FOEs are designed to be obstacles to navigate around, instead of mini-bosses to fight. Coming back to defeat what troubled you before is very cathartic. Being able to beat an FOE on sight is a mark of player growth!
Defeating an FOE by depleting its health gives you a feeling of power. Instantly killing them or petrifying them is doubly awesome.
Ronin in Untold have Severing Slash, a passive that may attempt to instakill all enemies at the start of battle. It can trigger against F.O.E.s. It's possible to kill them this way.
Curse is by far one of the worst ailments in the game due to Health/Damage Asymmetry greatly limiting the amount of damage it does. That doesn't stop several players from making the most of it. Cue the Curse Cheese Strategy, focused on inflicting Curse to a boss, giving a level 1 party member (with the weakest defenses) a Last Chance Hit Point effect, and letting them take its strongest attack. This results in Curse reflection damage that can one-shot a postgame boss!
Defeating the ultimate superboss at the game's hardest difficulty is another for the player, especially if they don't cheese it with a massive burst damage strategy.
Most games will, on victory, have the game just congratulate the player for beating its greatest challenge. In Beyond the Myth, the player can opt to fight the superboss while Arken is around. Their victory in this case will earn Arken's undying gratitude, and the congratulations carries a little more weight coming from an NPC rather than the game itself. Something similar happens in The Drowned City, as the leaders of Armoroad and the Deep City deeply thank you for vanquishing the great evil that's been the source of their problems.
Beating the Yggdrasil Core in The Millennium Girl, especially after the Post-Final Boss that is the regular battle at the end of Story Mode. This time, there is no Yggdra Vaccine. There is no Heroic Sacrifice to help the heroes. You're alone against an abomination M.I.K.E. believed required a multi-megaton weapon to destroy. You've weathered multiple attacks that would have caused a Total Party Kill. And you reminded it what dirt tastes like.
The Abyssal God of The Drowned City might give a little trouble at first glance, but once you've figured out its elemental rotation, it doesn't take too much to bring it down. But once you empty its health bar, the game displays "The boundary to another dimension is coming undone..." It then pans upwards to the Abyssal God's true body, and "Calling that Detestable Name" begins playing as you realize the boss is just getting warmed up.
The DLC Ur-Devil is incredibly difficult, more so than the Ur-Child, and capable of causing a Total Party Kill on a whim. Defeating it on Expert difficulty, where it holds back none of its unfair gimmicks, and while working through its attack pattern instead of just killing it in one go with a massive damage combo, is an incredible feat. The game acknowledges your victory with the Ragnarok sword, which at this point has become a Bragging Rights Reward.
Defeating the True Final Boss of Nexus gives the player one last cutscene showing its now lifeless corpse becoming one with the Yggdrasil. It really highlights that the player's long journey through the game (and maybe the series as a whole) has finally come to a close.
It's not unusual to see someone try a daring Self-Imposed Challenge, usually a Solo-Character Run in a game that expects you to have a full party for expeditions, or attempting to beat the ultimate superboss with a single character or unusual team composition. The things those players accomplish can be a sight to behold.
The Drowned City:
Tagen Battou (aka Drawing Slice) is a unique Ninja skill that requires unleashes several attacks; with more clones out, the attack hits harder. It's Difficult, but Awesome because you're going to need an intentionally understaffed party to get as many clones as possible and you have to keep them all from dying, but the outcome can oneshot superbosses. What makes it better is that the music briefly cuts out during the attack animation, so it can be an incredibly climactic moment as you see the payoff for all that setup!
Periodically through the game, you receive Sea Quests that send you to aid members from other guilds as they take on various bosses. The final Sea Quest, however, has a lot more buildup, as it starts in the postgame with the Elder Dragon announcing to Armoroad to challenge the three elemental dragons. You can see that everyone's heard it loud and clear with new adventurers showing up in the labyrinth looking to challenge them. Your guild is the one that bests them and earns the right to challenge it, and the NPCs who come to your aid are the people you've assisted over the other Sea Quests. They've even become a lot stronger to match the quest's standards.
In The Fafnir Knight:
The battle with the Demi-Fafnir in Story Mode starts with the protagonist in his newly acquired Black Guardian transformation, and it's a wicked clash between both wielders of the power of Fafnir until your transformation wears off.
At the end of Story Mode, the party has just beaten the Yggdrasil Core, but it reawakens and blows them away. The protagonist has one last resort — the Holy Grail — and uses it to gain immense power, enough to curb stomp the Core alone.
The conclusion to the "Law and order" quest in has your party confront the thief who used the monster-summoning flutes against you. With his latest wave of monsters just beaten, he flees to an upper floor, only to be ambushed by one of the bigger monsters he had summoned with said flute. In the original, you then leave him to his fate and turn in the completed quest. However, here you have an option to rescue him and confront an optional boss. Doing the latter and beating said quest boss lets you turn the thief in to the authorities, letting you cash in on his bounty — 30,000 ental — on top of the other quest rewards. Satisfying.
"The golden shadow" quest suddenly places the Storm Emperor before the party. Bear in mind that this is meant for a level 60-70 party to take on, when the quest is accepted at level 45 or so. Fortunately, it does not engage the party, giving the chance to retreat to safety. Or, you could take it on... and defeat it, if you're cunning with skill usage. Bear in mind that you also need to keep the boss from escaping as it will flee after a few turns. If accomplishing that crazy feat is not already a reward in itself, choosing to fight the Emperor and win, despite its attempts to escape, will give the party an additional reward of 100,000 ental!
In Beyond the Myth:
All the townsfolk who assist you as guest party members in various quests are pretty awesome. Jenetta turns out to be pretty handy as a Rover especially in her second trip with your crew, Lili's Soul Evoker build gives decent support and helps prop up any of your own Necromancers with some of her skills and passives, Egar seriously WRECKS the Primordiphant with his Cannon Bearer build with a hefty BUSTER CANNON, Solor's Deathguard setup lets her layer debuffs for your team and her other skills synergize incredibly well as a damage support, and Merina's Spirit Broker build gives you additional firepower from the back row.
Special note on Jenetta's second guest star quest — When she rejoins you, she's now a powered-up Hound Rover with lots of handy arrow skills and some useful Hound healing, and she can easily pull her weight supporting your party during the ensuing battle(s), even against the Dryad.
The set-piece leading up to the fight with the Crystal Dragon on the 4th Stratum is pretty cool. You are brought before it in a large chamber, where it demonstrates the power to throw teleportation crystals at you as an overworld attack. You then have to approach it without getting battered by the shockwaves of falling crystals, ultimately using those same crystals against it by teleporting around it so you can close the gap before it can turn to face you.
Following that battle, the lead-up to the Fifth Stratum, and reveal that comes with it, is really awe-inspiring. Stepping past the defeated Crystal Dragon, Arken congratulates you and invites you to open the door to what comes next. Cue the cutscene that reveals the inside of a space elevator and the approach to the biodome that is the Fifth Stratum, complete with a good glimpse of the stars above.
This game heads to new heights that the series hasn't explored when the player embarks on the Sixth Stratum. It's set in outer space!
