Hardest video game bosses

[Demoness]

title says it all. Post what is the hardest video game boss that you have ever faced, and explain why it is/was so hard for you.
going first, the hardest boss fight i've done so far has to be Arkham from Devil May Cry 3 on Dante Must Die mode. Of course, pretty much all the bosses in DMC3 are very hard on DMD mode, but Arkham just takes the cake for me. For anyone who has faced him before, you know that Arkham is split into two phases. The first is not that bad if you are a decentley skilled player, but the second form. is a fucking nightmare. at this point, Vergil is fighting alongside you, and the way the developers made Vergil work is through a really retarded process that disables both your style button (whatever button that allows you to do style-specific moves) and your Devil Trigger. this cripples your ability to deal damage so much that you have to rely on Vergil to basically kill the boss for you. To add to this kick in the groin, Arkham starts to just spam this really deadly attack where he spawns tentacles that fly at you and smack like 15% of your life away a hit, and home in on you quite well. Even worse, Arkham can use this tentacle attack, and halfway through it, he can use it again, meaning you'll have to dodge double the tentacles, which is ridiculously hard to do consistently.
Along with this, Arkham will sink into the floor when you deal a certain amount of damage to him and summon these eel-like things to attack you. These things are hellish: they swarm you in a huge pack, can take forever to get in a pattern where you can hit them with some sense of safety, and when they hit you, you don't get anny invincibility frames to recover, so they can just combo like half your life in a second if you get really unlucky.

 

[Brammi]

Whitney's Miltank

 

[moonbound]

2hu

honorable mentions:

• Mike Tyson
  
• The (spoilery) final boss of Catherine, especially on so-hard-that-japan-complained-about-it-hard-mode
• Elizabeth in Persona 4 Arena Score Attack. I have yet to hear of someone beating her without pause cheating
• and many more that I'll probably think of later

 

[GatoDelFuego]

This motherfucker's second form is the only boss I have never ever managed to beat

 

[KnightoftheWind]

That fucking giant sea serpent from Rayman Origins. He takes up about half the goddamn screen and he sends all these worms after you and they aren't easy to dodge. I only managed to beat the fucker on the 20-somethingth attempt.

 

[Nix_Hex]

Bongo Bongo in zelda OoT was quite ridiculous in my most recent playthrough (master quest 3d). Doesn't help that Shadow Temple is one of the worst video game dungeons of all time. It just makes me think, I SHOULD HAVE gotten the Ice Arrows before finishing the temple because apparently they have a use: freezing Bongo Bongo's hand while the other tries to break it, all the while leaving the eye vulnerable.

Oh and most recently, Mother Brain in Metroid (NES) was pretty terrible. Beat that game for the first time ever a couple weeks ago and it was an absolute nightmare.

 

[cjrocker]

As a kid I could not for the life of me beat Mad Jack or Pufftoss. Came back years later and they were easy as hell.

The Black Knight from FE9 will always be cheap as hell.

 

[moonbound]

The Black Knight from FE9 will always be cheap as hell.

As long as you grind Ike like you should, the fight comes down to you needing to proc aether at least two more times than he procs eclipse (unless you give Ike wrath+resolve which is better for the BK fight and worse for the whole rest of the game imo) and making sure mist can kill the squishy bishops. I don't know if needing to get lucky with skill activations is actual or "artificial" difficulty, not to mention the whole fight is optional and you don't miss out on much by not getting Nasir.

 

[Brammi]

On the topic of FE, killing Kishuna in one turn is balls.

And Xaldin was a bitch in KH2.

 

[vonFiedler]

Bongo Bongo also gave me trouble last time I played, because I was playing with my grandma and I never bothered to get all the heart containers. Zelda becomes a very different game.

But it was okay, because only a wuss would dislike the Shadow Temple.

 

[Asek]

I didn't find bongo bongo that hard with biggorons sword, just waited for the move where he used one hand to slam the drum when it became immobile right after then hit it, moved to the next one while he was recovering then when he was down spam biggorons on the eye. It took only 2 rounds of that on n64 to finish him off iirc. The hardest boss for me in OoT was shadow ganons second phase because i didnt know how to hit the spells back properly and struggled for a good hour trying to figure out what to do :/

 

[Geodude6]

Lou from Guitar Hero 3 if you play on Expert.

 

[Enguarde]

dr wily mega man 9

 

[Gogeta]

If any of you have played the PSN version of Metal Gear Solid before the PS1 version, please tell me that you found Psycho Mantis impossible too. I'd never played MGS on the PS1, so I thought I'd pick it up on PSN. When I got to Mantis, I didn't have the faintest fucking idea what to do. His attacks weren't too difficult to avoid, but he dodged EVERYTHING. I fired about 200 Famas rounds right into his skull to no effect. After pondering what to do for a while, I called in the colonel and he told me to change controllers. Fine, except I had no idea how to do that with a wireless dualshock controller (I'd only bought the PS3 the day before). And so to this day, Psycho Mantis is the only boss that made me read my console manual instead of the game manual. Really cool boss fight though.

also that giant robot thing in hello kitty roller rescue was a bitch.

 

[Trax]

On the topic of FE, killing Kishuna in one turn is balls.

Ughh yes.. especially given you have to do it to see probably the most interesting mission story wise.



In terms of difficulty though, Barrett from Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a huge pain in the ass -- largely because it wasn't what I was expecting at all, given the usual Deus Ex style of play.

 

[Blue_Tornado]

pretty sure we had this thread some time ago

2hu

 

[TUO]

I'm used to hard-ish games so I would say some of the bosses in Dark Souls (Ornstein and Smough stand out, Four Kings, and Kalameet match up)

 

[Farobi]

twewy

 

[Lavos]

cave story spoilers

BALLOS is hard as a motherfucker

 

[blitzlefan]

Metroid Prime from uhh... Metroid Prime! That thing was a pain in the ass to beat (it took me at least ten tries to beat it on normal mode, and I haven't even gotten to it on hard mode). Getting to the boss is a challenge in itself, but even with every upgrade in the game, beating the boss is still ridiculously hard.

 

[UltiMario]

Half the bosses in FFIV

The level/difficulty curve for that game makes no sense

 

[Aldaron]

One of the 2 main Kingdom Hearts games has a difficult Sephiroth match...forget which, probably 2 though.

getting perfect ending in chrono cross was annoying as hell (more tedious than difficult) against final boss

 

[faint]

Kefka from FFVI was a huge bitch for me.

and @Aldaron both Seph's were pretty difficult but the one in KH2 was much harder.

 

[moonbound]

Thought of some more.

• every F.O.E. from any Etrian Odyssey game. If you aren't familiar, here's the best explanation I can give: you're playing G/S/C and have a party of weakened level 20-25 Pokemon. You're in a regular random encounter battle but a few turns in level 40 Entei enters the ongoing battle and wipes the floor with you. Fiends in SMT are similar, but usually less overpowered and easier to avoid.
• The natural dancers in Persona 3. Fuck charm status and fuck yukari's AI for being to stupid to cure charm status.

 

[Geodude6]

It's not a boss, but it is pretty tough. On Rock Band 2, one of the harder songs is a song called "Visions." (for the uninformed, Rock Band is a Guitar Hero clone) That thing is HARD, even more so than Battery or Painkiller, or even Raining Blood. At least with Painkiller I can last until the first guitar solo on Expert. With Visions I can't get through the first 30 seconds of it on Hard. Also, my sister likes to sing, but she likes to sound as close to the original singer as possible, but Abnormality's lead singer sounds like Cookie Monster when she sings. (yes, the singer is female) So my sister won't sing Visions for fear of getting a sore throat. And on top of all that, the song sounds absolutely atrocious. So thank you Harmonix, for putting a song on Rock Band that we have to do (for the endless setlist) that not only is difficult to play, but also difficult to listen to.