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Probably Monster Hunter World’s Fatalis. That’s the only fight I’ve ever had to genuinely grind for multiple days to beat. It was 100% worth it though, the feeling of bringing him down for the first time was unmatched.
Probably Malenia, but she’s beatable. Definitely had a tougher time learning her than Freide, Gael, Artorias, Manus, Fume Knight, or Ivory King etc.
For me it was Psycho mantis from Metal Gear Solid. The reason being that I didn’t understood English at the time, so it was literally an impossible boss. I got frustrated with it and abandoned the game, until I found a translated version of it and replayed it and he’s actually very easy if you know what you need to do.
Dunno if I ever beat Mike Tyson
Jake Paul, is that you?
Messmer the impaler from Elden Ring SOTE.
I love this boss, it’s not bs, just pure skill… Shame I lack any of it. Still beat him eventually.
Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls. The series have plenty of difficult boss fights but this one is earlier than most and the biggest difficulty spike in the entire game IMHO.
Outside of the Souls games, there’s Lil’ Hunter from Nuclear Throne. I tried to beat this little trashcan SO many times and succeeded only once. It’s insane.
Also shout-out to Hush from the Binding of Isaac for almost giving me a heart attack when I was fighting it as the tainted lost. Never again.
For me, it was in Last of Us, >!when you walk through the door and get caught in the rope trap, then have to shoot the zombies upside-down.!<
I had to go through that entire animation over and over and over. It made me hate the game. I played a little bit more after finally making it through, but my heart wasn’t in it and I just stopped after a while.
Great Wolf Sif because I can’t bring myself to kill a loyal pupper who is trying to save me.
Sword Saint Isshin is not the hardest fromsoft boss. IMO he’s not even the hardest boss in Sekiro. But he might just be the boss design GOAT.
Fume Knight from Dark Souls 2
You can press f to go faster.
As always relevant XKCD
I was gonna say Papu Papu but this guy wins.
Is that Linerider?
Ski Free. Came with most installs of Windows 3.0 back in the day.
When the player passes the 2,000-meter mark, the Abominable Snowman appears and starts to chase the player, eating them when it catches them.
In Chrono Cross, when entering Time Fortress Chronopolis, you immediately encounter the PolisPolice. This isn’t framed by the game as a boss encounter, but it is.
There is a design problem with this boss that you probably wouldn’t see in a more modern RPG. To survive its big attack, you need the White Plate to absorb white-based magic attacks. You get the White Plate by stealing it from the Sky Dragon. If you already fought the Sky Dragon and forgot to steal at the time, you are hosed. The game doesn’t let you go back and redo that, and the PolisPolice encounter is about 2/3rds of the way through the game–very late to be starting over again.
I replayed that encounter 20 times before I finally lucked out on the attack cycle to keep the party alive. Then I encountered the actual hardest boss: a disc scratch that prevented the game from continuing towards the very end.
Reminds me of the time in a Pokemon game when a friend of mine caught Latias in one go only for the game to immediately freeze afterward with no explanation.
MCP from the Intellevision version of Tron.
Maleficent in Kingdom Hearts 1.
Oh my god. I tried everything. Every potion combo, every magic combo, every adjustment of Donald and Goofy to make them heal or damage. Never beat her. And never beat the game.
And before that is the fight against Riku with that hours long unstoppable cutscene. “You’ll never take Kairi’s heart!”
I still have every single line of that “Kairi’s inside me” cutscene memorized, because it was so extremely long and was immediately before the hardest story boss fight in the game. I felt like I was throwing myself against a brick wall with how many times I had to retry that Riku fight.
In comparison, the second Maleficent (dragon) fight was a breeze. I spanked her in like two or three tries, max.
Most people agree that Hollow Bastion is where the difficulty actually spikes. Before then, most bosses won’t really give you any trouble as long as you’re properly leveled. But Hollow Bastion is what separates the “easy” section of the game from the “hard” section.
Having seen the game played, I know the difficulty stabilizes itself around that point.
Saving the VIP on Veteran at the end of Modern Warfare. I spent 4 hours, 4 HOURS trying to save that guy. Not a traditional boss but a boss nontheless
