Marathon Boss: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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{{quote|''"[...] and where do you get off being so impossible anyway. we spent more than half the game fighting you."''|'''Problem Sleuth''''s [[Strongly Worded Letter]] to {{spoiler|Demonhead Mobster Kingpin}}, ''[[Problem Sleuth]]''}}
Make sure you don't have to go anywhere later before starting a fight with one of ''these'' guys.
A boss fight which requires a significant amount of time to defeat. Can be related to [[Sequential Boss]], as while one part of the boss isn't long, all the parts together ''are''. Has a good chance of happening with [[Final Boss|Final]] and [[Bonus Boss]]es. See the [[Marathon Level]] for the level version of this, which may well have a '''Marathon Boss''' at the end.
These bosses frequently elicit cries of [[Why Won't You Die?|"Why Won't You Die?!"]] among players. Compare [[Padded Sumo Gameplay]], of which it is often a logical consequence; contrast with [[Rush Boss]], this trope's inverse.
Not to be confused with [[Marathon Trilogy|Durandal]].
{{examples}}
* [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]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 [
*** Square Enix has changed things in response to the bad press about Pandemonium Warden so that both it and Absolute Virtue are weakened and will vanish after two hours of fighting. However, while the new PW isn't unreasonable to beat within the alloted time, AV remains unbeaten without cheating. SE seems to be fond of the [[Guide Dang It]] [[Puzzle Boss]], except without the "guide" part.
*** While we're on the subject of AV: Square-Enix seems determined to make this guy literally unbeatable. Every time a group manages to defeat him, they claim that the method they used was "improper" and then patches him to cover that weakness. Even a strategy that Square-Enix ''themselves'' used to beat him, and subsequently ''published in a video'', was later patched.
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* The [[Big Bad]] Primagen in ''[[Turok (series)|Turok]] 2: Seeds of Evil'' already has a ton of HP, and also has an annoying regeneration ability that can draw out the fight even longer.
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories]]'' has Marluxia, the final boss. Most bosses have two, maybe three health bars. He has ''four''. Not only that, but you can't actually damage him normally unless you go through his entire attack pattern. And when you do reach that point, you only have a few seconds since wind is blowing you off. Thankfully he's also open to attack every now and then, but it's unlikely you'll have strong enough cards to really exploit it until after you beat him.
** 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]]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 20–40 minutes of battling, monstrous compared to the 2–5 minutes typical of the series.
** The series' other [[Bonus Boss]]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!
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* Non-game example: the fight against DMK in ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' takes up nearly half of the entire series. It's a deliberate parody of JRPG boss fights though, so it's heavily [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] of course. [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=001735 Just one example...]
{{quote|what is with all these heads and where do you get off being so impossible anyway. we spent more than half the game fighting you.}}
* [[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
** Not nearly so bad as it's made out to be, as each of those can be bypassed: If the player moves extra characters to the reserve, you can take down all six of the Anima Masters...which has the unfortunate side effect of reducing your party for the last of them (admittedly, he's the hardest). There is also a guaranteed drop of a second item that prevents LP damage, much earlier in the game, but you have to choose to fight rather than bypass a particular battle. Admittedly the final boss is still lengthy in this case, making it as much of a [[Guide Dang It]] as a Marathon Boss.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZSxRuxrjfk This video]. Even with the assistance of a macro to spam the fire button, it's still absurd.
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* {{spoiler|Tyr/Myria}} from ''[[Breath of Fire]]''. Then again, you should have known after the previous bosses that after the health bar you actually ''see'' is only a ''fraction'' of their ''actual'' health.
* The final fight against the Thugs 4 Less leader in ''[[Ratchet and Clank Going Commando]]''. Mostly because you'll be sat in a turret, constantly trying to shoot away his bombs, rather than actually just shooting him. Even the developers admit he simply has way too many hit points.
* ''[[Rockman 6: Unique Harassment]]''
** The Jewel Man boss has four phases: Three phases dealing with his elemental jewels and a phase dedicated to the Jewel Man boss fight itself.
** The Dr. Wily fight has a total of 6 phases in this game. Luckily, Mega Man gets a Yashichi after 2 phases.
* [[Tank Goodness|Neon Valhalla]] in ''[[Epic Battle Fantasy]] 5'', the only enemy in the game that constantly regenerates its health, as if having the second highest health in the game (just below the [[Final Boss]]) wasn't enough. It's also immune to damage-over-time effects and comes with turrets that attack on their own and bombs that kill all 3 characters in combat after a few turns and require the player's attention as well. Altough manageable in normal difficulty due to its lack of magical damage and not attacking every 4 turns, trying to beat it in epic difficulty is where the true marathon begins, as it requires every character to sacrifice some damage for durability to stay alive while Neon Valhalla's regen also gets a massive boost along with the doubling of damage and health that comes with this difficulty setting. It's nearly impossible to outdamage Neon Valhalla's regen in epic difficulty without a specific strategy around the syphon or sudden death effects to get rid of its turrets and bombs.
== Uses of this trope outside video games ==
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[[Category:Boss Battle]]
[[Category:Marathon Boss]]
[[Category:Length Tropes]]
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