That One Boss: Difference between revisions
(→Miscellaneous Examples: Created a dedicated card battle page for the Yu-Gi-Oh example, am moving the Warframe examples to the Action subpage) |
(→Miscellaneous Examples: Moving more examples) |
||
| Line 50: | Line 50: | ||
* The Chaos-Master from the 11th book in the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series of gamebooks. It's a hideously hard fight if you don't bring the Sommerswerd along. If you do? Chances are you will die horribly. There's a particularly infamous Let's Play of Book 11 that had the players redo the Chaos-Master fight ''twenty-seven'' times before they finally won. It's that hard. |
* The Chaos-Master from the 11th book in the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series of gamebooks. It's a hideously hard fight if you don't bring the Sommerswerd along. If you do? Chances are you will die horribly. There's a particularly infamous Let's Play of Book 11 that had the players redo the Chaos-Master fight ''twenty-seven'' times before they finally won. It's that hard. |
||
* Not actually a game example, but in the manga ''[[The World God Only Knows]]'', Keima Katsuragi can capture any girl... ''any'' girl... with the exception of Yui Goido. He himself notes she is a serious player, introducing a new meaning to Player vs Player. {{spoiler|He eventually wins... by playing the [[Damsel in Distress]].}} |
* Not actually a game example, but in the manga ''[[The World God Only Knows]]'', Keima Katsuragi can capture any girl... ''any'' girl... with the exception of Yui Goido. He himself notes she is a serious player, introducing a new meaning to Player vs Player. {{spoiler|He eventually wins... by playing the [[Damsel in Distress]].}} |
||
* Ashley's boss microgame from ''[[WarioWare: Touched!]]'' features borderline [[Bullet Hell]] patterns of projectiles to dodge and an end boss that has three separate pieces shooting things at you. |
|||
* ''[[Nethack]]'' hasn't got many bosses, but of those few that are there, the {{spoiler|Wizard of Yendor}} can be the most mind-numbingly annoying - and dangerous as well. His abilities include casting powerful spells (some of them capable of being [[One-Hit Kill|instantly lethal]]) as well as stealing certain important [[MacGuffin]]s and [[Self-Duplication|creating clones of himself]]. And as if that wasn't enough, he [[Resurrective Immortality|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. |
* ''[[Nethack]]'' hasn't got many bosses, but of those few that are there, the {{spoiler|Wizard of Yendor}} can be the most mind-numbingly annoying - and dangerous as well. His abilities include casting powerful spells (some of them capable of being [[One-Hit Kill|instantly lethal]]) as well as stealing certain important [[MacGuffin]]s and [[Self-Duplication|creating clones of himself]]. And as if that wasn't enough, he [[Resurrective Immortality|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. |
||
* While the final bosses of the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series usually take longer to break than other culprits, the final showdown in ''Investigations'' gets special notice for being so long and difficult that there's a save point ''in the middle of the fight''. |
* While the final bosses of the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series usually take longer to break than other culprits, the final showdown in ''Investigations'' gets special notice for being so long and difficult that there's a save point ''in the middle of the fight''. |
||
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY1o6yH5P0Q And here's a song about how difficult it is.] |
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY1o6yH5P0Q And here's a song about how difficult it is.] |
||
* While ''[[Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach]]'' doesn't exactly have boss fights in the traditional sense (save for Monty, sort of), your first encounter with the Daycare Attendant's Moon form is a tough [[Nightmare Fuel|(and ''terrifying'')]] one. You have to run around the pitch-black Superstar Daycare and restore power by finding five generators and turning them on. The problem is that they're scattered around a confusing, maze-like playplace, and Moon is a [[Super-Persistent Predator]] who blends in with the darkness of the daycare and can ambush you from surprising angles thanks to his ceiling-mounted wire giving him free range of the place. You ''can'' distract him by knocking over stacks of boxes to trigger his [[Neat Freak]] tendencies, it doesn't do much to help when you're trying to find that [[Last Lousy Point|Last Lousy Generator]]. |
|||
{{reflist}} |
{{reflist}} |
||
Revision as of 16:55, 17 July 2022
 | This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable. Some examples had already been moved to subpages. The rest should follow suit. |
 |
I can't defeat Air Man. —I Can't Defeat Air Man (English version)
|
 |
There are many different categories of bosses, some more memorable than others. There's the Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, there's the Climax Boss, the Final Boss...
And then, there's That One Boss, the boss that falls victim to poor playtesting. You're levelling up normally, plowing through every battle, until you reach this particular battle and suddenly meet a plethora of Game Over screens. Eventually, you Rage Quit, or you go on the Internet looking for assistance. In the event that you stop by the game's message board, lo and behold, everyone else is having the exact same problem, with entire topics asking "how do I beat That One Boss?". Walkthroughs usually list the worst offenders as "the hardest boss in the game", and eventually, such a beast receives a reputation for being just that freaking hard.
Certain types of boss are not usually included in this consideration right off the bat: The Final Boss, "Wake-Up Call" Boss, and Bonus Boss. People expect the Final Boss to be tough (usually), and the Bonus Boss is usually included solely to be difficult. However, it's still definitely possible for them to count if they're hard by their standards: sometimes a Final Boss presents a baffling difficulty spike in a game that has otherwise been smooth sailing since the beginning. A "Wake-Up Call" Boss might not even be a "wake-up call", but a cheap kick in the balls that is more unfair than what's to come. And as the SNK Boss shows, some Bonus Bosses can take the intended difficulty of a game's ultimate challenge and make it outright insane.
They usually show up in RPGs, though they're not exclusive to them. Game designers will sometimes go out of their way to put them in, serving as a bottleneck to make sure you spend a couple hours Level Grinding before you go on to the next area.
Occasionally, the identity of That One Boss varies depending on an individual's playing style - bosses are often designed to have issues with one particular strategy, so one that requires another strategy can seriously hinder a gamer if they're not prepared to switch up their tactics. So while Revive Kills Zombie can disqualify a boss from being That One Boss, players either unwilling or unable to use 'revive' can still have a hard time.
They are sometimes called the "brick wall boss", for obvious reasons.
Compare Demonic Spiders, which is more of a That One Random Encounter, as well as the Boss in Mook Clothing. We'll leave it up to you to decide which is worse. See also That One Sidequest and That One Level. Contrast Anticlimax Boss, where the boss is underpowered/easy for story reasons (or despite them), and Breather Boss, where the boss is just pathetically easy unintentionally. For bosses that are not technically difficult, but are downright frustrating, see Goddamned Boss. For bosses that are deliberately impossible to beat, see Hopeless Boss Fight. If you're looking to read up on unfair bosses that the game seems to deliberately give every known advantage to, requiring you to either get by on luck or cheap gameplay, head on over to SNK Boss.
Because there are so many examples of this trope, they have been categorized by genre for your viewing convenience.
- Atlus (No, this isn't a genre, but a company. Yes, a company makes games with so many sadistically hard bosses that it needs its own section.)
- Action Games
- Beat Em Up
- Driving
- Fighting
- First Person Shooter
- Rhythm
- RPG
- Shoot Em Up
- Stealth Based Game
- Strategy
Miscellaneous Examples
- The Chaos-Master from the 11th book in the Lone Wolf series of gamebooks. It's a hideously hard fight if you don't bring the Sommerswerd along. If you do? Chances are you will die horribly. There's a particularly infamous Let's Play of Book 11 that had the players redo the Chaos-Master fight twenty-seven times before they finally won. It's that hard.
- Not actually a game example, but in the manga The World God Only Knows, Keima Katsuragi can capture any girl... any girl... with the exception of Yui Goido. He himself notes she is a serious player, introducing a new meaning to Player vs Player. He eventually wins... by playing the Damsel in Distress.
- Nethack hasn't got many bosses, but of those few that are there, the Wizard of Yendor can be the most mind-numbingly annoying - and dangerous 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.
- While the final bosses of the Ace Attorney series usually take longer to break than other culprits, the final showdown in Investigations gets special notice for being so long and difficult that there's a save point in the middle of the fight.