The 2000s was a time when games truly began to experiment with more risky structures than the 90s, leaving traditional, child-orientated games for more diverse genres and topics. Games had more variety to showcase with the constant improvement and rapid development in graphics.
Alongside this, difficulty began to take new approaches to whatconsisted of a challenge, and the most common factors of high health and fast reaction timing were joined by bosses that required hugely varied tactics, or delicate playstyles that were the only routes to success.
Appearance Conditions:
The big bad of Bioware’s legendary RPG,Darth Malakforbids players from using many of the simpler strategies they could employ throughout the game, relentlessly pursuing them around the map and during phase two, healing from the numerous Jedi corpses around.
What makes Malak even more challenging is the lack of support players have; their party remains behind during the confrontation, and so, for better or for worse, players must face The Dark Lord of The Sith alone. With enough preparation (and medpacs), Malak can be overcome.
The originalGears of Warpits Delta Squad against the First Lieutenant of Queen Myrrah at the conclusion ofthe campaign, deceptively reassuring gamers that because they’ve been immensely powerful the whole game, Raam will be a pushover.
This false safety hides one of the first-person shooter genre’s hardest enemies. With a portable turret, relentless aggression, and armor that has to be individually shot off before damage can truly be done, Raam is a force to be reckoned with.
A member of Cobra Unit designated ‘The Father of Sniping’, The End is a deceptively ancient individual who acts as one of theMetal Gearfranchise’shardest bosses. Eagle-eyed and deadly accurate, The End will instantly kill Snake the second he spots him.
The randomized starting location, attention to detail, and dense forestry make spotting The End a monumental task. His difficulty is so great that players will likely resort to one of his ‘shortcut’ deaths, such as at Ponizovje or by waiting a week for him to die of old age, but if they desire a real challenge of stealth, there is none better than The End.
Alma, widely regarded to be one of the most difficult bosses from thefirst-generation Xbox, is not just a study in good boss design. Poor camera and potion rationing cause the player to lose some advantages they may otherwise have, giving Alma the step-up in this encounter from the get-go.
Combined with her capacity to dive-bomb, high mobility, and overall powerful attacks that can kill the player in one or two hits, Alma is a force to be reckoned with. With every tool at the players' disposal, they are not quite powerless, but Alma still puts up a frustrating fight.
One Maneater by itself is not thebiggest problem inDemon’s Souls. Though it has challenging attack patterns and a tendency to punish over-eager melee players, the true difficulty of Maneater comes from something else entirely.
During a lull in combat brought on by damaging the Maneater, asecondwill come to the first one’s aid, and players will have to be content with dual monsters with the same ruthlessness. Without care, a casual player will immediately be ripped to shreds by the two Maneaters.
Resident Evil - Code: Veronica (2000)
The ‘plane Tyrant’ as it is commonly known, appears very shortly after The Redfields have dealt with a similar monstrosity on the ground, and it is easy for players to reassure themselves given the successful dispatch of the latter.
However, the cramped environment, deceptively fastboss, and large health pool make this beast a far different encounter, where time and careful maneuvering are all that save players from the one or two-hit attacks of the T-078.
What was a fairly difficult, but manageable encounter inFinal Fantasy 7becomes a challenging feat of patience, strength, and skill in the crossover gameKingdom Hearts 2,taking the form of an optional encounter barring Sora’s access to the Fenrir keyblade.
In a one-on-one encounter where nobody can help Sora, Sephiroth has high health and abilities that increase in magnitude the more damage he takes. As an optional encounter, Sephirothcan be avoided, but for the ultimate challenge inKingdom Hearts 2, he’s worth the fight.
A random encounter that can trigger endless times, The Reaper, housed in the multi-leveled dungeon of Tartarus, is a late-game enemy that can be defeated around level 75 onwards. This might make him seem manageable, but the big issue surrounding The Reaper iswhenhe first appears.
The Reaper can spawn from as low as level 20, potentially decimating the party if they try to fight him. As a result, the early-game Tartarus inPersona 3is something ofa nightmareif players want to farm shadows; if they take too long, the dreaded Reaper will arrive to wipe them out. For the low-level player, The Reaper is something to fear.
Playing against C’Thun in the modernWorld of Warcaftis far simpler entertainment than what was available to players upon the launch of Temple of Ahn’Qiraj in 2006. Despite pitting C’Thun against 40 players, this old god utilized a mass of abilities, most notably swallowing players and spawning deadly tentacles that madeshort work of experienced raiders.
It was so bad that Blizzard eventually patched the beast, and shortly afterward, he was finally defeated. For a short while, however, C’Thun was vulnerable for only 45 seconds at a time and played so mercilessly that this encounter has gone intoWarcraftlegend.
Absolute Virtue, one of the Notorious Monsters in MMOFinal Fantasy 11, wasdesigned to be a challenge, and this idea was so important to Square Enix that they patched out any ‘illegitimate’ solutions that players discovered during the course of the battle.
With regeneration, a huge number of abilities, and a painstaking list of tasks, players must complete before facing it, the lead gamemaster stated that the battle with Absolute Virtue should last anywhere from 18 to 30 hours. With such timing in mind, Absolute Virtue becomes a marathon to face in combat, and resultingly, one of the hardest bosses of all time.
