Favorite Boss Fight in Recent Memory? -Possible Spoilers-

Truely great and memorable bossfights are few and far between...

-Dragons Dogma : Dark ArisenSpoilerwarning-

Today I've finally beaten Daimon's 2nd Form (he's the final boss in Dark Arisen's Bitterblack Island dungeon - Diablo if you will). Must have taken me somewhere between 1-2 hours of highly concentrated gameplay to get it done with my lvl 120 Mystic Knight.

Fellow has numerous attack patterns from melee to grapple to crowd control to ranged dps, he's casting the highest magnitude of magicks in split seconds, stacking spells like High Bolide and High Seism. He has an easy way of dispatching all my pawns in one swoop, if I don't manage to stagger him out of it.

Watch a lvl 130 something Fighter take him out in roughly 3 hours here. There's supercheap ways for Strider-archetypes to take him down, but all-in-all, if you don't cheese Daimon, it's one of the best flippin' bossfights I've ever had the joy to overcome. The toughest cookies are often the sweetest, if it's a fair fight. Daimon is, and it's a masterpiece.

What's your favorite bossfight in recent memory and why? And please put a spoiler warning at the beginning of your post, to warn what game it concerns.

the moon

@jouseldelka: seriously, wtf were they thinking?

Dust: An Elysian Tale

Oh, and Asura's Wrath. The whole god damn DLC.

I was going to say precisely this, especially since it's one of the few games with good bosses that I've completed recently. I did beat Deus Ex HR, but it does not have good bosses.

What's this in reference to?

dead space 3 I think.

Senator Armstrong

The game where you place something on the moon at the end of the boss battle.

Let's not name it so we don't spoil it for those who haven't played it :)

DmC Bill O'Reilly boss fight

I was thinking this.

Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising. ohhh man

Ornstein & Smough and Artorias from Dark Souls.

Probably Barbas in DmC or Mistral/Armstrong in Revengeance, I can't choose.

@video_game_king said:

I'm pretty sure he's talking about PotatOS.

I loved the boss fight in the TV news program in DMC.

@buble: What he said.

Yeah - that was a great fight indeed.

Senator Armstrong. Great music and great flow, and he was tough as shit until you get the hang of it.

Does the end of Gunpoint count?

Didn't even let him get a word in. Camera opens door, dude starts to speak, gun drawn and fired, jump out window.

oh yeah, on topic, the fight with Kax-Teh in Zeno Clash 2.

Of the top 20 or so from the current generation I'd say 15 of them are from Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, so there's that. Aside from those, Radec, the Dragon in DD, Barthandelus, the Senator from Revengeance, and Dante from DMC4.

Dark Souls has some fantastic Boss fights, the character design is amazing. I just fought a wolf the size of a 3 story building that attacked you with a sword grasped in its mouth.

I really enjoyed the Mr Freeze boss fight in Arkham City as it was tense because you could not take him out directly due to him being too powerfully to fight hand-to-hand, because of this it made you feel and thus play as Batman would to take him down.

Brayko in Alpha Protocol.

The boss himself is such a fantastic character for Michael to play off of. Everything about this, the premise, the music, the ridiculous jacket, the snorting cocaine to turn into a uber boss, it's just brilliant.

Yes! This boss-fight was great.

So the thing was (for those of you who haven't played it), that he didn't take that many hits, but you could only use each technique once. So if you sneaked up behind him and did a silent takedown or crawled into a grate and did a takedown from below, that would only work one time.

On Normal, this wasn't such a big deal, but on New Game+, you needed 8 different kinds of hits. So you were scrambling, trying to figure out how the hell you'd hurt him. I remember I had him down to only one hit left and totally panicking, because I'd used everything I could think of, and then I realized that you can use the Line Launcher to kick enemies in the back, and that finally beat him. I was pretty darn proud of myself after figuring that one out.

That's some great boss-fight design. It was frustrating as hell, but afterwards it felt great. It really required some creativity from the player, unlike most boss fights in those kinds of games.

Sam, Mistral, Armstrong, and most of all Monsoon from Metal Gear Rising. Some of the best fights in a character action game I've played, up there with DMC 3.

I'm gonna be boring and say Bowser. Gotta stick with the classics.

Bob Barbas from DmC was probably the most recent time I had an "Oh Snap" moment when fighting a boss, though the Dragon battle in Dragon's Dogma is pretty epic and crazy, as is the final, final boss in that for as absurdly easy as that battle is. Anything Dark Souls related is also pretty self-explanatory, but I haven't touched any of the DLC bosses, sadly.

I should really play through the Dark Arisen stuff, the only thing holding me back being a lack of consistent access to a 360 and the dreading realization that I'm going to have to get my character far higher than the mid-50s if I want to get through bitterblack without burning through an absurd number of wakestones.

All of Vanquish's boss battles, but if I had to choose one, it would be the final boss battle. The best of this generation.

I also did like DMC4's boss battle between Nero and the girl's brother or whatever. The fight that takes place on the palace's battlements with a scenic view of the sea and horizon. Top notch.

Also, a shout out to Uncharted 3's final boss battle. No quicktime events but it is formulaic. And looks goooood.

Persona 3: nyx avatar and Dust An Elysian tail

Does Portal 2 count?

If I'm being realistic that is the only one I thought was exceptional, otherwise games I have liked were at best non-offensive (and a even greater number were kind of bad.... hi uncharted 2.....).

Gwyn, Lord of Cinder.

@video_game_king: Hell. Yes.

Every boss in Metal Gear Rising

This mother fucker knows what's up.

Most satisfying boss fight I've had in years.

The music during that fight is unforgettable.

Thanks for the spoiler warning. I haven't finished the Dragon's Dogma expansion yet.

My most memorable in the last year or so was Lucifer in SMT: Nocturne. I wasn't FAQ'ing my way through the game so I had no idea what I was in for. I went in under leveled and only had 1 pierce. I had my uber-Pixie though through shear luck when I made it down to the 5th Kalpa.

I'm not a big SMT fan but Nocturne is a solid game. Even some of the late-game puzzles where kind of cool.

Minor Spoiler for The Last of Us

The bloater enemy in the high school gym was pretty fantastic. The closest thing that game has to a traditional boss fight

The most recent? Yeah It'd be Damion from Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen.

I was totally the wrong class for it (i first tried him a bunch of times as a magick archer, got my ass kicked cus my magick stat was low as shit). switched to strider (which was my favorite class), and had a much easier time, but it was a really satisfying and challenging fight.

Dark Arisen feels alot like Dark Souls honestly. They don't do it as well, but its an obvious inspiration for them. A dark closed area, lots of danger. They just go overboard with it. Spawning in boss monsters when you're already fighting boss monsters. Spawning in Death that can oneshot you. its like "we're gonna out EXTREME Dark Souls!!!!!!" The thing with dark souls is it never felt cheap to me. In Dark Arisen it did, sure i beat it, it's just annoying as BALLS to have 3 Garms spawn ontop of you when you're trying to fight a gorecyclops, that happened to me TWICE, fuck that!

Dark Souls Also has ALOT of really great boss fights. Maybe its just me, or the weird learning curve of the game, but i had alot LESS trouble with the last half of bosses than the first half. Once i got past anor lando the game was alot easier. O&S was by far the hardest boss fight for me. (i beat them all solo my first playthrough, didnt mess with multiplayer at all till i beat it) when you wound Sif so bad he starts limping around :( i got so bummed out. I backed off to pop and estas flask, but then he was just limping around like a sad wounded dog. MAN! i got so sad having to kill him.

Agreed. This boss fight salvaged the entire game for me. Not that I hated it, but it's hard to play it after P4. And it's rare to find a JRPG ballsy enough to have a difficult final boss anymore. I think the only one I ever encountered was like in ff4.

False King motherfuckin' Allant. And pretty much all other bosses in the Souls series. The final CQC bout between Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot in MGS4 got me all gooey inside. That and finally being able to pilot a Metal Gear in a Metal Gear game (who'd a thunk it?).

God of War3 all the bosses lol and the Reaper boss battles in ME3 were fun.

That end boss in Bayonetta

All the bosses in No More Heroes 1 & 2

Anarchy Reign's bosses

The final boss in Vanquish (although all the giant robot shit was cool)

All the bosses in Anarchy Reigns.

Except I did just that and had no problems with the game.

I'm replaying Kingdom Hearts 2 after 3 was announced. I still really like the Xaldin boss fight in Beast's Castle the second time. Then I plan on going back to Final Fantasy X and I know for a fact that Seymour Omnis was the best fight in that game. Then Ace Combat 5 and I know that there's technically no bosses in that game but there are two missions that I like, Journey Home and Heartbreak One. Heartbreak One might have one of the closest things to a boss fight when you fight the 8492nd squadron.

Yeah. I'm going retro because outside of The Last of Us there's nothing that interests me. I guess I could play more Don't Starve though. Or maybe Marvel Heroes.

From the past year...

Jetstream Sam, so great that it got a whole chapter devoted to it. The closest thing we've had to DMC3's Vergil fight that I've seen for awhile, even DmC's attempt was pretty weak.

I played this pretty recently and this last fight was both fun and challenging, also the music for this boss was great too.

The Demi-Fiend fight in DDS1 deserves a special mention, especially with how long, difficult, and tactical it is. Coupled with the Normal Battle music that plays (implying that he sees you as nothing more than just regular enemies), this fight is ball-busting but satisfying when you beat him.