History Main / BreatherBoss

There are some bosses in gaming that are [[ThatOneBoss more difficult than the creators expect]]...and then there's this guy. He's not quite pathetic enough to go down in one hit from any old attack, and there's no story significance to him being easy, or indeed, any story significance to him at all. In fact, the developers expected people to actually find said character a challenging opponent in some way, but failed.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Balatro}}'', the Mark causes Face cards to be drawn face-down. Not only are there plenty of strategies that don't rely on (or even ''discourage'') using Face cards to be effective, but the face-down Face cards are still fully playable. Face-down cards are only a serious problem for forming straights and flushes, which Face card strategies rarely rely on to begin with, and Face cards comprise of just three ranks, making it easy to score a Two Pair, Three of a Kind, or better simply by repeatedly discarding Aces and Numbers, sorting by rank, and just blindly picking five face-down cards in a sequence. Best of all, you don't have to worry about this Boss Blind at all if you're playing the Abandoned Deck, which starts without any face cards, and you haven't added any yet; even if you did add a few face cards to that deck, it's still easy to pick out which of them were drawn.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Balatro}}'', the Mark causes Face cards to be drawn face-down. Not only are there plenty of strategies that don't rely on (or even ''discourage'') using Face cards to be effective, but the face-down Face cards are still fully playable. Face-down cards are only a serious problem for forming straights and flushes, which Face card strategies rarely rely on to begin with, and Face cards comprise of just three ranks, making it easy to score a Two Pair, Three of a Kind, or better simply by repeatedly discarding Aces and Numbers, sorting by rank, and just blindly picking five face-down cards in a sequence. Best of all, you don't have to worry about this Boss Blind at all if you're playing the Abandoned Deck, which starts without any face cards, and you haven't added any yet.

** Valor in ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta 2}}''. For a giant, high-ranking angel that single-handedly destroys the bridge you've spent the entire last chapter building and was preceded by Glamor, he goes down easily. His attacks are blatantly telegraphed and his BossOnlyLevel is the shortest chapter in either of the two games.

* Salazar was this in the original UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube release of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4''. In that version, Salazar "head" would never attack the corners of the platform where the tentacles came out, so if you got a tentacle to retreat (easily done by simply shooting it a couple times from a distance) you could go into that corner and wail on him unperturbed (until the tentacle came back out, but then you just had to shoot it again). This was fixed in the [=PS2=] and Wii versions.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfTianDing'' have it's second-to-last boss, Ding Peng, and the only boss who ''doesn't'' have gimmicks or devastating special moves. His only schtick is running all over the place while ringing his bell to [[FlunkyBoss summon easily-defeatable mooks as backup]]. Which works ''against'' his favour, because weapons dropped from mooks can be used on the boss.

** On the {{Kaiju}} side of the fence is [[Film/TheMysterians Moguera]] and [[Film/GodzillaVsHedorah Hedorah]], who both have the trait of "[[CycleOfHurting can be helplessly stun-locked in the corner]]". With Moguera it's by crouching and tail-whipping, and with Hedorah it's by punching as swiftly as possible. Neither character will be able to retaliate at all, making for easy level-up fodder and a good breather to restore health in later levels when you're being swarmed by multiple enemies at once.

* ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'' has the Egg Dragoon. It seems the developers were feeling merciful, and wanted to give players a break after braving the [[ThatOneLevel infuriatingly difficult Eggmanland]].

** The Stage 2 boss of ''4'' takes craploads of damage from the laser, which penetrates enemies and hurts them so long as it's touching them; the boss's big head certainly helps to compound the damage. In fact, when you fight his [[SequentialBoss second form]], if you continuously fire lasers at him, he'll go down before any of his shots have a chance to hit you.
** In Contra 3, the first boss of the last level is quite simple if you have the Spread Gun, as it's possible to shoot at its mouth and destroy the small aliens before they even come out.

* ''VideoGame/MinecraftAdventureMaps'':
** [[GiantSpider Areita]] from ''Herobrine's Mansion'' takes less to kill than any of the other bosses and has relatively few dangerous attacks — she may be able to summon cave spiders, but those go down in a single hit, and the webs in her lair are pretty easy to play around. She's fought right in the middle of a very hard section.

* ''VideoGame/StarFox'':

---> I will not be defeated by this--NOOOOOO! NOOO-NO-NO-N-N-NOO-- ''[boom, HIT +10]'' MY EMPEROR, I'VE FAILED YOOOOOOOUUUUUU!!

* ''[[VideoGame/Hellfore1989 Hellfire]]''[='=]s stage 3 has you fighting two midbosses that are [[ThatOneBoss unusually difficult]] due to their seemingly random movement easily cornering the player and costing them countless lives; the first one is a single cycloptic alien with FloatingLimbs and the second is [[WolfpackBoss a trio of three smaller eyeball monsters that each move independently]]. So it's a relief when the endboss of the stage fires relatively simple patterns and has an easy-to-reach weakspot, and can be downed in about five seconds.

* ''VideoGame/ArTonelicoIIMelodyOfMetafalica'' has plot-related battles that force [[GlassCannon extremely weak but destructive Reyvateils]] to fight, or has only TheHero fight alone with a boss, both with no defensive ability you normally have. Instead of hard battles you may expect, these battles are far easier than most enemies group in the same area. Some can even be considered as ZeroEffortBoss as they can hardly damage you at all.

* The FinalBoss of the Science Fiction chapter of ''VideoGame/LiveALive'' is so incredibly easy that he would be a ZeroEffortBoss if not for the fact that it's theoretically possible to lose to him if you don't figure out the ''very'' obvious tactic to beating him: take out the Stabilizers that heal the boss, then stand beside it and spam your heal ability while the boss fruitlessly attacks and triggers your CounterAttack over and over until it dies.

*** For a non-Robot Master breather, the Guts Dozer, one of the endgame bosses of ''2'', rolls onto the stage as a massive hulking giant, taking up a big chunk of the screen... and it's a complete pushover. Its damage output is surprisingly low (its shots deal only 2 damage, while contact or the spawning Metools deal 4, but the thing is so slow that it'll rarely make contact), and it has a gigantic hitbox and a distinct lack of MercyInvincibility. If you're good at mashing, you can feasibly kill this thing in about two seconds, especially if you use its weakness, the rapid-fire Quick Boomerangs. This stands out, since the other endgame bosses in ''2'' include the genuinely terrifying Mecha Dragon and the near-broken Boobeam Trap.