What is the trick to the final boss fight in Uncharted 3?

The magic formula is to keep attacking him... Standing around waiting is useless.. I countered him about 4-5 times in a row to beat him.

Just kicked Talbot's butt on crushing.

Stay on the offensive when possible. There seem to be a couple of action sequences you want to get into, which won't happen if you play defensive. It seems you have to get into the situation where Talbot grabs you from behind at least once, followed by the one where he throws you on the ground. In both situations, you want to hit that circle at the fastest rate you can. When he has you from behind, enough circles fast enough and Nate bites Talbot's arm, and gets away without damage. After that, the next time he puts you on the ground flat on your back, getting enough circles fast enough seems to block him from stabbing you, which gives Sully a clear shot at him. At least, I think that's what happened.

In the other situation, where you cross arms with him and he drops the knife, I never found the timing to counter this, and always got cut badly, but not fatally.

Always counter with triangle. When he gets you in any position where the knife might stab or cut you, press circle as fast as you can. Attack with square only when you have a clear shot.

I just did it.

If talbot keeps one arm of you behind your back press CIRCLE repeatedly. --> he will bite his arm and you get off

If your hanging off the cliff Press TRIANGLE repeatedly -> he will grab talbots leg

If talbot smashes you on the ground Press SQUARE repeatedly --> he will knock talbot with his on head

For all other attacks Triangle worked just fine for me and i could kill talbot in a matter of 3-5 minutes.

Hope it helps

It's about getting near the edges and letting them crumble. Keep blocking him while you dance around all four corners clockwise. The fountain last.

I had the same problem on Crushing, and I had been fighting Talbot for 34 minutes without dying. I finally figured it out. You punch and dodge, until SQUARE does not work anymore. When he grabs you when you press square, there are 3 things that can happen. Either you don't press CIRCLE fast enough, and he cuts you, or he throws you on the ground. You don't want either of these things to happen to you. Press CIRCLE as fast as you can (try vibrating your index finger over CIRCLE) and you will bite Talbots arm. After that it's pretty easy.

Really easy to defeat him on Crushing... simply mash all three ( square, triangle and circle) together. It's bizarre, but works and gets you to the bite the arm cut scene really fast, like 30s or so.

This is a difficult fight.

So I was also really frustrated with this for a long time and finally decided to look at a video of someone completing it on normal (with on-screen directives) to see if there was some sequence or combination I kept missing.

Where I would keep running into trouble was the grapple sequence where Talbot has you held from behind and you’re eventually supposed to bite him. I could never seem to trigger that as Talbot would always end up just pushing or rolling me away, but that seems to be the key to progressing through the fight. What I gleaned from watching the video on normal mode is that there’s actually a subtle pattern/rhythm to this sequence.

Rather than just aimlessly mashing the circle button to no avail (what I kept trying to do for what seemed like forever), there’s a point in the middle of this sequence where you’re supposed to hold circle down for longer (or harder?) once and then resume spamming the button. It might take a few tries to get this pattern right but after I watched that video and tried it out, I finally got lucky and triggered the bite once and pretty soon thereafter the fight was over. It’s hard to get it right and might take a few attempts but if you play around with it a few times and make a concerted effort to transition from mashing circle around 4-6 times, then pressing down on it more emphatically/longer once, and then immediately going back to mashing it a bunch of times, Nathan should finally bite Talbot.

Not long after that, the sequence where Talbot switches the knife to his other hand also finally triggered for me (luckily as others mentioned you don’t seem to have to avoid getting cut here to progress, just make sure he doesn’t slash you a second time on "crushing" difficulty unless you want to start it over again for the 573rd time but who’s counting at this point haha).

Then, after a few more counters (triangle), offensive strikes (square), or the other pattern where you just button mash circle as fast as you can to ward off the knife, you’ll get to the point where Talbot has you pinned near the edge and for the rest of the fight the game will now automatically give you on-screen directives regardless of difficulty.

I am not sure which if any of the other sequences are necessary to successfully complete the fight, but I don’t think you can progress until you bite him once and that was by far the hardest task for me since simply hitting circle as fast as I could would only end with Talbot rolling Nathan away instead of Nathan biting him.