This page is about the hardest and most powerful bosses in the Ys series.
Note: Final Bosses and Wake Up Call Bosses are not allowed unless they're overly difficult by their standards. Superbosses are not allowed; they're optional and have no standards for difficulty.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Ys I and II
- Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen:
- The vampire demon boss (Vagullion) in all versions of Ys I: this boss appears initially as a swarm of bats that can't be hurt, all the while chasing players around the boss arena to damage them. Every once in a while, these bats coalesce into a gargoyle, Vagullion's true form, and players have but a split second to hit Vagullion without taking damage themselves, else the boss turns back into bats, forcing players to redo the entire thing over again.
- The red ape demon in the Famicom port. Jumps around the room firing highly-damaging nearly-undodgeable omnidirectional projectiles. It's nearly impossible unless you break sequence and go further up the tower for the Infinity Plus One equipment.
- Even for a final boss, Dark Fact is a complete son-of-a-bitch; the fight is a Bullet Hell challenge with non-stop fireballs tracking you everywhere you run at a rate of one every half-second and exploding in a spray of smaller fireballs when they hit the ground, meaning you simply cannot avoid them all and putting an effective time limit on the fight before your HP inevitably runs out, you have to chase Dark Fact around as he dashes from one corner of the arena to the other, his hitbox is smaller than it looks, and even if you can track his (honestly rather simple) movement pattern, every time you hit him the ground below you explodes, not only massively reducing the amount of actual space you have to maneuver on as you draw closer to beating him (both making it harder to avoid the fireballs and harder to intercept his movements) but if you don't get off the ground fast enough as it explodes you instantly plummet to your doom. Matters are made even worse by a bug in some versions which causes the fireballs to bombard you at an insanely high rate if you don't manually cap the refresh rate to 60Hz, making it all but physically impossible to win.
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys / The Oath in Felghana
- Ys III: Wanderers from Ys: The crystal boss in the Cursed Mine was the hardest, if you don't do some serious Level Grinding beforehand. And the Time Ring is required here.
- Ys: The Oath in Felghana:
- Death Faleon is UNQUESTIONABLY the hardest boss in the game, bar none, and it's especially ridiculous considering what a complete pushover he was in the original Ys III. Seriously, even when properly leveled (which you won't be), this guy is an complete nightmare. He's got more attacks than any other boss (and those same attacks track you with incredible accuracy), a shifting elemental weakness, he moves extremely fast, and he takes an absolute load of punishment. Surprisingly, despite the MASSIVE difficulty and complexity spike compared to previous bosses in the game, he gets the same boss theme as everyone else
. And remember: he's got no storyline significance. Death Faleon is just a midboss. - Almost every boss may have shades of this trope due to being harder than what's around it. The one that really sticks out is Ligaty: Firstly, there are three of them; one has a weakness to physical attacks, one to Wind magic, and the other to Fire magic, and they each use their respective weakness against you (strangely). The troubles start when you realise your choices are to either attack the physical one, who has a habit of breaking out of hitstun and attacking anyway, or your combo could send you right into an attack from one of the others. Going for the wind one, in which case wind magic limits your movement a few seconds and removes Mercy Invincibility, potentially allowing you to take multiple hits in a row. Finally you can go after the fire one, who you can at least use ranged attacks on, but the aiming can be tricky and while you're focusing on that it's very easy to walk into an attack. Add all that together and it verges on a Sadistic Choice. To make matters worse the less there are the tougher they get, so the final one is nastier than all three combined. The only choice is to exploit one attack they use when all three are alive that makes them stay in place a while defenseless, then continue until you've weakened all of them enough that you can quickly destroy all three before the stragglers get going.
- There's also Zirduros. The only weakpoint is its back, it's quite agile while constantly peppering you with projectiles AND the weakpoint is capable of launching mines (which hurt you if you're attacking it in melee). After losing some of its health it can launch a laser that covers a large area in front of it and only gives you a split second to evade. And any of this onslaught is capable of killing you in around 10-12 hits unless you're really over leveled. While not the most damaging method, the only safe way to harm it is to to charge up Earth attacks and exploit the invincibility frames it has. Even better, if you do the dungeon in a certain order this can be the next boss you face after Death Faleon...
- Death Faleon is UNQUESTIONABLY the hardest boss in the game, bar none, and it's especially ridiculous considering what a complete pushover he was in the original Ys III. Seriously, even when properly leveled (which you won't be), this guy is an complete nightmare. He's got more attacks than any other boss (and those same attacks track you with incredible accuracy), a shifting elemental weakness, he moves extremely fast, and he takes an absolute load of punishment. Surprisingly, despite the MASSIVE difficulty and complexity spike compared to previous bosses in the game, he gets the same boss theme as everyone else
Ys IV: Mask of the Sun / Dawn of Ys / Memories of Celceta
- Ys IV (the PC Engine version) has its Big Bad Arem, possibly the hardest final boss outside the remakes. He has three life bars, Turns Red for his second, can regenerate his HP, it takes an extremely long time to whittle down his HP even if your EXP is maxed out, and bombards you with a shitload of hard-to-avoid highly damaging attacks.
- Gruda's One-Winged Angel transformation in Mask of the Sun: not only is this the hardest boss in the game, but it doesn't help that players have to go through a long unskippable dialogue before the battle.
Ys V: Lost Kefin, Kingdom of Sand
- Karion and Jabir's One-Winged Angel form in Ys V, particularly in Ys V Expert: both are battles of attrition, where players will need plenty of healing items.
Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim
- Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim:
- Orjugan, especially on Hard and Nightmare. It can only be damaged by playing tennis with its bombs, or with the Flame Sword magic, has highly-damaging Combat Tentacles, a deadly super laser blast that is difficult to dodge without taking hits from the tentacles (which can kill you instantly on higher difficulties), and finally, periodically summons shadow creatures (which you need to equip the Rainbow Fragment to kill).
- Ernst, espcially on Nightmare difficulty. He's a flash stepping Lightning Bruiser with a BFS, making him hard to hit without getting hit yourself, casts Kill Sat spells, and has his three Goddamned Fairies, who, in addition to their individual elemental attacks, can team up to cast an immobilizing Geometric Magic spell.
Ys: Origin
- Nygtilger. Most players won't beat it on their first try. Since it's a Segmented Serpent, each segment must be destroyed one-by-one first at it moves around the circular arena. The easiest method is to hop onto its back and hack away, but there's only a few scant seconds to do so before it barrels around and charges at players with a hard-hitting electrical attack. Making this worse is every time a segment is destroyed, that part of its body begins spewing timed bombs that have a ludicrously big Area of Effect with knockback capabilities, inflicting poison. Before long, the entire arena will be littered with these bombs, such that players will barely have enough time to swat them away before they explode. Finally, once Nygtilger 's Hit Points reach less than 50%, it starts rolling around the arena in a lightning-fast motion, a maneuver almost impossible to dodge due to how unpredictable its path is.
- Khonsclard in Ys I was largely a Luck-Based Mission, but its appearance in Ys Origin takes the cake: multiple targets, both its main body and several cacti-like Mooks spawning throughout the arena, the latter of which restore Khonsclard's Hit Points if they're not destroyed first. Khonsclard itself fires off plenty of projectiles, all incredibly hard to dodge, the number of cacti-Mooks increases as the battle progresses, and since the arena is sitting atop of shifting sands that pulls players towards Khonsclard's body, players also have to contend with limited movement options for the duration of the fight. Not even Final Boss Dalles is as difficult compared to this.
