What a reference. That's the first video game I ever played. Somehow it's still hard af as an adult. The visuals are great to this day imo.
Getting kicked out of the final level on beginner difficulty is a little patronising though. I'd be lucky to even get there on Beginner in the first place, would be a kick in the teeth after all that hard work
I didn't even know how you could switch difficulties for the longest time!
But there was a demo where where the code for the first level was shown (BBAB, I'm pretty sure), so I was able to start the game on expert that way, and eventually beat it. It's tough though.
The code for the last level was 46EA, at least for the version I had. Looking around the web to confirm, there's a lot of conflicting information, so I'm guessing the codes were randomised to some extent, maybe.
Isshin is one of the greatest boss battles in gaming. He's a brutal, but fair, test of everything you learn in the game. The best part is you get to kill Genechro over and over.
IMO the Demon of Hatred is way harder because so few of your skills are useful in that fight.
I spent a year stuck on that fight. Not the whole game, just Sword Saint. I don't regret a single minute of it, and I revisit him at least once a year since. Best goddam boss fight ever made.
Seconding Isshin SS, I'm also stubborn as hell, sekiro is one of my favorite games and that fight took me so many attempts that I almost gave up multiple times. Felt so god damned good when I finally beat him though
No other FromSoft game could have a final fight as challenging as in Sekiro, because in the other titles, they had to consider a range of levels or builds that players would reach the end with. In Sekiro, they could really push the player.
I love this contrast with the top comment (about lowering difficulty). Yeah, it was a struggle, but we got through, and it felt all the more satisfying for it! It doesn't feel satisfying to, for example, chop a tree in a game, because there's no challenge. Something can only really be satisfying if it challenges you (emotionally, intellectually, and/or in ability).
I think an additional undervalued part of not having difficulty settings is that we have a shared experience. Everyone who did it has shared in it. We know what they went through because there's only one way to do it. We don't have to ask about settings or anything, only that they accomplished the task.
For me though, the one I remember struggling with the most is O&S in DS1. I don't think they're actually the hardest boss FromSoft has made, but I've gotten far better at their games since then. Even their hardest bosses now I personally feel like they could be more challenging.
I'm with you. What these games are selling is that feeling you get after overcoming their challenges, and if you modify that, it's not the same product. It's like asking an artist to also offer their painting with changes to the colors, scene, or poses of the subjects to appeal to personal tastes - yes, they could do it, but it's a different piece of art at that point.
And omg yes, O&S. It's not as hard now after many years of playing souls-like games, but relatively it was so hard on my first exposure to dark souls in DS1. I had no idea what I was doing, my build was jank as hell, and it took ages to beat.
That version of the 8-bit Ghostbusters game ending (just get past Stay Puft and your guys automatically go up to the building's roof, cross their streams, and complete the game) is so much more merciful than the versions which added on extremely bullshit bullet-hell boss battles with Gozer afterward.
Pure Vessel in Hollow Knight. I have a file that's at like 111% and I just need to beat the final pantheon but I've never managed it. I don't even know how bad Absolute Radiance is, I've never made it that far.
Practice down below. He's no harder than NKG. The real final pantheon takes so long I haven't done it again since getting to radiance and losing. Instead i occasionally try to beat the first two pantheons all binds
Abs radiance is worse, but not just because it's more difficult. It's also a lot less fun, at least in my opinion. Think buffed Markoth kinda BS (which I just now realized, makes a lot of sense thematically/lore-wise).
Pure vessel was one of my favorite fights despite taking me many many attempts to beat.
Pivot tables are quick. If used properly you can summarize data much quicker than any excel formula. When I use them it pretty much always takes under 30 seconds to get what I want. Imo, there are 2 things every user of excel should learn to use. Vlookup (edit: or xlookup, see below) and pivot tables. Once you learn to use both, you will use them all the time.
No place I have ever worked has had a version of excel with xlookup, so I can't really comment on it. Im not on 365 or a newer desktop version. We are on Office 2019, as I suspect many offices still are.
Anyone else constantly looking up tactics with AI? This game is so difficult, you have to memorize a lot of combos and the strategy to use them really takes time to click. I'm getting into this one again after a long hiatus
About 100 hours on the final boss of FF8 because I fucked up and saved right before the fight with basically nothing in my inventory. I repeated the fight for literal weeks, trying different strategies and item use patterns and stuff.
It was very rewarding to complete, but I’ll never play that game again.
Haven't beat the dual boss at the end of Elden ring, or the final DLC boss.
Think i've done most the rest of Soulsborn bosses.
In terms of time, some Demons souls boss I got stuck on, put the game aside for years, then went back to.
In terms of number of tries, I think O&S in Dark Souls one still holds the title. I ran into that brick wall for a long time before getting good.
Can't think of any game series I had as much difficulty in and didn't just give up, unless you count the Mun in Kerbal Space Program as a boss, cause that took a long time.
If you’re still interested, I could give you some easy to execute strategies to beat the final Elden Ring Boss and some decently easy ones for the final DLC Boss.
Also plug for [email protected]. It's a nice and welcoming community :)
I don't think it's a can't, it's more of a "Ok, I've seen the game, this is a slog, I'm moving on to something else."
Just got a PS5 so I'm absolutely loving Demons Souls, been like 10 years or more since I played it. First time playing magic in a souls game and it feels down right broken. Will likely work my way back through the series on the new hardware.
With all the bingo brawlers seasons I've seen all the end bosses, so doing it myself just hasn't felt like a priority.
I was actually never able to beat the nilianth in the final level of Half Life. I think I tried 2 or 3 times, it was extremely annoying getting sent to the parkour room constantly and I haven't been back to try it again in a decade.
I still haven't finished Breath of the Wild. I think I pretty much did everything else in the game that by the time I should have gotten to the final boss but by that time I felt I had gotten enough out of the game and if it was going to just be the same kind of battle as the other two boss battles I wasn't interested. I really enjoyed the game, just didn't care to finish it 😅
Same for me but with TOTK. I spent hours upon hours doing everything else in the game, but the final boss fight seemed deliberately too hard, and I just really have no interest in forcing myself to beat it. I won’t get any more satisfaction out of the game just by seeing the final cutscene. Probably helps that I didn’t find the story particularly interesting and just played for the gameplay and atmosphere.
I've been a player of the original era DOOM games since the start and am pretty good on PC with a mouse and keyboard, but I've always found the console ports so much more difficult for some reason. On other games I can swap platforms and control schemes just fine, but my brain just will not accept the combination of DOOM plus a console controller.
I’m the same way with Age of Empires II. My younger sister loves to play the Xbox port but I’ve played AoE since the late 90s when they were originally released on pc… I can’t stand to play it on a console.
I played Doom and even Quake with keyboard only. That should translate well to a controller. But maybe that's why my brother always kicked my ass in death match.
I think I only switched to mouse look with Jedi Knight.
I've been stuck deep in Bomberman '93 for about 15 years. It's the boss level that starts with the multiple enemies on motorcycles and then progresses to a single boss who flies around the perimeter of the level and shoots fire. Every few years I'll load up my save and spend an hour or two re-learning the fire guy's patterns and making attempts, but never quite well enough.
I've heard Bomberman '94 is really cool, but I'm not allowing myself until I finish this one!
Currently for me it's the Silksong Choral Chambers gauntlet. It's been about 5 months. I can get to the last two Sentinals, only as of last night, but fail. It's taken that long as I give up, don't play for a week, then go off exploring other areas.
I did this one not too long ago! One thing that helped was recognizing that there's no "roar" delay like when the first one shows up. You can just attacking as they fall down from the ceiling. Second was trying to optimize for damage to take one out asap, and reduce the amount of time you need to dodge both of them simultaneously. For me that looked like Barbed Bracelet, Flintsteel, and Beast Crest. Good luck!
Armstrong in metal gear revengance... Not because he was hard on his own, but because the game bugged on the way to get to him and I couldn't rotate my blade to break the things he was throwing at me.
I got to the boss with a tiny sliver of HP left and spent like 3 hours trying to beat him with it. I THINK I beat it, I don't think there was another phase or something, but during a cutscene that happens after fighting him the game froze... I threw the controller and never turned the game on again lol
For Super Mario Bros 3, it was only recently that I beat it without using a cloud to skip the maze fortress a few levels before Bowser's castle. And even then only because I looked up how to get through it.
That surprisingly took me longer than I expected after the video of that journalist trying to do it and failing, I feel bad for laughing at them now lmao
Riku in the first Kingdom Hearts took me so so long. Halfway because of that fucking unskippable cutscene.
Similarly, I was never able to defeat Maleficent, so I never beat the first game at all.
Also, Lion King for the SNES. Technically it wasn't a boss that I couldn't beat, but the goddamn lava level. I had that game my entire childhood and was never able to beat it. When I was 22, I had a bunch of 12 hour overnight shifts with a work buddy who said he could beat it. So we passed it back and forth. It took us a few days and probably a hundred lives. But finally. Finalllllly, we did it.
Riku is definitely it for me. One of my friends brought me in as a ringer to get past that fight when she was playing the remake and it still took hours of retries despite being able to skip the cut scene.
I was a couple of attempts short of calling it quits on Simon in Clair Obscur. I don't like QTEs and the whole fight is "parry or die"
And yes I know now that I could have done the cheese strat of megabuffing Maille for a one shot but I think reading strategy guides for single player games is a major dork move
Afterward, I wasn't excited or proud. I was just relieved to not think about it anymore
Seemed to be a lot of the postgame bosses in CO. After one try, I understood them all as extra challenges available for those who want them. But given they’re literally just rhythm timing that eventually makes you invincible, I don’t quite know who’d find that interesting.
The problem was my biggest success. I managed to score a zweihander, pretty early on in the game. I upgraded the hell out of it and was able to clear most bosses with some grinding and a lot of determination. I did this with a failing PS3 controller that generated spurious inputs, resulting in randomly switching to my alt config (unarmed) if I squeezed the controller too hard. I even learned a new level of personal zen and patience after realizing that getting angry would make me perform worse. I got gud.
Then I arrive at the end boss and get absolutely wrecked.
Why? I never had to parry. Not. A. Single. Time. Strike, juke, medium-roll, retreat, strike again. Don't be a target, and keep moving. Meanwhile, every guide to beat Gwyn says you have to parry his attacks. I basically had little choice but to retrain how to play my character modifying an entire game's worth of muscle-memory in the process.
My save file has been in this condition for years at this point.
Metroid Dread was my first exposure to "tough but fair" bosses where every defeat felt earned. Every single boss took multiple tries, and every time I went through this cycle of trying a few times, walking away, debating whether I should quit altogether, only to come back a day or so later to repeat the process. I beat the entire game. Ravenbeak was of course the hardest, but man it felt good when I finally beat him.
I had a similar experience playing through various Soulslikes. The only other one I managed to beat was Tunic (I know I talk about that game a lot. It left quite the impression).
For me, Tunic. Well, it’s a bit more complicated. I was burnt out on soulslikes and wanted a break. Saw what I thought was a nice little Zelda clone, as in I was scrolling the Steam store home page and did a double take when I saw the one and only piece of promotional art for the game. That character design looked like it was one floppy green hat away from a lawsuit from Nintendo. Instantly downloaded it upon learning that the instruction manual played a big part in the gameplay.
I have fond memories of game manuals when I was a kid, coming home from not-yet-gamestop with a new game looking at all the concept art, or having my parents read to me from the super mario 3 manual when I was little. Anyway, long story short the game was another soulslike. Set in the ruins of a fallen civilization? Check. Spend currency to level up? Check. Opening up shortcuts to previously visited areas as you progress? Check. Difficult bosses? Check.
Oh, but what’s this? The whole game is in this indecipherable script that you have to decode? Oh baby! I spent way, way way too much time trying to decipher it. I got so obsessed that it was effecting my sleep and I had to uninstall the game for a few weeks. Never ended up solving it.
Anyway, overall the experience was a roller coaster of mild interest to acute dislike shifting to all consuming curiosity and finally to exasperation. I don’t think a game has evoked that many varied reactions from me. The music is also amazing.
The orphan of Kos in Bloodborne. Could never quite get it right, got so close several times but even with help that crazy bastard is just soo fast and difficult to predict. I tried for like a week, 30 or more goes.
It really annoys me because Bloodborne is my favourite souls game.
One thing I adore about the souls games is how everyone has a unique and personal experience with bosses.
A boss that I got on my first try may take you a week of banging your head against it; but, that is no indication that I'm just better because two bosses later I will be banging my head against a different boss that you just breeze through.
Yeah, sometimes your playstyle ends up being a natural counter to a boss. Sometimes a boss ends up being a natural counter to your playstyle. Or one of your first strategy ideas works and makes it easy.
The last boss in Tears of the Kingdom comes to mind. Too damn hard for me, and my motivation to try over and over was low since I knew it was the end of the game. That's happened with a lot of final bosses for me. "I could spend a lot of time beating it, but why? The game is basically over."
Nameless king. I finally caved and accepted I would have to summon to beat him... Ah fuck.
The only soulsborne I didn't beat, but I didn't play after getting hard stuck on him. I did beat everyone solo though, which is why it was such a decision to think about summoning.
Yeah, that was a tough fight to learn. I'd say try to get through the dragon phase consistently, then once you can do that, really focus on the Nameless King's moves. He only has a few and they all have an appropriate call/response pacing.
ALSO, Dark Souls 3 is secretly a rhythm game. Put on some headphones and turn up the music. You're dancing with the bosses just as much as you're fighting them.
I barely remember it, but I remember that the hardest mode of Shinobi was ridiculous. Basically just had to memorize and execute a perfect movement / attack pattern.
And if memory serves, it was like 2 levels before the final one that was actually the hardest on the hardest difficulty? Getting flooded with some kind of tricky enemy while way in the air?
But then you unlocked God mode and got to just slaughter everything with your OP abilities and sword... actually I think there were at least two levels of those upgrades. One had a life draining effect and the next was just absurd
Could never beat that hardest difficulty of Shinobi. Maybe halfway through the last level before the final boss, but just couldn't get through the vertical section full of flying enemies after the paper hallways full of ogres. My sour grapes is there's no way I'd beat the boss after getting through that level. But I still want to play that bonus level that unlocks if you get all the secret tokens
Battletoads. I thought me and my brother were just retarded or something until.I grew up, got the internet, and learned that it was one of the most unforgivingly brutal games of our era.
The tank in Arkham Knight on the Xbox 360. I spent hours trying to get past it. Finally looked online and others were saying it took them days to get past it. Decided I didn't like the game enough to put that much effort into one fight.
Is that the 3rd one in the series? I gave up on that one too. I loved the first two. But getting the hang of using the batmobile frustrated me and, like you, I decided I didn't like the game enough to finish it. I think I gave up pretty early on in the game though.
I never beat him as a kid, went back with an emulator and used screen save... still almost lost because I saved at a bad moment. That fight is a little ridiculous if you ask me. It forces you to replay the ENTIRE GAME just to get a grip on his moves. Little shit
Ugh. My friends and I recently played through "V Rising" . It's a good game. It's like Valheim meets Diablo but you're vampires.. Because of our busy adult lives we played together once a week for usually 2-3 hours. It's took us damn near a year to get to the final boss, and it was just wipe after wipe after wipe. We weren't making any progress. Like we couldn't get him down past 75% life no matter how hard we tried. We changed our skills and equipment, same thing. We looked up some guides online and they were basically like "git good"
We never beat him, because we didn't want to waste any more of our limited adult gaming time just getting crushed by a boss for hours.
It was such a slap in the face because nothing else in the game was that difficult. There were some tough bosses that took us down maybe 3 or 4 times. But this was just hours of getting wrecked without even getting close to winning. It was truly a morale blow.
Sigh... We switched to a different game, and I guess we will just never finish that one.
I've never technically beaten the final Bowser boss in Super Mario 64. Me and my siblings grew up with the game as kids. I remember us having 114 out of 120 stars. We were trying really hard to 100% the game, then I think it was our nephews who ended up deleting our save. That was a sad day.
We never did find the second secret slide. I only found where it was once my best friend showed me the location as adults.
I have this really old save file on Mario & Luigi Partners in Time where I basically tried to skip combat as much as possible, and it took me like 5 years to reach the final boss (compared to like two weeks on the other save).
Its been stuck there on the Shroob finale because it legitimately takes you like 40 minutes to clear the first princess and you have basically no one-ups or a useful amount of bros items, so you have to make every hit and dodge count.
I've seen several good speed runs of the game so it's definitely doable, but it requires about 2 hours of perfect inputs, so I probably won't be finishing it soon lol.
Metroid Prime on the game cube. I've played through that game multiple times over the decades and never could finish off the Metroid Prime boss at the end.
I got so very close a handful of times, but could never finish her off.
In terms of total time since I first played the game to finally beating it, probably Cave Story's Ballos fight for me. I had a fan made port of the game for the PSP back in '06 ish, struggled a lot to get the regular ending, found out about the true ending, and couldn't ever beat the Last Cave (Hidden), much less gauntlet of challenges beyond it. I think at the most I had seen that there was a secret area beyond the "final boss" for the true ending and the fan name for it, but never been. I might have once gotten to it but I know for certain I never ever beat it or the true final boss.
At some point around about 2018 ish I think I saw that they had a rerelease for the game on the Switch titled Cave Story+, where I fell in love with the game all over again and finally played it to its true completion. I still have all of the screenshots and videos I took during my first completion of that boss fight. I think since then I have beaten it on Hard Mode, but only ever on the Switch version with Co-op mode which allows you to double your damage output being that you have 2 players, so it'll be interesting trying to go back and complete it again soon without almost any Health pickups at all.
Well that kinda takes the wind outta my sails for completing the game. I'm kinda stuck at the forge of the giants. And I'm so late that there's hardly ever coop signs around
I've found that sometimes I come back to a game after a long break and end up better at it than I previously was. Like I'll dread parts that were difficult the last time and then breeze through them when I get there.
Like I was stuck on some room in Doom Eternal, it just kept kicking my ass until I gave up on the game for like a year. I tried resuming the game, realized I couldn't remember all the controls and decided to start over again and then didn't even notice when I got back to that room because I cleared it easily and continued on.
I'm not sure if it's because the other games I'd played in the meantme helped me develop my skills more, if my subconscious optimized the skills I retained from the first playthrough, or if I just avoided picking up some bad habits I had the first time that made things harder for me.
Holy crap, you just triggered traumatic memories I'd been successfully repressing for generations! That game. That whole fucking game, but especially the ending.
I remember using the ability to smack Roger Rabbit around to take out so many frustrations. That was a good feature.
There's like 10 years between starting Pokémon Red and beating the final four for me. I didn't have the guide books but eventually it was easy to get help from the internet for a handful of hangups. I put it down for a long time somewhere after like 4 gyms, came back years later, and spent maybe 6 months playing on the commute
As with any game of that era you had to play through the whole game with no save to reach the last boss. Sometimes you’d get taken out before reaching Gozer by the poltergeists on the stairs.
Then finally you’d have a few seconds to figure out what was going on before you were one-shot-killed by a projectile, with very like time to work out where you could have moved to.
I’ve still never truly beaten Gozer, but finally used save states to finish the game on my Anbernic a couple of years ago, meaning it took me about 30 years to see the ending.
Extra enraging because of the many versions of that 8-bit Ghostbusters game, which ranged widely from awful to fine, the Master System version was probably the all-around best iteration in terms of graphics and general gameplay. However, other versions had much easier endings.
There's boss fights occasionally in Dave the Diver and they just. I hate all of them lol. There was one at night I kept having to reload and just hope the weapon it gave me was the one that I was decent enough at that I finally got it.
I don't remember why I couldn't take the weapon with me. Maybe it was the night part and I couldn't switch? Or maybe I had a stupid weapon with me and just couldn't switch. This was some time ago. I had to restart a lot until I got a sniper I think. I was using my normal gas the fish weapon which against a boss was not good at all.
I was also just very very bad at the boss fights. I found them annoying after just swimming around capturing fishies and decorating and farming lol.
I'm going to say pretty much every fight in Sifu. People praise it as having some of the best fighting combat and claim that it just takes a while to learn, but I put weeks of time into that game and it never got any easier. I managed to get past the first two levels before hitting a wall I could just not get past.
Oh man, I loved Sifu! I'd recently finished Sekiro and thought "well it can't be harder than that". Ultimately, it wasn't but it took a long time to get the hang of the different combat rhythm.
Final boss from final fantasy 4 on gameboy advance, I loved everything about the game, but the boss was too difficult for me at the time and I got bored of grinding. This was back in middle school era.
I should go back and replay the game now that I'm older and have more experience with rpgs.
More recent example would be final boss from tunic. I don't think I got enough power ups when I got to the final boss and struggled hard against it.
Ursula's a fucking nightmare, in the most aggravating way. Far from impossible, but damn... fuck that boss fight. The rest of the game is kinda worth it imo, but my lord do I hate that bitch
I fucking hate FTL and everybody hails it as the best thing since sliced bread for effectively inventing the roguelike genre. It's an incredibly poorly balanced game that boils down to travelling across each sector, bouncing between beacons, fighting hostile ships, encountering random events and whether you choose to engage with these events, rolling the die and (more times than not) getting screwed over by dogshit RNG.
I've only reached the Last Stand twice. On the first time, I engaged the Rebel Flagship, had over half my health taken out in a few shots then decided to retreat. Retreating triggered an instant Game Over because the game was glitched. The second time around, I made it to the second phase before dying.
This is how rough the game is on Normal mode...
Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts 2
This is more like me not having the patience to learn the fight. Roxas had already worn me the fuck down, and the only way I got past him was to effectively cheese the fight with Megalixirs, Limit Form and Ars Arcanum spam, which is easier said than done. I not only had to grind my drive forms up significantly beforehand, but I also had to intentionally manipulate the game's RNG so as to not trigger Anti Form at any point in the fight.
Xemnas is like a far more bullshit version of Ansem from KH1, in the respect that both are lengthy multi-phase fights that can take 20 - 30 minutes under normal circumstances, but unlike Ansem, his Nobody counterpart now has the ability to drive you down to 1HP with an unavoidable QTE attack where he launches a flurry of combos which you have to perfect parry.
And I think generally, Kingdom Hearts 2 is an objectively worse game than the first one in almost every respect, aside from the fluidity of its combat system. It has serious difficulty spikes, some incredibly bullshit boss mechanics, lacks the interactive game world that the first game had, gave us a substantially worse version of Atlantica that plays like a cringe Little Mermaid sing-along rhythm game, has substantially worse gummi ship sections, and unlike the first game, and it generally began the point where the plot of the entire franchise would start turning into a confusing clusterfuck.
And it's not like I'm bad at Kingdom Hearts games either. Riku 2 took me a grand total of two attempts to beat in the first game, and the way I was able to beat both Riku fights so easily was because I learned quickly not to execute a full keyblade combo on him and cancel right before the last swing, because he will do an undodgeable counter. Also, Riku 2's ultimate attack can be easily dodged by just jumping up and gliding around the arena. Even Sephiroth (the game's bonus superboss) is pretty easy with healing items or Leaf Bracer/Curaga.
Elder Princess Shroob from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
Superstar Saga was a masterpiece. Its sequel on the other hand is linear as fuck, has bad writing, is ruined by the Baby Mario Bros who wear the same red and green outfits as their adult counterparts and therefore make Bros Moves substantially hard to pull off (as it's easy to get A/X and B/Y mixed up.)
For me it's the game that killed the Mario & Luigi series.
I could never get past the final boss and I'm convinced that my copy of the game is either glitched or she was designed to be a damage sponge. I genuinely gave up after one attempt took me well over half an hour only for me to die.
On FTL: I want that game's primary loop, but in a Fallout-style role playing game. Have a universe you're free to move around in. Rather than a single person gaining stats and abilities or whatever, you install equipment and hire crew. Kinda similar to the existing game, where having a leveled up medbay allows for certain actions. But make it one longer game you can sink your teeth into rather than a roguelike.
had over half my health taken out in a few shots then decided to retreat. Retreating triggered an instant Game Over because the game was glitched
IMO most likely what happened here is the flagship destroyed the Earth. If the flagship arrives at Earth and sits there for 3 rounds, you get a game over. The only way to stop it is to beat it in a fight, and finishing a phase will buy some time.
This mechanic is definitely not super obvious at first so I wouldn’t blame you for missing it.
It didn't. The Game Over triggered as soon as I retreated and the flagship was nowhere near the Federation base. I actually engaged it at the earliest possible moment when entering the last sector.
I was also gonna say "Returnal", maybe specifically the second boss. It took like 2 years or more of off-and-on playing to beat the game... it was oh so satisfying, but damn that game can be brutal
I looked up some tips and tricks that helped, but it really came down to "just be better"... I've gotten way better at this point, but the learning curve was steep and long
I'm playing Saros now (Returnal's 'spiritual sequel'), and it's wayyy easier in comparison. Not in a bad way, cause it's really fun... but after playing Returnal, I was already prepped for some bullet-hell dodging
Would highly recommend Saros, cause you'll definitely be able to beat it and it may entice you to keep striving for that sweet, sweet Returnal end game
Wasn't a boss but an achievement in the original geometry wars. Score 10 million without dying. It took me about two years to get that and I would play it at least once a night if I could.
The final boss of final fantasy 13. I was doing fine up until it cast death on my main character. In that game, you have 3 characters out in your active party, but the only one that matters is the middle character. After about 30 minutes of fighting, the boss cast death on my main character and they died. My two other characters were alive, I had Phoenix Downs, but because of how the game is, they are not allowed to have a turn unless the main character is alive. Immediate game over.
I turned off the console and never went back. While I understood that it was a mechanic, it just felt cheap.
I appreciated that after several Street Fighter games in which Sagat was significantly more difficult than actual final boss M. Bison, they finally made M. Bison truly challenging in Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Not a traditional “boss fight”, but Tropical Drive Westbound on Burnout 3 has a time trial that requires you to go full speed in an F1 car for 4 minutes without crashing to beat the time. Absolutely one of the toughest events I’ve come across in an arcade racing game.
Starfox adventure final space boss. After taking months adventuring my way through the game the space fight suddenly ramped up. Had no idea how to beat him.
Friend came over barreled rolled instintvly (I had never played the originals). Blew my mind.
When I was a kid it took me several years of owning TimeSplitters Future Perfect to beat the story despite playing it literally every day. Id first seen the game when I was younger and watched my older cousin play it and the zombie house freaked me out so much that it would get my panic going when I got the game myself at around 13. It wasn't until I genuinely set down with the goal of beating it that I realizes it had not aged well at all in the high point of the zombie craze and was actually hilarious.
Easily my favorite game of all time and I can't wait for TimeSplitters rewind to get to it. I still have my disk and of all things, the spot I used to stop it at is exactly where it throws a disk read error on my reclaimed Xbox.
My most recent play-through of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended in failure because I literally could not get myself together enough to fight
::: spoiler Spoiler even though old game
the Striders.
:::
... despite multiple attempts. I now can't bear to play it again because those warning alarms trigger my anxiety.
For a while I was convinced that having moved the game between PCs might have triggered some kind of anti-piracy protection and the battle was rigged to be impossible... but it's more likely that I just lost the reflexes and timing to be able to pull it off. Especially since I own a legitimate copy and was playing through Steam.
A similar story is true of the final battle in Quake 4, which I barely remember now. Pretty sure I was still on Windows at the time and I've been on Linux for the better part of a decade. It was also from a backup and wasn't through Steam, but I own a legit copy of the game and there are no in-game alarms that I remember so that might be on the reinstall and replay list at some point. Maybe.
Combo of the Thunderbird and Dark Link at the end of Zelda II. The dual SOBs were impossible for me and everyone I ever knew until emulators and ROMs made it possible to save state and jump back in over and over.
I don't play that many but I generally 100% games I play. So... a bit embarrassing, but Dicey Dungeons. The later chapters are genuinely difficult & are more puzzles than roguelikes... so I just gave up at one point
If specific endgame challenges count, I've never beaten Dead Cells BC4 boss rush, or the fabled Noita 34 orbs run (was very close though). Oh and every other rhythm game if you count skill analyzers/Dan courses, but most players don't clear those
Astaroth (the final boss) in Omikron. I played the game when it came out in 2000 but I was young then and couldn't beat him. Then I played the game again twenty years later and it was surprisingly easy to beat...
diablo 2, fighting diablo with golems and no cheating or souped up gear. i was using the fire golem to self-destruct and summoning him again and immolation effect on diablo while trying to avoid him, dont know which difficulty though. i remember taking an extremely long time to kill him. i ran out of materials to use for the iron golem which had the thorns effect.
Oh man I have such vivid memories of carefully placing every trap at my disposal so they were maximally effective and wouldn't destroy each other, then running between tiny points of cover trying to do whatever I could to survive the hail of bullets coming my way.
I think I was eventually able to beat it on the hardest difficulty a few times, but that console has been dead for a long time so no way to check.
Only way for me to defeat it personally was to abuse a glitch that made the enemies miss their grenades allowing me to stay in the same cover instead of rotating
Otherwise, I saw no way to do that. There's just no cover on that level.
Although nothing stops you from jumping into the end and immediately bridging across the void, it's about 1000 blocks which isn't too bad, and if you get away from the dragon nothing else will stop you making that bridge
The final boss in Cuphead (the Devil). I was very near the end, battling his last form... and my character glitched out under a platform. He couldn't hit me and I couldn't hit him. Softlocked! I uninstalled the game.
Final Fantasy X. Technically last boss has some auto-win thing to it, but the one before that is a tough challenge.
What killed it for me is, the one just before was very technical. There’s a shifting elemental stance that you can come up with counter strategies to, and it felt like a well thought victory.
But the final boss? WHAM, huge damage. And again, HUGE DAMAGE. It became a numbers check, and I didn’t feel like grinding to keep up, so I watched the ending on YouTube.
On the flip side, doing even just a couple of side quests will quickly over level you, making all the end bosses trivial.
Honestly, the hardest story boss is probably the Seymour fight on Mount Gagazet. You're less likely to be overleveled at that point and it introduces some mechanics for the first time that you likely aren't prepared for.
I know most people weren't thinking about webgames but I've never been able to beat this 10 level bullet hell boss rush game Obsolescence
Also this puzzle game Color Tiles is ridiculously hard because of the 2 minute timer. I cleared it once but it took me pretty much a month straight of attempts.
Not necessarily for any particular boss - but I enjoy shmups (Gradius, Thunder Force, Gaiares) and getting anything other than a "c" on a level is work. I've even seen videos of people 2 sticking the game (playing both players at once) and getting S on levels...
Doc Ock in the OG Xbox Spiderman game... can't exactly remember which one (probs for ps2 too). But if you beat it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I couldn't stand that fight
Basically any after the first two in B.P.M. The on-beat fighting just is not my cup of tea.
Other than that... I guess Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn took me a while, like three evenings each maybe. But I was also stubborn with my stupid bonking build, with no magic. Below was my status and equipment after Malenia for example:
You underestimate my willingness to lower the difficulty if I'm stuck
That best part of modern games. Couldn't do that in the old school games.
Prehistoric 2 kicked you out of the game before the final level if you were playing in beginner mode.
My son kicks ass in Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but the original Mario not so much.
What a reference. That's the first video game I ever played. Somehow it's still hard af as an adult. The visuals are great to this day imo.
Getting kicked out of the final level on beginner difficulty is a little patronising though. I'd be lucky to even get there on Beginner in the first place, would be a kick in the teeth after all that hard work
I didn't even know how you could switch difficulties for the longest time!
But there was a demo where where the code for the first level was shown (BBAB, I'm pretty sure), so I was able to start the game on expert that way, and eventually beat it. It's tough though.
The code for the last level was 46EA, at least for the version I had. Looking around the web to confirm, there's a lot of conflicting information, so I'm guessing the codes were randomised to some extent, maybe.
The final level of Mario Odyssey.
I'm pathologically stubborn and will stick with just about any game until I beat it, but Isshin the Sword Saint (Sekiro) took me a long time.
Beating Isshin is so dang satisfying! I really wish Fromsoft would bless us with another Sekiro.
God, I hope we see that one day. Maybe the anime will stir up some demand for it when it releases.
Isshin is one of the greatest boss battles in gaming. He's a brutal, but fair, test of everything you learn in the game. The best part is you get to kill Genechro over and over.
IMO the Demon of Hatred is way harder because so few of your skills are useful in that fight.
I fought Demon of Hatred like a dark souls boss rather than a Sekiro boss. Lots of dodging. I'm sure there was a better way.
I spent a year stuck on that fight. Not the whole game, just Sword Saint. I don't regret a single minute of it, and I revisit him at least once a year since. Best goddam boss fight ever made.
Seconding Isshin SS, I'm also stubborn as hell, sekiro is one of my favorite games and that fight took me so many attempts that I almost gave up multiple times. Felt so god damned good when I finally beat him though
No other FromSoft game could have a final fight as challenging as in Sekiro, because in the other titles, they had to consider a range of levels or builds that players would reach the end with. In Sekiro, they could really push the player.
Isshin only took me a few days to beat. Owl (father) on the other hand, took me a couple of months.
Owl is a hard fight too. It still holds me up for a while on replays of the game.
He's a very bad dad.
I love this contrast with the top comment (about lowering difficulty). Yeah, it was a struggle, but we got through, and it felt all the more satisfying for it! It doesn't feel satisfying to, for example, chop a tree in a game, because there's no challenge. Something can only really be satisfying if it challenges you (emotionally, intellectually, and/or in ability).
I think an additional undervalued part of not having difficulty settings is that we have a shared experience. Everyone who did it has shared in it. We know what they went through because there's only one way to do it. We don't have to ask about settings or anything, only that they accomplished the task.
For me though, the one I remember struggling with the most is O&S in DS1. I don't think they're actually the hardest boss FromSoft has made, but I've gotten far better at their games since then. Even their hardest bosses now I personally feel like they could be more challenging.
I'm with you. What these games are selling is that feeling you get after overcoming their challenges, and if you modify that, it's not the same product. It's like asking an artist to also offer their painting with changes to the colors, scene, or poses of the subjects to appeal to personal tastes - yes, they could do it, but it's a different piece of art at that point.
And omg yes, O&S. It's not as hard now after many years of playing souls-like games, but relatively it was so hard on my first exposure to dark souls in DS1. I had no idea what I was doing, my build was jank as hell, and it took ages to beat.
Stay Puft...screw this pixel perfect dancing marshmallow lol so frustrating
That version of the 8-bit Ghostbusters game ending (just get past Stay Puft and your guys automatically go up to the building's roof, cross their streams, and complete the game) is so much more merciful than the versions which added on extremely bullshit bullet-hell boss battles with Gozer afterward.
Pure Vessel in Hollow Knight. I have a file that's at like 111% and I just need to beat the final pantheon but I've never managed it. I don't even know how bad Absolute Radiance is, I've never made it that far.
Practice down below. He's no harder than NKG. The real final pantheon takes so long I haven't done it again since getting to radiance and losing. Instead i occasionally try to beat the first two pantheons all binds
Same. I think there's something of a skill cliff here.
I got stuck on Absolute Radiance and my thumbs took a break and haven’t made it back yet. It’s been at least a year.
FYI the last pantheon isn't a % point, if you're at 111 you're missing something else
He's talking about the Pure Vessel one before the final pantheon.
Shit, I might have fucked up then. I'll have to investigate
Abs radiance is worse, but not just because it's more difficult. It's also a lot less fun, at least in my opinion. Think buffed Markoth kinda BS (which I just now realized, makes a lot of sense thematically/lore-wise).
Pure vessel was one of my favorite fights despite taking me many many attempts to beat.
My mom. When she says, "Turn that off and get your homework done," I always cave.
Pivot tables.
Excel is one of my favourite games, but I've never been able to completely grok those things.
They seem like a waste of time when it's much easier to use formulas to construct indirect ranges and work on those.
Excel is like grind, grind, grind. You can level up a little and then it's even more work. One column after another, then, row, row, row.
I like the sql better.
SQL is nice, but it gets a bit tricky once you get into recursive queries, especially when you're trying to beat your fastest time record...
Pivot tables are quick. If used properly you can summarize data much quicker than any excel formula. When I use them it pretty much always takes under 30 seconds to get what I want. Imo, there are 2 things every user of excel should learn to use. Vlookup (edit: or xlookup, see below) and pivot tables. Once you learn to use both, you will use them all the time.
Please use xlookup instead.
Forget about lookup, vlookup, hlook-up or index(match()).
Only use xlookup.
No place I have ever worked has had a version of excel with xlookup, so I can't really comment on it. Im not on 365 or a newer desktop version. We are on Office 2019, as I suspect many offices still are.
Ok, xlookup is better because it doesn't return false positives and it also doesn't require the data to be sorted.
It almost does the same as index(match()), only better, easier and faster.
Arrayformula() friendly too
Pivot tables are great because they force people to put their data into tables.
Formulas suck. You only need sum. Everything is a sum, if you enter your data correctly in a table.
Want to substract? yes, that is a sum in which one of the numbers are negative. Multiply? Yes that is more sums.
What about IF statements then? No, no, no. Conditions are simply factors in a sumproduct.
Learn the keyboard shortcut for sum. It's the straight edge and compass of excel math.
Anyone else constantly looking up tactics with AI? This game is so difficult, you have to memorize a lot of combos and the strategy to use them really takes time to click. I'm getting into this one again after a long hiatus
About 100 hours on the final boss of FF8 because I fucked up and saved right before the fight with basically nothing in my inventory. I repeated the fight for literal weeks, trying different strategies and item use patterns and stuff.
It was very rewarding to complete, but I’ll never play that game again.
I've never seen what's beyond the fourth level of Battletoads for Gameboy. That fucking labyrinth.
Sekero is just about my favorite game. I've completed it at least 20 times and will do so again.
I've beaten the Demon of Hatred 2 times and I never want to play that motherfucker ever again.
Killed him once legit and then cheesed him off the cliff on every subsequent playthrough. Fuck that boss.
Mike Tyson
Haven't beat the dual boss at the end of Elden ring, or the final DLC boss.
Think i've done most the rest of Soulsborn bosses.
In terms of time, some Demons souls boss I got stuck on, put the game aside for years, then went back to.
In terms of number of tries, I think O&S in Dark Souls one still holds the title. I ran into that brick wall for a long time before getting good.
Can't think of any game series I had as much difficulty in and didn't just give up, unless you count the Mun in Kerbal Space Program as a boss, cause that took a long time.
If you’re still interested, I could give you some easy to execute strategies to beat the final Elden Ring Boss and some decently easy ones for the final DLC Boss.
Also plug for [email protected]. It's a nice and welcoming community :)
I don't think it's a can't, it's more of a "Ok, I've seen the game, this is a slog, I'm moving on to something else."
Just got a PS5 so I'm absolutely loving Demons Souls, been like 10 years or more since I played it. First time playing magic in a souls game and it feels down right broken. Will likely work my way back through the series on the new hardware.
With all the bingo brawlers seasons I've seen all the end bosses, so doing it myself just hasn't felt like a priority.
Then, have fun with Demon Souls :)
I was actually never able to beat the nilianth in the final level of Half Life. I think I tried 2 or 3 times, it was extremely annoying getting sent to the parkour room constantly and I haven't been back to try it again in a decade.
I was never able to beat the final boss in Alpha Protocol because it would just CTD upon starting the fight.
A legitimate victory by forfeit.
Hogger
... fucking Hogger, man
https://youtu.be/9Q9WGTCFwzY
The vid was posted 10 years ago but it's much older than that. I remember watching it on Google videos right around Burning Crusade coming out.
Anyway, gl next time you're in Goldshire.
That's the best thing I've seen all year. Miss doing stuff like that.
Ruby Weapon in the Final Fantasy VII PS1 game.
I even followed the guide, so I just couldn't figure it out.
The amount of grinding necessary to beat all of the Weapons was ridiculous. I got tired of trying.
It’s infuriating to see videos of people that have figured out the exact materia combos to beat it in under 5 minutes
i gave up on consort Radahn. but i guess they made it easier later with a patch? never went back to try again after trying to beat him for a week.
In Hollow Knight, the Grimm fight. I spent hours learning the patterns. I’m pretty sure that’s what created the drift on my joycons during that time.
Beating nightmare grimm is where I peaked.
It’s a perfect gaming mic drop.
I still haven't finished Breath of the Wild. I think I pretty much did everything else in the game that by the time I should have gotten to the final boss but by that time I felt I had gotten enough out of the game and if it was going to just be the same kind of battle as the other two boss battles I wasn't interested. I really enjoyed the game, just didn't care to finish it 😅
Same for me but with TOTK. I spent hours upon hours doing everything else in the game, but the final boss fight seemed deliberately too hard, and I just really have no interest in forcing myself to beat it. I won’t get any more satisfaction out of the game just by seeing the final cutscene. Probably helps that I didn’t find the story particularly interesting and just played for the gameplay and atmosphere.
Don't know if it counts but stupid meat circus climb in psychonauts. Never finished that thing.
Lol, I was going to say the same thing. Fuck that level.
The final battle in Star Trek 25th Anniversary (before it was patched). It's just not possible to win this!
A real Kobayashi Maru, you say?
Unintentionally by the developers, but yes, absolutely! Good one!
Mike Tyson/Mr. Dream in Punch-Out!! (I did beat them with Game Genie though).
This asshole
I don't think I've ever beaten Doom 2 without cheats or mouselook. I just can't time those rockets correctly.
Perhaps you might find it easier to archvile jump into the exposed brain and chaingun it to death.
I got the Xbox port of this a few years ago, and the last level of Doom 2 was a bitch to play. I died so many f’ing times before I finally got it.
I've been a player of the original era DOOM games since the start and am pretty good on PC with a mouse and keyboard, but I've always found the console ports so much more difficult for some reason. On other games I can swap platforms and control schemes just fine, but my brain just will not accept the combination of DOOM plus a console controller.
I’m the same way with Age of Empires II. My younger sister loves to play the Xbox port but I’ve played AoE since the late 90s when they were originally released on pc… I can’t stand to play it on a console.
I played Doom and even Quake with keyboard only. That should translate well to a controller. But maybe that's why my brother always kicked my ass in death match.
I think I only switched to mouse look with Jedi Knight.
DS3's Pontif Sulyvahn! GRR! I'll get you next playthrough! Just you wait!
Just gotta master that parry timing. Oh, and just wail on him and his clone when he summons it. With enough damage it won't be a problem at all.
I've been stuck deep in Bomberman '93 for about 15 years. It's the boss level that starts with the multiple enemies on motorcycles and then progresses to a single boss who flies around the perimeter of the level and shoots fire. Every few years I'll load up my save and spend an hour or two re-learning the fire guy's patterns and making attempts, but never quite well enough.
I've heard Bomberman '94 is really cool, but I'm not allowing myself until I finish this one!
Currently for me it's the Silksong Choral Chambers gauntlet. It's been about 5 months. I can get to the last two Sentinals, only as of last night, but fail. It's taken that long as I give up, don't play for a week, then go off exploring other areas.
I did this one not too long ago! One thing that helped was recognizing that there's no "roar" delay like when the first one shows up. You can just attacking as they fall down from the ceiling. Second was trying to optimize for damage to take one out asap, and reduce the amount of time you need to dodge both of them simultaneously. For me that looked like Barbed Bracelet, Flintsteel, and Beast Crest. Good luck!
I actually managed to complete this evening! Thank phuck. Now I just have to beat Lace again 🥺
You can do it! I'm rooting for you!
I should pick Silskong back up. Stuck in the Karak Sands area.
I hear many players struggle with this one. For me, it was Groal. Must have take me a hundred tries.
Armstrong in metal gear revengance... Not because he was hard on his own, but because the game bugged on the way to get to him and I couldn't rotate my blade to break the things he was throwing at me.
I got to the boss with a tiny sliver of HP left and spent like 3 hours trying to beat him with it. I THINK I beat it, I don't think there was another phase or something, but during a cutscene that happens after fighting him the game froze... I threw the controller and never turned the game on again lol
OMG, that's terrible!!! 😭
Level 7-4 (the maze level in Super Mario Bros).
Not a boss, but the only way to beat the level is to take the correct path. If you get it wrong you get sent back to the start.
For Super Mario Bros 3, it was only recently that I beat it without using a cloud to skip the maze fortress a few levels before Bowser's castle. And even then only because I looked up how to get through it.
The first bosses of Cuphead 😭
You mean the jump-dash right at the beginning?
That surprisingly took me longer than I expected after the video of that journalist trying to do it and failing, I feel bad for laughing at them now lmao
Defeating Cuphead felt like an achievement to me. I'll never 100% that game, but it sure was brutally fun
Riku in the first Kingdom Hearts took me so so long. Halfway because of that fucking unskippable cutscene.
Similarly, I was never able to defeat Maleficent, so I never beat the first game at all.
Also, Lion King for the SNES. Technically it wasn't a boss that I couldn't beat, but the goddamn lava level. I had that game my entire childhood and was never able to beat it. When I was 22, I had a bunch of 12 hour overnight shifts with a work buddy who said he could beat it. So we passed it back and forth. It took us a few days and probably a hundred lives. But finally. Finalllllly, we did it.
Riku is definitely it for me. One of my friends brought me in as a ringer to get past that fight when she was playing the remake and it still took hours of retries despite being able to skip the cut scene.
Man if I ever had to fight Groal the Great again...
I ended up cheesing this fight with the “embrace the stinky water” strat
Hide in the water on the right hand side, coming out to attack, hands shaking.
The only other battle that was long-ish for me was Lost Lace. But that was a really awesome duel
I was a couple of attempts short of calling it quits on Simon in Clair Obscur. I don't like QTEs and the whole fight is "parry or die"
And yes I know now that I could have done the cheese strat of megabuffing Maille for a one shot but I think reading strategy guides for single player games is a major dork move
Afterward, I wasn't excited or proud. I was just relieved to not think about it anymore
my friends don't get that. its an extra credit boss in a single player game, why would I spoil that for myself with a guide someone else made?
i haven't beaten him yet, I give it a few tries every month or so. my way of prolonging the beauty of the game I guess lol
Yeah...I can't imagine being proud of the accomplishment if you're just following a step-by-step guide.
Like "Please recognize my artistic achievement" and it's this
Seemed to be a lot of the postgame bosses in CO. After one try, I understood them all as extra challenges available for those who want them. But given they’re literally just rhythm timing that eventually makes you invincible, I don’t quite know who’d find that interesting.
Gwyn in Dark Souls.
The problem was my biggest success. I managed to score a zweihander, pretty early on in the game. I upgraded the hell out of it and was able to clear most bosses with some grinding and a lot of determination. I did this with a failing PS3 controller that generated spurious inputs, resulting in randomly switching to my alt config (unarmed) if I squeezed the controller too hard. I even learned a new level of personal zen and patience after realizing that getting angry would make me perform worse. I got gud.
Then I arrive at the end boss and get absolutely wrecked.
Why? I never had to parry. Not. A. Single. Time. Strike, juke, medium-roll, retreat, strike again. Don't be a target, and keep moving. Meanwhile, every guide to beat Gwyn says you have to parry his attacks. I basically had little choice but to retrain how to play my character modifying an entire game's worth of muscle-memory in the process.
My save file has been in this condition for years at this point.
Don't give up, skeleton!
Lavos in Chrono Trigger. 😭
Metroid Dread was my first exposure to "tough but fair" bosses where every defeat felt earned. Every single boss took multiple tries, and every time I went through this cycle of trying a few times, walking away, debating whether I should quit altogether, only to come back a day or so later to repeat the process. I beat the entire game. Ravenbeak was of course the hardest, but man it felt good when I finally beat him.
I had a similar experience playing through various Soulslikes. The only other one I managed to beat was Tunic (I know I talk about that game a lot. It left quite the impression).
Tell me more about Tunic, why'd it leave such an impression on you?
I'll just copy what I posted here
The orphan of Kos in Bloodborne. Could never quite get it right, got so close several times but even with help that crazy bastard is just soo fast and difficult to predict. I tried for like a week, 30 or more goes. It really annoys me because Bloodborne is my favourite souls game.
One thing I adore about the souls games is how everyone has a unique and personal experience with bosses.
A boss that I got on my first try may take you a week of banging your head against it; but, that is no indication that I'm just better because two bosses later I will be banging my head against a different boss that you just breeze through.
Yeah, sometimes your playstyle ends up being a natural counter to a boss. Sometimes a boss ends up being a natural counter to your playstyle. Or one of your first strategy ideas works and makes it easy.
Undine the Undying.
The fucking Dark Souls 3 Ballerina. It took me hours and hours and it fucking sucked. Love her though, such fun attack patterns.
The last boss in Tears of the Kingdom comes to mind. Too damn hard for me, and my motivation to try over and over was low since I knew it was the end of the game. That's happened with a lot of final bosses for me. "I could spend a lot of time beating it, but why? The game is basically over."
Nameless king. I finally caved and accepted I would have to summon to beat him... Ah fuck.
The only soulsborne I didn't beat, but I didn't play after getting hard stuck on him. I did beat everyone solo though, which is why it was such a decision to think about summoning.
Depending on your attitude about cheesing: his first phase is just wail on him with lightning and second phase is incredibly easy to kite with a bow.
Yeah, that was a tough fight to learn. I'd say try to get through the dragon phase consistently, then once you can do that, really focus on the Nameless King's moves. He only has a few and they all have an appropriate call/response pacing.
ALSO, Dark Souls 3 is secretly a rhythm game. Put on some headphones and turn up the music. You're dancing with the bosses just as much as you're fighting them.
I barely remember it, but I remember that the hardest mode of Shinobi was ridiculous. Basically just had to memorize and execute a perfect movement / attack pattern.
And if memory serves, it was like 2 levels before the final one that was actually the hardest on the hardest difficulty? Getting flooded with some kind of tricky enemy while way in the air?
But then you unlocked God mode and got to just slaughter everything with your OP abilities and sword... actually I think there were at least two levels of those upgrades. One had a life draining effect and the next was just absurd
Oh yeah! And some of the songs on Amplitude
Could never beat that hardest difficulty of Shinobi. Maybe halfway through the last level before the final boss, but just couldn't get through the vertical section full of flying enemies after the paper hallways full of ogres. My sour grapes is there's no way I'd beat the boss after getting through that level. But I still want to play that bonus level that unlocks if you get all the secret tokens
Top Gun (1987)
My end boss there was fucking landing on that aircraft carrier.
Obligatory AVGN
I played Minecraft for over a decade before I bothered going to beat the Ender Dragon
Battletoads. I thought me and my brother were just retarded or something until.I grew up, got the internet, and learned that it was one of the most unforgivingly brutal games of our era.
Celeste
There's one screen that's just keeeeps going in the very last level, shit took me like 20-30 hours spread over two weeks
The tank in Arkham Knight on the Xbox 360. I spent hours trying to get past it. Finally looked online and others were saying it took them days to get past it. Decided I didn't like the game enough to put that much effort into one fight.
Is that the 3rd one in the series? I gave up on that one too. I loved the first two. But getting the hang of using the batmobile frustrated me and, like you, I decided I didn't like the game enough to finish it. I think I gave up pretty early on in the game though.
Beat Emerald without much of a fuss.
Best Ruby after many many tries. X-Summon and KotR with only Cloud alive is the way to go.
Never beat Omega in VIII. Tried many times.
That bird in Karatka. I'm told it isn't hard but I could never get the timing right.
Greetings, fellow traveler. I too remember the Apple II and 5.25" disks
I'm too lazy to type the whole thing out but since I had an Atari you can figure out the flame I am supposed to leave in this spot.
Good times.
I am still in awe of the brilliance of Warren Robineet
I might have beat him, not sure, might have used debug mode. 0 rings? 12 hits? Spike arms? Blegh.
I never beat him as a kid, went back with an emulator and used screen save... still almost lost because I saved at a bad moment. That fight is a little ridiculous if you ask me. It forces you to replay the ENTIRE GAME just to get a grip on his moves. Little shit
Ugh. My friends and I recently played through "V Rising" . It's a good game. It's like Valheim meets Diablo but you're vampires.. Because of our busy adult lives we played together once a week for usually 2-3 hours. It's took us damn near a year to get to the final boss, and it was just wipe after wipe after wipe. We weren't making any progress. Like we couldn't get him down past 75% life no matter how hard we tried. We changed our skills and equipment, same thing. We looked up some guides online and they were basically like "git good"
We never beat him, because we didn't want to waste any more of our limited adult gaming time just getting crushed by a boss for hours.
It was such a slap in the face because nothing else in the game was that difficult. There were some tough bosses that took us down maybe 3 or 4 times. But this was just hours of getting wrecked without even getting close to winning. It was truly a morale blow.
Sigh... We switched to a different game, and I guess we will just never finish that one.
Smough and Ornstein...took me three days to beat them. Never. Again.
Ruby and Emerald. That's when I knew that I would never 100% a game in my life. Even with the game guide, those fights can fuck right off.
I've never technically beaten the final Bowser boss in Super Mario 64. Me and my siblings grew up with the game as kids. I remember us having 114 out of 120 stars. We were trying really hard to 100% the game, then I think it was our nephews who ended up deleting our save. That was a sad day.
We never did find the second secret slide. I only found where it was once my best friend showed me the location as adults.
So long gay Bowser!
I have this really old save file on Mario & Luigi Partners in Time where I basically tried to skip combat as much as possible, and it took me like 5 years to reach the final boss (compared to like two weeks on the other save).
Its been stuck there on the Shroob finale because it legitimately takes you like 40 minutes to clear the first princess and you have basically no one-ups or a useful amount of bros items, so you have to make every hit and dodge count.
I've seen several good speed runs of the game so it's definitely doable, but it requires about 2 hours of perfect inputs, so I probably won't be finishing it soon lol.
Metroid Prime on the game cube. I've played through that game multiple times over the decades and never could finish off the Metroid Prime boss at the end. I got so very close a handful of times, but could never finish her off.
Metroid Prime (the boss) was easier than Omega Pirate, who you seemingly must have defeated
Did you get to the 2nd phase? You have to stand in the phazon pools to deal damage in that phase
In terms of total time since I first played the game to finally beating it, probably Cave Story's Ballos fight for me. I had a fan made port of the game for the PSP back in '06 ish, struggled a lot to get the regular ending, found out about the true ending, and couldn't ever beat the Last Cave (Hidden), much less gauntlet of challenges beyond it. I think at the most I had seen that there was a secret area beyond the "final boss" for the true ending and the fan name for it, but never been. I might have once gotten to it but I know for certain I never ever beat it or the true final boss.
At some point around about 2018 ish I think I saw that they had a rerelease for the game on the Switch titled Cave Story+, where I fell in love with the game all over again and finally played it to its true completion. I still have all of the screenshots and videos I took during my first completion of that boss fight. I think since then I have beaten it on Hard Mode, but only ever on the Switch version with Co-op mode which allows you to double your damage output being that you have 2 players, so it'll be interesting trying to go back and complete it again soon without almost any Health pickups at all.
Troupe Master Grimm in Hollow Knight
Malileth, the black blade in Eden Ring.
I eventually had to summon co-op players in and just sit in the corner and let them do the work. Fuck that boss...
Well that kinda takes the wind outta my sails for completing the game. I'm kinda stuck at the forge of the giants. And I'm so late that there's hardly ever coop signs around
Don't let it dissuade you. See my comment here on this topic: https://programming.dev/comment/23859190
I think at a certain point, a break from the game is warranted before going back in to grind and be specced correctly for a difficult area/boss
I've found that sometimes I come back to a game after a long break and end up better at it than I previously was. Like I'll dread parts that were difficult the last time and then breeze through them when I get there.
Like I was stuck on some room in Doom Eternal, it just kept kicking my ass until I gave up on the game for like a year. I tried resuming the game, realized I couldn't remember all the controls and decided to start over again and then didn't even notice when I got back to that room because I cleared it easily and continued on.
I'm not sure if it's because the other games I'd played in the meantme helped me develop my skills more, if my subconscious optimized the skills I retained from the first playthrough, or if I just avoided picking up some bad habits I had the first time that made things harder for me.
PS2 Shinobi. That game was brutally hard.
The final boss of the Who Framed Roger Rabbit NES game. That was some unfair BS!
Holy crap, you just triggered traumatic memories I'd been successfully repressing for generations! That game. That whole fucking game, but especially the ending.
I remember using the ability to smack Roger Rabbit around to take out so many frustrations. That was a good feature.
There's like 10 years between starting Pokémon Red and beating the final four for me. I didn't have the guide books but eventually it was easy to get help from the internet for a handful of hangups. I put it down for a long time somewhere after like 4 gyms, came back years later, and spent maybe 6 months playing on the commute
Joker in Batman for the NES. It took forever to get to him, and it was too easy to mess it up
The aircraft carrier landing in top gun
UP! UP!I still don't think I've done that
Renoir, 2nd fight.
Gozer in Ghostbusters for the Master System.
As with any game of that era you had to play through the whole game with no save to reach the last boss. Sometimes you’d get taken out before reaching Gozer by the poltergeists on the stairs.
Then finally you’d have a few seconds to figure out what was going on before you were one-shot-killed by a projectile, with very like time to work out where you could have moved to.
I’ve still never truly beaten Gozer, but finally used save states to finish the game on my Anbernic a couple of years ago, meaning it took me about 30 years to see the ending.
Extra enraging because of the many versions of that 8-bit Ghostbusters game, which ranged widely from awful to fine, the Master System version was probably the all-around best iteration in terms of graphics and general gameplay. However, other versions had much easier endings.
Rodney, the Wizard of Yendor
@
I gave up on the final boss of Minish Cap. I was playing the game on the Wii U.
There's boss fights occasionally in Dave the Diver and they just. I hate all of them lol. There was one at night I kept having to reload and just hope the weapon it gave me was the one that I was decent enough at that I finally got it.
Why don't you just start the dive with the weapon you're good at? I can't think of a single boss fight in Dave the Diver that was all that hard...
I don't remember why I couldn't take the weapon with me. Maybe it was the night part and I couldn't switch? Or maybe I had a stupid weapon with me and just couldn't switch. This was some time ago. I had to restart a lot until I got a sniper I think. I was using my normal gas the fish weapon which against a boss was not good at all.
I was also just very very bad at the boss fights. I found them annoying after just swimming around capturing fishies and decorating and farming lol.
Any fight while playing this war of mine on the Steamdeck.
I'm going to say pretty much every fight in Sifu. People praise it as having some of the best fighting combat and claim that it just takes a while to learn, but I put weeks of time into that game and it never got any easier. I managed to get past the first two levels before hitting a wall I could just not get past.
Oh man, I loved Sifu! I'd recently finished Sekiro and thought "well it can't be harder than that". Ultimately, it wasn't but it took a long time to get the hang of the different combat rhythm.
Final boss from final fantasy 4 on gameboy advance, I loved everything about the game, but the boss was too difficult for me at the time and I got bored of grinding. This was back in middle school era.
I should go back and replay the game now that I'm older and have more experience with rpgs.
More recent example would be final boss from tunic. I don't think I got enough power ups when I got to the final boss and struggled hard against it.
Super Ghouls & Ghosts on SNES. I don't think I ever made it through the first level, let alone any boss.
Malenia. Giving up I just stopped playing Elden Ring for a few months before coming back and eventually succeeding.
This is a really weird one I'm sure, but Ursula from Kingdom Hearts... 1? Can't remember which.
I built my character for magic first, then attack, defense last.
It's not a hard boss fight but I wasn't scaling well in the game and hadn't gotten to where magic damage was supposedly OP so I hit a wall.
Never got past it. Can't go back and replay because honestly there's a lot about that game that hasn't aged well.
I'm not normally such a noob, this boss is my forever shame.
Ursula's a fucking nightmare, in the most aggravating way. Far from impossible, but damn... fuck that boss fight. The rest of the game is kinda worth it imo, but my lord do I hate that bitch
Three I can think of
Rebel Flagship from FTL: Faster Than Light
I fucking hate FTL and everybody hails it as the best thing since sliced bread for effectively inventing the roguelike genre. It's an incredibly poorly balanced game that boils down to travelling across each sector, bouncing between beacons, fighting hostile ships, encountering random events and whether you choose to engage with these events, rolling the die and (more times than not) getting screwed over by dogshit RNG.
I've only reached the Last Stand twice. On the first time, I engaged the Rebel Flagship, had over half my health taken out in a few shots then decided to retreat. Retreating triggered an instant Game Over because the game was glitched. The second time around, I made it to the second phase before dying.
This is how rough the game is on Normal mode...
Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts 2
This is more like me not having the patience to learn the fight. Roxas had already worn me the fuck down, and the only way I got past him was to effectively cheese the fight with Megalixirs, Limit Form and Ars Arcanum spam, which is easier said than done. I not only had to grind my drive forms up significantly beforehand, but I also had to intentionally manipulate the game's RNG so as to not trigger Anti Form at any point in the fight.
Xemnas is like a far more bullshit version of Ansem from KH1, in the respect that both are lengthy multi-phase fights that can take 20 - 30 minutes under normal circumstances, but unlike Ansem, his Nobody counterpart now has the ability to drive you down to 1HP with an unavoidable QTE attack where he launches a flurry of combos which you have to perfect parry.
And I think generally, Kingdom Hearts 2 is an objectively worse game than the first one in almost every respect, aside from the fluidity of its combat system. It has serious difficulty spikes, some incredibly bullshit boss mechanics, lacks the interactive game world that the first game had, gave us a substantially worse version of Atlantica that plays like a cringe Little Mermaid sing-along rhythm game, has substantially worse gummi ship sections, and unlike the first game, and it generally began the point where the plot of the entire franchise would start turning into a confusing clusterfuck.
And it's not like I'm bad at Kingdom Hearts games either. Riku 2 took me a grand total of two attempts to beat in the first game, and the way I was able to beat both Riku fights so easily was because I learned quickly not to execute a full keyblade combo on him and cancel right before the last swing, because he will do an undodgeable counter. Also, Riku 2's ultimate attack can be easily dodged by just jumping up and gliding around the arena. Even Sephiroth (the game's bonus superboss) is pretty easy with healing items or Leaf Bracer/Curaga.
Elder Princess Shroob from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time
Superstar Saga was a masterpiece. Its sequel on the other hand is linear as fuck, has bad writing, is ruined by the Baby Mario Bros who wear the same red and green outfits as their adult counterparts and therefore make Bros Moves substantially hard to pull off (as it's easy to get A/X and B/Y mixed up.)
For me it's the game that killed the Mario & Luigi series.
I could never get past the final boss and I'm convinced that my copy of the game is either glitched or she was designed to be a damage sponge. I genuinely gave up after one attempt took me well over half an hour only for me to die.
On FTL: I want that game's primary loop, but in a Fallout-style role playing game. Have a universe you're free to move around in. Rather than a single person gaining stats and abilities or whatever, you install equipment and hire crew. Kinda similar to the existing game, where having a leveled up medbay allows for certain actions. But make it one longer game you can sink your teeth into rather than a roguelike.
IMO most likely what happened here is the flagship destroyed the Earth. If the flagship arrives at Earth and sits there for 3 rounds, you get a game over. The only way to stop it is to beat it in a fight, and finishing a phase will buy some time.
This mechanic is definitely not super obvious at first so I wouldn’t blame you for missing it.
It didn't. The Game Over triggered as soon as I retreated and the flagship was nowhere near the Federation base. I actually engaged it at the earliest possible moment when entering the last sector.
Hardest that I've beaten were Sigrun from God of War, and King Hrólf Kraki from GoW: Ragnarok.
Bosses that made the entire game up to that point feel like a tutorial.
I’m parked about halfway through Returnal. It’s so punishing I just resent the time I need to put in to git gud.
I was also gonna say "Returnal", maybe specifically the second boss. It took like 2 years or more of off-and-on playing to beat the game... it was oh so satisfying, but damn that game can be brutal
I looked up some tips and tricks that helped, but it really came down to "just be better"... I've gotten way better at this point, but the learning curve was steep and long
I'm playing Saros now (Returnal's 'spiritual sequel'), and it's wayyy easier in comparison. Not in a bad way, cause it's really fun... but after playing Returnal, I was already prepped for some bullet-hell dodging
Would highly recommend Saros, cause you'll definitely be able to beat it and it may entice you to keep striving for that sweet, sweet Returnal end game
Ahhh! This great to hear. I looked at Saros and wondered about how much of a different experience it might. Glad to hear this. Thank you.
Crowmerax in Borderlands while solo. Possible but, depending on your class, very tedious.
I dunno how anyone does it without the siren's ability to become temporarily invincible
Ballos from Cave Story. Mostly because the runback to that boss is literally called hell lol
Wasn't a boss but an achievement in the original geometry wars. Score 10 million without dying. It took me about two years to get that and I would play it at least once a night if I could.
That game doesn't get talked about enough. Geometry Wars was an incredible little game on the Xbox Arcade
Yep was good, didn't care for the sequels
The final boss of final fantasy 13. I was doing fine up until it cast death on my main character. In that game, you have 3 characters out in your active party, but the only one that matters is the middle character. After about 30 minutes of fighting, the boss cast death on my main character and they died. My two other characters were alive, I had Phoenix Downs, but because of how the game is, they are not allowed to have a turn unless the main character is alive. Immediate game over.
I turned off the console and never went back. While I understood that it was a mechanic, it just felt cheap.
The Jade Temple level for the final chicken egg in Guacamelee 2. It's fucking bullshit!
Wow that looks like straight up not a good time
It was the last egg level I needed to get the key. I never did beat it. The other 4 egg levels were pretty difficult as well.
Not a boss per se, but the first Marauder fight in Doom Eternal made me rage quit for a good 6 months.
I appreciated that after several Street Fighter games in which Sagat was significantly more difficult than actual final boss M. Bison, they finally made M. Bison truly challenging in Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Still haven't gotten past RoboPres in Destroy All Humans
Destroy all humans combat could hit you out of no where!
That final boss in Anachronox straight up sucks. I don't remember if I cheated or gave up and watched the ending on YouTube
Not a traditional “boss fight”, but Tropical Drive Westbound on Burnout 3 has a time trial that requires you to go full speed in an F1 car for 4 minutes without crashing to beat the time. Absolutely one of the toughest events I’ve come across in an arcade racing game.
Pokemon ZA Zygarde has been kicking my ass. Usually I'm the one who dies while my pokemon are just fine.
Starfox adventure final space boss. After taking months adventuring my way through the game the space fight suddenly ramped up. Had no idea how to beat him.
Friend came over barreled rolled instintvly (I had never played the originals). Blew my mind.
The Jaquio.
When I was a kid it took me several years of owning TimeSplitters Future Perfect to beat the story despite playing it literally every day. Id first seen the game when I was younger and watched my older cousin play it and the zombie house freaked me out so much that it would get my panic going when I got the game myself at around 13. It wasn't until I genuinely set down with the goal of beating it that I realizes it had not aged well at all in the high point of the zombie craze and was actually hilarious.
Easily my favorite game of all time and I can't wait for TimeSplitters rewind to get to it. I still have my disk and of all things, the spot I used to stop it at is exactly where it throws a disk read error on my reclaimed Xbox.
My most recent play-through of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended in failure because I literally could not get myself together enough to fight ::: spoiler Spoiler even though old game the Striders. ::: ... despite multiple attempts. I now can't bear to play it again because those warning alarms trigger my anxiety.
For a while I was convinced that having moved the game between PCs might have triggered some kind of anti-piracy protection and the battle was rigged to be impossible... but it's more likely that I just lost the reflexes and timing to be able to pull it off. Especially since I own a legitimate copy and was playing through Steam.
A similar story is true of the final battle in Quake 4, which I barely remember now. Pretty sure I was still on Windows at the time and I've been on Linux for the better part of a decade. It was also from a backup and wasn't through Steam, but I own a legit copy of the game and there are no in-game alarms that I remember so that might be on the reinstall and replay list at some point. Maybe.
Combo of the Thunderbird and Dark Link at the end of Zelda II. The dual SOBs were impossible for me and everyone I ever knew until emulators and ROMs made it possible to save state and jump back in over and over.
I don't play that many but I generally 100% games I play. So... a bit embarrassing, but Dicey Dungeons. The later chapters are genuinely difficult & are more puzzles than roguelikes... so I just gave up at one point
If specific endgame challenges count, I've never beaten Dead Cells BC4 boss rush, or the fabled Noita 34 orbs run (was very close though). Oh and every other rhythm game if you count skill analyzers/Dan courses, but most players don't clear those
Astaroth (the final boss) in Omikron. I played the game when it came out in 2000 but I was young then and couldn't beat him. Then I played the game again twenty years later and it was surprisingly easy to beat...
diablo 2, fighting diablo with golems and no cheating or souped up gear. i was using the fire golem to self-destruct and summoning him again and immolation effect on diablo while trying to avoid him, dont know which difficulty though. i remember taking an extremely long time to kill him. i ran out of materials to use for the iron golem which had the thorns effect.
Mario & Luigi dream team bros.
Bowser, end of the game. He just fully. Healed randomly if I recall correctly. Online I did not find any help.
After a few tries I ragequit, it was infuriating.
The fucking Chernobyl mission in Modern Warfare was tougher than any boss I've ever faced
Oh man I have such vivid memories of carefully placing every trap at my disposal so they were maximally effective and wouldn't destroy each other, then running between tiny points of cover trying to do whatever I could to survive the hail of bullets coming my way.
I think I was eventually able to beat it on the hardest difficulty a few times, but that console has been dead for a long time so no way to check.
Only way for me to defeat it personally was to abuse a glitch that made the enemies miss their grenades allowing me to stay in the same cover instead of rotating
Otherwise, I saw no way to do that. There's just no cover on that level.
Minecraft ender dregn
Same. I don't really play MC to "win" it, just fuck around and make things
Easier to get wings after the dragon is dead.
Although nothing stops you from jumping into the end and immediately bridging across the void, it's about 1000 blocks which isn't too bad, and if you get away from the dragon nothing else will stop you making that bridge
That's beautiful ly broken and so in keeping with the systemic affordances of block games 🥹
The final boss in Cuphead (the Devil). I was very near the end, battling his last form... and my character glitched out under a platform. He couldn't hit me and I couldn't hit him. Softlocked! I uninstalled the game.
Pandemonium Warden from FFXI.
it took me a stupidly long time to beat shadow trap in borderlands pre sequel as athena. probably hardest boss fight ive ever beaten
Longest: Sister Friede Never: Absolute Radiance (mainly because I ain't playing all the way through the Pantheon to face him again)
Final Fantasy X. Technically last boss has some auto-win thing to it, but the one before that is a tough challenge.
What killed it for me is, the one just before was very technical. There’s a shifting elemental stance that you can come up with counter strategies to, and it felt like a well thought victory.
But the final boss? WHAM, huge damage. And again, HUGE DAMAGE. It became a numbers check, and I didn’t feel like grinding to keep up, so I watched the ending on YouTube.
On the flip side, doing even just a couple of side quests will quickly over level you, making all the end bosses trivial.
Honestly, the hardest story boss is probably the Seymour fight on Mount Gagazet. You're less likely to be overleveled at that point and it introduces some mechanics for the first time that you likely aren't prepared for.
The final T-Rex in "Chuck Rock"
The jousting boss in Luigi 's Mansion 2. Guy was a jerk!
I know most people weren't thinking about webgames but I've never been able to beat this 10 level bullet hell boss rush game Obsolescence
Also this puzzle game Color Tiles is ridiculously hard because of the 2 minute timer. I cleared it once but it took me pretty much a month straight of attempts.
Ikaruga.
Not necessarily for any particular boss - but I enjoy shmups (Gradius, Thunder Force, Gaiares) and getting anything other than a "c" on a level is work. I've even seen videos of people 2 sticking the game (playing both players at once) and getting S on levels...
Doc Ock in the OG Xbox Spiderman game... can't exactly remember which one (probs for ps2 too). But if you beat it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I couldn't stand that fight
first level in the original rayman
Trials... Jfc that game gets impossible.
Not sure but its definitely one of the elden ring ones.
Basically any after the first two in B.P.M. The on-beat fighting just is not my cup of tea.
Other than that... I guess Malenia and Promised Consort Radahn took me a while, like three evenings each maybe. But I was also stubborn with my stupid bonking build, with no magic. Below was my status and equipment after Malenia for example:
Xenoblade Chronicles, Lorithia
I paid for my insolence over, and over, and over again
I want to play Nioh but the huge guy inside the boat is proving too difficult to proceed.
The trick is remembering that most of his attacks can be blocked. You don't fight him like a Dark Souls boss.
Never had a boss defeat me. That shit is for noobs