Marathon Boss: Difference between revisions

* [[MMORPGMassively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPGsMMORPG]]s have an unfortunate habit of sending players after these sorts of bad guys, especially for Raid encounters. Especially painful when [[Bladder of Steel|pausing hurts the team]].

** The all-time god-king of this trope is Pandemonium Warden of ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]''. Absolute Virtue may be [[Nigh Invulnerability|practically invincible]], but [httphttps://www.1updestructoid.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169336final-fantasy-xi-boss-causes-vomiting-takes-18-hours-to-beat-99391.phtml 18 hours, and the Warden still isn't dead?] Makes one wonder if the developers like leather and pain, really.

**** ALL of the Caverns of Time instances really, especially Dark Portal, you have little time to rest in between waves of miniboss / [[Giant Mook|Giant Mooks]]s.

** This is actually a built in mechanic for the ''Player Owned'' Station's in [[EveEVE Online]]. Which have incredibly staggering amounts of hitpoints, the larger stations tended to have so much, that they required dedicated ships whose sole purpose was to function as siege tanks against these shields, whom deployed specialized heavy caliber weapons that could only be realistically used against these shields, with a unique module that assisted in doing so. And it still took ''hours'' if not more then a day, ''with multiple units'', just to collapse these shields. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in the fact that this was to allow the owners of the station time to mount a counterattack before the station could be taken down.

* If you want to beat [[Hopeless Boss Fight|Gades during your first encounter with him]] in ''[[Lufia]] II'' and have put in the required amount of level grinding to actually LET you do it, you're in for a good 20-3020–30 minutes of battle.

* A lot of bosses in ''[[Metroid Prime]] 2'' are given ridiculous longevity (large amounts of HP and multiple phases), as well as the fun bonus of them being [[Puzzle Boss|Puzzle Bosses]]es. Adding to it is that most of them are fought in an environment that constantly drains your energy. Note that they are horribly long battles by action game standards, as they are still much shorter than many other of the examples in this page.

* ''[[Final Fantasy III]]'' for the NES could be considered as having a pentathlon marathon boss: The final boss isn't that hard if you did your grinding, but there's a catch: It is absolutely invincible until you defeat the four guardians of the Dark Crystals, which will take you a long time because of the random encounters, and each one is pretty far away from the other, giving you no shortcuts. The worst part? Once you enter this fortress (where you fight the guardians and the final boss), you cannot go back. You can't use tents, cabins, cannot rest nor save your game, so spend everything before entering... oh. The door. You already went through a maze which takes half to a full hour to brave through from your last possible save point/shop to enter this place of no return. So, after two-three hours of fighting the goddamn bats at the random encounters and spending almost all of your precious, non-buyable Ethers... The Final Boss flarewaves you twice. Then you die. And your last 3-43–4 hours (plus the massive level grinding you were unable to save) will be sadistically forfeit.

** [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]es Ruby and Emerald Weapons. Emerald Weapon is a particularly cruel case in that the game gives you a 20-minute time limit to beat it, unless one of the characters is equipped with a [[Guide Dang It|stupidly obscure piece of materia]], which is more or less mandatory if you don't have a special strategy in mind.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', the optional [['''Marathon Boss]]''' was Ozma because the Ozma challenge was a [[Guide Dang It]], [[That One Boss]] [[Bonus Boss]] [[Luck-Based Mission]], in which you would spend more time healing, reviving and waiting to counter its attacks than actually dealing much damage. With a mere 65000 HP, Ozma can be taken down with less than nine hits, but that's before he casts [[Standard Status Effects|Curse]], followed by [[Total Party Kill|Meteor]].

** [[Bonus Boss|Vercingetorix]], who has 15.8 million HP (although it's worth noting that the default damage cap in that game is 99,999, not 9,999, and the fight will probably take no more than 15-2015–20 minutes).

* Not present in the original ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'', but there in the prequel, ''Duodecim.'' The version of {{spoiler|Feral Chaos one must beat to unlock him as a playable character}} is, in addition to being at level ''130'' when the player is [[Cap|cappedcap]]ped at 100, in possession of a stunning ''125,000+'' HP. In the ''Dissidia'' combat system, the most damage that can be done at one time is 9999--but9999—but, given the way combat works, the player will only be able to pull off a 9999 damage hit rarely if at all against {{spoiler|Feral Chaos}}, with hits in 500-1200HP damage range being far more likely. This, plus the fact that the player will be performing Bravery attacks in addition to HP attacks, plus the fact that the player is going to spend a loooot of time trying to avoid {{spoiler|Feral Chaos'}} utterly devastating attacks, given that the player is likely to have only somewhere in the realm of 10K HP and basically has little-to-no healing...essentially, it adds up to a very long fight.

* The final bosses of both GBA ''[[Golden Sun]]'' games. The first game's final boss is also a [[Sequential Boss]] (and its first form being a [[Dual Boss]]). Many of ''[[Golden Sun]]: The Lost Age'''s [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]es also qualify, most notably the Star Magician. The Dullahan can be, because it's a [[Puzzle Boss]] (unless you're massively overleveled) with attacks capable of screwing up your strategy.

* All of ''[[Monster Hunter]]''. Almost every mission is a boss fight, and while the earlier ones can take 10-1510–15 minutes, the end game bosses can take up to 45 minutes (it actually has a time limit in this case), and some of these are even with four hunters hitting it.

** Debatable. The bosses of Monster Hunter are all arguably [[Puzzle Boss|Puzzle Bosses]]es since randomly hitting the armored parts of the boss dozens of times can do less damage than a single hit to the weak spot. This naturally leads to huge differences in the amount of time taken to kill a boss between groups of similarly equipped but differently skilled players.

** Her predecessors The Celestial Queen and Lenneth, while not even possessing a fraction of her power can drag on for an eternity. Raise Fayt's defense to the point that he takes zero damage from their attacks, and the fight still drags on for on the upper echelon of 45 minutes. Ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe ''[[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]]'''s [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]es.

** In ''[[Star Ocean: The Last Hope]]'', many story line bosses and [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]es can go on for an hour or more. The final boss has around 2 million HP on Galaxy ([[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|Normal]]) mode.

* Of the six bosses in [[Iji]], three could be easily said to be marathon bosses, especially on higher difficulty levels; worse still is the fact that they're [[Puzzle Boss|Puzzle Bosses]]es who you're supposed to damage with either the arena or by reflecting one of their attacks, which serves to make the fights very repetitive.

* ''[[Touhou|Perfect Cherry Blossom]]'' has [[Bonus Boss|Yukari Yakumo]], who takes ''over 10 minutes'' to defeat, and over 15 minutes if you try to time out her attacks (say, to graze for score). Many shmups take about 20-3020–30 minutes to complete, total.

** Typically the last spellcard in any game is absurdly long. The average spellcard lasts about 15-2015–20 seconds, 45 if you're going for the timeout. Final spellcards can last ''two and a half minutes.'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1MR9jOpH94&fmt=22 Kanako Yasaka's final card is particularly terrifying.] Once again, Yukari takes the cake. Her [[Bonus Boss|optional]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKz5BJXWDYQ&fmt=22 Last Word spellcard] in ''Imperishable Night'' is an extended version of the aforementioned last spellcard in ''PCB''. Except you're not even allowed to bomb ''at all.''

** Ansem, the final boss for the [[Another Side, Another Story|Reverse/Rebirth]] mode, is just as bad, if not worse.

** ''Kingdom Hearts: [[Birth By Sleep]] [[Updated Rerelease|Final Mix]]'' has No Heart. Like most [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]es in the series, he attacks almost constantly. On top of this he has 9 Health bars and excellent defense (Roughly 1800 HP and the most a player can ever do is 10-15 with maxed level and equipment). This amounts to 20-4020–40 minutes of battling, monstrous compared to the 2-52–5 minutes typical of the series.

** The series' other [[Bonus Boss|Bonus Bosses]]es are just as bad. From [[Kingdom Hearts (video game)|Kingdom Hearts]], we have the Ice Titan and [[Final Fantasy VII|Sephiroth]]. The Ice Titan is a pain because the primary way to damage it is to deflect one of its attacks back at it, which as the fight goes on, it will do less and less, and often whilst you are in no position to be able to deflect. Sephiroth is easier to damage, but has a ridiculously large shield to whittle down before his health bar even begins to deplete, and has attacks which will almost kill you, even at full health. [[Kingdom Hearts II]] has Sephiroth again, who has 15 health bars (the final boss has at most 7/8) and loves to do back-to-back "Sin Heartless Angel" and "Teleport Flash" before you can heal. Hope you kept those Elixers!

* Bosses in the ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' series usually have much more HP or higher defense than normal characters, and most are [[SNK Boss|SNK Bosses]]es to boot.

* [[SaGa Frontier 2]]: the final boss of the game, and arguably the whole last dungeon. The final boss doesn't have a lot of HP (~60 000), but is empowered by his henchmen, the Anima Masters, which grants him special powers (such as healing or a OHKO move that can turn everyone to stone) and extra HP (which can double his initial HP) if you didn't defeat them earlier in the very last dungeon. The catch ? They are skippable, in a dungeon where you can't go back to fight them once they have been skipped (something a player can't possibly guess before reaching the final boss). Only 4 of them can be challenged to a fight, and two of them are [[Duel Boss]], which lead to the loss of the character who stay behind, in what seems to be [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. On top of that, your party grows weaker and weaker after each fight, losing [[Mana Points]] which are difficult to resplenish if you don't have in your inventory the correct items (which are useless for 99% of the game : you may have tossed them because of inventory limits, and you ''can't'' use them during a battle!) which can lead them to be forced to [[Cast Fromfrom Hit Points|use their own life force in order to continue on fighting]]. True, [[Heroic RROD|your characters do more damage the lower ManaPoints they have]], but doing so will kill them once they run of Life Points ([[LPs]]). Now, take into account that unless you are [[Crazy Prepared]] (which you will '''not''' be the first time), you won't do more than 2000 damages to the final boss '''per turn''', and that this boss loves to depletes your characters of their [[LPs]]. Oh, and your main character only have 14 [[LPs]], which means that unless you looted from one of the final boss's henchmen the one and only item of the game which prevents you from losing [[LPs]] when taking a hit, you'll hit a game over once she runs out of these (mind you, all others characters may die in battle, you won't get a game over). [[That One Boss|So, basically, you're stuck in a very long battle, where you must take down the final boss before it takes '''you''' down, and in which some party members may die permanently if they run out of LPs]]. Have fun!

* A prominent [[Bonus Boss]] in ''[[Tales of Symphonia]]'', Abyssion, is also a [['''Marathon Boss]]''', featuring higher HP than the [[Final Boss]] and a more dangerous base of attacks. The easiest method of dealing with this boss, an item called "all divide" makes this even ''more'' of a marathon, as it splits damage received in half, but also damage given, the only way it makes it easier being that your ability to heal remains the same.

** However, a rare [[Tales (series)]] example in which the [['''Marathon Boss]]''' is ''not'' a [[Bonus Boss]]: In ''[[Tales of Destiny]] 2'', {{spoiler|Fortuna}}, the [[Final Boss]] takes ''forever'' to beat. Look up videos of it on [[YouTube]], and you'll notice that they're often split into multiple parts or have most of the fight edited out. The only indication that they're going down is that the music changes.

* Bosses in ''[[The Legend of Dragoon]]'' are all like this due simply to the mechanics of the game. If you haven't played it, magic is outrageously rare and is pretty much for use on bosses only. Only two characters have healing magic at all,<ref>Shana, [[Jonas Quinn|Miranda]], and Meru, but Shana and [[Miranda]] are ''so'' much better at it than Meru and Boss battles with Shana and Miranda take ''forever''</ref>, and the item limit is quite low. The way you heal is that every time you defend, you heal 10% of your maximum health. [[Your Mileage May Vary]] as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it definitely adds length to every boss fight.

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