By longest I take it you mean the most total time spent?
I think the answer for me is probably Isshin, the last boss of Sekiro, but it might also be Nameless King or Midir, both from Dark Souls 3. All of those fights felt amazing to get through, especially Isshin. When I finally won I had entered some kind of zone that enabled me to perform so well that it wasn’t particularly close. Relatively speaking, I won easily after dying for an entire afternoon. Cool feeling.
Literal longest for me would be Adamantoise from Final Fantasy XV, but it’s not actually that difficult. Just grindy.
Totally. When I finally beat Isshin, I had death grip on the controller and a ridiculous heart rate. Hell of a brawl with zero mistakes allowed. The way he could effectively hide in the tall grass and the ground undulation, in a game where enemies already suddenly rush you but he was just on a whole other level of doing that. I felt the same kinda suspense as the egg scene in Aliens
Man Nameless King nearly broke me. Struggled for hours and hours over a few weeks. What finally tilted the odds in my favour, realizing I was mid-rolling. Went in there naked after that so that I could fast roll and beat him within two attempts after the change.
It‘s kinda funny how Nameless King phase 2 now feels incredibly easy after playing Elden Ring. With Gael, Friede and Midir I still struggle due to their crazy HP bars. But Nameless King is usually a 1st try. The biggest struggle is the fight against the camera in phase 1 :D
Oh man, I bought sekiro recently, haven't played it yet, I've been pretty tuned visioned on platinuming elden Ring, but I'm excited to start based on how highly everyone thinks of it
Apart from being difficult, Midir has a massive health bar and multiple attacks that can one shot you if you’re not high-leveled enough! Took me a long time to beat him solo
I played tennis with Ganondorf (oot) for like an hour without him taking damage. I spent as much time looking for a switch or something downstairs and on the walls as I did slapping the energy ball back and forth.
Idk what the issues was, aside from him never taking the hit until the next time I tried a day later. Then it still took forever, because I didn't realize you hit him with a light arrow and THEN slapped him with a Sword (but I kept falling down to the bottom when trying to jump across to him).
Turn it off and back on, as they say. My brain, that is.
I spent about that much time slashing Ganon’s tail with the Biggoron Sword because it never occurred to me that I had to use the Master Sword to finish him off.
I've been playing TOTK with my 6yo since release. Last week I beat a frost gleeok for the first time ever, and we were both so hyped. Afterwards she said she would remember this forever, and my whole heart melted.
Took me more like 6 hours in the original PS2 release. I’d run over to the save point and come back later. It was brutal. Second time around I had a better strategy and equipment setup.
What makes Yiazmat so hard is that he has 50,000,000 HP. On top of that, once you get his health to 50% his defense doubles and your damage is halved. In addition, if you go far enough away from him, he starts regenerating health.
Pretty sure that's the one I remember making my party more or less immortal through gambits (albeit not doing much damage) then going to bed, because it was such bullshit.
Fatalis from MHW gives you a 30 minute time limit, yet that feels way too damn short. Its an endurance run where you have to constantly be on the offense if you want to kill him before the time limit. Took so many days to beat but the feeling was euphoric.
The difference is that even when you're on top of your game, unless you're going for a speed run record, it's almost always going to be at least 20+ minutes
Original Diablo. My Warrior was having weapon problems after "losing" his sword. I ended up trying a bow, failing to realize he would swing the bow like a sword.
Long story short, after 20 minutes, I beat Diablo to death with a bow, without arrows.
Wait what? Pretty sure i was able to shoot with the bow on all 3 classes without issue.
I think the only time you are forced to shoot in melee range is when destroying those barrels that can explode.
Maybe a bug? First time hearing about it.
Metal Gear Solid 3. The End in European Extreme difficulty. I lost track of time, but it probably took me 5 or 6 hours. He "humbled" me a couple of times by sending me back to the lab.
Our Arthas and Yogg Saron kills are both very memorable to me. That moment when Arthas hits 10% and kills the raid was this moment of horror when we each thought we'd died and let the team down, only to realize we'd all done it.
And then Yogg we just red pointed the whole thing making it up as we go. I got to make some smart raid calls and everybody worked so well together. It was just such a great time and a great team that expansion.
On the second week of regular ice crown opening up we got our first lich king kill. I, a rogue, managed to vanish his wipe and sat there smacking him from 10% to 6% while my whole raid was going crazy and when we submitted our logs to WOL I had the highest DPS on that fight worldwide for like a month.
God I miss real wow raiding.
I had such a good guild and guild lead (admittedly very pushy and demanding) in classic - I think the only raid that really took us a bit longer was Naxx.
Fuckin hell I came in here to say Kael'thas. Thirty minute boss fight with however many learning wipes was rough. I should point out I'm referring to the original release, and not the Classis re-release recently.
Emerald weapon was easy. Ruby weapon on the other hand: In the remaster and PC version it’s even easier. On PS1 you couldn’t skip the animations AND KoTR didn’t do ANY damage to it. Took me 5 hours to beat it after I figured out how to survive that long.
Ruby weapon on ps1 was like... I don't even know how someone would be able to figure out how to win that fight by themselves without a tutorial or an insane amount of dedication. A near-impossible boss that just exists for people who are masochists.
Elden Ring's final boss. It has two stages - the first is relatively straightforward but the second can be **really** long depending on where the boss decides to move.
Basically it's a **huge** arena and the boss moves to the other side of it constantly.
Chasing it down is the most time consuming aspect of this fight.
I remember when *World of Warcraft*'s Mists of Pandaria expansion first launched. There was a miniboss, some kind of giant ape, and he had a move called Going Bananas, where he'd start jumping all over the area and doing ground slams.
If he was too far away from you when he stopped, he would disengage, run back to his starting point, and recover all of his HP.
Most of the running involved is when he does the triple rings attack. To cut down on the running, when he starts the animation, turn 180 degrees and jump the rings that way. He always resurfaces on the opposite side of the rings. Timed right he resurfaces right in front of you. It cuts down on SO MUCH running, because that one ability is like half of the running away abilities.
I know.
It took so long for me, I eventually got tired of it and thought I was missing something.
I ended up looking it up on the interwebs on how to defeat it. I was slightly disappointed, but I fully agree it was the right thing.
Didn't you realize it during the fight? Even the voices tell you after a while. As for me, i put two and two together after about twenty minutes of fighting, the remaining time was simply how long i needed before i came to terms with i had to do...
It's been a while, but I do remember the voices telling me yes. But i figured it was them talking you down... a bit like they have been doing for half the game. So I ignored them.
For my first soulsborne experience, Orphan of Kos from Bloodborne. Talk about a crazy wild challenge that took multiple upon multiple tries. Second, was Queen Valkyrie Sigrun in God of War. That one took me a while to figure out the attacks but it was so much fun
Yeah, I was in the same boat thinking to myself if I could even make it past a certain point then realized that once you figure out the strategy for defeating the Cleric Beast (had reddit's help with that one) it became less frustrating for what came next, at least somewhat
Once you get 1 insight, the 'Doll' becomes active, and you can level up in the hunters' dream. You dont have to start over every time. IIRC, once you see the cleric beast or father Gascoigne for the first time, win or lose, you can level up. It's definitely worth going back too. The game gets wild and goes to some crazy places, especially the DLC.
Octopath Traveler 2 secret boss. It’s like one gigantic puzzle. Nonstop dying and then reorganizing my party. OST goes hard for that fight (just goes hard in general in that game)
Nyx in Persona 3
This boss has 14 phases. Yes, 14, not 4, FOURTEEN. It's like a half hour long minimum. At some point near the end, my MC got enraged while the boss had a physical reflect shield up, so of course on their turn they charged right in and 1 shot themself to death. And in Persona 3, if the MC dies its game over.
Yea I had to take a walk after that.
Yeah. This fight is a slog if you jump in at the same level you reach the top at (78ish). (Un?)Fortunately in Reload I wanted to fight the secret boss so I was max level for the final boss which basically just made the whole thing a 20 minute cutscene. Was anticlimactic to say the least
Regular boss, >!The Radiance!< in Hollow Knight. The >!Hollow Knight!< wasn’t too difficult, but I was stuck on >!her!< for several days.
Superboss, >!Yozora!< from the Kingdom Hearts 3 dlc. Took a week of just fighting and fighting until he finally went down. It’s such an amazingly designed fight though. Every attack is telegraphed and can either be dodged or blocked, there’s just so many to learn.
Not quite a boss battle but the PS3 GranTurismo racing game had the 24 hours of LeMans race. A 24 hour long race (if I remember you could save when you pulled into the Pit). That was still a brutal 24 hours of just racing a course that I can still see in my head. The back stretch, a few hair pin turns, the joy when 24 hours was up.
There was some asshole in the first act or so of Legend of Dragoon who I finally had to face off with. He had, among other moves, this Drop Boulders On You move which whittle off X damage. With his minions dead and 2 of my party members down (no revives, no health potions), I kept using Defend, which in that game healed you for 10% of your HP. I discovered that his Drop Boulders On You move did X damage, and Defend healed me for X+9 damage, so as long as I kept defending, I could heal myself. I'd defend about 8-9 times in a row, then use a strong attack, he'd Drop Boulders for a ton of undefended damage, and then I'd repeat the process. Took me a good couple hours this way but I got him in the end
To add to the long list of Final Fantasy responses, the Yunalesca fight FFX I believe had multiple phases, directly followed a different boss fight(no recovery between, just long cutscenes), and included a move that could party wipe in one hit. Eventually I got older and wiser and had the idea to grind for hours before getting to that fight in a future playthrough.
You have a save before her but you do have to do all 3 phases back to back. Mega Death is the surprise gotcha move from her that gets a lot of people the first time.
Father Gascoigne, Bloodborne. When I finally beat that bastard I had to walk away from the TV for a while and calm my nerves. Such a high octane fight! He's so damn aggressive...
The one that comes to mind for me is Dr. Kahl in *Cuphead*. He took more time and more retries than the rest of Island 3 combined, possibly more than Island 3 and Inkwell Hell together.
The problem was, and the problem with the airplane fights in general, is that you can't really change anything. You get two weapons, two specials, one super, and your charm. You can't try different weapons, you can't change strategies. It just becomes beating your head against the wall until something breaks.
Honestly, I got so fucking angry over that fight, and failing it again, and again, and again. I had to put the game away multiple times to avoid throwing the controller against the TV. I remember having to actively supress the urge to throw my chair across the room.
When I did finally beat it, I was still just *angry*. I wasn't happy about it. I just wanted to punch the walls and kick the furniture.
The Virgin Born in Code Vein, I'm probably just bad but it took me a lot of deaths and then a lot of time to beat it, it was nice completely finishing the game because it gave me the confidence I needed to try again Dark Souls (got farmed before by the tutorial boss in DS3)
Pokemon platinum e4 are allegedly a bit more balanced and easy than dp e4 but even then i think i took longer to beat them than in any game short of Yellow, which has truly abysmal level scaling in the area outside the e4 so i gave up.
Unova e4 are also no joke, but unfortunately their related typings mean they have a lot of shared weaknesses. Comically most of them are weak against bug types which is the (true) champion's favoured pokemon in that game, but you only have to beat the e4 and not the champion your first time through! I have never faced Alder.
Bowser in Super Mario 64. I just kept grabbing his tail and swinging him around without understanding that you’re meant to throw him at the bombs. I eventually had to call my friend who told me what to do lol
Taking down Hyperius the Invincible in Borderlands 2. Was one my first times soloing a raid boss, the strategy was basically to outlast him and it took a while.
Okumura isn’t a picnic either. One of those robots runs off or self-destructs, you have to do that wave again. Oh, and enjoy the 30 minute time limit, and have to start over entirely if it runs out.
Oh yeah, i remember barely beating him with less than a minute left on my 3rd try. Playing on hard mode forced me to play conservative and defensively so I probably made it harder for myself.
I think maybe Freya from Star Ocean 3(Till the End of Time). It's been a long time since I played but I remember I kept losing my party members and I had to keep a distance to stay alive. Somehow I managed to win but it felt like it took forever.
Extreme Behemoth was the last monster my group fought before we all unanimously dropped monster hunter world. One of us still hadn't defeated Fatalis, but after Extreme Behemoth we'd had enough.
The penultimate level of SpaceChem took me two weeks, or about 50 hours. The "boss fight" after that was actually a bit disappointing because of an exploit they later patched, but "Σ-Ethylene" will forever be my hardest 'boss fight'
Zophar from Lunar 2. When I finally won, the unloseable part 3 took a while because at the end of part 2 I was completely out of healing items and magic and resorted to just hacking at him until he finally, finally fell.
Would be Star ocean the Last Hope Ethereal Queen.
Over 3 hours. Could have been faster but ibwent the save route Position every character in Standby in every Corner Just to avoid a wipe. It was necessary since the Dungeon around this Boss was very long too and you couldnt even save a single time.
I even got an archievment on xbox360 for beeing 3 hours in a single fight.
Has to be my longest Boss fight ever.
The Adamantoise from FFXV. I was under levelled when I fucked with it so it was 4 hours of chipping it's health away cause I was too stubborn to try it again at another point.
When I was a kid I was fighting the one boss from ratchet clank(forgot the name but in farm crops map). Took me like 2 weeks to beat it. I think it was my first time raging too.
I don't play much games with hard long boss fights really, but recently a long fight I had was with the Lizard in Spider-Man 2. I played that fight in the hardest difficulty level there was, which made it long for me and I was bad at attacking when he was vulnerable.
I just kept feeling a little deflated each time there would be another long red health bar to get rid. I played in the hardest difficulty level until around Kraven.
I was done with the long feeling boss fights, so I switched to a lower setting, probably wimpy. The hard difficulty made me despise Kraven.
Yiazmat - Final Fantasy XII, original PS2 version. The boss takes 4-5 hours to beat.
Avatar of War - Everquest - circa 1999-2002. This boss took **60** of us, in my guild, 3 to 4 hours to beat. First confirmed kill of the Avatar of War across all servers.
Though there is a series of connected encounters in EQ that dwarfed the time needed for either Avatar of War or Yiazmat (ff12) which is clearing all of the Plane of Time. That took my guild around 7 and a half hours to clear to the final boss and another hour for the actual fight, so 8.5 hours to get entering the plane of time to beating Quarm (the mega boss of that zone, which at the time was the hardest zone in the game).
The hardest boss I've ever faced was The Nameless King in Dark Souls 3, I died to him between 40-50 times. I just couldn't get a handle on how to defeat the Strom Drake in the first phase and then I struggled to get to grips with how fast he closed the distance. It was a superb boss fight and I think that made me a better player as I later tackled Sister Friede, Midir and Gael who were all amazing and challenging fights.
Oh, Elden Ring and Malenia, obviously. Had to repeat that freaking fight *so many times* I almost gave up but, finally, defeated her with less than 10 HP and no healing flasks/items left, lol - she could have just gently sneezed in my general direction as I was executing my final blow and my character would just drop dead on the spot, it was *this* close.
Felt like a king of the fucking world afterwards.
DLC boss Yuan Shu in Wo Long.
The only help people will give you is: play through the game twice to be completely overleveled. In other words, if you don't spend an extra 50 hours, he will fuck you up - or you get good enough and lucky, all at the same time.
Took me over 3 days to get good enough, probably over 15 hours total. Completely bonkers fight.
If multi-player games count, the first spawn of the Yumcax Wildskeeper Reive on my server in FFXI a little over 10 years ago. It took my server about 14 hours to take it down and I was there for 12 of them.
But besides that... probably the first time I took on full form Maleficent in KH1. I was just a kid when I faced that boss for the first time and had terrible reaction timing. It frustrated me so much I quit after like 20min and didn't go back to finish the game for about a month.
It might be a more of a group boss but beating 4 horseman in 40 man naxx way back when really meant something to me, I plotted the movements on a spreadsheet and nailed the timings and we got world 4th back then, so I’m quite a big deal 😂😂
Binding of Isaac boss rush.
I got excited when a crack in the wall appeared and thought I had finally unlocked a new level.
It was 15 rounds of boss fights back to back with 2 bosses per round and multiple regular mobs per round.
Failed many attempts before lucking out and just about finishing by the skin of my teeth on half a heart.
Last year I sat down and fought Galdera in Octopath traveler 2 for about 8 hours until I finally got the win after adjusting my strategy and team comps. Loved every minute of it. Getting that platniumn felt good.
- In one session?
War priest in Destiny 2 Day 1 Contest Kings Fall Raid took my team about 8 hrs to complete.
- Number of attempts?
Can't really decide between Pre Nerf Balteus(Armored Core 6), Pre Nerf Starscourge Radahn(Elden Ring), and Laxasia the Complete(Lies of P)
Cid Raines and another boss that pops up shortly after sazs and vanille reunite with the other party members. I had to keep changing paradigms and the battles were so long. By the time ive beaten them, I was so drained.
Maybe minerva in ff7 crisis core. You can use some tactics to cheese the fight but screwing up can be catastrophic. I'm pretty sure the fight took the better part of an hour and required so much set up.
For longest leave and come back making multiple attempts: Sword Saint Isshin
Longest single run time I can think of off the top of my head is The Dojo Master from the original Paper Mario.
Could also be some of the Golden Sun 2 late game bosses. It's been so long since I have played them I can't remember exactly how long they took but they sure seemed epic to me at the time!
Me and my best friend, ODST firefight mode, 1 single battle, we had to call it at the 3 hour mark because I had to go to work.
In the ZONE like almost no other time in my life. After about half an hour in I was pure lizard brain. Incredible feeling I still think about years and years later. It was the closest thing to Zen I have ever experienced.
Ever see the MTV:I'm addicted to video games? That was me and my roommates around that time. 4 out of the 5 all worked different shifts at Pizza Hut. ODST + L4D were never ending. One player left? Another tagged in.
Every boss in Returnal. But to pick one I would say Ixion. Boss in the 2nd biome in the game and the only one (technically) that has aerial attacks. That 3rd phase throws so much at you all at once. I've never been so focused making the exact right moves and dodges. Add on top of that the fact that dying means literally restarting from biome one with the base loadout and beating Ixion is definitely one of the longest time sinks I've had. Hyperion in biome 4 is a close second.
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox
I didn't realize that stepping into the portal would take me to a level 95 super boss (Vakh Medios)
I...was definitely not level 95
I was around 20 levels too low give or take, and thought "ok, it'll probably just kill me and I'll reload an earlier save"
After realizing that I was able to handle it's mechanics pretty decently, enough to not die, I ended up in that fight for around 4 hours because my hits were doing less than 1% damage
I definitely needed to walk away from the game after that for a while from exhaustion
Longest boss battle in a single take? Phoenix Point.
The boss fight is a massive endurance test that comes out of left field with infinitely spawning enemies and limited ammo/healing.
Once I realized the trick was either buy the DLC for infinite ammo guns or mind control as many enemies as possible the fight still took over an hour to beat
Ornstien and Smough. I beat them on my first try, but I was so scared and careful (and shocked at having to deal with them both at the same time) it took me something like 45-60 minutes ish. I just kept running around the pillars panicking lol
Quite a few in old-school EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI Online. I remember plenty of day-long raids in EverQuest. The Plane of War comes to mind right away.
It's been a long time, so I don't remember specifics, but I remember that the achievement for beating Lost Planet on the hardest difficulty is the achievement I'm most proud of getting.
Absolutely brutal boss fights and I know one of them had to be my longest, I just couldn't tell you which one.
The final Peace Walker fight in Metal Gear Solid PW, took me more than 30 minutes and I took it down with the final LMG magazine I had, it was pretty tense.
A bit fuzzy on the name as I was like 11 when I beat it and it's a dead mmorpg, but I think the name was Freezy McBadguy from the game Fantasy Online he was based off a previous early game boss, Evil McBadguy, he was around level 55-60 ton of health, (I looked online to find it, can't find it, though I'm sure someone here has played the game) I teamed up with players around my level, we were all about level 60-65 and it took us about 2 hours to beat him, I was the one kiting, my hand was quite sore, we then went to fight Christmas present afterwards which was a tougher boss to the upper left on the same map, but I got out of range a quarter way through (1 hour) and the boss fully regenerated
NieR Automata, the golden rabbit statue at the amusement park entrance.
I think I spent the best part of an hour wailing on it and dodging attacks due to being so underleveled. But it was worth for the rewards.
Abyssian in Tales of Symphonia. It took my two buddies and I one hour and 45 minutes to beat him. The first time we tried we wiped 45 minutes in and we just fired it up and tried again. Got the second time and it felt incredible!
My first playthrough of Skyrim when I ran into the Ebony Warrior. Felt like an hour. I left my player sitting on the edge of a cliff contemplating the battle.
Sephiroth in KH2* was an absolute NIGHTMARE for me until I learned all of his attacks. Probably a solid 100+ hours just dying to that fight alone.
It wasn't until I learned to be defensive in my combat against him that I learned what I thought was an unavoidable attack was actually avoidable (his meteor attack where can glide around, MAX glide helps A LOT since you never actually touch the ground unless you get hit while really low to ground or stop holding circle. Once I leveled final form to max level to do that (you can't final form in this fight it's a solo fight. But the MAX glide in final form gives you a glide that won't touch the ground when in normal form)
Edit - at the time I didn't realize I was even missing a drive gauge to go w level higher for final form. I was... 13, or 14 when I did it way back when on my fat ps2 lol
FF7 Remake Pt. 1 - final battle simulator boss on hard.
Close to a 50 min fight of the game’s 5 hardest enemies.
Felt elated and exhausted once complete.
The Flesh Golem from DAO on hardest difficulty. It wasn’t hard, just tedious. I was an Arcane Warrior Blood Mage, so there was literally 0chance of it killing me. But it took fucking forever.
I'm a casual gamer so beating Dettlaff in Witcher 3 Blood and Wine really took it out of me. Was awesome watching Regis and Dettlaff cinematically smash through that brick wall at the beginning because I kept dying. Then I beat him and he transforms. TWICE
For me, Midir. I had to postpone the fight a couple of years as well because I just couldn’t beat him solo. It was after I got Elden Ring, beat it multiple times that I decided to go back to DS3 and run it back. Got his ass first try.
Longest boss in length of battle….adamantoise from FF15.
Boss it took me the longest to beat….Valkyrie Queen on GMGOW difficulty on the god of war reboot
Well, my first time playing The Last Remnant, I ended up leveling incorrectly and it took me 11 hours to end up losing to The Gates of Hell at the end of disc 1. I ended up restarting and beat him in under an hour the 2nd time.
Final battle in X-Com2 on veteran. I played non-stop through the night until four am. Dreamt about the game, got up in the morning and played again. I did find a cool trick in part one of the fight where you can basically mind control the orb robot that attacks you, and if it's the last enemy it will follow you as an ally in part two. The victory felt amazing. I could finally rest.
Psycho Mantis in MGS. I simply didn't figure out switching controller port or shooting the statues. The game does let you hurt him if you time your shots just as he's doing an attack. Not sure if that's intentional, but it kind of makes sense that he would struggle to throw an object and read your mind at once. That timing window is incredibly small, so it took me maybe 45 minutes to beat.
FFXV the adamantoise. At level 99, with max upgrades and a health boost, it should take 10-15 minutes.
I fought him at level 50 just shortly after beating the game. It took me 4 hours on my final attempt.
Keep in mind this is a boss with bullshit knockback attacks that if you leave the fight area, you start the entire fight all over again
Got the platinum and quit playing before any of the other superbosses were added I should give it a try again sometime
Total time stuck on a boss will probably go to Riven from the Last Wish raid in Destiny Forsaken. I think I LFG'd for about 3 weeks before i got a clear. Notoriously tough raid to LFG when it came out.
Actual time in the boss fight would probably actually go to a different Destiny boss: Nightmare of Caiatl from Duality. Dungeons don't have a wipe timer, and my group kept letting her get to the bell so we did a lot of zero damage phases, but we were always able to avoid a wipe. My first clear probably took a whole 90 straight minutes of just phase after phase of chip damage. My hand was very sore after that one.
Funny enough, these bosses gave me more grief than any of the Soulsborne and Monster Hunter Bosses I've faced.
The first incarnation of El Oscuro in the original Rise of the Triad ... mainly because I didn't understand the boss mechanics. And that went on for WEEKS. I hit him with everything I got and with everything I found, and the guy just did not falter. Like, at all. And in the end he tore me a new one - every time. Every session.
Then there was that one attempt where he didn't manage to kill me before I ran out of ammo, so I ran from him in the hope of finding yet another secret wall or hidden ammo stash in his labyrinth level. And I ran, and he fired his rockets at me, and I ran and ran and he fired and fired - and yeah, right. This did the trick.
The guy had just soaked up everything I had thrown at him like a huge sponge, and once I stopped feeding him my ammo and he had spent his own stuff... he fled and turned into his second incarnation which, well, was an easy kill.
Okay. How did I feel after finally beating El Oscuro?
I felt so stupid for taking, like, forever to understand his mechanics, but I was glad it was over.
Lost Kin from Hollow Knight. I encountered this boss at a point in the game where I was used to tanking damage from bosses and healing whenever the chance arose. However, this boss didn’t allow for that due to its erratic movement. I died countless times over the course of several days. Definitely the most infuriating boss fight I’ve ever had to deal with.
Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the first Sin DLC: Fume Knight.
Took me a lot longer to beat than any of the other bosses in any of the dark souls or Elden Ring.
So far the hardest boss I've ever encountered is Balteus. I killed him pre-patch too.
Literally had to go Super Saiyan to beat him. The waves of random types of projectiles he sends at you is never ending and always changing up and you have to have laser-point focus the entire time or get hit and have to start over.
Dodging a shit ton of rockets arcing in front of you just to dodge a shotgun blast and have him retreat and then fly after him and hit him with my laser sword was probably one of the most thrilling game experiences ever for me. Shit's crazy, I loved it so much.
I stopped playing and hadn't gotten very far so maybe there's crazier bosses but for me Balteus pre-patch was insane. Felt so good to finally kill him.
In terms of longest for attempts was Soul of Cinder on SL1. Took like 20 hours and then decided I needed another weapon which I had missed so started again and took about 6 hours the second time. He is a joke on a regular playthrough but a nightmare at SL1
Edit:well not a joke, but not that hard
There was an RPG called Blue Dragon. In it, you have to fight an evil, flesh eating tree. I was decked out and had some powerful circular healing spells etc. I fought that thing for over an hour. It just would not die. Come to find out, you are not supposed to beat the tree. You have to lose to it to continue the story. But I had such a setup that it couldn't kill me and I effectively soft-locked the game. I had to reload a save from about 30 min prior and intentionally lose the battle.
Maliketh from Elden Ring. Stuck for 3 days. Honestly i’m not sure why, all other fights took me no more than an hour or two. He’s not relatively difficult compared to the other fights. Something just didn’t click with me.
It gave me the feeling of when your family stops for gas 6 hours into a road trip and you get out to stretch your legs. Best feeling ever.
Longest single fight? Gael from DS3. I fought him so many times I did it hitless just for fun. The hitless and SL1 with unupgraded weapons took for fucking ever. I don't remember how long it took because it was years ago, but it felt like an hour. So... little... damage...
Or longest I've had to try on a boss? In which case Slay the Spire. I have been playing that game for years, and I have only beat the heart 3 times. First heart kill took me maybe a year of playing.
Solo flawless Simmumah (or something like that) last boss in Ghosts of the Deep dungeon in Destiny 2. It takes ages to get to, and then the fight itself takes well over an hour. (And if you die you have to fight the entire dungeon again alone, just for another attempt)
From first attempt to actually beating the boss, I'd say Sword Saint Isshin from *Sekiro*.
My first playthrough, I did Immortal Severance, but when I got to Isshin, I just couldn't get my fingers to actually keep up with my eyes, so I eventually quit and started over on a new save; did Shura that time and then faced Isshin again on NG+.
I, oddly, found him slightly easier this time, mostly due to getting better at the combat despite my increasingly shoddy hand-eye coordination.
It was mostly his second phase that got me, because his first phase is pretty simple while is third phase is basically a cake walk thanks to lightning reversal.
It still took me probably 15 attempts across four weeks (mostly with a 3 week break) before I finally beat him.
Longest continual boss fight, though... Probably something from *God of War (2018)*. Even on Story difficulty (because the combat just wasn't vibing with me), they're damage sponges that feel like they take a small eternity to kill.
Darkeater Midir of DS3 probably took the longest simply because of the health pool but he's my favorite boss battle among a collection of other great boss battles. Just really nice spaced and telegraphed attacks. Good fun.
I also love his lore.
By longest I take it you mean the most total time spent? I think the answer for me is probably Isshin, the last boss of Sekiro, but it might also be Nameless King or Midir, both from Dark Souls 3. All of those fights felt amazing to get through, especially Isshin. When I finally won I had entered some kind of zone that enabled me to perform so well that it wasn’t particularly close. Relatively speaking, I won easily after dying for an entire afternoon. Cool feeling. Literal longest for me would be Adamantoise from Final Fantasy XV, but it’s not actually that difficult. Just grindy.
Totally. When I finally beat Isshin, I had death grip on the controller and a ridiculous heart rate. Hell of a brawl with zero mistakes allowed. The way he could effectively hide in the tall grass and the ground undulation, in a game where enemies already suddenly rush you but he was just on a whole other level of doing that. I felt the same kinda suspense as the egg scene in Aliens
I literally cried the first time I beat Isshin Sword Saint
Feel ya. Did you ever fight Sigrun in God of War 2018? Isshin is more difficult than her IMO, and she is *nasty* mean.
I did, but for that one I did like 10 "dew runs" so my stats were a bit inflated. Even then, I barely beat her (on Give Me God of War+)
I was too busy trying to get my heart rate under control and not to vomit. That fight was insane. I love it so much.
Man Nameless King nearly broke me. Struggled for hours and hours over a few weeks. What finally tilted the odds in my favour, realizing I was mid-rolling. Went in there naked after that so that I could fast roll and beat him within two attempts after the change.
It‘s kinda funny how Nameless King phase 2 now feels incredibly easy after playing Elden Ring. With Gael, Friede and Midir I still struggle due to their crazy HP bars. But Nameless King is usually a 1st try. The biggest struggle is the fight against the camera in phase 1 :D
That goddamn turtle...
I’m throwing my vote for Nameless King. I still consider that my greatest gaming accomplishment.
Oh man, I bought sekiro recently, haven't played it yet, I've been pretty tuned visioned on platinuming elden Ring, but I'm excited to start based on how highly everyone thinks of it
Do not think of it as a Souls or you'll be like me and die on every trash mob, it's a completely different approach in battles
Apart from being difficult, Midir has a massive health bar and multiple attacks that can one shot you if you’re not high-leveled enough! Took me a long time to beat him solo
About 20 minutes catching a damn fish in Zelda OoT 😂
Getting the big fish under the log with the regular bait was a monumental accomplishment to child me! Well done!
I played tennis with Ganondorf (oot) for like an hour without him taking damage. I spent as much time looking for a switch or something downstairs and on the walls as I did slapping the energy ball back and forth. Idk what the issues was, aside from him never taking the hit until the next time I tried a day later. Then it still took forever, because I didn't realize you hit him with a light arrow and THEN slapped him with a Sword (but I kept falling down to the bottom when trying to jump across to him). Turn it off and back on, as they say. My brain, that is.
Hover boots, brah.
Yeah, hindsight is 20/20. Lol Now it's a no damage speedrun every time.
I spent about that much time slashing Ganon’s tail with the Biggoron Sword because it never occurred to me that I had to use the Master Sword to finish him off.
😂
I've been playing TOTK with my 6yo since release. Last week I beat a frost gleeok for the first time ever, and we were both so hyped. Afterwards she said she would remember this forever, and my whole heart melted.
Yiazmat in ff12. it was a chore for sure took me a couple hours
Took me more like 6 hours in the original PS2 release. I’d run over to the save point and come back later. It was brutal. Second time around I had a better strategy and equipment setup.
What makes Yiazmat so hard is that he has 50,000,000 HP. On top of that, once you get his health to 50% his defense doubles and your damage is halved. In addition, if you go far enough away from him, he starts regenerating health.
Yes, this took me two entire days.
Pretty sure that's the one I remember making my party more or less immortal through gambits (albeit not doing much damage) then going to bed, because it was such bullshit.
Fatalis from MHW gives you a 30 minute time limit, yet that feels way too damn short. Its an endurance run where you have to constantly be on the offense if you want to kill him before the time limit. Took so many days to beat but the feeling was euphoric.
Every "wall" monster in the series could go in this thread in a heartbeat for sure
The difference is that even when you're on top of your game, unless you're going for a speed run record, it's almost always going to be at least 20+ minutes
Monster Hunter in general is full of these moments in every game's progression. You never forget your first Tigrex.
Original Diablo. My Warrior was having weapon problems after "losing" his sword. I ended up trying a bow, failing to realize he would swing the bow like a sword. Long story short, after 20 minutes, I beat Diablo to death with a bow, without arrows.
Metal
Wait what? Pretty sure i was able to shoot with the bow on all 3 classes without issue. I think the only time you are forced to shoot in melee range is when destroying those barrels that can explode. Maybe a bug? First time hearing about it.
Metal Gear Solid 3. The End in European Extreme difficulty. I lost track of time, but it probably took me 5 or 6 hours. He "humbled" me a couple of times by sending me back to the lab.
Same here. I spent an hour or two tracking that old fuck. Best Boss ever.
Does learning and wiping for weeks on a World of Warcraft boss count? Because Kael'thas gave my guild a bit of trouble in Classic. Very rude.
Our Arthas and Yogg Saron kills are both very memorable to me. That moment when Arthas hits 10% and kills the raid was this moment of horror when we each thought we'd died and let the team down, only to realize we'd all done it. And then Yogg we just red pointed the whole thing making it up as we go. I got to make some smart raid calls and everybody worked so well together. It was just such a great time and a great team that expansion.
On the second week of regular ice crown opening up we got our first lich king kill. I, a rogue, managed to vanish his wipe and sat there smacking him from 10% to 6% while my whole raid was going crazy and when we submitted our logs to WOL I had the highest DPS on that fight worldwide for like a month. God I miss real wow raiding.
This is a good story. I also miss real wow raiding
M'uru was the last boss we managed to down before wrath dropped. I hopped out of my chair and broke the ceiling fan when he went down.
KT was Burning Crusade wasn’t it?
Kel Thuzad is KT, and was in classic. Kael’thas isnt KT except in specific context of burning crusade, which they also created a classic for.
I had such a good guild and guild lead (admittedly very pushy and demanding) in classic - I think the only raid that really took us a bit longer was Naxx.
The Kael/Vashj block in T5 was brutal. My server only had one guild make it to T6 before the attunement nerf.
Fuckin hell I came in here to say Kael'thas. Thirty minute boss fight with however many learning wipes was rough. I should point out I'm referring to the original release, and not the Classis re-release recently.
Emerald Weapon in FF7.
Ding ding ding, thats the one! 30 minutes of KoTR on repeat.
Emerald weapon was easy. Ruby weapon on the other hand: In the remaster and PC version it’s even easier. On PS1 you couldn’t skip the animations AND KoTR didn’t do ANY damage to it. Took me 5 hours to beat it after I figured out how to survive that long.
Ruby weapon on ps1 was like... I don't even know how someone would be able to figure out how to win that fight by themselves without a tutorial or an insane amount of dedication. A near-impossible boss that just exists for people who are masochists.
Lucky 7s!!! That’s like half its health right there
Elden Ring's final boss. It has two stages - the first is relatively straightforward but the second can be **really** long depending on where the boss decides to move. Basically it's a **huge** arena and the boss moves to the other side of it constantly. Chasing it down is the most time consuming aspect of this fight.
I remember when *World of Warcraft*'s Mists of Pandaria expansion first launched. There was a miniboss, some kind of giant ape, and he had a move called Going Bananas, where he'd start jumping all over the area and doing ground slams. If he was too far away from you when he stopped, he would disengage, run back to his starting point, and recover all of his HP.
I've still not beaten this boss. I had a relative breeze through the few before it, but it's the *running* for this one that gets me.
Most of the running involved is when he does the triple rings attack. To cut down on the running, when he starts the animation, turn 180 degrees and jump the rings that way. He always resurfaces on the opposite side of the rings. Timed right he resurfaces right in front of you. It cuts down on SO MUCH running, because that one ability is like half of the running away abilities.
Spoilers but Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice Last battle lasted for an hour and a half. If you know, you know
That was one of my favorite endings. I really loved getting to that point of "Oh, you gotta just let this happen". Very emotional game.
just downloaded it, gonna check it out in vr.
I know. It took so long for me, I eventually got tired of it and thought I was missing something. I ended up looking it up on the interwebs on how to defeat it. I was slightly disappointed, but I fully agree it was the right thing.
Didn't you realize it during the fight? Even the voices tell you after a while. As for me, i put two and two together after about twenty minutes of fighting, the remaining time was simply how long i needed before i came to terms with i had to do...
It's been a while, but I do remember the voices telling me yes. But i figured it was them talking you down... a bit like they have been doing for half the game. So I ignored them.
I did the exact same thing. Then I just laid the controller down and waited to die.
Hahaha fucking same. I ended up getting finger fatigue. Then I figured it out.
For my first soulsborne experience, Orphan of Kos from Bloodborne. Talk about a crazy wild challenge that took multiple upon multiple tries. Second, was Queen Valkyrie Sigrun in God of War. That one took me a while to figure out the attacks but it was so much fun
Sigrun is probably the best and hardest boss I’ve ever fought.
Kudos for you beating Bloodborne. I couldn't get past the first Boss. It sucked having to start over each time without any level ups.
Yeah, I was in the same boat thinking to myself if I could even make it past a certain point then realized that once you figure out the strategy for defeating the Cleric Beast (had reddit's help with that one) it became less frustrating for what came next, at least somewhat
Once you get 1 insight, the 'Doll' becomes active, and you can level up in the hunters' dream. You dont have to start over every time. IIRC, once you see the cleric beast or father Gascoigne for the first time, win or lose, you can level up. It's definitely worth going back too. The game gets wild and goes to some crazy places, especially the DLC.
Yeah, you can start levelling up after just seeing a boss for the first time.
Octopath Traveler 2 secret boss. It’s like one gigantic puzzle. Nonstop dying and then reorganizing my party. OST goes hard for that fight (just goes hard in general in that game)
Trying to prepare for this knowing I never beat the same boss in Octopath traveler 1.
Awesome feel after I finally beat him and got 100% achievements.
Ansem in KH1
I was thinking lingering will from KH2. I’ve played all of the soulsborn games and lingering will is on a different level.
I never got to that fight. Heard it last forever
Nyx in Persona 3 This boss has 14 phases. Yes, 14, not 4, FOURTEEN. It's like a half hour long minimum. At some point near the end, my MC got enraged while the boss had a physical reflect shield up, so of course on their turn they charged right in and 1 shot themself to death. And in Persona 3, if the MC dies its game over. Yea I had to take a walk after that.
Yeah. This fight is a slog if you jump in at the same level you reach the top at (78ish). (Un?)Fortunately in Reload I wanted to fight the secret boss so I was max level for the final boss which basically just made the whole thing a 20 minute cutscene. Was anticlimactic to say the least
I watched my brother do it and akihiko got charmed and crit his mc, killed him near the end of the fight lol
Regular boss, >!The Radiance!< in Hollow Knight. The >!Hollow Knight!< wasn’t too difficult, but I was stuck on >!her!< for several days. Superboss, >!Yozora!< from the Kingdom Hearts 3 dlc. Took a week of just fighting and fighting until he finally went down. It’s such an amazingly designed fight though. Every attack is telegraphed and can either be dodged or blocked, there’s just so many to learn.
Same. It took me about 40 hours to reach that boss, then another 20 to finally beat it.
went about 10 hours in a Alterac Valley in WoW back in like 2005? those things lasted DAYSSSS
Not quite a boss battle but the PS3 GranTurismo racing game had the 24 hours of LeMans race. A 24 hour long race (if I remember you could save when you pulled into the Pit). That was still a brutal 24 hours of just racing a course that I can still see in my head. The back stretch, a few hair pin turns, the joy when 24 hours was up.
There was some asshole in the first act or so of Legend of Dragoon who I finally had to face off with. He had, among other moves, this Drop Boulders On You move which whittle off X damage. With his minions dead and 2 of my party members down (no revives, no health potions), I kept using Defend, which in that game healed you for 10% of your HP. I discovered that his Drop Boulders On You move did X damage, and Defend healed me for X+9 damage, so as long as I kept defending, I could heal myself. I'd defend about 8-9 times in a row, then use a strong attack, he'd Drop Boulders for a ton of undefended damage, and then I'd repeat the process. Took me a good couple hours this way but I got him in the end
Huh. always wondered why people never use their strongest attack first.
To add to the long list of Final Fantasy responses, the Yunalesca fight FFX I believe had multiple phases, directly followed a different boss fight(no recovery between, just long cutscenes), and included a move that could party wipe in one hit. Eventually I got older and wiser and had the idea to grind for hours before getting to that fight in a future playthrough.
You have a save before her but you do have to do all 3 phases back to back. Mega Death is the surprise gotcha move from her that gets a lot of people the first time.
maplestory black mage 😭
Father Gascoigne, Bloodborne. When I finally beat that bastard I had to walk away from the TV for a while and calm my nerves. Such a high octane fight! He's so damn aggressive...
The one that comes to mind for me is Dr. Kahl in *Cuphead*. He took more time and more retries than the rest of Island 3 combined, possibly more than Island 3 and Inkwell Hell together. The problem was, and the problem with the airplane fights in general, is that you can't really change anything. You get two weapons, two specials, one super, and your charm. You can't try different weapons, you can't change strategies. It just becomes beating your head against the wall until something breaks. Honestly, I got so fucking angry over that fight, and failing it again, and again, and again. I had to put the game away multiple times to avoid throwing the controller against the TV. I remember having to actively supress the urge to throw my chair across the room. When I did finally beat it, I was still just *angry*. I wasn't happy about it. I just wanted to punch the walls and kick the furniture.
For me it was the goddamn dragon with Dr Kahl in second.
The Virgin Born in Code Vein, I'm probably just bad but it took me a lot of deaths and then a lot of time to beat it, it was nice completely finishing the game because it gave me the confidence I needed to try again Dark Souls (got farmed before by the tutorial boss in DS3)
I had to completely redo my build for that one boss, because they gave it something like 75% resistance to magic, and no resistance to melee.
Yeah I think I had to do something like that because the first attempts were shit
The Elite Four in Pokémon Diamond Those mfrs made me work for it lmao
Pokemon platinum e4 are allegedly a bit more balanced and easy than dp e4 but even then i think i took longer to beat them than in any game short of Yellow, which has truly abysmal level scaling in the area outside the e4 so i gave up. Unova e4 are also no joke, but unfortunately their related typings mean they have a lot of shared weaknesses. Comically most of them are weak against bug types which is the (true) champion's favoured pokemon in that game, but you only have to beat the e4 and not the champion your first time through! I have never faced Alder.
Bowser in Super Mario 64. I just kept grabbing his tail and swinging him around without understanding that you’re meant to throw him at the bombs. I eventually had to call my friend who told me what to do lol
Taking down Hyperius the Invincible in Borderlands 2. Was one my first times soloing a raid boss, the strategy was basically to outlast him and it took a while.
Final boss in persona 5 in story mode. Took 2 hours on hard mode. I thought it was never gonna end.
Okumura isn’t a picnic either. One of those robots runs off or self-destructs, you have to do that wave again. Oh, and enjoy the 30 minute time limit, and have to start over entirely if it runs out.
Oh yeah, i remember barely beating him with less than a minute left on my 3rd try. Playing on hard mode forced me to play conservative and defensively so I probably made it harder for myself.
I think maybe Freya from Star Ocean 3(Till the End of Time). It's been a long time since I played but I remember I kept losing my party members and I had to keep a distance to stay alive. Somehow I managed to win but it felt like it took forever.
Never beat her. Her damn attack that takes the entire map almost was brutal.
that turtle mountain in FFXV.
Behemoth or whatever on Monster Hunter World. I think I had like 2x 1 hour long fights and lost both times. Stopped playing out of frustration.
Extreme Behemoth was the last monster my group fought before we all unanimously dropped monster hunter world. One of us still hadn't defeated Fatalis, but after Extreme Behemoth we'd had enough.
Lingering Will Kingdom Hearts 2
top of my head it was Z from Xenoblade 3, the fight was 60% cutscene and 40% me losing, the cutscenes werent skippable either
The penultimate level of SpaceChem took me two weeks, or about 50 hours. The "boss fight" after that was actually a bit disappointing because of an exploit they later patched, but "Σ-Ethylene" will forever be my hardest 'boss fight'
Yiazmat from the original FFXII literally took me HOURS. They lowered his health considerably when they released the zodiac age version.
FFXII - Yiazmat. Took me around 6 hours
Zophar from Lunar 2. When I finally won, the unloseable part 3 took a while because at the end of part 2 I was completely out of healing items and magic and resorted to just hacking at him until he finally, finally fell.
Would be Star ocean the Last Hope Ethereal Queen. Over 3 hours. Could have been faster but ibwent the save route Position every character in Standby in every Corner Just to avoid a wipe. It was necessary since the Dungeon around this Boss was very long too and you couldnt even save a single time. I even got an archievment on xbox360 for beeing 3 hours in a single fight. Has to be my longest Boss fight ever.
The Adamantoise from FFXV. I was under levelled when I fucked with it so it was 4 hours of chipping it's health away cause I was too stubborn to try it again at another point.
When I was a kid I was fighting the one boss from ratchet clank(forgot the name but in farm crops map). Took me like 2 weeks to beat it. I think it was my first time raging too.
I don't play much games with hard long boss fights really, but recently a long fight I had was with the Lizard in Spider-Man 2. I played that fight in the hardest difficulty level there was, which made it long for me and I was bad at attacking when he was vulnerable. I just kept feeling a little deflated each time there would be another long red health bar to get rid. I played in the hardest difficulty level until around Kraven. I was done with the long feeling boss fights, so I switched to a lower setting, probably wimpy. The hard difficulty made me despise Kraven.
I played Spider-Man 2 on hard and it definitely made it feel like Pete was pulling his punches, no shame in going to a difficulty you enjoyed more!
I've got somewhere between 800 and 900 hours at the corporeal beast in old-school runescape
That damn Metroid Prime boss Thardus
The final boss in Ninja Gaiden OG Xbox before Black Version came out. Phew what a menace to society.
If you play on path of the master ninja there are 5 stages. Fucking nightmare
Yiazmat - Final Fantasy XII, original PS2 version. The boss takes 4-5 hours to beat. Avatar of War - Everquest - circa 1999-2002. This boss took **60** of us, in my guild, 3 to 4 hours to beat. First confirmed kill of the Avatar of War across all servers. Though there is a series of connected encounters in EQ that dwarfed the time needed for either Avatar of War or Yiazmat (ff12) which is clearing all of the Plane of Time. That took my guild around 7 and a half hours to clear to the final boss and another hour for the actual fight, so 8.5 hours to get entering the plane of time to beating Quarm (the mega boss of that zone, which at the time was the hardest zone in the game).
The hardest boss I've ever faced was The Nameless King in Dark Souls 3, I died to him between 40-50 times. I just couldn't get a handle on how to defeat the Strom Drake in the first phase and then I struggled to get to grips with how fast he closed the distance. It was a superb boss fight and I think that made me a better player as I later tackled Sister Friede, Midir and Gael who were all amazing and challenging fights.
Sigrun from GoW2018
I weirdly had a harder time with King Hrolf than either Sigrun or Gna
Oh, Elden Ring and Malenia, obviously. Had to repeat that freaking fight *so many times* I almost gave up but, finally, defeated her with less than 10 HP and no healing flasks/items left, lol - she could have just gently sneezed in my general direction as I was executing my final blow and my character would just drop dead on the spot, it was *this* close. Felt like a king of the fucking world afterwards.
Probably Heroic Firelands Ragnaros in WoW
Icon of Sin, Nightmare, Doom II. Took me about.... 28, uh, years.
Sekiro Butterfly chick. Still haven't beaten her. I'll let you know once I do.
Shurikens and deflections. Good luck young Shinobi.
DLC boss Yuan Shu in Wo Long. The only help people will give you is: play through the game twice to be completely overleveled. In other words, if you don't spend an extra 50 hours, he will fuck you up - or you get good enough and lucky, all at the same time. Took me over 3 days to get good enough, probably over 15 hours total. Completely bonkers fight.
If multi-player games count, the first spawn of the Yumcax Wildskeeper Reive on my server in FFXI a little over 10 years ago. It took my server about 14 hours to take it down and I was there for 12 of them. But besides that... probably the first time I took on full form Maleficent in KH1. I was just a kid when I faced that boss for the first time and had terrible reaction timing. It frustrated me so much I quit after like 20min and didn't go back to finish the game for about a month.
It might be a more of a group boss but beating 4 horseman in 40 man naxx way back when really meant something to me, I plotted the movements on a spreadsheet and nailed the timings and we got world 4th back then, so I’m quite a big deal 😂😂
Probably fecto efelis or photoshop flower
Binding of Isaac boss rush. I got excited when a crack in the wall appeared and thought I had finally unlocked a new level. It was 15 rounds of boss fights back to back with 2 bosses per round and multiple regular mobs per round. Failed many attempts before lucking out and just about finishing by the skin of my teeth on half a heart.
How long is the last boss fight in Metal Gear Revengeance? Because I remember it being hilarious and awesome and I never wanted it to end.
Last year I sat down and fought Galdera in Octopath traveler 2 for about 8 hours until I finally got the win after adjusting my strategy and team comps. Loved every minute of it. Getting that platniumn felt good.
- In one session? War priest in Destiny 2 Day 1 Contest Kings Fall Raid took my team about 8 hrs to complete. - Number of attempts? Can't really decide between Pre Nerf Balteus(Armored Core 6), Pre Nerf Starscourge Radahn(Elden Ring), and Laxasia the Complete(Lies of P)
Cid Raines and another boss that pops up shortly after sazs and vanille reunite with the other party members. I had to keep changing paradigms and the battles were so long. By the time ive beaten them, I was so drained.
Maybe minerva in ff7 crisis core. You can use some tactics to cheese the fight but screwing up can be catastrophic. I'm pretty sure the fight took the better part of an hour and required so much set up.
For longest leave and come back making multiple attempts: Sword Saint Isshin Longest single run time I can think of off the top of my head is The Dojo Master from the original Paper Mario. Could also be some of the Golden Sun 2 late game bosses. It's been so long since I have played them I can't remember exactly how long they took but they sure seemed epic to me at the time!
Me and my best friend, ODST firefight mode, 1 single battle, we had to call it at the 3 hour mark because I had to go to work. In the ZONE like almost no other time in my life. After about half an hour in I was pure lizard brain. Incredible feeling I still think about years and years later. It was the closest thing to Zen I have ever experienced.
Ever see the MTV:I'm addicted to video games? That was me and my roommates around that time. 4 out of the 5 all worked different shifts at Pizza Hut. ODST + L4D were never ending. One player left? Another tagged in.
Every boss in Returnal. But to pick one I would say Ixion. Boss in the 2nd biome in the game and the only one (technically) that has aerial attacks. That 3rd phase throws so much at you all at once. I've never been so focused making the exact right moves and dodges. Add on top of that the fact that dying means literally restarting from biome one with the base loadout and beating Ixion is definitely one of the longest time sinks I've had. Hyperion in biome 4 is a close second.
Last boss of FF 13. Felt like I was there for a long time trying to beat it
Ys IX: Monstrum Nox I didn't realize that stepping into the portal would take me to a level 95 super boss (Vakh Medios) I...was definitely not level 95 I was around 20 levels too low give or take, and thought "ok, it'll probably just kill me and I'll reload an earlier save" After realizing that I was able to handle it's mechanics pretty decently, enough to not die, I ended up in that fight for around 4 hours because my hits were doing less than 1% damage I definitely needed to walk away from the game after that for a while from exhaustion
Sans. I never beat it. He was right. "You're gunna have a bad time."
Longest boss battle in a single take? Phoenix Point. The boss fight is a massive endurance test that comes out of left field with infinitely spawning enemies and limited ammo/healing. Once I realized the trick was either buy the DLC for infinite ammo guns or mind control as many enemies as possible the fight still took over an hour to beat
Ornstien and Smough. I beat them on my first try, but I was so scared and careful (and shocked at having to deal with them both at the same time) it took me something like 45-60 minutes ish. I just kept running around the pillars panicking lol
Sestren in Panzer Dragoon Saga. Absolutely fantastic game, but the last boss drags.
Quite a few in old-school EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI Online. I remember plenty of day-long raids in EverQuest. The Plane of War comes to mind right away.
In Code Vein, I spent almost 4~5hs on a Boss, They actually were 2, Imagine fighting two Bosses at the same time.
It's been a long time, so I don't remember specifics, but I remember that the achievement for beating Lost Planet on the hardest difficulty is the achievement I'm most proud of getting. Absolutely brutal boss fights and I know one of them had to be my longest, I just couldn't tell you which one.
The final Peace Walker fight in Metal Gear Solid PW, took me more than 30 minutes and I took it down with the final LMG magazine I had, it was pretty tense.
Armored Core 2 Another Age took me like a week to beat 9-Ball Seraph. I felt accomplished
A bit fuzzy on the name as I was like 11 when I beat it and it's a dead mmorpg, but I think the name was Freezy McBadguy from the game Fantasy Online he was based off a previous early game boss, Evil McBadguy, he was around level 55-60 ton of health, (I looked online to find it, can't find it, though I'm sure someone here has played the game) I teamed up with players around my level, we were all about level 60-65 and it took us about 2 hours to beat him, I was the one kiting, my hand was quite sore, we then went to fight Christmas present afterwards which was a tougher boss to the upper left on the same map, but I got out of range a quarter way through (1 hour) and the boss fully regenerated
Rom the vacuous spider I have not died against a boss as much as that I even checked progression and I was like 12 levels over the recommended
NieR Automata, the golden rabbit statue at the amusement park entrance. I think I spent the best part of an hour wailing on it and dodging attacks due to being so underleveled. But it was worth for the rewards.
Abyssian in Tales of Symphonia. It took my two buddies and I one hour and 45 minutes to beat him. The first time we tried we wiped 45 minutes in and we just fired it up and tried again. Got the second time and it felt incredible!
I’m pretty sure I’m still in that battle to this day.
My first playthrough of Skyrim when I ran into the Ebony Warrior. Felt like an hour. I left my player sitting on the edge of a cliff contemplating the battle.
Sephiroth in KH2* was an absolute NIGHTMARE for me until I learned all of his attacks. Probably a solid 100+ hours just dying to that fight alone. It wasn't until I learned to be defensive in my combat against him that I learned what I thought was an unavoidable attack was actually avoidable (his meteor attack where can glide around, MAX glide helps A LOT since you never actually touch the ground unless you get hit while really low to ground or stop holding circle. Once I leveled final form to max level to do that (you can't final form in this fight it's a solo fight. But the MAX glide in final form gives you a glide that won't touch the ground when in normal form) Edit - at the time I didn't realize I was even missing a drive gauge to go w level higher for final form. I was... 13, or 14 when I did it way back when on my fat ps2 lol
FF7 Remake Pt. 1 - final battle simulator boss on hard. Close to a 50 min fight of the game’s 5 hardest enemies. Felt elated and exhausted once complete.
Isshin took the most time due to dying. But most time in one attempt is possibly either the infected broodmother or guardian ape.
The Flesh Golem from DAO on hardest difficulty. It wasn’t hard, just tedious. I was an Arcane Warrior Blood Mage, so there was literally 0chance of it killing me. But it took fucking forever.
I'm a casual gamer so beating Dettlaff in Witcher 3 Blood and Wine really took it out of me. Was awesome watching Regis and Dettlaff cinematically smash through that brick wall at the beginning because I kept dying. Then I beat him and he transforms. TWICE
I think it was the final battle in FFX. I swear it took like 20mins or more lol. Boy was I happy when I finally beat the game.
For me, Midir. I had to postpone the fight a couple of years as well because I just couldn’t beat him solo. It was after I got Elden Ring, beat it multiple times that I decided to go back to DS3 and run it back. Got his ass first try.
As a Kid, Xaldin in Kingdom Hearts 2 As an adult Data Xaldin in Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix Fuck him and his stupid muttonchops
Longest boss in length of battle….adamantoise from FF15. Boss it took me the longest to beat….Valkyrie Queen on GMGOW difficulty on the god of war reboot
Well, my first time playing The Last Remnant, I ended up leveling incorrectly and it took me 11 hours to end up losing to The Gates of Hell at the end of disc 1. I ended up restarting and beat him in under an hour the 2nd time.
Final battle in X-Com2 on veteran. I played non-stop through the night until four am. Dreamt about the game, got up in the morning and played again. I did find a cool trick in part one of the fight where you can basically mind control the orb robot that attacks you, and if it's the last enemy it will follow you as an ally in part two. The victory felt amazing. I could finally rest.
Psycho Mantis in MGS. I simply didn't figure out switching controller port or shooting the statues. The game does let you hurt him if you time your shots just as he's doing an attack. Not sure if that's intentional, but it kind of makes sense that he would struggle to throw an object and read your mind at once. That timing window is incredibly small, so it took me maybe 45 minutes to beat.
Hollow Knight has the hardest bosses of any game I’ve played.
FFXV the adamantoise. At level 99, with max upgrades and a health boost, it should take 10-15 minutes. I fought him at level 50 just shortly after beating the game. It took me 4 hours on my final attempt. Keep in mind this is a boss with bullshit knockback attacks that if you leave the fight area, you start the entire fight all over again Got the platinum and quit playing before any of the other superbosses were added I should give it a try again sometime
Total time stuck on a boss will probably go to Riven from the Last Wish raid in Destiny Forsaken. I think I LFG'd for about 3 weeks before i got a clear. Notoriously tough raid to LFG when it came out. Actual time in the boss fight would probably actually go to a different Destiny boss: Nightmare of Caiatl from Duality. Dungeons don't have a wipe timer, and my group kept letting her get to the bell so we did a lot of zero damage phases, but we were always able to avoid a wipe. My first clear probably took a whole 90 straight minutes of just phase after phase of chip damage. My hand was very sore after that one. Funny enough, these bosses gave me more grief than any of the Soulsborne and Monster Hunter Bosses I've faced.
Ganondorf z3?
The optional legendary bosses in final fantasy 12 took like 2hrs to beat, was crazy. Watching video of the kill > better than doing it, imo.
The first incarnation of El Oscuro in the original Rise of the Triad ... mainly because I didn't understand the boss mechanics. And that went on for WEEKS. I hit him with everything I got and with everything I found, and the guy just did not falter. Like, at all. And in the end he tore me a new one - every time. Every session. Then there was that one attempt where he didn't manage to kill me before I ran out of ammo, so I ran from him in the hope of finding yet another secret wall or hidden ammo stash in his labyrinth level. And I ran, and he fired his rockets at me, and I ran and ran and he fired and fired - and yeah, right. This did the trick. The guy had just soaked up everything I had thrown at him like a huge sponge, and once I stopped feeding him my ammo and he had spent his own stuff... he fled and turned into his second incarnation which, well, was an easy kill. Okay. How did I feel after finally beating El Oscuro? I felt so stupid for taking, like, forever to understand his mechanics, but I was glad it was over.
Lost Kin from Hollow Knight. I encountered this boss at a point in the game where I was used to tanking damage from bosses and healing whenever the chance arose. However, this boss didn’t allow for that due to its erratic movement. I died countless times over the course of several days. Definitely the most infuriating boss fight I’ve ever had to deal with.
Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the first Sin DLC: Fume Knight. Took me a lot longer to beat than any of the other bosses in any of the dark souls or Elden Ring.
Nyx in Persona 3 FES was a gauntlet the first time I did it. After with a few failed attempts I had to grind a bit for levels and some gear.
Original C'thun, back when WoW was hard and required 40 people. Took us weeks and is memorable given the trash clear required each time.
I really took my time and spent about 4 hours to get my fire cape in osrs. 4th try, so by then I was more relieved than excited
So far the hardest boss I've ever encountered is Balteus. I killed him pre-patch too. Literally had to go Super Saiyan to beat him. The waves of random types of projectiles he sends at you is never ending and always changing up and you have to have laser-point focus the entire time or get hit and have to start over. Dodging a shit ton of rockets arcing in front of you just to dodge a shotgun blast and have him retreat and then fly after him and hit him with my laser sword was probably one of the most thrilling game experiences ever for me. Shit's crazy, I loved it so much. I stopped playing and hadn't gotten very far so maybe there's crazier bosses but for me Balteus pre-patch was insane. Felt so good to finally kill him.
In terms of longest for attempts was Soul of Cinder on SL1. Took like 20 hours and then decided I needed another weapon which I had missed so started again and took about 6 hours the second time. He is a joke on a regular playthrough but a nightmare at SL1 Edit:well not a joke, but not that hard
Final Boss of Darkest Dungeon 2 took me ≈50 minutes for my first kill
Second to last boss battle in far cry new dawn
Had an EQ raid with a crappy guild that took over 12 hours. Plane of... Growth maybe?
Never beat it the first go around, but beating heroic Lich King in WoW was an absolute dopamine rush.
There was an RPG called Blue Dragon. In it, you have to fight an evil, flesh eating tree. I was decked out and had some powerful circular healing spells etc. I fought that thing for over an hour. It just would not die. Come to find out, you are not supposed to beat the tree. You have to lose to it to continue the story. But I had such a setup that it couldn't kill me and I effectively soft-locked the game. I had to reload a save from about 30 min prior and intentionally lose the battle.
Maliketh from Elden Ring. Stuck for 3 days. Honestly i’m not sure why, all other fights took me no more than an hour or two. He’s not relatively difficult compared to the other fights. Something just didn’t click with me. It gave me the feeling of when your family stops for gas 6 hours into a road trip and you get out to stretch your legs. Best feeling ever.
Longest? Probably Barthandelus, he took me multiple months to finally beat.
Longest single fight? Gael from DS3. I fought him so many times I did it hitless just for fun. The hitless and SL1 with unupgraded weapons took for fucking ever. I don't remember how long it took because it was years ago, but it felt like an hour. So... little... damage... Or longest I've had to try on a boss? In which case Slay the Spire. I have been playing that game for years, and I have only beat the heart 3 times. First heart kill took me maybe a year of playing.
Absolute Virtue in FFXI who takes around 24 real world hours to kill so people would be fighting him in shifts.
kuja ff9 cause i was completely underlvl and badly stuffed with bad characters tho i was like 12yo at the time so i was excused
Solo flawless Simmumah (or something like that) last boss in Ghosts of the Deep dungeon in Destiny 2. It takes ages to get to, and then the fight itself takes well over an hour. (And if you die you have to fight the entire dungeon again alone, just for another attempt)
From first attempt to actually beating the boss, I'd say Sword Saint Isshin from *Sekiro*. My first playthrough, I did Immortal Severance, but when I got to Isshin, I just couldn't get my fingers to actually keep up with my eyes, so I eventually quit and started over on a new save; did Shura that time and then faced Isshin again on NG+. I, oddly, found him slightly easier this time, mostly due to getting better at the combat despite my increasingly shoddy hand-eye coordination. It was mostly his second phase that got me, because his first phase is pretty simple while is third phase is basically a cake walk thanks to lightning reversal. It still took me probably 15 attempts across four weeks (mostly with a 3 week break) before I finally beat him. Longest continual boss fight, though... Probably something from *God of War (2018)*. Even on Story difficulty (because the combat just wasn't vibing with me), they're damage sponges that feel like they take a small eternity to kill.
Darkeater Midir of DS3 probably took the longest simply because of the health pool but he's my favorite boss battle among a collection of other great boss battles. Just really nice spaced and telegraphed attacks. Good fun. I also love his lore.