Below is contained a list. A list of such power and pure kickassery that it almost requires an FDA warning label to warn you of the degenerative levels of utter badassitude. Please, view at your own risk. Beware this WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS. If you are currently invested into a game that has the possibility of showing up, please do not read on if you mind spoilers.
The Top 10 Most Badass Videogame Bosses, ranked by HappyPariah aka Ken Bloom, in accordance with the bosses: Threat level throughout the game, awesomeness, difficulty, and other miscellaneous criteria that will be explained in their respective entries.
Number 10- Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2
He's big, he's bad, and he's a sex idol (I shit you not). Pyramid Head is arguably the most influential and popular horror game character. Everyone has at least seen his iconic head cage and almost as many have experienced the terror of being chased by him through a series of claustrophobic hallways only to have it end in tragedy. Throughout the whole of Silent Hill 2 Pyramid Head is mocking you. He will appear to scare the fuck out of you only to saunter off as if nothing had happened. On top of all of that, he doesn't die. Try as you might, Pyramid Head never dies, he doesn't even acknowledge the fact that you are shooting at him. In fact the only way he ever stops his relentless assault is when he himself decides that he's bored and that he should just kill himself to get away from James (the protagonist of Silent Hill 2). Pyramid Head earns 10th place based upon his threat throughout the game, even though both fights with him are simply timers meant to scare you for a little bit.
Number 9- Kuja from Final Fantasy 9
Kuja is the very definition of "fruit". He meanders along in his manthong wearing poofy pants that expose his upper thighs and a belted top and sleeve combo that covers so little even a tuesday afternoon stripper would be embarrassed to wear it. However, this does not mean that he is not threatening. On the contrary, from the first time you confront Kuja in Burmecia, then subsequently get killed by Beatrix, flying in on his silver dragon you get the feeling that this guy is not to be fucked with. Throughout the game you keep trying to figure out what twisted motive he could possibly have for everything that he has done, but to no avail. It's only late in the game, when you are told the truth of Zidane and Kuja by Garland, that you figure out it's just because he is insane. His only purpose in life was to cause havoc... so he did, so well in fact that he actually DESTROYS THE UNIVERSE. Kuja is just a horribly badass villain that poses a very real threat from the very beginning. His only problem is... he's easy... really easy. I beat him on my very first try the very first time I played the game. If his difficulty were to be amped up Kuja would have been much higher on this list.
Number 8- Jeane Touchdown from No More Heroes
This is it. You've finally done it. Nine Assassin's down, there's only one left between you and superstardom. You go through that ridiculous driving scene eleven times because you can't finish the quicktime events fast enough. Then you arrive in the middle of nowhere. A lone man approaches you. He speaks and you recognize his voice as none other than Steve Blum, VA for Spike Spiegel, one of the indisputably COOLEST anime characters every, you pull out your beam katana and ready yourself for the biggest and most epic fight ever. Suddenly... his head falls off. He falls to the ground, dead. That's when she appears. Jeane Touchdown, your half sister. Her cutesy routine doesn't really phase you as you just got through killing a psychotic lolita baseball player that used her baseball bat to hit gimps at you from a conveyor belt. But something about her just scares the living shit out of you. THAT is Jeane. Jeane is NOT a push-over. If you aren't careful Jeane will eat your face and shit out daffodils to stuff down your throat. Jeane has earned her place at Number 8 based upon pure shock value and difficulty.
Number 7- The Sentry Gun/Doting Engineer Combination from Team Fortress 2
Imagine this. You join a game, pick your team, pick your favorite class, let's say you like to play as the Scout. So you get ready, choose your loadout, then zoom on ahead of your team. As you approach enemy territory you become cautious, surely the enemy is near. When all of a sudden, as you turn a corner you are immediately filled with lead and die. A Sentry? Well, damn guess it's time to be a demoman. So you change to a demoman. You go back to where you were and shoot a hail of grenades into the Sentry's location... but nothing happens... it doesn't die. Confused as to if it may have been already destroyed you turn the corner and come face to face with a shielded Sentry and an engineer aiming his turret right at you, you have just enough time to say "Aw f-" before you are dead. A good Engineer can keep one sentry throughout an entire game of Team Fortress 2, if that isn't a testament to the threat of these things I don't know what is. Also, of that good engineer happens to have the Wrangler you are going to have to pump at least three times as many shots into it for it to die, all the while the Engineer sitting behind it is using his Wrangler to snipe you then switching back to his wrench to fully heal the Sentry. Everyone hates the Sentry, everyone fears the Sentry, everyone respects the Sentry.
Number 6- Chariot and Justice from Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3
There is no build up to this. There simply is. And what it "simply is" is a horribly frustrating and damn near broken boss encounter. August 6th of Persona 3 has you facing off against the manifestations of the Arcanas Chariot and Justice, however, as the battle begins you only see one foe. You wail on it only to be dismayed as you see it actually split into two seperate bosses. Flabberghasted, you continue, focusing your damage to finish one off quickly. In a few rounds one of them falls and you turn your sights to the other... only to see it turn to it's fallen comrade on it's turn and revive it to full health. Yes, not only must your survive what is essentially three bosses in a row, with two at the same time, but you must kill the last two IN THE SAME ROUND. Everyone who has played this game CURSES Chariot and Justice as one of the most broken and horribly frustrating bosses ever.
Number 5- Wiegraf Folles / Belias the Gigas from Final Fantasy Tactics
You are Ramza, a chipper young Noble whose job is to help the destruction of a group of criminals known as the Corpse Brigade. In your exploits you manage to kill one of the higher ups, a woman by the name of Miluda. As you continue your job you come across a man, this man's name is Wiegraf. He is the leader of the Corpse Brigade. Milluda was his sister. His is FUCKING, PISSED, OFF. When you manage to finally defeat him here he swears vengeance and teleports away, the perfect strategy for every reocurring boss. He later reveals himself to be a member of the Knights Templar and challenges Ramza to a one on one battle. This fight is notorious for how difficult it is. In fact it is so difficult that there are entire threads devoted to simply developing strategies on how to defeat him. Wiegraf is a CHEATING BASTARD. He has Blade Grasp, so if you attempt to strike him with a bladed weapon from the front, guess what, you're fucked. He also has access to abilities only available to the Holy Knight and Holy Swordsman Job Classes... two classes that are in themselves exclusive to two characters. So needless to say, he is dishing out untold rape upon you while also inflicting status ailments with his Judgement Blade and Holy Explosion attacks. However, that's not all. After you manage to defeat Wiegraf, he decides that nows the time to surrender his life to the Lucavi, and he becomes a MOTHERFUCKING GOD. Yes, he is transformed into Belias the Gigas, and once your team shows up he decides that being a god wasn't enough. So he summons four demons to help him fuck you up. Belias will immediately start spamming the summon Cyclops on whoever is grouped up in your party which alone can deal upwards of 350 damage (about 7/10s of a Knight's [the class with the most health] health) meanwhile, his demons are throwing around Ultima, the single strongest black magic spell in the game. He's a dick, and takes forever to kill.
4- Hazama / Yuuki Terumi from BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
Even though Hazama is only around as a mere cameo until the end of Calamity Trigger, he still has his aura of pure badass even while he's claiming to be "simply from Intelligence" and spouting that "fighting really isn't (his) thing". However, when Continuum Shift hits, ALL SHIT BREAKS LOOSE. Hazama constantly harasses every character you play as and makes his threat very real with several fights along every storyline especially his ever infamous Ragna v Unlimited Hazama fight where he disables your Soul Eater ability making your X button completely useless. When Hazama makes his full transformation into Terumi, by simply removing his hat and gelling his hair up into anime spikes, you can't help but feel intimidated. In the True Ending it takes an ultimate sacrifice by Lambda-11 to finally make Ragna capable of dealing any real damage to Terumi. But even after that he still goes on as though nothing had really happened. The man infected what is essentially god in the game with a virus and stole all of it's power, damning it's consciousness to a hell of unsolvable logic puzzles. Plus, Gluttony Fang is the most badass theme in BlazBlue.
3- Cid Raines from Final Fantasy 13
Plain and simple, Cid is a cheating bastard. Cid is a l'Cie just like every one of your characters, however, his true strength lies in how fast he is able to exploit his ability to Paradigm Shift, which he does whenever he changes targets. Late in the fight he casts a spell that gives him every buff in the game cutting all damage by half, then can even turtle into a defensive mode that buffs his defense even higher so that he will take somewhere around ten damage a hit, THEN after all of that, he'll heal himself. Cid is frustrating. 100% FRUSTRATION. That is why he is worthy of spot #3 on my list.
2- Nyx Avatar from Persona 3
I know Persona 3 already had a spot, but that game is simply fantastic, any RPG fan needs to have at least played it. On top of having the best battle theme of any game ever, look up The Battle for Everyone's Souls in YouTube you will not be disappointed, Nyx is badass beyond compare. Not even the #1 Slot is truly as badass as Nyx, however, a disappointing end pushed our #1 just over Nyx in the rankings. Nyx is the incarnation of Death, brought to the planet to harvest the earth's souls and reset the planet. Pretty simple and cliche right? WRONG! Nyx gives the heroes exactly one month to either surrender to it and have their memories erased so they can live in peace untile the earth is effectively destroyed or resist and live in despair until they die. Needless to say they choose the ass-kicking route. However, even when you manage to get passed some extremely bullshit noob traps that come into play about ONE HOUR INTO THE FIGHT, yes this fight is easily the longest battle in any RPG, counting out Yiazmat as setting gambits can effectively make FF12 play itself, and drain Nyx's health to zero all it does is make it slightly discomforted and decide to destroy the earth now. Thus begins the most idiotic scene in any RPG ever. The main character, Minato, flies into the air after Nyx and enters a giant womb like thing, where he must fight the fetus of death itself. As Minato get's struck down and almost killed everyone that Minato has befriended in the game, via the Social Links system, prays for his safety and thus causes him to end death... with a Shining Finger attack a'la G Gundam.. only it's literally just a shining finger... However, even though Minato does save the world, Nyx still get's the last laugh as Minato ends up dead in Aegis' arms a few months afterwards during the school graduation ceremony. Not to mention, during the entire fight against Nyx it shifts it's Arcana weakness and strength, and with every shift comes a disturbing and awesome quote such as: "The Arcana is the means by which all is revealed. Celebrate life's grandeur... it's brilliance... it's magnificence." or "The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate. Entrusting his future to the cards man clings to a dim hope. Yet the Arcana is the means by which all is revealed. Beyond the beaten path lies the absolute end. It matters not who you are, death awaits you."
And now, for the number one most badass boss in any game ever:
1- Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy 6
I'm sure some of you are calling out "FAN BOY!" right now... and well that's partly true. I am a Kefka fan boy. But that doesn't detract from how simply maniacally badass Kefka is. The man commits mass homicide by poisoning an entire kingdom's water. He betrays his King, Gehstal, and his peer, General Leo. HE REFORMS THE FACE OF THE PLANET USING HIS POWERS AS A DEMI-GOD. Then you must fight your way up an enormous, twisted tower to face him at it's apex. You must fight a psychotic demi-god whose only purpose in life is to make things die or destroy everything in sight. What makes him better than Kuja in that respect is that Kuja really has no motivation, he says "I'm going to die some day, so I'll take everyone with me." Kefka has motivation, he wants to see things die, his madness has a method to it, he was made insane by untested experiments, but they also granted him the strength to procure the abilities of a demi-god. Also, as Kuja just destroyed things, Kefka remade them, showing a much greater power than Kuja could have ever had.
Well that's it for now folks. I sure hope that you have enjoyed my list of the top 10 most badass bosses in videogames. Seeya next time.
Cheers,
HappyPariah
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