Asuras Wrath - the antithesis of the saying "violence never solves anything" where our titular hero punches the very concept of existence into submission

Congrats to final fantasy for having near half the list

fun thing about the FF11 boss, that specific boss not only made people ill from over exertion but it also set a new standard for future boss content never being longer than like an hour or two, the fact it went so long before being nerfed was crazy

I remember playing Bayonetta when I was still living with my parents. Sometime in the middle of the fight against Jubileus, my mum asked me whether I was done soon, so we could all eat dinner and then watch her favourite TV show. Oops.

Shoutout to Yakuza where if you're playing the game and reach the final boss, you can expect 3 hours of cutscenes and revaluations after the fact lol. I don't think I've ever beaten a Yakuza game before midnight lol

I know a few people who had the Adamantoise knock them back so far in FFXV that the battle cancelled out and they had to start from scratch after almost 45 minutes

I remember finding Yiazmat in my first playthrough, saw its healthbar and just went "Nope, I've got a life." and just left the arena. Never went back, never regretted it.

That Culex death animation is so hilariously underwhelming it makes TerminalMontage's boss explosions look epic. It has to be deliberate.

This video was the right amount of time and didn't ruin my evening plans, well done!

Never played FF11, but whoever came up with the idea for Benediction knew EXACTLY what they were doing: breaking the hearts, minds, and souls of everyone playing that boss for that long.

I love that Squaresoft used actual Final Fantasy music for that boss fight. As if the aesthetic nods weren't obvious enough!

The final boss from Persona 3 took me hours because of how many times you have to deplete its health bar, and the ridiculously powerful attacks it has

If Yiazmat isn’t in here I’ll scream; it didn’t ruin my evening, it ruined my month, AND I NEVER BEAT IT

How about the full gauntlet from Kingdom Hearts II? Starting with fighting a spaceship, fighting a suit of armor on a throne, fighting skyscrapers, fighting on skyscrapes against a man dual wielding lightsabers, then fighting him again but now he's in his zebra-stripe pajamas. It's about 45 minutes of active battle and QTEs.

I used the Ring of Lucii to beat the Adamantoise. Not only does it instantly end the boss fight at about half health, but it turns the mountain-sized turtle into a hilarious glitchy mess of spaghetti limbs. Fun.

When i saw FF11 on the list I expected Pandemonium Warden. Multiple groups banded together to take it on and only gave up after 18 hours when players started getting physically sick.

I loved fighting The End! I knew how to kill him early, but I never did because I enjoyed the proper fight so much! Sneaking up behind him with the tranq gun and shaking him down for his camo was awesome.

The first time I encountered Hell Wyrm (aka Yiazmat Lite in FFXII), I had just kind of wandered into the arena with no idea what to expect. It was like 1:00 am and I thought, "Well, I'll just fight this until it TPKs me and then at least I'll know what I'm up against when I try for real tomorrow." Turns out, I didn't get TPKed that night, but I didn’t get to go to bed until 4:00am either. Good times.

You forgot to mention that Yiazmat starts HALVING YOUR DAMAGE halfway through. You literally cannot do more than 4999 damage after that point per attack (assuming not breaking damage limit like in the video.) So its even longer than first stated

As opposed to Minthara in Baldur's Gate 3 which lasted half a turn for me when Lae'zel pushed her off a bridge and she fell into the chasm... I found myself thinking "huh, didn't think that would work" for the 5000th time playing that game

I'm surprised P3's boss wasn't mentioned because it had like 13 phases. Also the Adamantoise in FFXV can be beaten fairly quickly with one lategame item

I forgot about Ignis's "the turtle's all the way down" line after you beat Adamantois. Perfection.

It's been over 10 years and I'm still hoping for a remaster of Asura's Wrath

Absolute Virtue was so tough. I fought it after it was nerfed and we barely beat it before the 2 hour time limit. 😅 ahh the memories

Galdera from Octopath Traveler surly deserves an honourable mention. An hour minimum more if you are underleveled. Oh and to actually fight him you have to beat 8 bosses in row. Without being able to save your game.

Original Yiazmat fight should hold Guinness World Records. I remember having a maxed out party with Zodiac Spear, Tournesol, Excalibur etc and never beating him on the PS2, reached halfway in 3 hours and gave up.

Saw the title, immediately thought of Absolute Virtue. I remember hearing people were needing to literally take the fight in shifts, tagging people in and out so they could sleep!

I have another couple to add: Grandia 2 and Skies of Arcadia both have long, multipart boss fights that you cannot save between.

Put an overlong boss fight in the earlygame and I'm going to be like "OK, this is what you're about, game, thanks for letting me know early" and I'll nope out. Put an overlong boss fight later in the game and that's how you get "I've played this game more than once but never finished it."

I don't remember the Jubileus fight taking very long. However, that Yiazmat fight was nasty. Fortunately, I figured out some way to set up my characters' auto actions to fight without me being present with the exception of some janky move occurring at 50% or 25% hit points. I think that it occurred around an hour or so in, and I resorted to setting a timer to remind me to come monitor fight progress for the latter portion. Super annoying.

Oh god, anyone remembers Sephiroths comet attack in the original FF VII? The fight itself already was hard as hell and then he regularly summoned a comet that you watched in real time pass through the solar system to hit you. I think I finished tenth grade while waiting until it was finally my turn again.

Not mentioned in the Absolute Virtue part: The methods Squeenix published on how to defeat it were later also patched out of the game.

I feel like the final boss from Legend of Dragoon deserves a mention here, that fight goes on for like an hour.

Ansem from kingdom hearts. It’s so long, especially in the original with the unskippable cutscenes. And if you die at any point, you are sent straight back to the beach to the very start. No checkpoints no nothing. You have to do what’s essentially a mini world in one go

My personal favorite was the Phantom fight from the original Kingdom Hearts. I was still in middle school at the time and by the end of it my older brother, who had been watching football had come over to watch me play. I remember how exciting and stressful it was near the end. He's a boss that can instantly kill you if you screw up and that last tiny bit of his health bar was absolutely terrifying.

A glorious day when FFXII finally gets some recognition!

0:25 I was genuinely waiting for this moment. Thank you Oxbox!

Here's an idea: moments in gaming where during the game the genre completely changes e.g: a romance game suddenly turns really horror like

Surprised that Nyx Avatar wasn't mentioned. You know, the boss with FOURTEEN phases and the ability to charm characters to make them heal her back to full. It's damn near impossible for the fight to take less than 2 hours.

The Culex battle kicking off with the epic FF battle jam right out of the somber sound of eerie wind still gives me the shivers.

With all the Final Fantasy bosses on this list, I'm surprised the superboss Penance from Final Fantasy X International / HD Remaster didn't make the list. You have to micromanage the fight making sure Penance never has both limbs alive, otherwise they will instant Game Over your party (Not Insta-Kill, you can revive from that. Instant GAME OVER)

The adamantoise can actually be a VERY short fight if you use the ring on it.

An honorable mention should go to Twilight Princess. The final boss, Ganondorf, has FOUR phases. The Zelda shadow puppet phase, the beast Ganon phase, the horseback phase, and finally the one-on-one combat phase. Plus, there's cutscenes in between phases as well as after. Depending on how good you are at the game, it can drag out for a while lol Oh, and the penultimate boss Zant technically has even more phases, but no in between cutscenes, so it does end up a bit shorter

It's criminal that they don't have any EQ raid boss. I remember Plane of AIr (renamed Plane of Sky) being a two day raid JUST to get up to the boss. Not to mention Inny in Plane of Hate or CT in Plane of Fear being all day raids

How did persona 3 not make the list? The nyx fight with lots of boss phases and the last phase where nyx charm one party member and heal the boss to FULL hp

The Okumara space battle from Persona 5 should absolutely be on this list. I laughed at the 30 minute timer the first time it started, but it was the 30 minute timer that had the last laugh

Fun runner-up for ffxi is pandemonium warden. In its original form, it had around 18 different forms. That was the furthest anybody got with it, and it took 18 hours to do so before they gave up.

I had to laugh so hard when the list of games included SO many Final Fantasy's XD also adding to that the Titan battle in the newest Final Fantasy 16 is also suuuuper long and epic! XD

I know there are longer boss fights, but the final boss from Wild Arms 3 comes to mind. If I remember right, it had 13 stages

Final Fantasy XVI Titan was one such battle. I kept waiting for it to end, But it was phase after phase after phase. I honestly felt like I was playing Asura's Wrath.

Honorable mention to Henry from No More Heroes. He’s not a flashy multi-stage multi health bar boss like the others on this list, but he takes around 1000 hits to die on the highest difficulty and you can bet he’ll make you fight for every single one of those hits.

Fun tidbit about the FF 12 boss fight. Friend of mine had the AI system set up so that he ended up making (and eating) a sandwich during the fight so that he was effectively playing it one handed.

Using Malenia as a “tough boss fight” is a BIT OF AN UNDERSTATEMENT! Also, lost it when THREE FINAL FANTASY GAMES SCROLLED UP THE SCREEN!!! As for the Adamantoise, it took me about an hour and a half to kill the beastie and that was with Noctis above lvl 100 while the rest of the gang was at 99. A far cry from 72 real hours xD

Not only did they release a video to show how to fight Absolute Virtue, they then patched that method out. The creator of the fight even said that you're meant to take 18 hours to fight it. Which, combined with how many people were hospitalized spending too much time playing the game (it was also extremely rare to spawn, which adds even more time to it) that it actually became pretty famous and lead not only to the nerf, but also the 2 hour time limit, that they even implemented in FF14.

Sudeki (2004), has one of the longest boss fights I've ever experienced. About three quarters in you're tasked with storming an Aklorian stronghold, and at the end you face a new monster called a behemoth. This creature is a massive damage sponge with a one-shot attack, the battle has multiple stages, and if you die at at any point you start from the very beginning. Took me over an hour to beat the first time

I thought number 7 was going to be Kerafyrm from Everquest for virtue of him being technically unkillable until some wild crap happened.

I got an amazinh one, Beatrice from Wild ARMs 3, she has 10 phases in her final battle and some can take forever, you even need to chase her in the world map after one.

Nice work as always

so happy to see Absolute Virtue on the list. never fought it and its original strength but i heard the stories about it and how any methods got patched out because SE likes you make player suffer

Kerafyrm, aka "The Sleeper", from Everquest. Wasn't really meant to be killed but a bunch of people did it anyway. Eventually. After trying for ages and having the zone "crash" due to a "bug" that definitely wasn't the devs pulling the plug when it looked like the raid was gonna be successful. Eventually they reset the thing and the groups tried again and eventually did manage to kill him (it took at least an hour, I think, maybe more than one). But he left no loot and, I think, no corpse, because he was never intended to die - he's supposed to wake up once you've killed the four Warden dragons guarding his tomb and then go on a rampage killing everyone before despawning forever (literally forever) on that server.

I kind of want to see Rock Band 2's endless setlist+bladder of steel on this. You have to play for hours without a break.

No mention of Kerafyrm from EverQuest? It was intended to be an impossible boss, but a group of like 200 players did it. And it still took them 4-ish hours 😅

Nightbreed!!! Wow I haven’t thought about that movie in ages. Epic shirt Andy.

The script writer for this was on FIRE! One of my favorites ever!🔥🔥🔥🔥

If you ever do a second one of these, Bravely Default 2 might be a good game to look at for mandatory long boss fights. Adam in particular takes ages, and it’s a long struggle all the way down. Not even a complaint, that’s what makes it a worthy fight.

Both Digital Devil Saga games had a notoriously long-winded optional boss fight that basically instantly murdered your entire team for doing the wrong thing(s) at the wrong time. Or at all. I still don't want to imagine the trial and error the folks who wrote the guide had to go through to figure those out.

Thank you for the mention of Asura’s Wrath. I recently managed to get an ps3 emulator on my PC and made a start to playing it. It set out a high bar for me for what can be considered to be hype and badass in videogames. Such a peak game.

My sister and I were playing against the multi stage boss at the end of Spyro: A Hero's Tail, we were struggling a wee bit so my sister's boyfriend confidently took the controller saying he'd sort it...only to die immediately and take us back to the start of the whole fight 😅 Boss fights that have long unskippable cut scenes and/or don't save after each stage if they take ages can get in the bin!

Jubileus will always be the craziest for me. Punching her into the sun blew my mind back then

It's also good to have a backup controller for Asura's Wrath. A truly spectacular game and it's a crime there's no PC release or sequel.

I remember several boss fights in Lunar (the original Silver Star Story and the sequel Eternal Blue) taking well over an hour even with the best equipment set-up.

While not as long as several others on this list, my favourite overly long fight was the coliseum cameo fight in _Tales of the Abyss_ (played with four players). You fight another party of four characters from previous Tales games, who have very high HP and damage, so my friends and I had to coordinate a lot, sometimes pausing to discuss strats and things. And then they apparently can also use healing and reviving skills and items... After winning, the game said the battle time was like 65 minutes but that doesn't count any time spent paused in menus. The music track for that battle is aptly called Everlasting Fight and is a medley of battle musics from the games that include those characters.

Demifiend superboss fight from Digital Devil Saga 1 has to be up here. It's usually a solid 45 min-1 hour on a successful run. Can easily run a few hours with failed attempts.

Personally, Okumura in Persona 5 (not Royal). It took me literally hours. I admit, I hadn’t prepared sufficiently and definitely spent a lot more time getting ready when I replayed in Royal (although they also changed his challenge for that version)

Bruh, Asura's Wrath's fight scenes are just fricking epic.

1:53 "You do not belong in this world!" "It was not by my hand I was once again given flesh. I was brought here by humans who wished to pay me tribute!" *wineglass throwing intensifies*

Asuras Wrath also charged $30-50 for the DLC, ie the end of the game. It might be one of the reasons Capcom thought to make the final boss an hour long without cutscenes.

In FF14 a speedrun of Praetorium used to take 45 minutes because of unskippable cutscenes. It wasn't the longest run ever but the fact that you could very possibly do it everyday meant you dedicated and unholy amount of time to that place.

6:25 I have never heard of using the Konami code to find the end until now. 19 years later and this game still surprises me.

Nyx Avatar from Persona 3. One phase for each arcana (14). Last phase, it can alternate between a shield that reflects everything, unresistable attacks, and an attack that causes random status ailments, including charm that could cause someone to heal Nyx Avatar back to full health.

The Adamantoise in FFXV can be cheesed, though. As I recall, you can one-hit kill it using a certain ability from a certain accessory.

Feels like the titular villain from Trillion: God of Destruction should be on here. That boss takes the entire game!

Amazing t-shirt Andy! I need one of those in my life

I immediately knew Final Fantasy was going to make the list multiple times. It's just what comes to mind when I think of long boss fights.

Playing Final Fantasy XI as I watch this video. Still going despite its years :3

That adamantoise took me 3 hours to beat with a fully stocked inventory of healing items. I finished on my birthday with 4 hi Potions and no Phoenix Downs left.

Love the video. It reminds me of the stupidly long and also stupidly epic Final boss in Nier: Automata, when you go back and forth from 2 different boss fights taking place at the same time but at two different locations with different characters.... Or the equally stupidly long and epic multistage reality shattering multi planar Final boss from Astral Chain... In both cases, I was literally exhausted by the end of the faight. Loved every hours of it though

Anybody else get early 2010's vibes from the OXcrew's voices? Regardless if it's just in my head, I loved it

In regards to the Adamantoise from FF15 they added a patch or something that allows you to one shot the Giant Turtle with the Ring of Lucius(or whatever its called) and it will suck that huge mountain reptile into a black hole

I love the uploads bro

18:00 Part of what makes Culex so difficult is that you're probably not going into the fight with optimal equipment, and that's because the game *straight up doesn't tell you what the best accessories actually do.* You probably have the Safety Ring from the sunken ship, but it doesn't tell you what its best effects are: it reduces all elemental damage to 0 and protects against all status effects. Same for the Troopa Pin, the Ghost Medal, the Amulet, the Attack Scarf, the B'Tub Ring, etc. All of these accessories have extra effects the game doesn't tell you about that can be a huge help for Culex. The Lazy Shell and Super Suit also prevent all elemental damage and status effects, but those are the best armors in the game so if you have them you're probably using them anyway. IMO no other fight in the game really needs you to understand what these items do - at least the Safety Ring tells you that it protects against instant kills for Jinx. With the right loadout you can beat Culex fairly easily well under the level cap. I think the lowest I've done was Level ~22 with Mario, Geno, and Peach.

Honestly Expected to see the Final Boss of Persona 3 on this list. With a total of 14 different phases, each with a considerable enough health pool and a new moveset, with the boss having the ability to launch Insta-Kill's, hit any possible weakness on your party, and probably worse, charming a healer on your party to get them to reset the bosses Healthbar, and it easily could be THE longest Boss Fight in all if the series. This isn't even mentioning how the final Phase see's a Ludicrous increase in HP, access to her full Moveset, AND the ability to make itself invincible for a few turns.

Higgs from death stranding took an absurdly long time; couple that in with all the cutscenes and the boss fight with Cliff Unger that they lead right into after the Higgs fight and the whole thing took me what felt like 5 hours

Asuras wrath deserves more love. Always wished for a part 2 or a remake or remaster

remember the final bosses of Legend of Dragoon and Wild Arms 3 both taking me a very long time. The secret boss in Standstill Girl too.

Thank you for the video.

_"Absolute Virtue uses Benediction to restore most of its HP after 30 hours of battle"_ The words I'd use to describe something like this would instantly demonetize this and every other oxbox video past, present, and future.

Shoutout to the paper mario 64's final 3 major bosses that take forever if you don't know what to do on the first go huff and puff, crystal king, and final form bowser where they each have ways to extend their boss fights if you do anything short of the max damage build and even then bowser takes a while

Aaaah the hey-day of Absolute Virtue... I remember it well. It was so bad people were getting physically sick from trying to beat it.

I've just been playing through Lost Judgment, and one of the bosses Akutsu has a boss fight where first you fight him with a bunch of minions, and then more minions show up, his health bar resets and you fight him again, and then after a cutscene or two you catch up with him in a slightly different location and you fight him plus minions *again*. He's not too hard, but it takes way longer than you would expect when the scene starts. The Judgment games (and Yakuza, I imagine, though I've never played the Yakuza titles) do have their way of *streeeetching* out action sequences when they want to.