For many an avid gamer out there, beating games is just a thing that they do quite regularly due to the time and effort they commit to their pastime and how long they have been gaming for. However, even the sturdiest gamer will wince at the mention of some game bosses that have plagued them throughout the years and were unnecessarily hard to beat.
Many will rush to defend the fact that games used to be harder and part of the enjoyment is in the challenge, which is true, but not when the bosses were so hard you lost days, even weeks, of your life trying to beat them. Here we look at a few of these bad boys and girls.
15. Pokemon Silver & Gold – Whitney
For the most part, with a little bit of logic, gamers could blast through Pokemon Red & Blue with relative ease with a decent crop of Pokemon to battle as they rapidly picked up on the imbalances in the games where Psychic Pokemon ruled the roost and a decent level one could jest destroy most other things. Bug Pokemon were a good starting point but otherwise pointless and then Water Beats Fire, Fire Beats Grass, Grass Beats Rock, Rock Beats Electric, Electric Beats Water. Easy.
So, by the time the Gold & Silver iterations of the game rolled around the developers tried to balance this out a bit, the problem was that the hard bit came too early. Whitney was the third gym leader you’d come across and, for the most part, your Pokemon would be middling creatures with probably your starter streaks ahead of everything else you got your hands on. So when Whitney rolled out her Miltank, a creature that could recuperate health and had an attack that got stronger the longer the battle went on, you were doomed unless you spent a serious amount of time grinding at the game and leveling your Pokemon in the tall grass against pitiful bugs and birds. Infuriating!
14 . The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Dark Link
The Water Temple in this game is both feared and adored by gamers across the globe for its difficulty and entertainment levels as you have to navigate your way through the dungeon to finally battle the Giant Aquatic Amoeba: Morpha, who is irritatingly hard on their own. Before that, however, you come across Dark Link, a nod to previous games and a mirror image of your character who has the same moves as you plus some.
Matching your sword skills, he can block and parry most of your attacks, and f you do land one, he will disappear only to reappear behind you. However, his difficulty is also lauded because he offers up a genuine challenge to your skills and its one of the few opportunities in the series you get to have a proper sword fighting duel.
13. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater – The End
The Metal Gear series is known for its unique and innovative boss battles from Psycho Mantis who would read your memory card and then force you to unplug your controller and plug it into another port during battle, to Laughing Octopus who would disappear in bursts of ink and reappear above you. The End was no different in this excellent use of combat play and he could manipulate the environment around him to his advantage and snipe you from long range.
There were several ways you could approach this battle where you could, perhaps foolishly, engage The End in his specialty and take him on in a sniping battle or you could try and get up close and do some real damage. Either way was ridiculously hard as he had a parrot who could spot you and anytime you left cover you’d be pelted with bullets. A little-known way of beating him was setting the clock on your system forward so that he actually died of old age but few people knew of this trick.
12. Castlevania – Death
In the Castlevania series, death repeatedly crops up because, apparently, he is best mates with Count Dracula, which sort of makes sense actually. In each iteration of the game, he is quite a tough nut to crack what with his ability to float out of reach and chuck projectiles at you from a safe distance. Also, how do you kill the very embodiment of death itself?
Although the ghoulish specter remains a pain at anytime he appears, it is undoubtedly the original Castlevania where he is at his most irksome, partly due to the clunky controls of early gaming where you couldn’t move during a mid-air jump. As such, if you jumped to attack death just as they launched an attack, you were powerless to dodge so timing had to be extremely precise.
11. Mega Man – Yellow Devil
The first Mega Man game was wonderfully designed, incredibly innovative and notoriously hard. So much so that some of the design kinks had to be worked out in later versions of the game and it had to be made quite a bit easier as well. That being said, the challenge to mastering the timing of the game and the thrill of success has made it a classic in many people’s eyes but mention the Yellow Devil and those same folks will curse the very name.
A boss that appears late on in the game, this character requires you to master the jump timing perfectly as he fires off a series of shots that, should you get caught by one, your most likely to be caught by all and his weak spot is very hard to get at. There was a glitch in the original that you could use to make it easier to defeat this boss but even then, you still had to actually land a hit on them.
10. Metroid Fusion – SA-X
Like Dark Link in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, This boss battle starts out with a creature that mimics your own skills and agility, which comes as a shock the first time around as you’re used to boss battles against giant, lumbering, but incredibly powerful, space aliens and monsters. However, if you do manage to topple this clone, it then does turn into a giant, lumbering, but incredibly powerful, monster just to really test your skills.
Once you’ve seen off these two versions of this parasite that has been tracking you down, it transforms a third time to a blue nucleus that bounces around the screen at ridiculous speed, firing ice beams that both deal you damage and act as a protective shield. All versions of this boss would have been hard boss fights, but the fact it is three in one makes it agonizingly hard to get past.
9. Resident Evil – Code: Veronica – Tyrant
The Tyrant in this game pops up a few times and, mostly, at inopportune moments. The second time you meet him, you have a timer counting down as you head to a cargo plane to try and escape so you typically fire all your ammo at him to quickly brush him aside before getting on the cargo plane. Not the easiest but by no means a terribly hard task.
That is until, on the cargo plane, the Tyrant reappears and you now have very little ammo and probably few healing items. You are forced to weaken him before knocking him off the plane by releasing the cargo onto him but his strength means he can defeat you in two or three hits. It’s deceptive storytelling and very hard to get the balance right to make sure you are prepared for both sections of the battle.
8. Final Fantasy VII – Carry Armor
In a game filled with iconic villains, you wouldn’t think it is a giant robot used for carrying crates around a dock that is the hardest but this infuriating bot has attacks that will draw the very essence of your rage to the surface as it has the ability to take out two of the three of your party with one swipe of its arm, until you defeat that arm to release them. Coupled with its stupidly powerful Lapis Laser strike, it can win a battle just by repeatedly doing this.
If the third member of the party is killed whilst the other two are being held, that’s it, game over and it is so darned annoying because usually, you can utilize the skills of the whole squad but here you are left with one option only so you need a bit of luck on your side with who it chooses to pick up.
7. Sonic 2 – Metal Sonic and Dr. Eggman’s Giant Mech
Sonic 2 is by no means the hardest game in the world and, if you know what you’re doing, can also be run through at a pretty decent speed if you have good enough reactions are a familiar with the controls. That being said, being produced in a time before the save feature was available on consoles, if you messed up you had to start all over again which made the final boss so rage inducingly maddening.
The final level sees you roll through a space station on your way to confront the evil Dr. Eggman but suddenly you have to face up to a metal version of Sonic who is just as fast but also has jet thrusters in order to hurl himself at you. Get past him and then you can battle Eggman in his giant mech suit that has spikes all over it so you have to be careful where you hit. Not too bad as actual boss fights but the fact you can’t pick up any rings means that if you take any damage, you die instantly so you have to fight both of these two to near perfection before you complete the game!
6. Monster Hunter 3 – Deviljho
The Monster Hunter series has a slew of ridiculously overpowered bosses, especially the underwater ones, mostly because the swimming controls are really, really, bad, but one that continually causes pain is the super fast, super strong Deviljho that will pop up from time to time to completely decimate your monster hunting team.
One of the worst times to come across it is when hunting the smaller but flightier beast the Qurupeco which can then mimic the call of other monsters should it need to. As such it can call a Deviljho that can’t be defeated until you’ve sorted out the Qurupeco which usually means you get torn to pieces whilst trying to ignore the thing that is doing all the damage.
5. Final Fantasy Tactics – Marquis Elmdor
An escort mission that sees you trying to protect a young girl from harm sees you wander into the Riovanes castle which is plagued by horrendous battles that are draining and time-consuming but as you reach the roof of the building your task becomes amplified tenfold by a stupidly hard boss and a stupidly…er…stupid companion.
The girl often wanders into the range of the attacks of the Marquis and their personal assassins whilst you can do absolute nothing about it, and should the girl wander in front of the assassin’s attacks it is pretty much game over.
4. Earthbound – Ness’s Nightmare
Earthbound is an absolute gem of a game from the early gaming era that was quirky, fun, well thought out and a little offbeat. However, early stages of the game are slow and clunky as you only have one member of your party who has low-level attacks and so many of the battles can turn into a bit of a chore before you progress.
At the end of the game, the storytelling comes to life when the protagonist, Ness, has to defeat the darkness within him and battle a beast known as Ness’s nightmare. The problem is, this once again just pits two singular characters against each other here and it is a really long slog as both just chip away at each other in small chunks. Not the hardest boss in terms of technical ability but it is hard to get through that’s for sure.
3. Chrono Trigger – Magus
Chrono Trigger is an immense, beautiful and complex game that was designed to near perfection and is as challenging as it is complete. The final boss fight is against the mighty sorcerer Magus who uses defense spells left, right and center and changes his weakness to specific elementals with each attack so a single tactic will not work.
His defense can only be lowered by Frog’s sword which means he is forced into the striker position which limits his ability to use healing magic, something you desperately need in a battle like this. The thought and complexity put into the final fight are typical of the game and adds to its brilliance but it is still a hard one to beat.
2. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne – The Matador
One of the longest running RPG series in Japan, it took a while for Western gamers to get their hands on this but its success paid dividends when more and more sequels were launched globally. One of the hardest bosses in Nocturne is The Matador character who is designed to make sure you are using debuff spells and making sure you make the most of the elemental magic that has to be carefully chosen.
Without planning and considerable forethought, your whole team can be wiped out in a few hits as the character can launch attacks that affect everybody. Many consider him near impossible to get past but those with the right tactical knowledge can see of The Matador with skill and cunning.
1. Dark Souls – Capra Demon
The Dark Souls series is known for being hard but most of the gameplay is at least fair in its doling out of punishment. That being said, the Capra Demon is by no means fair as you have to approach its lair and cannot leave once you are in it. The tiny arena gives the lumbering, goat-headed beast, wielding two massive swords that can cut you to pieces in a matter of two or three hits.
What’s worse is that the demon has two dogs that can stun you enough to allow ample time for the demon to attack, and once you’ve seen them off, you still need to get close enough to do it damage. Horribly hard, to the point that there are probably many saved versions of the game that never got past that point as gamers just quit in frustration.
