Really hard non-optional, non-final boss bosses

[I Took the Red Pill]

Songi was pretty hard every time you fought him in Legend of Legaia. Then again, so was pretty much everything in that game.

[Ouch!]

Living Ice in Lost Odyssey requires stupid amounts of luck unless you're over-leveled.

Ditto
Living Ice is the last boss on disc three, right? If so, then I'm thinking of the right battle, and I had only Cooke and Jansen in my party that were decently leveled :(

Last boss on disc three is the Ice Magic Monster. He's not quite so awful as Living Ice, although the party set-up for both is the same: Jansen, Mack, Cooke, and Ming. Having only one immortal for both fights is brutal on its own, but the biggest problem with Living Ice is the casting of reflect which renders Jansen, Cooke, and Ming virtually useless, and Mack is really only a subpar melee. With all their magic, staying alive isn't usually too much of a problem, but he's just hard as hell to kill.

[NeoCracker]

YES JESWEE! PErsona 3: The Answer bosses were mean.

Though I didn't find any of P4's bosses as hard as 3's were.

[Wolf Kanno]

Star Ocean 2, Vesper and Decus. The epitome of "That One Boss" battle. One of them has attacks with wide range and can petrify you, and the other spams fire spells that easily do well over your max HP without resistance. I mean, yeah, now I know how to take them out easily but not so much the first time through the game.

And here I was hoping I could forget about them... Yeah they really were dicks the first time you faced them. Not sure which was worse, not being able to hit the Fire spammer or suddenly realizing that Rena isn't healing Dias petrification cause she is also turned to stone...

Persona 3, Sleeping Table. Only boss that really made me seriously level up/fuse better Personas. If you get lucky, it wastes it's turns on status or instant death spells (which are still dangerous), if unlucky it spams a hit-all fire attack and an Almighty spell that easily takes over half of your HP if not killing you outright. Of course, SMT games have their fair share of these kinds of bosses.

Oh god yes... This boss still gives me nightmares and I dread that part of Tartarus cause I know its coming... I hate how if you try to use a Magic Mirror to try and reflect its Maragidyne spell back onto itself it either uses a status ailment or Mahamoan to neutralize it or more likely it starts to exclusively use Megidoloan until everyone is dead...

The worse part is that the boss is so infamous for Persona fans that they decided to bring him back in P4. I'm currently stuck on him in the game's final dungeon for the True Ending...

Eh, I had more trouble with Shadow Mitsuo my first playthrough than him. (SPOILER)Plus, technically he could be considered a final boss. But, splitting hairs there.

...That's my candidate, anyway.

Yes he was such a pain in the ass, especially when he remakes his 8-bit armor and "levels up" then he becomes a complete ass.

I would like to add:

Golem Twins from Chrono Trigger - yes they are not that bad now but back in the day, they were infamous among my friends and even when you know what you are doing they can be quite a handful.

Black Queen from Wolverine: Adamantium Rage (SNES) - I still can't beat this boss... I don't believe there is a level past her either, the screenshots of a such a level are a lie to fool kids into keep trying.

Samael from SMT3 - God's Curse is obnoxious especially since its impossible to protect yourself from all status ailments. You're either charmed or confused (leading to your party killing themselves) or Bind (leaving your party to the mercy of the boss) If you goofed and didn't bring a healing type demon that can restore ailments you are screwed when your main character gets hit since he's the only one who can use items.

Beelzebub from SMT3 - Death Flies, need I say more? Fine, what about the fact the only thing he doesn't resist, void, or repels is fire and finding a demon with Death Void and good fire magic is not exactly easy in this game...

Sumaru from Persona 2: Eternal Punishment - There are only two ways to beat this boss, the easy way that takes knowing specific information or the excruciatingly painful long way which is most likely how you will be doing this fight.

This guy has the most hp of any boss in the game (9999hp) and resists everything. Your best abilities at the time in a first playthrough will be doing a 100 - 250 hp of damage at most and that's just the fusion spells... The easy way to beat him involves taking note of the legend concerning him. He was killed by a samurai and his ward while trying to rescue a princess. You can get Persona's of these three heroes. Although the Persona's are pathetically weak, they have a fusion spell that auto-kills this boss. The problem lies here. While you obtain the Princess and Samurai characters in the dungeon you fight this boss in; you cannot obtain the Ward unless you donated 10.000 yen to a shrine that was only avaliable for a short time at the beginning of the game...

Miang/Opiamorph OmniGear from Xenogears - She's a bitch, plain and simple. She might have been a bit more managiable if you didn't have to fight Ramsus just before her but good god is she a pain to fight and since its a gear battle, there is nothing you can really do since levels don't really matter and the best Gear equipment at the time is adequate at best for this fight...

[Vermachtnis]

Star Ocean 2, Vesper and Decus. The epitome of "That One Boss" battle. One of them has attacks with wide range and can petrify you, and the other spams fire spells that easily do well over your max HP without resistance. I mean, yeah, now I know how to take them out easily but not so much the first time through the game.

And here I was hoping I could forget about them... Yeah they really were dicks the first time you faced them. Not sure which was worse, not being able to hit the Fire spammer or suddenly realizing that Rena isn't healing Dias petrification cause she is also turned to stone...

That's not good, I'm going through my first time of game now.

[drotato]

I dunno, Legend of Legaia was easy to me. xD
And I loved it. Boss fights and all. It was amazingly fun for me. > <

[Vyk]

Songi was pretty hard every time you fought him in Legend of Legaia. Then again, so was pretty much everything in that game.

This confused me..

I dunno, Legend of Legaia was easy to me. xD
And I loved it. Boss fights and all. It was amazingly fun for me. > <

This made me happy..

Legaia was so fun for me, I never had any trouble. I think I maybe died like... once. But then again the battle system was so much fun I actually enjoyed getting in fights. And though I didn't power level, I was never at a real disadvantage because of this. Especially once you can charge up a huge bar and unleash multiple combos

I too had a lot of trouble with Adel my first time in FFVIII. And Miang from Xenogears. But she was fun to figure out. Adel was just a chump. Also Adel looks like a dude. Some sorceress! ...

[blackmage_nuke]

Songi was pretty hard every time you fought him in Legend of Legaia. Then again, so was pretty much everything in that game.

This confused me..

I dunno, Legend of Legaia was easy to me. xD
And I loved it. Boss fights and all. It was amazingly fun for me. > <

This made me happy..

Legaia was so fun for me, I never had any trouble. I think I maybe died like... once. But then again the battle system was so much fun I actually enjoyed getting in fights. And though I didn't power level, I was never at a real disadvantage because of this. Especially once you can charge up a huge bar and unleash multiple combos

QFT. The only bosses that presented any difficulty were the occasional Seru Bosses because I had to keep attacking them slowly as I wanted to absorb them instead of just beat them.
edit:Oh I forgot, except for Xain...he was an ass

Psycho Mantis really pissed me off the first time.

[DarkBahamut]

Sky Scroll Monster: Tower of Doom
from Brave Fencer Musashi

Whenever you get paralyzed, it's like one of those annoying helicopter games where you press left to go right and press right to go left. I ended up whooping it's ass because I got pissed off.

[Jowy]

HI GUYS I'M THE REASON ERIC NEVER FINISHED TERRANIGMA.



Although I've never experienced the fight, five hours a week of Sanctuary wiping at him never seemed like a good time.

I can't find a good image of Opiomorph either, but smurf that gear.

[I Took the Red Pill]

Songi was pretty hard every time you fought him in Legend of Legaia. Then again, so was pretty much everything in that game.

This confused me..

I dunno, Legend of Legaia was easy to me. xD
And I loved it. Boss fights and all. It was amazingly fun for me. > <

This made me happy..

Legaia was so fun for me, I never had any trouble. I think I maybe died like... once. But then again the battle system was so much fun I actually enjoyed getting in fights. And though I didn't power level, I was never at a real disadvantage because of this. Especially once you can charge up a huge bar and unleash multiple combos

QFT. The only bosses that presented any difficulty were the occasional Seru Bosses because I had to keep attacking them slowly as I wanted to absorb them instead of just beat them.

well maybe I just suck dick at videogames then. Though now that I think about it, last time I played Legaia was when I was 10 years old or so, so that probably has something to do with it.

[Rye]

The... Proud Clod.

[Madame Adequate]

Legend of Legaia was balls hard when I played it :x

[NeoCracker]

LEgaia was of moderate difficulty for me. Not easy, not hard, it had a good medium going for it.

[Zeromus_X]

Star Ocean 2, Vesper and Decus. The epitome of "That One Boss" battle. One of them has attacks with wide range and can petrify you, and the other spams fire spells that easily do well over your max HP without resistance. I mean, yeah, now I know how to take them out easily but not so much the first time through the game.

And here I was hoping I could forget about them... Yeah they really were dicks the first time you faced them. Not sure which was worse, not being able to hit the Fire spammer or suddenly realizing that Rena isn't healing Dias petrification cause she is also turned to stone...

That's not good, I'm going through my first time of game now.

To make things a lot easier, (SPOILER)craft Flare Rings from Ruby, and equip Dueling Suits or Stone Checks (not sure what version you're playing, so names might be different). Decus's fire spells can't do jack to you and you won't be petrified, making the battle much easier to handle.