Hardest video game level/boss you've ever faced

[Demoness]

Title says it all. Post what levels or bosses that just make you want to cry out in fustration.


Hardest Level: Venom path 1 on Expert in Star Fox 64.
My god, Venom on Expert is just a fucking nightmare. It's basically just a huge clusterfuck of things shooting at you, and the only effective way of stopping them is with bombs, but those are likely in short supply, especially if you came from Macbeth. The likely hood of getting ruthlessly smashed up by all the ships in 2/3rds of the level means you have the real chance of actually being killed by the stone robot there, which is also turned into an actually hard fight due to your wings breaking from collinging with the damn walls he makes. The only part thats not annoyingly hard is the fight against Andross.

 

[RODAN]

iceman mega man 1

with no magnet arrow thingie

 

[Solace]

sho minamimoto taboo noise form from the world ends with you

he is ridiculously strong

 

[Celestavian]

For me, that would be the "Contingency" (the one with a 2 minute timer) and Estate levels ftom MW2 on Veteran. The timed one was brutal, since you basically have to run past a lot of the enemies to finish in time, while having practically multiplayer health. The espace from the Estate to the helicopter was even worse. I tried running as fast as possible, but then I'd get shot from nowhere. If you try and shoot everyone and take your time, mortars start shelling you. I raged hardcore at both.

 

[Improbability]

Final battle against Bowser in Super Mario 64.
I was young and incompetent at the time so it took me a good few weeks and ~ a hundred or so tries to beat him.

 

[Ivysaur]

sho minamimoto taboo noise form from the world ends with you

he is ridiculously strong

the last boss after all the "secret reports" or whatever... was incredibly hard. just getting to the top of the tower was a bitch

I was never able to beat any Zelda OoT bosses as a child, I had to get my brother to beat them for me. I couldn't even go near Majora's Mask because the moon creeped me out too much LOL :(

not because of the bosses themselves, but these

creepy motherfuckers would stop me from even getting there.

the shadow temple was the worst for me, mostly because of the wallmasters, but also because of this fucker

what is with OoT and creepy disembodied hands

 

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Beating Lavos, full armor shell version, in Chrono Trigger stands out in my memory. Probably because it was the first super-epic multistage JRPG boss I faced.

Any boss in the "bullet hell" genre is going to be tough, but I must give special mention to the final boss of Ikaruga (I imported it and region-broke my Dreamcast, but I hear that the GCN and XBox Live versions are largely the same).

Cyber Peacock as Zero in Megaman X4 is also quite hard. There is no super-effective weapon, and dodging his attacks is extremely difficult even with both Kuuenbu and Hienkyaku.

I also remember renting Megaman III when it first came out. That was one of the first games I ever beat. I found the end boss (standard 3-stage Megaman boss) to be hair-tearingly difficult back then, but that is probably just because I was so young.

 

[Percussionist]

The city level in Bug's Life. It's the reason the game's unwinnable.

 

[FlareBlitz]

Fire Emblem, Cog of Destiny, Hector Hard Mode. Oh my god that level pissed me off.

Your enemies are promoted high level magic users, many of which have sleep/berserk staves or bolting/purge magic, and surprisingly high speed. My party in particular was highly physical-based, so I had little to no Resistance on most of my characters...which means every turn I had to choose between healing someone who just took massive damage or restoring someone who just got berserked/slept. Add this to the fact that you had enemy reinforcements coming in every turn and it was very hard to make any progress without losing a unit. Oh, and if you do make it past the massive numbers of enemy mages, you ultimately have to face off with a Swordmaster who has a very good chance of immediately criting your unit and killing it, forcing you to start all over.

I actually don't know that it would be that hard now, maybe my memory is betraying me. But all I know is, 3 years ago that level made me rage just thinking about it.

 

[Improbability]

The city level in Bug's Life. It's the reason the game's unwinnable.

I remember playing this as a kid and not being able to get past the city. Not sure why though, care to remind me as to how it was unwinnable?

 

[firecape]

Ninja Gaiden II for the Xbox 360. GRAAAH.

The hardest difficulty makes you want to just pull out your hair. You start off against enemies that are fully upgraded (pretty much end-game enemies on the easiest difficulty) with an HP bar so small that you get 2-hit. To make matters worse all enemies have exploding projectiles that disrupt any combo you are attempting and knock you to the ground unless you perform a dodge at the exact moment it explodes after it gets stuck in you (which still messes up any combo you are doing). And these are just the normal enemies! Not to mention bosses that you have to face while still fighting at least 4 fully upgraded ninjas with exploding shurikens.

But the hardest part is not the endgame boss I'd say, but a reoccuring boss that you face ~4 times throughout the campaign. He can pretty much block and deflect everything you throw at him unless you dodge his combo and hit him in the second he is vunerable after. Oh yeah he also has an attack that lunges across the arena and (usually) kills you in one hit by hitting you up in the air then spiraling down.

edit @:

Dragon Age: Origin's final boss: that was actually challenging. Having to use those ballistas, ward off those Darkspawn, keeping your allies alive, helping your NPC allies, dodging the dragon's spells; the list goes on and on. I mention it because it was a hard and long fight, something final bosses fail to provide nowadays.

Uhh... you weren't doing it right. You have your party tank do its job for while you can openly hit it, then button mash A on the ballista and the dragon can't even move to attack. If the tank is doing its job (which you can easily make it do with the commands thingy) it should be a piece of cake.

 

[norulz]

red ninja: end of honor

the second time you fight that samurai boss, it's fucking impossible, his life bar is literally the size of the screen and he loses a quarter of an inch per hit, you on the other hand, you die in like 8 attacks, if you've stocked up on healing items, you'll be able to take more abuse, but not that much more

not only is he incredibly hard to hit, you have to lock on, do some shitty ninja move, and hope that he doesn't hit you with the two swords he has, while still managing to avoid the hundred fireballs flying around on the screen randomly, repeat about 100 times. and the slightest mistake will probably get you a game over screen, and this is normal difficulty, i can't imagine how much more of an asshole he can become on hard mode

fuck. that. shit.

 

[Oglemi]

The city level in Bug's Life. It's the reason the game's unwinnable.

Oh my god I can't believe I'm not the only one to have experienced the horrors that is the city level of a Bug's Life. And not only was that city unwinnable, it was extremely hard to even get to because of the canyon level.

Also, I've never beaten Star Fox Adventures for the Gamecube because I had a glitched version and it was impossible to beat the lizard in the swamp level. The match came down to just button mashing the A button to push the lizard into a hole, but no matter how fast you did it, you couldn't win. And because of that I've never been able to experience the Tyrannosaurus city level, and it was a fun game besides that :(

 

[Cordyceps]

Hm. Interesting topic. I'll name some, though people might not agree with me lol.

Yiazmat from FFXII: I'm a firm believer in trying to fight FF's ultimate monsters without ultimate equipment or stats. As far as Yiazmat went, well, I had to adapt a crazy strategy to fight it. In addition, that thing had too much damn health for a non-MMORPG boss. And it had the nerve to heal itself if you went too far too?! That health thing was the dealbreaker for me; FF always has powerful beings, but they usually don't even give you time to kill them before they aanihilate you. This dude makes you waste so much time, and does loads of underhanded boss stuff...

Tower of Latria/Maneater Boss from Demon's Souls: that whole Latria level scared the bejeezus out of me, idk why. I had to play music while doing it to keep from being spooked lol, which really just made everything harder. And the Maneater boss was so annoying! I always had trouble once it created another one of itself, even though I was running a Magic/Miracle hybrid dude.

Dragon Age: Origin's final boss: that was actually challenging. Having to use those ballistas, ward off those Darkspawn, keeping your allies alive, helping your NPC allies, dodging the dragon's spells; the list goes on and on. I mention it because it was a hard and long fight, something final bosses fail to provide nowadays.

Baal or Pringer X: anybody even remotely familiar with Nippon Ichi Software should know those names. You know a boss is brutal when games renowned for their exploitable levelling skills throw you a foe that makes your jaw drop. It is not a pleasant feeling, watching your beloved characters take AoE hits that inflict more damage on a single character than all of your characters' HPs combined. Baal and Pringer X (or XX or XXX) are the only ones I've faced who made me want to put my controller down and hide somewhere.

 

[Xaqwais]

Doing an A run of Megaman Zero 2. That game has so much "false" difficulty. Though, I suppose I can't complain, SDS beat it with an S rank.

Tahiti Maze for the Rally License on Gran Turismo 3. UGH

 

[HerbieTG]

The city level in Bug's Life. It's the reason the game's unwinnable.

Oh goddamn this. I hated this game because of it. So many wasted hours.

The jackel snipers in Halo 2 were pains in the ass too. They almost never fail to one-shot you. Annoyingly frustrating.

 

[ck49]

In kingdom heart 358/2, I still haven't been able to beat the The sky ruler

I've tried so many times until I just stopped playing completely. I think thats the only boss I haven;t beaten ever.

 

[Sæglópur]

Man, back in the day, I couldn't get past the third dungeon (Jabu-Jabu's belly) in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I didn't have a guide or a computer to look up where or what I was supposed to do, so I would always rent the game, get stuck there, and give up. :c

Harder than that though, was the water temple. It wasn't so much hard as it was tedious and long. Any sort of water level that has puzzles and annoying enemies is guaranteed to be frustrating...

 

[Nietzsche]

When I was a wee lad, Venom's Star Wolf battle in Star Fox 64 killed the fuck out of me.

More recently, I'd probably say the Hell Temple in La Mulana is one of the most aggravatingly hard levels of any video game I've ever played, approaching I Wanna Be The Guy-esque levels of facedesking.

 

[Pharaoh]

Any level on veteran in CoD: World at war. Goddamn grenades...

Barthandelus in FFXIII was brutal as well, and Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts was an ass(his KH2 version was easy because you could do combos with 39863478465 hits). Xaldin in KH2 was horrible for me for some reason.

 

[Heepo]

Haha, Baal from NIS games is the worst. Even when you swipe all his equipment, he still manages to kill most of your characters in one hit.

Also, Tager from BlazBlue in score attack mode is impossible. Not really, but it's really annoying to have a computer grab you in a single frame and deal 25%+ damage to you. :(

 

[Bogmire]

Hands down the Max Tours for Ridge Racer PSP. I beat all seven of them, but I believe Opus 5 to be the closest to impossible because of Crystal Coast Highway which took me like seven hours alone to beat. It also doesn't help that the CPU can gain nitrous boosts whenever the fuck they want. Literally the only way to beat these races is by using your rear view mirror to make sure your opponent is exactly behind you when they speed boost so they crash into you.

 

[Demoness]

I can't belive I forgot to mention Wiley's castle in Megaman 2. That place is just one huge melting pot of bullshit.

stage 1:

I'm sure people remember this one. The one part where you need to be pretty much right before you screen tarnsition to use item-1 to get to a ladder thats as far away from you as possible. Then yopu have to get chased by the Dragon until you can hurt him, where you can't afford to get hit at all because it'll knock you off your current platform to your death, but you also have to jump between two platforms just to avoid his fucking fireballs.

stage 2:

Honestly cannot remember most of this stage, but I do know it involves like millions of spikes, but the boss isn't that hard.

stage 3:

same as stage 2.

stage 4:

Ok, this place is just rediculous. You have to contend with fake blocks, which isn't that hard, but just before the boss, you have to through a hallway thats packed with Sniper Joes riding in mechs, which are annoying hard to kill unless you spam Air man's weapon, but that runs out quickly. The boss is the real reason I hate this fucking stage. You have to blow up turrest that are shooting at you, but the only weapon that can destroy them is the Crash Bomb, and just to spite you, nearly all of them are hiding behind walls that you can only blow up with the Crash Bomb, and you only have enough uses of the Crash Bomb to just kill all the turrest and blow up the walss that you need. The turrets are also constantly shooting at you, and if you die, you have to through half of the fucking stage again, and refill your Crash Bombs to ensure you can finish them off.

stage 5:

Just the 8 robot masters and an easy wily fight.

stage 6:

Just a corridor with what looks like blood dripping down that takes like half your health away with every hit IIRC, but it's easy to dodge them. The real problem is the boss fight. Your only weapon that works on him is the Bubble Lead, which wouldn't be much of a problem if he didn't deal 2/3rds of your health with a touch, and he also shoots at you, and it takes a while to kill him, and your bound to make mistakes and die. Still, not nearly as bullshit as stage 4.

 

[Porii Sames]

Speedruns on BtT in SSB64.

Also speedruns on one player mode on very hard. POLYGON TEAM T_T.

 

[Improbability]

Speaking of intensely difficult games, anyone play Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes ?
I guess any mission that isnt a tutorial counts as a boss battle, man that game was a beast. If you've never played it before, check it out. Its got amazing RTS gameplay (no production, just squad tactics and composition, and a bit of hack and slash when you switch to your hero) and there are 8 or something campaigns focusing on each character, each with hours of gameplay in themselves.