Super Bosses: Memories and Frustrations

[CJC]

As some of you may know from the 'What are you playing' thread, I've been visiting the Paper Mario Series, and I am currently playing The Thousand Year Door. The other day I spent two hours descending the Pit of 100 Trials, only to reach an optional boss loaded with high power and HP (and myself with not a single item to spare!). Needless to say, he stomped me and my two hours of effort were wasted.


I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss optional super bosses from games past, your frustrations and memories with them, and maybe even strategies you used to thwomp them. As for my current boss-o-frustration, I plan to load up on items, reach max level, and then have at him a second time with full force.

[erm2003]

I can name two from my earlier gaming days that frustrated me at first but eventually I was able to pull it off.

First up was Illusion of Gaia. This was seriously one of my favorite SNES games until I discovered Chrono Trigger. Anyway, the optional boss you can fight is Gem if you collect all 50 red jewels in the game. He's pretty hard, fires a lot of projectiles, and you have to fight him as Will only. It took me a while to get a rhythm down and defeat him. What sucks is you can quickly lose your health and use up all your herbs. You then still have to complete the main quest which has the repeat of each boss battle as well as the final boss yet to come directly after Gem if you opt to complete the side quest.

My other favorite one was from Super Mario RPG. Culex. First time he kicked my ass. I had to come back later in the game and outlast his MP to finally take him out. It's something I always do if I play through the game. It's hard to pass up the experience you can get from that battle and honestly it's just a fun challenge.

[King Aquamentus]

not a super boss perse, but their existence in RPGs (especially the likes of Final Fantasy) gave me a hilarious (but impossible to practice in the game world) idea for how one would save the world. rather than directly attack the main villain at the end of the game, simply get the optional boss to chase you to him, and let them duke it out. whoever is left standing and weakened, that's what you fight.

[mrz84]

Most of the monsters the Arena Guy in Final Fantasy X puts out, especially the one you can only fight with the characters that can go underwater. Tidus was prepared for anything, but Wakka and Rikku were not and I was quickly curbstomped but him. There were a few that were tamer than I thought, but then again I was OP with a party of Auron, Tidus, and Yuna for most of the Arena fights. Still haven't finished it and the last dungeon of the game. Probably should...

Also, the fight with Culex was tough unless you came back to it when the XP didn't matter anymore. I used Peach and Geno in my party. Peach for obvious reasons and Geno for buffing my party with Geno Boost and his hard to time, but OP if you can Geno Whirl.

Also, Omega Weapon in FF V. I was underleveled when I first bumped into him and was just horribly raped.

[NewJourneysFire]

Watch this video, these guys literally haunted my childhood for years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsR2ujP0n-o

The reason I put this in optional is because you can only fight them all in Hard Difficulty.

[CJC]

I can name two from my earlier gaming days that frustrated me at first but eventually I was able to pull it off.

First up was Illusion of Gaia. This was seriously one of my favorite SNES games until I discovered Chrono Trigger. Anyway, the optional boss you can fight is Gem if you collect all 50 red jewels in the game. He's pretty hard, fires a lot of projectiles, and you have to fight him as Will only. It took me a while to get a rhythm down and defeat him. What sucks is you can quickly lose your health and use up all your herbs. You then still have to complete the main quest which has the repeat of each boss battle as well as the final boss yet to come directly after Gem if you opt to complete the side quest.

Yeah, the Jeweler Gem definitely counts as a highly optional boss, especially because one small misstep can cause you to miss him, with no option but to start the game over. He's also at the end of a dungeon with some pretty annoying enemies, so you're usually weak when you fight him.

I made it to him once, but couldn't beat him. A strategy guide recommended using Tornado Dash as both a weapon and a shield, charging it immediately after it ends and then starting up again. Still, even with that, the guy has 40 hp... it'd take forever.


The last boss rush was sort of a pain, too, because you don't get refreshed between fights and some of them present you with no advantage (or in certain cases, a disadvantage, such as the Entombed Queen who I would prefer to fight with Freedan, not Shadow).

I had a few problems with the game in general, including its cheesy ending and the limited usage of Shadow (who needed a more interesting name, too). I'd list my wishlist of adjustments here, but that's really a discussion for a different thread (and with the 'Bury this Forum' game running, a new thread is a necessity).



My other favorite one was from Super Mario RPG. Culex. First time he kicked my ass. I had to come back later in the game and outlast his MP to finally take him out. It's something I always do if I play through the game. It's hard to pass up the experience you can get from that battle and honestly it's just a fun challenge.
Mario with Lazy Paratroopa Shells, both weapon and shirt. And a lot of time to waste.
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not a super boss perse, but their existence in RPGs (especially the likes of Final Fantasy) gave me a hilarious (but impossible to practice in the game world) idea for how one would save the world. rather than directly attack the main villain at the end of the game, simply get the optional boss to chase you to him, and let them duke it out. whoever is left standing and weakened, that's what you fight.
That would be amazing. Most superbosses are holed up in secret dungeons, though, so it might be more reasonable to lure the story villain to the superboss, possibly under the pretense of defeating the greater threat. Wouldn't be very heroic for the protagonist, though.



Most of the monsters the Arena Guy in Final Fantasy X puts out, especially the one you can only fight with the characters that can go underwater. Tidus was prepared for anything, but Wakka and Rikku were not and I was quickly curbstomped but him. There were a few that were tamer than I thought, but then again I was OP with a party of Auron, Tidus, and Yuna for most of the Arena fights. Still haven't finished it and the last dungeon of the game. Probably should...

Remember, petrify underwater counts as both a sneeze and doom. Terrible, I hated underwater fights.
I didn't play X intensely enough to put up a fight against any of the arena monsters, though. They all trounced me.


Also, the fight with Culex was tough unless you came back to it when the XP didn't matter anymore. I used Peach and Geno in my party. Peach for obvious reasons and Geno for buffing my party with Geno Boost and his hard to time, but OP if you can Geno Whirl.
It was all Mario for me. Peach and Bowser were dead within the first few turns.


Also, Omega Weapon in FF V. I was underleveled when I first bumped into him and was just horribly raped.
Omega Weapon stomped me, mainly because he nullified my strategy of throw magic shuriken, mimic, mimic, mimic...
The other optional boss, however, was pretty easy with the coral rings.
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Watch this video, these guys literally haunted my childhood for years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsR2ujP0n-o

The reason I put this in optional is because you can only fight them all in Hard Difficulty.
That... was... horrifying. And even with the player's talent, they still killed him like... seven times. Definitely superboss material, from back when games didn't hold our hands.

[erm2003]

A strategy guide recommended using Tornado Dash as both a weapon and a shield, charging it immediately after it ends and then starting up again. Still, even with that, the guy has 40 hp... it'd take forever.

If I remember correctly, what worked well for me was using the slide back and forth to do damage. If you time it right, you can avoid taking damage from the projectiles while sliding. After a bit I was able to get into a good rhythm and finish him off.



The last boss rush was sort of a pain, too, because you don't get refreshed between fights and some of them present you with no advantage (or in certain cases, a disadvantage, such as the Entombed Queen who I would prefer to fight with Freedan, not Shadow).

Totally agree here. I wish they gave a choice in the end. Go ahead, start that thread. I would love a discussion on this game. I haven't played it through in years. My actual cartridge is broken so that's a real bummer. My only option is to emulate it unless they finally release it as a VC game.


Mario with Lazy Paratroopa Shells, both weapon and shirt. And a lot of time to waste.

I would have Mario with the Lazy Shell, but I would put the shirt on Peach. It was great to have her taking minimal damage as the healer and reviver. Bowser would be my third just because he is quite powerful. This is the only battle I use Rock Candy for so I use up what I have which is quite effective and then I can wrap up the rest of the battle without too much trouble at that point.

[mrz84]

That would be amazing. Most superbosses are holed up in secret dungeons, though, so it might be more reasonable to lure the story villain to the superboss, possibly under the pretense of defeating the greater threat. Wouldn't be very heroic for the protagonist, though.



I remember that they do something similar with Dragon Quest 6's super boss, but only if you beat him within a certain number of turns. He then warps you all to the final boss and proceeds to own his ass. After that he leaves and you get a somewhat different yet oddly satisfying ending.

[Ventus]

Hmm... Let me think, I remember back when the ps2 was still alive I was playing Star Ocean: Till the end of time.
I was going through that huge bonus dungeon, I reached the end of it and started fighting the Ethereal Queen... Damn that bitch killed me so many times.

I was at level 180 and she was just whooping me so hard, finally the last time I was fighting her with the party of Fayt LV-180, Cliff LV-169, Sophia LV-156.
So I started wailing on her after about 20 so minutes of fighting I managed to get her HP down quite a bit.

But after awhile of fighting I wasn't paying attention because I was kicking ass. then she done a move that hit us all and I almost died... Wiped out Fayt and Cliff.
So I switched over to Sophia and to find out I was out of MP and items D:

So I said hell with it and beat the crap out of the Ethereal Queen dealing about 10000 DMG a hit.
After 4 minutes of fighting I managed to kill the Ethereal Queen with just Sophia.

Holy shit was the only thing I said after I beat her.

That was one amazing super boss.

[Brasel]

I'm procrastinating writing a report here, so this will be brief.

I beat Emerald Weapon for the first time last year. I was really happy when I finally beat him. This was kind of funny, because I actually had no trouble beating Omega Weapon in FF VIII the first time I played the game, and if I remember correctly, he's harder.

Culex was cool. I loved that they used the FF IV boss theme for his fight.

[Aliem]

The first super boss I ever beat in a game was Culex from Super Mario RPG. Took freaking forever.

Ruby and Emerald Weapon from FFVII were a bitch when I was younger. Though, I remember when the game was still new, my cousin and I were playing. We had no idea that Emerald's Aire Tam attack dealt 1111 damage for every piece of materia equipped. On dumb luck, we had two HP plus materia on Cid and Cloud, bumping their HP to 9999 each. Emerald used the attack right after a megalixer was used, and bam, both Cloud and Cid got lucky 7's. We nearly shat ourselves.

I also remember being completely outclassed by Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts... though that battle seems super easy now.

[Din]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWWFe-GQ_ZQ

Pictured: what happened to my sanity.

[NewJourneysFire]

How can I forget this battle? I beat this a couple of years ago. Hardest boss I ever faced.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsM_r6ep6Q

[Blanka]

Without a doubt. Ozma from FF 9 and the Emerald Weapon from FF 7 where a couple of the biggest bullies I've ever encountered. I never did defeat Ozma. The Emerald weapon I actually beat without the aid of the underwater materia because at the time I didn't know it existed. I just kept using W-Summon along with Knights Of The Round and Mime. Man what a frustrating turd he was! Damn near set fire to my console in anger.

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t426/kokolovich/download_zps0b48a58e.jpghttp://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t426/kokolovich/1199375686_f_zps80c508c8.jpg

[ShadowTiger]

There was the Abyssion Battle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9U6281QQg) from Tales of Symphonia. A rather lengthy side-quest culminates in this rather secretive battle with a boss that has arguably the largest hit point pool in the game, going well into the range of the somewhat ridiculous. If memory serves, after the battle is won, you get to keep the purified versions of the armaments you had collected during the side quest. Not too bad. Been a while though.

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I remember reading in Nintendo Power or some magazine like that from way back then that some boss at the end of some game literally couldn't be defeated. Anybody have any idea what that might be?

[CJC]

There was the Abyssion Battle (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9U6281QQg) from Tales of Symphonia. A rather lengthy side-quest culminates in this rather secretive battle with a boss that has arguably the largest hit point pool in the game, going well into the range of the somewhat ridiculous. If memory serves, after the battle is won, you get to keep the purified versions of the armaments you had collected during the side quest. Not too bad. Been a while though.

No, you're right. They're Karma weapons, so they do more damage for each enemy you've defeated with them. They start off pretty weak, though, so it makes you wonder if it's worth-while. Once purified, though, they tend to critical for lots and lots of damage, so I guess it balances out.

The video you linked to clearly has max level characters. To beat the guy without farming like crazy, use an All Divide to cut damage in half, and then make sure you've brought Raine in your party (to heal everybody. Because Healing isn't technically damage, the All Divide makes it twice as effective). Then it's less devastating a battle and more an exercise in tedium. If I remember correctly, it took me close to 30 minutes to beat the guy.


EDIT: Whoops, sort of cut off CAD there. No, I don't remember hearing about an unbeatable boss, but I wasn't a subscriber to Nintendo Power.

[Blanka]

I remember reading in Nintendo Power or some magazine like that from way back then that some boss at the end of some game literally couldn't be defeated. Anybody have any idea what that might be?Hi ctrl-alt-delete.
Don't hold me to this. It's been a LONG time. But it might be the boss from Bionic Commando. He's indestructible, but you must destroy a power core on the wall behind him to win.

[Orithan]

I never really had trouble with superbosses unless you count Touhou, which is a SHUMP, and its ludicrous Extra Bosses. Fujiwara no Moku's 5th card attack from Imperishable Night is literally unbeatable until you figure out a very obscure trick involving the laser she sweeps the screen with. I've seen some of Ran Yukamo's attacks from Perfect Cherry Blossom and Koishi Komeji's from Subterranean Animism and many of what I've seen were downright insane.
As far as RPGs are concerned I haven't fought many and out of them I can only recall Bonetail from Paper Mario TTYD, Wracktail from SPM, Dark Heroes from SPM, Egg Dragon from Lufia II and King Slimes from Lufia II.
Bonetail I found to be pretty easy. I just charged and charged until I was at the stage where Mario did 30s per stomp while I used Madame Flurrie to cover him and Vivian to hide from his charge attacks. Not only did Bonetail go down pretty smoothly, but my charged attacks also completely overran his reanimate ability that heals him 20 or so HP per use. I personally had more trouble with the Shadow Queen because she could do multiple attacks per turn, doing up to 21 damage or more if I wasn't careful. In contrast, Bonetail could do only 8 per turn unless he charged up to do 20.
Wracktail was more of a challenge, as his Wrackles could spit flames out at you, but Luigi's Super Jump made him relatively easy to deal with.
The Dark Heroes were literally pushovers because, after buffing myself up with Lovely Pasta, I actually OHKOed each of them with Bowser. Though that was because I ended up being very overlevelled after multiple attempts to get to them.
The Egg Dragon was the only secret boss that I actually had trouble with as he did massive damage with each of his attacks and could easily wipe out my whole party in a turn if he ended up confusing/killing my healer and following up with the attack that hits all of my party while they are weak. He also had a buttload of HP, making the fight last for ages. Fortunately, there is also a bug you can exploit which will allow you to kill him in a single turn.
The King Slime from Lufia II is only difficult because you have to kill him within three turns or he kills himself, leaving no item behind. He has 9999 HP, which makes him very difficult to kill within that time. This is all the more annoying because the only time you can fight him is when you get right to the bottom of of the Ancient Cave, which has 100 floors, and you have to redo the entire thing just to fight him again.

[Aliem]

whoops, already posted in this thread back in March.

So, to avoid restating what I've already said, I'll just say I still to this day have not beaten Omega or Shinryu from Final Fantasy V. Nor have I ever beaten Ozma.

[LORD APOCALYPSE]

Tanzra from Actraiser.

A hellish end boss with an energy bar extending across the screen and when you finally get that down......he grows another one!

A complete fucker off a boss fight but the feeling after kicking his ass, immense!

[MottZilla]

You want a super boss fight? Try the true final boss to the awesome Demon's Crest for SNES. You'd have to play it to believe how difficult the battle is. But one hint is that as the battle goes on, the floor and walls get destroyed leaving spikes that will damage you if you touch them. Infact near the end half or 3rd of the battle there is literally no where safe to stand or hang on to anymore, it's all spikes. And while you can hover and fly up at this point, anytime you get hit (which is about every time you temporary invulnerability flashing ends) you stop flying and need to immediately hit jump again to resume hovering as well as hit the button to try to regain your lost altitude. Not to mention all while this is being dealt with you have tons of projectiles, the boss itself, and sometimes the entire room has a lava rain where the only safe place is directly below the boss who is moving. I managed to beat him recently. I had to have the maximum amount of life refills (like Mega Man Sub-Tanks or E-Tanks) and at the end I'd used them all up.

Oh and just to make it more suspenseful, unlike every other boss in the game, he doesn't change color when he is near death. So you have no idea when you're close to winning. You just pray you can last as long as it takes. You only know how much life and how many refills you have left. I honestly didn't think I'd last it out.

I'm sure there are some other really tough bosses, but the Dark Demon is definitely one of the top hardest bosses from any game I've played.

[Nimono]

The only super bosses I've ever beaten that I'd actually classify as super bosses are those found within Final Fantasy 5. Advance. This includes Enuo and the rest of the Sealed Temple. And Omega. And Shinryu. And Omega MK-II and Neo Shinryu. Man, all those fights were HARD AS HECK...

For Culex as mentioned in the thread: Lazy Shell weapon on Mario, Lazy Shell armor on Peach. This makes the battle insanely easy, as Peach is virtually indestructable, where the only thing that does more than 1 damage, let alone damage AT ALL, is Culex's Dark Star. And maybe his physical, too, but you rarely see that. Her healing doesn't even take that big of a hit. It's not HP to full anymore, but it's still just about there!

For Bonetail: When I faced him, he was insanely easy, to the point where he only hit me ONCE- for 3 damage. Why? Flurrie's Dodgy Fog is an absolute LIVESAVER, and good use of Power Lift. Power Lift is SUCH an amazing skill in that game. Shadow Queen is definitely harder, since she hits multiple times per turn and can cause you to waste your FP faster.

Now, if you'd REALLY like to see a challenge, I suggest you try to beat Metroid Fusion getting only the one Missile Tank in Sector 3 that you cannot avoid. The famous 1% run turns everything into a superboss- to the point that the SA-X KILLS YOU IN ONE HIT if you EVER get hit by the Ice Beam! You need a LOT of dexterity and patience to complete a 1% run. Trust me, I did it once. NEVER. AGAIN. But it was SO freaking satisfying. The highlights are basically every boss from Giant Core-X onward. It really gets to the point where you can't even relax when the Core-X comes out!

Aside from those, I've also beaten Bowser-X in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, the two Pit bosses in SPM, and the True Arena in both Kirby Super Star Ultra and Kirby's Return to Dream Land. ...those are just the ones I can remember, at least...

[mrz84]

Dark Demon in Demon's Crest. One of my favorite Capcom games ever after Mega Man. That guy was a pain to beat. Sometimes I still fire up my SNES and try fighting him again.

[MottZilla]

I'm glad someone else has played and beaten the Dark Demon. I think Demon's Crest was pretty under the radar. Though I think more people know about it these days. It can be a very tough game.

[mrz84]

Ya, learning the controls was a bit tricky at first since I didn't have a manual when I bought it. And then there's all the secrets. Had to explore everywhere before finding out how to unlock all the stages except for Dark Demon. Its still fun for a from-scratch replay every now and again.

Would be nice if a Virtual Console version of the game was released. That way more people could play it.