< That One Boss

That One Boss/Atlus

He's not joking.

"'We get off on your tears."

Yes, one company has enough examples for its own page. Now, why is it not called Atlus Hard?

NOTE: Final Boss and "Wake-Up Call" Boss cannot be That One Boss without being overly hard by their standards. Please do not nonchalantly add them as examples. Bonus Boss is completely banned. (Yes, even the Demi-Fiend.)

Shin Megami Tensei

  • Shin Megami Tensei I has Gabriel, and he will destroy you. He is immune to sword attacks and demon's physical attacks (and most Chaos demons are only good at physical attacks). Oh, and if you're on the chaos path, you probably got the Bullets of Darkness, which he is immune to. And since your main character can't cast spells, he can't do anything in this fight. This fight can last as long as an hour. Unless you are taking the law path (in which case he joins you - only for you to have to fuse him to make an item necessary to finish the game).
    • This is after, of course, the police station's computer defense. Which is pretty much immune to just about every element. AND has an attack that can send your entire party into shock, which means your turn won't happen. And this is only about halfway through the game!
    • There's Kongokai, which is really early in the game and has decent enemies. Then there are 2 okay bosses, not too bad. Oh, and when you go to leave, you have to fight two enemies that can't be attacked at the same time by multi-hit attacks, one of whom will boost his physical power and do massive damage. Did I mention that there's almost no chance you'll have a way to revive dead characters by this point in the game?
    • You know what, that first Yuriko fight and pretty much all the Demon Summoner fights. They send waves of demons at you, with either 8 in each wave as one solid block of 8 or two groups of 4, and you can't talk your way out of them not only because they're required, but if they weren't, they're all unrecruitable species. Add in that each of your demons gets only 3 abilities, and you will quickly realize that your main character will spend most of these fights shelling out the macca to summon your other demons for the next round. On rare occasion, the first Yuriko fight will glitch so that after two turns of the first wave, her speech will start again and the first wave will regenerate. On the other hand, if any of your demons know Bufu...
    • Arachne. You have to go through a huge labyrith just to get to her that is overflowing with encounters (and it doesn't contain any items), and then at the end you find this. What really make her stand above almost all bosses before and after her is that you can't apparently charm her.
  • Shin Megami Tensei II has the fight with Satan at the around the end of the Chaos path, which primarily consists of "Satan pointed at [Name]! [Name] has died!". YHVH and Lucifer can also spam this attack if they so desire, but Satan seems to love using it the most.
  • The Matador from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne defines the trope. He comes out of nowhere during an early portion of the game and is far more difficult than any boss you've fought before. His main ability, Red Capote, buffs his evasion to the maximum level, and he has several powerful Force attacks. You really have to prepare in advance, fusing a Force-resistant team with Sukanda to lower his Evasion or Sukukaja to raise yours. It also helps if you grind to Lv.18 and fuse Ame no Uzume, who is Force-resistant and knows Media.
    • There's also Mot. He stands out for a few reasons; first, he is one of the three bosses in the game who have a weakness (the other two being the first boss and the Troll), he comes very late in the game, and has basically 3 attacks. The actual reasons he is so hard are the fact that he is immune to everything except his weakness (Well, physical attacks can damage him, but they do so little damage they are basically useless) and said 3 attacks: one is a powerful spell that your character can't be immune to; one is a buff that boosts the damage of magic attacks (and thus the previous one); and the last one is a skill that gives him 2 turns. For free. So far, not so bad. However, there is a chance he will use that last skill twice in a row or even more, effectively giving him the chance to wipe out your party without you being able to do anything about it (seen here). He also has a healing spell that gives him back around 50% of his health and a physical spell that hits the entire party-- but at this point, mentioning them is just overkill. Oh, and listen to the music in that video; he's considered to be a miniboss.
    • Trumpeter. How bad can it be when the boss himself explains how his attacks work and he STILL manages to be a pain in the ass? To explain, the boss basically says that every time he toots his horn (about every eight turns, according to him) either someone will be fully healed or die instantly. NOTE: The death ability is completely unblockable, even if it's you and you're protected to the hilt against death. Life or death will strike the character with the least hit points. And note that the healing Holy Melody (but not the killing Evil Melody!) can hit him as well as you. As a result, it's common to find yourself down to nearly killing the boss when he revives completely, HP and MP. This, plus the fact that the battle is actually inconsistent. Trumpeter's count of the turns is really a crapshoot and the only real way to guarantee that something won't go horribly wrong in this fight is to breed a weak fighter to take the fall. This is, however, one helluva Guide Dang It.
      • To add to that, if all characters are at full health when it comes time for him to use Evil Melody, then he can ignore the rule about attacking the weakest character and randomly attack anyone, including the Demi-Fiend. (Although, when this happens three times in a row, players might question whether it's really random.)
    • Ahriman, oh boy... For the first part of the fight,he gives you rules that you must comply to,or you die. It goes from mildly disturbing (no items allowed) to absolutely crippling (Items and healing are forbidden.) And of course, he isn't affected by his rules and pummel you with his -dyne spells. In the second half, he drops his rules but start using Tentacle and Apocalypse. God help you if he decides to use those along with Megidolaon. While less dangerous than other examples here, he's no slouch either.
    • Noah. He only has ONE element that can affect him (not a weakness) at a time, which he changes every turn. He can drain over 200 hp and mp from one of your party members, no questions asked. And while he only uses single-character spells for the first half, he hits the whole party for the second half. Argh. His weaknesses follow a fixed pattern, but that requires a guide or trial and error.
    • Baal Avatar. She summons two healers, both of whom debuff you and de-debuff their party. Oh, and Bael's Bane turns one of your party members into a fly. This is incurable and renders them utterly useless. Ouch.
    • While nowhere near as unforgiving as the previous examples, Daisojou deserves a mention here. His main attack drains both health and mana from its target, he can cast several instant death spells that hit the entire party, and he has access to his equivalent of the infamous Dragon Eye ability, which grants him extra press turns. Bonus points to mention that Daisoujou's instant death spells are the -On series (Hamaon, Mahamaon, Mudoon, Mamudoon), as in the higher ratio of death spells.
      • The real pain of Daisoujou is when he Turns Red: He basically replaces his normal attack with Dragon Eye and Meditation (the aforementioned HP/MP drain attack) - It's basically a given that he will sap your entire party's MP over and over and over. Your only breather is that Meditation can miss... but if you don't have Fog Breath, then enjoy wasting all your items in one battle.
    • Pale Rider is by far the hardest of the Four Horsemen. His support, a pair of Loas, know Debilitate, which is the equivalent of casting Tarunda, Rakunda and Sukunda all at once, and they'll use it every turn they can. They also can petrify your characters, poison them, or put them to sleep. And they can self-destruct, which does unblockable damage to you and HEALS the Rider. As for the Rider himself, he knows Blight and Pestilence, both of which have a chance to poison your party. Pestilence also has an added side effect; if anyone is poisoned and then hit by Pestilence, they die and there's nothing you can do to stop it. And if the Loas die (which they will, even if you ignore them) he uses DRAGON EYE to replace them and then spend some more time smacking you around. And in addition to the poison + Pestilence combo, he can also use Dormina and Eternal Rest, which essentially does the same as above, but uses sleep instead of poison.
    • Before the Pale Rider comes the Red Rider. Even if he didn't have angels powering him up every turn, he'd still be pretty difficult. He uses spells like Bolt Storm, which hits random party members for high electric damage, Wind Cutter, which deals a tremendous amount of Force damage to one person, and Terrorblade, which does a ton of physical damage to everyone, can hit twice, and can make your party Panic, meaning your party members will randomly run from battle. You can call them back, sure, but if the Demi-Fiend is panicking, you can't. As for the angels, they can either use a One-Hit Kill that is horribly inaccurate and a waste of a turn if you can reflect Expel, or Tarukaja, boosting the power of Terrorblade. And it can be used twice per turn. If you didn't bring anyone with Dekaja, then Terrorblade becomes a Total Party Kill within three turns unless you debuff it...but he also has Dekunda to cancel that out. Also, unlike the Pale Rider, who only uses Dragon Eye to replace his support, Red can use it at will.
  • Strange Journey gives us Ouroboros, the final boss of the fifth block. Her first form isn't terribly hard, except for the fact that she heals about 160 damage per round, which is more damage than you can do to her unless you exploit her weakness to fire. Her attacks include Wild Thunder, a powerful group lightning spell, and Disaster Cycle, a spell that hits for moderate physical damage and inflicts random status ailments. That last one is really nasty because sometimes she gets really lucky with it and manages to either leave you with a dead weight party or petrify the main character (instant game over). Fortunately, your chances of seeing Disaster Cycle are slim. All this is just her first form, however. Her second form no longer regenerates every turn, but she now uses Disaster Cycle almost every turn, and whenever she's not using Disaster Cycle, she's using Wave of Death which hits the whole party for nearly 300+ physical damage per hit! Her liberal use of Disaster Cycle almost makes the fight a Luck-Based Mission.
    • Mem Aleph continues the proud tradition of the Neutral Path Final Boss being the hardest boss in the game. First of all, they hit like about a dozen cement trucks. Secondly, they can cast the strongest forms of every single elemental spell in the game, including both instant kill elements. Oh, and their signature attack? A multi-hit physical attack that does a truly obscene amount of damage. Bonus points for their second form having an attack that kills its target, always, with no way to protect against it. If said target happens to be the main character, instant Game Over. Not to mention said attack gives the HP that was taken from you to the boss, and by the way, Mem Aleph's second form actually changes Elemental Weaknesses; at least Noah gave you the courtesy of letting you know what its weakness was.
      • On top of all this, Mem Aleph also has access to every hair-pullingly awful attack used by previous bosses. So not only do you have to deal with the aforementioned perfect-accuracy instant-death attack, a full contingent of -dyne spells, and six-to-eight hits worth of physical damage from "Mother's Kiss," Disaster Cycle and Asura Roga are back for an encore, since you'd clearly been missing them.
    • The Neutral path gives you the hard Mem Aleph as a boss, but not going on the Neutral path means you'll have to fight Commander Gore, one of the hardest bosses in the game. He has more HP than any boss in the game, with the exception of Demiurge (and yes, that includes the aforementioned Mem Aleph), and it's made even worse by the fact that when his HP hit 0 he heals himself for 7,500 health (his maximum is 15,000). He also hits like a damn tank, doing obscene amounts of physical and gun damage and the occasional status effects. And he has moves that give him even more power. He has the dreaded Charge/Adaptation combo which does enough damage to kill anyone who isn't defending and resistant to physical damage. And he will only use this on the main character! His absurd HP alone makes this one huge endurance test that is impossible to clear without enough Chakra Drops. Did we mention he reflects any and all physical and gun attacks?
    • Picked the Law ending? Then you get to fight both Gore AND Mem Aleph, on top of all the other bosses you fight in the last stretch of the game.
    • Captain Jack. He shouldn't be that hard, theoretically, since he only has two attacks. Except those two attacks are: 1) an incredibly powerful gun-type attack that randomly hits your party members (thus it has a chance that it'll hit your MC four times), and 2) a spell that heals him for 1000 HP and removes all debuffs from him. He's not immune to getting charmed, but good luck making that stick to him. He also has two Pisaca demons with him, which can inflict the Bomb status on your characters. It basically means that if you get hit, you die and take the rest of the party with you.
    • Maya. You know you're in for a hell of a time when using magic on her is answered with a 100% ACCURATE INSTANT KILL. This also extends to your guns, even though they technically aren't magic, as those too are grounds for getting one-shotted. However, that's only if you try to use its skills; regular gunshots are actually her weakness. Yes, she's weak to an attack that costs no MP and can be used whenever you want. Not that you'd be able to guess that, especially considering using Gun spells kills you. Not to mention she knows Illusory Ritual, which is basically this game's version of Red Capote (Read: maxes out accuracy and evasion) and all the -Dyne spells, which are boosted through using her different Gate spells.
    • Before even Ouroboros, there is Asura. While he carries a weakness to Ice, he has a very annoying skill by the name of Asura Roga. Remember earlier in the sector where much of the Strike Team was affected by the Delphinus Parasite? Well now, it's your turn to experience it firsthand! Asura Roga can affect the entire party with the Rage ailment barely seen anywhere else in the game at all; Rage boosts afflicted party members Attack, but it also causes them to attack randomly either the boss or their allies. Very often the player will find that their own party wiped each other out, or came close enough so that all Asura had to do was essentially sneeze at them to win. Sure, you can spend your turns curing everyone of Rage (assuming the MC isn't affected and has the appropriate items, and/or a demon ally has a skill that cures it), but by the time everyone is healed up, Asura may use it again. While he also carries two more powerful attacks Ashura (powerful random target Physical attack that can hit multiple times) and Black Flame (basically Maragidyne except--again--hitting random targets), both of those tend to be much more bearable than Asura Roga.
      • Though some players use this to their advantage by going into the fight with no demons summoned, so that the Rage-inflicted MC will only attack Asura with his boosted Attack stat.
      • Even after beating Asura, you're not safe from the horrors of Asura Roga; In Sector Fornax, Asura returns in the form of Asherah, and she still carries this attack among a plethora of other attacks.
      • It gets worse. Mem Aleph, the final boss from the Neutral route? Yeah, she has Asura Roga as well as everything else. Have fun.


Digital Devil Saga

  • Camazotz from the first game, mainly because of extra-turn spells and ZOTZILAHA BANE, which can't be defended against and turns you into a bat, which has hideously low stats and a large Force weakness. Three guesses what all of Camazotz's damage-dealing attacks's element is. Void Force would be your only saving grace, but Zotzilaha Bane apparently overrides all resistances to Force with its weakness. Camazotz's downfall is that it has terrible HP for a boss, so if you aggressively assault him he'll fall like a pile of bricks before he can trash your party. Assuming, of course, he doesn't get overly lucky when he starts spamming Beast Eye.
  • Cerberus in the first game. God help you if you don't have anyway to cast Dekunda or Dekaja.
  • For series veterans, Vasuki. Adjusting equipped skills to handle what the game throws at you in each dungeon and boss fight & taking advantage of the combo system makes the game grind-free until the bonus content and makes a Low-Level Run to quickly advance the plot very doable until the player hits Vasuki. He uses ice and electricity, both elements that freeze or stun characters, allowing him to critical hit them to death. The player can only shield against one of them at a time (at that point), and Vasuki's AI is smart enough to attack with whichever isn't blocked, meaning he won't lose turn icons that way. To top that off, he's capable of using two unblockable megadoleons in the same turn. If the player is underleveled, they won't have the HP or magic stat to survive fighting him conventionally unless they go and grind or already made the effort to acquire Null Phys, which can sucker the AI but first leaves the player vulnerable to Vasuki's powerful ice attack.
  • Orochi, who has to go to reach an item required for the Metatron fight. He has absurd amounts of turns, one for each head. Much like Mot above, he likes spamming Makakaja, potent Almighty attacks against which you have no protection, likes to exploit weaknesses, is no stranger to strong physical attacks, and nulls or absorbs most attacks and has no weaknesses. The fatal flaw? Orochi has horrible MP for a boss, and will constantly deplete itself. When this happens, he will cast MP Drain to restock its own tanks and go back to pounding you, but Null Mute will negate the attack, leading to no extra MP for Orochi; if everyone has it, coupled with Null Poison, Orochi will lose most of its arsenal. Once this has happened for long enough, optionally using Dekaja and Dekunda once or twice or just plain being careful with buffs and debuffs, Orochi will be essentially die of MP starvation, spamming Mad Rush (which can be Debilitated into oblivion).
  • Kartikeya in the sequel, which pounds on you with an assortment of powerful party-wide attacks and raises a barrier that makes it nigh-impossible to hit the boss, pretty much whenever the boss feels like it. Repelling its own spells or using electric magic is guaranteed to hit it and break the barrier, but that's easier said than done.
    • Cielo and his naturally high ability to dodge are the only way to survive this on hard mode. Equipping him with a karma ring with gems to boost those stats even further and making sure he has healing spells to revive the other characters after they're killed by attacks that don't scratch Cielo turn him into an immortal white mage and Game Breaker.
  • Vritra is often cited as also That One Boss of DDS2. Especially if you go into battle expecting him to be weak against ice attacks. Many a gamer has burst a blood vessel to see the attack absorbed text appear on the screen and watch their whole battle plan fall apart at their feet as the vary same magic from their precious strategy is flung back at them. Twice as hard. And then Vritra calls you an idiot for thinking it would have worked. He also has a pair of tentacles that protect him from damage and must be destroyed before you can actually do damage to him. (These naturally regenerate after a couple of turns.) To top it off, he has a skill that has an extremely high chance of freezing your characters. In DDS2's battle system a physical attack against a frozen target is an automatic critical, (Which not only causes extra damage but gives the attacker an extra turn) which Vritra is more than happy to exploit.
    • On hard mode, better hope you beat King Frost from the first game and have the Karma Ring that nulls ice. If you don't equip it to him, Gale will get frozen almost every turn. Your other party members' ice resistance & dodging ability make Gale the weakest link. Equipping the characters with counterattack skills will also make this battle far less painful.
  • Abaddon. The thing changes weakness, swallows your party members leaving you with two characters for most of the fight. Good luck not getting Argilla swallowed when he's weak to earth, because if you can't exploit his weakness and gain extra turns you will be spending ALL of the turns you have healing/reviving, and if you don't damage him enough in 4-5 turns he'll use a ridiculously overpowered attack...Om mani padme hum.

Persona

  • While he IS a Final Boss, Great Father Nyarlathotep in Persona 2: Innocent Sin is VICIOUS. He gets five attacks on his turn, and can easily bring a prepared party to their knees. Unless you are at incredibly high levels, you are going to get destroyed. The only breather he gives is that sometimes he will switch over from attacking your HP to your SP. Use that time to deal as much damage as you can, because once he targets your HP again, every single effing turn will be spent healing.
  • Persona 2: Eternal Punishment has "The Metal Trio"--golden statues of Jun, Eikichi, and Lisa, who were born out of Tatsuya's guilt. Like the Sylph battle example from Tales of Symphonia, this is a team battle, your party against them. While each character doesn't have a huge amount of HP, each enemy is immune to physical attacks, and possess unique high damage spells that target all party members, and to further twist the knife, Eikichi's 'Bloody Divorce' has a high percentage of causing instant death. "Jun"'s 'Terror Fortune' special can inflict almost every single freaking status ailment on everyone with next to no fail, often leaving you utterly helpless.
  • In Persona 3: FES, Atlus apparently decided to go back to its roots; like in Nocturne, pretty much every boss is difficult to kill. The real offender, however, is the final boss in the sixth level dungeon of The Answer: The Conceited Maya and the Jotuns of Blood. The Maya has a large number of hit points and will absorb damage from physical attacks, meaning your party is restricted to its Elemental Powers. However, every time it loses twenty-five percent of its health, it summons Jotuns of Blood, which are nearly as difficult to kill and are invulnerable to elemental attacks. Furthermore, they possess all of the high-level attacks (both single and multi-target) for the four main elements and will absolutely shred your party's weaknesses. It is possible to take a party with no weaknesses (the Maya and the Jotuns don't know Hama or Mudo skills), and to fuse a Persona without any - actually, this is required, because if Aegis has a weakness, no matter what the rest of the party has, they will focus on her. And remember, We Cannot Go on Without You.
    • The combo of Strength and Fortune, the October full moon bosses. Fortune can hit you hard with its attacks - which are pseudorandom - and you can't even touch it until Strength's dead. Most of the other full moon bosses aren't that bad, but this is definitely That One Full Moon Boss.
    • Before the two of them, you fight Chariot and Justice. Although they don't have many strong attacks, if you kill one but not the other, the next turn they will revive their partner to full health. That, along with you not being able to control your teammates directly, means a lot of angry moments where you wanted to keep one on low health long enough to whittle the other one down right as that teammate that you put on healing/support decides now would be a good time to kill the weakened enemy-- and presto, you're fighting two high-health bosses again. Nice job breaking it, teammates. Fortunately, you can deal damage to them both if they merge, though this doesn't always happen.
    • Generally speaking, though, while some of the full moon bosses may be somewhat difficult they pale in That One Boss-ness to the harder Tartarus bosses, which is by design, since losing to a full moon boss means you have to sit through 10-20+ minutes of cutscenes again while a Tartarus boss death only sets you back the 30 seconds it takes to teleport back to its floor.
    • Sleeping Table, the infamous boss from the fourth block, floor 135 of Tartarus. It was deemed difficult enough for most players that it earned a spot as a semi-optional boss (it's fought in the optional True Ending path) of Persona 4. Its physical attacks are nothing special, but it comes armed with Maragidyne (highest-tier, party-wide fire attack), Hamaon (light-based instant kill) and Megidola (second-tier, unblockable, all-party Almighty attack,) has no weaknesses, and has such exceedingly high defenses that physical hits deal pitiful damage. In addition to that, it is immune to status changes. No fear, no panic and not even Dreamfest can charm it. In other words, it will rain destruction on you and you cannot prevent it. When getting hit with Maragidyne is considered a breather, you know you're in for a lot of pain.
    • The World Balance from floor 236. Some players have complained that they thought that it was actually adapting to their decisions. Interestingly, you can use this to your advantage: if you throw up buffs constantly, it'll waste time trying to dispel them instead of attacking, allowing your party to just beat him to death.
    • Natural Dancer will destroy you if you don't look up a strategy. It just loves to charm you and has powerful all-party Garu attacks, and the only kind of attack it doesn't resist is Bufu (well, it technically doesn't resist physical skills either, but it will quickly cast a spell which reflects those back at you). The trick is actually to go in alone with a Garu-resisting Persona, but many players would not have thought of that, especially against a boss.
    • If you thought the Natural Dancer was bad, then the Royal Dancers will certainly give you PTSD. In terms of straight-up attacks, they're actually less aggressive (in fact, they only have one skill that deals immediate damage), but more than make up for it by having almost every ailment-causing move under the sun; Tentarafoo, Poison Breath and Sexy Dance are just a few of their moves. They can use Patra, Charmdi and Posumudi if you try to use ailments on them, and they can also heal themselves. Oh, and the one actual attack they have is freaking Primal Force, one of the strongest physical attacks in the game.
    • The Final Boss deserves mention for being a shining example of Fake Difficulty in a game which is otherwise tough but fair. He's a Sequential Boss with thirteen forms. Twelve are normal boss fights, even a little on the easy side, but put together they take almost an hour to get through, and no saving in between forms. Then the thirteenth form likes to spam its unblockable hit-all attack, has 6000 HP, takes half damage from everything except the Almighty element, and will randomly stop your progress cold by using an energy shield that reflects everything. It takes about a half-hour to whittle down his HP to the point where he's finally had enough and busts out his ultimate attack -- which, in most cases, leaves you flailing for a few turns trying to recover, and then dead. Hard bosses are one thing, but bosses that make you go through an hour and a half of AI Roulette and tedium before clobbering you are a special kind of sadism.
    • The Brilliant Cyclops, fought in the second dungeon of The Answer. It's just one Shadow, and the previous fight pitted you against four. Besides, it's the second boss of the game! This shouldn't be too hard, right? WRONG. The only element it's vulnerable to is fire (it reflects everything else), it has very powerful ice spells (Bufudyne on the second boss of the game? Seriously?) and can summon Soul Dancers, which could be bosses on their own, by virtue of having Agidyne and HEALING SPELLS potent enough to get the Cyclops back to full health in two turns. It will summon those Dancers after he falls below 50% HP, and each time one dies, it just replaces them the next turn it can. There can also be two of them on the field at once, so they can either heal the Cyclops to full health in one turn, or have one incinerate your party and the other heal.
  • Persona 4 has several bosses that are difficult if you haven't been leveling up your party, though it's easier than Persona 3.
  • Shadow Yukiko, a definite wake-up call and the end boss of the first full dungeon. While the shadow bosses fought before had elemental vulnerabilities, this boss has no such weaknesses, summons an ally into the fight, and boasts a very powerful all-party fire attack that she starts spamming after her health is low enough. Was it mentioned that you only have three characters available to you at this point in the game, including the protagonist, and that one of these three is horribly vulnerable to fire? (one randomly dropped item in the dungeon can boost her dodge rate to it, if you're lucky). And hitting a vulnerability in battle gives the person attacking an extra turn for additional mayhem? For extra points, while the boss's ally has a weakness to ice, ice attacks are the specialty of the character most vulnerable to the boss's fire attacks, and said boss even has a buff that removes this ice vulnerability from her ally, just in case you wanted to take advantage of it to take out her support.
And it won't do you any good to focus on the boss instead of her ally; the ally will heal the boss once for a significant amount, undoing your hard work. Not to mention that it has an attack called Terror Voice, which has a high chance of instilling fear in one of your party members. Right after it's cast, Yukiko uses her turn to follow up with Shivering Rondo, which pretty much kills anyone with the fear status. Lousy bird.
    • If you thought Shadow Yukiko was bad, Shadow Mitsuo will make you cry. He takes way too long and constantly gives himself a shield of 1400 additional hit points every few turns. He has a ton of attacks: he'll attempt to put the Fear condition on the whole party and then use a whole-party attack which kills fearful foes. Sometimes, he will precede Fear with Stagnant Air, which raises the susceptibility of status ailments. Worse, it will consistently attack with a randomly-chosen, multi-target elemental spell while its barrier is down; if at least one character is weak to the element and is knocked down, it will immediately follow up with the party-wide Megidola that will almost certainly kill at least the weakened character, if not everyone else. And in barrier mode, aside from a powerful normal attack (that deals Almighty damage), it can also use the party-wide Gigadyne and a "Bomb" attack that delivers medium damage AND inflicts Exhaustion status (SP drops with every action, like Poison does for HP) with 100% success rate if the attack hits. It's almost a relief when he uses the barrier form's ordinary attack, which hits between 170-240 HP when you're likely in the mid-300s.
To add insult to injury, while Mission Control suggests destroying it before it forms, it's pretty much impossible to destroy it before it reforms. While it is possible to break the shield before it forms (Rakunda to lower the boss' defense and Matarukaja to boost the entire party's strength, break his half-formed shield, wail on him with an All-Out Attack), this trick only works a few times: once his health reaches around 25%, he will use both his turns to reform the shield completely.
    • Shadow Kanji. This boss has been known spawned some... rather colorful rants against certain things like his hugely powerful physical area attack, large amount of health, and, of course, his friend Nice Guy, who constantly gives him buffers and health restorers. Part of the reason he is so hard is that he comes at a time when you don't have access to top notch Personae (unlike most of the harder late-game battles), but he still has abilities that are devastating in their own right: Unlike Shadow Yukiko, who's merely a harder than average "Wake-Up Call" Boss, and fairly manageable for a seasoned player, Shadow Kanji is powerful enough to quite easily beat any team with a lucky critical, or at least make it an extremely close battle.
    • Shadow Teddie can be difficult because you most likely set up a team to simply deal with Shadow Rise and are not expecting a second boss battle right afterwards. Then, you most likely have discovered that Yukiko is a great healer and have her around to handle that job...except she is horribly weak to ice attacks, which Shadow Teddie specializes in and by extension is immune to, AND he has Mind Charge (which can power up his Ice attacks even more) plus Ice Break (reduces Ice resistance) and Marakunda (lowers party defense, which is bad for Yukiko due to being a healer). So, you are faced with a dilemma. Do you have the protagonist be the designated healer and drop Yukiko, or do you risk the ice weakness and bring your best healer along? As if this wasn't bad enough, you have the Nihil Hand move to deal with. While it has an obvious set-up and easy countermeasure (simply defending), towards the end of the fight you have less time to prepare for the attack and in a panic, you could accidentally do something other than defend. To top it all off, Shadow Teddie likes to throw out both Foolish Whisper (a Silence spell, aka prevents use of your Persona) and Nullity Guidance, a move that will ALWAYS crit and give Shadow Teddie a Once More (leaving you with even less time to prepare for Nihil Hand) and causes a Dizzy state, so hopefully you stocked up on Mouthwash before entering the dungeon and are prepared to spend an ally's turn to remove a status ailment (particularly if Silence is affecting your designated healer).
    • Kunino-sagiri is a pain in the ass. He has a ridiculous amount of HP and can control your party members so they try to kill you if you're unlucky. The hard part is when he uses Quad Convergence, which powers up the strength of one element and makes the other ones do close to nothing if you attack him with it. He also ALWAYS uses Ma-Dyne spells, which hit the entire group. If you're willing to use up four Magic Mirrors and you get lucky, this actually be turned in your favor and shorten the fight considerably. That supercharged Ma-dyne spell will bounce off your team and hit him four times, depleting roughly a third of his life bar in one turn. He won't always do this, but it's so sweet when he does.

Devil Summoner

  • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army: Mishaguji. Resistant to physical, immune to bullets. Powerful, with at least two moves capable of knockdown. Knows Cursed Emission-- an unblockable attack that leaves you (or your demon) paralyzed for much longer than normal paralysis, and Cursed Bolt-- a wide-area attack that takes up a good chunk of the battlefield, and charms whatever it hits. If it charms you BOTH (Raidou is paralyzed by charm, but his demon actively turns against him for the duration), you better pray your demon doesn't kill you, or worse, HEAL MISHAGUJI.
  • Sukuna-Hikona, whose attacks aren't that bad... on the surface. But then it starts sending out attacks that paralyze whatever they hits, following up with a large beam that deals significant damage. As if that wasn't enough, if this beam hits your demon, and doesn't kill it by damage, it will seal the demon in its tube and you cannot use it for the rest of the battle.
  • King Abaddon continues the tradition with Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Star of Death. He's basically Sukuna-hikona version 2.0, with even more annoyances. The major one being that 95% of the time he constantly teleports around the combat field, pretty much making him invincible. He also can use screen-covering attacks that do high damage even when blocked (or are just unblockable). And like Sukuna-hikona, Mikaboshi too can fire "Mute Ray" which is the beam that seals your demons with no way to cure it except ending the fight. Sure he's weak to Ice and Force, but he's only truly vulnerable when he's firing the beam, and it doesn't help that most of the time you can barely hit him.


Devil Survivor

  • In Devil Survivor, if a boss has 'Bel' in its name, you might as well just start screaming in rage and frustration now. Because once the fight starts, you'll be too busy crying to do so effectively.
    • During the first days you fight enemies that can be one-hit killed by exploiting the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, and even "Wake-Up Call" Boss Wendigo is a pushover... and then you fight Beldr, who is immune to everything you hit him with except your main character's standard physical attack after you retrieve a plant-shaped cellphone strap. Note that only demons retain their levels with New Game+, and Beldr has a special attack which drains health from everyone in the field and heals him. If you didn't pump your hero's Strength much, the battle can either take forever or be straight Unwinnable if you can't even damage him more than he regenerates.
      • And his flunkies not only respawn indefinitely and include such utter nuisances as Vidofnir (Drain, anyone?) and Basilisk (Evil Wave and petrification abilities) but are also fond of the Petra Eyes/Mazan combo, which can kill an entire party in one attack. Consider that in this particular mission it's Game Over if the Hero falls...
    • Belzaboul. His attack range is huge, and when you combine that with the small arena the fight takes place in, that means he can attack anyone in the field. And it gets better: He's surrounded by lesser demons, which might as well count as a small army of Demonic Spiders, due to how annoying they are. So, you'd want to kill them first, right? Well, do that, and Belzaboul replaces them with his flies. They go down easily, but have an attack called Spawn that inflicts anyone it hits with the Fly status. Anyone with this status will die one turn later and spawn more flies. And Belzaboul's normal attack inflicts Fly, too.
    • Right after Belzeboul, a hard battle on his own, comes Belberith, who is able to attack anyone on the field and regularly heals himself roughly 450 HP after each turn. On his own, he would be only somewhat obnoxious, but to even get close enough to attack him you have to activate two switches to lower a pair of platforms that reach the stage he is sitting on. All the while demons are being summoned from COMPs that were left on the ground, and the demons are capable of using Phantasma to warp around the field, blocking your way when you need to press the switches and cross the platforms to reach the boss. If you run out of MP and are unable to heal, the battle becomes unwinnable and you have no choice but to reset the game. However, if you manage to get a character across to Belberith's side without hitting both switches, the enemy will do it for you so they can chase you down. And Belberith is weak against Force attacks.
    • The battle against Belial is an unholy combination of Escort Mission and That One Boss. The stage is one that makes it difficult to reach him quickly if you don't happen to have any Genmas or Avians on your teams. Like every other Bel boss, he also has minions scattered all over the place. He can attack 3x in battle. And he periodically unleashes a powerful fire attack that hits every player character and Haru. Keep in mind that you also automatically lose the mission if Haru dies-- and she can only take a couple hits from Belial's special attack before dying. The only saving grace in this mission is Belial's vulnerability to ice magic.
    • And if you manage to brave Belial and go on to Amane or Gin's route, the next day opens up with you taking on Jezebel, with your only solace being a free battle spot to grind on before battling her. Unlike Beldr, who only attacks once per turn (barring Extra Turns) and has some pretty weak attacks, or the vulnerable-to-ice Belial, Jezebel has no weaknesses--in fact, ice, which you most likely used against Belial, is one of the elements she's resistant to. On top of that, the battlefield in front of her is covered in lava that inflicts fire damage to a character's team upon the end of a turn. And like Belial, Jezebel gets three attacks, and one of her spells is Judgment, which takes away 50% of all targets' HP, often cast on her first turn to make her follow-up attacks worse. Hooray for ragequitting two bosses in a row!
      • On Naoya's route the day opens with the same fight - only since you made a rather large group of enemies, you have to fight through no less than EIGHT human foes (ALL of which have Evil Wave or Chaos Wave) to even get to Jezebel. Then the aforementioned Belzaboul and Belberith. We're not even gonna start on the sheer pain that is the final boss - which would not be bad enough to qualify for this trope under normal circumstances unless you're on the first playthrough with very little grinding. If that's the case, then it sucks to be you.
      • And the Final boss is even worse in Gin's route, because you have just commanded Babel to unsummon all the demons. Guess what, it did, and thus you have to fight it with your characters alone. Woe betide anyone who picks that route for their first playthrough. Thankfully, since Babel gets moderately depowered after your team loses all its demons, it's entirely possible for a character with high Magic (Yuzu and Amane are ideal) to beat it with a couple of overpowered Elec Dances. It's even worse if you take this route on a subsequent playthrough though, because you are likely to have relied on your endgame demons from your last playthrough to blaze through the whole game, leaving your human characters underleveled and unable to survive on their own.
    • At the start of Atsuro's route, you have to fight Naoya, who runs away and sets down an endless number of haywire comps. Oh, and he has Devil Speed and Phantasma, and heals the speeder. It gets worse on Amane's route, because instead of him running away, he has stronger attacks and Loki shows up to help him.
  • In the Devil Survivor 2 Neutral route, the Law bosses aren't all that bad, but the Chaos Boss.....may YHVH help you, because this bastard is tough. In fact, not only does blatantly cheat by buffing his turn ratio out the ceiling, but the battlefield is set up so he can be surrounded by mooks while his possession of a Vile Arioch allows him to beat on you like a redheaded stepchild, his Divine Remiel allows him to replenish his MP pool (which he abuses to spam Megido at least twice), and he himself can revive his minions with an auto ability. There is also at least one demon on the battlefield always nearby that can throw on more healing, and most of the others have Evil Wave and Chaos Wave, so they can beat the hell out your deployed demon summoners from a distance, and about the only way to even the odds is to provide everyone with a demon that knows Chaos Wave, and even then all the enemy mooks can hit like a truck.
    • Actually, you can blitz through his minions fairly easily if you know what you're doing. The problem is that this only makes Yamato faster, leading into a situation where he can get turns non-stop and achieve a Total Party Kill. Did you think you could use Phys Amp+Pierce+Multistrike to take him down? Haha, no. You see, Yamato has Repel Phys, which means that you will be killed by your own attack. Seriously, this is a Luck-Based Mission of the worst kind.
    • And that battle is made EVEN HARDER in the Anguished One's route. Imagine, instead of him getting his turn absurdly quickly, he instead summons a magic field that damages your HP and MP. If you kill any of the demons, the Norn just revives them with full health. As for Yamato himself... He has Prayer (Full HP and status restoration, so no Curse to prevent it), MEGIDOLAON (strongest hit-all attack in the game), and Drain (HP and MP steal). He halves all damage excluding Almighty, and has the Ghost Purple Mirror and Kishin Zouchouten. They can use Possession (Inflicts Curse, which prevents you from healing), Judgement (Halves HP), and allows him to attack twice. Yamato also has Magic Yin, which increases magic by 50%, but doubles cost. However, Drain offsets the cost while still doing massive damage. End result? Good luck trying to go for the Unkillable title.
    • The battle against the Osaka faction in Ronaldo's route can be an absolute sheer wall thanks in large part to Keita. The kid's got a downright vicious combination of Rage Soul and Attack-All, allowing him to level entire parties with a single attack. And if for some reason you survived? He can initate battle twice thanks to Zouchouten! What's more, the battle's on a time limit. May as well pray to the stars for salvation, because Atlus sure isn't showing any!

Other Shin Megami Tensei

  • From Last Bible, we have Minotaur, who is effectively the third boss in the game, the Zodia/Mephist Boss Rush, and the fight with Vaerial before you get to Terra.

Not Shin Megami Tensei

Snowboard Kids

  • While only an action game in the loosest definition of the word (I.E., a game focused mainly on action-y things rather than slow, measured things), the racing game Snowboard Kids 2 has only three bosses... and every single one of them is a That One Boss. It's not enough that you have to beat them to the ends of their respective race courses--hard enough, given that they're much faster than you could ever be. It's not enough that they constantly drop debris and other things to slow you down. It's that you also have to drop their HP to zero, with an array of non-homing, hard-to-come-by projectiles. And they're often so far ahead of you, getting a straight shot in is hard.
    • On top of that, the final boss will actually regenerate three extra HP after you manage to beat him down and become much faster. Since this usually happens near the end of the track, it's very likely that you'll deplete his "normal" HP bar only for him to sprint to the finish at the last minute.


Etrian Odyssey

  • Etrian Odyssey II made the first game look easy by taking out all of the cheap moves you'd use to actually survive well. Even the fact that some bosses cause mass confusion is nothing compared to the terror of Colossus. It was a hard enough fight as is due to massive damage output, resistance to every element, Massive Damage magic counterattacks, and the occasional defense debuff, but those poor people trying to use Buff-centric parties had no idea that having buffs active triggered Mad Rush, That One Attack that does about 40-80% of a max-level character's HP (depending on class) and simultaneously will multi-bind your party, likely preventing your healer from even being able to do anything...


Robopon

  • Prince Tail in the original game. Those dragon robots just...wouldn't...DIE!
    • Dr. Zero was no pushover, either, with one of his robots knowing the ultra-powerful Alpha move.
    • Of all people, Bisco can give you a good thrashing with his Hexbot. It uses a super strong Evil-type attack, and at this point in the game there's not much that can resist it.
    • Kamat's army; since the minigames you're required to play at this point were not required earlier, there is a strong chance that you will be entirely unfamiliar with how they work.
    • MR. Wild, the Legend5, has strong Robopon that can cause status effects as well as deal heavy damage. And he stole your Robopon, Dosbot, for the fight.
  • In the second game, Circe counts, with her Robopon being fast and powerful. And unlike in the previous game, when you die you don't continue. You get Game Over. Cue hours of level-grinding rage.
    • Insector can be particularly troublesome as well, due to the fact that he comes right after Circe and most players will not find the only healing Robopon within the labyrinthine Pond Garden. In fact, most bosses after Mr. Gait have a tendency to have obscenely strong Robopon that use Standard Status Effects and software to decimate the player's team in a rough, aggressive blitz, much like Circe.
    • Give Maskman enough uses of Shield, and all attacks do 0 damage.
    • Dr. Zero Senior, the final boss of the game, is harder than the Bonus Bosses.


Summon Night

  • The first game shows up a good example: Inferno Kirin who is exactly the same as before but with a VERY large HP that is sure to break one or two weapons your if you don't have Weapon Shield on. Also it deals extremely high damage with ANY attack even if you have high def values.
    • Bonus if you use the strongest weapons in-game which have the lowest DUR.
    • Actually, Inferno Kirin has very obvious (and unique) movements preceding all his attacks, which serve as hints as to which attack he'll use next, allowing you to dodge as necessary. Granted, you'll probably get killed repeatedly the first few times as you try to figure him out, but the massive EXP you get for killing him justifies learning his attack patterns; it's a given that you WILL level up more than once per battle, at least till you're nearing the maximum level.
  • In the third game V.E, Jade and Tier will just make you cry with their overpowered multi-hit attacks. ESPECIALLY V.E and her Axe's skill Aqua Burst that can sweep your HP to almost nothing if fully hits you.


Other

  • Horrza, the Area 9 boss from Xexyz. He is quite possibly the closest thing to a Bullet Hell boss that the NES can actually produce. He also has much more health than previous bosses would indicate he SHOULD have, and kills the player in 4 hits. Very few players have killed him without emulator tricks. Owning him on a console is practically a Bragging Rights Reward in its own right.
  • Dragon from Three D Dot Game Heroes. He does good damage and takes a ton of hits to kill, even with the most powerful sword available to the player, even IF it's fully upgraded. Also blocking his fireballs sometimes causes the player to take damage anyway.
  • The Red Sage and Blue Fool from Riviera: The Promised Land. One Overdrive can easily one-hit-kill a party member.
  • The Thaumamachine in Radiant Historia fought in the Alternate Timeline's third chapter is one of the first bosses in the game to bring out the good old-fashioned pleasant Atlus experience. By itself, it has three attacks, a normal physical attack, Bull Claw, a multi-hitting physical attack that targets one character, and All Crash, a Wave Motion Gun that hits the whole party for roughly a third of their health bar. The real pain are the bombs that it constantly summons, which do nothing except blow themselves up, dealing severe damage to whoever's targetted. Trying to chip away at the boss's health while destroying the bombs before they blow up is quite a painful experience, because if you can't keep up with your healing for even a second, the pain with pile up alarmingly fast and it's time to say hello to the game over screen.
  • There are a number of stupidly hard bosses in Catherine, but Doom's Bride arguably is the worst. First of all, you fight her on a Ice Level, where if you slip on ice off the edge, you die. Second of all, she is very fast at climbing compared to other bosses before her. Third, she has a move that causes an avalanche, if you are caught by this you are swept down to a lower level until it stops, this is potentially lethal. And lastly, she brings Fake Difficulty on with her cyclone attack. Removing random blocks from the level to hit you with and making it difficult to see what's going on.
  • The Final Boss of Master of the Monster Lair isn't particularly hard... providing that you spend nearly as much time you've already spent on the game to get to him farming for items to increase your strength. The Devil Lord has such ridiculously high defense compared to very other monster in the game, in fact multiple times more than any other boss before him, that without copious amounts of grinding you'll be hard pressed to deal more than one damage at a time outside of weapon specials... and he has an attack that he deploys when he's down to his last third or so of health that WILL heal more than you'll deal in a single turn (in fact, try upwards of five). Oh, and did we mention that he has over 1000 health? All told, he's a difficult boss and he can take around an hour to bring down. Thankfully, with all of the post-game equipment unlocked after beating him, fighting him when he shows up as one of the random bosses on the 20th floor is significantly easier.
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