Favorite Non Final Boss

[klunderbunker]

In video games, the system typically goes like this: do stuff in the main world, go to a temple or castle or whatever, navigate that, then fight the boss and repeat. However, in these dungeons, there are often bosses other than the final boss. Simply put, which did you like the most? Maybe it was because it was a cool idea, maybe it was challenging, maybe it was just memorable, but which was it?

For me, it's from Ocarina of Time and it's Dark Link. Your guide named Navi's description and strategy for it is Conquer Yourself. That's a great line and couldn't be any better. In essence you're fighting your own shadow. Anything you cna do, he can do, so how do you go about fighting him? That's very smart and while it's been done elsewhere, it's done here best.

 

[Blue Chipper]

My favorite non-boss would have to be "Satellite Ship Boss" in RE5 (Yea, recent, I know). He was a quite large monster that had lengthy attacks, and was surrounded by leeches. He was a visually stunning and masterfully created big fellow. It took me literally hours upon hours figuring out how to defeat him, and hours considering why I was always failing and being brutally massacred. Finally, after all the effort I put into it, continously shooting him, tourching him, and running from him meant virtually ziltch as I read a faq that said you had to shoot these small wholes or scars on his back. When I defeated him, I felt like I truly accomplished a big feat or something, and that boss was just so epic. The victory was so sweet, but short lived as another mini-boss sprung quickly into the fray.

Well, there's surely other mini-bosses I might would've put in front of this one, but my brain doesn't seem to have that remembering function when it comes to bosses.

 

[The Holy One]

Mine is Heartless Riku from Kingdom Hearts. The classic story of best friends turned bitter enimies somehow never gets old. This is one of the best in my opinion. From the story apart, the battle itself was hard as hell. His attacks are some of they most hardest to dodge especially that Dark Aura one. If Sephiroth wasn't included in that game, this would be hands down the hardest boss battle. I loss so many times that I could literally repeat the entire cutscene before the battle. After finally becoming a specialist at timing the jumps and glides in order to avoid his attacks, I was able take nice long break to watch Sora kill himself.

 

[Spunky]

I have a couple.

Jill Valentine, Resident Evil 5. Yes you read right(for the people yet to play this wonderful game), So you can't actually kill her?!?!? Or it's game over. The fight goes as followed. Wesker, Has Jill in some kind of brainwashed state induced by a gem that's located on her chest. For the first seven minutes of the fight, it's the Wesker show. You have to concentrate on him as Jill cannot be saved, Nor killed until Wesker has left. During the Wesker stage if you let him hurt you near the entrance way to the right, He will kick you through a wall. That helps you a shit load, You can only hurt Wesker when he has his back to you. IF you do manage to make him run before the seven minutes is up you get a big ol' jewel.

Anyway, The jill part of this fight is amazinly frustrating, As you can bet on your AI partner trying to kill Jill, So you have to have Sheva go through the level with no weapons. Then you have to keep baiting Jill towards you, So you can restrain her, And then atempt to remove the gem from her chest, OR if you have amazing accuracy, You can shoot it off, But this is a double edged sword.

Laughing Octopus, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the patriots. God damn this fight pissed me off so much, It's well known that MSG has some of the most inovative boss fights in the gaming industry. Well this one was located in a small shed like house/lab. You finish a cut scene off with a girl you are rescueing, And out of nowhere you her a crazy, Demonic laugh, The girl gets out, But you have to stay and either defeat her, Or kill her. For TWO FUCKING HOURS! I ran around the hut, Looking for Octopus, Expecting her to jump out at anytime, Ready to fuck me up, But NOTHING, It wasn't until I accidently hit the night vision function on the Solid eye, BAM! There she was following me, I was sooooooo pissed at not realising it sooner. The boss itself was rather hard to, I had to keep charging the eye to kill her.

 

[Y-2-Jay]

Mine would have to be on resident evil 4 were your in a boat and you fight some kinda sea monster its a cool battle also another from RE4 is that big guy who you fight in a barn and he transforms it to all sorts another good battle and finally from zelda OOT a boss fight which i dont think many people like is the one in the water temple i dont know hy but i just really liked it and the build up to the battle with the water bubbling.

 

[Loveless]

I'll take The End on MGS 3. It's a really simple but brilliant idea. A brilliant, camouflaged sniper high on a ledge with a parrot as a spotter. He was a bitch to find and half the time I didn't know whether I was shooting at him or part of the hill.
Barba, Pelagia, Argus from Shadow of the Collosus and Sagat the Bitch from StreetFighter II are all memorable.

 

[Blade]

Like KB, Mine's gotta be Shadow Link from Ocarina of Time.
In my opinion, the perfect boss cause you really had to think and strategise.
For those of you who haven't played Ocarina of Time (You better have a good explaination,) Shadow Link is the dark version of the character you play as. So he knows every move you know and knows how to block every move you know. It's incredibly challenging, to the point where you wonder is it actually possible to beat him. But it's also the single most rewarding boss I've defeated.

Another is in KOTOR, when (if you've chosen the light side) you have to fight Bastilla on the star forge. She's turned to the dark side because of Darth Malek, and so she attacks you when you find her. And you have to fight her while trying to persuade her to come back to the light side based on her love of you alone. It's a pretty touching moment. Plus, Bastilla is a powerful bitch and can kick your ass if you don't prepare properly.

 

[Dr. Stinger A. Zoidberg]

For me, It is Protoman from the Megaman Battle Network Series. If you ever played these games, Protoman is one of the most exciting people to fight. The battle is always quick and fun. Also if you lose to him, you don't lose any of your progress because all you have to do to fight him is talk to his owner after you've beaten the game. Also I remember if you beat him, you get some sort of beastly move.

 

[NSL]

Screw you all. The best sub-boss is Goro, and you know it. When the first MK game hit arcades, no one really knew how the game would end. After fighting yourself, and 3 random teams, the screen slides you up to the sub-boss, and all you see is that evil face looking back at you. Then, you switch to the fight screen, and all you see is a big badass 4-armed freak that wants to grab you, pound your chest in, and then stomp on your face. And, guess what? He does just that for about the first 10 times you fight him.

I learned it's best to cheat, and use Raiden, and then do nothing but use a jump kick, run away, rinse and repeat.

 

[Dexter]

Jenova from FF7. I love how you fight her multiple times throughout the game, how she's a little different and a little meaner each time, and... I'm sure everyone reading this has played the game but still, I'm going spoiler free here... I love what she means to the plot of the game and thus the significance of you having to fight her.

 

[Lee]

Like KB, Mine's gotta be Shadow Link from Ocarina of Time.
In my opinion, the perfect boss cause you really had to think and strategise.
For those of you who haven't played Ocarina of Time (You better have a good explanation,) Shadow Link is the dark version of the character you play as. So he knows every move you know and knows how to block every move you know. It's incredibly challenging, to the point where you wonder is it actually possible to beat him. But it's also the single most rewarding boss I've defeated.

By Shadow Link, one could assume you mean Dark Link, Shadow Link is in Four Swords Adventure. Dark Link first appears in Zelda II and has made a few appearances since.

For me the best non final boss would be Metal Sonic in Sonic 2, he's technically not the final boss as you have Robotnik to face afterwards. A very hard boss that I still struggle with to this day, plus the fact you have zero rings to do it makes it quite hard.

On top of that the Koopalings in Super Mario Bros 3 are pretty cool bosses, it makes an improvement from beating Bowser at the end of every world and gives us some variety.

 

[IrishCanadian25]

Y'all are WAY too new school for my tastes. Time to take you back a ways...

Super Macho Man, Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Well, he wasn't my "favorite," more like my least favorite. He was so frustrating, and often times he was harder to beat than Tyson was. Super Macho Man had that spinning punch that was near impossible to dodge and if you blocked, it'd still take you out. The guy was such a niusance.

Green Dragon, Dragon Warrior. I've mentioned this one before. A major subquest of Dragon Warrior is to rescue King Lorik's daughter, princess Gwaelin. What you DON'T know initially are where she is located and WHAT is guarding her. Often by mistake in early levels, wandering players learn that she is being guarded in the swamp cave by a freaking Green Dragon, which is often WAY over the heads of the PC when you first, often accidentally, find him.

 

[a7xoff]

Favorite non final boss... Hmmmm. I would have to say that Phantom Ganon from the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time is one of my favs. I mean I found him to be more challenging than Ganon himself. The fact that you had to try and watch all the paintings in the room, which there are several of, pick the right one and shoot an arrow at it before Ganon hits ya was a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time.

Now if I've misread the topic here and Phantom Ganon is considered a final boss then I would have to say that the fight between Axel and Roxas at the end of the tutorial of Kingdom Hearts II is easily one of if not is my favorite. The emotion that both Roxas and Axel carry into the battle is really intense and well duel wielding Oathkeeper and Oblivion over a burning crater is simply awesome.

 

[The Mark of Zur-En-Arrh]

The fact that you had to try and watch all the paintings in the room, which there are several of, pick the right one and shoot an arrow at it before Ganon hits ya was a lot of work to do in a very short amount of time.

Didn't help that sometimes there were two Ganondorf's in the paintings either did it? You wouldn't believe the number of times i kept dying because i was aiming for the wrong guy, lol.

I too would go with The End from Metal Gear Solid 3. Unless you had your infra-red goggles on and accidentally stumbled across him, he was a right bitch to find. However, it's understandable that the boss was so hard, considering they give you 2 separate ways to kill him without actually engaging in the boss fight.

Just after you've evaded the guards on the hover boards along the shadow river, you see a cut scene with Volgin, the Boss, Tetchyana (EVA) and The End, and then they leave. When gameplay resumes, The End is still on the boardwalk, wheeling himself back into the base. If you got the Sniper Rifle that's located just literally just before this you can snipe the hell out of him and wipe him out, and when you get to the fight area, there's nothing but guards in there instead. I know it works but when i tried it the other day, a fuckin guard walked right in my line of sight just as i was pulling the trigger to cap The End, and he escaped. Bastard!

Secondly, if you turn your playstation off and put the clock forward a month or two, when you turn the system back on, a cut scene plays immediately with Snake walking up to him, only to discover that he's died of old age. You don't actually have to change the clock, because i saved the game just after entering the boss battle, turned it off, didn't go back to playing it again, set aside a whole afternoon to do this Sniper battle i'd heard so much about only to find i no longer had to do it. Took me forever and a day to do it when i did it properly.

 

[hArdyPUNKmArk]

When I first thought about it the spider from one of the Donkey Kong Country series came to mind as very memorable. I used to love those games and I think it was the third one Double Trouble that you have to battle that big bouncing spider at the end of the forest levels.

Used to love those games on the SNES. Great times.

 

[MooseNugget]

My favorite mini boss in video games would have to be was the huge monster in the football stadium on Duke Nukem 64. That level was always fun to try to kill him or to mess around and try not get killed by him. It was also awesome to get friends involved and see who would last the longest in that mission. Another thing that added to it is when we would help the boss out and shoot each other with the shrink ray, or even if we used the enlarge ray to make ourselves larger. The boss was awesome because...well he was a large bad ass that can either kill you by steeping on you or shooting you. It was always fun to try and kill him with the game's weakest weapon. It was always fun to play that level in the game.

 

[instantkarmaVA]

My favorite non final boss is Magus from Chrono trigger. You kind of think that this guy's the main villian for a bit, trying to summon Lavos but you find out he's trying to destroy him. Best part is is when he joins your party.

 

[Tapion]

Gotta agree with the poster above me. The Magus' battle from Chrono Trigger. Going through his castle, getting up to finally fight him. The build up to it, its fun, and definitely love the music that plays during it.