The Eye of Valmar from Grandia 2 is a standout to me.
Grandia 2 was one of the early RPGs to show you enemies on the world map and let you avoid them. In games like that it was commonplace to skip many of the "trash" battles and stay at a level that was just high enough to clear bosses with some challenge, but without fighting everything or grinding. This was great! ...Until you met the eye.
So picture a huge boss that uses wide AOE status effects and hits fairly hard by itself but has a shitton of HP. And its fast, getting 1.5 to 2 turns to your one if you're underleveled. It can put your party members to sleep with a hugely damaging special move, and once slept (assuming they survive the damage) they lose 3-4 turns unless you had happened to stock up on heretofore useless Smelling Salt items. Next the boss came with 3 minions. Little flying eyeball dudes, whose attacks were individually weak but fast, so they were constantly smacking your party members around for chip damage and forcing them down in the turn order because attacks reduce initiative.
All that was bad enough, but if all three minions were alive they could execute a team attack called Delta, which would VERY easily one hit kill a party member from full HP. And if someone died? Well revive items were rare and cost 5000G IIRC, and since you werent grinding you never had the money to buy more than a couple and you never needed them anyway so you probly don't have more than a handful.
And did I mention this boss had a nice, pretty save point right before its fight room in a dungeon that you couldn't leave once you entered? Yeah, this son of a bitch was a point of no return boss, so if you think you're gonna just go out and grind some G to buy the items you need then think again. If my memory serves me the Eye of Valmar was literally the TVTropes posterboy for both "Wakeup Call Boss" and "That One Boss" many years ago. I was one of the generation who got to experience it firsthand.
The Eye of Valmar from Grandia 2 is a standout to me.
Grandia 2 was one of the early RPGs to show you enemies on the world map and let you avoid them. In games like that it was commonplace to skip many of the "trash" battles and stay at a level that was just high enough to clear bosses with some challenge, but without fighting everything or grinding. This was great! ...Until you met the eye.
So picture a huge boss that uses wide AOE status effects and hits fairly hard by itself but has a shitton of HP. And its fast, getting 1.5 to 2 turns to your one if you're underleveled. It can put your party members to sleep with a hugely damaging special move, and once slept (assuming they survive the damage) they lose 3-4 turns unless you had happened to stock up on heretofore useless Smelling Salt items. Next the boss came with 3 minions. Little flying eyeball dudes, whose attacks were individually weak but fast, so they were constantly smacking your party members around for chip damage and forcing them down in the turn order because attacks reduce initiative.
All that was bad enough, but if all three minions were alive they could execute a team attack called Delta, which would VERY easily one hit kill a party member from full HP. And if someone died? Well revive items were rare and cost 5000G IIRC, and since you werent grinding you never had the money to buy more than a couple and you never needed them anyway so you probly don't have more than a handful.
And did I mention this boss had a nice, pretty save point right before its fight room in a dungeon that you couldn't leave once you entered? Yeah, this son of a bitch was a point of no return boss, so if you think you're gonna just go out and grind some G to buy the items you need then think again. If my memory serves me the Eye of Valmar was literally the TVTropes posterboy for both "Wakeup Call Boss" and "That One Boss" many years ago. I was one of the generation who got to experience it firsthand.