Either I'm Worse Than I Thought, or Sans is not the Hardest Boss

[Pizzarugi]

I haven't played the genocide route, but I have watched videos of the Sans fight. How he chooses to fight you shows he possesses almost god-like power (game abuse, shmame abuse), but defeating him is merely a matter of muscle memory.

You wanna know who the hardest boss is? Asgore. With stick and bandage (starting items). And not being allowed to heal. On a pacifist run. I knew what I was getting myself into by implementing such a severe handicap, but this dude is absolutely brutal. I've been fighting him for close to two hours, smashing my fragile skull against him time and again, and the closest I've ever gotten was beating him to half of his life.

You may be wondering: "If beating Sans is based on muscle memory, wouldn't it be even easier fighting Asgore? Even with that handicap?" Yeah, you would think so! But after 10-20 deaths, I've been paying close attention to his attacks. While the pattern stays the same, the positioning of his attacks do not. The fire sine waves he throws, for example, are always an inch or two away from the previous times he used that attack. It's enough to throw me off, and when you lose 6-8 HP per hit, you can't afford to get hit at all.

I'm not writing this out of defeat. I'm determined to beat him (to an inch of his life) with a flimsy stick and nonexistent armor, and Toriel's pie always tantalizingly sitting in my inventory. This battle has left me with mixed feeling right now. On one hand, every death just makes me more driven to beating him with next to nothing. On the other, I get the growing feeling that I truly am the god of my little world. For every time Asgore cuts me down, I'm already back, ready to keep fighting. Asgore is in a nightmare that he cannot wake from.

Dear god, I think I'm starting to understand Flowey. x.x

[Michelozzo]

The Bad Time is the hardest boss, assuming no self imposed handicap. Simply because he's playing a different game than you are, and you're expected to adapt -hard-.

But yeah bandage + stick runs sound pretty bad for that one fight alone. Imagine Bandage + Stick Genocide doe o.o

We all understand Flowey in the end I think, even if we want to toss him in a Blender sometimes.

[Freaky Mutant Man]

I think you should reserve your judgement for when you actually fight Sans. Watching the fight is a very different thing from actually attempting it; I spent 5+ hours of playtime on him alone.

[Raeven]

lol this is so wrong it's funny.

[Devccoon]

This doesn't really make sense if you're comparing standard Sans to totally restricted Asgore. What if you fight Sans without healing items? Sure armor and weapon don't change anything, but there's almost no room for error if you screw up if you can't heal against Sans. It wouldn't be -that- much harder, since you have to be pretty close to perfect by the end of his fight, but I still think it would be hard enough to be worse than minimum % Asgore.

[R3sistance]

Asgore's attacks get pretty easy to predict pretty quickly. There might be a bit more randomness to them than San's attacks but San's attacks are pure ruthless, you need both perfect pattern memorization and almost superhuman fast reaction times to deal with Sans. I've heard it often takes people in the best gear between 4~8 hours to learn how to beat San, personally I still haven't got there myself and that was after about 25 attempts over about 2 hours.

Beating Asgore is not unreasonable in as little as 2~3 attempts, all you are doing with default stuff is making the battle take longer, since the fast majority of Asgore's attacks give you much more breathing space compared to some of San's. Also San's attacks near constantly at the end, even attacking you on the attack/act/item/mercy buttons.

[dat_potatoe]

Not even close. I can beat Asgore with very little effort, but Sans will take me hours and hours to kill. I'm actually a bit surprised so many people have trouble with Asgore.

[Pizzarugi]

Escrito originalmente por dat_potatoe:

Not even close. I can beat Asgore with very little effort, but Sans will take me hours and hours to kill. I'm actually a bit surprised so many people have trouble with Asgore.

I want it known, first off, that Asgore was only a real challenge when you're brand new to the fight. As in, you're fighting him for the first time ever. When I fought him for the first time, I only died 4 times before finally taking him down. The second time around, I knew his attack patterns and it allowed me to beat him without dying once. It was effortless.

Why is he so hard for me now? Simple: I've severely handicapped myself. No healing, no using Toriel's pie. No weapon or armor besides what you started the game with. No EXP or LV, so you only have 20 HP.

Asgore is not hard once you've become familiar to him, not unless you gimp yourself to the extreme.

[Fulton Boss]

Actually its not memory required to beat Sans, its all about reflexes, you cant say anything if you have not done it by yourself.

[Vulpire]

Asgore if anything is too easy and more vulnerable to the muscle memory arguement, he was easy the first time if only because he telegraphs similarily to past games I've played(Mario and Luigi series), and because I'm a bullet hell fan. Plus the only things thats been truly static in every San's fight is his introduction/final attack when he cuts his own dialogue off. Not to mention videos will make anything look easy since they'll show the winning run out of many failures.

Also handicapping yourself really just makes it a bad comparison since Asgore was designed to be fought with the Worn Dagger/Heart Locket at minimal. So of course you're gonna have a hard time running the self imposed challenge. But this doens't make him a boss harder than San's design wise.

[TheTacticalGamer]

Excluding handicaps and focusing purely on the fights, I'd argue that the top hardest boss battles in the game are:

#3 Genocide Undyne: the easiest part about this fight is avoiding the attack where three spears shoot up at you from the bottom. Past this, it's rough. The shield sections already start out either fast or full of bullets. The spear storm becomes faster and more intense as time goes on. And the spear rings eventually go from disappearing in the center to continuing outward like starbursts, increasing the level of difficulty. This fight continues to ramp up the longer it goes on and starts off punishing, and rightfully so; you did just try to kill a little kid you sicko. It's easily harder than any fight you'll come across in a pacifist run...except one....

#2: Omega-Flowey: a mixture of disturbing and insanity, this fight is extremely chaotic while constantly making the player wonder "what the f*ck!?" But it's also a fight with checkpoints and where you get healed at certain times. The starting sprint to the first heart's avoid-the-spinning-toy-knifes session is the hardest, followed by the next sprint because several new attacks come into play. But this fight gets easier over time. Even its final stretch isn't that hard if you can half-decently avoid some of the attacks and prioritize getting the healing greens. It's still a fight that's hard as all hell, but it's not as bad as fighting Sans. Speaking of...

#1: Battle Against Sans: many fights in this game are about muscle memory and pattern recognition, but Sans brings that to the extreme, especially at the end if you refuse his sparing (not that it helps). The gradual poison effect does remind me of the counter-style HP reader from Earthbound, where if you can heal fast enough you can keep yourself from going down, which helps induce an added layer of subtle panic into the player. It's a fight that, unless you are really lucky and have amazing reactions, you're going to be replaying several times because of how crazy and insane it is. Plus, Sans pulls a ♥♥♥♥ move and begins his attack in the middle of his dialog after he's killed you a few times, catching you off guard and either quick-killing you or forcing your first action to be heal. It's nuts! And the worst part about it is that there is a straight ~10 minutes of this madness that you have to completely repeat if you die. Now that's brutal.

The rest of the fights are nowhere near as tough as these. Even the fight against Asgore isn't as bad as facing Undyne on a genocide run. And, let's be honest, the fight against Asriel isn't a challenge because you literally refuse to die. Pacifist Undyne, Mettaton, Papyrus, and even Muffet are all pretty equal in challenge and difficulty to me, depending on how good or bad you are at each of their styles, of which I'm admittedly pretty bad. But they're also enjoyable and fun and can even give you a good laugh (jumping over the mega-bone with Papyrus or frustrating Undyne because I keep running away). There are all great fights that I love, though Muffet can basically be avoided by eating a Spider Donut or drinking Spider Cider in front of her (I believe). The only reason I don't like Toriel's fight is because it makes me sad at the end (plus the challenge is minimal since she stops trying to hit you once your HP hits a certain point).

Regardless, I think Undertale is the one game where I enjoy fighting enemies more than any other; at least during pacifist runs. I mean, we're not just mindlessly mashing the attack button waiting in annoyance for the fight to be over like in other games out there....

[Brine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL5STXqyBK4
Zero damage Omega Flowey is hardest IMO due to RNG.
Read the description of the video :)

[Vogel100]

Escrito originalmente por TheTacticalGamer:

Excluding handicaps and focusing purely on the fights, I'd argue that the top hardest boss battles in the game are:

#3: Genocide Undyne
#2: Omega-Flowey
#1: Battle Against Sans

I disagree with Photoshop Flowey. He's probably the hardest boss to do a no hit for, but his damage is very low, and you get healed often.

[Kptn Howdy]

Escrito originalmente por Vogel100:

Escrito originalmente por TheTacticalGamer:

Excluding handicaps and focusing purely on the fights, I'd argue that the top hardest boss battles in the game are:

#3: Genocide Undyne
#2: Omega-Flowey
#1: Battle Against Sans

I disagree with Photoshop Flowey. He's probably the hardest boss to do a no hit for, but his damage is very low, and you get healed often.

Don't forget that you can get hit TONS of times before actually dying.

[Brine]

Sans is easy to do a zero damage run. He negates your invincibility frames though.
Undyne is a mix of memory and paying attention with quick reflexes. Still feasable to do Zero damage runs.
Omega Flowey was Toby's sadistic take to see how much RNG he could throw in a single fight without making the fight imposible, which is why you seem to cling to 1-2hp forever until help arrives.. he obviously retuned the fight to give you a survival buffer.

~Zero Damage~ Omega (Photoshop) Flowey is still the hardest.

Outside of zero damage...Sans is more of a faster paced muscle memry which tries to overwhelm you with a mix up of attacks. The sheer variety of attacks to memorize is what makes him hard.
Undyne is just brutal and hits hard from every side. Undyne I'd like to say felt harder than Sans, but Sans had his fun with me. Loveable lil maniacle scamp!

[naii.neocities.org]

Escrito originalmente por T Fur 2 Pizzarugi:

I haven't played the genocide route, but I have watched videos of the Sans fight. How he chooses to fight you shows he possesses almost god-like power (game abuse, shmame abuse), but defeating him is merely a matter of muscle memory.

You wanna know who the hardest boss is? Asgore. With stick and bandage (starting items). And not being allowed to heal. On a pacifist run. I knew what I was getting myself into by implementing such a severe handicap, but this dude is absolutely brutal. I've been fighting him for close to two hours, smashing my fragile skull against him time and again, and the closest I've ever gotten was beating him to half of his life.

You may be wondering: "If beating Sans is based on muscle memory, wouldn't it be even easier fighting Asgore? Even with that handicap?" Yeah, you would think so! But after 10-20 deaths, I've been paying close attention to his attacks. While the pattern stays the same, the positioning of his attacks do not. The fire sine waves he throws, for example, are always an inch or two away from the previous times he used that attack. It's enough to throw me off, and when you lose 6-8 HP per hit, you can't afford to get hit at all.

I'm not writing this out of defeat. I'm determined to beat him (to an inch of his life) with a flimsy stick and nonexistent armor, and Toriel's pie always tantalizingly sitting in my inventory. This battle has left me with mixed feeling right now. On one hand, every death just makes me more driven to beating him with next to nothing. On the other, I get the growing feeling that I truly am the god of my little world. For every time Asgore cuts me down, I'm already back, ready to keep fighting. Asgore is in a nightmare that he cannot wake from.

Dear god, I think I'm starting to understand Flowey. x.x

"ASGORE IS THE HARDEST BOSS"
*I only died once to him
"SANS IS EASY"
*I've died 50 times and am still fighting him.