Favorite and Least favorite Boss Fight? (Spoilers)

[Flariz]

Pretty straightforward topic this time, just speak your mind!
Since all bosses are allowed, beware of spoilers.

Most Favorite:
Mine has to be Miru SP
Ever since the very first time I fought her, I always loved the concept of Miru’s fight- the whole idea of having to go melee, up close and personal with someone thats being manipulated by the big bad (Who just knocked out your one companion), along with the music and the background... It just sold me.

And then Miru SP improves upon this whole fight/concept in such an great way.
Everything, from the fact you also fight Alius and Noahball, and then the cherry on the top, Ribbon’s heroic second wind when Erina is in trouble...♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I actually got goosebumps when I first saw that. Amazing. Its no wonder this is technically the very last boss fight they ever made for this game- all the experience accumulated by making all previous bosses really shows.
While I (strongly) recommend to leave Irisu SP for last due to difficulty, I think Miru SP is a nice option as well to end the game with!

Literally a 9.9/10 fight-
Not a perfect 10/10 because I think its a bit silly that theres no way to dodge Miru’s Cut-In attack after Ribbon rescues Erina. I understand the intent, it truly fits with Miru; but at the same time undodgeable attacks are something I have a very big trouble giving a free pass. And on Extreme+, you WILL have to deal with this.


Forgotten Maiden is probably the runner up.
I love this fight too, especially without using the checkpoints.


Least Favorite:
I dont really hate it, but...
I am not much of a fan of the Halloween Cats fight.

The main issue I have is that it gets extremely dense and chaotic when both cats are attacking at the same time with different attacks. I dont mean it merely gets hard, I mean its literally impossible to dodge so much stuff without spamming Amulets.
Also, for the later half of the fight, they start to use less dense and more predictable attacks, meaning the first half of the fight is basically random crap happening on a screen, while the second half is A LOT easier and reasonable...
Its okay, because they dont hit very hard, so you can just tank everything. Theres hardly any threat because they hit for so low, its just pointlessly long.

It feels to me like they had a bunch of leftover attacks and decided to just grab them all, put them on this one fight and then let them all go off with no real consideration of whenever it would actually be, you know, dodgeable!

Thats not good...I honestly dont think this fight is very well designed.
If Miru SP is a 9.9/10, this fight is probably like... 4.5/10
It can still be silly fun, though, but I am also not exactly keen on doing it whenever I am doing a new playthrough- typically I do it after Order DLC is cleared.

[Miyuki Takara]

My favorite is regular Miru's boss fight. At first I thought the fight was absolutely hard, and I hated it. Over time I realized actually how fun the fight is in general. It gives the player something new, like you said, with only melee attacks. Poor Ribbon. The battle takes you by surprise with the background, and the music, M.R., is one of the best tracks in the game, though my favorite track is The Truth Never Spoken. The first time I played this boss fight, let's just say I panicked.

Least Favorite is Red Kotri's boss fight. Oh boy, take my health why don'tcha?! Of the three times you fight this dancing kitsune, not that I hate Kotri or dislike her, this one is the hardest. The fight has many annoying attacks, most of which have a burn effect and take a HUGE chunk of health if you fail to dodge, and every time I do a Boss Rush, I dread this fight in general. Would be rendered combat ineffective by a dancing rainbow kitsune again. lol

[Desticler]

I fully agree with you on favorite bosses. All 3 of them - SP Miru is Miru's whole potential unleashed, SP Irisu is Irisu but good, Forgotten Maiden is Forgotten Maiden. Although I'd put Forgotten Maiden above SP Irisu.
I'm actually a fan of halloween cats, except for the last phase when Cicini comes in.

My least favorite is Normal Irisu. First time I fought her, I quit for months. I dislike her in so many ways. First of all, this is one of the longest bosses in the game without checkpoints, she's only topped by BNA bosses. Second of all, the fight feels... artificial. First there's a ton of debuffs you'll have to counter, then she blows up 90% of the screen, then she goes behind the arena and watches you struggle while you can't hit her... Attacks that have to be dodged in a very specific way... The fact she only switches phases when she's scripted to do it... The fact she just fully heals when almost dead... This feels like fighting against a hacker or something. It doesn't feel fair. And finally, if you don't own any DLCs... this is the final boss. The final boss. The. Final. Boss. Final bosses usually leave the most impact on final impression, and she with her length and being artifical made a godawful final impression. Thank god I already bought Order DLC by the time I beat her (just to wear halloween costume) so I got to fight the far superior final boss that is Forgotten Maiden. Irisu is the worst of all 3 final bosses not only in design, but for her role in story too - Noah was the main antagonist who fought you to achieve her evil goal, Forgotten Maiden is Noah's past self who knows she's about to die and wants to fight with someone powerful one last time, and Irisu... She's just obsessed over Erina. That's it.
Why do I consider SP Irisu to be one of my favorite bosses then? She's also artificial, she's also long, so why? Well, first of all, this is not the final boss. This is an extra. You don't have to do this in order to be able to say you beat Rabi-Ribi. Second of all, you can fight her after you get the Order DLC items - Wind Blessing is a godsend when dodging attacks, Fairy Flute heals you when you're almost dead, Bunny Memories need no explanation. All that makes the harder attacks much more bearable. Third of all, she has adjustable difficulty, with left/right side, which I think makes her better. I want to think of more arguments but at the end of the day I just enjoy SP Irisu so much more than normal Irisu. SP Miru is still the best though.

[コトラ]

I actually love the base Irisu fight, for reasons I'm sure Flariz can agree with (it feels very climatic despite the story reasons for the fight being extremely anticlimatic and weird; what happens to the UPRPRC after this fight? They're still running around!), but I do agree that SP Irisu is a lot more fun. I wouldn't say either of these is my favorite, though they probably come close.

My least favorite boss has to be Seana 2. There's just nothing fun about this fight. You have the Fatigue buff which makes dodging the attacks (and Seana herself) an absolute pain, and it just drags on for far too long, especially in future loops. I don't like the Halloween Cats fight either, sometimes I won't even fight them.

[Serene Trinity]

I haven't done all the new bosses from the BNA dlc yet, but as of right now I'd say my favorite boss fight is:

Erina the Forgotten Maiden
She is a just compilation of everything I love about this game. From using attack patterns from all the other bosses in the game and revamping them in a way that feels really refreshing and exciting (Seriously, phase two was literally just her launching every other bosses special attacks at you and sometimes using multiple at the same time. I didn't even care that I was getting hit with the no badges debuff cause I was just enamored with that phase) to even the new attacks which are just as high energy and fun to avoid (I'll never forget the "Mega Laser" from phase three, I wasn't ready for that at all lmao). IDK how to describe it. Erina just left a strong impression on me when I first fought her and I always look forward to when I have to fight her on new playthroughs.

Now my least favorite is probably:

Ashuri SP
Honestly I'm not particularly fond of any of the base game SP bosses so any of them could apply here, but Ashuri SP just takes the cake here. I mentioned the no badges debuff earlier and how I didn't care about it in Erina phase two, but I absolutely despise it here. She hits like a damn truck, I can't take advantage Survival Instinct, and I can't use bunny clover either because healing in SP fights is a death wish (not that I'd use the bunny clover anyway) so I have no choice but to do a high DPS, no hit run of this boss. While I'm fine with that, cause I do the same thing for Cocoa SP and Ribbon SP, she makes it as hard as possible to even do this. For one, she escapes the Erina badge combo lock you put her in 8/10 times and even when you succeed in draining down her health, the Defense Boost+ buff makes it impossible to defeat her b4 her special attack is over (ugh). At that point, I have to consistently avoid her attacks, which isn't fun, until her special attack is done while worrying about the fact that I'll be dead in 2-3 hits.

I still remember when I first fought Irisu back in 2016. I absolutely hated her with a passion. I was keeping count of the amount of times I died fighting that boss, from getting blindsided by the debuffs in the beginning, to the screen nuke, to the fact that she never on screen/on the floor so I can properly attack her, to that god awful instant death debuff, followed by that bullet spam attack in phase three that I had absolutely no idea how to avoid. I legitimately loss count of the amount of deaths I had once I reached the 30 range. I hated this fight, but it taught me more about how to actually play this game than any other boss in the game. I started to get better at consistently dodging Irisu's attacks and it got to the point where I completely memorized all her attacks and how to avoid them. Every round I kept improving and the catharsis I felt when I finally beat her was just amazing. Over the course of a couple of days, she went from being my least favorite boss to my favorite boss to fight in the entire game (pre-dlc). Now If only her character and story significance were as good as her boss fight.

[Graeystone]

Favorite Boss - Hard to say. 98% of the boss fights are fun to do(SP variations not withstanding).
My two Least Favorite fights which are not about the actual boss but rather play style decisions which makes these bosses two to five hit wonders if not careful which brings me to
Least favorite fights-
illusion Erina Part 2(2nd Trip through the Stele) - On a low level item/zero badge and/or item run, getting through those damn Otakus is not fun with zero defense and just a couple of healing items plus Ribbon's default weapon. Getting the boss take time and too many hits can't be taken before hand.
Pandora - Stay on the ground already during a low/zero item run!

[TheNinthAlly]

My favourite boss is the second phase of Lilith when you are flying. It was so random and hilarious. Other than that, the Halloween cat fight is awesome.

Least favourite...

It’s definitely between Irisu and SP Ashuri.

I didn’t find any of the bosses overly terrible, although I did play on Novice.

[Flariz]

I actually love Base Irisu as well, my first impression of her was a great one, and when I finally beat her (Took 3 hours of attempts or so since I was on Hard No Consumables/No Buffs) I was like WOW! What a great fight to end the game with!
Of course, nowadays it pales in comparison to all the advanced content difficulty wise, but at the time it was really hard for me.
I do believe the first time you fight Irisu is one of these very special moments. Its certainly one of my favorite moments I had with this game even up till this day.

Originally posted by Desticler:

The fact she only switches phases when she's scripted to do it..

The fun part about this is that, apparently, according to Artbook DLC notes, you were supposed to see every single attack before you could even switch to the next phase. That would have been interesting to say the least. I wonder how that would work out though- Offensive builds would be pretty useless if it worked like that since you cant speedkill the fight anyway; somewhat like Miru SP works.


No, if anything, her SP version is the one I have issues with, and in fact "Artificial" difficulty as Desticler calls it- I believe it applies more to this version, actually. There are some things I seriously dont agree with going on in this fight.

Irisu SP is probably the prime example of how making things hard for the sake of being hard without thought is not always good. There is Hard, as in difficult but fair, and then there is the BS kind of hard, and SP Irisu has a fair portion of the later kind- probably the boss with the most amount of BS in the whole game to be honest.

I suspect this is the result of her being the first BNA Boss they made. They cleary wanted the fight to be extremely hard, and it is, they just didnt go about it in the best ways...
In contrast with Miru SP, who is also pretty hard, but feels A LOT more fair.

Its still a pretty good boss fight overall, but thats despite -not because- of these aspects.
The moment I finally beat her after 13 hours of attempts was probably the most amazing feeling I had upon beating a boss. Ever. It felt so freaking GOOD... I never even got to the Endurance phase at that point, I somehow managed to survive it all first try with 1HP wtf. My heartbeat was throught the roof lmao.

As for Irisu’s role/reason for the fight being less than impressive, I honestly dont find it that bad.
The way I see it, they already dealt with the main antagonist/threat (Noah).
Not every final boss has to be for the sake of saving the world or some other massive scale threat many other games do. Sometimes, something thats on a more personal and simple level such as Irisu’s obsession with Erina works as a closure, as well.

I like all 3 Final Bosses, each of them bring something to the table.

On a meta level Irisu SP is the Final Final Final Final Boss fight of the game for me though. The ultimate challenge. No matter what anyone else says, fighting her HAS to be the very last thing you do. Plus, she is the original Final Boss anyway.
Its just right-even more so considering how the fight ends.

[✌]

Favorite: Noah.
Noah is a big landmark, most of boss fight is easy before she(except for Cocoa too early), and i have to spent many time on every boss start with Noah. What's more, the story rhythm changes, four chapters are used to make the cushion and then Noah explain why she does that in chapter 5. But not all things are clear, we must to speculate what happened in the past by some clues (or finish chapter 10 for additional story for Erina the forgotten maiden. It's a nice but sad story, and affects me in the fight with Noah. Impressed music, different but familiar attacks. I have to learn useful skills to defeat she and following all bosses. The longest time is used to defeat Irisu, and the second-longest time is used to defeat Noah. Noah gives me the feeling that i'm fighting with the mixture of bosses I meet before, so I can enjoy the whole travel in Rabi-Ribi world in the same time.


least favorite:
Some fights have some avoidable attack(or maybe I can't find a useful skill to dodge).

SP Cocoa 2019: two bombs are used with random type, I dodge them depend on luck so I have to retry many times. For defeating she , I have to lower her HP before she attacks me(just one hit would kill me). What I can only do for finishing her is to better dodge her final cut-in attack, because I don't know how to dodge other attack without parrot bomb or bunny amulet.

Keke bunny in 0%item: One of attacks must require sliding powder, and one must require air dash, so finish this fight is hard and depend on luck.

I hope interesting story is provided for each new fight, like SP saya and Lilli&Pixie. I prefer meaningful fight to a fight only more difficult.

[Flariz]

Originally posted by Johnny0798:

My least favorite boss has to be Seana 2. There's just nothing fun about this fight. You have the Fatigue buff which makes dodging the attacks (and Seana herself) and absolute pain, and it just drags on for far too long, especially in future loops. I don't like the Halloween Cats fight either, sometimes I won't even fight them.

I dont mind Seana 2 all that much, the fact you can speed up the fight with Toxic Strike + Red Boost helps. Its not just dodging, there is a Boost management element to the fight which I like. It helps that it is a fairly difficult fight for mid-game... Actually this is probably Aruraune/Lilith/Keke tier. Pretty hard fight considering its just mid-game.

But there is something that irritates me about Seana 2 and that is WHY is there no checkpoint right before her fight?
Its quite annoying to have to walk from Town save point alllll the way back to Seana 2 everytime you restart... I dunno, maybe I am spoiled from all the other super fast checkpoints that are literally 1 second away from the boss fight, but really, could have added a single occasion auto save spot there...

[Graeystone]

Originally posted by Flariz:

Originally posted by Johnny0798:

My least favorite boss has to be Seana 2. There's just nothing fun about this fight. You have the Fatigue buff which makes dodging the attacks (and Seana herself) and absolute pain, and it just drags on for far too long, especially in future loops. I don't like the Halloween Cats fight either, sometimes I won't even fight them.

I dont mind Seana 2 all that much, the fact you can speed up the fight with Toxic Strike + Red Boost helps. Its not just dodging, there is a Boost management element to the fight which I like. It helps that it is a fairly difficult fight for mid-game... Actually this is probably Aruraune/Lilith/Keke tier. Pretty hard fight considering its just mid-game.

But there is something that irritates me about Seana 2 and that is WHY is there no checkpoint right before her fight?
Its quite annoying to have to walk from Town save point alllll the way back to Seana 2 everytime you restart... I dunno, maybe I am spoiled from all the other super fast checkpoints that are literally 1 second away from the boss fight, but really, could have added a single occasion auto save spot there...

That and Seana 2 takes way too long depending on difficulty and item/level ratio .Just dodging while her HP bar goes down can take a LLOONNGG time. At first I thought that attacking would cause something bad to happen during the fight(she goes ballistic) or that some minor plot point would be affected. I found out neither happens its fine to hammer, er, shot away to get it done and over with. . .of course warping to the Park makes its skippable.
Also there is the matter of forgetting about the fight in the first place and being 'ambushed' for it.

[Flariz]

Originally posted by Graeystone:

That and Seana 2 takes way too long depending on difficulty and item/level ratio .Just dodging while her HP bar goes down can take a LLOONNGG time. At first I thought that attacking would cause something bad to happen during the fight(she goes ballistic) or that some minor plot point would be affected. I found out neither happens its fine to hammer, er, shot away to get it done and over with. .

Yeah its a pretty long fight...
On my BEX-AFD playthrough it took 4 and half minutes, with a good portion of the items + Noah already defeated. On base BEX you are probably looking at near 4 minutes.
That said, I didnt had Toxic Strike. I bet if you had that and did the fight at a reasonable time, it would take 3 and half minutes instead. Thats still quite long but, it helps?

Fun fact: Seana's entire pattern is about 2 minutes 20 seconds long.

Originally posted by Graeystone:

Also there is the matter of forgetting about the fight in the first place and being 'ambushed' for it.

Hmm. I never thought about this.
But honestly, I always dealt with Seana 2 right after dealing with Seana 1. Also, even IF I didnt for some reason, there is absolutely zero reason to go to that part of the map after the first time.
You can just use Warp Stones to teleport to whatever place you want... I just fail to see why someone would ever go to the left side of the town again; only thing of interest that is on that way is Green Kotri (Lets be honest, achievement aside, you already defeated her LONG before Seana even entered the picture), for everything else you can just warp to the Park instead...
I dont really think this "ambush" can happen, unless you actively refuse to use the Warp Stones for some reason.

Right side of town I can understand. Arguably faster to reach Chocolate and certain items just travelling normally instead of using Ravine's Warp Stone (which is on a somewhat awkward place)


I cant ever seem to decide whenever I actually like or dislike Irisu SP. Everytime I think I have made up my mind, I discover something new which makes me question it even further.

It seems like there are attacks which are specifically designed with certain Badges on mind. There is one in which you more or less NEED the Ribbon Badge (in order to keep pushing Irisu backwards), and there are multiple attacks in which the Pure Love Badge is more or less mandatory.

If you dare not equip these, then HA! Some attacks just got x10 times harder....
I dont know man. I dont think this is right.
Sure, they dont become literal impossible, and you can always use amulets, but the fact these attacks are like night and day if you use said badges vs not using them is, quite frankly, dumb.

Sometimes I feel I hate Irisu SP with every fiber of my being.
Most favorite, Least favorite? I dont know.
I actually enjoy the fight at times but I also cant help but rant about it lol.
But one thing is for sure: Most Frustrating, rage-inducing fight in the game. No contest.
Nothing short of Ashuri on BEX-Bunny Hell comes close- and thats on an unbalanced mode!
Irisu SP is just as frustrating, except shes legit! People can fight her on a regular playthrough... Thats an scary thought.

[Graeystone]

Originally posted by Flariz:

Sometimes I feel I hate Irisu SP with every fiber of my being.
Most favorite, Least favorite? I dont know.
I actually enjoy the fight at times but I also cant help but rant about it lol.
But one thing is for sure: Most Frustrating, rage-inducing fight in the game. No contest.
Nothing short of Ashuri on BEX-Bunny Hell comes close- and thats on an unbalanced mode!
Irisu SP is just as frustrating, except shes legit! People can fight her on a regular playthrough... Thats an scary thought.

I forgot about Ashuri SP. When I first started to do SP Bosses, I was doing well against the first two(Ribbon, Cocoa). The fights were tough but doable and I was feeling pretty good about it. . .then I decided to fight Ashuri SP. . .and I left like an insect slamming in to the windshield of vehicle going 100 m/kph.

And my hatred for the 2nd trip through the Stele got reinforced the other day. I was doing a low item run(trying to wait to buy the Item Detector so I can experience an Item Hunt). Anyway I ended up with only half the regular HP by the time I got to the boss. Then during the fight something happened. Erina and Illusion Erian were both down to 1 HP and the two were close together. . .AND AT THAT POINT I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE BUNNY AMULET WHICH WOULD HAVE WON THE FIGHT! Instead of doing that, I tried to attack physically(like I said they were close) but she was too fast for Erina(haven't entered the shop yet so no walking speed boost for Erina) and got a game over. So not only did I miss out a victory, I also missed out on a possible hard to get Steam Achivement Badge.(Beat Boss with only 1hp remaining).

[Flariz]

I just use a Consumable right before the boss fight starts for these occasions if I REALLY need more HP

On a regular playthrough I dont really care because Alius dies very fast...
Yes, Alius is better than Erina at close combat. You need to stunlock her in a somewhat specific way, and even then I would recommend to not get overly greedy with a super-long combo; retreat after sometime because she can actually break out of the stunlock quite easily if she wants.

Honestly its a bit of an inconsistent fight. Good thing Alius dies extremely quickly, and if you happen to die you can just quickload and try again very fast.

Beat Boss with only 1 HP will happen naturally, trust me. Dont even need to aim for that... I probably got that achivement more than 50 times by now (Survival Badge is amazing).
Its come to a point where I am more surprised when I finish a boss fight with MORE than 1 HP than when that isnt the case.

[Graeystone]

Like I said I didn't enter the shop. That makes Alius really fast when compared to Erina without speed boost. When I say they were close it wasn't because I was trying to Hammer her to death. Like I said, my mistake was trying to smack her with the hammer out of instinct and reflex instead of backing off for a ranged attack or using Bunny Badge.

[Serene Trinity]

Alright, I take it back. I just fought all the BNA bosses and Miru SP just overtook Forgotten Maiden as my favorite boss in the game.

Flariz has pretty much noted every reason I love this boss already, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ if I knew this fight would be this much fun I would've fought her way earlier.

I blame Irisu SP for killing my motivation to fight these bosses.