Goddamned Bats/Video Games/Role-Playing Game: Difference between revisions

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* The Kudan enemy in ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]][[Colon Cancer|:]] Devil Summoner[[Colon Cancer|:]][[Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army|Raidou Kuzunoha VS the Soulless Army]]''. She's of the [[Metal Slime]] variety.

** Though given the [[Nintendo Hard|nature]] of the [[Mega Ten]] series, you're incredibly lucky if you come across a group of [[Goddamned Bats]]. It means you DIDN'T run into the [[Demonic Spiders]].

** And don't forget the Bell class of monsters, who appear in large groups, summon more bells and other monsters...and certain types of Bells, once they've gotten 8 or so of them on-screen, either play a level-up song or an instant-kill song...

** In the NES games at least, with insane random encounter rates, EVERYTHING was either a Goddamned Bat or a Demonic Spider.

** So many people hated cliffracers that in the PC version of ''Morrowind'', someone modded a downloadable "cliff racer killing ring," that when equipped, automatically killed any cliff racer who came within 50 yards of the player with a "zap!" sound. There are other mods of this sort, including some that make a lot of sense, such as one that removes all cliffracers (useful, but creates a scarcity of cliffracer plumes, a potion ingredient), and one that modifies all non-diseased creatures to be nonhostile to the player (including cliffracers). Since normally in the game, virtually ''[[Everything Trying to Kill You|anything]]'' [[Everything Trying to Kill You|is instantly aggressive towards the player]], this is a welcome change.

** Slaughterfish are an aquatic version of this trope.

* There are more wolves in ''[[The Elder Scrolls]] V: [[Skyrim]]'' than have ever existed in the history of the planet Earth, and after a few hours of exploring, you will have littered the landscape with their corpses. The fact that their pelts aren't worth very much only makes them more irritating.

** There's a few fights towards the end of the game where you have to fight groups with archers using Scattershot, and a ton of guys with shields who spam shield pummel. Yeah. Those are fun.

** ''Soul Blazer'' is also one of the rare games where one might be incited to proclaim "Butterflies!''"

*** Heck, the game is full of non-bat Goddamned Bats. You've got jumping caterpillars -- in fact, several types that only move into your sword range once you get in a spot where they're gonna hit you. You've got giant flowers that put out tiny bees that you practically cannot kill until they get you -- very hard if you're trying for a no-damage run. There's dragons that leap out of the water at you with no visible sign that that's an area to watch out for. And then there are the non-spawned guys whose only purpose is to make killing the spawned guys that much harder, and who are unkilled whenever you return from freeing another citizen -- the pillars of fire that spit fireballs at you are slightly annoying, but the freaky face statues that conjure up icicle death in your path, that's somewhat more than merely annoying (because you ''would'' be perfectly safe from the forewarned icicles conjured 2 spaces away from you... if you weren't trying to lunge at bats and sorcerers).

** This is counterbalanced by the fact that, unless you're a fighter, there's no automatic Badder fight at the beginning of the game. Also, you're given direction on where to go, the forest you're stuck in is not all that big and poison both works ''very'' slowly (it will take an hour of real time to kill you, while traversing the forest takes about five minutes if you don't know where you're going) and eventually heals itself for weaker forms of poison. Finally, the enemy encounter rate is turned ''way'' down until you reach the town for the first time (in fact, the only way you can possibly get into a fight is to go looking for one, that is, straying between screens for a long time), and after about five minutes of real time, the sun comes up.

** In ''[[Quest for Glory V]]'', you have the badders' long lost cousin, the batties. No poison this time since they're bats, but their small size, high speed and large numbers make them annoying as hell. Worse, they only show up at night or in dark places, making them very difficult to spot until it's too late.

* Neoshadows, Darkballs, and Defenders in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]: [[Chain of Memories]]''. All of them are fond of using high-level cards (8s or 9s) that will stun you if you try to hit them with a lower-level card. The former two are also prone to ''chase'' you, which can lead to you running away while you look for a card that will stop them. Neoshadows are particularly annoying, both because they travel in swarms (so you end up getting repeatedly pounded after a single card-break), and because they can flatten themselves against the ground to avoid your sleights (normal Shadows can do this, too, [[The Goomba|but they're much weaker]]).

** ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'' provides you with various Nobodies; such as the Berserkers and Dancers, ''both'' of which boast impossible-to-block attacks; the Samurai, who boast a reaction command that requires a ''very'' fast reaction time if you want to avoid getting damaged by it instead; and the Assassins, who ''self-destruct'' in your face if you don't kill them fast enough.

*** They're not hard if you get Blizzaga and wait in one spot. Cast it as they approach and wail on them when they're frozen.

** Basically all the Wonderland Heartless count as this. There's ones that teleport when you hit them, ones that teleport ''you'' when you hit them, one that causes random status effects, one that emits a poison that can EASILY kill you if you try to attack it. They all fly too. And they all appear in the aforementioned [[Scrappy Level|FUCKING MAZE.]]

*** Wonderland in general, because for most of the missions in it, you have to "drink" the ption to go back to your origanal size, but you [[Scrappy Mechanic|''CAN'T DO THAT WITH HEARTLESS AROUND'']]

*** If you think about it, the majority of the game's enemies are designed with this trope in mind. Scrappers are designed to hang back & attack during lulls in combos; Shoegazers become invincible for a period if not beaten quickly enough; Spiderchests burrow and poison you; Archravens fly high in the air, grab treasure prizes, and attack anything they touch when doing so; Blue Sea Salts can freeze you; Chrono Twisters cast stop; Axe Flappers attack with projectiles & feign being stunned (also, they're batlike). Oh, and of course, being Kingdom Hearts enemies, they swarm you like crazy.

** Hell, this dates all the way back to the first ''Kingdom Hearts'' as well. The Large Bodies (which have appeared in just about every game) may very well qualify, because they block any blow you deal from the front with their disgustingly incredible fat, so you have to strike them from behind. Depending on which game you're playing, this can either be laughably easy or a gigantic pain in the posterior (I'm looking at you, 358/2). The aforementioned Darkballs were also just as annoying as they were in ''CoM''. At one point, you have to fight an entire ''group'' of them (during the [[Final Boss]], appropriately enough). Then there were those damned monkeys that ran circles around you and could very much overwhelm you early on, especially on Expert Mode. And the Nobodies mentioned above? Not the only Bats in KH2. There were the freaking flying zombies that chased Sora everywhere, the Crimson Jazzes that are literally ''impossible'' to run away from, even with maximum movement abilities, and surround you with exploding fireballs, the Toy Soldiers and Graveyards, the Morning Stars, the... you know what? Let's just say "[[Kingdom Hearts]] is the best example for [[Goddamned Bats]]" and leave it at that.

** The enemy Thief and Kunoichi classes in ''Disgaea 2'' can lean towards this. As no matter how many thousands of levels above them you are, they still land their status moves on you almost 100% of the time while your own tend to fail about half the time. Little is quite as annoying as having a lvl 4000 die because two lvl 10 kunoichi poisoned it and put it to sleep at the same time. Prinny Dance comes close for the same reasons but it actually tends to miss or at least not always inflict an affect if the hits fail to do damage.

** Of course, the bright side of this is that almost every unit used against you can be used ''by'' you. And yes, it ''is'' satisfying to inflict three different status effects on one bigass enemy.

** The Ambling Pirates in ''Disgaea 2'' definitely qualify for the "appearing too often" category. To get to the best endgame areas, you must encounter and defeat 16 different kinds of pirates, all of which will appear at random in the Item World (randomly generated levels you can go through to make equipment more powerful.) It's frustrating as hell when you're down to the last one or two kinds and two out of every three encounters is with this guy.

* The Poison Lilies in ''[[Phantasy Star]] Online''. Not only do they spit out the titular poison, they also can paralyze you, making you unable to do anything but use items. Ob Lilies in the Ultimate difficulty level are even ''worse'', spitting out the instant death technique Megid. Oh yeah, and they can ''still'' paralyze you.

* In ''[[Wizardry]] 8'', any large gathering of monsters (usually eight or more) can turn into a [[Goddamned Bats]] scenario, since fighting them is often extremely time-consuming, and they ''all'' get to attack...

** Not to mention the fact that if you scare them away they high-tail it into the distance leaving you ''stuck in combat'' whilst you try and catch them because you can only get out of turn based play once they die!!!

** The Spiteful Crow is another infuriating enemy that was found very early in the game (and twice more after Onett) -- they were faster than you (and were quite evasive), and could steal one of your items!

** The Territorial Oak could be annoying (exploding trees, anyone?). But at least it usually showed up alone, so you could speed through its death message to end the battle before it killed you.

*** The worst are mushroom enemies. They are often fast enough to go before the party gets a chance to kill them and inflict a status effect that can't be gotten rid of without trudging all the way back to town. The "mushroomized" effect combines a chance of randomly attacking a party member with [[Interface Screw]] that makes walking back to town to cure it a chore.

* In ''[[Mother 3]]'', "brooms" appear near the end of Chapter 2, at the end of a dungeon filled with enemies that are kind of annoying to kill because you gotta use PK Freeze to kill one at a time. Anyway, the brooms are relatively easy to get by since they move in a pattern, but they lure you in with items! And if they catch you, they [[Incredibly Lame Pun|sweep you off your feet]] and you land in a garbage can ''all the way at the beginning of aforementioned dungeon.''

* ''[[Mass Effect (video game)|Mass Effect 1]]'': Thresher Maws, which spawn whenever you're driving the Mako through a large enough open area, are frustratingly time-consuming and boring to kill. What's particularly pernicious is that, when they appear, they sometimes spawn directly under the Mako, killing you instantly without warning.

** Normal [[Mooks]] sometimes did this by charging straight at you, even if they had sniper rifles or machine guns. Irritating, as you have to get out of cover and turn round before you can kill them. T

** At the epic level ranges where the expansion is located, you can have an overabundance of spells and - even better - artifacts giving you ''true seeing'', rendering their little trick useless to begin with.

** Duergar were also in the original campaign. This was a pain because a) an entire region would spawn NOTHING BUT SQUADS OF DUERGAR, and b) if you'd reached a certain level they'd hit you with ''Phantasmal Killer''. What does this do, you ask? Unless you pass your Will and Fort saves, it does [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. Having to respawn 10 times per level because the [[Random Number God]] leads to a handful of bad saves? Does horrible, horrible things to your money and XP.

** Towards the end of the game, you actually run into bats, which swoop down from the ceiling and are very hard to avoid or get an initiative hit on. There's also a chance that one or two bats will spend the resulting battle attacking from the ceiling (instead of hovering like most flying enemies), where Mario can't jump on them. I hope you remembered to equip Hammer Throw or Quake Hammer...

* In the first two ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario games]]'', there are ridiculously annoying little creatures called fuzzies. They suck your health, can split in two, and have '''really''' hard to time action commands. What's more, they're ''everywhere'' and are among the hardest enemies to avoid. Be warned.

** However, use of the Zap Tap badge renders them unable to damage you, as it electrocutes enemies that directly touch Mario; the only way Fuzzies can hurt you. But they're still annoying, because they will keep dividing. As soon as you kill one, another will take its place...

* In the earlier ''Ultima'' games, Gremlins EPITOMIZE this trope. They're small, attack (usually) in packs, and on their own don't do a lot of damage. Doesn't sound like much, until you realize they steal food from the party. Food in those games served as a counter for how long the party could stay in a area -- run out of food, the party starts losing health until they either reach a town or die. So, Gremlins could steal ALL your food -- condemning your party to a slow death if you couldn't reach a city in time.

* In the turn-based online RPG ''[[Dragon Fable]]'', any mushroom-type monster is ridiculously hard to hit. This gets even worse when they're level-scaled.

** The Bullfangos are basically boars that travel in groups and will charge you the instant they see you. Getting hit by one will send the hunter flying. Whoever thought of delivery missions with parcels that break if you drop them should be beaten. Whoever thought of Bullfangos should be shot. Whoever thought of putting Bullfangos in delivery missions should be beaten, shot and beaten again for good measure.

** Don't forget Vespoids, the flying wasps. Most times they only do just a small amount of damage, but they can sometimes paralyze your character causing him to fall down for about 20 seconds and twitch on the ground helpless. And in most cases, this is going to be just before a wyvern of some sort decides to charges at you turning you into a hunter pancake. It's less dangerous but still just as annoying, when you get paralyzed while carving or trying to harvest items as well.

* ''Spiderweb Software'' games:

** In the ''[[Geneforge]]'' series it was the Vlish, flying tentacled creatures with ranged attacks that had effects that made every combat longer; either stun, terror, poison/acid, some of them could even heal their allies. They ran to call on the assistance of others, came back to swarm in packs, then ran away when taking too much damage. And throughout the series, many entire zones were dedicated to these damn things.

** In the ''[[Avernum]]'' series it was the Imps, who were not nearly as bad, less frequent, and the rewards were better. They also assembled in packs, used ranged mental effects such as stun, charm, fear, and ran away at low health.

* In ''[[The Witcher]]'', Drowners (and their [[Underground Monkey|improved]] counterpart drowned dead). They're no threat to the player unless he accidentally runs into them early in the first chapter, and can be killed in seconds en masse. What makes drowners a pain is that they are still all over major locations in chapters 2 and 3 (the swamp and sewers), take longer to loot then kill, and simply force you to kill them before you can end combat.

* ''[[Baldur's Gate]] II'' has its entire first dungeon filled with Mephits, Fire Mephits, Air Mephits, and Mephit ''portals''. Goddamned Bats indeed.

** Any creature with level draining abilities becomes this, easily. Most of them aren't really *dangerous* damage- and health-wise, but they'll drain your characters to dry husks in minutes and take away your high-level spells. Most players quickly learn what things makes you immune to level draining, and uses scouts equipped with said immunity when vampires are afoot.

* Dokunemons In ''[[Digimon World]] 2''. Those guys are weaklings who'll probably die in a single hit. However, they can use their signature move to become untargetable for a few turns again and again and again and again... That being said, you can get that move if you manage to recruit or fuse one.

* Bone Buzzards from the Nobilia/Crustacea region in ''[[Secret of Evermore]]''. They do practically no damage, swarm in from EVERYWHERE, and can only be hit if they're really close to the ground. The buzzards, however, can hit you no matter how high they are. They also have no delay behind their attacks, and can hit you again immediately. When one makes contact, your attacks are immediately canceled even if it would have hit and killed the damn thing. Your only choices to deal with them are either to dance around for god knows how long, or waste spell ingredients (which is always pure overkill).

* Amoebas in ''[[Drakensang]]''. The least problem with them is that they make you stink. Then, there's the [[Standard Status Effects|fear]] effect that stops your character from attacking them for five seconds. You can gang up on one and carve it up with little problem, but at times, they attack in packs, effectively gangbanging you to death. Just two can waste your whole party, especially if you go melee on them. Oh, and they regenerate. FAST.

* Thankfully rare in ''[[Vampire Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines]]'', but when you go to fight the plaguebearer Bishop Vick, he has zombie minions. They take several attacks to kill, they are literally endless, and while they're not fast, they can latch onto you and render you completely unable to do anything else until you throw them off. The best way to deal with them is to run past them, knocking them out of the way with a blunt weapon such as the baseball bat or truncheon, get to Bishop Vick's room, and defeat him as fast as you can. The implication is that without him around to feed them, they die of the plague and starvation.

* There's a perfect example in the first boss (arguably a mini-boss) in ''[[Ys]] Origin''. One of it's attacks is turning into a swarm of Goddamned Bats and chasing you around/moving in your path to swarm and bite you. It's made worse when the monster splits into two and has one of them swarm you as said Goddamned Bats, while the other tries to attack you with magic or some such. The bats they turn into are even an enemy you can find shortly after the battle!

* ''[[Breath of Fire]] II'' gives us the Beak. When you first encounter it it's as the first boss of the game when your character is solo and pitifully weak, but at roughly level 30 it starts showing up in the hunting areas-- and it's ''still just as strong''. [[Curb Stomp Battle]] ensues. So why is it on this page? Because every time you encounter one in the hunting area, you get kicked back onto the world map. No big deal, just avoid... wait, is it ''chasing after you''? At speeds much faster than you can manage? Yes, these things are [[Too Dumb to Live]] and will actively commit [[Suicide by Cop|suicide by your party]], preventing you from getting any of the drops you actually went in there for. If you try going after it using the hunting area mechanics, it proves nigh-impossible to kill this way. And if by some miracle you do manage to do this? '''Another one shows up'''. And it drops absolutely nothing. Once these things start showing up in your hunting areas, you'll probably never use a hunting area again.

* Shadowcats in ''[[Touhou Project|Labyrinth of Touhou]]''. When you first face them, they will be faster than anyone in your party, even [[Fragile Speedster|Chen]]. They also know Shadowstep, which hits your entire active party and, more often than not, paralyzes at least ''half of them''. This leads to trouble if you have to fight two at once and you can't get Meiling, the only person who can cure paralysis at this point, out on the field.

* ''[[Infinite Undiscovery]]'' has green baby giant spiders called Larva. They are either in packs or jump off of the corpse of its parent that you just killed. They can get incredibly annoying because of their ranged attack (and in this game, even that attack can stagger you and interrupt your attack) and the fact that they can easily and quickly swarm you. They are only really bad {{spoiler|in the part of the game where the hero is briefly separated from his allies}}.