Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
A good boss fight is a culmination of everything you’ve experienced in a game for the last little while; an exam, a skill check. Given that, it’s understandable that a boss would be much heartier than your average mook, with a longer health bar or higher damage resistances. That’s perfectly fine, and indeed, I like my bosses to have a little meat on their bones. However, some bosses can get a little carried away, well past “a little meat on their bones” and into “several gigantic ham hocks hot-glued to their chest.”
These bosses, no matter how much you slash at them or how many bullets you pump into them, just refuse to go down in a timely fashion. Maybe they’re extremely mobile and tricky to pin down, or maybe their damage resistances are just way too jacked up, or heaven forbid, maybe both. It’s the kind of boss fight that may start fun, but after a while, you start checking your watch to see just how long you’ve been at this and pray it’ll be over soon.
10 The Mermaid Princess
Rule Of Rose
People often say that, in traditional horror games like Silent Hill, the combat, if there is any, is supposed to be bad. Clunky, janky combat makes you feel powerless, makes the situation feel more tense. There’s some truth to that, but only up to a certain point, past which things stop being scary and just become irritating. An example of this I frequently recall is the Mermaid Princess boss in Rule of Rose.
This boss fight is a standout in a game that’s already semi-notorious for its not-so-great combat for being a major test of your patience. She’s a deformed, bound girl, tied up and hanging from the ceiling, where she’s being constantly pulled up and lowered to menace you. Every time she drops down, she pukes everywhere to deal area damage, and if you try to get , she’ll claw wildly at you.
Despite literally being bound at the legs, she is an annoyingly mobile boss, constantly disappearing and reappearing. Even putting that aside, it takes a good 30 hits to put her down, even with one of the stronger weapons available at the time, the meat cleaver. There is a strong chance you’ll run out of heals before you’re even halfway finished.
9 The Vohrsoth Leader
Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force
The FPS spin-off to the Star Trek Voyager TV series, Elite Force, was one of my first true FPS experiences growing up. It’s a great game with lots of guns to use and a healthy variety of enemy types, including Borg drones. However, both as a kid and now, I very much do not care for the game’s final boss, the leader of the Forge’s commanders, the Vohrsoth.
Traditional gaming logic would have you assume that a big, chonky monster tied down to one spot in an arena wouldn’t be that hard to deal with. The Vohrsoth doesn’t go down easy, though; before you can even fight him, you have to deal with several waves of assorted alien combatants, chipping away at your health and ammo. Once you deal with the mooks, the Vohrsoth finally gets up out of his chair and starts fighting directly, launching homing attacks and firing blasts that shoot up under your feet. Basically, he can hit you from absolutely anywhere.
There’s little-to-no indication that your shots are doing anything to hurt the Vohsoth, so you just have to pump everything you have into him and hope you’re not doing this wrong. Even with full clips of your strongest weapons, like the Arc Welder and Photon Torpedo, he will not go down until you’re completely tapped, I guarantee it.
8 Theodore Bruno
Mega Man Legends
As the first true 3D Mega Man game, Mega Man Legends brought a new dimension to the existing Mega Man formula. You couldn’t just pump Buster shots into an entire enemy sprite, you needed to aim precisely at specific targets. Most of the game’s bosses, especially those against the robots of the Bonne Family, have clear weak spots, though one of them maybe has a few too many.
The last Bonne robot you fight in the game, and one of the largest behind the Gesellschaft and Focke-Wulf, is Theodore Bruno. From the moment the fight starts, you can tell you’re in it for the long haul, because its health bar is half the length of your screen. Theodore Bruno has a large arsenal of weapons it’s almost constantly firing off, including big lasers from its hands and rockets from its feet, so you need to be constantly moving and ducking behind buildings.
Theodore Bruno’s only weak spot is the middle of its spine; if you’re far enough away, Mega Man should be able to auto-lock while strafing, but otherwise, you’ll have to stand and aim, which doesn’t mesh great with the aforementioned hail of lasers and explosives. You’ll be lucky to get a couple of shots off before needing to cut and run.
7 Masakado’s Shadow
Shin Megami Tensei 4
All the Shin Megami Tensei games, as well as their spin-offs, have at least one endgame superboss, a dude strong enough to put the actual final boss to shame. By their very nature, superbosses tend to be pretty tanky and require a lot of time and investment, but none quite as much as Shin Megami Tensei 4’s DLC superboss, Masakado’s Shadow.
Masakado’s Shadow is more-or-less designed to be unbeatable without a laser-precision strategy and a perfect team of demons. This is because, among other reasons, he drains all elements and affinities without pierce attributes, resists Almighty damage, and has the highest flat HP stat in the entire game.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, you only have ten turns to defeat him before an ICBM nukes Tokyo. You would think that little bit of pressure would make the fight go faster. You would think wrong, especially considering Masakado’s Shadow gets six press turns on his move, more if he lands a weakness or critical. Even if you’ve got this fight down to a science, there’s a nonzero chance things are still going to come down the wire before he finally takes the hint and keels over.
6 Masato Aizawa
Yakuza 5
It’s more or less a tradition of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise that the last boss of any given game needs to be an exceptionally beefy dude that can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Kiryu or Ichiban. Yakuza 5’s final boss, Masato Aizawa, certainly fits that bill, with a katana to boot. Though, despite only being slightly larger than Kiryu, the guy is built like a refrigerator and has the constitution to match.
Out of every main story final boss in the franchise, Aizawa has one of the largest health pools, with eight multicolored health bars stacked on top of each other. Basic attacks pretty much just don’t hurt him, and even Heat moves are brushed off with only a few small chips in that health bar. It doesn’t help that Aizawa himself hits like a freight train, which means you’ll constantly be pausing the game to chug a Staminan.
Mercifully, the game does give you several opportunities to knock a big chunk off his health with QTEs, though these only appear when he changes phase, and if you botch them, you don’t get a do-over.
5 Rajan
Sly 2: Band Of Thieves
I always enjoy the boss encounter at the end of an episode in a Sly Cooper game. It’s an opportunity to dispense with stealth and subtlety for a moment and smack a punk upside the head for all the trouble they’ve caused you. Most of the bosses in Sly 2 are fun in this way, with the lone exception of the fight against Rajan. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard, since you’re playing the strongest character, Murray, but you’d think wrong.
Murray’s individual punches barely nick Rajan’s hefty health bar, and he’s constantly swinging his staff at you in massive arcs, knocking you away and keeping you from getting a good combo going. Rajan also regularly calls in stooges to chip away at you, and doesn’t even have the common courtesy to leave the arena while he does so, so you’re avoiding attacks from both him and the grunts until you deal with them.
The vast majority of the fight is just dodging staff swings and fending off mooks, though Rajan occasionally zaps the floor with lightning, forcing you to jump with precise timing. The whole thing’s just a slog, and not a particularly interesting one.
4 Nihilanth
Half-Life
Despite being one of the quintessential FPS games, Half-Life is a pretty boss-light experience. The game is more about problem-solving and pitched firefights, after all, so there’s no real room for large setpiece encounters. Most of the exceptions to this occur in the game’s last leg in the realm of Xen, particularly with its final boss against the creepy giant psychic baby, Nihilanth.
Nihilanth is a bit of a dark spot on what is otherwise an excellent game just because of how much legwork you need to put in to beat him. You can’t even touch him when the fight starts; you first need to bounce around the arena, destroying the crystals powering him up. This is all while he’s constantly pelting you with projectiles or warping you away to little rooms full of enemies.
Even after you break the crystals, you still have to beat Nihilanth himself, which more or less requires you to pump every last bullet and rocket you have into his big, dumb head. There’s very little indication that you’re actually hurting him, so you just have to keep firing rockets and hope that he’ll eventually have the courtesy to keel over.
3 Dark Link
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
The Water Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is frequently memed on as one of the game’s worst dungeons, though this has died down a bit in recent years. It was a lot harder when we were all kids, I can admit that. That said, it’s no bowl of cherries either; even before you get to the dungeon’s main boss, Morpheal, you have to get through its mini-boss, the infamous Dark Link.
There are two things that make Dark Link a long-haul boss fight. First, he’s an annoyingly agile opponent. It’s very difficult to pin him down without getting your nose cut off, and that’s not even mentioning his annoying tendency to step on your sword and smack you in the face. Plus, every time you do hit him, he disappears into the floor, so you can’t get a good combo going.
More than that, Dark Link’s actual health is directly proportional to your own. However many Heart Containers you’ve amassed by that point in the game is how much health Dark Link will have. This means that the more thorough you’ve been in gathering heart pieces, the longer this is going to take. There are ways to cheese the fight, like using Din’s Fire, but that’s the kind of thing you’d only know to try if someone told you.
2 Alduin
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
A large portion of Skyrim’s main quest and overall story is spent hyping up the dragon Alduin as the biggest, baddest dude on the face of reality. He’s the World Eater, the Twilight God, an existential threat to Skyrim and beyond. I suppose I’d be a little disappointed if a climactic showdown against such a dragon fell short of expectations, though I wonder if they perhaps overcorrected a smidge.
Alduin has a health pool in the thousands, a flat resistance to nearly all damage types aside from Frost, and an arsenal of breath attacks and shouts, including his wholly unique shout, Dragon Storm Call, which calls down a storm of meteorites. Beyond all that, he’s got the usual dragon playbook of slashing at you with his claws, biting with his jaws, and breathing fire at you if you’re standing right in front of him.
Actually fighting Alduin isn’t that hard, especially since you’ve got a cadre of legendary Nordic warriors watching your back, but because his base stats are so outrageous, just whittling him down takes absolutely forever. The process could be likened to an extremely long-lasting merry-go-round, wherein you’re constantly circling around Alduin’s back to avoid his breath attacks. Because nothing says a climactic battle against a draconic god like a game of ring-around-the-rosey.
1 Dragonlord Placidusax
Elden Ring
Speaking of all-powerful dragons, Elden Ring has its fair share of draconic foes, some of which take top spots amongst the game’s tankiest boss fights, like Malenia and Mohg. Amongst the lot of them, the biggest, chonkiest one of them all is, without a doubt, Dragonlord Placidusax. Try saying that name five times fast; you’ll probably do it before you actually finish the fight.
Placidusax is a massive, multi-headed dragon who serves as an optional boss in Crumbling Farum Azula. He’s got 26,000 health and a natural resistance to all status effects like Scarlet Rot, Hemorrhage, and Frostbite, which means you’re not getting through this with any shortcuts. If you’re running a melee build, you’re in for a long haul, as Placidusax’s only definitive weakpoints are his heads, which are almost never in melee range. You just have to steadily chip away at his huge body, constantly running and rolling to avoid his lightning strikes and claw swipes like an overeager rat biting someone’s toes.
For added fun, when Placidusax changes phase, he starts going all-in on breath and magic attacks, positively peppering the arena with damage zones. You’re going to be dodging for a good while before you can even get a moment to take a couple of swings.
