Your longest Boss battles

[Kurt Zisa]

I just spent the last hour and ten minutes trying to capture a Custom LAV on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and it's not even a good vehicle. I only need to it to unlock more extra missions.

Anyway what are some of the longest Boss battles you've completed? Was it becuase of the difficulty, or was that particular Boss just tricky to hit? I like battles that take a while to complete, it's not so fun when you can exploit a tough Boss's weakness and kill it in a few turns. That said, there's a fine line between a challenging boss that requires time and strategy to beat, and a battle that just seems to go on for ever.

The reason it took so long to beat the Boss I just mentioned is that it has an escort of 33 armored soldiers, which you have to defeat first, and its machine gun shreds you to peices if you are caught in its line of fire for too long. By the end of it I had used up all 30(!) of my recovery items and has used up all of my supply markers, so if I ran out of rations or ammo that hour would have been for nothing.

The End from Metal Gear Solid 3 is another infamous one. Fancy a sniper battle that takes place over three forest zones and you can hardly see or hear the guy until he shoots you? Add more time onto that if you want his unique camo and rifle. That was a fun battle though and if you put the time into it you get some pretty sweet equipment.

[Heartless Angel]

Ethereal Queen in Valkyrie Profile 2 the first time I fought her. It took me over 4 hours. On subsequent plays I've taken her out in a matter of seconds, but she's an optional end game boss, and i was fighting her with main story equipment and stats, and hadn't been doing any Einherjar releasing for stat boosts. Those fights were all designed for players who'd been boosting their stats and who had already gone through and looted a bunch of bonus gear and abilities and shit from the Seraphic gate, whereas i just kinda bulldozed through it (including the other 4 end game bosses, the first of which took me about 35 minutes, and got progressively harder after each boss). The reason it takes so long with those stats is a combination of these bosses just having such ridiculous amounts of health compared to your damage output, and you having to play it extremely safe to make sure you don't get your entire party one shot. Whereas with a normal fight I'd just get everyone healed up and then blitzkrieg a boss with everything i had, doing something like that with these guys was most likely going to result in your entire party getting blown apart by an area fire spell 2 seconds after your attack. So Instead I'd usaully have to split the party, have a bunch of people hiding, and the strongest guy I had trying to flank and spank while keeping the heat off of everyone else.

[loaf]

I ****ing LOVE The End's boss fight. No music at all during that boss fight. You just walked right into the boss battle and didn't even know, I love it so much. (to bad I know how to own him quick now) the no music part sold it for me.

FFXII Yiazmet I never got to finish but Hell Wyrm took me about 45 minutes to an hour to complete.

[Hyzenthlay]

My longest ever boss fight was in Baten Kaitos for the Gamecube. It was, for those people that haven't played the game, a card based combat RPG and was one of my favourite RPGs of that time along with Tales of Symphonia and Fire Emblem: Paths of Radiance.

So the boss fight was a battle aboard a ship and is against 3 enemies which are Giacomo, Ayme and Folon. The battle was pretty long as it is, even if you're really good at the game and understand what is going on. On my first play-through I had absolutely no clue what was going on and how to approach the battle. If I remember correctly you have to fight these guys a few times throughout the game but this one was particularly brutal for me. I remember fighting the battle over and over again and the thing lasted about 20-30 minutes each time I tried (depending on my luck with card draws). Eventually I worked out the system to defeat them which, avoiding spoilers, involves attacking 'A' first and then 'B' and finally 'C'. In this way, over time, you find the whole thing much more manageable and avoid some devastating special attacks which may come from attacking 'C' first. There were other such benefits to the system which I only realised through a LOT of trial and error such as healing being cut off for them and such. In all this battle probably cost me about 6-7 hours or so of my life, if not longer. The battle itself, when finally completed, was around 40 minutes. I would readily recommend the game but be prepared for some tough stuff if you're terrible at card games like I am.

If we're talking about one specific battle, though, then I'd have to say the Wesker hanger fight from Resident Evil 5. I could not for the life of me get that guy to stay down. When I play this game now I beat him in like 30 seconds flat, but that's because I know with surgeon-like precision where to be and when. When I first played I was shooting off RPG's this way and that and not understanding why the fool was all 'Neo' on me. Still, I got the last laugh there...

Hyz.

[SuperSabin]

I'm just going to go ahead and say that the final boss fight of Metal Gear Rising Revengence was my longest boss fight. If any boss fight boiled my blood, it was that one. The AI of that boss was really in-your-face like and it almost seemed as if he could read your movements. It took me way too many tries to finally take this guy down, but it was a long and painful process.

[Michael Swayne]

Today I battled Sophie Peithos in Xenosaga Episode I. The battle lasted 45 minutes, and luckily I managed to win. It is the final battle of the game, so there was no way to avoid it either. The trick for this battle is to defend in every way possible and save up your Boosts. Raise your defenses to protect yourself from attacks and raise your speed to get in an extra round of turns in order to use the Defend option when Sophie uses Dark Omen.

On top of that Sophie Peithos summons lesser enemies that you have to get rid of or the self-destruct and harm the entire party.

But after 35+ attempts over the last however many weeks it's been since I first started fighting this final boss, I finally won! Now to move on top Episode II.

[Andromeda]

In recent memory, it was in Atelier Ayesha against Keithgriff, who you're not really meant to win against, but can if you go in with a lot of patience and a smart setup. I'm pretty sure the fight was like 30 minutes long to complete and got nothing for my trouble other than him claiming to have underestimated me and held back too much.

I remember having to fight for a really long time against the final boss in Mario RPG and it felt like an hour, since it was so long ago I don't know how long it really was, but it took forever to complete.

[Crescent]

Off the top of my head, definitely a few of the bosses from the Metal Gear Solid series. But god they got the best boss battles n r so much fun you can either kill em or tranq em. Most recently the last boss in Metal Gear Rising did my head(and controller) in. Im really suprised to say The End was easy for me I finished him on my second attempt. I happened to run past him by chance (I didnt kno wth I was goin) with his back turned, got in a few head shots then ran up to him n tried to kung fu his old ass. Then I just followd his footsteps using my thermal goggles. I didnt give a crap about equipment I was just intent on killing him. The Fear was the longest MGS3 boss battle for me. The longest boss battle for me tho in the entire MGS series was in Sons of Liberty. My first playthrough was on normal mode where u had only 7 Metal Gear Rays to deal with. After I'd finished the game, I went for a second playthru on extreme mode. You still fight 3 at a time but I was sittin there for an eternity fighting off 20 Metal Gear Rays in total.

I feel like Shadow of The Colossus should gain an honourable mention. I found those battles very peaceful.

And Bowser. Feels like Ive been fighting that bastard my whole life.

[Michael Swayne]

Im really suprised to say The End was easy for me I finished him on my second attempt.

Same here, but probably for a different reason. Anymore I will just snipe him as he is wheeled into the building. Total battle time = the fraction of a second it takes my bullet to enter The End's head.

The battle against Necron also seemed to take quite a while back when I started playing Final Fantasy IX. But really, most video game final bosses take forever for me to defeat the first few times through.

[Kurt Zisa]

Thermal Goggles plus those mushrooms that charge batteries make The End a lot easier. I usually wait for him to take a shot and if the bullet misses Snake it'l show up on the goggles, and if it hits just look at where it hit Snake. In both cases it'l reveal his general location.

Cerberus in Final Fantasy VIII took me over an hour to beat, simply because I wanted to Draw the magic he had. In hindsight I could've just waited a bit longer to get it from regular enemies, but I didn't know that at the time. It took ages because of the way Triple works on him. Normally when you use it, you'll cast three spells in rapid succession, but for some reason when Cerberus does it he has to go through the charging and casting animation three times in a row. So what should have been a relatively battle dragged on for ages and ages all because I wanted 300 Quakes and Triples. Never doing that again.

[Heartless Angel]

Lol Hyz,I feel your pain on Wesker. The first fight with him when he's with Jill was a joke, He went for my buddy right away and just started popping him in the back of the head with a magnum, never pulled any Neo shenanigans, he left almost immediately. Second fight was a pain, I hit my partner with at last 3 rockets because he was getting close too soon. Which was, admittedly, kinda funny. Last fight was rally easy again, we just kinda unloaded unlimitted ammo magnums and nades all over him, but the second Wesker fight, god damn that sucked.

[HeroZero]

Freakin Wesker... I certainly spent the most TIME trying to kill wesker with my dad, we couldn't figure that bastard out forever. But Definitely Yiazmat was the longest (although it seems like a cop out answer) and next I probably spent more time on Zodiark in FF12 than Hellwyrm. It was very much a plick away at its health slowly trying not to die and recovering from near party wipes.

Honorable mention goes to The behemoth boss thing in Resident Evil 5 (fought from the stationary Humvee) on co-op on Professional difficulty... Getting two people to not mess up the fraction of a second window to not get wrecked was tough enough but getting enough damage in the right spots the whole fight AND still not messing up timing... brutal. Had 256 deaths on it before we won.

[Pete]

I'm gonna go with that final boss in Legend of Dragoon. I can't remember his name, but between all of his form shifting and attacks that brought my whole party down to near death, I was at it for at least 45 minutes to an hour. The worst part about the whole ordeal was that I had rented the game from Blockbuster, probably back in 2000, and never finished it, as the boss killed me and I was too pissed off to replay it. The next day, my dad returned it, and I bitterly never played it since.

I'm half tempted to pick it up now though, if it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

[Crescent]

Same here, but probably for a different reason. Anymore I will just snipe him as he is wheeled into the building. Total battle time = the fraction of a second it takes my bullet to enter The End's head.

Yeh theres no fun in that. I shot him just to see what would happen tho. I didnt think he'd actually die!XD Reset straight away n started again from the last checkpoint. Couldnt deny the old man, a "legend", a final fight against me(n possibly leave out a whole epic chunk of the game!). Its quite the tense battle esp with the absence of music n such a large expanse of area to run around in ..even tho I defeated him pretty quick. You miss out on what was n still is a great experience.

After finishing MGS3, I read that if you take too long to resume your game midbattle or simply set your PS2 clock forward a wk or so, he dies of old age. Haha that shit's genius. Just like the battle with Psycho Mantis#MGSbossbattles#4thWall Just talking bout MGS ughh GZ and PP cant come soon enough.

Another long boss battle thats sprung to mind is Monsoon. Not my longest in MGR but I finally got the better of him(n my poor reflexes) in just under 15min. Parrying, EM grenades + my favourite thing about the game(apart from Raiden)-Zandatsu but in this battle just without the "datsu"(take/grab). Ive never been fond of QTE's but I loved them in this game they meshed well with the fast paced combat. One of the sickest boss battles ever.

It's a good time to replay MGR again (one of my fave games of this yr) since they just recently cut the price n both(Jetstream & Blade Wolf) DLC is free.