What game do you feel has the best boss fights ever?

[Wolf Kanno]

What the title says, but I'm not talking about a game with one or two great boss fights, I'm talking ones that have a ton of them, and why you feel they are awesome.

[JJ Strife]

Probably Dark Souls 1. I love how much the Soulsborne series builds up its bosses with lore and environmental storytelling. That's just as important as the actual gameplay challenge itself. Dark Souls 1 is probably the best because of varied the bosses are, and the number of epic confrontations that just make it feel like you're doing something really important. Ornstein and Smough, Artorias, Gaping dragon, Kalameet, Priscilla. All of those are epic confrontations.

[WarZidane]

Final Fantasy XIV, mostly because its approach to boss fights is like a big spectacle through which you basically dance, and the music is always on point.

[krissy]

shadow of the colossus

lol

[Wolf Kanno]

While I love me some Soulsborne bosses and Shadow of the Colossus, my vote is going for the Metal Gear series. The boss fights are always creative and interesting. Even the 2D entries had some interesting boss battles going for it. I also appreciate the multiple ways you can tackle them, which I feel is the true sign of a great boss fight.

[Judge Mandolore Shepard]

When it comes to games with the best boss fights, I would have to go with any of the Castlevania games. Take the boss fight against Balore in Castlevania Aria of Sorrow for example. During the first phase of the fight, he uses his hands to try to crush you. Then during the second stage of the fight, he opens his right eye to fire beams that sweep across the bottom of the room.

[Lord Golbez]

I think MGS stands out in this category. Every boss fight is different and fun in it own way. Sure there are some standout ones (Psycho Mantis) that maybe pull ahead of the others, but the fact that every boss fight plays out differently is one of the great aspects of the game. And yeah, that certainly extends to the whole series, but I think it's particularly applicable to the first one (not to diminish from creative fights, like The End in MGS3, but I just don't think the other games match MGS in terms of the bosses as a whole).

I think the Megaman series (at least the good ones) fit this topic too. The games are all about the bosses in a way, so the good ones definitely have good boss fights, even if they lack the diversity of MGS (yeah, I'd definitely rank MGS higher but Megaman gets an honorable mention).

[Vermachtnis]

Yea, Mega Man.

Mega Man Legends, Flutter vs Gesellschaft is one of the best bosses ever. It starts with them dropping a bunch a ships. It's just a stall tactic so the main ship can catch up. Then you're fighting this giant airship. But you have a speed a movability on your side. You flying around targeting it's weak points. And then phase three happens and you're the giant target and they're the fast enemy zipping around. I love that role reversal. And there's the frog boss in the lake. The giant mining robot. Bruno in the Old City. And the final fight with Juno.

And on Mega Man, Zero 3. All the bosses were fun to fight. And the final dual against Omega. (SPOILER)Which is Zero with his moveset from X4.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Game: Street Fighter II Turbo
Boss: Akuma

The very first time Akuma showed up, that was pretty amazing..........then you just learn to smurfing hate him over the decades.

Game: R-Type
Boss: Dobkeratops (several other names)

Probably as famous as the series itself. I think it makes an appearance in some way in every game?

Game: Doom
Boss: Cyberdemon

"A missile-launching skyscraper with goat legs. 'Nuff said."

Game: MGS 3
Boss: The End

The series is known for it's creative characters and bosses, but The End is probably my favorite just for the numerous different ways you can interact with him or change how the fight plays out. You have more than one way of avoiding the fight altogether. Runner-up is fighting The Boss just because of the feels.

Game: Ridge Racer 4
Boss(es): Assoluto Volcano, Age Solo, Terrazi Utopia, Lizard Nightmare, and Pac-Man

The Ridge Racer games have always had fun little boss cars to unlock, and while Rage Racer might be my favorite in the series, I think 4 has the best boss cars. The Rocket Car and Pac_man always made me smile.

Bonus Boss I think I'd like.

Game: Mega Man 9
Boss: Splash Woman

So, the 9th installment gets a nod from me for simultaneously trying to make a game in the tradition of the early games in the series, while changing it up by finally introducing the first (and only?) female boss in the series.

[Karifean]

The king of boss fights for me has got to be the Touhou series. They do however only have 7 boss fights per game, so hard to say they have a 'ton' of them, and the quality does vary. Still, notable mention to two games: Touhou 11 Subterranean Animism, for having an absolutely stellar lineup of all memorable bosses, and Touhou 15 Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom, for still managing to wow with bosses when you think you've already seen it all in these games.

Outside of Touhou - and this is prolly gonna be a *huge* surprise to people who know my tastes - I'm gonna give it to Ys: The Oath in Felghana. The boss fights are just so much fun in that game, with a lot of standouts. Honorable mention to Ys Origin which definitely has highly memorable bosses as well, it's just barely beneath Felghana for me.

[Wolf Kanno]

Alright, so to add some life into this thread, what are your ten favorite boss fights of all time?

[Vermachtnis]

Galacticmon (Digimon World 3)
After spending most the game in the Digital World, the final dungeon is a space station above the real world. After fighting your way through it. The final boss fuses with it and your outside in space fighting it and it's massive. You start on it's tail and you see the main body in the background. And every so often the camera will pan behind you and show the Earth. You are quite literally the only thing standing between it and destruction. And after you beat the tail and move up to the body, it fires on the Earth and your partner takes the hit. Leaving it with 1HP. The music swells and starts playing a boss version of the opening theme as you move onto the core.

Magus (Chrono Trigger)
This is the guy we've been lead to believe will destroy the world. Fight your way through his castle and minions. And the buildup to the fight. With the lights coming on as you walk towards him. The music starts off with an ominous wind before it gets going. And this wasn't an easy fight the first time I played it. Switching between the elements with a lot of AoEs. Really felt like a test of everything you've learned up to that point.

Kuze (Yakuza Zero)
Especially the 2nd and 5th fight. Yea, you fight him five times. The second fight is crazy. He charges Kiryu on a motercycle and hits him with a iron pipe before the fight even begins. And goes on a whole Rocky spiel about how it's not about how hard you hit, but how you get hit and keep standing up. And he hates Kiryu at this point. But over the course of the game, he gains respect. And the final fight it's on equal grounds.

Nishikiyama (Yakuza Kiwami)
The final mission is tiring. You, the player, is tired. Kiryu is tired. There's just one loose end. Your ex-blood brother. And he comes in with six health bars. And as you're trading blows it'll flash back and show scenes of them from Zero and Kiwami.

Asch (Tales of the Abyss)
Tales games have great dual bosses. Luke vs Asch is the best. It plays Meaning of Birth, a boss version of the opening theme.

McBurn and Arianrhod (Trails of Cold Steel 3)
These are two of the most powerful people, if not THE most powerful in Kiseki. This is more personal. I broke Juna. I made her extremely tank. I dumped everything into defense and HP. She had like 5k more HP than the next guy. She also had auto-regen and auto-life that brought her back to full. Twice. I never thought that would come into play because for the most part she regens more than they can hurt her. But this fight has a mean little combo. McFireBro will drop everyone's HP to like 200 and Arianrhod will come in and clean-up. After all of that, Juna was the only one standing. With full HP and MP. And she know Seraphic Ring. Party wide full raise. And another thing about Juna, one of her class skills let's people skip turns.

Blade Bearer and Cannoneer (Code Vein)
The Blade Bearer, quick melee with icy attacks. The Cannoneer, slow ranged with fire attacks. Yup, it's this games answer to Smaugh and Ornstein. And when I say 'slow ranged' I being relative. This game is a lot faster than Dark Souls. And if you're not watching them both, they will get you. Luckily, they fuse after you kill you until the bonus dungeon fight. Even with one of them, it's still an intense fight all the way through.

The Final Boss (Bloodborne)
It was hard to choose between him and Soul of Cinder from DS3. Bloodborne was my first and it holds a special place. And the arena and music is beautiful. It's a fun fight and test of everything, especially parrying.

Omega (Zero 3/ZX)
Gesellscheft (Mega Man Legends)
I said those above.

[Judge Mandolore Shepard]

When it comes to my top ten favorite boss fights, these are my picks:
1. Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy series)
2. Darth Malak (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic)
3. Ridley (Metroid series)
4. Dracula (Castlevania series)
5. The Human Reaper (Mass Effect 2)
6. Magus (Chrono Trigger)
7. BNK3R (Borderlands 2)
8. Tartarus (Halo 2)
9. Cackletta (Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga)
10. Horseless Headless Horsemann (Team Fortress 2)

[Lord Golbez]

It's hard to make a top 10, so I'm not sure I will, but here are some top boss fights.

Mr. Freeze in Arkham City - Dang this fight took me awhile, but I applaud it for a couple different things. While most of the boss fights in the Arkham games amount to brawling type stuff, this fight focuses on the stealth mechanics, which in my estimation are the vastly better part of the game. Secondly, by forcing you to do different methods with each attack it keeps the fight interesting. While hard boss fights often become boring by forcing me to do the same things over and over and be cheap, this one is hard because it does the opposite. Rather than restrict your options too much, it forces you to attack with a bunch of different approaches. It also encourages some strategy in terms of how you're going to plan out your attacks. For example, the attack from the gratings is one of the easiest to pull off, but if you do it too early, you pretty much screwed up the gratings as a way to get around for the rest of the fight, which is bad, because dude's like Vulcan Raven if he gets you in his sights.

Psycho Mantis in MGS - I'm not sure this is the boss fight itself as much as all the meta stuff surrounding the fight, but this scene is iconic for the series. Reading your memory card is a fun stunt beforehand, but the fact that putting the controller in the second port allows you to play this battle differently and have an easier fight i brilliant.

Sephiroth in FF7 - I know this one is going to be controversial, because most will complain Sephiroth is very easy and he is, but my first time through that was not my experience. My strongest summon was Neo-Bahamut, I had the 2x cut materia, but not leveled to 4x cut. No quadra magic. My best bet was when Cloud got a limit break and I could do Meteorain and on top of that, I didn't have protection equipped for various status ailments that Sephiroth inflicts, including most notably, confuse. So it was actually a reasonably close battle for me the first time, and on top of that the production values were top notch for the time. A chorus for the final boss? I was definitely impressed. Kefka could probably get a mention on this list too, but I want to think about my other choices before going there.

Luca Blight in Suikoden II - They really sold the terrifying villain here. 3 parties of 6 to take him down, NPCs riddling him with arrows between fights, and after all that he's still standing for a one on one duel with the hero. That's one tough cookie. I actually like Jowy as the antihero/villain more, but in terms of boss fights, Blight has him beat.

The Magus Sisters in FFIV - It's a little hard for me to see why now, but this was quite challenging when I was a kid. Between using Wall and sisters being brought back to life if you fight them in the wrong order, there are some interesting strategic elements to this fight that generally aren't present in the more typical single enemy boss fights. I'm not sure I'd use a separate top 10 slot, but honorable mention goes to Rubicant. A fire based foe who absorbs ice if his cloak is closed? Didn't see that one coming.

[Fynn]

I don’t usually think about bosses and it’s not exactly something that makes me come back to a game. However, I guess Zelda comes closest simply for having iconic bosses throughout the series. Special mention goes to the Hearts of Stone expansion to the Witcher 3. After a game that was mostly pretty easy with bosses that didn’t require much thinking, HoS actually made them fun, engaging, and memorable.