10 Longest Boss Battles In Gaming History

1. Absolute Virtue - Final Fantasy XI

While deceptively reassuring in name, there’s absolutely nothing reassuring about this thirty hour long boss fight. Yes, this one is on the list for those of you who were skeptical after my Killzone inclusion.

Absolute Virtue is another High Notorious Monster in Final Fantasy XI. Originally, players were taking thirty hours to defeat this thing and if they figured out a faster way to do it, the developers were patching it as they went so the challenge would remain.

As you can imagine, this spawned a tonne of media coverage about artificial difficulty and as a result the boss was patched to become more manageable, allowing for a higher level limit for players and a 2 hour battle limit. Still a mighty challenge for players trying to chip into this glowy pain in the ass’s 100,000 HP bar. He also has a massively powerful healing spell called Benediction, as if the heavy attacks, vitality, and spells weren’t already doing you in.

The developers said that after three years no one had actually managed to beat him in any way they deemed to be legitimate, and even post-nerf it’s still incredibly tough.