The 3 Best Final Boss Tropes OF ALL TIME

i never thought id hear about deeeer simulator in 2024. the electric sheep police's intro has literally lived so fucking rent free in my head its not even funny

There are many such cases… where games do rad bosses. An honorable mention has to be Yozora from Kingdom hearts. It’s interesting bc the game takes into account how much you the player has grown in the series. If you’ve played through the game there’s a handful of bosses comparable to your character like Roxas in 2 or any boss in Chain of memories. But no boss goes as far as to literally copy you like Kirby as Yozara does. He can use your entire kit, the kit for Noctis from Final Fantasy 13/15 and your own extra life by stealing your only second chance in game called a kupo coin if you actually do “defeat”him with one. It’s the most, this is what it feels like to fight yourself fight I’ve ever seen.

You give me a video about Final Bosses, I will arrive with my squishy pink suction ball. Kirby has some very cool final bosses especially since 2011. Multiple cool phases, usually a last phase where you absolutely annihilate the boss, themes with motifs in droves, and strangely for Kirby of all things, the only time there was a "friends we made along the way" thing going on was with Star Allies' final "annihilate the boss section".

[Spoilers for Dark Souls and Elden Ring]
My friends there are many such cases but this series EXCELS at these tropes.
Dark Souls 3 final boss: is the player from DS1 and song contains musical motif from DS1 final boss
Elden Ring final boss: the music is not only an extended version of the title screen music, it is the very first song that we ever heard during the reveal trailer of elden ring.. being hyped for the game since trailer 1 and then hearing THAT song minutes before the game is about to end is SO GOOODDD
also the first trope is there a little bit in Dark Souls 1 final boss: if you complete a certain characters lengthy side quest and save their life you can summon them to defeat the final boss together with you as an NPC

My favorite game final boss where every character yout meet helps you is A Hat in Time. So many characters, mostly ones that you even FOUGHT against, but they still all come together because they care about the main character and they care about saving their world.

That was incredible. I love the energy, I love the jokes, I love the positivity. There are many such cases.

One of the best series that does "main theme as the final boss theme" is Kirby. Many of the series final boss tracks incorporate the series main theme Green Greens in there somewhere. And in the case of both Planet Robobot and Forgotten Land, they incorporate melodies that have been used throughout the entire game as part of the final boss themes of both.

A Hat in Time does both 1 & 2 perfectly. Also you play as Mustache Girl for one scene so you are technically facing you, all three rules down.

Bravely Default 1 voice acting was so good... However for Bravely Default 2 lol.

CrossCode has a fight where you fight you. It's not the final boss, hell it's not even technically a boss and a PvP duel instead, but it does mark the opening of the game's final act, where mysteries are solved and heros are born.

With the twist being that the copy isn't the boss, it's you. You're a digitalized and amnesic version of that character, but who diverged enough to become your own person.

Also the soundtrack from that fight is reused for the bossfight at the end of the DLC post-game cyborg goat mafia questline, against the Goatfather ( rematch )

On the topic of Main Themes in final boss themes, Destiny actually does this really well. Because of the dynamic music, the main theme tends to kick in during the parts of the fight where you're actually doing damage back to the boss

That whole Deeeer Simulator section made me lose my mind wtf is happening

I unfortunately don't want to watch this because of the Persona 5 spoilers. Having said that I want to leave a comment because I love the final boss fight in Octopath traveler 2. I will be spoiling the mechanics of the fight, but absolutely nothing story-wise. If you have any interest in the game though, I'd say play it first, even if I'm not brining up any story spoilers.












The thing that I love about the final boss of Octopath 2 is that you use all 8 of your party members during the fight. Your first group of 4 during the first phase, and your second also during the first phase. Halfway through the first phase your party is captured and the others have to come and save them. After you finish that you reach the 2nd phase where your initial party is freed. Now that everyone is here for the battle you fight the boss with all 8 party members where you switch between the two parties at will.

It's a phenomenal take on the tropes of everyone being there for the fight and unlikely allies aligning themselves for the same goal.

So many great choices, it's true that there are many such cases but Bravely Default will always be a favorite of mine. The complete theme being a combination of each character theme is another fun trope, I like that it and Octopath does it.

Octopath Traveler 2's final battle is fantastic. You fight at first like a conventional boss fight, but halfway through the first form it traps your party of 4 in uh... the Shadow Realm, I guess. So the other half of the roster steps in and continues the fight. Once the first form is beaten, the boss assumes its "serious" stance, and the party you started the fight with is released. Those Who Deny the Dawn (a more energetic version of the final boss theme) kicks in and you realize you're controlling all 8 travelers at once for this final showdown.
Live A Live 2022 does something similar too, but the really cool thing is that they added an extra step to the final battle that wasn't in the 1994 original. The power of hate itself manifests into the shape of the previous Lord of Dark, using Odio/Oersted as its core, which gradually gets chipped away throughout the fight. It proves to be too powerful a foe for the party of 4 you brought in, but the other 3 heroes join in. But not even that is enough, as they too get incapacitated. What happens then is peak JRPG storytelling. Oersted, with the hold of hate wanned just enough for him to break free, delivers the final blow himself and becomes the hero he and we always knew he was deep down. It's an act that kills him, but it is done to save the lives of 7 other heroes who needed it most.

I LOVE all the earthbound/mother final bosses. In none of them do you truly attack the enemy and yet they all feel so climactic and epic, or even sad, they're so good

There are many such cases

This might be genuinely the best video of all time

a banger captain astronaut video. there are many such cases.

There are many such cases.

Hi, Captain Astronaut. You could teach a Sociology or Political Science Class. Especially, on the cultural significance of Egypt in our modern society.

EARTHBOUND MENTIONED

sucks I had to skip a whole segment (my Bravely cartridge is fucked up so I need to get a new copy then get back to where I was at) but yeah all these tropes are great. Going off the SA2 part of the main theme trope, see also most other 3D Sonic games where you get either the full vocal version of the title theme (both Adventure games), a completely new rock song that perfectly encapsulates the villain's motive &/or their dichotomy with Sonic (Heroes & Black Knight), or just go full ass orchestral version (Colors & 06). I'm fine putting 06 in here because the OST is like the one thing everyone can agree is good about that game & His World is no exception

The finish ur games bit sent me, yall know how many times I see the credits of a game, sit there for 10m thinking about how awesome it is, only to see the trophies at 20% have past the tutorial and then 3% have beat the final boss

I got a coworker that is no joke playing 10 games at the same time, he aint gonna finish a single one of those

There are many such cases

One of my favorite endings in a video game was with Gravity Rush 2. You and Raven are at the end of your energy and have accepted defeat. The boss has knocked you across the room and you're on life support and your best friend is thrown through three buildings and they're down for the count. It's that trope of everyone singing the theme and telling you to not give up after the boss is boasting for a minute or two and destroying other parts of the town. It's the first trope, but after all the singing and your character standing up for one more hoorah she does her ultimate attack (something only exclusive to the ending) to deliver a final blow but in the process it kills her too. I think after the credits you get a secret ending of playing as the best friend visiting all pieces of the previous town and collectable, but if you do one specific quest its implied that your best friend lived as its a cut scene of your best friend looking extremely happy to see an old face again.

There are many such case's

There are many such cases of these tropes, but my favorite "the final boss is you" is Dante in the Vergil Route of DMC5. He's a beast.

Unrelated, but am i the only one who loves when the dungeon ost of an area stays the same in battle in order to emphasize the tone of the story at that point AND keep a better pace? Examples are the core in undertale and Life will change/i beleive in persona 5

THANK YOU i just beat sonic adventure 2 this summer and i literally started screaming when Rouge said she could do it in 5 minutes. Girl maybe you can but I CAN NOT. I think i game overed twice before i was able to memorize some of the locations of those stupid emeralds. Actually there are many such cases in which I screamed at the characters in that game. Mostly Sonic. He never wanted to listen to me.
When it comes to final bosses, some of my absolute favorites reside in the kirby franchise. The 4(?!) phases of Star Dream, the Chaos Elfilin reveal, the like final HOUR of those games goes CRAZY.
For me it's really hard to beat kirby... OH Bowser's Inside Story rocked too. I mean. Dark Bowser 👀

If i may add: bug fables final boss theme deserves a place along with the others

There are many such cases! Another great video

Another trope that’s great is when the boss STARTS strong, and then the 2nd phase is it’s weaker base form. Double points if it’s actually harder and not just a scripted fight.

Examples include
Tekken 8

Persona 5 Royal

And supposedly Trails through Daybreak 2

This is a very weird and somewhat unrelated comment and it will be cornier than anything in this video

But trope #1 should happen in whatever One Piece’s final battle ends up being

Monster hunter does such an amazing job with the soundtrack. To this day I still tear up over fighting Lao Shan in MHF2 and hearing the Proof of a Hero ring out as Lao Shan enters the final area. Memories of me and my grade school friends screaming at each other to grab cannon balls, place bombs, who has the dragonator! It's such a beautiful moment I'll never forget.

I see your "you (past) are the final (bonus) boss" and raise you "you (present) are the final boss"
sometimes your character gets so twisted that you've lost control of them, turning into a villain, or maybe they've always been evil all along and only then you're exposed to their true nature as the rest of the cast picks up being the player
sometimes is more just a matter of narrative perspective and you are the final boss to your opponent. that they went in this noble quest to stop you. the music playing is not you fighting them, it's them fighting *you*.

Obviously spoilers but Live A Live loves playing with this. OFF and Undertale maybe.
Sukuna Shinmyoumaru from Touhou 14 is basically david vs goliath and you're her goliath.

Touhou Mother is a weird fangame but it does absolutely wild things. The first game has everyone coming together in an heroic moment... to kill you, not knowing who you are.
The second game does something I've never seen anything do where it just, outright switches perspective in the middle of the fight.

I didn't even know Korra had a season 2... I only watched 5 episodes of season 1 and then dropped it cause it was boring

Bro holy shit if a game had those 2 tropes and TURNED ON MY CAMERA I’d flip the fuck out and forever be a fan. Too bad I’ll never play it 😭

Megaman Zero 3 final boss might be the single best use of trope 3 I had the pleasure of experiencing in a videogame.

It's not a copy, it's not non canon, both of you are the real and fake one at the same time and this is the canonical end of this story in the lab where this all began.

Hey, that wasn't Hawaiian Punch; that was Ocean Spray! This guy's a phony! 😛

"But the actual gameplay is kill kill kill kill kill"

Um, acktchually 🤓, nothing is stopping you from capturing the monsters alive, letting the scientists study them, and then they are released back into the wild canonically. In fact, you get way more items at the end of the hunt if you do it this way, and any kill quest will accept capture as a win condition too (sans the elder dragons which can't be captured), so there's no reason not to capture them instead.

Also something something there are many such cases something something.

I beat Bravely Default, but I'm starting to feel like that game might have actually been the turning point of when I started not finishing games 😭

Kirby Planet Robobot I think has an excellent final boss sequence... first of all the title music is the only one in the series to start so darkly, and it has an immediately identifiable ostinato. It is the only one of the recent Kirby titles (from Return to Dream Land) to not have a main theme apart from the theme of the main antagonist, so the musical through line is particularly strong in this title and leaves a very strong impression

During the first phase of the final boss Star Dream there's usually a heroic Green Greens insert, but this time they use the portion of Green Greens from Revenge of Meta Knight because Kirby is piloting the Halberd this time!

The second phase is a little less noteworthy but the music makes kind of an aesthetic pass at Kirby 64, which was the only other game to date to have an on-rails shooter format for their final boss shooting sequence (which is a trope in just about every game atp)

The third and final phase reprises the title theme with that immediately identifiable ostinato... suddenly that mysteriously dark title theme feels better contextualized but ALSO! There's a hint of Galactic Nova from Kirby Super Star like bubbling under the surface of the track, almost like it's threatening to break through, and the reveal in this part is a callback to Kirby Super Star anyhow

And then Star Dream fires a laser downing the Halberd, so Meta Knight ejects Kirby from the ship and his mech forms this giant drill he uses to drill right through the boss in one last QTE. It's awesome

what i'm getting from this video is that there are many such cases

Sonic Adventure 2 is peak fiction and nobody can tell me otherwise

One game I did not expect Trope 2 to appear in is Elden Ring, with its penultimate boss remixing the Title theme into something truly grand

Imagine trope 2 to the extreme, where the entire second half of a game goes through remixes of all the forst half's songs in reverse order, like a sorta funhouse mirror.

Last trope: Imagine genuinely literally a game that makes you ANOTHER REAL PLAYER'S endboss.

Also there’s the trope of the final blow to the final boss or last moment of gameplay incorporating button mashing like Mario Odyssey, Kirby Forgotten Land, etc. My favorite being Wonderful 101 where you need to button mash with the mission prompt being: “SAVE THE WORLD”