The Best Final Bosses

[Tweed]

Some final battles are better than others, either because of difficulty, novelty, or the epic build up to the end. It can be a real disappointment when you go through hell only for the final boss to be some limp-wristed encounter even if Konami made a tradition out of it with Gradius. Konami also put together some excellent last bosses though and that's where I want to start:

Castlevania III (Alucard, Jap Ver.) Final Boss Dracula - No Damage, Subweapons
Two great themes, difficult as hell, much better transformations than Castlevania 1. Even has a great "all cleared" jingle after the fight.

Well? What are you ultimate final bosses?

[Stack of Turtles]

Some final battles are better than others, either because of difficulty, novelty, or the epic build up to the end. It can be a real disappointment when you go through hell only for the final boss to be some limp-wristed encounter even if Konami made a tradition out of it with Gradius. Konami also put together some excellent last bosses though and that's where I want to start:

Castlevania III (Alucard, Jap Ver.) Final Boss Dracula - No Damage, Subweapons
Two great themes, difficult as hell, much better transformations than Castlevania 1. Even has a great "all cleared" jingle after the fight.

Well? What are you ultimate final bosses?

I don't like that you didn't capitalize the title.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

All of the climatic final mech battles of the Trails of Cold Steel pentalogy. The epitome of this is the last one at the end of the pentalogy in Trails into Reverie.

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The stakes are the highest they have ever been. Yukihiro Jindo's climatic music is playing. You have 50 party members raiding the fortress split into two raid teams that you have to alternate between. I played on abyss difficulty and it was really, really hard. You have final bosses and optional superbosses from prior games as mobs in the dungeon that are very threatening. The penultimate fight is where both raid teams step onto huge elevator lifts, and have to simultaneously fight two huge mecha bosses back to back which was very difficult. Then you have the ultimate final man himself. You have to face the last man himself, and then half way through he ascends into his mech and only you and a couple others who also have mechs call in yours and continue the fight with the mech battle system, which has much tighter balancing and is more stressful. Hardest fight in the series. I gameovered on my first try but got it on my second. It was so tense towards the end because of how long the fight had been running for and I didn't want to wipe.

Hajimari no Kiseki [BGM RIP] - Reverse Babel (Final Dungeon Theme)

I also quite liked the Trails of Cold Steel 1's final boss

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it was so unexpected. The mech system hadn't been introduced before then, and the betrayal was very sad. Also great music by Takahira Unisuga.

Sen no Kiseki OST - The Decisive Collision

Final Fantasy X

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The game is about travelling to various temples so your summoner Yuna can acquire the aeons (summons) and eventually go on to kill the godzilla monster Sin forever (since Sin has been defeated five times before but kept coming back). Sin himself is actually made from whichever aeon a prior summoner used to defeat the previous sin, with Sin's host Yu Yevon parasitically switching hosts to that aeon when his previous body is dying. You journey into the heart of Sin and confront the ancient magus Yu Yevon at its heart, who has become a braindead tick. During this fight, Yuna has to summon all of the Aeons you collected one by one, only for Yu Yevon to hijack them and turn them against you, and you have to strike down your aeons. Yojimbo even begs you to kill him before he hurts you. Combined that with Junya Nakano's music, and it was very suspenseful (even though mechanically it is actually pretty hard to lose this fight)

Final Fantasy X HD - A Contest Of Aeons Remaster OST \u30d5\u30a1\u30a4\u30ca\u30eb\u30d5\u30a1\u30f3\u30bf\u30b8\u30fcX

The Banner Saga 1 before the nerf patch.

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You have spent the whole game fleeing from an army of stonemen at your heel to the safety of a city. You managed to get in, and then you are holing up there from a massive siege, and they are slowly breaking through the layers of walls and killing your men. Finally, their big red leader, Bellower, shows up on the hill. You assemble a team to sneak past enemy lines and kill him. Before the fight, you have to decide whether Rook or his daughter Alette will shoot the arrow, and at that point dread began building in me there. Suspecting what would happen, I picked Rook. The actual final battle begins and there are several tanky, hard hitting adds, not to mention Bellower himself who has insane stats that can threaten even your Varl (horned giants) characters who have way higher stats than your humans. I gameovered on my first try but got it down on my second which felt satisfying. Then the cutscene happens, and Bellower grabs and kills Rook. Then you have a victory lap second phase where you finish off a weakened Bellower. The epilogue immediately after where Rook is on the boat and sails into the afterlife was neat.

Valkyria Chronicles 4.

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Up until now, the entire game had been about marching towards the enemy imperial capital to nuke it, but in the third to last mission a ceasefire is reached and the protagonist thankfully does not nuke the city. The evil scientist guy tries to grab the nuke and set the countdown to fulfill his lifelong dream and research. In the penultimate mission, his huge submarine has attached a cable to your ship and is towing it away, and you have to catch up while running and driving along the coast and jumping onto his submarine when it pops up out of the water and throw explosives into the vents. Stressful because that sub will only pop up 3 or 4 times before it escapes, and you have all of these enemies in between you and the various
jumping off cliffs.




Then you have the actual last mission, where the nuke is going to go off in 10 turns unless disarmed. Your ship is on the other side of a frozen lake while the evil scientist is in his big submarine-tank, and there are a lot of enemy soldiers on the lake. You have to first drive and run past all of the enemy forces to drop off your engineer at the ship to begin disarming the nuke. Then you have to clear the rest of the map of enemies, which is quite large so it takes time. Hitoshi Sakimoto's stressful music is playing. It was not until I think around the last 2 turns that I had cleared all of the adds and there was just the submarine tank left.

Valkyria Chronicles 4 OST -Last Stand on the Crystal Sea




The submarine has a kill zone almost entirely around it, and will regularly travel in a path before diving below the ice and reemerging out of one of three holes. You have to send engineers running across the map to use explosive to cause ice pillars to fall into the holes and block them, eventually preventing the boss tank from submerging. It was not until the final turn that I had all three holes blocked. Then you have to sneak guys up behind the boss tank, have him climb the ladder, and drop explosives into the vents. Difficult to do when there is little room on the walkways, so you have to move your guys up, have them lob, and then move back down the ladder to make room for more guys to go up until the tank is dead.




Felt satisfying to kill that guy and save the city.

Pokemon Colosseum.

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Pokemon Colosseum is generally a challenging game, as there are no wild Pokemon to catch or grind on, and most trainers cannot be refought. So this is a game where you have a limited roster with limited TMs to teach them and limited EXP to obtain. You just can't overpower enemies in a conventional playthrough, and the whole game is double battles. The enemies have teams that synergize with each other. The final dungeon has you go through a gauntlet of boss fights, and then you have the big bad villain himself who was very threatening with the crowd cheering for him to kill you.

Pokemon Colosseum- Nascour\u0027s Theme


After beating him, I had a moment of relief... only for the fat cheerful mayor to turn out to be the real big bad, and you get into yet another fight immediately with no chance to heal. Worse, at the end he had a Shadow Tyranitar and a Shadow Slowking, but my team was wounded and I just did not have the resources to risk delaying ending the battle to try to capture them, so I had to KO them and end the game. It was neat that there was heroic music at the end to uplift your spirit to finish.

Pokemon- Colosseum- Final Battle- Music

Pokemon Black & White

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This is the hardest mainline Pokemon game. The world is linear, you have a limited roster of Pokemon available to catch before the postgame, and there are no good ways to levelgrind, so you have to make do with facing enemies at the same level. This was also before team wide EXP share became a thing, so you would probably have one or two really strong Pokemon and a few same level or slightly underlevelled Pokemon. The Elite Four do not have a full six Pokemon, but they were very difficult, and the music was stressful.

Pok\u00e9mon Black \u0026 White - Elite Four Battle Music (HQ)


After fighting each Elite Four, they mention that someone came before you. Then you climb up the stairs and find that N has apparently defeated the big good guy Alder offscreen, and is now the champion, and intends to command all of the trainers to release their Pokemon. So now you have to fight N with your legendary dragon vs his, and he is very convinced of what he is doing. He thinks he is a righteous hero, and heals up your team to full before fighting you to prove to all that he won because he was right. More stressful music.

Pok\u00e9mon Black \u0026 White - N Final Battle Music (HQ)


Then after beating N, his adoptive father Ghetsis kicks N and disowns his son, and decides to try to kill you. I had no time to heal my party, and scary music was playing. I gameovered on my first attempt but got it on my second attempt. His Hydregion's intro cry was intimidating.

Pok\u00e9mon Black \u0026 White - Ghetsis Battle Music (HQ)


I felt so relieved beating him and watching him get sent to prison, and then getting the epilogue where N rides on his dragon across the ocean, never to be seen again.

Shadow of the Colossus.

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Not the 16th colossus, but the final events in which Wander's tribesman catch up to him and witness that he has become monstrous. They execute him (both for having broken the taboo and crossing into the forbidden land, and for working with a demon), but then the demonic Dormin possesses Wander's body and attempts to transform into a colossi. This time, you get to control the colossi! Unfortunately, you are inside a sturdy stone temple, which restricts your movement, so the enemy party is able to move and evade you. They grab your magic sword and retreat to a stairwell that you cannot enter, and then perform a ritual to destroy you. You get sucked of your power and shrink back into being a young man, and eventually sucked into the pool of water and die. The music playing at the end made the segment where you are slowly being sucked to the pool very despairing.

[High Quality] Shadow of the Colossus OST 09 - The End of the Battle

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Honorable mention to Kuro no Kiseki 2/Trails Through Daybreak 2. I played this on Nightmare difficulty. The adds in phase 2 and 3 were very tanky (hard to burst down) and threatening, which was really what made the fight so suspenseful.

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The final boss' 1st form has a cool design. Reminds me of Dragonoid from Bakugan. His basic Zolga-Grendel form is also cool too.




The final boss fight is pretty novel. During the first phase, I was caught offguard when the boss' turn came up and he used an ability that transistioned the game to action combat and I had to dodge his attack on short notice. Once enough time passes, you can go back to turn based. Pretty neat.






Next, once you get his HP down far enough, he then starts teleporting you to flashbacks of prior boss fights across Kuro 1 and 2, similar to the Garrosh fight at the end of Mists of Pandaria. Then you get spat back out and fight the boss again in the third phase. The third flashback fight with Melchior is pretty amusing, as Melchior can just summon shadow clones of himself over and over half a dozen times in a row before his AI picks a different action that delays him quite a bit. So you want to wait until he picks that different action and gets delayed, and then switch to Judith and pop your AoE S-craft to bewitch/confuse all of the shadow clones and make them fight each other (since Chaos Van can't one shot the Shadow Clones with a single S-craft. They have too much HP).






I liked how he could summon adds continously throughout the fight. The difficulty in Trails boss fights tends to be frontloaded if there are adds to deal with, and then once they are disposed of it becomes a simple tank and spank. CS3 introduced enhanced states to try to make bosses become more dangerous as boss battles went on but it didn't really amount to anything, and bosses in Kuro don't use S-boost just for the stats or the effects, only to pop an S-craft.




I got the boss down to 3k HP left, enough that my next basic attack would finish him off, when he popped an S-craft, but then it turned out to be an elaborate cutscene where Van ripostes the S-craft and kills the final boss. Novel.




This is the most elaborate Trails fight in the series, and the transitions between phases are seamless. Interesting to think that Falcom was able to whip this fight up in less than a year after releasing Kuro 1.

[Classix]

Now we're talkin' Tweeders.


SaGa Frontier: Lute\u0027s Final Battle \u0026 Ending


I remember this was my first playthrough of Saga Frontier... the sounds I still recall to this day, the Lute Final Song I think about a few times a month. This being my first playthrough back on ps1 when I randomly picked "Lute" was something I've never forgotten. Multiple boss phases with accompanying sprite changes and transitions was fuckin beauty and has been a favorite all these years. My team always had T2, Riki and Gen though. I have not played the remaster, as I'd prefer an emulator to keep it OG but this one came to mind instantly as a TOP 5.


Super Castlevania 4 (Final Boss) -Super NES-


Then we have the big ************... Dracula SNES SCV4. I remember playing this many times with my cousin back in the day during summer break when I'd visit my aunt and grandma for a few weeks out of the summer break and we'd plunk away at it, stage by fuckin stage until finally one summer night we beat it. The build up track and the bass/heaviness ( whatever your t.v could put out ) engrained the memory in me all these years when the final strike was landed and that ****** went up in flames and we finally saw the credits. It was just pure bliss and shock. Finally...

I'll have to think of some more.

[Tweed]

Konami had a real talent for final boss battles:

Contra Hard Corps All Final Bosses

[methoxetamine]

Eigong - Nine Sols

Eigong boss fight \u2013 Nine Sols

[Manny V]

Ceadeus from Monster Hunter Tri's single player. Chasing down a giant, bearded, horned, blind in one eye whale resembling Odin and Poseidon at once, shaving his beard off with your sword, then facing him off in his underwater lair in an ancient ruined city is kino. Breaking off his horn (which he was butting into the roof of the cavern, causing earthquakes for your village above) and weakening him enough to drive him off and out into the open ocean rather than slaying him, to return to Moga Village and be hailed as a hero that fended off a god; it all feels it's straight out of some Greek myth or folklore story.

Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) G - Moon in the Water (Ceadeus intro)
Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) G - Rampaging God (Ceadeus intro)
Monster Hunter 3 Tri ending

Then of course for the multiplayer, while not an official 'final boss', you have Alatreon, the strongest monster in the game. An elder dragon capable of using (almost) all elements, living atop a volcano, attacking any zeppelins that dare fly past the area, and in general as is with most elders, potentially being a great threat to the world if left unchecked. It having a sort of devil-like appearance to it makes it feel like you're having a showdown with dragon Satan.
Alatreon - Battle Theme [Monster Hunter 3]

Shara Ishvalda was also pretty neat in Iceborne; you face off against what seems like some weird giant rock golem, but as you break off bits and pieces, he sheds the rocks entirely and turns out he's some freaky Hindu/Buddhist dragon that makes sound wave blasts with his freaky wing-fingertips.

MHW Iceborne OST Shara Ishvalda Theme 1
MHW Iceborne OST Shara Ishvalda Theme 2

Honourable mentions to Gwyn from Dark Souls 1, cause even though he's technically a bit of a chump, the buildup, setpiece, music, and the fact that you can face him with sunbro Solaire is kino. It feels like you're ending the now miserable existence of a once great man, putting an end to his madness.
Also Grigori from Dragon's Dogma, although i can't really speak on this since i haven't beat the game myself (yet )

[Tweed]

Honorable mentions for RPGs include Sarevok and Behelit for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, respectively. Most videos on jewtube are trash though for showcasing the battles. Most RPG final bosses suck though because they end up being a wars of attrition. So long as you have more hps and outdamage them, you win. Frank in Fallout 2 is impressive looking, but easy to kill and combat in Fallout is easy to exploit.

Behelit and Icasaracht are both a blast to fight, especially on Heart of Fury.

Final boss for KotC might be fun, but I killed him instantly with 2% chance when I cast implosion on him so I don't know.

[Vlajdimir Ermenović]

Rader from Split Fiction, Xemnas from KH2, General Raam from Gears of War, Satan from Antonblast, Zeus from God of War 3, Gehrman from Bloodborne

[MrTwinkls]

BIO240.jpg

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Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 Soundtrack - BOSS THEME

[Bhaalspawn Jr]

This thread will be spoilers galore, but I just want to add (if @methoxetamine hasn't already) every Yakuza final boss (except Infinite Wealth and Pirate).

[methoxetamine]

Rader from Split Fiction

Based. The whole finale sequence is pure kino

This thread will be spoilers galore, but I just want to add (if @methoxetamine hasn't already) every Yakuza final boss (except Infinite Wealth and Pirate).

I didn't but I would have if I posted more than 1

[Kolgrim]

He's a great final boss because you realize while fighting him that you are the bad guy.

[rusty_shackleford]

He's a great final boss because you realize while fighting him that you are the bad guy.

But why would fighting a libtard make me the bad guy? Strange game.

[jdcp]

Mine's this:

Come on this was EPIC, can't deny it. Either this or the MGS4 one, can't really pick one.

He's a great final boss because you realize while fighting him that you are the bad guy.

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No censorship pls.

PS: he wasn't the final boss?