The most difficult boss encounter in a CRPG.

[Darth Canoli]

What about bosses that weren't as hard as they could've been? I can think of a couple.

Zuggtmoy from ToEE. Push over compared to the Hedrack encounter and the boss of the Fire plane.

The undead dragon from Gothic 2 (provided you use a certain spell).

Any game where you can talk the boss to death, Fallout, PST and Arcanum for example.

In PST, talking the last boss to death makes sense as he's you but I always thought Fallout's one was ridiculous.

Wasteland 2 Steel scorpion or whatever it's called was pitiful, what a waste of good art.

 

[laclongquan]

Silent Storm boss where you fight her in a flying robot, inside a Missile Silo structure. It's hard because the terrain is 3 dimensions, boss has great mobility thus you dont always have line of sight to shoot, and unless you have great tactical sense to hold the high ground positions, you have big trouble to have good hit percentage.

If you have good grenadiers and engineers, you can throw explosives down the well on top of boss' head before boss counter fire on your asshole. Shooters, if great skill, can snipe up her butt from down below, but only if GREAT skill, because shooting upward is not easy. Line of sight missile launcher is not very effective because bad hit percentage and AoE blast zone is not as good as explosives thrown by hand.

 

[typical user]

What about bosses that weren't as hard as they could've been? I can think of a couple.

Zuggtmoy from ToEE. Push over compared to the Hedrack encounter and the boss of the Fire plane.

The undead dragon from Gothic 2 (provided you use a certain spell).

Any game where you can talk the boss to death, Fallout, PST and Arcanum for example.

First time I played Fallout 2 I didn't know you could sneak up to the computer in the main room and reprogram the turrets and that you could also get the backup squad. I also didn't know leaving all my companions on the entrance level will make them inacessible after blowing up the reactor. So I had to fight Frank Horrigan and his turrets alone. I had around 250 hp at the start but quickly changed into stimpack hedgehog, savescummed a lot thanks to random crits. Horrigan became absolute beast once he ran out dry and pulled out his wrist-sword. I remember even when I blinded him with critshot to the eyes he would still crit 5 times in a row in single turn taking half my HP and fling me around the entire arena like a ragdoll.

Now, I just turn off those pesky turrets and 1v1 him with my optimized character builds no problem.

Similar story with Gothic 2 and Frost Dragon - he would knock me back with every attack and regenerate all the damage I dealt. I didn't expect a fight where summon scrolls or ranged weapons are mandatory. Oh and also trying to beat Sentenza for shittalking me back in Act 1 as low-level armorless scrub. I would lure him to that rock full of those giant cockroaches and shoot thousand arrows from the top. I was kind of stubborn on not paying him those laughable 100 gold coins. I also expected if I would go around the entrance one of the mercenaries would call me out on that and turn entire place hostile. Turns out no one cares for Sentenza & Raoul welcome comitee and instead smokes swamp weed.

Elex - I remember I had trouble with random renegates from Clerics - I had to kill them to join the faction and I wanted to do it early. I somehow save-scummed the encounter and abused the AI with my shitty bow and Duras.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the most difficult boss encounter is picking a name for your character

 

[Fowyr]

Namtar from the Pit, Dragon Wars.
That multi-part battle was really brutal.
Beast of the 1000 Eyes, of course as well.

 

[Atlantico]

In PST, talking the last boss to death makes sense as he's you but I always thought Fallout's one was ridiculous.

That's because you're a retard. It made perfect sense, for anyone with more than two braincells and no impeding autism. So you're shit out of luck.

 

[Mexi]

People saying Sarevok was easy.

"Sarevok was too easy, I just used every exploit in the book and mods."

 

[Silverfish]

the most difficult boss encounter is picking a name for your character

It's easy when you know the pro strats.

 

[Max Damage]

KOTOR - couldn't beat final boss with my first character (Scoundrel/Sentinel) no matter how hard I tried, if you don't have neither Guardian's combat nor Consular's Force DC bonuses AND didn't know to learn either Force Power to use on captured jedi, you're pretty much fucked - you don't have any help, and all your skills are useless.

Optional/true last boss in Legend of Grimrock 2 is also very hard, if not impossible for non-optimized parties (AKA 4 lizardmen with resistance trait).

 

[vota DC]

People saying Sarevok was easy.

"Sarevok was too easy, I just used every exploit in the book and mods."

If you focus against him the game ends with his death.....but there are some seconds where I haven't control and his followers kill one of my npc. I never killed his followers before fighting him because they teleport away and Sarevok hits hard.

 

[Humbaba]

In PST, talking the last boss to death makes sense as he's you but I always thought Fallout's one was ridiculous.

That's because you're a retard. It made perfect sense, for anyone with more than two braincells and no impeding autism. So you're shit out of luck.

Talking Lanius to death was pretty retarded tbf.

 

[Fargus]

If i have to choose from particularly loathsome fights then:

Amelyssan cunt in BG2: ToB. Fuck that redhead whore right in the pussy.
Tchort in Underrail was pretty annoying.
Most of the bosses in Divinity OS are long and tedious to kill.
Library and Black Monolyth legendary locations in Battle Brothers. Kraken boss is also fucking tedious and shit design, you have to waste so much time on him.

 

[visions]

KOTOR - couldn't beat final boss with my first character (Scoundrel/Sentinel) no matter how hard I tried, if you don't have neither Guardian's combat nor Consular's Force DC bonuses AND didn't know to learn either Force Power to use on captured jedi, you're pretty much fucked - you don't have any help, and all your skills are useless.

Maybe embarassing but I remember the final fight in KOTOR also took me a lot of tries. IIRC I eventually cheesed it with mines or traps or whatever they were called in the game. But since this was around 15 years ago, I'm p. foggy on the details.

 

[Snufkin]

Knights of the Chalice final fight with Dragon + all those enemies in huge room. Also bonus fight was super hard, did it only with reworked party with 3 Wizards and Cleric.

Kotor 1 - I couldnt beat Malak with my dual pistol dude and i think i opted for granades to win. Steamrolled him with str based double saber char with ease on next playthru.

 

[Sykar]

Guitar Warrior obviously!

 

[ga♥]

Even if a mod, Ascension final battle.

 

[visions]

I never could beat Isair and Madae in Icewind Dale 2. Guess I was too much of a noob. I did try a hell of a lot of times though.

I never did beat the bonus fight at the end of Knights of the Chalice either. I still have the saves but with two knights, a wizard with terrible constitution and a cleric, this doesn't seem particularly doable.

 

[FriendlyMerchant]

People saying Sarevok was easy.

"Sarevok was too easy, I just used every exploit in the book and mods."

Max level, prebuff, and autoattack for me.

 

[Falksi]

Jason Liang - does this subject tickle your fancy for one of your polls chap?

 

[Sykar]

In PST, talking the last boss to death makes sense as he's you but I always thought Fallout's one was ridiculous.

That's because you're a retard. It made perfect sense, for anyone with more than two braincells and no impeding autism. So you're shit out of luck.

Talking Lanius to death was pretty retarded tbf.

To death? You mean literally? I know you can talk him down by convincing that the dam is not worth it. Unlike in Failshit 3 where you can convince the AI president to commit suicide literally with a single speech check 3 it is rather involved dialogue with Lanius where you can easily rile him up to attack you if you choose your replies carelessly. Though I still think that Bitchzitizen Lynette is more of a landmine in that regard.

 

[Jason Liang]

Jason Liang - does this subject tickle your fancy for one of your polls chap?

Ironically, we were talking about Baramos in shitbox yesterday!



I did make a similar poll but it wasn't specifically for crpgs: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/poll-bullshit-end-bosses.131024/ . It also taught me that there's an entire generation of video games I've never even touched so idk who would be qualified to make such a poll.

We also had this thread a year or so ago https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/hardest-encounters-in-rpgs.134414/

idk generally any crpg boss can be beaten with enough grinding (see Wizardry 7). Several of the Rance games subvert this since your ability to grind is minimal in Sengoku and Rance X. Rance X, which is essentially an epic boss rush, certainly has 4 of the most difficult rpg bosses I've ever faced (especially with no New Game+ bonuses), and it's not even close, so it's not really an issue that makes me curious enough to poll. Basically it being the 10th game of the series, AliceSoft decided to make bosses that don't play fair since, if you're going to be playing the 10th game of the series, you aren't going to ragequit the game.

#1 La Hawzel (Rance X)

The toughest fights in Rance X are timed fights, where you only get 5 to 8 turns to beat the boss. And La Hawzel is the toughest of the timed fights. To deal enough damage to beat her, you need to do everything PERFECT. You need to come up with a perfect plan, use every character you have in your roster optimally, and then execute your plan perfectly, getting all the right rolls. She has a full heal on turn 5 or 6 - if you can't stop that, you're fucked. Hawzel's not just a damage sponge either - she can certainly kill you if you don't bring in enough defenses. Everything has to go perfectly for 8 turns. It's insane. Note that the streamer in the video has an extremely complete roster in this fight, and max bonus points. And it's the only 8 turn La Hawzel fight I can find on youtube. This is as close to an impossible fight as you can get in an rpg without being actually impossible.

#2 Warg (Rance X)

Remember how in Dragon Warrior 1 you beat the Green Dragon with SLEEP? In Rance X, Warg SLEEPS You.

#3 Kesselring (Rance X)

Kesselring's gimmick is that she uses darkness to obscure your life bar and status, so you have *no fucking clue* how much life you have left, how many AP you have remaining or how much damage you're taking. That simply makes using healing (which you will need since she hits HARD) completely FUBAR. And when she is not in darkness, she has a mist form that is near impossible to damage. And being a vampire, she FULL heals constantly. Maybe the most stressful fight in the whole game.

#4 Kayblis (Rance X)

Usually, AliceSoft isn't asshole enough to make the endboss impossible (they make bullshit side quest challenge bosses instead). However, Kayblis is certainly respectable for an endgame boss. He hits like a truck, is a damage sponge, and what makes him a challenge is that he randomly cycles through about 6 different attack patterns, and you can't swap your lineup fast or often enough to counter. Note that in the video, the streamer is fighting the easy version of the fight (where you get Shariela, a cheat character, to essentially double your action points). Without Shariela, the most difficult version this fight is considerably more stressful, chaotic, and insane. My own Kayblis fight (without Shariela):

You have no idea how close this is. I have a *sliver* *pixel* of life left (and I went through ALL my healing).

 

[Jack Of Owls]

My personal most difficult boss encounter in an RPG/aRPG was the vampire in the Ys I remake for PC. Cocksucker kept changing into a swarm of bats then reformed fully healed just when I thought he was down to his last hitpoint. Oh, I could have whittled him down eventually to beat him but that would have literally taken hours. My attempted playthrough of Ys I is the Anatomy of a Ragequit.

 

[luj1]

something from KotC I-II probably

 

[Bah]

World of Warcraft, Eye of C'Thun when it was a 40-man raid.

 

[Saduj]

Dark Sun's last fight is pretty hard. And the rest of the game is pretty easy. At the time I first played, I considered multiclass characters in D&D games to be cheap. My first party was all single classed characters. Only two spellcasters. By the later stages of the game, they were laughing through every encounter and seemed absurdly overpowered. Then I got to the last fight and lost a good twenty times in a row. Never really came close to winning. Not enough spells. Everyone was a dual classed spellcaster in my next party...