Final bosses that defeated you

[Zloth]

Dragon's Dogma 1 spoilers. (This topic is going to be pretty spoiler heavy as it deals with final bosses.)

In Dragon's Dogma 1, the DLC dungeon was full of hard enemies and an even harder boss. I managed to get all the way through and defeat him. But that wasn't the end - oh no. You can then go through the dungeon a second time. This time, the whole dungeon will be full of very hard enemies. And, when you defeat the final boss, this happens:

View: https://youtu.be/GJwPKpLIYiM?si=GtZxIDI7tvxF-PSD&t=461


There's... a dragon? Inside the demon prince, there's a DRAGON? The dead demon prince's dragon belly just wailed on me. Through all the rest of that video I didn't even take one dot's worth of health off that monster. Yeah, no. I'm done. Re-loaded, got out of the DLC dungeon, and won the main game without defeating the DLC. The dragon with the demon prince scarf can just stay down there.

What final bosses have gotten the better of you right in front of the finish line?

 

[Brian Boru]

What final bosses have gotten the better of you right in front of the finish line?

Ull from Far Cry Primal is the main one—I made 3 efforts to beat him, couldn't get even close. It was different to the rest of the gameplay, so it didn't bug me too much, but still… Strangely enough, I beat the other boss Batari first go, altho it was a boring 20-minute encounter.

ETA: 'different' = in a fairly small underground cave, where his minions kept spawning—kill one, gets replaced shortly after. If I recall correctly, the combat v Ull was of the shoot & dodge variety, like RPG-style—ie zero strategy and very limited tactical choice, more a case of learning opposition patterns which is of zero interest to me.

 

[Pifanjr]

Dragon Age: Origins. I was ready to be done with the game by the time I got to the last boss, so when it wiped me the first time I just cheated so I could get to the ending.

I also have yet to beat the heart boss in Slay the Spire. I got pretty close yesterday, but made a few mistakes. I'm not sure if I would've won otherwise, but it would've been a lot closer.

 

[Alm]

I never beat the final boss of Gears of War.

Edit: sorry, I didn't expand on that because it was 20 years ago and I really can't remember why he was so difficult.

 

[ZedClampet]

V Rising 1.0. You fight about 70 bosses then you get to Dracula himself. It is a HUGE difficulty spike. I can only take somewhere from 10 to 20 percent of his health before I'm annihilated.

I have a feeling the final boss of The Forest would have been the same sort of thing for me except that it got stuck on geometry, and I just stood there shooting it for a few minutes until it died.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I never beat the final boss of Gears of War.

Edit: sorry, I didn't expand on that because it was 20 years ago and I really can't remember why he was so difficult.

I played it a couple of years ago on Gamepass, that guy sucks. I only beat him because he got stuck on one of the cover points, bugged out, and I just blasted him until he was dead. No regrets it wasnt a fun fight anyway IMO.

I also have yet to beat the heart boss in Slay the Spire. I got pretty close yesterday, but made a few mistakes. I'm not sure if I would've won otherwise, but it would've been a lot closer.

200 odd hours over about 5 years and I never have. I rarely bother going for the heart, I always feel like my deck/loadout needs to be stronger. Which is true because I have like a 1/20 'win' rate across the 3 original chars. Its really tough for me and I've only got them all to ascension 5 and 6, love the game though.

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Guess these are final encounters rather than bosses but anyway. I never finished Final Fantasy 7. IIRC (it was 25 years ago) I went into the Final dungeon past a point of no return and realized at some point I should have done some more grinding as I was getting smashed. I just fell off it and didnt go back.

The other one that comes to mind is Dragon Age Inquisition. I got to the final battle part and just couldnt be bothered anymore, too much previous grinding again made me pretty tired of the game by the end. At a certain point combat was laughably easy as it was all automated and got boring for me.

Still havent beaten what I assume is a final boss in Armored Core 6, but may do that one day soon.

 

[Pifanjr]

200 odd hours over about 5 years and I never have. I rarely bother going for the heart, I always feel like my deck/loadout needs to be stronger. Which is true because I have like a 1/20 'win' rate across the 3 original chars. Its really tough for me and I've only got them all to ascension 5 and 6, love the game though.

It's definitely pretty hard. I think I just beat ascension level 1 on all of them and even with decks that felt very strong I'd usually run into at least one elite or boss that would get me down to below 20 health, often getting me one turn away from dying.

The daily challenge of today for example let me built a deck where I could play the entire deck and then some if I was lucky. But the last boss was the one where your turn gets ended as soon as you've played 12 cards, which made it a lot harder.

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I did think of another boss I couldn't get past, though it wasn't the final one: the Axem Rangers in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. They're commonly considered the hardest fight in the game and they were definitely too hard for me as a kid.

 

[BeardyHat]

Last boss in Shinobi 3 on Genesis. Tried and tried and tried and even with save states, he was just complete bullshit, so I quit trying.

 

[Johnway]

Shin megami tensei strangers journey. didn't beat the final boss, it got too grindy, was too powerful and getting a team in place and thensome was too stressful. The map to get to the boss was too long and i took a break and never went back. i even tried cheating by getting a load of codes from other players to register into my demon compendium in the hopes i could get an OP team to crush the boss, but you still need to buy/craft them. Screw it.

Dark souls 2 DLC bosses i never finished. Again, content was super tough, lacked saves to get to boss and i suspect its more for party/groups then solo. So a miss.

The icon of sin boss in doom 2 wads i just roll my eyes and cheat through most of them as they are bloody boring and serious tedious and annoying as well.

 

[red_5ive]

Doom II. I remember me and my buddies were all gathered around taking turns trying to figure out how to beat the end lol. We probably made it harder than it probably should have been. I finally just jumped in the pit and kept on going and taking the damage, which otherwise our initial tactic was trying to avoid doing that. And mind you, there was no YouTube back then . Aiming also sucked back then cause there was no vertical free look in shooters.

 

[McStabStab]

The final boss battle of Divinity: Original Sin 2 defeated me enough that I went back and did some additional quests to help put my party in a better situation. Once I had done that I was able to go back and finally achieve Divinity.

 

[Johnway]

Doom II. I remember me and my buddies were all gathered around taking turns trying to figure out how to beat the end lol. We probably made it harder than it probably should have been. I finally just jumped in the pit and kept on going and taking the damage, which otherwise our initial tactic was trying to avoid doing that. And mind you, there was no YouTube back then . Aiming also sucked back then cause there was no vertical free look in shooters.

Luckily for me, i had a walkthrough, but yeah not having free look was a nightmare. It involved luck more then skill to beat. Depending on whether you fired the rocket at the right and what gets spawned determined whether you won or lost. It was terrible. i remember beating it first time on UV and killed the icon before killing myself in the process. Still counted so a victory of sorts.

i guess terraria bosses were too tough as well. it took a long time to prepare and the bosses were BS as well. Especially if they could fly through walls and hit really hard. I remember building elaborate arenas or just destroying entire biomes to prepare a fight. worked for the wall of flesh (essentially i build one massive bridge destroyed as much of the obstructing scenery as required and just back peddled to win)

 

[Pifanjr]

i guess terraria bosses were too tough as well. it took a long time to prepare and the bosses were BS as well. Especially if they could fly through walls and hit really hard. I remember building elaborate arenas or just destroying entire biomes to prepare a fight. worked for the wall of flesh (essentially i build one massive bridge destroyed as much of the obstructing scenery as required and just back peddled to win)

Terraria bosses do seem pretty bullshit, but like you said you can often make them a lot easier or even trivial by just preparing an arena. I did the exact same massive bridge for the wall of flesh and it turned it into a cake walk. There's also a ton of gear to find and craft as well as potions you can brew and drink beforehand. Once you're properly prepared the bosses aren't nearly as bad (though it's been years since I played, so there's probably a bunch of new ones I haven't seen yet).

 

[Slasken]

Final boss of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Couldn't beat that one.

I'm no good at bossfights in Terraria. Always prepare an arena, but that's what you are supposed to do, isn't it?

 

[Zloth]

Guess these are final encounters rather than bosses but anyway. I never finished Final Fantasy 7. IIRC (it was 25 years ago) I went into the Final dungeon past a point of no return and realized at some point I should have done some more grinding as I was getting smashed. I just fell off it and didnt go back.

Huh, that's odd. They hadn't really invented grinding yet. That was more around Final Fantasy 11+. I played it without reading any guides way back in the days before there were any guides to read and didn't have to grind, but I did love it so I would have played any optional quests I managed to find.

The icon of sin boss in doom 2 wads i just roll my eyes and cheat through most of them as they are bloody boring and serious tedious and annoying as well.

I played that on a friend's computer. He told me it wasn't possible to defeat the end boss without using a cheat code, so I did - and believed him for a decade or two afterward, too! So, I guess that one is on my list of end bosses that defeated me, though there were mitigating circumstances.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Huh, that's odd. They hadn't really invented grinding yet. That was more around Final Fantasy 11+. I played it without reading any guides way back in the days before there were any guides to read and didn't have to grind, but I did love it so I would have played any optional quests I managed to find.

It was the first JRPG I ever played, can remember quite well earlyish in the open world there was a smallish forest area (near Wutai?) I spent a lot of time wandering around to level up as I was struggling with battles along the main path. I remember there was a point of no return at a meteor crash site, I think? Really tough enemies in there and I used all my save files inside so I couldnt get out and just kept dying to the same fight over and over.

I played a few hours of the game again in the last few years on my Switch, fwiw I seemed to get to the Golden saucer much faster than I was expecting, quite likely I was completely clueless on how to play the game in 1997 and was really not putting upgrades and using abilities where I should

 

[Johnway]

Terraria bosses do seem pretty bullshit, but like you said you can often make them a lot easier or even trivial by just preparing an arena. I did the exact same massive bridge for the wall of flesh and it turned it into a cake walk. There's also a ton of gear to find and craft as well as potions you can brew and drink beforehand. Once you're properly prepared the bosses aren't nearly as bad (though it's been years since I played, so there's probably a bunch of new ones I haven't seen yet).

I think it was the hard mode bosses that are (unsurprisingly) the toughest of the bunch. if they didn't fly through walls then i would be quite so upset, but i suppose if they didn't i could have cheesed them by running into a small walled off room and plinking away at them from a small crack in the wall.

But on the flip side deeply annoying. I remember building my home base as a fortress complete with multi layered defenses, rooms that were essentially death traps (once they got in they never left it alive). Defenses included deep holes, spike traps, flamethrowers and poison dart rooms (thank you jungle temple for the stuff). For the smaller baddies it kinder worked, but for harder monsters and bosses, absolutely pointless.


The main thing i remember about terraria was me cheating my balls off to get that spray cannon that removed corruption from lands. After you killed the wall of flesh corruption begins to take hold. Leave it too long and entire areas become tainted with it. i spent months battling it. First i built a big ditch around my home (saving as much of the biome as i could) and like cancer i would cut out large chunks of the surrounding area to prevent spreading before hosing the place down

I played that on a friend's computer. He told me it wasn't possible to defeat the end boss without using a cheat code, so I did - and believed him for a decade or two afterward, too! So, I guess that one is on my list of end bosses that defeated me, though there were mitigating circumstances.

I think the challenge is that regardless of the difficulty i don't think the final fight changes that much. Although probably on nightmare fast monsters will be a factor. But the boss fight is boring and tedious so i try and skip it if possible. Its more stressful when you only have a certain amount of rockets to do it. if they kept respawning ammo i might be more inclined to try harder.

Atm i'm playing through doom returns wad and there are multple icon of sin boss fights and mercifully, the ammo respawns so i can blast away most of the monsters before it becomes unmanagable. Plus the platform that raises to shoot the icon of sin isn't in a bloody hurt floor.

 

[Colif]

Recently I am more likely to restart the game on a new character than to fight some bosses.

I generally don't want games to end, so fighting final bosses only happens in games like Sacred 2 and Torchlight 2 where the game doesn't end after the last boss is dead, you can restart game in a new difficulty and do it all again.

But recently, I just made a new character in Grim Dawn whenever I get near end, and only killed the boss at end of one expansion by not realising it was what the quest I was doing was leading me towards. I was the same in Last Epoch too with one boss, only killed it once so far. but its not final boss of the game... i just got bored of game before i got to final boss.