The Toughest Boss Battles of All Time

[Deck Rickard]

Getting regularly destroyed in Elden Ring got me thinking about the toughest boss battles in video games. What are yours? Here are the ones that rank really high for me:

Elden Ring: Margit, those two Iron Maiden things and I’m sure Radahn and Malenia will be awful whenever I get the courage to face them

Lords of the Fallen: The Judge and the Guardian

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Medusa, Hades and that stupid farting boar

Legend of Zelda (original): The fight with Gannon was really hard for its time

Dragon Age Inquisition: The Guardian (Descent DLC), and most of the dragon fights

Shadow of War: The Witch King (and most Nazgûl fights), and that majority of overlord battles

Diablo II: Diablo, Duriel

 

[DeadlyWest]

There's only one choice in my mind.



There are bosses that are more annoying and more unfair, but Vergil Battle 3, on Dante Must Die, is by far the most organically difficult boss I've ever fought in my entire life. The only way to reliably beat him is to literally use jump cancel tech (which is considered advanced tech, albeit the kinda bare minimum of advanced tech) and Devil Trigger explosions.

The hardest FromSoft game boss took me, give or take, 9 hours.

This boss took me seven days.

No boss that I have ever fought has taken anywhere near that long for me to beat. No boss that I have ever fought has been as much of a genuine and organic challenge of all the skills I had learned up to that point.

It's for that reason that not only is it the hardest boss I've ever fought, it's also the greatest boss I've ever fought.

 

[Shinobi Shaw]

I'm gonna throw it all the way back:



I still have nightmares.

 

[Deck Rickard]

I'm gonna throw it all the way back:



I still have nightmares.

Oh, man. I never got all the way through the old Sonic games. I’ll be honest, I was never able to beat most of the old school side scrolling games like Sonic or Mario. I beat some of the Castlevania games but only the ones that had RPG elements (Castlevania 2 and Symphony of the Night). If it was a game with levels involved, I was screwed, lol.

 

[Brother Jack]

Emerald Weapon - Final Fantasy VII

Ruby Weapon is arguably harder but you don't have to deal with a time-limit for that fight. Also wanna give shoutouts to Hell House and Pride and Joy in the remake.

 

[Punisher_MAX]

Getting regularly destroyed in Elden Ring got me thinking about the toughest boss battles in video games. What are yours? Here are the ones that rank really high for me:

Elden Ring: Margit, those two Iron Maiden things and I’m sure Radahn and Malenia will be awful whenever I get the courage to face them

Lords of the Fallen: The Judge and the Guardian

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Medusa, Hades and that stupid farting boar

Legend of Zelda (original): The fight with Gannon was really hard for its time

Dragon Age Inquisition: The Guardian (Descent DLC), and most of the dragon fights

Shadow of War: The Witch King (and most Nazgûl fights), and that majority of overlord battles

Diablo II: Diablo, Duriel

You can cheese Radahn with a Scarlet Rot incantation called Scarlet Breath lol Also dual wielding Katanas with a Mimic Tear makes Malenia pretty manageable.

 

[Deck Rickard]

You can cheese Radahn with a Scarlet Rot incantation called Scarlet Breath lol Also dual wielding Katanas with a Mimic Tear makes Malenia pretty manageable.

Oh the Scarlet breath works on Radahn? Sweet! I use that one a lot. Thanks.

 

[Deck Rickard]

You can cheese Radahn with a Scarlet Rot incantation called Scarlet Breath lol Also dual wielding Katanas with a Mimic Tear makes Malenia pretty manageable.

Just following up on this; it totally worked! That was a breeze. Thanks again!

 

[Punisher_MAX]

Just following up on this; it totally worked! That was a breeze. Thanks again!

No worries haha scale your Katanas with Occult for the last two bosses.

 

[Jick]

This sucker right here:

Laurence the First Vicar in Bloodborne: The Old Hunters.

This is the hardest boss I ever faced. He was responsible for me feeling what anxiety really is, as I don't commonly have a problem with that, but facing the prospect that I could possibly not beat him was making me feel bad, and to get to him we had to run a dangerous freaking marathon.

When I finally beat him, my arms were shaking hard, but the exhilaration was real.
I then hopped to Youtube and watched people beating him with no damage. Dude...

 

[Deck Rickard]

This sucker right here:

Laurence the First Vicar in Bloodborne: The Old Hunters.

This is the hardest boss I ever faced. He was responsible for me feeling what anxiety really is, as I don't commonly have a problem with that, but facing the prospect that I could possibly not beat him was making me feel bad, and to get to him we had to run a dangerous freaking marathon.

When I finally beat him, my arms were shaking hard, but the exhilaration was real.
I then hopped to Youtube and watched people beating him with no damage. Dude...

LOL what even IS that thing?!

And yeah, I’ve watched YouTube videos of people beating all the hardest bosses in Elden Ring wearing nothing but a butt thong and taking no damage and it just pisses me off, lol. Here I am looking like a tool wearing Lionel’s Michelin Man armor and getting leveled in a few hits while these god tier gamers breeze through it like nothing.

Anyway, I would also put Astel and the Fire Giant up there with the hardest boss battles. I was regularly losing my **** against the Fire Giant. I’m honestly shocked I was finally able to beat him.

On to Malekith and Placidusax… ugh.

 

[Iceman]

On Gears 1 General RAAM was hard until people started developing strategies for it which made it easier.

 

[obredaan]

This sucker right here:

Laurence the First Vicar in Bloodborne: The Old Hunters.

This is the hardest boss I ever faced. He was responsible for me feeling what anxiety really is, as I don't commonly have a problem with that, but facing the prospect that I could possibly not beat him was making me feel bad, and to get to him we had to run a dangerous freaking marathon.

When I finally beat him, my arms were shaking hard, but the exhilaration was real.
I then hopped to Youtube and watched people beating him with no damage. Dude...

Bloodborne is the king of insanely difficult bosses for me. First Vicar and Orphan of Kos are on another level and I dread having to fight them on replays. But its so satisfying each and every time I mange to take them down even if its just pure luck.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Okay, Maliketh in Elden Ring might be the toughest boss I’ve ever faced in any game. I haven’t taken on Malenia yet, and I’m sure Godfrey, Radagon and Elden Beast are also impossible, but WTF are you supposed to do in the second phase of the Maliketh fight? I’m not the best at dodging and rolling admittedly but it’s almost as if you have to dodge 15 times in a row just to get close to him and then hack away at him while simultaneously dodging the entire time. Just insane. I tried for like 2-3 hours last night and got nowhere.

 

[Deck Rickard]

Bumping this thread since I beat Elden Ring twice since I last posted (once in the base game and once in NG+). I would say that Malenia, Malekith and Elden Beast were the toughest enemies in the game. Though Malekith and EB aren’t as bad if you have the Bolt of Gransax (I missed this awesome weapon on my first playthrough but made sure to grab it in NG+). The Sacred Relic Sword definitely made NG+ much easier. The only shardbearer I haven’t taken on yet in the new game is Malenia but I doubt I’ll have too much trouble with her since I’m at level 350 now lol.

Anyway, if you want to see the most INSANE boss fights ever created, check out this mod. Mad respect for this dude and anyone else who beats the game this way.