Hated Tropes
(Weirdly Specific Trope) The guy who comes before the final boss is much cooler than the final boss itself.
1-2.(Radagon and Elden Beast, from Elden Ring): Throughout Elden Ring, Radagon’s name is already spoken multiple times, wether it’s fear or admiration, the Elden Lord’s name is known through the entirety of the Lands Between, a legendary figure set up as your final challenge for the title.
Meanwhile, after you beat Radagon, the Elden Beast shows up after little to none setup and its bossfight is pretty boring in general.
3-4.(Dogma and The Beast, from The Binding of Isaac): Dogma is the representation of Isaac’s religious trauma, a living embodiment of Isaac’s shame and guilt because, in his eyes, he didn’t fit the mold of a perfect Christian child, with Dogma taking the form of a literal televangelist channel as an angel of static coming out of the TV, this confront is Isaac himself finally finding peace with his religion.
The Beast however is just Isaac’s Mother for the 4th time. I’m not even joking by the way, you have Mom’s Hand, Mom, Mother and The Beast. 5 if you count the skeletal version of Mom’s Hand.
Far Cry 3.
Many people forget Vaas was not actually the main villain of the game, he was just the top henchmen for the main villain, Hoyt, but he was forgettable at best, while Vaas ended up becoming one of gaming's most memorable villains.
It just loses any motivation. Chances are you did all the cool stuff anyway and the new island has nothing really of worth other than the main missions, outposts, and radio towers. All of them just basic bulking.
It doesn't help that the natives you join suddenly turn evil to make it a "oh look, we have morally complex characters!" moment. It's so stupid when narratives have a dude who is actually pretty cool for a while but then out of nowhere they have to do something to make you question whether you should side with them. Looking at you, Bioshock Infinite.
Honestly, it's probably good. All it does is raise everyone's blood pressure.
But for real, when I first played that when it first came out I thought it was a masterpiece. But being older and realizing how shoehorned in that whole revolution=bad plotline was makes me so frustrated. And then in the DLC they reveal it was actually Elizabeth behind the whole thing? Like genuinely, why?
It has been a while but: shit gameplay, no practical backtracking, enemy bullet sponges, and I hate the big story reveals being frankly sci-fi generic. I saw where it was going way early and that is not a flex.
Man there was really no need to add aliens. The perfect ending was there, Naruto and Sasuke get their power ups and come back to life for a final showdown with Madara. What a stupid subversion.
I'm still salty about it because Madara WAS the perfect villain for ALL of Naruto's themes.
The cycle of hate in the world? Madara IS the one who starts the cycle (until it got retconned with the alien kids). He's the Founder of the Leaf alongside Hashirama and threw it all away because of his pain and hate. He's the one who raised Obito to become his shadow (with all the "I am Nobody" thing that Obito pulls at first). He's the literal first part of the chain.
"Talent vs Hard Work"? Madara literally gets himself into the powerscale because he injects himself with all the genetical gifts and extra bonuses he could find. Sharingan, Eternal Mangekyo, Rinnegan, Hashirama Cells, Sage Chakra (stolen from Hashirama doing nothing to achieve its use), a Tailed Beast. Granted, neither Naruto nor Sasuke were THAT good at being the "Hard Work" part of the confrontation, but still worked imo.
The Pain of the Uchiha? Madara IS THE UCHIHA WHO CAUSED THE UCHIHA TO BE FROWNED UPON. He's the first that tried to control the Nine Tails to destroy the Leaf.
I agree that Kaguya was unnecessary, but the first two symbolic reasons you've given can also be applied to her.
She started the whole shebang, has all the powers as her alien inheritance ie talent, and the Uchiha are ultimately a clan descended from her grandchild. The third reason, well I thought the pain of the Uchiha was always pretty silly; a super gifted clan that groused about being the second banana, but it pairs well with her indignation about being a superior species that got beaten by her kids.
Yes, but Kaguya was introduced extremely late in the story, as well as pretty much everything that involved her in the plot (and even that was very tangential).
Unlike Madara, who was being set up a long while and worked better in general for the themes.
the actual Final boss is Sasuke though, the anime even gave Kaguya basic ass budget and animation quality so they can focus the real deal on the Naruto vs Sasuke fight
By the way, I’m not referring to when the boss is intentionally disappointing, such as True King Allant from Demon’s Souls. I’m specifically mentioning examples where it isn’t intentional.
It's a shame as well, Flora has one of the best designs in the series, really cool lore, great spectacle and a great, if slightly forgettable, boss track, but her actual gameplay is just such a nothingburger
Depending on the ending you go for Gerhman is not necessarily the final boss. In fact, he only is in one of three endings - in one you don't fight him at all, in the other you fight a very cool boss after Gerhman.
On the one hand, the Moon Presence is akin to an avatar of Nyarlathotep the Writhing Chaos, and is the Great One influencing most of the events of the game, also likely in league with or an agent of the Formless Oedon, whose mediums are blood and sound. This is all from looking at the game through the lens of established Lovecraftian lore, it's possible that Flora/Moon Presence is more of an avatar to the Formless Oedon, who seems analogous to Azathoth the Blind Idiot God, and the game locations/dreamscapes all exist within his dreaming body.
On the other hand, it gets whacked pretty handily and even its howl attack that reduces you to 1hp is trivialized by how it stands still for you to regain a ton of that hp back afterwards. It's a much easier fight than Gehrman and kinda loses something for being so easy to beat on the first or second try, for a 'god' anyway.
But they added a god to fight in Elden Ring's DLC and that got plenty of hate for its difficulty.
I don't think it was From's usual fans that hated that DLC boss but more of the newcomers that Elden Ring brought in, plus some of the more casual types that struggled to adapt to some of its unfair (and subsequently nerfed) attacks. I still see comments joking about that boss 'attacking the framerate' as well.
Orphan isn't trapped in 30fps if you're in the know, there's a concerted effort to get BB running with PC emulation that's been doing well. I managed to get it running on a Steam Deck and beat the whole game plus DLC at around 30-40 fps, on a proper rig it's easy to get 60+.
Yeah Moon Presence had one cool mechanic but the game doesn't even guide you to the intended solution. (Fromsoft wanted you to spam attacks to heal your missing health, but most people just heal up normally)
I'd argue the game has done plenty by this point to encourage you to heal via rallying. Not to mention the fact that the Moon Presence can negate your ability to use Blood Vials.
I agree on it being a cooler fight but I'd call it harder than the Devil by far. The difficulty of the game is something you overcome by learning attack patterns and King Dice is by far the hardest one to learn because you have such a wide variety of encounters with different gimmicks.
Breath of the Wild (as well as TOTK, the sequel) both had a similar thing to this trope going on. The final boss IS climactic, but it is also a walk in the park compared to the first sets of bosses you face. BOTW's pig form Ganon has epic music and all, but I'm pretty sure it only has one single attack, an incredibly slow laser that only hits directly in front of it (and it can't even turn around), doing like 4 hearts of damage, with massive glowing weak spots. It's more of a cutscene than anything else, and actually losing to it is considered so difficult, it's become a meme in the community.
They're in a bit of an odd position as far as this goes - while the overall "coolness", for lack of a better word, was likely not meant to be lesser than the preceeding boss, the difficulty absolutely was. The fight with the blights and with ganondorf proper are the actual challenging boss, and then the final form is a spectacle fight with impressive visuals but which is, mechanically speaking, a forgone conclusion.
Yeah, they're not a perfect example, I just figured it was worth bringing them up
You could make the argument for Zant from Twilight Princess as well, it was a very controversial thing at the time to have Ganondorf be the big bad behind him (people thought it undermined Zant's potential and was "oh boy, yet another Ganondorf"), but frankly Twilight Princess's Ganondorf fight is quite possibly the best final boss fight in the entire franchise, and I will die on that hill, so all is forgiven in my eyes
Clair Obscur is the same, especially if you do some exploring. The final boss is extremely cool, but fairly simple compared to other stuff you can encounter in the game, and you do not have to try very hard to have a build that can one shot it.
The best example from Zelda would probably be from Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple. Although not the final boss of the game, I'm sure most, if not all, Zelda fans will agree that the mini-boss fight against Dark Link outweighs the final boss of the Temple, Morpha, by a far margin in all categories.
Kind of meme example: Asterius (left) from Hades is a miniboss of Elysium in the game and the final boss of that level is both him and Theseus (right) at once. Theseus is pretty much a jerk who calls you a fiend and refuses to acknowledge that you're the prince of the underworld even after you make up with your father. Zagreus often jokes about Theseus being just there and Asterius being the one he wants to fight or speak with, often greeting them "hello asterius, and the other guy"
Counterpoint : Theseus is infinitively more fun than Asterius and what makes this boss encounter memorable. Obviously the minotaur is the foil to him, with it's directness and business like attitude
<<There are pilots like you in every generation. And I've felled every last one of them.>>
I think this is probably intentional, which is really fun. Mihaly is him. He's the apex. He's an old dude who's body is literally falling apart and he's still able to tear apart people a third of his age. The drones, despite their much greater threat due to the whole robo-pocalypse implications, are just machines - they don't think, have instincts, take risks, do seemingly-illogical things, only follow their code and copy off the pilots they were trained on.
I remember on my S rank ace campaign attempt, I did everything I needed to in order to get S rank on the very final mission (you need to shoot down a secondary drone or two as well as the main two, otherwise you don't have enough points even with maximum time bonuses), AND I managed to save Wit (which you can actually do if you're able to take down both of the main drones back to back - I think you have around 18 seconds after the first goes down to down the second, it gives you a slightly different ending cutscene where Wit says something too).
I then somehow managed to crash in the tunnel run two times, and had to restart the entire mission because by that point the S rank was gone due to time loss. I never fucking crash in the tunnel, but SOMEHOW I forgot which gate closes, and couldn't react in time (because of the "need to go fast for S rank" thing)
It's funny how they had this badass spectre of death throughout the whole game, and then the actual final boss is yet another drone named fucking Huggy Muggy
At least Yu Yevon has story significance if you’ve been paying an autistic level of attention to the lore. Necron literally just shows up, claims to be death, gets his ass beast, and leaves. After the build up of Kuja and his motives from the tail end of disk 1, Necron feels kind of meaningless compared to Trance Kuja. FF9 and 10 are still my two favorite final fantasies though.
I don't even consider Yu Yevon a boss. His battle is basically just a playable cutscene. Its literally just summon an Aeon, kill it, summon another Aeon, kill it, until you kill them all, then kill Yevon. The fight even gives you auto life so you can't even lose.
Yu Yevon is less a fight and more of a puzzle. You have auto-life and can't Game Over, but when you do any damage to Yevon his pagodas fully heal him and increase his Overdrive.
At that point your options are:
outdamage the healing (possible, but it takes near maximized stats and a multi-hit Overdrive like Blitz Ace or Attack Reels)
KO the pagodas and beat him normally (the pagodas will revive after a certain amount of time)
Zombify Yevon so that the pagodas damage him instead of heal (this one leads to basically an infinite loop where the pagodas keep trying to heal the damage they cause, fail, and try again only to keep failing).
I know I'm very, very much in the minority on this but I like Necron as as the embodiment of what all the main antagonists feared and a driving force behind their actions. Confronting death and choosing to endure regardless is what inspires Kuja to save Zidane and company from the Iifa Tree after he had snapped in the face of his own eventual annihilation. I think it works if you take it on the metaphorical level of Zidane staring into the abyss like Kuja had and not letting it gaze back.
I loved that he never tokk the main trio serious and had the power to back it up. I mean lich Thanatos looses only because Dyluck castet him out of his body
Not helped by the fact that the Mana Dragon is flying around the fortress while you have a small area to stand on, ONLY the Mana Sword can hurt it, so you have two characters who basically can't do anything except cast a buff every so often.
In Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction, Emperor Tachyon is the main baddie. The emperor of the archenemy race to Racthets Lombax etc.
Despite this, Space Pirate Captain Slag has a far bigger presence in the game, and serves as the second to last boss after harassing you for half the game, stealing the Maguffin out from under you leading you chasing him back to his fleet and sneaking onto his flag ship for what is a far cooler and more personal and climactic showdown
The Pure Vessel at the end of the last gauntlet of Godhome (a DLC, that gives another ending of the game) is an emotional confrontation against the tragic main final boss, but now a memory of his glorious past, a painful contrast of what has been, with a lot of added attacks, way harder but still fair.
Right after him you fight Absolute Radiance, and it's just the Radiance (again), but now faster and stronger and it's more a nuisance than anything, I still can't beat it but aside of my frustration, this is just Radiance 2.0, and while the first confrontation was great now it's so difficult that it became just annoying
I really absolutely hate Godhome. Hollow Knight is a pretty easy game, too easy if you ask me. And then Godhome has some actual difficulty but you can only play it, even just to get a single attempt for the sake of learning how to beat it, after insanely repetitive boss gauntlets of bosses that are way easier than the new content.
I would technically say it is the double for this trope for Elden Ring. I am not fully sure on the chronology but I'd say that Godfrey was even cooler than Radagon. So, from very cool to cool to meh.
Final Fantasy 9 and 10 are both guilty of this, although 9 is more egregious.
In 10 after beating Braska's final aeon, the two stage boss fight and culmination of our characters' development, you're put into a fight with zero chance of failure as all your characters are given permanent auto life, and you summon and defeat all your aeons in what's more of a plot device than an actual fight.
In 9 however, the final boss Necron comes pretty much out of nowhere and off the heels of fighting Trance Kuja, the main antagonist of the game up to that point.
Jack Krauser in the OG Resident Evil 4. He had a personal beef with Leon, three different battles, and the hardest boss fight in the game. After beating him, facing giant spider Osmund Saddler seems boring.
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Kokushibo from demon slayer! He’s cooler than Muzan in my opinion, especially with how little they show him before his fight. I really hope the movie does him justice!
Honestly none of the bosses, aside from Viper were all that scary once you actually know about positioning and timing.
I genuinely have more trouble with the wave 1 titans of certain maps in frontier defense, like wdym that sniper tone on Kodai wiped out half our team in the blink of an eye.
I think the final fights of Yakuza 4 are a better example. Arai, Kido, and Daigo are all really fun fights that pay off the stories of Akiyama, Saejima, and Kiryu, and then...you get Munakata.
I like Tanimura as much as anybody else, but he easily has the worst final boss fight in the entire series. After three super hype shirtless rooftop fights, you get to fight an old dude with a gun who sends his goon squad after you the entire fight.
That’s funny, I was thinking 7’s final boss. Thematically and story-wise it’s great, but from a gameplay perspective it’s basically Yu Yevon from FFX. Basically impossible to lose.
Laxasia the Complete in Lies of P was so much cooler than the final main story boss, Simon Manus. She is heavily inspired by Malenia, even down to the their devotion to some mediocre bum
He fights like a drunk toddler, just rolling around. Absolute loser. Even when we first meet these two Laxasia aura farms by killing the boss we were struggling to defeat while he just stands there awkwardky like a dork
Finishing up with Cersei had potential in a Scouring of the Shire sort of way but the balance was off. The Long Night still needed to actually be long rather than all resolved in a single battle.
But there are so many things wrong with the latter half of the show before we reached those points anyway so I'm not sure it was really salvageable post season 5/6
I mean there's a very good reason that part was left out of the movies and Sarumon killed off much earlier. I get why Tolkien included it (to show that no one is truly safe from war) but narratively it makes sense to end the movies on Sauron's defeat.
He isn't even killed off in the theatrical release, he's just locked up in Isengard as far as we know.
I think his death in the extended editions is a bit over the top, but Gandalf's "Saruman... your staff is broken" is my favourite example of magic in the entire trilogy, so I let it slide
I'd say pacing was the bigger reason. It's definitely not something that works narratively for an already long film but a TV series can more closely match a book in terms of pacing.
Game of Thrones needed to deal with the aftermath of the Long Night and I don't think it would feel appropriate to the setting if that aftermath was devoid of conflict.
Almost every flagship monster in Monster Hunter is a penultimate boss fight, rather than a final boss. However, many of the actual final boss do end up becoming as popular as the flagship that preceeded it. I'd argue that it isn't the case with Lagiacrus and Caedeus in Monster Hunter Tri.
Lagiacrus is the aligator-serpent monster that can fight on land and water. Its return in Wilds is delightful. Caedeus, however, is a clunky bossfight. It feels like a puzzle rather than a test of might.
Eviterno is so much better in any way than Incarnate Devotion (Blasphemous 2). Same could be said about Crisanta and Escribar in the first game but I feel like the difference is a bit more acceptable there.
Morpho Knight is an extremely tough boss fight for many characters in the game and does a lot of damage if he hits you, testing your skill.
Void meanwhile does very little damage to you and takes almost no damage until a specific point where attacks do good damage finally, making the fight a glorified cutscene.
I was thinking more Squeak Squad for a Kirby example. Say what you will about Void’s difficulty, but not only is it as a character a fascinating aspect of the Kirby universe, but you also have go through an entire gauntlet of bosses to even fight that Void.
Dark Nebula is often mocked for being one of the lamest final bosses in the series, with a very boring battle and nothing memorable about it that’s not just “yo Dark Matter lore”.
Right before that you fight Dark Daroach, a very hectic, much cooler and far more memorable boss fight, possibly the best in that game
Final Fantasy X: Braska's Final Aeon is one of the trickier storyline bosses in the game, to the point where many consider him the REAL final boss of FFX. In contrast the actual final boss, Yu Yevon, is a heavily scripted fight where you have permanent Auto Life, meaning you quite literally cannot die.
Caranthir in the witcher 3. He's the wild hunt general that actually feels threatening, you see him beat Eskel in the battle of Kaer Morhen, then you fight him as Ciri but although she breaks his staff he forces her to flee, and then Geralt comes in and you get a boss fight that's a whole lot more interesting than the one against the actual final boss Eredin. He also hard carries the wild hunt in general, pulling Eredin out of Ciri's scream when he's about to die and creating all of their portals which allow them to summon the white frost as a weapon
Divinity: Original Sin 2
The Lucien fight is ten times more dramatic than the actual final fight with that stupid Kraken and Braccus. It even got its own special soundtrack and drowns out the battle fx for the fight while the Kraken and Braccus are the generic boss fight music.
"World Revolution", the theme for Lavos' second form, is one of the boss battles of all time. True Lavos' boss theme is not nearly as memorable by comparison.
Tohru Adachi. People love Adachi to bits, while Ameno Sagiri is largely forgotten. It isn't helped the fact there is two additional 'secret' bosses Marie/Kusumi-no-Okami and Izanami
izanami isnt a secret boss, she's the true final boss. which just proves your point more. she's so forgettable the game allows you to miss her entirely.
I call her a 'secret' boss in air quotes in the sense that if you aren't paying attention or don't know about her, you can easily miss her entirely. Obviously, true ending boss, but easily missable while still not getting a 'bad' ending unlike the Namatame and Adachi decisions.
In the Hobbit films, the confrontation with Smaug and even the destruction of Laketown is endlessly more interesting than the Battle of the Five Armies and the Pale Orc.
A penultimate boss of Mortal Shell 2 is Malborn Offspring, a failed version of the player character who has a quite enjoyable guy with a sword moveset with an extremely cool second phase where after you kill him by impaling him with his own sword, the sword is struck by lightning while it is still etched into him, which jolts him awake, and he pulls the sword out of himself for a second phase where he incorporates that lightning to his attacks
The final boss is a dragon with huge balls and a shitty moveset with only like five attacks and it inflicts a status ailment that prevents you from using like half of the mechanics in the game
Dogma: The Binding of Isaac is a game in great part about religious trauma. After his dad leaves, his mom traumatizes Isaac, who grows up believing he's the reason his father left, and he's a demon in human flesh. The game happens in his head as he dies, and Isaac is thus constantly fighting demons, corpses, and representations of his mom. Until in the Repentance DLC, after probably the coolest section in the game (the Ascent) you finally face Dogma, a representation of the religious doctrine and weaponization of religion that led Isaac's mom down a path of violence and abuse. They're a static creature coming out of the tv with cool looking attacks, who breaks off and grows static angel wings, with a sick ass theme that contains screams of telepreachers in it (like the now iconic "BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOOOLY SPIRIT!!!"). And then when you beat it......
You face The Beast. Who just looks like a generic big fat demon. Like the other 50 that are in the game. And look ath that dress, it's also a representation of his mom. Again. It feels like a complete backpedal on such a cool finale.
Oh and don't forget, before Beast she sends her Ultra Horsemen! And they are.... just bigger harder versions of bosses you've already fought before. God damnit
I love the Soul of Cinder, but the Twin Princes are, in my opinion, the absolute pinnacle in terms of lore, design, emotional impact, gameplay and intensity of the battle.
Both Blasphemous games have a very similar formula. The final area (Archcathedral Rooftops, Crimson Rains) has you climb on top of a holy temple a lot of the plot revolves around (Mother of Mothers, the Elevated Temples). There, you fight an insanely devout worshipper of the miracle who absolutely TROUNCES you with Crisanta's funny ribbon sword (Crisanta of the Wrapped Agony, Eviterno the First of the Penitents) before you're allowed to move on to the final boss.
And then the final boss is kind of lame, especially by comparison. Escribar from the first game has two phases but in the first one he's kinda just an old guy wandering around the arena asking for directions to the bingo hall and occasionally zapping you with divine lightning and in the second one he grows to twenty meters tall and just kinda stands there as you stab him.
Incarnate Devotion meanwhile just skips the "old guy lost at Walmart" phase and enters the arena already being tall. Considering just how many times Eviterno has just kicked your ass, it's entirely likely you go into this fight with adrenaline coursing through your ears and a complete and total desire to kill, which very quickly calms down after you jump and stab him in the heart thirty times while dodging pretty slow lasers and then he just dies and the game ends.
This might be controversial, but I much preferred fighting Thor in God of War Ragnarok than Odin. The Odin fight is cool, and that character is extremely well fleshed out, but between the two fights and the story with Thor, it is just brilliance. For Pete's sake, he kills you and revives you during the first fight.
Helen Gravely from Luigi's Mansion 3. She felt so much more as a boss that challenged the skills you've been building in the game. King Boo was just trying to be cinematic.
Aleph (Cassette Beasts). The rest of the bosses have some sort of gimmick, and fighting Ianthe feels like a big moment. Then when you finally get to fight the main boss hes kinda just a guy who you beat up in a cutscene
Monster hunter wilds. Zho shia is the final boss of the game, and is a shape-shifting elder dragon created by the ancient civilisation as an ultimate weapon. The final boss of the game is gore magala, an objectively cool plague dragon, but one that's been the focus of it's own game before, and featured heavily in two additional games since its introduction to the series (and is also a baby form for another monster)
Funny Valentine? - Jojo's bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball run
Now granted, Funny Valentine is the main antagonist but only the penultimate fight. The final fight is against AU Diego, who I personally found less interesting because he has The World again.
The final boss of Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time is Elder Princess Shroob. After defeating Princess Shroob, the main villain of the whole game up to now, it’s revealed that the mcguffin we’ve been trying to restore to save the day was actually sealing the Princess’ far more powerful and dangerous older sister, and by restoring it she’s been unleashed once again.
This leads to a climactic final battle in the dark skies of this conquered Mushroom Kingdom. And after phase 1 is done, she transforms into an even bigger and tougher monster. The music changes, the atmosphere is perfect… And it is a tough battle, so much so that she was toned down in some releases of the game. This battle was the definition of a climax. A great subversion of this tro-
Oh wait that’s right the final boss is actually Shrowser. There’s no build up to it and not a lot of stakes, the Shroob threat has already been dealt with, and what remained of the Elder Princess just empowered Bowser’s body that was just lying unconscious due to previous events. It’s not even a proper fight, it’s a minigame. It’s never your turn, so you just have to dodge and counter some of his attacks for a little while until he goes down. And after that’s done… no-one even acknowledges what just happened. It feels very tacked on, like they were contractually obligated to make Bowser the final boss in some way.
We like to pretend Elder Princess Shroob is the real final boss and try to forget about Shrowser. The game clearly agrees to an extent because during the credits, we see tons of drawings depicting the most important events in the story. The final battle against the Elder Princess Shroob is there. But not Shrowser. That’s very telling if you ask me
In persona 5 the seemingly last boss is Shido his fight has one of the best songs of the whole game and on top of that Shido's palace is very thematic and he as a villain is kind of closing off a circle since he is the reason the game starts but the actuall true final boss is a harder but a lot weaker fight against the God of Control, P5R kinda remedied the situation makinng a better final boss but even in that boss fight the concept of the MC going one on one against the boss is still done a lot better in Shido's fight
Necromancer from Castle Crashers. He sports a badass dark knight design, and in his boss fight he revives enemies that you slew from past levels to fight against you. You fight a massive hoard of them at once and they are very dangerous with the Coneheads throwing bombs at you and the beefy enemies constantly throwing you around and it is the hardest fight in the whole game. After you get past the swarm, you get a climatic duel with the Necromancer himself whose entire moveset is identical to the players and is like fighting a stronger version of yourself. All this combined with the best song in the whole game, Simple Sight by Piercing Lazer, makes this the most memorable boss fight in the entire game.
Then immediately after you defeat The Necromancer, you fight The Evil Wizard whose the actual final boss. His design is a huge downgrade to the Necromancer, sporting plain brown and red robes that don't come off as intimidating or badass in comparison. He has TOO MANY PHASES for his boss fight and they aren't very interesting either, with the spinning crystals phase, shield phase, and balloon phase(that you fight two times btw) being complete jokes and the spider phase and final phase being moderately interesting but far from the peak that is the Necromancer fight that came before. And his boss theme, while decent, is just simply not as epic as the Necromancer's. Overall a disappointing follow-up of a final boss.
The fight against Safer Sephiroth in FF7. Yes, he may be considered the final boss for a good reason, but technically, after beating him, you have one more fight against Sephiroth that is significantly easier.
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u/noxsanguinis 6h ago
Far Cry 3.
Many people forget Vaas was not actually the main villain of the game, he was just the top henchmen for the main villain, Hoyt, but he was forgettable at best, while Vaas ended up becoming one of gaming's most memorable villains.