Ugh. My friends and I recently played through “V Rising” . It’s a good game. It’s like Valheim meets Diablo but you’re vampires… Because of our busy adult lives we played together once a week for usually 2-3 hours. It’s took us damn near a year to get to the final boss, and it was just wipe after wipe after wipe. We weren’t making any progress. Like we couldn’t get him down past 75% life no matter how hard we tried. We changed our skills and equipment, same thing. We looked up some guides online and they were basically like “git good”
We never beat him, because we didn’t want to waste any more of our limited adult gaming time just getting crushed by a boss for hours.
It was such a slap in the face because nothing else in the game was that difficult. There were some tough bosses that took us down maybe 3 or 4 times. But this was just hours of getting wrecked without even getting close to winning. It was truly a morale blow.
Sigh… We switched to a different game, and I guess we will just never finish that one.
Starfox adventure final space boss. After taking months adventuring my way through the game the space fight suddenly ramped up. Had no idea how to beat him.
Friend came over barreled rolled instintvly (I had never played the originals). Blew my mind.
I played Minecraft for over a decade before I bothered going to beat the Ender Dragon
Not a boss per se, but the first Marauder fight in Doom Eternal made me rage quit for a good 6 months.
The orphan of Kos in Bloodborne. Could never quite get it right, got so close several times but even with help that crazy bastard is just soo fast and difficult to predict. I tried for like a week, 30 or more goes. It really annoys me because Bloodborne is my favourite souls game.
One thing I adore about the souls games is how everyone has a unique and personal experience with bosses.
A boss that I got on my first try may take you a week of banging your head against it; but, that is no indication that I’m just better because two bosses later I will be banging my head against a different boss that you just breeze through.
Yeah, sometimes your playstyle ends up being a natural counter to a boss. Sometimes a boss ends up being a natural counter to your playstyle. Or one of your first strategy ideas works and makes it easy.
Still haven’t gotten past RoboPres in Destroy All Humans
Destroy all humans combat could hit you out of no where!
Pokemon ZA Zygarde has been kicking my ass. Usually I’m the one who dies while my pokemon are just fine.
Malileth, the black blade in Eden Ring.
I eventually had to summon co-op players in and just sit in the corner and let them do the work. Fuck that boss…
Well that kinda takes the wind outta my sails for completing the game. I’m kinda stuck at the forge of the giants. And I’m so late that there’s hardly ever coop signs around
Don’t let it dissuade you. See my comment here on this topic: https://programming.dev/comment/23859190
I think at a certain point, a break from the game is warranted before going back in to grind and be specced correctly for a difficult area/boss
I’ve found that sometimes I come back to a game after a long break and end up better at it than I previously was. Like I’ll dread parts that were difficult the last time and then breeze through them when I get there.
Like I was stuck on some room in Doom Eternal, it just kept kicking my ass until I gave up on the game for like a year. I tried resuming the game, realized I couldn’t remember all the controls and decided to start over again and then didn’t even notice when I got back to that room because I cleared it easily and continued on.
I’m not sure if it’s because the other games I’d played in the meantme helped me develop my skills more, if my subconscious optimized the skills I retained from the first playthrough, or if I just avoided picking up some bad habits I had the first time that made things harder for me.
PS2 Shinobi. That game was brutally hard.
I’m going to say pretty much every fight in Sifu. People praise it as having some of the best fighting combat and claim that it just takes a while to learn, but I put weeks of time into that game and it never got any easier. I managed to get past the first two levels before hitting a wall I could just not get past.
Oh man, I loved Sifu! I’d recently finished Sekiro and thought “well it can’t be harder than that”. Ultimately, it wasn’t but it took a long time to get the hang of the different combat rhythm.
Doc Ock in the OG Xbox Spiderman game… can’t exactly remember which one (probs for ps2 too). But if you beat it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I couldn’t stand that fight
I’m parked about halfway through Returnal. It’s so punishing I just resent the time I need to put in to git gud.
I was also gonna say “Returnal”, maybe specifically the second boss. It took like 2 years or more of off-and-on playing to beat the game… it was oh so satisfying, but damn that game can be brutal
I looked up some tips and tricks that helped, but it really came down to “just be better”… I’ve gotten way better at this point, but the learning curve was steep and long
I’m playing Saros now (Returnal’s ‘spiritual sequel’), and it’s wayyy easier in comparison. Not in a bad way, cause it’s really fun… but after playing Returnal, I was already prepped for some bullet-hell dodging
Would highly recommend Saros, cause you’ll definitely be able to beat it and it may entice you to keep striving for that sweet, sweet Returnal end game
Ikaruga.
Not necessarily for any particular boss - but I enjoy shmups (Gradius, Thunder Force, Gaiares) and getting anything other than a “c” on a level is work. I’ve even seen videos of people 2 sticking the game (playing both players at once) and getting S on levels…
The jousting boss in Luigi 's Mansion 2. Guy was a jerk!
The final T-Rex in “Chuck Rock”
