10 Marathon Video Game Boss Battles That Almost Broke You

Boss battles are a staple of video gaming. The final step you'll take before achieving your goal of either gaining precious loot, or advancing the story. It takes a lot of thought to ensure they are balanced not just for gameplay, but also your attention span.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a lengthy boss battle. In fact, narratively speaking, it's occasionally unavoidable - but the design needs to be on point for you to not feel like the battle is being really dragged out.

Some bosses don't manage to be this enthralling, and feel just plain tedious. They're stretched out to limits so long that you began to question your own sanity for wasting so many hours staring at a single enemy for so long.

We're only counting bosses you take on mano-a-mano, so bosses such as Ygrallith Zero from Xenoblade Chronicles, or the numerous bosses from MMOs won't be making an appearance - as they are specifically designed to be taken out over long periods by a multitude of players.

This is a list of the bosses that you personally had to devote insane lengths of precious time solo in order to gain victory.

The Force Unleashed 2 is not a long game by any means, but most player's memories of it are sure to be entirely focussed on the last fight against the Sith Lord Darth Vader.

The bout is not only a complete slog, but players need to defeat him three times with only slight variations in place to break up these phases. It's not the longest of the list, but the mind-numbing repetition makes it drag out in Perpetuum.

Your force powers are of no use here, so you're left to use the same limited lightsaber techniques to try and strike him down. This is then followed by him raising a bunch of Starkiller clones from the hundreds of tanks around the arena that serves only to annoy you.

It's true you can use force persuade to get them to attack Vader, but this assistance is minimal and you'll be mindlessly spamming the cheesiest tactic hoping to speed up the fight. This all counts on you not dying in the process and having to restart again all the way from his first phase.

If you know what you are doing, it can be around thirty minutes before finally taking down the dark lord. On your first playthrough, however, this duel against one of the greatest cinematic villains of all time can seem like millennia has passed before finally getting to the end credits.