With Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion surely bringing a crop of new bosses to tackle this summer, it got us pondering some of our favorite boss battles in video games.
Question: What is your favorite final boss battle of all time?
Giygas (Earthbound) – Ozzie Mejia, Senior Boss Battler
I’ve come across challenging boss fights, I’ve come across epic boss fights, and I’ve encountered fights of nearly every variety. The one that will always leave a lasting impression on me is Giygas from Earthbound just because of its ingenious design.
You come across so much weirdness in Earthbound. You face a multitude of dangerous creatures and survive so much that would kill anybody else ten times over. By the time you hit Giygas, you start to feel like you can beat anything. You even begin to damage this massive final boss and things start looking up. Then Giygas hits its final form and that’s when it sets in that this is an actual god. It’s an actual god and you are children. Children cannot win against a god. There is no hope.
When the realization dawns on you that the only hope that children have against an all-powerful killer god is to pray, it’s brilliant. It’s the most logical progression when faced with a fight of that magnitude and all hope is lost. You pray and hope for a miracle, which makes it so much more impactful when that miracle happens.
Few boss battles are designed as brilliantly as Giygas. It’s crazy difficult and mixed with some beautiful storytelling.
Liquid Ocelot: Metal Gear Solid 4 – TJ Denzer, Senior Nanomachines Plot Twist
I played every one of the Metal Gear games leading up to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, including the MSX games and the non-canon NES games. I mostly stopped at MGS4 with the main line because I didn’t feel there was anywhere else to go. They peaked. It all culminated in a long-coming battle between Solid Snake and his eternal rival, Shalashaska, AKA Revolver Ocelot AKA Adam AKA Liquid Ocelot.
So much led to this point: Big Boss forming a rivalry on the battlefield with Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid 3, Solid Snake meeting him years later in the Shadow Moses Incident in Metal Gear Solid 1, his snaky schemes behind the scenes in Metal Gear Solid 2 after he transplanted Liquid Snake’s arm to replace his lost one. Everything that came before arrived at Snake and Ocelot on top of a submarine in a knockdown, drag-out fist fight to the death. And not just any fist fight. It literally spans the fighting styles and mechanics of every engagement between Snake, Ocelot, and Liquid Snake from previous games. At the end of it all, it’s the ultimate ending of two men that have spent their lives fighting each other and gotten old doing it. I can’t think of many other boss fights that have tied a ribbon on decades of games so masterfully the way that Metal Gear Solid 4 did it.
Ganondorf (Tears of the Kingdom) – Asif Khan, Shacknews CEO/EIC/EIEIO
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom concludes in a massive boss battle that has multiple phases, new gameplay mechanics, and ends at a massive scale that has never been seen before in a Nintendo final boss battle. Without spoiling the game, the boss battle and ending are one of the reasons the game received a 10/10 review score at Shacknews.
Oryx, the Taken King – Bill Lavoy, Diamond City Resident
Yeah, I’m going with Destiny for this one. There have certainly been some crazy final boss battles in my gaming past, but Oryx stands out (both in Destiny 1 and Destiny 2) because it was a fight that my fireteam and I didn’t know we could actually win. We spent days going through the King’s Fall raid, figuring it out on our own, banging our heads against the wall that was Oryx. But, our group stuck with it and defeated the Taken King, watching him float off into space. It was the most satisfying end to a boss battle I’ve had, not because of the narrative implications (although those are also heavy in this case), but because a six-person fireteam had to work together to accomplish it.
The fight itself requires precise coordination between six players, consistent execution to get to each damage phase, and then a frantic final stand where you’re throwing every last bullet you have at near-death Oryx. It’s a fight that obviously becomes easier as you learn it and get more powerful in Destiny, but that first time through, it was like nothing I’d ever enjoyed in a video game previously.
Isshin, The Sword Saint – Sam Chandler, Hesitation is defeat
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice remains one of my favorite titles out of FromSoftware. The game manages to retain the feel of a Souls but twists it into an almost rhythm-like experience where reaction speed wins the day. While there are several memorable bosses and minibosses, it’s the final boss (or series of bosses) that stands out, especially if you’ve been following the mysticism-drenched narrative.
The fight against Genichiro Ashina at the start of the game is perfectly mirrored at the end, and then the intensity is ratcheted up as Isshin, The Sword Saint makes his dramatic entrance. What follows is one of the few three-phase boss fights in a Souls game that demands perfection from the player while still feeling fair with its difficulty.
Every single time I’ve defeated Isshin, I have felt like I’d mastered all the systems. That I had read my foe and reacted appropriately. I did not hesitate, and as such, I did not know defeat.
Slave Knight Gael- Dennis White Jr., The Ashen One on the Weekends
There are plenty of amazing boss fights in the Soulsborne franchises but since we are talking about final boss experiences, I have to show some love to Slave Knight Gael. Gael is the final boss of the Dark Souls series and waits at the end of Dark Souls III: The Ringed City to bring players to their knees. This fight truly pushed me to my limits as my friends and community watched me take on the fight live on stream for hours. I beat him during my 12-hour anniversary stream so, yeah, I’m feeling sentimental about it. He’s got plenty of intertwining lore as well which brings him to the forefront of my list too. Gael believes that he is doing the right thing in destroying what’s left of a rotted world but as the player helps him succeed in that goal by spilling his blood in battle, he loses what’s left of his humanity and turns into a terrifying, ravenous Hollow.
This fight has three phases and each one is pretty intense, but I love how the drama and scale of the battle escalates with each phase too. I always have a soft spot for the tragic bosses and, obviously, the Soulsborne games have plenty of them. But I do appreciate how Gael represents the Dark Soul in a different way than what’s left of Gwyn in the original Dark Souls. Ultimately, Gael succeeds in his mission through his death as the player can use his spilled blood to keep the world alive a bit longer after the Age of Fire ends.
Cynthia – Donovan Erskine, Sinnoh Champion
One of my favorite traditions of the early handful of Pokemon games is that you don’t know the identity of the Champion, the strongest trainer in the region and head of the Elite 4, until you walk into the room to fight them. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl’s reveal that Cynthia, a mysterious character who you cross paths with a few times during your adventure, was the Champion, shocked me as a kid. This shock was immediately followed up by an absolutely brutal fight, in which her Spiritomb and Garchomp obliterated my team of Pokemon. I must’ve reset my DS a couple of dozen times trying to beat Cynthia in 2006. I can still memorize her full team to this day. Also, I can’t talk about Cynthia without bringing up her iconic theme, which still strikes fear in me whenever I hear it. Cynthia is the rare Pokemon Champion to appear repeatedly throughout the series, and for good reason: she’s the GOAT!
Ganondorf/Ganon Fight Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Steve Tyminski, Stevetendo show host.
I could say the Smithy fight at the end of Super Mario RPG, with the great music and the challenge of Smithy changing heads in phase two. I could go with another Mario game, Super Mario World, with the Bowser fight on the roof of the castle. Those are two classic Nintendo games with great end fights but I think I have to go another direction.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of my all-time favorite games and the final fight with Ganondorf/Ganon is a great boss fight. Getting to the fight is a challenge in itself where you need to make your way through the transformed Hyrule Castle and get through the rooms based on the different temples. Then you make your way up the tower and start the fight with Ganondorf, which pays homage to Link to the Past, where you have to hit balls of light back at the evil king and shoot light arrows at him. Defeating him gets you the win, or so you thought. The tower starts to collapse, and you have to guide Princess Zelda out of the rubble. After you get out of the tower, you sense something isn’t right and Ganon shows his true form, a giant swine-like demon. Your Master Sword gets thrown across the battlefield and Zelda uses her magic to keep Ganon from moving. This gives you the chance to get your sword back and deliver the finishing blow, a sword stab right between the eyes of the demon. The music in the final area and battle is fantastic and adds to the craziness of the final fight. My favorite final boss fight is the Ganondorf/Ganon battle in the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time!
Those are our favorite final boss fights in video games. That was a doozy! What’s a final boss fight that has stuck with you? Let us know in the Chatty!
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