Superboss / Role-Playing Games

Superbosses are most common in role-playing games, and are where the term originated.

Series with their own pages:

• Final Fantasy
• Another Eden

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Dragon Quest

• Divine Dragon/Divinegon in Dragon Quest III became available to fight after beating the game. You even needed to beat him five times to gain access to all of his wishes. The Game Boy Color version of this game introduced yet another bonus boss, GranDragn. Getting to this boss required you to complete such a long, boring, and ridiculous fetch quest that even the most hardcore and dedicated gamers have never seen him.
• Dragon Quest IV: The DS remake adds an extra chapter after defeating Psaro. Explore a new dungeon, fight Foo Yung and Chow Mein, and you have the opportunity to revive Rosa, get Psaro joining your party and take down Aamon, who survived his first fight and is the one who orchestrated everything so Psaro would sacrifice his humanity and become a monster, allowing him to become ruler of the world once Psaro was killed by your party..
• Dragon Quest V: Not including the later remakes of earlier games, this was the first Dragon Quest to have one of these, as well as an accompanying Bonus Dungeon. Estark, the original form of the final boss of Dragon Quest IV, is the boss. He would become the recurring Bonus Boss for the series.
• Dragon Quest VI has Nokturnus (better known as Dark Dream), who, thanks to his appearances in the Monsters series, is considered by many to be the quintessential Bonus Boss of the series. Nokturnus actually gets a little more plot relevance than the average Bonus Boss, in that during the story, you witness a king try to summon him to deal with the Big Bad, only to be violently reminded that Evil Is Not a Toy. Though, if you're strong enough to put Nokturnus in his place, he really will deal with the Big Bad on your behalf.
• God in Dragon Quest VII. And the four spirits, which is the odd thing since they are supposed to be weaker storyline wise than both the Last Boss and God, yet you can't fight them unless you can beat God easily.
• The Lord of the Dragovians in Dragon Quest VIII. The first time, you have to fight his dragon form. After coming back, every fight against him involves fighting his humanoid form then a dragon form. One of the most notable forms is Darksteel Dragon; he's a Metal Slime with a lot better attack, who attacks three times, and, just for more fun, he has nearly 2000 HP. After beating all his forms, he'll challenge you to a gauntlet where you fight him then rematches against all his Dragon forms (with halved HP) with Ultimate Dragon at the very end. Ultimate Dragon will test your mettle, attacking 3 times per turn and having hard hitting skills to really bring the pain. If you beat that, glory is yours.
• However, if you're playing the 3DS version of Dragon Quest VIII, it's not the end! You can unlock a new dungeon called Memories Lane where you refight stronger versions of several bosses seen throughout the story. These bosses with their "in Memoriam" suffix will test your might and require unique strategies to overcome them. At the very end is none other than Estark who practically requires you to exploit his weakness to sleep skills lest he overwhelm your party with his sheer, unrelenting power.
• Half of the bosses in Dragon Quest IX. Of special note are the grotto bosses, who are revealed to be fragments of the Grand Architect Zenus, and the legacy bosses, the final bosses and some midbosses from every previous serial title (e.g. Dragonlord, Zoma, Estark, Rhapthorne, etc.) The best kind of Pandering to the Base. You can even opt to give the legacy bosses the experience you gain from beating them, and they will level up each time, to a max of 99.
• Dragon Quest XI:
  • There are beefed up versions of the Spectral Sentinels fought in Drustan's Labyrinth which require you to take them down in a set amount of turns, with several of them fighting in pairs. They also have a remix of Dragon Quest III's boss theme playing during their fights to really set the tone for how powerful they are.
  • The Definite Edition and 3DS version has the End of Time, a golden palette swap of the True Final Boss Calasmos, who is much tougher than the final boss in question. Exclusive to the Definitive Edition is also the Timewyrm, another golden palette swap, this time of Act 2's final boss Mordegon who is tougher than even the End of Time and takes the cake as the hardest boss in the game.

FromSoftware

• Dark Souls has several optional bosses and the particularly optional Artorias of the Abyss DLC areas. They are balanced for endgame stats, but even by those standards you are unlikely to be ready for Black Dragon Kalameet, who requires going out of your way to even be able to properly fight him, and drops nothing but the Calamity Ring, which doubles all damage taken (made from his eye, which casts a unique damage-doubling debuff).
• Dark Souls II has several:
  • The Ancient Dragon is a brutal Marathon Boss with a lot of health and all of its attacks can kill you in one hit unless you have extremely high Fire resistance. The saving grace is that most of its attacks are fairly telegraphed and can thus be avoided rather easily. Except when it decides to fly up and rain fire on the arena. Avoiding that can be a struggle. Upon defeat, it drops a Soul of a Giant that makes the Superboss immediately below easier.
  • King Vendrick is an Anticlimax Boss whose attacks are slow and easy to dodge, though he can kill you in one hit if you aren't careful. The main problem is that he's also a Puzzle Boss who starts out with a x32 multiplier to his defense, meaning any attack will only do Scratch Damage. This multiplier gets reduced by half for every Soul of a Giant you have in your inventory. It is highly inadvisable to attempt fighting him until you have at least four of them (which gives him "only" x2 defense), though having five will completely get rid of the multiplier. Here's the thing, though... there are only five in the entire game, and one of them is dropped by the above Superboss. Upon defeat, he drops nothing. However, a previously locked door in the Shrine of Amana will now open... but only if you're human. Behind it is his boss soul and armor set.
  • The Darklurker is the most obscure. The previous two are at least encountered in the storyline. It is entirely possible to never encounter this boss if you aren't playing with a guide. You need to discover and join a hidden covenant and fight through three small dungeons filled with dangerous black phantoms just to meet the Darklurker. Your efforts are "rewarded" with a harrowing battle against an eerie angelic figure who hurls powerful pyromancies, hexes, and sorceries at you while flying around the arena. It thankfully has much lower health than the other two bonus bosses. Upon defeat, it drops its soul which can be traded for a powerful hex. Its defeat also maxes out devotion to the hidden covenant, which comes with its own rewards.
  • Also notable are the DLC challenge areas, four Nintendo Hard optional paths designed for co-op. All of them have appropriate bosses at the end, though all except Sir Alonne in the Memory of the Old Iron King are Invader-type enemies or palette swaps.
  • The Crown of the Sunken King DLC has Sinh, the Slumbering Dragon who's like Kalameet, but with poison. And a resistance to non-weapon damage. And his dragon skin is so tough it will wear down your best weapons to their breaking point. And, unlike with Kalameet, you don't have anyone to disable his wings first.
  • Raime the Fume Knight from the Crown of the Old Iron King DLC is one of the toughest bosses in the entire game, period. It's telling when you find messages outside his fog wall commenting on misery and sadness ahead, because he's statistically the boss with the highest failure rate in the game. Most of his attacks come in hard and fast with his straight sword, but then occasionally he'll swing his ultra greatsword and either shave off a massive chunk of your life or utterly ruin your stamina. After he's lost about a third of his HP, he gets serious, buffs his ultra greatsword with a dark flame and gains a new, significantly more aggressive move-set that punishes players that either can't time their dodge right or just stand there expecting to block his strikes. If you don't have the right specs, the flame of his sword will chip away at your health regardless, and it's entirely possible to still take fire-damage if you don't do a pixel-perfect dodge. He also performs a devastating AoE that you absolutely must run away from. Additionally, if you haven't collected the Smelter Wedges throughout the DLC, Nadalia's idols will keep healing him if he's near them, and if you have Veldstadt's helm equipped, Raime will immediately enter his second phase move-set without you hitting the HP threshold. He was such a tough boss that FromSof actually used him as inspiration for future bosses.
• Bloodborne has even more optional boss encounters than Dark Souls does, owing to the fact you're actively hunting out these horrors than reacting to their mandatory discovery like in Dark Souls — and make no mistake, these include more than a few nasty surprises lurking within the depths of Yharnam that don't have to be beaten in order to win the game, but doing so anyways nets new content, areas and locations:
  • Martyr Logarius is fought at the end of Forsaken Castle Cainhurst, a well-hidden bonus level that the player can only enter after they find the "Cainhurst Summons" (a letter granting them admission to Castle Cainhurst), which enables them to trigger a cutscene in Hemwick Charnel Lane that allows them to board a ghostly carriage and travel to a secluded snowy mountain. An incredibly tough and aggressive boss with access to a wide array of punishing magic spells and a massive burning scythe, he's one of the most formidable bosses in the game, proving a challenge to even skilled players. Thankfully, though, he's vulnerable to parrying, and it's generally agreed that (much like Gehrman) he's significantly easier to beat once players master that mechanic.
  • Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos is widely considered to be the single toughest boss in the main game (possibly even rivaling the bosses from the DLC). She's found in a hidden chamber beneath the Orphanage in the Upper Cathedral Ward run by the Healing Church, which can only be accessed if you find the key to the Upper Cathedral Ward hidden in Yahar'gul; the elevator leading to the hidden chamber is inside a building that you can only enter by breaking a discrete glass window near the Lumenflower Garden where the Celestial Emissary is fought (most players don't know that the window is breakable without a guide). She's extremely tough and extremely hard-hitting, not to mention absolutely enormous—making it all the more difficult to get a good look at her while trying to get close enough to score a few good hits while avoiding her highly accurate laser blasts.
  • The Old Hunters DLC like the Dark Souls DLC adds an additional mini-campaign to the game, balanced for endgame level characters. The critical path of this takes you through four bosses, but if you go out of your way exploring, you can face Laurence, the First Vicar, who looks like the Cleric Beast (the possible first boss of the game), except he's on fire, ultra aggressive, and hits like a truck. After some damage he loses his legs, which you'd think would make for an easier back half of the fight, except he now leaves a trail of fire covering a large part of the arena and his mobility is not particularly affected.
  • Among the optional Chalice Dungeons is also a massive amount of optional bosses, from the Amygdala, to the Bloodletting Beast, to the Maneater Boar, to the Watchdog of the Old Lords, all of which are more than capable of ruining the day of any traverser of these underground, optional randomly-generated dungeon treks. Special mention explicitly goes to the Watchdog of the Old Lords, as they're both on fire like Laurence is, and is most likely fought in a dungeon that cuts your total HP count in half, with most of its attacks very often being one-hit kills given the level you're required to fight it at, making for an infuriatingly difficult boss trek.
• Dark Souls III:
  • The game ups the ante with the Nameless King, who is considered one of the toughest direct fights in the entire series. First you fight him on his Storm Drake, the King of Storms, who is so large that locking onto him makes it near impossible to see the Nameless King's attacks from above, combined with a particularly difficult to avoid fire attack from above you can only evade if you start running the instant the Drake starts flying overhead. Once the Nameless King is on-foot, however, it only gets harder; put the moveset of Ornstein with a super adrenaline boost on a God of War that is hyper-aggressive, extremely mobile, and can kill even the sturdiest of builds in a handful of blows, and pair this with fighting on a moving cloud background that hinders depth perception. It's not uncommon to see 85% of the fight, at minimum, being spent rolling for dear life. There's even a lore reason why he's so impossibly hard: it's heavily implied this is Gwyn's firstborn son, meaning he is a literal god, and one that's never gone Hollow.
  • The Champion Gundyr boss fight is only required for one of the game's three endings, and it will make you work to get it. Champion Gundyr is the game's Warmup Boss, Iudex Gundyr... but Iudex Gundyr was his hollow shell animated by abyssal corruption and barely able to swing his halberd properly. Champion Gundyr is the man himself in his prime, and he's really good with that halberd.
  • The two DLC expansions, Ashes of Ariandel and The Ringed City, are designed for experienced players with characters with endgame stats. Even with that in mind, Darkeater Midir (who is optional even for the sequence of TRC) still wipes the floor with pretty much anyone who hasn't mastered his attacks. He has an extremely beefy healthbar and several of his attacks can one shot your average player's HP reserves.
• Elden Ring has two bosses that are not only optional but clearly meant to be harder than the Final Boss^note The final boss is in the Elden Throne area, while Mohg is in Mohgwyn Palace and Malenia at the Haligtree Roots. :
  • Malenia, Blade of Miquella, who has Never Known Defeat and will make that fact abundantly clear to you. She can only be accessed through opening up a completely optional area near the end of the game, followed by a very tricky dungeon filled with treacherous terrain, deadly mobs, and more than one boss-level enemy. In keeping in line with FromSoftware Superboss tradition, she is one of the most brutally difficult fights in the game with more damage than any other enemy, huge life gain on every hit (including shielded hits, invalidating turtle strats), a virtually unavoidable attack that deletes your health bar with frame-perfect timing required, and a second form with even more aggressive attacks and AI topped with extremely deadly Scarlet Rot. She forces you to either use everything you've got or spend dozens of attempts trying to solo her. Fortunately, fighting her isn't required to reach any of the game's endings... though it will have an effect on how those endings play out, if you've also done Millicent's sidequest. Doing Millicent's sidequest while siding with her and then fighting Malenia will allow you to get Miquella's Needle, which will allow you to save Melina by cheating the Frenzied Flame.
  • Mohg, Lord of Blood, is about as out of the way as the above: you can only find him via either Varre's sidequest or stumbling upon a particular teleporter after killing one of his minions in a very late game zone (itself completely optional). You then have to go through possibly the most punishing arena in the game, specced for an endgame player and loaded with Elite Mooks and environmental hazards. Your reward for this will be a duel with Mohg, who has a truckload of hit points (only Dragonlord Placidusax, Fire Giant, and the above have more), deals a ton of damage (enough to kill even a high Vigor character in two or three hits), and inflicts AOE damage and the Bleed status effect in nearly all of his arcane attacks. His second phase kicks things up a notch when he gains the ability to fly and starts zipping around the arena like a roadrunner while spamming flames on the ground. He'll open this phase by hitting the player with a completely unavoidable (unless you equip one specific item obtained from defeating one of his minions way earlier in the game) Life Drain which will severely damage (if not outright kill) the player while returning him back to near full health. His only real weaknesses are that he's merely "pretty fast" instead of blindingly quick as a lot of other end-game bosses are and he has an ironic crippling weakness to bleed.
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has two:
  • You have Owl Father, a boss only reachable by doing an obscure questline with Emma. This boss is a harder version of Great Shinobi Owl, with far faster attacks, more damage and faster movement, however, it’s the second phase where things really get kicked up a notch. Owl gains access to the Mist Raven prosthetic, teleporting around the arena and divebombing on the player, and shooting massive fireballs at you, all while he does his standard moveset in between.
  • Then there’s the Demon of Hatred. A three phase monstrosity with ludicrous HP, absurdly high fire damage attacks that can’t be deflected, and a Posture meter that is the exact same as his vitality, meaning that you’re going to be in for a long fight. His attacks all have to be dodged, ran around or jumped over instead of deflected, in a game that beats the parry system into you. He’s basically an already hard Bloodborne boss put into Sekiro, a game where the player character doesn’t have the tools they do in Bloodborne to take down a boss like this (such as immunity frames or the rally system). There’s a good reason he’s optional. If you do somehow manage to kill him, however, the game hands you two Lapis Lazuli, incredibly rare (there are maybe six total per run) crafting materials needed for the highest level of gear upgrades.

Kingdom Hearts

• Kingdom Hearts:
  • The Clock Tower Phantom (gives you the last Stop spell upgrade), as well as many of the tournaments.
  • The international release of the first game added Sephiroth, Ice Titan, and Kurt Zisa. While the only prizes for beating them in that version were experience and bragging rights, the Final Mix version gives you decent rewards for beating them (the physically inclined One-Winged Angel Keyblade for Sephiroth, the magically inclined Diamond Dust Keyblade for Ice Titan, and the Zantetsuken ability (which gives Sora a One-Hit Kill attack, though it doesn't always work) from Kurt Zisa). It also adds the Unknown, who is easily the hardest boss in the game. This is justified immensely when you find out who he is: Xemnas, the Big Bad of Kingdom Hearts II.
• Kingdom Hearts II:
  • In the international release, the only boss that you don't have to fight to beat the game is Sephiroth; like the first game, you have to fight him one-on-one, and he's ridiculously tough. Beating him nets you the Fenrir Keyblade, which reduces your combo by one (more useful than it sounds, since it means your Finisher launches faster).
  • The third level of the Assault of the Dreadnought gummi ship course ends with a boss fight against the Hunter-X, which has every Spam Attack that the other enemy ships do plus an attack that's easily strong enough to one-shot most of the player's ships and hits half the screen.
  • The Final Mix version went overboard with this: First, there are the five Absent Silhouettes, shadowy spirits of the members of the Organization who had died in the previous game that have different tactics and a different level of strength since then. But those are child's play compared to what you can access after you've beaten the game; at the end of Hollow Bastion /Radiant Garden's Bonus Dungeon, the Cavern of Remembrance (itself a trial to get through), you find the Garden of Assemblage, where data replicas for all thirteen members of the Organization await, and their threat levels are jacked up. But none of those replicas, not even Xemnas, can match the last Bonus Boss in the game: a mysterious armored Keyblade Master named the "Lingering Will", found through a portal in Disney Castle. He is hands-down THE hardest boss in the game...and like the Unknown, it's very easily justified when you find out who he is: Terra’s soul, trapped inside his armor after Master Xehanort took over his body in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
• 358/2 Days: Dustflier. He can be found before beating the game, in a late-game mission where the goal is to defeat six bosses scattered through Twilight Town in succession, and only appears after all six are dead. And while you can complete the mission by only taking out the first six, you have to go and finish Dustflier to fill up the extra portion of the Mission Gauge, which is part of 100% Completion. (Fortunately, 358/2 allows you to redo missions at will.)
• Kingdom Hearts Re:coded has Buggy Roxas, a powered-up, Heartless version of the already very hard Data-Roxas. The best strategy to beat him is to nail down his pattern, spam Dodge Roll whenever he gets even near close to you and try to cheat his AI so that he doesn't use That One Attack when he's low on health, where all his stats are doubled and he becomes gigantic. You need to beat him to earn the Ultima Weapon.
• Birth by Sleep brings its own Bonus Boss, Vanitas Remnant, notable in that he only has one health bar because he's JUST THAT HARD TO HIT. If you heal yourself during the battle, he also heals himself. Completely. Unless you use potions instead of magic. The Iron Imprisoner and Mimic Master are optional Unversed bosses that only appear in the Mirage Arena, though they're not nearly as formidable as the Remnant.
  • The international release adds a new boss, another Unknown: the English speaking fandom calls him "The Mysterious Figure", a name taken from the strategy guide, to differentiate him from the first Unknown. He's revealed to be a time-traveling young Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]. A black-coated, dual-laser-blade-wielding mofo, this boss has put the rest of the series's famously batshit insane and bullshit hard bosses to shame. Until very recently, the only known strategies for beating it were "Spam Dodge Roll with Ventus and pray", "Spam Thunder Surge with anyone and pray", and "activate Goofy D-Link and hope you can block enough of his attacks to activate the finisher before it runs out. Perform several times.". In 2022, a new strategy was discovered that involves using the Peter Pan link's finisher. If done correctly it obliterates his health in an instant, but you're far more likely to crash the game than you are to actually win with this strategy due to how the Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs of the finisher interacts with his Renewal Barrier.
  • Birth by Sleep Final Mix adds three more bosses that can be fought in the Mirage Arena: Monstro and the armors of Master Eraqus ("Armor of the Master") and Master Xehanort ("No Heart").
• 3D has Julius, featuring heavy defense and powerfully strong attacks. And one of his combos doesn't set off Once More, only Second Chance, meaning you WILL die if you're unlucky, and another attack so powerful that not only does it eat up all of your HP, but it disables your active command. God help you if you only pack one Curaga and kept the cursor on it. The worst part, the only way to know which way to dodge for the attack is to use the bottom screen, which you never use during any other fight, to see where his icon is headed. And you're not allowed to bring your Dream Eaters into the fight.
• Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage- has a bonus Boss Rush. It starts with a Darkside, two waves of Heartless, and a Demon Tower, but the final opponent and the true contender of Bonus Boss? A buffed version of Phantom Aqua, who is essentially THE hardest boss of the game. Since you've fought her three times already, you'd think she'd be a pushover, right? Wrong. This version has plenty of new and old attacks (some of which are unblockable, indicated by red trails), little openings to strike, and is incredibly strong, too. You'd better be ready for her, or else she'll wreck you.
• Kingdom Hearts χ gets in on the action with Event Raids, raid bosses encountered through a specific event. And holy shit, can they soak damage. The first really bad one, the first Halloween’s Fortress Crab raid, had 99,000,000 HP at level 1. Later ones can take a pounding from even the most powerful parties whaling on it with the metagame’s top medals. Fortunately, pack a few defense boosting medals with your attack boosts and you can just leave the raid running(with the game’s nifty auto attack button), and go do something else while your character slaughters it.
• Kingdom Hearts III (pre-DLC) has Dark Inferno, a dual-wielding Heartless with fast & brutal attacks and high speed. Good luck on Critical. There's also the bonus boss in the Gummi Ship sections, the Schwartzgeist, a battle of attrition with one-hit kills. With Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind, we get a golden version of Dark Inferno, a more powerful Armored Xehanort with 13 Dark Keyblades, data copies of the Real Organization XIII, and the Sequel Hook superboss Yozora.

Pokémon

• Pokémon Red and Blue: You can find Articuno in the Seafoam Islands, Zapdos in the Power Plant, and Moltres on Victory Road. Mewtwo can be found in Cerulean Cave after you become the Champion. The use of cheats or glitches also enables the player to battle Professor Oak in the original Red/Blue versions, with his team having higher levels than the Champion's. Some fans speculate that he was supposed to be a True Final Boss and got removed from the storyline, but the developers didn't remove his battle data, since Agatha of the Elite Four states that he is a Retired Badass. Sadly, he didn't get any battle data in the remakes FireRed/LeafGreen. They did add one more in FireRed and LeafGreen, though: once you've obtained the National Dex, one of Johto's legendary beasts will begin roaming for you to capture — whichever one has a type advantage against your starter (Entei for Bulbasaur, Suicune for Charmander, and Raikou for Squirtle). The remakes also allow you to rematch the Elite Four and Champion with new teams including some Gen 2 Pokémon 10 levels higher than before once you complete all the post-game quests in the Sevii Islands.
• Pokémon Gold and Silver:
  • In the first Generation II games and their remakes, the legendary that's not your version mascot counts as a superboss; in Crystal, both Ho-Oh and Lugia also count, with Lugia being available only by talking to a man in Pewter City and Ho-Oh only being available by catching the legendary beasts.
  • All of the Johto games also feature Red, the player character from Pokémon Red and Blue, as either this or the True Final Boss, depending on how you look at it. He's very tough, with all of his Pokémon over level 70 (80+ in the remakes). You have to either massively level grind after the main game, transfer Pokémon from other games, or simply hope you get a lucky run to stand a chance against him. In HGSS, it's constantly hailing on top of Mt Silver, and he adjusts his team accordingly. He swaps out his Espeon for a Lapras with Blizzard, and both his Blastoise and Snorlax have Blizzard as well. So on top of having absurdly high levels even compared to the original you also have to deal with 100% accurate Blizzard spam from 3 of his Pokemon. And his Snorlax has the Thick Fat ability so even if you wanted to you couldn't turn the Blizzard cheese back on him because 3 of his Pokemon resist ice, one of which is a 4x resistance.
  • HeartGold and SoulSilver have a boss Trainer that can only be fought by having a Celebi: Giovanni. This Trainer isn't very difficult, however, and mainly serves to tie up some loose story ends. They also add more Legendaries; once you've earned the National Dex, you'll be able to find Latios (SS) or Latias (HG) after visiting the Fan Club in Vermilion City^*If you have the event-only Enigma Stone, you can fight the other Eon Pokémon in Pewter City; once you've beaten all sixteen Gyms, you can challenge the four Kanto Legendaries; and once you've beaten Red, you'll have completed the hardest prerequisite to battle Groudon for SoulSilver and Kyogre for HeartGold, and Rayquaza if you have both in the same game.
  • The ROM hacks SacredGold and StormSilver come with a number of bonus bosses. First, after completing the game, the player may face the player character they didn't pick. Recurring Boss Eusine allows the player to have a rematch with him. Steven appears to ask the player for a battle, as does Cynthia. After capturing Mewtwo, the player may return to his location, and face off with Silver, who uses a team of three Olympus Mons, in reference to Pokémon Stadium 2. Lastly, should the player Catch Em All, then they may head to the Sinjoh Ruins, and battle with Arceus.
• Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and their remakes (and Emerald) have the legendary titans Regirock, Regice and Registeel. After defeating the Champion, one of the Eon Pokémon (Latios for Ruby, Latias for Sapphire) and Rayquaza can be caught. Through event-exclusive items, Lugia, Ho-Oh, the other Eon Pokémon, and Deoxys can be fought. Mew can also be found this way in Emerald.
• In Emerald, Rayquaza can be captured before you take on the Elite Four (and Groudon and Kyogre take its place as Bonus Bosses). You can also choose which Eon Pokémon you encounter after entering the Hall of Fame. A traditional example appears in the form of Steven, who turns from Final Boss in Ruby/Sapphire to Bonus Boss in Emerald, having stepped down from his position as Champion. After entering the Hall of Fame, you'll find him in a secluded cave in Meteor Falls with a team identical to the one he has in Ruby/Sapphire, except twenty levels higher. The seven Frontier Brains at the Battle Frontier also count, as they are only available after you beat the Champion.
• In Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, you can battle all of the other Legendaries from Generations II, IV, and V, along with the previously Mythical Deoxys. Wally will also challenge the player to a rematch after the player wins 50 matches in a row in a Super Battle at the Battle Maison. He initially uses a stronger version of his team from Victory Road, while his team in later matches could be a Smogon OU Singles team. With his team at level 79 and his Mega Gallade at 81, he's one of the highest-leveled trainers in the series.
• Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (and Platinum) have Heatran, Giratina, Cresselia, and Regigigas; four legendaries that can only be encountered after you've beaten the main storyline and obtained the National Dex. Platinum (noticing a trend here?) adds even more; the three Legendary Birds of Kanto after you've earned the National Dex and, as Giratina is the version mascot and therefore encountered as part of the story, both Dialga and Palkia become Bonus Bosses if you visit Spear Pillar with their orbs. Also, Regigigas's status is tarnished somewhat, as in Platinum, it's dropped to Level 1. Also, through now legitimately unobtainable event items, players can fight the Mythical Pokémon Darkrai and Shaymin. In Platinum, an event Regigigas can unlock areas where the Regi trio can be battled and caught. Arceus can also be found in the Hall of Origin, but the item needed to access it was never officially released.
• The Video Game Remake of Diamond and Pearl not only has Elite Four rematches with tougher teams, it adds a second set of rematches where they have competitive-level items and movesets, maxed out EVs and IVs, and levels in the high 80's across the board. They also add Ramanas Park, which in place of transferring Pokémon from previous generations allows you to battle and catch the Legendary Pokémon from Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn. And one other: if you've already captured Giratina, you can access the Distortion Room and challenge Shadow Giratina, an uncatchable variant at Level 100, claiming the Griseous Orb if you win.
• Pokémon Black and White have Cynthia as their bonus boss, as well as one of the game's developers from Game Freak, Inc.. In addition, Alder, the League Champion, previously The Unfought due to story complications, can also be challenged by challenging the Elite Four to a rematch. The Subway Bosses of Unova's Battle Subway, can be considered this after one defeats the Champion. As for Legendary Pokémon, Cobalion, Terrakion and Virizion can be found through a sidequest, and post-Elite Four, Landorus can be battled if the player has a Tornadus and a Thundurus, and Kyurem can be fought in the Giant Chasm. An event item also lets you travel to Liberty Island to battle Victini.
• Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 lets you battle nearly all of the previous Gym Leaders from Generations I-V, from Brock to Drayden, in the Pokémon World Tournament or PWT. If you manage to conquer the regional tourneys and the World Leaders tournament, you get to fight all of the previous Champions (minus Iris) in the Champions League. Also, there's Colress, the Shadow Triad, the Striaton Trio (Cilan, Chili, Cress) in a Multi Battle, now Retired Badass Alder, his grandson Benga, the GameFREAK trainers, and under the right conditions, Cheren (with his original team), Bianca, and N. There are plenty of powerful trainers to battle for the postgame. The legendaries are no slouch either, with the Regi quartet, the Sinnoh lake guardians, the Eon Pokémon, Cresselia, and Heatran showing up. You can also fight and catch N's legendary dragon and Kyurem, who can't be captured during the main story.
• Pokémon X and Y doesn't have as many of these bosses as the previous generation did. For Legendary Pokemon, there's one of Kanto's Legendary Birds (which one you'll face depends on the starter you picked), Zygarde, and Mewtwo. As for trainers, it is possible to challenge Calem/Serena to a rematch postgame, and going through Looker's missions has you battle Essentia four times in a row.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games have various Legendary Pokémon, and most Legendary Pokémon that have no relation to the plot in the second set of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games.
• Pokémon Sun and Moon has the Looker sidequests, which has you catch all five Ultra Beasts, some of which are different depending on your version. This part of the postgame also has you fighting Anabel, Mina, and Nanu. This and the Ultra sequels are also the only games in the series where the character must defend their Champion status every time they fight the Elite Four, rematching various trainers encountered throughout the game. Speaking of, the Battle Tree also has you facing off against various trainers from previous generations and those encountered throughout the game. You can also catch all four of the Guardian Deities. Once you complete the Looker sidequests, you can also catch Necrozma in Ten Carat Hill. Some new battles are possible in some locations, such as Guzma in Hau'oli City, Faba in Aether Paradise, and Principal Asuka in the Trainer's School. Finally, after you beat all of the Eevee Users, you can fight Eevee User Kagetora.
• Ultra Sun and Moon expands on this. First, the Looker sidequests are replaced with Episode RR, which features Team Rainbow Rocket, a team built up from the villain teams of the first six generations, meaning that all their leaders can be fought, with them using the Legendaries that were central to their plans in their original games. The matches where the player defends their Champion title are also altered, with two trainers being replaced, while the two rival characters have much stronger teams this time. The player can also revisit the first trial, but with the Totem Pokémon at a much higher level. The player also gets a chance to catch a new Ultra Beast during the post-game, with the original Ultra Beasts being found in their own dimensions. The dimensional travel also lets the player battle all the Legendaries of previous generation, similar to ORAS.
• After becoming champion in Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, you can seek out and battle Blue (having replaced Giovanni as Viridian City Gym Leader), Green (encountered in Cerulean Cave after catching Mewtwo), and Red (encountered outside of Victory Road once you've beaten six Master Trainers). Each have full, balanced, powerful teams that could easily wipe the floor with the Elite Four and Champion, making for challenging fights.
• Pokémon Legends: Arceus has Volo. Well, the final fight with him. In order to access this fight, you have to have beaten the main game and unlocked the post-game. You can then go on to collect all of Arceus' plates... except the Spooky Plate, which is with Volo. His team is basically Cynthia's, but with Milotic swapped out for Hisuian Arcanine. They all hit HARD and you'd better pray that you have good Pokémon of your own with their grit maxed out. And even if you manage to take down his team, he'll summon none other than Giratina in its Altered Form. And let's say you took down that, Giratina will transform into its Origin Form. That makes Volo have a total of eight Pokémon on his party!
• The 7-Star Tera Raid Battles in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, also known as the Unrivaled series, are this in comparison to the ordinary Tera Raid Battles found throughout the game. Though each are available only during a pair of non-consecutive weekends, the Unrivaled Pokémon are at Level 100, have up to 7 moves at a time where Pokémon can ordinarily only have 4, and have at least a hundred times as much HP than they should. Up to four players can team up to defeat it, and in order to win, all four players need to bring in a Pokémon trained specifically to defeat it, as Unrivaled Pokémon not only have much sharper AI than the other Tera Raid Battle Pokémon, but those moves they bring are designed to fight the Pokémon's counters. Your reward is the opportunity to catch it; these Pokémon are almost always species not normally obtainable in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, come with the Mightiest Mark Cosmetic Award, have perfect IV in all their stats as well as hidden abilities.
  • The Teal Mask has the Bloodmoon Ursaluna, also known as the Bloodmoon Beast. It can be fought in an optional side quest, has five times its normal HP, and is so powerful it can give a level 100 party a hard time. Its Signature Move, Bloodmoon, is basically Hyper Beam, but it can fight on its recharge turn, and it hits like a bulldozer. Like with the Tera Raid Battle Pokemon, your reward is capturing it.
  • The Indigo Disk fights are all high leveled and challenging, but that's nothing in compared to the secret boss fight with Cyrano. His team's average level is the highest in the franchise (beating BDSP Cynthia), his Pokemon are all equipped with good set ups that wouldn't be seem out of competitive tournaments, and his ace Serperior who uses the devastating Contrary + Leaf Storm combo that enables it to fire off an intensely powerful STAB while raising its Sp. Atk. by two stages every turn. No wonder he says he hasn't lost in decades when you beat him!

Shin Megami Tensei

• Digital Devil Saga:
  • King Frost appears at Coordinate 136 after the defeat of Mick the Slug. Finish the minigame of "find the key" and King Frost will appear at the Princess's Bedchamber. He spams Cocytus, which will almost always freeze, and summons overleveled Jack Frosts to pound you.
  • The Four Gods: Each appears in a different sector in the first game, each representing a specific element. Avoid repelling their elemental attacks or hitting them with their respective elements and they will go down fairly easily.
  • Huang Long: Appears high in the Karma Temple after killing The Four Gods. Hits like a truck with the Almighty-type Celestial Ray, which also slaps you with any ailment he wants. Has tons of HP and can cycle through several forms to make the task of damaging him harder. Still not as hard as the Demi-Fiend.
  • Orochi is the last obstacle in the path to the Red Ring, required for another boss. He has eight actions on his turn, can exploit elemental affinities and Criticals with Ice and Lightning attacks, abuse Makakaja and Megidolaon, and has a crapload of resistances. However, he has pathetically small MP for a boss, and will try to restore his tanks with yours. With Null Mute, he turns into a joke after a few turns.
  • Metatron fights you after you enter Ajna with the Red Ring and killed The Four Gods. He likes to abuse Makakaja, Revelation, and Fire of Sinai, which can hit several times for Almighty damage with the possibility of instant death.
  • Beelzebub's two forms: Baal Zabul appears in Svadhisthana's underbelly once you unlock it with the Red Key. While he is somewhat strong, he's really nothing to be worried about. Beelzebub proper appears after Baal Zabul's defeat in the Manipura Waterways, and comes back with a vengeance, packing the lethal Death Flies move, which will kill anything not protected against Dark attacks with 100% effectiveness. Even if your characters are protected, it will hit with a horribly strong Almighty-type attack.
  • On a second playthrough, Demi-Fiend, one of the hardest bosses in the history of JRPGs, if not the hardest boss. Not only will he instantly kill you in the first turn with Gaea Rage if you have a "forbidden" move set (read: any passive or castable move intended to null, absorb or repel enemy attacks)^note However, Null Sleep and Null Critical are exemptions since they won't cause the boss to nuke your party with Gaea Rage., but the strategy required to defeat him requires a very specific use of one usually worthless skill that you would never use in the main game (to wit, the Null Sleep skill, which nulls all damage one would receive while asleep). How anyone could figure this out without the use of a strategy guide is a mystery for the ages. Beating him unlocks an useful accessory that you can find midgame through the sequel that boosts all stats by 10. And even then, if you do manage to get him down to half health, his (Uber) Pixie will fully heal him unless you trick them into wasting all their MP. If you kill all of his demon companions, he'll insta-kill you. If you go in with any protective moves, he'll insta-kill you. Hell, even with the correct strategy, if you take too long to kill him, he'll just get bored and insta-kill you anyway. One particular YouTube comment compared this battle to a game of poker where you die if you don't do card-reading, but you also die if you get caught doing so anyways. To add insult to injury, his battle music is the regular Nocturne battle music, so he may be an uber hard bonus fight to you, but you're nothing more than a random encounter to him.
  • In the second game, there are fights against the Four Archangels, Shiva, Vishnu, Jack Frost and Seth:
    • The fights against Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel and Micheal are unlocked midway through the game after getting Gale to successfully interrogate a scientist at the EGG Facility. The Archangels are the only superbosses that aren't fought in the final dungeon. The first three, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel can be located at the EGG Facility, Internment Factory and the Karma Society Building's Heliport and must be taken down before they can be rematched at the ground area of the Occupied Sector in a Boss Bonanza that ends with Micheal. Defeating all 4 archangels in sequence unlocks the Dragon Slayer mantra.
    • Jack Frost is a milder example than most. After successfully answering all 100 of his questions, he can be fought in a secret room in the 3rd layer of The Sun. His main plan of attack is using Breath to freeze a party member solid (and it always works) before using Psycho Rage to bolster his turn count so he can bean them to death with his other attacks. If you have any Ice Shield or Null Ice, he'll cast Megidolaon instead though it's nothing a strong round of flames from your party can't deal with.
    • In The Sun, Shiva and Vishnu fights can be found in two separate rooms in the final area of The Sun's 5th Layer before the final boss. Each boss requires you to find a special item that has a chance of being dropped by defeating Parvati (Shiva) or Narashimia (Vishnu). Defeating Shiva unlocks the Aksara mantra and a Turn Ring. Defeating Vishnu unlocks the God of Light mantra, the Pandemonium rounds and the Aura Ring.
    • After defeating Shiva and Vishnu, you can backtrack to the 3rd Layer of The Sun. The previously unlocked pathway has a floor that inflicts continous damage to the player and leads to Seth. On Normal difficulty, Seth is the hardest boss in the game and requires an unorthodox strategy due to his weakness to Gun attacks. When defeated, you obtain the Root of Evil mantra and the Avoid Ring. However on Hard Mode, he blocks the way to the game's ultimate boss...
  • Satan is likewise enormously difficult, if a lot less so than the Demi-Fiend from the previous game. Unlike Demifiend, he'll start the fight with Futility, rendering your resistances and immunities useless for the rest of the battle. You are required to have your party cast Charge each turn to boost all your stats to max so Satan won't cast God's Breath on the fourth turn, causing a Total Party Wipe. If you fully Charged your party, he'll only cast Dekaja and put you back at square one. Hurt him enough and take too long and he will cast Diarahan, putting himself back at full health. Anyway, even without their instant kill skills, both are beastly difficult — you need to cap out your major stats to even have a fighting chance, and then there's the actual strategy involved... which simply fails half the time due to bad luck. You also cannot fight Satan on Normal Mode; you explicitly have to be playing on Hard Mode or your team will be too fearful to even enter his room. Unlike the other superbosses, your only reward is the personal glory of taking down the strongest boss in the game.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army has Beelzebub. Soulless is particularly vicious as he requires three items to be fought, all of which have to be acquired through Zerg Rush battles with 100 enemies each; these will tend to be Demonic Spiders. Then, he will be fought amidst another Zerg Rush. Pray none of your healing demons get Charmed, as he will use and abuse any attacks which can inflict said ailment to jack up his health.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey:
  • The game has the NGP-exclusive Alilat and Demiurge. Alilat has the game-breaking combo of high Magic stat, Mind Charge, and Megidolaon-a nigh-guaranteed Total Party Kill. Demiurge is a Barrier Change Boss, has Big Bang which deals even more raw damage than Megidolaon, regularly heals himself with Diarama, and has a ton of HP. Additionally, he's fast enough to dodge most of your attacks and has all of the deadliest elemental spells.
  • The Updated Re-release, Strange Journey Redux, introduces a quartet of even stronger bosses under the command of Louisa Ferre, available only on a New Game Plus. Belial, Lucifuge, Nebiros, and Beelzebub are all capable of shuffling their weakness and obscuring their analysis data after you've just exploited it for free Co-Op damage. They also have very high stats across the board, and if taken too long to defeat, will bombard your party with Doomsday which is almost guaranteed to kill. If you consider the Womb of Grief a Bonus Dungeon (as it's not mandatory for the main plot, but does unlock the new endings) then its associated bosses qualify for this trope.
• Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon has Masakado and Lucifer.
• Shin Megami Tensei I has Beelzebub as the ultimate Bonus Boss, but there were others, such as the series's first three Fiends: Daisoujou, David, and Pale Rider.
• Shin Megami Tensei II brings back Beelzebub as the ultimate boss. There are also the Fiends, of which there are five this time: Alice, Hell Biker, Ghost Q, the Sage of Time, and Matador.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne plays around with this. The Updated Re-release includes a series of boss fights with the Fiends that unlock parts of the Bonus Dungeon, leading to a bonus ending after defeating the True Final Boss Lucifer. Also present but unconnected to this questline are the Buddhist Four Heavenly Kings, who reside at Bandou Shrine, have maxed stats and the most powerful attacks of their respective elements, and guard the game's most powerful Magatama.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV:
  • The game brings the Fiends back. Seven of these Fiends (Matador from above being one of them) can only be found in certain locations and the chance of actually encountering them is very low (1 out of 256). Each one has at least five Press Turn icons, will always get the first strike, and will spam Antichthon (massive Almighty damage and all stats lowered) or similar skills if they cannot safely attack you or your demons with their preferred attacks. Defeating them will unlock them for special fusion, and often, a wonderful reward, including some of the game's best equipment.
  • The DLC bosses are scaled for an endgame to postgame party, and some of the final DLC fights are so tough that they recommend you complete the preceding DLC quests to stand a chance. The ultimate example is Masakado's Shadow, who, among other things, can generate three extra turns and has an Almighty attack that always hits as a weakness thus causing him to generate an extra turn. And you have to defeat him in 10 turns or less. Defeating him awards the privilege of having him as a demon, with those moves available...although if you've already defeated the Fiends, there's nothing left to really use his massive power on.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse brings back the Fiends along with En no Ozuno from the first game. DLC adds Mephisto, Cleopatra, and a demonic Hope and Hugo. The final DLC makes the ultimate opponent Stephen, who fights against every numbered SMT protagonist at once.
• Shin Megami Tensei V:
  • Shiva is an optional boss, and he is prone to dusting entire parties unprepared for his signature move, which is an Almighty attack that instantly drops your defense to the minimum. Defeating Shiva is a requirement to get the Golden Ending. However, he's meant to be fought on New Game Plus, since he's 5 levels higher than the final boss of the route, meaning that being strong enough to beat Shiva will render the entire end game beyond trivial.
  • The DLC reintroduces the Fiends, and they are all as brutal as they were in Nocturne. The Demi-Fiend returns too, in all his controller busting glory. Of note is that he is infinitely more fair here than his DDS counterpart, since he reserves his insta-kill Gaea Rage exclusively as a penalty for going too long without killing one of his Demons, and skills such as Enduring Soul can act as a safety net in case you don't make it in time. However, he can still just ruin your chances of winning out of absolutely nowhere with his brand new skill "Chaotic Will", which is not only an AOE insta-kill but also halves your press turns next round whether it kills anyone or not.
• Persona:
  • Persona 2 was the sub-series's first entry in this list with Philemon's brutal bonus battle on his EX Dungeon. Notably, he's the only enemy, let alone boss, in the entire game who is immune to the Fusion Skill Armageddon, which, if used, can one-shot even the final boss. Try to use it on him, and he'll hit back with Armageddon R, wiping your party without fail and leading to a game over.
  • Persona 3:
    • Velvet Room attendant Elizabeth, who can only be fought on the second playthrough in the original game and FES (or very late in the game in Portable), along with accepting her 55th request and going to the top of Monad. She seems to be nothing more than a thin blonde girl dressed like a bellhop, but she is the most powerful foe in the game, can only be fought one-on-one (she'll kill any other party members right away), gets to attack twice every turn (where you can only attack once), knows several ways of inflicting pain by casting damaging skills that hurt like hell, and heals herself completely if her health is halved. Even worse, if any of her attacks are nullified, reflected, or absorbed (which they invariably will be, considering her attack rate and huge range of attacks), she'll gleefully spam Masakado's One-Hit Kill Megidolaon. Amusingly enough, the FES version of the game introduces an upgraded version of your starter Persona which seems to be tailor-made to fight her, as it resists every type of attack, giving you a good overall defense against anything she tosses out and avoiding casting Masakado's Megidolaon. While she does typically need to be fought at max level to have a reasonable chance, this isn't just a straightforward encounter: Her attacks follow a regular pattern such that you can avoid breaking the fight's rules while simultaneously minimizing damage by using attack resistance and not nullification. To finish the fight you need to finish her off with Armageddon once her health is down to less than half again, but beware: If you use it too soon, she'll respond in kind and immediately end the fight. Wait too long and she might heal herself to full.
    • Elizabeth's Reload incarnation is way more dangerous, since while Masakado's Megidolaon is no longer a One-Hit Kill, she can now throw severe-tier skills on you, frequently spam (de)buff support skills, her Die for Me! can bypass the Homunculus' auto-activation effect, and Counter skills are now included in the boss fight's stipulations. And the worst part is, once her health is down to half, she'll attempt to finish you off with Pixie's One-Hit Kill Megidolaon (and she'll always cast that skill and nothing else if you shave off half of her health again), so you must have your Theurgy gauge full and at least one Endure skill ready by then. Bringing a fully customized Orpheus Telos is also not enough this time, so it is highly advised to have the following equipment before fighting her: Sid's Jacket (has built-in Endure, purchased from TV Tanaka), Shoes of Bane (blocks Mudo skills and not Dark as a whole, also purchased from TV Tanaka), Hallowed Plate (has built-in Enduring Soul, forged from Maiyodo Antiques), Incense Box (Has built-in Insta-Heal, reward from completing Elizabeth's Request #97), and Amiritite Necklace (blocks all Ailments, purchased from Club Escapade's gemstone shop). The Royal Set 1 DLC Personas are also a great alternative choice (if properly customized), since all of them can only resist and NOT immune to a specific element, turning this insanely grueling boss fight into a still very challenging but manageable one.
    • While nowhere near as insane as Elizabeth, the Reaper, which can be fought in all versions of the game, is no slouch when it comes to making a normal player tear their hair out. It's at Level 99, is fond of casting, (de)buff support, Break, Drain, One-Hit Kill, high-tier damaging skills (all of them are way more painful than the Final Boss), and would spam Megidolaon if the player casts Tetra/Makarakarn or sets up reflecting items. This one is more infuriating to the average player due to the fact that he appears when the player spends too long in Tartarus. However, since the Reaper has less than 10000 HP, if you have Helel and Satan, you can just finish it off in one shot with the Awesome, but Impractical Armageddon Fusion Spell, though you'll have to fill the MC's Theurgy gauge first if you're playing the Reload version.
    • Persona 3 Portable allows you to fight Velvet Room attendant (and Elizabeth's brother) Theodore if you make the proper choice early on in the game (it's not dependent on gender), who has a similar Puzzle Boss set-up and unlock requirements as his sister. However, it cranks things up to 11 with the Vision Quest, which not only contains more difficult versions of the Arcana Shadows, but also allows you to fight Margaret! Yes, the one from Persona 4. You can still use your full party, but she's even harder than her siblings due to the more complex AI and being a straight fight rather than a puzzle boss.
  • Persona 4:
    • The game continues the tradition with Velvet Room attendant (and Elizabeth and Theodore's big sister) Margaret, who is unlocked by reaching the True Ending after clearing Margaret's Social Link and killing the six other optional bosses (see below). While you can bring in party members and she won't (immediately) wipe them, she's just as frustrating. Nice changes include only healing once. She'll cast Oberon's One-Hit Kill Megidolaon on you if you bring in a forbidden item, and do so on you every 50 turns. She'll also exploit 1 More relentlessly if you give her the chance in the pattern. She won't kill you if you reflect or nullify her spells, but she shifts her weaknesses around so that she heals if you reflect a spell at her. Golden increases her difficulty by allowing her to go twice every turn, essentially halving the time it takes for her to use Oberon's Megidolaon, as a way of offsetting the various new features that make things easier.
    • After defeating a dungeon's main boss in 4, a new, optional boss appears in the original's place. These tend to be a few orders of magnitude harder. If you fight the Contrarian King as soon as he becomes available, You Are Already Dead even after making your way through the next dungeon and bumping up a good 10 or 15 levels. His Rampage attack is overpowered enough to crush your party in one shot, especially if he casts Marakunda, and he's smart enough to trick you into thinking he's weak to Fire by casting Red Wall in his first turn, since Fire skills are useless against him: His actual weaknesses are Ice and Electricity instead. Naturally he's the first Bonus Boss to become available, and the game will encourage you to challenge him well before you're ready. The others aren't quite as difficult, and some actually have elemental weaknesses. If you defeat them, you're rewarded with a large Courage boost and a useful piece of equipment hidden in the boss room. As for Contrarian King, however, you'll must have (de)buff skills, Tetrakarn, Attack Mirrors, and/or a Persona with innate resistance/immunity to physical attacks beforhand.
    • This incarnation of the Reaper is just as challenging as its previous appearance. It can only be fought in the second playthrough and is usually found as a Chest Monster this time (the game warns you about it and gives you two chances to back out), especially if you're in Magatsu Inaba, where chances of the Reaper showing up are much more frequent. Should you open the chest containing the Reaper, you're in for one helluva fight. On the bright side, while the Reaper's HP is bumped up 5000, it's now at Level 85, and defeating it rewards you with the best equipments of the game. The conditions of triggering the boss fight have been slightly altered in Golden: it can be fought even as early as the first playthrough, and would usually show up after opening twenty-one chests (rattling chain sounds would be heard if that happens), though opening another regular chest or moving to another floor would cause the Reaper's chest encounter to reset.
  • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth continues the tradition of having the residents of the Velvet Room be overpowered bonus bosses, though for the most part things are a bit easier. You can fight Elizabeth several times throughout the game, with her difficulty slowly increasing over time and eventually, she's possessed by Zeus. Margaret is also an optional battle, in which you fight her two on one with the protagonist you didn't pick, in order to unlock your ultimate Personas. However, it wouldn't be a crossover game if you didn't have a chance to fight Elizabeth, Theodore, and Margaret simultaneously. They can even do an All-Out Attack every five turns, though they're more forgiving than they are in the base games.
  • Persona 5
    • The game once again continues the tradition of overpowered Velvet Room attendants with Caroline and Justine. Like the Persona Q battle against Elizabeth, Theodore, and Margret, they battle you as a team. Thus when one falls, the other will revive them, and they can do an All-Out Attack when all your team is knocked down. They can also use the new Baton Pass command, making it even more imperative to make sure they don't hit any of your weaknesses.
    • Royal adds a new boss fight in the Third Trimester against the Twins' combined true form, Lavenza. Unlike the Twins, this is just a single boss, but in exchange, they utilize advanced tactics such as using buffs and debuffs and have resistances that constantly shift throughout the fight. And they can still perform an All-Out Attack by splitting back into the Twins if given the chance.
    • The Reaper is back with a vengeance, and it would usually show up once the party stays in a Mementos floor (from Path of Aiyatsubus onwards) for more than two minutes. It's still just as tough as in the previous games except this time, it's much sturdier despite having same Level and HP as its Persona 4 incarnation to the the point where players wonder if it has a variant of Firm Stance. It also has two turns like in the updated versions of the previous two games, but only have one turn instead if you let it ambush the party. However, there's one method where you can kill the Reaper without doing anything: since it's not a proper boss here (though Hama and Mudo skills are still useless against it), it's now vulnerable to Despair if you enter Mementos during flu seasons, though being inflicted by that ailment happens by chance, so don't forget to have Toryo (guaranteed Escape, which is unlocked after reaching Rank 9 in Togo's Confidant) with you beforehand. This does NOT apply in Royal, however, since the Reaper is now a proper boss, meaning that being inflicted with Despair by flu seasons won't work this time. Thankfully though, if you collect all of Jose's Stamps, the party should be able to able to fight it on equal footing (once they're Level 85 or higher) by then.
    • Royal's DLC also added two new fights against the previous two Wild Cards. As you can expect, they're high leveled and dangerous.
  • Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, like the first game, features a fight with all the Velvet Room attendants. This time, there's four phases — Caroline and Justine fight you in the first phase, alongside Margaret in the second phase, Theodore in the third phase and Elizabeth in the fourth phase. In the lead-up to this huge fight, you get to fight each attendant (the twins are fought together) separately, one fight for each Sooty Film you collect from a Special Screening set at the final floor of each movie. The Reaper also can be fought at a specific red Power Spot in one of the final floors, and can wipe an unprepared party with very powerful attacks.
• Devil Survivor holds a few bonus bosses. They appear as unique Free Battles that don't advance the clock, and are usually a bit strong compared to the current day's expected power level. You'd usually need to be on New Game Plus to stand a chance. The Overclocked Updated Re-release adds a few more.
  • Sage of Time shows up on Day 6, hypnotizing civilians. If any of them make it all the way to him, he'll take their souls and you get a game over. You can wake them up to get them to start heading away from him, but if a demon gets them before they get away, same result. Later on the fight, the Sage will brainwash more civilians into entering the field.
  • Ikusa shows up with a swarm of powerful undead on Day 4. He revives the ones you defeat, and furthermore, you have to prevent any of them from reaching a pair of escape points while you battle him, then clean up after he's gone.
  • Also in Day 5, Nebiros. He appears surrounded by a lot of Vile demons with healing capabilities, meaning he can hide behind them and hit you from afar.
  • The Fallen Morning Star, Lucifer, is the definite superboss in both the original and its remake. He can attack anyone on the field and gets three actions per skirmish turn, and gets an array of resistances to make him resilient to most powerful strategies that would stomp other enemies. His deadliest attack is Megidoladyne, which bombards everyone with a super strong almighty attack and grows stronger with each use!
• Devil Survivor 2 has a whole slew of these that unlock in New Game Plus, but are strong enough that you will need to use your perks or risk getting overpowered. A few of these fights must also be unlocked before you can even see them.
  • The Sage of Time will fight you with mid-tier demons when you're far too underleveled to be able to equip any of the heavier-hitting moves in your arsenal, and you'll have to use the endgame demons carried over from a previous playthrough to keep up.
  • Lilith sics a bunch of hypnotized civilians which you have to avoid killing with immensely strong demons, and her Temptation skill will wreak havoc amongst enemy leaders. Worse, any male leaders hit by Temptation will be charmed without fail, even with Null Mystic (the Barrier Auto Skill will stop male leaders from being charmed if they have it equipped). Female leaders aren't charmed just as unfailingly, but there is a chance Lilith can charm them anyway.
  • Beelzebub is a Puzzle Boss who has a nearly flawless defense that only weakens as you defeat his waves of overlevelled mooks, but while you're doing so he'll still reach halfway across the screen to get potshots on your party.
  • As a Call-Back to his boss fight in the first game, Belial will regularly hit the entire map with Gomorrah Fire, so you and your demons need to, at least, Null Fire.
  • Nebiros will appear in a gaggle of undead and continuously summon more if you kill them, and Body Surf into them if you instead choose to go after him.
  • Finally, Alice isn't as difficult as Lucifer, but she does have Belial and Nebiros fighting with her, both with their signature tricks. Alice herself can easily oneshot entire parties with Die For Me!, remotely drain them to death with Vitality Drain, revive Belial and Nebiros, and speed up their turns.
  • The Updated Re-release, Record Breaker, gives you an option to fight the Ticos. One of the biggest bummer about this fight is that they bring back the dreaded Megidoladyne.

A-D

• Abyss Crossing:
  • If the player chooses to fight the Final Boss Siro a second time, she'll get a massive stat upgrade and become the second strongest boss in the game.
  • The boss of the Unexplored Labyrinth, Kuro, is the strongest boss in the game, due to having the highest stats of any boss, self-buffs, and special debuffs to put the party at a constant disadvantage.
• In Alpha Protocol, the Blood Knight Action Girl SIE will offer to team up with you during the mission where you first encounter her. You can agree to the alliance, or you can attack her (or you can agree, complete the mission, then attack her when you encounter her again at the end of the mission). Not only will she not die when you win, but your rep with her will increase.
• Angry Birds Epic has several:
  • The more obvious one comes after getting the submarine. Tapping on the whirlpool takes you to the level "Maelstrom" where you can battle the Poseidon Pig, who has more health than the Final Boss.
  • There’s also the "Mouth Pool" level, a ten-phase wave battle against a Necromancer Pig who summons virtually every undead pig in the game. It’s only on the tenth wave that the Necromancer Pig fights you directly.
  • The post-game Chronicle Cave has a battle against a unique, super-strong pig every 10 levels, and the later ones have a power level far beyond anything else in the game. The strongest among them, and the hardest fight in the game, is the Alphapig — a variant of the basic stick pig, with over a million HP and the ability to summon practically any other pig in the game to assist it.
• Atelier Series:
  • The 3 Golden Pigs at the end of the Bonus Dungeon (Mull's Dungeon) in Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, which are significantly more difficult than the final boss.
  • In Atelier Iris 2, the fights at the Dragon's Nest, particularly the last one against 3 Instant Brownies. However, while they are more powerful than the last boss, the overly-easy battle system makes them no more difficult than anything else, provided the player has stocked up on resurrection items.
• Axial series:
  • Axial Disc 1 features several superbosses in the Rellgiw, Raye, Lion, and the game's biggest superboss, Tefka, the latter of which requires you defeat Raye before facing her.
  • Compared to the previous game, Axial Disc 2 boasts over a dozen superbosses. This includes:
    • Seven rematches with bosses from Disc 1 capped off with their literal boss, who utilizes the party's moves against them
    • Four shameless self insert bosses against the games' composers and its director
    • A brand new fight against Tefka with a fake out first phase
    • An "Omegaboss" named Ren, who spouts cryptic nonsense and has a habit of randomly One-Hit KOing the party if they don't predict his moves and interrupt him. He also has Level 99 stats and ignores the player's chosen difficulty mode just to keep you from cheesing the fight.
• The Baldur's Gate series:
  • Aec'Letec in the Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast. He's more of a Final Boss to the expansion pack; said expansion pack is an optional sidetrack from the main story, he can be safely skipped after finishing Durlag's Tower and is much worse than the game's actual final boss.
  • Kangaxx in Baldur's Gate II, who could only be hit by +4 weapons, and, in his demilich form, could cast the annoying insta-kill spell Imprisonment at will, which had the tendency to mess up romances if your love interest got hit(since it removes the target from your party, causing your love interest to act like you broke up with them when you bring them back). Kangaxx does have an Achilles' Heel, however, in the form of a shockingly poor death save for his level.
  • Most of the dragons in the game are also optional fights, though they give some good rewards after being slain.
  • There's also an optional (and completely story-irrelevant) fight against some demon knights in the Underdark.
  • In the expansion pack Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, the Bonus Boss was Demogorgon, an incredibly powerful demon imprisoned at the bottom of Watcher's Keep.
  • The Twisted Rune is an order of evil spellcasters who, when you enter their lair, assume that you've come to foil their plans and attack you. They're sensibly skeptical if you claim to have found them by accident, because the only way that would happen is if you were wandering around a bad part of town while carrying an incredibly rare and valuable type of gemstone and opening doors at random. (This is in likely exactly what happened, unless you looked at a guide. The clues that would lead you to them were never put into the game.)
  • Baldurs Gate 3 has two: Raphael and Ansur.
    • Raphael can be fought when you break into the House of Hope to either steal the Orphic Hammer, or break your contract with him. He has the bark to match his bite, sporting a whopping 666HP on top of incredibly high damaging attacks. He has incredibly high AC until you break soul pillars in the arena to lower his defenses, and upon doing so, Raphael is granted his Ascended form, giving him access to massive nuke attacks that leave lingering Ao Es on the ground.
    • Ansur is fought at the end of the Wyrmway, an incredibly well hidden dungeon with very specific steps for entry, revealed via Wyll’s companion quest. A dragon with the second highest HP in the game, Ansur has access to high damage lightning breath attacks that will decimate clumped up parties, and once he drops to half health, gains access to a massive Ao E nuke that can easily oneshot entire parties unless they can find cover.
• Bahamut Lagoon has special "side quests" — essentially single battles — available throughout the game. One of them, appropriately named Hard Dungeon, is only available in the last seven chapters and is far more difficult than the final boss.
• Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden has a few:
  • The spirit of Dikembe Mutombo is the boss of a bonus dungeon and gives Barkley the Holy Dunk attack.
  • A duergar (actually Balthios, who is a Wereduergar) can be fought if you take the ferry to Liberty Island instead of the Underground Railroad.
  • The Ghastly Darklord is encountered by checking a seemingly empty corner in Proto Neo New York. He drops the Golden Potato, a one-use One-Hit Kill against any enemy, up to and including the Final Boss.
  • Kevin Garnett is the final opponent in the Arena in the optional B-Ball Dimension.
• Baten Kaitos Origins gives us a few. There's Nasca, Valara, Heughes, and Wiseman, who are fought to tie up loose ends; the last of whom allows access to the game's True Final Boss. There's also Arma Prototype M, a.k.a. The Wicked Gawd, who is the final boss of the Coliseum and is absurdly hard.
• Blue Dragon:
  • The original game has several Dragons that don't need to be beaten, but give the player a useful accessory if they are. The hardest superbosses include the Gold Mecha Robo, the King Poo, and the Golden Poo. The game's DLC Shuffle Dungeon adds in rematches with the optional Dragons and several new bosses, culminating in a battle with purple versions of your shadows called the Shuffle Guardians.
  • Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow had the Door Bosses consisting of Komodo Dragon, Prisoner Ghost, Lightning Boy, Poo Bird, Mer-Man Lizard, Flower Lizard, Dragon Ghost, Pyro Poo, Lizard Monk, Torippo 666, Kujirunner, Poo Tycoon, Mecha Robo 8, Twin Ghosts, Mistwalker, Genie Cupid, Panda and Panda Cub, Raging King Destroy, Imp Uber,Destroy^note You need to do a sidequest where you feed a baby Destroy clone enough seeds so it reaches 100% growth rate, allowing you to fight them as the boss of the Despair Door. and Arcane Dragon.^note Who can only be fought after defeating all other Door bosses and all New World bosses The last two of these bosses are the hardest fights in the game, requiring you to be Lv.99 with the best equipment in the game in order to stand a chance. In addition, there's also the Bloom Dragon, Reverie Demon Oboro and Omega Dragon who are post-game bosses fought in New World.
• Kisuke in Bleach: Soul Carnival 2. The thing with him, though, is that he can be fought pretty early on in the game, not that you'd have any chance of survival then. Until you clear the Soul Society missions, he'll probably kill you with just one combo. And he has two supports, whereas most bosses only have one, OR the fact that his Burning Attack can even hit you if you're off-screen, and it stuns you invariably (as Burning Attacks never miss). When you defeat him, you'll unlock him as a playable character.
• BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm has two of them:
  • In the Playable Epilogue, Esoteraphim hides in an out-of-the-way area that is incredibly hard to get, has 790,000 HP (even more than the True Final Boss), and has several hard-hitting attacks, including the ability to instantly kill a party member every turn.
  • The DLC has Rcoastee at the end of Alwaysland 2. Unlike almost every other boss, he outright eschews the usual RPG combat in favor of the clunky platforming segments. You need to dodge several red balls flying around and touch the green ball to hit him, but this is easier said than done as the balls fly all over the place and the hitbox for the green ball is tiny, while the platforms get smaller and smaller every section.
• A staple of Zeboyd Games: the Dragonduck in Breath of Death VII, DEM, SARA and Soulcaster in Cthulhu Saves the World, and DEM, Lita, Cthulhu and T in Cosmic Star Heroine.
• Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter had Dover, who was the final boss in the Bonus Dungeon. As long as you have a high enough level (around 50), he's not that bad. The only problem is is that his defense switches from regular ol' attacks to Dragon defense. So your time limit is based on how much you have left on the D-Counter. Lin's/Rin's "Shatter!" technique is particularly effective here.
• Bug Fables:
  • In the Playable Epilogue, Team Snakemouth can fight Team Maki, the aces of Explorers' Association. Maki alone possesses very high defense stat of 3 (and in the game where your normal attacks never exceed 3 points of damage without any help, it's a lot), lots of health, and his attacks inflict lots of damage and are very hard to block. He is also assisted by Kina, who always gets a damage boost when Maki is hurt (which stacks up to three), her attacks inflict negative status effects when not blocked and are hard to block due to her speed, and possesses 2 points of defense and almost as much health as Maki does, and Yin, who continuously heals and buffs her allies, and should she fall, Maki gets enraged and receives a permanent attack boost. All of this marks them as one of the hardest bosses to beat in game.
  • Post Update 1.1, Team Maki gets upstaged as the hardest bosses in the game by Team Slacker. They both possess lots of health (with Stratos alone possessing 100 HP, almost as much as the final boss in the first phase), have high defenses, and inflict tons of damage with their lightning-quick hard-to-block attacks. Delilah can also inflict many negative status effects, some of which can seal away the party members' skills and items, and they both get a permanent boost that allows them to perform two actions at their turns when their health is low enough. They can also revive each other and can use Queen's Dinner, the best healing item in game, to restore 15 HP to each other and cure their negative status effects, thus making the battle a race against time to beat them both before they undo the damages done by the player.
  • In the Cave of Trials, if the player possesses 4 Tangy Berries in the inventory or one Tangy Berry as a fourth item, the player will end up facing a holographic image of Tanjerin known as TANGYBUG. It possesses 99 HP, 4 points of defense, which is even higher than Maki and Stratos's defenses, can perform two actions per turn, and possesses a wide array of damaging attacks taken from many other enemies, such as mini-boss version of Kabbu, Wasp Drillers, Haunted Cloths and Venus Buds.
  • There are five Bounty Bosses you can take from side quests that are a major step up in difficulty compared to the storyline bosses. They are accessable at different stages of the game, with the earliest being fightable in Chapter 2 and the latest being fightable just before Chapter 6's dungeon.
• Byteria Saga: Heroine Iysayana has a Bonus Dungeon you cannot enter until you have finished the main quest, with three bosses inside: Rematches with Vile and Caryneth, and ultimately Lord Sick, one of the archvillains from Byteria Heroes. That series got a Continuity Reboot around the time Heroine Iysayana was finished and didn't become available in English at all until later, making it something of an Early-Bird Cameo.
• There are many bosses in Cassette Beasts that can only be fought as Post-End Game Content, and are at a much higher level than the final boss. These include rematches with the Ranger Captains and Archangels, the latter unlocked by defeating a fully-powered Morgante, as well as the new Archangels Lenna and Helia.
• Chest: Hyroin II is the only enemy in the game that can seriously challenge the party, since he can fight an extended battle with Zong of all people and can cast many powerful spells and ailments. However, he's entirely optional and can be skipped as long as the party avoids his grave.
• The DS remake of Chrono Trigger adds extra content for a player to discover and get challenged by between each New Game Plus run:
  • The fights in the Dimensional Vortexes against the Alabaster Shade, Crimson Shade, Steel Shade, and Once-King Dalton. Defeating all of them unlocks the fight with the Dream Devourer, a souped-up version of the game's Final Boss who has ties to Chrono Cross due it being an early form of the Time Devourer.
  • The ultimate form of Spekkio is also one of the strongest bosses in the game. But since you need maxed out characters to even challenge him there is not much strategy involved anymore...
• Corruption of Laetitia: When fighting the Predatory Birds in the map north of Gruhnwald, there's a chance that Hawkzombie will show up in the second turn to fight the party.
• Deltarune: The game currently has two superbosses available, one for each currently released chapter with more likely to be included in each future chapter. They're collectively known as the Shadow Crystal holders, named after the Macguffin you collect from them after they are defeated.
  • In Chapter 1, you get to find and ultimately fight the locked-away Jevil, whose fight makes the Final Boss look tame through sheer Bullet Hell, with his attacks being fast-paced and leaving little wiggle room to avoid. Upon defeat, he will give you either the best armor (Jevilstail) or weapon (Devilsknife) in the chapter, depending on if you pacified him or defeated him with violence.
  • Chapter 2 gives us Spamton NEO, a Clipped-Wing Angel version of Spamton that resolves his character arc. The means to encounter this boss aren't quite as convoluted as with Jevil, but unless you're already well-versed with backtracking, this boss could also be easy to miss. While the chapter's Final Boss is a reprise of the earlier Punch-Out!!-style boxing minigame that's easy to learn the ropes of, this superboss is, like Jevil, a Bullet Hell war of attrition with low wiggle room. Once again, emerging victorious rewards the player with either the best armor (Dealmaker) or the best weapon (Puppet Scarf) in that chapter depending on how you choose to defeat him. Also, if you undertake a certain gameplay route, you're punished by having to fight Spamton NEO alone.
• The Denpa Men:
  • The first game has two. One mid-game dungeon appears to have two bosses — a Water-type Golem and an Ice-type Golem. The Ice-type Golem is more difficult to get to, and is the true boss of the dungeon. The Water-type Golem, however, gives you a few extra goodies if you beat it. At the very end of the game, you can also choose to fight The True King, the final form of the King of Evil. He has his own Rare Random Drop, and each time you defeat him, he drops an emblem that can be sold for a tidy sum of money.
  • The second game has even more of these, most of whom are based around chess pieces. Each of the four Caves of Darkness contains a different variation on the Knight, and each one is progressively more difficult — especially because the Caves are timed, and even though you can keep battling if you run out of time, if you do, you'll be kicked out of the dungeon before you can collect your rewards for completing it. There's also a Pawn who you have one required fight against early on—but he keeps getting stronger and stronger throughout the game, and you can return to challenge him after different story events. The last two sets are linked — the The Inferno ends with a fight against the Demon Queen, who serves as a combination of this and a True Final Boss. This unlocks the Bishop, King, and Queen, who fight you back to back in a Call-Back to the original game's final boss. along with Master Oink and Octopaladin. There's also the Thunder Dragon that appears in the third Feeding Ground who unlike the other enemies there is considered a boss and cannot be fled from.
  • The third game also has several. There's Master Squelch who halfway through becomes the Self-Made King, setting up the Big Bad for the first game and gives the second ending. There's also the fight with the King, Queen and Rook which gets you the third ending and Best Malignus, a beefed up version of the Final Boss who gives out the final ending. The only superbosses who don't give an ending are the Pawn rematch and Havoc Dragon, the altter of whom is the strongest boss in the game.
• After beating Machinedramon and finishing the main story in Digimon World, you can continue the story and find a new level with high powered Mook Digimon. At the end is Machinedramon once again, only this time his health is maxed out at 9999 and his stats are also quite high. This is all for bragging rights.
• Dragalia Lost has quite a few of these in the Advanced Dragon Trials starting with clearing Chapter 6 in the main story. They are the highest forms of the Greatwyrms that Euden had recruited through the first five chapters of the game who are now testing to see if he's worthy of wielding their true power. Each one starts with a screen filling attack which will kill you in one hit unless you're sufficiently prepared for it. The Agito Invasion involves a new strain of bonus boss in that they're not only humanoid, but they have their own motives for why they do what they do. On Expert, bringing them down once has them transform into a bestial One-Winged Angel form that makes the fight mechanics change, the music get more intense and adds in a Break bar. Defeating them is what allows you to make the game's Infinity +1 Sword weapons which are 6* weapons.
  • High Midgardsormr is the first one with attacks that involve spin attacks, wind balls and an 8 direction attack that's a one-hit kill. The next attack involves a pillar attack that, once locked onto someone, requires everyone to group up together to mitigate the damage or the target gets killed in one shot. At the two minute mark, he unleashes tornadoes that will go left to right or right to left depending on which one is marked.
  • High Brunhilda is the second one with fire breath attacks, claw swipes, and dive bomb attacks. She shoots out fireballs that leave volcanoes on the ground that are used to hide from her Hellfire attack that can deal big damage to the party. She also has a pillar attack that has to have everyone grouped up together to mitigate the damage or the target dies. Finally she does Grand Muspelheim that leaves a large chunk of the map on fire, allowing only ranged units able to hit her before doing another pillar attack. As she's close to defeat, she does Grand X-Muspelheim which now does an x-shaped pattern on the map.
  • High Mercury is only slightly easier in that melee units won't need a wyrmprint to tank her first attack, though she has plenty of one hit kills up her sleeve with a 180 degree tail swipe, bubble blast and whirlpools. Four bubbles are then summoned that will allow each member of the party to get into to survive the waterfall attack, but if another member occupies the same bubble, it pops, meaning someone is going to die. After getting past that, she traps a random member in a water cage which has to be freed, then sends a homing bubble at another random member which has to be led away or they or someone else will die. After that, she goes to the middle of the room and conjures up a bubble storm that splits into more bubbles if they're attacked. Another waterfall will happen, but fiends will appear to try and burst the bubbles. Once the pattern is done, the trick is more that it's a damage race due to how high her HP is.
  • While not one of the High Dragons, the Mercurial Gauntlet adds Fafnir Roy III who's meant to challenge only the best compositions of each element party. It starts off simple enough, but once an element hits 20 is when things start getting challenging. Getting each element to 40 is a very high risk high reward deal as it gives out rupies, mana, eldwater and for every 25 levels, Twinkling Sand which is used to make tier five rank 2 and 3 weapons. After level 50, while the time limit becomes higher, his attacks become unavoidable and need to be healed through, turn to dragon before he attacks or bring him down before you wipe.
  • Volk is the first of the Agito who has an utter hatred of anyone of privilege whether they use it for good or evil and will see them dead. His mechanics involve hitting the party with Plague which reduces resistances while he sends out flying disks around the arena. Underdog's Scheme sends out four gas clouds, two each having stun and sleep clouds that supercharges anyone who runs into it, otherwise it causes massive AoE damage, if not leading to a wipe.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins has several optional bosses among its many sidequests. The Revenants are powerful undead warriors that are managable on their own but get downright nasty with backup such as the ones that drop the Juggernaut equipment. Gaxkang the Unbound is an homage to Kangaxx from Baldur's Gate. Flemeth shapeshifts into a High Dragon. An actual High Dragon (who could be beaten easily if you surrounded it with Traps before you aggro). And many more.
  • Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening gives us the Queen of Blackmarsh, a lightning-breathing spectral dragon who is quite unambiguously even more powerful than the Final Boss. Also, the Golems of Amgarrak Downloadable Content has the Harvester, widely regarded as the toughest boss in the entire Origins saga.
  • Dragon Age II helpfully marks its bonus bosses with dedicated Achievements you get for offing them: a Varterral, a High Dragon, Xebenkeck the Desire Demon (who happens to be an old chum of Gaxkang from part one), and Hybris the Pride Demon. The last one is particularly bad news.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition has no less than ten different High Dragons lurking in various areas, as well as the Desire Demon Imshael (also related to Xebenkeck and Gaxkang). Additionally, there is a secret High Dragon bonus boss, the Guardian of Mythal, whom you can only fight after very specific plot decisions, namely if Morrigan never gave birth to a child with the Archdemon's soul and did not drink from the Well of Sorrows.
• In Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu, if Goku becomes a Super Saiyan during the final battle with Frieza (accomplished by allowing a party member like Krillin or Chiaotzu to die) and he and Vegeta survive to the end of the battle, after the credits you'll get a scene of Vegeta going Super Saiyan and challenging Goku as payback for the humiliation he suffered back on Earth.
• Dubloon features The Quartet of the Seas, a group of four bosses each found in one corner of the ocean. Alone, they aren't dangerous, but just wait until you fight them all four at once in the Pirate's Graveyard. They will kick your ass.

E-L

• The EarthBound (1994) ROM Hack EquestriaBound has a few, who always drop the parties Infinity Plus One Swords. According to the hack creator, this was to prevent Sword of Kings situations.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind:
    • Due to the game's Anyone Can Die nature, naturally, anyone in the game can be fought and killed. But special mention has to go to Vivec. You are by no means required to fight him, and doing so before completing the main quest will make the normal method of beating the game impossible, but if you choose to do so, you'll have quite the fight on your hands. Bonus irony points if you soul trap him in Azura's Star. This is actually recommended, since he has the second most powerful soul for enchanting in the game, after only Almalexia.
    • The Ash Vampires. You are only required to fight one in order to get an item (Sunder) off of him, but there are 6 others you can hunt down and kill. Killing them is supposed to weaken Dagoth Ur in the final confrontation, but due to a scripting glitch, this does not happen (and if it did happen killing all of them would break the game, as Dagoth Ur would be dead before you arrive leaving you unable to get the result that's supposed to happen when you kill him). Still, they each possess unique enchanted items that are unobtainable if you don't fight them, and you should kill them if you're going for 100% Completion.
    • While the Tribunal DLC is already infamous for its powerful enemies, the one that truly earns this status is the wood elf Gaenor. If you talk to this seemingly random NPC in the Temple District, he'll ask to borrow your money. No matter how you try to deal with him, eventually he'll get angry and swear vengeance upon you. After a couple of days he comes back, decked in full Ebony armor with an Ebony longsword. Aside from his expensive gear, he has 155 strength, making him hit like a truck, over 700 luck, making it incredibly hard to hit him with physical attacks, and very high values (sometimes guaranteed) in magic resistance and reflect, making it just as hard to affect him with magic, and do so without hurting yourself. And to top it all off, constant effect health restoration.
  • Oblivion also has a few.
    • Erandur-Vangaril (a lich). He can only be found in a specific cave that none of the game's quests lead you to, and can only be fought there once your character reaches a certain level.
    • The giant slaughterfish, who shows up in one of the dungeons you explore in the Thieves Guild questline, but chances are you won't ever see this one if you don't fully explore the place.
    • There's also the Uderfrykte Matron at Dive Rock.
  • Skyrim has some as well.
    • The Ebony Warrior of the Dragonborn DLC challenges the player once they reach level 80 in the hope that he's finally met someone tough enough to kill him. His equipment is heavily enchanted, has 50% damage resistance to all elements, is immune to several spells and Shouts, and can use Dragon Shouts in addition to healing spells and potions. There are also a few named dragons which are not required to be fought. Of particular note is Vulthoryol, who can be summoned by using the Unrelenting Force shout on the orange globe in Blackreach.
    • Also in Dragonborn, the player has the option to fight the ghost of Karstaag, a Frost Giant that was killed by the Nerevarine in Morrowind's Bloodmoon DLC. The player must find his skull and place it on his throne if they wish to challenge him, and after defeating him they gain the ability to summon him in battle three times only.^note To be clear, you can only summon him three times ever; once you've used up all three, there's no way to reset or recharge it short of starting a new game.
    • The Dawnguard DLC adds the Reaper, a ghostly headsman that can be fought in the Soul Cairn after finding three gem fragments.
• Epic Battle Fantasy:
  • The third game has a bonus room in Volcano Peak that can only be unlocked by collecting all 60 in-game medals. This room has three of these, including a pair of level 50 bushes (in a game where level 30 is the default cap on a first playthrough), a pair of evil worms and their tails (mooks normally only summoned by the Final Boss), and a trio of one of each type of monolith enemy, all at level 40!
  • The Steam release of the fourth game has a whole area dedicated to these, featuring upgraded versions of the main game bosses (except the final boss), the notorious Cosmic Monolith from the third game, and even evil versions of your party members. Some of the bosses from the second and third games also return in the main game as optional minibosses. The main game also includes the Glitch, a Puzzle Boss based on using Non-Elemental skills and preventing One-Hit Kill attacks.
  • All versions of the fifth game have the return of the Glitch boss after completing four "glitched" areas and an Undertale-styled cat boss known as Snowflake after gathering three gems hidden in chambers underground. The first Steam version added harder versions of the four main non-Final Bosses (and the Hydra minibosses) in their own mini-dungeons, and beating them grants access to alternate evil versions of the party members that are more distinct from the Dark Players of the fourth game. Version 2 added even more: a Boss Bonanza of four sketches in the expanded Greenwood Library, twelve hidden 8-bit Arcade minibosses with some sort of central gimmick scattered around the world, and eight bosses from the previous games (two from each game) in a series of bunker simulations. All of them scale to the players, based on things like level, medals obtained, and how many other optional bosses and challenges have been completed.
• Eternal Twilight: In the Seraphic Shrine, the party can challenge revamped versions of story bosses, ending with a fight against El Puerco, a powerful extradimensional pig that threatens to destroy entire worlds.
• The Etrian Odyssey series as a whole has a LOT of superbosses designed to challenge a post-endgame party and frequently require specialized strategies to defeat.
  • Etrian Odyssey: Being the first game overall in the series, it's also the first to feature the postgame three elemental dragons (Great Dragon, Blizzard King and Storm Emperor), who each has an elemental attack that can wipe out your entire party in one hit unless you negate it with specific skill at the right time. They've since been prevalent in all games except the fifth, thus doubling as Legacy Boss Battle opponents. From the third game onwards, their defeat also raises the level cap for your entire guild — an important asset for the postgame. You also get optional challenges like Alraune and Manticore that are ideally fought with an endgame party.
  • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard: Briareus, renamed Hecatoncheires in the remake, is a chimera-like amalgamation of several other beasts. It can be unlocked by accepting a quest involving a part of the Bonus Dungeon where the party has to travel across certain teleporters and answer questions correctly (answering incorrectly will inflict them damage); in the remake, this is changed in favor of a straightforward navigation puzzle to approach the boss without it noticing. In both cases, the boss offers a very difficult battle with nasty attacks, including a skill that halves the party's maximum HP.
  • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: There are a few superbosses of exceptional strength and difficulty that can be found and challenged in sidequests from the postgame (or, in one case, a sidequest available during the standard endgame at earliest): Alraune (a veteran from the original game), Kraken and Anemone. There's also the Elder Dragon, a winged quadrupedal deity who challenges the player's party to defeat the three Elemental Dragons and then itself in the sea; only short of the Abyssal God, it's the second strongest boss in the game.
  • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan: After the quests involving the Elemental Dragons (including the respective ones where you defeat them) are completed, you receive a quest from a mysterious person who tells you that the Dragons' defeats broke a seal keeping a very powerful black dragon captive. That dragon is known as the Fallen One, and it's now free. You can find it in a hollow northeast of Cloudy Stronghold, and it's extremely powerful. Interestingly, it is not immune to being defeated via One-Hit Kill, though the chance rate is only 1%.
  • Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: In absence of the elemental dragons, the game has a new trio of superbosses that have the same role of raising your level cap: Dryad in Tutelary Forest, the Zombie Dragon in Fetid Necropolis, and Lamia in Lucent Hollows. The Primordiphant is a little different, first appearing in the main story as an obstacle to be avoided, but by the postgame you would be strong enough to defeat it.
  • Etrian Odyssey Nexus: The Dinogator may be classed as an overworld FOE, but the conditions to encounter it are so obtuse that you have to be actively hunting for it. Even then, it's so absurdly strong that it can put most of the other bosses in this game to shame.
  • Each game has a Bonus Dungeon that houses the True Final Boss of the game, and it goes without saying that they are excruciatingly difficult, sometimes requiring strategy guides that lists what they will do turn by turn just for you to have a chance to beat them. The first game has the Yggdrasil Core, Heroes of Lagaard has the Ur-Child, The Drowned City has the Abysssal God, Legends of the Titan has the Warped Savior, Beyond the Myth has the Star Devourer, and Etrian Odyssey Nexus has the Abyssal Princess.
• Ultimate Weapon and Khaer Magnus in Everlong. To mention just the really tough ones.
• Fake Happy End: After clearing the Gallery, the player unlocks four secret bosses: Sin and Pun-ishment on F7, Natural Redhead on F17, Primevil on F24, and Swamp Cutiepie on F29. All of them are much tougher than the bosses in the main story, and beating them unlocks the Dead God boss in the deepest part of the basement floors.
• Fallout has had several of these across all the games in the series.
  • Fallout 3 has five or six super mutant behemoths who you can hunt down. Admittedly, one is a Mini-Boss over the course of the main story, but even then, you could just skip the entire section. Other optional bosses include Commander Jabsco of Talon Company, Lag-Bolt and Enclave Squad Sigma in Broken Steel, and the three Ant Queens.
  • Fallout: New Vegas has the Big Bad himself, Caesar. Especially compared to his second-in-command, Legate Lanius, Caesar is pretty weak for a boss, only being about as tough as an Elite Mook. However, he's in the middle of the Legion's stronghold, and his personal section (the only one you're allowed to visit) is crawling with dozens of Legion troops. When you get past them, he is protected by eight Praetorian Guards armed with shotgun fists, each of which is as powerful as him. At lower levels, Caesar and his guards will usually dogpile you into a corner and beat you to death in a few hits, since said shotgun fists do ridiculous damage and Caesar and his guards are fast. However, if you go there at a later level with a good companion and high level weapons they'll go down easily enough.
  • The four (five with Old World Blues) legendary creatures in New Vegas, which are reskinned, upsized, and overpowered versions of their normal species. Admittedly, a sufficiently leveled character can make short work of most (Legendary Cazador, Legendary Nightstalker, and Legendary Fire Gecko) but the Legendary Deathclaw from the main game, and Legendary Bloatfly from Old World Blues can usually kill you in... Two hits. Almost always.
  • There's another boss Deathclaw in Lonesome Road, named Rawr. It's a Lightning Bruiser, even compared to the Alpha Male, and will kill most characters in one hit; it has somehwhat less HP than the Legendary Deathclaw. Defeating him allows you to build one of the most powerful Unarmed weapons from his talons, Fist of Rawr. Or Fist of the North Rawr if you have Wild Wasteland! There's also Gaius Magnus and Colonel Royez, who are only available if you choose to nuke the Legion or NCR respectively at the end. Both have all of their special stats maxed out, and Royez has the third highest HP of any human enemy after Ulysses and Legate Lanius, a Damage Threshold of 24, wields a plasma caster with overcharge ammo, and regenerates his HP very quickly from the radiation.
  • Fallout 4:
    • Swan, a special Super Mutant Behemoth, resides in the Boston Common's duck pond and wields a gigantic hammer fashioned from an anchor. Defeating him nets you the armor-piercing Furious Power Fist.
    • The optional Quincy Ruins is home to three Gunner leaders, who are backed up by many high-level mooks from the overpasses and other high ground. Two of the bosses wear Power Armor, and the one that doesn't, Sgt. Baker, is armed with a One-Hit Kill Fat Man. Clint wields an Engraging Laser Rifle named Good Intentions, and Tessa wears a unique Raider Power Armor Right Arm named Tessa's Fist (not a Power Fist, despite the name). Other Gunner bosses include Captain Wes in the Gunner Plaza, and Captain Bridget at Hub City Auto Wreckers.
    • The Far Harbor DLC has a randomly-encountered legendary Fog Crawler named Shipbreaker. Given that normal Fog Crawlers are already Bosses in Mook Clothing, this one's insanely difficult to take down, especially because, being a Legendary, it Turns Red and auto-heals when its HP is depleted halfway the first time. Reporting its defeat to Longfellow earns you the Skipper's Last Stand harpoon gun, which grants +150 damage resistance when reloading.
• Familia:
  • The Mother is the second strongest optional boss available before New Game Plus, due to her high stats, scripted HP absorption barrage, and multiple forms.
  • If the player angers Linky by repeatedly examining the bookshelf next to him, he'll attack the party. All of his stats are at their caps, making him the strongest enemy in the game.
• Fate/Grand Order
  • Events have various Challenge Quests, quests that generally require you to not only clear the event but require you to have cleared Final Singularity "Solomon" if the event requirement is a Singularity before that, and involves fighting enemies or Servants with special gimmicks that make them hard to clear. The various "Festival" events also has Exhibition Quests that are a series of Challenge Quests that are even harder than normal Challenge Quests.
  • Invoked by the primary enemy in Lostbelt 7, ORT. The writers said the intended player reaction to facing this being is "absolute despair", specifically citing a scenario in which the game's superboss inexplicably showed up 1/3rd of the way through the story and you were expected to somehow win.
• Fossil Fighters:
  • There is a huge slew of bonus bosses, one of which opens up before the final boss, and the rest of which appear afterwards, in the Playable Epilogue.
  • The lone bonus boss available before the game's end is Petey, a dino battler who demands to fight a team of three specific dinosaurs. If you take the time to grind those three specific dinos, he's managable, but if you're anything less than maxed, be prepared to hurt from it.
  • But after the final boss? Both Saurhead and the BB Trio reappear with "marathon battle" bosses, where you have to beat three of their teams with no break in-between. They're tough, and your reward is the Olympus Mons from waaay back at the game's halfway point. You can finally fight Dr. Diggins, though he offers up nothing but bragging rights (and EXP, if you're looking to grind). You can fight a samurai who's been in the hotel room next to yours for the entire game, whose most notable trait is that his Trainer rank is one beyond "Master." Oh, and if you're feeling lucky, punk, you can go back to the dinaurian spaceship and challenge Duna, Raptin, and Dynal — all at once. And that isn't even all of them!
  • The sequel, Fossil Fighters Champions, follows suit. In addition to almost all of the important characters having high-ranked teams you can fight in the Playable Epilogue, there's a bonus tournament that culminates in a fight against Rosie from the previous game. There were also DLC bonus bosses — including a strange character named Ryne, who gives you a new legendary vivosaur for winning, and Duna, Raptin, and Dynal again.
• All the Geneforge games have an 'Expert' level dungeon with the toughest Bonus Boss in the game. Most of them generate repeated creations to add to their attack power, and traps that deal extra damage unless the player has the skill to disable them or at the least reduce their effect. The worst is the Titan of Geneforge 4, which each time it was weakened to low health would shift to a new form, with a new set of attacks, defenses and vulnerabilities, requiring the player to have mastered a wide range of combat abilities. And of course, leaving the dungeon to rest also reset this Boss to its original form and strength.
• Golden Sun:
  • Golden Sun has Deadbeard, an undead pirate found at the bottom of Crossbone Isle, who guards the game's most powerful armor. One path to him contains another bonus boss, a weather controlling lizard. A third bonus boss has its own bonus Town outside the Bonus Dungeon, and is a gigantic acid frog.
  • Golden Sun: The Lost Age has the Star Magician, Sentinel, Valukar, and Dullahan. The Star Magician summons mooks to use Jupiter psynergy on you, buff and heal the Magician, and explode for huge damage. Sentinel constantly buffs his defense and is immune to all psynergy, meaning he gets tougher and tougher. Valukar can knock your Djinn into Standby and use your summons against you with Crucible. And Dullahan can put every active party member's Djinn into recovery with Djinn Storm, gets three moves per turn, and hits like a runaway cement mixer.
  • In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, Star Magician and Dullahan get buffed up, with Star Magician getting three new mook types (Curse, Death, and Ghoul) and Dullahan getting Valukar's Crucible move. There's also the Ogre Titans, a group of five increasingly powerful physical attackers, and the Ancient Devil, who can take over one character with Demon Sign.
  • In the early parts of Dark Dawn, if you try to beat the Psynergy Training Grounds a second time, the Dim Dragon gets an upgrade, making it an early-game Bonus Boss.
• Grandia Xtreme, rather than a new and unique boss, gave you the chance to go back to the old dungeons after beating the final boss, and in one of them you can fight a super-powered level 200 version of a boss you already faced.
• The Doppelganger in the .hack//G.U. games is optional, but is ridiculously difficult and gives some of the most powerful weapons in the games.
• Haven (2020) has the Space Whale Beruberu, who shows up after Yu and Kay spend two in-game days away from the Nest, and is the most powerful enemy in the game by a country mile. To have a chance at pacifying it, you must max out your intimacy levels in addition to crafting plenty of Status Buff capsules. Defeating it rewards you with Massage Oil and the achievement "There she blows".
• Icewind Dale II has two of these, both within the same chapter. The first is a black dragon in the "Crossroads", which can be killed to close the teleport to Kuldahar. Players don't actually have to fight it, and can achieve their goal in a much easier way, but the difficulty of the battle alone makes it worth it for many players. The other boss is the Six Lost Followers, in the Kuldahar graveyard. This is regarded by many to be the hardest fight in the game, because A) there are six different enemies to fight at once, B) they are several levels higher than your party, and C) because each has only a few specific weaknesses, being immune to all other forms of attack, and with the weaknesses being different between each member. Victory gives the player the Holy Avenger, the best weapon in the game. Unfortunately, this pisses off quite a few people itself, as the weapon can only be wielded by a Paladin, meaning that there is no reward for anyone without a Paladin in their party.
• Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass
  • Located at the end of the Heart Prison is The Family, one of the hardest bosses in the game. The fight consists of representations of Andrew, Lars, Buck and Helga, all of whom have absolutely massive HP stats and will not hold back.
  • Located at the end of the Dark Dungeon is the game's other superboss, the Dark Demon, a centipede-like creature that can take the forms of Jimmy's transformations and use them to attack. This fight is one long endurance test and it won't be easy. And if you want to complete the Dark Dungeon again, it has a powered up form with buffed stats and 225,000 HP. For context, the Pre-Final Boss of the main story has 35,000 HP.
• Knights of Ambrose
  • Knight Bewitched:
    • Ogopogo, in the Winterfall Cavern. You learn that he is one of the few dragons left not living in Strasza's village, and you can access his cave about as soon as you have the ship. The most important item to get there is the Blue Flame, necessary to go through the Midnight Desert, and is obtainable in the room before his, so you don't even need to fight him to get it. Defeating him does get you an achievement and a powerful accessory though. However, he's disproportionately powerful compared to the standard mobs in the cave.
    • Lilith is a mysterious being who physically resembles the goddess Helena, and is encountered at the end of the Depths dungeon. She drops the Chaos sword, which surpasses even Ascended Sylvanaras in terms of stats. However, she's much stronger than Ogopogo, due to being added to the game later. In the Enhanced Edition, beating her unlocks the True Final Boss fight, where she rides Typhus so that that the two of them stand a chance against the party, who they realize are too powerful for them normally.
  • Mari and the Black Tower: Tiamat guards the Raganarok sword in the ROGUE magma area, which is already a Brutal Bonus Level. Tiamat is also stronger than the Final Boss, due to getting three actions per turn. Although they get fewer actions per turn as they lose heads, they use increasingly powerful skills to compensate.
  • Finding Light: The boss of the Depths is Lilith again, who defeated Ruth and Gwen, placing them in stasis in the final room. Stray believes she's even stronger than when she was fought in Knight Bewitched.
  • Celestial Hearts: In the Depths, the party faces Silnastra, who wants to take Malady's tome from the party. She has many powerful dark-elemental spells, instant death spells, and the ability to summon weaker copies of Strife, making her more difficult than Lilith. Fittingly, she shows up in the final battle to weaken Lilith.
• While it's only a mod, the Knights of the Old Republic Brotherhood of Shadow has a flashback to Malachor V. You're stripped of all your gear, and have to re-create the single-combat against Mandalore that ended the Mandalorian Wars.
• The Gargoyle in Koudelka, on Disc 3/4. It is just insane, and will be forced to run away.
• The Last Story has Therius and Gigamuruk. The first is a one-on-one Duel Boss who can only be challenged with Zael alone, in a callback to an earlier boss fight. The latter is fought at the conclusion of the game's running Tournament Arc. In both cases, you have to wait until the Playable Epilogue to look for them.
• The Legend of Dragoon:
  • In the dungeon before the Point of No Return, you are given the opportunity to fight the spirits of the three dragons you defeated. They drop some useful attack items, and they're also guarding chests containing powerful equipment.
  • There's also the Poltergeist-posessed armor set in Fort Magrad, an optional section of the Snowfield on Disc 3 (you travel through this area on your way to Velwebb. Hint: the sword has an instant-kill attack and it always uses it at the character who manages to dispatch it.
  • There's also the four Dragoon ghosts in Velwebb, and Magician Faust at Flanvel Tower, who is the most powerful enemy in the game. Beating him does get you a great reward though in the Phantom Shield along with 30,000 gold. Here's everything you have to go through to get to him, which definitely puts him in this trope by the above definition: Throughout the game, there is a side quest to collect a total of fifty stardust scattered throughout the continent. Every tenth stardust, when shown to the proper character, will give you a different item. The final item is a mirror that is required in order to face Faust. Faust is an insanely powerful Wingly who was second-in-command to Melbhu Frahma, but ends up being a dozen times more dangerous, possibly due to having been alive and studying/training for the entire time his "boss" has been asleep. You then have to find the entrance to Flanvel Tower, following a winding maze of teleporters just to get to the tower. If you do not have the mirror in your possession the first time you see him, he WILL kill everyone in your party with one blow a piece, and you will be unable to touch him. As it turns out, this first Faust is merely a projected image. The real Faust is able to cast his magic through the image even while being twice as deep in the dungeon. And so, obviously, you must finish the maze.
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV, defeating every cryptid that can be found throughout Erebonia, and completing special quests during the final chapter will lead to Argres, the Holy Beast of Earth. He's exceptionally tougher than Osborne and prone to utilizes charged magic with physical strikes to inflict status aliments. Once beaten, he'll give Rean a special divine object that will lead into the true ending.
• Legend of Legaia has Lapis, who has insane attack power and can incapacitate a party member with a string of vicious attacks that deal upwards of 200% of the character's HP. Beating this boss requires either a lot of luck, hours of Level Grinding, or using a very specific accessory setup. ^note Specifically, equipping the Luminous Jewel accessory. Since Lapis's attacks are Light elemental (The game does not mention this.), using this accessory cuts his damage output in half and makes his attacks survivable.
• Liar Jeannie In Crucifix Kingdom has the two elite Pleiades Knights, Celaeno and Alcyone, who guard the exit of the kingdom and must be defeated to get the secret ending.
• LISA: The Painful RPG has a giant man who goes by Satan,^note His actual name is Mike, which he tells you when he's dying found inside a truck on an off section in the Eternal Wrestling Championship that links Area 2 and 3. The keys to his truck are guarded by the Joy Mutant Beady, itself a difficult and optional boss. He is one of the hardest bosses in the entire game, having a lot of health and access to an instant-kill move, but he drops one of the best equipment pieces as a reward. To emphasize his difficulty, he has an ominous buildup to him, with the NPC outside his valley telling Brad that nobody who has gone in the "Devil's Machine" (his truck) came out alive, the screen tinting red as Brad gets near the truck, and a mild Jump Scare-honk playing when in front of it. Also in the Updated Re-release for Painful and Joyful are new superbosses, both of whom are extremely painful and long fights.
  • The Manifestation Of Marty, a massive mound of flesh with Marty Armstrong’s head on top, encountered during a Nightmare Sequence accessible at the very first campfire after collecting the boat parts needed to progress to the endgame. It’s a massive three phase raid more than anything, with the first phase being a a fight against shadowy versions of Brad and his party members, with them gaining the ability to paralyze their counterparts, reflect incoming damage, and KOing the counterpart character in death on subsequent runs. Next is a fight against a group of anywhere from six to three stronger Marty Spiders known as Spider Thralls, and after a couple of runs TrickyRick shows up to heal them, buff them, and debuff your party, only [[spoiler: dying when the Thralls are killed. The last phase is against the Manifestation itself, who has a whopping 100,000 HP, and is meant to be grounded down through multiple runs. The Manifestation also has a variety of attacks that can Mana Burn, electrocute characters, and upon hitting around 42,000 HP, starts reducing the stats of your party permanently every turn. He also consumes a party member every six turns or so, turning them into a Spider Thrall to attack you on subsequent runs and forcing Brad to flee and return with a new party. Your reward for beating him? A hint on how to unlock the Joyful Superboss and 99 Joy, alongside some lore concerning Brad and Lisa’s relationship.^note Despite being a nightmare, consumed party members are considered dead and you keep everything gained from beating it.
  • To even unlock the second Superboss, you need to follow an extremely hidden and convoluted sequence of events. But once you do, after you kill the last warlord, a blue door appears on the List, and entering it takes you to a ghostly realm resembling a warzone. Upon nearing the end, Buddy is stopped by a voice asking her if “they will be silenced”. As it turns out, the voices are none other than the spirits of all nine warlords. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck And they all attack at once. You could either [[spoiler: Hold the Line until you are allowed to flee from the fight, or you could use what you learned throughout the game to juggle multiple foes at once, stay alive with the Warlord Skills, and use Buddy’s attacks to inflict high burst damage when able. Your reward for victory is a bit more substantial, landing you a powerful accessory that serves as a catalyst for the Golden Ending.
• Live A Live:
  • The Prehistory chapter has the Mammoth King, a lava-spewing mammoth that starts stampeding around the area outside of the cave Pogo's tribe is at after Pogo reaches the Kuu tribe's cave. Beating him offers a decent reward in the accessory the Fang of the King, and he also has the chance to drop the Cola Bottle, an accessory that also serves as the most powerful attack item in the game.
  • The Twilight of Edo Japan chapter has two superbosses.
    • Majin Ryunosuke, a ghost ronin who guards the Muramasa, one of the two most powerful weapons the player can get in the chapter. Beating him is required to get the sword.
    • Lord Iwama, a giant koi fish living in the castle's moat. Beating it causes it to drop the Suijin Scale, which can be used as either an accessory or a decently powerful attack item.
  • The Dominion of Hate has five superbosses, each of which drop the a piece of the Cosmic armor set, the most useful armors in the game.
    • Lucretius, a Legendary Carp encountered in the Trial of Instinct, who can be fought after the player gives him a Golden Topknot, and serves as an upgraded version of Lord Iwama. He's by far the most benevolent of the chapter's superbosses, being the only one who won't cause a Game Over should the player lose to him. Beating him nets the player the Cosmic Ring.
    • Jaggedy Jack, a quartet of crystalline monsters encountered in the Trail of Time should the player fail to escape the dungeon before eight bells ring. Each one has a large health pool, high defense, and performs several high-damaging attacks, all made even worse by the fact that there's four of them. Beating them nets the player the Cosmic Glove.
    • Euraokos, a machine encountered in the Trail of Wisdom should the player return to it after obtaining the 17nm Diode, fighting them with the intent of getting it back. It possesses extremely high defense and is resistant to the majority of physical attacks. Beating it nets the player the Cosmic Helm.
    • Death Prophet, a black sabertooth tiger the player will encounter should they run away from 100 fights. He possesses a large amount of HP, very high defense, and is capable of petrifying party members, with only the drops from the other superbosses giving immunity to the status effect. Beating him nets the player the Cosmic Mail.
    • Headhunter, a knight-like entity that attacks the player in the rift outside time and space should they leave the area Odio is in after he introduces himself. It has extremely high defense, and while it only has one attack, Wizenblade, said attack is so powerful that it's near guaranteed to result in a One-Hit Kill. Beating it nets the player the Cosmic Boots.
• Lost Odyssey has seven: Persona, King Kelolon, the Cave Worm, the Blue Dragon, the Holy Beast, Legendary Spirit Sorcerer Fu, and The Immortal One in the Backyard. Players with access to XBox Live can get a new downloadable dungeon with an extra boss Professor K, aka The Killalon.
• Luminous Plume:
  • Returning to older areas like the Mystic Forest, Arctic Lake, Tempest's Heart, and Mt. Arzen allows Raven to fight optional berserker bosses.
  • In the postgame dungeon, Wistful Pass, Raven fights his mentor Victor, who is no longer holding back.
• Lunarosse has two post-game bosses. One is implied to be a Greater-Scope Villain for the creator's future projects and the other tied into the Sequel Hook.

M-R

• Magical Starsign:
  • The Glissini Caves, a Bonus Dungeon accessible once the game is complete, has a special enemy formation guarding each floor. Most of these are regular enemy squads with boss-level difficulty, but every 5 floors, there's a stronger Palette Swap version of an earlier boss: floor 5 has the Securitron 3, floor 10 has the Elder Tree, floor 15 has a stronger Cybersaurus, and floor 20 has Umbra, an even stronger version of the regular Final Boss, Shadra.
  • Tagging with another player who's also beaten the game can get you a set of figurines, which can be used on Master Macadameus to summon monsters into battle. The monsters summoned by them are stronger versions of the elite Space Police bosses and some other story bosses, which are tougher than anything in the main story; the Insect Mage, the strongest of them, is at the cap of level 99.
  • Master Macadameus himself is an example. You can find him pretty early in the game, but you won't be anywhere strong enough to take him on until you've cleared the aforementioned Glissini Caves; he has the most HP of any single enemy in the game, knows several devastating attacks, and can even use Celestial Swap to move the planets, powering himself up and potentially nuking your party for 9999 damage if he lines all of them up.
• Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Alrevis had 5 Bonus Bosses in total: four that were cameos from other Gust games, and the fifth is a Palette Swap of the True Final Boss. Each of them are fought individually, but later three of them can team up for a sixth battle, which can be very difficult if the player's not prepared. The only saving grace for that battle is their common vulnerability to a certain character's normal physical attack.
• Manafinder: The Leviathan is the strongest optional boss in the game and can only be unlocked after finding all the Heavenstones.
• MARDEK:
  • Chapter 2 has the Zombie Dragon, located in Social Fox Tomb, accessed after the first battle with Moric. It has 11000+ HP and can inflict most status effects, though he goes down rather easily if you have Vehrn and Mardek equip a Silver Sword (Or replace Vehrn with Zach and have the boneslicer equipped) and have Quarry:Undead active.^note Vehrn also has Smite Evil and Disrupt Undead, making him a better choice than Zach. Upon defeat it drops the Burial Sword, the best weapon for Deugan in the chapter.
  • Chapter 3 has Annihilator:Karnos fought in the Miasmal Citadel. In addition of starting with Haste, having 66,000 HP, can also change its element either when taking a turn or reaction to magic attacks in addition of hitting like a truck to the entire party without proper resistance. He can and will dispel Haste and/or shields if you have them up.Defeating him gives you the Guardian Claw, the best weapon for Solaar in the chapter, Scarab of Fury and is also required to fight the boss below.
  • Annihilator:Animus, which, despite having lower HP than Karnos and can't change elements, is actually even stronger. Fought in the Dreamshrine, it starts the battle with Haste and Regen, has 50% resistance to most elements (Except Fig, which it's very weak to), can dispel Haste and shields like Karnos, very high physical defense, can deal Thauma damage, has HP percentage Aether attack and puts up shields on low HP. Defeating it gives Sorcerer's Soul and Scarab of Protection.
• Mario & Luigi:
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has several: the frozen Shroob trio in Bowser's Castle, the X bosses, and Bowser X.
  • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team also has the X bosses, with giant bosses now having X forms. Taking Bowser X's place is Bowser Jr.
  • Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam, once again, brings back the X bosses, but having dropped the X — same concept, but with no name. Bowser X and Bowser Jr. are succeeded by Dry Bowser.
• Marvel: Avengers Alliance has the Epic Bosses in certain missions, which only show up if you fight every battle and complete every deploy (which often require spending rare Command Points to recruit specific heroes) in that mission. The bosses offer stronger weapons and gadgets and higher chances of winning more Command Points as prizes for defeating them, compared to normal bosses.
• In the Mega Man Battle Network series, you can refight stronger versions of story mode bosses and other optional opponents (except the final boss) to get their Mega Chips though each game. However, the superbosses in each game are only fought in the game's Bonus Dungeon.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 1 allowed to you to fight Bass.EXE in the deepest areas of the Internet, a superboss who'd go on to become a series regular in terms of post-game challenge in other games in the series.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 2 had WWW Area had you fight PlanetMan, the at-the-time leader of a revived WWW. After beating him, the true Bass (not the clone fought before the story's Final Boss) catches you on the way out.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 3: White and Blue had Serenade who comes protected by a barrier that is difficult to circumvent. Bass GS could also be fought if you put 300 Bug Frags in the Secret Area's Bug Frag Trader, having lost his memory and claiming to seek those with power. Completing certain conditions and inputting a code at the title screen allows you to track down and fight the Omega versions of every boss, each of which are preceded by a multi-round virus battle.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon had you take down DS Navis which differed depending on if you were played either Red Sun or Blue Moon, ending with a fight against a stronger Dark MegaMan.EXE. Bass.EXE would also appear as a random encounter if you came back later.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Colonel and Team ProtoMan pitted you against the Chaos Lord after defeating dark versions of your Liberation Navis. Chaos Lord would first fight you as Nebula Gray though if you came back, he would take on the form of Nebula Gray, Dark MegaMan.EXE or Bass.EXE depending on how quickly you took down all the DS Navis. If you had Bass Soul equipped, you could also encounter Bass XX, a far stronger version of the series's resident superboss.
  • Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar lets you fight through RV versions of the villain Navis, before giving you a fight with Bass SP at the end. After beating him there, you can then travel into the Underground Area for a back-to-back fight with Beast MegaMan and Bass BX, who's now packing a piece of the Cybeast's power. In the Japanese version of the game, you could also fight the Navis from Battle Chip Challenge along with The Count of Groundsoaking Blood, all of which were unfortunately cut out of the US versions of the game.
• Mega Man Star Force:
  • Usually there's a secret area after beating the Final Boss where you have to fight upgraded forms of each boss in the game, followed by an all-new secret boss. After doing that in addition to getting all regular, Mega and Giga cards, the storyline's final boss is upgraded, with it being the truly strongest boss in the game. The only exception to this is the second game, where after beating the upgraded final boss, you fight an upgraded Rogue after the credits finish.
  • Traveling through the Bonus Dungeon of the second game pits you against IF versions of bosses, which are each one step stronger than the SP version you get through regular rematches. In addition, all bosses (except the final boss) had golden variants with a DX suffix with very high HP, attacks that deal very high damage and who could be recognized by their golden palette.
  • The third game has a rather unusual take on this with the Omega versions of the bosses, as they can rarely appear virtually anywhere in the game, and also at any point in the story, even before you've fought their regular versions. It's entirely possible to run into one of them right after the gameplay tutorial, despite even weakest of them being far stronger then the final boss. Fortunately, the game is nice enough to not give you a game over for losing to them and also alerts you of their presence by changing the music in the area to a very ominous tune.
  • Also in the third game, you can fulfill certain conditions to fight Rogue ZZ, Moon Disaster Sigma, or Crimson Dragon Sigma, which are all one step stronger than the hardest version a regular player can find.
• Mega Man X: Command Mission, meanwhile, had two Bonus Bosses plus another set of nine. Rafflesian and Duckbill Mole gave X, Zero, and Axl new abilities that were useful in what remained of the game by that point. Ninetails and the preceding eight Tails Clan members, on the other hand, who were definitively even more this trope, could only be fought after beating the final boss, making the rewards for beating them worthless.
• Might and Magic: Darkside of Xeen has the Mega dragon, which the cluebook describes as the mightiest creature. It has the most HP, does the most damage with a whole-party attack, and is immune to all but physical damage (to which it is 90% resistant). Barkman is second to the dragon, as it does less damage and isn't immune to everything, turning it into a Puzzle Boss if you've got good lateral thinking skills (or a guide).
• Monster Hunter has several examples, mostly reserved for multiplayer (whether local, online or both):
  • Monster Hunter (2004):
    • Debuting in the original version of the game, Kirin always appears in randomly-appearing quests, being a small, yet powerful Elder Dragon famous for being very elusive (hence its hunting quests being of ephemeral availability). So if you spot one of its quests and want to accept it, make sure to prepare everything to achieve a succesful hunt, because failing or abandoning it will force you to wait until the next opportunity.
    • In Monster Hunter Freedom, Yian Garuga is unlocked after hunting 10 Yian Kut-Ku. Its quest is rated with six stars (the highest grade), and it's ill-advised to challenge it until you have a decent postgame gear. The monster would later reprise this role in Monster Hunter 2 (dos), where it can only be unlocked via Old Save Bonus by connecting the game with Freedom through an USB.
  • After playing the role of Final Bosses in the first generation of games, the Fatalis dragons became secret, unlockable bosses from the second generation onwards. In Monster Hunter Freedom 2, White Fatalis is the most difficult to unlock, because you must have slain at least five specimens of every other Elder Dragon except the first two Fatalis (you need to defeat only three of those in total); in Freedom Unite, its G-Rank version can be unlocked after defeating the other two Fatalis in G Rank at least once each and completing all Boss Rush hunting quests.
  • Monster Hunter Portable 3rd: Gold Rathian and Silver Rathalos can be unlocked after 100 large Wyverns have been hunted (this also applies to their Freedom 2 and Unite appearances, but they were required targets to complete the game so they don't count). Akantor and Ukanlos (originally the respective final bosses of Freedom 2 and Freedom Unite) can be fought after completing all single-monster quests in the prior high rank quests, while Alatreon (of Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) fame, also its online final boss) is unlocked upon completion of all Dual Boss monster quests.
  • Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate: Hallowed Jhen Mohran is only accessible after the player slays or captures every single large monster (including previous Elder Dragons like regular Jhen Mohran and Alatreon) except Savage Deviljho, Lucent Nargacuga and Abyssal Lagiacrus (which happen to be Bonus Bosses on their own; as Savage Deviljho can only be fought in quests with unstable environments or alternatively through a DLC quest, Lucent Nargacuga is unlocked after reaching HR 40, and Abyssal Lagiacrus is unlocked after reaching HR 70).
  • Monster Hunter 4: The endgame multiplayer quests of the original version consists mostly of souped-up versions of monsters you've previously fought, such as Akantor or Dalamadur, though it also adds the debuting Molten Tigrex (HR 50) and series classic Fatalis (HR 70). The expansion 4 Ultimate repeats the trend for G Rank via the Aged Texts, having buffed familiar monsters while also adding Shah Dalamadur and Raging Brachydios. 4 Ultimate also has the quests where you fight Apex versions of monsters, each of which is unlocked through a specific condition.^note For the Apex Tidal Najarala, Gravios, Diablos, Tigrex and Zinogre, you have to hunt a specified combined total of specimens of the species and related subspecies in question. For the Apex Seregios and Rajang, you have to decipher the third and sixth Aged Texts respectively. For Apex Deviljho, you have to clear any of the previous Apex monster quests and accept the Deviljho Arena challenge in the Assembly Lastly, Guild Quest monsters can be repeatedly hunted until they reach the level cap of 140, at which point their quests become the hardest but also contain the best Rusted equipment as an incentive.
  • Monster Hunter Generations has the twelve Deviants, monster specimens that have survived numerous battles with Hunters and other monsters and have developed unique and deadly traits. All of them are optional and can only be fought through a unique series of quests. Hunters must spend special permits to post these quests because of how dangerous the Deviants are. Indeed they are, as the first, Redhelm Arzuros, is a notorious Wake-Up Call Boss, and the rest go up from there. The expansion Generations Ultimate adds six more, including the Bloodbath Diablos, who can only be fought after hunting the other five new Deviants at least once and defeating the final boss. GU also has the Extra Special Permit Quests at the end of each Deviant's quest chain, which feature a Deviant with health, attack, and resistance buffed up, require HR 100 to join, and have no supplies provided. EX Deviants are not required to defeat to max out Deviant weapons nor earn achievements, but doing so rewards a shiny color palette, Guild Card titles and special icons, and unlocks the ability to fuse Deviant armor.
  • Monster Hunter: World has the monsters added after the game's release through free title updates, a trait that is carried over to Iceborne: Deviljho, Kulve Taroth, Lunastra, Behemoth, Leshen, Rajang, Stygian Zinogre, Safi'jiiva, Raging Brachydios, Furious Rajang, Alatreon, Frostfang Barioth and Fatalis. With the exception of Deviljho, who can be encountered randomly partway into High Rank, they can only be fought after defeating the final boss and during their respective questlines. Additionally, there are Arch-Tempered Elder Dragons, souped-up event-exclusive Elder Dragons with increased strength and sometimes new attacks and behavior that require HR 50 to fight, attainable only in the postgame.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise has the Apex monsters fought outside the Rampage challenges. Since they're not focused on breaking a town's defense in these quests, they will focus entirely on attacking the hunter, so they're a lot more difficult to defeat (they cannot be captured either). There's also Crimson Glow Valstrax, which is unlocked after completing the last urgent quest and reaching HR 100. A post-3.0 update would add the "Apex Emergency" series of quests, which are non-Rampage hunts against Apex monsters with their stats cranked up even further; even Apex Arzuros's attacks are largely One-Hit Kills with endgame defense and the Blademaster defense bonus. For Sunbreak, there are quests where you hunt Afflicted monsters, and as you complete them their dificulty level will increase (and the post-release updates have pushed the level cap upward); the expansion also adds powerful variants, Elder Dragons and Rare Species available after raising the Master Rank level past the defeat of the expansion's Final Boss, as well as Risen specimens of Elder Dragons with exceptional strength (acquired upon overcoming the Qurio affliction, not unlike the Apex monsters in 4 Ultimate that overcame the Frenzy Virus) that can only be challenged upon eaching MR 110 and onward.
  • Monster Hunter: Stories has one main one found: The Fatalis, found at the end of the Labyrinth of Ordeals.
  • Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin has multiple. The Deviants and all Elder Dragons not named Nergigante are post-game exclusive. Fatalis also awaits at the bottom of the Elder's Lair, taking on the same role as in the first game: as the game's superboss.
• Monster Rancher Advance 2 features Ragnarok, a wandering special Dragon who only appears after beating the final boss. He will only appear to fight you once a year, and only if you have a specific kind of monster on your farm. If you're not prepared to fight him on the week he comes to visit, too bad for you! His stats are extremely high (especially considering when your monster can first fight him), and he's tough.
• In keeping with the series habit of spoofing common JRPG tropes, Mother 3 contains a parody in the form of the King Statue, a giant statue fought by interacting with it in New Pork City. It is deliberately designed to be literally impossible to fight via conventional means, sporting 1,000,000 HP (bear in mind this is a game where even the endgame bosses cap out at around 7000) alongside maxed defence and a slew of devastating attacks that will wipe out the party very quickly. The only way the player can possibly defeat is if they think to use PK Flash or a New Year's Bomb, which will wipe out almost all its health instantly, allowing it to be defeated for some decent EXP before taking on The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• The Gundam RPG MS Saga: A New Dawn has Ultima Gundam and Omega Gundam, made from a mix of parts from Mobile Fighter G Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam Wing mecha respectively. Their names are obvious homages to Final Fantasy's perennial Bonus Boss pair, Ultima Weapon and Omega Weapon.
• Naruto: Path Of The Ninja 2 has the Kumite Dojo, which has many bonus bosses.
• A lot of bosses in any of the Neptunia games will be this trope. The strongest in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 is Delphinus without the DLC while a lot of people have a hard time against Gargoyle in Hyperdimension Neptunia V.
• Neverwinter Nights 2:
  • Tholapsyx the red dragon, thanks to her size and fire attack; buffing the entire party (preferably with Energy Immunity: Fire and Stoneskin) and micromanaging spellbooks is almost mandatory, as opposed to the final bosses, whom you can just whack with sheer force if the party is well-equipped. The reward is 200,000 gold for your keep plus an insane amount of loot, including a cool weapon for paladins and clerics who bothered to take a certain quest in the keep.
  • Mask of the Betrayer has its own bonus boss, a seemingly harmless badger spirit that turns into a Gigantic Angry Badger of One-hit-kill Doom if you manage to anger it. Killing it nets one one of the only items in the game to grant permanent haste status (barring the time-consuming item crafting).
  • Also in Mask of the Betrayer, if One of Many is in your party when you meet the dead god Myrkul, they'll ask if they can eat the god's remains. Unfortunately, rather than eating souls outright like the Player Character's curse, One of Many adds consumed souls to its collective. Thus Hilarity Ensues when Myrkul overpowers One of Many and takes over.
  • In Storm of Zehir, you can encounter One of Many on the world map, who will probably be impossible to beat the fist time you encounter it (you're thankfully not forced into a fight with it). However, due to the Wide-Open Sandbox nature of the game later on, you can return and fight it once you're sufficiently leveled. Beating it will earn you the Imaskarcana, a helmet with good spell resistance, the ability to summon a devil once per day and a few other perks. If you don't want to fight it, you also have the option to feed it your companions for experience points.
• Nocturne: Rebirth has a bonus Wolfpack Boss consisting of three characters from another RPG Maker game, Cross of the World. After beating them once, they'll be strengthened to match a maxed-level party.
• Octopath Traveler has four shrines in the four corners of the world, where you can gain access to four advanced hero classes by proving your worth to the gods that guard them, along with a number of strong bosses findable by exploring caves and dungeons unrelated to the main plotlines. And in a very amusing twist, after beating all eight main scenarios then finding and fulfilling a newly unlocked chain of sidequests, you unlock the toughest challenge in the game: the True Final Boss linking all plotlines together, Galdera the Dark God. Looks like the simplest way to fix the "secret bonus boss is stronger than the final boss for no reason" problem is to make them one and the same.
• Octopath Traveler II has Galdera from the previous game return as an optional Superboss, while having a new and different true final boss called Vide that is related to the main story.
• OMORI: Perfectheart is one of the most difficult bosses in the game. She's completely optional and actually warns the player they will not have an easy time defeating her. She has an HP to One attack ("Perfectheart decided to let [you] live"), she can exploit Emotions and drain health/juice. When you get her health low, she Turns Red, heals herself and "unleashes her wrath" every turn, randomizing your party's Emotions and dealing 75% of damage to their maximum health.
• Tyrant in Opoona. He can actually be fought surprisingly early on, before the game's halfway point, and defeating him is required to raise your friendship with a few NPCs. However, taking him on so early and surviving is another matter entirely.
• Paper Mario:
  • Paper Mario 64:
    • Super Blooper will eventually appear in Toad Town Sewers when trying to get all the fast travel points unlocked. Being the third and final Blooper ambush (with only the first being mandatory), it is far stronger than either of them and can boost its attack to be even stronger.
    • Kent C. Koopa blocks a road and makes you pay to pass; beating him lets you pass for free, but he boasts very high attack and defense if this is attempted.
    • The Toad Town Dojo allows fights for bragging rights against two students and their Master. The Dojo Master has three forms that get progressively harder, with his third and final form even being stronger than the final Bowser battle.
    • The Anti Guy, found guarding a chest in a dungeon halfway through the game and with HP and attack roughly on par with Bowser's penultimate form. He can be beaten straight-up, or you can exploit his Sweet Tooth to bribe your way to the chest's contents.
    • In Chapter 8, if you flunk a quiz from one of the Bowser-faced stone doors, your punishment will be a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by three Anti Guys. Easily the most difficult fight in the game, as Mario will initially be taking in the ballpark of 25-30 damage a turn with (unlike all the above bosses) no way to cheese your way out of it.
  • Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Bonetail gives the game's final boss a run for its money (which is lampshaded by Goombella)^StatisticsThe final boss has 150 HP, 7 Attack and 1 Defense, but has Cognizant Limbs that can attack separately and should be defeated quickly. Bonetail has 200 HP, 8 Attack and 2 Defense, and fights alone. and requires going through a dungeon with 90 consecutive battles (99 floors with a "breather" every 10) to reach him. He is a bit easier than the final boss, as you'll probably be better equipped and levelled by the time you reach him, and his attacks aren't as complex to deal with — he just has enormous attack power and endurance, and getting to him is a massive two hour-long ordeal.
  • Super Paper Mario:
    • The boss of the Flipside Pit of 100 Trials is really a stronger version of the game's first boss, Fracktail, though Wracktail fights exactly like Fracktail with the only difference having stronger attack and stronger Mooks that shoot easy to dodge projectile and also deal more damage. He's not that hard, as you'd likely be better equipped with higher HP, as well as having Peach and Luigi in your party.
    • To even face the boss of the Flopside Pit of 100 Trails, Shadoo, you have to clear a dungeon filled with even stronger enemies that are all pitch black, making distinguishing subtypes near impossible without Tippi/Tiptron until it's too late. Twice. The fight against Shadoo is basically darker variants of the heroes, going from Luigi, Bowser, Peach, and Mario in order, each having 100 HP.
    • Fought close to the end of Chapter 6-4 is the 100th Sammer Guy, End Boss, the only one of them who cannot be fought until the postgame. He fights like a Big Hammer Guy, but has 99 HP, is faster, and can breathe fire.
• Even an RPG that is stripped down to its bare mechanics also has one. Parameters has the bottom rectangle (previously the second-strongest enemy in the game), which turns into a 9999 hp opponent with high defence and attack after beating the Final Boss. Thankfully, it isn't really that difficult so long as you have enough life regeneration, but it does get tedious as it regenerates health quickly and can take a ton of punishment.
• Parasite Eve had a few in the Chrysler Building. While most of the bosses are color swaps of the storyline bosses, the giant cockroach and giant bee were exclusive to the building. The original Eve is at the very top of the building, and defeating her gets you a different ending.
• Pillars of Dust: In the final chapter, the party can find a key that unlocks a secret room underneath a tomb. This contains a portal to the world in Shadows of Adam, resulting in a fight against Kellan, Asrael, Curtis, and Talon.
• Pillars of Eternity has the Master Below: a giant Green Rocks-laced dragon residing at the lowest level of the Endless Paths of Od Nua—itself a Marathon Brutal Bonus Level. Later patches and expansions added separate encounters with Concelhaut and Llengrath, two of the most powerful mages in the world. Llengrath is accompanied by two dragons, making it one of the most difficult battles in the game.
• Rakenzarn Tales has a feature known as the Ultra Boss. You need a specific party member in your line-up when fighting a specific boss under certain conditions — usually having cleared a minimum number of quests. They're a pretty clear step up, but winning gets you a stat boost, bonus stats and a new piece of equipment that grants a party member exclusive move.
• Re:Kuroi: In the Terminal, the player can use all party members to challenge EX versions of story bosses, who have higher stats or new skills to compensate for their old weaknesses.
• Resonance of Fate pits you up against Sullivan and Rebecca at the end of Neverland. Unlike many examples on this page, they are generally considered pushovers, especially compared to what you fought to get to them.
• Riviera: The Promised Land has Hades, the boss who only appear in the extra content section after you complete the game and obtained the Key to Hell from the Zombie Dragon in chapter 6. His Breakout does heavy damage, but he only attack once every 3 of your each character's turns (estimated), so if you keep healing yourself with elixer and attack him, he's a pushover. Of course, the final boss can has its HP brought down by 53% with Fanelia...
• Robopon has a couple. In the original, you can rematch the first six Legends in Zero Tower post-credits. The second game has several, including Rena's restored-to-youth mother, the younger version of Nick D., the Robopon in Delica Castle's basement, and the W-King.

S-Z

• Sacred Earth - Promise has an unnamed shadowy version of Isole in Icefall Labyrinth, who is on a similar level of difficulty as the Final Boss, Forneus.
• In the SaGa series, most of the game is optional, including many of the bosses. SaGa Frontier does have a few optional bosses who are particularly difficult, including the Earth Dragon in the Bio Research Lab, and cheating bastard Jotnar, who likes to employ his most powerful attack four consecutive times on his second turn.
• Sailor Moon: Another Story has Esmeraude in the fourth chapter. Beating said boss gets you a second Red Pupil.
• Sands of Destruction features Dark Kyrie, the protagonist's doppelganger spawned from his fear and doubt. He's entirely optional and can only be accessed by getting back inside the Temple of Light after it's been darkened (which wasn't easy the first time and isn't any easier the second), but he drops his Infinity +1 Sword, the Destruct Blade.
• Skies of Arcadia:
  • The original game has some. You don't have to fight any of the giant monsters (Obispo, the Roc, the Giant Looper, and Alania). There's also Elcian, a super Looper who appears in the Dark Rift near the end of the game, who puts up a tough fight but gives good experience and loot and can be fought multiple times, making him great for Level Grinding. And finally, 100% Completion unlocks one final battle against Air Pirate Vigoro.
  • The bounty bosses in Legends. Their difficulty is sadistic.
• Soma Union: The game lets the player save after they beat the game once, allowing them to fight the Sunset Squad, the Cooler Crusader, and the library's copy machine.
• The Spirit Engine 2 has a variant: the bonus boss, Urtat Underval, is fought roughly halfway through the game rather than at the end. Another variant is that you fight him twice; once as a human, and once as a hulking zombie.
• South Park:
  • The Stick of Truth has Al Gore. You can fight him fairly early on, but he's basically impossible until you get to Level 10 and gain Stan as a Party Member. This is because on his first turn Al Gore summons two Secret Service agents to protect him. They deal a ton of damage and have so much armor as to be functionally invincible. When the player reaches Level 10, Stan gains a new ability called "Way of the Sword" which hits 7 times and each hit cuts the target's armor rating by 5%. So, Al Gore is functionally a mid-late game boss.
  • The Fractured But Whole has Morgan Freeman, who you fight by going behind the counter at his restaurant Freeman's Tacos and hitting him 3 times. He won't fight you if your character is black out of a sense of racial solidarity (but since you can change your character's race at will by talking to PC Principal, this isn't much of an issue). Should you choose to fight him, you'll learn he has many of the same fart powers the New Kid has, as well as a massive AOE attack that will likely wipe out the party - which he opens with.
• Super Mario RPG:
  • The original game has the Final Fantasy Shout-Out Culex, a powerful magic-using entity from another dimension sealed behind a door in Monstro Town, who attacks using four elemental crystals and is harder than the game's Final Boss.
  • The 2023 remake on the Nintendo Switch adds SEVEN post-game boss fights, almost all of which can wipe you out much more easily than the Final Boss could. Fittingly, the last one of these is a rematch with Culex, who's now in 3D and much more powerful.
• The ROM Hack Super Mario RPG Armageddon adds a ton of Nintendo Hard bonus bosses, including Ozma, Penence, Yiazmat, Goddess, the Elemental Dragons, Kaiser Dragon,Mysterious Girl, Rosalina, The Shadow Queen, Magus and Schala (as a Dual Boss), Anti Guy, General Guy, The Master, and the two most powerful bosses of all: Xion and Terra.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Destiny 2:
    • The original PS2 version has Lymle Aileron, Kyle's cousin in the arena, and Magnadeus in the Bonus Dungeon.
    • The PSP version adds a few more, like Rutee, Philia, and Woodrow in the arena, and zombie Leon as one of Magnadeus's minibosses.
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • The game had at least 6 hidden bosses (Seles, Abyssion, Maxwell, three former Tales characters (Woodrow/Garr, Farah, and Meredy), and the Sword Dancer, and the Living Armor at the end of Forbidden Anamnesis), the second of which gives you weapons that makes the rest of the game ridiculously easy — as if it weren't already for anyone powerful enough to defeat him in the first place.
    • During your first encounter with the Sword Dancer, you may or may not get fucked up almost immediately. His attacks are absurdly powerful in this encounter, being able to KO the ENTIRE PARTY with a single attack. Though, if Raine unlocked one of her spells, like the photon spell, then you can defeat it rather easily. The next two encounters are only moderately hard because you'll be appropriately-leveled and you'll be able to use Unison Attacks.
    • Abyssion could give some Atlus bosses a run for their money. Because of the Devil's Arms, he can mimic every character's fighting style in rapid succession, can cast the most dangerous spells in the game with barely any delay, hits like a freight train with both magic and physical attacks, and has 180,000 HP, three times as much as the Final Boss. And he only gets harder when you reduce him to half HP. Martel help you if he goes into Over Limit... Even better, he is capable of using Genis's Indignation Judgement, and, in the PS2 version, he can also use Lloyd and Kratos/Zelos's final attacks as well. And finally, in the PS2 version? He's immune to All-Divides.
    • You fight Garr, Farah, and Meredy in the coliseum. They are absurdly hard to beat, in fact, think of having to fight Lloyd, Genis, Zelos, and Presea at the same time, while they use the very same battle strategy as you do, which is what makes them so hard. But once you get rid of Farah, then Meredy and Garr are almost a piece of cake, that is assuming you have enough healing items. The best party to fight them with are Lloyd, Zelos/Kratos, and Genis. Replacing Genis with Raine is also a good idea, but her lack of offensive spells may cause the fight to drag on. It's kinda funny hearing Lloyd say "Who the hell were those guys?" after beating them.
    • The PS2 Remake adds two new Trio Bosses to the Forbidden Anamnesis: Magnius, Pronyma, and Forcystus from before Pronyma became the leader of the Grand Cardinals and Mithos, Yuan, and Kratos from 4,000 years ago, the latter of whom demand to fight you Three-On-Three.
  • Tales of Phantasia had Pluto, who gave you his summon, and Odin, who is also a Duel Boss. Apparently, he really was that Odin.
  • Tales of Eternia had Sekundes, the summon of Time, but you didn't have to beat him to enlist his services. Maxwell and Shadow were also technically optional, but you did have to beat them. Cless gives you his bandanna and the Eternal Sword if you beat him in the Arena, and Valkyrie stands before a lot of treasure chests. Things like this make Eternia end up a very long and interesting game.
  • Tales of Vesperia:
    • The "Traitor to the Heavens" (Kratos fulfilling the role of a cameo boss). It also has a bit of an odd case with the Radiant Winged One, who, while entirely optional, if the player opts to fight him, ends up as the last boss anyway.
    • There are also Dhaos, Shizel, Barbatos (who still HATES items), and Kratos as bosses in the 200 Man Melee.
    • The PS3 Updated Re-release adds several more optional bosses, such as Clint of the Hunting Blades, the Sword Dancers which reward you with Flynn's normal, non-Fell Arm Infinity +1 Sword, and the Spiral Draco, lord of the Entelexeia and possibly the most difficult boss in the entire Tales Series.
    • There's also a colosseum fight where you use the four characters you currently have in your party against computer controlled versions of the other four you aren't using.
    • In addition to the already long list of bonus bosses in Vesperia, there's also Yeager's bodyguards, Gauche and Droite.
  • Tales of the Abyss contains Nebilim, who tests how well you are at free running and using altered artes, Reid, Mint, Nanaly, and Philia in the colliseum, the recurring Sword Dancer, as well as Arietta, Largo, Sync, Arietta in a team and Replicantisin the second playthrough exclusive Abyss Replica Lab.
  • Tales of Graces:
    • The post-game boss Solomos, as well as all the other bosses in the Zone Cage and Coliseum (including Veigue, Kohak/Amber, and Reala as the previous Tales cameo battle and Poisson. Defeating Solomos also changes the real final boss, Lambda Angelus into Lambda Theos. In addition, you can re-fight your first boss; he is no longer the Warm-Up Boss that he was before. You also can fight the incredibly large and strong Rockgagan. In the PS3 version, you only really get a trophy for defeating him — not even experience points.
    • There's also the three dragons that correspond to the 3 Giant Cryas in each country. Good luck trying to take them on before beating the final boss cause even on Normal, it's not easy.
  • Tales of Xillia has the Golden Swordsman at the end of its Bonus Dungeon. He's nothing to scoff at the first time you fight him, but he gets even stronger the next few times you fight him.
  • Tales of Xillia 2 has a massive number of these compared to its prequel, all available after beating the game. Defeating all of the Giganto Monsters will result in all of them reappearing as their much stronger EX versions. The bonus dungeon is populated by shadow versions of numerous past bosses, your party members, and Stahn and Cless. The end of EX Tag Arena pits you against powerful versions of past bosses partnered with random members of your party, plus if you defeat them quickly, you'll be rewarded with a bonus fight based on who your lead character is (Most notably, in Ludger's case, a stronger version of the final boss shows up). Lastly, the end of EX Team Arena pits you against the cameo team of Cless, Mint, Stahn, and Rutee in a battle that's chaotic enough to warrant a special ending scene should you prevail.
  • Also, Tales of Hearts bonus boss is nearly IMPOSSIBLE without use of infinite aerial combos or cheats.
• The Black Rabite from Trials of Mana looks like a black version of the cute and weak Rabite enemies from the beginning of the game, but is the exact opposite of weak. Evil in its cutest form!
• Uncommon Time has one at the end of each Bonus Dungeon: Altair at the end of Aubrey's Uncommon Time, and Arietta at the end of Arietta's.
• Undertale: Sans the Skeleton's fight is unavailable on most runs, and getting to him takes a lot of time and patience required to kill everyone in the Underground. Beating him is needed to get one of the endings, but it is the most out-of-the-way ending in the game and one you are outright discouraged from getting. If you do meet the criteria for his fight, he's easily the hardest boss in the entire game, as a Marathon Boss with attacks that do one damage per frame, said frames causing Damage Over Time, and an assortment of quick attack patterns that include Gaster Blasters, his brother's Blue Attack, and messing with your screen for one heck of a bad time.
• In Unleash the Light, Hessonite appears as the Final Boss in Rose's Room, which is a bonus game mode where under vanilla conditions, you start at Level 1 without items or money, you have to recruit your teammates one by one, you only gain new, random skills and abilities by exploring the overworld and defeating enemies, and being completely wiped out forces you to start over from scratch. She boasts high stats like Giant Mooks, has a Status Buffing move that gives her a random buff, and has three powerful attacks, two of which are unblockable. Said unavoidable attacks can stun one party member or damage the entire team. She's still the Final Boss even if you have Hessonite on your team because Rose's Room will make a simulated copy of her instead.
• Gabriel Celesta and the Iseria/Isis/Ethereal Queen in Valkyrie Profile, the Star Ocean series, Radiata Stories, and Infinite Undiscovery. Also, Freya from Valkyrie Profile is the strongest boss in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time where she makes a cameo appearance along with Lenneth.
• Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening has three extremely tough fights hidden in Makyo and the connected Neo Vinclum:
  • The Progress Nautilus, the final challenge that awaits you at the bottom of Makyo. Right off the bat, the player will notice that he attacks twice per turn. Initially, he is not too powerful despite this, but if you let the fight go on for too long, he will easily crush you as he powers up his stats and changes forms, and will slowly get more extra attacks per turn.
  • There are two encounters in Neo Vinclum that are even more powerful than the above foe:
    • Gonna Kill You, Undefeated Flerovium Organometal, and Barrier Bauble all synergize with insane Attack, Magic Attack, and barriers respectively. The former two deal more damage than anything else in the game.
    • Cephtil is a single opponent, but her progressively stronger discordant wailings (like "AaaaAaaaAaaaAaaaAaaaAaaa") can instantly kill multiple party members at once, dealing beyond 1000 damage. Notably, the creator admits that she was not supposed to be beatable, although it is possible to do so- it just takes a lot of effort.
• Ragu o Ragula in all of the Wild ARMs games for PlayStation, PS2, and PSP. Angolmois also appears in some of them. In fact, the Wild ARMs games have many bonus bosses, often found sealed in crystals found throughout the game. Ragu o Ragula is neatly incorporated into all of these titles as the sleeping demon who is fated to destroy Filgaia, centuries after the conflict-of-the-day is finished off. Big extra credit for overachieving heroes. The other bonus bosses can range from Call-Back characters, characters who are no longer a part of the main plot and have been more-or-less forgotten by the main cast, and nudie mags
• A Witch's Tale has a bonus fight with friendly vampire Loue, who suddenly turns not-so-friendly for the fight. If you win, you get a game-breaking doll.
• The World Ends with You:
  • Panthera Cantus is the toughest boss in the entire game. It has the highest attack power of all the Noise and two separate bodies; a tiger on top and a lion on the bottom. The fight itself can be quite hectic and requires the player to pay absolute attention to what is going on in both screens.
  • In addition, there are four "Boss Noise" on various days (Progfox, Grindcore Minks, Wooly AOR, and Goth Metal Drake), blue Noise symbols that lead to fights against much stronger Noise than average. For 100% Completion, you have to beat them all on Hard. Feel free to whimper.
  • Additional Boss Noise symbols for every non-Bonus Boss except for the Final Boss appear on various days after beating the game. This is more of a convenience for those going for 100% Completion, since you don't have to go through the entire chapter to fight the boss again, and can retry the fight if you didn't get what you were looking for, with the exception of the Final Boss, which is annoying since that day has three bosses beforehand. And, yes, as you may have feared by reading below, Reaper Beat and Taboo Minimimoto show up as Blue Noise as well. And, yes, you have to beat them on at least Hard in order to get all of the Secret Reports. And, yes, you still need to beat Minamimoto, the harder one, on Ultimate to complete the Infinity + One Pin Deck.
  • Unfortunately, some of these bosses were timed fights, so on your first time through, you won if you managed to survive for 30 seconds. No such escape clause in the post-game, and many of these bosses are still intimidating, even having killed the final boss.
• NEO: The World Ends with You continues the tradition.
  • When you replay days after purchasing a certain Social Network ability, each day will have a Boss Noise symbol, generally the boss of that day. Defeating the boss will unlock one of the Secret Reports.
  • Another Day's main storyline has the Wicked Twisters fight "alpha" versions of four of the Shinjuku Reapers, three of whom are also part of the Ruinbringers. The "alpha" bosses are stronger than their storyline counterparts, are usually fought in different arenas and are different in other ways(for example, Cervus Cantus has pufferfish flunkies rather than birds, and his second phase is missing).
  • Another Day also has a fight against Felidae Cantus, the stronger Noise form of an alternative Minamimoto. The game warns you that you will be going up against a very powerful Noise, and it's not exaggerating.
  • Also from Another Day is by far the hardest Dive sequence- Raimu "Rhyme" Bito. The dive is extremely long, with no less than ten battles (most dives have three to five), and concludes with a T-Rex Noise and two bear Noise that do increased damage.
• The World Is Your Weapon: Defeating the Demon Lord is not necessary to get the first ending, but beating him is necessary for the third and fourth endings. He and the Final Boss can also be fought in rematches so that the player can capture them. In version 2.40+, Weaco will have to fight a third version of the Demon Lord to get the secret ending.
• All three episodes of Xenosaga have some:
  • Episode 1 has four: two mechas, Din Gareth and Jin Gareth, the sharpshooter Great Joe, and Mintia, an evil version of MOMO.
  • Episode 2 has a metric-buttload of optional bosses encountered in the game's many sidequests.
  • Episode 3 has two mechas: Omega Universitas AKA Id Weltall and Erde Kaiser Sigma. The latter is the only mecha in the game who's fought without the use of E.S.s.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 1:
  • Five bonus bosses that are above the player's maximum possible level of 99 start to wander around the world after a certain point in the story: Final Marcus at 100, Ancient Daedala at 105, Despotic Arsene at 108, Blizzard Belgazas at 114, and Avalanche Abaasy at 120. Defeating them requires careful management of stat-boosting gems and the team's tactics in general.
  • One long sidequest chain with its own story that covers almost half of the game leads to a bonus boss. Though this one is not overleved, it stands out because the quests that lead to it can be lost forever, the battle is under a tune only reserved for a few select Hopeless Boss Fights, and the boss is one of the NPCs involved in the sidequest chain: Bana, the Nopon Kingpin.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X, much like its predecessor, has numerous tyrants that breach the level cap of 60.
  • The most powerful Tyrant is the level 99 monster Telethia, the Endbringer. It's first shown in a cutscene near the end of Chapter 6, and is later challenged in a Zero-Effort Boss fight in an Affinity mission ("The Nopon Heir"). The real battle comes during the normal mission "A Fateful Choice".
  • There's also Neilnail Albus and Neilnail Furvus, a pair of Skells fought in the 'Twin Dolls of Mystery' Time Attack mission. They were originally supposed to be a story boss, but that plot thread was scrapped.
  • The Global Nemeses, Telethia Plume and Yggralith Zero, put an interesting spin on this. They appear on the online mission list when a certain amount of multiplayer tasks have been completed, but instead of beating them, you're supposed to just deal as much damage as possible to them within 8 minutes (or until you die three times). This takes away from an absolutely massive healthpool shared across every player meaning thousands of players need to work together over the course of about a real time week to actually kill either of them.
  • Completing the game adds five powerful Tyrants to the world: Dadaan, the Strongest Prone, who summons his squad and will scrap your Skell with his bazooka if you try to use one against him; Lugalbanda, the Wanderer-King, which can debilitate you with Eye Beams and summon ovis to eat for healing; Gradivus, the Headless Emperor, a Barrier Change Boss millesaur with a permanently destroyed neck and 100 million HP; Leva'el, the Terminus, a Xern that summons squads of enemy Skells and Satellis units and has a One-Hit Kill Kill Sat attack; and Nardacyon, the Shadowless, a souped-up version of the Chapter 7 boss and a Lightning Bruiser extraordinaire that is summoned if you try to fight its pilot Nahum, the Red Hare while you're in a Skell. Some of these Tyrants drop unique weapons or special augments that add reflect effects to certain auras and Overdrives, and most of them drop unique holofigures.
  • Also found in the postgame are several non-Tyrant mission bosses at or over level 60, such as Blood Despair, the Gleaming Sphinxes, Ozuchi Caladar, and Nopopon Incarnate.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 keeps up the tradition with eight bonus bosses over level 99, all but two of which appear only during the final chapter: Gladiator Orion at 100, Reeking Douglas at 104, Pernicious Benf at 109, Cloud Sea King Ken at 110, Mk. VII Arek at 114, Artifice Ophion at 117, Chickenheart Dagmara at 120, and Tyrannotitan Kurodil at level 130.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country features four so-called Golden Monsters stronger than the final boss: Sentinel Carpathia at level 65, Herculean Gibson at 75, Mesmer Tlaloc at 85, and Hurricane Anise at 100. In order to fight them you must first find 16 slate pieces scattered across Torna so you can reach the Nopon Halfsage who will sell you their locations for rather a lot of money.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the tradition continues with five bonus bosses, four of them being above level 99, with Kilocorn Grandeps at 95, Perilwing Ryuho at 100, Dreadwyrm Nizoont at 105, Levialord Empireo at 110, and last but not least, Seraphic Ceratinia at 120 (its level can be increased up into 200, which is befitting for a creature with the title Aionios' Strongest).
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed has six more. Gotthard, the Ethereal at level 60, Bioluminescent Bob at 70, Thunderfish Duna-Roa at 80, Stronghammer Dorga and Peacebringer Divalo together form The Slow 'n' Steadies at 90, and Fogdweller Abaasy at 100.
• The Yo-kai Watch series has this trope almost religiously in both the main and spin-off games, and a few of these bosses are noticeably harder than even the Big Bads of said games.
  • The first game features the Infinite Inferno, which contains Palette Swaps of several main story bosses, including Mc Kraken's second form — but oddly, excluding Tarantutor — which lore-wise were imprisoned there for various reasons. The main attraction, however, is Wobblewok, which causes a lot of Yo-kai energy to leak to the human world due to the seal containing him being set loose. Also, Chirpster and Duwheel are this for examples outside of the Inferno.
  • Yo-kai Watch 2 brings back the Infinite Inferno with the same bosses, but also adds the Divine Paradise, which has palette swaps of several bosses of the main story of said game — excluding Gutsy Bones and Eyeclone, whose recolors appear elsewhere, and Meganyan, with no recolors at all — and has Kat Kraydel as an unique boss, who is the cause the summer is seemingly extending infinitely -as Hovernyan states at the beginning of the post-game.- The second bonus dungeon is the Mystery Way, which features palette swaps of Gutsy Bones, Eyeclone, and Hans Full, though the three versions of the game must be connected in order to fight all four of them. In addition to bringing back Chirpster and Duwheel as well, the aforementioned Hans Full, Retinado (another palette swap as part of the Gates of Whimsy sidequest) and Mallice (at the end of the Infinite Tunnel) appear as additional bosses. The 2.0 update and the third version add Rubeus J, Hardy Hound and Hinozall in the Psychic Blasters mode, and Bronzlow, Teastroyer, Infinipea, Headsteam, and Kabuking in additional sidequests and locations.
  • Yo-kai Watch 3 drops both the Infinite Inferno and the Divine Paradise as well as the Mystery Way, but adds the Daruma tower, where the bosses, which are fought in the four penultimate floors are Daruma-themed palette swaps of Orcanos, Chipster, Duwheel and Slakerjack, and in the last floor, Zenlightener appears as an unique boss. These five battles are notably tough for you're not allowed to use items (though the Yo-kai Blaster is still allowed). Also appearing are Mass Mutterer, Hinozall (both for the first time outside of Blasters), Hollow Guard in Zombie Night, Skulk in the Infinite Rice Fields, and Tornyedo (which is a palette swap and the father of another palette swap, Retinado) in a sidequest. The subsequent updates bring the Blasters T mode and several old Bosses, as well as adding some new ones as a result, such as The Goldfather, a new form of the Big Bad of the main storyline being the closest example to overlap with the Big Bad of Blasters T mode, as well as renditioning the third movie with Narwail and his second form Whaleman.
  • Yo-kai Watch 4 does not have bosses like this in the base version, but adds Raidenryu as the most powerful opponent in the Yo-kai Sumo mode in the 1.3.0 update, who truly lives as his title as the Yokozuna of the Yo-kai World, since his Boss Battle still follows the Yo-kai Sumo rules and can be a pain to ring-out^note as with real-life sumo, most fights in Yo-kai Sumo are won this way even with a team of three Yo-kai and a human player. Sproink and Hoggles return as part of the Blasters Mode, and Yami Kaira appears as part of a sidequest as of the PuraPura update.
  • Yo-kai Watch Blasters has, successively, a haywire Robonyan 28 in the first half of the postgame, and Kabuking, Kat Kraydel, Hinozall, and Red Paws and Swirlious Omai (these two only being fought by sticking a total of 100 friend insignias one-per-day in the YBA hall to the opposite statue in one version and playing with a friend with the other version). The Moon Rabbit Crew update adds several other bosses, with some of them being examples which are oddly close to being story Bosses: Captain Thunder, Robonyan 3000, Zazel/Zazelmare and his two retainers, also rendtioning the climax of the second movie, and Golden Claws, Swirlious Gold, Hinozall Awoken, Shogun King, which awoke due to the accumulated grudges from the Bosses which the Blasters defeated, and Pink Emperor.
  • Yo-kai Watch Blasters 2 has Sasurai Billy, which was the pirate captain mentioned in the backstory narrations in some chapters, and Majin Banbarayar, which also doubles as the endgame Boss for the Blasters' original objetive, as he grants a huge gold piece whose size depends of how the battle went, and is needed for the heroes to pay the huge debt Jibanyan had them contract and avoid the Blasters house being evicted. Yoderusen and Zircondor are other examples.
• In the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Fan Game Your Bizarre Adventure, there are several bosses in the main game that do not need to be fought in order to clear the storyline. Several of them simply stand in the main map and can be challenged at any time (though doing so until the player has leveled up enough is not advised).
  • DEO waits in the mountains, using The World against players who try to beat him and complete Dopey's^note a renamed Doppio side quest in the process.
  • Joe^note a young Jotaro Kujo from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stardust Crusaders can be found outside the Naples train station. Fighting him is necessary to finish a side quest from DEO (who stands nearby).
  • Joe Kujoe^note an older Jotaro Kujo from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean stands in the ocean near the Colosseum in the main map. He puts up a particularly strong fight, boasting an evolved form of his original Stand and having a hefty amount of HP, but he sometimes drops an item necessary to get one of the game's most powerful Stands.
  • Heaven Ascension DEO is the climax of Joe's own side quest, only achievable after gathering every part of the Saint's Corpse. Defeating the boss and his extraordinarily powerful Stand will rarely reward you with an item crucial to upgrading one of two Stands available to the player – either turning The Universe into The Universe Over Heaven (a copy of the boss's Stand) or G-Moon into The Way to Heaven (along with Joe's Disc).
• Another JJBA fan game, The 7th Stand User, has quite a few of these, many of them only available on repeat playthroughs or depending on which ending you get.
  • Kira Yoshikage is available to fight by writing his name in the Bizarre Memo item. If you're not near the end of the game or on a New Game Plus, he'll probably kill you very quickly.
  • Diavolo also appears on repeat playthroughs, and if you choose to fight him he has a chance of running away so you don't get the money and EXP for beating him.
  • In the secret Sanctuary room, bonus bosses include:
    • Shadow Dio, a slightly stronger version of the Dio you fight in most of the main routes of the game.
    • Wham, whom you can fight if you have Joseph in your party. He's tougher than most forms of Dio but more vulnerable to ripple attacks.
    • Cars, who is, of course, stronger than Wham.
    • Ultimate Cars, who appears on repeat playthroughs. Much tougher than his earlier form and regenerates 999 HP every turn.
    • The Creator, a cameo from Final Fantasy Legend. In repeat playthroughs, he can become immune to time stop. However, you can one-shot him by using Cars' Right Arm, which you get from defeating said Pillar Man.
  • If you beat the Creator, you get access to the Debug Room, which contains two even stronger bosses:
    • Hirohiko Araki, who has 99,999 HP, an array of overpowered moves, and summons various villains (Part 1 Dio, Cars, Kira Yoshikage, and Diavolo) as the fight goes on.
    • True Clayman, the strongest boss in the game. She has as many HP as Hirohiko Araki but she also regains 2000 HP every round, can inflict status effects on your party even if you are immune to them, and has moves that can one-shot your entire party. Beating her gives you the Ultimate Debugger.
  • There's also the version of Stroheim you can fight in the Developers' Room to get the UV Amplifier. He has lots of health and will periodically heal himself and cure himself of status effects, but is overall weaker than Ultimate Cars. You have to fight him alone, though, which makes him fairly challenging.
• Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim has Majunun, a blowfish-like creature that guards the Eldian Orb and will kill you in one hit the first time you can access it. Just finding it is a Guide Dang It!, and to have a chance of winning at all, you need to nearly max out your EXP, which takes many hours, as all the enemies only give 1 EXP on the highest few levels.
• The obscure 2000 RPG Wizards and Warriors (not to be confused with the better-known game of the same name) has an odd example in Oakenmir, who, unlike almost all the other friendly NPCs, is attackable. While he can be killed, he's so hard he makes the Final Boss seem like a joke by comparison. Killing him yields no loot, but will give enough xp for everyone in the group to go up about ten levels.

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