That One Boss/Role-Playing Game/Final Fantasy

This page is about the hardest and most powerful bosses in the Final Fantasy series. Hope you have enough Phoenix Downs.

'''DO NOT ADD "UNLESS YOU HAVE...", "YOU CAN ALWAYS..." and anything that amounts to telling the player what they should do to win!''' We all know how to find GameFAQs.

Bonus Bosses are permanently banned from being That One Boss. They're optional and you know they're deliberately overpowered.

"Cloud: Barrett! Attack while the tail's up!
 * Final Fantasy II has the Lamia Queen. Most of the theoretically difficult bosses in this game can be killed in just one or two turns once you get your hands on insta-death spells and/or the Blood Sword, but the Lamia Queen shows up before you can get any of these. Moreover, it'd be a horribly annoying boss even if you did have them, because it has powerful attacks that also make your characters go to sleep, can charm your party members and make them attack each other, and is nearly invulnerable to physical attacks. If you're one of those players who chose to make a party focused purely around physical attacks due to the game's rather esoteric magic system, then you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye.
 * To a lesser extent, the Behemoth, who also appears before you can get your hands on any boss-smiting items. This one doesn't have any nasty tricks like the Lamia Queen... just high defense stats, tons of HP, and brutally powerful attacks. Making matters worse, while you faced the Lamia Queen with the fairly competent Leila as your fourth party member, you end up having Gordon in that slot during the fight with the Behemoth. Being that Gordon starts the game as the weakest PC, guest or non, and players can choose to just fight with him dead in the earlier segment where he's available if they don't want the hassle of dealing with him...it can effectively mean that unwise (or just inexperienced) players are a man down in this battle.
 * Final Fantasy III DS has Garuda. He's weak to Dragoon abilities, but you've just gotten access to dragoon gear, so there's a lot of level-grinding involved. He has the Lightning attack; a ridiculously strong attack that hits your entire party for high damage. When you fight him, it's very much a luck based fight; even if you come prepared, he might still just go first and wipe your party with Lightning. The only real strategy is just trying to rush down his health with jump attacks before he kills someone.
 * There is also, who are faced in immediate succession, and likes using hard-hitting elemental spells while  can turn you to stone, requiring the party to be quite strong to last long enough to defeat both of them.
 * For added fun, the latter can also hit the whole party with the Tornado spell, which has a chance of dropping each party member's HP to single digits. If the boss does this to your healer and then chooses to attack said healer...well, sucks to be you.
 * The fight against Salamander comes right before getting the second jobs, just when your first jobs are obsolete; and he's happy to remind you why they're obsolete, particularly when he spams a party-wide fire breath attack that'll knock every character down nearly half their HP. He also comes after a brutal dungeon requiring you to wade through lava, which chops off huge amounts of health.
 * Hein, who comes after getting the second jobs. For starters, Hein requires you to have a Scholar in your party to scan for his weakness; without a Scholar, you'll just be chipping away. Entering Hein's Castle locks you in until he's been defeated, so you can't do any grinding. Working your way through will quickly cut down your supplies. There is a trick that makes Hein easy, but it's a hell of a Guide Dang It. The Scholar class can use items for double effectiveness; this includes attack items. However, this little tidbit is only mentioned by the old NPC in the inns, who you'll probably talk to once and then never go near again. It's also in the manual, but if you've lost your copy...
 * Any boss requiring you to be miniaturized. Physical attacks hit you for ridiculously high damage, and your physical attacks do single points of damage. Again, this reduces strategy to just trying to rush down the boss' health before he kills anyone.
 * Sure, she's the Final Boss. But Cloud of Darkness is ridiculous. Ever played a game and, when a boss suddenly starts using a really powerful attack near the end of its life bar, wondered "Why hasn't it been using that this whole time?" Guess what, Cloud of Darkness doesn't have this problem. Her most powerful move is Particle Beam and she will use it, twice per turn, every turn no matter WHAT until you are dead. She's backed up with two tentacles, who besides their standard attacks can use Lightning (yes, the same move as Garuda above; it's not as strong as it was then but the damage nibbles away at what little HP remains after Particle Beam) and the series staple Bad Breath, which inflicts numerous status effects. Oh, and thanks to the way Final Fantasy III's save sytem works, if you lose to her you have to go through The Very Definitely Final Dungeon and the dungeon immediately preceding that one all over again, including all the bosses, cutscenes, and random encounters. Good luck, you'll need it.
 * Final Fantasy IV
 * The battle with Golbez in the dwarven castle; at first it's a Hopeless Boss Fight, and one by one he picks off your party members, leaving only Cecil. Then, after a cutscene leaves you with two people (or potentially three, in the earlier versions, if you get Kain to jump at the beginning--this was "fixed" for the DS version), one of whom is the Glass Cannon, he starts throwing every unfair trick in the book at you: shifting his elemental weakness constantly, becoming immune to everything else, cramming third-level magic down your throat with a status effect chaser... And if Cecil is still dead after exorcising the dolls from hell, you only have a brief moment to throw a Phoenix Down at him before Hold Gas (Freezing Cold in the DS version) guarantees a Total Party Kill.
 * The Demon Wall. Capping the irritating Sealed Cave, it has no tricks. It simply pummels you into the floor, then begins to nail you with unavoidable One-Hit Kill attacks once enough time has passed. It's a massive stumbling block in normal gameplay; many a Solo Character Run has come to an untimely end on meeting the Wall. In the DS version, he has much more HP than the other versions, the whopping quantity of 99.999 HP.
 * The Boss fight against the CPU in the DS version. The Attack Node spams Laser Barrage, which causes a lot of damage to all your party members. If you don't do the opposite of the thing that Fusoya said to you (attacking the Attack Node instead of the Defense Node), then he will kill you quickly, by spamming said move. Note that the Attack Node only needs to use Laser Barrage twice to kill off 80% of the party, and a third casting will handily remove the remaining straggler. And that's with overleveling. But if you can survive that, you then have to not do the logical thing and kill the other small node that heals the big node. If you do that, said big node will start nailing you with One Hit Kills...and if you somehow survive that, it resurrects the Attack and Defense nodes, essentially restarting the fight.
 * The DS version makes Scarmiglione one. During the second battle he uses a Gas counter attack that causes several status effects, his attack takes a considerable amount of HP and his other counter slows you down, making it harder to defeat him. Not to mention that three out of four members of your team have rather low HP and Cecil, the only member of your team that can take more hits, can't do him much damage since he is strong against dark attacks.
 * Also in the DS version, Dr. Lugae got some new tricks. Specifically, Reversal Gas. It's pretty simple, yet brutal - damage heals, healing damages. Considering he's got both powerful healing and attacking abilities, this may seem bad. Now, remember that every action in FF IV takes a while and Lugae can get a turn JUST before you finish your spell casting. ...Yeah, you can end up literally killing your team or healing Lugae to full HP. Sure, there are some ways to help you, though it can easily backfire with another use of Reversal Gas.
 * Final Fantasy V had Archaeoaevis, who had multiple forms, each with various resistances to the elements (the only notable weakness is Aero, which you can get from the local wildlife if you choose). Despite its relatively low HP at that point, its high defenses make attacks mostly futile; however, Lv5 Death works on him: the problem is learning the skill.
 * In the Advance version of Final Fantasy VI, we get the reborn Holy Dragon from the Dragon's Den. All the Eight Dragons have a gimmick. Holy Dragon asks for "Aid from Heaven". What this means is that he constantly casts Curaga on himself, for devastating high amounts of healing. He has a widespread Holy attack called Saintly Beam, in addition to Holy; Holy being the hardest element to defend against. Oh, and he loves to counter attacks with Heartless Angel, which he will often dualcast with Saintly Beam, which is an OHKO for the entire team.
 * From the original, there's the Storm Dragon in Mt. Zozo. He has tons of HP, a brutal physical, and spells that both hit the entire party and are of the hard-to-defend-against Wind element. Oh, and because of in-game nudging, you're most definitely going to be hitting up his dungeon right near the beginning of the World of Ruin.
 * Atma/Ultima Weapon on the Floating Continent is usually very challenging for first-time players. The boss uses powerful magic, like Flare Star and Quake, that can deal significant damage to the entire party; it likes to follow this up by finishing off a weakened target with Flare for 700 (when generally most people won't break over 1300 by this time).
 * WrexSoul, for being a Guide Dang It Puzzle Boss. You can kill him with X-Zone, but then you don't get the item drop.
 * Number 128 at the end of the may qualify due to his placement. He immediately follows five waves of forced encounters between which you cannot heal, you have to fight him with 3 characters because you just lost your fourth (the only one who naturally learns Cure). And while the preceding events gave you a lot of new magicite, you don't have time to learn their spells because you're locked in and can't grind. On top of all of that, he's a difficult boss in his own right, with three targets that attack independently while also carrying an extremely rare, and powerful, item that may take many tries to successfully steal, prolonging the battle.
 * The MagiMaster atop the Fanatics' Tower. The fight itself is pretty difficult, but worse, if you don't take the long way and Rasp away all his MP, he casts Ultima when he dies, which is almost a guaranteed Total Party Kill.
 * Death Gaze / Doom Gaze. The guy is your standard Marathon Boss, but...he runs away all the time. Thankfully, he can't restore his HP. Not that dangerous, just frickin' annoying if you're trying for a "nothing broken" challenge.
 * Ultros, the first time you fight him. His tentacles mean business. Plus, whenever you hit him with fire, your one attack magic spell, he automatically counters. This can take Terra out of commission fast, leaving you to spend a turn reviving her. Oh, Banon has Health so I should just have him spam it, right? True, until Ultros decides you no longer need to live and tentacles the whole group. Then, without giving you time to get a word in edgewise, he will throw a tentacle at Banon and, without power-leveling Banon, it's game over.
 * The tentacles in Figaro Castle, also a Goddamned Boss, simply from one single attack: Sieze. If Sieze is used on a character afflicted with Slow, the character is grabbed by the monster and cannot act while getting his HP sucked away, AND healing the boss for every point it drains! To add to it, the tentacles have two attacks that cause Slow; Sieze and Entangle (which hits one whole side). And at that point in the game, you can have three characters max, if you didn't miss one, which first-time players might. It gets worse; these critters have a nasty habit of poisoning you too, meaning that when your characters are being leeched off of by the boss, the poison is draining them even further.
 * Chadarnook, the demon in Owzer's house in Jidoor. Aside from his 30,000-some HP and powerful lightning attacks, he also has one nasty gimmick up his sleeve; he can take the form of the goddess in the picture he's possessing. The lady has close to 60,000 HP, and can inflict nasty status ailments on your party: Whole-party sleep, Doom, the ever-popular Charm, and one that cannot be removed and slowly whittles away at your HP. And as you chip him down, it gets harder and harder to hit him; he'll stay in goddess form for several turns, then switch back to his original form just long enough to Bolt3 your entire party, then back to goddess. Even worse, every time he changes form, the screen blinks obnoxiously all during the transformation. Considering how often he switches, and how damn long the fight can drag on, good luck not ending up with a terrible headache.
 * Final Fantasy VII has Carry Armor. Not only is Lapis Laser horrifyingly powerful (to the extent of taking off half your normally-leveled party's health per cast), but his arms can grab party members and remove them from combat, smashing them against the floor and only returning them once they're dead. And as you wear Carry Armor down, he uses Lapis Laser more and more, often using Arm Grab to kill off two members and Lapis Laser-ing the last one. Thankfully, taking out the arms will neutralize the threat of Arm Grab.
 * Also the Demon Wall from the Temple Of The Ancients. It has some powerful magic and some nasty status effects, along with staggering magical defense and a mountain of health. This wouldn't be a problem, but you have to bring Aeris along to this dungeon, and her physical attacks suck. Hopefully you found her last Limit Break by this time, because it makes this fight significantly easier, although finding it is a challenge in itself.
 * Schizo at Gaea's Cliff. It has two heads that you need to attack separately, and when you kill one, it will unleash a nasty attack that can wipe out your entire party if you're behind with your healing. It gets even worse if you kill both of the heads at the same time.
 * For some, the Guard Scorpion at the start of the game is this due to a bad translation on how to fight it. The gap between Cloud's line is at the worse possible place, it makes it sound like he's telling you to attack while the tails up, which of course gets you a faceful of laser. They really should have stuck a don't in front of the attack.

(beat)

Cloud: It's gonna attack with it's laser!"


 * Final Fantasy VIII has Oil Boyles, two slug like bosses fought in Balamb Garden. You can spam fire attacks to kill them quickly, but their high power attacks can also take you out quickly as well. They will do their damage no matter how you tackle the battle.
 * Adel. She has a lot of HP, and uses nothing but non-elemental spells like Meteor and they are all fairly high-damaging. Your attack options get limited because you can't use attacks that damage all enemies, because Adel's holding Rinoa hostage and occasionally drains Rinoa's health to restore herself. If Rinoa's HP reaches zero, it's an instant game over.
 * Final Fantasy IX
 * In nearly all Final Fantasy games, you have the distinct advantage of outnumbering bosses 4-to-1, occasionally being thrown a 1-on-1 against the main villain. But never a battle where you're outnumbered by bad guys. That is, of course, except for the battle against Black Waltz #1 and the Sealion. The protagonist has to fight them alone. The Black Waltz goes down pretty easy, but the Sealion had a ton of HP, hits hard, and even gets stronger the less HP he has. He can also heal the Sealion at any time, and if you somehow manage to defeat the Sealion before the Black Waltz, he'll just summon another one. Also take into account that you need to waste turns healing yourself with your ever-dwindling supply of potions-- turns which could've been spent dealing damage. The best part? This is the second boss battle in the game. Fortunately, at this point you should be close to Trance Mode, which should even out the fight. If not... well, you're screwed.
 * The second-to-last boss of the first disc, Gizmaluke, is no slouch either. He has a Water spell that can hit for huge damage, and an attack that can hit the entire party for equally large amounts of pain.
 * If you don't know what you're getting into and aren't well-equipped for the fight, the Earth Guardian can be one hell of a boss. You're stuck with a character most people haven't really worked with (because said character has been gone for about 70% of the story up to this point), and while it's possible to win the fight with Zidane alone, it makes for a long and difficult fight if you can't snag a Trance in a pinch. Thankfully, the fight becomes much, much easier with Auto Float equipped.
 * Nearing the end of the game, the party has to fight three bosses in a row, each one harder than the last-- Silver Dragon, Garland, and Kuja. Two of those are also the game's main antagonists by the way. Anyway, all of them can do huge damage, and Garland can cast "Stop", which renders an ally motionless, unable to attack, and is basically counted as KO'd (meaning that if they're the last one alive or un-Stopped, you still get a game over). But what makes this battle (or series of battles) so difficult is that you can't even heal in-between them, it's just one right after the other. Throwing salt into the wound, right before you beat him, the now Trance'd Kuja decides to reduce the party's HP to 1 with Ultima and stop the battle.
 * Final Fantasy X gives us two in a row (or a simply hard and then a That One Boss in a row, depending on how leveled you are). The first one is Defender X. This boss is a golem with far more HP than the previous boss (we're talking about 28,000 HP more and him being quite near from the previous) and far more strength. He is resistant to normal attacks unless you use a technique on him and he uses Haymaker, an attack so powerful that will kill a party member party instantly, and that's without mentioning that he counters physical attacks with Blast Punch that will halve your current HP, making Haymaker even more deadly. Then when he is nearly dead he summons Mighty Guard, making your attacks half as powerful, and uses Slowga on your party to make them get less turns.
 * The second one is Seymour Flux. He usually starts using Lance of Atrophy to put a party character in Zombie status. Then the thing Seymour is on, called Mortiorchis, will use Full Life on that character. After a few turns Mortiorchis will use Cross Cleave, dealing about 2,000 damage to the whole party, while Seymour will cast Protect and Shell on himself to halve the damage you do. He'll also cast Reflect and then Flare on himself to make the spell be reflected on you (even if you have Reflect, a spell won't be reflected twice). If that is not enough, if you delay a bit in killing him, he'll start charging Total Annihilation, which will kill you unless your party is properly buffed and at full HP. Did we mention that he also dispels any summon after a turn, making them almost useless?
 * FFX also gives us Yunalesca, whom NOBODY likes. She has three phases to get through, and only the first one is even remotely forgiving. In phase one, she counters physical attacks with a blinding spell and black magic gets repayed with a silence effect (and in case you were thinking of getting clever, she's immune to both, so Reflect's sole use is to save you Echo Screens and Eye Drops). Once that's done, she gets a new ability called Hellbiter, which Zombifies the entire party. She then proceeds to cast Full-Life on you, and fires off Hellbiter every 3-4 turns. In phase three, it gets even better when she casts Mega-Death, a spell that kills everyone in the party who's not a zombie. Those two abilities alone are frustrating as hell. And it's really too bad, because one of the most epic scenes in the entire game is the setup for this fight. Takes away from it if you're forced to watch it ten times, though.
 * Made even more fun because, in a move that can only be considered supremely dickish, her third form's free counterattacks may not do very much damage, but they do strip Haste off your characters. Someone was really proud of that cutscene.
 * The Sin battle on the airship. You only have 16 turns to kill Sin before he uses his Limit Break Giga-Graviton, which destroys the airship for an instant Game Over. The fact that he has 140,000 HP doesn't help at all. Plus, you have to use magic - only Wakka can hit it with melee. This unfortunately can leave you in an unwinnable situation if you haven't trained Lulu or Wakka, as Kimahri, Tidus and even Yuna don't come in very handy here.
 * And let us not forget god-awful Sinspawn Gui. The song that plays during his fight is among the most epic in the game, which is pretty much a good indicator of how tough he will be. He can easily be one of the hardest bosses in the game compared to the overall levels of your characters at this point. He attacks with gratuitous amounts of poison, hides his weak spot with two of his other limbs, regenerates those limbs SHORTLY after every time you destroy them (sometimes in the turn directly after if you're really unlucky, most of the time he'll give you one or two turns but never more) and has a nasty tendency to charge up his most devastating attack as soon as you expose his weak spot, forcing you to direct some of your attacks at the limb generating the attack rather than his weak spot in order to prevent it from reaching completion and seriously screwing over your party. This boss is absolutely murder on your party if it's your first playthrough, and even on later playthroughs he is a notoriously difficult boss to defeat if you don't over-grind beforehand. He is, however, (unlike some other TOBs) well foreshadowed, as the random encounter enemies in the area preceding him are distinctively harder to beat.
 * Evrae. You can't use Aeons, you pretty much have to keep your distance to prevent Poison Breath from destroying your party (and even if you do, he'll just fly back over to you and use the deadly move Swooping Scythe), and he has resistance to all elements. The only saving grace is that the airship you're fighting from can shoot three missile barrages, which just barely take off 10% of the enemy's HP. Also make sure you have plenty of Softs, because Evrae has a nasty habit of inflicting petrification with his Petrifying Stare. Hopefully you've been leveling Wakka a lot.
 * The Sanctuary Keeper that guards the entrance to Zanarkand definitely counts. It has powerful physical and magical attacks as well as a huge amount of HP, and access to pretty much every status condition in the game. If you thought you could win just by using your overdrives in the beginning of the battle, think again, because it can use the Curse status affect to prevent you from using them, which makes the fight a lot longer. It can also heal itself if you damage it enough, so yeah, this fight is to show the player that just attacking over and over again won't be enough to win, and that you actually have to use strategy to win battles from here on out.
 * Final Fantasy XI
 * Three dungeons in the expansion called Promyvion have bosses that like to use all the worst status ailments such as sleep, curse or just plain high damage are required to even start that particular storyline. While, with the right party set-up, strategy and preparation, all three can be beaten in one evening, assembling a party willing and able to follow a strategy is a feat in itself, especially if everyone in your linkshell has already beaten the story and is too lazy to help out and you are dependant on pick-up parties more often than not consisting of people who just started playing.
 * The four magic pots right before the final battle of the main storyline.
 * Final Fantasy XII has Tiamat, who got a big power boost from the last boss that the party fought, makes her very difficult for a normally-leveled party. It's arguable whether she or the Elder Wyrm, which comes up a short time later, is FFXII's That One Boss, but because the Elder Wyrm is skippable, Tiamat gets the credit.
 * Neither of the Demon Walls are any picnic either. The optional one is pure murder, but offers a nice blade that counts as a Disc One Nuke. The mandatory one isn't as hard, but is still a nightmare unless you've done some serious Level Grinding.
 * Final Fantasy XIII
 * The Shiva Sisters don't count as That One Boss, as Snow's by himself and the tutorial tells you how to win. However, their sole purpose is to get you to understand how Eidolon battles work - the Eidolon slaps the character they're associated with (always rotated into the role of party leader) with the Doom debuff, giving you three minutes (five and change on Slow) to fill the Gestalt meter or else you die, resulting in an instant Game Over. Get used to these rules; there's five more where they came from, and they pull no punches. Vent all your frustrations before facing one; you may build them back up in short order. Here are the rest of the Eidolons:
 * Odin, who is hard thanks to unrelenting attacks that can take out Lightning in the very first chain with no chance of healing. In addition, Lightning and Hope are the two characters with the lowest Max HP. Compounded with the aforementioned rules, players taking more than 10 tries to defeat Odin is not unheard of. Did I mention he's the second Eidolon you face?
 * Brynhildr. Her attacks aren't powerful enough to one-shot you, but they can be incredibly annoying, as they take off a good chunk of your health. Your party, as with the Odin fight, has only two people. Those who don't make copious use of Tide Turner (Sazh as Synergist and Vanille as Saboteur) will find themselves in serious trouble.
 * Then comes Bahamut. He has a three-hit combo of doom, which knocks whoever it hits into the air, making them unable to act for the entire duration of the combo. The combo can hit everyone in its radius, and if it hits Fang twice in a row before you can heal, Game Over.
 * The very next boss fight (literally) is Alexander. Your party consists of Hope, Lightning, and Fang. Hope's HP is the lowest of the three. Alexander's first attack has a wide enough radius that it will probably hit all three of your party members, knocking them down in the process. His second attack comes fast enough that your party will barely be standing up again, meaning you haven't had a chance to heal, so it will very likely kill Hope. Recover the instant this attack is done.
 * Finally, there's Hecatoncheir, who has EXTREME damage-dealing potential and leaves you next to no openings to attack unless you've covered yourself with buffs beforehand. Having to fight him with only two party members way after the point when the game lets you pick your own party doesn't help much. If you haven't gotten used to Vanille much after all this time, prepare to be creamed.
 * Cid has incredibly powerful attacks that can hit your entire party, as well as cast negative statuses on them all at once, and can erase all of your power-ups like Faith and Bravery in an instant, meaning that all the damage you do will be negated by the time he heals himself. Oh, and did I mention that he has a ton of HP and is insanely fast? The words "mismatched" and "outclassed" don't even begin to explain the situation considering your maximum strength at this point in the story.
 * Dahaka. For most of the fight he seems easygoing, until he decides to whip out his elemental-themed attacks, which hit the entire party for massive damage. Survive these and knock him down to less than half his health and he pulls out his OHMYGOD nuke, Aeroga. If you haven't been grinding your whole way here, this is a one-hit KO. Did we mention he also has an attack that inflicts every status ailment on your party?
 * The second form of Barthandelus. He has a grand total of three attacks: first is the laser attack, which has a chance of inflicting Fog or Pain (disabling magical and physical abilities respectively) that he spams CONSTANTLY. There is no point during the battle where he isn't spamming that attack unless he's using one of the others. Next is Apoptosis, which does a fair amount of damage to everyone, removes all your buffs and all his debuffs. Then there's Thanatosian Laughter, which hits the entire party for for MASSIVE DAMAGE. Did we mention he has around 3.3 million HP? Good luck five-starring that, even with Level 8 Crystarium maxed out for all party members. And finally, if you take too long in beating him, he casts something nasty (read Doom, AKA instant, unavoidable death once the time counter that appears runs out) on your party leader.
 * Aster Protoflorian is one of those bosses who likes to switch up its elemental weakness. That's not much of a problem in this game, since you can chain together different elemental spells at once anyway. However, you're fighting it with only two party members, Lightning and Hope, and it possesses at least one attack that can hit both of them at the same time, dealing massive damage for this point in the game. Both of your party members have access to healing spells, but without any Sentinels, you have no real means of defense beyond spamming Cura and Phoenix Downs every time your health dips too low.
 * Final Fantasy XIII-2 has its share of really annoying and difficult bosses, most of them named Caius.
 * Most notably during the final boss battle with him.
 * The most absurd fights in the Game Boy game Final Fantasy Legend II, are with the "Tian Lung" and "Fenrir" mini-bosses you encounter in the dungeon between Apollo and Arsenal. Winning either of these fights is essentially a Luck Based Mission, because depending on the whim of the Random Number God, the battle may be against either one, two, or three copies of the monster. They almost always act before your characters, and their "Tornado" attack hits every member of your party for for more than 600 damage in a game where the Max HP cap is 999. An encounter with two or more is basically impossible to win.
 * Final Fantasy Legend III (aka SaGa 3) is perhaps even more brutal than the sudden difficulty spikes in Legend II. Agron takes the role of That One Boss of the game fair and square. You think several other bosses like Chaos and Ashura are rather large difficulty spikes? Agron not only comes very late in the game, but for the past five or so hours of the game (Depending on how much you spent leveling in the Purelands), you had a Guest Star Party Member with you, either Faye or Dion. Without powerleveling, this boss turns into a luck-based battle. He begins with an "Unexpected Attack" (??) which is basically "Agron casts White" (around 600 damage, or 2/3rds your health) followed up (in his next turn) with a non-elemental hit-all that does even MORE damage. Or he'll just Petrify one of your characters and make you waste a turn healing them instead of healing your party or attacking him.
 * Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
 * Medusa can paralyze and petrify the party. Now, there is an item that cures all status ailments... but this is counterbalanced by how your party is two people. If she's faster than you are and hits you with petrification, you're done.
 * Pazuzu can uses Psychshield to reflect magic. If he goes first after you order a spell, or if you just plain don't know what it does yet, Psychshield will reflect the spell. And odds are you're casting Aero to hit his weakness, so the reflected attack will do over 1000 damage to you resulting in an instant kill. Later on Pazuzu's reincarnation, Zuh, also has Psychshield, along with an Instant Death attack. Goodie.
 * The very first Behemoth can kill you if one of your attacks misses, or one of its attacks critically hit. Keep in mind that this is the first fight of the game.
 * Final Fantasy Tactics
 * The battle against Marquis Elmdor and the Assassins on top of Riovanes Castle is an exercise in restraining the urge to snap the controller in two. First, Rafa has a tendency to blindly charge into the Assassins' range and get herself instantly killed by Stop Breath -- which has an abnormally high accuracy rate for a no-cost, no-strings-attached ability that causes instant DEATH. But it's Rafa - who cares? Well, the game does; and if she goes down on this particular level (not as in crystal, as in HP reaching 0), then it's GAME OVER. And there are TWO assassins - both of whom are ungodly fast and will likely move before anyone in your party. Their abilities: the aforementioned Stop Breath, a spell that can inflict Charm, Shadowbind (which causes your character to be unable to move, attack, or defend, and is nearly 100% accurate), and Ultima (although on the upside, if you manage to get Ramza hit by this and he survives, he learns the skill). You put this battle anywhere in the story, and it's a challenge. But this fight is the last of a series of three with only save points in between (which you will do in a separate slot if you're smart), and directly after-- you guessed it-- the infamous Wiegraf, thereby turning Riovanes Castle into FFT's That One Level.
 * Unless you know what you're getting into, the solo fight between Wiegraf and Ramza is a good way to force you to restart the game. Wiegraf's got an at-will blast attack that deals just under half your HP if you're a tank class, the ability to heal, height advantage, and the "generosity" to fight you in a small, cramped arena where you can't run from him to heal up and swing back. And no, you can't go back and grind or even shop because you're locked into the next mission. Oh, and if you win, you get to fight a powered up version who has a gigantic, area-affect summon and minions who can use one of the strongest spells in the game at will.
 * It says a lot about how maddeningly difficult the Duel Boss part of the battle is that most people consider the second portion a touch easier.
 * The fight at the Golgorand Execution Site fits here nicely as well. You get to fight Gafgarion, tough by himself as he damages you and gets HP back with his signature attack that doesn't cost any MP, and other enemies, specifically two Time Mages which will happily status effect your people. You also start out divided into two groups, the second group popping up right in range of said Time Mages. At least there is one (one) random encounter map open because that fight blocks your access to the rest of Ivalice. If you are not prepared, be ready to get to know that map very well.
 * The subsequent battle with Gafgarion is no fun either because it can quickly turn into a Duel Boss situation. The enemy on the outside isn't that strong, but because of that annoying HP-absorbing ability, you'd need quite a bit of luck to win going one-on-one against Gafgarion with just the main character. This is worsened by the fact that, if the hero dies in the wrong place, it's very tough to try to revive him, which leads to him turning into a crystal and then game over.
 * The second battle against Balk/Barich isn't quite Wiegraf, but it still really SUCKS. Why? Because some of your staple melee tank classes are almost useless due in large part to the gargantuan chasm that's right in the middle of the stage. He, on the other hand, has a gun (one that turns your characters to stone), not to mention dragons and other terrible beasties, all of which can hand your ass to you from right where they're standing. A certain monster good at transporting can save you some trouble, but due to their overall lack of abilities, most players don't think to have one in the party.
 * Given a basic grasp of game mechanics and making things easier on yourself with certain choices, the first few fights shouldn't give you that much trouble. But if you know what's good for you, you'll swallow your pride and do some Level Grinding before setting foot in Dorter. This level pops up very early on (it's the fourth storyline battle), and it's the first map that you deal with enemy Archers and Black Mages. There are a couple of each, all conveniently placed just far enough away for it to take more than one turn for you to reach them, but just close enough for them to move forward and attack you. The worst are the two archers sniping your party from the tallest building on the map. You have a couple of guest characters that usually default to going up there and taking care of them first, but the building's tiles are laid out so that they take about 2-3 turns to navigate into attack range, during which the Black Mages and Archers can riddle them (and the rest of your hapless party) full of holes. And to add to the whole mess, there's a well-outfitted Knight guarding the Black Mages, and he will slap the ever-loving shit out of any unit that tries to beat up the Mages in melee. This battle is Final Fantasy Tactics' way of telling you it won't pull any punches; not now, not ever.
 * Taking on the Marquis inside Limberry Castle isn't much fun, either. You don't have the ridiculous conditions of the last battle, but Celia and Lettie are still...well, Celia and Lettie, except at a higher level. Not to mention Elmdore himself, who's basically a higher-leveled version of himself (i.e. a samurai on steroids) that makes use of Master Teleportation - basically, the Teleport skill that may or may not be available to some of your characters at this point - minus any sort of failure rate. Oh Crap. If there's an upside to this battle, it's the fact that: 1: You only have to bring him down to 20% to win the battle, and 2: he's got a full set of really badass armor that you can rip from him - provided you've got a skilled pilferer and the Zodiac Stones to try it.
 * On a parenthetical note, the Marquis and his two assassins go One-Winged Angel after this fight.
 * Adrammelech in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has a powerful attack hits anything in a line between him and the edge of the arena, which is especially bad given that the arena is a long, narrow one, with your party and his group on opposite ends. He also comes with three dragons who are quite powerful, and it's difficult to kill him without killing them first. A few levels, the right Law card, the right party setup, and a moogle with full JP will take this fight from "outright impossible" to "ludicrously hard". However, the big problem is finding out how to block that line attack, and to learn that spells that are one square attacks elsewhere are multiple square attacks there.
 * Fighting Llednar the second time you meet him. His fight comes after a somewhat tough fight inside the Bervenia Palace and is made worse due to the fact that it is a Duel Boss fight between himself and Marche. Unless Marche was raised as a melee fighter for high HP and Defense (and assuming you are not purposely using one of the many game breakers the game has) the fight will become a nightmare. You cannot damage him at all due to plot reasons and you have to stall for several turns until another character shows up to end the fight. Llednar has one ability that can put you under Doom status, inflicting KO on Marche in a few turns. Another ability can damage and Poison you so you get worn down. Llednar's signature move, Omega, can instantly defeat you with its massive damage unless you seriously level grinded. If you lose this fight, you'll have to do the previous battle again just to get back to this part.
 * Being a George Lucas Throwback, most of the bosses Final Fantasy the 4 Heroes of Light.
 * Admittedly, this has a lot to do with the fact that many enemies in general in 4HoL are rather gimmicky, and bosses often require a very specific set of skills or equipments that are completely not obvious at all until you're wiped out, forcing you to claw your way back through an entire dungeon (which gets very frustrating later in the game) after grabbing the one thing that you needed to take out the boss efficiently. This happens a lot outside of battle as well....
 * Doppelganger. An evil version of your party, except they get twice as many turns as you, have between two to four times the max hp of your tankiest character, and are in a 2 rank formation, so you can't kill the casters easily. Oh, and they heal. Frequently. And that properly equipped black mage you've been using to obliterate every boss in the way? Now his Doppelganger turns that power on you. Cue Angrish in response to (multiple) TotalPartyKills. Hope you weren't planning on using those gems to upgrade any crowns that might have helped you beat the boss.
 * Asmodeus inflicts widespread status effects. You could have 4 ribbons by this point, but probably won't. Added annoyance is that the game's auto-target system doesn't prioritize petrified or paralyzed characters over less debilitating status effects such as poison. You lose to auto-target as often as you lose to him, unless you invest in certain classes or spells which can remove ailments from everyone.
 * Final Fantasy Tactics a 2 gives us the lovely Flowsand Lord. It shows up early in the game out of the blue- the mission you take to fight it is about foraging for pearls, for goodness' sake- and will completely pulverize anyone who hasn't level grinded. First is its ludicrous stats- low speed and low magic, and an inability to move, but these don't matter at all because it has no magic attacks and has nearly 800 HP with the offense and defense of something double your level. It has 3 attacks straight off the bat- Gravity Flux, which deals roughly 75% of your current HP to all your party members, Stun Crush, which heavily damages all units next to it and inflicts Immobilize (and without being adjacent to it your melee attackers can't do anything) and, in an ultimate show of AI cheapness, Consume, which has a range of 10 tiles (read: most of the arena), deals damage enough to push you into HP Critical, moves you right next to it for a Stun Crush finisher, and restores its HP by the amount it deals, leaving one round's permanent damage at about 40 HP. The arena itself is inverse conical, meaning some routes are inaccessible to units with low Jump stats, and at that point in the game you can't camp in the corner and spam illusion spells because you don't have the Illusionist class yet. The Law itself is a nightmare, forbidding special actions by Nou Mu- your main damage dealers and spell casters- and while it would seem that you could just ignore it and spam the odd level 2 spell, the Squishy Wizards will get hammered by Consume, and, as the Law is invalidated, you can't resurrect your dead. Even worse, the boss has two tough Antlion lackeys that infinitely spawn, and, because you'll be facing the Lord, can spam paralytic attacks on your back for massive damage and debuffs. And the worst bit? After defeating it, you don't get any special rewards like you would from, and you have to beat it as it is a story mission. On another note, as a story mission you cannot quit it once you start it, and when you lose (which you will) you get a game over instead of a simple "oh well, try again". Flowsand Lord's only weakness is to Air spells, but at this point in the game the only access to an Air attack is a Bishop with Aero. Given that Bangaa have pretty low magic and the Bishop is a Bangaa only class, it's not even strikingly effective. It also casts 14 MP, so unless you manage to boost your Bishop's mp before his turn, you get to cast it once every 2 or 3 turns, thanks to the MP system of the game.