This thread is for posting bosses or the occasional enemy that were designed to do something we think is unique and cool/unfair(same diff) in games we have played. I love bosses with a passion, so I'll start us off with a couple. Obviously, expect uberspoilers all over the place.
FFXII - In a game which defied a lot of previous Final Fantasy design specs, one of the most notable differences was the inclusion of a graphic lifemeter that hovered above the head of enemies. With the casting of Libra(a truly ubiquitous spell), all enemies and bosses in the game had an exact numeric representation of their remaining life above their heads. Although some enemies autohealed once when they died or reached a health threshold, there were no exceptions to this- except the final boss- The Undying.
The Undying, the third stage of the final fight, has no lifemeter, and is far stronger than the previous two forms- when my friend first came the Undying, it was only after spending time waiting to see the cinematic attacks on the previous forms, before putting them out of their misery. By contrast, the fight with Undying was a grueling 35 minute fight that required several changes in tactics. The neat thing about Undying was how effectively it suggested that it was immortal by its design. No lifebar, plus a relatively high defense value, meant that players felt like they were missing something. Just to make things even better, when it hits 20% of its life, Undying activates a set of spells that render it immune to all damage. These spells last for a while, and it gets to continue attacking. While these methods are a bit cheap, they do give the final battle an epic feel that has been lacking in a lot of RPGs.
Growing Threat- an enemy-only ability, this one-use technique, found in several unique enemies, and most alarmingly in the ultimate secret boss, Yiazmat, DOUBLES the level of the monster, with proportionate changes to all its stats. This is unavoidable, and beautiful. Yiazmat activates it soon into its fight, and all of a sudden does ~3000 more damage per attack, among other advantages. Another example of FFXII's cheap, yet epic boss design.
