BEST RPG BOSS BATTLES

Max, I'm not actually judging the boss battle contest. It'll be judged like the last couple mapping contests - voted on by the contestants (and anyone else who wants to vote).

And yes, the problems you mentioned make Riovanes castle the worst designed battle in the game. But if you take those problems away - if you were to theoretically hack the game so that you can leave between fights, or make it so that the game warns you not to overwrite your save, or something like that - then it becomes a really cool fight. Which is to say, when I played the game for the second time, and could plan ahead to remove the bullshit from the equation, it was the best fight in the game. I felt so satisfied at beating it, like I had mastered the job system. First time through the game, though? Yeah, that was as far as I got. Ramza only had skills in squire, knight and monk. It was unbeatable, and I returned the game to Blockbuster and didn't play it again for a year or so. Utter bullshit.

tl;dr - I've probably played too many hacks of this game to remember how bad the original version of the fight was.

It is easy for me to come up with individual bosses in RPGs that are good, but hard for me to come up with ones that are mind-blowingly good. Usually the best ones don't scream at me THAT WAS AWESOME, they just feel extremely... clean?

I guess I feel required to mention the blue mage boss in the final dungeon of FF5. It knows a bunch of blue magic spells on you and uses them constantly. Your blue mages can learn all those spells if they haven't already. But if you use any blue magic on him that he doesn't already know... he learns it from watching you, and starts casting it back on you. This is not only insanely cool, but also creates an insanely cool way of cheaply killing him in one hit: you have a blue mage attack him with Self-Destruct. (There are other ways to kill him and most other bosses in one hit, like L5 Death, but teaching him how to blow himself up is by far the coolest and most creative.)

Does challenge alone make a good boss fight, benos? 2+ hours sounds boring as hell to me.

This thread is boss!

(Sorry).

If Craze hadn't already mentioned them, I would have brought up Xenosaga Episode III's boss fights. It is definitely the best installment in the series, and the boss battles require constant attention from the player to keep up a working strategy. My only real complaint is that some of the boss battles really dragged on, for me at least. After it is clear that the player has a working strategy, there is no reason to drag things on for another five to ten minutes due to a huge boss health bar.

I'm a huge SMT fan, and while those games are frustrating at times, to say the least, I always respected Atlus for being able to design really clever and challenging turn based fights. It's honestly hard to pick just one favourite boss. One of my favourites though is definitely God Brahman from Digital Devil Saga 2, my favourite console RPG. God Brahman's strategy is pretty basic; an elemental battle of attrition, but the set up, pacing, and music of the final battle really adds a lot to the experience. The bosses abilities strike just the right balance of seeming daunting without seeming cheaply overpowered:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOC2TXV5aCY&feature=related

Somewhat surprisingly, I own Persona 4 but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. With all the good things I've heard about it, I probably should give it a try...for 'research'.

Yeah.

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 Lich King enrages after 15 minutes of combat, gaining 900% damage and 150% attack speed. He 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 at 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, the raid 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 affect a radius 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.

You want even more epic? Look up the details of the Deathwing fights that are about to hit in the next content patch.

Here, I'll even save you a google:

Spine of Deathwing (part 1)
Madness of Deathwing (part 2)

If WoW's boss battles were available in a single player game, I would never stop playing it

author=WhiteLion
I think the Breath of Fire series has always been pretty good at mostly averting that sort of shit.

uh

think about that for a second.

^Um, that was an informative post..?

Struggling to think of many stand-out battles at the moment (?!) but I guess one that particularly caught my eye was Seymour Flux from FFX, mainly for the badass pre-fight talk ("Your hope ends here. And your meaningless existence with it!") and the music which has got to be my favourite boss theme to this day. Also notable for being exceptionally hard (but perhaps I did not grind enough), leading to repeated violent swearing from yours truly. ;(