ON Gameranx 10 crazy bosses that have three forms

[Falcon] You know the kind of boss that has multiple phases, like usually three.

It progresses through a couple of different things,and you gotta deal with it in different ways.

Well, let’s talk about a few of those.

Hi folks, it’s Falcon,

and today on Gameranx 10 crazy
bosses that have three forms.

Starting off at number 10,

“Dark Souls III”‘s Sister Friede.

Eh, let’s start this one off

with some pure, uncut brutality.

Many, many bosses in
the “Dark Souls” series

have multiple forms.

Hell, practically every
boss in “Eldon Ring”

has some kind of second form.

But few actually have these full blown,

totally new third forms.

Um, Friede?

One of the few exceptions and very rough.

Sister Friede is the final boss

of the Ashes of Ariandel DLC.

And at first it seems like

this one wouldn’t be too difficult.

The fight starts when you approach

the mutated form of Father
Ariandel in the secret shrine,

and she appears behind
you with her scythe.

Her attacks are actually
pretty easy to avoid,

but she’s got this one nasty trick

where she turns invisible,
jumps behind you,

and attempts to get you from there.

The only way to counter it
is to listen for her attack

and see her footprints in the
snow give away her location.

So that’s enough for a fight, right?

But that’s not the end of it.

Once you beat her, then
father Ariandel goes nuts

and decides he wants to join in.

(Father Ariandel screams)

So hey, you get to fight
both of ’em at the same time,

two on one, always fun in Souls games.

Maybe you can detect the sarcasm.

Um?

At least they share a health bar,

so you can just focus on
attacking one of them.

When they die, the game pulls
a final nasty trick though.

They disappear in a flash of light

and you get a Titanite Slab as a reward.

Something that only happens

when a boss fight is over in the game,

but then you hear a voice

and this is where you have to
take on the final boss form,

Blackflame Friede.

which is basically her
first form on steroids.

To somehow make things worse,

if you died in this last form, guess what?

You gotta do it all over again.

That’s probably one of my least
favorite possible outcomes.

It’s a grueling battle of attrition

and only the craziest Souls players

even bother finishing it.

Sister Friede’s reputation
as one of the hardest bosses

in the entire series is well earned.

It’s not hard.

Frankly it’s cruel.

And number nine is Chef
Saltbaker in “Cuphead”.

Pretty much every boss in “Cuphead”

has at least three forms, some
actually go well beyond that.

But if you gotta pick one,

I’m gonna go with Chef Saltbaker

from the Delicious Last Course DLC.

This is a guy that’s
both incredibly tough,

and also awe-inspiring.

Like from a visual standpoint

the animation is not just incredible,

it’s kind of just unparalleled.

There’s something about it
that’s beyond most things now.

And for the first phase,

you’re taking on the Chef
on his cutting board.

You’d think that mean
you’d be dodging his knife,

but the actual fight’s
more chaotic than that.

Instead you’re dodging
sugar cubes, sliced fruit,

a really annoying little fireball guy

that I don’t really know what to call him,

but he never goes away,

and whatever else you see him
chopping up in the background.

It’s kind of horrifying in some ways,

but it’s also really funny,

seeing all these cooking ingredients

portrayed as living things.

Especially the giant sugar
cube that looks terrified

before getting smashed into little pieces.

You manage to survive that
onslaught and the Chef grabs you.

And so then you have to
fight him on his hand

where he attacks with
salt and pepper shakers.

Instead of attacking directly,

you gotta shoot at the shakers

which then fly off and
hit ’em in the face.

after you do enough damage.

So I don’t know if the third one

I would necessarily
call the most difficult,

but it’s by far the most weird.

Anyone who’s been through
the rest of the fight

60 or 70 times (laugh)
before getting to it

knows what I’m talking about.

But the whole building like collapses

and you’re in the salt
version of “End of Evangelion”

for lack of a better way of putting it.

And you have like the corpse
of the chef in the background.

He attacks with this dancing salt creature

and then turns into, I guess, a tornado?

(quirky ominous music)

It’s-it’s truly insane.

It’s probably one of the
most grotesque things

in the game too, and it’s most
of all just incredibly good.

And pretty much every boss
in “Cuphead” is incredible

and qualify for this list.

But I mean, there’s just so many things

I’m totally blown away by in this fight.

Even not even thinking
about the difficulty level,

but yeah (laughs) that’s a big thing too.

And number eight is Urizen
from “Devil May Cry 5”.

This one’s kind of a cheat,
but I think it counts.

Urizen is the boss with three forms.

You just don’t fight ’em all at once.

The first encounter is in the prologue.

He’s sitting on this weird like throne.

It’s hard to tell what he’s
really even supposed to be

and his attacks certainly don’t help much,

mostly being hard-to-read magic attacks.

The first time you fight him

you’re really not supposed to win either.

It’s the event that
kicks the whole game off.

And it’s not until the end of the game

that you get a chance to fight him again.

This time he’s much more powered up.

He sheds all the vines, tentacles,

and reveals the Demon underneath.

He’s still not super mobile,

but at least he’s
walking around this time.

It’s a tough, pretty climactic fight

but there’s one more form to go.

After beating him, V merges with Urizen

to finally become Virgil,
who is Dante’s brother,

and the guy everybody knew
was eventually gonna show up.

(character grunting)

– It’s just about time to settle this.

(grunts) That’s right, come on.

– [Falcon] All three fights
are kind of separated

but it’s the same boss
just with new forms.

And they’re all pretty spectacular,

especially the final battle with Virgil

which is probably one of the all-time,

best boss fights period.

And number seven

is the “Resident Evil II”
remake, William Birkin.

Another Capcom game with another boss

that loves to change forms.

William Birkin along with Mr. X,

primary antagonist of “Resident Evil II”.

And if there’s one thing that
he loves, it is changing form.

Oh wow, does he like that.

In both versions of “Resident Evil II”,

he has no less than five
complete form transformations,

G1 through G5.

Each transformation more
grotesque than the last

on account of infecting
himself with a G virus

after being betrayed by Umbrella.

His first form looks basically human.

You can still make out part of his face

and he uses a pipe as a weapon.

But when you encounter
him again in the sewers

his face is now merged into his shoulder,

and he’s using a gigantic
malformed claw against you.

The third form, which
you take on in the lab,

is where he is fully become a monster

with four arms and an
almost alien appearance.

(William growling)

– [Leon] All right, we end this here.

– [Falcon] Claire’s the only one

that takes on the fourth form.

It’s her final boss fight.

And he’s looking pretty rough,

starting to look like a
bloated dog or something.

His final form is more of an
event than a boss, per se.

After beating the game
with both characters,

you have to fight off his final blob form

on the train while escaping the city.

And as far as transformations go,

there’s few in video games as
crazy and iconic as this one.

And number six is Sephiroth
for “Final Fantasy VII”.

When you’re talking about
a boss with multiple forms

you can’t not mention this guy.

Even though the Final Fantasy
series is pretty famous

for multi-stage battles,

if you look at a lot of ’em individually

not many of ’em have three forms.

Like Ultimecia does, Kafka of
“Final Fantasy VI” only one.

Three parts of the
final fight in his tower

but you’re not actually fighting him.

It’s actually kind of rare to have a boss

with three separate forms in this series.

And back in ’97, this was probably one

of the most epic things of all time.

This four stage boss fight
in the center of the Earth,

or whatever this place is supposed to be,

against one of the best
bad guys of all time.

For the first stage you
don’t even take on Sephiroth,

it’s about Genova.

The real fight starts
with Bizarro Sephiroth.

A bizarre looking thing that you can fight

with multiple parties, but don’t do that.

It actually makes the
fight much more complicated

for whatever reason.

So after beating him that
stuff, it seemed crazy,

but it’s not crazy
compared to what it is now.

Now you’re in the sky, or something,

taking on Safer Sephiroth.

The one-winged angel form of Sephiroth,

by far the hardest part of the fight

but still one final part to
deal with after you beat this.

The actual real final, final, final battle

is a one-on-one dual
between Cloud and Sephiroth.

(intense drum music)

You can’t really lose it.

It’s just basically a cool moment

that you get to beat down the
bad guy in his normal form.

Kind of still an amazing boss fight,

even with those PS1 graphics.

This is one of those things
that part three of the remake,

whenever that finally comes
out in a decade or whatever,

it’s gonna be the most
insane thing we’ve ever seen.

And number five, Fecto Forgo

in “Kirby and the Forgotten Land”.

You wouldn’t think a game as cute as Kirby

would have some kind of crazy final boss.

In fact, a lot of Kirby
stuff’s pretty deceptive.

And again, with this, you would be wrong.

The final battle against
the psychic alien creature

called Fecto Forgo is just totally nuts.

It starts with what seems
like the actual final boss,

Leongar, the King of the Beasts.

You beat him though and the
true bad guy reveals itself.

This melted alien thing
called Fecto Forgo,

which attacks you by
going full Resident Evil

and absorbing the beast back

to become this giant gross wall of flesh.

So you beat that and then you
take on its true form I guess.

Fecto Elfilis, where it fights
you like you’re playing DMC

or something like this
fight’s frigging crazy.

Normally the fight ends there,
but if you manage to unlock

and beat the ultimate arena challenge

you have to fight Chaos Elfilis,

who’s basically the same
boss but way harder.

What matters most for our purposes though

is that this is an exclusive new form

where it becomes this giant orb

that’s incredibly damaging and powerful.

Pretty much all the recent Kirby games

have some boss like this,

but I can’t think of any others

with as many forms as this guy.

And number four is
“Chrono Trigger”s Lavos.

You can’t make a list like
this without mentioning Lavos.

Like, this is JRPG classic territory,

Like “Chrono Trigger”s art, music, story,

they hold up 30 years
after originally came out.

And the final boss, no exception.

The whole game is about traveling

through time to stop this alien creature

known as Lavos from
destroying the entire world.

You’d think that would involve coming up

with some clever plan to stop it.

And yeah, I guess kind of?

But mostly all you really
do is roll up on it

and beat the hell out of it.

It’s first form is the outer shell.

The part you probably well
aware of at this point

and it attacks by taking
the moves of various bosses

you’ve already fought up to that point.

It’s not too difficult,

as long as you actually fight
it at the end of the game.

Beating it opens the
way to the next phase,

which is Lavos’ true form.

No pushover, but taking that down

reveals the final, true,
for-real, true form of Lavos

called the Lavos Core.

This is really tricky
because the real boss

isn’t the humanoid form at the center.

Killing that doesn’t
actually end the fight.

It can actually be infinitely revived.

Instead you have to kill
the little defense things

next to it.

It’s a wild fight, honestly.

And number three

is the “Legend of Zelda:
Twilight Princess”, Ganon.

There’s tons of great Ganon battles

throughout the whole series,

but probably the best in terms

of what we’re talking about
here is in “Twilight Princess”.

It’s a long fight.

Ganon has three different
forms and they all test you.

It’s actually a four stage
battle, kinda like Sephiroth.

You don’t start off fighting Ganon.

Instead you take on Zelda,

who’s being controlled by Ganon.

And after you save her, Ganon gets pissed

and transforms into Dark Beast Ganon.

Which is different,

’cause he is normally some
kind of a pig monster,

but this one’s a little more
beast, maybe even bull-like?

Most of the time when you
beat Ganon’s monster form

he’s done, but he’s just
getting started in this one.

Now you have to fight him on horseback.

Your main goal here is
to get Zelda to shoot him

with silver arrows and
make him vulnerable.

You beat him here

and that’s when the
real final battle starts

against Dark Lord Ganondorf.

The game ends with a
straight up sword fight,

and it’s probably one of
the best in the series.

It’s tense, it’s very challenging,

and it’s probably one
of the gnarliest deaths

in the entire series too.

And number two is Xemnas
from “Kingdom Hearts II”.

When it comes to
over-the-top endings in JRPGS

not a lot of games top
“Kingdom Hearts II”.

final battle against Xemnas, truly insane.

Counting the main man
himself, he’s got three forms.

But if you wanna count
that dragon ship as well,

then that balloons this
fight to at least five,

depending on how you wanna count it.

Doesn’t really matter
’cause it still counts

on list either way.

Starts with the normal form.

So cool, fine.

You’re transported outside.

You have to reach the dragon ship

which involves slashing buildings
because of course it does.

The ending of this game
is so over the top,

you just, uh, yeah, buildings.

From there you take on
the dragon ship core

then you go back to fighting Xemnas again.

This time he’s in his
armored controller form,

which has him lounging on
a throne, like really smug.

He’s so overpowered he
can’t even bother to get up

and fight you, that’s
how ridiculous it is.

That doesn’t stop you from
beating him, of course.

Otherwise what would be the point?

And after chasing down the dragon ship,

you end the sequence by
taking out his true form,

which is basically his
regular form on steroids.

The whole ending sequence is ridiculous

and I mean that in the best possible way.

Few things can match the
excess of Square Enix

when they’re firing on all cylinders.

And finally Nefi Gaia from “Wild Arms 3”.

Now this is a really great PS2 JRPG.

It’s a classic, one of the few PS2 games

you can still buy and play on
the PlayStation store as well.

And while that’s nice in all

you’re probably wondering
what qualifies it

for the number one spot
on this list, right?

Here’s the thing.

This boss doesn’t have three forms.

Four, five, no, not even six.

There are 10 forms to this boss,

and we’re not talking like
“Persona 3” final boss here

where there’s different phases.

No, this boss has 10
entirely different forms

that it changes into.

And apparently it’s many forms

are meant to be a representation

of its concept of evolution.

At least according to “Wild Arms” Wiki.

There’s no attribution, but whatever,

that makes about as much
sense as anything else.

By the time you get to this point,

“Wild Arms 3” is just way,
way, way, way off the rail.

As somebody who spent a lot of
time with RPGs from that era

I can’t emphasize how wild
“Wild Arms 3” gets by this time.

And it’s a final boss with 10 forms.

It’s just totally insane.

None of these things are
particularly impressive

on their own, but there
is 10 of them in a row.

I still don’t really know

what’s supposed to be happening here,

but if you’re looking for crazy boss forms

you can’t go much further than this.

At least nobody has.

And that’s all for today.

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I’m Falcon, you can follow
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