My Top 5 Hardest Boss Battles

I’m a sucker for a good boss fight. I used to jump into old games I’ve played and finished long ago, just to see if I have the save file from just before a certain boss fight. To me, a good boss fight can be the perfect climax to a tense storyline, or sometimes you just want to mindlessly blast some big strong baddie into oblivion. But, not these guys, oh no my friend; these shifty, tough little buggers were the bane of my existence, some for several days at a time. Whether forcing players to play in a way previously not needed, having a unique pattern of attack, or just being balls to the wall difficult, these are the five hardest bosses I’ve ever had to face. Spoilers for Cave Story, Undertale and Dead Rising 2 ahead.

5. Crawmerax The Invincible  - Borderlands 

Having a tagline of ‘The Invincible’ in an enemy’s own name should be a sign that they are probably going to cause you some pain if you try and tackle them on your own. Crawmerax The Invincible is an optional Raid Boss, the first of the Borderlands series, added in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, and becoming a feature in the base game of every main entry to the series since.

The Borderlands wiki explicitly states that Raid bosses are ‘designed to be fought by multiple players’, but I didn’t quite get the memo. Crawmerax scales to be four levels higher than the player, to a maximum of 72. The level cap for the player in Borderlands is 69 (nice), so at max level he was still higher than me. Even then, I didn’t get the memo. He is highly resistant to damage from the front, with his weak spots being found at his sides or right behind his head. I still thought it was meant to be done alone. A full day of experimentation and I finally found a successful, if not slightly cheap, tactic. Using Lillith’s Phasewalk ability, I was not only able to lose aggro from him, but I was also able to quickly and safely traverse the arena and regenerate health. These three combined meant that the fight was a long process of using her ability, getting to a pillar behind him, waiting for the recharge to finish before unloading everything I had at his weak spots before he could turn around; start back at square one and repeat. 

And after all that, I didn’t even get any of the rare weapon drops from him. I guess I need to beat him again sometime...

4. Ballos - Cave Story

Cave Story is a quirky Metroidvania title from 2004 that went on to be a staple of indie-gaming history, leading to three remakes and being one of the first titles to demonstrate how a one-man development team can find success in a market that was being dominated by big companies. Some argue it was also largely responsible for the 2D platform genre managing to maintain a key spot amongst games in the contemporary gaming industry. 

The final segment of Cave Story is essentially a gauntlet that goes directly to Paintown and refuses to have it’s brakes checked. Typically, the ending of the game comes after fighting four separate bosses, back-to-back and without saving in between. But, players who made choices that, to be quite frank, are ludicrous to make on a first playthrough without prior knowledge, such as straight up ignoring your friend when they fall down a chasm (if you talk to them, this will kill them and stop you getting the good ending), then you get access the ‘Blood Stained Sanctuary’ after defeating the Undead Core, wherein you will find Ballos. 

Ballos is the ‘true’ final boss of Cave Story and the real mastermind behind everything that has been happening since you awoke at the start of the game. But Ballos’ difficulty doesn’t necessarily come from the fight itself. If you just take it on its own, Ballos’ fight itself isn’t close to being the hardest in the game. The difficulty comes from having to traverse the Blood Stained Sanctuary beforehand, as there is no save for the rest of the game after the one you find at the beginning of the area, meaning you must return to the start every time you die. The accompanying music for the area is called ‘Running Hell’, a rather apt name because this section really feels like you’re running through hell. By the time you actually reach Ballos, your health will have taken a beating, your weapons will be underleveled and it’s likely you won’t have many missiles left. This is what makes fighting Ballos the torturous process that it is. Even with his fight having FOUR phases, each one is pretty easy to manage and with the right weaponry, positioning, timing, and quick trigger finger, each can be taken down within a few seconds. But the hellish process of actually reaching the fight, and hoping you have enough resources to make it through earns Ballos a solid position on my list. 

3. Sans - Undertale

I’m sure it was a beautiful day outside when the time came for me to fight Sans; it was on the tail-end of the summer in 2016, and I’d spent most of the summer itself playing through Undertale to get all three endings. I wouldn’t know if it was nice outside, however, because I spent four days inside trying to clap this god-forsaken skeleton.

The fight against Sans breaks all the pre-established rules that have been set in Undertale, even for the genocide run, which by this point is notorious for playing fast and loose when it comes to in-combat interactions. Sans surprises the player by attacking first -whilst he’s in the middle of talking to the player no less-, The only enemy in the game who does this. He will physically move out of the way when you attack him, making the effort to get precise hits utterly pointless. Over this, his attacks function differently to every other monster. Instead of hitting for instant damage, he inflicts ‘Karmic Retribution’, a special form of damage that only deals one damage, but applies it every frame that the player’s SOUL is colliding with his attacks. This mechanic can result in having your entire health pool diminished within just a few seconds without adequate planning. Not only this, but he can attack the player DURING their turn, meaning the player has to dance around the menu screen to avoid suffering unnecessary damage between turns. The only reason Sans isn’t ranked higher is that it’s basically just a test of muscle memory, meaning when you’ve beaten him once, you won’t really struggle anymore afterwards. I even managed to beat him drunk a few months ago, so anything is truly possible. 

2. Raymond Sullivan - Dead Rising 2

The psychopath battles are a huge highlight for me when it comes to the Dead Rising series. They’re fun to fight, accompanied by an epic soundtrack, and always rewarding to beat. Further, some offer a genuinely interesting look into human psychology as behaviour when put into a stressful, traumatic situation. Some are driven by delusion, like Harry Wong; some are driven by self-preservation, like Cletus; some are grief-stricken and lash out, like Cliff Hudson; some are just trying to carry on their lives like it was before as if nothing has gone wrong, like Carl or Ted. Then, some are driven sheerly by personal gain - that’s where psychopaths like Sullivan come in. 

Serving as the pseudo-final boss to the game, Sullivan’s betrayal is revealed by his murder of Rebecca Chang and subsequent escape attempt from the roof of the casino. Now, most psychopath battles have trained players in how to deal with them, and by this point in the game you are hopefully fairly proficient in the matter - evade their attacks, look for an opening, whack them. If you can, go for ranged attacks; while they do little damage and limit your mobility, most psychopaths will not have an effective way to target you back. Sullivan takes this formula, cranks it up to 11, and then changes it still. Attempting to shoot Sullivan will result in him returning fire, and he can hit a lot harder than you can, as well as knocking you back. As the fight takes place around a scaffolding site, such a hit will often knock you down and effectively leave you to the mercy of the hordes of zombies that are clambering beneath you. 

Thus, you’d think the solution is to get up close and personal with Sullivan, clobbering him with the lovechild of a fire axe and a sledgehammer? Still no. Engaging Sullivan with a melee weapon will result in him disarming the player, throwing both Chuck and the weapon aside. This again would often result in being thrown off the scaffolding, and from that platform, the fall alone could be enough to kill you outright.

There’s only two real strategies to beating him, one of which I wasn’t even aware of until researching deeper for this article. The first way, and the way I did it, is to physically throw whatever weapons you have at him from across the platform. It seldom resulted in a return shot, and if it did you still had your movement available to dodge roll out of the way. The second way, and apparently the way you’re supposed to do it, is to engage in hand-to-hand combat with Sullivan. Now upon trying this for myself, unarmed combat was a lot cooler than constantly throwing wine bottles, fold up chairs and stray bricks at the guy, but unless you’re a sadist, no sane person would have actually used unarmed combat in their time during the game, especially a first playthrough, so even if it was obvious that this was the proper way to beat him, most players wouldn’t know at all how to keep up with him, and even if you are savvy with how unarmed combat works, Sullivan yet again hits harder and faster than you.

Not even TK was this much of a bitch.

1. Corypheus - Dragon Age II

This spot nearly went to The Harvester from Origins’ Golems of Amgarrak DLC, but even on Nightmare difficulty, I didn’t struggle as much as many of the fanbase seemed to. Once I sorted appropriate tactics for my teammates, it was smooth sailing, probably due to how my rogue had such high DPS and defence that she took all the threat away from the Warriors, but still dodged literally every single attack that was done against her the whole fight. It was a fun and challenging fight, but the challenge was greatly negated by just how ridiculously overpowered you can become by level 35.

Meanwhile, Dragon Age II was a game I felt was lacking in some bosses, especially challenging ones. Combat was incredibly fun, but apart from the Optional High Dragon fight, and the fight against the Duke in Mark of the Assassin, many combat instances ended up being rather short, or mostly done by a single party member, such as both encounters with the Varterral, a creature that ended up wiping my whole party besides Merril before we dropped it to half health, and both times she single-handedly carried the rest of the fight. The power disparity was especially noticeable as I myself was also playing a mage, which was the equivalent of asking the game to just kill every enemy on screen automatically because it’d be much nicer on them than whatever world of pain you were about to introduce to the poor sap.

Apparently, the Ghost of Game Development Past heard my cries and returned to BioWare in 2011 when they were designing Legacy, a DLC focussed around Hawke’s father and a mysterious figure that is after Hawke’s blood. After murdering several dozen dwarves and solving some actually enjoyable, challenging puzzles, you finally come to the source of the chaos; Corypheus. What ensues is honestly the worst 12 straight hours of my entire life.

 

I got a little bit passionate about my feelings towards this fight in the moment, I’ll be honest

Simply put, Corypheus is a boss fight which proves either that BioWare’s ambitions surpassed what was possible on the game engine, or BioWare wanted it’s entire playerbase to get a taste of what going to hell would eventually feel like. His first phase is not too bad; he shoots fire in a clockwise formation around the room and you simply just have to run to avoid it, activating pillars to drain his power before you can fight him properly. For each ¼ of his health you knock off, however, he returns to the center with his flames and his attacks become more and more absurd. Rocks form around the arena, forcing you to take awkward paths to avoid his fire. Then lightning starts to strike between gaps in the rocks at set intervals, which may not always line up with when you need to get past. In his final phase, you have to avoid the fire whilst also avoiding the lightning strikes and the new addition of frozen stalactites that will fall at random, dealing damage and slowing you down if they catch you.

All of this is hard enough, but then there’s the friendly AI.

Companion AI was absolutely not designed for the kind of fight that BioWare had in mind when they made Corypheus. Unless set to defensive/cautious behaviour, they will either not move at all, or charge to the center of the room, where an invincible Corypheus lies and will often melt their entire souls with a blast of fire. Their pathfinding also begins to struggle as early as the second phase. They will get stuck on the corners of rocks, run into dead ends, sometimes even go the correct way and then backtrack because they think there’s a ‘quicker’ way to reach your position. Once you add the lightning strikes and frozen stalactites, the only hope you stand of successfully guiding your party around the room is to micromanage their movements down to a tee for the entire fight to avoid your companions throwing themselves to their deaths like a band of well-equipped lemmings. Add in the high possibility that a piece of ice can, and will, fall from the sky and delete your forehead without warning, the fact you have to periodically defeat shades that sometimes just straight up don’t die for a few seconds after hitting 1hp (a common bug in DAII), the fact that the same thing can (and did) happen to Corypheus himself, resulting in a squad wipe, AND the fact that this fight takes roughly 10-15 minutes (for a level 16 party), and you have a boss fight that feels similar to getting a handjob from Edward Scissorhands: it just really hurts; externally, internally, and otherwise, but you’re still going to enjoy it for what they are at least trying to do, and you’ll feel a new kind of satisfaction when you finally finish.

At least that’s the last we’ll ever see of that guy, right!

...Right?