"This was meant to be... Forgive me..."
— Reinhardt, before unleashing a magical No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on the unfortunate target.
Just when you're having fun managing an army... these guys show up to dry up all the fun.
Note: Final Bosses and Wake Up Call Bosses are not to be added unless they're overly difficult by their standards. Superbosses are not allowed; they're optional and have no standards for difficulty.
- Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
- In the original Fire Emblem, you have Camus, the boss of Chapter 20. He wields the Gradivus lance (essentially, an empowered Javelin with more might and 100% accuracy), and he is the first boss where Marth can't trivialize the boss fight by himself. Couple in his well rounded stats along with the deadly spear, and you have the hardest boss fight in the original game.
- The DS version of Shadow Dragon is known to have Hard Levels, Easy Bosses, with the vast majority dying in a single round to a forged effective weapon... which is why it's rather surprising that Gomer, the second boss, is generally considered to be one of the hardest bosses in the series. He's fought when you're still well within Early Game Hell, with only a small amount of XP to work with and no access to reclassing or forging. As a Pirate, there is no weapon capable of hitting him effectively. Unlike the first boss, Gazzak, he has a handaxe, so you can't outrange him. But what puts him here is what his stats become on higher difficulties—capping out on Merciless at around 36 HP, 16 Strength, and 12 Speed, with his standard 5 Defense boosted to 7 by his gate and the benefits of A-rank axes. With that kind of statline, he doubles the vast majority of base-level units (most of the time, this includes Jagen!), two-shots everything at minimum, is pretty dodgy and accurate against non-swordsmen, and takes about four or five hits to die before accounting for his gate's healing. Ogma is fast, accurate, and has weapon triangle, making him the only one with a real chance, but he barely survives one hit. Wrys, your only healer, who has only one heal staff and doesn't heal for much, can't heal Ogma without placing himself in Gomer's range. The only other source of healing are one vulnerary and the nearby forts. It says quite a lot about Gomer that the most oft-recommended strategy for reliably beating him is to simply weather his hits with fort healing until his weapon breaks.
- Hyman, the boss fought in Chapter 3, is nigh-on identical to Gomer, except that he's a Fighter, he's got slightly more HP... and he's hardcoded to have 14 Speed on all difficulties. There are four characters at that point in the game that can avoid being doubled by him at base—Caeda, Julian, Navarre, and Ogma again—and the former two are really frail. One might expect Navarre to be the perfect assassin for his old boss... except Navarre takes speed loss from steel swords and his Killing Edge, which drags him down to getting doubled as well, forcing him to wield iron swords and deal almost no damage. On any difficulty above Normal, he's a pickle, and on Merciless, Ogma, once again, becomes the only character who can face him. The sole thing keeping Hyman from being even worse than Gomer is that you now have a Killing Edge and a Devil Axe to work with, and a crit from Ogma with the former and a hit from Barst with the latter will bring him down in one turn, which is plenty feasible if you're willing to use the nearby savepoint for Save Scumming. If you're not, prepare to endure many turns of fort healing and twenty handaxe hits to Ogma and Navarre's faces.
- Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem
- Rumel the boss of chapter 2 of the SNES version. To begin with, he's a dracoknight with high stats, especially defense in the second map, but he also has a Ridersbane when your army is composed of primarily cavalry. Finally unlike every other boss, Rumel moves when a unit enters his range and a major gimmick of the map is chasing a thief with a valuable, meaning the unit trying to catch the thief will likely enter Rumel's range. The DS version even nerfed Rumel by removing his ridersbane and making him a Stationary Boss on easy and normal. Even with these nerf, Rumel is still no slouch.
- Katarina in Prologue 8 of the DS Version. She uses Elfire in a game where most anyone who isn't a mage has little to no Resistance. As a result, her attacks can 2-shot all but maybe 2 people on your team. And since it isn't a Seize map, you'll be forced to bait her to your position and fight on her terms for the first round. Squishy Wizard though she is, it's a difficult fight if you aren't expecting it and it can be hard to get up to her without someone dying, anyway.
- Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
- Ishtar, not merely content with being That One Boss, insists on being a Recurring Boss as well! Not only are her stats absurdly high in each appearance, but she always wields the Mjolnir tome, which has an insane 30 might, +20 skill, and +10 speed. Combined with her maxed out magic and speed stats, Ishtar is able to 1-shot most of your characters with perfect accuracy at 1-2 range and her Adept skill gives her another 50% chance to Mjolnir them again if they survived (and only a high level Seliph or Ares with their Mage Killer Holy weapons stand any real chance of taking one than one hit from her). Unlike other bosses sporting legendary weapons, Ishtar has free range of movement every time she appears. Her first appearance is in chapter 8, before most of your units are even promoted; good luck landing a critical hit with a holy weapon (preferably Forseti, which might not be around then)), or you'll be losing some characters. note For her second appearance in chapter 10, she's backed up by Julius (who's nearly impossible to kill at this stage of the game), and she won't leave until she is defeated or one of your units is dead (though it is possible to go around and kill the actual boss and seize the castle, which will also cause them to go away). She returns one last time on the final chapter, flanked by three other difficult bosses and the strongest generic units you will ever see. Hope you got Ced to 28+ Magic and gave him the Magic bracelet so he can use the Silence or Sleep staff on her, because the skill boost from Mjolnir and her leadership bonuses give her a real chance to kill even the Forseti user in one round if Adept activates!
- The last boss in Chapter 10 is arguably even worse. They have an absolutely ludicrous attack power of 70, meaning that they will one-shot a lot of your units. Their holy weapon grants them ridiculous defense boosts (as in +10 defense and resistance, when both were capped to begin with.) Making this even worse is the fact that they're a level 30 unit with Pavise, which equates to a 30% chance to No-Sell ANYTHING you throw at them. You'll need holy weapons if you want to give them anything worse than a scratch. Oh, they also has perfect leadership bonuses and guard a castle, which makes their evasion skyrocket as well. To add insult to injury, they also have the Nihil skill, which cancels out any chance of a critical hit on your side. If you don't have units with legendary weapons, high resistance, enough strength to actually dent the boss, and a shitload of healers... godspeed, soldier.
- Arion. He's packing an Infinity Plus One Lance that is guaranteed to make any player burst into tears. If the Elite Mooks with Sleep Swords, Slim Lances, and hyper-accuracy due to his 5-star leadership aura doesn't make you rage, the boss himself will. Nihil and good defenses makes him resistant, if not immune, to most tried-and-true killing strategies (including using bows, as it cancels his flying weakness), and the sadistic combination of Follow-Up, Adept, and insane speed means he'll either double your units normally, or double consecutively before you can counter. The only unit that can feasibly beat him without being ludicrously gibbed is your legendary-wielding sage. Oh, and if you're unfortunate enough to reduce his HP below 10 without killing him? He trips his Miracle skill, and for one turn, he'll dodge everything, and during his phase he'll fly and stab an unfortunate unit in the face. GLARGH. As one seeming final insult, he comes back in the endgame with everything save Miracle, but this time Altena can talk him into becoming a partner unit. Mwahahahaha!
- In the final chapter, the three hardest bosses, surprisingly, aren't any of the castle bosses, the holy weapon-users, or even the Final Boss: instead, its Maybell, Meng, and Bleg, a trio of Falcon Knights who show up alongside Ishtar. At first, you'd think they're just Elite Mooks, but then you check their stats and realize just how loaded they are: the three of them all have high stats all-around, including capped Speed, Luck, Defense, and Resistance, four skills (Critical, Follow-Up, Adept, Nihil), and an Earth Sword and a Leg Ring. They're incredibly dodgy and accurate, which is furthered by Meng's four Leadership stars giving 20% hit and avoid, and their multitude of offensive skills let them deal explosive amounts of damage. Being fliers, they can cover ground fast and retreat after attacking, which synergizes perfectly with their Leg Ring-boosted 11 Movement to let them prey on squishier units. The Earth Sword gives them 1-2 range with either physical or magic damage and Life Drain, and is light enough to leave them still fast, and their Nihil skill means that your own skills don't work against them and they aren't weak to bows. While there are characters that can duel them, their mobility means that they're very able to choose their own targets, their spawn position means they're very likely to hit your back line first, and given that there's three of them, even your strongest and scariest units are going to get worn down quickly. Oh, and they can Triangle Attack, though they almost never do. Getting the strongest 1-2 range-user you have and planting them on Dozel Castle while everyone else is a safe distance away is probably your best bet.
- Fire Emblem: Thracia 776
- Any boss becomes That One whenever Saias is on the field. He has a whopping 10 Leadership Stars, giving +30 Accuracy and Avoid to every enemy on the map. He himself can also pelt you with Status Effects like Sleep and Berserk from anywhere on the map, on top of making it harder to hit and avoid everything. Fortunately, he never stays for the entire duration of a chapter, and only appears in a few chapters. It's also possible to scare him off by using Warp to send someone past a certain map threshhold that triggers an event to make him leave.
- Gomes, the boss of chapter 8X. Unlike Batta the Beast, Gomes the invincible actually has stats to back up his title. In a game where the stat cap for everything but HP is 20, Gomes has 18 strength, 14 skill, 14 speed, 11 luck and 12 defense. As a Warrior, Gomes also lacks any weaknesses to weaponry. Not only that, but unlike all prior bosses, Gomes sits on a throne giving him +10 defense and +30 avoid. This makes Gomes unable to be doubled, able to tank all physical punishment and hard to hit. Good luck defeating Gomes without the mage, Asvel and Grafcalbiur.
- Reinhardt. Not only does he appear in a chapter with Saias and his absurd Leadership boost (though he leaves eventually), he's got his own Leadership stars, he's on a horse, carries two different weapons that attack twice consecutively, and also has Great Shield so he has a 20% chance to make your attack a No-Sell. Furthermore, he also has Vantage, so he always attacks first even if you initiate combat regardless (which in Thracia 776 allows the user to always attack first). He also has a whopping five movement stars so he's got a rather high chance to move and attack twice in one turn.
- He is so outrageously cheap that using staves, which would normally be frowned upon as a Game-Breaker in this installment, are practically necessary to win this battle. A village in the this chapter gives you a Warp staff, which can be taken as unsubtle nod from the developers that you're better off not fighting him and taking a shortcut to beat the chapter. Players can also cast Berserk on him and use his fighting prowess against the enemy army, then cast Sleep to incapacitate him and even make him vulnerable to capture. Yet another built-in way to trivialize him comes in the form of talking to him with Olwen, which provides her with the Blessed Sword, a weapon practically designed to defeat him quickly (massive boost to magic makes her largely immune to his Dire Thunder, and its enormous Might and natural Brave effect mean that she can usually one-round him without issue), but this still likely requires a Warp use and Olwen to be not only on your team but well-levelled.
- The Dark Warlords are mostly just annoying, but Bovis and Canis are genuinely very difficult. Bovis is functionally identical to Galzus, meaning he's got high stats and strong weapons, in addition to Astra and Luna. Canis has the same skills as Sara and comes with a Berserk Staff (and statuses in this game are 100% accurate) and Resire, making it difficult to ensure that she actually takes any damage. Canis also has Wrath, meaning that whenever you attack her she responds with a life-draining critical hit. Making matters even worse is that in Thracia, if you deal overkill damage when using Nosferatu, you heal the amount of damage you would have dealt, meaning you can heal more than your opponent lost in HP. Combine this with crits on your units and you'll quickly realize that simply throwing bodies at her won't work.
- Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade
- Henning, the boss of chapter 8x, is an extremely blatant Difficulty Spike in an otherwise straightforward map. He has stats that aren't out of place for bosses five chapters ahead of him, and is well-equipped: a Hand Axe to strike at range and a Steel Blade to hit hard in melee. You can't even exploit his pitiful resistance because he will double or One-Hit Kill your magic users. As a Hero, he's pretty dodgy, and the throne bonus raises his Avoid even further, reducing hit rates to the 40s and 50s. There's only one character who can generally take him on: Rutger, who doubles with somewhat acceptable accuracy and has a pretty hefty crit rate on him when promoted, and even he isn't completely foolproof.
- Gel, the Swordmaster boss of Chapter 19 (Sacae route). Being a Swordmaster boss in a game with generally lower hit rates is a scary prospect, but he's also very accurate, and more importantly, very fast. As in, on Hard Mode, he has 27 Speed when the cap is 30; he cannot be doubled, and he has 89 Avoid with his Luck and throne. Even the strongest lance units in the game are struggling to go above 40% Hit, and Rutger, the most accurate unit in the game, barely breaks 50 without supports when capped. You might scoff at his relatively low attack power, but then you realize that, as a Swordmaster, he has a sizeable crit rate—which, when combined with him doubling most units, is a very real concern. Melady is pretty much the only unit in the game with a chance of surviving two crits from him at that point. The only saving grace to the battle is his Light Brand, as while it does boast a ranged attack, it's a Fixed Damage Attack and can't crit, meaning strong bow-users and sages can outlast him with enough healing support.
- Murdock. He has the maximum strength a General can have, maximum Con, effectively 28 defense from being on a Throne, and a Tomahawk to punish ranged and melee attackers. His only flaw is his speed, although that's a given for being a General. He's also over the HP cap your units can attain. Exploiting the weapon triangle is strongly advised.
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
- Maxime, the mid-boss in the already horrifying "Battle Before Dawn". In the normal modes, he starts near Jaffar who will almost certainly slaughter him before you even get to fight him yourself. But in Hector's hard mode, not only does he start out of Jaffar's range, and in a perfect spot to ambush you with the Fog of War, but he's much, MUCH stronger than intended due to a developer oversight which accidentally gave him 20 extra levels worth of stats. It's pretty absurd for someone who's not the main chapter boss (that being Ursula) and doesn't even have dialogue. The fact that he's in the way of the path to Jaffar makes it even worse, as it's important to reach Jaffar as soon as possible before bad luck gets him killed (he's protecting an NPC who causes a game over if they die).
- Ursula in the same chapter poses many problems as well, and preys on unexpecting players to a downright cruel degree - like Maxime, she starts in a different place depending on the difficulty. She's hidden in the darkness with a 10-range Bolting tome, which can not only catch you off guard, but the NPC Nino as well, who it's beneficial to keep alive but has a chance to run straight into Ursula's range and die with absolute certainty. And if you haven't killed Ursula by the time the turn limit is almost up, she'll suddenly start moving as well... which can easily put her in range to snipe the mission-critical Zephiel.
- Sonia is incredibly obnoxious. She can use Bolting to snipe your units from a distance, and her Magic stat is high enough that she can easily two shot most of your units. To make matters worse, she's flanked by two Wyvern Riders. This wouldn't be so bad if she were a Squishy Wizard, but Sonia can take a surprising amount of punishment, and if her counter-attack doesn't kill you, her Wyverns probably will. The only mercy is that you can skip her chapter entirely.
- Even by the standards of a final boss, the Fire Dragon is absurdly overpowered. With a whopping 40 defense AND resistance, most of your units won't be able to so much as scratch the thing. Its flame breath is a Fixed Damage Attack that ignores defense and has extremely high accuracy, so any unit that doesn't have high HP is immediately out. The fight swings wildly between no challenge at all and flat-out impossible, depending on whether you have at least one unit capable of dealing damage, surviving the counter hit, and healing back up. It's especially bad on Hector's hard mode, which gives randomized stat boosts to enemies - this may buff the dragon's attack to 40 damage, enough to one-shot Athos, the unit who was meant to give struggling players a chance in this fight. The only other units who can consistently damage the dragon are the Lords, but they can easily not have enough HP either, or be too slow because the superweapons they need to use weigh them down immensely, which causes the dragon to double attack them, a guaranteed death. Any other character being able to do damage comes down to either pure luck or tons of advance preparation.
- Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
- Carlyle from Chapter 14 of Eirika's route. He's a Swordmaster sitting on a throne, which means that he can easily dodge nearly anything you throw at him with his high speed, and he has a very nasty critical rate besides. He's also equipped with a Wind Sword, which does effective damage to flying units, can attack at range, and uses his (not inconsiderable) strength to hit your resistance (which, for physical units, is low). Your best hope is to chip away at him with a high-resistance unit, and since he's sitting on a throne that regenerates his health every turn, this can take a long time.
- Beran from Chapter 10 of Ephraim's route. He can cover all three ranges with his weapons, and his stats are pretty good for a boss for this point of the game. With his Killer Bow, he has a good critical rate, especially because he's quite fast and can easily double most of your team. Oh, and he has a Lancereaver, when most of your characters are using lances. At least you don't actually have to fight him.
- Vigarde from Chapter 14 of Ephraim's route. Due to the fact he sits on a throne he has annoyingly high avoid for his class (General) on top of a ton of bulk. This means that on top of the difficulty of just hitting them (especially as amongst the best weapons to use on him, anti-armor weapons, also have terrible accuracy against him), being able to do damage to him is also a real issue. His only weapon is a Spear but that has 1-2 range, he sports big damage and surprising accuracy with it, and it has a critical hit rate so he has a small but critical chance to outright One-Hit Kill any character that doesn't have exceptional bulk or a high Luck stat. He also has a 13% chance to proc Great Shield, which makes him not take damage at all. Though he is easier than Carlyle, he comes at the very end of a map that is way harder than Carlyle's map and he's just one more thing in it that can go wrong.
- Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
- The fight with the Black Knight is a full-on Luck-Based Mission. He's so insanely powerful that even if Ike has maxed Strength, Skill, Speed, and Defense, he's still getting hit for 9 damage and killing Ike in four hits. Backing him up is his Renewal skill, meaning he gets back a bit of health every turn, and Luna, which means he can randomly cut Ike's Defense in half and get a massive jump in damage. Leveling up Mist, the only healer you'll have access to in the fight, helps, but only so much. The only abilities that make the fight any easier are Aether or a crit from Wrath, and both of those are also random—Aether has a 27% chance at best of activating, Wrath has a chance around 50% but requires Ike to be at half health, putting him in danger of dying to Luna. Oh, and you have five turns to win. (Fortunately, you're not forced to win to proceed, though you recruit a crappier unit if you don't win.)
- Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
- Dheginsea proves very statistically imposing, with 100 HP, a skill that combines Nihil with passive self-healing, all but Luck and Speed capped, and a base attack of 75. In plain terms, he is a massive tank who will usually kill those he attacks in 2 hits. Just to even reach him, you must fight through a map full of Demonic Spiders (Red and White Dragons) who themselves are capable of taking large chunks of health off at a time, and then hold them at bay while you fight the boss. To wear you down further, he periodically uses a wide-ranging area-of-effect attack that hits the Defense stat, and the damage increases the closer an ally is to him. To cap all this off, attacking him without Nihil or Parity equipped means you risk facing his mastery skill (Ire) which is, well, a death sentence. That in itself, though, is his weakness: by only attacking him with Nihil-users (and Marksmen who can snipe from 3 spaces back without retaliation) and staying healed, actually beating him boils down to doing the math and staying out of a position where you can get overwhelmed from the damage taken. He also will not attack Ena and Kurthnaga at all, even if they attack him, though typically they struggle to do any meaningful damage to him.
- The Final Boss, Ashera is a doozy. Unlike any other Fire Emblem final boss, you have to destroy eight barriers surrounding her. Each barrier has 90 HP, high evade, can only be damaged by certain weapons, and will send half of any damage she takes back to you unless you use the Nihil skill (there are only four of these) or the Parity skill (there are only two of these, and they have the side effect of neutralizing your support bonuses). In addition, she recovers 40 HP each turn (a third of her HP), and the constant reinforcements will heal her even further. Meanwhile, the boss herelf cycles between an area attack that targets Defense, a 1-3 square range single attack that targets Res, another area attack that targets Res, another single attack that targets Def, and yet another area attack that silences everyone. All three area attacks hit everyone and can kill most weakened units very easily. The boss has 35 Def, so only the strongest physical units can deal decent damage, and to make matters worse, 50 Res, meaning your mages are dealing single-digit damage. To twist the knife further, you have to defeat her in nine turns, and if you don't, she inflicts Stun on everyone, leaving your party powerless for several turns and able to be picked off by their mooks. Finally, if the boss isn't defeated by a certain overpowered mercenary leader, she will only get back up, recovering all 120 of her HP. The bright spot to all of this is that for the most part, none of these enemies are likely to get critical hits.
- Fire Emblem Fates (Conquest path)
- Haitaka, a Hoshidan Spear Fighter. He serves as the boss of Chapter 9, and is considered a Wake-Up Call Boss. He has a weapon that has 1-2 range with very minor drawbacks, and on harder difficulties, he has skills like Strong Riposte which boosts the damage of his counterattacks, and Seal Def, which would deter the player from trying to tank his attacks. Something notable is that he can come in handy for the next chapter, as he can be captured by Niles. However, given how fragile Niles is and how tough Haitaka is, this may prove to be quite a task.
- Iago, the boss of Chapter 26. Iago sits in the center of the map, and is able to use staffs, despite the Sorcerer class being unable to. Making matters worse is that he has the enemy only skill Staff Savant, allowing him to use his staffs for as long as he likes. He can assail the player's units with status effects such as Freeze (immobilizing a unit) or Enfeeble (reducing all stats by -4), and on Lunatic, he adds a Hexing Rod to his roster, which can halve a unit's HP. With his massive, central staff range, he can easily debilitate any of the player's units. This is on top of what is already a hard level, reaching incredibly frustrating levels on Lunatic (as the other staff users also get Staff Savant). Finally, fighting Iago himself may prove to be a bit dangerous, given his high stats and his weapon's high Crit rate.
- Hans, who also shows up in Chapter 26. He's in a room full of super sturdy Generals and hard hitting Bersekers, so trying to single him out is already difficult enough. He comes with a bunch of skills that make him dangerous on either phase, as on Lunatic he can have skills like Death Blow and Armored Blow to bolster his very high Crit and give him some extra defense when he's initiating on the Enemy Phase, and he can also have Counter and Countermagic to deter melee attacks and magic attacks on the Player Phase.
- Ryoma, in any chapter he's fought in. In Chapter 12, he is at the very least optional, but given that he stands in the player's way and yields a valuable Secret Book, there's an incentive to fight him. In Chapter 25 however, the player is forced to fight him, or at least forced to survive against him. His stats are insane, and is the perfect example of a Lightning Bruiser. Certain builds of Corrin, like ones focused on axes or bows, may be completely unable to fight Ryoma. At that point, the player will have to defeat Saizo and Kagero to open the doors to Ryoma's chamber and rescue Corrin, and have another unit engage Ryoma. However, with skills like Astra and Rend Heaven on higher difficulties, this is a very dangerous prospect. The only saving grace is that Ryoma's room does have special properties that reduce both damage given and taken, and the player does have 20 to 25 turns until Ryoma moves, but a confrontation is inevitable.
- Takumi, in any chapter he's fought in. He's the boss of Chapter 10, and while he does not move, he still screws the player over through the use of his Dragon Vein, making it easier for the enemies to advance towards the defend point. Should he be fought however, he will have the Point Blank skill. This skill will allow him to counterattack at close range, which bows and yumis normally cannot do. On harder difficulties, he'll have Wary Fighter, which prevents the user and the foe from performing follow-up attacks, making it even harder to dispatch him in a single round. Takumi shows up again in Chapter 13, and he's already promoted to the Sniper class. He will chase the player down immediately, and his yumi's effect allows him to ignore movement terrain costs. On higher difficulties, he also has Pass, letting him move through the player's units. In Chapter 23, Takumi shows up yet again, and he has the Vengeance skill, and on higher difficulties, Rend Heaven. They have high activation rates thanks to his high Skill, making him a very dangerous opponent to face.
- The final boss. He has an area of effect attack that damages the player's team heavily unless a Dragon Vein is used to soften the blow, but even then, it will still leave quite a mark. To say nothing of the hardest level in the entire game, simply reaching the final boss is a daunting task in and of itself. Once the player has reached him, the player has to contend with his massive 1-4 range weapon which is effective against fliers. He has Dragonskin, which mitigates any damage taken, almost requiring Corrin's Shadow Yato to break through, Draconic Hex to debuff all of any assailant's stats by -4, and on higher difficulties, skills like Vengeance and Lifetaker. Finally, what makes the final boss particularly special is that he is paired up with a clone of himself and has the skill Bold Stance, which lets him fight with the benefits of both Attack Stance and Guard Stance, being able to do extra damage and also potentially block attacks. He is easily one of the toughest bosses in the game and is an incredibly dangerous opponent to face. And just who is this asshole who makes the end of Conquest so miserable? It's none other than Takumi, bringing his amount of appearances as a boss to a total of four times, culminating in him being the final boss, and he makes for one hell of a boss fight every time.
- Fire Emblem: Three Houses
- Catherine in Chapter 12 if Byleth chose to side with Edelgard after choosing the Black Eagles is an incredibly difficult boss, and is harder than the actual main target of the level, Rhea. They hit very hard, have high speed thus allowing them to double almost all your units, and Thunderbrand gives a Brave Sword like effect, meaning just about anyone dumb enough to get in their range will die in one round of combat. They also have a high crit chance, meaning even if your unit can survive the two hits, they might get killed anyway. To put into perspective how tough they are, your only real hope of winning is to use long range spells and bows, weaken them with gambits, or hope the Death Knight, who she can one-round regardless, can whittle them down for you.
- Edelgard in chapter 17 of the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes. She has high defense and resistance, and she's surprisingly fast and hard to double. She has Counterattack, so nobody can attack her without retaliation. And she has 68 attack on the easiest difficulty, meaning she can potentially take out your squishier units in a single hit. Furthermore, she can use her Raging Storm combat art, which not only boosts her attack, but will likely give her another action, meaning she can potentially take out multiple units in a single turn.
- If she is not recruited on the Azure Moon or Verdant Wind routes, you face Petra twice, once in chapter 17 of both, and again in chapter 21 of the former and chapter 20 of the latter. Both times can be immensely frustrating. On Normal, she has 40 Speed on her first appearance and 44 or 46 on her second, enough to double even the fastest of your units (and in higher difficulties she's even faster), and thanks to a combination of Sword Prowess, Alert Stance, Keen Intuition (an enemy-only skill that gives +30 Avoid when fighting an enemy at range), and her Avoid-boosting Brigid Hunters battalion, her Avoid can get boosted to the point that she's almost impossible to hit. She can also hit fairly hard, especially if she's going up against an already damaged unit as her personal skill, Hunter's Boon, boosts her crit when fighting an opponent with less than half HP - which is even worse on Verdant Wind chapter 20, as she uses a Wo Dao there instead of the Sword of Zoltan she uses in Azure Moon. Good luck defeating her without first rattling her with a gambit - which is hard enough to do in the first place.
- Any of the Divine Beasts, which are faced in Linhardt and Leonie's Paralogue, Claude's Paralogue (Verdant Wind-only) and as the Final Boss of Silver Snow. They're monster enemies with as many as 5 health bars, each with over 100 HP on the higher difficulties, powerful long-range attacks, a THREE-BY-THREE armor grid to break through and high stats on top of all that. But what really pushes them into this category is they all have Miracle on their last few health bars, and very high Luck to the point where it'll active 30% of the time at minimum, on the lowest difficulties. Banking on finishing a health bar to avoid a counter attack? Hope you get lucky. The one under the spoiler tags is by far the worst, not only having a 51% chance of Miracle on Maddening, but gaining a stat boost halfway through the fight and a skill that lets them use their AoE attack whenever they want, which also fully replenishes their armor. They also heal to full if a White Beast is nearby, and guess what? White Beasts are also multi-healthbar monsters with Miracle.
- The Umbral Beast in Cindered Shadows' DLC can be an absolute nightmare to deal with if you don't use your resources carefully. Like any beast final bosses, it has three life bars, and will frequently summon Aelfric Illusions to fight your units. However any clones not killed will have their life drained by the monster. It will also use an attack that rearranges its position, causing you to be separated from your other units. It can also damage any unlucky character in its path doing this. Good luck defeating it when your units are around level 30 range.
- Fire Emblem Engage:
- Let's just start with the Four Hounds in general...
- Marni in chapters 17 and 19. In your previous two encounters with her, you were running, and she didn't have anything special respectively. In 17 and 19 however, you have to defeat her, and she is packing Emblem Roy as added heat. Not only does this mean you're fighting a general with extra lives (by now, revival stones are standard on bosses), but you're fighting a general who has a skill that lets her shrug off lethal hits if she was above dire health at the start of combat, as well as a super attack skill. Said super attack can also be performed with a Wyrmslayer, which means putting Alear anywhere near her can be... very disastrous. In chapter 19 its even worse: Kill her first life and she powers up, which causes her to gain the ability to spam that super attack... with The Binding Blade. Said weapon also gives her ranged attacks.
- Mauvier isn't too bad in his first few encounters, even in chapter 17 where he has Emblem Micaiah. Chapter 19, however? He still has the ability in the spoiler, and has tools to use it with: Warp and Rescue, which he WILL use to throw corrupted at your squishies, and later pull Marni to him and force you to face them simultaneously. It gets worse: he has two extra lives, and like Marni in the same chapter, killing the first life makes him power up, which gives him access to Thani, a tome that obliterates armors and cavalry.
- Zephia in previous chapters is already annoying due to being a powerful flying mage with multiple Revival Crystals, but Zephia in Chapter 17 armed with Emblem Sigurd is several magnitudes worse. If you've been leery of giving Sigurd's ring to mages or fliers, Zephia's performance here might change your mind: with 8 movement she almost gets the full boost from Momentum without even needing to Engage, Magic-damage Override with Momentum will rip through your army if you lined your units up, she primarily attacks from a distance, and she has Canter to hit-and-run. And as a flier, she will often Canter over tiles inaccessible to land-based units, meaning blitzing her down in one turn probably won't be an option. It doesn't help that she's at the end of a Boss Bonanza, supplanting Veyle as the real boss of the map unlike what you'd expect.
- And of course, Griss. In both Chapter 17 and Chapter 20, he's armed with Emblem Celica... who has a teleportation attack that will rend low-res units asunder. Thankfully he IS a sage, and so he takes heavy damage from physical weapons, but of course, revival stones patch that one, and in Chapter 20, he's got two of 'em. Naturally, killing him once in Chapter 20 makes him power up... after which point, all non-corrupted units (read: your entire team) will take 50% of the damage they deal to him as recoil damage to themselves unless it's a lethal blow on Griss. This makes it entirely possible for nuke-type units to kill themselves trying to take him down.
- The boss of Chapter 25, Corrupted Queen Lumera. A strong attacker with three life bars, surrounded by two Corrupted Sages using Meteor and two Corrupted Martial Masters Chain Guard-ing all of the above, or using Entrap to bring you closer to the boss. There are also two Wyrms guarding the boss, so even just approaching them, much less defeating them is no small task.
- Let's just start with the Four Hounds in general...
- Fire Emblem Heroes has enough to fill its own page.
