Things to make the Hardest boss fight...

[SpectacularWebHead]

Essentially, I just want a list, from the escapist, of things that you think mae boss battles just that little bit harder.

For me, it's gotta be henchman AND a boss. Little dudes swarming while I'm trying to take down one big ************ has resulted in many protagonist deaths over the years.

Anything else?

 

[Keoul]

-They spam attacks constantly
-You can be stunlocked (no period of invulnerability after getting hit)
-Constantly needing to change tactics (Mr freeze in Arkham City)
-Mulitple forms -shudder-

 

[Rylot]

Unblockable attacks. I'm never sure if I just didn't block properly or if I needed to time my dodge better.

Edit:

-You can be stunlocked (no period of invulnerability after getting hit)

Oh God do I hate that. That'll make me rage quit faster than anything.

 

[SckizoBoy]

-You can be stunlocked (no period of invulnerability after getting hit)

Oh God do I hate that. That'll make me rage quit faster than anything.

Likewise, you can hammer away at any combination of buttons... NOTHING DOING, *****!

*makes fresh hole in monitor*

OT: [user]Matthew94[/user] has already mentioned most of the ones I can think of, but the one that pisses me off most is when they (one hit from death) scurry away to regen health. Thing is, it's not actually that hard to beat them, it's just blatantly padding a fight so the devs didn't need to introduce a boss-exclusive combat mechanic (or equivalent).

 

[Yabba]

Homing insta kill rockets
quick time events where you nearly break your thumb from pressing down hard
Regenerating health
This ones not really boss ability but,: Being forced to watch the same cutscene for the boss over and over and over.

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

Has many ways to counter incoming attacks
Jumps all over the place
Predicts where you're going to land
Requires you to be unpredictable if not lucky to land a hit on them
Deploys dummies

Yes, this boss is real. It's the damn ninja monkey from Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night and I just can't get over how insanely good the AI is on that boss.

 

[White Lightning]

Bosses that ignore your attacks piss me off the most, like if normally action X causes your opponent to stumble, but when you do it to the boss he doesn't give a fuck.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

When you have a stupid arbitrary time limit to beat them
When your hits don't register
When you have to do the level from the start since there was no check point (makes it harder because it tries your patience.)

 

[DJ_DEnM]

QTE's when you don't realize it, I guess. Makes it tedious.

 

[Logic 0]

When it has over 50 million hp in order to make you get bored and quit.

 

[shrekfan246]

-Constantly needing to change tactics (Mr freeze in Arkham City)

I actually really like it when boss fights do something like that, it keeps it from being repetitive, especially if it's a boss that keeps destroying you so you have to start over from the beginning. Well, when it's done well and telegraphed clearly that you'll need to do something else, at least...

OT: One-Hit Kill attacks. Good lord those are annoying.

And I don't particularly like when bosses spawn smaller enemies, it smacks of lazy design to me, like they couldn't be bothered to make actual unique bosses so they just super-charge a normal enemy, maybe give him an extra attack or two, and then have him summon the normal mooks you've been charging through every 25%. Boring.

Stun/knockback attacks are hell too, especially if your character is particularly slow getting back to their feet.

But what will piss me off more than anything is a long boss-fight that doesn't have a mid-boss checkpoint. What's that? You spent the last fifteen minutes whittling away this guy's health, only to miss a dodge and get smashed into pulp? Haha! Do it all over again!

Demon's Souls makes me rage a lot...

 

[DugMachine]

-random insta kill attacks.
-Regenerating health
-Stun locks
-Too much health

 

[Mirroga]

Waiting for the boss's invincible status to be gone by waiting...for a long time. During this time, he uses unfair attacks.

 

[dimensional]

When it has over 50 million hp in order to make you get bored and quit.

Yiazmat? that thing took me bloody ages to beat he also has a chance to do instant death on each of his attacks as well as moves you have to change all your equipment for to stand a chance of surviving. God that was annoying wait until you see one of his telegraphed moves pause change equipment hope you survive then after the attack pause change equipment again and continue took forever wasnt hard though just tedious and annoying.

I would go with instant kill attacks, hyper aggressive AI with broken as hell buffs to damage, defense and move priority and my personal favourite way of artificially inflating the difficulty is make you do a lengthy level or even start from the beginning of the game if you fail so you dont get chance to learn many attack patterns or try out new strategies (without a huge risk).

 

[jebara]

Make it extremely long.
When a single try at a bossfight takes hours, its kinda difficult to go back for another round.
That's pretty much why I can't beat Lucifer in SMT:Nocturne.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

-Time attack. Annoying camera, really fast boss, keep hopping around like a frog-incarnation.
Like the final boss in Prototype 1, that son of a sweet and loving mother! Took me a few tries because I was always a few seconds behind.

Also: they summon minions. Long-range ones are the worst.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Multi-bosses are pretty hard, especially in games like Dark Souls where being surrounded basically means death.

The Bell Gargoyles kicked my ass endlessly when I first played the game, since I was still unfamiliar with the mechanics. Then I summoned Solaire and killed them in short order.

Ornstein and Smough are even harder, since all the damage you do to one is undone when you kill the other one.

The Four Kings aren't so bad as long as you kill them quickly, since they spawn one at a time.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

When you engage the boss, it erases your save file, deletes the memory in your gaming machine and turns off all of the audio and visual.

Also, if you rage quit out of the game, the game turns your gaming machine into a permanent expensive non-functional paperweight.

 

[Mirroga]

I have another example with the one I stated before. Outside my previous mentions of the invincibility status and cheap attacks during it, the hard part or tedious part is doing it again about possibly at least 5 times.