7. Ultimecia Final Fantasy VIII
As a time-travelling sorceress who inhabits a floating castle and wants to consume a space-banished past sorceress, Ultimecia is perhaps the ultimate example of Final Fantasys often convoluted storytelling. But whether she makes sense or not (spoiler, she doesnt) youve got to admit shes extremely difficult to beat. Unlike any boss before her, Ultimecia will punish you for any sort of imbalance youve created in your party. Randomly choosing which members of your party she wants to molest, youll soon find all the characters you ignored since disc one absorbed into the timestream for such idiocy. I hadnt touched Selphie since the Dollet missions, at least a days worth of game time ago the sorceress just demolished her and moved onto the next unprepared weakling (in this case, Zell). But what really set Ultimecia aside as one of the most formidable bosses in Final Fantasy was the fact you had to beat her in four stages. First she turns up as herself (difficult enough in itself), then summons a ridiculously powerful Guardian Force who can strip you of your own GFs before you can even blink. If like me, youd spent the majority of your battles spamming the GFs because you simply couldnt be arsed to draw out a fight, this came as a bitter kick in the down-belows. But not to worry, if you do eventually make it past that, shell only come back twice more, each time with exponentially increasing power! An entire generation of keen RPGers can trace a lot of trauma back to Ultimecia.