Favorite Boss fights ever?

[EvilIguana966]

Half Life bosses deserve a mention if for no reason other than the sheer complexity and length of the battles.  The bosses were for the most part entire episodes rather than simply pieces of a level.  Fun as hell when you finally kill the Garg or Tentacle.

While I am personally a big fan of the old style run-n-gun bosses I'll have to admit that it's really hard to make that type of monster challenging these days.  FPS players are just too good at movement and the only way to make it interesting is to give the creature a ridiculous amount of hps/armor or to make their aim perfect.  Going back and playing older games these days IY find the bosses way too easy even on the hardest settings.  For example just the other day I reinstalled Quake II and ran through it.  Of the 3 bosses I think only the final one actually did any damage to me. 

[vulpesweasel]

Vertigo-Resident Evil 4(scared the sh*t out of me playing at 4 am, until I blew him up! )
Seraph Lamington-Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (kicked my ass, wiped the floor with me, rinse, repeat)
Kuja-FFIX(so many possible comments)
Anima/Seymour-FFX(he beat me into oblivion)
Ruby/Emerald WEAPON-FFVII (ZOMG )
Odin-Final Fantasy Legends II (old and rare game, but he still beat my ass)
SAFER Sephiroth-FFVII (put your shirt back on silly sephy)
Ozma-FFIX (He looks like a a bouncy ball)
Kraken-Golden Sun (squid of doom)
Any boss on Megaman Zero 2...

[Tapewolf]

Rowne has already mentioned the end of U7BG, so I'll give a couple from some of the other Ultimas.

Ultima 6

There aren't any bosses in this game, unless we count your beloved liege, the immortal king Lord British.  The King is nice as pie unless you take his mug of ale (just the mug - you can strip the entire castle bare, so long as you don't touch his mug.)  Oh, and he doesn't like you killing his staff either.

When angered, the King will make a bee-line for the Avatar and kill him with a single blow (how he achieves this is unclear) slaying everyone in his path until the Avatar is dead.

One of the most treasured objects in this series is the Glass Sword, which does 255 damage points and snaps.  Even this won't kill the King and you can hit him with cannons all day and night to no avail.  But there is a trick - when the King is in bed, he's not the King anymore.  He's "person sleeping".  Cannons are insufficient - the first blow will injure him but he'll wake up and become immortal again.

So we crept into his chamber late at night and used the Glass Sword instead.


Splash one King.

But we wanted a fight, yeah, rather than an assassination?
Well, as mentioned the King is not only immortal but has an instant death attack too.  Summoning a daemon to fight for you is one approach, but they only last one blow from the King, if that.  The only creature in the entire game capable of fighting Lord British hand-to-hand is himself - so I used the CLONE spell on him.



The anvils were summoned using the cheat mode since I had to have a barrier separating the contestants.  The only way to get them to fight is to attack the (real) King with a crossbow - the copies are programmed to fight on your behalf, which is what the spell is for.

The battle raged on for two nights and two days, or until I got bored.  It might have been a week, actually - game time runs fairly quickly.  When I left the castle and returned, the clones and the anvil had vanished (being temporary objects) and the King was sitting on his throne.
Although he was still alive, the fight had damaged him - he never left the throne after that and was no longer capable of speech.  This lead to my notion of him being a robot.

Ultima 8 - Pagan

Okay, Pagan.  Again, not a 'boss' in the conventional sense, there's a guy called 'Beren' who is the chief of justice in the town and his purpose is to blow you up.  If you're caught stealing, he blows you up.  If you attack someone you shouldn't, he blows you up.  If you murder someone, he blows you up.  He is also immortal, so you can't blow him up.

(Player death is permanent in Pagan and Ascension - in the previous games you would respawn in LB's castle)

Usually Beren potters around in a small house in the rich part of Tenebrae, teleporting in when you do wicked deeds in the town.  He also has another house in the sorcerer's enclave, and there he doesn't actually blow you up, although he will usually kill you in battle.

For some reason my brother was feeling particularly cocky and decided to take him on.  We both knew the outcome, only we were wrong - after a couple of blows on the head with Skullcrusher, he keeled over and lay dead.  It was truly one of those 'WTF? That's impossible!' moments.


This pic was taken with the cheat mode, in his Tenebrae house

Then the other sorcerers came along and tried to kill the Avatar so we fled.  Back in Tenebrae, Beren was still dead and we found to our delight that it was now possible to mug, kill and steal with no repercussions whatsoever.  We managed to get it to happen once more, and then never again.


Until I discovered how to drown him in the pond

Ultima 9 - Ascension

About half-way through the game, the Avatar gets whisked off to The Guardian's secret lair in Terfin.  There he is shown The Guardian's new video of the destruction of Skara-Brae, and beaten up.

The 'beaten up' part is interesting - The Guardian is able to attack you, but if you attack him, you take damage.  As you approach death, he tells you that you can't win the game and chucks you out, since the idea is to prove a point not kill the Avatar.

In earlier versions of the game it was possible to use the CHARM spell on him, which knackered the game somewhat.  In 1.18 they fixed this, but I wasn't going easily.  When the Guardian told me to give up, I smacked him round the head with the Glass Sword.  He got very angry indeed and the safety interlocks for that scene somehow failed.  The next thing I knew the Guardian had killed the Avatar, but was still prattling on about how I can't win.  He teleported the Avatar's mangled corpse back to the beach.  Then the game crashed.

**EDIT**

Finally, I think my favourite honest-to-god Boss fight was S.H.O.D.A.N. in System Shock (and SS2).

My least favourite was the polyp at the end of Quake.  I was bitterly disappointed, having found the message 'SATAN'S POWER DEFLECTS %s'S TELEFRAG!' within the program.  The only reason I played the thing through to the end was because I assumed Satan was the boss and I wanted to kill him.
Instead I had the dubious pleasure of winning the game by killing a large sea-plant - some climax.

[Rowne]

... you can kill Beren?!

Okay, where did I put my Ultima Anthology CD ...

----

Oh and is it just down to my perceptions or does the avatar look out of place in Ultima VIII?

As a last act of humiliation, in this land of decidedly normal looking people, the Guardian cursed the avatar with the appearance of a Lego Knight.

[Leafar]

one thing is for sure...any boss is defeatable....

[Tapewolf]

... you can kill Beren?!

Okay, where did I put my Ultima Anthology CD ...

Here's my step-by-step guide to drowning him:
http://www.it-he.org/u8_beren.htm

With the cheat mode enabled, you can sometimes kill him using the 'summon guards' option.  When the Avatar says "Did I kill the person?" you say 'Yes' and they die.  Most of the less-mortal characters such as Beren and the Tempest will tend to get up again, but I did manage to take Beren out permanently a few times, as in the screenshot.  I don't think you can do this to Devon.  (He has super Jesus powers so you can't drown him either)

You can also break Beren without killing him:
http://www.it-he.org/u8_hang.htm

[Leafar]

or you can cheat....not that i do that....not at all.....

[insanekaosx]

I'm a fan of Biolizard/Finalhazard from Sonic Adventure 2, well, I played it as SA2:Battle, but it isn't too different I don't think. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, I blame the fact that I like the music >>

[EvilIguana966]

Now that I've though about it a bit, I think I may have to nominate Unreal as having the best bosses.  I absolutely loved the atmosphere of that game, the way that it put you on a strange planet with absolutely no clue what was happening, but slowly clued you in.  There was never any spoken dialogue, all the other humans on Na Pali being dead before you meet them.  The narrative was done via your universal translator, which brings us to the boss fights.  You see, you pass a plaque near the beginning of a level that says "The weak shall be struck down by the hand of the beast" and upon further exploration come to realize that the structure you are in seems to be some sort of arena, with really huge doors to the fighting area.  Clearly any seasoned FPS player, or any gamer for that matter, should realize at that point the meaning of the foreshadowing.  Cut to the chase, the fight with the Titan was a helluva lotta fun.  Good old school run and gun challenge.  The thing pulls rocks from the ground and chucks them at you, stomps on the ground to knock you around, and smacks you to all hell in melee if you dare to get close.  Many of his attacks were instantly fatal to you with anything but full hp and armor, which in hindsight makes sense given that he is 80 feet tall and the rocks he throws are the size of a VW beetle and 10x as heavy.  Of course, as any seasoned FPS player also knows, ludicrous amounts of rockets can solve most ANY problem.  Helpfully, Unreal's rocket launcher had 6 barrels, so delivering said ludicrous volume of rockets (or in secondary fire as grenades, less range and an arced path but more damage, nice for big slow targets or baddies behind cover) was not a problem. 

Later on in the game you have to fight multiple titans at a time, though they do give you more room for that.  Still later they beef up the titan as the Stone Titan, whom you meet first as a gigantic petrified statue sitting on a throne, guarding a pedastal with a powerful weapon upgrade on it.  Again the astute player will realize that this is a sign to prepare yourself.  The stone titan was of course, the same deal as his little brother, only with like 3x as many hps and more powerful attacks.  Good old school FPS fun, none of the shenanigans you get anymore where you have to jump through a billion hoops to make the guy vulnerable.  Just you, 7 tons worth of impossibly large weapons and associated ammunition that nonethless does not prevent you from running as fast as an olympic sprinter indefinitely, and a bad guy that defies most known laws of biology. 

[luiqui]

The final boss of Ristar. It wasn't that impressive or special, but at the time I was playing the game, back when I was about 10, it was an imsurmountable challenge. No matter how much time I put into it, it killed me with a depressing efficiency. Nobody else that I knew could do it either, no matter how many intense hours they spent holding the pad with an iron like grip, their bleeding eyes mere inches from the screen (okay, maybe it was just me that did that). Except for one. I barely knew him - he was up until that point just another kid on the playground - but that one event caused him to hold a near mystical status in my mind, a god of gaming, with incomprehensible, supernatural powers. Then, years later, whilst on a Megadrive nostalgia trip, I dug out the old cartridge, loaded up the final boss using the foggily recollected level select cheat, and defeated it first try.

Ho hum.

[bill]

Does Senator Ryder in AMFV count?

[Leafar]

does seto kaiba counts?

[CutMan]

Does anyone remember Slash from "TMNT IV: Turtles in Time"? HE was the hardest boss in the game. Not even Shredder was as difficult. Part of the reason being that you had to hit Slash from behind to do any damage to him; he would block any attacks to his front. He was killer, and you'd waste so many quarters on him, it wasn't even funny. Then he'd go into that mega-death spin drive and slaughter you. He definately deserves some recognition.

There are others, but I'll save their mentioning for another time....

[Leafar]

what about tyson in punch-out?

[CutMan]

what about tyson in punch-out?

Mike Tyson? I really can't call him a boss or anything. He was just another boxer....except he could knock you down in one punch. He was cheap and a pain to fight. I knocked him down LITERALLY 5 times, and he STILL got back up. In the end, I only won by desicion. But it still was a fitting last fight of the game.

[O.M.]

Battlelord, Lunar Commander, Cycloid Emperor - Duke Nukem 3D

Cycloid in particular was an amusing fight, given he's possibly the only boss where you could constantly look at him while fighting him rather than a constant dart behind cover, jump out, fire, repeat.

Any of the Mega Man X series bosses are great, though Kaiser Sigma wins the "oh.....sweet.....mercy..." award for my reaction upon first seeing how freaking huge he was.

Gol Dragon on PSO Episode II was definitely one of my favorite dragon boss designs ever.

All three PSO final bosses deserve mentions for various reasons.

Dark Falz: Creepiest boss intro 'cinematic' ever.
Olga Flow: One of the oddest fights in the game, but he looks incredible
St Milion: He's the crossbred spawn of an orbital laser and a sandworm. Need I say more?

Finalhazard is possibly one of the most entertaining boss fights I've played.

The dark trinity of Metroid Prime: Omega Pirate, Meta-Ridley, Metroid Prime

[Boog]

Megaman legands one - The three blumbears. Yanno, the red, blue, and yellow robots with servbots inside 'em?

LoZ: Majora's Mask - Ghot (sp?). The big mechanical bull you had to chase down as a goron. That rocked.

[Leafar]

SVC Plus: Serious Mr. Karate or Shin Akuma...

way harder than the secret final bosses...

[TheDXM]

Fighting Jack Krauser in RE4 was the best boss I've seen in the series yet.

And if you're into flight sims, taking out Stonehenge, although not quite a boss fight, in Ace combat 4 is damn cool. That one always gives me a good rush.

[Zedd]

Hmm my favorite boss fights would have to be...The MCP from Tron...Yeah that was fun...Fighting hitler in Wolfinstein is fun too....Watch his brain splode! And Metal Maddness on sonic heros!

[Boog]

Another one of mine would be Gravios from monster hunter. Yeah, technically every dragon or wyvern in that game could be considered a boss, but I say the Gravios should count.

[Toric]

Every..... single..... fight, in Shadow of the Colossus. In particular, I like the gigantic bird.

[Dakata]

My favorites aaaare... Grunty from Banjo-Kazooie and every boss except for "Lord Woo F*ck f*ck" (My brothers kept calling him that after I told them his name. X3) in Banjo-Tooie.

...F*cking ugly fish. I'll beat him without cheats one day...*Shakes fist at him*

...Mr. Patch is fun to kill though. I can use GRENADE eggs! ...And he sorta reminds me of Barney. And...*Blabs on and on about Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie*

Another one of mine would be Gravios from monster hunter. Yeah, technically every dragon or wyvern in that game could be considered a boss, but I say the Gravios should count.

*Clawhand* Dragon murderer!

*Tickles Boogey until he CRIES*

[Saist]

I think my favorite Boss Fight ever came from Sly Cooper: Theivius Raccoonus, and the fight with Mizz Ruby. For those who haven't played the game (you should, and it is cheap now), when you get to Mizz Ruby's lair, she wants to play a little game with you, a rythm game.

It just struck me as something so out of the blue, a boss fight that is a rythm game. While the Sly Cooper series turned back to more traditional smash and thrash boss fights with the second and third games, the unusual setups for the first game give me a reason to go back and play it again... again... and again.

[Boog]

Another one of mine would be Gravios from monster hunter. Yeah, technically every dragon or wyvern in that game could be considered a boss, but I say the Gravios should count.

*Clawhand* Dragon murderer!

First off, a Gravio is a wyvern, not a dragon. Second, don't tempt me

[Dakata]

Another one of mine would be Gravios from monster hunter. Yeah, technically every dragon or wyvern in that game could be considered a boss, but I say the Gravios should count.

*Clawhand* Dragon murderer!

First off, a Gravio is a wyvern, not a dragon. Second, don't tempt me

You're still a murderer.

...*TEMPTS THE OOGIE BOOGIE MAN*

[Manawolf]

Wyverns are still dragon, just not true dragons.

[Jack McSlay]

Half Life bosses deserve a mention if for no reason other than the sheer complexity and length of the battles.  The bosses were for the most part entire episodes rather than simply pieces of a level.  Fun as hell when you finally kill the Garg or Tentacle.

While I am personally a big fan of the old style run-n-gun bosses I'll have to admit that it's really hard to make that type of monster challenging these days.  FPS players are just too good at movement and the only way to make it interesting is to give the creature a ridiculous amount of hps/armor or to make their aim perfect.  Going back and playing older games these days IY find the bosses way too easy even on the hardest settings.  For example just the other day I reinstalled Quake II and ran through it.  Of the 3 bosses I think only the final one actually did any damage to me. 

or... because you already beat them before and knows how to dodge their tricks... I highly doubt anyone had ease on beating bowser on SM64 for the first time for example...

but if you want really hard bosses, play the original megaman series

[Boog]

Wyverns are still dragon, just not true dragons.

Not in monster hunter, or at least not exactly.

[Kenji]

Another one of mine would be Gravios from monster hunter. Yeah, technically every dragon or wyvern in that game could be considered a boss, but I say the Gravios should count.

*Clawhand* Dragon murderer!

First off, a Gravio is a wyvern, not a dragon. Second, don't tempt me

You're still a murderer.

...*TEMPTS THE OOGIE BOOGIE MAN*

You get to wear their skin as armor. In fact, my lance right now is made from the bones of the horned sand beastie.

As for the guy commenting on Slash from Turtles in Time... that's why you take turns being the decoy while your friend smacks Slash in the back. It confuses him so... heh.