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15 Video Game Bosses So Hard They Had To Be Nerfed

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Ignacio Weil

Gaming - February 22nd 2026, 11:00 GMT+1

Starscourge Radhan Elden Ring — Starscourge Radahn — Elden Ring (2022)

The “festival” vibe lasts about three seconds, right up until a shot the size of a telephone pole deletes you from across the dunes. Then Starscourge Radahn turns the whole arena into a physics lesson: absurd reach, wide sweeps that clip you even when your dodge *looked* correct, and a second phase that arrives like a jump-cut from a different game. Early on, players weren’t just losing they were losing in ways that felt inconsistent, which is poison for a boss built around timing and spacing. FromSoftware patched him soon after release and the fight noticeably softened, with damage/pressure and that sticky hit-feel reduced enough that the “impossible” stories cooled down. Later adjustments nudged things back toward the original intent, but the damage was done: Radahn became the poster child for a boss whose reputation got shaped by patch notes. | © FromSoftware

Absolute Virtue Final Fantasy XI cropped processed by imagy — Absolute Virtue — Final Fantasy XI (2002)

Back when MMO raids were equal parts strategy and stamina, there was one name that sounded like an inside joke until you actually met it: Absolute Virtue. The misery came from how the fight could stretch into long, draining slogs where momentum evaporated, regen and resets punished progress, and players weren’t even sure what the encounter wanted from them. Difficulty is one thing; *time theft* is another, and this one was accused of stealing entire evenings. Square Enix’s response was telling: they eventually imposed a hard time limit so attempts couldn’t drag on indefinitely, and they adjusted behavior/parameters to make it less of a bottomless pit. When a raid boss needs a built-in stopwatch to stay reasonable, it’s basically the devs admitting the original version wasn’t just “challenging” it was structurally out of control. | © Square Enix

Absolute Radiance Hollow Knight cropped processed by imagy — Absolute Radiance — Hollow Knight (2017)

Godhome is already a flex zone, but the final climb turns into a stress test where your hands start shaking before the fight even begins. Absolute Radiance earned its infamy by stacking pressure instead of relying on a single cheap trick: overlapping patterns, tiny safe windows, and phases that demand focus for longer than most players can hold it. What made it feel cruel was the *length* of perfection required one sloppy landing late in the fight could erase several clean minutes. Team Cherry later reduced the HP requirement for the Godmaster finale version, which effectively shortened how long you had to play flawlessly. They also improved clarity in ways that matter massively in a bullet-hell platformer, where “I didn’t see it” can be the difference between mastery and nonsense. It’s still a nightmare, just less of an endurance punishment disguised as a skill check. | © Team Cherry

Marauder Doom Eternal cropped processed by imagy — Marauder — Doom Eternal (2020)

*Doom Eternal* trains you to be a blender: always moving, always firing, always turning demons into spare parts. Then a trench-coated bully shows up and tells you “no,” because the Marauder isn’t about DPS he’s about patience, spacing, and hitting a very specific window without getting baited into shooting the shield. That’s why he broke so many players: he punishes the exact instincts the game spent hours rewarding. What’s important, though, is that the clearest documented “nerfing” happened around balance changes to how oppressive his toolkit could be in the multiplayer context, especially the wolf-related pressure and how often it could swing control. In the campaign, he largely stayed a rhythm test; in competitive play, the sharpest edges got sanded down so he couldn’t dominate purely through relentless forced reactions. Same concept, fewer “this feels unfair” moments. | © id Software

Adamantoise Final Fantasy XV cropped processed by imagy — Adamantoise — Final Fantasy XV (2016)

The weirdest thing about this fight is how calm it looks at first like you’ve wandered into a postcard until the ground starts bullying you. Adamantoise became infamous less for complex mechanics and more for the sheer commitment it demanded, because “hard” here often meant “long,” and long fights turn tiny mistakes into inevitable mistakes. The danger is fatigue: eventually someone gets lazy with positioning, the camera lies, a stomp chain clips you, and the whole attempt spirals. I can’t confidently confirm a patch that directly nerfed Adamantoise’s raw stats, but Square Enix *did* make the broader toolset stronger in a way that functions like a nerf in practice. Notably, buffs to the Ring of the Lucii’s Death effect made the “mountain with HP” approach far less mandatory, letting prepared players end the ordeal faster and more reliably. The boss didn’t shrink your options got nastier. | © Square Enix

Phantom Hades II 2024 cropped processed by imagy — Phantom — Hades II (2024)

Some minibosses are hard because they hit hard; Phantom was hard because it felt like it was cheating your build. In the Fields, that life-drain pressure already forces you to stay sharp, but things got especially nasty if you leaned on summoned help players discovered Phantom could siphon Life from your raised servants, turning a “support” option into extra fuel for the enemy. Supergiant quickly stepped in with a hotfix that removed that interaction, so your summons stopped being accidental health batteries for the boss. After that, Phantom’s life-drain kit was also toned down more broadly in later balancing, with the drain effect reduced and stripped from some attacks to make the fight less oppressive over time. The result: still a scary stop on a run, but no longer a “skip this or regret everything” encounter. | © Supergiant Games

Boost Guardian Metroid Prime 2 — Boost Guardian — Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004)

The cruel part isn’t even the boss it’s the room. You’re bleeding health simply for being in Dark Aether, your cover can get smashed, and the floor turns into a hazard buffet while you’re still early enough that your resources feel tight. Boost Guardian piles on by weaponizing speed: it ricochets around the cramped arena in morph ball form, hits like a truck, and forces you to split attention between the main threat and the smaller Inglets trying to body-block your movement. Retro Studios has even told stories about this fight getting cranked up very late in development, which tracks with how “spiky” the difficulty feels compared to the surrounding stretch. The nerf came later: the Wii rereleases (*New Play Control!* / *Metroid Prime Trilogy*) toned the fight down, including reducing some of the nastiest damage values (like the puddle-form contact damage) so the battle stopped feeling like a coin flip the moment you slipped. | © Retro Studios

Pieta Lords of the Fallen cropped processed by imagy — Pieta — Lords of the Fallen (2023)

Every soulslike wants a gatekeeper, and *Lords of the Fallen* chose a glowing, hymn-singing wall with wings. Pieta hits hard for how early you meet her: quick strings that punish greedy swings, sudden ranged pressure, and that “I thought it was my turn nope” rhythm that deletes your stamina bar and your confidence in the same breath. She’s also a teaching boss in the meanest way if your spacing is sloppy or you can’t read telegraphs yet, she turns the opener into a retry loop. The nerf (in the most literal, patch-notes sense) arrived through later boss tuning in Legacy Mode: updates reduced how often she throws special attacks and adjusted combo timing/cadence to make the fight more readable, with clearer telegraphs and pacing. Worth noting the devs also introduced a tougher Veteran tuning where she gets nastier again, but for most players the baseline experience is now less “beam spam roulette” and more “learn the dance.” | © Hexworks

The Roaring Knight DELTARUNE 2025 cropped processed by imagy — The Roaring Knight — DELTARUNE (2025)

That fight hits the point where your brain stops “reading patterns” and starts just begging for a clean lane. The Roaring Knight became infamous because its pressure doesn’t come from one giant gimmick it’s the sustained chaos, especially when the screen fills with blades and your dodges feel like they *should* work but still get clipped. The biggest offender was the “Sword Tunnel” sequence, a long, fast attack where the visuals and the danger didn’t always feel aligned, so surviving it could come down to luck and pixel-perfect movement. Toby Fox later patched the encounter by shrinking the hitboxes on those Sword Tunnel swords to better match what you’re actually seeing, turning the moment from “cheap wall” into “tight but fair.” It’s still a flex to beat, just less of a roulette wheel. | © tobyfox

C Thun World of Warcraft — C’Thun — World of Warcraft (2004)

Back in vanilla, this wasn’t just a hard raid boss it was the kind of encounter that made guilds argue about whether the game was trolling them. C’Thun’s reputation came from a nasty combo of tuning and jank: punishing damage checks, brutal positioning demands, and infamous bugs where tentacles could spawn in absurdly unfair places (like behind walls or right under players), turning pulls into instant wipe theater. The nerf story is legendary because it’s one of the clearest “okay, this is too much” moments in MMO history: Blizzard pushed changes that removed or reworked some of the most oppressive mechanics (like the old stacking acid behavior), lowered knockback from giant tentacles, and prevented certain tentacle spawns that created unavoidable chain chaos. After that, the fight shifted from “maybe impossible” to “finally learnable,” and the myth of the original, untrimmed C’Thun became part of *World of Warcraft* folklore. | © Blizzard Entertainment

AAP07 BALTEUS Armored Core 6 cropped processed by imagy — AAP07: BALTEUS — Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (2023)

The first time that missile halo blooms over your head, you don’t think “boss fight” you think “weather event.” AAP07: BALTEUS earned its wall status because it punished almost every early-game comfort build at once: relentless tracking volleys, a pressure-cooker shield, and burst windows so short they felt like a trap. What really tilted players was how sticky the pursuit felt, turning evasive play into a stamina-draining treadmill where you’d still eat chip damage. FromSoftware later adjusted several Balteus attacks in a balance patch, and the encounter immediately became more readable less homing oppression, more space to actually *play* the matchup. It’s still a build-check, just not a missile-tracking lecture. | © FromSoftware

Simon Manus Awakened God Lies of P cropped processed by imagy — Simon Manus, Awakened God — Lies of P (2023)

Near the end of *Lies of P*, the game stops pretending it’s fair and hands you a finale that feels designed to break your guard discipline. Simon Manus, Awakened God hit so hard that a couple of missed reads could erase an otherwise clean run, and the fight’s tempo made healing feel like signing a waiver. Players also complained that the payoff for good defense didn’t match the risk you could parry well and still watch the fight drag into error territory. In response, the developers patched his tuning by lowering his damage and making it easier to break his stance, while also trimming his earlier Simon phase in a related adjustment. The result kept the spectacle, but removed the “one mistake = evaporate” vibe. | © NEOWIZ

Hephaistos Final Fantasy 14 — Hephaistos — Final Fantasy XIV (2010)

Week-one savage raiding is always a little unhinged, but this one sparked a different kind of debate: not “skill issue,” but “is the math even sane?” Hephaistos in *Final Fantasy XIV* became infamous for an unusually tight DPS check that left groups staring at enrage casts with the boss at slivers the kind of wipe that feels personal after hours of clean mechanics. The pressure wasn’t just execution; it was perfection under a clock, where any death tax or awkward comp choice could doom a pull before Phase 2 even got a chance. Square Enix eventually pushed an adjustment that reduced Hephaistos’s HP across both phases, effectively easing the check without rewriting the fight. It didn’t turn the tier into a free clear it just moved it back into “hard” instead of “punishingly tuned.” | © Square Enix

Dice King Cuphead cropped processed by imagy — King Dice — Cuphead (2017)

The board-game gimmick is cute right up until you land on the wrong square and realize you’ve just been sentenced to extra bosses for daring to exist. King Dice was brutal partly because the fight isn’t one fight it’s a gauntlet with RNG spice, and early runs could get kneecapped by an especially nasty punishment space. The most infamous one was “Start Over,” which could fire more than once in a single attempt, turning a promising run into a comedy of resets. Studio MDHR later patched the encounter so the Start Over square would only trigger once per attempt, dialing down the board’s ability to ruin you repeatedly. King Dice still demands consistency, but the game stopped piling on quite so gleefully. | © Studio MDHR

Promised Consort Radahn Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree cropped processed by imagy — Promised Consort Radahn — Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (2024)

The DLC’s endgame doesn’t just raise the difficulty it raises the volume, the speed, and the visual noise until you’re fighting for clean information. Promised Consort Radahn built a reputation on relentless pressure: huge coverage, minimal downtime, and a second phase where effects and movement could make reads feel like guesswork. The biggest frustration wasn’t simply damage; it was how often players felt they couldn’t *see* what mattered until it was already too late. FromSoftware later issued a dedicated balance pass for the final boss that changed the opening pattern, adjusted specific moves, reduced damage and stamina damage, trimmed the reach of certain attacks, and improved visibility on some effects. The fight stayed punishing it just became more interactive instead of overwhelming. | © FromSoftware

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You know a boss is built different when the community stops arguing about “git gud” and starts trading survival tips like it’s a disaster movie. Then the patch hits, the damage numbers shrink, and suddenly that “impossible” phase feels… suspiciously beatable.

These are the fights that launched as pure misery—overtuned movesets, unfair RNG, or one mistake turning into a full restart—until developers quietly stepped in and sanded off the sharpest edges. If you ever thought, “No way this is intended,” you were probably right.

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You know a boss is built different when the community stops arguing about “git gud” and starts trading survival tips like it’s a disaster movie. Then the patch hits, the damage numbers shrink, and suddenly that “impossible” phase feels… suspiciously beatable.

These are the fights that launched as pure misery—overtuned movesets, unfair RNG, or one mistake turning into a full restart—until developers quietly stepped in and sanded off the sharpest edges. If you ever thought, “No way this is intended,” you were probably right.