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Boss Arena Idiocy: Difference between revisions
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*** The boss of the Chateau du Vent has plenty of throw blocks in its arena. If these blocks were replaced with an ordinary platform, the boss fight would be impossible.
*** The boss of Chateau de la Terre still has the throw block problem, but there's only three throw blocks in said arena.
* The Pain from ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]''. He's a guy who's covered in bees. The only place where you can't be hurt by his insect 'brothers' (though all worker bees are females without the reproductive capabilities of the queen) is in water. So where does The Pain, in his infinite wisdom, choose to ambush you? On a rock in a lake, of course! [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?|How could that possibly backfire?]]
** In the original ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', [[Implacable Man|Liquid Snake]] can't be defeated through normal means and you don't have access to weapons while fighting him. Conveniently, despite having hours to prepare for the battle, he chose to stage the fight on top of a Metal Gear with nothing to prevent him falling off. [[Implacable Man|Not that falling off stops him for long.]]
* ''Zelda'' has plenty of examples.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages|The Legend of Zelda Oracle Games]]''
*** ''Seasons'': The Dodongo fight is like the original, but you need to use the Power Bracelet to throw him into the spikes after he swallows the bomb. Why are there spikes there? There's also the random giant metal spike ball in the area of the fifth boss, Digdogger. Good thing you got those Magnetic Gloves beforehand, and no, the spike ball doesn't reappear later. Both Agahnim and the Poe Sisters would have fared better if they didn't fight in areas with torches.
*** ''Ages'': Smog adverts this by making you play a 'game', changing the arena to try to get his separate parts together. The game, being more puzzle-orintated than Seasons, avoids this.
** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'':
*** The game's Gohma incarnation fights you in an arena filled with giant, hammer wielding statues, the only way to kill it and the only such devices in the game.
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** Clotho fights in an arena filled with deactivated traps that aren't at all suited for hurting someone the size of a normal human. Kratos, of course, uses them to kill her in an elaborate puzzle boss battle.
** Perseus' preferred tactic is to use his helm of invisibility, then either sneak attack Kratos with his sword or take potshots with his sling. Unfortunately for him, he is forced to fight Kratos in a room with a shallow pool of water, meaning you can use the ripples and splashes to help figure out where he is.
** In the third game Heracles is wearing armor made from the pelt of the Nemean Lion, whose golden fur is nearly impregnable. Heracles by extension would also be invincible, were it not for [[Tactical Suicide Boss|his tendency to stop]], [[Calling Your Attacks|bellow loudly]], and drop his guard with a bum rush long enough for Kratos to counter it and slam him into one of the walls of spikes set up around the arena that keeps him in place long enough for Kratos to remove his armor.
* ''[[Kirby]] and the Amazing Mirror'':
** The Mega Titan is [[Nigh Invulnerable]] unless he gets knocked into the convenient electrical barriers on either side of his boss arena. The Spark ability works, though.
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* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[You Have to Burn The Rope]]''.
* ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]'':
** (the first one) Ripper Roo is '''invincible'''. The only way to harm him is to jump on TNT that's moving down the river between the two platforms and hope that the explosion hurts Ripper Roo. Same thing happens in the second game, but this time, he's a [[Tactical Suicide Boss]], the whole thing is just surviving long enough for him to kill himself.
** In ''Crash Bandicoot 2'', Tiny is invincible. The only way to harm him is to hop around on the platforms, avoiding him, until they blink red. Once they do, hop onto a non-blinking platform and hope that Tiny lands on a blinking platform and falls, hurting him.
** In ''Crash Bandicoot 3'', N. Tropy is... ''not'' invincible. However, he has you at the far end of the arena from him, and thus you can't do a thing, not having a distance attack. Until he switches the platforms to create a direct trail to him... and then takes that moment to catch his breath and stop attacking you.
** Almost all boss battles in ''Crash of the Titans'' are only winnable because the bad guys are considerate enough to [[Flunky Boss|populate the arena with weaker Titans]], so you can capture something capable of hurting the main boss.
** In ''Crash Mind Over Mutant,'' the boss fight against Evil Crunch and N. Brio has the boss in a decrepit weapons factory - next to a conveyor belt steadily supplying TNT Crates, which are the only thing capable of blowing up Crunch's cannons. Then, later on, when facing a mutated Cortex, the boss is defeated by taking control of Cortex and spinning a screw out of the ground then body slamming the self-destruct switch for the Space Station the fight occurs on. The screw in the ground is only uncovered when Cortex's defenses and minions are defeated.
* In the first ''[[Sly Cooper]]'' game, Muggshot's arena is filled with person-sized grounded light bulbs. To defeat the boss, you have to reflect light onto the light bulbs (thus making them completely impractical for non-combat use), and lighting them all hurts Muggshot and melts his guns, despite not hurting your character. There's no attempt whatsoever to explain why Muggshot keeps these things in his office.
* Being a game composed entirely of boss battles, ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'' naturally employs this trope.
** A memorable example is the eighth Colossus (Kuromori, the lizard), who you fight in a ruined Colosseum. He has incredibly powerful lightning attacks, and there is no way to damage him at first. If he stood still, he would be invincible. But, if you aggravate him and hide, you can get him to climb the walls to try to hunt you, at which point you can shoot him to make him fall down, leaving him vulnerable.
** Both of the "dogs", smaller and faster Colossi that chase you around, are beaten this way. The first is said to be afraid of fire (the only one that is) and lives in an abandoned temple... that has torches around (the only place that has them, mind) so you can scare him with them to push him off a ledge and destroy the armour. The second chases you around as you bait it into knocking over pillars to you can hop onto a ledge, which it crashes into. The final pillars cause the ceiling to collapse onto it, destroying that armour as well. Had they traded locations at least the first one would have been impossible.
** Also memorable is the 16th Colossus, Malus. His lightning attack is even more powerful and has strong knockback. Although he holds the high ground in his arena, the arena is also filled with defensive walls and tunnels you can hide in, to approach his blind spot.
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* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', you fight Hercules in an arena you've already used for dozens of battles. Every single time before and after, it was completely empty, just a flat ring. For the Hercules fight, it's filled with barrels that you need to get rid of the hero aura which makes him invincible. The barrels being provided may be justified by the fact that it's more of a friendly practice match than anything else and Hercules is giving Sora sporting chance. There is, however, no explanation for why a wooden barrel is able to weaken Hercules so much.
* [[PlayStation|PS1]]/N64 [[Spider-Man]]:
** The [[Beat'Em Up]] was chock full of such examples, but the most blatant is the penultimate boss fight of the game against the symbiote Carnage. As Spidey tells you, a symbiote is weak against fire and supersonic frequencies, so naturally the room you fight Carnage in has a massive sonic bubble in the middle (presumably built by Dr. Octopus as a failsafe against Carnage) for you to knock him in. Other such examples include the fight against Doc Ock (with convenient "disable forcefield" buttons lowered to the arena one-by-one) and the Rhino boss fight ([[Bullfight Boss|with electric pistons for the Rhino to charge into and electrocute himself with]]). The sequel lampshaded this, even, with the final battle against Hyper Electro where, after you trick the pure energy final boss into zapping one of the several generators in the area, which sucks his energy away and makes him physical again so he can be attacked, Spidey quips "Man, you'd think a guy would learn after a while!", or with "Remember kids, good always wins because [[Evil Is Dumb]]!" {{spoiler|This turns against you if didn't destroy the electric tower, which will refill all of Electro's HP. Being that it takes up half the area, you should feel REALLY dumb.}}
** Also in the sequel, the second fight with Sandman (the first being [[Hopeless Boss Fight|impossible to win]]) takes place in a construction site, which seems logical until you spot [[Kill It with Water|the open plumbing]].
* The final boss of the ''[[Prince of Persia]]: Two Thrones'', Vizier can manipulate matter telekinetically and at the first stage of the battle he tosses debris at you which is perfectly understandable. Then he makes debris revolve around the arena trying to run you over with them which is also perfectly understandable. Finally he soars high into the air where he would be completely unreachable for you... if it wasn't for the debris that he, completely unintentionally, of course, arranges as a contrived obstacle course.
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** It initially averts this; GLaDOS has learned from the last time and presents you instead with what would be a completely lethal trap, if you and Wheatley hadn't {{spoiler|sabotaged her turret and neurotoxin production during your earlier romp through the facility}}.
** Likewise, although {{spoiler|Wheatley}} claims to have studied footage of GLaDOS' defeat and doesn't make the same mistakes, he makes entirely different mistakes instead, building his "lair" near convenient gel tubes and hurling bombs at you instead of waiting for the neurotoxin to do its work. Mostly justified though, as {{spoiler|he has been well established as being [[Too Dumb to Live|deeply, deeply stupid]]. Plus, he wants the satisfaction of killing you before the entire place explodes. It's also subverted in that he ''does'' have one final surprise in store if you beat him, perhaps his triumphant moment of [[Genre Savviness]], and it's not his fault that it doesn't work.}} He also tries turning the bombs off after you hit him the first time, but he's apparently too damaged to do so, like GLaDOS above.
** The room you fight in has no viable portal surfaces (your only method of attack) before Conversion Gel tubes start bursting, so his plan was ''almost'' airtight. Unfortunately, ''somebody'' was stupid enough to try throwing bombs at someone standing behind a Conversion Gel tube, causing it to spray everywhere. After the sprinkler system activates and wash away the gel he even comments on how he should have triggered it himself if only he had known it would work (or been able to turn them on, given his state at the time).
* Many ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' bosses fill this trope perfectly. In ''Soul Reaver'', Rahab's chamber consists of windows you have to break to shine sunlight on him, while Melchiah's chamber has retractible portcullises you have to lure him through to have them fall and hit his back. In ''Blood Omen 2'', Faustus stands atop furnaces in a room full of mist, which you can use to become invisible and sneak up close enough to turn the furnaces on and burn him. In ''Defiance'', Turel's chamber has four gongs that ring loudly and stun him when rung. The third boss of ''Blood Omen 2'', Sebastian, isn't so much Boss Arena Idiocy as it is he's plain stupid -- he crawls along the walls and leaps at you, and there's a laser in the center of the room. If you stand on the other side of the beam, Sebastian will leap ''into'' it to try and hit you, and hurt himself in the process.
* ''[[Darksiders]]'' is ''full'' of this.
** The first boss, Tiamat, would be unbeatable if her arena wasn't surrounded with torches and bomb flowers. The second boss, the Griever, is defeated with a freight rail carrier that War can punch into her gut. Straga's own weapon and the floor of his own arena are both used to kill him.
** In the Griever's case, it's not technically her fault -- she has no idea you can move something that big. Tiamat can [[Cherry Tapping|allegedly]] be defeated using only your Crossblade without the bombs.
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* ''[[Transformers: War for Cybertron]]'' has this twice: Omega Supreme fights you near energon tanks you can taint with dark energon to make him vulnerable. Trypticon fights you near energon tank conveyor belts, which can be made to detonate and are the sole things capable of damaging his shoulder cannons.
* In ''[[Silent Hill 4]]'', Walter and the "god" he summons are completely invincible... except for the spears that spawn in the very place where you fight him.
* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'':
** A recurring invincible boss named Ozzie is beaten twice. Both times involve attacking other objects to cause him to fall through a trap door.
** Is this even possible in an RPG? [[Too Dumb to Live|He found a way.]]
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