There are so many moments in video games that make us bang our head against the desk, thrown the controller against the wall, or even punch the TV or monitor. And one of the reasons why we do such things is because of a very tough boss fight. We all have been there; we all fought a boss that made us wonder why we bought this goddamn game in the first place, but you continue fighting because you never give up, right?
The joy we feel when we finally beat the boss is incomparable and, in the end, all the rage worth it. This list is about that, and we are going to select the hardest bosses in video games ever, so let’s begin.
10. Through the Fire and Flames – Guitar Hero 3
Despite not technically being a boss, this song feels like it. If you have ever played Guitar Hero before you know that mastering this DragonForce song on expert difficulty is like mastering the song itself on a real guitar.
It requires top notch mind-hand coordination and almost superhuman reactions; I play real guitar and I have never been able to finish this song even in medium difficulty… Even Herman Li, DragonForce’s guitarist, had a real bad time playing this song on Guitar Hero, he even said that is easier to play on a real guitar.
9. Dracula – Castlevania
Difficult games were extremely normal on NES and one of the hardest games back in the day was Castlevania. This game was hard from start to finish but the Dracula fight was something else, without a doubt the hardest part of the game.
Dracula’s attack patterns were so random that was very hard to follow, and also, the fight has to phases: the first part you fight against his human form and after you destroy the first health bar the second part will begin with him transforming into his true form and guess what? More random attack patterns.
8. Sigrun – God of War
2018’s God of War is a game not that hard compared to other current hack and slash games. But if you want to complete the game at 100% you have to fight a number of Valkyries that are surprisingly harder than any enemy you have fought before.
Yeah, each Valkyrie puts up a fight but they are a piece of cake when compared to Sigrun, the Valkyrie Queen. She appears after all the other 8 Valkyries are defeated and she can use all the abilities of her fallen comrades and also each attack does more damage.
7. The Nameless King – Dark Souls 3
FromSoftware is a developer that likes to create sadistically hard bosses, so this won’t be the only time we will see a FromSoftware’s boss on this list… In fact, if only FromSoftware’s bosses would appear on this list nobody would argue about it, but that would be boring.
The Nameless King from Dark Souls 3 is arguably the hardest boss in all Souls games. This fight, just like Dracula’s fight, has two phases: the first one is about taking down King’s dragon and the second one is taking down King himself. And guess what? At half health, the boss uses all-new moves in his patterns.
6. Mike Tyson – Punch Out!!
Punch-Out is another NES video games that is remembered for its extreme difficulty. Reaching the fight against Tyson is a challenge, but beating Tyson himself felt like fighting him in real life because he was almost impossible to beat.
Back in the day, if somebody told you that he beat Tyson, it was probably a lie because most people never beat Tyson. He can knock out Little Mac with a single punch and blocking a punch would disintegrate your energy in a matter of seconds. Defeating him came down to superhuman reflexes and luck… Pure luck.
5. Sephiroth – Kingdom Hearts 2
To be honest, you can not a expect a nasty boss in a game where the protagonists are Goofy, Donald Duck, and other Disney characters. Well, Sephiroth will surprise you a lot.
Sephiroth, the villain of the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy 7, appears as an optional boss in this game and we all are glad that he is optional because he is extremely hard to beat. Sephiroth is particularly hard because you will need to unlock a lot of powerful abilities and grind out at least 70 levels to have a hope of defeating him.
4. Yiazmat – Final Fantasy 12
Yiazmat is a boss that will be remembered forever because of its difficulty. Final Fantasy 12 players must have defeated the Hellworm and every single rank 7 mark; those things are considered really difficult already but the true challenge come with Yiazmat.
You have to have a team of max levels characters, and obviously max levels abilities, and not only that, you have to carefully use your items because this thing has 50 million hit points. Yiazmat also gains damage reduction as time goes on and can throw devastating attacks that have a 5% chance to one-shot a member of you party.
3. M’uru – World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is my favorite MMORPG. The game has been around almost 20 years and throughout the time we battled with more than one difficult boss. Some of these fights in WoW often take hundreds of attempts with more than 10 players fighting simultaneously.
The most infamous and hardest boss of the game is M’uru, the fifth boss of the Sunwell Plateau raid. Back in the day before the nerf, M’uru was so extremely hard that only five of the best guilds in the world were able to kill it.
2. Absolute Virtue – Final Fantasy 11
Final Fantasy 11 is a MMORPG that was released on 2002. The game is mostly remembered because of this boss who is infamously remembered for going undefeated for years until developers nerfed it in 2008 after realizing how incredibly difficult was. Players could be locked fighting Absolute Virtue for more than 30 hours and still not walk away victorious.
This might sound funny, but this boss wasn’t a boss that required amazing mechanics, top skills or team management, it only required developers’ intervention to finally beat it, and because it would be nerfed.
1. Malenia – Elden Ring
I told you that FromSoftware will appear again on this list. Malenia is not only considered the hardest boss in Elden Ring, but the hardest boss in all of FromSoftware’s titles, and probably the hardest boss to ever appear in a video game. Unpredictable combos, lightning-fast attacks, unfair high base damage and an even more unfair life stealing mechanic; even if you consider a pro Souls player you will have a horrible experience fighting Malenia.
Oh, I almost forgot, she has a second phase that makes her even more deadly than before. Thank you FromSoftware.
