Games with unbeatable or "unbeatable" battles

[danzibr]

Lots of games have unbeatable battles, but it always leaves you wondering... how many of those can really be beaten?

*spoilers ahead*

First one that comes to mind for me is Breath of Fire III. When you fight Balio and Sunder in the woods, there's no winning. In fact, even if you bust out the gameshark and make your party uber strong, you can whale on them for hours and hours, doing tens of thousands of damage, and they just don't die. Similarly when you fight Garr in the contest of champions.

Or XenoGears. When you fight Weltall Id as Bart in the desert, there's no winning. But if you cheat... you actually can win, but doing so has no rewards. Or when you fight True Weltall (or whatever it's called) later on in the cave. You can win, and it turns out you get a unique item!

Or Phantasy Star IV. When you fight the dude that gives you Megido (you're not supposed to fight him), he owns you, but if you're way overpowered you can win! Doing so gets you like 1 experience or something.

And IIRC in Phantasy Star II you solo the evil Nei with your Nei and you're supposed to lose.

Or Chrono Trigger. The first time you fight Lavos with Chrono, you're not supposed to win, but enough power leveling and you can win (I think? Been a while. For sure you can do it in a new game +).

Then there are fights that are just really friggin' hard.

Like in Demon's Souls. The fight against the big dude at the end of the tutorial. He owned me, but apparently you can win.

Like in Suikoden, when you duel Tyr's dad as the brawler dude.

Or the first Blitzball match in FFX. If it's your first time playing, for sure you lose. But when you get some skill, you can beat it your second playthrough.

And I'm sure if I were to look at my collection of games I'd come up with many more, but... that's a good start.

[Tylorious]

I can think of two off the top of my head but i don't know if you can gameshark pass them.

The first and my favorite is Golden Sun, and the second is Final Fantasy II (not to be confused with FFIV)

[Mx.Silver]

My problem with 'unwinnable' fights are the ones where the enemy can still kill you 'too early' forcing a game over. This seems to crop up in a lot in games, particularly JRPGs, possible as a result of most unbeatable fights being slightly modified standard battles, where the enemy hits you with a 'you lose now' event when their HP reaches zero, instead of just going to a victory. Final Fantasy IX, for example, did this in basically all of its 5-odd unwinnable battles.



The first and my favourite is Golden Sun
Golden Sun 2 had an interesting version of this phenomenon, that wasn't so much a unbeatable fight as it was a stroy-significant boss fight that would let you keep playing if you lost (with a fairly good item as a reward if you actually beat it, which wasn't actually all that difficult).

[Cikomyr]

What I hate, most of all, is Boss Fights that end in a game over if you lose.

But if you win the battle, the Boss just pulls out a Uberfighting move, knock you out and you end up prisonner.


Gee. If the outcome of the fight was that bloody useless, why can't the game simply move forward if I lose it?

[Psyren]

Hopeless Boss Fight (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HopelessBossFight)
Beef Gate (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeefGate) / That One Boss (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatOneBoss)

[erikun]

And IIRC in Phantasy Star II you solo the evil Nei with your Nei and you're supposed to lose.

Or Chrono Trigger. The first time you fight Lavos with Chrono, you're not supposed to win, but enough power leveling and you can win (I think? Been a while. For sure you can do it in a new game +).
Nei vs Nei can actually be won with enough levels, but Nei still dies due to the other Nei being a part of her, and so killing it ended up killing her as well. I think there was some special dialogue if you do that.

Killing Lavos the first time Chrono meets it gives you one of the special endings. You can go right into its shell and fight an extra-hard final boss if you manage it. It's entirely possible in the 2nd or 3rd playthrough of the game, and actually intended.


I can think of two off the top of my head but i don't know if you can gameshark pass them.

The first and my favorite is Golden Sun, and the second is Final Fantasy II (not to be confused with FFIV)
If I remember correctly, beating the first fight in Final Fantasy II means the party just continues on and the game ends, correct?


For me, I have three from Final Fantasy IV.

The first one is the Cecil vs Kain battle, when Kain shows up to retrieve the Fire Crystal from Fabul. It's a fight you're supposed to lose, and if for some reason you cannot lose (say, infinite HP) then you're stuck in the fight. Kain can take damage but has no max HP, and so cannot die either.

The second is Paladin Cecil vs Dark Knight Cecil on top of Mt. Ordeals. The way the battle is supposed to go is to let Dark Knight Cecil kill itself, either by using Darkness to drain its HP or by not attacking and have the battle automatically end (depending on the version of the game). However, Dark Knight Cecil does have a HP value, so you can bash him enough to kill him outright. You don't get anything for doing so.

The third is the first fight with Golbez in the underground. Normally, how this fight plays out is Golbez paralyzing your party, killing them off one by one until only Cecil is left, and Rydia coming in to save the day. Needless to say, you'll have problems if your other party members are unkillable (or possibly immune to paralysis). This was mainly a problem on the SNES and PS1 versions, from what I recall. Later versions just instantly knocked party members to death, rather than dealing damage.

The only other one I can think of is the Dark Elf in the Lodestone Cavern. You normally get KO'd or forced out of the fight after a few rounds before the Whisperweed activates that the boss fight progresses as normal. I think you can immediately jump to the second boss stage if you can kill him before then, but don't 100% recall if that's possible.

[danzibr]

Hopeless Boss Fight (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HopelessBossFight)
Beef Gate (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeefGate) / That One Boss (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThatOneBoss)
Man I just wasted a lot of time.

[Tylorious]

The Sims is unbeatable and eventually you realize how much time you've wasted.

[Calemyr]

Lots of games have unbeatable battles, but it always leaves you wondering... how many of those can really be beaten?

*spoilers ahead*

First one that comes to mind for me is Breath of Fire III. When you fight Balio and Sunder in the woods, there's no winning. In fact, even if you bust out the gameshark and make your party uber strong, you can whale on them for hours and hours, doing tens of thousands of damage, and they just don't die. Similarly when you fight Garr in the contest of champions.

Or XenoGears. When you fight Weltall Id as Bart in the desert, there's no winning. But if you cheat... you actually can win, but doing so has no rewards. Or when you fight True Weltall (or whatever it's called) later on in the cave. You can win, and it turns out you get a unique item!

Or Phantasy Star IV. When you fight the dude that gives you Megido (you're not supposed to fight him), he owns you, but if you're way overpowered you can win! Doing so gets you like 1 experience or something.

And IIRC in Phantasy Star II you solo the evil Nei with your Nei and you're supposed to lose.

Or Chrono Trigger. The first time you fight Lavos with Chrono, you're not supposed to win, but enough power leveling and you can win (I think? Been a while. For sure you can do it in a new game +).

Then there are fights that are just really friggin' hard.

Like in Demon's Souls. The fight against the big dude at the end of the tutorial. He owned me, but apparently you can win.

Like in Suikoden, when you duel Tyr's dad as the brawler dude.

Or the first Blitzball match in FFX. If it's your first time playing, for sure you lose. But when you get some skill, you can beat it your second playthrough.

And I'm sure if I were to look at my collection of games I'd come up with many more, but... that's a good start.

There's also Megaman X vs Vile (both times). You can't deal enough damage to him no matter how badly you cheat.

But Suikoden's duel between Pahn (the brawler dude) and Tyr's dad? That one is awesome. Because you can win, and it's vital to getting the 108 Star ending. But the beauty of it is: Pahn is a good/decent brawler in a game of magnificent mage-knights. Are you the kind of leader who only takes uses the best of the best, or are you the kind of leader who doesn't forget his friends even after you make it big? The fate of two of your childhood friends depends on your answer.

[Happy Gravity]

Man I just wasted a lot of time.
Please don't consider this a waste of time. If we devolved every discussion about gaming to links to TV Tropes then we wouldn't even have this part of the forum. Pretend it doesn't exist if it bothers you. :/

Should probably plant a big honking spoilers sign on the top of the thread, though anyone entering it should expect them.

The first Kratos fight is hard, but winnable. The story goes on regardless of whether you beat him or not. This is understandable, since this is right after ANOTHER boss (who WILL kill you if you die to him) and he's fairly strong himself. I didn't even know it was possible to beat him until after my first playthrough.
The fight after that, vs his boss, is completely unwinnable. He'll one-shot you, most likely. If you survive for some time or beat him before the time limit through New Game Plus cheese + Grinding, the fight just flat-out ends and he beats you in the story anyways.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Dwarf Fortress.

A Titan/Forgotten Beast made of something hard like Steel or redacted is impossible to kill with conventional means. Then there is the "circus."
The demons of hell are nigh impossible to beat unless the RNG is very generous and makes them all out of weak materials like sand or vomit. Still expect heavy casualties unless you use unconventional methods like cave-ins from an infinite source of water and magma.

[KillianHawkeye]

There's also Megaman X vs Vile (both times). You can't deal enough damage to him no matter how badly you cheat.

I was going to mention this one. Not even the secret instant-kill Hadoken upgrade will do anything to VILE in his ride armor.

[Mewtarthio]

What I hate, most of all, is Boss Fights that end in a game over if you lose.

But if you win the battle, the Boss just pulls out a Uberfighting move, knock you out and you end up prisonner.


Gee. If the outcome of the fight was that bloody useless, why can't the game simply move forward if I lose it?

The in-universe justification would be that you managed to put up enough of a fight to keep the boss from just killing you outright. The out-of-universe justification is that, if it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, why even have the fight in the first place?* If I'm looking for a game where the mechanics closely match in-universe physics, I'm not going to play a JRPG.

*Note that I'm talking talking about fights like the aforementioned Golbez Underground battle, where he just paralyzes your entire party and one-shots you one-by-one. Those are more like cutscenes that happen to take place on the battle screen.

[NeoVid]

Rival Schools. Yes, they put a rigged fight in a fighting game. A few matches in, you went up against a mind-controlled Hideo who had 75% damage resistance, and it was a one-round match. You were expected to lose, of course, which just sent you back into arcade mode's story. However, I learned that if you hold him off with constant ranged attacks, you'll wear him down before he can get at you.

Turned out that if you beat that fight, you skip right to the end bosses, so winning it meant you didn't get to play as much.



Like in Suikoden, when you duel Tyr's dad as the brawler dude.

Or the first Blitzball match in FFX. If it's your first time playing, for sure you lose. But when you get some skill, you can beat it your second playthrough.


I remember those. You had to win Pahn's fight honestly, as far as I know, but you could still crank up his stats as far as possible first.

The Blitzball match had a dumb exploit, though. Score one point (Jecht Shot ftw) then get the ball and hide behind your own team's net. The AI has no way of dealing with it.

[Cikomyr]

The in-universe justification would be that you managed to put up enough of a fight to keep the boss from just killing you outright. The out-of-universe justification is that, if it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, why even have the fight in the first place?* If I'm looking for a game where the mechanics closely match in-universe physics, I'm not going to play a JRPG.

*Note that I'm talking talking about fights like the aforementioned Golbez Underground battle, where he just paralyzes your entire party and one-shots you one-by-one. Those are more like cutscenes that happen to take place on the battle screen.

Give a little something to the players for beating the boss battle. But don't do a frikkin' Game Over when they fail.

[tyckspoon]

I remember those. You had to win Pahn's fight honestly, as far as I know, but you could still crank up his stats as far as possible first.


Yeah, it's actually a fairly easy fight to win if you get Pahn up to date with your primary party's power level and understand the cues for the Rock-Paper-Scissors choices in that fighting mode. The sticky part is that if you don't know it's coming you don't have a lot of reason to make sure Pahn is ready for it; he's not a very good character otherwise, so you probably are going into this fight with outdated or no armor, low levels, and unforged weapon levels. And since it's also not very obvious that character stats have an impact on the duel, this looks an awful lot like an unwinnable fight.

[Sajiri]

I don't know if it counts since it's an mmo (somehow that makes it worse to me) but there was an unbeatable boss in Final Fantasy XI. He's easy now the level cap has gone up but for the longest time nobody could beat him. The devs had an idea of how he should be defeated, and the few times someone did beat it, the game got patched because thats not how the devs thought it 'should' be beaten (not even cheating or exploiting mechanics, its just they managed to do it without figuring out whatever his little 'trick' was).

Later the guy who designed that boss, came out and said he thinks its perfectly okay to put a boss in MMOs that players shouldnt be able to defeat, with loot tables and everything :smalleek:

[Impnemo]

Later the guy who designed that boss, came out and said he thinks its perfectly okay to put a boss in MMOs that players shouldnt be able to defeat, with loot tables and everything :smalleek:



Mind if I play devils advocate here? It honestly makes sense. You put a big bad NPC that can be attacked and players will try to take it down. By making it impossible or nigh impossible to accomplish you dont have to worry about power levels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnyjw5LUj0&feature=youtu.be&t=22s), of players or npcs, jumping out of proportion through equipment upgrades or story feats etc. If theres obviously no chance of success or reward people will give up, but funny thing about MMOs is the data mining. You know the NPC has loot attached to it because someone dug through to code to see it. If it has loot, it therefore must be killable, and so people will continue to try.

Its the content that keeps on giving.

[Sajiri]

Mind if I play devils advocate here? It honestly makes sense. You put a big bad NPC that can be attacked and players will try to take it down. By making it impossible or nigh impossible to accomplish you dont have to worry about power levels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnyjw5LUj0&feature=youtu.be&t=22s), of players or npcs, jumping out of proportion through equipment upgrades or story feats etc. If theres obviously no chance of success or reward people will give up, but funny thing about MMOs is the data mining. You know the NPC has loot attached to it because someone dug through to code to see it. If it has loot, it therefore must be killable, and so people will continue to try.

Its the content that keeps on giving.

I would agree, aside from the part where they took away the win/loot from the people who did beat it because it didnt match 'their way', and encouraging people to fight it. I mean, this is the game where a group (foolishly though) fought a different boss for 20 hours straight trying to win and couldnt because it was just that hard, resulting in that boss being patched to despawn after 2 hours to avoid that. If they couldnt do it in 20 hours...yeah...(although that did get defeated...eventually)

[Eldariel]

Or Chrono Trigger. The first time you fight Lavos with Chrono, you're not supposed to win, but enough power leveling and you can win (I think? Been a while. For sure you can do it in a new game +).

You can, yes. First time I ever played through the game, I never let the cutscenes play afterwards. I thought this was the final battle so I did a ridiculous amount of grind to beat Lavos there (only his first form is tougher; it has doubled stats). You can imagine my surprise when I found out I had beaten "the hardest" version of the game and was supposed to just let the game continue.

But yeah, my point is you can definitely beat the game there on your first playthrough; there's nothing stopping you and it isn't even horribly difficult if you do the Sunken Desert for Vigil Caps and use Lifeline (though of course, you still need to grind a ton of levels - I think I was 55 or something).

[Impnemo]

I would agree, aside from the part where they took away the win/loot from the people who did beat it because it didnt match 'their way', and encouraging people to fight it.

That is dirty. At least the folks who got the Talisman of Binding (http://www.wowhead.com/item=17782/) got to keep it.

[Sajiri]

I will also point out that FFXI boss was not some random one lurking around. You had to kill other bosses to spawn it, and the devs released a video showing it off. They also showed a video giving 'hints' on how to beat it that was immensely vague, and the characters in it obviously weren't normal characters being that they weren't even wearing endgame gear.

I also dont think the gear you got from it was found through data mining. I can't remember but I think it dropped items you exchanged with an npc for the gear, so you could see it all right there in game but couldn't have it.

In theory the big bad boss nobody can beat sounds cool, but when you think about the players fighting it constantly, thinking it's able to be beaten and being teased with the best gear in the game...it becomes rather heartbreaking :smalleek:

[danzibr]

Please don't consider this a waste of time. If we devolved every discussion about gaming to links to TV Tropes then we wouldn't even have this part of the forum. Pretend it doesn't exist if it bothers you. :/

Should probably plant a big honking spoilers sign on the top of the thread, though anyone entering it should expect them.

The first Kratos fight is hard, but winnable. The story goes on regardless of whether you beat him or not. This is understandable, since this is right after ANOTHER boss (who WILL kill you if you die to him) and he's fairly strong himself. I didn't even know it was possible to beat him until after my first playthrough.
The fight after that, vs his boss, is completely unwinnable. He'll one-shot you, most likely. If you survive for some time or beat him before the time limit through New Game Plus cheese + Grinding, the fight just flat-out ends and he beats you in the story anyways.
... huh?

The TV tropes thing didn't bother me in the slightest. I was just stating that I spent a lot of time looking at that site (though I did use the word "waste").

Also, it does say way at the top that there are spoilers.

Right, I do recall that fight in ToS. That was a good one.

[Hiro Protagonest]

I'm not sure if the first battle with Seath the Scaleless can be beaten (although I'm not sure if TVTropes meant that he's a recurring boss or that you seriously cannot beat him on the first try unless you looked up all his moves), but you can beat the Asylum Demon in Dark Souls with just the straight sword hilt (or your fists), and you can use the black firebombs if you picked that as your starting gift. The game even filled in that space - you get his hammer for doing so. You can also beat the Hellkite Dragon with ultra-heavy max fire resist armor or ultra-light/no armor and really good dodge skill, but I'm not sure if he's meant to be unbeatable or just really frickin' annoying.

[Psyren]

Man I just wasted a lot of time.

I apologize for nothing :smalltongue::smallwink:

[Sith_Happens]

Dragon Age: Origins has the "unbeatable" with scare quotes version: The fight in question is tuned to be ridiculously difficult such that you'll probably lose, but if you do win the story acknowledges it and you get to skip the otherwise-subsequent prison-break quest.

[Winter_Wolf]

Nei vs Nei can actually be won with enough levels, but Nei still dies due to the other Nei being a part of her, and so killing it ended up killing her as well. I think there was some special dialogue if you do that.

The worst thing about that fight is that logically if Neifirst kills Nei, she should die too--because they are after all part of the same being, but instead the rest of the party gets to fight her after she kills your best party member.

For what it's worth, someone at SEGA recognized that was BS (eventually), and if you've been a devoted follower of the PS series on the Playstation 2, and have a won-game save from Playing the Phantasy Star: Generation 1 game, there's apparently a way to bring Nei back in Phantasy Star: Generation 2. She still dies at the end of the duel, but you can clone her afterward.

That's a lot of 'and' conditionals, and probably more of a "okay whiners, screw you, here's a bone" thing than anything else.


The Sims is unbeatable and eventually you realize how much time you've wasted.

It's good that we can laugh about it now, hey? Now that the pain of those missing hours is starting to fade. :smalltongue: So. Many. Wasted. Hours.

[Starwulf]

Breath of Fire 2, the Male cat person who wants Katts affections and he challenges you to a fight. I actually tried to kill him, I sat down with a calculator, before I finally gave up I had dished out 162,521 damage, approximately 16x more damage then the final boss has HP.

[OracleofWuffing]

The boss of Labyrinth Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog (the first one) does not attack you, you're just supposed (http://youtu.be/8oRAdfXtmIg) to race to the end of the level without getting tripped up by obstacles or drowning. You still get points and he still has a death animation if you hit him 8 times (http://youtu.be/K11CfgKt93c), though.

Final Fantasy V has a couple of these, including one where the tables are on the other feet and a character continues fighting after being reduced to 0 HP.

[Saito Takuji]

quite a few in star ocean the 2nd story, and its a mix of them. and there is at least one of them that looks like a game over when you lose it.

one that comes to mind is the dias fight at the end of the tourney, even if you grind he won't go down.

funny thing you see his fights as an AI controlled party member, and on the higher difficulties he can lose THOSE fights, but still progresses

[Gnoman]

There's a third category, which seems to be fairly rare in my experience, as I'm only aware of 2; both of which are from FF VIII. Bosses which aren't supposed to beaten, and "winning" has no storyline effect whatsoever, but you gain an extremely nice reward.

The spider robot XATM092 in the Dollet Trading mission is supposed to be well beyond your ability to defeat, so the intended way to proceed is to do enough damage each time you can't avoid it that it becomes "stunned" (from which it will repair itself and continue attacking at full health)and allows escape. The final defeat of the machine is in an FMV where it is taken out by another character* using a heavy machine gun. However, in one of the fights, the "repairs itself" function will only activate 5 times, so it is possible to kill with massive amounts of damage. Doing so nets you 50 AP (for reference, the elusive and difficult to kill Cactaurs, generally considered the best source to grind AP in the game, give 20, and 5-10 is pretty decent at this stage of the game), and a couple of high-end GF ability items.

The second example is the Edea assassination in Deling City. The only difference between winning the battle and losing it is that the former gains you 20 AP.

[Triaxx]

Fallout Tactics actually has a section of one of the missions designed to be unbeatable. It's Super Mutants dug into a bunker area with end-game heavy weaponry, when teh best you have is mid-game armor and late-early-game weapons. Of course tactically speaking it's possible, and I'm watching some videos of someone doing it, but it's not supposed to be done.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Finath River. If you know, you understand, if not, rejoice in your innocence. The Chocobo's man! Chocobos and other monsters scale with levels much more strongly than human characters because they don't rely on armor. The battle at Finath River is comprised almost entirely of Chocobos and mostly they are Red and Black. Black ones can fly and thus can move anywhere on the field. Red ones have a move called Choco Meteor, which NEVER misses and does lots of damage. The higher you've leveled, the more powerful the enemies are and the harder this fight is.

Also, 11 monks.

[tonberrian]

There's a third category, which seems to be fairly rare in my experience, as I'm only aware of 2; both of which are from FF VIII. Bosses which aren't supposed to beaten, and "winning" has no storyline effect whatsoever, but you gain an extremely nice reward.

The spider robot XATM092 in the Dollet Trading mission is supposed to be well beyond your ability to defeat, so the intended way to proceed is to do enough damage each time you can't avoid it that it becomes "stunned" (from which it will repair itself and continue attacking at full health)and allows escape. The final defeat of the machine is in an FMV where it is taken out by another character* using a heavy machine gun. However, in one of the fights, the "repairs itself" function will only activate 5 times, so it is possible to kill with massive amounts of damage. Doing so nets you 50 AP (for reference, the elusive and difficult to kill Cactaurs, generally considered the best source to grind AP in the game, give 20, and 5-10 is pretty decent at this stage of the game), and a couple of high-end GF ability items.

The second example is the Edea assassination in Deling City. The only difference between winning the battle and losing it is that the former gains you 20 AP.

In Super Robot Taisen Original Generation 2, there's a point early in the game where three of the last dozen or so bosses show up, with no nerfs to their power. At this point you only have four units of which you've only had the chance to customize one with fairly weak attacks. If you lose one unit it's game over. You're intended to escape the map, but if you manage to hold the line (thanks to the AI which won't move so long as the bosses can attack you without moving and the ridiculously good terrain bonuses you have access to) and destroy the three bosses, you get rewarded for a little fourth wall breakage and some of the best equipment in the game.

[Gnoman]

Final Fantasy Tactics: Finath River. If you know, you understand, if not, rejoice in your innocence. The Chocobo's man! Chocobos and other monsters scale with levels much more strongly than human characters because they don't rely on armor. The battle at Finath River is comprised almost entirely of Chocobos and mostly they are Red and Black. Black ones can fly and thus can move anywhere on the field. Red ones have a move called Choco Meteor, which NEVER misses and does lots of damage. The higher you've leveled, the more powerful the enemies are and the harder this fight is.

Also, 11 monks.

Neither of those are all that bad. Chocobos have fairly low HP as monsters go, so any party with Ninjas or Summoners can take down the nasty reds and blacks before they can do too much damage, while monks are unable to equip hats, weapons or shields, meaning that they miss out on the best elemental and status protections.

[banthesun]

Breath of Fire 2, the Male cat person who wants Katts affections and he challenges you to a fight. I actually tried to kill him, I sat down with a calculator, before I finally gave up I had dished out 162,521 damage, approximately 16x more damage then the final boss has HP.

I remember having a similar experience (though not quite going as far in my case). :smallbiggrin:

Also in that game, the first time I played it I had some trouble getting the Affinity spell, leading me to believe the final boss could be beaten without it. This lead to me wailing on him with Ryu for about two hours, slowly becoming convinced it was a battle I was expected to lose, but becoming more and more terrified it would be a game over.

After that, well, it was a long time before I played that game again...

[NEO|Phyte]

I'm not sure if the first battle with Seath the Scaleless can be beaten (although I'm not sure if TVTropes meant that he's a recurring boss or that you seriously cannot beat him on the first try unless you looked up all his moves)

The initial encounter with Seath cannot be won, and you have to die to proceed. Until the primordial crystal is broken, he has infinite HP, and said crystal is down in the crystal caves, while your first encounter is in the archives.

[Happy Gravity]

... huh?

The TV tropes thing didn't bother me in the slightest. I was just stating that I spent a lot of time looking at that site (though I did use the word "waste").

Also, it does say way at the top that there are spoilers.

Right, I do recall that fight in ToS. That was a good one.

Well, it bothered ME. :smallredface:

I don't know if any other Tales games feature any such battles, I haven't seen the series mentioned anywhere else in this thread. Does anybody know?

[Thiyr]

First three games I think of upon seeing this:

Megaman Battle Network 3, against Bass. One of those fun instances where people find a way to do it anyway, only to find the game doesn't recognize that they did anything.

Lufia 2, first fight against Gades: I actually don't mind that even if you manage to beat him (but you probably won't first time through), he just goes to cutscene and blows you away. He's a god of destruction. He's reveling in the fun of it all. Somebody manages to hurt him? Well, time to turn on the shenanigans. At least he gives you his sword.

Aaaand Kingdom of Loathing. Because beating the Guy Made of Bees or the Naughty Sorceress the way they're designed is less fun than getting around the required event script and punching them in the face to death. Notable in that the first two times somebody beat the NS, the Devs said "Huh. Well, good job. We didn't think this was possible. Have some stuff, we're gonna go fix that." Like Absolute Virtue from FFXI, he wasn't supposed to be beaten that way. Unlike that, the devs were still impressed and gave the guys something for their trouble.

[Triaxx]

They're pretty bad if you're unprepared. Or if you've ground up high level.

[danzibr]

There's a third category, which seems to be fairly rare in my experience, as I'm only aware of 2; both of which are from FF VIII. Bosses which aren't supposed to beaten, and "winning" has no storyline effect whatsoever, but you gain an extremely nice reward.

I actually included that in the "unbeatable" category. The only one I gave an example of, I think, is beating True Weltall and getting the unique item (some armor, forget the name... Executioner something?) in XenoGears.

[Cogwheel]

Snip

Since you're here (and thus at least one person will get it...

The battle after Dreadfell in Tales of Maj'Eyal. The orc patrol and... Ukruk the Fierce, was it? Huge swarm of archers and fighters about twenty levels above you, in a game where archers are extraordinarily nasty, and their boss. They ambush you the moment you leave the dungeon.

You can actually beat them? I can do it either a third of the time (roughly) or always, depending on my class. Never, for one or two classes. It doesn't change a thing, bar some dialogue lines, an achievement, and the leader's likely-useless loot, plus some XP. On the bright side, losing is harmless, which is just as well in a roguelike.

[Chen]

Since you're here (and thus at least one person will get it...

The battle after Dreadfell in Tales of Maj'Eyal. The orc patrol and... Ukruk the Fierce, was it? Huge swarm of archers and fighters about twenty levels above you, in a game where archers are extraordinarily nasty, and their boss. They ambush you the moment you leave the dungeon.

You can actually beat them? I can do it either a third of the time (roughly) or always, depending on my class. Never, for one or two classes. It doesn't change a thing, bar some dialogue lines, an achievement, and the leader's likely-useless loot, plus some XP. On the bright side, losing is harmless, which is just as well in a roguelike.

Hmm I didn't realize that was an unwinnable fight. Any character that I could beat Dreadfell with just kicked the crap out of those orcs.

[Cogwheel]

Hmm I didn't realize that was an unwinnable fight. Any character that I could beat Dreadfell with just kicked the crap out of those orcs.

It's meant to be unwinnable! Or rather, you're meant to lose.

That said, anyone who beats Dreadfell is probably a wee bit broken at that point. It's like Far East Syndrome but a bit less so.

[Choyrt]

Some great stuff here. I have two off the wall examples, but I'm not sure if the count technically.

1.) Planescape Torment = you. I know it sounds odd, but in that game YOU are the badguy and YOU can't truly be killed. Suicide is the only option with the blade of the immortal.

2.) Baldur's Gate = Drizzt. You bump into him on the surface fighting a pack of gnolls. He is a buzzsaw, and he is burning through everything in sight. When I encountered him, I tried to bonk him for his sword and he simply gibbed the party faster than his attack animations could reflect.

I reloaded, played almost the entire game and leveled my party fully, then returned and assaulted him with everything I had and fully prepared. He still gibbed my party.

My friend Mike..... somehow beat him.


http://lparchive.org/Baldurs-Gate/Update%2010/24-25.JPG

[Choyrt]

Fallout Tactics actually has a section of one of the missions designed to be unbeatable. It's Super Mutants dug into a bunker area with end-game heavy weaponry, when teh best you have is mid-game armor and late-early-game weapons. Of course tactically speaking it's possible, and I'm watching some videos of someone doing it, but it's not supposed to be done.

I went bonkers on that, and actually pulled it off with two men standing at the end. I settled that it wasn't worth it, despite spending two days doing it.

Still, to this day, Fallout Tactics is the best turnbased squad game I think I've played and that includes SS2 and XCom.

[Eldariel]

Fallout Tactics actually has a section of one of the missions designed to be unbeatable. It's Super Mutants dug into a bunker area with end-game heavy weaponry, when teh best you have is mid-game armor and late-early-game weapons. Of course tactically speaking it's possible, and I'm watching some videos of someone doing it, but it's not supposed to be done.

It's not just possible, it's easy. They are all armed with Browning M2 machine guns, which while a great weapon, is horribly inaccurate. A good lone sniper can kill all of them with basically zero chance of return fire hitting. It takes a while but it's not even a challenge.

In similar vein, in C&C: Red Alert, there's a Tanya mission where you blow up some bridges to stop soviet tank advance. At the end of the mission, when you blow up the last bridge, the tank column actually arrives on the map. However, if you don't finish another objective, the map doesn't end at that point. Of course, since Tanya outranges said tanks, just destroy one bridge and you can kill all the tanks with her eventually (she does 5% damage to tanks due to using pistols so it takes a long, long while but again, there's zero risk of return fire). This, of course, has no effect on how the campaign progresses.

[GloatingSwine]

There's a third category, which seems to be fairly rare in my experience, as I'm only aware of 2; both of which are from FF VIII. Bosses which aren't supposed to beaten, and "winning" has no storyline effect whatsoever, but you gain an extremely nice reward.

The spider robot XATM092 in the Dollet Trading mission is supposed to be well beyond your ability to defeat, so the intended way to proceed is to do enough damage each time you can't avoid it that it becomes "stunned" (from which it will repair itself and continue attacking at full health)and allows escape. The final defeat of the machine is in an FMV where it is taken out by another character* using a heavy machine gun. However, in one of the fights, the "repairs itself" function will only activate 5 times, so it is possible to kill with massive amounts of damage. Doing so nets you 50 AP (for reference, the elusive and difficult to kill Cactaurs, generally considered the best source to grind AP in the game, give 20, and 5-10 is pretty decent at this stage of the game), and a couple of high-end GF ability items.

The second example is the Edea assassination in Deling City. The only difference between winning the battle and losing it is that the former gains you 20 AP.

Killing the spider robit also gets you a bonus to starting SeeD rank. If you spam Quetzalcoatl at it over and over again with max boost each time you can do it quite easily within the time limit.


2.) Baldur's Gate = Drizzt. You bump into him on the surface fighting a pack of gnolls. He is a buzzsaw, and he is burning through everything in sight. When I encountered him, I tried to bonk him for his sword and he simply gibbed the party faster than his attack animations could reflect.

I reloaded, played almost the entire game and leveled my party fully, then returned and assaulted him with everything I had and fully prepared. He still gibbed my party.

My friend Mike..... somehow beat him.

beating Drizzt in BG1 is all about exploiting how bad the pathfinding AI was in that game. You can get him basically stuck on, I think, the pier in the lake in that area and just pew pew him with arrows.

[Mewtarthio]

Hmm I didn't realize that was an unwinnable fight. Any character that I could beat Dreadfell with just kicked the crap out of those orcs.

It really depends on the class. If you've got lots of area attacks, for instance, the orcs are much less threatening, seeing as the AI really likes bunching up into tight crowds. If you rely on escape/mobility, the orcs are more dangerous, since they surround you and the stage is really small.

Also fun fact: The function that lets you get knocked out instead of dying reverts to normal once you kill the boss. If you take down the boss first, then his minions can actually kill you for real. Because this is still a Roguelike, and darkgod will punish you if you forget it.

[erikun]

The worst thing about that fight is that logically if Neifirst kills Nei, she should die too--because they are after all part of the same being, but instead the rest of the party gets to fight her after she kills your best party member.

For what it's worth, someone at SEGA recognized that was BS (eventually), and if you've been a devoted follower of the PS series on the Playstation 2, and have a won-game save from Playing the Phantasy Star: Generation 1 game, there's apparently a way to bring Nei back in Phantasy Star: Generation 2. She still dies at the end of the duel, but you can clone her afterward.

That's a lot of 'and' conditionals, and probably more of a "okay whiners, screw you, here's a bone" thing than anything else.
Nei actually dies over the next few days if she kills Neifirst, so it makes sense that Neifirst would still be there if Nei lost.

Of course, there are a lot of ways that can end up not making sense, such as heading back to town and sleeping for a week, but the basic idea is that Neifirst still being there isn't that terrible.


*Note that I'm talking talking about fights like the aforementioned Golbez Underground battle, where he just paralyzes your entire party and one-shots you one-by-one. Those are more like cutscenes that happen to take place on the battle screen.
I don't know, that was actually a cool fight. Not only was it a normal fight at first - a tense situation in the story, and clearly a boss battle at the beginning - but you end up in the unique position of having two characters alive and returned to the boss first after the "cinematic" was finished. If you tried that with a cutscene and dumped players into a battle with most of their party dead, players would call foul. The fact that it started as a battle, where you could buff/prepare, and switched back to a battle after the "scene" made it a lot more accepted.

[Tylorious]

Some great stuff here. I have two off the wall examples, but I'm not sure if the count technically.

1.) Planescape Torment = you. I know it sounds odd, but in that game YOU are the badguy and YOU can't truly be killed. Suicide is the only option with the blade of the immortal.


No spoiler alert?

[Mewtarthio]

I don't know, that was actually a cool fight. Not only was it a normal fight at first - a tense situation in the story, and clearly a boss battle at the beginning - but you end up in the unique position of having two characters alive and returned to the boss first after the "cinematic" was finished. If you tried that with a cutscene and dumped players into a battle with most of their party dead, players would call foul. The fact that it started as a battle, where you could buff/prepare, and switched back to a battle after the "scene" made it a lot more accepted.

Sorry I was unclear: That was a positive example. I was contrasting it against fights where you appear to have a fighting chance, but it really doesn't matter what you do.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

No spoiler alert?

The game is 14 years old. We're moving into "Rosebud was his sled" territory.

[Psyren]

The game is 14 years old. We're moving into "Rosebud was his sled" territory.

Movies are different though - the really old/classic ones are remastered and rereleased all the time. Torment didn't make it to GoG until 2010, over a decade after it was originally released, and getting it to run on modern computers before that time was a PITA.

[Wardog]

Freelancer has a number of unbeatable bosses (that you're not supposed to fight).

My most recent playthrough was using a mod that gave you access to the whole galaxy from the start and removed the level restrictions on ships and weapons, so I got myself the Outcast (or possibly Corsair) Very Heavy Fighter and kitted it out with Class 10 CODENAME weapons, before starting the story missions.

I wanted to see if I could break the game (or alternatively find any easter-eggs) by e.g. destroying all the cruisers that attack Bedford Station, but it turns out they have a minimum HP they won't go below, no matter how hard you hit them.



In Halo: Combat Evolved, at the start of the first level, if you return to the bridge immediately after getting your pistol, you can murder the captain and bridge crew. However, if you do so, the exit seals, Cortana declares that you have gone rampant, and a squad of marines are spawned to attack you - including an unkillable Sgt Johnson.

[Draconi Redfir]

the last mission in Warcraft 3 is sort of like this, you're set to defend a base for around thirty minutes while a trap is prepared to defeat the big bad guy, so huge and powerful armies of enemies slowly crawl up the mountain to try and get to you, and if they do before the trap is ready then you lose. but you also have two other computer-controlled friendly bases that you can reinforce to stall them for you, however no matter how many troops you pile on to either base, no matter how well you enforce them, the main boss that you need to trap still needs to get to your base in order for the game to end, so at some point, assuming the base hasn't fallen earlier, the guy comes into the fight himself and beats the place to a pulp, i don't think you can kill him without cheats, and it still happens even if you do, though his image won't be present for the gameplay cut scenes after each allied base is destroyed.


it's also mainly because of him that you cant launch an all-out assault on the enemy base, you could theoretically attack and possibly even destroy his base, but he's always on the map so he will just destroy anything you throw at him in more or less one hit. even if you use cheats to beat him, i think enemy units just sort of spawn in mid air to rush at you? I’m not quite sure.

Eventually the level ends with your base being destroyed and the guy falling for the trap, though if this happens before the thirty minutes of preparation are up, then you need to do it again.

[Olinser]

Lots of games have unbeatable battles, but it always leaves you wondering... how many of those can really be beaten?

*spoilers ahead*

First one that comes to mind for me is Breath of Fire III. When you fight Balio and Sunder in the woods, there's no winning. In fact, even if you bust out the gameshark and make your party uber strong, you can whale on them for hours and hours, doing tens of thousands of damage, and they just don't die. Similarly when you fight Garr in the contest of champions.

Or XenoGears. When you fight Weltall Id as Bart in the desert, there's no winning. But if you cheat... you actually can win, but doing so has no rewards. Or when you fight True Weltall (or whatever it's called) later on in the cave. You can win, and it turns out you get a unique item!

Or Phantasy Star IV. When you fight the dude that gives you Megido (you're not supposed to fight him), he owns you, but if you're way overpowered you can win! Doing so gets you like 1 experience or something.

And IIRC in Phantasy Star II you solo the evil Nei with your Nei and you're supposed to lose.

Or Chrono Trigger. The first time you fight Lavos with Chrono, you're not supposed to win, but enough power leveling and you can win (I think? Been a while. For sure you can do it in a new game +).

Then there are fights that are just really friggin' hard.

Like in Demon's Souls. The fight against the big dude at the end of the tutorial. He owned me, but apparently you can win.

Like in Suikoden, when you duel Tyr's dad as the brawler dude.

Or the first Blitzball match in FFX. If it's your first time playing, for sure you lose. But when you get some skill, you can beat it your second playthrough.

And I'm sure if I were to look at my collection of games I'd come up with many more, but... that's a good start.

For Catherine, I don't think anybody in the world has managed to beat the last level in the Tower of Babel solo (man have done it in duo).

[Partysan]

I believe the last part of the action sequence in Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy) where Lucas is at work and suddenly gets attacked by these green insects is unbeatable. You know, when you are trying to punch in the door code while being approached by the murdered guy. At least I've never seen it done.

[Triaxx]

The problem isn't the inaccuracy of the M2, but a flaw in the mechanics of full-auto fire. That single Sniper is guaranteed to never be hit but anyone around him/her are going to get pasted.

I have managed it, but only by incredible cunning and copious amounts of luck. I stole the General's Minigun and used that and explosives to cut them down.

[Temotei]

If I remember correctly, in The Legend of Dragoon, the first fight against Lloyd is unbeatable.

Most of the others I can think of have been mentioned.

Oh, and in Golden Sun, if you beat Saturos and Menardi, nothing happens. You still lose. They are beatable, though.

[Teln]

There's a third category, which seems to be fairly rare in my experience, as I'm only aware of 2; both of which are from FF VIII. Bosses which aren't supposed to beaten, and "winning" has no storyline effect whatsoever, but you gain an extremely nice reward.

The spider robot XATM092 in the Dollet Trading mission is supposed to be well beyond your ability to defeat, so the intended way to proceed is to do enough damage each time you can't avoid it that it becomes "stunned" (from which it will repair itself and continue attacking at full health)and allows escape. The final defeat of the machine is in an FMV where it is taken out by another character* using a heavy machine gun. However, in one of the fights, the "repairs itself" function will only activate 5 times, so it is possible to kill with massive amounts of damage. Doing so nets you 50 AP (for reference, the elusive and difficult to kill Cactaurs, generally considered the best source to grind AP in the game, give 20, and 5-10 is pretty decent at this stage of the game), and a couple of high-end GF ability items.

The second example is the Edea assassination in Deling City. The only difference between winning the battle and losing it is that the former gains you 20 AP.

There's another one like that in Kingdom Hearts 1. The first time you're in Traverse Town, when SquallLeon challenges you to a fight, it is possible to defeat him if you know your stuff. Your reward is 30 XP (a lot at such an early point in the game), a cutscene where Sora collapses from exhaustion just as the fight ends, and Leon gives you an Elixir later on.

[GoblinArchmage]

In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, if you beat the running man in a race, he tells you where to find the Unicorn Fountain, which lets you unlock the beam attack, which opens up the secret door to the Temple of Light, where you can get the Triforce. It's true!

[Triaxx]

No, it's not, he just yells at you for cheating.

[Cogwheel]

It really depends on the class. If you've got lots of area attacks, for instance, the orcs are much less threatening, seeing as the AI really likes bunching up into tight crowds. If you rely on escape/mobility, the orcs are more dangerous, since they surround you and the stage is really small.

Being able to get away is still really useful! Just make sure it's not stopped by people, you know, being in the way.


Also fun fact: The function that lets you get knocked out instead of dying reverts to normal once you kill the boss. If you take down the boss first, then his minions can actually kill you for real. Because this is still a Roguelike, and darkgod will punish you if you forget it.

Oh, yes. What a delightful discovery that was.

Say, what do you think about starting another ToME thread?

[Mewtarthio]

For Catherine, I don't think anybody in the world has managed to beat the last level in the Tower of Babel solo (man have done it in duo).

People in Japan have done it. Mainly because there's actually a glitch in all the non-Japanese versions of the game that makes it impossible unless you're doing co-op.


Say, what do you think about starting another ToME thread?

More ToME threads are never a bad thing.