The Toughest Boss I Ever Beat
When you've played enough games, you start collecting certain trophies. Not literal trophies, but unwritten personal achievements. Every gamer loves trading stories of their exploits and greatest achievements. The hardest game you ever beat, longest you went at critical health without dying, highest body count before death, best team you’ve ever assembled, highest you’ve ever leveled something up, etc. Above all, there’s the Toughest Boss You Ever Beat. The ultimate trophy among gamers.
I’ve never been quite the gamer some of my friends are. Part of it is lack of time, part of it is lack of money, part is lack of motivation to pursue every promising new game that comes out, as well as every system. Part of it is that I didn’t have my own game system until I bought a PS2 when I was 10. Still, I have a fair collection of games, the only ones that haven’t been beat being ones I received as gifts and/or had no interest in beating.
It’s an unspoken rule that you don’t throw your weight around about a game if you can’t beat it. These days, the vast majority of games can be beaten in a weekend, or even a day. They require little strategy beyond a couple combos and wildly flailing your weapon about to finish. Most of the time, the focus is on easy pickup and multiplayer. People don’t go looking for hard games like they used to.
The first game I bought was the original Kingdom Hearts. Because I was 10 and it looked cool. And it had Disney characters. And magic. And darkness. And fighting monsters. And good and evil. And I was 10. It’s hard to think of a better game I could have started with, because Kingdom Hearts is, first and foremost, hard. This is not a game you pick up and beat in one weekend. Or one week. It took me months to beat the actual game, and months beyond that to beat all the optional bosses. Most people who played the game when it came out know exactly which parts of the game took a while to beat. Cerberus, Shadow Sora, Riku (you know which fight), Ansem, and of course the Big Three; Sephiroth, Kurt Zisa, and The Phantom. I consider beating them one of my greatest video gaming achievements, because it took forever. Technically, I don’t consider The Phantom among my trophies, because I was legitimately stumped on him until I looked at a guide for the key. I didn’t beat him on my own, so I don’t count him as a trophy. Kurt Zisa and Sephiroth, I absolutely do. Between the two, Sephiroth is the one I’m most proud of.
Sephiroth has his origins in the legendary Final Fantasy VII, which firmly established him as one of the greatest video game bosses of all time with the coolest background music of any video game character in history. I didn’t know anything about that series, and to be fair, the Sephiroth you face in Kingdom Hearts is very different from the version in the final battle of FF7. He’s no less than the hardest boss in the game, regardless.
Making my way through Kingdom Hearts, it became clear after many countless deaths that you couldn’t just charge in swinging at every foe. Or really, any foe. Almost every enemy from the biggest to the smallest had some kind of trick up their sleeve that came out when you hit them head-on. You had to learn these moves and with dozens of different enemies it added up to a lot of strategy to memorize. But with so many fights and squabbles in every quest, it just becomes instinctive, drawing out enemies then beating them when an opening appeared. By the time you reach the end of the game, the only foes that hit you are the ones you don’t see. Again, this applied to everyone, from the most common Heartless to the toughest fighters from Final Fantasy. Every move, every attack, every ultimate form had an opening, a way to dodge, counter, or interrupt. The sole exception was Sephiroth.
I still remember when I saw Sephiroth the first time. I spent a lot of time in Hercules’ World doing tournaments and matches to practice against every kind of foe and get down moves in the open. I was about level 45 when a new match showed up, listed only as “??????”. In truth, I’d scanned from a guide that Kingdom Hearts’ toughest boss was one of these matches. I didn’t know anything more than that, however, and I didn’t even know who the other “??????” match was. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention either way. Whoever or whatever the boss was, all it would take is practice and a few dozen matches to kick their ass.
You walk into this arena that resembles something from the underworld. The forcefield pillars that keep you contained are replaced by wilted looking purple trees. Unlike other matches, everything is quiet when you start. The matches tend to be so well established into a pattern of orchestra music and setup that it catches you a bit off guard. No one is here, until you look up and see some enormous symbol appear in the sky. It’s extremely intricate, meticulously drawn for the few moments it appears so you can’t even get a grasp of what any of it says or means. Then it releases a pillar of light that crashes to the ground.
A young man appears. He has long silver hair and black clothes, almost like a dress. He looks like someone you could talk to like a character from the game. He’s so slow to get to his feet you almost wonder if he’s hurt or something. As he stands with his back to you, your mind just starts wondering what’s going on. Is he really a fighter? Then the black wing over his shoulder lifts to reveal a black arm reaching out, like someone grasping for insurmountable power as the music kicks in, that legendary “One Winged Angel” score. He turns to face you and you immediately accept that he is not someone you’re going to talk to. I went from skeptical to scared a lot faster than I was expecting. Hands on your weapon, he reaches across to put his hand around a small sword without a scabbard.
First thought that went through my mind, “That little sword must hurt a lot. Maybe he uses big magic and energy attacks then finishes you with it? Draw your focus to his weapon, then hit you with something else bigger, flashier, but ultimately easier to counter. There’s no way he’s actually fighting with something that small.”
If I’d known the first thing about Sephiroth, I wouldn’t have charged in. Because that sword grew to twenty feet long and smacked me into critical health with one hit. I don’t know whether the shock made me hesitate or he was just too fast, but halfway to casting heal on myself he raised pillars of fire that knocked me out. BAM, defeated. In two hits he’d knocked me out. The entire match hadn’t lasted 5 seconds.
I reached level 100 long before I beat Sephiroth.
Sephiroth also became the first video game boss I was genuinely afraid of. I was afraid to face him because I didn’t think there was even a way to react or guard against his attacks, and given how quickly his hits killed me there was no time to study anything about him. What little confidence I had disappeared the first time I hit him. After the first joyous echoing sounds of “Oh! Ow! Oh!” came an instant sweep of despair. Realizing guard and dodge roll were literally too slow to use meant I needed something with a wide gap of avoidance time to get close to him. So I’d jump, then get in a combo. I thought I was getting somewhere, until I looked at his health bar and saw that it hadn’t gone down. I was so angry I died moments later, partly on purpose because I knew something was wrong with the game, partly because he was still completely out of my league. It was bad enough facing this guy, but I was not subjecting myself to this level of fear against a boss who wasn’t even taking damage. What I eventually learned was that he did take damage, but you had to wail on him a bit before it actually started showing. I fought Sephiroth off & on over the rest of the game, taking long breaks between matches because fighting him always scared me. When someone is that fast and can kill you that fast, you don’t leap to face him. Until you have some kind of plan or strategy for avoiding that pain and getting the upper hand, you only fight him when you’re ready.
Part of what made Sephiroth so difficult was that he stripped you of most of the tools you could rely on for tough battles. There was no Goofy or Donald fighting with you, no summons, and nowhere to run inside that tiny arena. Kurt Zisa was tough and took months to beat; but you fought him in a big arena, you had Donald and Goofy to chip away at him while you recovered, he was a big target, and you could find a use for almost every tool at your disposal against him. Against Sephiroth, magic was useless, both too slow and literally did no damage to him. Summons were impossible, meaning no Tinkerbell to revive and heal you if you died or got hurt (both of which happened a lot). The majority of skills and abilities you spent the game collecting and unlocking were effectively worthless. Combos never got beyond four hits before he went invisible, your target lock disappeared, then he smacked you again. No Donald or Goofy to distract him from you, which, not gonna lie, was what I usually used Donald and Goofy for. Send them in attacking, watch them get smacked around from afar, look for clues to predicting attacks and moves. There are no breaks or lulls in the match, never a moment when you are not at risk of being instantly smacked, which is a big contributor for the twitchy and frantic state of mind I associate with Sephiroth. It’s just you and him. And he is faster, stronger, more durable, and nastier than you.
The speed and scale of his attacks was what really did the most damage. There’s no warning before a move. One second he’s barely moving, the next he’s hit you. Your commands are too slow, your reactions are too slow, your attacks are too slow. Trying to use guard is mostly luck and you quickly give it up because he can swing that 20 foot sword faster than you can block with yours, and even if you do block, it throws you off balance more than him. Secondly, his attacks cover a wide range inside a small area, and require no buildup. All he does is raise his hand and pillars of fire scorch a 20 foot radius around him. Even if you see him raising that hand, you can’t dodge roll fast enough to escape it. Furthermore, he does a lot of leaps with his attacks, covering ground instantly that takes you significantly longer to traverse. It’s like the tortoise and the hare, and you’re the tortoise.
But wait, doesn’t the tortoise win? Yes, because the hare gets cocky. Does Sephiroth get cocky? This, this impossibly fast smacking around of you while you struggle to even react, this is him cocky. He stays cocky for about 3 minutes of a 15 minute fight, then he starts getting mean. What’s worse is you know it’s coming, because it’s the first time he does anything for show. A harmless leap across the span of the arena, a taunt, this is when it starts getting hard. This is when he starts appearing and disappearing. And then there’s Sin Harvest. I learned that name after the fact, I just called it “No you friggin’ don’t!”. Perched at the edge of the arena behind you, Sephiroth starts doing a spell that, if uninterrupted for 3 full seconds, will sap your health and magic to critical. No healing, followed directly by pillars of fire to kill you. Elixirs are your only hope, and you need to be fast with them. You will never feel more like a tortoise than in those few seconds when you hear him starting his spell and run, roll, or glide as fast as you can to hit him and interrupt it. He starts dashing around the arena, further showcasing how much faster he is than you, even when he isn’t teleporting.
Keep hitting him, and he starts actually trying. The first real move he does is a series of lightning-fast sword swings in quick succession. Again, guard will not help you. Guard usually stops an attack and throws both fighters back, but with Sephiroth, guard isn’t strong enough to stop his attacks completely. He always gets a full swing, guard just stops you from taking damage as you’re blown backwards by the force. It’ll hit you again before you’ve recovered enough to guard again, and that’s when it gets really bad. Best bet is run, dodge, jump, heal, and don’t die. His last blow can’t even be guarded against because it’s an overhead strike that explodes across the ground, making guard completely useless as a defense. You either need to dodge or heal. There’s no predicting these swings either. By the time you see one and react he’s midway into a second and third. This is a perfect demonstration of what this fight will be like. Getting hit, almost dying, healing, and slowly chipping away at his health while he tears yours a new one every few seconds. It does not matter how good you are, you are going to get wailed on for the entirety of this fight. It is simply unavoidable.
That’s the other thing. You’re going to be using every tool and trick you have from the very start of the fight. You can’t hold anything in reserve. He, on the other hand, keeps pulling out more tricks whenever he thinks you’re making progress. When he starts calling out the power of darkness, you are in the home stretch. And by home stretch, I mean the most blatant outclassmanship you have ever experienced. Now he starts flying. Now he starts becoming invulnerable. Now he starts appearing and disappearing before you hit him instead of after. Now he starts hitting you with more than just a sword. Black orbs of energy he can create, leave behind, and surround you with in seconds. They don’t hurt much, but they knock you off balance and leave you open to another smack from his sword. And he starts leaving them everywhere with everything he does. They are a sign of the end. But the real omen is his biggest attack, in which he calls down meteors from the heavens to circle around in impossible-to-see paths while he charges up a supernova. Even if you could get to him through the meteors, it seems clear he isn’t taking damage at this time. Can’t say for sure, because my curiosity to find out was vastly outweighed by a little voice telling me that getting in a combo wasn’t worth getting knocked around like a pinball by meteors and running towards a supernova attack. Needless to say, there’s no defense against the supernova, no matter what you do.
In truth, these attacks are mostly for show. They don’t do any more damage than the rest of his attacks, which is a nice way of saying you won’t see anything worse than attacks that instantly put you at critical damage. By this point, you’ve become accustomed to seeing your health flashing red. You’ve become accustomed to constantly healing yourself every time he hits you. Once you get used to constantly being on the verge of death, the only real game changer would be an instant-kill move. He’s doing this because he can, because at this point you no longer have any say in this match. From cocky to mean to hard, we have reached mad with power.
Sephiroth will have only about a bar and a half left of his health at this point. That is the only good news. This section of the match cannot be accurately addressed as “hard” because it is no longer a match. This is an ass kicking that won’t end until he’s dead. Every second of the next several minutes will be filled with black orbs, unblockable sword swings, big moves, and teleporting. You are now a hacky sack. Sephiroth has thrown strategy out the window and decided to obliterate you with sheer overwhelming power. Dealing damage to him is now a matter of waiting and surviving. He’s moving so many steps ahead he’ll accidentally come full circle and teleport in front of you to dodge. Hit him, hit him whenever you can. Any amount of damage you can do. Because everything else is just pain. This is now a battle of attrition. He’s gone crazy, everything you see is hurting you, you can barely even dodge anymore, he’s impossible to even keep track of, and the only way you can keep healing is because every time you get smacked it restores magic. For every minute of getting kicked around like a soda can, there might be a second of time to land a blow on him. If there’s any upside, it’s that it doesn’t get any worse than this. No final move, no big finish, no ending attack. This goes on until the last piece of Sephiroth’s health is gone. Doesn’t take a combo or special move, anything will end the insanity.
And then you rest. And see what all the fuss was about now that you’ve beaten him. Somewhat disappointingly, you don’t get much for beating him. Like, anything at all. He doesn’t speak, you don’t get anything, he just disappears in a flash of light. Being able to say how pissed off you are that you didn’t get anything for beating him is about the only reward you get. To date, I haven’t found anyone in my group of friends who’s beaten him. Again, he’s an optional boss, so there’s no real pressure to because, again, you don’t get anything for it. But bragging rights are still something.
The one other thing you get is the ability to spot people who are lying about it. A friend of mine tried to brag that he’d beaten Sephiroth while I was still struggling. So I asked him how. He lied about finding some spot in the arena where he could activate a big attack and I could see through his lie without even having to test it out. The giveaway is talking about any kind of shortcut. Anyone who’s gotten to the end of that fight knows there is no shortcut, no strategy, and no secret way to win. The only “glory” this fight offers is getting slapped around until you can’t tell which way is up. When people ask me how I beat Sephiroth, I give the only appropriate answer:
