Shadow of Colossus had a ton of memorable bosses, each for their own reason. I remember the ape-like one in the temple area as being the point where the job was familiar despite how destructive and huge the creatures were. It was less daunting than the others, and far less stressful! Somehow that makes it my most memorable Colossi.

The Fury boss battle in MGS3 still stands out. Not only did you just finish climbing a ladder to the Snake Eater song, you had to fight the bastard amung blazing fires. It was so cool.

For some reason, the FF8 final boss was fun, even if it was a continuous cast of Aura, Megalixers and finishing moves. I remember especially when on one of my playthroughs, I killed Griever so well he turned purple and would not die... Broke the freakin' game. That was memorable.

Kingdom Hearts 1 had a boss battle agains the demon guy from Fantasia... The fact he cast fantasia demon-imps at you and that the boss song was Night on Bald Mountain made it so awesome for me.

The first Pyramid Head boss 'chase' was insane in Silent Hill 2.
Oh, and the last boss of Earthworm Jim 2.... lol

giygas

/thread

I honestly believe that the people who did not list this fight did so because theyv'e never played the game.

what game is giygas from?

what game is giygas from?

Earthbound.

ok. at first i thought this topic was going to end up badly but some of these suggestions are pretty good.
i don't really think any of the bosses in jRPG's or even western RPG's have been really MINDBLOWING. most of the time the battles are pretty set and stiff and most of the time the desirable EPIC feeling in the battle is unachieved. baldur's gate series had good attempts at this but only in a strictly tactical sense.

see, because of this, i think the best fights have indeed been in n64's legend of zelda - series or indeed SHADOW OF COLOSSUS. basically shadow of colossus took the boss fights of legend of zelda and made a whole game out of them, only punctuating the MAJESTY and OVERWHELMINGNESS of the fights.
it's kind of hard to explain but the rpg games can't achieve what these games did because there's so little control over the characters itself in rpg bossfights and most of the time a direct attack does SOMETHING to the enemy. DOES NUMBERS. this doesn't work in fps games (hl2 for example) or in these two games. even better, you can't even FIGURE OUT how to even damage the bosses in SotC at first so you pretty much just RAN LIKE HELL and hoped the best.

maaaan fuck adults fuck games. the water boss in SotC! my little brother who is only two years younger didn't want to do it because of the SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DAMAGE and the great tensed music in that fight. the area was just FILLED WITH WATER and you had no idea what to do. hsdfgsadgAIYFG the worse parts were when the boss seemingly RANDOMLY started to tail you jesus christghdaga. we ended up playing that with VOLUME TURNED OFF and GAMEFAQS. i felt like a huge jerk after that fight, i had spoiled something important right then

alsoalso the vanilla-hl2 had good ideas and mechanics for boss fights unfortunately it was mostly boring/disapointing as shit. the end fight was pretty bad.

also i have never fought giygas, i have heard it's a good battle??!! please do not spoil anything related to it i will fight it some day.

mgs3. the fury was gay as hell whoever thinks it's the best fight?!? get a grip man, smoke less!! no joke the fight against the end was one of the most immensive boss fights i have ever played. i really liked that fight. really neat! besides being a good fight in general, it somehow managed to break the rule of the boss fight's boundaries. like not EVOLVING... THE BOSS FIGHTS?!? but rather than breaking the unsaid rule of when the boss fight is ON or when it is OFF. ONE OF THE BEST BOSS FIGHTS for real

i kind of dismissed baldur's gate in my first paragraph but holy shit what a neat design in overal. both games without expansions are really well planned and scripted. my worst, most difficult fights have been with that game and they have also been the most rewarding ones too. you could try making your way through using certain glitches (the talk glitch was pretty bad but it was fixed in certain updates) and casting all the enchantments you could at the beginning of the big battles but really, in the end all of that didn't mean that much. if you don't know what you are doing or what you need to do then WELP. i wish i could explain this better.

sorry for a ragnar-like post also ragnar rules.

oh hey something i forgot to mention

it also shocks me because it's super recent


but the last boss from Dead Space: Extraction

jesus, that was incredible


not for how you fight the boss (because its just yet another rail shooter bossfight)

but for everything else

Giygas is the only acceptable answer here. that boss fight scarred me for life-- i first played EarthBound when i was approximately 6 years old. even playing it again last year was terrifying too, though. true horror right there. Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness... I'm... ha...ppy... *shudder*
also, the final fight from Mother 3! another highly emotional boss. i cried. a lot. can't say much more than that without spoiling something. all i can say is that the Mother series has some of the best bosses. those are the best games i have ever played.

ok. at first i thought this topic was going to end up badly but some of these suggestions are pretty good.
i don't really think any of the bosses in jRPG's or even western RPG's have been really MINDBLOWING. most of the time the battles are pretty set and stiff and most of the time the desirable EPIC feeling in the battle is unachieved. baldur's gate series had good attempts at this but only in a strictly tactical sense.

see, because of this, i think the best fights have indeed been in n64's legend of zelda - series or indeed SHADOW OF COLOSSUS. basically shadow of colossus took the boss fights of legend of zelda and made a whole game out of them, only punctuating the MAJESTY and OVERWHELMINGNESS of the fights.
it's kind of hard to explain but the rpg games can't achieve what these games did because there's so little control over the characters itself in rpg bossfights and most of the time a direct attack does SOMETHING to the enemy. DOES NUMBERS. this doesn't work in fps games (hl2 for example) or in these two games. even better, you can't even FIGURE OUT how to even damage the bosses in SotC at first so you pretty much just RAN LIKE HELL and hoped the best.

maaaan fuck adults fuck games. the water boss in SotC! my little brother who is only two years younger didn't want to do it because of the SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DAMAGE and the great tensed music in that fight. the area was just FILLED WITH WATER and you had no idea what to do. hsdfgsadgAIYFG the worse parts were when the boss seemingly RANDOMLY started to tail you jesus christghdaga. we ended up playing that with VOLUME TURNED OFF and GAMEFAQS. i felt like a huge jerk after that fight, i had spoiled something important right then

alsoalso the vanilla-hl2 had good ideas and mechanics for boss fights unfortunately it was mostly boring/disapointing as shit. the end fight was pretty bad.

also i have never fought giygas, i have heard it's a good battle??!! please do not spoil anything related to it i will fight it some day.

mgs3. the fury was gay as hell whoever thinks it's the best fight?!? get a grip man, smoke less!! no joke the fight against the end was one of the most immensive boss fights i have ever played. i really liked that fight. really neat! besides being a good fight in general, it somehow managed to break the rule of the boss fight's boundaries. like not EVOLVING... THE BOSS FIGHTS?!? but rather than breaking the unsaid rule of when the boss fight is ON or when it is OFF. ONE OF THE BEST BOSS FIGHTS for real

i kind of dismissed baldur's gate in my first paragraph but holy shit what a neat design in overal. both games without expansions are really well planned and scripted. my worst, most difficult fights have been with that game and they have also been the most rewarding ones too. you could try making your way through using certain glitches (the talk glitch was pretty bad but it was fixed in certain updates) and casting all the enchantments you could at the beginning of the big battles but really, in the end all of that didn't mean that much. if you don't know what you are doing or what you need to do then WELP. i wish i could explain this better.

sorry for a ragnar-like post also ragnar rules.

lolthanks

also I kind of mixed up memorable/IMPOSSIBLE boss fights and I still remember fighting Mike Tyson in Punch-out was like the most impossible thing ever in the history of things that are hard to do - I'm pretty sure like curing most diseases is easier than beating Mike Tyson without the game genie. Also Super Punch-Out had those guys who were brothers or something and they were EACH as hard as Mike Tyson I think - or like you beat the one guy and it's impossible and then the next guy is EVEN HARDER thanks a lot game designers. I might be completely wrong and the second guy is a total push-over like Glass Joe like thanks for playing the game etc.

also Giygas

I don't even remember who the fuck you fought against in most games - like last boss of Final Fantasy 27 what was he like an angel but sort of a devil and he had tentacles that throw swords at you and can like turn into your dudes and do shit that your dudes would do but it's not it's HIM

also Dragon Warrior 7 you fucking fight against God. And God knows HELLFIRE or some spell like that

also the final guy in Dragon Warrior IV was animated and crap and I was like WHOA I was easily excited as a kid

i totally agree with ramci. the end was one of the best boss fights i've ever seen

There's various ways to beat The End.

There's the "normal" way which is what everybody refers to as super epic; being to outwit his skills as sniper and beat him at his own game
there's the "zzz" way which is pretty much like the normal way except you let him fall asleep everytime so it's easy to sneak up on him
there's the "lazy" way which is, like you said, to let him die of old age
there's the "wat" way, which is to snipe him in the 2-3 second window you get when you first see him in his wheelchair, causing him to explode and die

if you do the "wat" way though, you get an Ocelot Unit instead

and they're kinda annoying

Why is a SNES boss the top draw here? Really, was it that impressive? Never played Earthbound, so no idea... but still, really?

Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude...Dude


I FEEL HAPPY

it might not be the most inspired answer, but final fantasy 7 did a good job assembling a fair assortment of boss fights against important story characters that you're supposed to feel something about. i will always prefer boss fights that have some sort of tangible impact on the story, specifically ones that actually utilize the emotion of the story in setting up the significance of the battle. most boss fights are really just against GENERIC CAVE MONSTER #3, and don't have any worth outside of quirks thrown into the battle itself.

it's actually pretty surprising how few games really make use of the boss fight as a legitimate function of the story throughout its development. outside of final fantasy 7 and some of the suikoden games, i can't really name too many other games that do this to any noteworthy extent. you just go around throwing grenades at the wildlife or shooting rocket launchers at faceless footsoldiers. that doesn't do a whole lot for me.

edit: i totally failed to answer this question, since i'm talking about GAMES WITH GOOD BOSS BATTLES and not GOOD BOSS BATTLES.

dunno, kinda stumped. i'll come back when i have an actual answer(probably never)

that game was ridiculously hard for me for some reason

final fantasy 7 did do a pretty good job with bosses i think, namely rufus near the end of midgar kind of struck me as being pretty cool and relevant story wise