What Makes A Good Secret Boss?

What's the name of the song playing at the end?

I haven't seen anyone mention this one, but Grima in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valencia.

You get to him by going through the grueling 6-floor Thabes Labyrinth after you've beaten the final boss. Both Alm and Celica mention that it just appeared in Arcanea, and they both are subtly unsettled by the place.

Thabes as a dungeon tests everything the game has had you learn plus throwing a new mechanic at you as well. Once in post-game, you get the ability to use Alm and Celica at the same time. If you decide to field them both, they have a whopping 40% support bonus, which I believe is the highest in the series. The drawback is that if either one of them die--even on casual--you game over. In Thabes this is a problem because the maps are small, Celica is very squishy and the enemies hit hard enough to two or three shot Alm and your most tanky units.

To add onto that, the fight against Grima is just as difficult as getting to him. He hits for a guaranteed 48 damage while witches with Medusa harass you from around the map. Beating him you get a bit of lore of Grima's birth and the implication that Alm and Celica delayed Grima's debut to set him up as the final boss of Awakening.

What's the difference between Hidden Boss and Secret Boss?

Morpho Knight is more than just some guy. It’s the butterfly you see in the opening cutscene of every Kirby game, an ultra powerful creature searching for the strongest warriors in the universe.

Even though I've beat Persona 5 three times, I've never once gone through New Game+ just to fight one boss.

Beat the original P5 release on PS4, then beat P5R a few years later. Then when P5R came to PC Game Pass, played through one more time just to see it all in 4k/60 fps, but there was still no chance I play through 100+ hours again just for one hidden boss fight.

i had a secret boss when i worked as a D___ Dealer

My favorite secret boss could be Cynthia in Pokemon Black and White(2). After I beaten the game, I tried to retry the Elite Four to find the true ending, which I now is just fighting Alder and becoming champion. However, I struggled a bit due to my lack of knowledge on Pokemon games at the time. This is also when I met Cynthia for the first time in a cabin at Undella Bay. I immediately thought she was a villain because she wore entirely black. I couldn't beat her either because her Pokemon were so high-leveled!

BIG SHOT

"When i surfed on cinnabar island and found Misigno."

As if there's not a 20 minute process to making it appear lol

I dont know if this counts the radiance

Mega man zero 3
Hidden phantom
Located in neo arcadia stage 2 he was a boss in the first game that exploded himself and died practically
Now to fight him you must enter cyberspace and do some tricky parkour youll be met with a teleporting machice take it and you'll arive in an empty room where phantom is waiting to fight you

My favourite secret bosses are the ones that cause me to buy the game and take actual effort to even get to.
Minos Prime, you old f*cking fart, give me back the 10 hours I spent P-ranking 3.1, all other levels combined didn't take me so long you f*cker.
And don't even start me with the f*cking Moth from HK.

These bosses cause me to hate them even before I get to them, and it's soo satisfying to cave in their faces with my fist or nail.

Amon.............these motherfuckers in yakuza......................

The coolest secret bosses are the ones that add unique mechanics or a unique concept

as a kid i thought i found a secret boss in Sonic 3&K. i played as knuckles, ended up somewhere i wasnt supposed to be, and glitched into sonic's version of the act 2 fight.

If I made a game, I'd have multiple secret bosses, each one would be tied to an overarching lore series. Kind of like the Item Trade quests in Zelda games. Once you beat all the bosses, a super super secret final boss would be available. In addition, there would be secrets that reference other serials that have no relation to that series of secret bosses, just to keep you on your toes.


Probably the best case of this is in the original .hack// series. While not completely full of secret bosses, it was a questline that you had to start in .hack// Volume 1. If you didn't start it there and forgot to bring your save data over to the second volume, the secret quest wouldn't start in Volume 2 and so on.

Persona 5 has another secret boss though, the Reaper. I'm just sad they took out the easy way to beat him in royal.

I'm not really intrested in the bosses themselves. I'm more intrested in the attacks. For example: i have noticed that many secret kirby bosses, such as void, actually mimin other boss attacks and movements. Such as void's mirror attack being a refrence to dark mind, and morpho knight's giant sword attack being a nod to magalor soul, and many secret kirby bosses, such as marx soul, soul of sectonia, void, chaos elfilis, and many more, actually have attacks that are all refrences to one final boss...

Hundun from Spelunky 2 is by far my favorite secret boss

Gt admit raidince is more like a final boss than a secret boss

Deltarune’s secret boss battles are truly fun

The way you did the advertisement sounded like Sydney Watson.

I saw a [BIG SHOT] in the thumbnail

My favorite "secret" bosses are the prime souls in Ultrakill. They provide such a unique and difficult experience unlike anything else in the game, that they become the best part of the game.

i saw terra and immediately came.

yozora is by far the hardest boss in the entire series

IMO jevil is harder

The background music at the start of this video being the Galaxy Map from Mass Effect was a nice thing to notice

Idk if this counts but the mochi guy Pokemon battle in legends arceus

my fave secret boss was one I found by replaying a game on my old dusty console years later. only to search it up to discover it wasn't secret at all - my weird child mind had accidentally speedran past it, perplexed by standard gamer logic

My favourite secret boss off the top of my head would have to be the resourceful rat in enter the gungeon, it just feels so refreshing compared to the other floors to me

Do you count the true ending of Sonic & Knuckles?

I liked Spamton NEO, the [ONE] the [ONLY] the [BIG SHOT]! His betrayal was pretty jarring at the end of his quest line, and his song is an ABSOLUTE BANGER

My first time experiencing a secret boss was in Bloody Roar 2. I think it was something that happened only when you beat all of arcade without getting the continue screen. When I finally thought I beat the game by going through with a clean run for my first time, I was introduced to Shen Long. That character killed me from full health in a single long winded combo that bled into his super attack. The way they made him flash red while doing it was pretty cool but intimidating at the same time to me as a kid. It took me a few attempts to finally beat and unlock him.

Though not a secret boss, Noita has one of my favorite final boss secrets ever.

In order to get the true ending in Noita you have to complete a 34 orb run and kill the final boss, collecting 34 orbs in one run can take over a dozen hours and increases the boss's hp to above 4 trillion, You also have to do all this on one life, with no perminate upgrades, Only skill and memory over the mechanics.

Inner Agent 3 from Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion. The fight goes from "fighting a CPU who uses too many specials" to absolute heck.

Yiazmat from FFXII was really brutal but boy did getting to it and beating it feel so good.
Erde Kaiser Sigma in Xenosaga Ep3 was also pretty rough but I did enjoy it.

My favorite secret boss is probably Mwyah and True Mwyah from Evironmental Station Alpha. You have to go through some pretty obscure secrets in order to reach them, and once you do both are very unique and challenging fights.

It's a secret to everyone.

As someone heavily invested in all the theories and secrets in Undertale and Deltarune my favourite part of Spamton's storyline was talking to the Addisons after beating Spamton NEO and getting that one line about the phone. Absolute *chills*.

Seeing Morpho Knight made me come.

Great video as always Doc!!

I will never forget the first time I stumbled upon Ivan Ooze in the Power Rangers fighting game for the SNES. He was also fun to play as with the cheat code.

Not sure if this would count, but in the rhythm game D4DJ, there's a secret/easter egg song that can only be unlocked by creating a setlist made up of 4 specific songs. The secret song also has the highest difficulty rating out of all the songs in the game, so it could be considered the "secret boss" of D4DJ lol

my favorite secret bosses is ofc my favorite series of all time kirby and true arenas in kirby games it puts you or what ability's you got to the full of their or your power and you might be lucky to learn some things that you did not know that your copy ability's do if you don't go has hammer or without any copy ability's

THANK YOU, bc im currently working on the demo version of my rpg game and i needed to know about this (i didnt even search this i just found this conveniently) but now i need an idea for the boss itself and i have no ideas i literally just need a silly goofy funny wacky idea for a boss but i can think of nothing 💀

FF9 Osma… I found this boss actually super easy. I’ve only played once and damn near 100% the game before taking him on. I’d grinded by killing dragons which resulted in one of the character abilities hit max damage every time. What’s this sidequest that makes it easier? I’m not sure if I did that or not. Either way, far easier than most other secret bosses for me.