The Tales series has plenty of surprisingly tough bosses to give you something to talk about.
- Tales of Eternia:
- Undine, the first of the Craymels, is a particularly brutal fight. No opportunity is given to the player to heal before her fight, meaning your team is likely short on mana from fighting to get to her, and she has plenty of combo moves including a potentially spammed attack called Spear of Baptism that can easily result in a Total Party Kill.
- Tales of Symphonia
- Ktugach and its two lackeys, which are the boss of the Fire Seal. While Botta and his two Desian lackeys were already there to ease the player into boss battles against multiple targets, these are worse. The Desian lackeys were easy to get rid of, but Ktugach's little tigers take more than two hits to get down and also like to cast Fireball on your party. Particularly on your healer. And trying to combo them can be difficult, too, as Ktugach is a very large target and likes to sweep its tail across the field and knocking you back. Ktugach himself is also not a pushover. With five digit HP, it's the first boss with that high amount of health and knocking it down can take a while. It also has Eruption, a mid-tier Fire spell that can easily kill majority of your party, due to its range. He's a good taste of what upcoming seal bosses will be like.
- Pronyma when fought on the Fooji Mountains in Tethe'alla. Several knockback or launching attacks that deal good physical damage, mid-tier spells like Dark Lance and Ice Tornado and she can cause status effects. If she doesn't convince the player that things are starting to get more tough, who knows what will.
- The Monster Marble can be a pain in the ass if you don't know your way around the battle system (and odds are, at this point, you don't). She's the second boss of the game, by the way.
- The third exemplifies this trope even more: Botta. He's the first Wolfpack Boss in the game and uses Stalagmite, a second-tier spell that the party can't even come close to learning yet. That spell alone can knock party members below half health from full, and the hitbox is wide enough to potentially hit two or more.
- The fight against Sylph is going to knock you good if you can't coordinate your party, as they're the first of only a handful of multi-part bosses where all enemies are of roughly equal strength, rather than being a Flunky Boss. While you're focusing on one, the others can easily sneak in behind and attack your back-row characters.
- This is especially true if you elect to fight Sylph before the events at the Tower of Salvation, as you will not have many of the advanced techs needed for such a complicated fight, such as Raine's mid-range and advanced healing arts.
- Or if you decide to postpone the Sylph battle by doing certain other plot-related missions firstnote . You think you're ready for them just because you're a solid 10 levels or so higher than you'd normally be, but the darned buggers will rather nastily avert forgetting to level-grind and will be much stronger than they normally would be as well.
- Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has a particularly nasty one when you're visiting Asgard for the first time in the form of Hawk, one of Alice's higher-up goons. While he himself is not a big deal, it's the fact that the player, veteran or not, will not be expecting to fight a plot-related boss in the middle of town without any warning and likely to be killed because they never bothered to grind for EXP before now. And if you die to him, you have to do the entire segment for Asgard over again because the cutscene that transitions to his fight is just inches before the door to the inn with the save point inside. To add onto the frustration, this comes right after fighting against Lloyd, so you're probably scraping for items as it is if you didn't realize his fight was scripted.
- Tales of the Abyss:
- In Choral Castle, Arietta the Wild and her two animal allies. As most Tales games go, team boss fights are difficult, and as the first one in Abyss, she is a huge step up from the first boss, the Liger Queen. Arietta's fighting style focuses on her pets holding you off while she casts spells from afar, and while she is fragile, her pets are strong enough that they will push your team back if you get too greedy. Keep in mind, this is the second boss in the game, and if you don't learn to focus on spell casters when they start casting, you'll be overwhelmed quickly.
- For those playing Unknown difficulty, the Rhinossus counts. It is the very first enemy of the game, which players can easily beat on their first playthrough...but on Unknown, it can take upwards of 10 minutes for the party to beat it to death, and that's assuming New Game Plus benefits. This establishes very quickly just what kind of difficulty Unknown is.
- Tales of Vesperia:
- The fandom has nicknamed Gattuso, a large wolf and the third boss of the game, the "noob killer." It attacks quickly and ruthlessly, tosses the party around the battlefield like rag dolls, can poison with one of its attacks, and can charge from one end of the field to the other in two seconds flat. To add insult to injury, this was the boss of the 360 version's demo, meaning its brutality was several people's first experience with the game.
- The first Zagi fight on any difficulty above Normal. This gives you a taste of what the harder bosses in the game are like. It's ridiculous to level up in the castle without using equipment from the last game you played, meaning that you will most likely not gain very many levels, if any, before the boss battle. For a first boss, Zagi is tough, being fast, with annoying artes, and with Yuri being alone... until miss Princess steps in to help. She can heal, but, her AI is infuriating for most players, with her tendency to run up and attack, only healing when someone is about to die if they take one more hit. In higher difficulties, her running up to attack = instant death to the Princess. She's also slow as hell, so don't expect her to be able to get away from Zagi if he chases her. This battle teaches you how to "hit and run", and use Free Run though.
- Tales of Graces:
- Victoria. Large amounts of health compared to the previous boss, knows to go for your healers (Of which you will only have two - unless Pascal has her healing ability by that point), and is the first boss who will use a Mystic Arte on you. Up until that point, Eleth break was more or less an annoyance for you - but then, the player learns that when they get Eleth break against them to play it safe and prepare for danger.
- Richard, who is the first boss you absolutely have to use certain attacks to break the Nova barrier on otherwise he takes only one damage. While you experienced this gimmick before, those were event fights. This is something you have to do throughout the campaign on some bosses.
- Tales of Xillia
- Jiao's the first boss you have a healer for, and with good reason, as he hits about as hard as one might expect him to, being a towering fellow with a similarly massive hammer. As is the norm for a human boss, he can also do combos to further increase the pain he dishes out, and has a nasty area attack that'll wreck your melee fighters if you're not cautious. He also calls monsters onto the field periodically, who'll most likely start harassing the aforementioned healer if they're not dealt with.
- Jude's first Duel Boss against Ivar comes as another one. If you haven't learned how to use Jude's Snap Pivot ability by now, Ivar will make sure you do. Proper use of it is the only way you're avoiding his long, brutal combos that inflict several painful status effects.
- Tales of Xillia 2
- Spirit Volt. His HP count is massive compared to any of the previous bosses, and he has a ton of attacks that can seriously injure, if not OHKO, your party members if they aren't blocked or avoided. He also has elemental minions which he'll start to respawn once his HP dwindles, which is also when he starts busting out his nastier attacks like Thunder Blade and a spinning laser sweep that hits almost the entire arena. Knowing how to take advantage of the weakness system so you can both keep him pinned down in combos and deal a high amount of damage is important, as you'll find yourself starved for healing if you take too long to beat him.
- There's also Muzét (Fractured) in the first fractured dimension the player enters. She's so bad that she also counts as one of those bosses. Muzét's spells hit hard, her hair can cause some good damage and she likes to use Flame Ring, which means that standing close to her to cause lots of damage will only result in causing damage to you. She is also the first boss to have a Mystic Arte and use it, so the player knows that every boss fight now has this potential problem. The player needs to know how to use the Link Abilities of the party members now, especially Milla's being very helpful in this battle, or Muzét will simply teleport away when you have her in a good combo.
- Tales of Berseria:
- Kamoana. If you haven't learned to really temper your equipment and really start getting comfortable with the battle system, you are going to have a lot of difficulty on this one. You definitely have to make sure to block by this point - since Kamoana will be able to just push your active character into a corner and take out almost all their health. And if you haven't paid attention to elemental resistances, Kamoana will punish you if you don't resist any wind.
- Failed/Armatized Oscar is this for the late-game bosses. This boss lets the player know that end-game enemies and bosses will go a lot harder on you, in fact, it's very similar to fighting a Wind-armatized Rose or Sorey from the previous game. It's considered That One Boss thanks in part to the fact it's this... and it follows another boss fight that, despite being an Anti-Climax Boss, still uses a Mystic Arte and you get no chance to heal in between.
- Tales of Arise:
- The fight against Balseph at Glanymede Castle is surprisingly tough for the first major boss in the game. He is a Mighty Glacier that hits hard and will rip through Alphen and Shionne like they're made of paper. Hopefully you got practice dodging attacks and knowing when to go on the offensive. And it's impossible to be overleveled (unless you're using DLC bonuses) due to the EXP scaling.
- If you thought Balseph was hard, Ganabelt is even tougher. Only the 2nd major boss he is considered That One Boss for a reason. Ganabelt is a skilled swordsman with powerful magic spells, is able to make copies of himself and a barrier which requires using Law's special ability multiple times to break. And unless you made sure to get light resistant accessories on your whole party and keep their health high his use of the series Signature Spell 'Indignation' will be a guaranteed One-Hit KO and lead to an unavoidable Total Party Kill.
