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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
What happens when the [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]] [[Let's Get Dangerous|gets dangerous]]? You get a Wolfpack boss.
In a typical boss fight, the player fights a lone, powerful target ([[Flunky Boss|possibly accompanied by a few regular]] [[Mooks]]). The pattern here is usually straightforward; if there are mooks, take them out quickly to lower the enemy's attack strength, then finish off the big guy.
A Wolfpack boss is a bit trickier. In this case, the player faces 2 or more enemy characters who aren't quite powerful enough to be bosses when alone, but attack together to overwhelm the player with multiple powerful attacks and abilities. Wolfpack bosses tend to be strategically different from other boss battles because the player has to decide which one to attack first, and has to deal with being attacked multiple times per turn.
One thing that can work in the player's favor here, unlike a normal boss fight, is that the going may get easier as the enemies fall one by one. However, it can also work the other way around, where killing one enemy just makes the survivors [[Turns Red|get angry and fight harder]].
The [[Psycho Rangers]] are a common example of this. Compare [[Dual Boss]]. Contrast [[Duel Boss]] where the boss takes your character out of your group for one-on-one. Relies on the aversion of [[Conservation of Ninjutsu]]. See also [[Doppelganger Attack]].
{{examples}}
* ''[[Serious Sam]]'' takes this trope [[Up to Eleven]]: There is a [[Boss Battle]], complete with a single big healtbar, against the [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]] frogs that can only [[Suicide Attack]]. [[Zerg Rush|They attack in large swarms]], as you can see for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7GybnNI0qA yourself]. After you think you're done with them, the next corridor unloads yet more hoppers at you.
* In ''[[Front Mission]]'', one of the levels pits the player against an enemy unit called "Hell's Wall", consisting of 6 enemy mecha that are more powerful than normal enemy boss units and, in fact, have better equipment than the player can possibly get at that point in the game. Factor in that it's an early stage and the player doesn't have a lot of deployable units, and you get a sure formula for [[That One Boss|Those Six Bosses]].
** Repeated again in ''Front Mission 3'' with Imaginary Number unit (either one-shot charater Griffith or the recurring Jared and Rosavia combo), and the Purple Haze UCS unit. Except for the Purple Haze unit in Alisa's scenario (in which the two Grapple [[M 1 Ps]] are packing a fist-type Melee weapon one level better than what you have), the others don't have better weapons or equipment than you.
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* The Inspectors from ''[[Super Robot Wars]]: Original Generation 2.'' and ''[[Super Robot Wars 3]]''
* The Koopa Bros from ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' put up a decent fight just by using special team attacks. Individually, they're just koopa troopas with a bit more health.
* The Schrodinger family in ''[[Wild
* Several raidbosses in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''
** The straightest example is Priestess Delrissa in Magister's terrace, Moroes in Karazhan, Kael'thas Sunstrider (the Tempest Keep version) and Hex Lord Malacrass since they employ 4 fighters of different classes chosen randomly from set with each of them with their own abilities. Sartharion can be optionally fought this way for a harder fight but better loot. The Argent Coliseum is a slight variation since the team of enemy heroes have no defining "leader". The other multiboss fights (such as the Twin Emperor and the duo in SM Cathedral) are strong enough to qualify as [[Dual Boss]] since each of them are bosses in their own right.
** The Blood Prince Council in Icecrown Citadel has three vampiric undead elves, each with their own tricks. While they share a health pool, only one of them takes damage at a time, the vulnerable one gaining a massive boost to the abilities.** ''World Of Warcraft'' High Priest Thekal in Zul'Gurub with his two attendants Zealots Lor'khan and Zath. They, like the later encounter Romulo and Julianne, all have to die simultaneously or they resurrect each other. Of course then he has second phase with a Tiger [[One-Winged Angel]] form... And the Twin Emperors of Ahn'Qiraj. Healing each other, linked health, whole nine yards.
** The Illidari Council in the Black Temple and Council of Iron in Ulduar, which consists of several (4 in the former case, 3 in the latter) bosses fought at once. Each has separate abilities and requires specific tactics to deal. At least they don't have to all die at once, although in the case of the Council of Iron the surviving bosses grow stronger when other members of the Council die.
** The ogre council fighting along with High King Maulgar. Being more powerful than any of them, he may be considered as a [[Flunky Boss]], but his helpers are not mere adds. They are named, powerful, and require specific strategies to take down.
** Naxxramas has the Four Horsemen encounter (also a [[Puzzle Boss]]), where the four bosses fan out to the four corners of the room; your raid has to engage all four simultaneously AND keep them seperated to keep their respective abilities from snowballing into a very quick [[Total Party Kill]].
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* The [[Beat'Em Up]] ''Robo Army'' has a miniboss battle set against a squad of four recolored generic mooks with stronger attack.
* ''Aero Fighters 2'' has a battle against two Concorde plane look-alikes.
* Common trope in ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games:
** [[Final Fantasy I]] has the Pirates and the [[Boss in Mook Clothing|Wizards]] that guard the Crown in the Marsh Cave.
** The [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] that opens ''[[Final Fantasy II]]''.
** ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'' has the Mom Bomb, the Magus Sisters, and the Calbrena dolls.
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** Also, later on, the player character and partner must fight {{spoiler|Wigglytuff and the rest of the members of the Guild}}.
** And there's {{spoiler|Dusknoir and the Sableye.}}
** There's also Kabutops and the two Omastars in Brine Cave.
** Don't forget Regigigas accompanied by 4 Hitmonlee and 4 Bronzong, and {{spoiler|Darkrai accompanied by Aggron, Arbok, Magcargo, Magmortar, Mismagius, and Rhyperior.}}
** Heck, the Monster Houses are basically a boss fight against a large number of Mooks, randomly picked from those in the dungeon.It can either be laughably easy if you have a move combo that can sweep the whole room, to nightmarishly hard (Expecially the ones that include Flying Pokémon, that can use Agility or Tail Wind to grant '''every enemy in the room''' one extra attack per turn.Including themselves.And can use it up to 3 times in the same turn.And will '''always''' use it if you're out of their other moves' range.
* The Action RPG ''Sacred'' has several of these as bonus bosses in it's expansion. Requiring you to kill thousands of regular mooks in a particular area. An all-day task in the single player campaign. Much easier in multiplayer. But instead of being several lesser enemies to make a hard fight, it's usually comprised of several boss enemies, such as dragons, and other bosses.
* ''[[Star Fox (series)|Star Fox]]'''s Star Wolf Team are pretty much this trope incarnate.
** Plus, the name (Star Wolf) and the team leader (Wolf) make them a [[
* In ''[[Jade Empire]]'' before you fight the Emperor, you have to fight a large amount of the elite royal guard, about 20 of them, 4 at a time. They are like the normal guard except faster, stronger, smarter and work together better
** And can be [[One-Hit Kill]] by Harmonic combos.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' combines this with [[Puzzle Boss]]. Before you fight Darth Malak, you have to fight a bunch of elite droids that keep respawning if you don't shut down their individual [[Mook Maker
* The first boss in Data East's ''Sly Spy'' is nothing but a huge mob of mooks that attack you individually with punches, guns or bombs.
* In ''[[Dark Souls]]'', one of the hardest bosses is the Four Kings. As the name suggest, there are four of them although they do not all spawn at once. The fight begins with one appearing and attacking you followed by another appearing and attacking you about one minute into the fight. The most dangerous thing in ''[[Dark Souls]]'' is to get overrun and surrounded, making this fight very difficult if the individual kings are not dispatched before the next one begins attacking.
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** The Penkinos, as well, later on in the game. It'd be unbelievably easy if there were only one of them, but ...
* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'', the most difficult arena fight features 4 separate bosses: Cloud, Leon, Yuffie, and Tifa
** In the first game, you have to fight Lock, Shock, and Barrel in [[The Nightmare Before Christmas|Halloween Town]] before you can go fight Oogie Boogie.
** The first game also provides an optional boss battle with Wakka, Selphie and Tidus in the beginning of the game.
* Every battle against an enemy ace squadron in ''[[Ace Combat]]''. It's a perfectly justifiable trope when we're mostly dealing with normal fighter planes, but when the enemy is using [[Made of Iron]] superfighters like the Fenrirs or {{spoiler|final Varcolac}} ...
** In particular, ''[[Ace Combat Zero]]'' and ''[[Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy]]'' feature quite a bit of ace squadron bosses (with ''Legacy'' taking after ''Zero'' in this regard).
* The ''[[Tales (series)]]'' tends to have this frequently, generally by having the [[Recurring Boss|recurring bosses]] gang up on you, and/or as a [[Bonus Boss]] fight against multiple characters from previous Tales games.
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** The Four Stars in ''[[Tales of Rebirth]]'' all get together for a final showdown towards the end of ''[[Tales of Rebirth]]''. Gets taken [[Up to Eleven]] in the bonus dungeon, where they show up again, but each with a clone in tow, turning it into a four versus eight battle.
** ''[[Tales of Innocence]]'' features Chien and his dogs, Cer and Ber. It's probably the hardest fight up to that point, given how difficult multi-boss fights in Tales games are in general.
** This is basically the entire premise of the Team Arena in the [[
** In ''[[Tales of Hearts]]'' Chalcedony, Peridot, and Byrocks team up after you fight each of them individually earlier in the story.
** Some of the later Trials of Graces challenges in ''[[Tales of Graces]]'' put you up against three or more previous bosses at the same time.
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* In [[Maple Story]] you fight [[Beyond the Impossible|up to 6 bosses at once with millions of hitpoints each]]
* ''[[Last Scenario]]'' has a triple boss and two quintuple bosses.
* ''Defenders of Oasis'' for Sega Game Gear had several, [["Wake
* Roughly half the bosses in ''[[Persona 3]]'' are like this. Bosses you encounter while dungeon-crawling will either be one enemy or three of the same enemy.
* ''[[Persona 2]]: Eternal Punishment'' has one of these consisting of a paramilitary unit led by {{spoiler|Police Captain Shimazu.}}
* In the ''[[Scott Pilgrim]]'' movie, Scott has to fight Lucas Lee's seven evil stunt-doubles at once.
* ''[[
** In dungeoneering, there's also the Skeletal Horde and the [[That One Boss|Skeleton Trio]] bosses.
* ''[[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]]'': Baal is fought with 4 equally powerful clones of himself.
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* Literal example: By itself, the Fenrir in the first ''[[Etrian Odyssey]]'' is merely a powerful boss (in a game where ''every'' boss is [[That One Boss]] to some degree). However, if you don't take care of the nearby Skoll F.O.E.s before challenging it, they will quickly join the fight and cause even more trouble for you.
* The sniper family in ''[[Dead Rising]]''. Individually, they lack any special attacks (aside from, well, having sniper rifles) and are fairly vanilla foes. Working together, they can be an extremely annoying boss battle.
* Near the end of Boat 3 of ''[[Vindictus]]'', you return to the Perilous Ruins of the first boat to take on a bonus mission, which ends with one of the most evil
** It's not too uncommon to face down two or more bosses at once at the end of an instance, particularly during the later quests on a boat. The very first [[Dual Boss]] battle you fight consists of two gnolls, one an archer and the other a melee type, both of which like to bullrush you. Then there are the brothers Emuloch from boat 2, as well as the goblin bosses from Boat 3...
* [[Muramasa: The Demon Blade]] offers a strange example with the Oomukade boss: Instead of having the usual long lifebar and the smaller one, his body is the long lifebar, while the other centipede that back it up are considered the short lifebar.
* The final [[Bonus Dungeon]] of ''[[Fire Emblem:
* In the penultimate battle of ''[[Ys]]: The Ark of Napishtim'' you fight against both the [[Big Bad]] Ernst and his [[Quirky Miniboss Squad]] of fairies at once. The fairies can't be killed, only temporarily KO'ed.
* Ultrabox/ The Four Horsemen in ''[[Metal Gear]] 2: Solid Snake''.
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* Shredder and his clones become this if playing with multiple players in the ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' arcade games.
* The Heretic Leader and his [[Doppelganger Attack|holographic clones]] in ''[[Halo 2]]''.
* ''[[Cabal]]'s'' third boss was a truck that hauled in [[media:
* ''[[MadWorld]]'' has the Shamans, who are a [[Our Werewolves Are Different|literal]] and figurative take on this trope. Howard and Kreese, [[Large Ham Announcer|befitting]] [[Greek Chorus|their job]], lampshade this.
{{quote|'''Howard:''' These guys don't seem so tough!
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'''Howard:''' Have they been sanitized?
''(Kreese groans at this.)'' }}
* ''[[Night Striker]]'' has a ''literal'' wolfpack boss- a robotic pack of wolves. You face a constant stream of them until a timer runs out. Each wolf takes [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|one hit to die]], but you have to get that hit in fast before it pounces on you.
** And then there's also the last few stages, which give two to three of a previous level boss to fight. In fact, all the [[Final Boss
* The [[Team Fortress 2|Engineer]] part of the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EFYzVvn3zc Octo-Heavy video] certainly counts
* Karumuna Bash and the mids from the [[Mega Man Legends]] series, the Mids get special mention because they fight differently depending on whether or not the area is filled with water, if it isn't they simply fire homing energy shots, if it is when you get down to the last Mid it becomes invulnerable until it attacks and starts leaving mini-mids which explode all over the place.
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[[Category:Boss Battle]]
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