Unexplained Boss weaknesses

[Saltyk]

Megaman Bosses often have arbitrary weaknesses. In Megaman 8, Aquaman was weak against Astro Crush. Literally weak against being attacked with meteors. It's such a random weakness for an aquatic enemy. You would think water would be weak to lightning or ice, but not meteors.

I'm sure there are others that I just can't think of.

 

[syaoran728]

I think there was one in FFIV that copied your every attack only with much more power so he basically killed you every time you hit him or wiped you out if you used an aoe attack on him. The trick to beating him easily was simply do absolutely nothing and you win after a few rounds. It wasnt immediately obvious that this is what his weakness was but fairly logical took me a little while to figure it out more of a puzzle boss I suppose but I enjoyed it, guess while its unexplained it is foreshadowing the solution.

I remember that fight, it was when you switch from dark knight to paladin so it was a fight against yourself. Not immediately obvious but I still enjoyed it.

 

[Surpheal]

The title of having the oddest place to be hit and killed, if your name is not Achilles, would have to go to Argus, the fifteenth colossus with the battle going along these lines.

- Get on to it
- Stab it in the head (and if on Hard mode, stab it in the chest)
- Now what?
- Hmm, what's this?
- The right hand? Really?
- *STAB* (dead)

For no other reason than to extend the fight to more than just acupuncture to the skull, the second to last colossus experiences the worst hand cramp in history.

 

[sXeth]

I think there was one in FFIV that copied your every attack only with much more power so he basically killed you every time you hit him or wiped you out if you used an aoe attack on him. The trick to beating him easily was simply do absolutely nothing and you win after a few rounds. It wasnt immediately obvious that this is what his weakness was but fairly logical took me a little while to figure it out more of a puzzle boss I suppose but I enjoyed it, guess while its unexplained it is foreshadowing the solution.

Are you sure that was FF4? Sounds like the Gogo fight to get Mimic Job in FF5.


In Dragons Dogma, the titular Dragon is weak to Dark Element, and strong against Holy (which was the one you probably equipped for the dungeon of demons immediately leading up to him, and the generally most consistent element to use).

This isn't actually explained or hinted anywhere that I've found. If you have a pawn thats seen it happen, they'll yell it out though.

 

[USIncorp]

Stuff about undead in Final Fantasy.

FFVI: Phantom Train. Great Behemoth once he goes undead, again. Skull Dragon. Lots of minor undeads.

Pales in comparison to the greatest weakness of them all...

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u84cH_bmTA[/youtube]

But seriously.

BEST. WEAKNESS. EVER.

I only wish Kefka was vulnerable to the almighty Suplex.

 

[EyeReaper]

Megaman Bosses often have arbitrary weaknesses. In Megaman 8, Aquaman was weak against Astro Crush. Literally weak against being attacked with meteors. It's such a random weakness for an aquatic enemy. You would think water would be weak to lightning or ice, but not meteors.

I'm sure there are others that I just can't think of.

I would say the best example of this is Wily's final form in Megaman 2. Because, let's be honest here, how could you expect friggin' Bubbleman's Bubblegun to be the only thing that can win the game? That thing had been a joke up until then.

 

[bbchain]

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.

I don't think it's that they're weak to fire, but the fire spell is an easy way to get rid of a bunch of them at once.

But forreal though, fuck demyx. Most annoying battle of the game.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

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

They're weak against the emotional attachments you, the player, are making with them...probably, just trying to get into Peter Molyneux's frame of mind.

I can't really think of any off the top of my head though having been born just a bit too late to have been huge into Mega Man there are probably dozens of Men whose weaknesses I couldn't tell you. Although I can comment on how odd it is that Metal Man is weak against his own weapon, the Metal Blade.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

The guy at the end of FF13, he's weak to poison. Poison. This is a series that i've never seen a boss who could be poisoned yet, and yet this one asshole is.

Totally changed the stupid spamfest of a fight it was to just running down the clock.

 

[Casual Shinji]

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.

I think that's also something he can do to you, or maybe it was another Boss, I don't know. Anyway, he turns your party members Undead and then starts casting Healing spells on you or something, I can't remember exactly.

 

[Auron225]

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.

I think that's also something he can do to you, or maybe it was another Boss, I don't know. Anyway, he turns your party members Undead and then starts casting Healing spells on you or something, I can't remember exactly.

That's

Spoiler: FFX Spoiler

Yunalesca

you're thinking of. Half of her attacks will zombify a character or the whole party, which makes healing next to impossible. Yes you could continually cure it in order to heal, but she also has Mega-Death which will instantly kill every character that isn't a zombie.

Basically it's a ***** of a fight.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Probably The Sorrow in MGS3, it counts as a boss fight. So you make your way down this river, wading your way towards the end, and you come across the body of The Sorrow himself. You touch it, and you die. You start the whole sequence all over again. It must have taken me about 3 attempts before I found you are supposed to use the revival pill in your inventory when the game over screen comes up. How was I supposed to know that? D:

 

[dragonet111]

As there is already so many answers I'm sorry if this already post

In Final Fantasy 7 the boss at the end of Canyon Cosmo. You just cast a potion X (full heal on a character) and that's it, One dead boss.

 

[Korenith]

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.

The same boss can be killed by skipping your PS2/PS3's internal clock forward during the battle so that when you reload the save he had died of old age waiting for you.

Also in the same game The Fear can regenerate his stamina by hunting and eating animals in the arena but if you throw poisoned food on the floor (like the little poison tree frogs crawling about the floor) he will eat them instead and it makes him sick. Actually the entire metal gear solid series is littered with clever ways to beat bosses that you have to either figure out or call your allies so they can give you hints.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

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?

I knew it. I knew it.

I only beat Resident Evil 4 recently, playing it on Pc for the first time. After the end I was a bit puzzled about why the final boss was so much easier than Krauser, and I started wondering if I was supposed to use the knife on him. Damn, I should have actually tried that at the time.

It's very similar to the final fight with Boss at the end of Metal Gear Solid 3; the easiest way to fight her is to rely entirely on CQC, countering her attacks when she comes at you and dodging her gunfire the rest of time. I guess it kind of makes sense that they want their dramatic friend-turned-rival battles to be sorted out dramatically with knives, rather than through putting dozens of bullets into each other.

 

[Lieju]

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.

The same boss can be killed by skipping your PS2/PS3's internal clock forward during the battle so that when you reload the save he had died of old age waiting for you.

Also in the same game The Fear can regenerate his stamina by hunting and eating animals in the arena but if you throw poisoned food on the floor (like the little poison tree frogs crawling about the floor) he will eat them instead and it makes him sick.

Those are not unexplained weaknesses though.
Complete opposite of that, rather.
It makes perfect sense that someone would die of poison, or of old age. Or of being sniped.

It's just most video-games ignore such ways of killing foes, and go for more unrealistic weaknesses and climatic boss-battles.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I think there was one in FFIV that copied your every attack only with much more power so he basically killed you every time you hit him or wiped you out if you used an aoe attack on him. The trick to beating him easily was simply do absolutely nothing and you win after a few rounds. It wasnt immediately obvious that this is what his weakness was but fairly logical took me a little while to figure it out more of a puzzle boss I suppose but I enjoyed it, guess while its unexplained it is foreshadowing the solution.

Are you sure that was FF4? Sounds like the Gogo fight to get Mimic Job in FF5.


In Dragons Dogma, the titular Dragon is weak to Dark Element, and strong against Holy (which was the one you probably equipped for the dungeon of demons immediately leading up to him, and the generally most consistent element to use).

This isn't actually explained or hinted anywhere that I've found. If you have a pawn thats seen it happen, they'll yell it out though.

Well it is explained really since

Spoiler: Major Dragons Dogma spoiler

The Dragons in Dragons Dogma are jut previous Arisens that have been transformed by the Seneschal (a being who for all intents and purposes is God) into a Dragon to test future Arisens to see if theyre worthy of succeeding the current Seneschal. It kinda makes sense to me since if the Seneschal is God, then makes the Dragon very similar to an angel

 

[rvbnut]

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.

Yeah. I wish that younger me knew this as well....

 

[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.

I think that's also something he can do to you, or maybe it was another Boss, I don't know. Anyway, he turns your party members Undead and then starts casting Healing spells on you or something, I can't remember exactly.

Most likely that would be Seymour Flux. He uses the attack Lance of Atrophy to put your characters in zombie state, then casts Full Life on them.

 

[BrotherRool]

The guy at the end of FF13, he's weak to poison. Poison. This is a series that i've never seen a boss who could be poisoned yet, and yet this one asshole is.

Totally changed the stupid spamfest of a fight it was to just running down the clock.

There's a boss fight in FFX against (Zombie?) Seymour where he goes through some very complicated and tricky stages of attack...or you can just poison him because poison damage doesn't set off his combat triggers.

I always felt that one of the weaknesses of the FF franchise in general is the way bosses are almost always resistant to practically everything. It makes the tactics you develop in other fights useless when it comes to the big ones.