10 Video Game Enemies We Hate More Than The Final Boss

10. Insect Swarms - Resident Evil 7

Now, frustration is the point of some horror games. Even in titles with fluid, responsive controls, you're still meant to feel constantly on your back foot, as if one bad move, one wrong corner turned - can make you lose it all. But the insect swarms in Resident Evil 7 take that to an entirely new level.

Being a gross house, housing gross people, and filled with gross things, naturally the Baker house has a lot of bugs. The most annoying of these are the bug swarms. While they don't do much damage as long as you aren't standing there letting them attack you, they heavily obscure your vision, and most of your weapons cannot harm them. The only way to be rid of them is with the flamethrower, and even then, you have to attack their nest if you want them to stay gone. This eats through your flamethrower ammo very quickly, and that is ammo that you want to treasure like it's water in the desert.

While at the bottom due to them adding to the game's overall theme of helplessness, it's no shock that fans hate these things way more than they hate the Bakers.

9. Malboro - Final Fantasy

Cazadore ThumbSquare Enix

Final Fantasy loves to reuse ideas from game to game. Being a series whose every entry is fundamentally different from the ones before, it makes sense to have recurring elements to tie it all together. This includes characters like the ever-present Cid, the names of spells, and certain iconic enemies. And one that every fan dreads running into is the Malboro.

The Malboro is a mid-tier enemy in most Final Fantasy games and is a rite of passage for newbies. Because newbies always fall for the Malboro's most infamous ability: Foul Breath.

Foul Breath hits you with every status ailment in the game at once, instantly turning the flow of the fight against the players because now they have to play defense while they undo the damage.

The Malboro is an infuriatingly ingenious wild card in classic Final Fantasy's random encounter system. But it's so low on the list because - hated as it is - players only fall for that trick once. Unless you are profoundly unlucky, a Malboro will rarely hit you with foul breath right away. And once they're wise to the game, most players will make getting the Malboro off of the board their immediate priority.

Still, that hasn't stopped players from holding this tentacle nightmare demon in deeper contempt than most final bosses.

8. Marauders - Doom Eternal

Cazadore ThumbId Software

The Marauders were an interesting idea for a Doom enemy. Lore-wise, they're sick as hell, being traitorous Night Sentinels who turned against the order to serve the Khan Makyr. Making the Marauders suped-up demon knights with the exact same training as the Doom Slayer. Awesome idea: print it, run it, and put it on a billboard.

Gameplay-wise, it's also an interesting challenge for the devs, since this makes the Marauders into essentially duels for the Doom Slayer, having to fight a guy who knows how to fight back. Just a shame that this is where the execution trips up.

Everyone who has played Doom Eternal hates these damn things. The reaction time demanded of the player is too tight compared to how devastating the consequences for missing it are, the Marauder zips across the screen and can only be hurt at certain times. It also has attacks that can counter almost every tactic you employ, and getting hit once, especially on the higher difficulties, tears valleys off of your health.

The Marauder was a neat idea, but in execution it was just too much, and led to the Marauder overshadowing the Khan Makyr herself for the most hateable thing in this entire game.

7. Birds - Ninja Gaiden

Cazadore ThumbTeam Ninja

When it comes to the annoying flying enemies of the 8-bit era, most people think of the Medusa heads from Castlevania. And look, no one here is saying they aren't one of the most annoying enemies in gaming, but people are forgetting the final form of the Medusa heads: the birds from Ninja Gaiden.

The secret behind what makes the birds so annoying is all about their placement. The devs seemed to have taken truly sadistic pleasure in putting these damn things in the exact spot where they can destroy your entire playthrough in one swoop. Whether over bottomless pits or when you're already surrounded by enemies, expect to get pelted in the head by at least one rat with wings.

Now, of course, we know why this is. Ninja Gaiden started as an arcade game, meaning that its priority is to drain your quarters. But that's cold comfort when you're playing at home and Tweety has knocked you down a firepit or whatever. And it isn't like getting out of the arcades made Ninja Gaiden easier - if anything, the games got harder from there.

6. Prometheans - Halo 4

Cazadore ThumbMicrosoft Game Studios

What made the original Halo trilogy's combat so damned good was the carefully designed variety in the Covenant enemies. Every single foe had clearly communicated tactics that complimented the others so seamlessly that you could put them in any combination and the fight would be interesting. Unfortunately, Bungie made their departures from the franchise in 2007, meaning that Halo 4 was due to be shepherded by a new team. And with Halo 3 ending the threat of the Covenant, a new enemy needed to be introduced to keep things moving. Enter, the Prometheans.

The problem with the Prometheans is that they are just not as interesting as the Covenant, based purely on one factor: there's only one race. The Covenant was made up of tons of different alien races, leading to lots of visual and mechanical variety. But the Prometheans all look the exact same, so it gets monotonous.

Plus, when they aren't boring, they're flat-out infuriating to fight due to their cheap tactics. The worst are the teleporting ones that incessantly dog you throughout the battlefield, leading to cheap deaths.

The Prometheans were an interesting idea for a different kind of Halo enemy - being a collective hive mind instead of a religious cult - but the art design and gameplay mechanics just didn't measure up.

5. Invading Players - Dark Souls

Cazadore ThumbFromSoftware

When it comes to picking the most infuriating enemy in Dark Souls, one truly has their pick of the litter. Through the game's intentionally wonky combat, combined with difficult mechanics and clever enemy placement, Dark Souls' enemies are a cut above the rest, even over a decade later.

But, to be perfectly frank, all of them pale in comparison to getting jumped by a guy who is way better at the game than you.

One of the many reasons Dark Souls is constantly online is because if you connect to the internet while playing, you open yourself up to invasions. This is when another player can come in and just wreck your business front to back. It doesn't happen nearly as often anymore as it did back in the game's heyday, but honestly, that's even worse.

At the game's most popular it happened all the time, which meant you had a good chance of getting some overconfident newbie you could handily beat and move on. But if someone is still invading other players' worlds in 2024, they're probably one of those hyper-obsessed weirdos who long since min-maxed their character to oblivion, and memorized every pore of this game.

In short, you're dead.

4. Cliff Racers - Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind

Cazadore ThumbBethesda

Sometimes an enemy doesn't have to be hard to fight, they just have to be really annoying. And Bethesda has gained something of a reputation for having at least one enemy per game that just grinds players' gears. Whether it's Fallout 4 with the mini-nuke Super Mutants, or the Slaughterfish in Skyrim with their stubborn as hell, fast travel-ruining aggro... but, before all of them, there were the Cliff Racers of Morrowind.

Traveling into Morrowind's mountains will inevitably cause you to cross paths with the nation's equivalent to pigeons. They're annoying and, worst of all, they are everywhere. And like the slaughterfish, they never leave you alone - except these guys can fly - so it's even harder to be rid of them. The cherry on top, of course, is the constant screeching noise they make. And when there's a lot of them, which there always are, you'd better believe that sound gets old real quick.

They're not even the hardest enemy to deal with, and certainly not harder than the final boss. But these little freaks have cemented themselves in gaming history for just being so damn obnoxious.

3. Tin Man - Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia

Cazadore ThumbKonami

The Igarashi Castlevania games prided themselves on their challenge. Starting with Symphony of the Night, with its brutal difficulty spike in its second half, the handheld Castlevania games that followed did their level best to make you work for it. And hoo boy is that ethos embodied thoroughly with Order of Ecclesia's Tin Man.

Ranking higher on the hate-o-meter than Order of Ecclesia's Dracula fight is quite the accomplishment, as that fight is easily one of the hardest and cheapest in the entire franchise. But at least you only have to fight Dracula once, and there's only one of him. Neither luxury is afforded to you with the Tin Man.

This late-game enemy hits hard and VERY fast, easily catching up with you whenever you try to get even the smallest shred of distance. They're made of metal, so most blade weapons will do nothing to them, and they're constantly spinning an axe at your face that takes entire chunks off of your health.

Oh, and if you do manage to get its health down, it starts shooting a machine gun at you.

But at the very top of the list of why this enemy is so infuriating is that Dracula's castle has entire rooms filled with these things. No escape, and no mercy, that's the Order of Ecclesia way.

2. Flame Chariot - Elden Ring

Cazadore ThumbBandai Namco

It's hard to pick just one enemy from Elden Ring that is the most infuriating, at least when you rule out the bosses.

Every enemy in this game can, and most likely will, kill you at least a few times. But the one enemy that most fans agree can take a long walk off a short pier the most is the Flame Chariot.

The main problem with these things is that killing them is tricky - having to find some way to get to the driver behind the chariot to backstab them. And all the while you're getting either run over, doused in fire, or both. The only way to avoid all of that is to pull off a plunge attack from high up, but the odds of you coming across the perfect spot to do so are slim at best.

Oh and even if you do manage to kill them, you have to book it immediately or you will die from the chariot violently exploding.

1. Cazadors - Fallout New Vegas

Cazadore ThumbObsidian

At the beginning of New Vegas, assuming you actually take the time to talk to the people of Goodsprings, you are told on no uncertain terms that taking the short, straightforward way to New Vegas is a terrible idea. And say hello to the reason why.

The Cazador is the true hardest enemy in New Vegas - wasps the size of your torso that move fast, hit hard, and leave a devastating poison that is almost guaranteed to kill you if the constant stinging doesn't get you first. Hard enough to deal with on their own, but unfortunately these nightmare beasts travel in packs.

Your only saving grace is that they're incredibly territorial and tend to stick to mountainous areas. So if you've run afoul of them - chances are you were wandering around someplace you shouldn't have been in the first place. A lesson that will be swiftly and brutally imparted onto you by every spheksophobic's (that means a fear of wasps) worst nightmare.

No boss in New Vegas inspires as much instinctual terror and raw hatred as the Cazador does.