Most Frustrating BOSS Enemies In Games!

[Starbird]

Since we already have a non boss one.

Hmm...

1)Youmu Konpaku https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzQ6E6s_mKM from Touhou series. I've seen a bunch of my students beat these games on arcade. The phase where she fires from the sides wipes me out and then the bullets from the bottom...just cannot focus on both projectile types at once.

2) Xan Krieger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2vrJK0qezs, Unreal Tournament 2004. Not as hard now but man, I was stuck on this bastard for *weeks*. It's like fighting against someone using cheats.

3) Bed of Chaos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCNcWKVR6Zo, Dark Souls. No idea why but this was the fight that basically broke me and caused me to put DS1 aside for a long time. Once I got past phase 1 I just kept getting knocked down the holes.

4)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGbVUiVzpPE, 8:30. This Boss, Ninja Crusaders NES. Man the music from this game....
One of my first 'ragequit' games. No idea what this idiot thing is called but it gave me fits back in the day. Looks rather easy now though.

5)Kintaro, MK2 on PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eUBYT8wKjA. All my friends had this on Genesis except for me. They couldn't understand why I had a hard time with him. Until they tried my version. No idea why his AI was so damn aggressive on PC vs console.

6) Alien Queen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkw-T0DmoyM, Contra 3. Egh...looks so easy on videos now.

7) Demogorgon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI9fb7iacvY, Baldurs Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. No idea how to beat this guy without being cheesy as hell with certain spell stacking. Massive hp and summons nasty enemies to aid him

8) Murai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1se66FBGDo, Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Everything, including the obnoxious climb before this guy was a test of endurance. The game was hard as hell but ugh, this fight was something else entirely.

9) Ragnaros, Heroic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry394tAy0J8. The boss that made me quit raiding in WoW. I still have nightmares in red and brown thanks to this stupid, frustrating thing.

10) Final boss, Splatterhouse 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l9AZp3WMWI. Another amazing music track and boss that looks *way* easier in the video but this guy was and still is hard as balls.

 

[Aeshi]

Might add more later, but here's my cast:

1) Bloat (Binding of Isaac)
Dude's basically un-attackable from 3 out of 4 directions and there's no guarantee that the 4th direction will even be an option if he's near the top and/or spawning creep, so he takes ages to kill if you don't have Ludovico or Ipecac. The green version that shoots bombs is even worse because the explosions push the eyes around and makes them hard to predict.

2) Avatar of Khaine (Dawn of War II)
He constantly throws out exploding orbs that can insta-kill anyone save the 2-3 toughest characters in the game (and even they barely survive it), which is reasonably challenging to begin with and ludicrously hard near the end where he's throwing them out 8 at a time. Plus he's accompanied by powerful, constantly respawning enemies, most of whom have knock-down attacks. Thank the Emperor this guy's an Optional Boss!

3) Zinaida (Armored Core: Last Raven)
A very fast boss who specializes in Close-Quarters who's fought in a tiny room right after a grueling slog through a maze of tunnels full of kamikaze drones. I've S-Ranked Assault on Arteria Carpals on hard mode, I've S-Ranked N-GWIX, I've never even BEATEN Zinaida.

4) Alice Twilight (No More Heroes 2)
Not that hard to begin with, but if she manages to knock you down you're basically fucked, because she's got a fast knockdown attack that she's smart enough to not use until the nanosecond you've finished getting up from the last time she did it.

 

[Starbird]

1) Bloat (Binding of Isaac)
Dude's basically un-attackable from 3 out of 4 directions and there's no guarantee that the 4th direction will even be an option if he's near the top and/or spawning creep, so he takes ages to kill if you don't have Ludovico or Ipecac. The green version that shoots bombs is even worse because the explosions push the eyes around and makes them hard to predict.

I think I forgot about this game out of pure mental anguish. Bloat was bad but honestly, had a way harder time with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3czZubOZ7s

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Emphasis on ones that are frustrating to fight rather than difficult to beat, though that often overlaps:

1) Mogenar from Metroid Prime 3. Hitting small targets on a large, constantly moving and attacking opponent is never exactly easy, even more so when you're required to get close and bomb his feet while he's charging around, but the real clincher is that he and Dark Samus are the only two bosses who can heal themselves. The difference being, Dark Samus is the final boss and Mogenar is only about 1/3 of the way through. YET! Dark Samus' healing is easier to prevent than Mogenar's, and Mogenar requires you to consume one of your supply of Energy Tanks (maximum 4 at that point in the game) and enter Hyper Mode just to be able to damage him properly. Even final boss Emperor Ing from the previous game would spawn some tiny flying bugs to be shot so you could get your ammo back if you ran out, but Mogenar is not so generous with you in a game where your health is also your special ammo. You can flush 3 tanks blasting him down without taking a single hit and then watch him undo every bit of it because you were slow destroying his hands a few times.

2) Rafflesia from Final Fantasy XII, a game no stranger to bosses who dish out lots of status effects and spawn enemies, but this one had the good fortune to fight you on a field that drains your MP to 0 within the first twenty seconds of the battle. Meaning you can't use spells, skills, limit breaks, OR Espers. Normal attacks and items only on a boss who likes using Blind and Poison and spawning various other enemies including Malboros on occasion. As Ixion might say, fuuuuuuuuuu-n!

3) A recent discovery from the notorious Shin Megami Tensei series. At this point I'm wondering if they make it a habit of having Beelzebub be in each game and always be the most annoying thing to fight in it. My most recent encounter with the Lord of the Flies has been Devil Survivor: Overclocked which I got for Christmas. He brings with him some extremely tough demons too and has attack range enough that he can hit anyone on the map at any time, usually with Spawn. You've probably already heard about it, and so had I, so I came somewhat prepared even though I didn't know I was facing him until I saw him. If you didn't I could certainly see the plague flies assimilating someone's entire party a la XCOM's Chrysalids from the previous thread.

But even though I was able to keep that from happening after the first time and clear out his other allies... he can't be killed! He is immune to everything except Almighty attacks. Using my best Almighty attack, my most powerful spellcaster can inflict about 280 damage each round (assuming it hits every time). He also regenerates about that much every round, necessitating a second Almighty spell user to always attack every round as well. Fine and dandy, except he also gets to attack whoever he wants, starting a new round and always picking the team that can't damage him more than 200 or so and then regaining 280 (or much more if you have any physical-negating or counterattack abilities because he absorbs physical damage). And in case the name wasn't a giveaway, Almighty spells are expensive to use every round along with healing. Even with the best MP restoring ability in the game on all my teams you can't keep up. Three times now he's run out of MP from casting, leading to an eternal stalemate. He's never killed me, but I can't for the life of me tell how I'm ever going to kill him.

Okay, vent over. Let's hear about someone more frustrating than Beelzebub or Mogenar.

 

[sageoftruth]

Elana The Squalid Queen from Dark Souls 2 DLC. Her attacks are extremely punishing, and worst of all is how she can summon a boss from earlier to fight you while she bombards you with her spells. I haven't beaten her yet.

 

[SoreWristed]

Jinpachi Mishima from Tekken 5.

Not the hardest boss i fought, but has to be one of the worst cases of a difficulty spike i've seen. You can blaze through the game, killing dudes left and right as if the game was going easy on me. But then you'd come to Jinpachi, and happy fun time is over.

Jinpachi often decides the battle to be over by using his unblockable, unavoidable stun, leaving you open for any attack he so chooses to use. His Giant fireball of almost KO is unblockable, and can only be properly avoided by premature sidestepping or if you happen to be playing as one of three characters that can lay down flat, and you'd need to be very far away in order to have time to enter that command. His speed is unmatched by any character with exception to steve.
He teleports and getting caught by his bear hug is just a long drawn out animation that leaves you nearly dead at his feet to be killed by the wimpiest of low kicks. And the worst part is, you can see when he decides to kill you regardless, and there's nothing you can do about it.

"But Sore, i think jinpachi was the wimpy boss after a wimpy series of wimpy wimpy fighters in a wimpy game, you wimp"
Shut up, i don't have the ungodly reflexes the entire population of the internet seems to have.
"but i killed him in a single combo that only took me 7 years atop a mountain being trained by Katsuhiro Harada to master"
see?

i still get riled up thinking about him.

 

[Augustine]

I have to go with Kalameet from Dark Souls. No pushover in normal conditions, but when you are trying to cut off his tail instead of killing him... Augh...

And to top it all off, none of the rewards, including Obsidian Sword are worth the pain. Well... Tangible rewards, that is. Satisfaction of doing it is delicious.

 

[sageoftruth]

I recall Theseus was pretty frustrating in God of War 2. At first, fighting him was cake, but then he jumps to a high platform far out of your reach, where you can only hit him with magical projectiles. He summons enemies whom you must fight to acquire more MP for more attacks. On the highest difficulty, one of his attacks insta-kills you, and he uses it a lot.
Still, what made him and many other bosses far more frustrating in that game was the removal of a boss health bar. Ever since that was removed, the sense of progress I once got from damaging bosses just went away. Once God of War 2 came out, you just kept smacking them until they were dead. When would that be? Who knows? Imagine playing Dark Souls without knowing how much damage you're even doing to the big tough bosses, or how close you are to defeating them. I recall fighting Zeus again in God of War 3 and quitting out of sheer boredom. That was the last time I touched a God of War game.

 

[Toblo1]

Beezlebub/Belzaboul (SMTIV and Devil Survivor Overlocked). The ONLY time in SMTIV that I had to switch the difficulty was during the sidequest where you have to fight him (Damn you Neutral route and your "Do all the human-aligned sidequests" requirement......) because of how much he spams almighty spells. And now I'm currently having trouble facing him in Devil Survivor Overclocked because his attack range nearly covers the entire area....... and from what I've heard, it gets worse after you damage a bit.....

Providence (Risk of Rain). I know he's supposed to be hard (Being the final boss and all of a REALLY hard game...), but goddamnit, he has SO MANY PHASES. It becomes more of a endurance match than anything else, because I can handle when it's just him, but those two worm-things he summons freaking at the start of his 2nd phase end me unless I have a good item loadout with some sort of health regen.....

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Sephiroth (Kingdom Hearts & Kingdom Hearts II)
Seph shows up as an optional boss in the first two games, and boy is he a pain to go through. While most of the bosses in the series are a simple hack-and-slash affair - even large, multi-stage final boss fights - Seph is one of the few that requires actual discipline from the player to be defeated. You're also severely impaired for both fights: you face him on your own, meaning there's no bonus HP/MP healing (usual courtesy of Donald and Goofy) and you have to tend to both yourself. Many of his attacks are nigh unstoppable and will instantly lower your HP and MP to 1 if not countered properly, so you'll need more Elixirs than you can pack. You have to be consistently geat to beat him. There's no room for mistakes.

Battles can last as long as 15 minutes (and as little as 1, apparently). People usually agree second game Seph is significantly easier than his first iteration. I can't vouch for that. I've seen KH2 videos of people mincing Seph in under a minute, but then again they were Lv. 99, maxed out on HP and MP and packing the Ultima Keychain, so it's not like they didn't train to get there.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

Matador in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. Also Lucifer from the same game.

Matador in particular just...wrecks shit compared to the few options you have in the early game. He tends to quickly raise evasiveness to the point where you're unable to consistently hit him without using some debuffs of your own. But every turn debuffing is another turn for him to deal the damage to kill you off anyway.

Lucifer is just...a very time-consuming and arduous fight. A war of attrition that can end up with you in the same position for quite a while. The last time I tried to beat him it was just a never-ending cycle of certain actions and he just wouldn't frigging die.

The belfry gargoyles in Dark Souls 2. You generally have to fight at least three of them at once, with six in total. The first couple runs fighting those things is stupidly frustrating if you have to do it by yourself, not to mention the the tower you have to climb to get to them. Members of a faction exclusive to that tower can invade your world and kill you off before you even have the chance to get in the boss room. So it's a double whammy of awful frustration.

 

[Mister K]

Matador in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. Also Lucifer from the same game.

Matador in particular just...wrecks shit compared to the few options you have in the early game. He tends to quickly raise evasiveness to the point where you're unable to consistently hit him without using some debuffs of your own. But every turn debuffing is another turn for him to deal the damage to kill you off anyway.

Lucifer is just...a very time-consuming and arduous fight. A war of attrition that can end up with you in the same position for quite a while. The last time I tried to beat him it was just a never-ending cycle of certain actions and he just wouldn't frigging die.

The belfry gargoyles in Dark Souls 2. You generally have to fight at least three of them at once, with six in total. The first couple runs fighting those things is stupidly frustrating if you have to do it by yourself, not to mention the the tower you have to climb to get to them. Members of a faction exclusive to that tower can invade your world and kill you off before you even have the chance to get in the boss room. So it's a double whammy of awful frustration.

Huh? Solaire became Mike Ross?

OT: I think Maneater from Demon's Souls is quite unfair. You fight it on a really narrow bridge, it has realatively strong melee attack, it can also fly and shoot magic missiles. Oh, and after some time passes, or you get it to 20% hp (whichever happens first) ANOTHER one appears. But that is not the most frustrating part. The most frustraiting part is that the soul you get for fighting those a-holes can be only be used to either consume it and get really small ammount of souls or craft one of the worst weapons in the game. Screw them.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

Huh? Solaire became Mike Ross?

THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM!

But to add another frustrating boss for the thread, I'd say Saiki from King of Fighters XIII is also an appropriately annoying and infuriating bastard of a boss. Hope you like seeing 5 second long grab animations over and over again. And make sure every move you do is safe too, because Saiki as a boss will punish EVERYTHING even on normal difficulty. At least in my experience.

 

[thesilentman]

Four Kings. That boss fight I just wanted to straight up quit in Dark Souls. It's mostly because I was no ninja and had nothing to eat hits if I needed be. Along with the extra kings spawning as fast as they do, I felt rather pissed. Did beat it, but I decided to put down Dark Souls for a good week after that.

And for my sanity, I'll conveniently forget all of the NG runs I had vs them.

 

[Fox12]

The fucking CAPRA DEMON from Dark Souls. One of the only "cheap" fights in the game. Are you skilled? Well trained? Have good armor? Too bad, the Capra Demon will stomp your ass. It was the hardest boss on the game for me, and it relied on pure luck to defeat him. The whole thing was completely asinine, and shouldn't have made it into the final game. If I die, let it be because I suck. Everything else was perfect.

 

[JagermanXcell]

The fucking CAPRA DEMON from Dark Souls. One of the only "cheap" fights in the game. Are you skilled? Well trained? Have good armor? Too bad, the Capra Demon will stomp your ass. It was the hardest boss on the game for me, and it relied on pure luck to defeat him. The whole thing was completely asinine, and shouldn't have made it into the final game. If I die, let it be because I suck. Everything else was perfect.

The Bed of Chaos was perfect?!

You are a straaaaange maaaaaaan. >3>

OT:
Fighting Game Bosses... in particular mother f***ing Shao Khan from MK9, where they decided "HEY, lets have a boss do cancels that NO PLAYER should able to do, have damage NO PLAYER should be able to have, and have his AI occasionally spam an unblockable projectile that will stop a game about PUNCHING PEOPLE an impossibility!"

Did people already say Matador? Yeah, f**k Matador, that lovable prick.

And since this is now a Dark Souls thread: Dark Souls 2's Twin Avaas from the Ivory DLC. You want a new original boss? NO PROBLEM, here's the new boss you fought half an hour ago, recycled, and now there's TWO!... oh you lost?!
Thats ok, JUST TRAVERSE THE ENTIRE FRIGID OUTSKIRTS, the worst area in the souls series, AGAIN!

 

[laggyteabag]

I played Destiny recently, and I did a dungeon on the moon called "The Summoning Pits", and I have never played a game with a more boring and bullet-spongy boss. The final boss in the dungeon is this giant Hive Ogre that shoots lasers out of its eyes or something similar, and if you are outside of one of two locations, this guy will shoot you down within seconds. So what you need to do, is sit in this really cramped location, just shooting out of a door and killing random adds that run in, and shoot a turret that spawns inside. It took about 10 minutes, but it felt like it took hours. He wasn't even difficult, it was just boring. Made me never want to do that strike ever again, and I am just scared that I will land on that specific strike if I queue for a random one.

 

[Maximum Bert]

OT:
Fighting Game Bosses... in particular mother f***ing Shao Khan from MK9, where they decided "HEY, lets have a boss do cancels that NO PLAYER should able to do, have damage NO PLAYER should be able to have, and have his AI occasionally spam an unblockable projectile that will stop a game about PUNCHING PEOPLE an impossibility!"

True Fighting game bosses are some of the worst not just because of their difficulty (Classic SNK) but because if you play single player you have to fight them so damn often yeah sure I suppose you could quit at the boss but really most people want to do a complete run.

Shao Khan in MK9 is a pain and cheap as hell but you can also cheap him out fairly easily some characters are more effective than others but yeah if you attempt to fight him like you would another player you will lose because he flat out cheats.

The two bosses that have frustrated me the most in fighters recently (semi recently) are Alpha from DOA4 and Seth from SF4 not because they are the hardest bosses ever (although they have plenty of BS stuff they can and will do to you) but because I hate their design just silver nude featureless kasumi clone and nude silverish bald guy with a ying yang ball in his gut. It really frustrates me losing to characters I hate.

Think these two are the only ones that have made me turn the comp off to calm down in the last 10 years or so.

 

[legend of duty]

I hated the final boss in Final Fantasy 1. He just took fucking forever. To be fair, my team was badly made so if one guy went down I would lose almost everybody trying to bring him back.