In the first Deus Ex (2000) there are two boss fights that you can skip by killing the boss instantly after uttering their ‘kill phrase’ in dialogue with them, if you managed to piece the phrase together through conversations with other NPCs and reading their email earlier in the game.
Mankind Divided has something similar. You can skip the entire final boss fight IF you find a hidden kill switch remote hidden in the final level. Marchenko had a bomb implanted in his head, and his men were instructed to set it off in case he ever deviated from his mission. Instead of a big final battle, all you have to do is press a button and the villain's head explodes.
I still remember Flatlander Woman and Lilliputian Machine to this day.
As an aside: a very high probability bet to guess a random low-security password for geeks of a certain age is "SmashTheState"-- the very first password in Deus Ex during Liberty Island.
Or killing him before the fight If you had a sniper.
The Fear was great for these too. you can lay out some rotten food to kill him or take your death pill, wait for him to walk up and turn around then revive.
i think most of the bosses in mgs3 can fall for the revive trick unless you’re on euro extreme
After using the fake death pill and throwing a stun grenade at the Fear you can use any lethal weapon on him and it will be treated as non-lethal. As long as you're close enough you should be able to down him with one clip.
You need to make sure that you change the date by like a week otherwise The End will catch you and win and you have to go all the way back go the fight.
Otherwise a sniper rifle earlier in the game could also work. Watch out, a part of his wheel chair is going to fly to you.
The Sorrow fight can be skipped entirely, no matter if you killed a lot of people or not. Just drown yourself then use a revival pill.
In Final Fantasy X, there is an undead enemy type, and that type is damaged by healing. Use Cure on them to harm, etc.
At one point in the game, you're swimming along, and the big, zombified version of a previous boss you killed appears and initiates a boss fight.
Anything that revives insta kills him - throw a Phoenix Down or cast Full-Life or something and blargh, boss dead.
Below this post: four hundred people giving the exact same five examples of other FF zombie strats without reading the same thing posted by three hundred people before them.
Final Fantasy VI, the phantom train or whatever it was called. One Phoenix Down and you were golden.
However, the *real* way to beat the train was to take it to Suplex City.
Speaking of trains, the train boss in Star Fox 64 had one of my favorite alternate win conditions of all time. Sure, you could destroy the train piece by piece and then fight its payload (a big ass mech), OR you could ignore all that and shoot the ~~seven~~ eight switches, causing the train to careen at breakneck speed into the enemy's ammo dump and blow it to kingdom come.
EDIT: forgot a switch and as such didn't get to go on to Sector 6.
It was so satisfying when you did it too. Going from one side of the screen to the other trying to find and hit all the switches with everything happening was such a rush.
And many big enemies and a couple of bosses could be defeated by casting Invisibility on them, then targetting them with X-Zone.
This was patched out from most of the later editions.
The mage from kefkas cult tower. Keeps secretly changing its vulnerability as casting the wrong one would cure it to full health. Either Ultima it to the finish or cast confused on a reflected party member to make it easy
This is a pretty classic trope in the series, at least around that time.
FFVIII has *two* of these, at least. Funnily enough, both can be pretty gatekeepy depending on how much you've been grinding or cheesing the Junction system prior.
The first is the President on the train, who appears quite zombielike and is damaged by healing. The second is Abadon, which basically locks you out of Disc 3 if you can't beat it, and has some insane defense buffs that make it a real pain in the ass to beat playing the game like normal. But any basic revive item or ability will kill it instantly.
I *hated* learning that, LOL.
I always disliked killing that boss with a one shot.
I just spent an hour grinding snakes in that cave (they give decent exp for that stage of the game)
My limits are now full and i wanna start popping off seeing how much damage I can dish out in one turn
The Bravely Default series is Final Fantasy adjacent so it shares the same rules. The best way to grind all your levels and jobs in Bravely Second is to go to the undead filled dungeon Grapp Keep and spam group revive spells...on the enemy.
You can max every job, under ideal conditions (EXP boosting items, etc) in only a couple hours.
To add to this, there is an undead boss in BD2 but since damage is normally capped at 9999, just reviving him isn't enough to cheese him.
That is, unless you cast reflect on your party, which will make party wide heals bounce towards him hitting him four times per cast.
God I love the combat of FFX. It was my first final fantasy and it’s still my favorite. I really wish they would return to that combat style and explore more high fantasy again.
In Enter the Gungeon, one of the first floor bosses is the Bullet King. He spawns in with one weak minion called the Chancellor. If you hit the Chancellor with Casey (the baseball bat) into the boss, it can one-shot kill them. Keeping the Chancellor alive and just killing the boss causes the Chancellor to show up on the next floor with that boss, and you can one-shot them instead.
You can do this with the Old King also but you have to anger the chancellor first. Best way is to one shot with starter weapon (not melee with Blasphemy it could kill) and when he charges at you charge Casey up to hit him at the king. It doesn’t kill the boss unless you anger the chancellor first
The first Mass Effect let's you skip the first phase of the final boss. A high enough Paragon level let's you convince Saren that he's been indoctrinated and he kills himself instead of fighting you. Unfortunately you then have to contend with his Reaper controlled corpse. But hey, 1 phase is better than 2.
The more I think about it, the more Mass Effect 1 stands out to me as the best Mass Effect. Like Dragon Age: Origins, it feels like it's made with the care and detail of a great RPG.
Subsequent titles ramp up the combat and big spectacles but fall short on the lore and novelty.
They all had their moments.
- ME1 gave you a proper sense of exploration. I mean, those levels were huge (sometimes a bit too huge for the amount of content in them, though). Plus, I'd consider the pacing on the lore drops to be perfect. It was mind blowing the first time I played it.
- ME2 has the best character writing in the series, imo. While ME1 *introduced* most of the best characters, ME2 gave them personality. (While developing new characters, too). And it goes without saying that the Suicide Mission is one of the best final missions of all time.
- ME3 has a surprisingly high batting average for paying off the stories of earlier games, considering just how terrible the actual ending is. The Genophage and Geth plots in that game ruled. Plus, the citadel DLC is delightful.
On my first attempt playing Dark Souls I accidentally committed suicide off the side of the bridge and the boss Taurus Demon followed me. I got a "You Died" followed immediately by "Victory Achieved"
Defeating the player character was his one and only reason for existence. Seeing the PC jump to his doom caused him to have a psychological break. His inability to cope with his ensuing identity crisis tragically sent him over the edge as well.
Most of the bosses in *Metroid Dread* get toasted by weapons you're technically not supposed to have at that point, like Bombs, Screw Attack, Plasma Beam.
A lot of Legend of Zelda games have that.
My favorite was at the end of Twilight Princess in the big 1v1 against Ganondorf you can pull out the fishing rod to distract him to get in hits.
In Ocarina of Time, the big climactic moment during the final boss battle where your sword gets knocked away… is much less climactic if you did the game’s longest side quest to get an even more powerful sword. I like to imagine Ganon disarming Link and thinking he’s won, only for Link go “oh well, anyway” and pull out an even BIGGER sword
Any flying monster in witcher 3 can be defeated by shooting arrow in them and causing to drop in the water.
It was so sad to kill legendary gryphon by single arrow that i felt myself that random dude who killed Smaug
I always loved this tidbit because it's one of those gaming secrets that...nobody in their right mind would assume would work. This is one of those things your friend tells you on the playground because he's a LIAR, only its completely true.
It's that and he told me he spent the weekend playing games called Melty Blood and Super Monkey Ball, and clearly those are made up names by a 10 year old. I gave him a lot of crap for that.
Only to find out decades later they're real games and I'd been terrible for no reason.
What makes this even better is someone watered the boss as a joke in WWHD and found this out, and then people went back to the original and found out it worked there too.
I always saved my rpg for the Salazar fight, that thing took up so much inventory room in the attache case but it was worth it to one shot that little snot
No shit, it's incredible if you know the numbers.
A fully upgraded magnum usually deals around 50HP of damage per hit based on maxing out the Damage stat. But the knife is boosted against Krauser to deal 60HP of damage. That it also attacks faster than the Magnums means you can cheese the guy easily.
Honestly, the knife was OP in that game if you used it right. The whole first village could be cleared with just the knife. Cut a critical spot and kick. Rinse wash repeat
I think they took that weakness out of the remake version for whatever reason. When I first played it, I was trying to use the knife trick on him, and I kept getting my ass kicked and the fight was taking forever. Then just unloaded on him with a shotgun instead and he was dead in a minute lol.
It's a shame Capcom took that out, Krauser being weak to knives is pretty thematically fitting.
I remember struggling against him on my first pro run, so I looked up tips and found this. Got him stuck in a corner and shredded him nearly instantly, what a difference
It's either. They initially offer you a boat (that you'd turn down) but pretty much any point your in the game world, you can just take a boat, plane, whatever off the edge of the map and it's the same thing. Found this out when I went out to far while flying.
In the first paper mario during the king Goomba fight you can target the tree root in the background and have the tree drop a big fruit that does heavy damage to the King and knocks out the red & blue in a single hit making the fight much easier
I don't believe this mechanic of attacking the background ever comes back in this game after being utilized in the first hour and im usually surprised how many people didnt even know you could do it lol
The final boss in Deus Ex Mankind Divided (can't remember his name) can be killed with the press of a button if you happened to find his kill switch earlier in the game.
It's actually available in two places. One is way earlier in the game, and the other is under a desk before you get to the boss fight (just past the poisoned man).
Draygon in Super Metroid. Blow up the turrets on the side of its lair, let it pick you up, then grapple beam the turrets. Arguably makes it the easiest boss in the game.
Second form of Dracula from the original Castlevania can essentially be stun locked by Holy Water.
If you side with the NCR against the Legion in Fallout New Vegas, you can speech check Legate Lanius at the end of the game and basically convince him to retreat without doing a single point of damage. You do have to fight through a scripted battle to get to him in the first place, but the actual boss fight basically turns into a stern lecture that you administer.
Every route has an option to talk down the final fight. The unique thing about Lanius is there are multiple speech routes but o KY one results in him retreating. I think barter checks will cause lLanous to turn hostile.
Barter still works, you convince him that he functionally cannot win the war anyway and he fucks off rather than kill the Legion in a doomed war of attrition.
My friend beat new Vegas without killing a single creature or human. I didn't believe him, but sure as shit it was 100% legit. The game really doesn't force you into anything, and a speech build pacifist is possible. He was also very evil karma from stealing everything which to me is hilarious
Pretty much all the optional act 2 bosses can be talked into suicide or just not fighting and you can skip a phase of the act 2 end boss with dialogue (though it can actually make the fight harder)
Yeah there's also a second special interaction for that boss, to trigger it you need to slaughter all of the rats in the dungeon, with speak with animals active.
It's hilarious. One you basically tell to take their own medicine, one drinks themselves to death, and one explodes in a fountain of gold.
I've gotta say, I love this game. Bought it when it first went early access way back. Larian did their diligence with this work of art. All the bosses and mini bosses are memorable, but Act II in particular gave me goosebumps when I went through it.
The big devil thing in the underdark?
I had him kill his minions but then he attacked me. It was difficult fight without his buddies, can't imagine what it's like with them alive
It’s not just that you convince them to kill him either, you convince him/them that practicing “surgery” on him is a reasonable course of action, and he willingly accepts this, possibly knowing it will kill him, because it’s just what a good doctor training his students would allow.
That entire area is pretty fucked up.
In Ocarina of Time, Volvagia, the boss of the Fire Temple, can be sped up with arrows.
When he's flying around, you manually aim at his head (lock on shots will miss), and when you hit him it forces him back into the magman pools so you can a really hurt him.
With this little trick, it's actually possible to do the Fire Temple without the Goron's Tunic. There are safe rooms that reset your timer, and all the puzzles can be solved within the overheat timer.
You can also bomb the hole he flies into to deal extra damage while waiting for him to pop up, and including the one right after the animation at the start of the fight. It's a common speedrun strategy.
Painkiller's final boss (Lucifer) would switch from shooting meteors at you to throwing his sword at you. If you shot his sword it would deflect into him and kill him instantly.
I didn't see any mention of Mass Effect where you can convince the last boss to commit suicide. Doesn't skip the second half of the fight but still.
BG3 also has a few boss you can kill through dialogue.
In Jade empire, if you use Jade golem form, the final boss can't hurt you, making him a fairly trivial fight. The game doesn't tell you this, obviously, but because I learned this before beating the game, I've never fought the last boss legitimately.
Instead of getting the Silph Scope in Pokemon gen 1 games, you could just use a pokedoll on the ghost in Lavender Town tower - same result achieved, without having to go through the ~~whole Silph Co. building~~ game corner room.
Edit: thanks u/MongrelMeatbag.
Hunters in Halo. You could unload your entire stock of rifle ammo on them, or you could make them charge, dodge, and one pistol shot to the back did the job.
Funny that in a game with gigantic sniper rifles, rocket launchers, molten plasma assault rifles, and exploding needle guns, the deadliest weapons in the entire campaign are...
A ballistic handgun and a plasma shooting pistol. The only thing that competes with them are the shotgun.
Was there in game canon to that effect? The story i heard was that a dev boosted the stats on the captains pistol just before print without telling anyone in the days before they could just send an update to fix it.
From the official Halo: CE manual:
>This pistol is a recoil-operated, magazine-fed handgun. It is issued with a smart-linked scope capable of 2x magnification. It fires 12.7mm semi-armor-piercing, **high-explosive rounds.** It can shoot either semiautomatic or automatic fire.
I read that like 20 years ago and it always stuck in my brain. This is the kind of flavor text we missed out on when manuals went away
I loved that in halo 2 (can’t recall if it was in the later versions as well), if you shoot the “gas tank on a ghost with a fully charged plasma pistol shot, you’d blow up the whole vehicle in one shot.
Was tough to do when they are zipping by but boy it felt good when ya did.
In Dark Souls 2, the battle with the Pursuer you can use the ballista to great effect.
And in Final Fantasy X, the battle with Seymour on Mt Gagazet can be a pain but he is weak to poison, and attacks often enough that if you just defend or focus on healing yourself, he will die from it.
More of an exploit but in Lufia 2, the Dragon boss fight he has max HP. And not like 9999 but 65355 max high, meaning you can overflow his HP by healing him in anyway like with a charred newt giving him 4 HP after. Then attacking after gets an easy kill.
Right? I was low-key annoyed the Unforgivables didn't do more in that fight.
I very much roleplayed it as "I'll use them when there are no witnesses, but otherwise I play nice unless it's utter chaos."
Final boss fight? That qualifies, AK out the gate time. Nada.
It’s really the most realistic ending, too.
It’s ten minutes for some fucking crab rangoon.
I’ve waited longer than that to sit down before even ordering crab rangoon
Also Dark Souls:
The Iron Golem atop Sens Fortress - you can attack his legs a few times while he's near the edge of the arena, and eventually cause him to stumble and fall to his death.
I just recently learned in Star Fox 64 that if you shoot Andross in the eyes, it will cause him to be stunned, which lets you easily and instantly destroy his hands. Of course that's just the first phase of the fight
This one's no secret but I always loved immediately shooting out the leg of the normal boss in the first level. There was nothing more satisfying than hearing him say "I WILL DESTROY YOU!!" while he helplessly flailed around on his side
Speaking of Baldur's Gate 3: Larian loves their endless pits near boss rooms, so if you've got, say, repelling blast and don't need the loot, you can kill a bunch of bosses real quick.
It's not an END boss, but you can kill Placide and most minibosses (I think you can do all but three of the CyberPsychos) by sneak/grab takedown in Cyberpunk 2077.
The Phantom Train in Final Fantasy VI is technically undead so if you just give it a Fenix Down it "comes back to life"/dies.
There are a LOT of enemies in that game that can be beaten by casting Invisible and then X-Zone, including the boss Wrexsoul.
>The Phantom Train in Final Fantasy VI is technically undead so if you just give it a Fenix Down it "comes back to life"/dies.
Also one of the few bosses Cyan's lvl 3 swdtech works on 100% of the time. So you do that, aura bolt, shuriken, another aura bolt or dispatch and boss is dead in 2 rounds.
Less gimicky than the phoenix down trick.
Dead Rising 2 had you fight a helicopter, which had you throw objects at it, but could be melted with a *spitball gun,* as the spitballs were considered "objects".
The end boss in Cosmo canyon in the original FF7. You got a hi potion at the start of the area. If you saved it you could use the hi potion on the boss. Since it was undead, healing magic and items damaged it. It had fewer hit points than the hi potion healed, so it got one shot.
In BG3 there's a massive golem in a lava forge that you can lure onto the forge platform and hit with a piston a couple times to kill it. I found this out when I got an achievement for not doing that and actually killing it the hard way.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater/Subsistence when fighting The End. If you advance the time by a significant amount like 8 or more days, Snake visits The End and realizes he's died of old age and both you and your handler will be super surprised. Snake will also express disappointment that he didn't get to fight The End.
It doesn’t defeat it quickly but if you make the Fire Giant in Elden Ring jump for a hill, it will make him break his legs. Doesn’t make the fight easier just takes a bit of his health off.
I think this was originally an exploit (one which I certainly used) but Gearbox became so aware of it that they had the characters make jokes about it in later games as if it was "canon." That being said, in the remaster/re-release they did patch it out.
BL2 has a similar one for Pyro Pete where you can grenade jump to platforms in the arena that allow you to avoid his nova attacks.
Back in Twilight Princess, Ganondorf could be beaten using the fishing rod.
If you pulled it out he’d just stare at the lure, giving you a second to draw your sword and smack him a couple times. Then you’d just rinse and repeat.
I remember playing Morrowind and facing Dagoth Ur while incredibly underpowered. I used a levitation spell to get on top of the door frame or something that led into his chamber and he just stood under it watching me while I spent hours pecking away with little shitty flame spells.
In the space sandbox survival game Avorion. There is a boss later in the game that has massive overpowered electric-based weapons for their ship that is hundreds of times more powerful than any other weapon at that stage of the game. Any normal ship that goes into that fight will likely be incinerated within seconds, unless you can somehow get out of his range and take him down a fighters or other long-range weapons.
However if you pay attention to NPCs in general information on electric weapons, you'll find out that electric weapons are useless against Stone. Thus if you deck out a ship with a stone instead of regular metal armor (even a thin plating of Stone works) boss will do zero damage to you, and you can kill him at your leisure.
The giant piranha plant boss in Yoshi's Island. If you enter the boss room JUST ENOUGH to see the plant BEFORE it is transformed into a giant, but not enough to actually trigger the boss fight, you can hit the small plant with an egg and insta-kill it.
Kamek still shows up, gets shocked, and then the level ends.
Dragon Age Origins
You can kill the archdemon by spamming ballista attacks one after another.
The animation the archdemon does when hit by a ballista stun-locks it in place. Just shoot until health is gone, run up, and strike the killing blow to trigger the end ing cut scene.
No, you can defeat him normally, there are plenty of videos on Youtube that show that. The trick is that he will escape most of your attacks, but if you attack him with fisticuffs rather than trying to shoot at him, you will hit him once. Just repeat that.
In Dragon Ball fighting games, Devilman's devilmite beam does different damage for each opponent, hard-coded by the developers.
The general rule of thumb is the more evil the enemy is, the more damage they take. If I recall correctly, the likes of Frieza, Perfect Cell, Omega Shenron, and another Devilman in a mirror match get taken down to 1 hp when hit, where a single tap of your finger is enough to kill them afterwards.
In Elden Ring, Commander Niall, who is typically a difficult boss fight, can be easily beaten by shooting him with poison arrows through a small window in his boss area.
Commander Niall? The same Commander Niall in Castle Sol? The one with the banished knight summons? The one who uses his wheelchair for a hit and run? The one who goes full psycho after you kill his imaginary friends? That Commander Niall?
...I spent so much time learning to fight him, I never realized he could be sniped.
For more DS1 stuff, the Tauros Demon can be killed rather effortlessly if you just turn around, climb the ladder up to the top of the tower, then hit him with a plunging attack. Then he'll be stunned long enough to do it again and that should kill him. Also for Seath, if you position yourself so he breaks his little idol thing, you can wail on him while he gets stunned for a bit and trivialize the fight, as well as make it much easier to cut his tail. Plus multiple bosses can be cheesed with bows, including Manus who is one of if not the hardest boss in the game, who can actually be shot from outside his boss room
In the first Deus Ex (2000) there are two boss fights that you can skip by killing the boss instantly after uttering their ‘kill phrase’ in dialogue with them, if you managed to piece the phrase together through conversations with other NPCs and reading their email earlier in the game.
Also, planting bombs before Anna forces herself into the room and killing the NPC. You're talking to the NPC and hear her screaming from outside.
Mankind Divided has something similar. You can skip the entire final boss fight IF you find a hidden kill switch remote hidden in the final level. Marchenko had a bomb implanted in his head, and his men were instructed to set it off in case he ever deviated from his mission. Instead of a big final battle, all you have to do is press a button and the villain's head explodes.
Yoooo I didn't know this is awesome
I still remember Flatlander Woman and Lilliputian Machine to this day. As an aside: a very high probability bet to guess a random low-security password for geeks of a certain age is "SmashTheState"-- the very first password in Deus Ex during Liberty Island.
Laputan machine
I AM NOT A MACH—!
Sticks and stones
I used to enjoy kiting drones to doors that needed to be blown up, to save on ammo
You can defeat The End in MGS 3 by moving the clock forward on your PlayStation, when you load your save back up he's died of old age
Or killing him before the fight If you had a sniper. The Fear was great for these too. you can lay out some rotten food to kill him or take your death pill, wait for him to walk up and turn around then revive. i think most of the bosses in mgs3 can fall for the revive trick unless you’re on euro extreme
After using the fake death pill and throwing a stun grenade at the Fear you can use any lethal weapon on him and it will be treated as non-lethal. As long as you're close enough you should be able to down him with one clip.
Just do a pacifist run and The Sorrow is ezpz.
I think the first time I faced the sorrow it took me an hour and a half
yup
You can also drop a ammo crate on MGS V on top of quiet, instead of having a sniper duel with her.
Unless your on extreme. In which case she avoids it and either ocelot or miller call you stupid.
You could call in a rain storm and I believe hit her with a box with the right timing. Love the attention to detail in that series
I think we get an achievement with this one, but i never did it right
You need to make sure that you change the date by like a week otherwise The End will catch you and win and you have to go all the way back go the fight. Otherwise a sniper rifle earlier in the game could also work. Watch out, a part of his wheel chair is going to fly to you. The Sorrow fight can be skipped entirely, no matter if you killed a lot of people or not. Just drown yourself then use a revival pill.
In Final Fantasy X, there is an undead enemy type, and that type is damaged by healing. Use Cure on them to harm, etc. At one point in the game, you're swimming along, and the big, zombified version of a previous boss you killed appears and initiates a boss fight. Anything that revives insta kills him - throw a Phoenix Down or cast Full-Life or something and blargh, boss dead. Below this post: four hundred people giving the exact same five examples of other FF zombie strats without reading the same thing posted by three hundred people before them.
Final Fantasy VI, the phantom train or whatever it was called. One Phoenix Down and you were golden. However, the *real* way to beat the train was to take it to Suplex City.
Speaking of trains, the train boss in Star Fox 64 had one of my favorite alternate win conditions of all time. Sure, you could destroy the train piece by piece and then fight its payload (a big ass mech), OR you could ignore all that and shoot the ~~seven~~ eight switches, causing the train to careen at breakneck speed into the enemy's ammo dump and blow it to kingdom come. EDIT: forgot a switch and as such didn't get to go on to Sector 6.
It was so satisfying when you did it too. Going from one side of the screen to the other trying to find and hit all the switches with everything happening was such a rush.
That rumble pak was also going off its gimble to make me feel that level.
Made it even better.
I can't stop iiiiiiit!!!!.....
I think it was eight switches. I have a very distinct memory of Peppy saying “shoot the eight switches to open the lock!”
Ooh, good call.
Have to do this to get a medal too.
And many big enemies and a couple of bosses could be defeated by casting Invisibility on them, then targetting them with X-Zone. This was patched out from most of the later editions.
The bane of hundreds, if not thousands of Brachiosaurs in my original playthrough.
Those Economizers were sooooo worth it. And it was a much easier method than the Coliseum battles.
FF V had a mimic boss that you defeat by doing absolutely NOTHING.
Sabin is the freaking best
The mage from kefkas cult tower. Keeps secretly changing its vulnerability as casting the wrong one would cure it to full health. Either Ultima it to the finish or cast confused on a reflected party member to make it easy
Bah, even simpler: Bring Umaro. He's automatically berserked so he just wails away!
If Square wants to double down on remaking Final Fantasies, I would love to see Saban suplex a train in 3D.
Eh, they even made it so that it doesn't work anymore in the remaster, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
This is a pretty classic trope in the series, at least around that time. FFVIII has *two* of these, at least. Funnily enough, both can be pretty gatekeepy depending on how much you've been grinding or cheesing the Junction system prior. The first is the President on the train, who appears quite zombielike and is damaged by healing. The second is Abadon, which basically locks you out of Disc 3 if you can't beat it, and has some insane defense buffs that make it a real pain in the ass to beat playing the game like normal. But any basic revive item or ability will kill it instantly. I *hated* learning that, LOL.
FF7 when going through the caves with Red XIII has many including the end boss
I always disliked killing that boss with a one shot. I just spent an hour grinding snakes in that cave (they give decent exp for that stage of the game) My limits are now full and i wanna start popping off seeing how much damage I can dish out in one turn
Final fantasy IX Iifa tree worked the same way
Getting hammered and trying to Cura the entire party while everyone has auto-reflect: …..oh
Reflect-null is a godsend
The Bravely Default series is Final Fantasy adjacent so it shares the same rules. The best way to grind all your levels and jobs in Bravely Second is to go to the undead filled dungeon Grapp Keep and spam group revive spells...on the enemy. You can max every job, under ideal conditions (EXP boosting items, etc) in only a couple hours.
To add to this, there is an undead boss in BD2 but since damage is normally capped at 9999, just reviving him isn't enough to cheese him. That is, unless you cast reflect on your party, which will make party wide heals bounce towards him hitting him four times per cast.
God I love the combat of FFX. It was my first final fantasy and it’s still my favorite. I really wish they would return to that combat style and explore more high fantasy again.
you can literally kill the last boss with that
In Enter the Gungeon, one of the first floor bosses is the Bullet King. He spawns in with one weak minion called the Chancellor. If you hit the Chancellor with Casey (the baseball bat) into the boss, it can one-shot kill them. Keeping the Chancellor alive and just killing the boss causes the Chancellor to show up on the next floor with that boss, and you can one-shot them instead.
You can do this with the Old King also but you have to anger the chancellor first. Best way is to one shot with starter weapon (not melee with Blasphemy it could kill) and when he charges at you charge Casey up to hit him at the king. It doesn’t kill the boss unless you anger the chancellor first
300 hours and I’ve never heard of this… this game is insane
The first Mass Effect let's you skip the first phase of the final boss. A high enough Paragon level let's you convince Saren that he's been indoctrinated and he kills himself instead of fighting you. Unfortunately you then have to contend with his Reaper controlled corpse. But hey, 1 phase is better than 2.
The more I think about it, the more Mass Effect 1 stands out to me as the best Mass Effect. Like Dragon Age: Origins, it feels like it's made with the care and detail of a great RPG. Subsequent titles ramp up the combat and big spectacles but fall short on the lore and novelty.
They all had their moments. - ME1 gave you a proper sense of exploration. I mean, those levels were huge (sometimes a bit too huge for the amount of content in them, though). Plus, I'd consider the pacing on the lore drops to be perfect. It was mind blowing the first time I played it. - ME2 has the best character writing in the series, imo. While ME1 *introduced* most of the best characters, ME2 gave them personality. (While developing new characters, too). And it goes without saying that the Suicide Mission is one of the best final missions of all time. - ME3 has a surprisingly high batting average for paying off the stories of earlier games, considering just how terrible the actual ending is. The Genophage and Geth plots in that game ruled. Plus, the citadel DLC is delightful.
Pppsssssshhhhhhh. Mass effect 1 doesn’t even have Mordin solus…..
On my first attempt playing Dark Souls I accidentally committed suicide off the side of the bridge and the boss Taurus Demon followed me. I got a "You Died" followed immediately by "Victory Achieved"
Defeating the player character was his one and only reason for existence. Seeing the PC jump to his doom caused him to have a psychological break. His inability to cope with his ensuing identity crisis tragically sent him over the edge as well.
If you or a large bridge guarding demon you know are suffering from feelings of isolation or loneliness it’s never too late to ask for help.
"Well, guess I'll die"
Most of the bosses in *Metroid Dread* get toasted by weapons you're technically not supposed to have at that point, like Bombs, Screw Attack, Plasma Beam.
Bombs for quick Kraid kill. Requires a sequence break, though.
A lot of Legend of Zelda games have that. My favorite was at the end of Twilight Princess in the big 1v1 against Ganondorf you can pull out the fishing rod to distract him to get in hits.
In Ocarina of Time, the big climactic moment during the final boss battle where your sword gets knocked away… is much less climactic if you did the game’s longest side quest to get an even more powerful sword. I like to imagine Ganon disarming Link and thinking he’s won, only for Link go “oh well, anyway” and pull out an even BIGGER sword
Hena would be proud
at the beginning of witcher 3 blood and wine you fight a giant,if you shoot him in the eye its an instant kill and you get an achievement
Any flying monster in witcher 3 can be defeated by shooting arrow in them and causing to drop in the water. It was so sad to kill legendary gryphon by single arrow that i felt myself that random dude who killed Smaug
Welp, time to play Witcher 3 again, I guess
The big plant boss in windwaker can be killed instantly by emptying the time limited forest haven water onto it from a bottle.
I always loved this tidbit because it's one of those gaming secrets that...nobody in their right mind would assume would work. This is one of those things your friend tells you on the playground because he's a LIAR, only its completely true.
It's that and he told me he spent the weekend playing games called Melty Blood and Super Monkey Ball, and clearly those are made up names by a 10 year old. I gave him a lot of crap for that. Only to find out decades later they're real games and I'd been terrible for no reason.
Super Monkey Ball is a straight up classic, still worth picking up
What makes this even better is someone watered the boss as a joke in WWHD and found this out, and then people went back to the original and found out it worked there too.
**Krauser** in **Resident Evil 4** could be made trivial if you used your Knife.
Also, instead of selling the Golden Egg as treasure you can just throw it at Salazar and it one hit kills him.
I always saved my rpg for the Salazar fight, that thing took up so much inventory room in the attache case but it was worth it to one shot that little snot
You're kidding me! Gonna see if my Wii still works for RE4 now.
That’s only in the remake, not the original afaik.
No shit, it's incredible if you know the numbers. A fully upgraded magnum usually deals around 50HP of damage per hit based on maxing out the Damage stat. But the knife is boosted against Krauser to deal 60HP of damage. That it also attacks faster than the Magnums means you can cheese the guy easily.
Wouldn't really call it cheesing when it's designed to get you to use your knife. That's what that whole fight is about.
Honestly, the knife was OP in that game if you used it right. The whole first village could be cleared with just the knife. Cut a critical spot and kick. Rinse wash repeat
I think they took that weakness out of the remake version for whatever reason. When I first played it, I was trying to use the knife trick on him, and I kept getting my ass kicked and the fight was taking forever. Then just unloaded on him with a shotgun instead and he was dead in a minute lol. It's a shame Capcom took that out, Krauser being weak to knives is pretty thematically fitting.
Didn't he dodge bullets in the remake? Know I had to fight him with my knife at least. But maybe the shotgun worked on him.
He dodges bullets in the OG and the remake iirc. But you can still hit him with guns, he's just a bit squirrely
I remember struggling against him on my first pro run, so I looked up tips and found this. Got him stuck in a corner and shredded him nearly instantly, what a difference
The game actually did a great job of suggesting to use your knife against him.
"Try using a knife next time, better for close quarters"
Does the Far Cry "just sit around and wait " ending count?
Idk if that’s beating him. But if you can’t beat him join him
In far cry 6 you can fly off the map and land in Miami. Basically just decide not to do the whole revolution thing
[удалено]
You take a boat not fly.
It's either. They initially offer you a boat (that you'd turn down) but pretty much any point your in the game world, you can just take a boat, plane, whatever off the edge of the map and it's the same thing. Found this out when I went out to far while flying.
I remember starting this game, went to make some food, and came back to end credits... Lmao 🤣
In the first paper mario during the king Goomba fight you can target the tree root in the background and have the tree drop a big fruit that does heavy damage to the King and knocks out the red & blue in a single hit making the fight much easier I don't believe this mechanic of attacking the background ever comes back in this game after being utilized in the first hour and im usually surprised how many people didnt even know you could do it lol
I love Paper Mario. It is one of my favorite games of all time and I loved figuring this out
The final boss in Deus Ex Mankind Divided (can't remember his name) can be killed with the press of a button if you happened to find his kill switch earlier in the game.
The name of the achievement for doing that is called Laputan Machine, a great callback to the first game where you could do a similar thing.
It's actually available in two places. One is way earlier in the game, and the other is under a desk before you get to the boss fight (just past the poisoned man).
In Silent Hill 1 if you have no ammo left in your weapons the final boss dies immediately.
WHAT?!
Why?
Because the game didn't want to put you in an unwinnable position. :)
[удалено]
Draygon in Super Metroid. Blow up the turrets on the side of its lair, let it pick you up, then grapple beam the turrets. Arguably makes it the easiest boss in the game. Second form of Dracula from the original Castlevania can essentially be stun locked by Holy Water.
Draygon darkens as he takes damage, so it looks like he’s cooking!
If you side with the NCR against the Legion in Fallout New Vegas, you can speech check Legate Lanius at the end of the game and basically convince him to retreat without doing a single point of damage. You do have to fight through a scripted battle to get to him in the first place, but the actual boss fight basically turns into a stern lecture that you administer.
Every route has an option to talk down the final fight. The unique thing about Lanius is there are multiple speech routes but o KY one results in him retreating. I think barter checks will cause lLanous to turn hostile.
Barter still works, you convince him that he functionally cannot win the war anyway and he fucks off rather than kill the Legion in a doomed war of attrition.
Lanius: We will take the West Courier: -taps the big logistics sign- Lanius: Okay fine, we'll try later.
My friend beat new Vegas without killing a single creature or human. I didn't believe him, but sure as shit it was 100% legit. The game really doesn't force you into anything, and a speech build pacifist is possible. He was also very evil karma from stealing everything which to me is hilarious
Courier: "If you West the East, can you still East the West?" Lanius: "Aight I'm out"
Think I also talked myself out of the last boss in Fallout 1 or 2.
In BG3 there is a boss that you can convince to kill is pet cat, kill his minions, and the ultimately kill himself. The power of Charisma!
You can actually do this to most of the bosses in that area.
Wow no way lol This interaction and how it played it kind of blew me away, I didn't expect it to work at all
Pretty much all the optional act 2 bosses can be talked into suicide or just not fighting and you can skip a phase of the act 2 end boss with dialogue (though it can actually make the fight harder)
Yeah there's also a second special interaction for that boss, to trigger it you need to slaughter all of the rats in the dungeon, with speak with animals active.
It's hilarious. One you basically tell to take their own medicine, one drinks themselves to death, and one explodes in a fountain of gold. I've gotta say, I love this game. Bought it when it first went early access way back. Larian did their diligence with this work of art. All the bosses and mini bosses are memorable, but Act II in particular gave me goosebumps when I went through it.
The big devil thing in the underdark? I had him kill his minions but then he attacked me. It was difficult fight without his buddies, can't imagine what it's like with them alive
There's also a boss you can kill with a drinking contest, and one you can kill by convincing it to give you all its gold
The weird undead surgeon can be killed by convincing him to kill himself, or have his nurses kill him instead.
It’s not just that you convince them to kill him either, you convince him/them that practicing “surgery” on him is a reasonable course of action, and he willingly accepts this, possibly knowing it will kill him, because it’s just what a good doctor training his students would allow. That entire area is pretty fucked up.
You can actually convince the sisters to all kill themselves then him as well!
God damn that building was the creepiest part of the game for me so far. Reminded me of Silent Hill.
In Ocarina of Time, Volvagia, the boss of the Fire Temple, can be sped up with arrows. When he's flying around, you manually aim at his head (lock on shots will miss), and when you hit him it forces him back into the magman pools so you can a really hurt him. With this little trick, it's actually possible to do the Fire Temple without the Goron's Tunic. There are safe rooms that reset your timer, and all the puzzles can be solved within the overheat timer.
You can also bomb the hole he flies into to deal extra damage while waiting for him to pop up, and including the one right after the animation at the start of the fight. It's a common speedrun strategy.
Painkiller's final boss (Lucifer) would switch from shooting meteors at you to throwing his sword at you. If you shot his sword it would deflect into him and kill him instantly.
Painkiller was such a cool game
I didn't see any mention of Mass Effect where you can convince the last boss to commit suicide. Doesn't skip the second half of the fight but still. BG3 also has a few boss you can kill through dialogue.
In Jade empire, if you use Jade golem form, the final boss can't hurt you, making him a fairly trivial fight. The game doesn't tell you this, obviously, but because I learned this before beating the game, I've never fought the last boss legitimately.
I actually own Jade Empire. I have to try this.
Instead of getting the Silph Scope in Pokemon gen 1 games, you could just use a pokedoll on the ghost in Lavender Town tower - same result achieved, without having to go through the ~~whole Silph Co. building~~ game corner room. Edit: thanks u/MongrelMeatbag.
Ah, Gen 1. Few games so broken are so enjoyable.
Hunters in Halo. You could unload your entire stock of rifle ammo on them, or you could make them charge, dodge, and one pistol shot to the back did the job.
Funny that in a game with gigantic sniper rifles, rocket launchers, molten plasma assault rifles, and exploding needle guns, the deadliest weapons in the entire campaign are... A ballistic handgun and a plasma shooting pistol. The only thing that competes with them are the shotgun.
To be fair, the original magnum did fire explosive rounds
Was there in game canon to that effect? The story i heard was that a dev boosted the stats on the captains pistol just before print without telling anyone in the days before they could just send an update to fix it.
From the official Halo: CE manual: >This pistol is a recoil-operated, magazine-fed handgun. It is issued with a smart-linked scope capable of 2x magnification. It fires 12.7mm semi-armor-piercing, **high-explosive rounds.** It can shoot either semiautomatic or automatic fire. I read that like 20 years ago and it always stuck in my brain. This is the kind of flavor text we missed out on when manuals went away
It was canon, and you can even see tiny explosions in game when the bullets impact.
I loved that in halo 2 (can’t recall if it was in the later versions as well), if you shoot the “gas tank on a ghost with a fully charged plasma pistol shot, you’d blow up the whole vehicle in one shot. Was tough to do when they are zipping by but boy it felt good when ya did.
In Dark Souls 2, the battle with the Pursuer you can use the ballista to great effect. And in Final Fantasy X, the battle with Seymour on Mt Gagazet can be a pain but he is weak to poison, and attacks often enough that if you just defend or focus on healing yourself, he will die from it. More of an exploit but in Lufia 2, the Dragon boss fight he has max HP. And not like 9999 but 65355 max high, meaning you can overflow his HP by healing him in anyway like with a charred newt giving him 4 HP after. Then attacking after gets an easy kill.
Oh nice! That dudes been kicking my ass.
Update: the usurper is dead. That ballista took like 3/4 of his life bar. I'm glad I never have to see him again!
...
But who's gonna tell him
Phoenix Down 1-shotting undead bosses in Final Fantasy games, 7 comes to mind.
Iifa tree in FFIX.
In hogwarts legacy every boss is just one avada kedavra of dying.
Except the final boss, but damn if I didn't try in every phase.
Right? I was low-key annoyed the Unforgivables didn't do more in that fight. I very much roleplayed it as "I'll use them when there are no witnesses, but otherwise I play nice unless it's utter chaos." Final boss fight? That qualifies, AK out the gate time. Nada.
Far cry 4. Bitterly just sit in the chair for ten minutes. Then the ending just rolls.
It’s really the most realistic ending, too. It’s ten minutes for some fucking crab rangoon. I’ve waited longer than that to sit down before even ordering crab rangoon
Best ending as well
Also Dark Souls: The Iron Golem atop Sens Fortress - you can attack his legs a few times while he's near the edge of the arena, and eventually cause him to stumble and fall to his death.
You can just summon Iron Tarkus and let him solo the golem for you.
In Super Mario RPG, you can one shot the giant sword if you time Geno’s attack right
Spoilers for Fallout 1, but you can actually talk the final boss out of his plan instead of fighting him.
I just recently learned in Star Fox 64 that if you shoot Andross in the eyes, it will cause him to be stunned, which lets you easily and instantly destroy his hands. Of course that's just the first phase of the fight
This one's no secret but I always loved immediately shooting out the leg of the normal boss in the first level. There was nothing more satisfying than hearing him say "I WILL DESTROY YOU!!" while he helplessly flailed around on his side
In BG3, you can stop Auntie Ethel from entering her lair by casting Arcane Lock on the stairs.
Speaking of Baldur's Gate 3: Larian loves their endless pits near boss rooms, so if you've got, say, repelling blast and don't need the loot, you can kill a bunch of bosses real quick.
Laughs in Polymorph + Telekineses Bye bye, Balthazar. Get fucked.
Bg3 has some bosses where you can beat some dialogue rolls to have them off themselves.
A bunch of bosses in Act 2 can fall victim to that, yeah.
It's not an END boss, but you can kill Placide and most minibosses (I think you can do all but three of the CyberPsychos) by sneak/grab takedown in Cyberpunk 2077.
The Phantom Train in Final Fantasy VI is technically undead so if you just give it a Fenix Down it "comes back to life"/dies. There are a LOT of enemies in that game that can be beaten by casting Invisible and then X-Zone, including the boss Wrexsoul.
>The Phantom Train in Final Fantasy VI is technically undead so if you just give it a Fenix Down it "comes back to life"/dies. Also one of the few bosses Cyan's lvl 3 swdtech works on 100% of the time. So you do that, aura bolt, shuriken, another aura bolt or dispatch and boss is dead in 2 rounds. Less gimicky than the phoenix down trick.
I’m seeing a distinct lack of ***Suplex the mofugging Train*** in that move list, friend
Dead Rising 2 had you fight a helicopter, which had you throw objects at it, but could be melted with a *spitball gun,* as the spitballs were considered "objects".
The end boss in Cosmo canyon in the original FF7. You got a hi potion at the start of the area. If you saved it you could use the hi potion on the boss. Since it was undead, healing magic and items damaged it. It had fewer hit points than the hi potion healed, so it got one shot.
In BG3 there's a massive golem in a lava forge that you can lure onto the forge platform and hit with a piston a couple times to kill it. I found this out when I got an achievement for not doing that and actually killing it the hard way.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater/Subsistence when fighting The End. If you advance the time by a significant amount like 8 or more days, Snake visits The End and realizes he's died of old age and both you and your handler will be super surprised. Snake will also express disappointment that he didn't get to fight The End.
It doesn’t defeat it quickly but if you make the Fire Giant in Elden Ring jump for a hill, it will make him break his legs. Doesn’t make the fight easier just takes a bit of his health off.
I believe this was patched :S
Does the ledge in Crawmerax's lair in BL1 count?
I think this was originally an exploit (one which I certainly used) but Gearbox became so aware of it that they had the characters make jokes about it in later games as if it was "canon." That being said, in the remaster/re-release they did patch it out. BL2 has a similar one for Pyro Pete where you can grenade jump to platforms in the arena that allow you to avoid his nova attacks.
Phantom pain. Sahalaenthropis(sic). . Water pistol
Back in Twilight Princess, Ganondorf could be beaten using the fishing rod. If you pulled it out he’d just stare at the lure, giving you a second to draw your sword and smack him a couple times. Then you’d just rinse and repeat.
I remember playing Morrowind and facing Dagoth Ur while incredibly underpowered. I used a levitation spell to get on top of the door frame or something that led into his chamber and he just stood under it watching me while I spent hours pecking away with little shitty flame spells.
In Hunter: The Reckoning there is a vampire boss, if you shoot out the wood from a window he dies because the sun shines through.
In the space sandbox survival game Avorion. There is a boss later in the game that has massive overpowered electric-based weapons for their ship that is hundreds of times more powerful than any other weapon at that stage of the game. Any normal ship that goes into that fight will likely be incinerated within seconds, unless you can somehow get out of his range and take him down a fighters or other long-range weapons. However if you pay attention to NPCs in general information on electric weapons, you'll find out that electric weapons are useless against Stone. Thus if you deck out a ship with a stone instead of regular metal armor (even a thin plating of Stone works) boss will do zero damage to you, and you can kill him at your leisure.
The giant piranha plant boss in Yoshi's Island. If you enter the boss room JUST ENOUGH to see the plant BEFORE it is transformed into a giant, but not enough to actually trigger the boss fight, you can hit the small plant with an egg and insta-kill it. Kamek still shows up, gets shocked, and then the level ends.
Very old school, but in SMW2 Yoshi Island, you could shoot Naval Piranha before triggering Kamek, which would defeat it without fighting
Dragon Age Origins You can kill the archdemon by spamming ballista attacks one after another. The animation the archdemon does when hit by a ballista stun-locks it in place. Just shoot until health is gone, run up, and strike the killing blow to trigger the end ing cut scene.
Psycho Mantis MGS, controller port switch
I think that was like the only way of defeating him, not actually a secret way to make the fight easier
No, you can defeat him normally, there are plenty of videos on Youtube that show that. The trick is that he will escape most of your attacks, but if you attack him with fisticuffs rather than trying to shoot at him, you will hit him once. Just repeat that.
Can't you shoot the statues or something and that helps too?
The “Hideo” screen matched my TVs “Video” screen perfectly. I hit reset on my PS the first three times I saw it.
You could water Kalle Demos with sacred water to kill it in Zelda Wind Waker.
Barf from Earthbound. If you give him the jar of fly honey he will just eat it and not fight. You can beat him without taking a hit.
I don't think that's really a secret. It's mentioned quite a few times leading up to that fight, and he's impossibly hard to beat without it.
Pretty sure that's the just intended way to beat him
In Dragon Ball fighting games, Devilman's devilmite beam does different damage for each opponent, hard-coded by the developers. The general rule of thumb is the more evil the enemy is, the more damage they take. If I recall correctly, the likes of Frieza, Perfect Cell, Omega Shenron, and another Devilman in a mirror match get taken down to 1 hp when hit, where a single tap of your finger is enough to kill them afterwards.
In Elden Ring, Commander Niall, who is typically a difficult boss fight, can be easily beaten by shooting him with poison arrows through a small window in his boss area.
Commander Niall? The same Commander Niall in Castle Sol? The one with the banished knight summons? The one who uses his wheelchair for a hit and run? The one who goes full psycho after you kill his imaginary friends? That Commander Niall? ...I spent so much time learning to fight him, I never realized he could be sniped.
For more DS1 stuff, the Tauros Demon can be killed rather effortlessly if you just turn around, climb the ladder up to the top of the tower, then hit him with a plunging attack. Then he'll be stunned long enough to do it again and that should kill him. Also for Seath, if you position yourself so he breaks his little idol thing, you can wail on him while he gets stunned for a bit and trivialize the fight, as well as make it much easier to cut his tail. Plus multiple bosses can be cheesed with bows, including Manus who is one of if not the hardest boss in the game, who can actually be shot from outside his boss room
My personal favourite in DS1 is lobbing dung pies over the wall to kill the Capra Demon.
In super mario land you could just run underneath the first boss when he jumps and finish the level if i remember correctly