Awesome Bosses / Other Games A To M

A - F

• The Ace Combat games have a few awesome boss fights worth mentioning.
  • Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War:
    • The second to last and last missions are amazing, though lacking in a specific boss unless you count the SOLG.
    • The Scinfaxi. Who knew that fighting a submarine from the air could be so intense? Sadly, this doesn't apply to the Hrimfaxi.
  • If you could count anti-fortress missions, 04's Megalith and 6's Chandelier are epic; facing enemy aces in any of the games is pretty great.
• Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War:
  • The final mission. One on one dogfight? Check. Super-advanced enemy fighter? Check. Crazy Spanish guitar of awesome? Check. The fact that you're fighting against someone established as your best friend in the war? Super Check. The boss' plane is equipped with an ECM system that makes him invulnerable to missiles and guns. How are you supposed to defeat him, you ask? By Air Jousting him head-on and nailing his front air intakes. The speeds involved in dogfighting mean that every time, you have literally a split second to fire your missiles and turn away before he returns the favor. And the whole battle is timed, as Pixy has launched an ICBM that will cause The End of the World as We Know It, unless you shoot him down before the reentry phase begins. The blood-pumping flamenco/orchestral battle music does not lessen the experience either. All in all, Zero's final mission is indeed a worthy sendoff for Ace Combat's PS2 era.
  • The XB-0 Hresvelgr. By extension, the P-1112 Aigaion and its escorts in Ace Combat 6.
• In the Shoot 'Em Up Air Gallet, your final boss is a massive statue of a demon choking other people, with some nice looking attacks and the statue changing color and shedding Tears of Blood the more damage it takes. On top of that, the final battle with this statue also has flames rising in the background! Finally, when you confront its final form, it becomes a simple fighter with a skull as its face.
• The criminally underrated PSX game Alundra has its fair share of excellent boss fights, including a duel against a crazed werewolf in plain view of the horrified village, running from an animated stone colossus, fighting a dream demon while simultaneously trying to keep the man whose mind you are in from being sucked into the abyss of its maw, or maybe just the way the final boss battle sees you win through the prayers of all the (rather few at that point) surviving villagers granting you strength... before you finally set him on fire.
• Despite its rather cold reception, even in comparison to its predecessor, most if not all of Alundra 2's bosses qualify. Highlights include an early boss fight against the giant robotic bull boss (prefaced by an entertaining fleeing scene reminiscent of the aforementioned Goht) and the demonic spider fought on a rapidly-descending elevator (doubly so when she smashes the guard rail protecting herself and Flint from smashing against the walls). The grand prize has to go to the demon whale, however; an enormous mutated whale swallows most of the game's cast, stranding them in a Scrappy Level spanning its innards. After all the puzzles are finally said and done, the player comes face to face with the whale's mutated, mechanical heart, which defends itself with summoned mooks, beam spam, and more. It's a fair, yet challenging boss, and it's only vulnerable when it hangs down as if to say, "Take out the aggression of being stuck in this damn level out on me!"
• The Jabberwock from American McGee's Alice. All the bosses' power is proportionate to their ability to mindrape, and this is the first one to wipe the smirk off Alice's face and make her scream. Tough battle, awesome lines.
• Another Century's Episode 3 features an absolutely incredible final boss battle with the Shin Dragon from Shin Getter Robo Armageddon. This is due, in no small part, to the massive size of the mech and the incredible stage in which you fight it. The Buster Ark from ACE 2 deserves mention as well, quite simply for being the hardest fight in that game by far, as well as the true Final Boss. To explain why the ACE 3 fight was so awesome, it's because you're in between two alternate Earths being pulled towards each other into a collision, and between you and salvation is a city-sized dragon-like mecha who is to scale. And you are to scale, and chances are you might be in a 4-meter-tall bug mecha.
• Ape Escape Pumped & Primed has a light feel to it until you get to the final boss, a Giant Face from hell, which is actually the core of the entire virtual world in which the tournament takes place. It's also the first and only boss to have multiple health bars. Coupled with the fact that it has more attacks than any other boss in the game, which deal a lot more damage, and it's One hell of a boss. Until you realize that Monkey Team's "Goliath Fist" special hits multiple times (due to it being so tall) for massive damage, and that it's mostly stationary...
• Aquaria:
  • The Sunken City boss (an invulnerable golem with hammers for hands, attended by a hard-to-damage wraith) not only works great as a Puzzle Boss and a normal boss battle, but the music is kick-ass incredible.
  • Nautilus Prime, without the Energy Form... or the boss of the Sun Temple. The music for the latter's second form is just that good.
  • Then there's the five-part battle against the final boss, The Creator, who is basically a Physical God. It all culminates with you and your boyfriend facing off against a towering, twisted monstrosity with some of the best music in a game filled with excellent music. The final phase isn't really all that difficult (the hardest part is probably the second phase), but the sheer scope of the battle makes it pure awesome anyway.
• Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits features Two Lines, No Waiting with Dueling Player Characters. At one point you take the Dueling Player Characters part literally - and you must pick between Kharg or Darc, then fight their party. And they will use the exact skills you have given them. Sure, it's nothing after you fought Demon Droguza or Darkham, but that doesn't make it any less fun.
• Nineball from Armored Core in all his appearances. Fast, powerful That One Boss set to an incredible badass theme that gets you pumped up? Hells yes.
  • Just as gratifying was Ultimate Zinaida from Last Raven. As the last console release before Armored Core 4 changed large chunks of the mechanics, Zinaida was From Software's final challenge for old-skool Ravens. After navigating a series of cramped passageways loaded with suicide bots and taking down the heavily defended generators on the ship, players got to fight Zinaida in her final form. She had higher speed and turning ability than it was possible for a human player to get, her boosters did not consume energy, she suffered no penalties for being massively overweight, could fire her shoulder weapons while moving, and she was virtually impossible to overheat. To make things worse she was a crack shot with her hand-held rail gun and machine-gun duo and was an expert at getting to your back and parking right over your shoulder, pounding you relentlessly. Even being able to keep Zenaida in sight was an achievement, much less actually beating her. An S-rank on "Destroy the Internecine" was a sign of sublime skill — and possibly of latent masochism.
• Headlok from ARMS in the Grand Prix Mode. After you score a certain amount of points throughout the mode at the end of the Championship match against Max Brass, Headlok shows up and takes control of Max Brass. What follows is a brutal battle where you have to fight an opponent using three pairs of arms. Headlok uses Max's arms to devastating effect and can almost predict your movements; in addition, his Limit Break attack is an energy ball that will deal half your HP in damage. Note, in multiplayer where three different players face against Headlok controlling a standard character, the battle is still very difficult. Managing to beat this overpowered Headlok on a 1-on-1 will make anyone feel like they truly earned the belt.
• The four legendary ships from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag are fun and inventive ship boss fights and taking them down is a Final-Exam Boss that represents the culmination of the Franchise's naval component. Special mention has to go to the two Spanish ships - La Dama Negra and El Impoluto, with the latter being almost Shadow of the Colossus worthy as a fight.
• Assassin's Creed: Unity: Your duel with Pierre Bellec. First because it's essentially a Mirror Boss, but mostly because the duel plays out in a huge Church, which goes from outside the Cathedral to its vast interiors, so your quarry can disappear in the shadows and leap out of nowhere, keeping you on your toes, and he can match your best moves in a swordfight. It also leads to a dark emotional payoff.
• The Queen System from Astebreed on Hard. It's even tougher to fight than APITEX-EVO, and it has tons of attacks that just screams Bullet Hell. In its second phase, it limits the space by having lasers constantly fire and on its third phase, it just goes all out with its bullets, lasers, and power shots. All while this pump-pounding music plays. You better have your EX attack, because if not, good luck.
• Axelay, stage 5. It's a burning cyborg lava ogre.
• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • Though the games have many gloriously surreal moments, the battle against Mr Patch in the second game has got to come tops. In it, you fight a giant, inflatable dinosaur, or "Strange Wobbly Inflatable Thing", as the game puts it with the ability to summon boxing gloves from nowhere, patches you need to blow off with grenades and some of the most wonderfully demented battle music ever. Also, his main attack is to spit exploding beach balls at you. Awesome!
  • The fact that you spend half the boss fight flying doesn't hurt either. But there's also Lord Woo Fak Fak, more fun when you realise you can fight him in submarine mode. And then the final boss, a witch in a giant drill tank who gives you trivia questions in mid-battle! (And the trivia level before as well, with hundreds of questions that stretch your knowledge of the game to the limit.)
  • The first time Banjo and Kazooie fought Gruntilda, at the end of the first game, was pretty awesome as well. She has all the tactics of a Final-Exam Boss, forcing you to use practically every move you've learned at your disposal just to survive. Including the epic phase of the fight where Banjo and Kazooie take to the sky and dogfight her.
• Baten Kaitos:
  • Just about any time that Giacomo, Ayme, or Folon show up in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. The battles against the three of them (especially the last time, immediately after you beat them they recover and you have to fight them a second time) are the best, but solo Giacomo near the beginning of the game can be That One Boss, and solo Folon is pretty cool, too, if only because he's so funny. (He acts like a clown, he has blue skin and a blue-and-red mohawk, and one of his main attacks is called "Worg Laser". What's not to love?) Just to top it off, there's the boss theme, Chaotic Dance, complete with incomprehensible lyrics.
  • That said, for those who weren't very fond of Those Three Bosses, there is also the fight with the "Angel of Darkness" a.k.a. Kalas about three-fourths of the way through the game. Although he too presents an incredibly difficult fight (being able to attack with HP-draining nine-hit combos), the electric guitar version of The True Mirror is blasting and you can practically feel the party's determination to overcome this challenge and bring Kalas back to his senses. Plus, there's the fact that, y'know, you're fighting the main character, which isn't something that's done in RPGs all that often!
  • Malpercio. Yeah, he's a nightmare to fight, but my god, is it cool. You fight him on top of the Cor Hydrae, in the middle of a dimensional anomaly. As you whale on him, he goes from just stomping on your party to firing giant dark arrows at them, swapping his elemental alignments, and finally stealing their health with Enchanted Blade. All while Violent Storm is blaring in the background.
  • The fight against Shanath. Everything about this fight was incredible - the fact that Iconoclasm was playing in the background, the fact that the player had wanted to kill this guy for ages, the fact that you get to use your new attack on him...really, any descriptions of this fight just don't do the emotions justice.
  • Any fight with Wiseman, be it the first fight where he sics a dragon on you, or the second one where he possesses Verus' body and turns into a full-fledged Eldritch Abomination.
  • There's something about "The True Mirror" because when it shows up again in Origins, it's fully orchestrated to lend a feeling of awesome to the fight with Baelheit, also subtly alluding to the fact that he's the real spiriter. Seriously, the entire three-part confrontation is epic: first, he takes out Sagi's allies, forcing Sagi into a one-on-one swordfight; when Sagi starts gaining ground, he goes into a Motive Rant explaining his sordid history, which Sagi finally interrupts by essentially saying "Shut Up, Hannibal!!"; and finally, Sagi's allies regroup and stand with him for the real fight, during which the boss uses the same kind of special spiriter finishers Kalas used in the first game. It's almost a shame that The Man Behind the Man has to stab him in the back right then, because the fight with him had no chance of living up to such an amazing confrontation with the Big Bad you had been fighting for most of the game.
  • How about every late-game boss fight in Origins? After the first half of the game, where you lose nearly every boss fight, it's so satisfying to watch Sagi shred through bosses like they're made of tissue paper. Destroying the machina armas, killing Wiseman, even the bosses of the character sidequests are incredibly fun to fight.
• Batman: Arkham City:
  • Mr. Freeze, who COMPLETELY averts Boss-Arena Idiocy by making sure that once you use a strategy against him once, you can NEVER USE IT AGAIN. He's completely invulnerable to head-on attack and can kill you in under 5 seconds with his ice beam. Beating him requires that you utilize every stealth-based attack you have used since once you have used one trick on him, he'll put up a defense that prevents it from working again. For example, if you try to attack him by gliding off of the top floor rafters and kicking him, it will work at first, but then Freeze will fire his beam into the air, making the air denser which ices over Batman's cape and making gliding impossible. On New Game Plus mode this will go up to eleven, where you won't just have to use five or six tricks, you will have to use all of them due to his increased health and general badassery. Oh and on top of that in New Game Plus if you're the kind of player who abuses Detective Mode by turning it on and leaving it on? Freeze will punish you for that too by jamming it into uselessness unless you turn it off for extended periods of time much longer than the duration you left it on in the first place. Have fun having to actually track Freeze on your own.
  • The fight Bruce has with Ra's Al Ghul while tripping on the Blood of the Demon is nearly as good. It has some of the best (and most outlandish) visuals in the game (which is saying something), a tense atmosphere, and gives Batman the opportunity to counter attacks from over twenty opponents at the same time (He's normally capable of a mere three counters at the same time).
  • One word: Clayface. Fighting this Humanoid Abomination with Talia's scimitar, while dodging its insane attacks and slicing up its Mooks, while near a Lazarus Pit involved in the awesome Finishing Move against this boss....it's awesome.
• Batman: Arkham Origins may be considered the weakest of the Arkham games, but almost everyone agreed that the boss fights vastly improved:
  • The Deathstroke boss fight has been particularly acclaimed, as it forces the player to make sure to memorize his attack patterns rather than just spamming the attack button as well as focus on mastering the counter ability, since just rushing in and pressing it as quickly as possible will lead to a very quick death.
  • The battle against Firefly is also rather engaging as one has to be quick to dodge his fire attacks and then be quick reeling him in with the grapple to cause any damage or one is forced to repeat the strategy. It helps the battle is stretched through the Gotham bridge making it feel more epic.
  • The first fight against Bane is a huge one for players of the previous games. While Bane was a Bullfight Boss in Batman: Arkham Asylum, the fight against him in this one is a full-on brawl (with elements of Bullfight Boss and Flunky Boss, but mostly a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown).
• Batman: Vengeance is a decent platformer that one heck of a finish. The very last fight in the game is Batman fighting the Joker, freefalling several thousands of feet in the air, with the Joker lobbying several of his traps at Batman forcing him to dodge them all and deliver a series of punches in order to finally knock his enemy out.
• Battle Garegga introduces us to the G-616 "Black Heart": a high-speed fighter prototype developed by the Federation to combat the Wayne brothers' Garegga fighters. Encountered in Stage 5, which takes place in a thundercloud, the fight goes at high-speeds as you chase Black Heart through the storm, all while it releases difficult bullet patterns, closes in to incinerate you with its twin jets, and unleashes its dreaded Spread Shot attack, which requires extreme precision to maneuver without getting hit. It also counts as That One Boss because, while the previous bosses (Nose Lavagghin, Mad Ball, Earth Crisis, and Satanic Surfer) all had destructible parts you could blow off to stop them from using more attacks, Black Heart has no destructible parts. So you're forced to endure the brunt of its attacks, which get harsher the more you damage it.
• beatmania IIDX 15 DJ TROOPERS's "Military Splash" extra stages represent your performance in the song with a shooter-like duel with a giant boss figure in the song background window. Hitting notes fires lasers at the boss to deplete its HP, while missing notes causes the boss to hit you. For full effect though, you'll need to be playing one of these songs in Expert mode or with the Hard gauge (both of which make you fail the song if the life gauge falls to 0%), because when you finish the song, the boss dies (regardless of HP left; a full combo will completely reduce it to 0), signifying that you survived the entire song.
• Bionic Commando (2009): "Whoah! Is that a long health bar or are you just happy to see me?"
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger has the final battle in the True Story. You play Unlimited Ragna, against Unlimited Nu, in a proper Three Round Deathmatch (unlike every other story battle), on an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, to the tune of the game's theme song, Ao-Iconoclast. And it's marvelous. Its sequel, Continuum Shift, uses the same format, with Unlimited Ragna facing Unlimited Mu, after some warm-up battles, some cathartic, some hopeless. The third, Chronophantasma has an Inverted Sequential Boss; Noel, Jin then U Ragna vs Take-Mikazuchi. Afterwards, you can fight the boss whenever, and with whoever you want.
• Bloodborne. Where to even begin.
  • Father Gascoigne. Difficult, yet so awesome. Gascoigne begins playing much like the player, dodging around with his Blunderbuss and Hunter's Axe. But, as you whittle away at his health, he slowly becomes more monstrous, until he transforms into a massive werewolf, capable of leaping across the arena and smashing apart previously unbreakable gravestones in his final form. And this is your first mandatory boss!
  • Though he's not considered a proper boss and fighting him is completely optional, the battle with Retired Hunter Djura is one of the game's cooler duels. After dodging his gatling gun throughout most of Old Yharnam, you fight him atop a precarious clock tower roof, preventing you from getting more than a few feet away from him as he relentlessly attacks you with a Pilebunker, of all things.
  • Darkbeast Paarl, the Superboss in the Hypogean Gaol area. It has an awesome design, essentially being a skeletal werewolf covered in electricity, and the theme that plays when you fight it is quite imposing. The fight itself is extremely difficult, due to Paarl being an extremely fast Lightning Bruiser, leaving almost no margin for error — especially if you fight it in the first half of the game, in which case you'll be very underleveled.
  • Micolash, Host of the Nightmare. A scholar gone completely mad due to exposure to the Great Ones, he spends his boss fight alternating between running away from you and shooting at you with incredibly powerful magic. Sure, his actual fight is pretty easy, but his nonsensical, yet infinitely quotable prayers throughout the fight more than makes up for the lack of difficulty.
  • Mergo's Wet Nurse is visually striking with a haunting yet sad theme, has a large pool of cool sword attacks, and can even duplicate herself temporarily.
  • The Final Boss on a normal run, Gehrman, the First Hunter. Imagine the fight against Father Gascoigne mentioned above — except he's faster, stronger, and doesn't even need a second form to kick your ass. You may be much stronger than you were in Gascoigne's fight, but it probably won't help you much.
  • The Old Hunters DLC has Ludwig the Accursed. He may be That One Boss, but the reveal of the Moonlight Great Sword and the accompanying music transitioning seamlessly makes it almost worth the pain. The boss gets bonus points for being a twofer - in the first stage, Ludwig, the Accursed is already one of the finest large beast battles From Soft have ever produced. But then the second stage begins and in a huge subversion of the "formerly-human boss slips further into bestial insanity" trope we've already seen several times, the sacred light of the Moonlight Great Sword restores the beast's sanity and Ludwig, the Holy Blade brings one of the greatest giant swordsman battles From Soft have ever made as well!
  • Lady Maria, the DLC's Climax Boss, who stands out with possibly the best Gascoigne-like duel in the entire game. The boss is fast, capable of Flash Step spam, employs two swords for swift hit and run tactics. Then the boss Turns Red, her blades start doing freaking Sword Beam attacks made of blood. Then she Turns Red again and the blood is now on fire. And that's not even getting into the amazing atmosphere, the predictably grand music, or the lore implications. It's a little bittersweet having to fight the Plain Doll's template, truth be told.
  • As difficult as the previous fights are, the DLC's Final Boss is an absolute killer, quite possibly the hardest fight From has designed: at the end of the Fishing Hamlet, you fight the Orphan of Kos on a rain-swept beach, right next to the corpse of Kos itself. It's one of the fastest Lightning Bruisers in the game, and easily the most aggressive, constantly slashing its huge weapon around you with few warnings and breaks. That's hard enough, but then it Turns Red and gains a speed upgrade, a damage boost, and a whole host of new attacks and effects. As the de facto True Final Boss of the Bloodborne experience, it's the ultimate test of your skills.
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night:
  • Dominique uses the old shards you sold her and power from the Libre Logaeth to throw every prominent technique at you, including crucial in-game shards like Reflector Ray. It makes for an insanely frenetic final boss fight, and almost makes her fusing with Bael a letdown by comparison. If you throw on the Kung-Fu Boots as your weapon of choice and load yourself up with powerful shards, you'll feel just as agile and powerful as Dominique is by this point. Especially on Hard mode, beating this boss feels like an accomplishment.
  • Most fans were eager to trigger the secret boss fight with O.D. on purpose because the character's various nods to SotN's Alucard extend to their moveset as well, with O.D. employing the use of Al's bat, mist, and wolf forms. This is on top of their liberal yet judicious use of Time Stands Still.
• Blue Dragon has a notable boss fight part way through Disc 2. Whilst working through what is - easily - the biggest dungeon in the game at that point whilst set to a 1-hour time limit, the party re-encounter the final boss of Disc 1 and his four assistants - all 5 of which are robots who had been destroyed in the last dungeon of Disc 1, one at a time. This time? You get an epic cutscene, then face the four assistants in a 5 v 4 battle where the enemy AI works together with a beautiful set of teamwork attacks, after which you get to re-fight The Dragon who is riding a GIANT FLOATING CANNON. Mere words cannot express how awesome this fight actually is.
• Boktai:
  • The very final boss of Boktai 3. You're on a motorcycle tearing through a castle that's orbiting the moon in space, and the boss you just thought you killed comes back completely unharmed and chases you down. Since sunlight is fatal to it, all you can do is run for dear life to techno pipe-organ rock music until the castle orbits into view of the sun. And it kicks ass!
  • Trance Dumas in Lunar Knights. He presents an actual challenge (he can drain your health and he's got his own Burst attacks) and his pattern (at the start, at least) mixes it up enough that it doesn't get too repetitive, and if you're smart enough to not hit him rapidly enough to constantly force him into the bat swarm attack that gets faster and spreads further as his health gets lower, you can have a satisfying conclusion to the battle by timing a parry well enough to go THROUGH the guy.
• The battle against the Wendigo in the little-known game Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer. Not only is the Wendigo the upper-half of a giant, red, horned, flying, and flaming skeleton, Brave fights it by shooting at it with an amulet, whilst riding a large Bald Eagle spirit, over a pit of lava, with fireballs, rocks, and explosives flying everywhere.
• The Borderlands saga is an excellent mix of FPS and RPG, perfecting the Looter Shooter genre. From Borderlands 2:
  • The Warrior is a giant alien beast that sure knows how to make an entrance in a volcanic chamber, and is a visually stunning fight. It's very satisfying to unload on his vulnerable chest and land a bunch of critical hits. It has a great balance of being a hard but manageable fight.
  • Raid bosses are secondary Superbosses designed for multiple players. They are very challenging, especially in TVHM and UVHM and at very high levels.
• From the criminally unknown Breakdown for Xbox, there is the Climax Boss, Solus. Every human enemy in the game involves using cover and the environment well, while the T'lan enemies require you to simply dodge the first hit and then beat the crap out of them before they can recover. Here, Solus is standing in the middle of an arena which is floating in mid-air, and the last time you fought him he utterly curbstomped you and proceeded to stand in front of an exploding nuke without flinching. This time, you have exactly the same powers as he does, and the only way to beat him is to bring the fight to him in an awesome fistfight, countering his superspeed with your superspeed and dodging his energy blasts. The first time you knock him down, he congratulates you, since up until then he had never been knocked to the ground. Ever. When you bring him down to roughly half his health, he simply shakes his head and declares "Your death was meant to be swift." before taking his performance up a notch.
• Brütal Legend - huge bosses plus metal soundtrack equal sheer badassery.
  • First boss in the game: Eddie rams a spiked gate through its head and celebrates with a guitar solo and a "Decapitation!!" shriek. And it's only the beginning, afterward you get to fight a metal spider with Brocas Helm's Cry Of The Banshee as background music, and of course, the final, axe-to-spear brawl with Emperor Doviculus set to the tune of, of all things, The Painkiller!!!
  • The demise of Doviculus makes the player really feel like a metal badass: DECAPITATIOOOOOOON!!
• A few in Bug. One was Bug facing against a Background Boss octopus who flung fish at Bug, so Bug had to use a tennis racket to swat the fish back to the octopus' head. The other one, while very difficult, was the swamp worm- Bug had to stand on a tiny platform floating on instant-death water as the worm tried to attack Bug. The awesome part came when the platform started moving, and then both Bug and the boss had to trade shots with each other in what was essentially a spitting competition.
• Bug Fables:
  • The Beast. As if fighting a terrifying, sadistic centipede that towers over the main characters isn't cool enough, the fight turns the Hopeless Boss Fight trope on its head by having Kabbu power through what should have been an unavoidable Total Party Kill through sheer willpower alone. Thanks to this, the player and Kabbu get the satisfaction of slaying the monster responsible for the deaths of his friends instead of it being relegated to a cutscene.
  • The Final Boss fight with the Wasp King, powered up by the Everlasting Sapling, is amazing. Everything the player has learned comes into play in this final fight over the fate of all Bugaria and you are given the feeling that no matter what, you can not lose this fight. The Wasp King's attacks are also just the right challenge for this point in the game and is a fair fight despite his powers to heal. All capped off by some Awesome Music.
• Every boss fight in Bully, apart from the final one:
  • Russell is a very standard Bullfight Boss - who gives you a hint that every boss fight is something to come. He gives you a very clear warning, letting you learn just what bosses are like.
  • Darby is an Elite Mook without much... but what does set him apart is that he is a Flunky Boss - after Jimmy knocks enough health off, he will hop behind a table and yell "Give me a hand in here, boys!" and force Jimmy to fight through some flunkies, before Darby joins again.
  • Johnny Vincent is a vehicular boss fight, though you do not have to fight him.
  • Edgar is a simple Background Boss who does not engage you directly. This fits his character entirely - he's not a physical fighter, you have to chase him and dismantle his contraptions before he will surrender.
  • Ted is a tennis boss. Before you get to him, you must get rid of his praetorian adds... by throwing explosive-laden footballs at them.
• Call of Duty has had a few great boss battles over the course of its history, mostly in the extra game-types.
  • Extinction Mode, from Ghosts has three great bosses to take on: the Breeder, a large beast capable of spawning additional aliens, and is also fairly heavily armored; the Kraken, a gigantic sea dweller fought on the cargo deck of a ship who can acidify the floor save for a few islands immune to the acid, and you can fight back with mounted heavy machine guns; and the Ancestors, the Big Bad of the saga, who are fought en mass in the finale to the final mission.
  • Nazi Zombies has a couple of notable boss battles, ranging from defensive hold the line rounds to true battles against bosses. The first boss battle in the series was the finale to the Mob of the Dead mission, where Weasel has to fight off his co-conspirators on the Golden Gate bridge. In Zetsubou no Shima, the Origins crew must fight a giant Thrasher in order to free the original Takeo; while in Gorod Krovi, the team fights against the original Nikolai who is piloting a mecha.
• Cave Story does not have a single unfun boss fight in the entire game; but the final boss sequence lines up three (normal ending) or five (true ending) awesome boss fights in a row:
  • The Boss Bonanza starts with a fight against Misery, who can create blocks that will deal immense damage, fire energy balls, and shield herself with energy balls that turn into bats.
  • Then, you fight The Doctor, who is shielded by the Red Crystal he created and can fire energy balls either straight or in a circle surrounding him. After beating him, the Red Crystal will take control of him and cause him to go wild, at which point he punches you and fires a swarm of bats out of his hands.
  • Then we get the Undead Core, which is the Core fought before but merged with the remnants of the Doctor after he took control of Sue and Misery. The Undead Core attacks differently depending on how the Doctor is showing his face while Sue spins towards you and Misery creates Mooks. It is absolutely amazing...
  • Then we get to the two bosses of the true ending. The Heavy Press hides itself behind a wall while firing lightning. Also, two Invincible Minor Minions, Rollings, are attacking the whole time while Butes infinitely spawn. After defeating the Heavy Press, it acts like every other Press in the game and tries to one-hit kill you by falling.
  • This act of falling, however, opens the path to Ballos. Ballos will fly at you and hover in midair and fire lightning at you to the tune of one of the main boss themes, Gravity. Then, he turns into a giant head and starts crushing you while creating waves of bones, this time to the tune of a boss theme more reserved for the harder bosses, including the Heavy Press: Eyes of Flame. After Ballos is defeated, he gains eight cycloptic rock satellite things that you need to shoot down and the music becomes Last Battle, previously only used for the Undead Core. After all eight of them are defeated, Ballos takes his position in midair and causes spikes to appear on the ground while platforms start orbiting around the rocks. After this phase is defeated, Ballos finally dies.
  • Outside the final boss gauntlet, there is the fight with the Core. The boss that drowns you as one of its attacks. The rising water was used amazingly well here as a gameplay element, especially seeing as it impedes your movement. All this backed by Awesome Music.
  • The sixth to last boss, the Red Demon/Ogre, doesn't seem like one at first. Then you learn its backstory and you suddenly feel much more awesome. Congratulations. Arthur would be proud of you, true hero.
• Champions Online:
  • Shadow Destroyer, who, several times during the fight, floats up and tears a rift in reality itself, plunging the entire battlefield into the Lovecraftian Qliphothic realm, forcing the players to force it back, before they are destroyed by his increasingly powerful attacks, or the realm itself.
  • Therakiel, who shortly into the fight moves it to the ground zero of the biblical apocalypse. You can literally see, above and below you, the winged legions of heaven and hell circling towards the final confrontation which you are desperately trying to avert.
  • And just for the awesomeness of his Large Ham delivery and sheer insanity, Foxbat has become a fan favorite as well.
• In Chrome Hounds, there's the Xbox Live Only "Unidentified Weapon Appears" mission, which is one of three examples of an Awesome Boss Fight. They're kinda rare, but damn once you've done one, you'll feel awesome. Nothin' beats a Battleship Raid with 5 of your buddies.
• Let's give Chrono Cross some love. Yes, the last few hours are painful, but the fight with FATE is excellent. And the Dragon God as well, even if the fight doesn't quite make up for Terra Tower.
• Chrono Trigger:
  • Even today, despite the SNES-era storyline, graphics, and music, the Climax Boss at approximately the halfway point of the game can't be anything but one of the greatest boss battles of all time. Magus has brilliant build-up, an amazingly kickass battle theme, is one of the most difficult bosses up to this point, gets a wicked anime-cutscene introduction in the remakes, and just generally exudes awesome. Such was the impact and awesomeness of that battle that many gamers think Magus is The Dragon at first.
  • And there's also Lavos' final form, with the Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, awesome animation after awesome animation, and methodically subverting every expectation you have about JRPG final bosses.
  • Black/Rust Tyranno, basically fighting against a HUGE fire-breathing T-Rex.
• There are plenty of ridiculously awesome fights in City of Heroes:
  • Showdowns with Praetorians, the Freedom Phalanx's Evil Twins (or the Freedom Phalanx themselves for villains)...
  • Player villains taking on their own chosen patron and eventually Lord Recluse himself...
  • Romulus Augustus empowered with the might of Nictus...
  • Reichsman, who turns out to be another Evil Twin of Statesman, who fought for Nazi Germany during World War II in an alternate universe. The Reichsman is so powerful that he is literally in a class of his own. Whereas other enemies are classified from something as lowly as "Minion" to something as powerful as "Archvillain" or "Hero" or "Giant Monster," the Reichsman is "Reichsman". If that doesn't instill fear in the hearts of a poorly put-together pick-up group...
• The battle against The Great Mighty Poo in Conker's Bad Fur Day, a giant, opera-singing pile of crap.
• Contra:
  • Contra III's Stage 4 is epic in every way possible, but the boss at the end has you hanging taking down two turrets and core of an airship. What makes this epic? The fact that you're jumping from helicopter missile to missile or else falling to your doom.
  • Contra: Hard Corps has Super Power Robot Ninja Yokozuna. A well-animated Killer Robot that races the train, pushes it to a halt, then fights you on top. It also comes with one of the best boss musics ever.
  • Red Falcon. Three Lives. Eff the Konami Code.
  • The True Final Boss of Contra: Shattered Soldier, the Relic of Morai, and the final boss of Neo Contra, Master Contra.
• Copy Kitty:
  • Arikan is hard as hell, but is made awesome by the fact that it's a sword duel where the player is given every badass technique (including an obscure projectile attack, which replaces your default beam) the boss himself can do, and even powers up as he does. In hard mode, you start with the power of the normal fight's second phase, and then you both still power up. The sheer number of particles and lighting effects will milk your FPS to the last drop, but it's so worth it. In the Turbo Edition, though he isn't the Final Boss anymore, he gets his own unique battle theme, and if you fight him as Savant, it's a drill duel rather than a sword duel!
  • Turbo Edition adds a new Final Boss: Fortress Virs and the Giga Dengrahx (which one you face depends on which character you're playing as), gigantic sized versions of the pilotable Boss in Mook Clothing you've been fighting the whole game. Both of them tower over the player, standing at least 50 feet tall, and unleash attacks that could kill any other boss in the game in two hits. You even have to get inside the boss to fight its core to truly defeat it. The best part is that once you blow up the core... well, the lesser Virs and Dengrahx are pilotable, and so are these! You then fight the other giant boss with your own giant boss.
  • The final boss in the penultimate version is a Yoggval just like those you've fought several times already, except he was destroyed and then reincarnated and puppeted by a magical artifact, turning into Phoenix Yoggval. He has three health bars, more than any boss before it, and his patterns become flashier and more intense as you whittle down his health, and when it is finally done... He reincarnates again, with an even more powerful set of patterns, and the ability to curse Boki, which makes this battle incredibly difficult on the first time, except if you die, Boki will copy the reincarnation power, and power up the same as the enemy, gaining the ability to break his patterns, as well as cursing him, which prevents further resurrections as she kills him for the last time, and then destroys the artefact. The hard mode version of this fight has you facing Spectrum Yoggval, which constantly shifts between different forms, each with their own life bars, and mirroring the stronger Yoggval fights of Hard Mode, and after you whittle them down, you get to face his final form.
  • The final boss of the full version is Supreme Thremnat, the leader of the construct forces you've been fighting, and the one who previously defeated Boki in a single attack. You fight him after destroying the gigantic mobile base he was using, which leads to the title of the level 'Among the Wreckage'. It starts as a fight against a humanoid enemy, reminiscent of Arikan, though soon he starts blocking everything with his shield before attacking Boki with the same beam that had defeated her before. Except she copies his shield, and then the fight starts to switch between using the shield to destroy the other's shield, and using the blaster when he is unshielded. But when you are about to destroy him, he fuses with the remains of the base, becoming a gigantic shielded menage with powerful attacks, to which Boki responds to copying his supreme saber, leading to an amazing slashing fight. It is a worthy ending to normal mode.
  • The Super Boss fight against Exgal is as awesome as it is terrifying, with strange, demonic powers you can copy, tense action that leaves very little room to breathe, with three inflated health bars that only make the victory all the more satisfying.
  • The Super Super Boss Aekros is even more ridiculous with music that gets progressively more intense as the fight goes on. And then it turns into a Shoot' Em Up, ending with Boki and the boss firing screen-filling lasers at each other.
  • Savant's True Final Boss. The delivery person, revealed to be Lymia (the main hero of the lore), suddenly pops in for a one-on-one, resulting in a truer Mirror Boss than almost every other fight in the game thanks to how similar Savant and Lymia are in both abilities and stature.
  • With Hard Mode, you know that there has to be a way to one-up the stakes when Supreme Thremnat is the Final Boss of Normal mode. Well, how about an actual Cyber jumping into the simulation to fight Boki herself? One whose powers (which Boki also gets to use, of course) are based around atomic explosions and throwing miniature suns?
• Cuphead made serious splashes with its announcement trailer, between its beautiful animation, high difficulty, and wacky bosses. It was originally a Boss Game and it shows, with 30 of them to face, very nearly a record for a Run-and-Gun type game. All are pretty awesome in their own way (at the very least for visuals alone!) but there are some standouts even among them.
  • Hilda Berg is a Warm-Up Boss mostly used to demonstrate the side-scrolling shooter mechanics. That doesn't keep her from transforming into constellations and the Moon to try and bring you down.
  • Wally Warbles introduces us to proper bullet hell mechanics and is notable for trying his damnedest to kill you while being practically dead himself by his final form. He will actually kick himself so hard that he vomits out his own heart just to take a shot at you.
  • Grim Matchstick is a loving Shout-Out to the classic Mega Man 2 Wily stage 1 boss, Mecha-Dragon. He's just as tough and as dangerous, though his apologetic and otherwise cheery demeanor keeps him from being as hated for his difficulty.
  • The battle against German rat Werner Werman, his scrap-metal-battle-tank, and the giant cat which eats him has at least two awesome twists involved, making it notable even among the other bosses.
  • Dr. Kahl in turn is a Shout-Out to Doctors Wily and Robotnik, and fights you at the helm of his Humongous Mecha. Part of the charm of his fight is seeing how many references to the two the devs managed to sneak in.
  • Then there's King Dice and his King's Court, a Boss Rush of unique bosses whom you have to face in order to reach King Dice and make him pay. You end up fighting through literal personifications of vice in order to reach and beat up the king of sleaze at the end.
  • Oh, did we mention you have to fight the Devil himself at the end? Oh yes, the boys have to go toe to toe with the literal Devil in order to free Inkwell Isles from his subjugation. Did you just blast the Devil right in his ruddy huge face?
• Dad Series: The 'Dadgame has several epic (and epically hard) bosses for a free flash game. The gigantic Final Weapon and its secret counterpart, Final Weapon X, sporting an arsenal that would make many a mech collapse in shame, including bombs, missiles, plasma bolts, lasers, more lasers, and even MORE lasers, plus an unorthodox way of defeating it compared to most other bosses? Sakupen, who fires gigantic beams and explosions at you? Phantom, a living glitch, and also a Puzzle Boss? And Mecha-Death, who seems to have been made of superconcentrated awesome?
• DanceDanceRevolution, in a Rhythm Game context similar to BEMANI contemporary beatmania IIDX, presents many such exhilarating bosses, both in the traditional Extra and Encore Extra/One More Extra Stages, that sound just as awesome as the feeling of conquering them:
  • From DDRMAX: Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix: MAX 300, with the distinction of being both the first official boss song and first 10-footer in the franchise's old 1-10 scale, and CANDY☆, as the subsequent One More Extra Stage.
  • DDRMAX 2: Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix gives us the ominous sequel Maxx Unlimited for Extra Stage, and 革命 (aptly translated to 'Revolution') for One More Extra Stage.
  • The Legend of Max (Extra) and Dance Dance Revolution (One More Extra) from DDR Extreme, the former being yet another entry into the MAX series of songs, and the latter being an affectionate homage to the franchise's heyday and an assortment of samples from stepcharts of the most notable/popular DDR songs (Dynamite Rave, Afronova, Celebrate Nite, etc.). Given that Extreme is something of a "greatest hits" entry and an initially-rumored finale, this is very fitting.
  • X2's Replicant D-action event pits you against six boss songs—three at level 14, and three at level 17—each with individual requirements to meet before they can be played. Upon clearing all six bosses, one last challenge stands in your way: Valkyrie Dimension. A true measure of skill after toppling six prior challenges and a deeply satisfying feeling upon completing it.
  • Replicant D-ignition, the sequel featured in the 2014 edition, only has five boss songs by default, but to compensate for this, upon clearing all of them, you are pitted against not one, not two, but three hidden bosses:
    • EGOISM 440, a high-speed blitz clocking in at 440 BPM, which after clearing with a high-enough score leads to...
    • Max. (Period), returning from the Japanese console version of DDR Extreme which, like the One More Extra Stage of Extreme, hinted at the end of the franchise. A high-note to end on, already, but months later into Replicant D-ignition, a monkey wrench is thrown at you in the form of...
    • Over the "Period", the definitive last challenge of Replicant D-ignition. With the combination of both the shock factor and the Attack Perfect Full Combo requirement tipping the odds against your favor, the triumphant feeling of overcoming this feat is palpable.
  • Dance Dance Revolution A (Ace) continues the precedent with Extra Exclusive, one of the game's two Extra Stage systems (the other being Extra Savior). As it states, these are boss songs exclusive only to Extra Stage and unlocked at a later date. By unlocking these songs, the final Extra Exclusive, Endymion, becomes available, but at the expense of the player's Heat Power. A true challenge retaining the spirit of DDR, heralded by its ominous atmosphere, that leads the player to yet another obstacle after it has been AA'd with a sufficient score...
  • That obstacle is Ace For Aces, the affectionate credits theme of DDR A composed by franchise mainstays Yasuhiro "TAG" Taguchi and Yuichi "U1" Asami. Nothing says an amazing Grand Finale quite like overcoming a song with a large bag of tricks, from stops to slowdowns, with the aforementioned Attack Perfect Full Combo requirement, and being treated by the game thanking you for playing at the end of the song.
• Dante's Inferno:
  • Lucifer. Man, you fight SATAN himself! And you are only a human!
  • King Minos is also cool. A giant half-man, half-serpent who guards the entrance to Hell. The last moment when you have to impale his head on a sharped-wheel is just... gosh, just play the game!
• WARNING! Huge battleships from the Darius series are approaching fast.
  • Titanic Lance, hailed by many as the ultimate boss of Darius Gaiden, despite only being available halfway through the game. Six screens long with a large array of weapons to throw at you.
  • Queen Fossil, the boss of G-Darius Zone Beta. Although she appears in the earlier Darius Twin as a standard-size enemy, her G-Darius incarnation is so huge that you not only pick her apart piece by piece, the level split occurs at the beginning of her boss fight.
  • Dual Spin in Dariusburst Another Chronicle. It's Steel Spin from Darius II, except it's two of them fighting you in unison from both sides. One could swear that this boss is made for two or four players. All while the frantic boss theme "Hinder Four" plays in the background.
  • Gigantic Bite from Chronicle Saviours. Truly a great fight to end the game, and it really packs a big punch. All of it attacks are totally something you'd see in a Bullet Hell game, and loaded with a burst beam, cannons on its belly, drones, and can even attack in the background. The boss is truly a sight to look at. The music that plays during this fight makes it even more epic.
• Dark Chronicle had the battle with Emperor Griffon's true form who happens to be a cute bunny child named Sirus who's angry at the humans for killing his best friend. It's tough as hell, but very satisfying, especially considering the music that went with it. The battles against Gaspard are also pretty damn awesome.
• Pick pretty much any boss from Darksiders.
  • The "Payback's A Bitch" fight against Straga. A boss fight against a giant raging demon with a hammer the size of a large building who flings smaller enemies at you, all the while you're shooting portals to get to the back of his head and cut it open. Then there's the end cutscene when you shoot a portal into his head and destroy him from the inside. Chills...
  • The single most satisfying boss in the game is not The Destroyer, Silitha, the Stygian, the Griever, or even Straga, but the very first real boss you have to deal with, Tiamat. She is the only boss in the entire game where you don't have way more health bars than necessary. The only boss where avoiding every single attack is a puzzle and a challenge in of itself. The only boss that never ends up laying down and submitting to inevitable defeat once the puzzle's solved. Tiamat is thoroughly the best boss in the game because she is the only one that will kill you if you're playing anything but the best game of your life.
• Deadly Creatures:
  • One of the most awesome Final Bosses ever. Not only do you fight a man with a shotgun, despite being a three-inch scorpion. You also get to stab him in the balls with your stinger. Three times!
  • The boss fight against the rattlesnake in chapter 9 begins with you (as a tarantula) encased in a ring of fire, trapped with the snake as it constantly tries to chow down on you. After hitting it enough times, you move to a vertical battle on the gas pump (which is ON FIRE AND ABOUT TO EXPLODE) and finally, you have a sequence where you have to dodge all the rattlesnake's final, desperate attacks against you, culminating in an epic dodge maneuver where the rattlesnake misses and ends up biting itself; then, as you scuttle away, leaving the snake to writhe under its own fangs, the pump explodes. Hell yes.
  • And then, for some inexplicable reason, everything blows up.
• The Final Boss of Dead Rising 2 is an epic fistfight against the Big Bad on top of a building surrounded by a sea of zombies as an AC-130 blows holes in the building in the background. If you get knocked off the platform (and you often will), you have to cleave your way through zombies and avoid the AC-130's cannons to get back up while he shoots at you with his pistol. Alternatively, skip the epic battle and just have a shoot out with him if you bring a pair of sniper rifles and a bunch of healing items, popping out of cover, getting a shot off, and rolling back in. Still fairly epic as you have to watch out for the zombies, the AC-130, and his pistol.
• Demon's Souls may be overshadowed by its Spiritual Successor Dark Souls, but the lesser amount of bosses in the game is more than made up for by how memorable they are.
  • The Tower Knight is, as the name implies, a knight the size of a tower who will absolutely destroy new players until they figure out how to bring it down by striking the only thing within the player's reach, its ankles.
  • If you manage to win the Hopeless Boss Fight at the beginning of the game, you get teleported to the chamber of a latter game boss, the Dragon God, who proceeds to reward your victory by killing you with one hit. Give it ten to fifteen hours and you're back there to face him as a Puzzle Boss and return the favor.
  • The Flamelurker boss isn't visually impressive and is barely bigger than your character, but it's memorable because it can be a player's first non-Puzzle Boss encounter, instead the fight is a fast-paced one-on-one fight with no trick other than to read the boss' movements and wait for the chance to attack.
  • The Maneater deserves mention for fighting you with a very notorious advantage: It can fly, you can't, and the fight takes place in a bridge in the middle of the night. Taking it down is a feat, even more so when another one with a full health bar shows up halfway through the fight.
  • The Old Monk can be this or That One Boss, considering that the fight is not against the boss itself, but rather, either an NPC Black Phantom or another player forced to invade you. If the invader player defeats you, they get a special set of equipment, making this a boss fight where both you and the "boss" are on theoretically equal footing.
  • The Storm King is a fight on completely open terrain which starts with the player dodging a large amount of Goddamn Bats in the form of the flying manta-rays that have been making the previous world annoying to traverse, up until you grab a sword that fires storms at them and cut them down like butter. And then the boss shows up in the form of a flying manta ray roughly the size of the island you're standing on. The best part is that the player will amass a preposterous amount of souls after the fight, as well as rare items and materials strewn about the island where the fight takes place.
  • Fake King Allant is a fight that is built up from the very start of the game, and for many players, it was the last boss they fought before The Old One, and he's notable because it's the only boss with attacks that can suck the levels out of you, effectively making you progressively weaker if you're not careful, not to mention his very strong area of effect attacks. It's entirely likely to walk into that fight and lose it because you're suddenly to weak to use your weapon effectively or your armor is suddenly too heavy for you.
• The huge battle against Kojira at the end of the Japan area in Destroy All Humans! 2. First you chase a giant, energy-spewing Godzilla lookalike across the countryside, avoiding its attacks and trying to zap it with your saucer's piddly weaponry before ending up in the middle of the city. You then have to destroy all the buildings in the city before she has a chance to to prevent her from healing while trying to avoid her huge salvos of energy missiles, and then you have to land and chase her about on foot while shooting her with your disintegrator ray. All while the Japanese army is sending out huge battalions of soldiers and laser-equipped tanks to deal with the both of you and your character makes snarky remarks about how unfair her healing is.
• Destiny: The Taken King comes with several, averting the usual trend of boring bullet sponges where you can cheese one spot.
  • Oryx, as he appears in the final mission of the "Taken King" questline. Not only does he get a very dramatic sequence leading up to his boss arena, his fight comprises a second phase where he traps you and tries to get the drop on you after you deal with his flunkies.
  • S.A.B.E.R.-2. Not only does it change between three elemental modes to deal variable damage in accordance with Year Two's revamped damage chart, it also makes full use of the boss arena, which is filled with clever lightning traps and many reinforcements, turning the fight into a very hectic slugfest where your cover may bite you in the ass. It's topped by its boss theme, which incorporates a familiar melody from the base game's soundtrack into a fast-paced remix.
  • Alak-Hul, the boss of the "Sunless Ceiling" Strike. You get into the boss arena by... dropping down into a pitch-black pit with reduced visibility. Then the boss and his flunkies appear. You're going to get goosebumps every time the axe-wielding behemoth stealthily shows up behind your back.
  • The Shield Brothers. You get to whittle down each brother's health to half before they retreat, before coming back together to lay the smackdown on you. Oh, and upon killing one, the surviving one will take the fallen brother's signature abilities, in no way lessening the fight's intensity.
• Deus Ex isn't exactly known for its boss fights, but the "fight" against Bob Page is of epic proportions. Page himself is stuck inside a giant impenetrable globe of glass, taunting you as he activates every single base defence The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is armed with. In addition to minigun turrets, he then starts unlimited spawns of the game's Demonic Spiders. At this time, Page is pretty much a locally omnipotent Physical God. As you come closer and closer to defeating him, his taunts turn to pleading, then to taunts again as he comes closer to ascension. You then get to pick exactly how you want to finish Page: Outright kill him, collapse his base taking the entire Internet down with it, or achieve godhood before Page does.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution is no slouch in this department, with some of the most memorable fights involving Talking the Monster to Death. And they're still awesome since you either invoke Heel Realization or Slave to PR to win.
• The So Okay, It's Average game DICE based on the same anime is completely based on mindless repetitive action and nonsense plot. The Shell, main phlebotinum, is simply equal to solarbenite, so you can have an idea, the game was simply panned by critics. Everything is just stupid until the secret last mission, when you fight the true last boss: the Shell created an Eldritch Abomination and it's up to you to impede him to destroy the universe (yes, the universe), with your Transforming Mecha, with everything, since the bare hands to the main cannon. It's truly the only Moment of Awesome of the entire game, you just have to earn much patience.
• Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories:
  • The Hopeless Boss Fight against Etna, especially if you'd never played the first one before and therefore don't know who she is. You've just plowed through the first three chapters of the game with little effort, and you're ready to take on another boss... but what's this? You're getting your ass kicked by the Disgaea equivalent to Goombas and wondering why the boss keeps dodging everything you throw at her... then you see what her level is.
  • Zenon VS. Laharl. To wit, Laharl utterly rocked the party by virtue of being several hundred levels higher than them, but as he prepares to finish them off, he accidentally unlocks the true Overlord Zenon from her seal. What ensues is a Curb-Stomp Battle with the player dealing the curb stomp. Bonus points for letting the player control Zenon, who is otherwise impossible to recruit for your party.
• Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten:
  • Des-X, the boss of chapter 8. Basically, she's the one who killed Fuka because she wanted to be Mr. Kazamatsuri's only daughter, despite being a manufactured demon. In other words, time for revenge. The fight itself isn't too spectacular, just an average geo effect layout with some enemies you've fought throughout the chapter... Only for a second phase to show up afterwards. This time Des-X is giant, has higher stats, there's no geo effects to screw with the fight, and you didn't get healed after the previous fight. Second phases are common in a lot of video games, but keep in mind that this is the first time this has ever been done in the series.
  • The free DLC battle with Baal. For a while, it seemed like he was being phased out as the Ultimate Superboss in favor of Pringer X, but here he returns with a vengeance. His stats are through the roof (even by this series standards), his attacks are devastating, and he takes forever to go down. But nothing makes him seem more badass than his Evility, which allows him to attack any character you remove from your base panel, immediately. Unless you put in some serious prep time, he will literally kill your entire party before they can take a single step toward him. And when you finally kill Baal, you not only feel like the baddest mother in the cosmos, you make him your personal trainer so you can spar with him any time you want.
• Daud from Dishonored, who is a Mirror Boss, has clever AI that makes good use of his powers and is a great character overall. Better yet, in a Low Chaos^note Using stealth and killing very few or no people. run, he'll fight you one-on-one rather than employing the help of his minions. And, in a Low Chaos run, once you wound him enough, you have the option to spare his life after listening to his Despair Speech... without it being a Cruel Mercy. For those who don't know what your (and thus, his) powers are, they consist of things like blasting your opponent with wind and freezing time. However, neither of your best powers work on the other, forcing both of you to improvise. Cue you and your opponent doing awesome shit like Teleport Spamming all across the room, clashing blades the whole time, with epic music blaring in the background.
• Distorted Travesty:
  • The final boss, The Artist. The fight is pretty insane, due to Jeremy and Hexor both attempting to screw with the game's code and out-hax each other (giving you all sorts of Eleventh Hour Superpowers in the process). Meanwhile, you're hopping around, destroying the Muffins, and avoiding Bullet Hell attacks from the boss himself.
  • The Shroud Lord. This thing is hard (may even be the toughest boss in the game), has a ton of health, and a love of Beam Spam and Bullet Hell, but between the epic music, the context of the story, and the fact that this thing and its minions have been dogging you for half the game, you'll be having too much fun to be frustrated.
• Donpachi, or indeed any CAVE game, is practically defined by soul-crushingly hard but extremely satisfying bosses. The True Final Boss Hibachi really kicks it into 11th gear (twice, given she has two forms) for your fight with her, which is appropriate, given that you have to play the game WITHOUT CONTINUES in order to reach her. Not only that, but the boss music from DoDonPachi is enough to send shivers down the spine. It's just so epic and pulse-pounding. So memorable.
• Doom:
  • The Cyberdemon. It's got to be about fifty feet tall, with a rocket launcher for an arm and loads of bionics, in a stage where it is often the only enemy, for which you have ammunition and weapons practically thrown at you, and explodes when killed because the ammunition inside it cooks off and detonates, reducing it to a pair of stubs where its legs were. The Spider Mastermind and the Icon of Sin might have their fans, but the Cyberdemon, on the 1-12 scale of badness, is a 37.
  • In the sequel, in level 20 "Gotcha!", there's a room with a Mastermind and a Cyberdemon. If you get the two to start fighting one another, guess who doesn't win.
  • The Mother Demon in Doom 64 earns their place as the Final Boss. If you deliberately or accidentally miss 2-3 demon artifacts for your Unmaker, she will be able to put up an intense fight and likely be That One Boss. Winning without access to your Game-Breaker, the Unmaker can be so gratifying due to her nightmarish offence including lines of cardinal-direction fire on the ground and homing rockets borrowed from the Dummied Out Revenants.
  • Maledict, the commanding demonic dragon made of the evil spirit of Dr. Malcolm Betruger, in Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. You start the battle by landing on a flowing platform in the bottomless space of Hell. You have the the Artifact but it's only in limited use. Maledict demands you to hand over it, but the marine simply points the gun at it. The battle starts with Maledict randomly throwing fires and summoning the local cannon fodders at you. You just simply kill them all and then use the Artifact to slow time and then you just fire whatever kind of guns right at Maledict's slow-flying ass. After a while, Maledict decides that its gonna stop bull-shiting around and then just throws meteors at you, and all you can do is avoid them and not trying to fall over the platform, as well shoot the beast up. And you can't get any healthpack during the battle. That and everything else makes it to one of the most adrenaline-pumping boss fights ever. It really makes up Doom 3's Cyberdemon's status as the Anticlimax Boss.
  • Doom (2016) has the Final Battle with Olivia Pierce as the Spider Mastermind. No longer the Anti-Climax Boss from the first game, she is extremely durable and loaded with different weapons, putting up far more of a fight. Special points go to the Finishing Move performed at the end of the fight: shoving the BFG-9000 into her mouth and blowing her entire head apart.
  • The Final Battle against the Icon of Sin in Doom Eternal manages to top that of the Spider Mastermind from the previous game. Instead of being a giant demon head stuck on a wall with his brain exposed, he's now a towering demon the size of a goddamn Kaiju. The battle itself is just as long and epic as it was all the way back in Doom II, coming complete with Mick Gordon's most intense track to date, and not only is the boss also covered in armor, he isn't limited to just spitting demons at you this time, making it even more difficult. After you tear down his armor and severely wound him, you finish him off by shoving the Crucible right into his brain. Samuel Hayden's Pre Ass Kicking One Liner upon reaching the Icon of Sin is also what sells it:
    Samuel: Now is the time. Two titans meet - as it was written.
• .hack:
  • The Boss fight against Sakaki in .hack//GU is very cathartic, and was a tough fight that makes you glad you were badass enough to beat the shit out of this creep.
  • The crown jewel of GU's boss fights, though, is undoubtedly the Cubia Core, especially if you don't go overboard on level grinding beforehand. The intensity never lets up thanks to the never-ending tide of respawning gomoras, which can do quite a bit to keep you from doing significant damage to the arms or the core and turn the fight into a frantic battle of attrition demanding every single trick in the book for you to come out on top, all the while your ears are assailed by the mind-numbingly awesome tunes of Full Force. It more than makes up for the crap boss fights and pathetic combat system of the original quartet all by itself.
  • The several boss fights against Ovan... especially the final one where everything is unraveled, and the incredible amount of emotion displayed afterward. Truly a hard-won and well-worth it battle.
  • Azure Kite is always a blast. Especially the final duel against him and the other Azure Knights in Redemption. You are fighting the digital reincarnations of Kite, Orca, and Balmung, in the Hulle Granz Cathedral, with Azure Kite's amazingly epic Leitmotif playing throughout.
  • The fight against Skeith in the first .hack// game. Especially if you've read the books and seen the first anime up to this point. Nobody has ever managed to win against this thing. Skeith is Mind Rape personified, and it requires an entirely new type of playing up to that point. All the Phases after this is just more of the same copying it. Skeith is so badass that the protagonist of the next series is Skeith, more or less.
• The True Final Boss of Double Dragon II: The Revenge for the NES and PC Engine, the Mysterious Warrior. This boss can only be truly fought on the hardest difficulty of both versions. When you reach the final mission of the game, you find what appears to be Marian waiting for you. When you go to her, though, the Big Bad comes down and personally fights you. The boss battle takes place in either what appears to be Hell itself with the Devil watching over you or in outer space in the first part. When his health goes down a bit, though, the second part of the fight then has you continue the battle inside some sort of church. Upon defeating the boss, he goes down in slow motion.
• The final boss of Double Dragon Neon, Giga Skullmageddon. Like in Double Dragon II: The Revenge, the battle is a Final Boss, New Dimension fight, and the fight has the awesome Double Dragon theme playing in the background. After defeating the boss, the credits roll, and you hear the villain sing the ending theme, titled "Dared to Dream", during which Skullmageddon announces, "Here's a medal for your victory!" and the Achievement Unlocked/Trophy Unlocked message pops up, and as Skullmageddon finally finishes falling, Marian delivers an uppercut to his crotch.
• Dragalia Lost:
  • The Alfonse and Veronica fights, from the "Fire Emblem: Lost Heroes" Event, and the EX version of Chronos, from the "Fractured Futures" Event, are regarded to be the best boss fights in the game, subverting the large boss archetype that normally dominates the game and fighting players with quick and brutal attack patterns.
  • Three years in, and anniversary event Raid Bosses have proven to be able to consistently raise the bar of quality:
    • Chronos Nyx from the "Fractured Futures" Event is an intense battle that keeps you on your toes, and remains sufficiently challenging even when you possess powerful enough equipment and boosts to take him on. Then he came back for the "Rage of Chronos" Event with even more to his arsenal, to the delight of many.
    • Morsayati's Omega battle in the "Forgotten Truths" Event is one of the best Raid Boss battles in the game. It starts out the same as the normal battle, but eventually he'll use an attack that requires you to knock out a Weak Point bar. When you do, he gets angry and completely changes the battlefield, then starts throwing a TON of super powerful attacks at you one after another, forcing you to dodge constantly unless you have a strong healer. When you eventually whittle down his health to 1%, he moves onto the final phase. All of his health is restored, and he is now invincible. To defeat him once and for all, you need to take out four obelisks while avoiding all of his ultra powerful attacks from before, complete with the soundtrack really rocking out.^{Fun fact!}Once you've reached this final phase, as long as you stay alive and avoid all the attacks, you've basically already won the fight, as the timer no longer actually comes in play despite it still ticking down! (In the final phase, there is a separate hidden timer that gives the players two minutes to defeat him.)Finally, once you destroy the four obelisks, you hit the Zethia's Mana button and a MASSIVE Mana Sword comes down from the sky to slay the boss once and for all. The best part? Newcomers can experience the fight too, as there is a Fixed Stat version that lets anyone of any level experience the fight. For bonus points, in Morsayati Reckoning, the hardest version of this quest and arguably the current endgame quest, the lyrical version of "We Are The Lights" plays for the third phase, practically completing the climactic feeling of this showdown twofold.
    • The fight with Satan in the "Faith Forsaken" Event is a worthy successor to the Morsayati fight, featuring some of the game's best visuals, Light a Fire playing for all of it, and one hell of a climactic showdown, especially for those who were engaged in the Apostles and Archangels' stories.
  • Among the permanent bosses, Volk is one of the best. His Plague mechanic and Affliction bombs encourage mixing up teams in a way that doesn't feel overly restrictive, and at release his strength and health were just enough that most Flame Adventurers stood a chance against him. On top of that, as he was the first Agito boss released for each difficulty, it was a genuine shocking moment when he transformed into his awakened form on Expert, and transformed right at the start on Master. As a fun boss fight with interesting mechanics, challenging yet not overly punishing, Volk is well-regarded by the player base.
  • For those even capable of getting past his affliction checks much less are able to beat him, Iblis is the best of the Sinister Dominion, a race of a fight to dispel and afflict him with statuses in time while having a very unique flow in his attack patterns, with Musical Theme Naming and a wonderfully hammy performance to boot. This extends as well to his Legend difficulty version following the mixed reception from the prior three of Lilith, Jaldabaoth and Asura's Legend versions.
• Dragon Quest VIII:
  • The battle with Dhoulmagus, the one responsible for all this mess to begin with. Since the start of the game, the bastard was running the world, murdering innocent people on his way. And now, it's finally time to make him pay! It starts with him summoning two copies of himself to fight you 3 against 4. Then, he goes full-One-Winged Angel on you. The guy may have been a Disc-One Final Boss, but with the climatic fight and the excellent Disc-One Final Dungeon before him, you could be excused to think that he was the Final Boss.
  • Rhapthorne is an epic battle in and of itself. The first fight vs him has you fighting vs a little fat roly-poly caricature of a demon with a pipsqueak voice, the second battle has you forced to fight him on top of the goddess of light from a previous DragonQuest game, Ramia/Godbird Empyrea. The only thing that detracts from the fight is the fact that his English voice sounds like a Disney villain with bad sinuses.
  • The bonus boss, Dragovian Lord is also pretty epic. You fight him several times, each time he gives you 1 item out of a set pool, and the next time you fight him he gets stronger. Until the last time, when you fight the first 7 forms and an 8th final form, all in a row, without healing.
• Dragon's Dogma has the Dragon himself. It's a Multi-Stage Battle where you have to alternate between fighting him and running away to seek a more strategic location. There are multiple tactics to defeat them, including engaging in a Colossus Climb, you can shoot him with ballistae, and at one point, you have to inch across his back to reach a weak point as he flies above the clouds. And while you're doing this, he is constantly delivering one awesome speech after another in his deep voice, ending with genuine praise as you seriously start to wittle him down.
• Dragon Warrior Monsters for GBC, either version, but easier if you've got Cobi's... DARCK. That mofo would NOT go down! Frustrating and enjoyable, because once you've beaten his 4000 HP ass...you win.
  • The DS sequel, Joker, had an Optional Boss battle against a high-powered...um, Estark. Yes, the King of Monsters himself from Dragon Warrior IV. The battle goes on for what feels like ages, with Estark having the usual array of high-powered Dragon Warrior boss powers. Of course, once it's all over, what happens? He joins your team, of course. Honorable mention goes to Captain Crow, pirate extraordinaire, who you run into from time to time when navigating the islands of the Green Bays Archipelago, only for him to throw increasingly-tough monsters at you until he stops screwing around and fights you himself; the fact that this fight is repeatable costs it in the awesome department, especially if you have the aforementioned Estark on your team.
• Drakengard, the Queen-beast in Ending E is a unique, memorable rhythm-based boss fight that brings Drakengard to an unforgettable conclusion. In terms of gameplay the game is an utter disaster and not many people will reach the last ending, but those who do, will remember this peculiar final boss.
• Duke Nukem 3D's final level: Duke, VS the big bad alien on a grid-iron field covered with powerups and cheerleaders. Come get some!
• Seabook Arno's final story mission in Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2, which teams him with Domon Kasshu of G Gundam and half the cast of Gundam ZZ to take down Master Asia. Master Asia, however, cannot be killed until after you've defeated the Devil Gundam, which just so happens to be That One Boss. Meanwhile, enemy officers show up to harass your allies. By the game's standards, it's a long and involved mission, which makes incredibly satisfying to beat; the Massive Multiplayer Crossover nature of your allies makes it fun.
• EarthBound: Many people consider Giygas one of the greatest final bosses in videogame history, and not for just being by far the most nightmarish part of a generally lighthearted game and arguably the single scariest Nintendo villain of them all (which really says something considering their track record). In its third and final form, your party cannot defeat it on their own. In an interesting twist on breaking the fourth wall, you, the player, kill Giygas with the final attack. To elaborate: Paula has already reached out to everyone the party met on Earth, but Giygas hasn't been defeated. She prays again, but she doesn't know who else to reach out to. Her call is absorbed by the darkness because you're fighting Giygas, the embodiment of evil itself, in a dimension of absolute darkness. Paula prays one last time for someone to help them; the player, yes, you, the person playing the game, begins to pray for them and destroys Giygas.
• The final boss of Einhänder, Hyperion. After being betrayed and outgunned by your own allies, you decide to rebel against them and engage them in one final battle. The final stage is not a normal stage at all, first you battle against the new EOS ships made by Selene, then you battle Hyperion itself. The battle itself is also cool, with the camera spinning in 360 directions, and Hyperion firing a variety of attacks, including a Wave-Motion Gun. All of which is set to this awesome music. Then comes the Bolivian Army Ending, where you engage the rest of the Selene nation, and after the credits, you actually end up winning.
• The The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion expansion Knights of the Nine has a particularly epic final battle. After storming an enemy fortress with more allies than you ever have, continuing on solo, and defeating Umaril's physical form, you chase his soul to the afterlife, battle him miles above the Imperial City, and kill him enough that he stays dead.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • The base game has Ancano, the Final Boss of the College of Winterhold questline. He is a powerful magic user, and for most of the fight is invulnerable, requiring you to use the Staff of Magnus to make him vulnerable. He also disables any followers you try to take into the fray, and summons Magic Anomalies to aid in the fight. He himself is quite a Glass Cannon when not invulnerable, preventing this fight from being too difficult. Between being a Puzzle Boss and a Flunky Boss with a unique invulnerability mechanic, he is one of Bethesda’s best and most memorable bosses.
  • Say what you will of Alduin's battles, but you can't deny how epic their atmospheres are, given that you, the Dragonborn, is dealing with a Demonic Draconic Abomination that's also the son of Akatosh. The first battle takes place on top of a giant mountain called The Throat of the World and the battle comes with a dash of Cain and Abel, as Paarthurnax helps you whittle down Alduin to the point where the latter shows his cowardice by escaping, casting doubt on his authority from the other dragons. The second and final battle takes place in the stunningly beautiful Sovengarde, where the Nordic heroes help you put an end to the diabolical dragon's tyranny, and the battle is accompanied by the appropriately called Final Battle.
  • Dawnguard DLC:
    • Lord Harkon. The atmosphere leading into the fight is epic in and of itself, as you face him in a partially ruined gothic cathedral. Harkon himself is an entirely unique enemy, darting around the battlefield throwing Gargoyles and health draining spells at you, and tearing into you with his claws if you get too close. You also get the satisfaction (if you kept Auriel’s Bow) of preventing him from healing himself.
    • Arch-Curate Vyrthur is an ancient Falmer vampire whom you fight in an ancient chapel, as he sics a horde of Chaurus and Falmer at you and tears down the building around you. It's also a great boss fight just in terms of how Vyrthur serves as the Climax Boss to the plot of the whole DLC, gives further depth to the story's "Tyranny of the Sun" prophecy, and Vyrthur is fought in the Forgotten Vale where the twin Revered Dragons can also be found.
  • Courtesy of the Dragonborn DLC:
    • The final fight with Miraak, who serves as a near-perfect Foil to the Player Character as both Dragonborn struggle against each other with the fate of both Solstheim and all of Tamriel hanging in the balance. The fantastic atmosphere given to their arena and Awesome Music only makes it all the more epic.
    • And to only a slightly lesser extent, there's the Ebony Warrior, a Meta Guy who can be argued as the true Final Boss to all of Skyrim, being a Nigh-Invulnerable adventurer who has Seen It All and wants you to kill him so he can go to Sovngarde. The fact that you fight him in an inevitably awesome duel atop the Throat of the World and that he has Dragon Shouts just like you is just the veritable icing on the cake.
• Epic Battle Fantasy 5's Evil Players. You battle a golem Matt, holy necromancer Natalie, robot Lance, and demon Anna that each give their own unique status ailments, throw the party's powerful Limit Breaks against you, and have their own personalities as twisted and exaggerated versions of their human counterparts. Beating the four of them lets you fight God himself (the "Evil Player" counterpart to NoLegs), whose unique status "ailment" buffs your stats — but he's still an extremely challenging foe that can drop a massive Spirit Bomb on the entire party. The first four fights are set in a temple of the verse's Satanic Archetype and the music sounds like you're fighting against the apocalypse. Lastly, like most of the enemies of the game, you can capture them and use them as summons. Including God. They are appropriately among the most powerful summons in the entire game.
• The final boss of Ether Vapor, APITEX. When fighting the boss, most of your attacks barely do any damage against it. But after it sustains enough damage, a cutscene occurs in which you suddenly go into Overdrive Mode, and your weapons become powerful laser weapons. The second form of APITEX, APITEX-EVO, is much more epic, as you and APITEX engage each other with the most powerful weapons that you and APITEX can use.
• EverQuest has The Master of Dreadspire, Mayong Mistmoore. After clearing through all of his lieutenants and minions in his underground castle/alternate dimension, he finally faces you himself, and to date, he is the only boss in EQ raids to have his own theme music. After you defeat him, you learn that you and your raiding party just fell into his trap, and slaying him has had the unintended effect of causing his ascension to the Norrathian Pantheon.
• Everything or Nothing: Escaping Diavolo's villa — and, to unlock a new cheat code, you have to do it unarmed. It's Nintendo Hard in the very best sense — damn near impossible, but the crazy awesome Good Old Fisticuffs make it way too much fun to be frustrating. And the badass Spanish bullfight-style music barling away in the background doesn't hurt, either.
• EXCeed3: Jade Penetrate Black Package's final boss Celestia Lindwurm (note that the battle is supposed to go at about twice that speed). Awesome attacks and the two most epic pieces of music in the entire game mean that she is far more awesome than even the Superboss.
• The Mentor character in Faraway Story, Ellevark, can be challenged to an optional Duel Boss battle. He definitely proves himself worthy of teaching the main character, since he can easily kill unprepared players with his rapid-fire casting and diverse moveset that allows him to be quite deadly at any range. This means the player has to learn to judge the best distance to keep from him, as well as knowing the best times to switch from evasion to attack. His sudden Large Ham, use of an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, and visually impressive Ruin spells certainly add to the epicness of the fight.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • After a couple of those kinds of bosses in a row with Solomon's dodge spam and Goetia's incredibly busted turn 1 combo that turns the unwary player's entire frontline to ashes, we get the ultimate and truly final battle with Human King Goetia. Not only is it extremely well-balanced even for the most stacked or spare of parties, but it features arguably the single greatest music track in the game while being an amazing throwback to the fan favorite battle of Kirei vs Shirou in Heaven's Feel: after having become mortal and overwhelmed by the Protagonist, Goetia still stands, already one-and-a-half foot in the grave but with willpower left in him to spare, and challenges you to one last battle, no longer with the fate of the world at risk, just your life and his, with the earnest hope that you, his greatest adversary, will stay and watch the end of his story, of his short but finally real life. That it manages to make Goetia of all people infinitely sympathetic considering his past actions is just the icing on the cake for an amazing boss fight.
  • The final battle with Tiamat at the end of Babylonia is incredibly fun. While your party loses 4000 HP every turn, it's balanced out by the fact that your entire party is buffed to insane levels thanks to Merlin and Ereshkigal, basically boosting all your general stats and healing 4000 HP at the end of your turn, not to mention how satisfying it is to essentially beat down the mother of all life, who was established to be essentially invincible and unkillable, and King Hassan still manages to impose the concept of death upon her, still making her incredibly tough, but now killable. It is worth noting that while the boss is fairly easy, the sheer spectacle, story build up, and music, create a boss fight that even by the time of the Lostbelt storyline, is considered one of the best fights in the game.
  • It's immensely satisfying to beat the Final Boss of SE.RA.PH after all she's done both in the event story and in past events, with the Kiara Punishers forcing her onto a level playing field and an absolute god-tier orchestral remix of her battle theme playing. Players can have fun with her by choosing which Kiara Punishers to use in the battle to challenge themselves. Bringing Meltryllis or Passionlip enhances the experience, not just because they're the only ones who deal extra damage, but their character arc comes to a culmination as they finally overcome Kiara.
• Belgar, the final boss of Final Fight. While the battle is fun enough, the best part by far is punching the man who kidnapped your daughter (because let's face it, you're playing as Haggar, not Cody) through the windows of a skyscraper.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: The battle against Arvis is a long time coming, the build-up to him goes to really flesh his actions out, and the battle itself is tough, with him having the legendary fire tome Valflame and very powerful stats, making the best unit to go against him none other than Seliph, as his Tyrfing provides a great counter to his sturdy defenses. He serves as a great prelude to the final holy war.
  • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade:
    • Two, both of which receive a Call-Forward from the ending of The Blazing Blade. The first is Zephiel, the Big Bad and apparent Final Boss. He's the most powerful human enemy you'll face in a GBA Fire Emblem and he has a unique class and an even more unique attack animation. If you've got all the S-ranked weapons intact, however, and Fae still has her Dragonstone, you move on to face The Remnant, consisting of the last of Zephiel's generals, the (literal) Dragon, and The Man Behind the Man (not in that order, though; The Dragon is last). It's The Man Behind the Man, Jahn/Yahn, that's the other one. He's also a dragon, and his stage consists of you going from room to room fighting apparent clones/projections of him, getting Hannibal Lectured after every one you beat. It's immensely satisfying to finally destroy him once and for all.
    • There's also the battles against the Wyvern Generals: Narcian, Murdock, and Brunnya. Each are powerful bosses with powerful unique equipment and come at the end of long chapters acting a the final obstacle to overcome before you seize the throne and all take a great deal of strategy to bypass them. Add in the unique boss theme: "In the Name of Bern" and they all are memorable encounters.
  • Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade:
    • Tragic Monster Kishuna, the Magic Seal. The first time he appears, he's somewhat of a Helpful Boss, nullifying the actual boss's magic. He leaves at the end of the turn in which you attack him, so beating him requires a concentrated attack of powerful non-magic units (here's hoping you've got a few of your other units promoted), and doing so is required to unlock another sidequest, one that gives a lot of backstory for the main villain. The second time he shows up, he's at the center of a maze of ruins and disappears as soon as you either attack him or open the door to his chamber, so beating him is only possible with a lucky critical hit by an attack-buffed Sniper. You get different mooks appearing upon his departure depending on whether you drove him off with an attack or opened the door, so decide based on whether you need magic or weapons. In his final appearance, you learn that he was essentially Nergal's rejected experiment, a morph that could feel but lacked speech and can't attack, and this time when you beat him—and he never retreats this time—you feel like you're putting him out of his misery.
    • Sonia. Like Kishuna, she's only faced in an optional battle, but given everything she's done to this point, it's worth the hassle of trudging through the Water Temple to fight her. (Not to mention it works better for continuity since we actually get to see her kill Brendan Reed there, and she gets killed regardless by the end of the next chapter.)
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn:
    • (3-13) Ike yeah! Alternatively, (3-7, 3-E) Micaiah Yeah! Unfortunately, the latter three will be missed by most players since 3-7 and 3-13 end after a certain amount of turns and 3-E ends after 80 deaths between the three armies, and in all cases, the boss is at the back of the map. But if you're fast enough you also get Black Knight Yeah! in 3-7 and Kurthnaga Yeah! and Nailah Yeah! in 3-E.
    • The Black Knight is a one-on-one Duel Boss between him and Ike, and he finally unmasks himself beforehand. It's the perfect conclusion to the arc that began with Ike's father's death in the Path of Radiance. (Being easily cheesable with a Hammer notwithstanding.)
    • Deghinsea is a full-strength dragon Laguz, absolutely huge and intimidating and with stats to match. He also has a map-based AOE attack, something rare in the series.
    • Sephiran is not nearly as tough, but still has a few tricks, such as summoning Spirits to absorb attacks directed at him, as well as having an awesomely tragic boss theme, several great boss conversations, and another AOE attack (magical this time).
    • The Final Boss Ashera is often considered one of the best final bosses in the series from a gameplay standpoint, if not the best. Unlike many earlier final bosses, it's more than just having the main Lord wail away with their legendary weapon. Ike has to deal the final blow, but first you have to destroy the barriers surrounding the boss with the rest of your army, which requires making use of teamwork and skill combinations. The boss also has many different attacks, ranging from single-character snipes to AEO, both physical and magical. Ashera is one of the few final bosses in the series whose fight feels like a natural extension of Fire Emblem gameplay.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening has the final boss, Grima. The battle takes place on his own back while flying over the ocean with infinitely respawning enemy units and when you finally reach the point you're supposed to attack to win, Grima in the background responds to the damage done to his vessel and attacks himself from behind instead of the vessel attacking, and these attacks have several different animations instead of just one general. Oh, and you're also given the choice to strike the killing blow yourself which might kill you, since you are him or Chrom with his Exalted Falchion. And of course the entire map, including the actual boss battle is accompanied by the most epic BGM in the whole game.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has its three final bosses in each route, much like its predecessor Awakening. It's worth mentioning that they all play End of All, one of the best themes in the game.
    • The Birthright final boss is the Nohrian King Garon, fought in his Nohrian King form in Chapter 27, in the throne room of Castle Krakenburg, not only getting to him is fairly difficult as the stage is large and full of dangers, but Garon himself is very tough as well, as he's equipped with the Bölverk axe, which not only can deal a ton of damage, but has a 90% chance of hitting you, on top of a 10% of critting you, possibly killing your units in the process. And if you manage to defeat him, he enters his Blight Dragon form, who is also one of the very few bosses who can move in the entire series, but only after he uses the four Dragon Veins he has. And while he's not as strong as in his human form, he still manages to be a tricky but amazing boss to beat. All of that coupled with one of the most epic themes in the game.
    • The Conquest final boss is Double Anankos!Takumi, and boy, he's one tough motherfucker, but it pays off by being immensely satisfying as a fitting end for the hell that is the Conquest route (especially on Lunatic). Unlike Garon, he's only fought in the Conquest Endgame as opposed to being fought in both it's Chapter 27 and Endgame like Garon since the latter had already been defeated in the previous chapter. But still, after an incredibly aggravating (but epic) struggle to reach him, he reveals himself as an extremely tough boss as he's basically paired with a clone of himself, with the Bold Stance that basically turns it into the Pair Up mechanic from Awakening. All coupled with several skills that make him harder, when you finally beat him you'll likely cry of happiness as you've finally conquered the Nintendo Hard hell that is Conquest. And it's all accompanied by a slightly different version of the previously mentioned theme.
    • The Revelation final boss, which is also the True Final Boss of Fates as a whole, puts the other two final bosses and even Grima to shame when it comes to spectacle. Like Garon, you fight Anankos in two phases between Chapter 27 and the Endgame itself. The mask itself is rather tough, being equipped with the Dragonskin and Status Immunity along with some rather high stats, but after you defeat it, the real deal comes: Anankos turns into his much larger Silent Dragon form, and the whole Endgame is centered about fighting Anankos, which rivals the Final Boss of Radiant Dawn when it comes to complexity: you have to destroy his arms, then his head, and then his heart (the last of which is fought very similar to Awakening's Grima). All of them are quite tough, as they sport the same skills as the mask form, but on top of that, they hit even harder and can even kill units easily. That, while the camera does some really epic pans to show Anankos' attacks off. Coupled with Vallites swarming you constantly, the boss itself putting you on your toes and yet another version of the previously mentioned epic theme, making for an epic confrontation, if not as insanely hard as, say, the Conquest final boss.
• In For Honor: Gudmundr. Tough but fair, with awesome arenas, and gimmicks that serve to spice up the battle rather than frustrate the player (yes, Tozen, that means you).
• Fraxy:
  • Any boss ever made by Eboshidori. (Awesome Music optional.) Most of these are hard enough to qualify for That One Boss as well, but they make up for it terms of sheer awesome. He even has a Fraxy version of Hibachi!
  • Add True Acala, Sakra-Devanam Human Type, and Sunyata to the list. Awesome Boss Maker?
  • Prior to being nerfed, Landshark was more than deserving of its Memetic Badass status.

G - M

• Gaia Online:
  • zOMG! has this with the second boss, the OMGWTF. After fighting your way through a graveyard, you come to the gate. When you approach, you're forced to fight a small army of OM Gs. Then the boss comes out. Part dragon, part scorpion, part hat. And it wants you gone. Just because words can't properly describe how awesome a dracoscorpiohat is, here's a picture◊. Besides looking awesome, it's the first really tough enemy you'll face in the game, so defeating it for the first time really gives you a sense of achievement.
  • And then you reach "The Endboss". The buildup in the last few stages of Chapter One is a positive infodump that calls back about a dozen different aspects of the Gaia Online plot-manga from several years ago, and the chapter boss itself must be seen to be believed. It is also extremely difficult to beat (even in Easy Mode) without being overbearing, but rather awe-inspiring, which makes it completely satisfying when the last explosions fade and you teleport back to Barton Town for your rewards.
• Any of the Impact battles from the N64 Ganbare Goemon game, but especially the giant peach spaceship.
• In Gears of War 3, finally getting to have a proper battle with a Brumak on foot was great.
• Ghostbusters The Videogame:
  • The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man fight. Blasting away at a 50-foot marshmallowman (who throws helicopters and spits marshmallow minions at you) while dangling from the side of a building only being supported by two other human beings surely defines Awesome Boss. It should be noted that this boss is the only boss that's 95% the same fight between the realistic style game and the cartoon-style game.
  • Stay-Puft be damned—what about the freaking Collector? Damn, but he's got a bitchslap from hell...
  • The 2009 Ghostbusters was just a parade of wonderful boss battles. The Stay-Puft Man? You're dangling over a goddamn building firing proton darts at it! The Librarian? You're down in secret passages within the library not opened for decades, sealed in a creepy little chamber with you, her, and the classic team. Cool! The Spider Witch? Beautifully creepy, and double the Squick for any arachnophobes. You get to see what a Sloar looks like (as mentioned in passing in the first film). And then, there's Shador himself. Oh. Wow. Thank you, Misters Aykroyd and Ramis!
• The final boss battle of Ginga Force. Just when you manage to disable his battleship, the Big Bad launches in his own fighter for one final showdown with you as he goes full-on Villainous Breakdown and fires everything he has at his disposal. It's also one of the most Hot-Blooded final boss battles in any video game since it has both you and the Big Bad yelling at the top of their lungs.
• God Hand:
  • Any fight with Azel is awesome thanks to his kickass theme music and the ability to get into a pummel duel with him. Try thinking ATATATATATATATATATA or ORAORAORAORAORAORA for maximum effect. Elvis, while difficult, is still the best boss fight ever. Fuck yes.
  • Dr. Ion is immensely fun simply because he is much easier than the other bosses, while still retaining a level of challenge, especially the second fight with him. He changes into multiple forms to fight you, and when you hit him with a powerful attack, instead of being blasted away, he breaks apart.
• Golden Sun:
  • Saturos and Menardi After all of the hype, you finally get to see what they're capable of. Of course, they live up to and beyond expectations. The following battle crosses into That One Boss territory though...
  • Saturos alone atop the Mercury Lighthouse, not only is the battle simply amazing, but the battle theme that accompanies it should be considered the national anthem for boss battle music.
  • Agatio and Karst atop Jupiter Lighthouse from the sequel. They split your party, and the first few turns are struggling to survive. Then your reinforcements start pouring in ones and twos saying they were worried about you. Agatio and Karst start to panic as they slowly get overwhelmed. When your party is complete, the battle turns barely in your favor. Barely. Made more epic by the fact that this is one of two battles in the game in which losing doesn't make you have to start over. However, if you lose a party, you now have a SECOND party ready to jump in to continue the fight and you can heal the fallen. That new mechanic alone makes the fight epic because now everyone worked out their differences and are working together as a team.
  • The Serpent in the sequel is also pretty interesting. When you first get to Gaia Rock, there's a pretty straightforward route through the dungeon and it leads to a boss fight surprisingly quickly...and it turns out that the reason the dungeon was seemingly nonexistent is that as such, this is a Hopeless Boss Fight, and you actually had to scale the outside of the rock to get an item that unlocks side paths on the inside and explore these side paths to shine light on four orbs in its room, turning down its regeneration to manageable levels. (Three out of four is still manageable, but harder. Of course, with New Game Plus bonuses, you can actually take it out in one turn, thereby eliminating the need to worry about it regenerating all of its health at the end of every turn.)
  • The mark of a great boss is that he's hard to beat, but doesn't use any cheap tactics that you can't counter. By giving external mechanism for his various tricks, the Star Magician made for a great battle—balancing warding off his Star Ball attack and whaling on whichever ball was most dangerous (Refresh first, then Guard, then get any Anger balls before they self-destruct; leave thunders alone so the magician can't spawn more of them) made for a great battle. The other two guardian bonus bosses, Sentinel and Valukar, were also fun (although Valukar using our Djinn summons against us was pretty cheap.) Dullahan, the final bonus boss? Um, No.
• Golden Sun: Dark Dawn:
  • Unfortunately, Blados and Chalis don't quite live up to the hype— their fight is certainly awesome, but just doesn't live up to Golden Sun standards of awesome... especially since they're following some pretty epic boss fights. If you liked Star Magician, try Sludge, a (surprisingly sympathetic) disfigured crocodilian nightmare beast with similar allies and combat strategies. If you'd rather pluck the feathers of divinity, try the Mountain Roc...
  • In the bonus round, defending champions Star Magician and Dullahan return, joined in That One Awesome Boss status by the Ancient Devil, whose claim to fame is enchanting your party members to join him against you, which depending on who he steals can be hilarious or horrifying. The Ogre Titans seem bland in comparison, except for the part where newer, stronger ones keep showing up...
• Gotcha Force has the final boss, which is basically where you and all of your allies are blown up to ENORMOUS size to fight a giant space station of death. It can be frustratingly difficult, but the pure joy of actually BEATING that boss is magnified once you finally do win.
• Gradius series:
  • Gaiden's first boss is a giant snow worm called Blizzard Crawler that jumps from the floor to the ceiling and vice versa while chasing after your Cool Starship. It fires a hailstorm of snowballs and Frickin' Laser Beams on its back in higher difficulties/loops. Its introduction and the awesome boss theme makes a great way to start the game.
  • The Boss Rush stages throughout the series are awesome in their own way, but also in Gaiden is the Boss Bonanza for introducing new bosses rather than returning ones, such as Laser Tetran, a modified Tetran where it fires 4 laser beams instead of Combat Tentacles; Triple Core Formation, a trio of core battleships where their attacks get more intense the more you take them down; and Deltatry, a triangular core battleship that fires grenades, blasts a sword-shaped Wave-Motion Gun, and summons fiery dragons to hound you down. Bonus points for Deltatry being a Shout-Out to the player ship from an obscure shoot-em-up called Trigon/Lightning Fighters, also made by Konami.
  • Despite its reduced variety of boss designs (especially when compared to previous titles), V still has some rocking bosses, such as Ground Spider, a Spider Tank that chases you down while sweeping the screen with a giant laser; Blaster Cannon Core, a core battleship that fires Bullet Hell at you and a volley of lasers while the Vic Viper hides behind swarms of asteroids for protection; and Elephant Gear, another epic Spider Tank, except it's shaped like a battleship instead of a spider and it has an epic theme that reflects its slow yet mighty nature.
• Graffiti Kingdom's final boss fights. The first guy is essentially a giant technicolor Satan that you have to beat twice, and then after that, his own son [who you thought was dead] comes out and KILLS HIS OWN FATHER, then fights you in a six-stage epic complete with the most amazing music in the entire game.
• Grand Chase:
  • The Corrupted Divine Tree in the Forest of Life. Four heads in each corner to take out before the main body, constant mook summoning, and when all the heads go, ACID RAIN starts pouring down.
  • To even the odds a little, Gaia (the one you're supposed to rescue) periodically summons healing magic at certain spots, which is a full HP heal for you, and also extends the fight somewhat, as this also restores Gaia's HP.
• In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the run-and-gun chase through the streets of Los Santos against Samuel L. Jackson's Dirty Cop, Officer Tenpenny.
• Ricardo Di­az from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Boy, is he Made of Iron (it takes 5 headshots with the sniper rifle to take him out!), but the resulting scene is so awesome it's well worth the pain.
• Jaguar Javier from Guacamelee!, the resident Mirror Boss (given that he was trained by the same master as you). He has no gimmicks; he just hits fast and hard with the same attacks a player has. Also, getting a stagger against him isn't guaranteed, so you have to know when to weave away from a counterattack, and when to press the advantage. Needless to say, he's a more beloved boss than the more standard Final Boss.
• Guild Wars:
  • Varesh Ossa, though That One Boss, is The Dragon. She was known as the warmarshal, and she puts up quite a fight before going down.
  • Abaddon in Nightfall. The battle itself is much easier, but by then you have been forged in the fires of the Grand Court of Sebelkeh, Varesh Ossa, and the penultimate mission where you fought the Lich and Shiro Tagachi at the same time (while dealing with a debuff). It is actually a rather methodical fight where you deal with a Damage-Sponge Boss and must get rid of its flunkies to make them vulnerable. It feels unlike other bosses, giving the feeling of a raid boss from other MMORPGs at the time.
  • For those who didn't find it That One Boss, the penultimate boss fight to Abaddon involved a rematch of the Lich and Shiro Tagachi. Those were both the Final Boss of their respective campaigns, and if you had played Prophecies and Factions before, now you get a rematch with them again. At once. Obviously, one can see why Nightfall was a well received expansion.
  • Many viewed it as That One Boss, but the Doppelganger in Prophecies is a literal Mirror Match - every skill you have, it has too. And it knows how to use them. Give yourself a Game-Breaker build? It knows to use it too. What's more, while Prophecies became easier and easier due to Power Creep of PvE only abilities, the doppelganger remained hard all throughout the game's life. It even learned how to use Ritualist Spirits, Assassin combos, Dervish enchantments and Stances, and Paragon shouts. The Doppelganger is so interesting that entire guides were made on how to beat this thing. Depending on the class you played, you had to use a Cheese Strategy.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • Heart of Thorns may be an expansion pack filled to the brim with Demonic Spiders and Goddamned Bats, but the final fight(s) against Mordremoth more than make up for the disappointment that was Zhaitan. You have gone into the area where Mordremoth's weak spot is: his mind. A Battle in the Center of the Mind gives it a very eerie atmosphere. Finally defeating Mordremoth gives you an amazing feeling of triumph.
  • The fight against Palawa Joko in season 4 of "Living World". Unlike the past champions that were walls of health that took forever to kill, Joko feels very much like he's taking damage from you. He will try to keep you on your toes by throwing Area of Effect attacks and requiring you to constantly use the Illusion Signet (which dates back to the first game) to bring him back to the stage and avoid walls of death he sends at you. All while he continues to trash-talk you. The cherry on the top however happens at the end... when Aurene flies in and literally devours him, causing him to be killed mid-gloat. It's as awesome as it is hilarious.
  • The fights against Kraklatorik in Living World Season 4 are considered to be some of the best, if not the best, fights against Elder Dragons, if not the entire game. The first is against a giant dragon - bigger than an entire zone. The second? Another Battle in the Center of the Mind - but this time you have Aurene at your side. Crutch Character aside? You're still basically fighting it your own. It's a literal manifestation of his torment. All while Kralkatorik comes to terms with his impending death. Season 4 of the "Living World" has in general been seen as one of the game's highlights.
  • The Icebrood Saga, even amongst those who felt it tedious, had a rather climactic Dual Boss (technically Quadra-boss) fight against Primordus, Jormag, and both their champions, Ryland and Braham. You have to knock down both of the champions at around the same time, then hit the elder dragons. It is as frantic as any elder dragon battle should be.
  • The fight against Mai Trinn in End of Dragons, specifically because she reveals she's a Revenant and Scarlet Briar herself is coming back for one last hurrah. Humorously, she also does it while completely smashed.
  • Ankka becomes a Disc-One Final Boss in End of Dragons - and is a nice callback to Joko in terms of gameplay. You're fighting against a boss who will summon necromantic and void energies and try to sap the life out of you, which is fitting since she wants to end all life on Tyria, and you're the only one standing between them and their goal. Since she killed Mai Trinn, you'll definitely want her head on a pike.
• Lou from Guitar Hero 3, if only because you feel like the world's biggest badass after beating him. And you fight to "the Devil Went Down to Georgia" and they bleep out the cuss word. And when you beat Lou, you get to play a minute-long solo whilst he just stands there, utterly defeated and reduced to name-calling. Then, at the end, the game utters these final words: "YOU ARE A ROCK GOD!" As if that wasn't enough, you fly up to Heaven on winged motorcycles and play DragonForce whilst the credits roll.
• Gundam Vs Series:
  • The final boss of Gundam Vs. Gundam? The Devil Gundam. In its Devil Colony form. It throws giant beams, explosive particles, Gundam Heads, Death Army MS, and even its own gigantic fists at you.
  • In the sequel, the Superboss is Kira Yamato's Strike Freedom Gundam, which is fought in three phases. First it fights normally, but after you damage it enough, Kira pulls out the METEOR and begins assaulting you with Beam Spam and Macross Missile Massacres galore. Once you destroy the METEOR, Kira decides to be serious and enters S.E.E.D. Mode until you finally take him down.
• Garino Corsione in Gungrave: Overdose. As the final boss of the game, you fight this guy in a alien spaceship/cathedral....thing. He constantly spouts A God Am I-esque lines while playing an advanced-tech pipe organ, but what really makes this fight awesome is Unlimited Demolition. Whoever you're playing as gains a considerable power boost in that the Demolition Shot Gauge regenerates on its own, allowing you to spam the uber Lv. 3 shots more often. During the second phase of the fight, when you empty the boss' life meter, you're treated to an epic boss fatality cutscene—Triple. Final. Demolition. Shot.
• Gunstar Heroes:
  • Gunstar Green. First you fight against him and the huge transforming Seven Force robot in an epic high-speed underground battle. Then a reprisal battle against him with you at the helm of a massive, heavily-armed spaceship. Finally, he faces the heroes mano-a-mano, taking on both gun-wielding heroes with his bare hands and actually kicking your asses around the map if you don't stay sharp. Throughout it all he's never less than poised and in control, coolly acknowledging your victory even as his mecha explodes around him.
  • The Seven Force fight gets better on higher difficulties. Seven Force always starts in the human-shaped Solider Force...but on Easy, you fight two more forms after that, four more in Normal, and on Hard Mode you fight a grueling marathon battle against all seven forms, each with about as much health to them as Pink's mecha in one of the other stages. All this, and you fight him while riding a gravity-defying mine-cart, constantly worrying about whether you should be clinging to the floor or the ceiling to avoid the myriad attacks of each form.
• The GBA sequel Gunstar Super Heroes pretty much reprises all of this, except in the rematch with Green, he doesn't hesitate to use his Seven Force forms mid-battle. The end result? A ninja teleporting behind your back, turning into a giant urchin, rolling at you, then leaping into the air and transforming into a giant crossbow. It's extremely hectic, pushes the system itself to its limits, and the whole fight is framed by a minimalistic, yet heroic, theme.
• Ghost of Tsushima: Each final boss is a duel that will make you feel like a real samurai.
• Hades:
  • The Furies — while the first the player will meet is the deadly Megaera, there are three fearsome Furies, each with their own fighting style. While Megaera is an all-rounder with a cool, dry wit (not to mention a lot of chemistry with Zag), Alecto is a rage-fueled Blood Knight and Tisiphone is a nightmarishly focused Fury who will close the room in on Zagreus as they fight, slowly but surely tightening the fight. On Extreme Measures, the Furies can call in assists from the other two!
  • The Lernaean Bone Hydra, a massive hydra that fights Zagreus, summoning other heads, unleashing countless attacks. On Extreme Measures, the islands split, making movement itself precarious against it.
  • Though a mini-boss, Asterius is a Blood Knight seeking a worthy opponent, who begins to find it in Zagreus. Honorable and badass, Asterius destroys pillars and decorations during his fights with Zagreus, ramming him, attacking with his axe, and doing it all with utter respect and honor.
  • Theseus and Asterius. The two are a dangerous Dual Boss akin to Ornstein and Smough, capable of utterly destroying anyone they so please. While Asterius is aggressive and strong, Theseus is weaker, yet hides behind his shield and throws his spear from afar. Once Theseus is brought to half health, he gets even more intense, calling his own Olympian aid and letting one of the gods rain fire upon Zagreus, just as Zag can himself. Every time Zagreus beats the duo, and/or the fight becomes very intense, the arena begins chanting his name! On Extreme Measures, Asterius gets a suit of golden armor and Theseus gets a chariot with gatling guns on it, though it does break at the halfway mark. A Prophecy even encourages Zagreus to fight them on Extreme Measures.
  • Upon reaching the surface, Zagreus finds himself facing down against the Final Boss, the big man himself: Hades. Hades is fast, brutal, and efficient; he summons minions, turns invisible, strikes with his spear, and uses every trick he has. Of course, Zagreus can beat him… only for him to get back up again, rallying himself for the true final showdown, unleashing fiery lasers, summoning deadly vases of undead hands, striking even faster, and gunning to take Zagreus's life and send him right back to Styx. More intense, however? On Extreme Measures, Hades gains the ability to turn the field of conflict to darkness, regain health, call Cerberus for aid, and then gets back up a second time.
  • The Optional Boss, Charon, is activated by stealing from his shop. He strikes for huge damage with his oar, unleashes misty attacks on Zagreus such as throwing massive projectiles at him, and proves to be a dangerous fight, all set to "Final Expense (Payback Mix)." Don't fuck with the ferryman. If Zagreus wins, Charon gives him a discount card, and it's noted that he actually enjoys testing his edge against the son of Hades.
• Half-Life 2:
  • The glorious moment where you finally blast the everloving CRAP out of the Combine helicopter that's been dogging you for a level and a half at least. And it's a running battle through Absurdly Spacious Sewers and wide-open spaces with plenty of eye candy. Oh, and you're riding a hovercraft armed with Frickin' Laser Beams the entire time. Insanity.
  • The final battle of Episode 2. Easily the most epic encounter in the entire Half-Life series.
  • Gordon Freeman versus the Strider Army. Who will win? The fifty-foot tall, heavily armed monstrosities? Or the theoretical physicist? The best part is that they basically send Gordon out there alone... okay, he had help, but they don't last long. They think Gordon can handle the situation alone. And they're right. Completely.
• Halo:
  • Halo 2:
    • The Scarab Battle. While not technically a boss, when combined with the bgm, and all the other marines rallying behind Master Chief, bringing it down is surely an ego boost for many.
    • Tartarus, Chieftain of the Brutes. He's an 8-foot-tall gorilla with a really bad temper, who is leading an entire race of crazy apes with nail guns but he has more than a nail gun, instead he has a huge-assed hammer which sends enemies 50 meters away and his energy shield is almost indestructible, it takes three shots from a beam sniper to take it down and you still just has three seconds to shoot him as much as possible before the shield is back online.
  • Halo 3:
    • There are no less than three Scarab battles, which combine both Best Boss Ever and Best Level Ever in varying amounts. You get to fight a Scarab on ATVs with Rocket Launchers, then you get to fight a Scarab at the conclusion of a massive tank battle. What could possibly top that? Oh yeah, fighting TWO Scarabs in the midst of a massive aerial battle.
    • For added awesome in the dual-Scarab battle, play with a friend and have him pilot a Hornet while you jump into a passenger seat. When he flies over one of the Scarabs, bail out and jump right on top of the beast. With luck, the guards on the Scarab will be too busy firing at the Marines above and below them to notice and you can slip right by them and take out the core with relative ease. Have them extract you off of the roof of the Scarab as it melts down or the ground after you jump off and repeat...
    • The last boss, 343 Guilty Spark, for the sole reason that he's an annoying fuck and blasting him was one of the most satisfying acts ever.
    • The last part of "The Ark" is fighting a Brute Chieftain, half a dozen Jump Pack Brutes, and two Jackal Marksmen. A little known fact is that if you don't go in guns blazing, you can actually fight the Chieftain on his own while his allies just watch the fight. So basically, you have the chance to beat a Brute Chieftain on your own with nothing but melee attacks.
  • Halo 5: Guardians: The Goblin in Warzone is a Mini-Mecha with a large variety of powerful attacks, and you will need teamwork to take it down. Also, it's piloted by a trash-talking Grunt who's yelling at you through a megaphone the entire time. It's a lovely mix of terror and hilarity.
• Tiberius, the Big Bad and Final Boss of Hard Corps: Uprising. He has laughable Narmy dialogue he uses to taunt you repeatedly, uses a sword as his primary weapon, catches the bullets when he goads you to shoot him, and when he goes onto his One-Winged Angel form, he says, "Let's begin... the final battle." The final phase of the battle has you descend from the now destroyed battleship while falling from the sky as Tiberius tries one final attempt to kill you.
• HardReset: it was here, with their first major release, that Flying Wild Hog would establish their love for boss battles that can only be adequately described as 'titanic'. Imagine the 3D version of Background Boss and you're getting there. Throw in some excellent and intense music, generous-but-not-too-generous supplies, and what could otherwise be fairly unremarkable or even hellishly frustrating fights turn into epic David vs. Goliath showdowns.
  • First, Atlas, the Titan carrying the Heavens. The Machines smuggled a nanomachine payload into the statue. As Fletcher encounters it, a seemingly unremarkable stone statue comes to life, sprouting massive glowing armor plates and deadly weapons, whilst more hostile Mooks swarm into the arena. You have to destroy all of the glowing plates in order to cripple the Titan, all so that you can ultimately borrow the contents of its 'brain'.
  • Second, the Constructor. A colossal shrimp-like construction machine, it spends the entire battle climbing between giant towers in the distance (making it a literal Background Boss) whilst blasting away at you with a cutting laser as more mechanical mooks swarm up onto the landing pad you're on. You need to balance destroying three of the Constructor's legs with fighting off its minions, dodging its laser, and avoiding the piles of explosives scattered around the arena.
• A Hat in Time:
  • The chapter "Battle of the Birds" has an interesting boss. Depending on who wins the rivalry, you could end up fighting The Conductor or DJ Grooves. Both fights play out the same, but man, do they escalate. It starts with the boss stage-diving at you. Soon, they start causing shockwaves with a giant disco ball (and photos of the disco ball), run at you with a knife, and again with photocopies, cars, lights falling, saw blades...Halfway through the fight, out of nowhere, you sit down and chat with the boss in a nice quiet moment. Then you get a bomb strapped to your back until the boss's rival can defuse it! Until finally, the boss gets fed up and calls in a line of knife-happy owls to chase you around 'til the end of the fight! And the epic music that plays is like something that belongs in a freakin' bar fight!
  • The boss battle against The Snatcher starts with a bang — whatever you were expecting, it probably wasn't the demon instantly launching into a series of multicolored explosions all around the arena while an amazing tune plays. Not only are these explosions massive and take up a large amount of the ring you can run on (the same arena you fought the Toilet in), he'll try to fake you out in pure darkness with a wooden cutout of himself, refuses to turn blue of his own accord (you have to use his own flasks against him while he says funny stuff), carousels his Subconite subjects around the arena, and even creates whack-a-mole shockwaves! It's an intense, fun-as-heck battle with an unbelievably heartwarming and fun end to it all. And the Snatcher makes good on his name and snatching something - your hat! No abusing your hat powers on this fight!
  • Queen Vanessa is more of a Level in Boss Clothing combined with Puzzle Boss, but still qualifies, due to being both completely out of left field and genuinely frightening in a game that's otherwise largely very cutesy and light-hearted.
  • The Final Boss also deserves a mention. Mustache Girl, having abused the power of Time Pieces to dominate the planet, is told to get lost by eall of your favorite enemies from the previous stages, and it's accompanied by one of the best songs in the game, "You Are All Bad Guys." Mustache Girl then sends everyone into the very fabric of time itself while she tries to get rid of Hat Kid. When she starts fighting dirty, your former enemies provide what assistance they can, ending in them performing a Heroic Sacrifice to grant Hat Kid virtually infinite healing pons. Mustache Girl then pulls out all the stops even as her Time Piece powers are weakening to try and take down Hat Kid, resulting in a thrilling frantic final phase. All of this is backed up by an absolutely beautiful track that captures the mood of the final phase perfectly.
  • Before they commit Heroic Sacrifices, Hat Kid's former adversaries (and a goat from Alpine Skyline) combine their attacks and abilities to let Hat Kid break through Mustache Girl's defenses. Hat Kid can't hit Mustache Girl due to Teleport Spam? Well, the Conductor rides a Mafia Ball into battle and tells you to knock the ball into Mustache Girl while she is distracted with her beam attacks. Once Mustache Girl wises up and creates a barrier to block all attacks, The Snatcher has one of the Alpine Skyline goats sign a contract with him, where The Snatcher will create cherry bombs and the goat will toss it into the ring to ignite it so Hat Kid can break Mustache Girl's barrier. For impromptu teamwork, the forces of the planet Hat Kid landed on sure do work well together.
  • The new Death Wish mode amps up the above bosses. Special mention goes to Killing Two Birds, which has you fighting both DJ Grooves and the Conductor at the same time.
• On occasion, the Tavern Brawl of Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft will feature a cooperative boss fight. Every time this happens, both players must summon monsters or use spells to clear the board or fill the board and weaken the boss. Other times, they'll actually have to heal the other one or intentionally read their actions in order to provide cards that can benefit them (such as the Rogue's plagiarism card, which adds copies of the opponents' cards to their hand). It's an interesting change of pace compared to most Tavern Brawls.
• Hellsinker:
  • The bossfight against Rex Cavalier is both a really long boss and very well thought out. All the while, Mickey Mousing is in full effect. As the fight goes on Rex changes attacks based on your performance, with everything from missiles to more lasers. And when he explodes and seems to be beaten, his Spirit Kernel takes over the fight in one last struggle while the music picks up and the background starts flying by very fast. And finally, in a last-ditch attack, Rex tries to load over his spirit onto the protagonist. If you stop him it's on to the next stage; if he succeeds, however, you get a Non-Standard Game Over where your spirit gets corrupted and is slowly turned into the PRAYERS you have been fighting.
  • From the previous Segment, the Apostles of the Seed, Dusk and Dawn, who assault you with co-op attacks. After some damage, they switch to tag-teaming, taking turns with a wide variety of attacks, followed by a Combination Attack where the two spin around and attack you both at the same time again, inverting the screen colors and super-attacking you if you time out this particular attack. Destroy one of them and the other fires at you with all they've got. Finally, after the two bosses are destroyed, you then have to run through a gauntlet of Unnamed enemies that spew out dense patterns or fire blue beams of death, until your character lands on The Key and use it to unlock the next Segment. All to Awesome Music with a combination of rocking out and a One-Woman Wail. Of course, it's only an Awesome Boss if you like challenging bosses.
  • The third-tier Final Boss, Garland, who you fight over a trippy background that even takes over the interface. Who knew that going to the lost-and-found service could be so awesome? If you do unlock Lost Property 771, the massive spray of Mistletoes turns into hearts, allowing you to max out your lives and rake in gigantic Immortality bonuses. 771 is a Hold the Line boss, where not only must you face its attacks until time runs out with the entire screen inverted in color, but continously shooting 771 will give you large quantities of Spirits.
• Hero Core's final boss fights are pretty awesome, at least due to the music. But then again, so are The Elites, Silencer, the Guardian...
• Hi-Fi RUSH:
  • Korsica's boss fight is unique compared to every other boss in the game. Rather than fight her directly, the player has to parry and dodge all of her attacks in sequence to wear her out, while Chai tries to talk her down. The dialog, the music, the tension, and the increasing difficulty as the fight progresses makes it not just memorable, but a strong test of the player's reflexes and rhythm.
  • Mimosa's boss fight stands out as one of the highest points in the game, as two egotistical bruisers duke it out to one of the best original tracks in the game. It's a fun, fast-paced romp that perfectly fits Mimosa's Attention Whore character, allowing her the chance to really show off what a Vandelay exec can do when push comes to shove; for as vain as she is, Mimosa keeps on throwing new gimmicks and complications into the fight that keeps the player on their toes, all while continuing to show the sort of athleticism and grace that comes with being a performer such as herself. By the end of it, she requires the combined powers of each member of Peppermint's crew to make vulnerable, and Chai finishes the fight in style with a very visually impressive Single-Stroke Battle.
  • Not to be outdone, the following boss fight against Roquefort pits you against his Lightning Bruiser giant werewolf form, each Flash Step and claw swing punching in time with the techno-remix of Wolfgang's 5th Symphony, testing the player's parry timings as he dashes off-screen and back in again, or just crossing them up with repeated tackles. Even in his human form, he puts up a decent defense, summoning shields and a laser grid as you crash through his vault, culminating in a pitched battle on top the Vandelay gold reserves, Roquefort once again keeping the player guessing as he dips in and out of the gold coins with delayed timings to betray the rhythm he installed in them at the start of the fight.
• Hollow Knight:
  • The Mantis Lords are widely seen as one of the most satisfying bosses in the game thanks to the hectic pace of the battle and relentlessness of all three sisters, which is properly reflected in the just as frantic music throughout their fight. It gets taken up to eleven in the Final Pantheon, where you must fight all three of them at once.
  • The Watcher Knights are notoriously difficult, but they are also extremely fun to fight. You have to face six of them (two at a time, with another awakening each time one drops), and they have fairly simplistic movement patterns, bouncing around the arena and swiping at you if you stay close to one for too long. What makes this fight great is the sheer chaos of having two Watchers active nearly all the time, so that the player has to be constantly on their toes — but fortunately there are brief moments of respite each time one goes down.
  • Grimm, and his upgraded form Nightmare King Grimm, encourages you to learn his moves, think fast and react appropriately to each one in order to have a shot at defeating him. While he may be frustrating for beginners, fighting and defeating him is a proof of one's reflexes and pattern recognition.
  • From the new bosses in the Godmaster update, Paintmaster Sheo stands out as a fun battle that isn't too taxing. He is mechanically unique in that he fights by splashing paint around the arena, leaving splatters on the floor that make it more colourful as the fight progresses. Each colour of paint corresponds to a different attack, so it's relatively easy to read his moves and learn to respond to each one.
  • At the end of the fourth Pantheon is the Pure Vessel, an extremely powerful and fast paced boss. Featuring several of your own tricks as well as many others, the original form of the Hollow Knight can and will destroy you many times, but their attacks are nevertheless well-telegraphed, making them all the more satisfying to beat once you've achieved mastery.
• The Magician from House of the Dead. Just everything about him is cool. His "demon knight" design is striking and fearsome, but also elegant and, unlike his successors, restrained. His pose and gestures exude arrogant power. His theme is great. The fight itself is a true ordeal, since the Magician is blindingly fast, and his weak points, despite being an open secret now, are cleverly concealed, and the realisation that the fight has begun but you don't know where to shoot brought a moment of panic to all who reached him for the first time. How awesome is The Magician? Not only does he return for the sequel, not only does he retain his personal theme despite no longer being the final boss, but his voiceover is actually okay there! Granted, he only has a couple lines, but the inflections are mostly correct, and he sounds neither bored, confused nor whiny. It's like even the clowns in charge of that voiceover realised you do not screw up a boss that epic!
• In Hype: The Time Quest, Mhasse is the only boss that really requires any tactical thinking.
• The Final Boss battle in the Sega Saturn Shoot 'Em Up Hyper Duel, from the creators of the Thunder Force series. It starts out as a Battleship Raid as you attempt to destroy the enemy mothership. And it appears as if the Big Bad is actually helping you destroy the mothership! But after you destroy it, the mothership ends up taking the Big Bad in, and you fight the Big Bad himself while this awesome theme plays in the background, which is also a Title Drop on the OST.
• Although it was the only boss fight in the game, the battle between Ico and the Shadow Queen in ICO was immensely gripping and tense, right up to the moment when Ico drove the spirit sword right into her dark heart!
• Iji:
  • The Final Boss Tor definitely qualifies. He's got attacks where he flies several miles away, and shoots lasers or missiles at you, then flies back. And when he's back, you face Bullet Hell of epic proportions. From blasts that leave rippling waves on the ground, to missiles that turn into other missiles, to a bolt of energy you have to reflect back at him. And he even has a one-hit kill that not only kills you but wipes your stats. Also, if you've beaten the game before, you can find a terminal and power him up so he has even more HP and attacks more.
  • The final fight with Asha. After trying to (and possibly even succeeding in) killing Iji's brother, being able to finally put him down for good is immensely satisfying, and the fight itself is suitably epic as well.
• The final portion of the Chapter 5 boss, Tageri, in Ikaruga. The most awesome instance of Playing Tennis with the Boss ever.
• The final boss of inFAMOUS is one hell of an epic fight in a game loaded with them. You're put in a one-on-one duel with Kessler, the man responsible for the deaths of thousands and the destruction of your city (not to mention killing your girlfriend)in the middle of a huge crater you woke up in at the very beginning of the game. Kessler has powered up versions of all of your moves, plus it's hard to actually hit him since he'll teleport a few feet away every time you shoot him unless it's during one of his moves. Beating him requires skill, patience, and liberal use of the dodge button.
• From inFAMOUS: Second Son:
  • "He Who Dwells" AKA Eugene Sims, a massive, laser shooting angel who you fight inside of a video game. This results in you fighting in what looks like the fires of Hell against what Delsin compared at one point to God.
  • The first battle against Augustine. Coming on the tail of Reggie's death, what follows is a very cathartic beatdown where Delsin calls out Augustine over all the crap she did to Delsin and his people. The end result is Delsin leveling the concrete island they were fighting on.
• The Final Boss of the Flash-based game Intrusion 2, M.A.C.E. Your character is traveling through a deserted corridor, then this Humongous Mecha comes after you, firing its Eye Beams through the windows, biting off the walkway, then using his Finger Firearms to attack you with fireballs and homing missiles. Then your character goes into a building, and the huge robot grabs the windows with his hands and picks up the building. You then have to avoid the junk being tossed around, while firing at M.A.C.E.'s fingers to destroy them and force him to put the building down, after which his fingers attack you again. After this, the real fight starts- it spits out a Bullet Hell of fireballs, crushes you with its fists, uses Eye Beams, a twirling laser beam attack, and will periodically take a container to dump bad guys (and health). Like Tor from Iji, he also can fly away into the background to fire out a Macross Missile Massacre or a huge sweeping laser, the second of which can only be avoided by hiding behind a wall which you need to operate. During then, the missiles will attempt to push the wall back down. Words cannot describe the boss in its full glory.
• I Wanna Be the Guy:
  • Dracula. He throws delicious fruit on fire, as well as the frickin' moon, at you, sets the floor ablaze several times, and turns into a Waddle Doo at the end, all with epic music playing in the background. Hard or not, that battle was pure awesome from start to finish. (Or, considering this IS IWBTG we're talking about: From start, to start, to start, to start...) He can even kill you in the intro speech, when he throws his wineglass at you. You have to jump over it.
  • Mechabirdo's boss fight also counts as you ride huge-ass missiles and the BGM taken from Ikaruga's boss fight made it MORE AWESOME.
• In Jagged Alliance 2, about halfway through the game, you get to fight "Mike", a fellow mercenary (the best recruitable merc from Jagged Alliance 1). He's a shameless opportunist and is now hiring out his services to the enemy this time around, basically betraying his fellow mercenaries. In fact, each A.I.M Merc recruitable in the game (there are roughly 50 of them) has special spoken dialogue for when Mike is spotted and for when Mike is eliminated. He's extra bad-ass because he carries a very rare and powerful assault rifle (G11), which you'll definitely want to collect for yourself.
• Jedi Academy:
  • The truly epic final duel against Kyle Katarn on the Dark Side path, especially on Jedi Knight difficulty. He was every bit the worthy opponent you'd expect him to be, without being the cheating, overpowered, one-hit-kill murder machine that Desann was in Jedi Outcast. Made all the more awesome because Kyle has moves seen nowhere else in the Dark Forces Saga, if not Star Wars video games as a whole... who else, in the middle of a lightsaber duel, would Force Pull your saber out of your hands so they could wrap you up in a chokehold or deliver some gut punches?
  • The final battle against Marka Ragnos, the "most powerful Sith Lord evah" was also pretty good. Sure, he had a somewhat annoying instant-heal-to-full-health move (though he can only use it 4 times before running out), but at least he didn't kill you in 1 hit or have an impossible-to-break force choke like Desann did.
• Just about every damn boss in Kid Icarus: Uprising counts.
  • Highlights include a reaper two stories tall, a Humongous Mecha, Hades himself... and the Chaos Kin. The latter technically takes up two boss fights - the first time it was possessing Palutena and the second time was a straight-up KILLKILLKILL fight.
  • The battle with Phosphora is very cool. It's basically a frantic duel between Palutena's and Viridi's strongest warriors. The fast pace of the fight is matched by the atmosphere. Even the commentating gods and goddesses agree that the fight is very exciting to watch.
• Killer7:
  • Curtis Blackburn. MOST AWESOME GUN DUEL EVER.
  • Gotta add in Ayame Blackburn, sebaibu!
  • Before them, Andrei Ulmeyda manages to be one. In a much more serious way.
• Kingdom of Loathing:
  • The class Nemeses, after which the Big Bad is anticlimactic. Everyone has their favorite.
  • Gorgolok the Demonic Hellseal, with bone shields that must be shattered before using your newly acquired super-critical-bamming attack.
  • The Spaghetti Demon, for allowing you to do something you can't do anywhere else: Spam Entangling Noodles, a spell which you have been using at the start of most every fight since you hit level 3.
• The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match has longtime series villain Rugal Bernstein as a hidden boss. Getting to him in itself is quite difficult. When you do get there, you'll know by the kickass cutscene showing Rugal emerging from his cybernetic coat, ready to crush every dream you ever had. Then the fight starts. The game's camera-panning-down-from-the-ceiling effect with Unlimited R playing in time on his brand-spankin' new Blacknoah stage (Which first appeared as an extra 3D stage in the PS2 port of the original, mind you) sets the mood to what is guaranteed to be a hell of a fight. You also can't continue against him, so give him hell before he gives it to you.
• The sorcerer duel with Mordak in King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder!. Graham is an ex-knight, not a sorcerer (that's Alex's department), and still manages to hand the guy his rear with some fast thinking and a borrowed wand.
• Alex's duel with Alhazred in King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. Using a mostly useless sword and what had to be a crash course in sword fighting (he was raised a slave, after all), he manages to hold his own long enough for Cassima to break out the dagger she concealed in her robes and stab the guy in the back!
• Leorina from Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil. After she goes all One-Winged Angel unwillingly, she begins to skate around the arena. You know those lighting enemies you use to go up really high? When she tries to jump on you, you fly up using those to hit her in her weak point. It doesn't sound that impressive, but actually playing it feels like you're playing Dragon Ball Z. It probably helps that the background music is quite possibly the biggest Awesome Music in the series. For added effect, try yelling "SHORYUKEN!" or "FIYAH!" every time you attack her.
• The final boss battle of the Light Gun Game LA Machineguns, which is a Battleship Raid against the giant aircraft carrier terrorist organization Rage of the Machines.
• La-Mulana:
  • Tiamat, the Guardian of the Dimensional Corridor. She continuously generates Goddamned Bats to slow you down, has an attack in which she whips out her hair in all directions, a tail whip attack that can chop off a good chunk of life, and gives you a split second to hit her face before she changes direction, should you choose to battle her the hard way (without getting on the infinity symbol you can generate onto her and stabbing her with the knife over and over). Her battle is more or less the game's equivalent of Castlevania's Death, and it certainly helps that she has one of the most badass boss themes to grace video games.
  • Viy is worth a mention just for the giant laser Eye Beams out of nowhere. They strike quickly, fill 2/3 of the screen, destroy platforms, and even vaporize the little helper demons keeping his eye open. The HSQ goes through the roof during that fight. Also, he finally makes the otherwise useless throwing knives useful.
  • From the earlier part of the game, Ellmac surely counts. Not particularly hard, he's a giant frilled lizard that chases after you in a Minecart Madness segment with an awesome musical theme while you shoot shurikens in his mouth.
  • Sakit, despite being a very difficult Wake-Up Call Boss, still deserves a mention. You're fighting a fifty-foot tall giant statue, armed with little more than a whip and a knife, while one of the game's best boss themes plays in the background. If you can get past the step up in difficulty, it's a fun fight.
• The Passing from Left 4 Dead 2. Sure, there's the entire fact that, in general, you get to make your own awesome boss fights thanks to the AI Director, but there's something about just getting to the bridge and seeing the remaining original survivors in all their glory, making idle banter with the new four survivors before going down to start the generator. First off, having the original survivors not just stand there like complete goofs but actually take up positions and open fire on the Horde as they try and stop you is awesome unto itself, but having Louis, then normally cheery, optimistic, and most carefree of the survivors kill a Tank with a Browning .50 calibre machinegun, all by himself is nothing short of completely kickass.
• Legacy of Kain: Defiance- Kain Vs Raziel. You switch between playing as both during the fight, which is awesome enough. Throw in the fact that this is the climactic fight the series has been building to since Soul Reaver 1, that both have the Reaver (in their previous two fights Kain, then Raziel had the Reaver respectively), allowing for an even duel, plus the terrific vocal performances of Messuers Simon Templeman (Kain) and Michael Bell (Raziel), and you have one hell of a dramatic fight. Add in the fact that the actual gameplay is awesome (two telekinetic swordsmen slashing it up in a gothic cathedral) and the awesomeness quotient is off the scale.
• Legend of Dragoon:
  • The dragon bosses, not only was the Divine Dragon incredibly difficult since you couldn't use dragoons, but the Sea Dragon is awesome for its sheer massiveness.
  • The Virage in the Valley of Corrupted Gravity. The Awesome Music is horribly desperate and makes you think you're about to lose no matter how well you're doing. Every Virage is kind of an Awesome Boss, actually.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky:
  • Every Enforcer battle is cool given how badly both the player and the party want to take them down a peg, but the fights with Renne are particularly intense. She's been hyped up throughout the game as one of the most powerful of the group, and when it's finally time, she backs it up with a powerful S-Break and efficient tactics that'll have the player staring at the continue screen in shock. And in The 3rd, you get to fight three Enforcers at once! All while the awesome arranged version of their boss theme plays.
  • Loewe's boss fight in SC. One of the most iconic themes mixed together with one of the most memorable bosses in the franchise's history. Being That One Boss just makes beating him on Nightmare without any retry offsets an achievement by itself. Lampshaded in The 3rd where there is an achievement for doing just that.
  • The Third also has Cassius, despite, or perhaps because of the sheer difficulty. Given how much this character is hyped in-universe, this could have easily been an Anticlimax Boss. But no, he's just as strong as as his reputation suggests. Unlike every other boss in his area, he's not a Flunky Boss. He puts up that much of a fight alone, even 4 against 1. And you actually manage to beat him, while he's not holding back! The Silver Will arrangement playing during the fight also helps.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • Crow + Ordine in Cold Steel I is unexpected, tense, exciting, and the music is absolutely phenomenal. It also completely relies on your skill and ability to adapt, making it impossible to cheese it.
  • The duel between Rean and Crow in Cold Steel II is the first time players get unlimited access to Rean's Super Mode, and Crow will still make you work for your victory.
  • Vermillion Apocalypse in Cold Steel II allows you to use all of Class VII. And yes, that includes Crow in Ordine, giving players an exclusive Combination Attack for the final part of the battle.
  • Loa Luciferia, also in Cold Steel II. As the true final boss of the game, it has oodles of HP, some extremely powerful attacks, and basically allows (and, to a degree, forces) the players to go all out against it. It manages to hit that nice sweet spot of being a tough challenge without ever feeling unfair or cheap. Not to mention, as the pre-battle dialogue highlights, this is the last hurrah for Class VII, One Last Field Trip before they go their separate ways and one last chance for them - and for the player - to relive their glory moments and say their goodbyes. The fact that the boss has an absolutely amazing BGM playing when you face it just adds to how incredible the whole experience is.
  • Cold Steel III finally gives us the long-waited battle between Class VII and Arianhrod. Except you're not just fighting the Steel Maiden herself, you're fighting her along with all three Stahlritter at the same time! But to even the odds, you've got Aurelia in the party, who more than lives up to two games worth of being hyped up to be one of the series' strongest characters. The fact that Unfathomed Force returns from when you fought her back in Ao just makes the experience even more epic. Oh, and you can finally see Grand Cross in glorious 3D.
  • The second-to-last boss of Cold Steel III is one of the most emotionally-charged fights in the series, as you take on the Ironbloods - Claire, Lechter, Millium and Rufus. The first three are former party members who you've likely gotten attached to, and they're clearly conflicted over having to fight Class VII. Meanwhile, Rufus is someone players will likely have been wanting to beat down ever since he completely trounced Class VII's ass back in the second game. Aside from being a legitimate challenge, it manages to be both incredibly cathartic and utterly gut-wrenching at the same time.
  • Rean himself as a boss fight in Cold Steel IV ends up being one of the best fights in the game, as he is in full Spirit Unification mode against his students with him no longer holding back anything when he was a boss fight 3 games ago.
  • The True Final Boss of Cold Steel IV, Ishmelga Loge, allows players to use all of the playable characters of Cold Steel IV and is split into three teams.
  • Back in Japan, they consider the final duel between Rean and Crow in Cold Steel IV in their Divine Knights to be the best boss fight ever. Mainly because Rean has access to every single subcontractor in the game while having to fight against Crow. And that does include both old and new Class VII.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie:
  • Many players praise the fight between Rean's party and C's party in Chapter 2, as the game unexpectedly switches perspectives and goes from fighting as Rean's team to fighting as C's team. The fact that it happens twice in the game is just icing on the cake.
  • The battle against Demon McBurn in Chapter 3 of Lloyd's route. Getting to fight against Ouroboros' strongest Enforcer with a party consisting of characters from all three previous arcs^note Tita and Agate for Liberl, Lloyd, Tio, and Wazy for Crossbell, and Alisa and Sharon for Erebonia, set to "Heavy Violent Match," makes for what many consider to be the highlight of the route.
• Legend of Legaia:
  • After making your way through the body of the Juggernaut/Cort fusion which took over Rim Elm, you meet the now completely deformed Cort. Made even more awesome if you saved those uber summons you just got till this battle and are fully decked out in the Ra-Seru equipment found in the dungeon.
  • The fights against the Delilas family are epic. All three are Evil Counterparts of the main characters, so their techniques and battling style are very similar to your own. Your party is split up to take on each member one-on-one, and the only way to win the battles is to use everything you know about the combat system to it's fullest potential.
• LEGO The Lord of the Rings has both battles against the Balrog. The first has Gandalf skydiving towards his sword to catch it, then hack at the Balrog while it breathes fire. The second is set on the snowy mountain, and Gandalf wins by standing under bolts of lightning, then using his sword to channel the lightning towards the Balrog's weak points.
• LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • A cool boss fight in Lego games would be Kraken.
  • From the same game, Blackbeard. The way you fight him is also pretty dang unique (using the Fountain Of Youth's waters to give his health to his dying daughter).
• LEGO Marvel Super Heroes gives us Galactus. Basically, heroes and villains team up on the Helicarrier to stop Galactus from having our world for a tasty snack. At the end is a glorious attack that sends Galactus packing:
  HULK THOR SMASH!!
  • The entire Bifrosty Reception level and boss fight, with Loki taunting you every step of the way as the heroes use their powers to great effect to take him on. He even gets alternate dialogue in Free Play mode.
• The Rancor in LEGO Star Wars 2. It was awesome. Also, Two Vaders!.
  • The big finale of the original trilogy. You fight Palpatine, with all his crazy acrobatic skills displayed in Revenge of the Sith. Oh, and to make it fit with the co-op gameplay style? Vader achieves his redemption a little earlier and teams up with his son to fight the Emperor. That's right, two generations of Skywalkers dueling against the Big Bad of the whole Star Wars saga. They changed it, now it's awesome.
  • Fighting Darth Maul with "Duel of the Fates" in the background; in Freeplay mode, you can play as Vader against Maul (or vice versa).
• The final boss of Lethal Enforcers 1, an Apache Helicopter. On the Sega Genesis version, you were liable to be on your last or next continue, so the pressure was really on to stay alive. You really didn't want all your hard work to go to waste.
• LittleBigPlanet 2. All the bosses you fight in LBP2 are... different, to say the least.
  • The first boss is a tutorial boss, yes, but it's a freaking giant monkey who throws punches at you and uses an electrified yo-yo while you're dangling from a grappling hook, trying to avoid touching the electricity.
  • The second boss has you throwing freaking cake at it while it tries to shock you, vaporize you, and finally just beamspam you to death.
  • The third boss is a giant turkey that you can't even fight. The only thing you can do is run away while guiding Sackbots, swinging from giant platforms, and yanking on levers before you get stepped on.
  • The fourth boss is a giant scorpion mech that you fight with a flying bee while shooting honey bullets. It tries to shoot you out of the sky with Frickin' Laser Beams. The awesome boss theme doesn't hurt either.
  • The fifth boss is inside the head of one of the creators. You actually shrink down and go into his body. You travel into his brain and shoot the hell out of the virus with the body's own white blood cells.
  • Holy crap, the final boss. The Big Bad of LBP2 is a giant vacuum cleaner that you fight in three stages. Words cannot even describe how awesome and intimidating this boss is.
• Live A Live features no fewer than eight separate stories, with a Big Bad at the end of each to fight. Standouts include:
  • Prehistory, where your small team of four cavemen (okay, two cavemen, one cavewoman, and a flatulent ape) have to take down O-D-O... the last Tyrannosaurus Rex on earth. It is a feral, ravenous twelve-ton beast, and you have to bring it down.
  • Wild West, which asks two gunslingers to challenge O. Dio, an outlaw gang leader... who happens to be a mountain of a man carrying a Gatling Gun. And if you're feeling a little bit brave (or mad), you can fight him and his Crazy Bunch, who will crowd you out of the battle board!
  • Imperial Japan, which tasks a lone ninja (and possibly a helpful escapee) to challenge the corrupt Lord Ode Iou, a daimyo who opposes the shogun and threatens to plunge Japan back into endless war and conquest. The problem with this assassination mission is that Ode is actually the demon frog Gamahebi, and you will have to send him back to hell personally.
  • Near Future, which starts with a young man with psychic powers and ends with a Super Robot battle between the enormous Buriki Daioh/Steel Titan and the psychic-energy-infused Great Inko Buddha Statue, operating under the guise of Lord Odeo. It's hard not to enjoy a boss fight where a Humongous Mecha puts down an evil demigod with a Diving Kick.
  • The remake adds an extra boss: Odio's hatred after the Boss Rush at the very very end. What makes this boss stand up is the fact that the other three members get to join in. And the best part? At the very end, it's Oersted, who, after finally coming to his senses, gets to land the final blow.
• The major boss battle of Chapter 3 of Lost Planet 2 is a massive Akrid that has to be fought with a massive cannon mounted on a train. The best way to fight this boss is with a full four-man party of players since operating the cannon requires a lot of work to take full advantage of it: one person manning the controls, one to load rounds into the cannon, one to energize the rounds for added damage, and one to rotate the cannon. The sheer weight and overwhelming power of the cannon, however, makes it all worthwhile.
• In Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, your first encounter with the Sinistral Gades, Master of Destruction is meant to be a Hopeless Boss Fight. If you encounter him normally he'll kill half your party with his first attack and cripple the other half- your chances of lasting more than 3 turns are practically nil. However he is beatable if you level grind considerably. Beatable, but never easy- if you put on about an extra 5 or 6 levels (about 3-4 hours of solid grinding) and apply a very tricky strategy revolving around predicting his actions you can (assuming your luck holds) survive against him long enough to chip away at his massive amount of HP and eventually beat him. This is not only immensely satisfying, it also makes it an incredibly tense and fun encounter and also nets you a powerful sword with a great IP skill. That aside, it's simply an awesome encounter as Gades is an enormous◊ opponent and the Sinistral battle theme is the most awesome, pulse-racing, blood-pumping track in a game filled with fantastic music.
• MadWorld:
  • Kojack fight is one of the most awesome things ever. Mostly because you see Jack ramming himself against himself. As Kreese put it: "We are witnessing the most violent masturbation ever."
  • Even better is the final boss, The Black Baron himself. It comes out of complete nowhere for anyone playing the game. But when they face him, they realize that this person got Rank 1 because they're STRONG AS HELL. Unlike Kojack, who you fight in an underground secret base with motorbikes, you face The Black Baron in a brutal fist-fight, on an arena on a tower, WAY up high in the sky, with the audience cheering in the background, while an incredibly laid-back song (fitting, considering who the final boss is), which is actually quite refreshing to hear, plays in the background, stating how Jack is cramping the Baron's style and he wants to basically pimp slap him in the face. If you get knocked out of the ring, you get bludgeoned with a spiked bat and then launched back into the ring. It gets even more intense after you take down half the final boss' HP. IMMEDIATELY, the music shifts from the laid-back 'Look Pimpin' into 'So Cold', stating just how ticked off you made him. The boss then gets a potential One-Hit KO, a lightning kick, and a rocket punch that can knock you out of the ring instantly. Throughout the fight, the clashes can be described as 'Multiple Cross-Counters', the two of you basically punching each other until The Baron takes a bit too much damage and you slam the boss' head into the arena. And when you FINALLY drop his health down to zero, you get the pleasure of home-running the boss into a dartboard to finish him.
• The final battle of Ruru's scenario in Magical Battle Arena, where Kirara, Sarara, Nanoha, and Fate appear to help you take down a Nowel that's permanently in Super Mode and accompanied by the usual army of Gadget Drones plus the clones of your comrades. Epic.
• Let's face it, pretty much every single boss in Magicka is awesome, but here's a few really good examples:
  • Khan looks like he should be easy...after all, he's just another Orc, right? But no, the second the fight starts, he's dashing around the screen almost as fast as you can run with Haste activated, hacking at you with his sword, chucking bombs at you, and bashing you across the room with his shield. After five levels of facing down increasingly big and hulking monsters and powerful wizards, facing a single Badass Normal Lightning Bruiser is a nice change of pace, not to mention fighting someone who uses speed and aggression to beat you rather than just standing there while you blast him with spells.
  • The next boss, Grimnir, is even better. After trekking through possibly the best level in the game, it's time to face the most powerful wizard in the world. First, he transports you through a series of mini-challenges where you have to fight off waves of every magic-using enemy in the game, including ones you haven't seen yet. Then you fight him physically, and he is HARD. Even though he never even moves, you're fighting him on a tiny space surrounded by void, so one slip-up will send you into the abyss. And you will slip up, because unlike other spellcasters, he doesn't just chuck a few beams your way. No, he summons ethereal duplicates of himself to constantly blast you with powerful projectile attacks while he uses actual Magicks, including Rain, Tornado, and Conflagration. Combined with one of the best music tracks in the game, it's truly awe-inspiring. Oh, and by the way, this is only the halfway point of the game.
  • Then there's the Chapter 9 boss, Vlad. Yes. The previous bosses have all been some form of huge monster, powerful magic user, or leader of armies, and your next adversary is an ordinary Vampire armed only with a sword. And it's awesome. Hell, not only does he have an awesome theme (an organ theme, no less), is the only boss with fight dialogue, is very challenging despite being very simple to fight, and is, you know, Vlad, but after you beat him, he doesn't die. Instead, he decides you're too annoying to be worth fighting and teleports you into the underworld.
  • The boss of the next chapter is no less than DEATH ITSELF. If it so much as touches you, you die instantly. It's constantly teleporting around, summoning minions, and will occasionally surround a player with duplicates of itself that charge towards them one by one, making them set off Life Spells as fast as possible destroy them all. All this makes it one of the most unique and most intense fights in the game. The music here is awesome too.
  • Then there's the 11th level boss, Fafnir. A Dragon. He's huge, he's imposing, he's at the end of the hardest level in the game, he spits streams of fire at you, he can only be attacked for a few seconds at a time, he can destroy the ground under your feet, and can even invert your controls. This fight can't be described in any way but "intense".
  • The final chapter is composed of THREE awesome bosses in a row. Vlad and Grimnir you've fought before but Assatur is a different matter. He's a Captain Ersatz of a GREAT OLD ONE. He can shoot lightning out of his hands, release an almost undodgeable wave of energy, and conjure meteor showers and Black Holes. All this while falling from the sky at the edge of the world, while one of the best pieces of Awesome Music in the whole game plays.
  • Finally, there's the final boss of the expansion The Stars Are Left. Nothing more or less than FREAKING CTHULHU. Need we say more?
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance:
  • The final battle. Against a Nanomachine infested Nick Fury. Fury unleashes the powers of almost a dozen heroes and villains against you, keeping you on your toes and switching tactics-all the while ranting about how you need to submit to the collective.
  • The Deadpool boss fight. Partly because he attacks an enemy, followed by one of your own allies on account of disturbing his vacation to look at the cherry blossoms. Partly because he proceeds to get angry at the player for laughing at the fact he came to see the cherry blossoms and announces that it's "time for a little Boss Battle, SUCKERS!!", and partly because you unlock him shortly after.
• Onslaught from the original Marvel vs. Capcom is even taller than a Sentinel (which he uses in some attacks) and has Magneto's suite of hyper combos to use as regular attacks, on top of being aggressive. And that's just the first half of the battle! After draining his HP, he vanishes for a moment, only to come back as a massive beast, booming "NO ONE IS SAFE!" Now, he's even more aggressive, and his attacks his like a freight train. He's easily one of the toughest bosses of the series, but holy cow is he a blast to trade blows with!
• Galactus in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, just for the sheer scale of it. To start, every other fight in the arcade mode, save for the first, is preceded by a page-turning animation of the victory screen to show who your next opponents are. Galactus, just to show how far above the rest he is, disregards this convention and tears apart the victory screen as his entrance revealing the battlefield, a rocky plane overlooking the world. The game doesn't hide what is at stake- the announcer will shout "The battle for Earth!" before his usual stuff, and the HUD even changes in accordance, with "Time" replaced with "Earth Limit" and "Save the Earth!!" added as well. Heck, once Galactus summons his heralds to take care of you, he'll teleport to the background and loom over the planet! If you manage to take the heralds out, Galactus will return to the foreground and slowly approach you, as the camera slowly pans up to reveal how much he towers over you, as a truly pulse-pounding theme sets the mood. If you lose at any point, the game will remind you just how much you screwed up - instead of just a "K.O.", the screen will show "EARTH K.O." while the announcer says "Global destruction!", and to hammer it home, you are treated to a scene where Galactus destroys Earth. However, if you manage to beat him, the announcer declares "You have saved the Earth!" while Galactus falls off the stage. Yep, you just defeated a cosmic being that can consume whole planets with a team of three people. It's enough to make anyone feel like a hero. Yes, beating Galactus with a team featuring Thor, Amaterasu, and Doctor Doom is pretty much impressive, but it's even more satisfying if you use Badass Normal characters like Chris Redfield, Captain America, or even Frank West to beat Galactus. Yep. Friggin' epic.
• Master of the Wind has a boss fight during a rock concert. With the lead singer. Who summons a bunch of rock angels. All of whom look different (and awesome) and have music-themed attacks. While you have two Guest Star Party Members. And "Spirit Never Dies" plays in the background (you know, this song) because the singer is still rocking out. Best. Boss. EVER.
• Not strictly a boss-fight, but the battle with Nicole Horne at the end of Max Payne is a charming combination of deeply satisfying (after all the shit she has put Max through) and utterly fucking badass. "What do you mean, 'he's unstoppable?'" So satisfying...
• MechAssault 2: The Spider Tank boss is absolutely awesome! The introduction to the mech starts off as a quiet empty swamp, and after taking a few steps, the boss mech shows itself: a hulking and menacing robot spider that is so huge it makes your already Humongous Mecha look like Battle Armor in comparison. The spider mech charges towards you before trampling you down with its arms, followed by either a plasma PPC or a Wave-Motion Gun! To take it down, you blast off the armor on its 6 legs before laying waste on its exposed body. When it finally dies, the spider mech blows up in a spectacular light show. It helps that Papa Roach's "Getting Away With Murder" plays as the Spider Mech's theme.
• Metal Slug:
  • A majority of final bosses could fall under this, such as the massive battle against the Martian Mothership where you team up with the enemy army in Metal Slug 2/X, the grueling freefall battle against Rootmarks, the leader of the Marspeople, in Metal Slug 3, and the colossal, two-screen tall, demon Scyther in Metal Slug 5. The fact that they're all accompanied by Awesome Music, especially in the case of 5, doesn't hurt either.
  • Allen O'Neal:
    • He has come back to life three times throughout the course of the series and is fun each time, especially in Metal Slug 2, where he falls off of the cliff and is eaten by an orca, which spits his bones out of the water afterward. The complete randomness of the scene made it that much more awesome. "Come on, boy!"
    • He is even more awesome than before in Metal Slug 7, wherein you have a giant robot duel with him set to the hardcore Assault theme.
    • Playing the third Training Mode (ie, Challenge Mode) version of that fight has you fight him on foot. Man vs mech.
  • The final boss of Metal Slug 7/XX, the Kraken, which is a gigantic mechanical octopus summoned after the destruction of the time portal. For once, outside of the first Metal Slug game, you actually fight Morden himself as the final boss. That's right, the Kraken is being controlled by Morden. And you fight the boss on top of lava. And the boss battle has an awesome violin remix of Final Attack. And finally, when you defeat the boss, the "Mission All Over" screen shows the characters defeating the final boss.
• Sheltem from the Might and Magic games is probably one of the most badass bosses ever. He gloats about being unstoppable, and he's basically right. Your party cannot kill him. If you try, he calls you fools, waves his hand, and you all die. Even if you get around this, you still don't fight him.
• Mischief Makers:
  • Quite a few bosses qualify, but Lunar deserves special mention. Your character rides on the back of a tiny thrill-seeking kitten (only makes slightly more sense in context), while Lunar gives chase in some sort of huge panther motorcycle thing; especially awesome when he screams "EAT LEAD!!!" and fires a machine gun at you, laughing maniacally.
  • Any of the times he Macross Missile Massacres you, you can jump onto said missile and surf it for the greater part of the fight! And since the game's battle system revolves around throwing your opponent's attacks back at them, you can catch Lunar's Wave-Motion Gun beams and throw them back!
  • The final boss should also qualify. What other game lets you grab a 50-foot tall robot by the foot, effortlessly lift it into the air, slam it into the floor like you're beating out a rug, and toss it into the background?
• Missile Dancer: What better way to cap off a game where you and the enemies shoot loads of missiles at one another by having you take on a ballistic nuclear missile for a Final Boss? And it doesn't go down without a fight, as it has many compartments from which it can launch smaller missiles at you, and you have to destroy each stage of the rocket before finally shooting down the warhead itself, all on a pressuring-but-fair timer until the missile can reach its target.
• Game Over from the first Modern Warfare. You engage in a car chase against Zakhaev and his men until you end up in a bridge. Then, you end up being severely wounded as Zakhaev and his bodyguards close in on you and your allies. Price then throws you his handgun and you personally finish off Zakhaev and his bodyguards.
• Endgame from Modern Warfare 2. You pursue Shepherd in his helicopter on a boat until you reach a waterfall after Price shoots down the helicopter. Upon confronting Shepherd, he stabs you in the chest with your own knife and is about to shoot you until Price arrives and fights Shepherd. Shepherd then beats down Price and you pull the knife out of your chest then you finish off Shepherd by throwing the knife in his eye.
• And finally, we have Dust to Dust from Modern Warfare 3. You track Makarov at his hotel in the Arabian Peninsula, fighting off Ultranationalists and hotel security along the way, all while wearing Juggernaut armor. After shooting down a Little Bird helicopter, the chopper crashes into the elevator and your armor is destroyed. You then have to fight your way to the restaurant but as you arrive another Little Bird helicopter destroys the restaurant with missiles and you have to run to the roof and jump onto the helicopter to stop Makarov from escaping. After killing the pilots and the helicopter crashing back onto the roof, you struggle to get the gun only for Makarov to beat you to it, but before he can kill you, Yuri shoots Makarov and Makarov kills Yuri. Then you deliver an awesome No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Makarov and finally kill him by hanging him with a steel cord and breaking the glass roof, causing both you and Makarov to fall. Then the words "Objective Completed" appear and you smoke a cigar as the police arrive.
• The battle of wits with LeChuck at the end of Monkey Island 2. Never at any other point in the series has the villain (who's usually played for laughs) been this bloody terrifying. Any player who doesn't jump every time he enters the room with his crashing theme and that voodoo doll of his clearly must be a robot incapable of fear. And this takes place at the end of a point-and-click Adventure game where you can't even die. How many Adventure games have done a final boss that can actually stand head and shoulders with bosses from other genres?
• Monolith:
  • Chamberlord seems like a simple King Mook of the most basic Chamberheads, but it shoots big bullets that travel quickly and adds said Chamberheads to the fray.
  • Behemoth is a huge tank that fires large bullet spreads and fireballs as it moves around. Dodging the attacks that rendered this thing The Dreaded to less nimble opponents is quite exhilarating.
  • Devourer is an enormous sewer worm that chases you while shooting at you with eyes inside that mouth. Not much is better than destroying the eyes to lighten the boss's attacks, and the pinch mode against its core isn't bad either.
  • Starting from Relics of the Past, Reactor takes its seemingly humble bullet patterns and overlaps them to create a tough — yet surprisingly fair — challenge for its fight.
  • The Machine unleashes a variety of quick attacks when its true form is revealed. The fact that it puts up an entirely different fight when you play as Overlord or ???, and it survives the first two combatants regardless of gameplay outcome, makes it even more badass.
  • Monolith replaces the Machine as True Final Boss in Hard difficulty, and proves the combination of Null and the Power Eternal to be something only rivalled by Chaosgod. It pulls stronger versions of every playable weapon out of the bag at random, and the struggle proves itself a personal and emotional one in the story.
  • For all intents and purposes, Database is ten bosses jumbled into one. Aside from its main phases and playback of the Machine's creation, it can summon three out of eight boss Mix-and-Match Critters that use existing bosses and bullets and reuses them in creative ways.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Technically almost everything you fight is a boss in comparison to the way most games are played, but the fight against Lao-Shan-Lung stands out for several reasons. First off, it's a frikin' huge dragon, and secondly the music once you get to the final area comes with what is possibly the best out of the game's various Awesome Music.
  • And then Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) is released, and Jhen Mohran comes along. A dragon the size of Lao that swims in the sand. You get to fight him on a boat; a boat armed with cannons, ballista guns, and a dragonator (A giant clockwork spike). If this isn't enough, during the final segment of the fight, striking Jhen with the dragonator triggers a remix of the music heard while fighting Lao. And it's every bit as epic.
  • Monster Hunter 4:
    • Zamtrios is a massive amphibious Threatening Shark, with all the cool factor that follows. It has several ice breath attacks, can burrow under the ground with its dorsal fin up, can swallow the Hunter for its pin attack, and has a rage mode where it gains a sheet of icy armor. It can go into a special mode where it then inflates and looks like a massive beanbag chair; hilarious to look at, but that doesn't mean it's any less dangerous, as it can spew ice chunks all over the place and pound and roll over you.
    • 4 Ultimate introduces Gogmazios, a massive Elder Dragon of unknown origin that attacks with explosive tar, bears an entire Dragonator in its back that it stole ages ago, and is fought in the special Battlequarters area which offers a variety of artillery weapons for you to attack it with, including a massive Demolisher cannon that fires a concentrated blast of Dragon-elemental energy. In the second phase, this massive dragon can take to the air and carpet-bomb the entire area, most likely forcing hunters to take cover until everything's all clear. The Demolisher takes a very long time to charge up, but land a successful hit with it and not only does the Gogmazios take a lot of damage, but (assuming it's still alive) the music changes to "Proof of a Hero".
  • Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate gives the Ahtal-Ka, seemingly just a large leaf mantis. And then it uses its glowing webs to utilize gears, pillars, and the Dragonator drills you've been using for so long to damage Elder Dragons as weaponry against you. If that doesn't sell it, then it uses all the rubble in the area to create a giant mecha dragon called the Ahtal-Neset to crush you with sheer force that you can climb onto for all sorts of treasures and to whack every web until the thing falls apart. Stories tell of this thing crushing entire armies, but once the mech's destroyed for the second time, Proof of a Hero plays to remind players that they've taken on a threat that should be far beyond their power, and are going to kill it soon.
  • Monster Hunter: World:
    • Raging Brachydios' boss fight in Iceborne proceeds mostly the same as the regular variant's (albeit with less time to react since its slime explodes faster), with the monster using the shifting terrain of the Guiding Lands to its full advantage...until it nears death. Instead of retreating to its lair to sleep like most monsters, it seals the exits to its lair, rigs the whole place to explode, and goes absolutely batshit insane trying to throw everything it has at the Hunters, making explosions so massive it even damages itself in the process. It gets a revamped theme with Ominous Latin Chanting during all of this, too!
    • The siege against Safi'jiiva, presented as "The Red Dragon" event quest. Thematically, newcomers to the series are finally treated to a fight against a threat that's taken as seriously as the infamous Black Dragons from previous installments. Massive and quick on its feet, Safi'jiiva boasts moves that are a spectacle in itself, with 'Sapphire of the Emperor' being the most visually stunning explosion you'll ever see, made even better by the music collapsing as the detonation happens. The combination of the energy drain mechanic and the parts breaking also encourages your team, sometimes your entire gathering hub, to pick different objectives spread out over potentially multiple hunts before finally killing the beast at the bottom floor. Then there's its awesome boss theme, which gets even more epic as you get down to the final area and hear a snippet of "Proof of a Hero", signaling your imminent victory even as Safi'jiiva unleashes one ultimate attack after another.
    • While Safi'jiiva's raid quest is certainly impressive, Kulve Taroth's Master Rank quest deserves a mention too. First and foremost, the golden Elder Dragon has taken a significant level up from her High Rank quest. Previously, she preferred to ignore your attacks and run away. Here? She knows you're coming, and jumps into the fray as soon as she sees you. Like the original, you have to corner her by forcing her to retreat deeper into the Caverns of El Dorado from heavy damage. However, if you don't break enough parts off of her in a time span of about eight minutes per area, she decides you're too weak for her and leaves. The original objective of the siege was to break her horns and carve them. You can still do this here...but she doesn't run away. And once you finally corral her into the fourth area? She almost immediately becomes furious, pulling out even more stops and partially melting the floor itself to her advantage. She even gains a visually stunning (and very deadly) attack where she blasts the ceiling with her heat breath to make a lot of melted gold fall down at once. But the really awesome part comes in when you actually slay her. Yes, Kulve Taroth, previously thought unkillable even by a group of 16 Hunters, can finally be slain, and she puts up one hell of a fight to the bitter end.
  • Iceborne's fight against Fatalis deserves special mention for each of its phases:
    • The fight starts with nothing but you, your Palico, and the Excitable A-Lister trying to take down the Black Dragon, with the latter healing you with an infinite supply of Dusts of Life if you slip up. Once Fatalis gets angry enough, he unleashes the first iteration of his "Demise of Schrade" move, an all-out assault that effectively amounts to a tidal wave of flames, with your only option being to hide behind a huge hunk of metal. Knowing that you're not going to make it, the Excitable A-Lister tosses you behind the metal wall and takes the brunt of the blast. And survives. This lets you call in other hunters to assist in the Herculean task of slaying Fatalis...though at that point, it's highly probable that you might not need to.
    • Fatalis' first "Demise of Schrade" attack blasts away a bunch of the rubble cluttering the arena, doubling it in size and unlocking various siege fortifications, including a roaming ballista. Once he gets angry enough, he puts out another iteration of the "Demise of Schrade" attack, this time forcing you to pull up an iron barricade to weather the firestorm.
    • Once this is said and done, the dragon pulls out the big guns: he transitions into Hellfire Mode, where his chest starts glowing red and his flames will routinely deal massive damage. The only way to depower it is to break its horns, a task easier said than done while it's throwing absolutely everything it has at you, including more "Demise of Schrade" attacks. And how do you survive these blasts with nothing to hide behind? Why, go towards Fatalis, of course!
    • After a certain amount of time, you then get to skewer Fatalis with the Dragonator. And then...Du-du-du, du-du, du-du-du-du-du, du-du-du, du-du, du-du-du-du-du, DU-DU-DU, DU-DU, DU-DU-DU-DU-DU! The series' tried and true "Proof of a Hero" begins rallying you forth to seize the moment and slay the strongest monster in the world, just like the rest of them! And when the smoke clears, when the battle is finally over...Fatalis is finally dead, after giving you the greatest display of savagery and firepower the franchise has ever seen, reminding you that you're the Sapphire Star for a damn good reason. And to put the icing on the cake of badassery, you did this in 30 minutes as opposed to the standard 50!
  • Monster Hunter: Rise:
    • Thunder Serpent Narwa is an Eldritch Abomination who moves in very weird patterns. Platforms repeatedly rise and fall throughout the fight, some with ballistas; when they show up, it's time to open fire. Midway through the fight, a Magnamalo shows up (replaced by a Malzeno during the Sunbreak encounter). You then have to ride that trademark monster into the boss to deal massive damage for an amazing Catharsis Factor, since they were That One Boss. And then Narwa will literally send a whirlwind of dragonators against you.
    • The Final Boss of Sunbreak, Gaismagorm, is a huge and unnatural Eldritch Abomination. You end up shooting against the Qurio bugs to weaken it, and it gives some clearly telegraphed tells when you should get the heck out. It's also a two-phase battle, giving you the feeling that you've damaged it hard.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Goro, whose moves included grabbing you with two arms and beating you with the other two, or his four-arm version of the power slam.
  • Goro's entrance deserves a mention. The match just before is a fight against two opponents, set in Goro's Lair. Once you beat the last guy, your points are tallied up...and then, with no transition, Goro roars and smashes through the ceiling and starts the fight. No announcer, no respite, just immediate ass-kicking.
• Mortal Kombat 9:
  • The final fight of Cyber Sub-Zero's chapter in the MKIII act of the game. He goes up against both Goro and Kintaro, the game's two SNK Boss Mid-Boss characters in a tag-team (while Sub-Zero's on his own) and the game expects you to be able to win.
  • Another mention goes out to Onaga, the final boss of Mortal Kombat: Deception. Let's see... he starts off every battle with a great roar, his grab is sheer awesome, and it takes place in a spike-laced arena where the six Kamidogu stand on pedestals circling it. And with each one you break, Onaga gets a little easier to fight. On top of that, he notices when you approach one and rushes to stop you. Whoever came up with that subtle touch is amazing.
• Mother 3:
  • So many bosses. Whether it was Li'l Miss Marshmallow "spilling hot tea" on you or Lord Passion "making you cry by playing a sad song", almost all the bosses are worth mentioning!
  • The entire final Boss Rush. First, you go up against the Natural Killer Cyborg, an enemy so massive its sprite completely fills up the screen. Then, you go through the Porky Bots, a horde of minibosses. Then, you come up against Porky himself, who you've undoubtedly wanted to beat up ever since you found out he was behind everything (and is gloriously hard to boot). Finally, you get to the final boss, who is covered below.
  • Earlier in the final chapter, there was Miracle Fassad. The fight starts out as a powered-up version of the New Fassad fight in which Fassad uses all of his new technological enhancements on the party. However, he later goes One-Winged Angel and reverts to his New Fassad form. At this point, he reveals a little secret: he can use PSI. Fassad goes berserk at this point, using PSI shields and using the Omega form of Freeze, Fire, and Thunder, as well as PK Starstorm. In short, a two-part fight that tests both physical and special abilities and renders your physical shields worthless at the halfway point.
  • Though not actually a boss, Negative Man. Moreover, like the previous Mother, the game featured a unique final boss. In it, the rest of your team is incapacitated, leaving you to face the Masked Man, your brother Claus, one on one. Any attempt to attack him is made impossible, as Lucas can't bring himself to attack his brother. Claus continues to attack you, though, so you must guard at every turn to slow down the damage ticker and heal whenever your health gets too low. Over time, your deceased mother reaches out to the two of you and asks Claus to stop his assault. Claus continues to attack, but his attack strength decreases as he gradually uses weaker and weaker PSI attacks. Eventually, he dies when a lightning PSI attack is reflected off of your Franklin Badge and strikes him.
• Musashi Samurai Legend gives you a final stage where you get to beat on all of Gandrake's directors, followed by the man himself. Rothschild is particularly fun, what with his magic tornadoes and such.
• Mushihime-sama Futari, True Final Boss aside, has the Stage 1 boss. You've been flying forward for nearly the whole stage, when all of a sudden, you drop down a cliff and a T-Rex-like dinosaur starts chasing after you.

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