MEMORABLE BOSS BATTLES!

Dr. Robotnik in the old school Sonic games. I guess the very first encounter in Green Hill Zone would be the most memorable for me. Kicked my butt when I was 7. :( Could beat him with my eyes closed now. :)

Lance from Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal. I only need 2 words: That music.

Mallyx the Unyielding from Guild Wars Nightfall. You were forced to go through the entire Domain of Anguish which was a huge area consisting of four parts, all of them consisting of the most difficult fights in the game. You then had to clear several waves of the hardest enemies in the game until you could finally battle against Mallyx. He was also surrounded by spirits that would cripple your team, and he'd summon additional enemies, making the battle easily the most challenging I've had in Guild Wars. May the gods have mercy on you if you dare challenge him in Hard Mode. :)

The Great Mighty Poo.

The End: From Metal Gear Solid 3. For the record, I'm not a fan of the series. It's well written and (mostly) well designed, but it just felt too clunky for me to get much enjoyment out of it, especially when the boss battles come around. They just make me want to puke. Until I fought The End, and it was my favorite boss fight of the entire series, and possibly one of my favorite boss fights ever. It was a sniper duel where we had to track each other down using visual clues (footprints in the forest, a quick flash from his sniper scope) and it tested the endurance of the player, for it was a long and drawn out fight. I also loved the hidden secrets and shortcuts. You actually had a chance to kill him an hour before the boss fight proper. Also, if you save in the middle of the fight and leave for a day, The End will instantly kill you when you wake back up. Or, since The End was an old man, you could simply kill him by turning off the game and leaving it for a week and he'll die of old age.

MGS3 was my favorite of the series, and it's in no small part due to The End.

author=unity
That all sounds totally awesome except the last bit. What if you go on vacation at that point or (like me sometimes) get caught up in something else for a week? Then you come back and he's dead and you've missed the boss fight? I guess it's unlikely that most people would take a break at that exact moment, but still. Otherwise, sounds awesome ^_^

You are told multiple times the closer you get to fighting The End that it's going to be a long and grueling fight, so it's not like the boss comes out of nowhere like the other bosses. Plus, if you try to save during the fight, your commander strongly advises against it. Since you can save anywhere, players should save before the actual fight, so there's no problem.

MGS3 handles the act saving in a unique way. In the game's world, when you save the game and quit, Snake actually goes to sleep to restore health and stamina. Since you do that, The End is also healed while you sleep. If you managed to wake up before he catches you, he should have restored his life and stamina as well, meaning you'll have to start the long battle all over again.

Basically, saving during the fight is a bad idea for many reasons.

The longest it took me to beat The End was a little over an hour, wheras most boss fights take less than ten minutes. Plus, the fight itself isn't really that hard, so you probably won't need to save. It's just a time commitment.

I've played MGS 1 - 4, and I think 3 is the best of the series. It's a prequel to the others too, so you need only a minimal knowledge of the game's lore to understand what's going on. Just don't start with 4. Heck, I wouldn't even call 4 a good game, since it's about 70% cutscenes. Plus, you'll have no clue what's going on unless you've played all the other games.

Anyway, back on topic:


Any Shadow Boss from Persona 4: For a specific example, the third boss: Shadow Yukiko.

Here's what she looks like:


The look and attacks of Shadow bosses are designed around the hidden feelings of their real world counterpart (duh). Since Yukiko always dreamed of having someone come and save her from her situation, she looks like a bird breaking out of a cage. She also employs a Prince to fight for her after she gets damaged enough. Defeat the Prince, and she'll desperately try to summon him again, but to no avail.

"Why? Why won't my prince come?" That line really got me when I played it for the first time. It was great, especially once you see it in the full context of the story.

I feel like maybe I should post in this topic, since I am LOCKEZ, BOSS OF BOSSES, but I posted in the last one and also the one before that so like, whatever. I forgive you for making a new thread since the last one was two and a half years ago, but I don't feel like doing any more than just copying and pasting my post from one of the other threads.

So here it is! Final boss of World of Warcraft. (Don't tell me the game kept going after this, I don't believe you.)

ARTHAS, THE LICH KING

The Lich King is the final boss of Icecrown Citadel and the final major encounter of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

The Lich King is a long and challenging battle for survival. All classes are tested to the limits of their abilities. All raid members have to react quickly to various abilities, often several at the same time. The encounter is rather unforgiving; most players must react properly in various situations, and all players get ample opportunity to commit mistakes which then wipe the raid.

The battlefield is a circular platform, and the outer edge of it disappears and reappears several times during the battle. The Lich King enrages after 15 minutes of combat, and must be defeated within that time limit.

Phase 1

During Phase 1, the Lich King should be tanked by the main tank at a spot near the edge of the platform. At the end of phase 1, this will give Arthas a greater distance to travel before casting Remorseless Winter, thus the raid gets more time to react and a shorter distance to run. The raid damage dealers should solely target Arthas, AoE should not be used.

Mostly-harmless ghouls and very dangerous Shambling Horrors spawn during the first phase. Horrors have a frontal cleave attack which can hit multiple characters, and an extremely dangerous enrage effect which increases their damage massively. To survive the enrage, they must either be tranquilized or stunned.

The ghouls and horrors are mostly killed using the Necrotic Plague mechanism. Every 15 seconds Arthas applies the Necrotic Plague debuff to a player. The plague deals 50k damage to its target every 5 seconds. Whenever its target dies, or the plague is dispelled, it jumps to any nearby unit, friend or foe, except Arthas himself. The trick is to have debuffed players run next to the enemies and have the healers dispel them there, so the plague jumps to an enemy. The plague also stacks with itself, this means the longer the phase lasts, the faster the adds die. This needs to be used to kill the Shambling Horrors, because in hard mode, even the highest damage dealers cannot spare the time to switch to the Horrors. Drudge Ghouls can be used to get higher Necrotic Plague stacks before placing it on the Shambling Horror. Each time the plague debuff jumps, Arthas increases his damage dealt by 2% for 30 seconds. This buff stacks with itself; at 40 stacks, he will kill the tanks in one hit, thus the plague must not jump too frequently.

The Lich King also periodically casts Infest, an area attack which hits a large group of players and continues to deal damage to each of those players until it wears off. It does not wear off with time; it only wears off when the player's health goes above 90%. A Discipline priest can proactively shield the raid between Infest casts, helping to minimize the amount the raid needs to be healed.

This phase ends when Arthas's health gets down to 70%. When the last ghoul or horror dies, a player (usually the tank) gets all the plagues.


Phase 1.5

At 70% health a 1 minute transition phase takes place. The Lich King moves to the center of the arena, away from the tank, and begins casting Remorseless Winter (an area attack with a 45 yard radius around the Lich King). When he moves away from the tank, all players must flee to the edge of the platform to get out of the 45 yard range. He also attacks random players with shadow magic which explodes around the target player, and summons a Raging Spirit every 20 seconds. Immediately after the third Spirit, Arthas casts Quake, which destroys the outer ring of the platform - the raid has 2.5 seconds to move away from the edge. The area that is about to fall becomes very obvious.

During this transition phase, one player usually gets the stack of plague effects from the previous phase. This player must move away from everyone else and then get dispelled, this removes the plague without letting it jump to anyone else.

Raging Spirits attack very hard and can silence players. They must be killed quickly.

Frost orbs also head towards random players and explode if they reach someone. They have low HP and can be killed by ranged attackers.


Phase 2

During Phase 2, the raid must react to two different abilities, each of which requires different positioning.

The first ability is that Arthas summons Val'kyr. They pick up raid members, carry them to the closest edge of the platform and drop them to their death. To avoid them, the raid should be huddled up closely near the center of the platform, so that the Val'kyr have the longest path to the edge. They must be snared, slowed and killed.

Defile, the second ability, is an area attack which is centered on a random raid member. Whenever it deals damage, it grows larger and increases its damage output. This ability is extremely dangerous and the largest cause of groups failing this encounter. In order to avoid Defile, the raid must be spread out and close to the outer edge of the platform.

Right after the start of Phase 2, Val'kyrs start showing up. Thus initially, the raid should group near the center, everyone on the same side (so that all Val'kyr victims are carried in the same direction). Immediately after the Val'kyr have picked up their targets, the raid should spread out, because after 5 seconds, the first Defile takes place.

Soul Reaper is a very damaging debuff applied on the Lich King's current target every 30 seconds. It's a good idea to switch tanks after he uses Soul Reaper, otherwise a combination of Soul Reaper tick plus melee hit may instantly kill the tank.


Phase 2.5

When the Lich King falls below 40% health, the platform rebuilds itself and he casts Remorseless Winter again, forcing the raid to the edge of the platform. This is similar to Phase 1.5, except this time a Raging Spirit spawns every 15 sec instead of every 20 sec, for a total of four spirits instead of three. After one minute, Phase 3 starts.


Phase 3

During Phase 3, Arthas continues to cast Defile and Soul Reaper as he did in Phase 2. Instead of Val'kyr, he summons Vile Spirits. Generally, the raid should be well distributed during Phase 3, to minimize the danger from Defile.

At the start of Phase 3, one or two Raging Spirits are going to still be alive, so melee attackers should kill them, while ranged attackers deal with the new Vile Spirits. Vile Spirits move toward raid members and explode when they reach their target. The most obvious way to deal with them is to AoE kill them before they start moving, but only if the spirits are grouped closely together. The Spirits move very quickly at start but slow down over time, thus snares are helpful. An effective strategy is to drag the Lich King to one edge of the room and then drag him all the way to the opposite side after Vile Spirits spawn, and kite them through Earthbind Totems and frost traps. A tank who is not busy with Arthas can taunt the Spirits onto himself and absorb some of their explosions.

Arthas also casts a new spell called Harvest Soul every 70 seconds on a random raid member, which causes heavy damage over six seconds. Victims who survive this are sucked into Frostmourne (see below).


Inside Frostmourne

Inside Frostmourne, King Terenas' spirit (an NPC ally) fights with the Spirit Warden (an enemy). Players leave Frostmourne when the mob is dead, or die after 60 seconds.

The NPC deals nearly enough damage to do the job by himself, but he does need support. Tanks should taunt the Spirit Warden and take some of the damage. Healing classes should heal Terenas. All classes should damage the Spirit Warden as much as they can, and interrupt its attacks. Stunning it is also very helpful, since it heals itself each time it does damage.

If either the player or the NPC ally dies inside Frostmourne, Arthas gains +200% damage for 15 seconds.


Phase 4

Phase 4 is not really part of the fight. From this point on it is impossible to lose.

At 10% health, the Lich King casts Fury of Frostmourne. This kills all members of the raid and prevents them from reviving. Tirion Fordring arrives. The Lich King and Tirion will have an exchange during which Tirion destroys Frostmourne. The ghost of King Terenas will appear and resurrect the raid while the other spirits that were trapped inside Frostmourne hold the Lich King in place. All raid members who have died during the fight, even from being dropped off the edge by the val'kyr, are resurrected by Terenas at this point. The Lich King becomes immobilized, and players can finally finish him off.

I really like the Inazuma Eleven game series - travel around to match people in soccer within various areas (Regions of Japan in 2, The national teams' districts in 3, gimmicky special stadiums in GO, different time periods in CS) and assemble your team from ~2000 characters. I think I'm gonna a side by side comparison of the final bosses of 2 and Chrono Stone (the only ones I actually finished).

Spoilers, obviously.

Team Name
2: Dark Emperors (original&dub)
CS: The Lagoon (original), Ragna (dub)

Affliation
2: The Alius Academy, a group led by a square head consisting of orphans given power by a meteorite to dominate people in soccer while pretending to be aliens. However, the Dark Emperors are led by a freak who wanted to do his own thing with the meteorite. He did his thing shortly after the almost final boss team, Genesis, failed to win.
CS: N-Gen, a group of hyperevolved teenagers named EVO2-Children. They think society hates them and want to destroy the world for that. They take over the plot as villians close to the end after it's revealed the previous ones did their actions to stop those.

Captain
2: Kazemaru Ichirouta (original), Nathan Swift (dub)
Actually one of the defenders of Raimon (aka the team you play as) and probably one of its most reliable players, he was brought down by Genesis hard after they saw he could keep up with them. Nathan, eight other Raimon players you lost over the course of the game and two fillers (who were given a meaning in the Anime) were enlisted as they were led to believe that Raimon abandoned them for being weak, forming the Dark Emperors to get revenge.
CS: Saryuu Evan (original), Simeon Ayp (dub)
The leading figure of N-Gen. He only appears late in the story to introduce himself, blow up the other villian's headquarters to form it into a soccer stadium (EVO2 Children are basically Omega-level mutants) and to play you after his other three teams drawed in a match (yes, he did risk not having a chance to play you).

Gameplay
General: After beating the team and getting to the credits, the NPCs remain to let you redo the final battle another time.
2: You can take them on with whatever team you want (Though the first time, you have to keep the main character) and the match plays out just like a normal match - though there is some extended dialogue in the match, it doesn't affect the game state. The difficulty is very balanced compared to the rest of the game (which was a snoozefest), the players being all very strong.
CS: You have to field 11 specific players you can't substitute. In the postgame, you can alter some of the things that were locked before. Like many story matches, a lot of events get in your way. In the first half, you're forced to concede a goal and have to even out until the end. The game prevents you from getting ahead until the second half, which starts with Simeon making three more goals and getting an infinite powerup. As you score goals, his power ups fade, returning once you're ahead. Although this sounds really tricky, your characters are so much stronger than Simeon that you won't be challenged at all. The rest of Ragna is a pushover in comparison to him, too. Also, your MC gets a boon that sounds really great but is ultimately meaningless.

I actually think Chrono Stone improved over the earlier games in many aspects, such as no obfuscation about how strong an enemy's tech is or letting you splice your players with others - but it's staggering how great the final battle of 2 is compared to Chrono Stone's.

Basically any Trauma Center final boss.



But especially Aletheia. Like, holy SHIT, you would not believe my reaction upon first seeing it. It's literally an EYE growing in a womans' heart, and it's probably the most breakneck fight in the series. Took me a few tries to beat it because you had to be ridiculously fast, ESPECIALLY if you go X like in the video above.