10 Hardest Boss Battles in Games

We spoke a short while ago about the Easiest Boss Battles in Games and, as expected, we'll also mention the most difficult ones. Of course, ranking the most difficult battles can be quite subjective; after all, a fight you prepare for can end in five minutes, even generating a feeling of frustration when everyone says "this boss is very difficult" and you defeat them in a few minutes.

For me, this happened with Kai Leng from Mass Effect 3. Everyone said it was an absurd battle, and I solved it easily.

Whether because the boss is very powerful and deals enormous damage, because it depends on an unusual strategy, or because of its historical relevance in the world of games, these ten are battles that the consensus in the gaming community is that they’re challenging. They may be made easier, but they’ll never be called easy. So, you tell me if you agree or not by leaving a comment.

When we talk about boss battles, we understand that we are talking about an enemy that is more difficult than common enemies, with more damage and more HP than the others, and a unique and striking appearance.

Perhaps not the most difficult of all, Phoenix, a "spaceship" shooter released in 1980 by Taito for arcades, is widely considered by gamers and historians to be the first game to feature a boss battle. There are discussions pointing to Samurai, also from 1980, or Sasuke Vs. Commander, from the same year, as the first boss battle, but for this list, due to its striking visuals and strategy, we'll consider Phoenix as the first.

So, imagine the scene: you're playing games like Galaxian or Space Invaders, thinking it's just another day trying to get the maximum score and put your name at the top of the ranking (or at least your initials), and suddenly, that giant spaceship appears on the screen, occupying almost the entire screen, firing lasers from the front, sides, and wings, and demanding that you hit specific points to be able to hit the ship's pilot and defeat him. By the time you recover from the shock, your credits are over.

Elden Ring, a game by FromSoftware that featured the participation of George R.R. Martin, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire whom most of us know from the Game of Thrones series, was one of the company's biggest successes thanks to the story created in partnership with the American author and director Hidetaka Miyazaki, and its challenging battles. Among them, the Malenia boss fight.

Malenia inflicts heavy damage in both her first and second forms, where she also learns poisonous moves, gains a fire breath, and high-speed attacks. However, the main problem for those facing her is her life regeneration with each hit. While you’re dying, she’s regenerating. The good part is that this battle is optional, and to reach it you need to complete a certain number of steps, find some items, and then enter the fight. In other words, it's a type of suffering you only endure if you want to.

World of Warcraft is one of the largest and longest-running MMORPGs ever released. With its relatively simple graphics, low system requirements, and a monthly subscription system that discourages bots and hackers, the game remains one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world and continues to receive new content regularly.

In version 1.6, the game received the Ahn'Qiraj Temple raid, whose final fight is against C'Thun, a powerful Old God and one of the most difficult bosses to appear in the game. This boss requires the coordination and participation of many people from guilds and clans to defeat him. In addition to a gigantic health bar and "one-hit kill" attacks, the monster also trapped players in its stomach and only released them when it wanted to. It was also necessary to hit some crystals to break its defense and open a damage window of about 40 seconds. Therefore, patience and teamwork were necessary.

God of War has never been an easy game. At no point did the bosses and gods of Greek or Norse mythology give Kratos a moment's peace, but among them all, there was one boss who earned a special place on the list for being absurdly difficult and also optional. Again, let's "mess with what's quiet", since in the 2018 God of War, Sigrún, the queen of the Valkyries, is more difficult than the final boss, Baldur.

Corrupted by Odin, killing a Valkyrie means freeing their soul and letting them rest in peace. The hardest part of defeating Sigrún is the fact that she combines the powers and tactics of all the other Valkyries: aerial attacks, wing attacks, projectiles, and the entire arsenal of the other Valkyries (which weren't easy to come by either). You need to memorize patterns to try and predict some of her attacks, but she can still quickly change tactics and land another blow, catching you by surprise. On higher difficulties, some attacks can be one-hit kills.

This case has more historical value on the list of most difficult bosses than actual difficulty. M. Bison, the final boss of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, was a thorn in the side of many players who lost tokens in arcades in just a few hits, because the boss was fast, delivered painful combos, stunned you before you could even move the joystick to do anything, and finished you off with the Psycho Crusher just to make sure you were truly dead.

The fight was much more psychological than physical, since when he started hitting and wouldn't stop, the urge to drop the controller and tell him to go to hell was stronger than anything else. Now, if this fight was already difficult in the regular game, imagine in those "Street Fighter II at the Bus Station" games where every move left a trail of hadoukens in the air and the blows took away much more health than they normally did. If you could beat him in the "Bar SFII", then this list here must be a joke to you.

Again, a boss that may not be the most difficult in its franchise or even in games, but it had something that made it incredibly frustrating and could result in more than 30 minutes of battle lost in a single hit: the need for advance preparation, resource management, patience, and coordination.

Born on the Master System as one of Sega's answers to the success of Final Fantasy, the Phantasy Star franchise came to an end with Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium, released for Genesis in 1993 and considered one of the most important RPGs of the 16-bit era.

The story follows Chaz Ashley and his allies on a journey to discover the origin of a series of disasters threatening the Algol planetary system. As the adventure progresses, the heroes discover that behind all the events are Dark Force and its creator, the cosmic entity known as Profound Darkness.

The difficulty lies in reaching the boss with the right items, the right team, the correct spells and equipment, and without losing HP along the way. Simply arriving and fighting until the boss dies won't work. If you don't prepare in advance, you won't even get past the first boss fight. More than the strongest sword, strategy and planning are your greatest weapons here.

Released for the Super Nintendo in 1994, Earthbound (or Mother II in Japan) features one of the most difficult bosses in Eastern RPGs, and one of the strangest and most disturbing. Especially considering that Ness and his group are just ten or twelve-year-old children, seeing Giygas as a series of images of pain and distorted faces would be grounds for sending them to therapy for the rest of their lives.

It's not enough that the poor guy only talks to his dad over the phone, imagine him still having to confront the abstract graphic representation that depicts "absolute evil".

At a certain point in the fight, Giygas becomes completely invulnerable, and the only way to damage him is with Paula's "Pray" ability. However, there are two important details: imagine Paula falls in combat and you have no way to revive her? It's a highly improbable situation, but not impossible. The other detail is that the game doesn't provide any information about this; you only discover this strategy by reading the game manual or trying everything you have until you reach "Pray" and manage to inflict some damage. If you haven't read the manual or anywhere else, by the time you discover this, the fight may already be over with you actually losing it.

This Nintendo 8-bit wrestling game was simple, with limited moves and no career or story mode. It had nothing particularly noteworthy, except for the fight against the Great Puma, one of the most difficult on the console. This final boss became famous for its extreme difficulty and the need for strategies and tactics to defeat it.

The boss seems designed to break the rules of the game itself, hitting you with special moves like a dropkick before you even realize what's coming. Furthermore, the amount of damage he inflicts is above average for the game's fighters. So, in addition to the surprise, the subsequent damage takes away half of your HP bar.

Another problem was the difficulty of finishing him off by holding him down, because he dodged practically everything. Video game tip magazines of the time, like Nintendo Power, recommended using a turbo controller to keep him on the ground.

The latest game in the Halo franchise, which concludes the story of Master Chief and Cortana on the Zeta Halo ring, features one of the most difficult fights in the game's history, but with one condition: you must play the entire game on Legendary difficulty. So, if you enjoy suffering, the challenge is on! The Harbinger is the true final boss of the game and only appears on this highest difficulty.

Fighting him means facing hordes of enemies before even reaching him. And if you die, you go back to the beginning of the stage—not just the boss, but the entire stage. You're thrown back to the start, you have to retrace your steps to reach him and restart the fight. Furthermore, the boss has area damage and a shield that requires charged shots from weapons like plasma cannons. Another detail: in Legendary mode, vital points like the head can kill the player in just a few hits; therefore, taking a headshot here is a one-way trip back to the beginning of the stage.

Undertale is an indie RPG that has attracted attention for its different approach to combat. Normally, players engage in gameplay where they only kill those they find most difficult to overcome or those they can't avoid because they're in their path, but here, instead of killing everyone, it's possible to beat the game without killing any enemies—or by killing absolutely everything in your path: the so-called Genocide Route.

In this route, after eliminating all enemies, NPCs, and even possible allies, you face the hoodie-clad skull Sans. This enemy is truly extraordinary, with random and unpredictable attacks, extremely high defense and dodges, and the need for perfect movements to avoid being hit by his high damage output. Sans also messes with your psychology, pretending to lose several times during the fight just to lower your guard so he can then kill you. And when he does this, he even counts how many times you fell for his lie—just for fun.