The seven most difficult boss battles in the Final Fantasy series

[Fangu]

XII is the only game I've talked to every NPC... there's a lot of gold, like that old woman talking about how "she sure did some mining back in the days!", drunk Bangaa, drunk Moogles, that Seeq talking about "following Vaan's career" like he's been "following that Viera's career"... generally just a lot of adult jokes in the true spirit of VII's Wall Market, IMO. (I need to make a Top 10 Funniest NPC's post from that game!) There's the funny stuff, but there's also the more serious stuff, such as that Archadian calling a Seeq 'something let in from a farm' or something - there's a lot of racism in that game. Overall, it's just very realistic. People aren't generally sweet giving you dull info, they are generally proud, prejudiced or really angry, helping out portraying the complex, political picture of Ivalice.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Well I don't know if hidden superhard bosses should really count or not, but for me Ozma from FF9 I remember as obscenely hard.

More normal bosses. Yunalesca from FFX has already been extensively recommended and rightly so. The first two forms are pushovers even at low levels but dat last form. MegaDeath man... thats not cool.

I remember, of all things, having a lot of trouble with the painting in Final Fantasy 6.

The only really difficult boss in Final Fantasy VIII is Adel and thats only because you have to mind Rinoa and can't use summons without hurting her.

Final Fanasy 7 I had trouble with Godo mainly because i never used Yuffie. Also found Hojo to be a touch challenging.

Final Fantasy XIII has a lot of challenging bosses though its mostly the fault of the broken combat system. Proudclad in particular as well as Wladislaus gave me a real tough time.

And Final Fantasy XIII-2's Caius battle in Oerba 200 A.D was tricky.

 

[Flintlock]

As promised.
I want to gather as many people as possible into the IRC channel at some point in the next few days so we can debate the hardest bosses and make a final list of seven. We'll use the nominations made in this thread as our starting point. Anyone who takes part in the discussion will be credited in the finished article on the front page

In order to persuade you all to come along, I've added a new feature to Sephibot, which I want to run for the first time after we finish the discussion. It's a (Final Fantasy) trivia game!

Each round consists of ten multiple-choice questions, and the questions don't close immediately when someone gets them right. I designed it like that so that even the slower or less experienced players can take part and answer every question

This obviously didn't happen in the week I suggested, so I'm postponing it until 2014. In the meantime, I might bring Sephibot into the IRC channel tomorrow night, in case anyone wants to try the trivia function out

 

[Ⓐaron]

For the record I probably won't be able to participate in the chat if it's done during evenings EST, unless it's done on a Saturday or Sunday. Other times I will probably be able to participate.

 

[Keveh Kins]

Materia Keeper in FFVII drove me up the wall during my first playthrough. I wasn't altogether familiar with RPGs at the time so I didn't get that I needed to level up and was too young to comprehend how support materia and independent materia worked, and by too young I mean stupid.

Hated the robot tank thing at the Missile Base in FFVIII as well.

Found near enough every boss fight in V to be a pain, rarely every beat one on my first try but I looked at most of them as trial and error challenges that needed certain classes to be beaten, so I enjoyed the little bit of strategy that went into fighting them even before the battle.

Seymour Natus was difficult. As was regular Seymour in Macalania when he summoned Anima.

Cid Raines involved a lot of Crystarium grinding for me as I'd largely ignored Saboteurs up that point in favour of just ploughing through bosses with brute force and a healthy dose of Haste

 

[Yuri Lowell]

Who doesn't struggle on Yunalesca? Honestly, it's enough she has an unavoidable instakill move that's only nullified with a curse you're avoiding throughout the fight with her because it's evil. She's a Seathe the Scaleless moment, an annoyingly mandatory lapse in fairness. She just sharkjumps you with that form 3 attack from left field. At least you can avoid it the 2nd time through, though.

 

[Flintlock]

I'm glad this thread has been revived. I'm still planning to use it as the basis for a front page article, after which there will be more entries in the Seven series. Just waiting for the redesign/refocus stuff to settle down at the moment. I would have written it a long time ago but real life got in the way.

 

[Kuja9001]

In one particular order

Barthandelus I, Neo Exdeath, Ozma, Nemesis, Seymour Flux, and that's it for now.

 

[Joker]

I'd say Ozma, Wiegraf, Elidibus, Dark Yojimbo (though Dark Shiva/Bahamut/Anima are also extremely difficult without prep), a number of enemies from FFXII (Yiazmat, Gilgamesh, Omega Mk. XII, Hell Wyrm, some of the Espers/hunts/rare game, etc - pick any one), and that fight in Tactics on top of Riovanes Castle where you have to keep Rafa's stupid ass alive...as she walks directly into the paths of Elmdore's two assassins. REALLY RAFA?

I couldn't think of a good seventh one because VII was easy and VIII was even easier >:

 

[Yuri Lowell]

Ozma is objectively the hardest to beat boss if we assume the player is using the best strategies for every fight, since there's no way to guarantee a win. You can win at low lvls, sure... But you can die at any time with a max lv crew if he scores the right combination of moves.

I *do* feel like he deserves an honourable mention at least.

 

[Kuja9001]

I've had Ozma not use Doomsday even once during battle, hit us with it's unavoidable meteor right off the bat, curse right off the bat.

 

[Yuri Lowell]

Exactly. If you're at the top of your game, Ozma is the one boss that's hard if not impossible to guarantee a win against. I think he was really good balancing since Dark Aeons take a certain method and so do other hidden bosses, whereas you can beat Ozma at a lot of levels if you play smart and get lucky.

 

[Lex]

You know I've never had a problem with Ozma. I don't know why :/. Aren't there mechanisms to make it kind of useless before you even fight it?

 

[Joker]

Ozma is the ONLY boss that I've beaten the first time I fought it and then never been able to do it since.

@lex-chan: nope. He has a few different ways to either one-shot your entire party or status them into oblivion, and you can only block about half of them. Ex: Meteor (unavoidable), Doomsday (Shadow absorb gear), Curse (damage plus like 5 status effects), L5 Death (and regular Death), Berserk, etc. There's just not a way to defend against everything it can do, though apparently luring it into using stuff like L4 Holy is a strategy.

fucking meteor though

 

[Ⓐaron]

Speaking of Yunalesca, I think that boss deserves a dishonourable mention for being the most fucking stupid fight in any role-playing game I've ever played. There is basically no way a player going in blind can win the fight the first time except through sheer dumb luck. The game punishes you for doing what is natural instinct to anyone with a decent background in role-playing games, and then forces you to watch a ridiculously long cutscene again as punishment for doing what a long series of playing games should have trained you to do. Just an horrific fight that is representative of everything wrong with FFX.

 

[Kuja9001]

You know I've never had a problem with Ozma. I don't know why :/. Aren't there mechanisms to make it kind of useless before you even fight it?

Completing the friendly monster quest flips the colors on Ozma which for some reason allows it to harm itself with Doomsday and allows you to hit it with physical attacks..

 

[Lex]

^It's the friendly monster thing I was thinking about.

When I say I've never had a problem with Ozma, I mean that during the 3 times I've done a completionist playthrough of the game I've killed it without dying against it. Maybe it's the friendly monster stuff that helped (I assume so).

 

[Blade]

Okay, here's my list:

--Yiazmat (FFXII) by far the most killingest, one-hittiest, stat-smacker you will ever chance to meet, took me 3 days and several retreats to kill.

--Anything in Bevelle Lower-Underground, mostly Paragon and Trema (FFX-2) ugh I hate this place... and the creepy music doesn't help either.

--Serah + Monster vs Caius Ballad (FFXIII-2, You need to use Paradox scope to access it... but it's a real beast if you haven't strengthened Serah to fight alone)

--Chronodia (FFI:20th Anniversary) Actually solving all the puzzles to fight it at it's maximum power is the hard part.

--Aeronite (LR:FFXIII) not only does he take forever even with Limit Break, but if you take too long he will rip you a new one.

--Angra Maiynu (FFX-2) quite the beast if you don't have a good setup for it.

--Ozma (FFIX), attacking him is one thing, dealing with his spells is another.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Trema is a goddamn cock monger.

 

[Joker]

^It's the friendly monster thing I was thinking about.

When I say I've never had a problem with Ozma, I mean that during the 3 times I've done a completionist playthrough of the game I've killed it without dying against it. Maybe it's the friendly monster stuff that helped (I assume so).

Try fighting disco ball without doing that quest

 

[Flintlock]

I don't mind the discussion about superbosses, but as I mentioned in my opening post, I won't be including them on the final list:

I'm interested in the bosses that you found difficult on your first playthrough as well as those who present a challenge every time ... I'm not going to consider superbosses, but optional bosses that form part of the main story or will be fought by most players in a regular playthrough (e.g. Elder Wyrm in XII) are eligible.

 

[Blade]

Well excuuuuse me for mentioning the most FRUSTRATING bosses that don't count!

 

[null]

OMG Wiegraf/Velius. Everything I know about ragequit I learned from losing to that son of a bitch. I had to start the game completely over to make lancers.

Also have to agree with Warmech (NES version). There's a lot of debate over whether it's a superboss; personally I don't think so, because it isn't the hardest enemy in the game, and I wouldn't necessarily call it "optional". Really it's like fighting Chaos before you're properly leveled. Whatever it is, I wanted to crap my pants every time going down that hallway.

Glad to see some appreciation for the FFIV bosses, especially the underrated Magus Sisters. Nearly every boss from Baigan on is really hard.

 

[Blade]

My experience with Warmech is that I randomly came across him by chance and just barely won. (Having a Monk with haste cast on him killed him in one hit).

 

[Flintlock]

This has been way too long in the making, but I finally counted up everyone's nominations. The seven going into the article are:

Yunalesca (X)
Seymour Flux (X)
Demon Wall (IV)
Zeromus (IV)
Materia Keeper (VII)
Carry Armor (VII)
Cid Raines (XIII)

I still need more quotes about why those bosses are so difficult (especially Cid Raines, who I've never fought), and that's where you come in: What did you find tricky about the bosses I just mentioned?

Give a good explanation and you'll be on the front page by the end of the month