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Most frustrating/annoying boss?

Malroth in the IOS version of Dragon Quest II took me probably half a dozen tries; he's a huge difficulty spike from earlier in the game and without copious grinding it feels like a test of how lucky you get in regards to which attacks he uses (if he spams fire breath you seem basically doomed).

I shudder knowing he was even worse in the NES version, where he knows a full-healing spell and has infinite MP.
 
All I can think of right now is Demyx from Kingdom Hearts II. I remember having to do that fight over and over again. The Xaldin battle was pretty annoying, too.

Another was that treasure heartless boss in the PoTC world. It's been years since I've played it, but I remember it being very annoying with the coin mechanism.
 
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kurt zisa is like the only good one, for me it's practically any SMT boss, but especially matador and minotaur, there's a reason the fanbase hype those 2 in particular up, they are when you realize you can't brute force your way to victory and need actual strategys.
Malroth in the IOS version of Dragon Quest II took me probably half a dozen tries; he's a huge difficulty spike from earlier in the game and without copious grinding it feels like a test of how lucky you get in regards to which attacks he uses (if he spams fire breath you seem basically doomed).

I shudder knowing he was even worse in the NES version, where he knows a full-healing spell and has infinite MP.
yeah malroth was bad af, but he's got nothing on DQ6's final boss, especially in the remake.
 
The Paper Mario bosses particularly Tutankoopa, Lava Piranha, and Huff N. Puff. Of course this was before I developed any sense of strategy.

Paper Mario 2's Shadow Queen. Either attacking three times per turn (two of which could heal her) or having a stampede of dead hands along with all her spells.

Boolossus in Luigi's Mansion since the Boos get smarter and more aggressive the less there are.

All 3 final bosses in Spyro Reignited Trilogy:
* I had trouble catching up with Gnasty.
* Couldn't aim my attacks towards Ripto or dodge his attacks easily for the final phase and it doesn't help that I can't replenish health or touch the floor.
* The Sorceress for the difficult hovercraft controlling.

Roark since Rampardos has triple digit attack and he's the first gym leader.
 
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If you had asked me this when I was about ten or eleven, I would have told you Steven from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. But now that I'm older, I can beat him easily with the right set-up. But since I've been branching out towards other video games, I've had my fair share of bosses that made me want to shove my head up my butt. But the two that really made me want to cry are under spoilers, because they're important to the story.

I played Tales of Zestiria on easy mode when I first got it, as at that time, I hadn't really gotten the chance to really play a Tales game in full. But dear lord, people say Armatized Heldalf is easy, but for me, he was hard as hell! In the penultimate dungeon, the characters confront the main villain, Heldalf, who at one point fuses with the god of the world he intended to corrupt and summon. The battle requires you to knock him out before he can unleash his most powerful attack, Indignation, using a very specific attack set-up that cuts him off mid-chant if you can land a decent hit on him. But I had so much trouble trying to interrupt his incantation even with the set-up, and he would always one-shot my entire party, even if I was way out of attack range. God, it took me ten tries just to beat him, and this is on Easy Mode!!
But that battle was absolutely NOTHING compared to the terror that was the first phase in the fight against Galdera in Octopath Traveler. An optional sidequest that should have been an important story quest requires you to defeat the corrupt god of the world, Galdera, but the battle consists of two phases. The first one, called Omniscient Eye, requires you to not only spam as much magic on it as possible, but you have to put a crap ton of magic attack power into them so you can do enough damage to it to make the battle not drag out, because if the battle does drag out, Galdera and the souls it generates on its body will waste no time comboing your ass to high heaven. Not only that, it respawns the souls on its body if you don't kill them all simultaneously, none of them have a shared elemental weakness, Galdera itself has a TON of abilities that can cripple you such as removing status augmentations, healing itself, gaining permanent buffs, and so on. I thought Armatized Heldalf was a pain, but Omniscient Eye was absolute hell! I got my ass handed to me TWELVE times before I finally figured out how to beat him! I had an easier time with his second phase, if you can believe it!!
 
For Super Smash Bros Ultimate:
Galeem and Dharkon.

I at least beat Tabuu in Brawl on my first try. Of course having a team opposed to one character certainly helped.
 
The final boss in Ratchet & Clank 2 for the longest time, I couldn't beat it until I was older and had already beaten the third game.
Prototype is another final boss I couldn't beat at all, it saves right before the battle so you can't reload to earlier to train up, it's also a timed mission and the boss can self heal, and it's a very confined location, could never beat it.

There are probably some others, but those are notable stand outs since they're final bosses.
 
Can't recall a lot of bosses in video games that I felt were really difficult over the years.

Kingdom Hearts 1 - Bonus boss The Phantom. The fact it kept changing its elemental weakness and had a countdown effect on the field made it really annoying. You had to run back and forth between stopping the timer and damaging The Phantom with the right magic spells. Kurt Zisa and the mysterious cloaked man at the end of Final Mix were not that bad for me but The Phantom was rather annoying to deal with.

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Demyx Round 2 - This boss annoyed me so badly when I played the game because it took forever to nail down a good and quick consistent attack pattern to knock out the water clones within the ridiculously short time limit you were given each time.

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Biolizard - Nowadays I find it to be easy to take out but when I was much younger, I found it incredibly frustrating as you had to stay in a very small area and wait for an attack opportunity to happen. I died so many times before I finally beat the boss.

Epic Battle Fantasy 4 - The Glitch - Not sure if this one can count as annoying given it was meant to be difficult to begin with. It has a massive HP bar, all its attacks are literal glitches that the player characters can't comprehend and there is a 95% chance that its attacks will ALWAYS kill one or two characters meaning having to waste a turn or two to revive everyone while hoping they don't get KO'ed again.

Final Fantasy XIV - Any boss on Savage difficulty - These are meant to be tackled with groups of friends usually instead of randoms since they require a lot of coordination among players to knock them out successfully. The annoying part comes in when you have a teammate who refuses to listen to anything the rest of the team is asking them to do or avoid which can lead to board wipes.

.hack GU// Reminisce - (AIDA infected) Innis - Atoli's Epitaph that you end up having to face to try getting everyone back to the normal version of the game. All the lines she spews in this form are pretty heartbreaking but the annoyance is from the fact you have to wait for long periods before attacking since trying to rush in for a hit results in her countering every time and she has very few windows where she lets you attack her.
 
Got a few that have always given me headaches.

Monster Rancher 4 has two that have always given me trouble: Don Mudlone (a Gaboo) and Wit's special Ripper. Those who remember the horrors that are the Gaboos in MR2 will hate Don Modlone. Don Modlone is one because you have to go into the deepest parts of Kalaragi Jungle, which is only really about 1/3rd into the game. The wild monsters in the lower floors alone are tough nuts to crack, but Don can be brutal. He has a ton of AoE moves and has a really bad tendency to block your attacks. Plus, there is no save point before him, so if you get clobbered, you pretty much have to start the whole jungle over again. Fortunately, his attacks do have low accuracy, but that doesn't always come into play. As for Wit's Ripper, well, it's a Ripper, which means it evades like there's no tomorrow. While it can't take a hit, actually hitting it is the problem. And don't even attempt to counter, as if you fail it's guaranteed damage, and its attack pattern is very erratic, making counter worthless (the counter mechanic as a whole is worthless, as only certain foes will make their "strategy" that easy to read, thus heavily limiting its use). I guess it makes sense in his case, as he is the last fight in the Rank A cup, but still, even the final boss is easier than him (I beat the final boss in one try while it often takes 3 attempts at the Rank A cup to beat Wit... which also means you have to go through all those other competitors multiple times to get to Wit).

Another more recent example is Gulp from Spyro Reignited. Gulp was a pushover in the original, but now Gulp's attack range is much wider, making dodging him extremely hard. Plus, he's a lot faster than before, or at least faster than I remember. Getting the Skill Point for defeating him without taking a hit now really requires the permanent Superflame, since that counts as "explosion" damage, which he's weak to, thus when you use it against him, just stay put and spam the fire breath button until he's dead.

A much, much older example would be the two Ammonites from Breath of Fire 3. They, themselves, aren't too hard (just use the Thunder + Force Genes and spam Focus + Thunder Claw and they go down in about two attacks each), but they not only have a very annoying confusion-inducing move that pretty much always hits (they often target Ryu with this), but actually trying to battle them in the most "ideal" situation is very luck dependent. When you first encounter them, you're on the bow of the Black Ship, which can cause some of their attacks to become more damaging. You need to slowly walk back to where the cannons are to have the most ideal setup, as the cannons not only attack them, but often interrupt their turns, preventing them from attacking. But, since you have to slowly lure them to said location, only moving when they're not moving, they tend to be very quick on the draw when you're trying to move back. Thus, time your actions wrong, and they jump into battle, preventing you from getting your ideal setup and increasing their damage output. In my countless playthroughs in Breath of Fire 3 I've only achieved this once, as I often jerk the controller at just the wrong time out of nervousness. And you really need a confusion-reducing item on your chosen party, particularly Ryu, as it turns their confusion-inducing attack into a coin toss instead of a near-guarantee (which is even worse when Ryu is in dragon form, as when he's confused he can often do a total party kill on his team by accident, especially since the "ideal" team to deal with them is Ryu, Nina, and Rei, who all possess the Lightning element in some form, the bosses' weakness, so the team is somewhat frail). While, again, they're not too tough on their own, fighting them on a more ideal layout is the annoying part, along with avoiding that confusion-inducing move, which can make the bad situation worse.

There are probably more but those are the ones that come to mind right now. I'll mull over it and think about what other bosses have given me problems and post later.
 
The Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep arena bosses (boss?). I had to resort to cheats since it is impossible to beat in single player. Was that fixed in the remake?
Lol nope, they made it harder and without online play either, to unlock the final episode I had to grind terra to level 50 in a game beaten at level 30 to beat the halfway point mission and get the xehanort report required for the final episode.
I’m lucky I actually got to play BBS coded and days with multiplayer.
as for my own new additions: undyne in undertale took me a lot more tries than I wanted to admit, and no I never did sans so no comment there.
 
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