Puzzle Boss: Difference between revisions

Unlike most bosses, which have a [[Achilles' Heel|weak point]] ''somewhere'', the [['''Puzzle Boss]]''' is entirely [[Made of Iron]], or [[Intangible Man|intangible]], or out of reach. Whatever the justification, it is invulnerable to your character's conventional methods of attack, and if you wish to defeat it, you need to take advantage of one of two things.

The other is to wait for the boss to [[Tactical Suicide Boss|leave itself open to damage]] by virtue of its own [[Idiot Ball]]. Most typically, this takes the form of an attack that if successfully countered -- [[Action Commands]] optional -- leavesoptional—leaves the boss temporarily vulnerable. Obviously, for gameplay purposes, the boss will seldom learn from this mistake. Hypothetically, it would make it interesting if a boss ''did'' learn, but tried out a new, equally foolish attack in the next phase.

A subtrope of [[Convenient Weakness Placement]]. Not to be confused with a [[Trick Boss]], which is more about the boss's place in the story rather than the actual boss fight itself. When the puzzle is that the way to win is to not fight the boss at all, then it's [[Sheathe Your Sword]]. Inversion to [['''Puzzle Boss]]''' is [[Damage Sponge Boss]].

* ''[[Okami]]'' has most [[Boss Battle|Boss Battles]]s as this. To summarize, you will probably be using/practicing the brush technique you most recently learned on your next boss. Especially frustrating with techniques that require a learning curve, such as the Vine technique used to beat the Spider Queen. {{spoiler|The Final Boss, Yami is very guilty of this since, chances are, you'll be using ALL of your brush powers as you get them back.}}

* Those odd bosses like the Dark Guardian are a carry-over from another major Sonic Team property, [[Ni GHTS]]. This franchise has among the most cryptic bosses in video game history--ashistory—as NiGHTS's only means of attack is the Paraloop, which is a circular vacuum attack done by tracing a full circle in the air, NiGHTS very rarely engages into direct combat. In addition, NiGHTS is invincible and can only lose by time running out, so the bosses tend to focus around stalling and wasting time rather than a blitz of powerful attacks.

* By now one in fact has to wonder if Mario would even be able to beat Bowser were it not for [[Tactical Suicide Boss|Bowser's tendency to choose terrible arenas or attack patterns. Consider:]]

** Defeating Bowser in ''[[Super Mario Bros 3]]'' requires that Mario simply staystays alive as Bowser smashes the arena, until he's destroyed enough of it that he falls through the floor to his demise (though the traditional strategy of hitting him with enough fireballs/hammers still works).

** ''[[Super Mario 64]]'' hadhas you throw Bowser into bombs lining the arena. The bombs serve no purpose other than to hurt him, since he can't (or won't) throw you into the bombs himself, and you frankly have to be suicidal to run into them.

** ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]'' hadhas you use FLUDD'Ss rocket pack to do ground pounds until the point that the hot tub Bowser is sitting in breaks apart. Yes, really.

** ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'', perhaps in a throwback to Super Mario Bros. 3, hadhas you defeat Bowser by having him smash into structural weak points on the artificial planetoid you're fighting on.

*** Ditto the final "Story Minigame" of ''[[Mario Party]] 5''. Yes, ''really''. And then after that stage, the [[Sequential Boss|final stage]] hadhas one of his attacks hitting the residue from another of his attacks to create something that could actually be used against him.

** And in a separate Mario example, inIn ''[[Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door]]'' you facedface the Iron Adonis Twins - two Clefts made out of a metal that's literally impervious to all but an equally hard substance. [[Hopeless Boss Fight|You ''cannot'' beat them the first time]], but once Yoshi joins Mario's team, you beat them by getting a Yoshi to spit one at the other until they're both KO'd.

** A rather frustrating one wasis the Shroob-omb Battle in ''[[Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time]]'' where the order you defeat the Support Shroobs is vital to winning, but with no indication of such it became a real [[Guide Dang It]] moment.

*** AnotherSunnycide Partnersfrom Inthe Timesame example: Sunnycidegame has (probably) the highest defense yet in the game, until you free the Yoshis to make them push a boulder.

** Most Mario hacks generally stick to the regular bosses. But the main feature of Brutal Mario is facing off against bosses from a host of different games, many of them [[Puzzle Boss|'''Puzzle Bosses]]'''.

** A similar tactic will defeat Barbos from ''[[Donkey Kong Country]] 3: Dixie's Double Trouble'' -- protected—protected by two invincible spiny shields, the player must trick homing torpedos into hitting the shields.

*** And so does the original ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' game with a battle against a ghostly copy of the Prince, which was earlier created by a magic mirror. It would mimic your actions, so attacking would cause it to strike you as well -- additionallywell—additionally, there was a red herring 'pit trap' nearby; luring the boss into it caused you to die as well. The only solution was to sheathe your sword, with the copy doing the same.

*** Killer Moth in "In the Dark Night" suffers the same glaring weakness as Man-Bat -- onlyBat—only instead of a record player, you have a giant light bulb that you can turn on by building the generators in the room.

*** Commissioner Gordon in "A Surprise for the Commissioner" is a painfully obvious one-- afterone—after you hurt him, he retreats and sends a police truck after you. You have to use the crane nearby to pick an exploding teddy bear (really) and drop it on the truck to get the boss to reappear.

* The final boss of ''[[Serious Sam]]: The First Encounter'' was a combination normal boss and puzzle boss. Ugh-Zan III had a lifebar, and he could be damaged normally -- untilnormally—until he was in the red, at which point he regenerated progressively faster the more damaged he was, making conventional weapons useless. The player has to bring his health down and keep it there while activating a large laser on a spaceship above, which does enough damage to kill Ugh-Zan before he can regenerate.

*** But it should be noted that simplySimply casting the right spells isntisn't enough. You have to cause enough damage to kill him while playing his game. Otherwise he runs at the end of the puzzle. If you cast the wrong spell however, he will proceed to nuke you with high level earth spells until you are dead, which will happen VERY''very'' fast if you don't have the earth -absorbing armor on.

* ''In ''[[Kirby]] and& the Amazing Mirror]]'', the fifth boss can only be harmed by 2 abilities...and pushing him into the walls of his arena.

** AGhameleo minibossArm in ''Kirby Super Star'' can be harmed normally, but is invisible most of the time... unless Kirby inhales one of his attacks to gain the Paint power, which not only damages the boss, but also makes him visible for a while.

* With the exceptions of Necrogiant, the bosses in ''[[Painkiller]]'' fall into this category. Detonating bubbles is needed to make Swamp Thing vulnerable, as is destroying Guardian's hammer. Alastor's statues can heal him and make him invincible -- andinvincible—and can't be dealt with unless they're doing so. Then there's your [[Playing Tennis With the Boss|tennis date]] with Lucifer. In expansion pack ''Battle Out Of Hell'', all the bosses are of this category. For better or worse, in follow-up ''Overdose'' only the first of the three bosses was of this type.

* The ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' series has a lot of bosses of the "reveal the weak point" variety, but ''Echoes'' has a few bosses that fall even more decisively under the [['''Puzzle Boss]]''' heading. The Spider Guardian and Power Guardian both require you to simply navigate a morph ball course. {{spoiler|Also, Dark Samus becomes invincible to conventional attacks in her last phase. You can only damage her by using the Charge Beam to absorb the Phazon energy she launches in a particular attack and launch it back at her.}}

* Giygas, the final boss from ''[[EarthboundEarthBound]]'' (''Mother 2'') ends as a Puzzle Boss. His initial form must be attacked and weakened like any other boss, but to ultimately defeat him, you must {{spoiler|repeatedly use the previously nigh-useless Pray command.}}

** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' features several, most notably Asura and Bahamut. Both are very hard -- Asurahard—Asura because she keeps healing herself, and Bahamut because his attacks are very powerful. However, both can be easily defeated by casting Wall on them, thus causing their moves to reflect onto the opposite side...At least, that's how it used to be. In the [[Video Game Remake|DS version]], while Reflect is still required for Asura, Bahamut's Megaflare will ignore Reflect and leave you in a world of hurt, meaning that your entire strategy is going to need an overhaul. Because of this, the book describing him in the Eidolon's Library is changed to match, this time suggesting that no warrior could defeat him, except possibly one capable of "rising to the heavens to deliver the finishing blow". Hey! Guess who one of the final party members is?

*** Defender-X, the mech encountered at the base of Mount Gagazet. It has an array of very, very powerful attacks that can leave a player who hacks-and-slashes their way through tearing their hair out (especially since its HP is high and it is Armored, meaning it takes very little damage and thus you will have to survive a number of these attacks)...but there's a way to beat it very easily, though it's extremely counterintuitive. Have [[Glass Cannon|Tidus]] use his Provoke move, which will goad the monster into targeting only him-- soundshim—sounds incredibly stupid, given Tidus's low general survivability (seriously, why didn't they give that move to Auron instead?), but the catch is that once Provoked, the monster will ''also'' only use the move that deals percentage-based damage. That move is devastating combined with his other attacks, but if it's the only thing he uses, it means that he is actually incapable of killing even one party member, let alone the [[Total Party Kill|total party kills]] he is otherwise quite proficient at, turning the entire fight into a cakewalk.

* ''[[Mega Man 2]]'', in addition to being the best example of the series, has a shining example of a [['''Puzzle Boss]]'''. Wily's Castle, level 4. The boss is a number of laser turrets, who can only be hurt by Crash Bombs, protected by walls that can only be broken by Crash Bombs. Yes, you could bullheadedly blast through all the walls surrounding the turrets, but if you do that, you'll run out of Crash Bomb before reaching the last turret and make the fight [[Unwinnable]]. The solution, of course, is to use Item-1 to float up past the big glaring open areas underneath or above the less-shielded turrets, thereby bypassing the shields. If you do it that way, then you'll kill the last turret with your very ''last'' Crash Bomb,so don't screw up.

** [[It Got Worse]] in ''Battle Network 3'' - the new [['''Puzzle Boss]]''' (s) are the "numbers". Pay attention: You need to destroy all Number1s in one hit, then all Number2s in one hit, and finally all Number3s in one hit. This requires the right combo.

* The Geb Queen from obscurish action game ''Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy'' is a particularly complex example. At most times, she is completely invulnerable, being surrounded by a glowing shield. There's an unreachable platform above her that contains two monster cages, holding [[Personal Space Invader|Personal Space Invaders]]s and a shielded crown. One of her attacks, however, is shooting blue magical spells that turn you into a frog. You ''have'' to be [[Stupidity Is the Only Option|hit by said spells]], use the frog's extra jumping power to leap up to the platform, and press the buttons next to the cages, releasing the [[Personal Space Invader|Personal Space Invaders]]s. They'll attack the queen in the way they do, leaving her vulnerable to a strike. In later rounds, the queen starts [[Flunky Boss|summoning mooks]], who will kill the spiderlike enemies if you don't defeat them first.

** The Destroyer Armor, which gets its ultimate attack charging up if you dare to attack it. You have to go through the four warps and defeat the [[Mook|Mooks]]s inside, after which you will stumble upon Loki's frozen body. Trick the Armor into unleashing said move on him and they both die.

** [[Jimmy Neutron]]'s mutated Girl Eating Plant. To quote Technus: "We have to find a way [[Womb Level|inside that plant!]]" (And that way is to get to a certain spot where it will swallow you.) And the plant adapts as its giant roots will block the previous path you took to get to that area and leave open the next one after each round of whacking its innards. There's a reason why you have to get there in order to be eaten. (Hint: The name of the boss, the battle takes place in a mall and you're stuck with [[SpongeBob SquarePants]] and Technus. [[Cross DresserCrossdresser|Go figure.]])

* In the first ''[[SagaSaGa Frontier]]'' game, the Ring Lord in Riku's scenario is only beatable unless you rack up a combo score of ten; this becomes nigh impossible once the Ring Lord gets bored with sitting around and starts stomping your party into the ground. Interestingly, the DSC counts as a combo for the purposes of the fight, so if you've got a character who can pull it off, they can rack up up to 5 points at a time by themself.

* A ''ton'' of bosses in ''[[Wild ArmsARMs 3]]'' fall under this trope, and considering there are somewhere in the area of eighty story bosses, we do mean a ''ton.'' The first major one is Trask, who halves all elemental damage and nullifies physical damage...{{spoiler|until you cast a fire spell and then follow it up with an ice spell -- since heating and then rapidly cooling something makes it brittle, this makes him incredibly weak to physical attacks now.}} Some of these ''do'' fall under [[Guide Dang It]] (the spoilered method is referred to only in an easily-missed book in the preceding town), but for the most part, they're pretty easy and fun to figure out. Some other notable ones:

* In ''[[Wild ArmsARMs 4]]'' many bosses were Puzzle Bosses as well, especially the Brionac fights.

* The Rhino in a number of the ''[[Spider-Man]]'' games is a [['''Puzzle Boss]]''' - his skin/suit thing is too tough for spidey to hurt, so defeating him tends to rely on directing his charging attacks into appropriately hard/zappy items.

* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'': the majority of the battles in the Naughty Sorceress's castle. Most of the earlier ones have insanely high HP, but can be [[One-Hit Kill|OHKOed]] by a specific battle item (most of which sort of make sense, in an [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Incredibly Lame Punnish]]nish way). Then there's the shadow of yourself, which you must defeat {{spoiler|by healing yourself every turn}}. After that, you face the Naughty Sorceress's familiar; you must beat it with a familiar of your own of at least 20 pounds, with the five possible enemy familiars each being weak against a specific one of the other four. Finally, there is the battle with the Naughty Sorceress herself, which comes in three parts, one after another without any saves or time to change equipment between stages. The third is either an automatic win or an automatic loss, depending on whether or not you have {{spoiler|the Wand of Nagamar}} in your inventory. (Earlier you had to have it equipped, but since it's a fairly weak weapon this was changed so you can wage battle with a weapon of your choice.)

** Another, gaining notoriety since ''Subterranean Animism'' was released, is [[Green-Eyed Monster|Parsee]]. Several of her spells have gimmicks not usually seen until endgame, such as actively chasing you around the screen. However, her patterns are quite simple once figured out-- herout—her infamous "Green-Eyed Monster" can be thwarted by moving slowly upwards-- leadingupwards—leading to [[Hype Backlash|some players wondering]] why she has a reputation as [[That One Boss]].

* Virtually every ''[[Lucas ArtsLucasArts]]'' adventure game ends with one of those, which is obvious considering they are essentially entire puzzle GAMES:

* The ''[[Punch-Out!!]]'' series makes frequent use of this trope. While most of the early fighters like Glass Joe and Von Kaiser can be defeated through brute force and the occasional block/dodge, the rest of the boxers have different fighting styles that prevent you from just whaling on them, such as Don Flamenco relying on you to strike so he can block/dodge and then counterattack. Except for Super Punch Out,<ref>where you just had to build a stamina meter by landing good shots and not getting hit; then you could throw KO punches at will as long as the meter was full</ref>, figuring out how to earn star punches was also a puzzle itself-- soitself—so difficult, in fact, that in the Wii remake, the [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] designers decided to make Exhibition Mode challenges out of finding them. Good luck finding them on your own, as some of them are [[Guide Dang It|fiendishly difficult to either figure out or nail just right.]]

* Each of Alhazad's battles become this in the remake of ''[[Wild ArmsARMs 1]]''. He has two trios of drones that sheild him from physical and magic attacks. Destroying either of the trios results in him simply regenerating them. {{spoiler|The trick is to leave one of both Drones alive.}}

* [[Sigma Star Saga]] has what is probably [[That One Boss|*the* most annoying Puzzle Boss ever designed]], and it's only [[Boss in Mook Clothing|a miniboss.]] It's a light blue rock/crystal with an eye in the centre and six orbs floating around it (three purple, three blue). It shoots one slow-moving bullet at you every three seconds or so. In order to open the eye and make it vulnerable, {{spoiler|you have to shoot the purple orbs once each, turning them blue in the process.}} Sound easy so far? Not when it fires another bullet at you for every ineffective hit made and most players, up to this point in the game, have equipped their ships with [[Spam Attack|rapid-fire bullets, usually with some sort of spread]]. To make matters worse, there is [[Guide Dang It|no indication whatsoever]] (apart from {{spoiler|the already-shot orbs reverting to purple if you hit a blue orb or the boss when its eye is closed, but how would anyone notice that if ''they're shooting every part of the boss at once''?}}) whether or not you're doing it right; most players just shoot the boss repeatedly, hoping they're doing damage, and die in the cloud of counterattacks. In many cases, especially due to the [[Luck-Based Mission|possibility of having to use a large ship that can hardly move]] and (nigh) impossibility of {{spoiler|hitting ''only'' the purple orbs and ''only'' once each with a [[Spam Attack]] weapon}}, the battle is utterly hopeless. In fact, it's one of the two main reasons why so many people have to [[Guide Dang It|use online help to beat this game]], assuming the [[Game Breaking Bug|Game Breaking Bugs]]s on the Forgotten Planet and [[Luck-Based Mission|ever-present probability a random encounter will get you killed in a ship that literally CAN'T fit through certain tunnels]] don't make them give up completely. (Incidentally, both "reasons" are on the Ice Planet.)

* In ''[[Alone in Thethe Dark]]'', the stairway is blocked by a pair of Lovecraftian Nightgaunts, who are invincible to physical attacks and can only be defeated by their own reflections.

* The final battle with Baldus in the canon route of ''[[Blaze Union]]''. Actually defeating Baldus is not the trick; it's getting him to join you--andyou—and that's easy enough as long as you bother to follow Nessiah's instructions to the letter. There are plenty of cases of players ignoring Nessiah and accidentally killing Baldus, though.

* [[The Witcher]] has a stone golem boss which you have to re-animate and then kill {{spoiler|using pillars surrounding it that generate lightning bolts}} (you can kill it very quickly this way). The monster can also be killed by conventional weaponry, but this will take a long, long, LONG time. A skilled player can keep hacking at it and dodging its attacks until it dies, so this makes it a [['''Puzzle Boss]]''' or a [[Marathon Boss]] depending on how the player tries to kill it.

* ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time]]'' has a rare beat 'em up example--atexample—at least in the Super NES version. It's the [[Climax Boss]] battle agains the Shredder about halfway through the game. Rather than fighting you himself as is his custom in the video games, Shredder instead battles you in some sort of Dimension X war machine thing. He himself is shown in the far foreground, and cannot be hit using normal attacks. Fortunately, he's also flooding the arena with Foot Soldiers, who the Turtles can actually throw into the camera, which in this case damages Shredder. Can be a SLIGHT case of [[Guide Dang It]], because this is the only point in the game where this skill does anything more than insta-killing the Foot Soldier for three points.

* In the endgame of ''[[Persona 3]] Portable'', Margaret (of ''[[Persona 4]]'' fame) opens up a door in Tartarus wherein you can fight four puzzle bosses -- forbosses—for each one your party, group of Personae, level/stats, and so on are set to a certain fixed thing, so grinding and such are useless; you have to figure out how to defeat each boss with what you're given.

* The final boss of [[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind|Morrowind]] has two stages. The first one goes down easily, which opens up a door to the final chamber. The second has a script that heals it of all damage every frame, and doing enough damage to kill it in one hit breaks the main quest.<ref>There was no way to directly make a creature invincible</ref>. Unusually for a [['''Puzzle Boss]]''', there is little thinking on the player's part involved in defeating Dagoth Ur, as another character provides instructions before sending you out to find the remaining necessary tools to pull the trickery off.

* Some players approach the Big Daddy battles in ''[[BioShock (series)]]'' like this (kind of a "DIY" [['''Puzzle Boss]]'''). Rather than just fight the brutes head on and unload as much lead as they can muster, they will lay a long line of things to trap and damage the Big Daddy as it comes barreling at them. Explosions, electricity, and other objects on the land make for great Big Daddy roadblocks. It's all in how you set it up that determines how much damage can be done by the time he's made his way through your gauntlet of pain.

== Non-video game examples: ==

** Nonetheless, almost every [[Monster of the Week|Card Of The Week]] would qualify as a [[Puzzle Boss]].