Breather Level: Difference between revisions

*** And once you've developed a sudden need to sleep with every light in the house on after the hell that is the Shadow Temple, there's the blessedly simple and uplifting Spirit Temple. Easy monsters (well, except for the Iron Knuckles, but with the [[BFS|Biggoron Sword]] they're not too bad), convienently placed fairy fountain, no block puzzles, pretty music, no [[Nightmare Fuel|CREEPY DEAD THINGS EVERYWHERE]], couple tricks with a mirror to take out the witches, and bam, you're done. It's even got a nifty little shortcut that you get pretty early in the temple! Too bad it's the last thing you do before you take on Ganondorf...

*** In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|Ocarina of Time]]'' Master Quest, which makes most of the dungeons three times more difficult, you may be surprised when you blow right through the ''Water Temple''. It's probably even easier than it is in the standard game.

*** Blind's Dungeon (Thieves' Town) qualifies as well, even if activating the boss is somewhat of a (Simple) puzzle. Before, you have Skull Woods with a complicated layout, [[Wall Master|Wallmasters]], [[Demonic Spiders|Pikits]], and [[That One Boss|Mothula]]. After, [[Frictionless Ice|The Ice Palace]] with one of the most difficult puzzles of the game, which ''itself'' is wrapped in even more enigmas.

* An older example is ''[[Pac-Man]]'' and its spinoffs. The amount of time where monsters stay blue and edible generally goes down after [[cutscene]]s, but there are specific levels where the amount is suddenly high again, making the game easier for that particular level.

* Lampshaded in ''[[Hydorah]]''. The level description for the third level is "Upgrade your weapons."

* ''[[Super Robot Wars Original Generation]]'' has a [[Disc One Final Dungeon|climactic battle]] in which both Maier and Julia are fought for the final time and {{spoiler|Sanger}} is also fought, and like most such levels, the following cutscene has a major [[The Reveal|reveal]]. Then the following level is...a rush of enemies that most of your units can probably one-shot.

** ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl]]'' may also buck the trend; while Candice herself is a [[Breather Boss]], you have to go through her Gym to get to her, and needless to say it's [[That One Puzzle]]...

** Subverted in ''[[Pokémon Gold and Silver]]'', where the fifth, sixth and seventh gym leaders can be battled in any order.

*** However, in Gold and Silver (arguably not their remakes, though), the entirety of Kanto could be considered a '''Breather Level'''. Most of the Gym Leaders aren't ''much'' higher-leveled than the Elite 4 (except for Blue), Janine is noticeably easier than the rest of the Gym Leaders even in the remakes, and much of the extra dungeons and buildings have been closed off, leaving Kanto fairly simple.

** World 5, [[Lost Woods|Forest]], is this after the horrendously brutal World 4.

* Crystal Caves in ''[[Donkey Kong 64]]'', at least compared to the surrounding levels. It's much smaller than, say, Fungi Forest or Creepy Castle and nowhere near as confusing. Most of the bananas are close together (There are ''two'' hubs for the kongs to snag their bananas from, as opposed to just one, if you're lucky) and/or easy to get to (Except the beetle race, of course), And most of the puzzles are just the kongs helping each other out. Even the boss is a slightly harder version of the first boss.

* The Mountain realm in ''[[Gauntlet (1985 video game)]]: Dark Legacy'', but there's a reason for it: Dark Legacy is more or less an [[Updated Rerelease|expanded re-release]] of ''Gauntlet Legends'', with more characters and extra worlds added on to the beginning and end of the game. The Mountain realm was the first world in ''Legends'' and got bumped up to world 2 to make way for the new Town realm, but little else about it was unchanged; hence why it has some of the shortest and breeziest levels, and the easiest boss, in the game.

* In the last level of ''[[Supreme Commander]]: Forged Alliance'', after getting a defence that can overcome the Tech 2 raids, you can basically build tons of experimental units from all 3 playable factions (plus the Serraphim themselves if you capture an engineer or factory) and buildings before finishing the first objective. Once you've got enough, you can wipe everything off the map each time it expands with them, most notably with the T3 aeon rapid-fire artillery and the experimental UED artillery (which can both bombard anything on the entire map).

** The mission "The Devil's Playground" is a joke even on Brutal difficulty; you can collect the required 8000 minerals and simply build troops to defend your base from light Zerg offenses, or you can go and trump the enemy's buildings, only to find adversity within the last base, which contains a Brood Lord and an Infestor as well as standard defenses. In fact, at that point you can collect the minerals and keep your units near the last base so you can fend off the attacks easily.

** The mission "Breakout". You only control one unit, and do relatively little micro-ing, even on Brutal difficulty. Only sheer recklessness is the way to fail the mission, as with Tosh you can consume an infantry unit to regain energy and stand next to Medics constantly to heal yourself.

* In the Atari 2600 version of Frogger, the difficulty slightly zigzags (1, 2, 3, 4 increase in difficulty, 5 is a bit easier than 4 but harder than 3, and 6 is pretty tough), but following a tough Level 6 you get an easy Level 7 which is either the third or fourth easiest level in the game. By this time you're in rhythm enough that it's a breeze (the fast moving snake being the only obstacle still easy to avoid). Then comes Level 8 which makes Level 6 look like a warm-up level. Level 9 is slightly easier than Level 8, but 10 and up continue to increase in difficulty as the game wears on.

* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' features a battle where you take on five chemists, and practically all they do is heal each other. This also makes it [[That One Level]] just due to the annoyance.

* The Flash horror platformer ''[[The Bright in The Screen]]'' has the "Red Freaks Museum" level and a level where [[Gameplay Automation|you lose control of the player character, and they easily finish the level on their own,]] leaving you free to read the screens.

* The arcade version of ''[[Gradius]] III'' is famous for being brutally [[Nintendo Hard]], but Stages 6 (Bio) and 8 (Plant) are considerably easier than the rest.

* The ''[[Twisted Metal]] 2'' battlefield difficulty curve: easy -> moderate -> very easy -> moderate -> very easy -> hard -> INSANE -> moderate.

* In ''[[Drakensang]]'' after some pretty hard times of stealth and hard fights in the castle ruins in the Blood Mountains and the siege of Grimtooth castle, Tallon feels pretty much like this. {{spoiler|Except fot the hidden Linnworm [[Bonus Boss]] and the [[Climax Boss|Dragon Jafgur]] near the end.}}

* ''In [[Super Mario Galaxy]]'', this is the case with most of the beach themed levels. Beach Bowl Galaxy has no boss fights or tricky platforming and some ludicrously easy missions like passing the swim test, and Sea Slide Galaxy has mainly racing and item collecting missions with no real platforming or combat. Especially a breather considering the former comes before Ghostly Galaxy and [[That One Boss|Bouldergeist]] and the latter after the tricky Toy Time Galaxy. In [[Super Mario Galaxy 2]], you could probably count Starshine Beach as this as well, since minus an annoying green star it's again a rather sedate level with few tough enemies or jumps and a collectathon focus to it.

** In ''[[Super Mario 64]]'', possibly Snowman's Land due to it having an easy boss and much less of a focus on platforming than the others at that point in the game.

[[Category:YMMV Trope]]

[[Category:Video Game Settings]]