Unexplained Boss weaknesses

[Bombiz]

So I recently have been play Re4 again (the HD pc version) and I heard from 2 best friends that using the Knife in the Krauser boss fight makes the whole fight A hell atone easier. So I decided to give it a go AND HOLY SHIT did it work. you can take him out in 2-3 hits with it. This is rather strange though since theirs nothing in the game that hints at him being weak against the knife. So I want to ask you guys :
1. Does it actually explain any where in the game why Krauser is weak against the knife?
and
2. Is their any Boss fight that you have encountered in a game where the boss had an unexplained weakness?

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Shadow Dethl comes to mind:

Spoiler: Your worst nightmare?

From looking at it, you'd never ever guess that a single hit from a boomerang will instantly kill it, now would you?

As for Krauser, I would think effort would be made to reward the player for taking the huge risk of using a melee weapon against powerful foes, but only Capcom knows for sure.

 

[Pink Gregory]

So I recently have been play Re4 again (the HD pc version) and I heard from 2 best friends that using the Knife in the Krauser boss fight makes the whole fight A hell atone easier. So I decided to give it a go AND HOLY SHIT did it work. you can take him out in 2-3 hits with it. This is rather strange though since theirs nothing in the game that hints at him being weak against the knife. So I want to ask you guys :
1. Does it actually explain any where in the game why Krauser is weak against the knife?
and
2. Is their any Boss fight that you have encountered in a game where the boss had an unexplained weakness?

It seemed to me that it could have been just something of an easter egg for linking the cutscene knife fight and 'hey...what happens if I actually *use* it?'

Let's be honest, it's not the first thing you'd think of doing.

 

[Bombiz]

So I recently have been play Re4 again (the HD pc version) and I heard from 2 best friends that using the Knife in the Krauser boss fight makes the whole fight A hell atone easier. So I decided to give it a go AND HOLY SHIT did it work. you can take him out in 2-3 hits with it. This is rather strange though since theirs nothing in the game that hints at him being weak against the knife. So I want to ask you guys :
1. Does it actually explain any where in the game why Krauser is weak against the knife?
and
2. Is their any Boss fight that you have encountered in a game where the boss had an unexplained weakness?

It seemed to me that it could have been just something of an easter egg for linking the cutscene knife fight and 'hey...what happens if I actually *use* it?'

Let's be honest, it's not the first thing you'd think of doing.

indeed it wasn't.

Shadow Dethl comes to mind:

Spoiler: Your worst nightmare?

From looking at it, you'd never ever guess that a single hit from a boomerang will instantly kill it, now would you?

As for Krauser, I would think effort would be made to reward the player for taking the huge risk of using a melee weapon against powerful foes, but only Capcom knows for sure.

makes even less sense the the Krauser fight

 

[al4674]

There is no reason,why krauser is weak against the knife. It's just some random mechanic. Whatever works. They never explained, why nemesis was particularly weak against nitrogen rounds either. He just was and that's that.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Why are the final bosses in the Fable games weak to cutscenes?

 

[Bombiz]

Why are the final bosses in the Fable games weak to

Gotta be fancy and take 5 years to kill you while they monologue to you about how evil they/you/the world is.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

 

[HardkorSB]

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

They do that all the time in FF.
In FF8, there were 2 bosses that were killed instantly after throwing a Phoenix Down on them.
One was a zombie president, the other was a big monster skeleton.

I guess that their "element" is death so bringing them back to life would destroy them.

 

[King of Asgaard]

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

...Are you kidding me?
Younger me would have killed for that kind of information. You just blew my mind.

 

[Bombiz]

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

They do that all the time in FF.
In FF8, there were 2 bosses that were killed instantly after throwing a Phoenix Down on them.
One was a zombie president, the other was a big monster skeleton.

I guess that their "element" is death so bringing them back to life would destroy them.

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

But is it obvious to detect that by looking at them?

 

[Flutterguy]

Poison arrow and every boss in Dark Souls. Seriously. knowing this would have saved me so much time.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I would assume this is very vaguely hinted during the cutscene knife fight with Krauser earlier in the game. I don't know any "canon" explanation for his weakness to knives.

 

[Kotaro]

Spoiler: This asshole from Kingdom Hearts II

At one point during the fight, he summons a bunch of water clones, and you need to kill them within a time limit or you die instantly for no reason. What's the unexplained weakness? The water clones have a weakness to fire. Let me repeat that: the water clones are weak to fire. You use fire to kill water. I... I just don't know.

 

[elvor0]

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

They do that all the time in FF.
In FF8, there were 2 bosses that were killed instantly after throwing a Phoenix Down on them.
One was a zombie president, the other was a big monster skeleton.

I guess that their "element" is death so bringing them back to life would destroy them.

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

But is it obvious to detect that by looking at them?

The ones in FF8, yes, they're clearly undead, one is a zombie, the other a skeleton. Undead in FF have always been weak to healing and life spells.

The one in FFX isn't...exactly rotting or anything, but you did fight and kill it 20 minutes prior, and things in FFX wern't known for staying dead for long. There's also the use of the ability "scan" which would tell you that it was zombified anyway, and any weaknesses it had. The weakness isn't unexplained, it just doesn't explicitly tell you, unless you scan it, which you should be doing for bosses anyway.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I don't think anyone mentioned it (didn't see it while I skimmed down the page, anyway), but The End in Metal Gear Solid 3 has a random weakness in that you can kill him long before you're even supposed to fight him. Early in the game there's a cut-scene that Snake watches through his sniper scope, and at the end of the battle The End is still out in the open for a moment before someone goes to wheel him back inside. If you shoot him, he's just dead and you don't have to fight him later on in the game. The only penalty incurred is that his wheelchair blows-up and one of the wheels flies out and slams into you, but it just knocks you down and then you get back up and move about your business.

But is it obvious to detect that by looking at them?

The ones in FF8, yes, they're clearly undead, one is a zombie, the other a skeleton. Undead in FF have always been weak to healing and life spells.

The one in FFX isn't...exactly rotting or anything, but you did fight and kill it 20 minutes prior, and things in FFX wern't known for staying dead for long. There's also the use of the ability "scan" which would tell you that it was zombified anyway, and any weaknesses it had. The weakness isn't unexplained, it just doesn't explicitly tell you, unless you scan it, which you should be doing for bosses anyway.

It's obvious that they're undead, but you wouldn't think to use a Phoenix Down on them from anything that the game tells you. You'd either have to experiment on a whim, or read about it online, so I'd call it an "unexplained boss weakness" as per the topic title.

 

[Lieju]

I would assume this is very vaguely hinted during the cutscene knife fight with Krauser earlier in the game. I don't know any "canon" explanation for his weakness to knives.

Machismo.
Leon and him decide to settle it like men and losing a knifefight to prettyboy Leon hurts his feelings so much he dies of shame.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Spoiler: This asshole from Kingdom Hearts II

At one point during the fight, he summons a bunch of water clones, and you need to kill them within a time limit or you die instantly for no reason. What's the unexplained weakness? The water clones have a weakness to fire. Let me repeat that: the water clones are weak to fire. You use fire to kill water. I... I just don't know.

The short version is that there's no water element in the Kingdom Hearts element mechanics. From what I can remember, there's just Fire, Blizzard, Thunder and Dark. The only element that works for Demyx's Water Forms is Blizzard; it wouldn't make much sense for them to be Fire or Thunder element, so they went for Blizzard.

I was going to come here and post about Demyx, as well, but I'm gonna extend it to elemental weaknesses in Kingdom Hearts in general. None of them are explained, and it's unlikely that anyone is going to figure out any of them on their own, especially since the only time when it really makes a difference is during the Demyx fight since you're on a time limit. Most of the time, it's faster and easier to smack enemies upside the head with your Keyblade and save your MP for defensive spells like Aero, Reflect and Cure, unless you're playing Birth by Sleep or KH3D, where you can't spam elemental attacks because of the command system, anyway.

 

[bliebblob]

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

They do that all the time in FF.
In FF8, there were 2 bosses that were killed instantly after throwing a Phoenix Down on them.
One was a zombie president, the other was a big monster skeleton.

I guess that their "element" is death so bringing them back to life would destroy them.

Final Fantasy 10 had a boss called Evrae Altana. The game never tells you, but it is afflicted with the zombie status, which causes healing spells and items to damage you.

Throw two Phoenix Downs at it and it's dead.

But is it obvious to detect that by looking at them?

I'd say the signs are there, but it's not obvious. The full context of the situation is that you already killed him once not long before, so he does look a little worse for wear. But to then instantly conclude that he's undead and that you should chuck healing items at him is a bonkers leap of faith. Scanning him for extra info on the other hand right out tells you he has 'zombie' status ailment. But at this point in the story you're cut off from most of your party so chances are good you don't have the scan ability on hand. Or you could just not know what zombie status does, which is what happened to me in my first playthrough. Finally the story has by this point begun to hint at undeath being an important theme.
Looking back I think it's quite clever: right around the time of this fight it finally becomes blatantly obvious what dark secrets the yevon religion keeps hidden, chief amongst which is the use of undeath as a means of immortality. Which in turn is incorporated into the gameplay by most yevon-related bossfights from that point forward involving instant death spells. And you can kind of tell this timing is not a coincidence because the developers give you a way out in case you don't figure it out, but there's some premium loot to be had if you do put it together.

BTW I have a theory about that Krauser boss. Perhaps the developers thought that if players can get in some clean knife slashes, they've proven they've mastered whatever the bosses' mechanics are. Since stabbing him is (I assume) harder than just shooting from across the room. So said players shouldn't be forced to take eons to whittle down his whole health pool. So why did they then only do that for this one boss fight? Who knows. Maybe they found that players were particularly likely to run out of bullets in the first place during this bossfight.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I've always wondered why Handsome Jack doesn't use the Hyperion regeneration machines. Maybe they're just not a cannon thing.