Difficult, optional boss battles

I've always thought this was a dumb concept the way that it's executed in most RPGs. And then your "reward" is usually some piece of gear that has no purpose–you've already beaten the greatest challenge the game has to offer.

No, the toughest, baddest boss in the game should be the final challenge. The best thing to do with an optional boss is to make it only appear at the very end of the game if special conditions are met.

The Ancient fucking Dragon from Dark Souls 2. Surprised he hasn't been mentioned yet really.

Hades summon does the same thing.

Nope. Running Danger Mario is already, well, dangerous as one slip can mean instant death.

I'm gonna have to agree and Bonetail is an excellent example of that since he gives a badge that does 50% of the damage you take to the opponent who hits you, but seriously, he was the hardest foe, so what does it matter?

The optional boss should be something tough, perhaps post "final" boss and the reward is a different ending. Kirby is one of the only ones who's done it right.

the dragon boss at the end of the 2nd dlc is tougher than nameless king imo

that guy's super easy though, his moveset is too telegraphed

Only five uses.

The Etrian Odyssey series usually has the ultimate superboss as your final challenge in the game. They reside in the sixth stratums on the very last floor while the regular final bosses are in the fifth stratums.

Ultima weapon in FF8. 20 minutes of just pure stress.

PERSONAFAGS GO HOME

i fought him and won after several tries but there's absolutely nothing you can do that will convince me it isn't a battle of luck.

im not even talking about the "you need to be asleep to dodge his gaea rage" im talking about the fact he can at any point crit you twice because he feels like it and you'll lose, or he can mamudoon/mahamaon your whole party and you're boned. You need to have luck over and over while doing as much damage as possible before your luck runs out.

git gud

how to waste dubs and make enemies in one post

How about the child of Espers in FF12

And yes I mean that fucker Zodiark.

This entire game.

Some of the superbosses in endgame are retarded "cheese it with ether blossom" or have one specific team build to counter the bosses most annoying gimmick.

Still salty about the wandering king.

You're a casual

What did he mean by this?

I never even used ether blossom, or swords at all for that matter.
For me it's was mostly stacking XX slayer and attack augmemts.
On foot it was mostly ghost walker+saber arts spam in infinite overdrive. I guess it isn't much different from ether blossom in principle. But I only fought on foot where it was impossible to go with mech.

I never played Persona 4 in my life. Do I get to marry Margaret if I beat her?

Baseline he's the hardest boss in the game including stronger variants of other bosses and the requirement to fight him is that you reach 100% of standard cards.
But then he has V2, V3 and Σ versions of the boss which all majorly spike up.
Barriers that not only block your attacks but are placed to kill the lock quick step mechanic which has been extremely strong on everything else in the series. None of his attacks are directly from him so he has no counter point, lore wise he also revived the previous games secret boss and powered him up to test to see if you'd be any fun to fight.
Only issue with the fight is they missed an obvious exploit with the fight that allows you to completely gimp him.
FF5 isn't too hard when you've busted it's job mechanics open so in the re-release of 5 on GBA they added a boss who's made to take it, just a fun boss hands down, he hits hard has a lot of health to cope with the Double Flares/Holy's with +50% boosts from duel bells + 4 strikes from the 2 strongest weapons each, being slowed vs your party haste and other various bullshits you've acquired over the game.
Just fun to have something was made with all these degenerate combos in mind that would otherwise have trashed everything else in the game.
Shame the classes he unlocks for beating isn't actually any good, I think it's Necromancer and it's got spells stronger then flare/holy and shit but you've just beat the toughest guy in the game .
So normally this game a shitter when it comes to the AI, but in the collectors edition of the game, in the bonus Dragon Arena where you level up to acquire bonus stats for characters, they added an extra fight with this guy if you beat every other fight in the arena, for this fight he's level 140 giving him max in every stat, so he pays half cost for all skills with max energy as his baseline makes punishing anything he does difficult or based on hard exploiting of the AI till he runs out of steam.
One issue is the first time I thought him so I know this can happen, with little energy that the vanish attack can't be used the AI activated hyper mode, grabbed him and then proceeded to infinite him (Hyper mode drains energy till you run out and are in stun, but if you're in hit stun you can't leave it so he was stuck in my infinite without any energy or hope to escape) till he only had a small chuck of HP left, let him down and then did super for game.
Shout out to the guy who did this fight as a Level 1 Trunks though since he'd be doing pot shots of around 20 damage to someone with 7000 while he only had 3000 and gets combo'd for 1500+

Fought him*

He's almost entirely pattern-based. It's a matter of finding his logic and then enduring until he falls.

Or you can do the trick where you drain through his magic demons mana making him waste 2 press turns a turn while you pick off at Demifiend, though tbh going through the effort of getting to him to cheese the fight like that is pretty wack, unless you really want that shit ring that's kind of good early game.

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life shrooms exist, which means that running danger mario or peril mario doesn't have to be very dangerous.

Still one of the hardest fighting game bosses.

Trying to fight her normally is suicide as it's so hard to get close. Try to build up meter and unleash a very powerful attack when you think she's open. Some characters can OHKO her this way. The easiest way to beat her is to use Mirror arcana and blast her with her own super.

KH2 Seph is a joke while KH1 Seph is pretty tough. There's also KH1:FM Xemnas.

Is he really that tough? It's mostly a long ass battle of endurance in a game where the "battle of attrition" strategy works 90% of the time as the game gives you so many resources to heal your team's HP or MP. I found most bosses in post game Dungeon Travelers 2 tougher than many of the bosses in this thread.

Outside of absurd hitboxes, he's pretty easy. Once you figure out how big his hitboxes are he's not even a threat.

I do like when games give you a second ending for beating an optional challenge boss. Like Paz in Peace Walker.

Confirmed for not using the resist phys and dark skills.
Putting null sleep on everyone who participates and endure on backup drastically increases the chances that you won't get fucked over by Gaea Rage.
I'll grant you that the fight is pretty luck based and if it was better designed would let endure work multiple times per encounter if you heal to full. Also null death not triggering Gaea Rage.
Other than that, hoping for buffs via Cu Chulainn's taunt and spamming Ragnarok gets the job done pretty well if you remember to kill both allies at the same time.

I don't remember most, but I do remember loving that there were final boss battles in the final fantasy games that were actually harder than the regular last boss. Like the ultima weapons in ff7. Those were some insane fights. I remember being scared shitless by the desert ultima. Felt like a real victory when I bet that one.

Come on Holla Forums, step it up.

Scratch that. Endure working again after a full heal would be broken because there would be no consequence for Gaea Rage.
A better solution is to only let it restore when the character retreats.

I found these assholes harder than the two Amon fights in 0. Jo/So Amon at least have some stuff you can exploit, these two just dodge everything and hit you from behind all the time on top of having super armour on pretty much all their attacks after you damage them enough.

Ultima Weapon was one of the weapons. The desert one was Ruby Weapon.

Oh, my mistake. All I remember is when I was a kid and played it he scared the shit out of me. I was afraid he was going to drag me into the desert like a tremor and eat me. I remember flying above him and just watching the fucker there, nervous as fuck.

I don't get the Midir hype. Great boss, lore, OST and all that, sure, but not this ass pain I was told to expect. I beat him probably five tries max with the Ariandel axe.

The Amon fight in Yakuza 4 was probably the most fun I had in a secret boss fight. A boss rush that challenges your mastery of all four characters. The only one that felt unfair was the Amon that fights Tanimura, he just spams bullets from his machine gun and is a bitch to hit. Later I just cheesed him by unlocking the bulletproof armor. Still had fun with Akiyama, Saejima, and Kiryu’s fights.

Usually the optional bosses are more fun, but that god damn final optional boss in Borderlands wasn't. He's not meant to be soloed, but with the right level and gear it ought to be possible. Didn't succeed though.

oh hey nice JRPG party you got going on there

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one shots your tutorial
What do you do?

You ever play Tales of Vesperia? If you do all the optional shit your reward is the final boss steals all your ultimate gear and merges with them to gain a new form

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Chaos Rings 1 has the shopkeeper as the super-boss. The following CR has secret bosses too.

just enjoy the moment, user.

Can I fight her with my penis?

bass
bass II
bass III
bass IV
bass V
and finally
bass VI

faggots
all of you

One of my favorite boss fights of all time. Especially on hard mode.

This motherfucker is the reason I'm /agdg/ nowadays.

Seems to me other genres need to catch up.
Bayonetta 2 has that kind of stuff. Bayonetta 1 probably also does and I just haven't seen it yet.
Obviously Cave Story does too, as you show.

Isn't the reason he's too easy in MMZ3 becasue his moves are slow as shit because of the GBA system limitations? Cause the reason I find the fight hard on MMZX is because he's so fast and his attacks come out lighting fast

I think it had to do with the smaller screen. Since the sprites take up more of the screen, Omega stays off screen much more. So his attacks had to be slow enough that you could actually react to them. One of the many reasons the Zero series could benefit from being remade.

I dunno if id call him hard, although I can see why for people who don't play the series. But I've beaten every version Baal in every Disgaea. I think of him more as a checkpoint than anything else since ItemGod's are generally harder than him and I fight them earlier.

It took me only 10 tries to kill the vanguard.

FF12 has loads these kind of enemies or bosses. Only one that truly seek them out will encounter them.

I went on an autistic rampage by playing the tutorial at least 11 or 12 times before I killed him. Then I started again just to make sure it wasn't a fluke

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Even Disgaea D2's? That was the only one that couldn't be beaten by playing smartly and required grind.
Fucking roughly 220 reincarnations at level 9999, I could get from 1 to 9999 in a single map but I still gave up 70/220 in because it was just dull. I'm getting the itch for grindan again though wish I had ps3 around.

>tfw I beat Ballos on a 3HP run on the wii version once with just the polar star
There wasn't even an official hard mode or any benefit to doing it, just pure autistic rage until I finally managed to kill him.

I would rather kill myself irl than do that.

Everything in The last remnant.
Fuck that game, but I love it.

Mogdrogen's a cunt. Also, Ravager in AoM counts too and is fucking ridiculous.

Yes even D2's as much of a pain in the ass it was. I assume you're talking about the LoC version since normal Baal if I remember was kind of a pushover. I think I actually beat normal Baal with my runner as a joke.

Persona 5's optional boss fight is way harder than the earlier ones. Not only do you have to fight 2 of them, you have to do a certain amount of damage per turn and if they hit a weakness they get a stronger attack.

Oh, you also have to kill both on the same turn or they cast recarm and the dead one gets half their life back.

Yeah I'm talking about LoC, forgot to mention it.
How's Disgaea 5 btw?

It's good, I only did 1 real play through so far. The new assault system is really abuse-able with the right setup. Not a bad entry into the series but felt a little bland in some places. Still one of the better ones though.

All good super bosses should have some element of luck. There's a hard limit to the challenge you can provide to the player if you adhere to the "no luck" rule. The best superbosses have an element of luck which can be mostly, but not entirely mitigated through careful planning. Tossing a small amount of luck into the equation ensures that the player will never fully know if he's found the optimal strategy or if he needs to improve further. Those who don't improve further might never beat the boss while those who have the drive to constantly try to optimize and improve have the best chance of winning.

SMT proper >>> Persona 3 >>> Persona 4 > Persona 5.

The lack of restrictions on Margaret and the Twins fights made them trivial. At the very least, they should have had a minimum level requirement of 99 and a way to bypass null/absorb/repel. Perhaps if they used heat riser/-karns, they might have been able to make something interesting out of their "kill both at the same time" mechanic, but just standing on its own, it has been done to death in an infinitely many other JRPGs (even P3 had this mechanic for one boss).

Kalameet lol

I personally beat her with self-imposed restrictions on myself. I solo'd her without using items on the hardest difficulty. Just me and my personas vs her and her personas. Winning against her in a fair and square manner.

The battle itself wasn't very difficult once I fused the right personas. It just took me forever to fuse them in the first place. Unlike how easy it is on the Vita's P4 Golden, fusing personas on the PS2 version with the Skills you wanted was very aggravating. I had to become autistic and learn everything about how the PS2's fusion system worked. In the end however, I did manage to beat Margaret with 3 really good personas. A Yoshitsune, a Trumpeter, and a Norn.

Not that difficult, particularly in terms of how I've found him, but the game did manage to be unfair by making fighing him to be the "wrong" choice.

Although he could have been made hard through "soloing", or maybe even by using only 2 or 3 characters instead of 6. Of course, there are other adjusted ways of playing this game that are common convention.

Perhaps GemRB does or will make it possible to play this game in "heart or fury" mode, then that would make this definitely qualify, not to mention be seriously cool.

Is this fucker supposed to have hyena or mandrill heads?

I remember you. You're the faggot from the Megaman thread. Zero is ok as it is, remakes right now are shit, fuck off.

Zero is pretty shit, tbh fam.

A baboon or somesuch, but some depictions of him are more expectedly demonic.

no