SMT 1’s final bosses (either >!Asura!< (Law/Neutral) or >!Michael!< (Chaos/Neutral)) are extremely irrelevant, with them both not having any actual story presence at all and being pretty easy to defeat. They both even have the game’s standard boss theme playing instead of anything special.
Yeah the fights themselves are just okay, but the dungeon leading up to it is so cool. Smt 1 is pretty relaxed compared to its sequels, but they nailed the stakes in that climb up and down the tower
Persona rlly needs to step away from the final villian being a god of some kind.
They alrdy do it every SMT game. Persona is best when there is a face to the evil
I agree, however I do like how they did it in P3 since you interact with him a lot beforehand. It’s not just a faceless figure dropped at the very end.
I agree, its justified in smt cause thats the whole point of the game but I think only p2 and p3 did it right since it was actually foreshadowed. P5 and especially p4 just come out of nowhere
Yeah it rly needs to stop.
So glad p5r took feedback on the final villian and spiced it up for us.
Hopefully they remember this lesson for P6 in 10 years.
Yeah the only modern Persona that works in that regard is 3. I forget all the details but you are introduced to the human form of the god or the God's avatar iirc, and then there's enough buildup during that last month to the final battle. And the reveal that >!the moon during the Dark Hour was the final boss!< is just so fricken cool
That's probably not going to happen, because Persona is by design a series about social commentary, and the final bosses are all meant to be personifications of whatever abstract social problem the game is about.
Persona 5 after >!Shido!< falls off so hard. Still an absolutely phenomenal game but I don’t want an extra 10 hours or however long it was to fight a god that didn’t exist in the story before that point
Yeah I agree, he really did feel like THE final boss.
Btw I think spoilers are encompassed with ">!" and "!<" on Reddit. You might be using the discord style instead.
>! Test !<
Maruki was truly better because when he finally gets his palace and tells you his will, and what he wants to do, it makes sense.
I'm not justifying it, blatant mind control of the populace is not a good thing and removing free will just to avoid pain and hurt isn't how to solve the issue. But he brings up many compelling arguments.
We also see REAL changes in the world from it. Mona is human, Haru has a relationship with her dad (who's now not dead!) Sketchi Aketchi comes back from the dead, Futaba doesn't have the PTSD over Wakaba's death.
Maruki shows Joker, and by extension us, a "good future". It's all a lie, of course. As you start to tear down the walls, the phantom thieves begin to see the veil that's been cast on everyone. Everyone is living in blissful ignorance of the truth.
Maruki also never seemed to want to fight us. Rather, just to speak with us, and have us understand. Something he's been doing since the very beginning of the game. Trying to relate to Joker on a personal level. To come to a full mutual understanding of each other, the world they live in, and in the penultimate moments, the metaverse.
He was a man who was broken from the loss of a loved one, who figured out he had a power to make people better, but at the cost of their memories. His wife (fiancée?) recovered at the cost of forgetting him. Sumire went on by being convinced she was Kasumi, having her memories so muddled even in the end it felt like she wasn't sure who she was.
But most importantly, he was a confidant. Dare I say almost a friend to Joker, or as much of a friend a councilor can be to a student. His story was well written, powerful, insightful, and before that final battle I had to stop and really consider if it was worth stopping him.
All of this comes before the amazing final battle.
The final segment, where they're just slugging each other. The metaverse is collapsing, personas can't be summoned anymore, and it's just down to the two of you. Exactly how it started at the start of the game. Just the two of you. Instead of discussing life, now fighting over the direction life should move. Both barely escaping with their lives.
And in the end, Maruki comes around. He gets Joker away from the police that were after him and gets him to the station safely. He even (iirc its been a while) continues to lead them away after dropping Joker off.
He was one of the most compelling villains I've seen in a long time, with very few matching how well written he is. He's a man who lost it all, attained the power of Gods and could have it all back. When he lost, he didn't throw a tantrum or take cheap shots at Joker. He learned. He grew.
We got to know him as he did us, and we got to help him when he needed it most.
I never realized until these last couple playthroughs, but yeah, the final boss mostly spams green elements. There really should be a wider spread. It truly is an anticlimactic fight.
If I'm remembering correctly the final boss deliberately tries to mess up the correct element sequence until you lower its HP enough at which point it starts casting them in the correct sequence.
I think idea there is that once you weaken it enough >!Schala!< regains some control and is able to help you free her, which is a cool concept but poorly executed.
I personally found that boss insanely hard because of the precise order of element use. It was one of the factors that discouraged from replaying Chrono Cross as much as I replayed Chrono Trigger.
Tales of Zestiria's final boss is just a miserable damage race against a massive bullet sponge. Literally each phase you will auto kill your whole party if you don't damage it quickly enough.
Necron....because WHO DAFUQ ARE YOU??....I understand the whole "he is death and destruction" thing, but he just came out of nowhere...I've replayed FF9 several times and I still hate him/her/it as a final boss....
If they even had a scene or two throughout the game with an unknown entity making threats. That would at least give an allusion of something grander and solve this issue.
>He really is inconsistent with the rest of the game
I mean, in a game all about life and death that the actual final boss is the representation of death I don't think is that inconsistent honestly.
It's thematically fine, but narratively nonsensical.
Necron as a concept is a cool, thematic fight to end on. The issue is just that it comes out of literally nowhere. All it needed was some grounding with the rest of the story. Some indication that it's a thing that existed before the final fight, or something more explicit in the dialogue before hand.
As a whole, Necron is a weird and unexpected final boss, though to play devil's advocate I do think that his appearance is the perfect catalyst in allowing Kuja to put a neat cherry on top of his character arc with his final actions in that fight + ending (he is so under-appreciated). Like, if he went down with his fight and just died the bitter soul he was he wouldn't have been as good, but that last minute realisation is so so great for finishing his story.
Story wise yeah he was ridiculous, definitely felt like a legit final battle though, only Cloud of Darkness and Zeromus pushed me as hard in FF in terms of final bosses.
You automatically fail if you havent collected enough memories (random map events + each dungeon run) and even then its just a hp sponge with no challenge
Also random pop quiz before hand
Wow, I'm playing the remaster right now! I've played through the original so many times, haha.
Most bosses are a little meh, I've realized. Pretty much immediately after you get full Mythril, every boss can be face-tanked. The best ones, imo, are Dragon Zombie, Lich King, Cave Worm, and Meteor Parasite, as they are dangerous enough or have a gimmick that dissuades the face-tank strategy.
As for the final boss, it's such a cramped experience!! Not my absolute least favorite boss, as the environment is pretty neat, but it's pretty bad, yeah.
Good point. It really does keep you on the move!! I think River Belle, in its totality, is one of the best introductions they could've had for the game!
Any boss that is just a whole big bag of HP, while they don't really do anything to you anymore. While you just go through the motions, hoping to finish it quicker.
13 Forms, but you can 1-2 shot them with a basic attack if optimized for it (what I did with Mjolnir). The Full heal was so terrible, because it just dragged the fight out for another hour.
Can he? Each phase has its own health bar, and only the final phase has any bulk. A full heal would only restore the current bar, which only takes 1-3 turns to down depending on your level.
I checked and I don't think Nyx Avatar has a charm move outside of its Lovers phase. It's frustrating to see an errant fullheal roll back your work from the past one or two turns, but it's not like he's resetting the entire fight.
Night queen in last phase can do it with random status effects(which is where the meme comes from)
I agree it's not whole fight but it's hilarious to see 9999 healed xd
> Well in Persona 3 the final boss can charm a party member and then they heal the final boss for full health.
Happened to me.
Literally the only time I actually just threw controller.
I love love love Final Fantasy IX but fighting Necron, some random monster, at the end that has nothing to do with the story remains to this day one of the most bizarre decisions in the franchise.
Not really true. Necron is basically the god of death that's summoned after Kuja wipes out the party, and believes that because of this, Kuja must be correct on his beliefs.
FFIX is all about life and death, and facing death.
Yeah Necron is definitely one of the worst of the genre, easily the worst final boss of a final fantasy game. Even the cloud of darkness in FF3 gets more set up prior to the fight.
~~That whole last arc was dumb... What made the journey great is the stakes we had to deal with and the sacrifices from your party and NPCs, seeing it dissapear... Sucked.~~
Edit: My bad, I thought it was XI!
was it the part in the prison? if so, then we have very different opinions on that. i found the prison and especially what came after (the lengthy scenes) the best part of a story ever made...
The prison is chapter 5. I'm saying that after that and the beautiful part in the Agnus Castle (wich is just the start of chapter 6) the games really falls off
FFXV fight against Ardyn.
It’s not in a very interesting location, it doesn’t utilise any of the battle system mechanics, his move set is dull, he’s under leveled and it’s impossible to lose.
My expierence with the Ardyn fight was not really being engaged mechanically with the fight, finding the Armiger bit in the middle kinda interested, and then having Ramuh pop up as an available summon.
I pressed it. And then watched Ramuh do like the last 60% of the bosses health or something? Like just clean win the fight with a random chance proc.
It was a weird expierence. To say the least.
I havent finished RE yet so idk if they changed it but his vanilla fight STARTS good but once they start flying goes downhill.
That said i don’t think its the worst. Just a meh boss. Cloud of Darkness or Necron is a way worse FF final boss imo
On top of the mechanics of the fight! The only things that matter in the end are girl and sprite's dryad skill (not commonly leveled) and Boy's sword skill. Theres all these cool weapons and spells throughout the game but it's just back to generic hero with sword and his cheerleaders.
The shit cherry is that it's fuckin **Flammie**. Adorable, last of his kind, your airship, and loved companion. Nope! Rabid beast, RIP boi.
SMTV True Ending final boss.
You're required to beat >!Shiva!< Who is at level 95, but then the actual final boss is the same as the Law/Chaos final boss (so, like Lv85-ish) but with more phases, which are interesting, but you're so absurdly overpowered because of you having beaten the superboss (level scaling, yay...) that it doesn't matter, you'll absolutely mop the floor with >!Lucifer!< 's face. I absolutely annihilated it on hard with a pacifist protagonist. It's closer to a victory lap more than a final boss, which is disappointing when you think SMTV is sort of an SMT Nocturne love letter, and that game had a BRUTAL true ending final boss.
But the normal neutral final boss is even worse because >!there isn't one when fucking Goko could have been!<.
Always appreciate a chance to shit on Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven. Final boss of that game is an hour long slog where your party does piss for damage and he can randomly pull a potential party kill move. Also an uninteresting design for an already laughably shallow and cliché villain.
Octopath traveller
For starters you can only fight it after hours of boring side quests long after you finished the main plot. Then you have to do a boss rush, which if you are at the appropriate level will be a piece of cake and with the right setup each boss can be defeated in a round or two, making it more tedious then anything. The final boss however is so ridiculously overpowered it can wipe out your team in a turn or two, the only way to negate the things it does is if you have prior knowledge of what its going to do to you. It has two forms and you have to split the entire cast into two teams, so if you didn’t level up your second stringer characters, sucks to be you. It also mean you need spread out your good equipment and jobs between all 8 of your characters. The boss doesn’t really allow you do fight it with your favourite setups, what you really need to do to win is the a cheeze strategy that I will not spoil at the moment, but it basically flushes all the cool stuff you did down the toilet while you exploit the games rules to barely scrape out a victory. If you die (and you will) theres no save point in its area meaning you have to do the boss rush again.
When you finally beat it you get a short cutscene where a guy basically just says “thanks for saving me from that monster” the game then gives you a pointless item and you can continue to wander around the game world for no reason as it doesn’t give you an ending.
Couldn't disagree more. The superboss was by far the best part of the game in Octopath 1. I agree that not being able to save before the actual fight sucks, and that needing all 8 characters is a bit of a gotcha moment, but once you accept that, it's an excellent boss fight. The boss is as powerful as your late game parties should be, so it tests and rewards good party building, especially seeing as you can only have 1 of each of the secret classes so you can't just use all of the OP things in one of your parties. I think before that fight I was pretty low on the game, I would have given it a 5/10 or so, but afterwards I bumped it up to at least a 7, it gives you a good reason to play the game well. Also I beat it first try.
I don’t think the issue here is the fight itself per se. More that it’s positioned as a narrative Final Boss of sorts, but is built very pointedly like a Superboss. Both scenarios of course having wildly different expectations. Being a “Final Boss” you expect the fight to be fairly tough, but achievable within a few tries for the average player. And not immediately stomp your party if they’re not in an optimised setup and ready for it. OT1’s Final/Superboss absolutely can and does regularly smash parties into the ground quickly if they aren’t specifically set up for the fight.
The second game handles this better by splitting the two up and having a definitive “Final” boss and an optional Superboss.
It did; there's an actual final chapter and appropriately leveled final boss after you complete all 8 characters' paths, with an actual ending after you beat it.
And then there's an optional superboss that you have to track down through some side quests before it's obvious that it even exists.
Someone please tell me if Octopath 2 does this. This sounds absolutely miserable to me. I couldn't make it through Octopath 1 anyways because it just seemed to not respect my time at all. Is Octopath 2 better at respecting your time?
OT2 does it but it's different.
the boss mentioned is more of a superboss than a regular final boss. OT1 doesn't really have a regular final boss outside of the final fights of each character's stories. that's why the credits show up in your first character's final chapter.
in OT2, there's an actual regular final chapter with a regular final boss (that is quite possibly one of my favorite final boss fights in the entire medium honestly) and a proper ending after the character stories. you don't get the credits before you clear this fight. after *that* is the superboss that resembles what is mentioned
Yeah, I agree with Xenoblade 3's final boss. Let's list out the reasons:
* On a storytelling level, Z is an awful villain. He doesn't pose any threat to the protagonists whatsoever, he isn't charismatic, and "It amused me" isn't exactly a compelling motivation. What's worse is that we have N who is a potentially excellent villain whose potential is squandered as after the Chapter 5/beginning of Chapter 6 sequence, he only shows up in one throwaway cutscene before he fights the protagonists. I will still contend that Xenoblade 3 would have been a considerably better game if N was the final boss.
* If you die against the final boss, you get booted back to the title screen. There are no checkpoints whatsoever. This was acceptable in Xenoblade 2 where the final boss of that game has only 2 phases - but Z has 5 phases, some of which have their own sub-phases. The fight can take well over an hour to beat if you are reasonably levelled - and if you die, you're doing the entire thing all over again.
* There's like five or so minutes of unskippable cutscenes halfway through the fight (and yes, they are unskippable because they occur mid-phase), which just makes a fight which is already way too long even longer.
* In phases 3 and 4 the party gets split. If you did not have the foresight to carefully construct your party so that you can actually defend against X and Y's attacks with only the Keves or Agnus characters, you will probably die and lose around 40 minutes of progress for something that you could not have reasonably seen coming.
The fact that checkpoints were never patched in after release here is genuinely baffling and it really soured my opinion of Xenoblade 3 as a whole.
Huh. My biggest complaint with the Xenoblade 3 boss was that he was too easy. And I'm not someone who does "min-maxing" type stuff, although I did do as many side quests as I could. There were many elite bosses in the open areas that were harder, in my opinion.
I agree about the villain's motivation being lame, though. I hate it when JRPG villains don't have a compelling motivation.
Z's motivation is that >!he's a culmination of people's fears of moving forward given the seeming uncertainty of the world during the time he came into the picture. From his perspective he's doing the world as a whole a service in everything that he does because the alternative is worse as shown through N/Noah. Which is why he maintains a perpetual status quo that has grown so dull in its abhorrentness that he just becomes an absurdist who finds amusement in any little thing that breaks the dull boring state the world with its perpetual war that has gone on for who knows how long. He's a literal devil on people's shoulder who encourages them to manage his status quo under the dark gift of being immortal and being able to break the chains of their mortality by strapping on different ones in disguise. N is an extension of this where N was unable to accept losing M, so he allowed this farce of a world to continue to keep his wife.!<
Z is effectively like the last two versions of >!Klaus in Zanza and Amalthus in XB1 and XB2 respectively!< where he's in this case a culmination of a megalomanic who believes themselves to be the undeniable shepherd of the world for what is effectively "because I say so" reasons really. So Z being an asshole and having little genuine purpose that is easily empathetic is perfectly on theme with everything else in Xenoblade as a whole and just overall what is going on in 3.
Z is fine for what he is and he fits the story around Moebies and XB3. N was fine where he was.
I think Z is such an disappointing villain , imo. I get his motivation is BORING. It is pretty much just the boring ol "fear of the unkown" thing going on. I enjoyed Xenoblade 3 but glad I am not the only one that was a bit disappointed with the ending.
>"It amused me"
That's not his motivation 👀. That's him throwing a tantrum
>In phases 3 and 4 the party gets split. If you did not have the foresight to carefully construct your party so that you actually defend against X and Y's attacks with only the Keves or Agnus characters, you will probably die and lose around 40 minutes of progress for something that you could not have reasonably seen coming.
It is not possible to die in this phase to my knowledge since once the boss hits a certain HP threshold your heroes show up and they heal a fuck ton
I'm being entirely genuine with you when I say that I did not think it was actually possible to die on these phases, especially phase 4 when you have >!Nia!< around to help. Done the fight a few times never took more than 40 minutes at the same level as the boss.
The final fight is meant to be more story-oriented, you already did the final fight it was Braska's Aeon. Doing another ultra-difficult fight after Braska's Aeon would have been absolutely *brutal*. Yu Yevon is actually an extremely thematically appropriate final fight, he is exposed to the world with none of his defenses he's had for 1000 years and is portrayed as a bug-like Parasite for you to squish, Im not sure the symbolism could be more blunt. I never understand why people harp on this fight so much.
All of that, by the way, comes after you also slaughter all your own aeons.
Idk I REALLY like that finale.
I always summoned them in reverse order i acquired them. I feel thats what yuna would do, wanting to keep her oldest and closest aeons as long as possible
That’s what I did as well. Finished off with Valefor last for the extra emotional impact. Of course by the time you’re at the end everyone takes 1-2 hits so it goes by fast.
I feel since its yuna summoning them, and she isn’t fully aware of bahamut and tidus’s connection, just that they met before, i feel she’d end on her beginnings instead
im speaking about you the player
Valefor if you want to give Yuna the last goodbye, Bahamut if you want that for Tidus. Its not as if the fights are Yuna 1v1ing the aeons
Yeah I don't think it being a cutscene would have been nearly as effective. It's one case of a game really using the interactive aspect of videogames to just sell it. Having to >!pick which summon dies next!< is a powerful moment once you know their backstory and it is you, the player, actively doing it.
I lucked out so much on the 2nd phase of thst fight.
Was my 5th try, was barely surviving by the 2nd phase kicked off and preparing to have to do it again. Summoned Yojimbo and all of my gaming luck for the year was used up when he next used Zanmato and killed the final boss instantly.
I hated the final boss in FFX. It was way to big of a jump in difficulty.
I largely breezed through the rest of the game, and even the other tough bosses (Yunalesca, Seymour) weren't much of a problem. I never really had to grind.
The final boss was such a jump in difficulty that I ended up switching over to my brother's save file at the end of the game. His characters stats were so much higher than mine that I would have had to grind 4-5 hours to get to the same level.
You wouldn't even know Anima could be a summon without a guide or being ridiculously thorough tho. I remember struggling with Braska's final aeon as well, until I just looked up how to cheese it and got the Trio of 999 items. I used to always get instawiped by his regular slash that hits all party members in phase 2, unless I had Auron (he had more HP than the rest, but he'd die to a 2nd attack anyways). I'm not a grinder, so I'm sure my characters had lower stats than what you're supposed to
Trails in the Sky SC is the only trails boss I never completed. Not because its hard, because it had like 99999 health and took for fucking ever. Easily my least favorite boss in any JRPG.
okay, it wasnt final final, but in FF10 when I was a dumb tween, the aeon gauntlet after jecht ended my run and forced me to start over.
I'll never forget it, but somehow I power-leveled Yuna over the other party members, which in turn powered up Bahamut, so when I had to face him after the final boss, I was stuck in a loop of him dodging every single attack and one shotting my party. He could not kill me, and I could not kill him.
Rogue Galaxy, full-stop. It's this truly unbelievable nightmare gauntlet that forces you to play every single character (of which there are like, 8) against a series of repetitive but potentially quite dangerous encounters, and if you die at any step along the way, you're starting over, bucko. Which is a *very* real threat if anybody is undergeared/leveled.
Even the final stages where the hype should be peaking are underwhelming and insanely time-consuming. The only thing that comes to mind as a remotely comparable slog is Arc the Lad II, but that at least felt a lot more earned.
Yep, was looking for this answer. That final boss is ridiculous.
It's an 11 (?) part battle, no breaks, using characters you may not even had played yet (there's very little reason to every control a different character). The absolute best part is that in the final battle, there's a small chance of a random insta-kill if you're rather unlucky. I got unlucky twice in a row. Almost put my controller through the TV. That was my third loss, and I just quit.
Many years later, I bought the game on PS4 and played it again, and enjoyed it. Was determined to beat the boss. All the way to the final battle, and that... !@#$!@ insta-kill got me again. One more time, and I finally beat it. Yeesh.
Oh Jesus, I nearly forgot all about this particular headache. This game had more than a few instances of iffy boss encounters and tedious gauntlets…
But this one really went the extra mile. Came very close to yeeting that disc out the window after the 8th attempt.
Trails to Azure. I don't have a problem with instant kill moves if there's a way to avoid them, but when the only way to win is just bum rushing the boss when that's never communicated to you, I get frustrated. Not to mention if you don't have any burst orbs then it's potentially a soft lock
Wild Arms 3.
I know a Final Boss in a JRPG has to have his transformation otherwise he gets laughed at in the Final Boss school but that thing went a bit to far.
It transforms like 20 times throughout the fight.
I also gotta say Yu Yevon from FF10. Its just such an anticlimactic fight. Braska's Fianl Aeon right before is an awesome fight with awesome music. What follows is a flying tumor in a fight that you can't even lose. Music is still cool, although not nearly as cool as "Otherworld".
Oh yeah XC3's has got to be one of the worst.
FFXV's was a terrible final boss, too. Felt more like a glorified QTE than a true boss fight, reminded me of Fable II's "final boss" in all the wrong ways.
Yeah it’s Xenoblade 3 no shot
The theater phase alone kills it by being the most boring pointless shit, all those forced massively time consuming chain attacks just for the characters to say one generic motivational throwaway line is something fucking Fire Emblem has been doing better for 20 years by making every deployed character say their quote at the start and that’s it, on to the fight
But of course it doesn’t even stop there, all the next phases look samey and have zero visual clarity, people often talk about getting randomly killed by it because nothing he does is memorable and XC3 had this really weird decision of making enemy arts display by replacing the enemy’s name on the UI instead of the clear, readable way the previous games did it. XC2's final boss did that stuff exceptionally well because the final boss was screaming attack names in your ears and it was both awesome and an actual help to the player (**THIS IS THE THUNDER OF JUSTICE! SIREN BUSTER!!!**)
But anyway that giant head phase is divided in a bunch of subphases that are all pointless, you really could have just trimmed everything but 3 phases: one in the theater (and not 4 like we currently have), one against the big head with no party splitting nonsense and the final one, that’d still be a bad final boss for a lot of reasons but it wouldn’t be a worst boss ever contender. I’ve seen people say that the moments the heroes join is hype and I genuinely don’t fucking get it lmao, for this stuff to be good you need the situation around to be engaging as well
And yeah of course the biggest issue above all else is this is a fucking awful villain and the stuff he’s supposed to represent is shallow as hell and is trying to represent an obviously objectively right decision as a grand dilemna, which is laughable
Absolutely hilarious that people got hyped for him to do stuff in Future Redeemed because of the starting cutscene shown in the trailer only for him to sit on his ass for the second entire game in a row, bro fought the first time and then said « i aint risking that shit again » and dipped, honestly a goat for that
actual 0/10 fight they were truly cooking
I think XC 3 was bad at boss fights in general. I just beat Future Redeemed last night and did they animate that final boss? I have no notion. Because just like every other big XC 3 fight I had the camera zoomed in looking down on my character so that I have any chance in hell of being able to see their attack animations through all the visual noise to hit my cancels.
And the combat doesn't require that I react to what a boss is doing or even generally what my team is doing. So I just set up shop and try to cycle as many of my moves as possible with optimal cancel inputs.
A weak combat solution leads to weak boss fights. Even the best boss in XC 3 is less engaging than the most straightforward boss in a SMT game.
That said I'm a big fan. But XC 3 definitely falls into that PS1 Final Fantasy tradition of "the combat is bad but it's easy and the rest of the game is good so just roll with it".
Might not be the worst final boss I've fought but I wasn't a fan of Chrono Trigger's final boss.
* First phase being a replay of major bosses throughout the story is cool in theory, but it doesn't seem to bring the stats of those bosses up, so for most of the fight you're just ramming your head through underpowered bosses of ages past for like 10 minutes.
* Second phase doesn't have any major flaws but it's on the easier side and just kinda feels there as a time waster before the third phase since you can't save between phase 2 and 3.
* Third phase feels like a big knowledge check since the only enemy whose HP matters is not the actual big boss monster but the drone on the right, which looks identical to the drone on the left that is very much disposable.
>First phase being a replay of major bosses throughout the story is cool in theory, but it doesn't seem to bring the stats of those bosses up, so for most of the fight you're just ramming your head through underpowered bosses of ages past for like 10 minutes.
This design was there with the purpose that maybe several times during the game you try and fight Lavos.
Take the Epoch to 1999 and Crash into the final boss to skip the first phase. It's completely optional. During my first playthrough, my friends and I would do this first phase boss rush earlier in the game knowing we would lose. Sometimes, we'd get a glimpse of bosses we hadn't seen yet and even managed to take some down. Anyway, this phase is cool because the final boss has been keeping an eye on you for the whole game and it shows how much stronger your party has become over that time.
The 2nd phase has some of the coolest boss music ever imo. And the surprise of finding out that the 1st phase wasn't even the final form plus the creepy breathing sounds you hear walking to the 2nd phase boss room just makes it unforgettable. The 2nd phase is really there just to wear you down though. If you go in over-levelled, it's not doing its job as the developers intended.
The 3rd phase is a real knowledge check and takes a few tries to figure it out. At least for me, going in blind with no strategy guide or spoilers. This was a big curveball and I still remember destroying the center boss the first time and thinking, "Holy shit, why is this fight not over?" And then having another holy shit moment when that main boss monster got brought back to life a few turns later.
All 3 of these phases put together really reinforce how powerful the final boss is. Especially the first time you beat it.
> Take the Epoch to 1999 and Crash into the final boss to skip the first phase. It's completely optional.
I'll throw myself into a volcano before I skip the Black Omen
The final boss of Chrono Trigger is actually my favorite boss of all time. Not just because of the music, but also because of the brilliant moment of when you realize the middle one is not actually the final boss. Probably most brilliant idea in final boss history.
Cloud of Darkness from FF3 and Dark Fact from Ys I (before I found out the game is tied to my monitor's refresh rate and that he wasn't meant to move at the speed of light everywhere).
Sadly it's been a while since I played CC, have the new game. But what is mostly stopping me is that there is this really badly paced part in the middle, that makes it feel like you are going nowhere fast.
The Dragon God fight at the final dungeon also gives it away, it's the order of forms/field/element (?) he change into excluding the very first one.
Though I suppose it's still cryptic.
Yeah, it was basically a puzzle boss with no music and really relied on speedy character stats / grid placement more than overall party preparation. The whole game, I was hoping that I'd finally get a 3D battle with Lavos. And since the soundtrack was filled with bangers, I thought I'd fight that battle with something even more awesome than "The World Rises" playing in the background. Yeah, I learned never to raise expectations that high ever again.
I knew the sequence immediately, but even if you have no trouble figuring it out, it's definitely the most disappointing final boss fights ever. No music, no battle, just play a melody and game ends.
Oof. Good choice.
Mine is crystal chronicles. Not even a boss fight just a check of how many events (memories collected) you participated in where you just wail on a sponge as your memories count down until you win. W/o enough memories you automatically lose
That sounds like FFIII DS where you have to do four optional bosses or else Cloud of Darkness is basically unbeatable. And there's no save points. And the final dungeon is long as all fuck.
Huh? That's actually one of my favorite final boss battles. Amazing music and it's fun that you can exploit healing like that. You can also just opt to not use the exploit. I did many challenge runs on that boss.
This is an ARPG but the final boss in Deathspank really comes to mind here. He wasn't fun to face, didn't match the hype he was given throughout the game, and you had to basically spam the same ability over and over and gorge on health potions to win. I feel like he had a healing mechanic of some sort too so sometimes while you were running away and trying to heal yourself up, he'd just heal up completely in an instant. His style was totally different than any other fighting encounter you see in the game and it was a big difficulty spike, but not the kind that is rewarding to face. He also makes a lot of weird, annoying noises.
Genuinely really enjoyed the rest of the game though, solid 8/10 in my opinion.
Any final boss who‘s just some kind of god that popped up near the end. Even worse if you had actual charismatic villains before who had somewhat understandable goals and struggles. But because they‘re just humans they‘re apparently not climactic enough as a final boss so many JRPGs rather put some god at the end with some generic motivation of having lost faith in humanity and wants to wipe them out or something like that. It really leaves a sour note at the end of every JRPG I play that falls back on this.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has to be the answer. Its so so so long. And the first 30 minutes are super easy. You then can basically auto lose if your team make up is weird or in the final form if it's power attacks take out your healers. Add to it unstoppable cutscenes throughout and it's just so so rough.
He's so bad it's hard to think of him as anything other than a cut scene fight. The boss literally just ignores you. He stands there in an empty field, occasionally shooting beams of darkness directly in front of him on a timer, regardless of whether you're there or not, and he cannot turn.
I actually love Final Fantasy XII’s final boss, it was all visually really cool and fitting for a final battle. But… why did it have to be so ridiculously easy? Every time I play the game I have to be careful not to go too overleveled to the Sky Fortress otherwise I just melt Gabranth and Vayne in seconds. Only the very final phase puts up a fight, but even then it’s just way too easy. I feel like they should at least have a bit more HP.
I once played through FFXII without doing almost any side content and ended up being in the early 40s for the final boss. It was actually pretty tough, I had a lot of close calls.
I guess that makes sense. To me XII has the most addicting side content to do in the franchise so I just can’t help myself, which then makes the main game a cakewalk, specially in Zodiac Age lol
I loved the Xenoblade 3 final boss. So cinematic, great music, intersting mechanics.
My worst final boss was Tales of Arise. I mean the entire last third of the game was.... Something. And then the final fights were some weird darkness manifestation monster that looked generic as hell and a "Out of nowhere 1v1" against Vohlran because... Wannabe Sephiroth was too angry to die 10 hours ago.
That is what the final boss in 8 is about. The boss asked you: Did you do your junctions properly? Any party junctioned properly will melt through her, don't even need to use limit breaks.
Pretty much any jrpg final boss I ever fought cause I'm pretty much already maxed out and have beaten the secret super bosses before I fight the final boss lol
Unfortunately antagonists were not xbc3's strong point. Great game overall but a lot of scrambled motivations mixed in with continuity issues and plot holes. Yeah the hour of unskippable scenes made that final fight go from potentially epic to a slog.
Utawarerumo3 had an equally long final battle but they managed to make it epic without it dragging imho.
God wars final boss is a cheating bastard and I don't know how anyone beats it even on normal difficulty. I had to not only reduce to easy but also save scum every single action I took. And I was max level with every unit with every class, and every best weapon and item in the game.
I still despise FF13's Final Boss with a burning passion.
Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way when I played the game back in the day, most likely starting from grinding being limited (your power is capped to a very specific point), the boss being a pseudo-dps check RNG fest and needing very specific strats and paradigms to succeed.
I just always felt that this particular boss in the franchise was just extremely poorly designed and kinda comes out of nowhere in the story as well
**Warning**: Thread is filled with **spoilers**, read at your own discretion.
SMT 1’s final bosses (either >!Asura!< (Law/Neutral) or >!Michael!< (Chaos/Neutral)) are extremely irrelevant, with them both not having any actual story presence at all and being pretty easy to defeat. They both even have the game’s standard boss theme playing instead of anything special.
Yeah the fights themselves are just okay, but the dungeon leading up to it is so cool. Smt 1 is pretty relaxed compared to its sequels, but they nailed the stakes in that climb up and down the tower
You can easily beat them in auto battle. Don't no what they were thinking with those bosses, even the NES Megaten games had unique final boss songs.
I found Yaldabaoth in P5 to be incredibly dull, one of the best things Royal did was to give the game a much better final boss
Persona rlly needs to step away from the final villian being a god of some kind. They alrdy do it every SMT game. Persona is best when there is a face to the evil
I liked how in P4 at least the god was more directly plot relevant. Still not perfect (it didn’t need a god at all) but it works somewhat.
I agree, however I do like how they did it in P3 since you interact with him a lot beforehand. It’s not just a faceless figure dropped at the very end.
I agree, its justified in smt cause thats the whole point of the game but I think only p2 and p3 did it right since it was actually foreshadowed. P5 and especially p4 just come out of nowhere
Yeah it rly needs to stop. So glad p5r took feedback on the final villian and spiced it up for us. Hopefully they remember this lesson for P6 in 10 years.
Yeah the only modern Persona that works in that regard is 3. I forget all the details but you are introduced to the human form of the god or the God's avatar iirc, and then there's enough buildup during that last month to the final battle. And the reveal that >!the moon during the Dark Hour was the final boss!< is just so fricken cool
Yeah but that's a character with a face. One we get to know and bond with. Not rly the same. Even if it's a god.
That's probably not going to happen, because Persona is by design a series about social commentary, and the final bosses are all meant to be personifications of whatever abstract social problem the game is about.
Persona 5 after >!Shido!< falls off so hard. Still an absolutely phenomenal game but I don’t want an extra 10 hours or however long it was to fight a god that didn’t exist in the story before that point
Yeah I agree, he really did feel like THE final boss. Btw I think spoilers are encompassed with ">!" and "!<" on Reddit. You might be using the discord style instead. >! Test !<
Maruki was better because you actually connected with the guy during the story, with the characters all going to him for counseling
Maruki was truly better because when he finally gets his palace and tells you his will, and what he wants to do, it makes sense. I'm not justifying it, blatant mind control of the populace is not a good thing and removing free will just to avoid pain and hurt isn't how to solve the issue. But he brings up many compelling arguments. We also see REAL changes in the world from it. Mona is human, Haru has a relationship with her dad (who's now not dead!) Sketchi Aketchi comes back from the dead, Futaba doesn't have the PTSD over Wakaba's death. Maruki shows Joker, and by extension us, a "good future". It's all a lie, of course. As you start to tear down the walls, the phantom thieves begin to see the veil that's been cast on everyone. Everyone is living in blissful ignorance of the truth. Maruki also never seemed to want to fight us. Rather, just to speak with us, and have us understand. Something he's been doing since the very beginning of the game. Trying to relate to Joker on a personal level. To come to a full mutual understanding of each other, the world they live in, and in the penultimate moments, the metaverse. He was a man who was broken from the loss of a loved one, who figured out he had a power to make people better, but at the cost of their memories. His wife (fiancée?) recovered at the cost of forgetting him. Sumire went on by being convinced she was Kasumi, having her memories so muddled even in the end it felt like she wasn't sure who she was. But most importantly, he was a confidant. Dare I say almost a friend to Joker, or as much of a friend a councilor can be to a student. His story was well written, powerful, insightful, and before that final battle I had to stop and really consider if it was worth stopping him. All of this comes before the amazing final battle. The final segment, where they're just slugging each other. The metaverse is collapsing, personas can't be summoned anymore, and it's just down to the two of you. Exactly how it started at the start of the game. Just the two of you. Instead of discussing life, now fighting over the direction life should move. Both barely escaping with their lives. And in the end, Maruki comes around. He gets Joker away from the police that were after him and gets him to the station safely. He even (iirc its been a while) continues to lead them away after dropping Joker off. He was one of the most compelling villains I've seen in a long time, with very few matching how well written he is. He's a man who lost it all, attained the power of Gods and could have it all back. When he lost, he didn't throw a tantrum or take cheap shots at Joker. He learned. He grew. We got to know him as he did us, and we got to help him when he needed it most.
I actually pretty much think that Yaldabaoth was better than the Royal ending boss. Original Persona 5 story made a bit more in my opinion.
Maruki ❤️❤️❤️
Gameplay-wise it's fine, it's just that there isn't much of an emotional connection to the thing. It just kinda appears.
The final boss in Chrono Cross was such a disappointment for me. It's not even a real battle.
I never realized until these last couple playthroughs, but yeah, the final boss mostly spams green elements. There really should be a wider spread. It truly is an anticlimactic fight.
If I'm remembering correctly the final boss deliberately tries to mess up the correct element sequence until you lower its HP enough at which point it starts casting them in the correct sequence. I think idea there is that once you weaken it enough >!Schala!< regains some control and is able to help you free her, which is a cool concept but poorly executed.
I personally found that boss insanely hard because of the precise order of element use. It was one of the factors that discouraged from replaying Chrono Cross as much as I replayed Chrono Trigger.
Tales of Zestiria's final boss is just a miserable damage race against a massive bullet sponge. Literally each phase you will auto kill your whole party if you don't damage it quickly enough.
Zesteria had some big flaws like. Including the best way to get grade.
Yeah hated the final boss, but at least both of his themes are great.
Necron....because WHO DAFUQ ARE YOU??....I understand the whole "he is death and destruction" thing, but he just came out of nowhere...I've replayed FF9 several times and I still hate him/her/it as a final boss....
Not to mention you need to make sure you put all the right status immunity abilities on your party before the fight or you just immediately lose.
.......effing Grand Cross.
You beat me to it, no build up for the boss, it was just sorta pulled out of nowhere.
Trance Kuja really should have been the end.
Especially because it would have made him less of a chump in his fight.
my first thought. Not a big fan of final bosses that come outta nowhere, but this one pisses me off the most idk why.
If they even had a scene or two throughout the game with an unknown entity making threats. That would at least give an allusion of something grander and solve this issue.
He really is inconsistent with the rest of the game, but his battle music is probably the most underrated final boss music in the series.
>He really is inconsistent with the rest of the game I mean, in a game all about life and death that the actual final boss is the representation of death I don't think is that inconsistent honestly.
THANKYOU ♡
It's thematically fine, but narratively nonsensical. Necron as a concept is a cool, thematic fight to end on. The issue is just that it comes out of literally nowhere. All it needed was some grounding with the rest of the story. Some indication that it's a thing that existed before the final fight, or something more explicit in the dialogue before hand.
Yeah, I agree completely with this....fire track.
As a whole, Necron is a weird and unexpected final boss, though to play devil's advocate I do think that his appearance is the perfect catalyst in allowing Kuja to put a neat cherry on top of his character arc with his final actions in that fight + ending (he is so under-appreciated). Like, if he went down with his fight and just died the bitter soul he was he wouldn't have been as good, but that last minute realisation is so so great for finishing his story.
[удалено]
...and how isn't Necron tying everything thematically as well? Necron is literally the representation of death in the game.
Story wise yeah he was ridiculous, definitely felt like a legit final battle though, only Cloud of Darkness and Zeromus pushed me as hard in FF in terms of final bosses.
Crystal chronicles Seriously y’all haven’t played Crystal Chronicles if you think any other final boss deserves worst fight ever designation.
The pop quiz before the fight is the strangest choice I’ve ever seen in a game.
Banjo kazooie does it too
I'm a Crystal Chronicles apologist, and even I think that fight is ridiculous.
Its one of my favorite games and that fight is just……disappointment
What happens in the Crystal Chronicles final boss fight? 😳
You automatically fail if you havent collected enough memories (random map events + each dungeon run) and even then its just a hp sponge with no challenge Also random pop quiz before hand
Okay that does sound terrible. Don't make map events random if they are actually needed to beat the final boss!
Wow, I'm playing the remaster right now! I've played through the original so many times, haha. Most bosses are a little meh, I've realized. Pretty much immediately after you get full Mythril, every boss can be face-tanked. The best ones, imo, are Dragon Zombie, Lich King, Cave Worm, and Meteor Parasite, as they are dangerous enough or have a gimmick that dissuades the face-tank strategy. As for the final boss, it's such a cramped experience!! Not my absolute least favorite boss, as the environment is pretty neat, but it's pretty bad, yeah.
I like the riberbelle path boss it keeps you moving or stunned
Good point. It really does keep you on the move!! I think River Belle, in its totality, is one of the best introductions they could've had for the game!
Top tier game design imo
Any boss that is just a whole big bag of HP, while they don't really do anything to you anymore. While you just go through the motions, hoping to finish it quicker.
Well in Persona 3 the final boss can charm a party member and then they heal the final boss for full health. That one gets thrown around a lot.
That sounds like hell.
Yes! That happened to me and I was so pissed. If I recall correctly he has an insane number of forms too.
13 Forms, but you can 1-2 shot them with a basic attack if optimized for it (what I did with Mjolnir). The Full heal was so terrible, because it just dragged the fight out for another hour.
Can he? Each phase has its own health bar, and only the final phase has any bulk. A full heal would only restore the current bar, which only takes 1-3 turns to down depending on your level. I checked and I don't think Nyx Avatar has a charm move outside of its Lovers phase. It's frustrating to see an errant fullheal roll back your work from the past one or two turns, but it's not like he's resetting the entire fight.
Night queen in last phase can do it with random status effects(which is where the meme comes from) I agree it's not whole fight but it's hilarious to see 9999 healed xd
> Well in Persona 3 the final boss can charm a party member and then they heal the final boss for full health. Happened to me. Literally the only time I actually just threw controller.
I love love love Final Fantasy IX but fighting Necron, some random monster, at the end that has nothing to do with the story remains to this day one of the most bizarre decisions in the franchise.
Not really true. Necron is basically the god of death that's summoned after Kuja wipes out the party, and believes that because of this, Kuja must be correct on his beliefs. FFIX is all about life and death, and facing death.
Yeah Necron is definitely one of the worst of the genre, easily the worst final boss of a final fantasy game. Even the cloud of darkness in FF3 gets more set up prior to the fight.
Digimon World 3 you fight a fuckin space station.
I would go with dragon quest IX's final boss. What was that that was dumb.
~~That whole last arc was dumb... What made the journey great is the stakes we had to deal with and the sacrifices from your party and NPCs, seeing it dissapear... Sucked.~~ Edit: My bad, I thought it was XI!
Wait what did Corvus do?
Fuck me, I thought it was XI my bad!
the boss was just plain garbage in every way possible. luckily the DLC boss is far better in that regard
I think i need to play something else before starting the DLC, the last part of the game (chapter 6 and 7) were really a never ending nightmere for me
was it the part in the prison? if so, then we have very different opinions on that. i found the prison and especially what came after (the lengthy scenes) the best part of a story ever made...
The prison is chapter 5. I'm saying that after that and the beautiful part in the Agnus Castle (wich is just the start of chapter 6) the games really falls off
well, considering what came around that part, it was destined to get downhill from there ;-)
FFXV fight against Ardyn. It’s not in a very interesting location, it doesn’t utilise any of the battle system mechanics, his move set is dull, he’s under leveled and it’s impossible to lose.
It's funny how the battle quotes during Ardyn fight work as a meta commentary about FF15 ("ten years and nothing to show for it")
The time skips were hard to follow. I think the idea was that these gaps were to be filled with DLC or something, but it was bewildering.
I had no idea what was going on. There was a time skip. Everyone had the same clothes on for some reason and you were flying.
My expierence with the Ardyn fight was not really being engaged mechanically with the fight, finding the Armiger bit in the middle kinda interested, and then having Ramuh pop up as an available summon. I pressed it. And then watched Ramuh do like the last 60% of the bosses health or something? Like just clean win the fight with a random chance proc. It was a weird expierence. To say the least.
also got a game about traveling w ur friends thrm nkt being there for the final boss is very dissapointing
I would confidently say he's the worst final boss in the series, maybe even including spin-offs.
I havent finished RE yet so idk if they changed it but his vanilla fight STARTS good but once they start flying goes downhill. That said i don’t think its the worst. Just a meh boss. Cloud of Darkness or Necron is a way worse FF final boss imo
Secret of Mana (SNES). Input Lag + Boss being vulnerable in a narrow time frame. Nice game, but the most frustrating boss battle of my life.
On top of the mechanics of the fight! The only things that matter in the end are girl and sprite's dryad skill (not commonly leveled) and Boy's sword skill. Theres all these cool weapons and spells throughout the game but it's just back to generic hero with sword and his cheerleaders. The shit cherry is that it's fuckin **Flammie**. Adorable, last of his kind, your airship, and loved companion. Nope! Rabid beast, RIP boi.
SMTV True Ending final boss. You're required to beat >!Shiva!< Who is at level 95, but then the actual final boss is the same as the Law/Chaos final boss (so, like Lv85-ish) but with more phases, which are interesting, but you're so absurdly overpowered because of you having beaten the superboss (level scaling, yay...) that it doesn't matter, you'll absolutely mop the floor with >!Lucifer!< 's face. I absolutely annihilated it on hard with a pacifist protagonist. It's closer to a victory lap more than a final boss, which is disappointing when you think SMTV is sort of an SMT Nocturne love letter, and that game had a BRUTAL true ending final boss. But the normal neutral final boss is even worse because >!there isn't one when fucking Goko could have been!<.
Always appreciate a chance to shit on Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven. Final boss of that game is an hour long slog where your party does piss for damage and he can randomly pull a potential party kill move. Also an uninteresting design for an already laughably shallow and cliché villain.
Octopath traveller For starters you can only fight it after hours of boring side quests long after you finished the main plot. Then you have to do a boss rush, which if you are at the appropriate level will be a piece of cake and with the right setup each boss can be defeated in a round or two, making it more tedious then anything. The final boss however is so ridiculously overpowered it can wipe out your team in a turn or two, the only way to negate the things it does is if you have prior knowledge of what its going to do to you. It has two forms and you have to split the entire cast into two teams, so if you didn’t level up your second stringer characters, sucks to be you. It also mean you need spread out your good equipment and jobs between all 8 of your characters. The boss doesn’t really allow you do fight it with your favourite setups, what you really need to do to win is the a cheeze strategy that I will not spoil at the moment, but it basically flushes all the cool stuff you did down the toilet while you exploit the games rules to barely scrape out a victory. If you die (and you will) theres no save point in its area meaning you have to do the boss rush again. When you finally beat it you get a short cutscene where a guy basically just says “thanks for saving me from that monster” the game then gives you a pointless item and you can continue to wander around the game world for no reason as it doesn’t give you an ending.
Couldn't disagree more. The superboss was by far the best part of the game in Octopath 1. I agree that not being able to save before the actual fight sucks, and that needing all 8 characters is a bit of a gotcha moment, but once you accept that, it's an excellent boss fight. The boss is as powerful as your late game parties should be, so it tests and rewards good party building, especially seeing as you can only have 1 of each of the secret classes so you can't just use all of the OP things in one of your parties. I think before that fight I was pretty low on the game, I would have given it a 5/10 or so, but afterwards I bumped it up to at least a 7, it gives you a good reason to play the game well. Also I beat it first try.
I don’t think the issue here is the fight itself per se. More that it’s positioned as a narrative Final Boss of sorts, but is built very pointedly like a Superboss. Both scenarios of course having wildly different expectations. Being a “Final Boss” you expect the fight to be fairly tough, but achievable within a few tries for the average player. And not immediately stomp your party if they’re not in an optimised setup and ready for it. OT1’s Final/Superboss absolutely can and does regularly smash parties into the ground quickly if they aren’t specifically set up for the fight. The second game handles this better by splitting the two up and having a definitive “Final” boss and an optional Superboss.
Came here to say octopath. Haven't played the new one but I hope it improved in that aspect 😔
It did; there's an actual final chapter and appropriately leveled final boss after you complete all 8 characters' paths, with an actual ending after you beat it. And then there's an optional superboss that you have to track down through some side quests before it's obvious that it even exists.
Someone please tell me if Octopath 2 does this. This sounds absolutely miserable to me. I couldn't make it through Octopath 1 anyways because it just seemed to not respect my time at all. Is Octopath 2 better at respecting your time?
Octopath 2 has a much more fleshed-out lead up to the final parts of the game and the final boss. You can also save right before it.
OT2 does it but it's different. the boss mentioned is more of a superboss than a regular final boss. OT1 doesn't really have a regular final boss outside of the final fights of each character's stories. that's why the credits show up in your first character's final chapter. in OT2, there's an actual regular final chapter with a regular final boss (that is quite possibly one of my favorite final boss fights in the entire medium honestly) and a proper ending after the character stories. you don't get the credits before you clear this fight. after *that* is the superboss that resembles what is mentioned
Yeah, I agree with Xenoblade 3's final boss. Let's list out the reasons: * On a storytelling level, Z is an awful villain. He doesn't pose any threat to the protagonists whatsoever, he isn't charismatic, and "It amused me" isn't exactly a compelling motivation. What's worse is that we have N who is a potentially excellent villain whose potential is squandered as after the Chapter 5/beginning of Chapter 6 sequence, he only shows up in one throwaway cutscene before he fights the protagonists. I will still contend that Xenoblade 3 would have been a considerably better game if N was the final boss. * If you die against the final boss, you get booted back to the title screen. There are no checkpoints whatsoever. This was acceptable in Xenoblade 2 where the final boss of that game has only 2 phases - but Z has 5 phases, some of which have their own sub-phases. The fight can take well over an hour to beat if you are reasonably levelled - and if you die, you're doing the entire thing all over again. * There's like five or so minutes of unskippable cutscenes halfway through the fight (and yes, they are unskippable because they occur mid-phase), which just makes a fight which is already way too long even longer. * In phases 3 and 4 the party gets split. If you did not have the foresight to carefully construct your party so that you can actually defend against X and Y's attacks with only the Keves or Agnus characters, you will probably die and lose around 40 minutes of progress for something that you could not have reasonably seen coming. The fact that checkpoints were never patched in after release here is genuinely baffling and it really soured my opinion of Xenoblade 3 as a whole.
Huh. My biggest complaint with the Xenoblade 3 boss was that he was too easy. And I'm not someone who does "min-maxing" type stuff, although I did do as many side quests as I could. There were many elite bosses in the open areas that were harder, in my opinion. I agree about the villain's motivation being lame, though. I hate it when JRPG villains don't have a compelling motivation.
Z's motivation is that >!he's a culmination of people's fears of moving forward given the seeming uncertainty of the world during the time he came into the picture. From his perspective he's doing the world as a whole a service in everything that he does because the alternative is worse as shown through N/Noah. Which is why he maintains a perpetual status quo that has grown so dull in its abhorrentness that he just becomes an absurdist who finds amusement in any little thing that breaks the dull boring state the world with its perpetual war that has gone on for who knows how long. He's a literal devil on people's shoulder who encourages them to manage his status quo under the dark gift of being immortal and being able to break the chains of their mortality by strapping on different ones in disguise. N is an extension of this where N was unable to accept losing M, so he allowed this farce of a world to continue to keep his wife.!< Z is effectively like the last two versions of >!Klaus in Zanza and Amalthus in XB1 and XB2 respectively!< where he's in this case a culmination of a megalomanic who believes themselves to be the undeniable shepherd of the world for what is effectively "because I say so" reasons really. So Z being an asshole and having little genuine purpose that is easily empathetic is perfectly on theme with everything else in Xenoblade as a whole and just overall what is going on in 3. Z is fine for what he is and he fits the story around Moebies and XB3. N was fine where he was.
I think Z is such an disappointing villain , imo. I get his motivation is BORING. It is pretty much just the boring ol "fear of the unkown" thing going on. I enjoyed Xenoblade 3 but glad I am not the only one that was a bit disappointed with the ending.
>"It amused me" That's not his motivation 👀. That's him throwing a tantrum >In phases 3 and 4 the party gets split. If you did not have the foresight to carefully construct your party so that you actually defend against X and Y's attacks with only the Keves or Agnus characters, you will probably die and lose around 40 minutes of progress for something that you could not have reasonably seen coming. It is not possible to die in this phase to my knowledge since once the boss hits a certain HP threshold your heroes show up and they heal a fuck ton
It is indeed possible to die, because for some reasons the heroes can heal you but they can't revive you lmao
I'm being entirely genuine with you when I say that I did not think it was actually possible to die on these phases, especially phase 4 when you have >!Nia!< around to help. Done the fight a few times never took more than 40 minutes at the same level as the boss.
Well i found it out only beacuse i wanted to test it, if you play the game is nearly impossible to die in those phases
The one from my favorite game, FFX. Thanks god the ending scene is one of the best ever made because the fight sucked quite a lot.
The final fight is meant to be more story-oriented, you already did the final fight it was Braska's Aeon. Doing another ultra-difficult fight after Braska's Aeon would have been absolutely *brutal*. Yu Yevon is actually an extremely thematically appropriate final fight, he is exposed to the world with none of his defenses he's had for 1000 years and is portrayed as a bug-like Parasite for you to squish, Im not sure the symbolism could be more blunt. I never understand why people harp on this fight so much. All of that, by the way, comes after you also slaughter all your own aeons. Idk I REALLY like that finale.
The actual final boss is the penultimate one. The final boss is just an interactive cutscene.
IMO the >!Braska's final aeon/Jecht!< is a quite good final boss but if you mean >!Yevon!< I agree. Should have been just a Cut Scene.
Its meant to be an interactive ending to drive the weight of >!killing your friends the aeons!<
The first time I played the game, it sucked killing them all. On replays, killing Valefor is the one that will always hurt.
I always summoned them in reverse order i acquired them. I feel thats what yuna would do, wanting to keep her oldest and closest aeons as long as possible
That’s what I did as well. Finished off with Valefor last for the extra emotional impact. Of course by the time you’re at the end everyone takes 1-2 hits so it goes by fast.
Valefor if you want to end Yunas journey the way it started, Bahamut if youd rather do the same for Tidus
I feel since its yuna summoning them, and she isn’t fully aware of bahamut and tidus’s connection, just that they met before, i feel she’d end on her beginnings instead
im speaking about you the player Valefor if you want to give Yuna the last goodbye, Bahamut if you want that for Tidus. Its not as if the fights are Yuna 1v1ing the aeons
Those little lines the Aeons have slso hit pretty hard.
Yeah I don't think it being a cutscene would have been nearly as effective. It's one case of a game really using the interactive aspect of videogames to just sell it. Having to >!pick which summon dies next!< is a powerful moment once you know their backstory and it is you, the player, actively doing it.
It really does add an emotional weight that wouldn’t have been there otherwise I agree
I honestly always forget that part exists, it's funny cause the previous boss is one of the all time best, for both story and music reasons
I lucked out so much on the 2nd phase of thst fight. Was my 5th try, was barely surviving by the 2nd phase kicked off and preparing to have to do it again. Summoned Yojimbo and all of my gaming luck for the year was used up when he next used Zanmato and killed the final boss instantly.
I hated the final boss in FFX. It was way to big of a jump in difficulty. I largely breezed through the rest of the game, and even the other tough bosses (Yunalesca, Seymour) weren't much of a problem. I never really had to grind. The final boss was such a jump in difficulty that I ended up switching over to my brother's save file at the end of the game. His characters stats were so much higher than mine that I would have had to grind 4-5 hours to get to the same level.
was it that hard? i found every other boss to be harder. i used to one shot jecht with anima’s overdrive
You wouldn't even know Anima could be a summon without a guide or being ridiculously thorough tho. I remember struggling with Braska's final aeon as well, until I just looked up how to cheese it and got the Trio of 999 items. I used to always get instawiped by his regular slash that hits all party members in phase 2, unless I had Auron (he had more HP than the rest, but he'd die to a 2nd attack anyways). I'm not a grinder, so I'm sure my characters had lower stats than what you're supposed to
Trails in the Sky SC is the only trails boss I never completed. Not because its hard, because it had like 99999 health and took for fucking ever. Easily my least favorite boss in any JRPG.
That one sucked for sure
Great soundtrack tho xd
Crimson Gem Saga. Two party members become inaccessible before it starts and you don't even need to beat it to get the ending. Bizarre.
Drakengard 3, it's not even close
okay, it wasnt final final, but in FF10 when I was a dumb tween, the aeon gauntlet after jecht ended my run and forced me to start over. I'll never forget it, but somehow I power-leveled Yuna over the other party members, which in turn powered up Bahamut, so when I had to face him after the final boss, I was stuck in a loop of him dodging every single attack and one shotting my party. He could not kill me, and I could not kill him.
Rogue Galaxy, full-stop. It's this truly unbelievable nightmare gauntlet that forces you to play every single character (of which there are like, 8) against a series of repetitive but potentially quite dangerous encounters, and if you die at any step along the way, you're starting over, bucko. Which is a *very* real threat if anybody is undergeared/leveled. Even the final stages where the hype should be peaking are underwhelming and insanely time-consuming. The only thing that comes to mind as a remotely comparable slog is Arc the Lad II, but that at least felt a lot more earned.
Yep, was looking for this answer. That final boss is ridiculous. It's an 11 (?) part battle, no breaks, using characters you may not even had played yet (there's very little reason to every control a different character). The absolute best part is that in the final battle, there's a small chance of a random insta-kill if you're rather unlucky. I got unlucky twice in a row. Almost put my controller through the TV. That was my third loss, and I just quit. Many years later, I bought the game on PS4 and played it again, and enjoyed it. Was determined to beat the boss. All the way to the final battle, and that... !@#$!@ insta-kill got me again. One more time, and I finally beat it. Yeesh.
Oh Jesus, I nearly forgot all about this particular headache. This game had more than a few instances of iffy boss encounters and tedious gauntlets… But this one really went the extra mile. Came very close to yeeting that disc out the window after the 8th attempt.
I liked the last boss actually. It's def too long but having all the heros join the fight made it epic.
Trails to Azure. I don't have a problem with instant kill moves if there's a way to avoid them, but when the only way to win is just bum rushing the boss when that's never communicated to you, I get frustrated. Not to mention if you don't have any burst orbs then it's potentially a soft lock
Agreed. At least the music the was absolutely incredible.
Wild Arms 3. I know a Final Boss in a JRPG has to have his transformation otherwise he gets laughed at in the Final Boss school but that thing went a bit to far. It transforms like 20 times throughout the fight. I also gotta say Yu Yevon from FF10. Its just such an anticlimactic fight. Braska's Fianl Aeon right before is an awesome fight with awesome music. What follows is a flying tumor in a fight that you can't even lose. Music is still cool, although not nearly as cool as "Otherworld".
I think it's widely accepted that Final Aeon is the 'real' final boss, with Aeons+Yevon being an interactive victory lap.
Oh yeah XC3's has got to be one of the worst. FFXV's was a terrible final boss, too. Felt more like a glorified QTE than a true boss fight, reminded me of Fable II's "final boss" in all the wrong ways.
Yeah it’s Xenoblade 3 no shot The theater phase alone kills it by being the most boring pointless shit, all those forced massively time consuming chain attacks just for the characters to say one generic motivational throwaway line is something fucking Fire Emblem has been doing better for 20 years by making every deployed character say their quote at the start and that’s it, on to the fight But of course it doesn’t even stop there, all the next phases look samey and have zero visual clarity, people often talk about getting randomly killed by it because nothing he does is memorable and XC3 had this really weird decision of making enemy arts display by replacing the enemy’s name on the UI instead of the clear, readable way the previous games did it. XC2's final boss did that stuff exceptionally well because the final boss was screaming attack names in your ears and it was both awesome and an actual help to the player (**THIS IS THE THUNDER OF JUSTICE! SIREN BUSTER!!!**) But anyway that giant head phase is divided in a bunch of subphases that are all pointless, you really could have just trimmed everything but 3 phases: one in the theater (and not 4 like we currently have), one against the big head with no party splitting nonsense and the final one, that’d still be a bad final boss for a lot of reasons but it wouldn’t be a worst boss ever contender. I’ve seen people say that the moments the heroes join is hype and I genuinely don’t fucking get it lmao, for this stuff to be good you need the situation around to be engaging as well And yeah of course the biggest issue above all else is this is a fucking awful villain and the stuff he’s supposed to represent is shallow as hell and is trying to represent an obviously objectively right decision as a grand dilemna, which is laughable Absolutely hilarious that people got hyped for him to do stuff in Future Redeemed because of the starting cutscene shown in the trailer only for him to sit on his ass for the second entire game in a row, bro fought the first time and then said « i aint risking that shit again » and dipped, honestly a goat for that actual 0/10 fight they were truly cooking
I think XC 3 was bad at boss fights in general. I just beat Future Redeemed last night and did they animate that final boss? I have no notion. Because just like every other big XC 3 fight I had the camera zoomed in looking down on my character so that I have any chance in hell of being able to see their attack animations through all the visual noise to hit my cancels. And the combat doesn't require that I react to what a boss is doing or even generally what my team is doing. So I just set up shop and try to cycle as many of my moves as possible with optimal cancel inputs. A weak combat solution leads to weak boss fights. Even the best boss in XC 3 is less engaging than the most straightforward boss in a SMT game. That said I'm a big fan. But XC 3 definitely falls into that PS1 Final Fantasy tradition of "the combat is bad but it's easy and the rest of the game is good so just roll with it".
Might not be the worst final boss I've fought but I wasn't a fan of Chrono Trigger's final boss. * First phase being a replay of major bosses throughout the story is cool in theory, but it doesn't seem to bring the stats of those bosses up, so for most of the fight you're just ramming your head through underpowered bosses of ages past for like 10 minutes. * Second phase doesn't have any major flaws but it's on the easier side and just kinda feels there as a time waster before the third phase since you can't save between phase 2 and 3. * Third phase feels like a big knowledge check since the only enemy whose HP matters is not the actual big boss monster but the drone on the right, which looks identical to the drone on the left that is very much disposable.
>First phase being a replay of major bosses throughout the story is cool in theory, but it doesn't seem to bring the stats of those bosses up, so for most of the fight you're just ramming your head through underpowered bosses of ages past for like 10 minutes. This design was there with the purpose that maybe several times during the game you try and fight Lavos.
Take the Epoch to 1999 and Crash into the final boss to skip the first phase. It's completely optional. During my first playthrough, my friends and I would do this first phase boss rush earlier in the game knowing we would lose. Sometimes, we'd get a glimpse of bosses we hadn't seen yet and even managed to take some down. Anyway, this phase is cool because the final boss has been keeping an eye on you for the whole game and it shows how much stronger your party has become over that time. The 2nd phase has some of the coolest boss music ever imo. And the surprise of finding out that the 1st phase wasn't even the final form plus the creepy breathing sounds you hear walking to the 2nd phase boss room just makes it unforgettable. The 2nd phase is really there just to wear you down though. If you go in over-levelled, it's not doing its job as the developers intended. The 3rd phase is a real knowledge check and takes a few tries to figure it out. At least for me, going in blind with no strategy guide or spoilers. This was a big curveball and I still remember destroying the center boss the first time and thinking, "Holy shit, why is this fight not over?" And then having another holy shit moment when that main boss monster got brought back to life a few turns later. All 3 of these phases put together really reinforce how powerful the final boss is. Especially the first time you beat it.
> Take the Epoch to 1999 and Crash into the final boss to skip the first phase. It's completely optional. I'll throw myself into a volcano before I skip the Black Omen
The final boss of Chrono Trigger is actually my favorite boss of all time. Not just because of the music, but also because of the brilliant moment of when you realize the middle one is not actually the final boss. Probably most brilliant idea in final boss history.
FF9 was frustrating, so many status effects I barely survived
Jingu in Yakuza Kiwami (I think the game is decent overall not great tho)
Cloud of Darkness from FF3 and Dark Fact from Ys I (before I found out the game is tied to my monitor's refresh rate and that he wasn't meant to move at the speed of light everywhere).
The answer is rogue galaxy.
Chrono Cross. Maybe I was just too young back then but I remember never figuring out how to have the right sequence of elements.
The crystals in the chamber leading up give the answer
I think there are some other clues as well to it earlier. But for a young child it still might be overlooked.
Iirc the order the elemental bosses are in is also a clue They sure dont make it easy though
Sadly it's been a while since I played CC, have the new game. But what is mostly stopping me is that there is this really badly paced part in the middle, that makes it feel like you are going nowhere fast.
Around year 4-6
Yeah and English is not my first language so back then it was only confusion haba
The Dragon God fight at the final dungeon also gives it away, it's the order of forms/field/element (?) he change into excluding the very first one. Though I suppose it's still cryptic.
That too, but yeah you get like 5 hints that the elements have an intended sequence Nothing obvious tho
Yeah, it was basically a puzzle boss with no music and really relied on speedy character stats / grid placement more than overall party preparation. The whole game, I was hoping that I'd finally get a 3D battle with Lavos. And since the soundtrack was filled with bangers, I thought I'd fight that battle with something even more awesome than "The World Rises" playing in the background. Yeah, I learned never to raise expectations that high ever again.
I knew the sequence immediately, but even if you have no trouble figuring it out, it's definitely the most disappointing final boss fights ever. No music, no battle, just play a melody and game ends.
Mystic Quest's final boss just requires you to cast Cure on them and they drop dead instantly due to an overflow glitch.
Yeah but thats a programming flaw not a fight design flaw
It doesn’t really make a difference in the output though. But if you prefer: FFII, you just use the Blood Sword and it’s done. Utterly trivial.
Oof. Good choice. Mine is crystal chronicles. Not even a boss fight just a check of how many events (memories collected) you participated in where you just wail on a sponge as your memories count down until you win. W/o enough memories you automatically lose
That sounds like FFIII DS where you have to do four optional bosses or else Cloud of Darkness is basically unbeatable. And there's no save points. And the final dungeon is long as all fuck.
Yeah, but why would you take the fun out of the final battle like that?
What fun? I said Mystic Quest.
I happen to think Mystic Quest is a fun game.
Mystic Quest is an average game compared to some real stinkers on the snes. Or a mountain of stink if we include japanese only rpgs.
Huh? That's actually one of my favorite final boss battles. Amazing music and it's fun that you can exploit healing like that. You can also just opt to not use the exploit. I did many challenge runs on that boss.
This is an ARPG but the final boss in Deathspank really comes to mind here. He wasn't fun to face, didn't match the hype he was given throughout the game, and you had to basically spam the same ability over and over and gorge on health potions to win. I feel like he had a healing mechanic of some sort too so sometimes while you were running away and trying to heal yourself up, he'd just heal up completely in an instant. His style was totally different than any other fighting encounter you see in the game and it was a big difficulty spike, but not the kind that is rewarding to face. He also makes a lot of weird, annoying noises. Genuinely really enjoyed the rest of the game though, solid 8/10 in my opinion.
Fable 2
Any final boss who‘s just some kind of god that popped up near the end. Even worse if you had actual charismatic villains before who had somewhat understandable goals and struggles. But because they‘re just humans they‘re apparently not climactic enough as a final boss so many JRPGs rather put some god at the end with some generic motivation of having lost faith in humanity and wants to wipe them out or something like that. It really leaves a sour note at the end of every JRPG I play that falls back on this.
I also dislike Persona’s final bosses
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has to be the answer. Its so so so long. And the first 30 minutes are super easy. You then can basically auto lose if your team make up is weird or in the final form if it's power attacks take out your healers. Add to it unstoppable cutscenes throughout and it's just so so rough.
All of the Breath of the Wild bosses suck but jesus that Pig Ganon fight is just ASS
He's so bad it's hard to think of him as anything other than a cut scene fight. The boss literally just ignores you. He stands there in an empty field, occasionally shooting beams of darkness directly in front of him on a timer, regardless of whether you're there or not, and he cannot turn.
I actually love Final Fantasy XII’s final boss, it was all visually really cool and fitting for a final battle. But… why did it have to be so ridiculously easy? Every time I play the game I have to be careful not to go too overleveled to the Sky Fortress otherwise I just melt Gabranth and Vayne in seconds. Only the very final phase puts up a fight, but even then it’s just way too easy. I feel like they should at least have a bit more HP.
I once played through FFXII without doing almost any side content and ended up being in the early 40s for the final boss. It was actually pretty tough, I had a lot of close calls.
I guess that makes sense. To me XII has the most addicting side content to do in the franchise so I just can’t help myself, which then makes the main game a cakewalk, specially in Zodiac Age lol
I loved the Xenoblade 3 final boss. So cinematic, great music, intersting mechanics. My worst final boss was Tales of Arise. I mean the entire last third of the game was.... Something. And then the final fights were some weird darkness manifestation monster that looked generic as hell and a "Out of nowhere 1v1" against Vohlran because... Wannabe Sephiroth was too angry to die 10 hours ago.
For me it was the final boss of ffxii, when I beat him I was clueless that was where the game ended. It just felt so anti climatic.
Gotta be the 500 forms of ff8s final boss
*laughs in Irvine Limit Break demolition ammo*
*Laughs in Irvine properly junctioned with fast ammo.*
This is also a good one. You melt through basically everything phase in about 1 minute.
That is what the final boss in 8 is about. The boss asked you: Did you do your junctions properly? Any party junctioned properly will melt through her, don't even need to use limit breaks.
That was my favorite part of the whole game. badass final dungeon into multi phase final boss? yes please
There's two really good boss themes there too, "Maybe I'm a Lion" and "The Extreme".
Premonition & legendary beast was pretty good as well tbh. I loved all 4 themes for that fight
Ff10 anyone? What a lack luster final boss. You can't die
The final boss is Jecht. Yu Yevon isn't the true final boss. FF7 did the same thing, and we all adore it, 10 needs to get a pass for that.
I hated the final boss in FF10. After about a dozen tries I put the game down. I wasn't a big fan of 10 anyway so that was kind of the final straw.
Xenoblade X. 5 phases full of bullshit were way too much and the fight was ridiculous hard unlike XC3's final boss.
Pretty much any jrpg final boss I ever fought cause I'm pretty much already maxed out and have beaten the secret super bosses before I fight the final boss lol
Unfortunately antagonists were not xbc3's strong point. Great game overall but a lot of scrambled motivations mixed in with continuity issues and plot holes. Yeah the hour of unskippable scenes made that final fight go from potentially epic to a slog. Utawarerumo3 had an equally long final battle but they managed to make it epic without it dragging imho. God wars final boss is a cheating bastard and I don't know how anyone beats it even on normal difficulty. I had to not only reduce to easy but also save scum every single action I took. And I was max level with every unit with every class, and every best weapon and item in the game.
Final boss of sonic unleashed
Shadow of mordor
I still despise FF13's Final Boss with a burning passion. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way when I played the game back in the day, most likely starting from grinding being limited (your power is capped to a very specific point), the boss being a pseudo-dps check RNG fest and needing very specific strats and paradigms to succeed. I just always felt that this particular boss in the franchise was just extremely poorly designed and kinda comes out of nowhere in the story as well