For me it was:

-the gym leader Brock in Pokémon Yellow Version. Having an electric Pokémon go up against a rock type early on in the game was impossible let alone the fact that you could only catch Pokémon that were weak against rock type or catch Pokémon that could only use moves that were not very effective against rock type was a real challenge.

- in Dark Souls, the boss battle where you fight two bosses at once. I've lost count how many times it took me to finally beat those two A-holes. No matter how many times I tried to come up with a strategy to beat them, I always seemed to fail. I think I finally defeated them with shear luck.

- the final boss in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. This one was tough enough because of the robotic Sonic you had to fight before the final boss. If you lost all your coins before fighting Dr. Robotnik you were SOL. Add to that the fact that if you ran out of lives you had to start back at the very beginning of the game.

The guy at the end of Half Life was... well, perhaps not so much tough, but certainly annoying as the bugger would keep teleporting me to random places. In the end I used a crowbar and jumped on his head to deliver the killing blow: the ludicrousness slightly made up for the protracted irritation.

For some reason, I can't think of really tough final boss battles that I have had at the moment. Except for maybe the Nihilanth at the of HL1, but it was only really tough the first time or two that I fought him. I can definitely think of a few rather easy final bosses though.

The Nihilanth. The first time or two I fought him it was a bit tough, especially because of his hard-hitting electrical attack. The teleportation was certainly an annoying bonus. Having Vortigaunts and Alien Controllers after you as well when it is your first time or two in the fight can make it hard too.

You can catch Mankey west of Viridian City or train Nidoran until it learns Double Kick, or even evolve a Butterfree, which should be fine despite its Rock weakness because it outspeeds Brock's Pokemon.

For me it was the boss in Crusader No Remorse. It wasn't that he was tough, I just could not figure out how to kill him, so I died over and over. And back then there was no home internet to look up a quick hint. I eventually got it.

I've still never beat Mike Tyson in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. (NES)


Ultima Weapon from FF8.


There are a handful in the Souls series, but The Maneaters or Manus were probably the most troublesome for me.

And the Orphan of Kos in Bloodborne.

Bonetail.

When the boss told me to grab a bunch of archives from a garage which then aggravated my sciatica a few years back.

Grigori the last boss of dragons dogma boy was he a hard ass! Also in the same game the dark arisen dlc's last boss was just as tough.

Ultima Weapon in FF8 was tough. I had to get a kid in our neighborhood to beat it for me. I could not get it to save my life. Of course, he beat it while having a conversation with me and not even breaking a sweat.

Alex Mercer in Prototype 2? He wasn't actually tough, but for me he was a bit of a pain in the rear to beat the first time, considering I was in hard difficulty and I had never fought him before. Basically you had to die more than a few times to learn his attack patterns and figure out how to beat him, there was no way around it. Well, other than Google, maybe (but that's no fun ). I guess there are many bosses like that in videogames. Most bosses in the Resident Evil saga are probably like this too, now that I think of it, and you don't get to have superpowers in those games

?

I think arcade bosses were generally the toughest in that sense, they were designed to be.


?The toughest ones I fought, though, must have been in Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. The fast-paced combat and highly reactive AI, along with the clunky controls.. it was the perfect recipe for tough boss battles.

Magic Emperor Ghaleon from Lunar Silver Star Story Complete, I fought this battle mostly with brute force and it took man,many,MANY tries but I did manage to finally beat him. Thanks to HCBailly I've found out the battle is mostly a puzzle battle and knowing his pattern helps a lot.

Melchior from Fallout 2. [censored] your cheap magic tricks.

Dural from Virtua Fighter 4. I don't think I ever beat that boss. It would always pain me to get so far in arcade mode and lose there, starting all over.

Black Dragon Kalameet from Dark Souls. I had a personal vendetta with this boss the first time around. Felt good to come back in future playthroughs to kick his ass in easily.

Laurence, the First Vicar from Bloodborne. Probably one of the hardest bosses I've faced in Souls. A lot of people hate him, but I actually enjoy the fight. Probably one of my favorite bosses in Bloodborne and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD_ZBRrUwyg.

I never had a problem with Gregori, but the DLC boss was definitely tough. (especially the second time you meet him, in his true form.)

Diablo on hardcoe was difficult because I refused to play on an easy difficulty or with the "recommended" easy character because I didn't really think that would have actually been hardcoe.

Malthael on hardcoe in "Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition"... that was a pretty intense fight.

In hardcoe... Dead is Dead. No quickly shutting your machine off or trying to glitch it. The character dies and is gone.

The most memorable epic boss balttle I've ever thought has to be the Jet Pack Boss Battle with Boba Fett in "Shadows Of The Empire".

We couldn't afford an Nintendo 64. We had to rent one from the Video Store (ask your parents, they'll tell you what a Video Store is).

We all screamed like girls when IG-88 attacked us with his flame thrower...

But Boba Fett... We had to clean up stains after he turned up.

If you only have squalls first limit break and don't give him another weapon til his last one, you get a 50% chance of getting lionheart off (I did this my first play through cus I didn't know about weapon upgrades which just gave you better limit breaks til near the end). Then you just use aura on squall and can beat ultima weapon in about 5 minutes or less with just squall and use the other team members just healing.

Mike Johnson. No matter what, he always blocked my good ideas for improvements at work! He ended up firing me after awhile...

OH! Video Game Bosses!

I think it would be "Freddie Nine Lives" from the MMORPG Wizard101. He had 9 lives, ie: he had to be defeated 9 times in a row. No breaks in the action, just one fight after another. What made it tough was that players had only one deck of cards, so by the last fight, the pickings were slim, indeed

yes melchior is a tough SOB couldnt beat him....yet

ya i got to him a bit under leveled and realised I needed to be a little higher in level.

Damn, that's a good one. And then, to boot, if you finally take care of Boba, you then have to fight Slave 1. So much hair pulling.

You know, I saw this post a few hours ago and thought "I was going to say that!".

I heard Gengar got nerfed to oblivion recently (haven't played a Pokémon game since Gen 4). No Levitate renders him almost useless now. RIP Gengar.

@deano19892012 : The 2 Bosses were (Dragonknight) Ornstein and (Executioner) Smough in Anor Londo. I just summoned a phantom player and we wrecked them. Never died on them tbh.

@pepe silvia & Pluto : Yeah, Grigori was easy imo. Even the Ur-Dragon isn't particularly tough. As for the Daimon, yeah, probably one of the toughest straight-up boss fights in the whole game tbh. The awakened Daimon fight is actually easier imo, the only issues are getting to his face, doing enough damage and keeping your Pawns alive.

Personally, I find Prisoner Gorecyclops a much tougher fight if you don't try to cheese it (which I always do). He can do an incredible amount of damage in one hit, and he's so big, and covered in those stamina draining shackles, that fighting him legit is way more difficult than 99.99% of the game.

@Legion64 : Black Dragon Kalameet wasn't too bad for me, though I did totally skip him on my first run, and when I died trying to cut his tail on NG+ (or NG++, I don't remember), I just said "Screw it!" and didn't even try the next time. Yeah, I killed him. I agree that Manus is worse, though I still hate the Artorias and Gwyn fights because they force you to play a certain way. And Bed of Chaos just svcks outright, as everyone knows already.

To think of some of the toughest boss battles I've ever had, one worth mentioning is The Joker from Batman (NES). Getting your jumps right to go over his shotgun blasts was hell. Lots of fighting game bosses like Seth from SSFIV (on the highest difficulty), or Final Bison from the older games. The final battles on The Force Unleashed (on the hardest difficulty) set you against Darth Vader then Palpatine, and man, I remember reloading a lot for that Achievement. General RAAM on Gears of War on Insane was kinda OP. Same could be said for the final Myrrah fight on Gears 3 on Insane. Even with 4 people, we must've had about 50 restarts.

I've played hundreds upon hundreds of games tbh, so I can't remember them all, but I couldn't go without mentioning the Yellow Devil from Megaman/Megaman 3. Seriously, I've hated this guy throughout my life. I only learned about "the pause trick" a few years ago, and not only is it cheap, I feel like I cannot take it as a win (not that I've played either game since I learned about it). But yeah, THAT guy was pure BS.

Ranzou from Double Dragon 3 used to kick my anus when I was young too. I beat him once in my late teens when I went back to it, but never reached the end of the game.

Also, one of the coolest bosses I feel a need to mention would be Death from Super Castlevania IV. That guy is pure metal.

Honestly, probably Nomad from RuneScape for me since it took so many tries for me to finally defeat him.

Without any help whatsoever, even with maxxed characters, Ruby Weapon from FF7 is by far one of the biggest Pains In The A** bosses there is.

Oh, this is just tough boss battles in general, not final bosses. Okay, I'll throw in one that was legitimately brutal: the 3rd time you fight Seymour in Final Fantasy X. The first time he is fairly tough but not too difficult, the second time he is laughably easy, and the fourth time he is just a little tougher to beat than the second time. But that third battle with him was ridiculously challenging. And his character is easy to hate anyways. [censored] that guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2ANmmyTdqw in Redout?
That is a [censored] scary and long track

I seem to also remember https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE9FqZFkGVI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAhT5LDVwZ8 kicking my ass like it was going out of style in Star Ocean 3 Back then i was young and crazy enough fight them until i beat them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s91vSGoVMb8 in FFX12 was also quite memorable, though not especially tough. Come to think of it i made it to Yiazmat, but never beat him. Well, if it gets a HD re-release, i'll beat him then