path also gets to fight Deathjester, his Monster Clown dragon. At the start of the fight, he splits off two invincible copies, forcing you to guess which one can actually be hurt. Even when you do find the one you can damage, you have to hope that the game's auto-target system for physical attacks figures out which one you're going fo. While you do that, he's casting all sorts of nasty spells to hit you with debilitating status effects like Snowman and Mute, which at the worst will completely incapacitate one of your characters, and he's always casting. Oh, and did we forget to mention his instant-death spell? The one he likes to use three times in a row?
  • Moon God-Beast Dolan. Aside from being one of the stronger God-Beasts overall, when his HP gets low, he will use this attack called Spiral Moon that in addition to being his strongest attack, temporarilly LOWERS your max HP. Darkness God-Beast Zable Fahr, being the last one you fight, will also be quite the challenge, even though you get a class upgrade, which you will be very grateful you got, before you fight it. First you fight these two heads that hit you with stat lower and status effet moves (special and magic attacks in the Seiken Densetsu / World of Mana series can't be dodged, so you can't do much about them), and then the real monster head appears and revives them. If you kill the two weaker heads, the main one will revive them, so only attack the main one, which the death of will kill the other two. The main head will attack with powerful dark elemental attacks, very nasty when coupled with the stat lower attacks the other two heads, and has the spell that kills a character instantly if his/her level is lower then Zable Fahr's.
• Legend of Mana tries to avoid making baddies too difficult; either placing new lands close to home, or learning blacksmithing will let you through nearly everything. If you don't, though, it can get very ugly. Irwin essentially spams an area of effect power that fills the entire screen. The dragons hit a bit too hard to be fair. But the worst is the Sierra and Vadise fight. Large area of effect powers, some of which cause the player to fall asleep, nasty amounts of health, and you can only bring one ally where you'd normally get two. Even better, they get back up if you don't beat them both at the same time.
  • Tropicallo is pretty ridiculous. You can only damage it by destroying two flowers which respawn at a set rate, and one of these flowers has a self-destruct with a large range -- one corner is usually safe, but if you're unlucky the flower can get slightly out of position and blast you anyway. On No Future, the hardest difficulty level, this fight goes from "hard" to "utterly insane", as the explosion is a one-hit kill on just about anything, even from 999 HP, and Tropicallo's life bar is huge.

Other Role-Playing Games

• In Monster Hunter Tri, every boss can be this if you don't have the right equipment. However, there's the Deviljho, a monster who has incredible amounts of health, deals high damage, and will repeatedly force a restart (regardless of what armor/weapons you have). Even with sleep bombing, traps, and a heavy supply of afflicted meats, this monster is nearly unstoppable.
  • There are many other examples in the series. Special mention goes to Tigrex, Rajang (especially the Golden Rajang), Diablos and the infamous Plesioth
• Perfect World has, among others, the Nightspike Bloodguard (previously called the Mantavip Scout). The problem with it is, not only is it extremely strong, very hard to tank (he uses magic attacks, which will kill a barbarian, and arcane classes don't have that much health), but it has 2 Dragon of the Depths as pets. That's 2 more bosses, swimming around it and killing your party along with those damn water casts. Oh, and he has AoE. And so do the Dragons.
• Draconis the brown dragon, from Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, is widely considered one of the most frustrating enemies of the game despite the fact that his storyline role is essentially that of a door guard for his Evil Overlord father (who is considerably less difficult, as is every other boss in this extremely poorly balanced expansion). The problem with Draconis is that by the time you encounter him, you probably think you have dragon-slaying down to a science. Then you find yourself facing a dragon with high-level spellcasting abilities, who can buff and protect himself in ways that other dragons can't. And to top it off, he's the second part of a Sequential Boss fight that begins with his human form, meaning that any short-term buffs that you cast on your party before the battle will fade before or soon after he goes draconic on you.
  • Sendai is quite difficult, as she has seven statues of high level warriors, each of which results in two Drow arriving after it's defeated. You will defeat around 20 powerful enemies before even facing Sendai.
• Wild ARMs 2 features Kanon, who is easily That One Boss though she joins her party after you fight her three times. Her attacks, each of them, are infinitely useable, occur at random, and deliberately overpowered. The two strongest of them are her favorite ones to use, and each are capable of one-shotting the lowest defense characters of your party. The fun part? She's in the middle of the first disk. The bosses that you fight after her aren't nearly as difficult, which disqualifies her as a "Wake-Up Call" Boss.
• Unlimited Saga has Basil Galeos, especially since you have to fight 2 other enemies before fighting him the first time. Shadow Breath can instantly lop off LP and he can use Tail Lash/Dragon Tail to hit all allies, and he can Combo his own attacks making it even more difficult and devastating.
• The first Baten Kaitos has two fights with the three Empire generals - Giacomo, Folon, and Ayme - that are universally considered ridiculous for taking place within situations designed to screw the player over. For the first fight, you can get yourself trapped on the enemy airship with no way to level up; for the second fight, you're required to fight them twice in a row, without a break in between. Thankfully, the game has the mercy to fully heal you between the fights.
  • Fadroh has a special move called Orb of Magical Offense that will boost his stats to insane levels, allowing him to destroy your party and turn an otherwise-unremarkable boss fight into a Curb Stomp Battle. The only way to prevent him from using this move is...by killing him before he does so. It is entirely random whether he will or not. It's not impossible to beat him, of course... Just ungodly hard enough so that the next boss, listed here as well, of course, is EASIER.
  • The fight with the Angel of Darkness combines this trope with Climax Boss. He has a ridiculously long combo attack (8 attacks, in a game where 5 hits is a very long combo for an enemy), which he always finishes with one of two moves. The first is Binding Winds, which inflicts paralysis, a status condition so ridiculously overpowered it puts even the paralysis in Final Fantasy I to shame - in large part because it nullifies the character's defensive ability. The second is Fangs of Darkness, which causes him to be healed by the amount of damage he just did in that combo. Not in that attack, in that combo. And after you get him down to around half health, he Turns Red, and uses this combo twice per turn. If he decides to use Fangs of Darkness on a paralyzed character, well, fuck.
  • The boss of Zosma Tower, Ungyo and Agyo. Two giant dog-golems that pull the same trick Fadroh pulls; at first they seem easy, but then they buff themselves to ungodly levels. One buffs attack, while the other buffs defense. They're not as hard as Fadroh, mostly due to being easier to counter (fire and water), but they both have a mountain of hit points and are murder for an unprepared player. Just to top it off, Agyo also has A-Up Pentagram, which deals ridiculously high damage to a single character, and they both can inflict their element's status effect with their finishers (Pillar of Flames - Flames, Pillar of Ice - Frozen).
  • One-Winged Angel Geldoblame. Aside from the oft-mentioned Squick, this is a tough boss. For starters, he's quite fond of the One-Hit Kill attack Forfeit Your Life. He's also one of the few bosses that can heal himself, and he does so almost every turn. However, what really makes him tough is Seal of Evil, an attack that inflicts paralysis. If he uses Forfeit Your Life on a paralyzed character, they can't defend and are most likely going down.
  • Malpercio is the last major boss fight in the game. He still deserves to be here. His first form isn't hard at all, but his second form is nightmarish. He can do tremendous damage and move twice per turn, which is all to be expected. But, he's also a Barrier Change Boss. Ever tried resisting and damaging all six elements? Also, as you wear him down, eventually he Turns Red and busts out Enchanted Blade, which replenishes his health based upon the damage the player takes. If you can't kill him within a couple of turns after he starts using that attack, you will not be able to win. Oh, and if you can't reduce his life from 10,000 (he has 20,000) to 0 in one turn, he uses Enchanted Blade on all 3 of your characters in a single turn. This makes him the only boss in the game that gets three turns in a row (even if only once in the battle). Unless you are loaded up with some of the Game Breaker healing items (Deluxe Sushi or Wonder Momos), you're in for some serious pain.
• Baten Kaitos: Origins has the Holoholobird, a hard-hitting Flunky Boss. For starters, this boss is a huge difficulty spike above the last one. It hits hard and has a particularly nasty finisher, Wingflail, which knocks the whole party down and trashes your HP. Meanwhile, it constantly lays eggs, which hatch into chicks. The chicks not only hit hard, but can also heal the big bird for huge amounts of HP. Like the trio mentioned above, this also comes right after a disc swap that will trap you there without any way to train if you don't have another file on the first disc to reload from.
  • There's also Early Bird Boss Giacomo. He's the second boss in the whole game, and he attacks right as you prepare to leave Mintaka. Giacomo hits hard and fast, tearing through Sagi and Guillo's pitiful health very quickly and frequently knocking them down. Milly joins your party for the fight, but she's under the control of the AI, which is apparently too stupid to equip weapons, which makes her only useful as a meat shield. Just to top it off, your only healing items are the rather underwhelming Low Potions, the borderline-useless Herbs, and the weak revival Fate's Cordial, while your weapons and specials are severely limited. You can get a Longsword for Sagi if you know where to look, which helps out a little, but it's still a tough fight.
  • Many people found themselves stuck on the boss right before the Heart-to-Heart scene, the Godcraft. It has ridiculously strong stats, and is easily the most powerful enemy you'll face in the game (possibly even more than the final boss!). It can wipe out half of anyone's HP with a couple of normal physical attacks, and then KO them completely with a devastating finisher. It also has a finisher that will hit the entire party, meaning one of two things: everyone will be brought down into the red zone, or you'll be left with one or two devastated characters. Due to the move's damage calculations, if you've lost a character when it uses this, you're screwed, because it'll hit the two remaining characters for more HP than they have. The saving grace is that it's weak to Darkness, boiling strategy down to 'assemble Blackest Yang over and over again while praying it doesn't kill Guillo'.
  • The Black Dragon. This guy's entire shtick is his sheer power: he's one of the heaviest hitting bosses in the entire game, and also has one of the highest HP counts in the game too. He'll frequently leave someone in critical condition if not outright kill them with a single combo, and when he uses Crimson Catharsis, he'll nuke your entire party for massive damage and may leave them in flames. This battle would be nearly impossible if you didn't have the opportunity to get a Book of Mana at this point. The battle's strategy is basically to assemble the heaviest hitting light-based combo you can manage (because that's his weakness), because otherwise you'll only be chipping at his massive health while trying to keep yourself alive.
  • Quaestor Verus. Final Boss, yes, but still can go here just for being completely different from any other fight in the game. For starters, you have to fight two waves of tough machina before you get to him, and losing sends you all the way back. Also, you don't get a break in between waves, so After Combat Recovery doesn't kick in, making this the one mandatory fight where you have to think beyond the enemies you're currently fighting. Not healing and reviving before finishing a wave is insanity. Then, when you get there, you find out he's a Flunky Boss. He doesn't take damage until all the flunkies are dead, and he constantly revives them. Thought you could use Frigid Queen's Festival to annihilate him? FOOL! Thanks to the way the game's targeting system works, that'll only kill the flunkies. The boss himself will be unscathed, and your specials (and your best revival and healing) will be unavailable until the MP gauge turns back on, by which point he's almost certain to have introduced your party to his sword a few times, as well as reviving his mechanical pain dispensers.
• The sequential Big Cannons from Metal Max Returns. They shoot you while you're moving towards them on the world map, so you're not likely to start the battle with full armor. You only have two party members and maybe two player-owned tanks at this point. They can hit both party members with a single attack, and are capable of doing so twice in one turn. And they have a ridiculous amount of HP.
• Miguel in Chrono Cross, who comes with a full complement of white magic: devastating spells, buffs, debuffs, TurnBlack, and AntiBlack. And he's very good at comboing them for tremendous damage, as well as quickly turning the entire field white, which substantially boosts his already staggering magical power. And, once his HP gets low enough, he starts using HolyLight and MeteorShower. And the fight with him is preceded by a non-skippable, 3-4 minute Exposition Break, which you will read over and over and over again before you finally kill him.
  • Garai is possibly the first truly hard boss in the game. He has very strong attacks which do heavy damage to anyone. And to top it off, he is a White element, which is bad news for Serge who has recently been placed in his nemesis's body, giving him the dark element. This is probably the first boss that will wreck your main character.
  • The Hi-Ho Tank is also quite a tough boss fight. The main threat comes from its ElementShot ability, which hits characters with their elemental weakness. Most characters can't stand up to two shots from it without healing, and it has several other attacks that are too powerful to shrug off. Also, it comes with two flunkies, who will repair the tank once it starts taking serious damage.
• Magus of Chrono Trigger is very tough compared to previous bosses, with powerful magic attacks that smack your whole party for half or more of their HP and change his barriers that make him impervious to all magic damage but one element of his choosing. He uses fire, water, lightning, and shadow barriers; any magic that doesn't correspond to the barrier heals him. Crono and Frog are required for the fight, so you'll be able to hit at least two elements. The third partner is where the decision comes in; taking Lucca or Robo will let you hit a third barrier (although Laser Spin is a pretty weak attack against a boss), but this can leaves your healing weak, and you need all the healing you can get, especially once you start seeing Dark Matter; however, if you take Marle along, it'll drag the battle out a lot longer. Thankfully, they did give you a show of mercy; Magus isn't immune to physical attacks, and repeatedly attacking him will cause him to swap the barrier, although he'll make you suffer for it.
  • Giga Gaia is a giant golem you fight on top of the Mountain of Woe. You have to destroy his two hands, and then attack his head. This is easier said than done. If you leave the hands alive, they'll frequently work together to unleash a variety of powerful attacks. If you destroy them both, he'll regenerate them within a couple of turns. Just to add to that, his head has a ton of HP and his right hand will heal it.
    • The problem with Giga Gaia is, right off the bat, his hands are pretty much guaranteed to go first and unleash Double Handblaster and Dark Plasma in one turn. Without having insanely high resistance to the elements (fire and shadow), the party will be on its last legs by the time he's finished, meaning not only do you have to take out one of the hands, you have to heal before they can act again and wipe you completely.
  • The Son of Sun, fought in a late-game sidequest, will likely murder anyone who went there unprepared. The entire battle is a giant Luck-Based Mission; there are five flames that rotate around the body. One of them will damage the boss if hit, the other four will result in a swift and painful counterattack against the attacker. The boss routinely shuffles the flames at high speeds, as well as hitting the entire party with powerful fire attacks. Oh, and the battle doesn't obey the standard rules for damage: Son of Sun always takes a set amount of damage with each hit, meaning no matter how powerful you are, the battle can't be won in a few well-placed shots. Also, if you try to smartass your way around the strategy by using techs that allow you to hit all enemies, he'll unleash a devastating counterattack on your whole party. If you want to survive, either bring antifire armor or pray you can hit the right flame, because Son of Sun will wear any party down eventually.
• In Digimon World 3 there are actually several, depending on the player: all encounters with Bulbmon ( although one is technically part of the Final Boss battle and therefore exempt), Persiamon and Raidenmon.
  • Digimon World DS had a few, including Zhuqiaomon and Leviamon.
• Exo Grimmon from Digimon World Dawn/Dusk is incredibly tough despite being the final boss, his attacks are much stronger than his previous form's and often requires you to heal just to stay alive, not to mention that if you die you have to reface Chaos Grimmon who is easy in comparison
• Macha in .hack Volume 4. She has an attack which charms the entire party without fail, meaning that all you can do is watch your team beat each other up and hope they snap out of it before you get a game over.
  • Skeith in .hack Volume 1 is much worse. Three out of its four attacks are powerful enough to bring a full-health character down to under a third of its health, and of these, one hits the entire party and is impossible to dodge (IT is also percentage based so it won't outright kill you, but one of its other attacks, which it loves to use, will oneshot you afterwards). The fourth attack inflicts enough damage so that any other attack can kill, as well as causing every status effect in the game (which is the same attack that put Orca into a coma. And the attack that shows up a few more times with other bosses. Fun). And its second phase is worse than the first, considering how much faster it gets. Plus the fact that it likes randomly inflicting status effects on your party, for some reason. Hope you stocked up on revives - never mind that they were Too Awesome to Use up until now. It does not help that Skeith lurks at the end of That One Level, so you're already hurting, or that you can't Level Grind to make this battle easier; even at the game's Cap, all of the above still applies.
  • Then there's Cubia Core in .hack volume 2. It can render itself immune to all physical attacks or all magic attacks on a whim, when there's a character who has zero physical attacks forced into your party. It should also be noted that this character is a Squishy Wizard who is basically the only way to deal sufficient magical damage when Cubia Core nullifies physical attacks - "sufficient" because the bastard heals itself, repeatedly, thanks to its Repth Gohmoras that it summons. A lot. Of course, this makes them a priority target, although Cubia hardly needs it as Cubia Core has three unavoidable attacks that can easily kill said Squishy Wizard. Note that after reviving a dead character in this game, they start at 0 MP. Fun fun fun.
  • Tarvos in the fourth volume shows just how much the developers learned by repeating almost the exact same gimmick as Cubia Core. Granted, Tarvos doesn't heal itself, so it doesn't seem nearly as bad as Cubia Core...until it decides to use Cursed Death Play.
• The sequel to .hack, the .hack GU Games, has AIDA<Oswald>. She's the first AIDA boss to spend all her time on top of you at melee range, and her melee attacks are devastating and trying to attack her with a scythe while not stunned is foolish. On top of that, her bullet attacks slow you (to make you easier to smack around), her homing attacks tend to hover out of sight and swarm at an odd timing to make them harder to knock away, and her "laser" attack is a web that makes for micro-dodging hell. She'll probably be the first Avatar battle that you have to refight.
  • Corbenik the Rebirth is also a monster, thanks to the difficulty in Data Draining him.
• Dragon Age: Origins has a couple in the main game. Any time the Revenants show up can be considered this (anything but a godly build will absolutely shred you. It'll kill your damage dealers in seconds, then overwhelm your tanks with mooks). The Hermit can often be this, since he is an incredibly powerful blood mage (earlier he's fought, the harder), a LOT of scenes from Orzrammar are infuriatingly difficult, The first Ogre can be (just because he shows up so early) if the magic of kiting hasn't yet revealed itself, and notably from Orzrammar is a fight against several Yellow/orange enemies, including a Templar (who is basically a toned down Revenant with higher health/damage), a Blood Mage (who is broken by sheer merit of being a blood mage), and dangerous mooks. The original Dragon Age had a nasty habit of this trope, seing as it could be applied to a bunch of random fights (even with a perfectly optimized build, and all the broken DLC gear, there are many fights that are infuriatingly difficult for dozens of reasons).
  • The Darkspawn Chronicles has this so frequently, it can be counted as That One Dungeon.
  • Leliana's Song has the mage fights from the prison sequence. You have crappy gear (having lost the stuff you should have), a probably useless spec, and only 2 members to deal with an array of lethal mages and nigh unstoppable Mabari Warhounds. There is also the fight against an Amulet's guards.
  • The Golems of Amgarrak ALSO does this so often that it hits That One Dungeon levels, the worst example likely being a room containing four Boss-level golems with two Elite golems as backup and precious little room to maneuver. If your physical resistance isn't sky-high, expect to spend most of the fight flat on your back from a barrage of highly-damaging Slam, Quake, and Hurl attacks.
• Dragon Age II had several. The Ancient Rock Wraith at the end of Act I. It has massive health, massive armor (that only goes down after it uses a special ability), this special ability requires you to rush all your characters behind rock pillars before it vaporizes them, it's nigh impossible to kite, deals huge damage, has huge range on it's melee attack (in addition to it's ranged attack), and summons mooks (on Nightmare, the Crowd Control required to deal with them is suicide).
  • The next one is the Arishok, at the end of Act II. Normally, you fight him with your full party, against him and a bunch of backups. This is a hard, but not unbeatable fight. But, if you choose the right options, you can fight him one on one. Almost regardless of your build, this is a nigh impossible feat of kiting and endurance if playing above easy.
  • The second encounter with a huge spider is incredibly difficult. It has extremely powerful AOE attacks, can leap around, is almost impossible to tank, and summons backup.
  • The High Dragon. It's not a hard fight per se, but it takes a long time to beat. It has massive health and armor, enjoys jumping away (staggering your characters in the process), frequently flies to a remote corner to blast you from afar, and after she hits about half health, will almost CONSTANTLY flee to summon normal dragons.
  • From the Legacy DLC, we have Corypheus. The former Tevinter Magister-turned-Darkspawn Emissary hits like a bus, boxes the players in with a maze of rock spikes, and is invincible for most of the fight unless the player can both activate a series of switches spread around the arena and kill off all his minions in a short time. Why a short time, you may ask? Because you only have about 20 seconds before he hits you with a nearly unavoidable gout of flame that he'll continually sweep the field with until you take care of everything else. Did we mention that he fills the field with other hazards such as mazes and elemental traps to slow you? Or that the only safe areas on the field are extremely small spaces behind corners next to each of the switches? Or that his minions are unaffected by all of this and will try to flush you out to die? Because that's what he does.
    • Lampshaded by your party members:

Varric: What, he has fire now? Merril: He absorbed it from the statue. And later... Varric: Sweet Mother of Pearl! Hawke: Watch out for the ice! Fenris: And the rocks! Don't get too close! Varric: Okay, if he pulls a dragon out of his ass, I'm leaving.

• The fishman Gracos in Dragon Quest VII, the worst in a game full of tough bosses.
  • The Fire Elemental also deserves a mention here. When you battle him you are forced to use Maribel who at that time is far behind the rest of your and is likely to die in one hit. There is a piece of armor that can protect her from his attacks, but it's sold in a shop that is unavailable at the time of the fight. So unless you have the foresight to buy that armor ahead of time you're pretty much out of luck.
• Dhoulmagus from Dragon Quest VIII is universally considered to be the most difficult boss in the game. This boss fight consists of two consecutive confrontations with the Monster Clown, each being very difficult due to the boss' vast amount of powerful attacks, some of which have effects that haven't even been introduced in the game at that point, and ability to attack TWICE per turn. However the majority of the bosses after Dhoulmagus are also brutally unfair, with the stupid icewave move that'll obliterate your carefully built up status buffs and tension, AND multiple actions per turn. Empyrea is ungodly. Oh, and apparently she was just testing you.
• Many of the DLC Legacy Bosses in Dragon Quest IX, especially once they get to high levels.
  • Malroth loves to abuse Disruptive Wave, which removes all your buffs. All of them can eventually do this, but Malroth just does it the most often. It's not unlikely that he'll spend at least one of his 2 or 3 actions to use this 5 to 6 turns in a row.
  • Zoma is extremely fast and has a tendency to use his desperate attack more often than the others, which at high levels is a 1 hit kill.
  • Estark, at high levels, hits so hard that his normal attack becomes That One Attack, especially if he targets the same person twice in a row with it. His desperate attack is also a 1 hit kill.
  • Nokturnus, once he gets to attack three times per round, is just as bad, if not worse, than Estark. Nothing he does is a wasted turn, except for restoring his MP after flattening you with Magic Burst. His only bright point is that if you know his pattern, you can see it coming and prepare. Unless you abuse the Paladin's overpowered Knight Watch, defeating him, even with your entire team possessing every passive stat boost possible and their level at 99, is a Luck-Based Mission. Same with Estark.
• The two dragons guarding the entrance to the Final Boss encounter in Neverwinter Nights. One dragon is a massive pain in the ass to fight. Two are just ridiculous.
• Neverwinter Nights 2 has the three Shadow Reavers shortly before the final boss. They ambush you on a narrow bridge, blocking your escape on both sides and severely limiting your mobility. If your melee warriors are on the wrong side of your spellcasters, you're SOL. They are immune to most types of attack, and will continually regenerate until one of the characters speaks the words of power to make them vulnerable (this must be done for each Reaver). Only two characters can do this, and one of them is the party's only cleric, so that character is out of commission for several rounds while speaking the words, and can't cast the all-important Mass Heal. If the character is damaged while speaking the words and fails their Concentration check, they have to start over. Meanwhile, the Reavers emit a shock wave every time they regenerate, knocking your party down and stunning them for a round. This fight is virtually impossible to win unless you specifically prepare your party's spells and items for it in advance, and even then it will often take several tries.
• The Queen Bee in E.V.O: Search For Eden, for being a flying tank, essentially, with an uncharacteristically erratic flight pattern. Also, the Mother Yeti, for doing heaps of damage and causing knockback.
  • The Yeti in the next stage is a real bastard, too.
• Legend of Legaia has the Berserker. A monster so powerful that it will give you nightmares--a hideous giant green mantis driven to the brink of insanity and over by the corrupting power of the Mist, it lurchs about with ridiculously powerful strikes and gives you the previously unseen status effect, Rot, which blanks out random attack commands.
  • The battles against Gaza later in the game were also insanely hard. The second fight was especially hard if he abused his attack-all move, Neo Star Slash, which did over 1,000 HP each time. Underleveled players will likely see Fragile Speedster Noa going down in one hit every time from this move.
  • Elfin, from the sequel. You need to be at at least level 9 so you can get a fourth art block, otherwise (and even then!) she will destroy you. And by "destroy you", I mean "Wreck you with so much imputy and horror that it almost feels like the game is telling you 'you're not strong enough. Go grind.'" It's almost like she's an overglorified Beef Gate who attacks you for no reason and whose death throws you into a Hopeless Boss Fight and then a jail cell. Doesn't help that she's the second boss in the game, you only have one party member, and he hasn't unlocked his Origin yet.
• The Renegades in Paladin's Quest, a pair of nasty sword-wielding bosses whose attacks can quickly shave off large chunks of your party's HP.
• Verminator in Secret of Evermore, whose devastating spells can wreak havoc on an unprepared party. Because he's up on a big stack of boxes, your melee attacks can't reach him. By the way, your "party" is two characters, one of which is your dog who only has a close-range melee attack and is therefore worthless. The only attacks that can hit him are spells, and charged spear attacks, so we hope you've grinded some offensive magic or raised up a spear a level or two.
  • Salabog is another one. Most of the time its spent out of range; you can only hit it while it dives in, and that's a hit on your part if you don't do it right. You also probably don't have enough ingredients to pound it away with alchemy. You can use your newly acquired spear as well. But the kicker is that Salabog has 2000 HP, and is the second actual boss. Thraxx has 600 HP.
  • Rimsala is also the next one up. It has a short window of vulernability. There's also four statues near where Rimsala stays at during this time and they spam Flash. Despite Flash being a weaker spell at this point in the game, it's overpowered. You can outrun Flash though.
• Dugog from Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords. He's the first storyline boss you face, has a weapon that randomly does + 12 extra damage, gets an extra turn every time he gains gold, and sports the Double Roar spell which is capable of killing you instantly. And at this point in the game, you probably won't have the stats or equipment to beat Dugog on anything other than luck or serious Level Grinding.
• SaGa Frontier's Green Sage, featured in Asellus' quest. Wouldn't be so tough if you had time to prepare, but the boss can come at any time, without warning, ready or not. Some players suddenly found themselves in an Unwinnable situation after saving at a low level and, no longer being able to leave to do any Level Grinding without fighting the boss, were forced to start over from the beginning.
• Star Ocean: The Second Story has Vesper and Decus in Fienal/Phynal. First, they're the first boss fight that the bosses have voices in, and they taunt you to start: "You insignificant bugs!" and "I WILL BURN YOU TO THE BONE!" They then proceed to do just that, with Decus throwing out a fire-based physical attack that is easily capable of one-shotting the whole party and Vesper backing him up with a beam move which hits multiple times and causes status ailments. Add to this the fact that Level Grinding takes forever in the area since the random fights don't give a whole lot of experience, and you've got a recipe for good old fashioned controller throwing.
  • There's also the Bark which has high health, defense, and only one attack called "Lost Patience" (how appropriate) which hits the entire screen and the team for an incredible amount of damage. Later you can go to The Cave Of Trials, and find out it has an evolved form which is a boss of one the floors, and then becomes a regular enemy on later floors which takes this fight Up to Eleven.
• There's the Grigori bosses in Star Ocean: The Last Hope who are all pretty much That One Boss because by the time you encounter them, they'll usually be tons more difficult than anything else you've faced in the area they appear and they have certain points on their bodies which must be hit if you are to do anything resembling decent damage. It doesn't help with the fact that said weak spots are pretty much stupidly difficult to unveil, let alone hit.
  • The Phantom Soldiers on your second visit to the first planet are an awful test of endurance. You fight eight waves in a row with no break, and while it's pretty hard to do any solid damage to them, they can certainly hurt you.
    • It isn't the damage that's the problem, it's the fact that they can spam a range attack that can stun you and interrupt your casters. The biggest problem, however, is the Leaders, who have an aura buff that makes the soldiers hard to kill. The trick is to Dispel it.
• In Alundra, the Soul Leach from Giles' Nightmare easily counts as this, considering it already has the rare honor of combining "Wake-Up Call" Boss and Early Bird Boss the first time you fight it in Kline's Nightmare before it escapes. In Kline's nightmare, you had to protect Kline from being swallowed by the soul leach since any damage done to him would hurt you too because you are inside of Kline's subconscious dream. In Giles' nightmare, this is taken Up to Eleven since it's now much more powerful and you have to protect Giles at all cost since if Giles is swallowed by the Soul Leach even once, you instantly die no matter what. It's said that this fight is almost impossible without a Wonder Essence (which is an auto revive item like the fairies in The Legend of Zelda) due to it's difficulty. The best part about this whole ordeal is that the Soul Leach is the boss of Those Two Levels. At least in Kline's nightmare, the save point is close to the boss door in case something goes wrong. In Giles' nightmare however, you don't have that luxury as the save point is extremely far from the boss room, which means that if you mess up the boss fight, you have to go through most of the dungeon again just to reach That One Boss.
  • The Watcher In The Water comes pretty close to combining That One Boss with "Wake-Up Call" Boss and Early Bird Boss also. It's an earlier boss and doesn't do this to the level of the aforementioned Soul Leach does later in the game, but it still counts mainly because it has a lot of health for that point in the game, a good attack radius, and your offense and defense are both extremely limited which makes this fight much tougher than it should be.
• In the first Suikoden game, the Zombie Dragon will be the bane of an underleveled team since it can hit the entire team For Massive Damage, and you don't have a lot magic at this point which means you have to perfectly balance physical attacking and healing with your items to have the smallest chance of victory.
  • Also during the raid on Kwanda Rosman's fortress, you have to fight The Dragon which is actually a real dragon and have to deal with a fixed team, and also the fact that the dragon has incredibly high health and evasion which will make most of your physical attacks completely useless which will make things a lot tougher considering you don't have access to really powerful magic at that point in the game.
  • Pahn's fight against Teo, full stop. Not only do you have to make sure that Pahn is trained to an extremely high level after he says "I am going to fight Master Teo.", but you also have to know that the only way to survive the battle is to constantly defend and hope Teo constantly goes for his Special Attack instead of his Normal Attack since Defense beats Special Attack, while Attack beats Defense, essentially turning this into one big Luck-Based Mission. The important thing about this battle is the fact that if you lose, Pahn is Killed Off for Real and that prevents you from getting the good ending, so you MUST WIN. This is the one of the few battles that most people say that they spend multiple times trying to win due to its difficulty.
  • Neclord definitely counts for this considering that he can hit your entire party For Massive Damage and hits your entire party with multiple status effects at the time. He also has high health, attack, and physical evasion which means you better have some strong magic and healing or else Neclord will wipe the floor with your team.
• The battle against Luca Blight from Suikoden II is generally considered to be the toughest fight in the game for a variety of reasons, despite the fact that you attack him with THREE squads. And guess what? It's in-universe too!
• In Nethack, Master Kaen has the highest base damage in the game, the Eyes of the Overworld which give him immunity from wands of death, and he ignores Elbereth, which can be used to hold off most other enemies. Making it all the worse is that these strengths are especially dangerous to Monks, who are the only ones who have to deal with him anyway.
  • Demogorgon the demon lord also qualifies; he's a fast-moving high-powered teleporting magic-user immune to most everything, and he inflicts you with fast-acting poison when he strikes. Mercifully, you can finish the game without ever meeting him.
  • The Wizard of Yendor is one of the most mind-numbingly annoying - and dangerous bosses as well. His abilities include casting powerful spells (some of them capable of being instantly lethal) as well as stealing certain important MacGuffins and creating clones of himself. And as if that wasn't enough, he won't stay dead - even if the player kills him or escapes the level, he will periodically cast nasty spells on the player or even return to fight in person again until the player reaches the Astral Plane.
• The Tarantula in Lufia II is a pretty big kick in the nuts to first-time players, boasting high HP (relative to your damage output), the ability to summon smaller annoying enemies to aide him, an attack that knocks off a lot of damage from all your party members while having a good chance of poisoning each member, and a normal attack that also happens to have a chance of causing full paralysis to the target.
  • Amon in Lufia: The Legend Returns is incredibly difficult due to the battle mechanics of the game. You have nine characters at a time in battle, and you can only act with three of them. Amon has a confusion attack that hits all nine of your characters, and confused characters can always attack. If you're unlucky, you can end up with eight confused characters attacking (and slaughtering) your lone non-confused character. There is an equippable item that will protect from confusion, but there are only three of them in the game...
• The Monster Rancher series doesn't really have bosses per se (Well, Monster Rancher Evo did, but that's... well...), but it does have tons of computer-defined opponents--some of whom could easily be That One Boss, despite actually being "That One Monster." There are too many throughout the series to list all of them, but there are a couple patterns:
  • In the first game and if you lack speed. Golems, There was one in every grade (E was avoidable, every other grade was not). They had enough power to KO your monster in one hit possibly killing it afterwards, and worst of all many of the times you have to beat the said golem to win the tournament.
  • Monster Rancher 2 had a species of monster known as a Gaboo. These had extremely high life and ridiculous attack. As you may have expected, they're absurdly hard to defeat, and some of their attacks can actually KO your monster in one hit.
• The PC's Vampire: The Masquerade--Redemption had Mercurio, a rogue student of necromancy who popped up quite early in the game and proceeded to walk all over the small party with persistent area-effect attacks to which he himself was immune. Had to be nerfed by a patch as too many people were complaining about how tough he was.
• From the sequel, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: the two endgame bosses. Depending on who you side with, you have to defeat one or both of them.
  • The first is Ming Xiao, who starts off with a Nightmare Fuel-riffic transformation into her final form, a giant tentacular blob of goo that can spawn copies of itself, on which superpowered attacks are next to useless; you're basically screwed if you don't have a high Firearms skill and the flamethrower, and even then, if it wasn't for the game letting you save during a fight, an unfortunately-timed spawning can destroy you.
  • The second is the Sheriff, who also transforms into the Chiropteran Behemoth; again, you need some crazy firearm skills and the sniper rifle to take him out, and it's a long, long slog. There are two little things that can even out the fight, though: you can activate various high powered lights on the roof top which blind him, bring him to the ground and allow him to be wailed on with melee weapons & your fists for a bit, and b) he intermittently flies down to the street below and returns with a mook who was walking past. Still, should you decide to take on the Sheriff, prepare for the fight of your un-life.
  • Also from Bloodlines, Bishop Vick. He's super fast and has a shotgun with unlimited ammo. If you decide to turtle, you'll either get ganked by his army of zombies, or Vick will just superspeed next to you and kill you in half a second. He's also a vampire, which means that he's extremely resistant to bullets himself. To make things fair, you can hit him while he reloads, but even if he doesn't complete the animation he receives a full six shells (although it seems like more) to destroy you with. Unless your character is completely combat oriented (which the game actively discourages), your only hope is to pray that the AI bugs and Vick gets caught in a loop. Unlike Ming Xiao, he's optional, but beating him is required to complete a long sidequest chain and get an extremely helpful item.
• Lenus from Legend of Dragoon. Casts ridiculously powerful spells that hit everyone, uses a physical attack... that hits everyone, and is so fast she'll likely get three or four turns in a row before your party gets to act. Better hope you've done enough grinding to get Final Burst!
  • The Grand Jewel can also count. It can mess with your character's levels, changing them by 5 at a time, and it loves to lower your level multiple times in a row before actually increasing them. And it's even worse if you've gotten into the habit of getting as much of your transformation gauge filled as possible before using the Special command (all characters take on their Dragoon forms); doing that will make him use the Dragon Block Staff, which makes your Dragoon forms pathetically weak.
• The Ice Magic Beast in Lost Odyssey has Reflect permanently on it, and casts several powerful spells that hit your entire party for ridiculous damage and can freeze your characters solid. That, and you're fighting it with a party of entirely Squishy Wizards.
  • The Arthrosaurus sequence. You encounter the beast as you approach Numara and have to face it to progress. It has just over 14,000 HP, and only has two attacks: a physical strike that deals around 200 per character, and a fire based attack that can do around 2000 damage to every character in a single line of your formation. A somewhat lengthy, but not too terribly difficult battle by itself...but then 4 more appear off the coast of Numara, and start heading for the city. You have to defeat all four of them before they reach the coast, and they move at a fairly brisk pace. If just one of them reaches the city, it's an instant game over. And while you're fighting one of them? The other three are still moving.... Thankfully, Sleep works every time on them, and can freeze them on the world map for around a minute or three. The fight is meant to be a hit-and-run affair, where you wear away at one after another's health.
• Minamimoto the first time around in The World Ends With You: a boss so difficult that nearly every guide suggests just setting the freaking game on easy mode.
  • There's a trick to Minamimoto, but it's a hell of a Guide Dang It: his chain teleporting is triggered when he's touched with the stylus - as in, you the player touch him on the screen. Notably, he's the only the enemy that directly reacts to being touched like this. If you have pins that don't necessitate actually touching him, he's much easier for Neku to pin down.
  • Uzuki and Kariya, at least if you try and fight them on Hard or above. Uzuki by herself is a nightmare, even when she's not teamed up with Kariya. She's got multiple Bullet Hell esque energy shot patterns, but the real problem with the fight is how she switches screens with her shadow self. When she does it, it has the effect of her Flash Stepping and breaking your comboes, even if she goes exactly where her shadow was on the other screen. How often does she do this? Let's just say that, on Hard, she makes Minamimoto look "zetta slow". It's really hard to pass that light puck when she doesn't allow Beat to land more than 2 hits of his (5-6 hit) combo.
  • Kitaniji and SHIKI. Shiki gets a massive power boost out of nowhere since she was in your party and Kitaniji can FREEZE TIME to try and hit you, and that's just on normal!! On hard Kitaniji gains 2 Bullet Hell-esque energy blast attacks, and loves comboing them with his time stop move for maximum pain...
• Mikhail Rasputin, the boss of the second act of X-Men Legends 2: The Rise of Apocalypse is probably the hardest boss in the game. In the first stage of the fight, Mikhail creates many duplicates of himself which must all be defeated. Then he tosses up a forcefield that must be brought down by beating up various minions until they turn into control panels. And finally, he decides to just bring on the pain while summoning near endless goons to challenge you.
• In Shadow Hearts, shortly after the Time Skip, Alice has to fight Arcane Olga in a Duel Boss fight. Alice is the game's White Mage. The fight is on a timer because of her Sanity Points (the lowest in the game), and taking a turn to restore them could get you killed. And Olga can poison you. The fight boils down to spamming Alice's one attack spell and hoping to get it over with before she goes Berserk.
  • Also, Joachim's teacher in Covenant when you first meet him. What makes this battle so hard? Well, he'll be using Grand Slam all the goddamn time, which wouldn't be so bad if it wouldn't randomly kill you instantly. And you only have Joachim for the fight.
• Even Kingdom of Loathing has a member or two of this grand pantheon. The first, Baron von Ratsworth, is optional, but if you decide to fight him, he scales to your level, which is frustrating since level-grinding will actually just make him stronger. Defeating him on your character's first run through the game is incredibly hard. On subsequent runs or if you level up and get to access the Cola Wars Battlefield, it actually gets quite easy: get enough combat initiative to get the jump on him, then toss a Cola Wars Battlefield grenade at him. If need be, mop up with a strong enough guaranteed-hit skill.
  • The worse example, however, is The Bonedragon, the boss of the Level 7 quest. Apart from the Naughty Sorceress, it is the only monster capable of blocking skills and item use. Considering that it takes a rather substantial boost to one's stats to stand toe-to-toe against it compared to rest of the quest itself, it can prove to be very very frustrating. Unlike Baron von Ratsworth, however, one can just level-grind to take it on, but it can be a pretty severe bottleneck.
  • And speaking of the Naughty Sorceress, she herself was easily That One Boss back in the day. Like Baron von Ratsworth, she scaled to your stats, meaning she was tough no matter what, and like mentioned above, she could block skill and item use, PLUS she dispels all your buffs right at the start of the fight, constantly healed herself, and shrugged off your de-leveling effects. And she was impossible to beat if you weren't equipped with a specific weapon, which has a mere 30 attack points. With the introduction of NS13 though, she's much easier, as her stats are set around 200 and no longer requires the aforementioned weapon to beat (though it DOES have to be in your inventory).
  • Two of them are in Hobopolis: Frosty and Zombo. Frosty takes only 1-3 damage from any source, so quite a lot of damage sources have to be collected to chip him down within the 30-round limit. Zombo scares the pants, hat and shirt off of you, so you would have to be sufficiently leveled up to fight him naked. Skipping either of these bosses will make Hodgman the Hoboverlord That One Boss instead, as Frosty will boost his already high damage resistance, and Zombo will scare your gear off your character in one round instead of his usual three.
• Duriel of Diablo II, despite being only the mid-game boss, is probably among the most dangerous of them and easily the most frustrating. For some reason, the designers thought it would be great to pit the player against an enormously fast boss, with an aura that irresistably slows the player, in a bare room perhaps eight times his area. This in a game where hit-and-run is god; half the classes are explicitly designed for ranged combat only. Another relies on enemy mooks corpses to summon minions. On top of everything else, you can't escape the room to catch your breath, even though you enter the room through a big hole in the wall.
  • Plaguewrath in Diablo, a frustrating spitter boss. Basically he has a bunch of minions that all act the same way: they spit at nearly double, or even triple the speed of regular spitters, which means that often they'd drop a barrage of deadly spit that can drop you in seconds, before you can do anything. Add the fact that they don't have a melee attack, and unlike regular spitters, will actively run away from you if you try to get close, and you get one frustrating boss. Not to mention that the first time you'll encounter him, Plaguewrath himself takes forever to kill.
  • The three Barbarian Ancients are pretty much the hardest encounter in the game, arguably topping Duriel, Baal, and even Diablo himself (who at least gave you ample room to hit and run). What made the Barbarian Ancients so damned difficult was that using Town Portal to escape would heal them back to full health, meaning yes, you had to kill them all in one go.
  • The councilors in Act III on higher difficulty modes. They're just superuniques, but on higher difficulties they gain a lot of traits, and sometimes those traits work TOGETHER to create a new definition of pain. Can you imagine Conviction plus Might plus Cursed plus Extra Strong plus Lightning Enchanted plus Multi-Shot together?
  • Lister the Tormentor is a nasty one. It takes forever to kill him, while all he does is move toward you unphased and land in a nasty punch when close enough. You can't even run away because he follows you everywhere.
  • The Destroyer of Souls in the Chaos Sanctuary and his twin brother, Ventar the Unholy in the Woldstone Keep. Big, strong, and faster than you can ever hope to be. Their minions also share these traits, so you will end up cornered by half a dozen monstrous demons in the matter of seconds with nowhere to run, and beaten down in just a few seconds. Ventar is only made easier because of the nature of the area you fight him in. It's possible to separate his goons and kill them one by one. If you're lucky
  • Diablo III continues the tradition of murderous Act 2 bosses with Belial. It's a perfectly reasonable standard boss fight with mooks, like every other boss fight to that point...and then he goes One-Winged Angel and turns into the equivalent of a World of Warcraft raid boss, complete with phases where he AOE spams the entire narrow platform where you fight him. Even on Normal difficulty it's bad, especially for the squishier classes like the Wizard.
• The first few bosses in Summon Night: Twin Age are a piece of cake to beat... and then you face Mardin at the end of Chapter 6. This summoner has a wide variety of attacks and appears to be Made of Iron, as his HP are far higher than any enemy you've faced up to this point. Oh, and he loves to get up close and attack your party members head-on, so if you chose secondary White Mage Ayn instead of the axe-wielding Nassau, expect her to be defeated once or twice (putting a dent in her support value).
• Xenogears has several of these throughout the game. The first one that comes to mind is the second fight against the Five-Man Band that fights for Solaris. What makes it hard is the fact that you first face two of them at once. Then you have to face three of them at once and you don't get a chance to heal before it. Then you have to face Elly with all of the damage received from the previous battles.
  • Redrum is another pain to fight. Not only does he have Bloody Rain, a move that will damage your party and heal himself at the same time, he also has Murder, a move that kills one character and heals himself at the same time. Worst of all, he's found in the sewers of Kislev, which is That One Level due to its size.
  • Id is a pain to fight each time you face him since he can do massive damage to any character in a short amount of time.
  • One of the first fights that you have in the second disc against the Sufal Mass and Sufall. You can't do elemental attacks against him or it will heal him. If he happens to kill the last Sufal he will unleash a massive attack against your party.
  • The Elements also are quite a pain to fight, mostly because they can heal each other, and if you use the wrong elemental attack it will heal them as well. Don't even think about attacking Domimina until you beat everyone else or she will heal herself regardless of what you to do attack her.
  • Hammer is another example. When his HP gets low enough he will start to glow red and will blow up, killing everyone unless you either defeat him before he blows up or runs away. Running away however will prevent you from getting a rare and awesome item.
  • The first fight against Deus is a pain the ass since he starts out with one attack that cuts EVERYBODY's HP in half. If you attack before a certain point he heals himself for a huge amount of HP. On top of all this, the game has a habit of crashing during this battle.
  • The last Ramsus and Miang boss fights. Ramsus has an attack that causes HP to One in every character. If everybody on the team has more than 1 HP, he will do the attack again later on in the fight. The main problem is that you have to heal yourself and fight him at the same time while keeping an eye on your fuel. Miang is worse since she will mirror the damage done to her back onto you.
• The infinitely infuriating Kromar, from Lil' Monster. He's got a metric buttload of HP, ridiculously high strength that makes even his weakest attacks do almost 100 damage, and copious healing gems. However, he also makes liberal use of Meteor Drop, the most powerful attack move in the game--which does something like 230 damage per hit, coming from him. If you've been Level Grinding up to that point of the game, you're likely to have about 400 HP, give or take. Yeah. He's hard.
• Varesh Ossa from Guild Wars. UGH. She is even harder than the final boss. (Granted, he is rather easy but...) She also has a One-Winged Angel form too, blegh.
  • Nightfall has Shiro Tagachi. The amazing thing is that he was the Big Bad of Factions, and he wasn't nearly as hard there, despite the fact that he had two incredibly annoying and powerful skills in Factions that he doesn't have in Nightfall. (On the other hand, in Factions, the mission to fight him consists entirely of "Defeat Shiro." In Nightfall, you have a fairly lengthy and difficult mission to get through before Shiro.)
  • Coventina the Matron... or any of the other Mursaat Monk Bosses from Prophecies. It takes a specialised -team- to take them down effectively due to the efficiency of their self-healing... and can consume a LOT of time. Makes for much trouble if coupled with OTHER Mursaat bosses.
  • Elementalist bosses in general. All bosses and boss-like foes have an inherent double damage bonus (on top of the bonuses they get for their level), meaning some of them can pretty much wipe a party in seconds.
  • Then there is Dhuum, of the The Underworld, this boss is now a MANDATORY fight to complete the Underworld where before you just had to finish the quests. Those quests? You still need to do them all first before he appears and there is no second chance, if you all die that's it, you got to do it ALL AGAIN. Dhuum ranks up there with Kanaxai and Urgoz...
• Red Testament from Xenosaga: Episode III is a rather interesting example. Most fights in the game are strategic, and level grinding is avoidable, but this guy blows every boss before him out of the water, as well as the Final Boss. Being preceded by a spoilerific Trick Boss fight beforehand, and the game's Crowning Moment of Heartwarming doesn't temper this, but it may lead the player to a false sense of security. By this time, every character can have Safety and Best Ally available for use, which automatically revive a character it is cast on after they die. This is important, as Red will beat the tar out of every squishy character with incredible speed, and with Break every tough character with that same speed. Victory comes from poking the enemy to death over the course of the entire fight.
  • Commander Cherenkov's Gnosis form in Xenosaga: Episode I qualifies, also. Not only is it him (in a surprise battle, nonetheless), but he also gets two pain-in-the-rear minions with an area-of-effect attack.
  • Orgulla from Episode II. She was a nightmare that did terrible damage, including poisoning party members, and acquired boost at a ridiculous rate, which gave her the ability to kill your entire party in a short amount of time. The only real strategy against her was attack, heal, and pray.
  • The Patriarch Sergius fight at the end of Episode II. Sure, his first form is pretty easy, but his second form is tons harder. He has a habit of boosting multiple times to cast an Ether attack on the same person (the damage gets higher for each successful Ether attack of the same element) including one a version where he first knocks you down and then casting another for maximum damage, but you can't boost over enemies so you just hope your characters evade or you have enough heals ready. He also can summon a machine by the name of Proto Omega to do massive damage in one attack as well, which can be combined with an attack from the Patriarch that can send your characters in the air. And this is just a few examples. If you're below level 40 then god help you, but even if you're above that, it becomes an exercise of you healing and him doing more damage at some points.
• The Melk Crystal from Grandia III is an excellent example. Despite being at the very beginning of the dungeon, this boss has can wipe your party out if you haven't been playing around (and given the general Grandia mind set of no-grinding-required, this is quite possible). Not to mention it has two forms with different weaknesses and resistances, and switching between them tends to cancel your well thought out commands (literally at times). Beating this boss without using one of the orb summons is a feat in and of itself.
  • Speaking of Grandia, the first Grandia had the fight with the female Garlyle officers Saki, Nana, and Mio all at once. Since they've been played up as the Goldfish Poop Gang up to this point, and since they were pretty easy when you fought them individually, you're probably expecting an easy fight, right? Then they use a little move called Trinity Attack that hits the entire party for huge damage. Even though all three girls are used in the move, it only takes one girl to actually do it and the other two still get their turns (which might be another Trinity Attack)? Getting hit by two Trinity Attacks, one right after the other, can be very hard to come back from.
  • And lets top it off with Grandia II, and the Eye of Valmar. You got this bossfight twice, and they constitute the hardest and second hardest boss fight in the game. Earlier in the game, you got into a fight with four smaller eyes as a mini-boss, and they were Demonic Spiders that were capable of doing a lot of damage very quickly and took a long time to kill. The Eye of Valmar would be hard enough as it is, being a typical Valmar Body Part boss (meaning stronger than usual) and having an ability to completely immobilize one of your party members, but it comes another set of four smaller eyes!
• Demon Droguza from Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. He has physical attack power that's through the roof, and has ranged attacks as well - a sweeping tail laser that slices across the midpoint of the battlefield (where you will be caught, unavoidably) and a giant energy ball that goes boom on your little cluster of fighters and nukes roughly half of their HP on a normal, non-grindfest playthrough. And your healer will very likely die. Add in the fact that the resurrection spells aren't likely going to be available to you at this point....
• The final boss of Arc the Lad II. At the beginning of the game, the level progression of your characters keeps pretty even with you enemies. However, in the last couple dungeons, the enemy difficulty skyrockets upward at a rate greater than natural character progression. If the player either hasn't spend absurd amounts of time grinding in the game or in first game (to unlock a certain move in the sequel), the final boss will be absurdly, crazy hard.
• Breath of Fire II certainly had a fun one in the form of Barubary. He's statistically the strongest enemy in the game (this includes the final boss, by the way, never mind that said final boss is freaking GOD). And to get a clue about the Infinity+1 Accessory location, you have to face him alone. With no reduction in his stats. You do get free healing before the fight though if you do so.
  • Algernon and Wildcat definitely count as well. The main problem is that the Revive Kills Zombie method for beating them is a massive Guide Dang It in both cases. And in both cases, when you're having trouble with said bosses and check a guide for them... you realize you missed your chance. Tough luck.
  • Guardeye is a bit of an odd case, as if you're using a guide (which would be understandable, given all the Guide Dang It this game has to offer) he actually becomes harder. Why? Because you need to spare the old man in order to get the best ending. This means you can't use your strongest attacks, as nearly all of them hit every enemy, which will kill the old man. Hope you have some very powerful healing, since the eyes can easily wipe you out in a few turns if they're all alive.
• Ernst, the Big Bad and penultimate boss of Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, espcially on Nightmare difficulty. He's a flash stepping Lightning Bruiser with a BFS, making him hard to hit without getting hit yourself, casts Kill Sat spells, and has his three Goddamned Fairies, who, in addition to their individual elemental attacks, can team up to cast an immobilizing Geometric Magic spell.
  • Orjugan, especially on Hard and Nightmare. It can only be damaged by playing tennis with its bombs, or with the Flame Sword magic, has highly-damaging Combat Tentacles, a deadly super laser blast that is difficult to dodge without taking hits from the tentacles (which can kill you instantly on higher difficulties), and finally, periodically summons shadow creatures (which you need to equip the Rainbow Fragment to kill).
• The vampire demon boss (called Vagullion in the PC remake) in Ys Book I and II. He starts out as a swarm of Goddamned Bats that home in on your position and coalesce into his true form, often faking you out. And if you don't hit him at just the right moment, you'll take a ton of damage from him, making him a bit of a Luck-Based Mission. In the remake, Khonsclard (the rock monster) and Dark Fact are even more cheap bastards. To say nothing of the bosses in Ys II Eternal/Complete, which are often Bullet Hell (in an RPG!).
• Gaia Online's MMO, zOMG! has a few. First up is Katsumi's Kokeshi Doll. She's far, far stronger then the already nasty Kokeshi Dolls wandering about Zen Gardens, which wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that she will always attract a horde of these lower-ranked Demonic Spiders as you try to kill her. By a horde, we mean about a dozen at a time, with more coming in every couple seconds. Oh, you've got area affect attacks? Well, watch out for that Pink Fluff! Oops, you hit one? BOOM!
  • The Battle Of The Three Bridges. You fight three Nexus Animated, which are much stronger versions of the regular Animated roaming the gardens. Both are assisted by two normal Animated. The Kokeshi Nexus is arguably tougher than Katsumi's Doll. The Drum Nexus can play kickball with you, and has a nasty AoE attack. And the Lantern Nexus is way tougher than any of the other enemies in the area, and only spawns at night. (Meaning if you don't kill it before the sun rises, you have to wait an hour for it to respawn again.) And if you get too close to the edge of the bridge, there are still exploding Fluffs.
  • Stone Coatl is the definition of That One Boss. He takes all the annoying bits of these previous fights and turns them up to eleven. The fight starts with Tiny Terrors and Witch Doctors, the second of which can heal their allies and slow you down considerably. After each wave of Animated, you fight a Mask of Death and Rebirth, which could qualify for this trope in their own right, despite being "mooks". And the last wave of monsters before you even fight the boss itself are Bladed Vases which have a ridiculous area of effect attack that deals heavy damage in a circle to anyone even kind of sort of near it. Oh and if you don't work fast, the vases can easily wipe out a party because they keep spawning until a certain number is reached. Finally, when you reach Stone Coatl, he has the most HP out of any boss you've fought, has several different attacks, one of which knocks you back across the entire screen when you've been to close to him during the fight, and he spawns an infinite number of Animated which can be any or all of the types previously mentioned. Stone Coatl is easily harder than the final boss.
• Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant had the Hall of Gorrors, a special zone in the final dungeon home to the Gorrors-a set of optional bosses that, with one pushover exception, are all as bad or worse than the final boss, and you may only have found the keys to access one or two.
  • Wizardry VIII. Nessie. Dear sweet mother of god, Nessie. Not just a pain for being a huge sea monster with absurdly powerful elemental spells, large teeth, and insane armor and resistance. No, the game had to make the fight underwater, meaning one of your trinket slots is occupied by scuba gear, and fire spells don't work. Even ones (like Haste) that technically don't involve, you know...fire.
    • Oh, and Phoonzang help you if you run into the Sorceress battle by mistake. Taking on a sorceress who can cast fairly powerful spells, along with six cultists (who immediately summon elementals to their sides) and two death knights (with powerful lightning spells and the tendency to cast a persistent "save or die" cloud on the party), is a nightmare without being very overleveled or incredibly well-prepared.
  • D'Arboleth is lots of fun with instant-death spells. Luck-Based Mission comes to mind.
  • The Thing From Hell was a straightforward and brutal slugfest.
  • The Fiend Of Nine Worlds. Fast, hits very hard, hits often, and has a pretty good chance of instantly killing your characters with a critical hit.
  • Well, the Gorrors are bonus bosses, so shouldn't really be included. On the other hand, both Magna Dane and the Lord of Dark Forest are required bosses, and both can be extremely challenging if you aren't well-prepared. Magna Dane uses some of the most powerful damage/instant death spells in the game, is immune to most magic, and has a remarkably strong physical attack. He can easily wipe out the entire party in one round. He's also backed up by up to 8 High Fathers, who are all almost as strong as he is. The Lord of Dark Forest is lightning fast and hard to hit, can instant kill your party members easily. He's backed up by a large group of condition spamming Monks and Ninjas who can also do instant kills on your party. He'll occasionally summon a Godzilla monster, which is strong enough to wipe out your entire party on its own unless you are extremely overpowered. And on expert mode, there's two of him.
• Gates of Hell seems to be That One Boss in The Last Remnant. It has 2 free attacks that it can perform while it's in its turn, both which can hit all the deadlocked teams (it has multi-deadlock), not counting its attacks in its main attack phase, which means it can attack 3 times in a turn. The problem is that a lot of players will try to deal as much damage to the boss as possible, causing nearly all your teams to engage in deadlock with the boss, which will result in massive damages being dealt to nearly everyone. And if a group is dead, the boss will cast Pandemonium, turning the dead group against you. The best way to beat it is to keep only few teams to engage it, and let the rest acting as healers and rotate in if possible to maximize the survivability.
• Phantasy Star IV had Lashiec, who probably was the single most difficult fight in the game, even more so than the final boss. The fact that he appears in That One Level, after a miniboss fight and Marathon Level that virtually seems designed to screw the player out of healing items does NOT help.
• Eternal Sonata's first fight with Captain Dolce is not to be underestimated. Encountered after being separated from the characters that you have to use in her ship for an extended period, you're likely to be underleveled and Dolce will wipe the floor with you if you aren't prepared. She's faster than greased lightning, and packs a wallop and a half. Top it off with the fact that she comes with a pair of henchmen that will heal each other if you don't kill them in one go and do some decent damage themselves.
• Morgan Freeman is this in South Park: Fractured but Whole, where he is, without a doubt, the hardest boss in the game. His boss fight is an optional one (although you have to fight him sooner or later in order to gain the much coveted “Farts Over Freckles” achievement) and NOT recommended until you've almost beaten the game and your characters are upgraded to the MAX. He’s got 9999 HP, an attack that can OTK any of your characters, and worse, in the second phase of the fight, he has double the number of turns as the first. Bring a LOT of healing potions and even more patience for this one.
• Ancient Domains of Mystery. The Minotaur King and Nurrag Varn are just two, along with more Bosses In Mook Clothing than are healthy. If you ever see a named monster in this game, prepare yourself. Y.A.S.D. may be imminent.
• In The Witcher In the proper fight at the end of chapter 5 Azar Javed qualifies. He will regularly blind or knock you down, both will disable you for a significant period of time, only one of the two can be properly defended against (willow potions prevent knockdown), blind can only have its effectiveness decreased by spending a talent on an ability that stops it from working sometimes (and no other enemy in the game seems to use blind and silver level talents aren't something you throw away...). To make matters worse, if you made certain choices in the game, this battle has an escort who will die if you lose the bosses attention and he starts to attack them (Berengar is really Overrated and Underleveled) and you have to start over if you want to save him (admitedly, this doesn't get you anything). Also, one of the early bosses in the game, The Beast, is well named.
  • The Beast himself is easily stunnable for instant kill. It's his pack you should worry about. Then again, you can get those packs anywhere. If you're really not careful.
    • And his lag. The fire graphics for his fight are significantly more graphics-intensive than basically anything else in the game, so (unless you change your settings) you have to deal with framerate issues while you're being mobbed by respawning Demonic Spiders.
• Spirit User Tuoni and Wicked Witch Olly in Chapter 6 of Avalon Code. You remember all the ass-kicking weapons and armor you had back during the Inevitable Tournament in Chapter 5? Yeah, you have none of that now. Same goes for the spirit magic, property manipulation powers, and even the ability to heal. One of them is a remixed Chimera with limited intangibility powers, and the other has taken her meds since your last fight against her. Genkai said it best: "Best of luck, I hope you don't die."
• EverQuest 2's Raid Battle against Venril Sathir qualifies for this in spades. Not only do you need 2 copies of the same item from a previous raid mob to even make him DOABLE (thankfully they aren't consumed by the battle), the fight is simply unforgiving of ANY mistake. Guy on statue duty lags? Everyone dies. Someone doesn't cure their poison? Everyone dies. Someone casts too much/not enough? Everyone dies. Venril Sathir decides to screw you by giving the same person both his curses at once? Everyone dies. Someone crosses the threshold of his room too soon? Everyone dies. Venril is the raid mob in EQ 2 responsible for more raid guilds breaking in half than any other. The kicker: He's not even an end of progression boss, he's in the middle of an expansion's progression.
  • Venril did eventually get nerfed. EQ2 generally nerfs the high end raid bosses about 3/4ths of the wait until the new expansion to give the less uber guilds a better shot at getting them down. See also: Perah'Celsis (raid version) in the most recent expansion, who was changed so he no longer charms the tanks making the fight easier.
• Julius in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. The previous bosses were all slow movers with a pattern of movement, so strategy amounted to "find the enemy's blind spot and sit in it". Julius has no blind spot. He will move around the field faster than Soma does without Black Panther equipped, he will find you, and he will end you. And he was holding back, too! One shudders at the thought of how that fight would have turned out if he had decided to go all out.
• Skies of Arcadia has Recumen, the Red Gigas. While he is technically a Hopeless Boss Fight, you are expected to survive the encounter with him for more than a few turns, which is difficult enough. And after him, you have to fight Belleza in another ship-to-ship battle; this time, you DO have to win. You better have brought plenty of healing items for your ship, despite not even having a ship right before these events occured.
• The Phantom Evil King (Epros) from Okage: Shadow King. Say goodbye to every Black Cat Jewel you might have owned, and if you don't have Big Bull with at least his second-level fire attack and a bunch of help from Stan, you'll be stuck here a WHILE. It's especially sad when a fight that ends up being harder than the final boss is against someone who ends up joining your party.
• The roguelike Iter Vehemens ad Necem (aka IVAN) brings us the apotheosis of all bastards: Ischaldirh. His stats are pathetically low even compared to other bosses in the game. He has, however, access to the most frighteningly powerful magic in the game, and is not afraid to use it. A favorite of his is teleportation, which he uses with relish. Get close enough to split him in two? Poof, you're on the opposite end of the screen. He also is fond of teleporting your gear away, not to mention teleporting your LIMBS away. He also can summon an explosion and then teleport that explosion on to you for massive damage. His most brutal tactic, however, is his summoning. He can summon any monster in the game. This includes other boss characters as well as golems made of material that give them ungodly high stats. Also he can clone you. These clones have the same stats and equipment as you. Considering you lived to see the end of the game you're probably very high level with very good equipment, so taking on just ONE of your clones can be a challenge, to say nothing of the mobs he's capable of summoning. Beating the game is literally considered to be a glitch, and with bosses like this it's no wonder.
• That One Boss of Wild ARMs 4 comes in only about halfway through the game, in the form of Hugo. He was annoying in that he would almost always decide to stop time and dodge your attack right before you try to attack him! Use lock out? He'll move to a new square. And don't even try to trap him around a lock out, because that stops you as much as it stops him, leaving you open to his attacks. His swords can become a fucking bow! The strategy--corner him with three characters; he can't get past them--is a "why didn't I think of that?!" moment, but then again, it's also not hinted at very well, if at all, unlike every other Puzzle Boss in the game.
• The roguelike Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup has a particularly nasty That One Boss (with an element of "Wake-Up Call" Boss mixed in) by the name of Sigmund. Serious DCSS players will come to loathe that name given the ease with which he slaughters players left right and centre. He usually shows up between the 2nd and 4th floors of the dungeon (meaning that you're approximately level 3 to 5 when you face him AT BEST) and comes with several nasty spells (Magic Dart, Fireball and Invisibility, all very nasty against players at this point in the game) and backs that up with a scythe (again, very nasty against players at that point). Oh, and depending on how the dungeon generates, he might just well be the FIRST boss you face.
• If you played Magi Nation, you'd definitely agree that Zet fits this trope to a T. He summons a lotta monsters that have a lot of energy and therefore take a lot of abuse before going down, despite being healed beforehand comes after a somewhat difficult boss (So you have no chance to rearrange the monsters you got), and can kill a monster in one hit regardless of their energy. Stupid Cunning Blow. Sure enough... you never get it.
  • Ogar can give you some trouble. She summons multiple chaos jiles, which not only can be rather scratchy pains in the arse, but can use Consume, which on top of healing them, has a chance of inflicting an instant knock-out regardless of current health.
• Almost everything in the later parts of Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. Prism has fairly low defence (although his other stats are ridicously high) and most of Amalgam's worse attacks are cancellable, so the worst of them is The Baroness, particularly because of all the minions she brings with her. Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny has the Slaith Reincarnation, although thankfully the Shadow Stalker in Atelier Iris 3 is entirely optional (the actual game storyline shouldn't really have a That One Boss).
• Gorak the Ancient (aka, Lightning out his ass) in Warhammer Fantasy Battle Online's The Lost Vale is frequently an exercise in frustration. He hits MUCH harder than the bosses that come before and after him, and will occasionally go into a trance in which he fires a series of lightning bolts at random targets. If these weren't bad enough, the bolts can chain from person to person if they are too close. Even without the chain, a squishy target taking two or three bolts in a row will frequently go down, leaving the group either short a healer or a DPS. To make it even worse, he sometimes refuses to reset after the party wipes. If this happens, it requires an instance reset and hacking through some Elite Mooks to get back to him, meaning it could be 30 minutes or so of running and clearing before you can get beaten down by another cheap shot set of bolts.
• Being Nintendo Hard, Odin Sphere (which is not MADE by Atlus, but is published by them!) has most of its bosses falling into this category, but Velvet vs. Beldor and Belial is the one that has been known to drive some players to tears. To say it's a warping, spellcasting wizard (and even mook wizards are a bitch and a half to fight) and a ginormous rampaging dragon teaming up to fight the character with the lowest attack power in the game is to make a gross understatement of the exact levels of evil the player faces in this fight. And then after it's over, Velvet ends up captured by the bad guys anyway, to be rescued by Cornelius later. So that's awesome.
  • Odette, who summons a constant stream of lost souls, pushing the processor to the limit -- then when her health starts to flag, starts absorbing them to heal. Then there's her killer legs...
• Hide 'n' Seek Battle Monster Tactics has a potential one in Trinchula, the first Target Monster of B5. It is highly resistant to every element except fire. Since Kevin can have only one fire technique at all at the time, it is virtually required to have Kaen on your battle team, which is made unpleasant by the fact that there are two wind monsters just waiting to take down your only character with a constant chance of dealing decent damage to Trinchula. What's worse is that fire doesn't do heavy damage to anything else that is particularly dangerous, which combined with Kaen mainly having melee attacks and this being a game revolving around hiding and seeking does not bode well with the poor girl's usability in the first place. Unfortunately, if you don't have the character sufficiently leveled up (elemental multiplier includes the enemy's defense in this game, which means it won't help much at all with insufficient attack) and on your team, have fun dealing single digit damage to this triple digit HP pain.
• If you don't know what you're doing, the fight with Yellowjacket or Goliath in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 can reach TOB status. (Both play the same-you fight Yellowjacket on the anti-registration path and Goliath in the pro-reg path. To beat the boss, you have to chip at their damage until they get stunned, and then unleash a fusion attack on them. Problem is, if your fusion attack misses, or you use the wrong sort of fusion, or you take to long to pull the attack off, the boss regains the energy you just spent the past few minutes draining. And since Yellowjacket/Goliath are giants, it's hard to hurt them that much in the first place. And when they start calling in Mooks...
• Flash game example: the sandworm boss fight from Epic Battle Fantasy 2. It can vomit poison (yet it itself can be poisoned) on both of your party members at once, and its tail can deal a lot of damage. That and it can stun you (which means you lose a turn) which is bad, because you need both party members or else you will essentially die instantly.
  • The third game in the series has Akron, who even for a final boss is beyond ridiculous. The fact that it constantly shifts its weakness around is the least of your worries; it also summons mooks to aid it. These aren't just any mooks; you'll be happy to see it summon Demonic Spiders, because it means he didn't just summon a Boss in Mook Clothing. The demonic spiders in question can heal the boss' already staggering HP, buff the entire enemy field, debuff your side, and cause status effects. Or how about the other Demonic Spiders, which come equipped with immunity to physical attacks and practically every spell in the game, including an instant death spell? The Boss in Mook Clothing, on the other hand, has an attack that nails your entire party for potentially over 10000 HP (when your Meat Shield has about 14000); coupled with everything else attacking you, this can mean a one-turn Total Party Kill from full health. To cap it all, Akron himself will occasionally go into his second form, where the attacks become even more powerful, and he gains an area-of-effect instant death spell. However, if you have enough dark resistance (and instant death for epic dificulty), this is actually GOOD because you'll survive, whereas anything else not immune to or absorbing dark will be damaged by the Cosmic Monolith, the aforementioned Boss in Mook Clothing. Just hope Akron himself isn't immune to or absorbing dark at the time.
• Tactics Ogre has quite a few difficulty spikes. If one takes the right path, you have to fight both Oz and Ozma at the same time (Along with the rest of their units). Now during the other two paths, you only fight one, and when they are defeated, the battle ends. It's much easier with just Oz because they are both rather difficult and he starts off rather close to your units. (Having a one-on-one match with Denim before they call their armies out) Let's also not forget the battle with Lans Tartare...considering he's the commander of the Dark Knights, highly justified.
  • Its Gaiden Game Knight of Lodis also has a few contenders, such as Aerial and Nichart.
• SaGa 2 has Venus. She's a really sudden wake-up call since you had Mask destroying Ashura. Don't expect to win easily, but if you know to stock up on Muskets, she'll at least be easier. Then after that, the difficulty spikes again with Odin who, like his Final Fantasy incarnations will kill you in 6-rounds, on top of getting screwed by the Random Number Generator that summons a bunch of additional enemies. (But that's what the Hyper Gun is for!)
• Want to know how Baramos fails at being convincing at being the final boss? Just watch him cast Disperse and kick out your party members who you probably desperately need to shake off his attacks that deal 70-80 damage to all members of your party. You better have equipped the Hero with equipment that resists his nasty attacks or you're in for a very ugly battle.
• The final battle against Magic Emperor Ghaleon in Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete. He is incredibly fast, attacks twice per turn, and has an incredibly powerful arsenal of doomsday spells that can devastate your entire party in two turns flat, not to mention a 1000-HP shield, an HP-draining attack, and an instant death spell. Some consider it impossible for any player to beat him on their first try.
• Magical Starsign has two bosses that qualify for That One Boss status:
  • Mugwort has pretty high HP, high speed, a physical attack that can take off a third of one character's health, a physical attack that can take off a third of everybody's health, and a hit-all magical attack that will bring your healer to the brink of death. He's of the Wood starsign, so you can't exploit Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors on him yet. Oh, and he knows Celestial Swap.
  • The Holy Sapling can deal nasty and unavoidable damage to one character, very nasty damage to all characters, or incredibly nasty damage to one character. That last one is also Wood Magic, meaning that your healer will probably die if she's hit by it. You can exploit Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors here, but doing so causes the Sapling to summon an annoying minion.
• Valkyrie Profile has several candidates for That One Boss. Most of them pop up in Hard Mode only, though.
  • The first boss that can be counted as "hard" is the pair of Beholder-like Hel Servants in the Hard-Mode-exclusive Dark Tower of Xervah. They are extremely durable, hit hard, and can bring each other back from the dead if you don't kill them off at the same time. Compounding this is your lack of access to really good equipment, since the best weapons and armor can only be accessed if you transmute a certain item... and the Servants guard the first prerequisite to that item. Appropriately enough, their Palette Swaps later reappear in several other dungeons as Demonic Spiders.
  • Wraith is possibly the first boss to break out the extremely-damaging Great Magic moves that you've been using throughout the game. His Great Magic, Gravity Blessing, comes out when he hits 50% health and really hits hard. He also has a move that hits multiple times and can lay on the hurt with magic attacks. Unless you have Holy Water of Mithra, be prepared to slug it out.
  • Akhetamen starts out the battle with Reflect Sorcery, forcing you to go through the two weak Undead Slaves that guard him. Once you kill them, Akhetamen starts fighting, and his physical attacks are pretty manageable. However, every two turns he likes to cast the Great Magic Seraphic Law, which will put a dent in your party's HP. He also heals himself to full if you bring him to 20% HP, so you have to hit him a couple of times before tossing a Holy Water at him: otherwise it'll be wasted. The worst part, though, is that Akhetamen comes after the end of a long and convoluted dungeon with a ton of torturous puzzles.
  • Before the battle with the Big Bads of both the B ending and the A ending, you have to get past his two "bodyguards". The first of them is Bloodbane the dragon, and he is tough. Bloodbane hits really hard with a single claw attack ("I'll crush you!") and then follow up with a deadly flame attack ("Feel my flame!") that hits the entire party multiple times. Bloodbane absorbs massive amounts of damage before getting really nasty: by the time you slice through half his health bar it is likely that he will start using the special magic "Gravity Blessing" which will most likely kill all of your characters EVERY FREAKING TIME, and he will be using it every turn afterwards. With Bloodbane, the Guts-Auto Item-99 Union Plumes combo that allows you to survive a possible Total Party Kill is less of a convenience and more a necessity for survival, as you will inevitably have to survive "Gravity Blessing" after "Gravity Blessing" or slog it out after Bloodbane heals himself back to FULL HEALTH. In Valkyrie Profile, your party can do insane amounts of damage (as there is no 9999 damage cap) but that does not help much when the thing has 380,000+ hit points. In comparison with him, the other bodyguard and the Big Bad himself are cakewalks.
  • Due to the fact that the dungeons appear in random order when searched, there's the chance that you'll run into Barbarossa in the Lost City of Dipan before you'll hit Wraith. He can also use a Great Magic attack, Calamnity Blast, and it will wipe out your party if you're not prepared for it (either by equipping to protect against fire or the methods listed in Game Breaker). Also, unlike all of the above examples, he shows up in every difficulty level, and you're only going to survive on Easy if your hit points are full.
• Phantasy Star Zero looks like an easy run through Normal mode if you know what you're doing and keep your gear up to date. Then you get to Hard mode and you run into the brick wall known as Humilias. If you don't invent compound swears after going through a stack of Scape Dolls against the guy, you have anger issues. Here's why:
  • His main laser is a freeze beam. If you get hit by this, unless you have a unit that prevents freezing, you will be a sitting duck. You need to roll away before you get shot, but the spread can be murder at longer ranges. The best place to be when he fires, damningly enough, is below or behind him, where he can't aim.
  • His sub laser is a slow beam. It will be a bitch to dodge much anything while this is in effect, so try to roll away or you will regret it in short order. This is introduced midway through the fight, but he fires it right after the freeze beam.
  • He also can combine his weapons into a laser sword for a single slash if you get hit by either beam. If you are still frozen when this goes off, you are taking a LOT of damage, and there is nothing you can do about it.
  • He also has a punch attack that's used as crowd control. He may use it if he doesn't get you with his lasers. It hurts as much as the sword.
  • He is also a bipartite robot, and can split into his two halves. He's completely invincible until he recombines, and he can still hurt you.
  • He can also arm the floor with a variety of traps that all hurt like your mother, and you better not color in all the panels if you know what's good for you. Red is pure damage, orange confuses - CASTs, keep your Sol Atomizers handy, because confusion is annoying. He can use this in tandem with his regular attacks, which is a source of rage on its own.
  • Finally, as one last "screw you", when he dies his upper half drives around uncontrollably while exploding, and it still hurts like a bitch.
• In Evolution: The World of Sacred Device, the final encounter with Eugene Leopold. The first fight with just him is somewhat of a pushover, but then cue him showing up in a Humongous Mecha. What mainly makes him so dangerous is a machine gun attack he loves to use that hits the entire party TWICE, and can poison them with a high chance. And even then he takes a ton of punishment and will sometimes heal himself for 3000 HP. On top of this, he's ALWAYS be at or above the level of the main character, AND since you're forced to always use your White Mage up until this point, you'll now be forced to have other means to heal and buff since she's been kidnapped. The main character can get some, but only if you've actually been exploring the ruins and not just rushing to the end of each one. And if you start the sequence to get up to the boss, you aren't going back to town until you've beaten the game.
• Most of the bosses in Last Scenario can be this thanks to Nintendo Hard Boss Dissonance, and because of this no one can seem to agree on which is the worst. The first one that's likely to make you bang your head against a wall is the Marid King, but later ones (particularly the Nigh Invulnerable Riftgate; the Viviones, a mob of 5 inexplicable critters that constantly heal and revive each other; and any boss that spams Total Party Kills and status effects) can be even worse.
  • Also, the full Omega Team. First off, it's not just a Dual Boss- there's three of them, and while Earp was a Breather Boss in his first appearance, Helio tends to leave you with lots of status effects and has a nasty ice spell, and Flynn was pretty hard even when she was alone. And because they all attack in different ways, and even if you equip water-absorbing armour to absorb one of Flynn's spells, you're still at the mercy of Random Number God, since she's prone to spamming Comet Slash, which leaves your party in such a devastated state that it requires so much healing that getting in any hit at all is hard, and you're likely to run out of healing items and mana before they go down.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age has some pretty easy enemies and bosses... until you reach the Bridge of Khaza-dum and join Gandalf in his face-off against the Balrog. Showing why everyone was afraid of him in the movie, the Balrog proceeds to open a can of whoop-ass on your party, with two powerful attacks that hit everyone and deal Fire AND Shadow damage AND drain your ability-using points, his flame sword and flame whip that hit only one person for HUGE damage, having a high evasive stat, very high defense, and more health than all of the previous bosses combined. The only character in the party who can do any appreciable damage to him is Gandalf; the rest of you are there to heal, buff the party, and be mangled.
  • Once you encounter the Final Battle against the Witch King, you understand why even Gandalf the White is worried about him. Having the best stats in the game BAR NONE, only slightly lower HP then the Final Boss, being able to counter you if you DARE attack him, AND having a hit-all Life Drain so powerful, 2 in a row is a guaranteed party wipe out. Just for kicks, he also can stun a character so they can't move, good luck if he does it to your healer.
• Super Robot Taisen OG: Endless Frontier gives us Kyon Flaurion. Kyon comes with two Joker Soldier sidekicks. All three of them have Shields, which means your first attack is more or less meaningless. But, unless you can keep them very high in the air (hard to do with Suzuka, who, as the fastest party member, always goes first), they're also the first enemies to truly abuse Forced Evasion, meaning your attacks get cut off. The Joker Soldiers can hit multiple party members, and also inflict Freeze and Stun with monotonous regularity. Kyon, meanwhile, does one of two things: either she attacks one party member with a long, unbreakable attack string, which is basically guaranteed to kill them, or she uses her Overdrive (at will, mind you), "Bronte Magic", which hits three people and can Freeze, Stun or Paralyze. Did we forget to mention you only have one worthwhile multi-target healing spell? And that in order to use it, you usually have to break your combo so that the character can access the menu?
• Mass Effect 2 has Praetorian, an exceedingly frustrating boss. First, it's a flying tank that can fire a powerful laser beam at you, and often only you, with perfect accuracy. It has a barrier that is difficult to bring down before you can even begin to deal damage to it. Once you take that barrier down, it will wait a few seconds and then slam itself into the ground, setting off a shockwave that stuns anyone nearby. Once the stun wears off, you have only a second to get away before the boss sets off an energy pulse that is almost always a one-hit-kill to anyone within a few yards. Then it will rise back into the air with its barrier fully recharged. The final kicker? It will always slowly float towards you, so while you're hiding under cover to keep away from its laser beam, it's getting closer and closer to getting you with the insta-kill energy pulse. For a game that is mostly tough but fair, such that if you die you'll know what you did wrong and how to do better next time, Praetorian suddenly crosses the line between challenging and Nintendo Hard.
  • It also features a couple fights on foot with enemies that you tackled from the safety of your Awesome Personnel Carrier in the first game.
    • 1) The thresher maw. This is a giant worm thing that shoots poison that can kill you in two hits and can only be hit at range.
    • 2) The Geth Colossus. Not so bad in the first game when you could drive circles around it while whittling its shields down with your vehicle-mounted cannon. Here, you're fighting it on foot with small arms, and it has cover and infantry support. On Hardcore or Insanity (which you have to do in order to get the Bonus Weapon), the thing fires its pulses really fast to keep you in cover while its buddies run around and kill you.
  • Tela Vasir in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC definitely fits here. She's easily one of the toughest bosses in the series. She has extremely high barrier and armor defenses. She's ridiculously accurate with her battle rifle, uses a biotic charge (something that only Vanguard Shepard was capable of before), shockwave, and tech armor. And it is awesome!! Especially if you're playing as a Vanguard.
• Mass Effect 1: The first game's Thresher Maws were no joke either. You fight them in the Mako, which some people would argue is quite enough, but that's not all. The giant worm also ignores your shields completely and is able to trash the Mako with one hit when you're unlucky and three hits if you are. It frequently disappears beneath the sand and reappears elsewhere, meaning in addition to shooting and dodging, you have to be constantly fiddling with the camera to stay on target. And even if you get the strategy down pat, it can still randomly hand you a Crack Defeat by spawning right underneath you. Luckily, you can avoid most encounters, but at least one sidequest forces you to fight one.
  • There's also the... beloved krogan battlemaster at the end of Therum. Most players go there fairly early on to get Liara. Most players have, up to this point, had a relatively easy time of it. And thus most players will die immediately. What makes it even more frustrating is that the game will not autosave immediately before the fight, so you'll end up getting reeeeal familiar with the dialogue immediately before.
  • Matriarch Benezia can also be tough. She can use her biotics to move your cover or cripple you, and to make matters worse, you have to deal with Asari Commandos and Geth Snipers (which can kill you in one hit, by the way).
• Labyrinth of Touhou has plenty of these:
  • Youmu Konpaku, who is almost guaranteed to give you hell. For starters, she's teamed up with her ghost half who rains down status effects on your party, while she devastates your whole team with her absurdly powerful sword attacks. Thankfully, the ghost goes down fairly easily. Youmu, on the other hand, has a whopping 24,000 hp, with the most you're capable of doing at best is 1000 or so. And about half the characters at your disposal are weak to physical attacks, the only moves Youmu uses, and die to them instantly.
    • Judging by the above, you'd probably think that it's a good idea to focus on the ghost, considering that it has less health. You'd be very, very wrong. Upon it going down, Youmu goes completely insane with her attacks, using her elemental attacks more often and also beginning to use Slash of Eternity, which is ungodly powerful.
  • The Eientei trio, against whom you must kill Eirin and Kaguya at the same time or else face an instant game-over from either Astronomical Entombing or Danmaku Barrage.
    • Luckily, characters high Spirit Affinity can resist them somewhat, so equipping characters like Komachi with the +128 SPI affinity item helps a lot
  • Yuyuko, a.k.a. "Whoops, here's a multi-target attack with 200% chance of instant death."
  • Flandre, whose Levatein obliterates anyone not with tankish stats and about 500 FIR affinity.
  • Yukari, who uses Djinn "I totally cribbed this from Golden Sun" Storm to drain all SP from ALL your characters (including those in reserve). And she'll always use it in battle twice, including once just before her Turns Red phase.
  • Rinnosuke, who has an absurdly long fight filled with several different forms, and is capable of inflicting every status effect in the game. To add insult to injury, he can switch between his elemental forms at will, and the ones that are inactive regain health. You could have one form on the ropes, only to have Kourin to switch to a brand new form with full health. By the time you take that form out, the first one will have, more often than not, come back to full health.
  • Bloody Papa. Two words: "Strengthen Jutsu".
  • Hibachi #1 and 2, who are like Eirin and Kaguya, only even more unforgiving, and with relatively infinite DEF or MND.
  • Utsuho, who busts out Giga Flare from out of nowhere without any warning at all. If you're not expecting Mystic attacks on a Fire-based boss, then you are screwed.
• In Aion, Draupnir Cave is supposed to be, progression-wise, the fourth-hardest dungeon in game (third-hardest for either faction, since two of the following dungeons are restricted by faction). The last boss of Draupnir Cave is harder than anything in the later dungeons except perhaps the hardest of the bonus bosses in the final dungeon. In earlier versions of the game, the captain of the pirate ship Steel Rake was also That One Boss, until his Nerf.
• The MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has many very hard bosses, but most importantly Akande, which is necessary to kill to get the Griffon, the standard flying mount of the game. This boss was nigh impossible for anyone but best equipped groups, which still kept failing a lot. There was supposed to be a trick to kill Akande easily, but apparently nobody ever found out what it was. Even after Akande was toned down a lot later, it was still an almost impossible kill.
• Action RPG Metal Walker has one in the form of B. Dragon. He does a fair amount of damage even if you grinded...and his amount of HP is MASSIVE. Even if you do 77 damage with each hit, he will likely kill you before you kill him, especially if he or his minions get good capsules.
• The level in GPG's RPG Space Siege where you decline Jake's offer of joining the Dark Side has you fighting a unfair number of fights, but the piss taker is Jake himself. His Railgun attack is easy to avoid, but if it hits you it takes off a fifth of your Health Bar, but the real dick move is the undogable Fire Trap Spam (for want of better term) that turns a third of the playing field into mines. Which you can't destroy with the rocket launcher, but you can trick into detonating with HR-V or yourself. Think you can keep doing that in a game with sticky controls?
• The 3 Death Knights in Mystic Ark is hands down, one of the hardest boss fights in the game. They all can attack for massive amounts of damage, Lux and Reeshine being the only ones who can take a hit rather well, they also know a moderately powerful fire spell, and all know the Kill spell to top it off. Unlike in The 7th Saga though, getting a party member, especially the main hero killed is sort of a big deal. To make matters worse, one of them will start casting the second best healing spell in the game if its allies are being threatened. Fortunately, the Deathguard spell/the Cross item helps take care of the Kill problem. Too bad they can still team up and annihilate, if they wanted to or if you're just plain unlucky, the main character, who is a Glass Cannon, the White Mage, and/or the Squishy Wizard.
  • The "Beast" is also a royal pain, being a Duel Boss in a game where the hero has only slightly more defensive capabilities than the squishy wizards. The thing hits hard, too.
• In Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, there are two actual boss fights that are absolutely enraging. The first is against the TWIN giant scorpions, and the second is the fight with the TWIN Swat Bot MKIIs. The Giant Scorpions are hard the first run through the game for many reasons. They can easily poison you, they have very powerful attacks, they have way more health than ANYTHING you've seen thus far, and most importantly, your characters have virtually no upgrades on their specials. The Swat Bots, on the other hand, have downright ridiculous health, insane defense, and the ability to resurrect themselves. If you don't kill BOTH on the same round, they'll get back up with 50 health. On your first run, you're hitting for maybe 15 damage if you're lucky at this point. The only consolation you get is that it is VERY EASY to prevent their specials from hitting you.
• Monster Racers has Reinhart. After a Hopeless Boss Fight very early on (which will cause him to go nuts if you manage to beat him and his then-level-35 monster - for reference, you're expected to be at level 8), most players would've eventually settled into the groove of 2 high bells and a ring of knowledge for everything except tournaments, where they would shuffle their equipment around to give their monsters an edge in the races. This works fine and dandy up until the European GP, where being 20 levels above EVERYONE BUT REINHART (and having fed your monster of choice lots of candy) will still make the difference in time between you and Reinhart's beast of a monster less than half a second. Making this much more painful is when he tells you immediately afterward that he was only beaten by one other racer.
  • The boss preceding Reinhart, Santos, isn't that easy either. Like the Reinhart example right above, this boss has a large speed boost on the terrain that his stage uses a lot. To make things worse, he has great speed and acceleration, and a defensive skill that means just bashing into him won't do you any good.
  • Even worse, there is a late-game battle that features you against Reinhart and Santos at the same time. And a third boss, just to add insult to injury.
• Terranigma's Bloody Mary is the combo breaker in a series of reasonably easy minor bosses. She has high defense and powerful attacks, plus a floating ring of masks or something that screw you every time, as Ark's physical attacks are all close range. Your best bet is a magic ring, and you're limited to 9 of those.
• RuneScape gives us Nomad, generally agreed to be one of the hardest fights in the game. The highest amount of health you can have is 990. He has 12500, and his normal attack can hit in the middle 300s. He has quite a few special attacks, but two stand out. The first must has to be ran from, or you get hit with 750 damage. The other sees you teleported in front of him, and frozen, meaning you can only stand there and cram food into your mouth as he charges up a viscous HP to One attack. It does your health level minus one. So if you have a max of 990, it does 989. You didn't have full health? "Oh dear, you are dead."
  • With there release of Dominion Tower, there is a challenge that you will have to fight him twice in a row without using the bank or take a break. Good luck!
  • One of the Occult Daemonheim bosses, the Gravecreeper, is notoriously difficult to defeat. His normal attack can't be blocked, and one of his specials summons purple goo which hits everyone around him rapidly with strong hits (200+) while disabling all their prayers. His other special attack takes this to the next level: he digs himself into the ground, rendering himself invulnerable, while activating various plinths around the room. Fail to deactivate them by blessing them (and sacrificing more prayer,) and practically the whole room will become filled with the purple goo. "Oh dear, you are dead!"
• Everquest 2 and the Leviathan. Even though it is a level 80 raid monster, and the max level is now 90, people still refuse to go anywhere near it for several reasons. At level 80, it would reflect spells up to level 87. This meant mages were near useless for DPS, and any group Debuff's cast by bards could turn around and hit you. You also needed at least 100 noxious potions to cure yourself. Then the time it took to kill. Guilds would often have to spend a week or two before farming fluids which you need to blow the mob up from the inside. And at the time, you needed to kill him to be able to access Veeshan's peak, and get your Mythical weapon.
• In the first Dark Cloud game, there is one boss that will absolutely mop the floor with you over and over and over and over and over... Anyone who has played the game can tell you: Ice Queen La Saia is a bitch. First, you have to kill the magic-resistant shield she is using. Alright, you've got 3 characters who aren't magic users, so it shouldn't be that hard, right? ABSOLUTELY WRONG. For she has several varieties of projectiles, one of which FREEZES YOU IN PLACE, and one which drops a gigantic block of ice For Massive Damage. Which she will use in combination. And she'll distance herself from you CONSTANTLY. Alright, so you take out the shield, now what? Good luck damaging her, as without using Fire element with a pretty high score on your weapon, you will do all of shit to her. And only the sole Magic user on the team can damage her without using items. La Saia is still capable of freezing you and hurting you QUITE badly. If the magic user dies, and you lack revival powder, guess what? You lose. Right there. And she has FAR more health than the two bosses that precede her (though Dran takes an insane amount of hits to take out if you haven't been using Xiao a lot). Oh and the BGM doesn't help. AT ALL.
• Neoquest and Neoquest II, the RPG games on the Neopets website have a few examples. In Neoquest I, Archmagus of Roo can cause players within his level range a lot of pain and suffering, and the Final Boss is very difficult as well. In Neoquest II, Zombom, an early boss in the game can do a lot of damage with his Decimate spell for that point in the game, and you only have one party character to fight with. The Leximp can also cause players a lot of problems as well. The Four Faeries, Hubrid Nox, and King Terask are the hardest bosses in the game, hitting extremely hard and are capable of healing.
• MagicMan.EXE in the first Mega Man Battle Network. His own attack blocks one row of your field, and then he summons two Mooks who might just Deadlock you.
  • BubbleMan.EXE in Battle Network 3. ENDLESS RESPAWNING BUBBLES ATTACK FROM HOLES IN FLOOR, YES, THANK YOU. Also he envelops himself in a bubble shield, and the player has to destroy that before being able to damage him, which takes a hard hitting attack, but you can't really use a chip card because that'd be depleting your deck and just arghwhattasflkdjI want toasfd machen wis das TOT GEHEN.
    • It gets worse when fighting his v3 form, since the only way he'll even show up is if your HP is critical. That's just plain mean.
  • CloudMan.EXE in Battle Network 5 is almost as bad as BubbleMan. He hangs out in the back column with clouds protecting him, while periodically summoning one in your field that shoots electricity. Using a Navi-summoning chip to break through his defenses for a free hit? The clouds absorb all the damage, meaning the only feasible way to take them out is with buster shots...but that doesn't stop Cloud from summoning more. Then there's that damn moving thundercloud pillar with Cloud hiding inside one of his panels... Granted, if you have a Lance, you can push him out of the back column and do a huge amount of damage right off the bat. If not, good luck. And unlike Bubble, it is mandatory to fight all three of his forms if you want to complete the postgame.
• The Ravager in Jade Empire hits hard, can recover his health in seconds with Chi healing, and is fond of rolling away or using area attacks to prevent the player from killing him before he can recover. He also has unlimited Chi, which makes it a matter of killing him before he can regenerate.
  • The Dirge Clones on Jade Master difficulty are incredibly hard to beat, since none of the cheesy strategies that you need to stand a chance against the bosses are particularly useful in this fight. Unless you exploit the poor pathfinding AI, it seems almost impossible to win, and even then it's a handful.
• Goresby Purrvis, The Dragon of Dragon Quest IX, is widely considered to be one of the hardest bosses in the game barring the final boss and the grotto bosses. For one, he is insanely fast, is similarly extremely powerful, and is fond of using an upwards thrust attack that will, 100% of the time, knock the target down, rendering him/her inactive for a turn. Oh, and he can also use Hatchet Man, which he makes liberal use of throughout the fight.
• Baron Brixius in the flash game Sonny 2. He has an utterly absurd HP total, upwards of 48,000 (to put that into perspective, you fight Brixius in the middle of the second area, and the game's Final Boss in the fifth area has slightly over 14,000.) He also loves casting one of the nastiest debuffs the game has to offer - a very powerful poison that will kill any character in 10 turns if you don't heal them, and that's assuming they're at full health when it hits them AND that Brixius doesn't simply attack them to make it even faster. AND this poison also reduces any healing the afflicted character receives by half. It's also impossible to cure, except by waiting for it to wear off - in 10 turns. So you have to spend the vast majority of what would have already been a very long battle healing, because you need all the help you can get, and there is no way to revive dead characters mid-battle in this game. Oh, and it's not like there's anything stopping Brixius from casting his poison spell on multiple characters at once. This is all on the game's easy mode.
  • Brixius might count more as a Puzzle Boss however - The actual trick to him is to keep draining his focus (the game's equivalent of MP), which will make him apply a buff that restores it that also damages him. All 3 classes have access to at least one focus draining ability.
  • There is also the Hydra, the final boss of the 4th area - Just like Brixius, there have been multiple threads on sites where the game is hosted asking how to kill it.
• In Golden Sun the fight against Saturos in the first game can rip an unsuspecting player to shreds. He's the first boss to use second-level spells against the player, which do tons of damage for that stage in the game and will hit the whole party. You'll want to heal constantly... oops, except that Mia, your Mercury caster, is your main healer, and Saturos' weakness is Mercury Psynergy! The total lack of revive spells/Djinni at that stage of the game also means that you'll have to rely on Waters Of Life if one of your characters fall (which they will) and you only have the opportunity to find maybe two by the time you find him. And Saturos is the third boss in the game, not counting the Hopeless Boss Fight in the prologue and assuming you're not Sequence Breaking.
  • Another nasty encounter in the first game is the Kraken, boss of a sailing ship on the Karagol Sea. He's got 2400 HP, quite a bit more than the last boss's 1700 HP, and like most bosses in the game gets two attacks per turn. Even worse, it knows Ply, which heals it for about 100 HP a pop. Also, almost all of its attacks have a high chance of either inflicting status (such as its favorites Dark Blessing, Water Blessing. and Poison Beat) or of ignoring stats (Such as Spinning Beat, which has a chance of treating someone's defense as though it were HALVED). Add on a minuscule chance of it pulling a nastily powerful Mercury elemental attack and you're pretty screwed over. No wonder most people who run from a few fights get stuck here, especially since once you get on the Karagol sea you can't go back to grind levels or buy new equipment and items.
  • Coming after Lamakan Desert, the Manticore can be a difficult boss. Unless you were really diligent with the oasis searching, you might be weakened from sunstroke. In addition, the Manticore can move twice per turn, and is the first boss to do so, so it will catch a new player off guard when it suddenly nukes your party with its powerful Mars element attacks that hit multiple targets at once. Along with raw power it also has an arsenal of status-inflicting moves to make your life miserable, such as Poison Tail, Curse, and Delude.
  • The Final Boss fight is an intense two-stage gauntlet against Saturos and Menardi at their most powerful, with no chance to rest between phases. Saturos and Menardi are both packing monstrously powerful Psynergy attacks that will nuke your entire party For Massive Damage, with Menardi in particular being capable of instantly killing anyone targeted by her Death Size attack. They also buff and heal each other, while flinging debuffs and annoying status conditions your way. If you survive this insanely difficult Dual Boss fight, you're rewarded with a fight against their Fusion Dance form: the Fusion Dragon. It attacks twice per turn, and utilizes insanely hard-hitting Summon-style attacks, status effects like Haunt and Deadly Poison, and even an HP to One attack as an extra kick to the nuts.
• Orb Of Undead from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, he's not particularly hard on single player, but on co-op he get's buffed considerably, The Orb Of Undead is a Flunky Boss who summons an army of undead to fight the player, when he summons his army he flies out of reach, and will only come down once you have killed all of his minions, but when he comes down he only he comes down for a few seconds before repeating the process, there's enough skeletons to surrond the player, and they can do it quickly doing high damage, don't be fooled, these skeletons aren't really cannon fodder you can kill in just a couple of hits.
• While several of the bosses can be That One Boss in Demon's Souls, the general consensus on the toughest is between three different ones; Flame Lurker, Maneater and the False King (if they are not beaten using Good Bad Bugs and AI exploits).
  • Flame Lurker is highly agile, highly aggressive, leaves few openings where it is truly safe to attack, and is a melee boss with various attacks that cover a wide range. To make matters worse, when it loses between half to three-quarters of its health it goes berserk and has pretty much all its attacks do radius damage. Flame resistance helps a lot, but even then it can cut down all but the toughest tanks (who can at least rely on high stamina along with a good shield) in a couple of direct hits, and gives few opportunities to heal.
  • Maneater is also very aggressive and fast, and in particular it has an incredibly annoying pounce attack that does heavy damage and can easily knock you off the thin ledge the majority of the arena is made up of (thankfully the centre of the arena is mostly safe from this problem, except you have to move past it to get there). Oh yeah, and there are two who are both equally dangerous, although it is possible to wipe out the first one before the second becomes an issue. As a bonus, its understated introduction of demonic eyes approaching from the darkness is Nightmare Fuel.
  • False King is another Lightning Bruiser type boss (notice a pattern?), who can unleash many quick combos and easily break the guard of all but the toughest fighters. He also has an instant kill attack that covers at least a third of the arena (although you can knock him out of it pretty easily), and is the only (computer controlled) enemy in the game with an attack that can Level Drain you.
• There's an easy way to determine if a person has played Agarest Senki through the midway point. Mention the words Midas and Phoenix Wave in the same sentence, and see if the person you are talking to starts frothing in rage. Of course, there's also the massive amount of HP, the 12% HP regen that is difficult to break without certain attacks, and the other myriad of overkill attacks he can use that are normally left as combination specials. God help you if you haven't obtained one or more useful EX 2 combinations, Execution, Gore Crush, and don't want to do the extra Level Grinding to promotion level.
• Many of the end-level bosses in the PC game for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King had various tricks and unusual ways you had to fight them, but most were fairly straightforward- There were patterns to their summoned allies, points where they couldn't be attacked, and times they were vulnerable. Then there was Gorbag, at the end of the "Minas Morgul" level. The only way to beat him was to first break his shield- which required a spear- then immobilize him- which required another spear- and only then would his health bar appear so you could wail on him for a few seconds before he got another shield. And actually picking up these spears, since you're a freaking Hobbit, takes forever, during which you're vulnerable to attack (Which knocks the spear out of your hand, so you have to get another one.) Oh, and he'll also leap at you across the whole level and begin rapidly assaulting you if you stay in one place (ie near the spears) for too long. Oh, and after you break the shield, he'll still fight, still be immune, and keep trying to attack you until you get that second spear. And don't take too long with that second spear, or he'll just grab another shield and you have to START ALL OVER AGAIN.
• Ys IV(the TurboGrafx-16 version) has its Big Bad Arem, possibly the hardest final boss outside the remakes. He has three life bars, Turns Red for his second, can regenerate his HP, it takes an extremely long time to whittle down his HP even if your EXP is maxed out, and bombards you with a shitload of hard-to-avoid highly damaging attacks.
• Agarest Senki 2 may not be crossing the Nintendo Hard line, but that doesn't mean that this game doesn't have the resident That One Boss. Pain, thy name is Sophia, one of your party members. She herself as a boss really isn't hard at all. What makes her hard is if you did not have any back up party members due to the fact that at this point, you lose four of your party members due to a series of PlayerPunches. Oh, and this is also a case of Boss Rush due to the fact that before you even fight her, you are fighting off against two bosses who aren't hard themselves. However, whatever HP you have left at your last fight, it still carries over to this fight. And woe befall to you if you didn't equip your reserves with any equipment due to the fact that the game will not allow you to change equipment while in this section.
• In the flash game Book of Mages: The Dark Times, we have Witchthorn. He is one of a very small number of opponents who will use Cursed bolts, which reduce your character's strength, and can stack to the point where your strength falls all the way to 1. The problem is that Witchthorn has 610 HP, in a game where 300 HP is above average and endgame-level enemies typically have somewhere from 300 to 400; never mind that you typically fight Witchthorn in the midgame, making for an absurd Marathon Boss. While the bolts can normally be blocked, Witchthorn will usually cast Silence before you have a chance to kill him, and when he does this, you are about to get cursed and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. To cap it all, if you choose to spare his life after your first fight, you might have to face him again.
  • Burnstorm also counts, mostly for his Combined bolt. This attack does an amount of damage exponentially above what Combined bolts are normally capable of; it's virtually guaranteed to one-hit kill you. And once his Special bar gets high enough, he will do nothing but spam that attack for the rest of the fight; note that another one of his abilities increases his Special bar. If you fail to prevent him from firing this attack, even once, you lose. To make matters worse, he is one of a vanishingly small number of opponents who can dispel status effects; good luck if you're playing a clan that relies on those, such as Dark Wood, which is otherwise the best clan to beat the game with, or Poison Water, with its complete reliance on the Poison effect.
  • Another obnoxious opponent is Chilldream, who stands out as the only opponent in the game who isn't a Bonus Boss but can do something your character can never do - shooting 20 high attack bolts at once (your max is 15). Since Chilldream has maxed out attack power, that means 50 unblockable damage per round unless you got the High Defend Bonus skill (which is mutually exclusive with Low Attack Bonus, the latter of which is much more useful in literally every battle except this one). This assumes he doesn't simply cast Freeze Defend, which deals 100 unblockable damage. This, in a game where you might have 400 HP in time for the final boss, and are likely to have under 200 around the time you can first face Chilldream. The saving grace is that it's possible to avoid facing him with clever use of the game's Relationship system, though doing this causes you to gain Reputation points (when on the Black path you want as few of these as possible, and Black players are the only ones who have to face Chilldream in the first place.)
• Champions Online rarely has such bosses, mostly because all of the most powerful ones are pretty much for a full party (meaning at least SOMEONE has the right powers to either keep him busy or take him down), or a full open environment beatdown by everyone who can gather there, or have a specific method and set of tactics for defeating them that most players can do solo (though not without taking a world of hurt in some cases). However, in the Demonflame adventure pack, the final boss BECOMES That One Boss not because of him - but because of the horrible AI of your mandatory assistant. You must keep the Boss and his summoned mook busy as your assistant opens five mystic chests, releasing the power contained within. Unfortunately, it is timed - and if the Boss or his mook attacks the assistant, the assistant fights back - and keeps fighting until his target is dead, even if he's not being attacked anymore. Solo attempts on this boss are possible - but if you lose twice, you're given a "mercy" win with no rewards and you'd have to start the whole adventure pack over again to try for a 'solid' win once more.
• Return to Krondor has a few bosses that are candidates for this trope. The first candidate is a demon. This demon is huge, red, and muscular. It does not use magic attacks, but it has a claw attack that will hit your characters very hard and almost never misses. It is pretty much immune to magic attacks (However, it is possible to blind this monster with the spell Behold the Birthing Sun - the second last magic spell you can unlock in the Fire Spells section). This demon a lot of health points, and you will need a good sword to hurt it. Your party against this demon consists of James the thief and Jazhara the mage. Wait, that's not all! Your decisions in the game will cause one out of a few scenarios to occur: 1. You fight the demon and one necromancer in a small room, 2. You fight the demon and two mages in a small room, or 3. You fight the demon, one necromancer, and at least four Nighthawks in the Bar. Have fun! The second candidate is at least one of the Grey Talon Mercernaries. Some of them have magical armour and weapons. This means that if you did not properly prepare for this fight, then you are going to spend forever trying to inflict damage on them. The party consists of William the warrior and six Krondorian guards. The third candidate is the Vampire Lord. Your decisions will result in one or two fights with this boss. One of the fights has the boss being able to completely restore all his health (He has a lot of health points) every time you bring it down to zero. He also will very likely hit you, and not only does he hit hard, but the vampire bite adds a lot to the damage he inflicts. This means that he can topple mighty Solon in a few hits. That fight ends after a number of turns, in which the Vampire Lord disappears in a puff of smoke. The other fight with him is the same as the last one with two differences: 1. He can no longer completely restore his health when you bring it down to zero and 2. He has three vampires and a zombie backing him up. At least this time he dies for good after a number of turns...if you last that long. The party consists of James the thief, Jazhara the mage, Kendaric the mage, and Solon the warrior-priest. The fourth candidate is the Dragon Soul. This boss is practically immune to attacks except for magic swords. It will simply shoot chain lightning at you on every turn. There is little defense against magic attacks. All you can do is try to survive for enough turns before it is automatically defeated. The party is the same as the one fighting the Vampire Lord.
• Not only is Chaos Lord Ledgermayne in Adventure Quest Worlds a Complete Monster bent on starving off all of Lore by sealing off ALL magic from it, it is also so incredibly tough to beat that it'll probably give you nightmares every time you fight it, especially if you're at a low level. Its toughness is explained by the special boss mechanic worked into it that requires you to pay attention during the fight. Every one in a while, it will automatically warp to the center of the battlefield and give off a colorful glow and a message will pop up, warning, "Ledgermayne charges a powerful attack! Enter the glowing safe zone!" This message urges you to quickly run to the glowing safe zones that open up every time it does this, and if you're not there in time, then the resulting blast from the attack will hit you with MASSIVE DAMAGE and, if you have under 1,200-1,600 HP, it can easily KILL YOU. Of course, once you're in the safe zones, the blast will end up healing you.
  • Wolfwing, an earlier Chaos Lord, can be a pain as well. Whenever you fight him, every time you've taken enough HP off of him, he will use an attack that hits one player for huge damage and, worse yet, heals him. He'll do this about five times per fight, and once his HP hits below 10,000 or a little lower, a message will pop up saying "Wolfwing goes berserk! End this before he ends you!" and therefore he'll start attacking TWICE AS FAST! He can heal himself at least two more times when he's berserk, too. Whoa.
  • Another earlier Chaos Lord, namely Vath, also counts as That One Boss. Basically, he has Stalagbite, and both have low HP, but here's the catch - if you attack Stalagbite first, your damage will be significantly reduced when attacking Vath. And, of course, there's much worse than that - if you attack Vath first, Stalagbite will increase the damage of his attacks and stomp you to death for quad-digit damage that goes RIGHT ABOVE your current amount of HP! Yikes!
  • Ladies and gentlemen, meet Tibicenas, the eighth Lord of Chaos. Just like Wolfwing, Tibi will steal HP from as many targeted players as he wants every time enough HP is taken off him. He'll do this about eight times per fight, and by the time he steals HP for the sixth time once his HP hits below 5,500, that's when he goes berserk, as evidenced by attacking twice as fast as a message pops up saying "Tibicenas goes berserk! Kill him quickly!" If you're unlucky, his HP-stealing AoE can even leave you with just 1 HP, no matter how much HP you have left.
  • And then there's his revenge-shade, Ultra-Tibicenas. He has almost the same amount of HP as the Frost King, plus, he steals HP more often and can even use an attack that petrifies at least one player for a few seconds every once in a while. Worst of all, he WILL go berserk once his HP hits below 20,000, therefore he'll start attacking twice as fast by the time a message pops up saying "Ultra-Tibicenas goes berserk! Kill him quickly!" Now this guy feels like he seems hopeless to defeat.
• The Final Boss of Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity, yet another Dark Force/Falz/Fulkis, is pretty ridiculous. Its level scales to anywhere between 25 to 88, meaning that unless you fight it past level 100, you're going to be subject to the following: defense so ridiculously high you'll be surprised to ever see anything past 15, a size so cosmically out of scale that you can't even fit anything past its heels on the screen, trampling damage like most any other walking boss (De Ragan, etc.), most attack will easily take out half your HP, some attacks which can chain you to death if you're too stupid to keep strafing, and that's before it Turns Red. When it gets to low HP (of course there's no way to see how much it has; that would give you hope), the game's theme starts playing (which may or may not be an Ear Worm or Hell Is That Noise depending on the person) and it start attacking twice as fast and with extended combos. Then it disappears, and unless you've got a lot of HP, a good block ready, or great reflexes to dodge, will reappear right over you and do what for most will be an Instant Kill attack. The fight can easily last for over 20 minutes, in which you'll run dry of all your monomates, dimates, trimates, star atomizers, and any and all PP on Resta. Didn't bring a good light weapon or strong dark armor? You're dead.
• The first battle with Ichii in Touhoumon World Link is a prime example of a brutal "Wake-Up Call" Boss. It might not seem so bad at a glance; she only has one Boneka, Rin, and she's at Level 3. The problem? Its moves. WHY THE HELL DOES A LEVEL 3 BONEKA KNOW THUNDERSHOCK AND HYPER VOICE?! And Rin has a lot more HP than anything else at her level, as well as a Sitrus Berry to bring its health back up once you start doing damage to it. Ichii will also start the fight by using an X Special, making ThunderShock hurt more. Picking Kurumi as your starter makes this fight a little easier, as Pursuit does more damage with her, and she also has Synchronize to inflict Paralysis on Rin, thereby forcing Ichii to waste her turn by using a non-working Energy Root and lowering Rin's speed. If you picked anybody else? Good luck.
• In Mega Man Star Force 3, two storyline bosses really stand out; Acid Ace and Dread Joker. Ace has a large pool of attacks and never follows any clear pattern with his attacks. Joker has Super Armor, meaning he doesn't flinch. On top of this, he has a laser attack that takes up the whole screen, so the only way to not take damage is to time your attacks so that he's knocked out of it. Much later in the game, you fight upgraded versions of both of them back-to-back.
• The fight with the Soldum Telethia ranks as (one of) the hardest in Xenoblade Chronicles for many players. It's not really the Boss himself that's the problem: it's Tyrea who fights alongside him. The Telethia will evade any and all attacks unless you use Purge on it. easy enough. But you've only got so much time before the effects of Purge wear off and it begins attacking again. This is annoying but not impossible. Tyrea makes it worse because not only is she capable of attacking any of your characters, she's also capable of casting a Shield on the Telethia, making damaging him very difficult indeed. Now you may think it's easy to get around this, just take Tyrea out first right? WRONG! The Telethia likes to use a move that's kinda like Pokemon's Follow Me, as it forces you to attack the Telethia himself. Oh, and if you're using Shulk, which you probably are since only him can silence the Telethia, all his attacks will do Scratch Damage to Tyrea. Fun times.
  • The first fight with Xord in the Ether Mines is just awful. To even scratch the guy, you have build up enough affinity to pull off a chain attack, which requires for you to have a party member who is able to topple him over alive in order for it to work. Now take a boss who does a disgusting amount of damage with his attacks, swarms of lesser Mechon who will chip away at you and your companions, Sharla and Reyn being too stupid to help you out with specific enemies, and making it to where if you have to revive your companions, you need to spend a third of your Affinity to do so, and you have an absolutely nightmarish clusterfuck on your hands. It also doesn't help that the camera can get really screwy during the fight which may give you a literal headache along with the figurative one that Xord presents. Thankfully, the battle with him afterwards is almost insultingly easy.
  • The second fight with Jade Face is a strong contender as well (The first one is simply a Trick Boss and he runs away after you deal some damage). Not only he keeps summoning mooks to annoy you, he's got several powerful attacks (Especially Laser Bullet) which unless you tank will decimate your party, and he's fairly durable, even. To make matters worse, the game makes you think you might auto-win after dealing a set ammount of his HP on damage since you're "buying time"... nope, you do have to deplete all his HP. To put in perspective, you face HIS boss five minutes later, and despite him having similar tactics, he's much easier.
  • And lest us forget Lorithia. Flunkies that you need to take down or your physical damage to the boss will be nerfed to hell (Until they're brought back), attacks that cause Standard Status Effects (The really bad ones, too), high HP and worst of all, the area is surrounded by acid pools that cause your HP to start going down fast. Your computer-controlled allies are too dumb to run away from them, but the boss can walk inside the acid fine.
• Rune Factory 3: Even among the jacked-up bosses within the Sharance Maze, Golem and Siren stand out. Most have near-full-screen, multi-hit magic attacks which, while powerful, can be nerfed or outright nullified with the right equipment (Or dodged with the Rocket Shoes). Except for the Golem - which simply chases you around with multi-hit punch attacks and Rocket Punches and dizzies you with nearly every blow (setting you up for a knockout follow-up) and Siren - which has "Siren Song". It throws musical notes at you, each color does different elemental damage (did we mention the accessories that nullify damage from one element gives you double damage from it's opposite?). It also contains black notes that will One Hit KO you. Oh, and as the notes drift towards you, they change color. So that water note drifting towards you could suddenly become fire or death just before it it hits you. Like many bosses on this list, if you have the right equipment, they're nothing to worry about. If you don't, you die.
• DC Universe Online: Go into the general chat, mention PengiBot Maximus or the Penguin himself, and witness many highly equipped players swear like sailors. The former has dash and spin attacks that can suck you in and kill you in seconds, plus adds that can freeze or you set you on fire, blow you up or heal him making it hard to keep your distance and not get hit...and he's just the MINI-BOSS in the instance. The latter has an umbrella with a stun for close range, a machine gun or flamethrower for mid range and a grenade launcher that can hit you anywhere in the room all of the above will melt your face off in seconds. Even better? Its a SOLO mission so you can't bring pals to share the pain. They did add it as a Duo mission and dropped the Bot from that version but still. Ow.
• Aragog from the GBC version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. His attacks take roughly 25% of your hp every turn, plus he can poison you for even more damage. Did I mention that he can paralyze you to prevent you from healing between turns?
• Nearly every boss in Dark Souls is capable of killing you in a matter of seconds if you're not careful, but two stand out; the Capra Demon, and the Dual Boss battle against Ornstein and Smough.
  • The Capra Demon is fast, powerful, supported by two poison dogs, and is fought in a tiny room. Killing the two dogs makes the fight slightly more manageable, but even that is a feat. And unless you've upgraded a shield, you won't be able to block the Capra Demon's strongest attacks. It also appears relatively early in the game, before you have any really powerful weapons or spells.
  • Ornstein and Smough are arguably the hardest boss fight in the game. Either one would be a fairly challenging boss on their own. Together they are a nightmare. And it actually gets worse after one falls -- the other will absorb the fallen one's power and be healed to full health. Ornstein becomes a giant while Smough's hammer gets charged with lightning.
• Breath of Fire IV has the dice known as I and II, encountered in Fou-lu's tomb. They're both packing plenty of HP - that's brutal enough. To add insult to injury, their first move is always to use Statis, which prevents you from using the game's most damaging combos. So when you decide to fall back on Ryu's HP-granting dragon forms, they bust out a move called Revolution, which randomizes your characters' HP counts (healing Ryu in dragon form is impossible without a very special, very rare item). Their regular physical attack is very brutal. But, after all is said and done, the worst part about it all is that one die will always attack before your characters and one die will always attack after your characters, meaning planning any sort of defense or healing takes some good luck.
• Dark Cloud: The Ice Princess will KILL YOU.
  • Dark Cloud 2: Sirus. Not Griffon in his ultra-badass form. Sirus, as in that bastard rabbit with the voice of Phil and Lil.
  • Not to say that Griffon isn't a gigantic asshole either. The fight will either take forever or you will barely survive. Dark Element is also a complete bitch if you don't know exactly what you're doing and don't have really, really powerful projectiles. Gaspard, in all incarnations, is also a raging whore if you don't have really powerful weapons. Like, used the photo album exploit level powerful weapons. Really, half the bosses in the game can be considered That One Boss to someone, but Sirus in Bunny form takes the cake for sure.
• The PSP adaptation of Digimon Adventure has a few of these. A rule of thumb for late-game bosses is that good use of certain Digipieces is required for survival.
  • Believe it or not, the Pumpmon and Gotsumon fight can be this for the unprepared, marking this game's Difficulty Spike. For context, this is a 2-on-2 fight with only Gabumon and Patamon in the player's party. The problem is that both bosses have beefy health and can inflict massive damage unless they are debuffed, and Patamon has yet to recover his evolution, which risks him into getting knocked out easily, turning the battle into a 2-on-1. Another problem being that the battle happens after several dialogue scenes involving Pumpmon's and Gotsumon's antics, and the only time the player is given a chance to prepare is during the very beginning of the Episode.
  • VenomVamdemon, the climactic battle to end the Vamdemon arc, basically ups boss difficulty even more, and the game will never look back after that. Even with a careful setup, he can still potentially murder the entire party (including WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon) as not only he has 2x Action, but also has most of his attacks inflict multiple hits. This Damage Sponge Boss also has Auto Heal Ω, enabling him to regenerate HP every time he gets his turn. Even worse, it is a Sequential Boss fight fought twice in a row, so unless the active Digimon managed to level up after the first, the player is more likely to start the second battle in a crippled state. Near the end of the main story, the player will face him again, with the same attacks and all.
  • The battle against Delumon/Deramon and Floramon is this simply due to the latter's annoying status effect spam and the former's Defend trait allowing him to tank damage meant for Floramon if her health runs low.
  • MetalEtemon. When the player encounters him, the player will be left controlling only Zudomon, unable to use Palmon as the other two party member spots are filled with supports, with one of them starting the battle with a critically low health from a fatal blow inflicted in a cutscene. Perhaps it is for the better, as MetalEtemon is both tanky and very strong (Zudomon can tank attacks well despite his slowness, while Palmon is very squishy), which, considering that this is late-game, makes status buff skills necessary. Unfortunately, even with this in mind, beware of MetalEtemon's Banana Slip. It inflicts negligible damage, but it removes all stat buffs on the affected target, on top of pushing the target's turn icon back (Break effect). Not so fun anymore when the player has worked one or two turns setting up only to get hit by Banana Slip. Oh, and regarding Palmon's squishiness... you will encounter MetalEtemon again near the end of the main story, and if the player wants to unlock Rosemon, they have no choice but put her into risk despite Rosemon being able to inflict various crippling effects on him.
  • The four Dark Masters are inevitably difficult, but the most notorious goes to Piemon. If the player is smart enough to load the active party with status buff skills and healing skills (or just rely on Angewomon), the previous three can be handled no problem, but not Piemon. Piemon comes with Focus, a skill that buffs both his Attack and Defense by two stages, the max buff stack allowed. The player has access to this skill too via Digipiece equipment, but until post-game, the player can only manage to get ahold of one, meaning two other active Digimon will still take more time setting up if they want to stand a chance against him. Not even WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon can handle him if they are not tanky enough. Keep in mind that he is fought three times on separate occasions, with the second fight only being handled with two Digimon (though at least one is really strong on his own, while the other has access to healing). And like many other late-game bosses, he has 2x Action, so he has more opportunities to use Focus. His rematch near the end of the main story is not any better, as he still keeps the same traits, but if the player did not expect to unlock Hououmon/Phoenixmon there, the battle can throw them off as the leader is temporarily replaced with her and the two allies default back to Agumon and Gabumon regardless of party setup. Even if the player can expect it anyway, Piyomon is rather fragile, and Hououmon's Life Force is rendered moot with its negligible damage thanks to Piemon's Focus. For extra fun, the final Digital Dungeon has two Piemon fought at the same time.
  • In the post-game, the fake Magnamon is considered to be the most annoying to fight. What the player's ally has that can put them into great advantage, this boss will happily use it against them. Why? One of the skills is a status buff that can boost both Attack and Defense by one stage. While it is not as bad as Piemon, he has massive stats that can cripple even your ally. At least he does not bother stacking the buffs and, aside from Ultra Counter and 2x Action, he has no other Digipiece-exclusive skills (so no Giga Heal +, thankfully). Also, at this point the player has access to Digipieces that can help stat boost, heal greatly, revive a fallen ally, enable two actions in one turn, and make SP consumption a complete non-issue, and the player only has Agumon as the player-controlled party member anyway. But keep in mind that the aforementioned boss is just the first of several bosses leading up to the game's Bonus Boss...
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • Dragons may be the star of the show, but the Dragon Priests that worship them make them look like harmless lizards. There are eight of them in total, and each one is a powerful spellcaster far stronger than just about any other mage you may fight in the game. Oh, and they constantly drift away from you while pelting you with spells, which crosses the line from "tough" to infuriating. Now, as far as specific examples go...
    • Krosis. Unlike most Dragon Priests, he's not lurking deep within some ancient Nordic ruin. His coffin is on top of Shearpoint, a random mountain that a low level player can easily stumble upon and investigate while being completely ignorant to the horror that awaits on the peak. There's also a dragon roosting on the Word Wall at the top, often leading to a terrifying scenario where you're fighting both a formidable dragon and a powerful Dragon Priest. So for all that is holy, kill the dragon before you awaken Krosis. Because his fireball spam is deadly enough without his dragon buddy backing him up with powerful breath attacks and an insta-kill bite-and-toss move.
    • Rahgot isn't too bad by himself... so to stack the odds in his favor, he summons four Draugr lackeys to back him up. At least one of them is almost guaranteed to be a Deathlord, and if you're fighting him while sufficiently leveled up? They're all Deathlords. All of them. And they can still send you flying with Fus Roh Dah, knock your weapons out of your hands with their Disarm shouts, and they can still cleave through your HP like nothing with their Ebony weapons.
  • So you're playing the Thieves' Guild questline, and you're infiltrating the sewers underneath the Honningbrew Meadery. Everything's going smoothly, with you finding some stray loot, weapons, fighting a Skeever or two... and before you know it, a crazy mage pops right the fuck out of nowhere and kills you before you even know what hit you. Congratulations: you just met Hamelyn, a freakishly powerful spellcaster squatting underneath the meadery that you are given absolutely no warning about, who hangs out with Skeever minions that make sneaking up on him impossible. Since you're likely playing as a stealthy, squishy thief, it's baffling to see them put an opponent who's the very antithesis to that playstyle in the second mission, especially since other mandatory boss-level enemies are nowhere near as tough.
  • Malkoran, the evil sorcerer fought during Meridia's Daedric Quest. Enemy mages are tough in general, but like with Hamelyn, Malkoran is stupidly tough, and his Ice Storm spell can kill you in one hit at lower levels while wiping out most of your health at higher levels. And if you survive it? Congratulations, now you're a painfully slow-moving target he can easily finish off. And that's assuming his Corrupted Shades don't beat him to the punch.
  • If you choose to help Saadia during her special mission, you're also choosing to pit yourself against a brutal Wolfpack Boss. Kematu is a fierce, dual-wielding opponent backed up by several other dual-wielding Alik'r warriors, and you fight them in a small, crowded room. The result is you being shredded to pieces by a whirlwind of blades and dying over, and over, and over again.
  • Krev the Skinner from the Companions questline, Captain Hargar from the Lights Out quest... hell, it doesn't matter if they're named or generic, any Bandit Chief wielding a Two-Handed weapon is more trouble than they're worth. Their damage output is insane, they're ridiculously tanky, and more often than not, they'll bypass any armor, shields, or any other kind of resistance and instantly kill you by triggering a Kill-Cam attack.
• Don't let Undertale's cute and quirky aesthetic fool you, there are several bosses who will gladly knock you flat on your ass and (quite literally) break your heart.
  • Some bosses are tougher depending on your playstyle. But no matter if you're playing through the Pacifist, Genocide, or Neutral Route, Undyne is always a pain in the ass. Her boss fight's gimmick has your SOUL protect itself from her spear barrages with a rotating shield. Sounds simple on paper, but those spears come at you from all four cardinal directions in huge numbers and in formations that are hard to block without taking a hit. Her yellow spears will even flip over to the adjacent side before hitting you, turning an already tense battle into a chaotic clusterfuck once she brings them out. And if you're trying to spare her, good luck figuring how to do it on your own: you have to run away from her at a specific point in the fight, which isn't an option in any other boss fight. And because pacifistic players will only have 20 HP for the entire game, you can't afford to make too many mistakes while puzzling out how to spare her.
    • And on the Genocide Route she's even worse, to the point that she can stop a playthrough dead in its tracks through sheer difficulty alone. Because as Undyne the Undying, her attacks are way stronger to accomodate your boosted stats and hit levels of Bullet Hell that surpass every other boss aside from the Genocide Route's Final Boss. On the bright side, defeating her is a straightforward process of simply reducing her HP to zero. No complicated sparing mechanics necessary.
  • The final battle with Mettaton or rather, Mettaton EX in the Neutral and Pacifist routes is another hair-puller. When he attacks, you have to deal with Unexpected Shmup Level mechanics to avoid them. The problem is that these attacks are more complex than simply having your SOUL shoot them down: you'll have to shoot his leg attacks away and then fly past before they quickly stomp back into place, shoot smart bombs and dodge the ensuing Bomberman-style cross-shaped explosions, constantly shoot a disco ball so you can change its unavoidable white lasers into blue ones that harmlessly phase through you... all while dealing with a weird ratings mechanic that isn't really explained to you. And of course, in the Pacifist Route, he's even harder since you only have 20 HP. Thankfully, Genocide players dodge a bullet since they kill him in one hit.
  • Asgore is a lot tougher for first-time pacifist players than those with a more neutral playstyle for one big reason: He destroys the MERCY button and forces you fight him. Players who aren't used to the FIGHT command's timing-based minigame will struggle to deal more than minimal damage against an already tanky boss, and most of his attacks are souped-up versions of Toriel's fire magic that come out in rather complex patterns. That's a bad combination when, again, you only have 20 HP to your name, even if you're decked out in the best gear the game has to offer.
  • Speaking of Toriel, she's a weird example of this trope for first-time pacifist players. She's not hard to fight in the slightest, and you really have to go out of your way to get killed by her. But trying to spare her without consulting a guide or accidentally blundering your way into it is stupidly obtuse and non-intuitive. Despite the game telling you that your SPARE command won't work on certain enemies, with Toriel and even the game itself admonishing you if you try, you have to keep using SPARE. Over 23 times, at that. Talk about Violation of Common Sense.
  • Lemon Bread is the toughest of the Amalgamates fought in the Pacifist Route. She only has two attacks, but they're both a doozy. One has a massive mouth crunch down on your SOUL's dodging area, forcing you to move it to a toothless safe spot before it gets crushed under her jaws. The second has you escape a smaller mouth and its large teeth while a pair of eyes pelts you with laser beams. Both attacks come out fast, hit hard, and again, you've only got 20 HP. And not only is merely surviving them a pain, but so is piecing together how to spare her since you have to input a specific amount of commands in a specific order before hitting the MERCY button.
  • Last but not least is the infamous Final Boss of the Genocide Route: Sans, whose utterly ridiculous nature of his boss fight is one of this game's biggest plot twists. Because this lovable, lazy goofball is the last thing standing between you and the utter annihilation of monsterkind, he pulls out all the stops to defeat you. And they entail breaking every established rule of this game's combat (as well as RPG's in general) by messing with your gameplay mechanics during the fight. Unlike every other opponent, he gets the first turn, and takes advantage of it by hitting you with a brutal barrage of bones and lasers right out the gate. Survive that, and he only ups the ante from there. He can turn your SOUL blue, forcing you to use the platforming mechanics from Papyrus's boss fight in a hellish mix of Bullet Hell and Platform Hell. He can screw with your SOUL's gravity and color mid-attack. His attacks ignore invincibilty frames and constantly drain you of your health. He can dodge your attacks once you finally get a chance to fight back. And when you think you've won, he can instantly kill you if you fall for his sincere-looking Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Even though the consequences of winning are disastrous, it's not hard to feel proud of yourself once you finally defeat the little bastard.
  • Muffet is technically a Mini Boss, who attacks you in Hot Land if you did not buy anything when you encountered her at her bake sale. Naturally, this means you can avoid the fight if you do buy something, but her wares are outrageously overpriced. This fight is so tough, many players are fooled into thinking she's a main boss, and creator Toby Fox admited on Twitter he might have gone a little overboard designing this one. Being a spider-girl, Muffet can use her webs to bind you and keep you from attacking, something most enemies in this game cannot do. It's even harder if you are trying for the Pacifist Route, because the only way to defeat Muffet without killing her is to survive 17 turns, because if the fight lasts that long, she gets a telegram and has to leave. But that's much easier said than done, as each of her dozens of projectiles she throws at you in any given turn will reduce your hp by at least one and possibly as much as six. The only real defense is to bribe her to convince her to use less of them.
• Being the sequel to Undertale, Deltarune has a few tricky opponents of its own.
  • Chapter 1's Bonus Boss, Jevil, is considered by many to be right up there with Sans and Undyne at the top tier of Undertale boss difficulty. Though for him, his difficulty stems less from true Bullet Hell and rather attack patterns that are genuinely difficult to dodge. His Devilsknife is the most infamous of the bunch, being a spinning ring of scythes that you have to move your SOUL in and out of while it rapidly undulates, and later in the fight he'll toss in a big red Devilsknife that will home in on you while you're trying to dodge the rest. His carousel attack is just as daunting, specifically the duck and horse one where the seats rise and fall in annoying alternating patterns. And while not as hard to deal with, the rings of spades he spawns around your SOUL are tough to dodge safely if you don't think to simply dodge between them instead of trying to outrun them as they close in on you. You better get used to dealing with these attacks, because no matter if you're trying to properly fight him or spare him, you're in it for the long haul.
  • Spamton G. Spamton doesn't seem like much of a threat when you meet him, since he's a silly little guy who pops out of a dumpster and talks like a mix between a used car salesman and every spam e-mail you've ever gotten. That all changes when you fight him, and you soon realize how much tougher things are when you're playing as Kris fighting by himself, and don't have Susie, Ralsei, or even Noelle around to help you. His attacks hit hard, and the one where he summons a swarm of mini-Spamtons that run along the floor and ceiling of the SOUL's dodging area is particularly nasty thanks to the way they leap up at you once your SOUL is in range. The only healing you're capable of is with a finite amount of food items, and because Kris is flying solo you have to waste a turn healing him instead of making actual progress against Spamton... which potentially leads to him summoning his mini-Spamtons again.
    • Funnily enough, Spamton NEO is a lot less of a pain despite his secret superboss status, if only for the fact that you fight him with a full party this time, as well as him lacking anything as truly nasty as the Mini Spamton swarms.
• In Octopath Traveler, you can fully expect to run into at least one of these on any given character's path.
  • Gustav the Black Knight, Olberic's Chapter 2 boss, is one of the few early-midgame bosses who gets two actions per turn from the beginning of the fight onward. He also starts his battle with all his weaknesses sealed off, meaning that you can't break his shield points until you've gotten rid of his shield-bearing helpers. They themselves have a good amount of shield points to eat through which makes breaking them tough, and they're annoyingly resilient since they constantly beef up their defenses, which means you'll be eating anywhere from four to eight attacks per turn if Gustav feels like spamming his Triple Strike attack. While you may think it's smooth sailing once you finally defeat his shield-bearers, Gustav will be quick to dash your hopes with his arsenal of annoying attacks, such as the party-hitting Level Slash and Terror-inflicting Black Blade, which prevents the character afflicted from boosting their attacks. Oh, and once you get him down to half health? He gets three actions per turn.
  • Among each characters' final bosses, Werner from Olberic's story is often considered to be one of the hardest. The hype he gets for being an absolute terror of a man isn't mere flavor text: all of his attacks have a chance of inflicting Terror on your party, and he has moves that will either target the entire party en-masse (Sweep), or hit one traveler multiple times (Double Strike) to ensure that he can inflict it on at least one of your guys before he uses up his actions per turn. Ignoring the fact that Terror makes it hard to break his shields, it also opens up the victim to Rule by Fear, an attack that instantly kills a Terror-inflicted victim. Even if you've made sure to grab items that will keep Terror at bay, Werner still hits ridiculously hard, shifts his weak points around, and gets three actions per turn once he's close to death, ensuring that he doesn't go down easy either way.
  • Gideon, the boss of Cyrus' second chapter, is another boss whose weak points are sealed off until you kill his goons. Said skeleton goons, as well as Gideon himself, hit like trucks while Gideon himself also likes to lower your party's stats and inflict Terror on them. While he's got less HP than the other Chapter 2 bosses, a Squishy Wizard he ain't.
  • Tressa's Chapter 2 boss, Omar, is mainly a threat because he and his minions hit hard from the offset, and have party-hitting attacks (Sideswipe and Vacuum Slice respectively) that will flatten your team into paste. If they all use these respective attacks during their turn, it's safe to say that your team is screwed unless you can quickly take out (or at least Break them so they can't attack) his goons.
  • But while removing Omar's goons effectively neuters the man himself, Tressa's very next big boss, the Venomtooth Tiger, is a lot tougher to put down. Like Gustav, it gets two actions a turn by default. It's also a heavy-hitter who gets attacks that let it target your entire team, or will viciously attack individual members at random. Every attack has a chance of poisoning your team, and Poison in this game will take off several hundred HP for each turn it's inflicted. Later into the fight its poison grows deadlier, and will effect not just your party members' HP, but their BP and SP as well. Meanwhile, this beast keeps increasing its Shield Points until it's got a whopping ten Shield Points to eat through if you want any breathing room during this fight.
  • The Mystery Man and Shady Figure from Ophilia's third chapter are one of the game's very rare Dual Bosses, and much of the difficulty from their fight comes from the fact that both members of this Evil Duo are dangerous. The Mystery Man is the team's damage dealer, with all his spells dealing massive damage while either targeting the entire party or in the case of Arcane Blade, hitting one character hard enough to instantly put them in the red unless they're a dedicated tank. The Shady Figure, on the other hand, is a Support Party Member who takes advantage of getting two actions per turn by constantly healing himself and his buddy for a respectable 800 HP while either buffing his team, debuffing your team, or nuking your side of the field with a hard-hitting spell of his own. Their lack of shared weaknesses mean that it's really hard to Break them both in a single turn, and since their elemental weaknesses are sealed off until one of them dies, merely Breaking them consistently is a chore in and of itself. And if you think you can breathe easy once you kill one of them, think again: the survivor becomes furious enough to get three actions per turn. You'll need a seriously well-thought out battle plan to triumph over these assholes.
  • If you don't have a reliable way to keep Blindness at bay, Albus, the Right Wing of the Crow fought in Primrose's story can be one of the nastier Chapter 3 bosses because his strategy revolves around constantly inflicting it upon your party. And like Werner mentioned above, once he's Blinded someone, constantly missing your attacks is far from your biggest worry, because he has a move that instantly kills your blinded party members! While you may think you can coast by on constantly inflicting Guard Breaks, he'll eventually summon a pair of Mooks that seal off his weaknesses until they're dealt with. Considering that this is when he also ups his actions-per-turn to two, this fight's also got a bit of a Snowball Effect going for it.
  • Alfyn's Chapter 3 boss, Miguel Twinspears, has a recommended level of 32. You want to be at least ten levels higher than that, because he is disgustingly hard to kill without endgame-level gear or higher stats bought upon by the extra levels. All but one of his attacks are multi-hitting moves, and many of them target the entire party for massive amounts of damage. While his moves that involve throwing spears can be interrupted, you have to break all seven of his shield points to do so, which can be hard to do if your party isn't set up to have a diverse array of attack types at its disposal. Making it even harder is him shuffling his weaknesses around every time he recovers from a shield break, which is bad once he's close to death. Not only does he get harder-hitting versions of his already deadly attacks, but he gets FIVE ACTIONS PER TURN. H'aanit's (or other party members that sub-class into Hunter) Leghold Trap is practically needed to survive, because if you can't Break him here and now, even your dedicated tanks won't survive the Total Party Kill that follows.
  • The Ogre Eagle, Alfyn's final boss, isn't much easier than Miguel. Out of all the final bosses, it has the biggest health pool to eat through. So naturally, it has most of its weaknesses sealed off at the beginning of the fight and acts as a living Swiss-Army Knife of status conditions that it can inflict with its multi-hitting attacks, party-targeting attacks, and multi-hitting party-targeting attacks. Its physical attacks also have a chance of lowering your travelers' resistances and physical attack power since clearly its arsenal of status conditions weren't annoying enough. Its Swept Away attack will also blow a randomly-selected Traveler away for a few turns, removing them from the fight for a while and making it easier to inflict a Total Party Kill while they try to make it back. Get this thing down to half its health, and it'll create a cloud of rainbow poison that gradually lowers your party's total HP. You can't get your lost health back until you've defeated this griffin from hell and you can't block the poison, so you have to put in some serious work to send this brutal Time Limit Boss packing.
  • Gareth, Therion's Chapter 3 boss, is special in the sense that he's something of a Mirror Boss. A very, very nasty Mirror Boss who makes use of stronger versions of some of Therion's best moves. Now you get to be on the receiving end of Steal SP, and believe us when we say that it isn't fun to lose half of your current SP at once. Ditto for getting hit with a version of Steal HP that targets your entire party and heals him to boot. He can also make himself extra evasive, give himself three actions per turn, and is yet another boss who constantly shuffles his weaknesses around.
  • The Dragon H'aanit fights in her third chapter is as imposing as you'd expect it to be. Its claw attacks hit hard and it can roast the entire party with its powerful fire breath, but brute strength alone isn't what makes it so dangerous. It can, at any point, use Swept Away to kick one of your party members off the field for several turns. You can't block it, and you can't get the afflicted party member back any faster, so you have to deal with the damage drop-off that comes from a sudden loss in manpower while the dragon and potentially miss out on vital abilities to keep this monstrous powerhouse in check. Oh, and even though they're alive? If your remaining three party members die before the fourth returns to the battlefield, it's counted as a loss. Here's hoping it didn't blow away your healer or H'aanit (whose Arrowstorm is a godsend once its Arrow weakness is unlocked)! Even worse is that once it gets ready to use its Desperation Attack, failure to Break it will lead to it using a stronger version of Swept Away that removes TWO of your party members from the battlefield!
  • After all the hype and buildup leading to her final confrontation with the beast, H'aanit's ultimate foe, Redeye, proves to be her most dangerous quarry yet. All its physical attacks have a chance at Blinding your travelers while its Bestial and Unearthly Roar attacks can knock them unconscious. And since the roars, as well as its Sweep and Rampage attacks target the whole party, your entire team can be crippled by these dangerous status ailments. Unconscious is especially bad, since if Redeye doesn't focus on attacks that merely hit one traveler hard or randomly heal one on a whim, it will maul your entire party to death while they're unable to fight back. Thankfully, it doesn't use its deadliest attack that often despite it being its main method of killing in cutscenes. But should it use Evil Eye? It'll turn the victim to stone, leaving them unable to act until the petrification is healed. Which can be really hard to do considering that Redeye will use its remaining actions during the petrification turn to rush down and kill the petrified traveler. And if it does? That traveler is permanently dead until you either kill Redeye or get a game over. Here's hoping he doesn't target your Squishy Wizards or healers!
  • The Giant Python and Snake Charmer fought in the "Shadow Over the Sands" sidequest are a truly nasty duo. The game recommends you tackle their dungeon, the Quicksand Caves, at level 35, but in truth you want to be at least ten levels higher if you want to stand a chance. The Python herself is a hard-hitting monster with attacks that target the entire party, as well as attacks that can put the heroes to sleep. And yes, one of those sleep-inducing moves (Soporific Breath) is also one of those attacks that hits the entire party. While less powerful than the Python, the Snake Charmer will constantly throw status buffs her way such as an attack boost, restoring her shield points and sealing off most of her weaknesses, and giving her extra actions per turn. Now you might think that it's a good idea to Shoot the Medic First since he has less health and is constantly buffing her up, and the game seems to be nudging you in that direction... but that is the exact opposite of what you want to do because if you kill the Snake Charmer? The Giant Python goes nuts, and will get three actions per turn while throwing a horrific new move into the mix: Big Bite, which targets your party members at random, hits multiple times, and risks putting its targets to sleep. Nothing like a bit of Violation of Common Sense to ruin the player's day, huh?

• Elden Ring:
  • The Tree Sentinel, one of the very first bosses the player can encounter in the open world. Since he's located very close to the player's starting point in a new game (he patrols the main road to the Church of Elleh, if you want to be specific), it's very easy for new players to accidentally stumble into him and receive a halberd to the face for their troubles. To be blunt, the Sentinel was made to not be fought immediately after by the ill-prepared, but his speed, ferocity, and love of overhead swings and jump attacks with weird hitboxes ensure that he'll remain a threat even after you've gained some levels, flask charges, and better gear. Fighting just one is bad enough, but later on you'll find two souped-up Tree Sentinels right next to one another guarding the outskirts to Lyndell, the Royal Capital.
    • Want to enter Lyndell itself via the capital outskirts? Hope you're ready to face an even stronger variant, the Draconic Tree Sentinel. Not to be outdone, he trades the former's halberd for the Dragon Greatclaw, an absurdly massive club which can do enough damage to one-shot even higher-leveled players. Thinking of cheesing him with ranged attacks at a distance or rushing in and taking potshots while riding Torrent? Try again: his horse now shoots large, quick fireballs, sometimes one after the other, and at half health he starts channeling lightning strikes directly on top of you and lightning shockwaves with utterly ridiculous Hitbox Dissonance and tracking. The one outside Lyndell is hard enough, but the one found in Crumbling Farum Azula as a Degraded Boss is even worse considering you don't have access to ashes nor Torrent during the fight thanks to the game considering him to be an enemy instead of a boss entity.
  • Margit the Fell Omen is an infamous noob stomper that quickly gained notoriety for being one of the most punishing Wake Up Call Bosses ever encountered in a Soulslike. Despite being the first main storyline boss, he's got an arsenal of attacks that include delayed strikes that bait and punish mis-timed dodge rolls, throwing knives made of light that can be used to hit you from afar or open you up for his most punishing attacks, and overly long combos that will make mincemeat of you. And once you've gotten him down to around half his health, that's when he whips out a gigantic light hammer that he'll gladly use to pound you into a pancake... or simply kill you via the explosions it creates. The developers absolutely knew he'd be a problem since you’ve got a summonable NPC ally right outside the boss room, as well as a dedicated item meant to stun him for a little, but he's still a gigantic pain in the ass if you use them.
  • Runebears. Just... Runebears. House-sized bears with freakish proportions, these things do double duty as That One Boss and Demonic Spiders. Their mammoth health pools, insane movement speed, and crackhead-level aggression make them one of the most dangerous enemy types in the game, but the enemy versions can be ignored (and honestly should be, since they drop dick-all for good loot), and you can always get on Torrent and run away if you're coming up short in a fight. But keep in mind that one Runebear is the boss of a certain dungeon (Earthbore Cave), and it's fought in a small, cramped arena where you can't summon Torrent, and are locked inside until you either kill it, or die trying.
  • Normally, Erdtree Burial Watchdogs are pretty easy. But the three-headed Watchdog fought in the Impaler's Catacombs comes packing four Imp minions, and good god do they make its fight so much harder. While the Watchdog itself uses the same predictable attack pattern, the Imps are constantly leaping around and rushing you down with their annoyingly quick and painful combo attacks that deal Bleed damage. Thanks to their small size and zippiness making it hard to hit them, the boss chamber being dimly lit, and the Watchdog itself relentlessly hounding you the entire time, this fight becomes a stressful clusterfuck that will leave you on the edge of your seat until you finally beat it.
  • While they can be encountered as early as Limgrave, Crucible Knights never stop being a pain in the ass. They've got their shields raised a good 90% of the time, only lowering them when they're about to unleash a can of whoopass on you with their relentless, damaging combo attacks that often have weird dodge timings. Attacking them without getting hit in return is very hard to do since they can easily hit you right back before you can roll to safety, and if you're hoping that you can stagger them or break their poise? You can't, not unless you parry their attacks. And just in case you weren't having a miserable time fighting them already, they get a few dangerous new moves once they hit the half-health threshold: they can sprout wings and divebomb you, or grow a tail and smack you with it for a ton of damage. The tail smack is especially dangerous thanks to there being a variation where the Crucible Knight immediately follows up with a second tail smack that comes out faster, hits harder, and stretches out so ridiculously long that it will hit you if you don't nail your dodge roll timing. And this is all just what you can expect from the ones with swords and shields! Thankfully, spear-wielding ones are generally easier overall since they can't block your attacks, but they have projectiles to make up for it, and their second phase divebomb attack is tailor-made to fuck with you if you think that it has the same dodge-timing as the other type's. It doesn't.
    • You want to make a Crucible Knight even more aggravating to fight? Make it part of a Dual Boss battle, and do absolutely nothing to balance it for such an occasion. There are two such fights in the game, one where the knight teams up with a Leonine Misbegotten (a normally tough, but manageable boss), and one where you’re fighting a pair of Crucible Knights. Unlike, say, Ornstein and Smough, there's no sense of rhythm to these fights and neither opponent fights in a way that complements their partners' style without overwhelming you: it's a desperate struggle for survival against two Lightning Bruisers that will mercilessly stomp you into the dirt.
  • The Red Wolf of Radagon is fought in the last place you'd ever expect to fight a wolf (a classroom: specifically Raya Lucaria Academy's Debate Hall), and combines powerful Glintstone sorceries and a flaming sword with the spastic, unpredictable movements people love oh so much about dog enemies in FromSoft games. Since his Glintblades have a delay before they launch themselves at you, you have to keep track of their positioning and the wolf's, and pray to god that you can actually dodge the wolf's attacks without eating a salvo of Glintblades anyway. While he's got low health to balance it out, good luck hitting him while he constantly dashes, leaps, and pounces all over the damn place. And just in case that didn’t sound aggravating enough, the closest Site of Grace you respawn in is fairly far away, and the halls between rooms are full of annoying spell-slinging enemies that will either soften you up before the wolf if you opt to simply rush straight to his room, or force you to waste resources to heal up before fighting him.
    • You run into other Red Wolves elsewhere in the game, and despite falling victim to Degraded Boss syndrome, they aren't the slightest bit easier. They're harder thanks to having stats scaled to the places you fight them at. Even having access to Torrent won't help you since they can easily keep pace with him and smack you right off of your faithful steed. Thankfully, a few are fought near cliffs, and their aggressive behavior and insane mobility actually work against them since you can easily bait them into flinging themselves to their deaths.
  • Some Invaders are more dangerous than others, but Millicent is probably one of the deadliest. She invades you smack-dab in the middle of Caelid's Scarlet Rot swamp, often dropping you right into the health-sapping bog if you're currently riding Torrent. While a fairly formidable combatant herself, fighting her isn't the hard part (unless she unleashes Malenia's infamous Waterfowl Dance on you, in which case get ready for what is most certainly going to be an instant-kill). The hard part is trying to fight her on the tiny patches of untainted land, and without drawing the aggro of the Cleanrot Knights that patrol the area.
  • Starscourge Radahn is hyped up to be one of the most powerful Demigods in the game. That is NOT an exaggeration. The fight starts with him a good mile or so away from you, taking potshots with lightning-fast magic arrows that home in on you, as well as unleashing a rain of arrows from above that constantly chase after you before finally relenting. And once you begin the fight proper, he proves to be a terrifying Lightning Bruiser who slides and zips around on his horse as if he were a skateboarder while slicing you apart with his massive greatswords, pelting you with rocks that have annoyingly good tracking, pulling you into the danger zone with gravity wells, flattening you with powerful divebomb attacks, and (during his second phase) summoning homing boulders that will very likely instantly kill you if you fail to dodge them. He's so stupidly strong and aggressive that you're encouraged to make use of multiple summoned allies so they can draw aggro away from you, but most of them (aside from Blaidd and Alexander) will die in a few hits before Radahn sets his sights on your sorry ass. If you decide to just fight him all by yourself, good luck.
    • Amusingly, Radahn is such a stupidly hard boss that when a patch led to him accidentally being nerfed, many players thought it was a deliberate response to how powerful he was. It wasn't, and the nerf was quickly undone with the very next patch.
  • The Putrid Crystalian trio fought during Sellen's sidequest is one of the game's most infuriating group boss fights. And seeing as how many group bosses are some flavor of That One Boss, that should give you an idea of just how awful it is. By default, Crystalians are annoyingly tanky Damage Sponge Bosses who barely take any damage until you've hit them enough to crack their bodies (at which point, thankfully, they become hilariously fragile and will fold under a couple more blows). They're also fairly aggressive, and thanks to the ranged attacks favored by the Ringblade and Staff variants as well as the constant jump attacks of the Spear variant, you're in constant danger of getting hit since their arena is on the small side. And since their attacks can infect you with Scarlet Rot, you don't want to get hit. While their attack patterns are fairly simplistic, it's still a hectic, stressful fight where you're given very little breathing room, even after a patch dialed back their aggression by several notches.
  • Valiant Gargoyles are never a fun time. They combine their gigantic size with aerial mobility and wide-reaching attacks, which spells disaster when they start pulling off long, brutal combos full of attacks that aren't so easily dodged. And to top it off, they have a very wide-reaching poison breath attack that deals a shit-ton of damage and builds up fast. Have fun trying to find the breathing room needed to heal and dispel the poison while being menaced by a homicidal 15 foot tall flying statue!
    • And that's just what you see in a fight with a bog-standard Gargoyle. The Black Blade Kindred (likely first encountered guarding the Beast Clergyman's home, way before you're ready to properly fight it) is even more aggressive, and its attacks (which now include a damaging roar to hit you if you think you'd be cute and fight it from a distance) deal a stupidly high amount of damage. If you're adequately leveled they might two-shot you. Probably. But its attacks may as well be an arsenal of one-hit kills, and considering how much health these things have? Getting killed and having to put in all that work to whittle their health down sucks.
    • Another particularly awful Gargoyle fight is one against two of these things during the questline that unlocks Fia's ending. While it starts off as a fight against one Gargoyle, another swoops in to help his buddy once he's lost half his health. And like with the Crucible Knights mentioned above, they are not balanced around fighting as a pair, meaning that you'll often be overwhelmed and destroyed in seconds thanks to being ganged up on by these things. And even if you won't, don't be surprised if you exhaust damn near all your healing items by the time you've got one Gargoyle left to kill.
  • Alecto is the ringleader of the Black Knife Assassins for a reason. Like her underlings, she's extremely agile and vicious, often flipping out of the way of your attacks before cutting you down to size with her relentless combos. But she's got one extra tool that makes her particularly awful to fight: her death magic jump attack. It has a massive area of effect, making it insanely hard to dodge. And if you get caught up in it, you'll take a shit-ton of damage, start gradually losing what little health you've got left, and your total HP is reduced overall. Getting hit by this attack is a death sentence, because when you aren't instantly killed outright, you're seconds away from dying either by the residual damage from Alecto's attack, or Alecto herself rushing in and killing you. Unlike most boss fights, you can't use summons or call other players over for help since she's an Evergaol boss. So you'll have to beat her by yourself if you want the Game Breaker Spirit Ashes that she's guarding.
  • The Bell-Bearing Hunter is one of the rarer overworld bosses, to the point that a good chunk of players will likely never run into him blind. On one hand, that's not a bad thing since he's stupidly hard. But on the other, new players who do run into him in will be in for the fright of their lives when a nighttime trip to a nearby merchant turns into a desperate struggle for survival against a vicious knight whose telekinetic greatsword swipes can two-shot even tanky players and hit them from a good 30 feet away.
    • While he's never an easy fight, he's especially hard when fought in Caelid and the Shaded Castle. Caelid, because he's fought in the Dragonbarrow section of the map and has ridiculously bloated stats like everything else in that area, and the Shaded Castle because that's where you fight him as his true self (Elemer of the Briar), and thus goes all out with overly long combo strings and brand new moves that punish you for thinking that you've learned the Hunter's moveset.
  • Deathbirds are already some of the more annoying overworld bosses, so it's only logical that their stronger relatives, Death Rite Birds, suck even harder to fight. Boasting the aerial mobility, long pointy spears, and Camera Screwing tendencies of their weaker cousins, Death Bite Birds also make use of Ghostflame, deadly white flames that inflict Frostbite if you allow it to build up. Their Ghostflame attacks, more often than not, generate massive explosions and leave trails of it all over the ground, making it dangerous to physically attack them since it'll eat through your health like it's going out of style and do the same to Torrent. And while you're trying to endure their deadly assaults and look for an opening, you're often having to duck and weave across hostile, mountainous terrain where one wrong step will send you falling to your death. Luckily, you can avoid fighting them by traveling at day for the most part, but one that's on the way to Castle Sol (home to fellow TOB Commander Niall) will attack you no matter the time of day.
  • Fallingstar Beasts. Take the much-maligned Blazing Bull from Sekiro, make it a hell of a lot bulkier as well as even harder-hitting, and that's the gist of it. These things take forever to kill since their rock-hard bodies are immune to Bleed, and their weakpoint (their eyeball/face) is dangerous to hit since more often than not, you'll end up getting trampled flat by this alien bull from hell. The one fought in Selia Crystal Tunnel is probably the worst of its kind, because you're trapped in a very small and cramped arena with a monster and thus given very little room to dodge its wide-reaching, relentless attacks.
  • Kicking off the brutal stretch of endgame bosses is the Fire Giant. While he's as slow and lumbering as his gigantic size would suggest, that also means that he's freakishly strong and resilient. He's got a lot of health to eat through, and his attacks deal so much damage that you're very likely to die in two hits, even if you've invested a ton of experience into Vigor. And to make things worse, there's no foolproof way to fight this guy: fighting him from a distance isn't really an option since he can close the distance faster than you think. Fighting him up close is fairly safe since you can't get hit by his worst attacks... but now you have to deal with a hostile camera that makes it hard to react to the rest of his arsenal. And while using hit and run tactics with Torrent might seem tempting, Torrent is an outright noob trap since he has a very hard time dodging the Fire Giant's avalanche and shield bashes. He is safer to use once the second phase begins... but that's because the Giant sacrifices his leg to the Fell God, meaning that he'll now nuke you with an arsenal of dangerous new fire attacks that deal a fuckton of damage and have a mile-wide area of effect. Since his crippled leg is no longer a viable weak point, you now have to target his hands, which are much harder to hit and put you smack-dab in the middle of the danger zone. Oh, and as if his damage output wasn't bad enough, his roll attack (which he already had) is now a full-body "log roll" that covers a lot more distance than it did before. It also has weird hitboxes, meaning that if he so much as grazes you with his toes or buttcheeks, it's treated as if he squashed you flat with the brunt of the attack.
  • While you don't have to fight him to beat the game, you do have to beat Commander Niall if you want to find the other half of the Haligtree Medallion. And just in case you expected a slightly tougher retread of the fight against Commander O'Niel in Caelid, you're in for one hell of a rude awakening. Unlike the weak Mooks that O'Neil summons, Niall summons two Banished Knights, and now you're faced with a truly awful Wolfpack Boss where Niall and his minions will gladly team up and stomp you into the flagstones of Castle Sol. While there is an Easy Level Trick to get the Banished Knights off your back (using Bewitching Branches to make them fight each other), killing the Knights means that Niall goes nuts and starts spamming freakishly powerful ice and lightning attacks with massive AoE's until he's dead. If you want to find the Haligtree and take on Malenia, you can consider him a nice preview of all the bullshit waiting for you in the Consecrated Snowfield.
  • The Godskin Duo fought in Farum Azula combines two of the game's hardest recurring bosses, does nothing to make their fighting styles mesh, and is yet another Dual Boss in FromSoftware's catalog that tries to ape Ornstein and Smough without understanding what made that boss fight work so well. The Godskin Noble is the more immediately dangerous of the two since his rapier swipes have a much further reach than you'd expect, and he's a Lightning Bruiser who loves to stay in your face no matter how much distance you try to put between the both of you, but the Godskin Apostle is quite quick and aggressive himself, and his health-shredding twinblade spinning attack is particularly dangerous. They tend to gang up on you, trying to seperate them with the pillars in their boss room often fails, and trying to heal or restore your FP will usually lead to you taking a Blackflame Fireball to the face. And getting them down to half their individual health bars will activate a dangerous Super Mode: the Godskin Noble will inflate himself and try to turn you into roadkill by repeatedly rolling over you while the Godskin Apostle will turn into Stretch Armstrong and start hitting you from across the room with most of his attacks. God help you if you activate both Super Modes at the same time.
  • As bad as the Godskin Duo may be, the proper boss of Farum Azula is just as bad... or possibly even worse. While you'll know what to expect from Gurranq if you progressed far enough in his sidequest to activate the Final Boss Preview, you'll still find yourself overwhelmed by his love of putting constant pressure on you. His cinquedea combos come out damn-near instantaneously, and when he isn't trying to shank you he's constantly throwing out rocks and Razor Wind that make it dangerous to approach him as a melee fighter. But that's not the hard part of the fight: the hard part is when you get him down to half health and force him to reveal his true identity as Maliketh the Black Blade, one of the setting's fiercest fighters and a (beast)man who canonically scared the piss out of the Demigods. While a Glass Cannon with comparitively low health for when you fight him, he makes up for it by fighting like a total crackhead, constantly backflipping and bouncing off the pillars in his arena while ripping you apart in short order with attacks that just never stop coming. The Destined Death-powered sword beams fired by his black blade are also extremely dangerous because getting hit by them will have the same effect as getting hit by the ones fired by Black Knife Assassins: a tenth of your health can't be healed back for a while, and your health will rapidly go down as if you were afflicted with poison. It's very hard to survive this attack since you're often on death's door as it is, and between how quickly your remaining health dwindles and how relentless Maliketh is, it's hard to carve out the window of opportunity needed to chug down a flask before dropping dead on the spot.
  • Godfrey, First Elden Lord is one of the game's coolest, best-made boss fights, meaning that he's hard for all the right reasons. But of course, that still means that he's hard. Much like Gurranq, your fight with him (as a golden shade) means that you know what to expect, but it's still easy to get caught off-guard when this Mighty Glacier of a man throws in surprisingly quick attacks during his axe combos, or leaps across the arena to tag you with his jump attacks. He's also very fond of spamming annoying, far-reaching Shockwave Stomps once he gets low on health. Getting him down to half health means that the kid gloves (and ghost lion) come off, and leads to Godfrey embracing his original identity as Hoarah Loux, "WARRIAH!": an Ax Crazy Lightning Bruiser who tosses his weapon aside and decides to beat you to death with his bare hands. While he's more fragile and has less of a reach in this state, Hoarah makes up for it by moving a lot faster, hitting much harder, and being a lot more aggressive. When he isn't tearing you apart with claw-swipe combos or throwing you around like a ragdoll, he's kicking your ass with wrestling moves like power bombs and chokeslams. Oh, and he can still spam his Shockwave Stomp attack as well. As tough as he is though, it's still a fun and completely fair fight, and him complimenting you as a Worthy Opponent softens the blow quite a bit.

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