Today I go over the 5 boss fights in the Tales series which gave me the biggest challenge to overcome. Link to my Twitter: / xenosanctum1 Link to my Patreon: / sormon
The first fight against Arietta in Abyss was pretty challenging on harder difficulties. Since its the second boss fight you don't have a lot of abilities yet...and there are 3 enemies. If you don't focus on her pets, they will interrupt your casters. If you DO focus the pets, she pelts you with spells. For Graces, I found the Rockgagong the hardest fight, but not sure if you count optional bosses
I think the big problem with Arietta's first fight is that her physical defense is unusually high. On higher difficulties, it scales to such crazy levels that you can usually only make her lose 1 HP per hit, which is not how spellcaster bosses are supposed to work. So you basically have to choose. Do you either try taking her on first to stop her spells, even if it'll take forever and allow her pets to run rampant? Or do you try to take out her pets first, even if it means she can cast spells all the time? Either way, it doesn't feel elegant.
Agreed with this list. The worst one I encountered was Nebilim on Abyss on Unknown (and yeah it’s kinda cheating as she’s a post game boss). She took me and my cousin a solid 4 hours non stop fight to beat lol. Right at the end we ended up with no life bottles, barely any Tp, I had been running around as Natalia casting revive constantly (to try and keep our life bottles) while my cousin used Guy (having FOF wars with her) to distract her while Jade and Tear hit her with spells that did like 100-300 damage, gradually bringing down her absurd HP. She almost killed us near the end of the battle with a very cheap Time Stop into Fragmented End where she killed 3 of the 4 party members, but we somehow managed to overcome it. This was before I knew how to properly manage level ups with CC’s on Abyss as well. So yeah our damage was pitiful lol. I still have my swap magic to play Abyss in Australia given it never received a prosper PS2 release in Australia unfortunately.
A fun fact about Graces F, you can actually get a victory quotes in normal battles that is actually self-aware of Hubert's awful healing abilities ua-cam.com/video/UZdk05FbJPw/v-deo.html
In tales of Xillia I HATED the solo fight against Ivar with Jude. No matter what food I ate before the battle, no matter what I powered or equipped Jude with, it didn’t seem to work
The Ivar fight is basically you needing to learn to use Snap Pivot correctly. Ivar has slow reactions after his attacks which Jude should abuse. Learn a good 4-8 hit combo and lay into him each time you pull off a Snap Pivot.
Silly answer, but there's this one ogre boss in Zestiria... I played the game on whatever the hardest unlocked difficulty was. I was either at Chaos or one below it. That thing took me HOURS simply cuz it had one and two shot attacks against my characters. Had to experiment a lot with party set ups to handle that. I think I settled on 1 fusion and 2 constant casters. Oh, and imo the hardest boss in Graces is the eyepatch guy, with the same "highest difficulty available" habit. Sooo complicated!
I feel like in arise the most likely difficulty spike will be the 2nd lord seriously that guy is fast-hits hard- and sucker punch you with a surprise Indignation..... oh yeah did i also mention that he summons clones of himself in the second half of the fight not 1 not 2 not 3 BUT 4 CLONES THAT HAVE THE SAME EXACT MOVESET and keep in mind that in arise healing arts and iteams all cost a certain gauge and if that gauge goes 0 you are doomed and you wont have much of it at the start iirc you will be at 232 max cp by the time you reach the fight and when close to death HE WILL TRY AND SPAM INDIGNATION ON YOUR BUTT so you better start killing him quickly or you will be at the receving end of one of tales most famous & infamous mystic arte
I think Alexei in on hard mode is harder than Gattuso, he's so much more BS. Alexei will just use Guardian Field and heal chunks of his HP whenever he wants. I fought him for like 15 minutes. Gattuso on hard is beatable at least, I have NO IDEA how to stop Alexei from healing, and worse yet if he goes overlimit, you can't stun him and he might just use Guardian Field and there's nothing you can do about it. I've seen him go overlimit and immediately use Guardian Field or his mystic arte. Barbatos does look completely unfair though, but he looks easier if you use the right strategy. For Alexei you're just praying he doesn't heal himself too much.
Nice video. I found that the Xillia 2 bosses were really easy as you can take out 50%+ in a single combo thanks to the battle system. I'm surprised Alexia isn't on here with his strong healing and MA.
What about that "boss fight" in vesperia where you are with just Yuri and need to defeat like 7 pirates that are generally faster than him. I needed to use the exp boost from the dlc of definitive edition to even do something there :( From post game neblium is a standout for me, it was a really intense fight that forced me to really think about what my strategy and making use of stuff like changing battle on the fly to dodge a few attacks . It was really fun but hard
totally normal encounters in Zestiria that spawns 6 caster type enemies. Pls I can't interrupt them all all the time, just stop! And in Arise, Ganabelt until I figured out the mystic art is just a matter of "heal up to full and kill maybe one copy before it bursts and you'll be fine". Then it was just a matter of perking back up and finishing the fight.
Because of your videos I was encouraged to play Tales of Innocence... but I see that you mention the final dungeon and you are at level 42... I think I am just halfway through the game and I am at level 34... and to give more commands to your characters they give you goal level 90... don't you think you rushed a little and didn't have enough level for the last dungeon?
The only thing worst then fighting Barbatos in Tales of Destiny 2? Fighting him in the Destiny remake in the bonus levels, gloves are off for sure in that one.
Tales of xillia Gaius and muze on hardest difficulty my first playthrough took me like 11 hours I think? I was up that first night trying over and over again for like 4 hours then the next night even longer! I kept going back and forth on who I should kill first and refused to look the fight up online.....was so confused when taking out the healer and she got a big heal instead of dieing....
and sadly some are even hard to KILL on EASY mode ie Gatusso the WOLF boss Vesperia on easy mode still manages to 1 shot the party like 5 seconds INTO The battle AT lv 15 and Sylph on normal mode at lv 26 can STILL easily kill the entire party even WITH BOTH Raine and Kratos in the party in mere seconds WITHOUT using the only all divide item I had at that point.
I find it hard to believe you did not put magnadeus at top 1, that boss (especially on highest difficulty) is an absolute nightmare never again reached. Miktran in DC is also very difficult on higher difficulties, much more so than barbatos. Barbatos 2 is hard however.
I can't speak for the titles that weren't released in the states since I haven't played them, but since that means Barbatos is the only one in this list that I haven't fought: Gattuso is still the boss I consider to be the hardest. Even though I've played ToV more than any other game in the series it still gives me a good amount of trouble on replays. The Sky Trent was a bit challenging without more healing options, but I don't think it felt like one of the hardest in the series. I never had any trouble beating Victor. And Gnome...it's been a long time since I played ToP, but I think similar to the Trent it was a challenge but not one of the hardest IMO.
I know that usually Nebilim is the one talked about for Abyss, but as far as normal bosses go, I think we need a major shoutout to Legretta's first fight in Deo Pass which feels like such a difficulty spike with how prior Generals weren't that hard to beat. Like, later fights against her don't feel as bad, but I think part of why she's so difficult in that first fight is your low level and likely the lack of access to proper equipment and AD skills and how her strategy is based on doing a huge amount of damage very quickly, be it a melee attack that depletes your HP down to a sliver in three seconds flat or just using Rage Laser and killing you on the spot. Not to mention, I think they _want_ you to have Natalia on your team to speed up the healing process with how quickly and how much you'll get hurt as well as harry Legretta from afar, but Natalia herself is more likely than not extremely underleveled by that point in the game and as such very easy pickings, so it's overall a recipe for pain.
Gonna have to disagree with the prior God Generals not being as tough to beat. The first Arietta battle and the one with Largo and Sync marked the only two points in a somewhat recent playthrough I did where I was actually forced to conclude that I had no chance of winning and had to grind further and stock up on items. Granted, I was playing on hard, but most later bosses weren't that big of a deal. Abyss has this problem where it pits you against team bosses in the early game, even though you're not really prepared to handle those at this point.
I'm genuinly curious, but are Xillia 1 and 2 really that difficult? They were my first games in the series and out of all that I played, they are 50x easier than anything else I played. Vesperia, Abyss, Zestiria, Berseria and especially Graces, I kept dying multiple times, but Xillia and especially Xillia 2, you have to practically try to die. While in Xillia 1 the bosses are pretty mean, they weren't really a threat unless they combo you, or nearly one shot you with a mystic arte. Xillia 2, however, I don't even remember anything in the game, other than the scripted final boss mystic arte, or the post game dungeon bosses ever killing one of my party members. I don't know what difficulty, but on Moderate, Xillia 2 MAs deal like a third of a party members HP and get stun locked otherwise. Am I missing something here? Because I am not good at these games. I run through an entire stack of Life Bottles and Gels every 2nd boss fight, except in the Xillia games. If I had to rank the games I played in terms of difficulty, it would probably be something like: Hearts R > Symphonia > Vesperia > Graces > Abyss > Berseria > Zestiria > Arise >>> Xillia >>>>>>> Xillia 2
Sekundes spamming sekundes corridor every 2 seconds and using his laser attack whenever the back lines are casting will make anyone rage quit. I find nereid shizel highly annoying too with her passive instant spell casts to anyone the back line.
"Lightning bl-super lightning blade"
I let out an audible "oh god" when i saw Gnome. Got sent back to 2006 with those flashbacks.
Story wise, the hardest boss I fought was Irene in Destiny PS2. Optional boss was the Rockgagong
The first fight against Arietta in Abyss was pretty challenging on harder difficulties.
Since its the second boss fight you don't have a lot of abilities yet...and there are 3 enemies. If you don't focus on her pets, they will interrupt your casters. If you DO focus the pets, she pelts you with spells.
For Graces, I found the Rockgagong the hardest fight, but not sure if you count optional bosses
Omfg defeating Arietta final battle was great haha 😂
I think the big problem with Arietta's first fight is that her physical defense is unusually high. On higher difficulties, it scales to such crazy levels that you can usually only make her lose 1 HP per hit, which is not how spellcaster bosses are supposed to work. So you basically have to choose. Do you either try taking her on first to stop her spells, even if it'll take forever and allow her pets to run rampant? Or do you try to take out her pets first, even if it means she can cast spells all the time? Either way, it doesn't feel elegant.
Tales of the Abyss - Nebilim. I remember to spend over a hour in the battle to defeat her
Agreed with this list. The worst one I encountered was Nebilim on Abyss on Unknown (and yeah it’s kinda cheating as she’s a post game boss). She took me and my cousin a solid 4 hours non stop fight to beat lol. Right at the end we ended up with no life bottles, barely any Tp, I had been running around as Natalia casting revive constantly (to try and keep our life bottles) while my cousin used Guy (having FOF wars with her) to distract her while Jade and Tear hit her with spells that did like 100-300 damage, gradually bringing down her absurd HP.
She almost killed us near the end of the battle with a very cheap Time Stop into Fragmented End where she killed 3 of the 4 party members, but we somehow managed to overcome it.
This was before I knew how to properly manage level ups with CC’s on Abyss as well. So yeah our damage was pitiful lol. I still have my swap magic to play Abyss in Australia given it never received a prosper PS2 release in Australia unfortunately.
A fun fact about Graces F, you can actually get a victory quotes in normal battles that is actually self-aware of Hubert's awful healing abilities
ua-cam.com/video/UZdk05FbJPw/v-deo.html
Omg I love that, he's such a beast in other ways though lol
In tales of Xillia I HATED the solo fight against Ivar with Jude. No matter what food I ate before the battle, no matter what I powered or equipped Jude with, it didn’t seem to work
The Ivar fight is basically you needing to learn to use Snap Pivot correctly. Ivar has slow reactions after his attacks which Jude should abuse. Learn a good 4-8 hit combo and lay into him each time you pull off a Snap Pivot.
Silly answer, but there's this one ogre boss in Zestiria... I played the game on whatever the hardest unlocked difficulty was. I was either at Chaos or one below it. That thing took me HOURS simply cuz it had one and two shot attacks against my characters. Had to experiment a lot with party set ups to handle that. I think I settled on 1 fusion and 2 constant casters.
Oh, and imo the hardest boss in Graces is the eyepatch guy, with the same "highest difficulty available" habit. Sooo complicated!
I feel like in arise the most likely difficulty spike will be the 2nd lord seriously that guy is fast-hits hard- and sucker punch you with a surprise Indignation..... oh yeah did i also mention that he summons clones of himself in the second half of the fight not 1 not 2 not 3 BUT 4 CLONES THAT HAVE THE SAME EXACT MOVESET and keep in mind that in arise healing arts and iteams all cost a certain gauge and if that gauge goes 0 you are doomed and you wont have much of it at the start iirc you will be at 232 max cp by the time you reach the fight and when close to death HE WILL TRY AND SPAM INDIGNATION ON YOUR BUTT so you better start killing him quickly or you will be at the receving end of one of tales most famous & infamous mystic arte
I think Alexei in on hard mode is harder than Gattuso, he's so much more BS. Alexei will just use Guardian Field and heal chunks of his HP whenever he wants. I fought him for like 15 minutes. Gattuso on hard is beatable at least, I have NO IDEA how to stop Alexei from healing, and worse yet if he goes overlimit, you can't stun him and he might just use Guardian Field and there's nothing you can do about it. I've seen him go overlimit and immediately use Guardian Field or his mystic arte.
Barbatos does look completely unfair though, but he looks easier if you use the right strategy. For Alexei you're just praying he doesn't heal himself too much.
Nice video.
I found that the Xillia 2 bosses were really easy as you can take out 50%+ in a single combo thanks to the battle system.
I'm surprised Alexia isn't on here with his strong healing and MA.
I can't remember most of these except vesperia. Me thinking, is this supposed to be this hard?
What about that "boss fight" in vesperia where you are with just Yuri and need to defeat like 7 pirates that are generally faster than him. I needed to use the exp boost from the dlc of definitive edition to even do something there :(
From post game neblium is a standout for me, it was a really intense fight that forced me to really think about what my strategy and making use of stuff like changing battle on the fly to dodge a few attacks . It was really fun but hard
I just run around in a circle until they're running in a line, use 2 or 3 artes, and repeat the process. Good ol guerrilla tactics.
@@edmg7 that's actually a good idea. But idk even trying to run to reposition myself they always attacked me. Still will try that if I replay the game
Honorable mention spiral draco in vesperia
totally normal encounters in Zestiria that spawns 6 caster type enemies. Pls I can't interrupt them all all the time, just stop!
And in Arise, Ganabelt until I figured out the mystic art is just a matter of "heal up to full and kill maybe one copy before it bursts and you'll be fine". Then it was just a matter of perking back up and finishing the fight.
Richea in the Hearts DS EX dungeon is pretty difficult too honestly, unless you cheese her with aerial infinites.
Because of your videos I was encouraged to play Tales of Innocence... but I see that you mention the final dungeon and you are at level 42... I think I am just halfway through the game and I am at level 34... and to give more commands to your characters they give you goal level 90... don't you think you rushed a little and didn't have enough level for the last dungeon?
The only thing worst then fighting Barbatos in Tales of Destiny 2? Fighting him in the Destiny remake in the bonus levels, gloves are off for sure in that one.
Graces was my first Tales game, got my ass kicked so much by some of those bosses.
Tales of xillia Gaius and muze on hardest difficulty my first playthrough took me like 11 hours I think? I was up that first night trying over and over again for like 4 hours then the next night even longer!
I kept going back and forth on who I should kill first and refused to look the fight up online.....was so confused when taking out the healer and she got a big heal instead of dieing....
and sadly some are even hard to KILL on EASY mode ie Gatusso the WOLF boss Vesperia on easy mode still manages to 1 shot the party like 5 seconds INTO The battle AT lv 15 and Sylph on normal mode at lv 26 can STILL easily kill the entire party even WITH BOTH Raine and Kratos in the party in mere seconds WITHOUT using the only all divide item I had at that point.
The hardest boss fight is Barbatos, but specifically the version you fight as a punishment for grinding too much.
I find it hard to believe you did not put magnadeus at top 1, that boss (especially on highest difficulty) is an absolute nightmare never again reached. Miktran in DC is also very difficult on higher difficulties, much more so than barbatos. Barbatos 2 is hard however.
Again I don't usually dive far into post game content nor have I gotten to the end of Destiny DC.
Barbatos deserve first stop, Magnadeus is easily after learn standart
I can't speak for the titles that weren't released in the states since I haven't played them, but since that means Barbatos is the only one in this list that I haven't fought:
Gattuso is still the boss I consider to be the hardest. Even though I've played ToV more than any other game in the series it still gives me a good amount of trouble on replays.
The Sky Trent was a bit challenging without more healing options, but I don't think it felt like one of the hardest in the series.
I never had any trouble beating Victor.
And Gnome...it's been a long time since I played ToP, but I think similar to the Trent it was a challenge but not one of the hardest IMO.
For that boss Gattuso can off a lv 15 party in under 10 seconds on EASY MODE.
I know that usually Nebilim is the one talked about for Abyss, but as far as normal bosses go, I think we need a major shoutout to Legretta's first fight in Deo Pass which feels like such a difficulty spike with how prior Generals weren't that hard to beat. Like, later fights against her don't feel as bad, but I think part of why she's so difficult in that first fight is your low level and likely the lack of access to proper equipment and AD skills and how her strategy is based on doing a huge amount of damage very quickly, be it a melee attack that depletes your HP down to a sliver in three seconds flat or just using Rage Laser and killing you on the spot. Not to mention, I think they _want_ you to have Natalia on your team to speed up the healing process with how quickly and how much you'll get hurt as well as harry Legretta from afar, but Natalia herself is more likely than not extremely underleveled by that point in the game and as such very easy pickings, so it's overall a recipe for pain.
Gonna have to disagree with the prior God Generals not being as tough to beat. The first Arietta battle and the one with Largo and Sync marked the only two points in a somewhat recent playthrough I did where I was actually forced to conclude that I had no chance of winning and had to grind further and stock up on items. Granted, I was playing on hard, but most later bosses weren't that big of a deal. Abyss has this problem where it pits you against team bosses in the early game, even though you're not really prepared to handle those at this point.
I'm genuinly curious, but are Xillia 1 and 2 really that difficult? They were my first games in the series and out of all that I played, they are 50x easier than anything else I played.
Vesperia, Abyss, Zestiria, Berseria and especially Graces, I kept dying multiple times, but Xillia and especially Xillia 2, you have to practically try to die.
While in Xillia 1 the bosses are pretty mean, they weren't really a threat unless they combo you, or nearly one shot you with a mystic arte. Xillia 2, however, I don't even remember anything in the game, other than the scripted final boss mystic arte, or the post game dungeon bosses ever killing one of my party members.
I don't know what difficulty, but on Moderate, Xillia 2 MAs deal like a third of a party members HP and get stun locked otherwise.
Am I missing something here? Because I am not good at these games. I run through an entire stack of Life Bottles and Gels every 2nd boss fight, except in the Xillia games.
If I had to rank the games I played in terms of difficulty, it would probably be something like:
Hearts R > Symphonia > Vesperia > Graces > Abyss > Berseria > Zestiria > Arise >>> Xillia >>>>>>> Xillia 2
Tales Hardest boss fight?Sekundes or nereids regulus..
Sekundes spamming sekundes corridor every 2 seconds and using his laser attack whenever the back lines are casting will make anyone rage quit.
I find nereid shizel highly annoying too with her passive instant spell casts to anyone the back line.
Imo, 3d tales games is easier than 2d games thanks to free run system